Being Selective

I think a major feature of the fairly neat compartments into which our world has been dividing itself for some years, is that one side is real and the other isn't. That's why the right wing attracts the flat earthers and conspiracy theorists: the whole thing is a fib.

'But they're mistaken or have been lied to' goes the narrative at this point.

I'm afraid at this point I honestly don't care. At this point if you claim to think the earth is flat, Trump won, Brexit was a sensible decision, abortion is murder, covid doesn't exist, etc, you are choosing to believe this nonsense. The reality is as an adult it behoves you to orientate yourself to reality, and I don't owe these people a discussion, evidence, or even an audience. They're fools and will not be persuaded because they don't want to be (that is, if they're even actual people, on social media).

Is this judgemental? Of course. Am I being horrible? You bet. Do I care? Do I fuck.

When you don't care about these fools, it changes your perspective. It gives you the opportunity to concentrate and be very selective who you talk with. This means that I don't waste the remaining years of my life around people that I can't stand, and I think we can all agree that this is a desirable thing.

In my misspent youth hanging around the monastic world I got to know the idea of being focused on thing, being alone, and so on. In a Christian monastic world this tends to mean being focused on God and the other people in the community form the lessons that God teaches you by the love of neighbour. I suppose in true witchy fashion I've turned this on its head to focus on what I want to focus on, and not be distracted by fools. The Hound's rule for monasteries would tend to end up with a very different end product than St Benedict's!

I honestly can't really see a downside to this approach. I can see an objection that you would never get your opinions challenged if you only hang out with people of your own opinion. However if you're just making a point of avoiding unreality and argument with the unpersuadable I think you actually get challenged more. I think this is the result of seeking out intelligent people.

This also highlights that in a witchy/Pagan milieu, rather than the single eye being focused on God, it will necessarily be focused on the world and open to all the possibilities therein. Just not fools.

Subtle, I know.

The obstruction is the way

Apologies for the mindfulnessish sounding title - it just seems to fit best.

Today is the fourteenth of January which means it has been four days since my last post here. Not long by any standards, especially as this blog isn't a chore so I have always resisted any feelings of ought or should about it. And yet something very strange has been happening - I have convinced myself that I haven't posted for ages, have writer's block and should put a post on here saying the blog is on hiatus.

And then it struck me that virtually the only thing I actually have ever had to say here is that the hedge - a blockage - is the place of liminality where the magic happens. The hedge of the hedge witch also has similarities with the desert where you notoriously experience strange things.

And bingo - another blog post. The block, the hedge, is the source of the creativity. As one of the desert fathers never said - your hedge will teach you everything!

Harvest

I like it lots when things I have sown years before come to fruition. Regular readers will remember the spot of bother at work I had some years ago, largely because of my manager at the time, Zippy. She was a bit screwed up to start off with, but was hit by the menopause, lost any interest in her job, and started asking any man she met to impregnate her. She shagged a friend of mine on the organisation's premises - sadly I couldn't cause her grief because although he had given me a rather sickening blow-by-blow account, I have a certain loyalty to him. She then tried to get him in trouble the day after for doing something which really wasn't a thing, which merely indicates what a cow she is. Then she married the least evidently heterosexual man in world history who made her pregnant in circumstances I don't care to think about. Another of her former friends who she has stabbed in the back told me that Zippy's husband doesn't like sex - since he previously gave me the come on with a very obvious hard on, I feel he likes sex perfectly well, just not with his wife. She miscarried his baby and then discovered she had Lady trouble, and they spent a fortune on IVF which failed - all while they didn't own a house or even a bed, and their baby was conceived on a mattress on the floor. She was already pushing fifty at this point and had stopped doing anything which might look like management of the team.

This is all background to say that I saw a job advertised in the team this week and Zippy is no longer manager. I got the cards depicted as an explanation of what happened and that's definitely pushed by a lot of stuff coming home at once. I love it when a plan comes together.

My Destiny, Will, and Bliss

I haven't had to post about my work life here for some time. Regular readers will remember that I literally walked out of my last but one employers without notice. I am delighted to announce that they have recently been inspected by the body which regulates our industry and the report is, frankly, abysmal. I knew for a fact it was bad, but if they can't even get it together for an inspection, it's falling apart even faster than I thought it was. I will also leave it to the gentle reader to wonder whether The Hound can claim any credit for their tumbling down the league tables.
My new employer is much better. One of the strangest things is that the boss is extraordinarily able to handle me, much the best manager I have ever had in that respect. And we all know that if an INFJ likes you we'll happily throw the rule book out of the window and eat out of your hand, so he's onto a good thing.
Unfortunately he's made a bit of a mistake in employing the woman who is my immediate supervisor. She's not actually bad (see, here is a rare opportunity for the Hound to be a model of reasonableness and restraint), but she's been promoted beyond her ability. The team is fortunately made up of very able and very young people, so that it leads itself, because her ability to lead isn't that good and she's very keen on telling other people what to do when she isn't performing that well herself. When it came to her appraisal, the feedback from the team was overwhelmingly bad about the way she speaks to people and her attitude generally. Apparently this has dented her confidence to the extent that she's having difficulty going on - as you can see she is what I believe is called in army sarcastic slang, a 'born leader of men'. As a result of this loss of confidence she has become even more hands off than she already was and in fact even sits away from the rest of the team, facing into a corner. I have limited sympathy for her because she took the job thinking that it would be a stepping stone to something else that she thinks she wants to do.
The reason any of this is appearing on this blog is as a preface to the fact that I do feel witches have a purpose. I had a go at witchcraft many years ago and returned during a difficult period of my life. I had some people who owed me (how familiar) and would not sit with them having wronged me, but didn't know what to do because I had read a lot of fluffy literature about sweetness and light. A friend put me right by telling me that the witch's function is to hold up a mirror to people so that they can then get on with their own life's work, lightened of whatever rubbish they've got going on. This is the reason I'm perpetually surrounded by conflict (which I don't start) and idiots (whom I abhor): the universe sends them to me because I can deal with them, so that I end up attracting the same nonsense repeatedly.
But this time I'm in a markedly different place. I've decided what I'm going to do on a very simple principle, which is to ask myself whether I want this idiot to be in my life at all. The answer is of course, no, and tomorrow I'll be popping to the market because there are some things I want to attain this end. She'll learn her lesson if she hasn't already and I won't have her in my life at all.

The Universe's Gift

Regular readers will recall how last year I placed Zippy my 'manager' under the judgement of the Goddess. You can read about it in this post. I have wound up being the agent of this judgement, as is usually the case.
The gift of the universe to me is that I have been moved to a part of our organisation which works closely with the police, which is pretty much a wet dream of a job for me. This comes close on the heels of having a week at home at the organisation's expense because of the difficulties sorting this out. Zippy's boss is furious, and not with me, in fact she commented on how easy to deal with i am. My union rep thinks one of my colleagues has had a final warning and has only not been dismissed because Zippy has never managed her. My rep also implied that I can't expect the big boss actually to say that my 'manager' is a tw*t. I don't need to, I said, I can see it in Zippy's face.
The 'team' i work in is disintegrating quite quickly. People have left, others haven't started, Zippy's off sick.
The retaliation has started. The one who got the warning has gone round telling people I've made things up about her. That's right, cause trouble for me, I always have more info than anyone else and whatever they try to do - Zippy's not managed me either so there's a limit to what can happen. The contents of my statement has got back to me and it should have been confidential. This is the point at which it really falls apart - would you like to give me an opportunity to roll it back at you?

The Lady will Provide

...and that is one of the ways the witch knows things are moving, when things inexplicably start falling into place. For example in the Acocks Green area of the city (the accent is on the long A, not the O, by the way) today, I not only found the box set of a TV series I've been looking for for ages, but also found my manager (pictured) staring at me in a charity shop window! Of course I had to buy it (the woman closed the zip saying he wouldn't be able to speak, but I closed it again, saying that silence is required) & then some pins from Wilko for the next part. This really is a gift from the universe, a case of more opportunities coming along if you make use if them.

Incidentally, apart from the inane grin & idiotic expression, I hadn't realised how like Zippy my manager is in personality, making it all about her & wanting to be friends, while ignoring other people's views & actual misconduct completely:

'...Zippy claims to be the best at whatever is being discussed, and always claims to be right. He loves to eat sweets, sing songs and tell his favourite jokes, and always has to be the centre of attention. For example, the other characters might be having a discussion, when Zippy would shout: "But I don't want to talk, I want to sing! I'm very good at singing! [starts singing] I'm a little teapot short and stout, here's my handle and here's my spout..."

'Due to his frequently loud behaviour and silly voice getting him into all sorts of trouble, other characters in Rainbow occasionally zip his mouth shut, rendering him unable to talk. On at least one occasion he unzips himself, although he appears unable to do so on most occasions.' (Source

Activity and Passivity with Specific Reference to Ageing

I posted recently about my changing reading habits, and of course one of the ways they have changed over my lifetime is that there is now a whole 'library' of stuff on the internet to read. This has both the advantage and the disadvantage that anybody can publish anything – rather than the accolade of getting an actual publisher to publish your stuff – and this blog is actually an example of that phenomenon. I worry sometimes how I come across in this blog – a touchy queen, an absolute bitch or just a nasty piece of work – and this worry has actually been intensified recently by my reading through a blog by a woman who is a male to female transsexual.

I'm not going to reference which blog it is – I've decided it wouldn't be fair because I'm going to take a single recurring thought out of context and chew it over. However this blog has reminded me how much sheer labour it is to transition from one gender to the other. This person has been blogging over the period of her actual transition, even publishing expenses and intimate details of what she actually has to do. She manages the ultimate feat in blogging, actually, because you might think that writing about those sorts of things would be way too much information, but she manages to write about it in a way that doesn't revolt or give the impression of overexposure. She doesn't know who she is, but the blessing of the witch is upon her.

Anyway, the single thought that I want to pick up and run with is related to the fact that she is around twenty years older than me, already retired when she began her transition, and naturally for her age, thinking about what her old age will be like. She is therefore at a different stage of life from me; most people my age are pondering the unlikelihood of them ever being able to retire without starving or freezing to death on any pension they get. And this difference of life stage may be reflected in how she talks about extreme old age.

In one post she described seeing two different very elderly relatives, one living in her own home and the other in a home, and described the difference between them. She felt the one in a home was reduced to passivity as a result of being looked after, whereas she felt the other one continued to be actively involved in the running of her own life and running of a house. Where I may be being unfair is that I want to connect that passage to a passage she wrote at quite a distance of time where she describes the ability of old age to rob you – rob is the actual word she uses – of agency over your own life. She describes how it makes doing things impossible, and clearly feels a fear that she will ever get to the stage she describes, where she would feel she lacked a sense of agency over her own life.

One of the things I have had a realise in my recent dealings was the extent to which I have spent my adult life deliberately aiming to live purposely, and honing my will to make things happen, and the simple fact that not everybody does that. I swear I was an old-fashioned Quaker in a previous incarnation, because the level of plainness in my life has to be seen to be believed: plain living, dressing, eating, and plain speaking to the point of rudeness. Where this fear of geriatric apathy strikes me in this woman's writing, is that to my mind she has performed almost the ultimate magical act – by transitioning from one gender to another she has completely changed her persona in accordance with her will, and I am surprised that she is not necessarily able to harness this sense of magic and transfer it elsewhere in her life. However, as I say I'm referring to two ruminative blog posts some time apart and she may not always think like that.

This matter of accepting help is always a difficult one, particularly in extreme old age, because it gets mixed up with the fight or flight reaction. If you feel as if the power to make decisions for yourself is being stolen by a process over which you have no control, you tend to end up hitting out at the wrong thing. This is partly what happened with my own mother, she pushed me away with all the strength she had left, while determinedly taking herself down a road she consistently told me she didn't want me to let her go down. And this situation will be familiar to anyone who has had any dealings with older people's stubbornness and contrariness.

The connection with witchcraft is perhaps not apparent, but it is there, in honing the will and not allowing uncontrollable processes to take your attention from it. Any witch worth her salt will of course make allowances for variables including those considered unexpected by others – perhaps it's an INFJ thing, but I expect the witch to have fewer surprises in life than other people, as a result of looking around and considering everything involved in a situation. This involves making a conscious decision – and in the face of the old person's fear of 'being taken away', consciously thinking about it may result in the witch accepting the need to be cared for. I have used examples in this blog before of such things as volitionally caring for, say, diabetes, in such a way that you will optimise your chances of being able to see for life, for example. Similarly, nobody in their right mind who had broken a leg would refuse the use of crutches for fear of a loss of independence. The keys to this one seem to be facing the situation square on, and adapting to whatever the situation is.

Ironically, this isn't that far removed from what the World Health Organisation has to say about active ageing – I wonder if they realise they have an uneasy bedfellow in modern witchcraft?

'Active ageing is the process of optimizing opportunities for health, participation and security in order to enhance quality of life as people age. It applies to both individuals and population groups.

'Active ageing allows people to realize their potential for physical, social, and mental well-being throughout the life course and to participate in society, while providing them with adequate protection, security and care when they need.

'The word "active" refers to continuing participation in social, economic, cultural, spiritual and civic affairs, not just the ability to be physically active or to participate in the labour force. Older people who retire from work, ill or live with disabilities can remain active contributors to their families, peers, communities and nations. Active ageing aims to extend healthy life expectancy and quality of life for all people as they age.

'"Health" refers to physical, mental and social well being as expressed in the WHO definition of health. Maintaining autonomy and independence for the older people is a key goal in the policy framework for active ageing.' (http://www.who.int/ageing/active_ageing/en/)

Avoiding Routine

Throughout the experiences which have left me where I am now, I have always accepted the need for routine and discipline. This is a major theme in 'spiritual' traditions of all sorts, and now strikes me as being unbelievably dreary. It is also one which has somehow made its way into the modern witchcraft and pagan milieu. So many of the books advise one to develop a daily practice, one which will become routine by means of discipline. Do the majority of people stick to their spiritual disciplines? No, they don't. In fact people don't stick to 'spiritual' disciplines to such an extent that some religions actually cultivate a sort of elite of spiritual practitioners, whose expertise is assured by their disciplined sticking to their routines. Sometimes this is even called a 'rule of life'. It is not for nothing that the concept of asceticism was born in a Greek gym, and also not for nothing that Christian monasticism arose after the state sanctioning of the religion, prior to which a career in the church had been a simple question of martyrdom.

But here's the contradiction in this: ascetics of all religions will say that they have to belong to these structures of discipline because they couldn't do it on their own. And this is also where my major problem with this starts, that it brings in a question of authority and motivation. At its lowest level discipline implies some sort of authoritative imposition of rules by another: do this because I say so. This takes us straight back to school. On a more exalted level it implies discipline by means of self-imposed commitment to a course of action, which may be helped by other people or by whatever motivation we have.

There is an undercurrent running through the whole history of the modern witchcraft movement, of turning things on their heads. The example I like is undressing for church, for example. So in line with this tradition, what happens if we turn the concept of 'spiritual discipline' on its head? I think we end up with 'embodied inspiration'. When I look at the experiences which have been most formative to me as a witch, I find that not one of them has been planned. They have all been accidental, often hateful. No amount of ritual, routine, discipline, could have made me a witch. I'm really exploring my way towards a concept here, but I would therefore like to think that (this will sound rather Zen) if I just Be, everything that I need can be found in the Hedge. I wouldn't want this to sound too passive, so perhaps I'd better include ideas of exploration and response to life event.

I suppose the key word is embodiment. I don't want to live in a world from which divinity is absent. In fact I believe that I am my Goddess's priest, and hands in this world. It would therefore be a slap in the face to Goddess to make out that my witchcraft can only be accomplished by my own discipline, routine, ascesis, whatever.

That said, if I had to talk about disciplines for the witch, I would have to talk about values. Dealing with integrity. Being prepared to be surprised at all times. Being open to whatever I find in my Hedge. I'll grant you that these things would require a certain clarity of mind, but I would rather go for a walk and see what happens than get into a ritual. If I'm finding my head a bit crowded I will meditate for a while, but even then that can often take place on a bus or in a crowd.

But the greatest discipline, given the tradition of turning normal society on its head, would be the avoidance of routines and rituals. I merely throw this out there – if getting into routines is a 'spiritual' discipline, then a major 'unspiritual' discipline would be the avoidance of those routines as limiting and closing up the opportunities the universe has for me.

Second-hand Tarot Decks? You Bet!

I wasn't going to comment on the hiatus that has occurred on this blog, since I refuse to be a slave to my blog, as well as to everything else. However, the reason for it has been the upheaval of having my old ginger tom cat put down, finding a flat on the other side of the city to rent, selling my house, having the estate agents make the most incredible balls up. It's customary to leave a house secured after a viewing - naturally I went in there like the wrath of G*ddess the next day. I moved out in a hurry so that my stuff wouldn't be there when they were conducting viewings. A sum of money has been mentioned (by me) as compensation: normally I wouldn't do that but naturally if I was ever in need of spare cash it's now. This sum of money has not been forthcoming, so they're just going to have to take the consequences of doing wrong by the friendly neighbourhood witch.
The house sold (at auction). Of course it did. It flew off the catalogue like it was going out of fashion. My motto at the moment is 'come on, universe, look after your witch,' & this certainly seems to be exactly what is happening. Everything I need is falling into my lap at the exact right moment. I've even settled down remarkably well into my little rented flat over a shop: I slept remarkably well right from the start, even at one point sleeping through the road being dug up outside in the night!
One of the gifts the universe has given me is a tarot deck I have never had before - the 1JJ Swiss tarot - which I found in a charity shop for £1.50. Incidentally, I'm aware that the way I phrased that inclines towards the difficult question of why bad things happen to people - my own opinion as a working witch is that life is too damn short to worry why, the witch's role is to turn disasters round into opportunity!
The received occult wisdom is that everything used in magic should be new. 'Virgin', as it were. Just a word of caution - go down that route if you want, but you'd better be a stock investor, banker, or, for preference, have a private income with endless leisure to pursue magic. There are genuinely some wealthy, leisured people who pursue magic that way nowadays - I think they constitute the opposite end of a polar spectrum from my approach.
There is an obvious reason why 'everything new' need not be the rule for a competent magical person. I would expect a basic competence to be to sense an atmosphere or history in a place, person, or object. The way in which people would do this may vary, but the way I do it is just a feel. My 'just know' has never been wrong yet, & I don't use anything I don't like the feel of. This is completely subjective, but that's the point.
Another reason not to reject used magical implements, is that it is to miss a possible opportunity to make a connection with a magical ally. We all value family things for the connection they have, but there is more to family than flesh & blood, more to the Great Coven, or Red Thread, than meetings on this plane & they should not be despised.
The 1JJ Swiss deck is going to take some getting used to - obviously it's the universe's way of inviting me to further reflection & development. I'm delighted to find that it's a deck intended for game play of two games in a particular area (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troggu and http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troccas from whence I get the explanation of the JJ name:
'Troccas decks are sometimes called "1JJ" or "Jupiter and Juno" decks because they substitute Jupiter and Juno for the Pope and Papess of the Tarot of Marseilles.'
In fact it has all sorts of things about it to like from my point of view, including non-reversible minors. It isn't quite as non-reversible as the Italian decks I've written about before, but I'm still looking forward to getting to know it better:
'The deck is derived from the Tarot de Besançon which itself comes from the Tarot de Marseille. It is an Italian suited pack which substitutes the figures of Juno and Jupiter in place of the Popess and Pope of the Tarot de Marseille. The cards are not reversible and both the trumps and pip cards use Roman numeral indexing. The lack of modern features like reversibility, corner indices, and Arabic numerals has made this deck unpopular for game playing and is now mostly used for cartomancy. It is still the official deck for Troccas tournaments.'http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_1JJ_Tarot)
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What I did (or didn't do) in my holidays

The purpose of this post is not a delineation of what I did on my holidays: it is rather a consideration of the underlying significance, 'energies' if you like, of what happened & didn't happen.
What I did was - absolutely nothing of great significance. For a start I was disappointed to have circumstances scupper a planned meeting with a friend who was only in the country for a fortnight. Obviously I'm disappointed, but we've come through it with our friendship reinforced.
Then there was something I *didn't* do: I have withdrawn from something because I am no longer willing to be used to buttress a social gathering that someone else looks on as his property & possession, when I'm not getting out of it what I was seeking when I started going. I was looking to meet like-minded people & that hasn't happened: if I'm told I'll have to pull someone's cold dead fingers off a thing, I leave the fingers there & withdraw, since they're already dead.
Nor have I particularly felt the need to rush around in 'outings'. Instead I have spent a lot of time on the canal bank - no *not* for that purpose, the canals were cleaned up a decade ago & respectable people can walk them now without fear of heaving bodies. Actually I've walked several stretches of the canal that I've never walked before. The universe's message to me was found in the fact that I completely failed to find my ideal canal guide reasonably priced anywhere, until I found that *exactly* what I wanted was available free online. Stop straining, Hound, is the message.
There's a funny thing about canal banks - they attract all sorts of odd people, who then end up talking to each other, when I doubt they would in normal circumstances. I'm sure some of it - such as the drunks who were obviously from the Salvation Army hostel - is that people on the edge recognise the witch & get respect since they know trouble could be staring them in the face.
That may also have gone for the black man who literally *grabbed* me on the canal bank & wanted to look over my ink. He said 'God bless' & I gave him the blessing of the witch.
So all in all a free-form week, in which things have just happened. Sometimes you just have to return to yourself & stop trying to make things happen.
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The Curse of the Witch

Sounds like a horror film, that, doesn't it? I can almost write the screenplay off the top of my head - family move to a country cottage, terrible things happen to them, it becomes apparent from the locals it belonged to an old woman with a cat. The woman was wronged somehow, did something, the cottage has been no good for anyone to live in ever since.
That scenario, while variations of it are common in horror films & folklore, only appears at the top of this post to illustrate what the post is *not* about! In my usual pedantic way there's a grammatical point to be made about the title: 'of the witch' is the genitive case, & means belonging or pertaining to the witch. I will not repeat my numerous previous comments on the meanings & nuances of the word 'witch'. Since the curse of which I speak is 'of the witch' it could actually be a curse on the witch herself, or a curse the witch has put on someone else.
The reality is that the witch - a competent witch - would rarely, if ever feel the need to put an actual curse on someone or something. It is essential that the witch is able to do so, & if the witch is not able to step up to the bar she will frequently find she is confronted with the sort of situation where she feels it is necessary to do so, but in reality a curse initiated by the magical practitioner is way too much like hard work. Just as usually, when as individual feels they are cursed, it is them somehow cursing themselves, usually when someone/thing *needs* to be cursed they will usually merrily do it themselves if you let them, or sometimes slightly push them in the direction in which they are already going.
And the reason why it might be necessary to curse someone cuts right to the heart of what magic is about. I'm also not planning on repeating my opinions on why the 'Law of Three' can't possibly be true, but we humans do somehow bring the things that happen to us, on ourselves. There will always be some level on which the person who can't find another half, only attracts heels, does it over & over again, is doing this themselves. This is the real nature of everyone's curse: we keep on doing the same nonsense. If the witch can recognise this pattern & move it on somehow, that is a very effective curse. For example, a perfect situation would be a case I was reading of recently where a man who works as a stablehand likes sex with animals, & actually has sex with the animals in his care, damaging them & causing them distress on the way. He has been caught doing this *fourteen* times. The last time - the leniency of this sentence staggers me - he was banned from keeping animals for *one year* & fined - get this - 200 dollars. That's two-oh-oh. Ideal subject for a curse this. In fact even as I write those words I can feel the anger of the Goddess building up & the laughter of the universe starting up as he nears a sticky end. It is plain that in this case human justice will not deal with him effectively, & that he will continue. So the thing to do is use that. So what's going to happen is he will choose to penetrate a horse or donkey that is not as placid as it seems, one that will kick out. If he's lucky he might live. It is done: the witch has spoken.
And that brings me nicely to the witch's own curse, which is surely that of simply being a witch at all. In addition to the curse I talk about above, that we all carry round with us, the witch has the curse of being the witch. The responsibility. The duty. The privilege. Often witches go through some *terrible* stuff, more than can conceivably be caused by one person's learning needs in one incarnation. I feel this is because we somehow attract those who need a cosmic slap. The guy above would be the perfect example. And there is no such thing as a day off from being a witch - we're witches all the time, & thus continually are confronted with other people's need for a slap.
Of course it can be difficult to tell which is which. It is not an invariable rule, but I feel witchily dealing with your own stuff will feel relatively more painful, since it usually cuts to the heart of who the witch is. My experience of dealing with other people's stuff is that it usually feels more joyous, with a sense of putting things right. Some of these experiences will also have an initiatory air about them, & thus even more be cases of having to make decisions quickly with *no* way of weighing all the consequences.
So this is why, when people say, 'I wannabeawitch,' I say, 'No, you don't.' The hours are unsocial in the extreme, the pay is uncertain, the prospects of promotion are negligible at best. It also leaves you marked for life: it's almost like you curse yourself at some point. However you have to be prepared to do this, otherwise you are always left at the junction of a crossroads. And this junction is one that you can't return from.
Coming next: 'Grumpy Old Witches'.
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Urban Grimoire: Creating magical entities

Yesterday evening I was in town with other witches. How I laughed! I think sometimes the reason witches recognise each other is we are the only people who understand our peculiar lives & world-view. I had a very strange dream, that I was being handfasted to my current (presently straight, but definitely questing) crush, in the back room of the pub we were in. The ritual took place at midnight, which nobody thought remarkable, & there was a chair for my deceased father, & three for my magical daughters. I woke up feeling giggly, in fact I've had that giggly feeling of something leaving you & making you lighter feeling all day, which means that the magic is working. Then today my daughters came shopping with me. They've been working on one of my current projects & I've asked them to finish it off - in tandem with an action I've taken on the physical - so I thought this post could be all about them.

Of course they're not physical daughters - I haven't done *that*, & any child of mine would have to be called Turkey Baster. They're magical entities, or what the chaos magicians call servitors. I don't personally like that word, it doesn't really feel right from my experience of them. My purpose here is not to describe how to do this, but to blog about my experience of it. It is actually one of the more ancient magics, yet seems not to have entered Wicca & the witchcraft movement to any great extent. For instructions I would recommend Patrick Dunn's Postmodern Magic and this website: http://www.spiralnature.com/magick/chaos/servcreation.html.

The first magical entity I created no longer exists, since she was designed to do a particular thing & to dissolve when it was done. These entities are often seen as parts of the self that are broken off, & their termination as a reabsorption, but in this case it was something I didn't want reabsorbed, but got rid of. I can see her now, & feel affection for her as I remember her, she was a sort of gothic Mary Poppins, & her purpose was to remove a certain person from my orbit permanently. She was fed by this person bullying others & lived wherever she was. She did a wonderful job of making this person crack up under the strain of what she was doing to other people. I created her by visualisation and literally split her off from me.

This was what taught me that this is actually one of the easiest ways of doing magic once you've created your entity, if you make it fuelled the way I did. I feel this magic is also in some way prohpetic, because in this approach the person brought her own downfall by bullying people. So far so textbook, except that the fluff bunnies would want me to make her nice & cast white light around her, so there are probably people already thinking I'm a black magician (of course since they will automatically think they're white magicians, they don't understand magic & might as well be fundamentalist Christians).

My next creation of magical entities was less textbook, & if I a) wasn't such an arrogant bastard & b) didn't love them so much, this would be the Hound's example of how not to do magic. I created three entities, who I call daughters, they have individual names & characters, but no specific purpose as such. The theory was that I would give them things to do, & indeed I do, but they ended up rather going their own way, & they now do things independently of me. This became apparent when a friend said their names in a restaurant, & there was a crash at the bar. She did it two more times with the same effect, & there were no further crashes while we were there. They are not around me all the time, they tend to appear now & then, often when their old dad is having trouble. They'll often see to things without me asking but at least I now have a spell of my own to use: 'Darlings, Daddy wants you to...'. How I can't stand those middle class parents who go, 'Mummy doesn't want you to do that, darling.'!

I have a fifth entity, who is still current, but who I'm perhaps not thinking about - & therefore feeding - as much as I could. I'm not going to write about what she's doing, because that would spoil it, wouldn't it?

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Season's Greetings

We have entered the dark side of the year with a vengeance now, so this post is to say Season's Greetings & a cosy & cuddly Yule. The illustration shows a sequence   from the fourteenth-century Graduale Birminghamiensis. It was published by the Henry Bradshaw Society at the beginning of the twentieth century, but did not achieve wide use beyond St Agatha's Sparkbrook & St Alban's Highgate. My own translation (you see, I've got hidden depths, I can play Scrabble) of the first few lines is:

A reindeer there was, Rudolphus,

In possession of a bright red nose.

And if it should ever happen that you saw it,

You would say that it glowed.

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A sorbet opportunity

I was going to make a colossal linguistic error in this post by commenting on how the Chinese character for 'crisis' includes the character for 'opportunity'. Fortunately I checked my facts before writing this, & it turns out the component mistranslated opportunity is better translated as crucial or critical point (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_word_for_%22crisis%22), which as it happens better suits where I want to go with this post anyway. This is the test for evidence-based witchcraft: when you find confirmation in the hedge, you're in the right direction.

Years ago I read Margot Adler's 'Drawing Down the Moon', in which she has an interview with Z Budapest. I don't have the exact quote in front of me to hand, but Budapest speaks about her suicide attempt being a turning point in ther life. After that she returned to the true attitude of a witch, that of turning bad things around & using them to your advantage.

This definitely refers to an outlook on life characteristic of us, refusing to be put down or give up. This is what has happened to me this week. I was actually talking to someone at work about how I was fed up with doing the same incident report for a matter which is obviously not being solved.

Than a customer's relative presented me with my crisis/critical point, & blasted the matter into a whole different playing field. She thinks she is being critical of me, she thinks I am the root of the problem she's identified, but with knowledge she doesn't have I know I am not. I have been thinking about bringing a grievance about this matter, but if I turn this crisis into a critical moment, hopefully I won't need to.

Give a Witch lemons, & she'll turn them into sorbet.

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When it goes quiet

There are times when the witch's life goes quiet. This is the reason for the scarcity of my posts lately.

My personal opinion is that these times illustrate one of the differences between us and conventional religions, which are very insistent that you stick to their prescribed practices come rain or shine, regardless of how inclined you feel to do so. They also have an experience called spiritual dryness, when you don't feel like it at all.

I would like to think that we witches live in a world that we are in a relationship with, & it & we respond to each other accordingly. I've posted before on how often the witch is actually dragged kicking & screaming to a task, so I certainly wouldn't want to imply that what we do is dependent on our feelings, but more that we respond to the tasks & challenges as they appear in front of us.

This is the true school of witchcraft, & this is what is meant by the tradition of putting down the books & just doing it. I would personally resist a too rigid daily practice: I mean, G*ddess knows I'm probably the least disciplined witch in the world. For me, there is no point trying to set a daily discipline & stick to it. I can't do it. Working shifts also interferes with it. The failure to stick to the discipline I set myself ultimately leads to 'ought', 'should', 'must', & guilt, & the one discipline I insist on is not feeling guilt because I haven't stuck to an arbitrary rule. I feel for the witch guilt is a suspicious emotion: it suggests something is being imposed on us - even when we do it ourselves - & dammit I *will* be free from slavery!

I also avoid any negative implications of these times, seeing them instead as part of our natural life cycle, of times of busy witchiness alternating with rest. If we're truly trying to be responsive to the world about us, these hints from the universe will be welcome, & paralleled by the necessary times of rest for fields.

Because nothing doesn't happen in these quieter times. In fact they're the prelude to activity. For example I cast a spell on someone before this rest came along, it seemed like nothing had happened, but it now seems like it's working. It was a spell that she would see & not deny a given situation. She actually told me the whole situation today, & the sitch itself is certainly feeling very pregnant, & ready to pop!

Perhaps that's the secret sometimes: sleep on it & don't force it...

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A mark of the witch

I have commented before that one of the remarkable things about the modern witchcraft movement is that we can both share the same experiences without having to meet or be taught them, & also differ completely on matters of importance without it being an 'issue'. This explains why it seems as if there ought to be historical evidence for us as a movement: don't worry, there isn't & our movement is a completely modern one. Rather, what has happened has been that different people in different places have done the kind of things that we call witchcraft, culminating in certain historical turning points, such as Gerald Gardner joining the New Forest Coven. As I understand the evidence, it indicates that there were co-masons & others doing magical things in the New Forest. It does *not* indicate the existence of an ancient religion. People create/believe/are taught 'lineages' for themselves because people who are confident enough that the mere fact of them doing what they are doing is enough to validate what they are doing, are few & far between.

One of the commonalities that mark us is a certain ability to pass among all sorts & conditions of people. Now if it be your will to take a more political or class-conscious approach to witchcraft than I do, I don't have a problem with that. Some witches identify as anarchists, for example, & may spend their time in direct action at correcting injustices. I would be surprised if the early Wiccans voted anything other than conservative. The point I'm making is that it is not necessary for witchcraft or witches to identify with a particular political or class 'current'.

Rather what I mean is that what we deal with as witches surpasses the compartments we divide people into. It's as if we are dealing with the vibrations - which could manifest as class differences on the material plane - that underlie these things. As clergy of the world's most freaky religion we can expect our 'congregation' to be also incredibly diverse. And boy do they come to us, whether or not it is conscious or they know we are witches. More often people's paths cross ours at times of significance for them, which is when they need the witch most. They may not even know that we would interpret their story in mythological or eternal terms, but at that moment of us being involved in their world, social differences disappear.

And the purpose of all this? We don't have a specifically religious message nor seek to convert people. Instead if people's lives can be made easier, if they can deal with their own 'stuff', if they can feel a spark of enchantment in their lives, surely that is what it is all about.

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Magic using multiple methods at once

The books tend to assume that you can just do a spell & you have the self-discipline not to scratch it. Of course the reason we don't think or talk about spells we've done is because it brings the energy back to us, but I find if I cast a spell it's usually about something that's bugging me anyway so it's never that simple.

In the spirit of play described in my last post, I have developed a magical technique to deal with this, which is essentially that I'll just keep on at you throwing anything at you that comes to hand, usually practicing a few new things along the way.

This evening I started a candle spell, supplementing it by a sacrifice - of sesame seeds at a crossroads. Did I say this blog was about real old school witchcraft? My ritual is simplifying as I go on - although the altar's a bit loaded at the moment. I set aside the space by three circumambulations with incense. The four candles are to invoke the elements. I had a period of meditation to calm down my thoughts, before invoking, then simply dressing the candle & lighting it. I turned my intent over in my head while walking to the crossroads to sprinkle the sesame seeds.

Some of the other things on the altar - I find I don't use tarot decks put away in boxes, whereas heaped up on the altar I'll use them more. On the left the red-backed one is the Tarocco Indovino 1.96 given to me by my Goddess daughter. Underneath it is the Tarot de Paris, which I'm finding a little eccentric to read with. The box contains newspaper cuttings about rapists & other abusers. Also inside are two little rubber rings which are used to castrate sheep - I think the person who gave them to me never thought I'd find a use for them. On top is a stone from my Goddess daughter; she wasn't impressed I use it as my toxic waste dump, but I think has accepted this as one of her old dad's little ways. The African figure was from my Goddess mother & invokes her presence on my altar. As for the dog - you didn't really think I wouldn't have. A hound on my altar, did you? On the right we have my tarot deck made up of several different ones, a Morgan Greer tarot being seasoned as a gift, & a RWS from my Goddess mother - the tartan back is not standard in UK by the way. The cloth is a scarf: Hecate has this kind of dark yet party aesthetic & it's actually quite glitzy.

Some of the things on my altar will make some people very uncomfortable, but I find no contradiction in saying it is a place of peace - of real peace that comes from people not having to live with fear. Similarly my multiple magical methods are not what the books say, but it works. That's the point.

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William Morris, creation & will

To Lichfield today, for the day of the Lichfield Festival when they have a market in the grounds of the cathedral. To me Lichfield is a place which has ideas above its station; the simple fact is it is a small cathedral city, & to me the fact that is has Walsall postcodes means it will be forever a suburb of Walsall.

It has an independent sports shop, which sells actual sports clothing, rather different from what you can get in Brum. It is owned by a blond man: why oh why are all the best men straight? I did go round the market: the high point was an old stoner selling stuff from the hippy trail round Nepal who called me 'man'. On the way back I got off the train in Erdington & did the rounds of the charity shops - strangely given the subject of today's post it was a relief for me personally to be back in the city milieu: clashing music coming from cars, people of colour, & the smell of weed.

In Lichfield I found a Pitkin guide about William Morris in one of the charity shops & it has caused me to think again about him. The Arts & Crafts movement & the associated back to the land movement of the early 20th century are not usually considered part of the 'recipe' for modern witchcraft. Certainly it seems the contributors of the really early days in 40s & 50s came from much more occult/masonic interests than from an interest in the dignity of work, the respect due the worker & the (re)sanctification/remembrance of the sanctity, of work. Yes, Gardner worked throughout his time in the east, but don't forget that work for old colonials always meant a position of superiority to the worker, & I don't doubt that the majority of the early members of the coven were never really in the position of being a wage slave.

That said, this tradition is present in the later incarnations of witchcraft. Surely the essential Work of the witch is to seek what Morris called the Earthly Paradise, & what Eric Gill called 'a cell of good living in the chaos of our world'?

And let us not forget that our religion, if it is one, is a Craft, it is something you do, not something you believe in. To misuse a quote from Morris:

'A good way to rid one's self of a sense of discomfort is to do something. That uneasy, dissatisfied feeling is actual force vibrating out of order; it may be turned to practical account by giving proper expression to its creative character.'

In fact Morris's pursuit of beauty (it's no use, the one Wiccan virtue I could not get my head around is not going to go away) does make him sound like a witch in his pursuit of what he envisaged:

'With the arrogance of youth, I determined to do no less than to transform the world with Beauty. If I have succeeded in some small way, if only in one small corner of the world, amongst the men and women I love, then I shall count myself blessed, and blessed, and blessed, and the work goes on.'

The first picture on this post is of an attic at Kelmscott Manor. The second is of now-obliterated grafitti at Cardross seminary. The text from Herbert Read exactly depicts what Morris warned against:

'Art will utterly perish, as in the manual arts so in literature...; Science will grow more & more one-sided, more incomplete, more wordy & useless [so] that beside it the theologies of old time will seem mere reason & enlightenment. All will get lower & lower, till the heroic struggles of the past to realise hope from year to year, from century to century, will be utterly forgotten, & man will be an indescribable being - hopeless, desireless, lifeless.'

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Anger and the Witch

I was talking to another witch the other evening & commented that he'd stopped posting on his blog. This was because the things he wanted to post about made him so angry that he felt, for various reasons including that his blog actually identifies him as a figure in public life, that anything he posted would not be acceptable. This conversation set me to thinking about anger, since I don't know a witch who doesn't have 'issues' with anger, frequently some unresolved matter that makes them angry, or there are subjects that will press buttons in them & make them angry.

Despite the much-vaunted embodiment of witchcraft, I'm going to avoid an account of the physiology of anger, for the purposes of this post it is enough to say that anger is the emotional component of the fight-or-flight, or fight-flight-or-freeze, reaction we have in response to a perceived threat.

It seems to me it is one of the less socially-acceptable emotions as well, which raises the question for me of whether people who are angry find their way into witchcraft or whether the kind of people who are witches are also in touch with their emotions, including anger. I would argue that it's actually both, & indeed that anger is actually an essential 'tool' of witchcraft. I would also argue that those who have been taught from childhood not to display strong emotion are a) lying and b) unlikely to make good witches.

Of course it's the displaying of anger that is the socially unacceptable bit. As witches it behoves us to consider the use of all inner & outer technologies as embodiments of the divine multiplicity, so let us not scorn the use of anger management. Many of these techniques aim to quieten the physiological arousal, perhaps the most 'witchy' would be meditative grounding & centering techniques.

It seems that there is much evidence that empathy for the other is most helpful in a conflict, while also being the most difficult. As witches we can stop & allow the divination method of our choice to show us what else is going on in the situation than we think. Methods of conflict resolution should also not be scorned: my personal opinion here is that if we are in touch with our emotions we face another danger of being annoyed by people who think that conflict will go away if they avoid it, rather than resolving it be facing it head on. Sometimes, arrogant bastard that I am, I just like to let a situation ride until it comes up again, knowing that I'll be proved right in the long run!

As magical people, of course, anger has a use. In psychotherapy the word 'transference' is used for the 'stuff' that passes into the therapist from the client. You can't see it, but my G*ddess, it's powerful. As the power behind spells it gives them an oomph otherwise unobtainable.

But of course that requires anger management to direct it into the right place. I don't ground toxic dynamics or emotions, I personally have a toxic waste dump, a stone a friend gave me which is now heavy with sh*t, ready for it to be used to power a spell when I need it. Trying to neutralise it wastes it.

Finally an aspect of anger useful to the witch is that it gives one tunnel vision. Powering a spell with managed & directed anger will help you to do that all-importance focus on the matter in hand.

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Age & the witch

I recently came across this piece written by Jonathan Swift, which he wrote at the age of 32:

When I come to be old. 1699.
Not to marry a young Woman.
Not to keep young Company unless they reely desire it.
Not to be peevish or morose, or suspicious.
Not to scorn present Ways, or Wits, or Fashions, or Men, or War, &c.
Not to be fond of Children, or let them come near me hardly.
Not to tell the same story over and over to the same People.
Not to be covetous.
Not to neglect decency, or cleenlyness, for fear of falling into Nastyness.
Not to be over severe with young People, but give Allowances for their youthfull follyes and weaknesses.
Not to be influenced by, or give ear to knavish tatling servants, or others.
Not to be too free of advise, nor trouble any but those that desire it.
To desire some good Friends to inform me wch of these Resolutions I break, or neglect, and wherein; and reform accordingly.
Not to talk much, nor of my self.
Not to boast of my former beauty, or strength, or favor with Ladyes, &c.
Not to hearken to Flatteryes, nor conceive I can be beloved by a young woman, et eos qui hereditatem captant, odisse ac vitare.
Not to be positive or opiniative.
Not to sett up for observing all these Rules; for fear I should observe none.

One thing is clear: the more maladaptive ways of ageing have not changed in the past 300 years. These things aren't limited to those of great age, of course, but younger people are frequently annoyed by those of great age on the basis that they're miserable, stubborn, bigoted, etc, & attribute this to the fact that they're old. Yes, old people are annoying when they are these things, but young people are annoying when they are shallow, impatient, impulsive & reckless.
Perhaps it is for both extremes of age not to fall into the 'vices' proper to those ages. Nor is it cool (I've checked that word out, & have discovered that it is a 1950s beatnik word & I am therefore safe in using it without dating myself to the slang of my youth) at either extreme of age to attempt to be the other extreme. It is to be expected as a young person to think you have the answers to all life's questions; but young people who aspire to be very mature before they have it in them make a fool of themselves as do the old people who (usually try to) dress & act in the latest fashions of youth.
My personal example of gracious ageing is the lovely Honor Blackman, whom my mother always used to call 'mutton dressed as lamb,' which I don't think a fair description. I feel that her book with a title along the lines of 'How to Look & Feel Half Your Age For the Rest of your Life,' is mistitled, since what she does do very well is to play to her strengths. She has very good teeth, which she shows much more than she did in older photos, dresses well for her own body shape, & keeps fit (I would advise most people to steer clear of the diet she advocates in the book, to me it is clearly a slimming diet & doesn't include nearly enough protein & calcium).
Anyone who does these things: play to your strengths, do something about your weaknesses, act your age & dress timelessly in a style which suits your self & your natural body shape, can't go far wrong at any age! I feel ageing is probably something of concern to witches: the practice of witchcraft conversely both keeps you young & ages you because of the exposure to so much of the world's debris. For witches who've aged well, Lois Bourne & Fred Lamond spring to mind. *Ahem* Janet Farrar & Laurie Cabot spring to mind as examples of not such good ageing - facial tattoos spell rebellion or prison in cultures where they're not routine.
For myself I'm older know than I've ever been in my life & after a few stressful periods life is better than it's ever been. The crucial question here, since witches are very keen on making things how we will them to be, is what I have done to end up where I am now. I think it is this: I am being me & not trying to be anyone or anything else. I know who I am & am unapologetic about it. I notice that Swift's list of resolutions is mainly things not to do, which is not really the witch's way. Knowing it, willing it, & doing it is our way so here is my list:
As I age:
I will act my age & not try to be any other.
I will be myself without accepting the perceived limitations of whatever age I am.
I will seek out whatever company I damn well please, if it's mutually enriching & pleasant.
I will maintain an interest in a sex life, since to lose interest in this is to cut yourself off from a major mystery of life, & source of life & pleasure.
I will seek out partners suitable to my stage of life - my 'type' seems to be getting older as I am, & young men are frankly never any good in bed.
I will not become embittered: it's too late for me to resist stubbornness but at least there's one I can do.
I will continue to do new things, acquire new interests to complement the old ones & actively avoid getting stuck in a rut.
I will not eat at 12 noon or 5pm unless it happens to suit me (weird, I know, but those are the only two times my mother will eat).
I will continue to develop my trust that the universe will forever look after me, give me pleasure & challenge me. This journey will not end until my life does.
I will attempt to maintain my health as best I can & will not accept diminishments of ability or potential without a fight.
I will start smoking again at the age of 80, or if I go blind or get a terminal illness. My addiction is alive & strong & I don't want to die without once more embracing Our Lady Nicotine. Starting again in old age would hopefully mean I cheat her of the long-term effects of smoking, if I don't start because of having a terminal disease.
I will continue to seek as my highest goal, going through life without fear, including the fear of death. I am a priest of a death Goddess & accept that she will take my life when it suits her. I may have warning or not. If my life becomes too much for me to bear, through pain or disease, I may renege of this though.
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