The Ramblings and Wanderings

Archive for the ‘Paths & Traditions’ Category

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.

Okay. So my dear Bren may or may not have eaten his “Totem” for dinner last week. And I joked about it. A few people had panic attacks about this. So in my usual sweet but sarcastic way let me address this.

First of all, I am the kind of woman who has been known to start pillow fights in the middle of the afternoon in downtown Ottawa. I don’t take life all that seriously. I take my Witchcraft seriously, but not entirely seriously. If there was a rule that in order to be a Pagan and/or Witch you had to be serious all the time, about everything, and never crack a joke, I’d join the Discordians, or possibly the Pastafarians. I do love spaghetti.

So with that out of the way …

I just adore the endless debate over the proper definitions and uses of words. Especially words stolen from cultures we invaded then conquered and shoved onto reserves to eek out a life of poverty and hopelessness.

The whole Totem vs Familiar vs Power Animal vs Let’s Just Call Them Sprits debate is a personal favourite of mine.

Folks often use Totem for just about anything. From my understanding in most of the cultures that have Totem concepts, you get one of these at birth. Often it’s a tribal thing. Kind of like how as a Fergusson our ancient clan badge is the Poplar tree. There are all kinds of rules regarding Totems, depending on who you talk to. These things vary from culture to culture, tribe to tribe, website to website … got it?

Familiar also gets used for just about everything.

In my mind it is an actual animal (maybe a plant too) you work magick and ritual with. In A very real sense, not a “My cat jumped on my altar once” way. My now elderly dog Crash and I have a relationship that can only be described as uncanny. Those are other folk’s words, not mine. The fact that she allows Bren to take her half a block away from me to potty in the morning is amazing. This dog and I part a part of each other. In ritual we dance an intricate dance built upon a decade plus of working together. She guards me as I walk the Hedge and sometimes even joins me. I can go on and on but I won’t.

Then there’s Power Animals, Spirit Guides, Spirits, Ancestor Teachers … the list goes on and on and often different words are used for the same thing.

It’s enough to make your head spin.

Now while I do understand it is important to be using words in a way that makes sense to us all, so that we can communicate better, I also feel that at times we worry far too much about these things.

Once upon a time, while wandering on the otherside of the Hedge I found myself hanging out with the God Who Has Antlers on His Head. Since nothing seemed to be happening, I decided to ask a question.

I asked “Sooooo … are you one individual god, not a god at all, are all gods one god, or are you some kind of archetype … or what?”

His response:

“It doesn’t matter”

So there you go.

It doesn’t fucking matter.

Not that we have that out of the way …

Bren is not a shamanic practitioner; he’s a Druid and Philosopher. He doesn’t know what his Totem is and I don’t know what his Totem is. He has a special fondness for rabbits, that’s all.

And yes, he eats rabbit. Last week was not the first time either.

In some Traditions, it’s totally against the rules to eat your Totem. Bren knows this. He has worked with First Nations Elders off and on for many years. Not as a spiritual student, but as a guy working for the government and such learning their customs and values in order to beat the white guys in charge over the head with the proper ethics of dealing with the First Nations people. But he knows a heck of a lot about First Nations culture, customs and spirituality.

When I joked to him about eating his “Totem” the first thing he mentioned (not totally seriously) was that it’s against the rules in some Traditions to do so.

At which point I said “Yeah, but you’re white”

Bren and I are not First Nations. We are Celts and Anglo-Saxons by blood and culture at best (and Canadian of course)

The debate over whether white folks have Totems aside, there is a lot of good evidence that animals had some major sacred importance to white people once upon a time. The horse for example was associated with some heavy hitting goddesses, with the land itself, and with sovereignty.

But white folks being white folks, we’ve always done things a little differently than other cultures. We don’t treat scared horses like sacred cows in India, or Totems you can’t eat.

Here’s an interesting ancient Celtic practice:

In order to be king, you must (in front of the whole tribe) have sex with a horse, then kill it, then butcher it, then eat some of it, and then cover yourself with its blood and guts and maybe even parade around in its still oozing hide.

Yep yep

So, even if Bren’s Totem is a rabbit, I don’t feel all that bad about serving it to him for dinner.

Thanks for reading yet another nonsensical ramble.

Dear normal people of the Pagan movement. First of all let me state that I am very happy to see you, and your adorable children joining up. Witchy Soccer Mom are sooooo cute, and it’s nice to have real professionals (like lawyers) not afraid to call themselves Wiccan, or Druid, or whatever in public now. In no way do I want to chase you out of this big old stone soup of religions and magickal practices.

However, I want to make a few things clear to you.

There is no way in cold, dark Hel I am going to go mainstream and PC myself. So please stop trying to paint all of Paganism with the same PC brush. Please stop pretending that you are somehow better than the goth kid with the giant pentacle, or the naked hippy chick at fest.

Those naked hippy chicks were out there, bare assed naked earning us the right to be naked back in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s … they also lead the way for us to be recognised as real faiths. They build the first Pagan organizations and it’s the now grey haired naked hippy chicks that fight to get pentacles on the gravestones of Wiccan soldiers. So stop looking down your nose at that naked hippy chick with dreadlocks in her hair, stop telling her to put some clothes on, and show a little respect.

Now, about those goth kids out in the world wearing giant pentacles and Thor’s hammers for all to see. While you all were hiding in your broom closets, those goth kids and their giant pentacle were being spit on, beat up and pushed around. It was their tenacity to keep showing up at school or the mall, sporting a giant pentacle and a black eye and spit in their purple hair that made those bullies give up … so that you could feel safe to come out of your broom closet. So please stop acting like those goth kids don’t exist or don’t have the same rights as a Pagan or Witch that you do.

I have just as much of a right to show up at Circle in a motorcycle jacket as you do in pink sweater vest. In fact, it may very well be that because I’m in a biker jacket that those assholes calling nasty names at us from the otherside of the park are staying on the otherside of the park. Cause seriously pink sweater vests make you look like a pussy. But hey, if you like them, then wear them. I would never tell you what to wear.

So please, keep spreading Paganism in the suburbs, I think it’s awesome. Just don’t think you can drive the rest of us away or turn a messy little Hedgewitch into Martha Stewart.

Okay? Thanks!

Although my feet
Have never walked
Upon ancestral lands

And I’ve never heard
The winds sing a song
Across the Motherland

Though I have never
Laid my own hands
Upon a standing stone

I will sing the old song
I will honour the old gods
I will learn the old ways
And make them new again

For a man or woman
Who is without roots
Finds it all too easy
To cut down another’s tree

And so I will connect
With this New World
I will love, I will learn
This, my dear land

New ways for me to make
Like forefathers of old
New paths for me to blaze
New stories to be told

I will sing the old songs
I will honour the old gods
I will learn the old ways
And make them new again

Dear Everyone,

You may or may not know me, Juniper from the Hedge.

I was born in 1980. I will be thirty in the Spring. I went to high school with a girl whose mother had been in a Coven for almost as long as she could remember, since about ’85 or ’86.

I grew up watching many of our now Pagan Elders, or at least Notorious Pagans, on Discovery Channel or the BBC at least every October talking about how Witchcraft is a religion not evil yada yada yada … I grew up on the X-files and Oprah interviewing ex-Satanists and all that jazz.

I don’t remember a time before OBOD, ADF or Circle Sanctuary. They’ve always been there from my perspective.

Watching Paganism grow on the web, and helping it do so, seemed to be the most natural thing in the world to me.

I was twelve when my Mom’s then boyfriend took us to a “hippy farm” for Summer Solstice, to join the small gathering there. I still remember the children’s play was about Pan and Gaia inspiring the owners of the land to build a hedge labyrinth. I grew bored and wandered off with another girl about my age to make-out in the bushes.

Granted, I live in a part of the world where you are up to your eyeballs in hippies and tree-huggers and eco-villages, but still.

Folks wonder why I can be so angst-y about the Pagan Community. They ask how dare I show so much rebellion at times? Well, because from where I’m standing the Pagan Community is big enough and strong enough to take it.

The Pagan Community is already BUILT and has been for as long as I’ve been a member. Which was a little over half my life ago, and all of my adult life thus far.

We are established, solid, and humongous. Large enough, tough enough, organized and established enough to have folks like me rail against it and have it stand firm.

The only reason we argue about whether or not we really have a community is because some areas are more solidly built, and more mature, than others. If we didn’t have a real community we wouldn’t be arguing if we did or not. Let’s stop the denial game shall we?

It is time to stop talking Community Building like it doesn’t already exist. We need to be opening up dialog about Community Management, how to RUN it. How to keep it growing the best way we can. “Best” in every sense of the word, for everyone.

The time of multiple generations of Pagan is already here folks. Wake up and smell the Community. The Pagan Community is alive and growing. I hope we can make it grow in a good way, but we won’t with all of us floundering around waiting for someone else to do something.

I thank the generations that came before who built this Community, with blood sweat and tears, from the very bottom of my heart and soul.

Now lets get down to the business of running it. Come on now everyone; roll up your sleeves.

It’ll be great; this is going to be FUN!

I’m excited, aren’t you?