Hidden City: Underground Tunnel in Stirchley

Picture credit: via http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/showthread.php/78817-GKN-Stirchley-Tunnels-Birmingham-March-2013
I'm liking living - temporarily - in the Stirchley area of the city. It's a very Birmingham place, by which I mean it has the characteristic mix of all sorts of people, & doesn't show all its facets on a superficial glance. Driving through, you merely see another depressed mixed-industrial & residential area.
It is, however, one of the urban exploration centres of the city. Until restoration started the disused baths was a great favourite & there are several disused factories. I didn't know that the mighty GKN had a works here, & particularly didn't know there is a tunnel under the road! Of course I haven't been in: the former car breakers mentioned in the page above is sealed up closer than a straight man's y-fronts. Nonetheless I had to 'reblog' it here as a facet of the hidden city, a hidden city I just keep on discovering!

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Mummy issues for Christmas

Picture: Virgin & Child, painted by Adolf Hitler. Credit: Wikimedia
True to form, I'm not avoiding the difficult matters for the festal season. Yes, I'm using the Christmas word: my usual disenchantment with 'the Pagan community' pushes me into using the name for this feast of the predominant surrounding milieu. And of course that's the point of this post. Christians like to make out that Christ is the 'reason for the season'. And of course they're dead wrong. The reason for the season is the darkness. And we witches know you can't have darkness without its polar opposite, light, right kids?
But the image which illustrates this post has become a more common image of this season since the Christians came along, & interestingly brings with it one of the most complicated human relationships possible. The Christians, of course, have a slight difficulty with the apparent lack of femininity in their divinity, which is accounted for usually by Mary, or the image of the church as the spouse of Christ. The witches, as among those who have 'reclaimed' the feminine divine in the twentieth century, have exactly the opposite problem: we risk mummy issues creeping into our either bisexual or completely feminine perception of divinity. That said, mummy issues are almost the definitive feature of the witch:
'"I have found that people who know that they are preferred or favored by their mothers give evidence in their lives of a peculiar self-reliance and an unshakeable optimism which often bring actual success to their possessors."' (http://www.pbs.org/youngdrfreud/pages/family_mother.htm)
You will note that I'm using the phrase 'mummy issues' quite differently from its normal sense of a heterosexual man without a mother figure in his early years, who looks for a woman who will fill that void. it is only my personal opinion but I find it quite creepy the way straight men can both want sex & to be - almost - mothered by their lovers. That is my stereotyped perception of a particular human relationship seen from the outside. The stereotype extends to homosexual men having over-involved mothers. In fact both straight & gay men can have over- or under-interested mothers & thus various mummy issues.
This festival has therefore become one marking the *most* complicated relationship we humans have. Of course I'm sitting here secure in the knowledge that I'll never have children to fuck up, although I did manage to turn a nervous stray cat into a relaxed, happy old man. The whole tone for upbringing is set by the parents, the 'blame' will always somehow land there, they will always get it wrong to various degrees.
I hope, as a witch, I can sit with the fact that this relationship will never be 'right'. However if nothing else, I will not play at happy families - that is the way of falsehood & further screwiness.
Happy festival - go on, upset a relative. It's strangely liberating.
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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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Spirit of Place: Birmingham Pub Bombings Fortieth Anniversary

(Picture credits: BBC/Mirror)
Some time ago I was trying to write a post on a witchy pub crawl of Birmingham, but I found it was impossible to put the words 'pub' & 'Birmingham' together without the word 'bombings', so I've been saving this up for the fortieth anniversary.
The episode is a shameful one on the city's history. It has left a legacy of blame, false accusations, recriminations, hatred, & miscarriages of justice. Real stories of locals affected by the bombings can be read at http://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=27896 and more particularly at http://justice4the21.blogspot.com (from which the list of names below is taken).
But this is a witchcraft blog & of course I have a purpose to all this. You will read the received wisdom that the bombs were planted by the IRA, who have always denied responsibility, & the police's scepticism of claims of responsibility by another terrorist group. I don't know anything about terrorism, but I'm fairly sure there isn't another example of an apparently completely pointless terorist act. The Birmingham Six lost years of their lives through police incompetence, & the 21 lost their lives permanently. The witch in me hears a cry for vengeance. So for the fortieth anniversary, if you are in the Second City, please pass by the monument in the cathedral churchyard & say the names. Hear them crying for vengeance. Invoke whatever divinity you may believe in. If you don't, call on the spirit of Beorma. Somebody put those three (one didn't detonate) in places where they knew they would kill people, & has gone scot-free for forty years. You'll notice I say vengeance, not justice. Beyond the long arm of the law stretches the longer arm of the witch, & together let us say the names below & send it back. This is actually the first step to healing: you have to get rid of the cancer first, before you can forget.
Michael William Beasley, aged 30
Lynne Jane Bennett, aged 18
Stanley James Bodman, aged 51
James Frederick Caddick, aged 40
Thomas Frderick Chaytor, aged 28
James Goodlet Craig, aged 34
Paul Anthony Davies, aged 20
Jane Elizabeth Davis, aged 17
Charles Harper Grey, aged 44
Maxine Hambleton, aged 18
Anne Hayes, aged 19
John Clifford Jones, aged 51
Neil Robert Marsh, aged 20
Marilyn Paula Nash, aged 22
Pamela Joan Palmer, aged 19
Desmond William Reilly, aged 20
Eugene Thomas Reilly, aged 23
Maureeen Anne Roberts, aged 20
John Rowlands, aged 46
Trevor George Thrupp, aged 33
Stephen John Whalley, aged 21

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Winged penises, bereavement & moving house

It's a bit fraught in my house still. I'm in the middle of selling & moving, & in true witch style I've almost worked my way through one estate agent in a fortnight. Without naming names, they made a monumental cock up & I was forced to remonstrate with them. I wish people would stop crying when I'm trying to talk to them, it's most distracting. Anyway, also in true witch style, I have a little plan to turn this situation around to my advantage.
I'm not so distracted that I didn't notice the graffiti which form the first picture here. I looooove the halos, & apart from anything else, those are actually a genuinely ancient religious symbol. Forget your made-up Neo-Pagan traditions, kids, flying penises are that real ol' time religion! The second picture is of an ancient Roman amulet to prove that it's the real thing (sorry, I've lost the source):
'In ancient Roman religion and magic, the fascinus or fascinum was the embodiment of the divine phallus. The word can refer to the deity himself (Fascinus), to phallus effigies and amulets, and to the spells used to invoke his divine protection. Pliny calls it a medicus invidiae, a "doctor" or remedy for envy (invidia, a "looking upon") or the evil eye.' (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascinus)
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A terrible warning

Me, that is. I'm a terrible warning. Or ought to be, to myself, if to no-one else. I am however, definitely the sort of sorcerer you get warned to avoid, by Llewellyn publications. I've written here before of the three magical entities I created, for no better reason than it seemed a good idea at the time. If nothing else, playing at magic seems to make it successfully spectacular, if the havoc created around me by my magical daughters is anything to go by.
Another of the main axioms of magic that I've come to understand better of recent years is that the magician is ultimately the target or object of all magic. This has been most recently shown to me by a spell I did on a friend, using the entity of the River Rea to bring her here. It didn't happen like that, but instead the kickback from it has worked on me to carry me to a place near the river.
It is a liminal place, also bounded by crossroads - about as witchy as you could wish to be. I'm now free to move because my poor old familiar was put down on Thursday, after suddenly becoming ill. Short of finding him dead in his bed it was the death I would have wished for him, as painless as possible. I don't know how muggles cope with life events, since for me it did genuinely feel like midwiving him to the next thing. I've been told since then he's happy & will be back soon. Definitely a person cat rather than a place cat.
It's stressful, of course, but this marks the end of my Hanged Man year & the move into my Death year. I have a feeling that after a year when all I could do was sit & wait (which I'm spectacularly bad at) I'm going into a year of loads of everything happening!
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Things coming together

It has been a little while since I have posted on here. Of course this does not mean the Hound is inactive meddling in reality, but rather that I have a number of things going through my head, none of which would constitute a post in itself.
I notice I had another pause around this time last year, so it may simply be an Autumn thing.
My depression is much better, thank you. I'm liking fluoxetine better than sertraline, & am about ready to take on the world again.
My poor old ginger tom cat is still with us, but visibly fading now. I will miss him terribly, but so badly want to move house & have been putting it off because he's been 'dying' for the past two years.
My complaint about a colleague had interesting repercussions. Most interestingly the management didn't side behind him, which, having learned the anatomy of workplace bullying from several experts at it, surprises me. I was all ready for a full scale battle, but believe that since I've learned that one I don't need to keep Tim Field's Bully in Sight anymore: this is one that isn't going to keep coming round.
The 'pagan community' is a continuing source of irritation to me. If it was anyone other than me I would query whether that person wasn't a team player. Or maybe it's just a witch thing.
There are two 'Passages' - Congreve & Coleridge - in Brum that carry writers' names but I have been unable so far to find out whether that was actually how they were named.
The present state of the former Grande Hotel in Mozambique is not a result of either blacks' inability to run things or the political instability of the country (both of these pieces of nonsense are bandied around on the internet), but rather the result of the colonials' greed. The hotel *never* made a profit & could not be supported by the resources of holidaymakers at that end of the continent.
I'm watching Ross Kemp on Gangs. Yum.
Anyway, all of these things make me think that things are moving on in me & around me, & that fortunately my year of the Hanged Man is drawing to a close. Of course this means that next year my year card is Death, so I'm bound to be all at sixes & sevens!
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