The Ramblings and Wanderings

Archive for December, 2008

Happy Holidays from the Hedge folks!!!

I have been quite busy here at Misty Acres for the holiday season but will catch you all up on the goings on as soon as possible.

In the mean time, here is some interesting reading material to help you keep your sanity during Yuletide, Christmas and etc…

First, in the news:

Bee Sanctuary Established

Häagen-Dazs has announced that it is making a $125,000 donation to the UC Davis Department of Entomology to launch a nationwide design competition to create a one-half acre Honey Bee Haven garden at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis.

Druids mark solstice at Stonehenge

Hundreds of druids, pagans and tourists braved the gloomy weather to gather at Stonehenge on Sunday morning to celebrate the winter solstice. The mystical stones attracted a crowd of 1,900 people, with some dressed in cloaks and robes, to see sunrise at the prehistoric site in Wiltshire.

A Solstice Tribute

Sunday morning was a nasty time to be out and about in New York, with cold rain falling hard, but the predawn hours were worse. Sleet was blowing at just the right angle to find its way into tightly drawn hoods and mittens, and yet 17 people got out of bed anyway, all with the same thought:

“I shall go stand in the middle of an intersection in Brooklyn and bang on a drum.”

Edmonton City hall hosts solstice festivities

Edmonton City hall hosts solstice festivities for the first time! Hundreds gathered at city hall yesterday afternoon to celebrate the holiday season through pagan ritualistic chanting and calling to the four corners of the universe. Winter solstice celebrations are among many alternatives that replace conventional Christmas traditions for thousands of Edmontonians. “It’s a celebration of darkness, and a return of the light,” said Westwood Unitarian Church spokeswoman Sara McEwan.

And some Yule articles:

Santa’s Many Faces

Pagan celebration of Winter Solstice is a tradition with its roots in the ancient past, twining from hunter-gatherer cultures through the Old Religion of Europe, influenced by the rise of Christianity from the Middle East. A look at some of the history can help you design your personal Solstice traditions.

Yule logs

What in the world makes a log a yule log? I can remember campfires where we joked about great big logs being “the yule log” and you hear about it during the holidays, but what is it? I’ve also seen log-shaped cakes called yule logs, confusing the topic even more.

And some random but interesting articles:

Crooker of the Derwent and Malevolent Water-Weirds

In my most recent work regarding Traditional Witchcraft, The Toad Bone Treatise, I present an “occult bestiary” of types, outlining some of the many strange experiences and even stranger sentient beings one may run across when engaged in explorations of this world through different modes of perception. Those “fire-sighted” people will often discover that the “ordinary” things of this world- including the features of the landscape- reveal themselves in a non-ordinary fashion, sometimes as entities every bit as sentient and self-willed as they believe themselves to be.

Cornish Witchcraft

Cornwall, the ‘horn’ of land at the very south west of England has been described as one of the ‘last strongholds of Witchcraft’ in Britain. Indeed Cornwall is rich in Witch lore and heritage with many Witchcraft traditions, stories and legends most of which are connected to specific sites or locations in Cornwall. There are many mysterious ancient sacred sites in Cornwall – particularly in the Penwith region at the far western end of Cornwall. These include stone circles, quoits or chamber tombes, standing stones or menhirs, fogous – mysterious underground passages or chambers and holy wells. Today many of these sites retain a deep association with magic, the supernatural, divinatory and healing practices, which at some sites may have continued unchanged for centuries.

Cheers folks!

Tell me
Is it painful to dance with my randomness?
Or are you still lost in the thrill of the chase?
Did you know I live in the eye of a hurricane?

Tell me
Can you speak the language of the weirdo?
Have you ever walked the way the wind blows?
Do thoughts race like a lightning storm in summer?

Hear me
Chaos loves me so much it made be its priestess
I am no creature of poise and grace
My roller coaster life is never boring or plain

Hear me
Don’t mistake me for some kind of Leonardo
Matching socks will never grace these cute toes
Understand I love being the eccentric daydreamer

Juniper 2008

Just Another Yuletide

I hear the shopping songs sweetly singing
The folk are fighting over baby gods in public places
And the people throw money away like garbage
A smile then a start with “Have a happy – ”
Happy what hunny? We have become so painfully worried
Isn’t the sentiment the same? Or has it changed today?
Yeah, it’s just another Yuletide

Trees and bows and pretty things
Shiny gifts for rosy faces, ratty gifts for hungry faces
The halls are decked the cupboards are bare
Stampeding malls and plastic walls filled with things
To fill our vacant and distracted souls
How painfully close we come to losing the meaning
You know, it’s just another Yuletide

Hearthfire, farmfire, heartfire, soulfire, homefire
Through the soft and silent snow I do the rounds
Dark, bitter, brilliant nights walking alone by ambient light
Crown of the Holly King glistens, freezes, shines
Mantle of the Lady frozen in time, glows with white
Cold moon peers through crisp clouds and the tips of pines
Yes, it’s just and other Yuletide

~ Juniper, December 2008

When the going gets weird the weird get going – Unknown

If you think you are too small to have an impact, try going to sleep with a mosquito in the room. – Unknown

I see myself as an intelligent, sensitive human, with a soul of a clown which forces me to blow it at the most important moments. – Jim Morrison

I’m alarmed that to think than modern science may be turning creativity into a medical disorder – Thomas Armstrong, PhD

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing but burn, burn, burn like fabulous roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes Awww! – Jack Kerouac

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. – Albert Einstein

Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one. – Stella Adler

When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college – that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared at me, incredulous, and said, “You mean they forget?” – Howard Ikemoto

I don’t pretend to be captain weird. I just do what I do. – Johnny Dep

People like to label you. I’ve never like being labeled. I can’t take it because I’m never going to do the same thing over and over and over. I hate being limited. I hate being put in a box.  – Queen Latifah

“You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don’t alter their views to fit the facts; they alter the facts to fit their views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.”
– The Doctor, “Dr. Who: The Face of Evil (1977)

A real witch does this; a real witch doesn’t do that. A true pagan would say this, but not write that … etc etc etc
I am amazed that people feel they can judge whether or not I am a “real” pagan and witch based on reading a few blog entries. I mean you must be a real knowledgeable Elder to be able to make such a judgement based on an online journal!
How does one become qualified to make such judgments, I’d really love to know?
Just for the record, that was a rhetorical question, so please spare me the long emails listing how many years you have practised, which books you have read or who your teachers were, I won’t be impressed anyways.

Just I case anyone reading this does not understand just what a blog is, here is a definition for you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

See? A blog is someone posting his or her thoughts, feelings, experiences and opinions. Opinions people.

If you have really read through the Hedge, you will know that I make no claims of presenting concrete facts. I don’t believe in concrete facts. Nor do I claim to be an Elder. In fact, if you know me at all, you will know I have a rather large chip on my shoulder regarding self-professed Elders so I would hardly try to claim to be one myself!

Now, I love reading blogs, it’s a great way to waste my time. But I wonder, what drives a person to post negative comment on another person’s blog? What is the thinking behind this? Didn’t you ever hear the old adage “If you have nothing nice to say…” My mother raised me better than that, obviously not like some people.

And really, do you honestly expect a person to approve your negative comments? Would you approve my negative comments on your blog, if the roles were reversed? I mean, come on. I suppose people are not aware that a blogger can mark you as spam, therefore blocking your comments without ever having to read them. It is that blogger’s blog after all; it’s their right.

One of the craziest things I have ever seen was a self-professed Hedgewitch Elder, one with her own website and yahoo groups, attack the Hedge and myself on someone else’s blog!!! Or rather, she was accusing that poor witch of plagiarizing me and then proceeded to attack both of us. That was freaking hilarious, and rather petty if you ask me. I did track her down and offer her the chance to come to the Hedge to criticize me on my own ground, then I offered to allow her to attack me in her home base and she declined. I suppose she was too much of a coward for that. *Waves cheerfully*

Just today someone decided to tell me I am not a real witch and that I had no right to call myself as such. Sorry but in my opinion only the Witch Father has that right, or possibly the Great Goddess Lady Wiccans follow. Don’t know who the Witch Father is, or what the Cunning Fire is hun? HA! You’re not a real witch! See? Fucking stupid right?

This person even apparently did not use their own email address but someone else’s, as when I emailed them back, I got a confused response from someone else entirely. How’s that for cowardly?

Hunnies, if you want to snipe at me, please feel free to do so. But do it honestly, openly and not like some gossipy coward. Or better yet, please feel free to email me for my hometown; we can meet in the town square so I can give you the ass whooping you obviously really need.

Now, in witchcraft there is such a thing as information control. Especially practised by Hedgewitches and Traditional Witches. Why? Well if you don’t know why I beg you to think long and hard about what MYSTERY TRADITION really means.
Also as a semi-responsible (though totally unrespectable) witch, I have no desire to give the idiot children of the world information that the might be misused and come looking to sue me or something along those lines.
Yes, spells that change traffic lights and your hair color can (for some people, some of the time) actually work. While I personally have not seen those specific examples myself, I have seen and done similar type (very advanced) spells work. So why on earth would I make a blog post specifically telling people such spell do not work? Well first off this is a public forum, see mystery tradition. And also, I have no desire to have some moronic 17-year-old run through a red light and cause a 5 car pile up because they genuinely thought they could change a traffic light with magick. You might think that if they are that stupid they deserve it, but did the minivan full of little kids deserve to get t-boned by that teenager? Plus the internet is not as anonymous as people tend to think, and I know that if I had done something that stupid as a teen, my father would have tracked down the witch who told me I could change traffic lights and knock on her door, baseball bat in hand. Thanks, but not exactly what I’d like to open my front door to someday.

So anyways, if your life is so sad and boring you have nothing better to do than browse around other people’s blog and websites and attack them, I have only one thing to say to you:

BRING IT BITCHES

I ain’t scared or impressed

Cheers!