NFL Great Tom Brady and Witch Craft

[FlyersFan]

This is old news, but it's new to me. Just hearing about it.

NFL legend Tom Brady ... who is Catholic ... was 'helped' by witchcraft to win games.  He and his supermodel ex-wife are/were Catholic and married in a Catholic Church.  She turned to Wicca and got him involved in the rituals.  She got him to set up a Wicca altar before games and make intentions on it, and she got him to carry different stones that supposedly have different powers, etc etc.

So .... did Tom Brady win all those games and Super Bowls because he was a good player?  Because those players around him were good and carried him?  Because he cheated?  OR ... because of witchcraft?

Google Tom Brady Witchcraft.  Lots of mainline news stories on it.  It's not a made up thing.

Tom Brady and Witchcraft - CBS Sports

According to the 41-year-old quarterback, the other equally important part of the equation is the pregame rituals that his wife, Gisele Bundchen, has him go through. In the days after the Patriots' 13-3 Super Bowl win over the Rams, Brady described some of those rituals.  
 
First, Brady noted that Gisele makes an 'altar' for him at every game. "I've learned a lot from my wife over the years," Brady said. "She's so about the power of intention, and believing things that are really going to happen and she always makes a little altar for me at the game, because she just wills it so much. So she put together a little altar for me that I could bring with pictures of my kids."

"I have these little special stones and healing stones and protection stones and she has me wear a necklace and take these drops she makes and say all these mantras," Brady said.

[argentus]

Interesting.   Looking at this with an open mind, I find that I don't particularly care how people worship or their rituals, as long as their ideals aren't a horrific blasphemy against the Earth's creatures.   

Full disclosure:  I can't help it, I would find it fairly impossible to befriend a worshipper of Satan.   I don't, however, believe that adherents of Wicca are proponents of the dark side.    I hear the term "Pagan" bandied about sometimes, and think that is often a junk drawer for religious boundaries of people who don't understand a culture.   When I was a boy, I lived in a place near Shoshoni tribal grounds/reservation.    Their religion was characterized by those outside of it as "pagan".   

What I found is that their theology had a symbolic Father, Son and Great Spirit (holy ghost), and the chanting and such was prayer in a language which I didn't understand.   I think I would have to delve deeply into Wicca before I felt comfortable passing judgement upon it, and even then, it is my belief that the IS, the Godhead, God grants us all free will for a very good reason.   

This is the primary reason why I've never felt a conflict between faith and science; different terms measured by similar phenomena.   

Short answer:   Whatever blows his hair back is fine with me, as long as it doesn't cause a detriment to innocent people or creatures.

[putnam6]

As all Falcons fans know the franchised is cursed, even before parishioners at a historic Atlanta Church were forced to move for the Falcon's new stadium circa 2015. Many thought the church buy out low balled and many cursed the Falcons and owner Arthur Blank

it took that and every bit of the  pagan rituals of little Tommy Brady to facilitate the Patriots win, so much that they didn't have enough of that mojo later against the Eagles

[Nugget]

'Where attention goes, energy flows' is one of my favorite quotes. I don't think the supernatural is as envolved in the outcomes of our lives as people believe.

Genesis 1:26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

We were given the power over the direction of our lives if we choose to use it.
I.E. if you wake up convinced your life is crap and nothing good will happen today, that's the kind of day you're likely to have. 
If you wake up with an attitude of gratefulness for all that you have and fully believe in your power to attract positive events, that's what you're likely to attract.

I spent decades fighting depression until I realized 'I' have control over the outcome of my life, and it begins in my thoughts. It was not easy to switch my thought process from the negativity that began in early childhood to positive thinking, but it worked for me. Like attarcts like, and I have been richly rewarded for not giving up on my quest to find happiness.

If people want to believe using tools spells or rocks are responsible for their positive outcomes it's still the same principal; The Law of Attraction.

I used to be a big believer in the paranormal; now I think it's just a primative concept for all of the unexplained normal that we don't understand.

[FlyersFan]

Short answer:   Whatever blows his hair back is fine with me, as long as it doesn't cause a detriment to innocent people or creatures.

Okay ... but did his talent win the superbowls, or did the witchcraft?

[argentus]

Okay ... but did his talent win the superbowls, or did the witchcraft?

That's a great question FlyersFan.    I know that I have my own little rituals that some might be weirded out by, and other practices that might be misconstrued.    For example, my Bride and me frequently do a Smudge Ceremony in and around our house and my Mom's house.   As a scientist, do I have measurable data that it makes a difference?   Oh hell no!     But it's something I feel.   I grew up around people with these and other ceremonial rituals.   

I have to think that if it produces a positive feeling for the practitioner, that I believe it has merit.   I also think there are many forces at work in the universe which we cannot currently measure.   The scientist in me accepts that as a fact of nature, as an unmeasureable quantity is nearly as good in the dataset as a measureable one.   

Short answer:   I don't think it matters which factors won the games;  a person brings all her or his personal power to bear in the competition of life.   

Great thread!   Thank you