(November 30, 2025) Modern magic based spirituality is best known by its techniques labeled as Witchcraft and Energy Work. These have mostly been reconstructed from personal experiences motivated by the memory that something like it once existed in the past (The Old Ways).
Only now with the first successful translations of runestones and ogham stones are the Old Ways being revealed. These Old Ways turn out to be very magical as many have suspected. Despite the suppression of the intervening years, today's magical spirituality can easily been seen as a continuation of the past, only updated to keep up with the changing times with our deeper understanding of nature and our different spiritual needs.
The main spiritual concerns of the past were about survival instead of about peace of mind like today. They were most worried about having enough food.
In the past nature was thought to consist of one realm with everything working according to the same rules. Today we believe we exist in two different realms, the material and the spiritual/conscious realms which work differently and which interact only in limited and at present, in unknown ways. This splitting of reality came about because because after rules of motion were established by Isaac Newton, people realized that the physical universe could run itself like a clock. The universe did not need deities or spirits to change things.
Despite these difference both modern and ancient magical paths have non-dualist worldviews, that is, reality is not a war between good and evil. This perverse idea came from Persian Zoroastrianism and spread east and west along with the Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BCE). With this worldview everything became either inherently good or bad. If the divine realm was good then the material world was bad. If males were good then females were bad and needed to be controlled. If my empire was good then all others were evil and deserved to be conquered (empire rulers loved this ideology). No middle ground existed for uncertainty, neutrality, or transitional states.
Additionally, both modern and ancient magic paths do not lordify their deities, that is, treat them only as people who tended to become mostly male lords at a royal court. Deities could be perceived as cluster of powers as well as optionally be personified if needed. The pantheon of the Old Ways was gender balanced and it even had one hermaphrodite (or at least neutral gendered). Its pantheon was the source of many of the most popular Pagan deities today.
Lordification developed in parallel with empires hence it occurred at different times at different places. This is because as empires developed distant kings came to be seen to be as powerful and capricious as nature powers. This led to a change in the perception of nature powers as being the manifestations of lordly people. This gave rise to classical mythology as wall as to the medieval era bardic tales from Nordic and Celtic lands. These lordified deities also acquired human weaknesses and so could now be bribed and flattered (praised) by humans. That led to human sacrifices because that was the ultimate bribery. This was also when the divine feminine stated to be downgraded because most rulers were male.
The European civilization associated with the Old Ways are the Ancient Druids. Their runic and ogham texts were written in the original language of the Neolithic farmers who came out of northern Mesopotamia and spoke Akkadian. This language exists on stone or fired clay tablet ranging in date from the Minoans of 1900 BCE to the Scandinavian runestones and Codex Runicus dating to as late as 1200 CE.
This ancient writing continued to be used despite the various local spoken languages changing around them becoming various mixes of Akkadian and Indo-European. This means that Druid Akkadian was the Latin of the Pagan world and some organized religious group must have been teaching it. The only such group we know of are the Druids. The Druid civilization was also the one which built the megaliths of Europe like Stonehenge prior to the arrival of the Indo-European speakers.
Reference For Priestess With Pentacle
Italian Ministry of Culture (November 19, 2024) Archeologia, TPC: recuperati due sarcofagi e otto urne etruschi provenienti da uno scavo clandestino a Città della Pieve. Online at: https://cultura.gov.it/comunicato/27006