The Ramblings and Wanderings

Archive for January, 2010

I am growing tired of wishy-washy Pagan speak:

Well, that is your opinion, this is my opinion.

But opinions don’t really matter, because everyone is different.

Unless you place value on other people’s opinions, that is.

Neither of us is right and neither of us is wrong for anyone but ourselves.

I however do not judge, I simply perceive for my reality is perception.

So just do whatever feels right for you, but only if you want to.

Let each walk their own path.

You may choose to walk with them or not, as that is your own choice.

You choose how things make you feel

No one needs to claim responsibility for their own actions.

Unless they are choosing how to feel, of course.

URGH!

Do people really buy in to this stupid New Age clap trap?

This one is on Witchvox this week and is host to a number of typos, I’m not sure how they got there. I must need a proof reader or something. So here is a cleaner version for y’all:

“This is what happens when you dabble! You can’t practice the Craft while you are looking down your nose at it.” ~ The Aunts from Practical Magic

So why do I have to do all this required reading and research? Isn’t that work? Its so time consuming and the books are hard to read! Why can’t we simply practice solely based upon our instincts and natural talents?

Instinct is only one part of the equation.

Imagine that your spiritual practice was a house. Now, try to build that without blueprints, without a plan, without the knowledge of how to properly the use a nail-gun and electric drill. You could probably build yourself and nice little shanty but it’s probably not going to keep you very warm come winter time. It is also certainly not the four bedroom post and beam home you had hoped for either.

It’s all about balance. It is alright if your spiritual path leans more on the instinctive side than the research side, or vice versa. After all you should build a house you’d actually want to live in. However leaving out one or the other entirely is just plain irresponsible.

An adult doesn’t go into a job interview without having some experience at that job, or without at least doing a little research first, or else they wouldn’t get hired. So a Witch shouldn’t be summoning spirits, ancestors and gods without having a clue as to what they are dealing with and how.

I know a number of Witches and Pagans who practice almost totally based on instinct and natural talent alone. It’s wonderful to be blessed with strong instincts and natural talent, if you have it. However these instincts only Witches will, more often than not, report frightening and bad experiences or a lack of anything “special” happening at all. Why you may ask? This is because instinct and talent is the starting point, not the be-all and end-all.

They go walking into ritual and situations they are not properly prepared for and wind up doing more harm than good. If instinct and talent were all that was required than these instincts only Witches would not be having such bad experiences in the first place.

Working based on instinct and talent is supposed to come after years of research, practice and trial and error. Practicing a beautiful and fulfilling non-scripted ritual is your reward for years of practicing with a script in hand until you don’t need one anymore.

Starting at the 101 level without a script, with out doing your research, is taking a shortcut. It is lazy, immature and irresponsible. It will never be as enlightening and fulfilling as a ritual, rite or Craft that you earned the hard way. There is no such thing as “good enough” in a spiritual practice, especially when that “good enough” means you did next to nothing at all. A spiritual Path is not supposed to be easy and the gods don’t like lazy people.

The gods, spirits and ancestors do not reward people who do not do the work to earn their respect. If you want to develop a relationship with the Otherworld and the Spirits of the Land you have to earn it. You cannot simply show up with your hand out expecting a prize, for no work, like a spoiled child.

This is Witchcraft & Paganism, not a revealed religion. You cannot just show up, sit down, open one book and expect heaven to be handed to you for no reason other than that you are a good person. Declaring “I am here and I am good” may work for monotheism, at least on the surface, because they are on a conquest kick and want as many people to join as possible. Yahweh and Allah just aren’t all that picky, its enough that you are willing to show up and feel guilty for the bad things you do and then try to coerce other people to join too.

Our gods expect a little more from you than that. After all, they put you here and they made you good (at least that’s how you started out as a newborn anyway) so showing up and saying “I’m here and I’m a good person” fails to impress them. Our gods used to be worshipped by people who would sacrifice their very best goat to them and now you expect them to hand the Mysteries over to you because you showed up with Enya playing on your MP3 player? For shame!

You cannot expect your ancestors, people who fought battles with swords, who pushed horse drawn plows, who would walk many miles to the yearly feast grounds, to give you long lost lore for nothing. What we must look like to them, we who are so spoiled and pampered that we whine and complain when the processional to the ritual is longer than 3 city blocks. How can you ask for their aid, protection or knowledge when you are willing to do little more than pour half a bottle of cheap whiskey out to them once in a while? The processional for the Eleusian Mysteries in ancient times took a whole day.

Now I know I am being a bit hard on you here. I do so because I care and also because I myself have learned these lessons the hard way. I was once a young aspiring Hedgewitch who covered herself with too-potent, homebrewed, flying ointment only to have a truly terrifying, mind shattering, life changing experience. The kind I would not wish on my greatest enemy. So I speak from experience here, not a high horse.

Allow me to give you another example from my own experience. I have a staff that I now call my “fluffy staff” made many years ago when I was younger and impatient it is covered with poorly researched runes and ogam, silly markings and glued on crystal beads. Truly it looks like a cheap prop for a small community’s stage production of Harry Potter. I grimace every time I look at it now and vow that one day I will sand it down and start again.

In the meantime however I have spent the last six years slowly creating a most wonderful and beautiful stang. Made of juniper wood from an uncles back yard and seasoned for three years. It has been carefully laid in the sunlight and moonlight, placed in the winds of the great Canadian Rockies, the Kootenays, the wind off the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. Carefully carved, each stroke with the knife researched, planned and mediated upon. Lovingly hand sanded over an entire winter until my hand ached. I have loved this piece of wood for the better part of a decade now; I know every millimetre of it better than I know my own body. All I have to do it touch it to enter into a light trance state and it has not yet been blessed.

This stang is nearing completion and will be finished in its seventh year of creation; it will be one of my proudest achievements as a Witch. And it will be a tool far more potent and powerful than anything even an Elder could whip up in only a week’s time. I know all this work and worry, waiting, plotting, planning and research is worth it. I know that when I come into the presence of the gods with this tool in my hand, they will see plainly my dedication to the Craft and approve.

I have learned to earn my right to call myself Pagan, Witch, Priestess and Shaman.  How about you?

“Properly prepared I must always be” ~ part of the 2nd degree oath as written by Gerald Gardner.

I will be me

Unequivocally

Always

And in every situation

No audience

No following

No friends

Or family

Will make me be

Anything other than

Me

I am not a one dimensional character

I am an onion

I have many layers

It may take time

For them all to see

All that is me

Sometimes happy

Sometimes sad

Sometimes compassionate

Sometimes stark raving mad

Though I am a human being

And thus I will change and grow

And often be a different me

I will still always

Be me

But always and forever

I will be me

Consistently

With integrity

I will be me

I am a farm girl; I “get” the lambing season at Imbolg as I have spent many sleepless nights in the barn, praying to Brighid as I midwife livestock. I don’t need to be reminded of where my food comes from, I have grown it!

I don’t need a lesson to tell me how to experience the elements, I have lived in them, and I have worked in them. I have been up to my knees in frozen mud and in snow, with the winter sun beating down on me as I fix the horse fencing. I have had a wind burned face, a sun burned nose and frost bitten toes.

I have lived at the edge of endless wilderness all my life. I have performed rituals in a real grove. I have done meditations under an elder tree that is older than my country. I backpack into the wild on a regular basis, I have had bears on my property in spring and summer, fishes spawning in my creeks in fall, and moose that walked by my house each morning.

I have touched a shrine to Epona on my way into the stable each day. I have poured offerings to Taranis when ever the storms loom close and threaten the seedlings newly planted. I have sung to Danu when I walk the fields. I have praised Cernnunos as my hound and I track wild rabbit.

I adore wildcrafting and learning the native plants of an area. I have dozens of field guides. I love learning about animal tracks and all of that. I love being bale to walk through a landscape and know what grows/lives where and why.

My connection with Nature is largely through animals, a result for farming and working in animal rescue, as well as the wild. Thanks to living in places where I have accesses to it as well as being raised by the kind of Dad who teaches his daughter orienteering for fun on the weekends.

Formal gardening is an area I am not a strong at. My mother and grandmother have terrific green thumbs and are amazing gardeners. Things just come naturally to them. Anywhere my Mom is, things grow bigger and greener than they “ought” to be. This didn’t happen for me, so I was put off a little when I was younger, feeling frustrated and inadequate.

I am a much better container gardener for some odd reason. Also I do very well with xeriscaping and growing native plants, that are happier to be allowed to do their own thing for the most part, rather than working with finicky rose bushes like my Mom.

As for the home I talk to house spirits and they are normal to me in a rather odd way. I have a kitchen shrine and a house altar and a sunroom shrine. Honestly I feel quite unhappy, even a little anxious not having my shrines up, they are such a part of my life now.

The gods and spirits get fed regularly, usually home made biscuits or something along those lines. The ancestors have a permanent place on the house altar, where they get acknowledged everyday.

I love to cook, though I am no expert. I love to bake more and have a little notebook I cram with hand written recipes. I love to experiment with food and make a terrible mess in the kitchen.

I always have a Birth of Venus hanging in my bathroom, a witch ladder somewhere, broom by or above the door, witch balls hung in the window etc

I love having a magickal home, living in an enchanted world. My poor man, Dr. Philosopher has to adjust to it. Just the other day he dared to put a half full tea cup on the shelf with my herbalism gear, which is below the house altar! He got a “tsk tsk” for that!

Having recently moved into the city, I have to adjust to pulling the blind down if I want to wander around naked, setting off smoke detectors with smudge sticks and having not moonlight but streetlight coming in through the window.

It’s easier to not notice the big maple tree on the corner when in the city. I find myself talking down to house plants in a way I’d never do to potted juniper on the front stoop, let alone a 100 year old elder tree!

A Simple Life

By Kat Ballew

Cows grazing on the mountain side

horses running wild along the seaside

Birds singing as they journey past

and old men telling tales that are unsurpassed

Butterflies fluttering their wings in the breeze

And the sun doing everything to appease

This is the simple life of living

This is a day of thanksgiving

The tumbleweed rolls across the desert floor

The owl sings a song and is the nights decor

The fireflies flash their lights in harmony

And the crickets they do play for all a symphony

The waters rush up to scare the shores

The milky way dips and peace from it pours

The wolf howls out but the moon is not afraid

A simple life for nothing would I trade

Balance.

Yes yes yes.

That checkbook, that bank account, that job you do, the errands you run. Keep pilling shit on the teeter totter and never stop to wonder … why is this shit on my teeter totter? Whats does it mean? How do I feel about it?

The things that need changing and fixing the most is our society and culture. This conformist, mindless, horrid world where the gross domestic product, and keeping up with the Jones’, is the most important and worthy goal.

Schools where we teach children not to think for themselves or nurture their talents and abilities but chain them to desks all day so that they can spend the rest of their lives in a cubicle.

Wearing the same clothing as everyone else, driving the same cars, living in identical pink stucco homes, going to the same churches, eating the same unhealthy genetically modified food from McDonalds.

Then giving birth to more children destined to lead the same meaningless lives.

People are asleep. People are sheep.

The world is changing before our eyes and we are too busy watching Oprah to see it.

Society crumbles around our ears as we go shopping for a new video game to keep us blind.

I walk through the suburbs and cities and I weep and rage at the stupidity of it all.

Some of these people try so hard to be “perfect”, with all the fake tans and fake eyelashes and expensive parties and such just to fit in. They work so hard to keep up an appearance. They talk about Balance and chakra alinments and cleansing their aura.

Then they wonder … why am I not happy? Why am I not fullfilled?

People are happy when they’re allowed to thrive and do their own thing with acceptance, not when they’re held down and forced into a mold that they don’t fit in.

It makes me wonder how we are all going to survive together tomorrow if we are so worried trying to fit the “traditional” ideas that are suffocating.

We are taught, brainwashed even, that everyone must fit that mould or esle they are deficient in some way and then must be made to conform.

We are expected to play by the social rules, to have priorities that mirror whatever holywood and the corperate America say we should, etc.

The system isn’t broken.

It’s been methodically turned into a precisely functioning system guaranteed to oppress and press, squeezing out all defiance, independence, and unique potential.

Don’t worry though … You’ll feel “better” as soon as the BMW is paid off.

There is no greater threat to a controlling, selfish, greedy, manipulative society than a strong, bold, creative fighter.

Passionate people are awesome to listen to. They are rare in today’s world, in my opinion. And passionate people that can have an independent thought are even more rare.

Don’t think, don’t think, don’t think. Don’t examine your life, your reasoning, don’t wonder why. Don’t think!

Tow the party line, run the rat race. Do as is expected of you.

Dogmatism and idealogoy runs so deep the non-conformists practice it.

Live life asleep. In a materialistic, banal world where nothing matters and nothing is sacred.

Spew nonsense catch phrase garbage, pop culture wisdom.

Fear everything!

Don’t think, don’t think, don’t think

Don’t stop to feel the wind on your face. Don’t stop to smell the bread baking. Keep that nose to the grindstone.

Don’t look upon the world and wonder, how do I affect it?

How does it affect me? How can I improve these things?

Whats is my relationship with the world around me?

Is it sacred, this world. Am I sacred? Is my relationship with the world around me sacred?

Or is it all a bunch of garbage. Like the food we eat and the clothes we wear.

Am I just a brand? Or a no-name piece of trash in a trash world.

Just another slave to the gross domestic product.

How do I claw my way off this grindstone and into the free air?

Breathe …