Friendly Neighborhood Murder

My spirit animal is, without doubt, the crow.

That sounds so faux hippie: spirit animal. But "totem" makes me think of totem poles, which are cool but so far removed from my experience that I feel weird using the word. "Spirit" fills the abandoned barns of my world, thick as the humidity, stubborn as kudzu.

Crows aren't very popular. They can be regarded as a bad omen. Their cawing isn't very pleasant. And on a more practical note, they will tear up a garden. All the farmers around here hate them.

Our produce has been safe from crows, even though there's a murder of seven who live here. I see them pestering hawks in flight over the fields. They congregate outside my bedroom window, six on the ground and one standing guard in a dead pine tree. I love to watch them hop and strut, feathers shining in the sun. I listen to their calls and pay attention to the meanings.

I didn't choose them myself. The crows chose me. At 22, I began to dream of them. One morning a murder of at least twenty roosted on the roof of a building I was walking past. As I grew closer, they began to caw. When I was on the sidewalk beside them, they all began to carry on. It was so loud. As I walked further away, they grew quiet. At first I thought they were angry, afraid that I was a threat, but as I learned their calls, I realized that they were greeting me. I've heard the same lazy squawk each time a member of my local murder lands next to another.

As a witch, it's important to be able to get to the truth without popular opinion clouding my judgment. Crows have a shitty reputation, but the more I study them, the more I see just how incredible they are. Crows are intelligent. Their language is complex. They have impressive problem-solving skills. The fact that they are smart enough to trick other creatures causes them to be labeled as cunning, which has a negative connotation. To me, this cunning is creative survival. The crow works with what it has.

If you have crows near you, take some time to observe their behavior. Even if you don't have a connection to them, you can learn to interpret their calls. Let them alert you to changes in the environment. Their watchfulness can benefit you as much as the rest of the murder. Also, let the crow inspire you to try unconventional methods of problem solving.

Blessed be!

The Black Side of Gray

I don't buy into the all positivity, all the time hype. Yeah, positive thinking is great, but it's unrealistic. Besides, I wasted two decades of my life trying to banish all negative thoughts and actions, and my life kind of sucked, so now I'm doing things the gray way. Love and ultimate good is still my aim. That said, sometimes folks deserve instant karma. When protection spells for myself or my loved ones aren't enough, a lesson needs to be taught.

What about the Threefold Law? you ask. Well, let's just say I never specified that I'm Wiccan. Honestly, I don't want to go medieval on anyone's ass, but this has been a long time coming. Even the kindest people have breaking points. Christ himself went on a table-flipping rampage. And we all know I'm not particularly Christlike in spite of all the effort I put in.

Still, I'm not going to completely destroy someone's life. I know people who deserve it, but they're (hopefully) not a threat anymore. Right now I just need something along the lines of... hell, I don't know. What's the protocol for verbal and emotional abuse? It's bad, but I found physical and sexual abuse plus the former two to be much worse. So how do I treat someone who's only doing half as bad, but still bad enough to really fuck up my life?

The other issue here is keeping it quiet. I would love nothing more than to get my hex on with all the drama of a Hollywood movie, but when you live with the person causing all the trouble and they don't necessarily know that you practice, it's kind of stupid to make lights flicker and sacrifice a chicken.

I know that the practitioner's will is the most powerful part of a spell, and that if you put enough effort and energy into your work, you don't necessarily need to worry about the moon phase or how many ounces of x herb to grind. That said, I like having some tools to focus my mind. Sigils are kind of my go-to thing right now. The creative energy charges them, and if you carve them on a candle or burn the paper you drew them on, there are no traces left. If I combine this with offerings to and an invocation of a goddess who protects and/or avenges women, I'm thinking that might pack the extra punch I need. And of course I'm going to bind it. I don't know why returning the favor to someone who's victimizing me would ever need to come back to haunt me, and I'm pretty sure the consequences are worth it at this point, but I still need to make sure it only affects the individual.

Any thoughts or recommendations? I know magic is a last resort, but believe me, I'm out of other options.

Muggle Dating is Hard!

It's easy to see why Secrecy is included in the Witch's Pyramid. Practitioners of magic have not always been very popular among their peers. Hell, persecution is still a problem around the world. Thus most witches keep mum about their, shall we say, extracurricular activities in muggle company.

This is becoming a problem for me.

I have been trying to find a magic-friendly fellow to date. Okay, not necessarily to date--I'm a hopeless romantic, so finding someone to stay with the rest of my life, or at least a significant part of it, is pretty high on my priorities list. And because I am both insistent on open communication and horrible at lying, I cannot start seeing someone who isn't at least magic-friendly. I can come right out and say I'm Pagan, at this point. But a witch?  Goddess have mercy on me if I say that to the wrong person!

In my corner of the world, magic is pretty actively discouraged by a significant portion of the community. How's a witch to find a nice, Pagan guy in a place where they're all so deep in the broom closet one can't find them? Spells haven't been able to draw them out yet, but based on the inbox of the Internet dating service I'm using and the blatant staring on the streets, Aphrodite has been listening to at least part of my petition. (Thanks, Aphrodite!) And no, I haven't been harming others. No mind control in my magic! But apparently I need to be a little more specific.

I suppose I just have to keep my head down, keep reworking my spells, and go about my business as usual. It's not like I don't have plenty of other shit to deal with in the meantime. But hopefully I'm getting closer to my goal of meeting a great partner, and until then, I'll just have to find clever ways to gauge a potential match's opinions on magic without giving myself away.