Shoutout to /r/Witchcraft

Confession time: because I am a bored computer-literate human being, I spend a lot of time on Reddit. 

(That's not a confession, really. I need something juicier. Alright, actual confession: when I raid my grandfather's candy bowl, I leave the Hershey's and go for the Lindt.)

And because I have spent all this time exploring subreddits--and praying that I don't stumble across anything too fucked up--I have found a few oases of calm in the otherwise turbulent seas of teh Interwebz. My favorite is /r/Witchcraft. 

The night before last, I shared a link to my previous post in /r/Witchcraft. I dithered about it for a while. Was it interesting to anyone but me? Would I look desperate for attention? (Which is silly, because I don't think that when someone else posts. But I am not always very nice to myself. Sorry, patronesses.) After a bit of back-and-forth, I said "fuck it" and hit the submit button. 

And BOOM. Awesome shit happened.

The comments were overwhelming. Everyone was so kind and supportive. Other disabled practitioners responded. I've been able to converse with people from around the world (and surprisingly close to me). 

So thank you, /r/Witchcraft, for making me see that I'm not alone in this. You guys are a trove of wisdom and inspiration. You are my tribe. Bless you all.

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.

Grim-whaaaa?

Some people remember everything they hear. Some of us need a little extra help, so we write everything down. And a decent chunk of humanity has been that way at least since the early modern period, when culture shifted from being primarily aural. Grimoires are the result of magic practitioners not being able to remember shit without writing it down. Plus it sounds so metal.

(Am I the only one who hears "grimoire" and thinks of Guitar Grimoire? Yes? Moving on.)

Historical grimoires are available online. I've skimmed the contents, but honestly, they're not my cup of tea. Using someone else's sigils seems like a copout, especially when creating my own will have that much more of my energy put into it. Also, a number of them are based on Christian demonology. I'd rather not summon malevolent entities. Even if you don't believe in demons from a Christian point of view, calling up negative shit is, to me, asking to have something go wrong. No thank you. I spent more than enough time in Sunday School worrying about demons without inviting them into my house.

A lot of Wiccans recommend keeping a Book of Shadows, which is like a grimoire and journal combined. (Awesome for those of us who wouldn't remember our heads if they weren't attached!) Magic and mundane are more connected than we realize, I think, so it makes sense to have not only the spells and rituals but notes about the experience of conducting them. Especially if something backfires: you'd better be able to trace it back to the source so you can avoid fucking up again.

What makes the Book of Shadows vastly preferable to a grimoire is the fact that it's personalized. Yes, it's important to learn from other people's successes and failures, but why copy a stranger's rituals? As a beginner, it's fine, but I think that as you learn and grow as a witch, you really ought to be able to hammer out your own. And based on the Kindle Store's selection of books on earth-based religion, the spells I want to perform are not what most folks are interested in. Love? Pshaw. I just want to learn how not to kill every herb I try to grow. Yes, it's bad enough that I need magical intervention.

At the end of the day, I suppose the Book of Shadows is just the postmodern version of the grimoire, a natural progression as society has become more individualistic. If anyone has actually been successful working with a grimoire, though, especially 17th century or earlier, I'd like to hear more about it. Does it feel like you're traveling back in time, as I imagine it would? And does anyone use their Book of Shadows as a work-in-progress type thing, like a lab notebook for rituals, or do you just wait to get something down pat before you add it? That sounds like a dumb question, but I'm really curious, because based on what I've read it could go either way.

Small Towns and Syncretism

A year and a day is the standard for exploring most pagan paths, it seems. Standard usually equates to boring for me, and I'm a chronic overthinker, so I spent well over a year in study before even thinking about converting. (Not gonna lie, most of that year was spent seriously weighing the odds, just in case the Hell I grew up hearing about was real.) Then there was the year and a half of very private practice AND study. And then there was last weekend, when in the middle of a political discussion, I said to my mother, "I'm pagan, by the way, and tomorrow is our Easter."

Well, okay, nature worship is all well and good. She's as fond of cute chicks and bunnies as the rest of us, pagan fertility symbols or not.

Tonight, though, I mentioned the name of this blog. She wrinkled her nose up a little at first. "Witch" is a more controversial word than "bitch", in a lot of ways... especially in a small town. I went into the lecture about ethics that I've had ready for months now. Let's keep it simple: right-hand path, white, fluffy. If I stray into gray, that's between me and the Goddess.

Goddess... another loaded word. Especially in a predominantly Southern Baptist town where the women marry right after high school and instantly pop our babies--or vice versa. The country club hosts largely ineffective abstinence balls. The men over sixty are either Masons or Klansmen. Publicly supporting a democratic candidate around here is a great way to get shunned. Now imagine being out as a pagan and a witch. They're not synonymous, but that doesn't matter in this area: either way you're asking for a burning cross in your front yard.

Because I actually do revere Jesus, I've made up my mind to participate in any Easter celebration my family has. I feel like a shitty pagan for it, like I should have spent last weekend gardening naked instead of having a quiet Ostara ritual and planning for Easter with the family. It's some comfort knowing that my ancestors basically did the same thing. Syncretism works for a lot of people, but when it's mostly coming out of fear (Jesus was a teacher and prophet, not a god!!!), it sucks ass. I just wonder how many people around the world are inwardly cringing at the thought of lying their way through a sunrise service.

I'm sure that someday I'll be out more or less entirely, simply because I have a big mouth. Right now, though, I'm genuinely worried. Look at the presidential race. If a certain side wins, the country's going to be a lot like Germany in 1939, and we all know how that went for minorities. And martyrdom is just... so unappealing. I certainly wouldn't fault someone else for hiding their religion from people who might hurt them for it, but when I do it, it feels gross. Conformity disgusts me, at least in myself. (Sometimes in others, too, to be honest. Like, damn, why does everybody have to wear all the same shit?)

Maybe Easter candy will reconcile me to my apparent fate as a shitty pagan. I'm used to being a shitty Christian; fundamentalists used to love to inform me of that. For now I will secretly light incense to my patronesses and eat ham with the family to celebrate Jesus.

Wait a minute, that's messed up.