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.

The Reason for the Sneezin'

I love spring. Really, I do. The trees come back to life overnight. Flowers blossom everywhere: in yards, in fields, in the cracks in the pavement. Frogs croak all night and birds sing all day. It's cool enough to be refreshing, warm enough to be soothing, and the wind bears the scent of honeysuckle. All of nature is celebrating Ostara and the Spring itself...

...by fucking.

The baby bunnies darting across the yard are the product of rabbits, who are known for--what else?--screwing like rabbits. The chicks at the store hatched from an egg, that ancient fertility symbol that is found in every nest, coop, and birdhouse this time of year. And that golden powder dusting the hearts of flowers (and your car)? Pollen, which is basically plant sperm. 

It's hard to worship nature when nature is basically blowing its load on you. 

You'd think I'd be having Shitty Pagan Syndrome again, worrying that I'm failing by not toughing out my allergies and communing with nature. Surprisingly, no. I can tolerate low pollen levels, but when all the world seems to be reproducing at the same time, I feel completely justified in staying inside and popping benadryl like M&Ms. I do venture out, though. Pretty flowers sometimes overcome my dislike of breathing plant sperm. 

Enjoy this season of renewal and rebirth. Just don't cast when you're in an antihistamine-induced haze.

Flower Pic-ing

Probably half of my phone's memory is filled with variations of my hand holding a flower in place while I snap a picture of it. I like to identify wild plants, especially flowers. How could I not? They're the epitome of the Divine Feminine as expressed in nature. After a decade and a half of hypermasculine Christianity with a fondness for giant new buildings, I need the sacred wildness of Mother Earth. So I store up pictures as references and learn what I can.

To the right is an Asiatic Dayflower I found while walking on the edge of the woods near me. It's said to bloom only one day out of the year. That may or may not be the case. What I can say about it for sure is that it's a member of the pea family. And sure enough, it has little legumes in pods that look like the seeds inside of a green bean,

They're edible, apparently, but I don't know of any medicinal or magical uses. When I found them last year, I pressed a few and offered the rest to the Goddess on my altar. (At that point, I didn't really have a patroness, so they were for the Earth Mother in all her aspects.)

This here on the left is a Muscari, or Grape Hyacinth. I used to think they were ugly until I heard someone compare them to Faberge's work. Sure enough, they are gorgeous up close. Do you see the little white edging on the fully-opened bell in the center? It looks like crochet lace.

Again, no idea of any medicinal or magical uses. I will point out, though, that Hyacinth was the curly-haired youth loved by Apollo, and thus the hyacinth is sacred to him. I don't know if the Grape Hyacinth is included, but I imagine that using these to honor Apollo would probably not hurt his feelings.

They're also a great decoration for an Ostara altar. If you find them growing wild, as I did, you can dig up the bulbs and transplant them to your garden. Just give them extra TLC so they aren't shocked beyond recovery.



And the little white bloom here is... something. It almost looks like a wild violet, but the way the petals behaved looked more like the Asiatic dayflower. It nestled in the grass like the niphredil of Lothlorien. While I was sitting down after getting tired out, I noticed this one beside me and picked it to get more familiar with it.

So what is this flower? I'm sure I'll sit down and do the research sooner or later, but I think that particular blossom had a much simpler purpose: to add a little beauty to a moment when I wasn't feeling very well. Sometimes a tincture or a salve or a spell isn't what you need. Sometimes you just need to sit a minute with the Divine and reawaken what's divine in you.

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.