What’s your witchy background?

Cover of "The Crone's Book of Words"
Cover of The Crone's Book of Words

I was bullied a lot in school, so after martial arts failed (the boys in Karate bullied me too) I went to an occult shop and searched for a book that would help me curse them.

I found The Crone’s Book of Words by Valerie Worth and never ended up cursing anybody with it, because I chickened out. However I did try the weather spells (worked really well) and the building up one’s own power spells. I also tried the “To Bind a Malefactor” spell, but I did not know what “malefactor” meant and so I thought it meant to bind a person of the male persuasion. My dad did not respond to my commands as I had hoped.

I then picked up Teen Witch and walked around in a SRW-groupie haze for several years.  It was a dark, dark time in my life. I don’t like to talk about it.

After the Dark Ages of SRW were over, I started actually, you know, thinking for myself and figuring out what it was I believe. I moved away from the more CM-influenced Neo-Wicca I’d been practicing and got more into folk and hearth magic. Witch has now taken on the meaning of “worker of liminal spaces” to me, or British Isles version of a shaman. (Shaman is a specific term linked with Siberian cultures; I avoid using it to describe what I do even though it could be considered shamanic. Witch works fine.)

Now I’m interested in rootwork (working with plant and animal curios, etc) on top of my current hearth and hedge witchery practice, so I’m doing some research in that area.

Don’t make me get Old Testament on your Universal Peaceful Matriarchy [Bullshit]

Recently I picked up a copy of Becoming an Ally: Breaking the Cycle of Oppression, by Anne Bishop. It’s required reading for an English class I was planning on taking this fall (though those plans have changed) and it’s been on my To Read list for a while anyway.

Honestly, I’m disappointed.

Anne Bishop (this is not Anne Bishop, novelist and author of The Black Jewels Trilogy) definitely knows what she’s talking about with regards to the mechanics of oppression and how it perpetuates itself. That’s not where my complaint lies.

My complaint lies with the mounds of feminist revisionist history littering its pages.

I am so, so tired of reading about the “peaceful matriarchy” or the 100 million witches killed during the “Burning Times”. It sucks to see it in Pagan books, though I sort of expect it by this point so I’m never really surprised.* It sucks even more to see it in books that are assigned reading for class.

I no doubt have a bone to pick about this particular bit of revisionist history because I was so taken with it myself for so long – what young, naive, feminist girl wouldn’t be taken with the idea of a time when women ruled the earth? (Probably quite a few, but I’m trying to make myself feel better here.) I spouted the same lies.

Until people who knew better directed me to scholarly sources that showed these lies had been debunked decades beforehand, and what I was spouting was revisionist history. It hurt to admit that I was wrong, but I managed to do it – and life has been much better.

So it angers me to see this revisionist history printed in books that are well thought of, generally, because I think that someone else a lot like me is going to pick up the book and think that that’s the goddess’ honest truth.

The idea of a peaceful matriarchy that existed long before the ebil penis patriarchy took it over (via rape, of course) is actually actively harmful to the modern feminist movement. If we need to imagine a past that didn’t exist in order to lend credence to our fight for equal rights, then that says we don’t really believe we deserve those rights just by virtue of our existence. We don’t need a peaceful matriarchy myth to say “We deserve to be treated like human beings.” We deserve to be treated like human beings even if patriarchy has always been the way society as arranged itself. Traditional does not equal right.

Furthermore, this matriarchy myth keeps our eyes focused on the past and how things “used to be” — instead of looking towards the future we should be working to create, we keep ourselves mired in the past, the “glorious heyday of the universal peaceful matriarchy when everyone worshipped the great goddess. Except for those people who didn’t and systematically conquered the matriarchy.” (Already the myth is breaking down! It can’t hold itself up.)

Why do we need to imagine a past to give our current cause credence? Are our actual feminist foremothers not good enough for us? We set up this ridiculous standard – a universal matriarchy – that we must measure up to. We never will and it’s ridiculous to try – we need an egalitarian society, not one gender dominating the other (as much because it’s still domination as because it encourages the idea of gender binary). Matrilineal I can get behind as it makes sense genetically, but matrilineal =/= matriarchal.

I think from now on if I get assigned a book for class that spouts this bit of revisionist history, I will get a hardcover copy of The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented past Won’t Give Women a Future by Cynthia Eller** and just fling it at the teacher’s head.

Or imagine doing so, because I don’t want to get charged with assault.

____________________________________________

*One of my favourite authors, Starhawk, is guilty of this. However, her books were written a while ago, and the notes in the later editions would suggest that she’s seen her initial error. She also talks less about the numbers of the “burning times” and more the why of the when. (IOW, why it happened at that point in history.) I’m still a huge fan of her work and I still love what she has to say; because she’s been so inspirational to me I’m able to overlook her few shortcomings. This doesn’t mean I’ll actively support those same shortcomings in every other book I come across.

**By the way, I haven’t read this yet. I plan on doing so as soon as possible. I’m sure it will give me even better points than the ones I’ve listed in this post. 

Realizing a dream: The Fifth Sacred Thing film

The Fifth Sacred Thing
Image via Wikipedia

One of my favourite books by one of my favourite authors (The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk) is being made into a film.

Probably. There’s a Kickstarter page for it, and if they raise the amount of money needed by the date listed they’ll be able to go ahead with the project. It’s very likely that they will make the goal — they’ve raised almost 50,000 dollars of their 60,000 dollar goal — and Starhawk will be able to make her dream a reality. I’ve pledged 5 dollars; I’d pledge more but I’m a student and I’m broke.

However, I am going to see if I can lend my efforts in another way to the film. They’re looking for actors. I’m going to send them an email and ask for a chance to audition. I recently decided I was done going to VIU and have applied for an 8-month film acting program at Langara; estimating standard pre-production time, I don’t think filming will start until the middle of next year.

I have a ton of acting experience and honestly, being in this film would make me the happiest person alive.

So, cross your fingers that I’m given the chance to audition. If I get to be a part of this film, at least two dreams will have been made reality.

State of Grace: Friday Fire Hazard

Today I lit candles for various reasons. One of them was Aphrodite’s candle, because it’s Friday. Her altar is on one of the lower bookshelves.

I then left the house, forgetting about the candles.

Came home to a blackened spot on the underside of the shelf above Her altar.

Could have been a lot worse. SomeOne’s watching out for me.

Wiccan Unity (or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Being Solitary)

Please stop.

Stop crying for “Pagan Unity.” The more you cry for Pagan Unity, the more divisiveness you create.

There was a time when I called for Pagan Unity. I was even part of the Pagan Unity Campaign — State Chair for Hawaii. I admit this without shame; I was younger and not well educated about the larger community of pagans and why something like PUC would cause such anger and vitriol. The only pagans I had come across were Wiccan, so I had come to the natural conclusion that all pagans were Wiccan. The others I’d run into had certainly never tried to disabuse me of this notion.

To be fair, what PUC was calling for was political unity — simply asking pagans to remind their EOs that they were pagans who voted. To give EOs an idea of the amount of pagans in their jurisdictions. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with reminding your EOs that you’re here and you vote, because that is democracy in action. Nor do I think there’s anything wrong with combining religion and politics; in fact I think you can’t not do that. The personal is political.

However, the PUC went about it the wrong way when they tried to define Paganism as “earth-based”. A perfect definition of a pagan is The Cauldron‘s: A Pagan religion is a religion that is not Jewish, Christian, or Islamic and self-identifies as Pagan.

Really, that’s all you need. It covers everything. Paganism is not a monolithic religion; it’s a term for a movement more than anything else (the Neo-Pagan movement, specifically). The problem with calling it earth-based is that not all pagan religions are earth-based any more than they are on the planet earth.

Yes, the Neo-Pagan movement came about because people hungered for something else to fill their spiritual cups, and they looked backwards through time, to ancient beliefs. That doesn’t make it all earth based. The ancients were just as messed up as we are. If they held great secrets as to how to live in perfect harmony with the earth, they didn’t share.

Now, aside from the PUC’s great mistake — the mistake of calling all pagans earth based — other mistakes have been made, and in my view they’re much worse. PUC is a small group. According to most sources, the majority of pagans are Wiccans or Neo-Wiccans — I’m not sure how you’d actually prove this as we don’t have a worldwide pagan census, but for the sake of argument let’s say this is true. In my own experience it certainly has been; seems everyone starts out in Wicca and then either stays there or moves on to another religion. Wicca certainly seems to be the gateway drug to Paganism as a whole.

Wiccans believe certain things that other pagans frequently do not. Paganism is still fringe enough that if you mention you’re pagan to someone and they know what it is, they’ll assume you’re Wiccan.

I wouldn’t have a huge problem with this if it were just a matter of Wicca being the largest pagan religion and therefore the most well-known one. I’m sure there are sects of the Big Three that I don’t know a thing about because they’re fairly small.

No, my problem comes from Wiccans or Wiccanesque people calling for unity by saying that all pagans believe in the Rede and follow it, or we all worship Maiden, Mother, and Crone, or we all have Esbats and Sabbats, or we all believe in the Three Fold Law, or any gods or goddesses we worship are all just facets of THE Lord and Lady, or….

Look, if you’re going to talk about Wiccan Community and Wiccan Unity, go fucking wild. I will not complain. That’s your thing. Not going to tell you it’s not your thing if you leave me the fuck out. But when you start opening up old wounds by spreading the falsehood that non-Wiccan pagans are anything like you and then telling us to get over it for the sake of unity, we’re not going to react too kindly to the idea of Pagan Unity. Your actions breed bitterness and hurt, which causes more division.

Leave it the fuck alone and eventually we’ll get there. You can’t force unity. Trying to do so — making a “call” to the “Pagan Community” for us to “stop being catty” — will not win you any non-Wiccan friends. It will simply cause more and more of us non-Wiccans to become more and more isolated, farther away from the label of “Pagan”. I’m so close to not using the label myself that…well, actually, I don’t use it anymore.

Hm. Wonder why.

June 3rd–4th Flamekeeping Shift: report

I didn’t sleep for this shift. At all.

I had a migraine on the 3rd, and I went back to bed at 4:30 pm (after waking up at 2:30pm) and slept until 9:30pm. The migraine was gone (and again I wondered how I had forgotten what life was like before the migraine — this one had lasted four days), and sunset was still happening. Before I could light my candle and say my beginning of shift ritual prayer, I got a call from my best friend. In tears. Panicking. She asked if she could come over, because she just needed a hug. Obviously I agreed, seeing immediately my main task for this shift.

I lit the candle, said a prayer, put on some pants. JV showed up and I gave her a good, long, hug, sending out calming energy. Got her to sit down and talk it out. Family issues — her mom and sister are treating her like a little girl, making plans that JV had had for months, and then acting like when she gets upset about it she’s overreacting (when she works fulltime and doesn’t have the time to just rearrange things on a whim — things are set in stone for months beforehand because they have to be).

So we talked for a while, I gave her some advice on how to deal with shitty family problems (I have loads of experience, after all), and then I asked her if she wanted to watch some Firefly to cheer up. Answer was obviously yes.

After she went home, it was very late, but I didn’t go to bed. I wasn’t that tired. I’d slept all day. I ended up chatting with my boyfriend and vegging out until the afternoon of the 4th (well, not talking to my boyfriend that long — he did need to sleep). My candle went out at about 1pm, which was impressive, to say the least. I started one of my battery operated ones because I can’t reach my candle supply at the moment.

In the afternoon I was feeling exhausted but I didn’t want to sleep in the afternoon and mess up my schedule. So I decided to clean — a Brighidine activity if there ever was one.

Lit the Brighid candle that sits on my stove for my cooking and cleaning occasions and set to making the kitchen somewhat usable. I have new dish-washing gloves that say “Queen of Clean” on the cuffs; I’m hoping if I wear them enough it’ll become true.

The rest of the night is fuzzy on the details — but I did manage to stay up until nightfall, when I turned off my battery-operated tealight, said the end of shift prayer, took a blissful shower, and then collapsed into my bed for a much needed sleep.

And slept for over 15 hours.

Homework? What on earth is that?

Ostara (2011)

So I’ve had a very…depressing month. Teachers at my school are on strike right now and it’s sort of drained all my energy and will to do anything. I haven’t posted blogs, I haven’t done homework, I haven’t written anything, and I sure as hell haven’t really been a Witch.

On the list of things to do for the Dedicant Path for ADF is to attend 8 festivals in the year, whether solo or private-group or public, and write about them. 4 of them (I think? Don’t have my notes handy) have to be ADF rituals. So I decided I was going to do Ostara as an ADF ritual — I was also going to attend the Pagan Fringe’s Ostara fest the other week.

I didn’t, and I haven’t done my own solo ritual either. I’ve been absolutely scattered. And I’m thinking I’m going to do an Ostara ritual, ADF style, this weekend, even though it’s long after the Equinox. I really don’t want to miss a ritual and have to do it next year; I’d like to get these done.

Anyway. I guess I’m sort of wondering if any of my readers think it’s absolutely too late to do a ritual or not? Ostara as a holiday doesn’t actually mean that much to me personally, so the whole “aligning with the energies of the day” doesn’t matter to me. What matters more is marking the general season, and I think in BC we’re definitely still in the Ostara-time and not the Beltaine-time.

Thoughts?

Between 2007 (when Morrigan Thwapped me) and 2010 (when I got involved with Brighid, Manannan, Lugh, and Aphrodite), Morrigan was always by my side. I always knew She was there. Since January 2010, She’s not been distant per se, but definitely not always by my side. I realized today it was because She knew I needed Her every step of the way when it was just the two of us. Now I work with other deities, I have a network of support and She can step back without me falling down and breaking.

Now my heart is bursting with love, in this moment. To realize one’s deity loves you so completely is a rush.

Dedication to Brighid: ritual debrief

I do a few things quite well.

One is writing. I’m a good writer.

I also make really excellent hashbrowns.

And I do a good ritual (with some — ok, half, but with edits — of the parts borrowed from this one here).

I was distracted and scattered before the ritual. I wasn’t paying attention, or tending to my shift very well. Or doing homework or anything productive. I couldn’t even write in my journal (that means I’m really distracted).

Then I decided it was now or never, because hells 9:30 had rolled around and I had to get to sleep at some point. So I set up things and drew a bath and added some colorful sparkly things to it. I don’t know what they are except that they’re from Little India in Vancouver and are meant to go with henna tattoos, I think. They’re gold and silver and green and magenta and indigo and really pretty. And they can be added to water.

So I added them to my bath-water, to the water I used in the ritual, to water for tomorrow’s ritual (sitting in the bowl I use for LotS rituals). I put on the skillet and some hashbrowns to cook while I bathed. As the bath water filled I lit candles and sang the Lady of the Starfire chant by Ali, over and over and over until it sank into me. I lay back in the bath and sang some more, and had a mild epiphany: fire in the water. Fire is represented by reds and oranges and yellows, but mainly red is associated with it (to us Westerners at any rate). Red water. Blood. Blood in the body is fire in the water. (Or, well, blood cells in plasma are the fire in the water — little stars swimming in the space within our bodies.)

Blood is our life force, it holds the most abundance of energy. The hot springs rising from the heart is the fire in the water, the blood being pumped through our bodies and bringing Her light directly to every part of us.

I don’t know, feel free to disagree with me. But it came to me and felt right in every fibre, every vein of my being. So I share it here with you.

After I’d reached a state of centered calm I took out the plug and let the water and all negative thoughts, all the “old me” parts I didn’t want anymore leave down the drain, down down down, back to the earth where the energy can be reabsorbed and cleansed, put to work elsewhere. I saved the hashbrowns from a near-burn experience. I put them and the other libations by the altar, and put on my ritual dress (simple black — I’m a Witch; duh).

And then…ritual. I stumbled once or twice. Mainly kept to the script and did things right. I wasn’t able to afford a sterile piercing needle and decided to dedicate an earring tonight and get the piercing done later, either by my best friend or a professional. (I then thought I’d just put the earring in my current ear hole until I could get the second one, but after straining to gauge my current ear holes from 19 to 14 for several minutes I gave it up as a lost cause.) I also dedicated the necklace I posted pictures of a little while ago, with the caveat that I may take it off from time to time.

During the meditation part I started to cry. I can’t say why. I think it was gratitude that She wants me to serve Her, gratitude to Her and to myself — to myself because I’ve healed enough to consider myself worthy of the Gods. Gratitude to Her for facilitating that healing. Gratitude to Her for coming into my life a year ago and not taking No for an answer.

Gratitude, and the tears that signal that last wound is being sewn shut, that the last pieces are coming together and solidifying. I’m finally a whole being, and I could feel it happen tonight.

But the fact of the ritual didn’t hit me until right afterwards. After I’d poured green tea-root beer (it’s green tea, which is healthy for your body, and root beer, which is a substitute for alcoholic beer — and She said She wanted some) for Her and dished out some hashbrowns and nuts (walnuts and almonds, and She likes potatoes), and eaten myself (to symbolize that I now walk with Her as Her priestess, I shared a meal with Her), after I’d blown out the candles and said hych’qa* to All who bore witness, I felt like I got slammed into a wall. (A good slamming into a wall.)

Holy shit. I just dedicated myself to Brighid. For life. I’m Hers. I’m Her priestess. With or without clergy training, I’m a priestess now. My entire life is now lived for Her.

My heart fluttered like it does when I think about my boyfriend. I let out a little laugh. And felt like crying again — tears of joy. Life is going to be so different from now on. Oh, I’m sure I’ll be back to my grumpy self most days, and I’ll continue walking to class with my best friend or having the same sorts of conversations with people — outwardly nothing has changed. But inwardly….

A spiral galaxy has been born in my soul. It spins outwards and touches others, even if they can’t see. I keep those stars safe. The stars in my blood. Be noble for you are made of stars, be humble for you are made of earth. I’ve never felt that so much as now.

And these stars will leave, one by one, when they’re ready, to bring light to the dark places, to bring light to others, to start their own little spiral galaxies.** This is okay, for there’s a never ending supply of them. I will never run out of stars to give.

Hych’qa.

(The not-quite-full text of my ritual can be read here. I’ve edited the part where I say all my names and my lineage, for safety and privacy’s sake.)

~~~

*”Hych’qa” is Coast Salish and means “Thank you.” It is pronounced “HAITCH-kah”.
**I realize this is not how astronomy works. Bear with me. It’s a metaphor.

Imbolc 2011: plans

I have two major plans for Imbolc this year, aside from the Cill’s group flame keeping from sunset on the 31st to sunset on the 2nd (my shift starts at sunset on the 3rd, so I’m just going to keep the flame straight for a week, basically).

One is a Lady of the Stars Ritual, which, again, I’m not going to talk much about except to say that I’m excited how our group is progressing, and that we’re taking this step. Imbolc is going to be big, I feel, not just for me personally but for the group as a whole.

Two is my own personal ritual of dedication to Brighid. I have yet to write it (on my list of things to do this weekend), but I am going to be doing it the evening of the 1st, and my best friend will be helping me. Namely with the ear piercing part — I am piercing my right ear and putting in a silver earring as a symbol of my dedication to being Brighid’s priestess. I feel it must be done within a ritual context and for that reason I can’t go and get it done professionally — so we’re going to get some supplies, some learning, and do it at home.

It may sound silly, but we’re doing it right (sterilized needle, etc) and I’ll be monitoring it carefully for possible signs of infection. It’s just not the same to go and get my ear pierced after the fact. (Also, doing so means waiting a long time because who knows when my student loan and therefore the money to get my ear pierced professionally will show up.)

Also, I’m a little bit crazy. This has been established in previous posts.

So now all I have to do is keep it together and not forget to get my ritual stuff down pat before the big nights. Easier said than done, believe me.