I have always had an interest in comparative religion and have tried to educate myself as much as possible about other faiths and their observances. Joining the compendium of bloggers at The Daily Scribe has been a wonderful immersion into an ongoing multi-faith conversation. My fellow scribes are all talented writers who bring their unique perspective to the philosophy and practice of their religion and spirituality.

There are a number of Scribes who are Jewish and leading up to today they have been doing much writing, as you might expect, about Yom Kippur. Others in the group, while not Jewish, are following the spirit of this day to do some of their own "personal meditation, fasting, and reflection." I have other friends, outside the Scribe circle, who also take the opportunity during Ramadan, Yom Kippur and other holy days to attend to some of their own personal spiritual needs. It's not that these people don't have religious observances in their own faiths but that out of compassion, love and respect for those of other faiths they wish to observe on this day as well.

Witches know that the more people who are adding their energy to a particular working, the more powerful that working will become. Meditation done within the context of a group ritual is often much more powerful by virtue of the energy that the other participants are contributing. Is it any wonder, then, that many people are taking the opportunity today to dip into the collective spiritual energy being generated around the world for some spiritual work of their own? Not just to have a more powerful personal experience but to feel part of a universal collection of souls.

One of the posts on Yom Kippur that caught my attention was Simchas Yom Kippur at Reb Chaim HaQoton. It starts by saying that Yom Kippur is one of the happiest days of the year and goes on to explain why. This passage was particularly instructive:

...the repentance during the Ten Days of Repentance from Rosh HaShannah to Yom Kippur is a repentance out of fear (fear from Heavenly punishment and fear of the awesomeness of G-d), while the repentance during the holiday of Succos is a repentance from love. The difference between the two types of repentance is that repentance from fear only erases one's sins, while repentance from love transforms one's sins into fulfillments of positive commandments...

I am intrigued by the concept of two kinds of repentance, especially the idea that "repentance from love" can be a transformative power for good. Witches perform their work in a sacred circle of "perfect love and perfect trust." We too recognize love's power to transform.

While I don't prescribe to the idea of "sin" or that of a smiteful God who is going to be angry and do nasty things to you if you don't repent, I do embrace the practice of taking a day to look back over the past year, reflect upon things you've done that you regret or wish you had done differently, and make a plan for how to transform yourself, your attitude, your actions so that next year will be better. Yes, it's good to ask forgiveness from others, but it's just as important to forgive yourself. That is how I think atonement and forgiveness can make you happy.

In my recent post about the Wiccan Sabbat Mabon I wrote:

This is a time for spiritual reflection on the past year, what it has brought to us and what have we sown and harvested in our lives. It is a time to give thanks to the God and the Goddess for what we have been able to accomplish and it is an opportunity to cut away the chaff, the useless things and situations that are keeping us from realizing our truest potential and greatest happiness. How can we work to bring more balance to our lives? Since we are coming to the end of our Pagan year it also is a time to imagine what we hope and plan to accomplish next year. These things are our modern "harvest."

The spiritual work we are asked to do on Mabon is very similar to that asked of Jews at Yom Kippur. We do this now to prepare for the end of the year, the end of the harvest, the darkness of the winter to come, before Samhain, our New Year.

Another passage from Simchas Yom Kippur that I found intriguing was this:

On the day of Yom Kippur, every Jew's fate for the year is sealed, and it is one's final time to repent for sins.

A literal reading may suggest that this is your last chance to ask for forgiveness. From a larger, metaphorical position, I think it's possible to read this as meaning that as the end of the year approaches, these are the last days we have to wipe the slate clean to begin the new year clearer of spirit and of intent. In witchcraft, intent is the most powerful energy of all.

G'mar chatimah tovah (may you, finally, be sealed for good) and "May your observance bring you closer to the meaning that you seek." (The Velveteen Rabbi)

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 09:30 AM | Comments (4)

Steph at The Witch Within (who is about to go on hiatus and will be missed) writes about her issues with Wicca in this post: Why it's not Mabon to me.

My biggest beef with Wicca is the practices and beliefs that were seemingly plucked from thin air decades ago. As more people study the historical records of ancient races they discovered that there is no historical proof that these peoples even worshipped this god or goddess or practiced a certain “sabbat”. There is no historical proof that a celebration called “Mabon” ever existed or that the Celts even celebrated it. To me that is highly suspect and I return to question the inventions of those who help foster the Witchcraft renaissance over 100 years ago.

I never really stopped to think about it that way. I've always been aware that Wiccans have had to "make up" much of the essence of our modern practice because the ancients didn't write theirs down. I'm also being trained in a tradition that encourages people to find what works best for them and use that in their practice, so perhaps from the get-go I've been more inclined to be accepting of this aspect of Wicca.

Without any direct influence from the Gardnerian tradition, I haven't experienced Wicca as a "creation of men based on vague ancient memories." I can understand why others who started on their paths as witches longer ago than I have might have chaffed under some restrictive influence of early Wiccan traditions, but my experience has been an entirely female-positive one. I don't accept the view that Wicca is solely a feminist religion either, but I do appreciate that Wicca enjoys far less institutionalized sexism than a number of other organized religions.

Hecate, in a recent post about celebrating Mabon with her new coven, quotes Carol Christ from The Politics of Women's Spirituality:

Religious symbol systems focused around exclusively male images of divinity create the impression that female power can never be fully legitimate or wholly beneficent. The message need never be explicitly stated (as, for example, it is in the story of Eve) for its effects to be felt. A woman completely ignorant of the myths of female evil in biblical religion nonetheless acknowledges the anomaly of female power when she prays exclusively to a male God. She may see herself as like God (created in the image of God) only by denying her own sexual identity and affirming God's transcendence of sexual identity. But she can never have the experience that is freely available to every man and boy in her culture of having her full sexual identity affirmed as being in the image and likeness of God.

Wicca allows us to celebrate the divinity within ourselves and gives us plenty of powerful role models to choose from.

Recently, I've come to accept the Wiccan mantle. Maybe I'm trying it on to see how it fits. But when I first launched this blog nearly a year ago, this is what I wrote about my beliefs on the subject:

A question that I have been asking myself is: am I a Wiccan? I think it's too soon to tell. As I said, I'm still not comfortable with the "religion" label - at this stage I see myself more as a practitioner of folk magick than a follower of Wicca as a formal religion.

While this is still partly true, I'm finding myself increasingly comfortable accepting myself as Wiccan. That said, I think it's more important to accept oneself and to follow a spiritual path that holds the deepest possible meaning rather than be overly concerned with finding a label to put on it.

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 05:36 PM | Comments (2)

No, it's not another Quizilla quiz (which I sometimes find fun) - it's an issue I've been mulling over while bunches of blog posts and book passages and other random bits of information have been floating about in my brain, turning into some kind of collective stew that hasn't quite congealed yet.

I've referred to myself on occasion as a green witch. This was because I had read a definition of "green witch" that essentially equated this path with the practice of a simpler folk magick, as opposed to formal, ceremonial, ritual-based magick. That definition certainly applies to me, so when trying to describe my path to others I've taken to using that terminology. But other sources have described being a green witch as one who is an herbalist, who works spells and mixes potions with a close affinity for and use of nature. Well, that's not quite me. Living in the city, it's difficult to live as a truly green witch, even if you are a skilled herbalist, which I'm not. So, if I'm not exactly a green witch, then what color witch am I?

Lately I've been reading Raven Kaldera and Tannin Schwartzstein's book The Urban Primitive: Paganism In The Concrete Jungle. Another of my favorite books on the topic of being a witch in the city is Christopher Penczak's City Magick. One of the ideas that is common to both books is that the city has sources of energy unique to its urban essence and that we, as witches, can work with that energy just as we can work with the energy of trees, rocks, and oceans. These authors would argue that typical man-made constructs in an urban environment are no less from nature, although they do not fit many pagan ideals of being from the earth. All matter is natural. In the city, it just finds its way into forms that have evolved far from the states in which we find matter in the woods or in a meadow. In the city we have power lines, concrete, steel, and glass. Neon even!

Other sources of city energy are the radiated feelings and psychic residue from the vast number of its inhabitants. This energy is intense because of the density of living beings in the city. And by extension - and given that cities tend to be where hospitals are located - more people die in cities. Ghosts are much thicker here than in rural or suburban areas. All of this energy combines into a great, soupy morass made up of all of the disparate kinds of energy these beings exude.

If we try to imagine a color that might best represent the forms that energy in the city takes, the closest we might come (neon notwithstanding) is grey. So then, as an urban witch, does that make me a grey witch? It's actually an intriguing thought.

The primary association with the color grey is neutrality. Grey is a color of darkness tempered by light, a balancer of positive and negative, a color of complexity. In magick, grey is used to achieve balance, for attuning to the spirit world, to learn peace and patience, veiling, invisibility, and to assist with vision quests, theft and dreams. It also has to do with neutralization, cancellation, protection, grounding and hex deflecting.

The Urban Primitive posits that one of the most important things that the city witch must learn to do is self protect. We all learn to be street savvy and watchful for physical predators, but we also need to develop the ability to protect ourselves from energy:

... city dwellers need just as much to protect themselves from the constant swirl and fog of energy that billows and throbs in great glittering invisible clouds all around them. Effects of being immersed in that energy all the time range from fatigue to forgetfulness to depression. It's as if your third eye is constantly exposed to a strobe light, with the resulting dull headache. You need to be able to escape from the city's energy vortex, for your own health.

When we think of green, we think of healing. Herbs are used in remedies to heal a world of ills. Just as green witches are skilled herbalists, perhaps grey witches are those who are called upon to be skilled neutralizers of the immense amount of city energy around them. Just as green witches provide healing for themselves and others, so can grey witches achieve balance for ourselves and others through a uniquely urban approach to magick. Spells not only to protect us from harmful effects of the exuberance and abundance of urban energy, but also to provide patience standing in queues, to provide invisibility from psychic predators on the subway, and to deflect thieves who might be tempted to lurk on our fire escapes.

So now, if I'm called upon to define what kind of witch I am, I'll say: I am a Grey Witch!

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 07:57 PM | Comments (7)

This week I have been guest blogging over at A Pagan Sojourn (and have cross-posted my entries here). There were three of us guest bloggers, each tasked with writing about three different issues from our own faith's particular point of view. First was nature, then the afterlife, and finally, describe the essence of your faith in 300 words or less. As the Wiccan/Pagan of the bunch, this was a daunting task indeed, given how much ground there was to cover. But it was a fun and enlightening experience.

I decided the bulk of my final post - describing Wicca as if to someone who didn't know anything about it - would be old hat for most of my Blogickal readers. But there was one section that I thought worth posting here because it points to some specific ideas that are important to me:

Wiccans are women and men of every profession, cultural background and religious upbringing. For many, Wicca is the only religion they've found that encourages love for the Earth and its inhabitants (human, animal, vegetable and mineral) and that promotes the practice of magick to transform their lives into positive experiences. Women, especially, are drawn to it because of its acceptance of the feminine aspect of divinity - the Goddess. For Wiccans, theirs is the only religion that allows a truly intimate link with deity.

My personal experience of Wicca as a spiritual path puts me firmly in this category. I enjoy the connection to nature and spirit as one and the same. Wicca requires me to taking responsibility for the outcome of my actions, including my spiritual ones, and allows me to direct my personal will while discovering a higher purpose for myself - a divine Will. Along with the freedom it gives me to adopt a spiritual path of my own choosing, I appreciate Wicca's returned emphasis on Goddess worship. It represents something of a feminist liberation after feeling the after-effects of the Judeo-Christian suppression of the feminine divine and the second-class status women have been handed by more dominant religious institutions. It is important for me to be able to identify with a religion that tells me that I have power and am divine. I also count myself among certain Wiccans who are reclaiming the word witch, who are not ashamed to admit that what we are practicing is witchcraft. Although I sometimes enjoy the ceremony of a high ritual, my day-to-day approach to the craft is more about finding a personal connection to deity and to living my life in a way that is in harmony with nature, with the spirit of the world around me, and that celebrates and acknowledges my place within the web that connects us all.

Thanks and blessings to Sojourner for having me, and to Mike and Bjorngrimner, my fellow guest bloggers, for their kind comments and support. It was fun!

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 11:02 PM | Comments (1)

Proof, the play by David Auburn that was made into a movie starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Sir Anthony Hopkins, is a wonderful treatise on the human response when faced with the unknowable. Intellectually unknowable. Personally unknowable. Spiritually unknowable. It's about trust in something that we cannot prove to be true, yet we believe nonetheless. David Auburn's story centers around a mathematical proof that becomes the test for the existence of faith and true love - between father and daughter, sister and sister, man and woman. It points to a greater, cosmic belief in each other as human beings. This is the very nature of belief in the divine.

We approach our magickal work "in perfect love and perfect trust" because without this perfect trust how can we know the Goddess and God? We can't. Despite St. Thomas Aquinas' mathematical proof for the existence of God, true faith in the existence of the divine stems from trust in that which is empirically unknowable. Spirit may come to us in many forms but ultimately we have no proof. We trust. We believe.

When we trust that the divine is possible in the world, we must accept that by extension it is possible within ourselves. For many of us this is the more difficult thing to believe.

Believe in yourselves. Blessed be.

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 05:09 PM | Comments (1)

1. Calm is a place you create in the midst of chaos.

2. Take comfort in the uneventful. It prepares you for what's to come.

3. Kindness is in our nature; practice giving and receiving it freely.

4. For a centered spirit and a quieter mind, commit to a daily walk

5. Think of sleep as a ritual; prepare for it each night

6. See a rut as an opportunity for change.

7. Any moment can bring an awakening to what really matters

8. Experience your spirituality as a gift and a process.

9. Reverse the golden rule: Treat yourself as you treat others.

10. Dreams give your life color and momentum. Let them inspire your passions and propel you forward.

Inspiring thoughts for a Monday morning. A weekly affirmation in the making? This list was found in the August 2006 issue of body+soul magazine.

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 09:03 AM | Comments (0)

Okay, so if my picture were in a magazine, I'd be the one with the black square over my eyes. An attempt to protect the identity of the woman who was so unfortunate as to have made THAT particular choice, rendered more humiliated by the fact that now she has a silly black square stuck to her face. Well I'm coming clean - I am a Wiccan Don't.

This past Sunday was the New Moon in Cancer. As the evening wore on, I realized that I hadn't planned a ritual or a spell or even an affirmation for the day. In the past I've let too many lunar opportunities go by and I decided I wasn't going to waste this one. I'd cast circles; I'd called quarters; I had my wand now. I was going to wing it.

From a Litha ritual I attended a couple of weeks ago I had a yellow candle charged with the intent to bring me joy in the coming year. I decided I would light this candle and ask for some joy. It was too late to write a petition spell. Besides, the last time I did a petition spell I set off the smoke detector and I wasn't looking forward to a repeat of that experience. I'd just light the candle. Sit with it for a bit, maybe meditate on filling myself with lovely yellow light, and then put it out before I burnt the building down.

In one of our classes we made a power potion. I decided to dress my candle with it because, lets face it, I could use a little joy in my life right about now and the more power this joy candle had the better.

So as midnight approached, I set out my tools, such as they are. I have a sort of altar on the desk in my home office that right now consists of a lovely witchball floating in a vase of water, a small vase of pink and white little flowers, my statue of Ganesh and a votive candle. To this I added a lotus blossom candle holder, my yellow candle, a bottle of power potion, and my wand. I was ready. But wait - no matches. I ransacked the apartment looking for matches. None. Note to self - witches should keep matches in the house.

Suddenly I had the brilliant idea to light a little birthday candle on the burner of the stove and use that to light my other candles. Well, all I succeeded in doing was dripping beeswax on the burner, which caught fire. Thank goddess for exhaust fans! Another note to self: make sure there is a gas stove in next home. I decided to risk setting off the smoke detector and lit a piece of twine, with which I succeeded in lighting my votive candle. Geez louise, I was ready to go!

I took up my wand and cast my circle. (It was the first time I'd used it - I was stoked!) Perhaps not the most eloquent of circle castings I'd ever done, but so far so good. I dressed my candle, lit it, asked the god and goddess to help me manifest its intent to bring me joy, and stood there quietly for a few minutes. The air conditioning came on and nearly blew out my candle. Then I remembered, oh yea I'm supposed to raise the cone of power! So I did this and sent my joy energy out into the universe. Right about then I heard a noise in my kitchen and ran out there expecting to see the burner up in flames again. It wasn't. But of course I hadn't thought to make a door to exit the circle as we'd been taught. So much for the sacredness of my circle! With my propensity for this sort of thing, it's clear that I need to practice cutting a door in my circle.

I did the final blessing of putting into what remained of my circle the names of others I thought could use some joy too. I got so caught up in this that I think I ended up asking for joy for the whole world! Let's just hope that there's a little left for me. It was only after I'd gone through the motion of releasing the circle, open but unbroken, that I realized that I'd forgotten to thank the god and goddess or release any of the elementals. I called a hasty "thanks guys!" and fell limply into my chair.

This, my friends, is not the way to practice magick. You know when you wince at the the picture of the unfortunate fashion choice? Well this Wiccan Don't is the magickal equivalent of cautioning you not to wear briefs with low-rider jeans. I'll remember next time to be more prepared. Or if I'm not and there's a nice New Moon that I'd like to acknowledge, I'll simply light a candle and say an affirmation. Keep it simple, silly witch.

I sat there contemplating my ridiculously imperfect efforts of the evening and said to whomever was still listening that I sincerely hoped that this witch's imperfections in no way would affect the perfection of the the joy to come to all for whom I'd asked it. Because, for whatever I lack in perfection as a witch, I believe I make up for in the goodness of my intention.

As I put my tools away and got ready to go to bed, I thought I felt some spirit still lingering about. I hoped it was kind and said good night.

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 11:28 AM | Comments (2)

My teacher has described spells as a witch's prayers. They are active, and directed with intent and personal will, but as a means to place a spell within a spiritual context that someone who doesn't know anything about Wicca can understand, it is a useful analogy. There are petition spells, wherein you ask the gods and/or goddesses to deliver something to you or to manifest something for you. There are as many types of spells as there are needs to be fulfilled, just as, I'm sure, there are many types of prayers uttered by those of Christian or other faiths. What does one do then, when prayers go unanswered? When our spells do not work?

In the text we are using in my class to learn spell craft there is a list of reasons why a spell may not work. These include an improperly worded spell, or a poor choice of time and lunar or planetary energy, and other practical issues of this nature. But there is also the issue of the spell not serving our highest good. When we cast a spell, we say to the gods/goddesses that we ask that it be for our highest good, harming none. This includes ourselves. But when we have been working magick toward a particular goal, in many forms for many months, with strongly directed will and carefully chosen words and a deeply heartfelt desire to make our will manifest, and yet our spells still do not work, what are we to accept as the reason?

This is something that I am experiencing at the moment. My magick has been for something deeply personal that is very important to me. Since the full moon before Ostara I have been pouring all of my energy into one particular goal. I have meditated on it, I have worked different sorts of spells, I have made offerings to gods and goddesses, I have practiced wishcraft and visualization. My teacher tells us that intent is more important than perfection of a spell. My intent has been focused and full of conviction. Even so, I have been conscientious about how I have worked my magick. And yet, I have failed. For me this represents the first intense crisis of faith since I have begun this spiritual path.

Am I a bad witch? Is it that what I'm trying to manifest is not for my highest good? And is that just something we tell ourselves so that when our spells don't work there is an explanation other than that magick simply doesn't work? Among all of the questions I am struggling to answer for myself tonight, these are weighing heavily on my mind.

What do we do in a crisis of faith?

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 10:19 PM | Comments (0)

Lately I've been contemplating the fact that I really am a very earthy being. For one thing, there is a preponderance of astrological evidence - I'm a Taurus with Virgo rising and my moon is in Capricorn. It doesn't get much earthier than that! There are other aspects to my chart and to my personality that suggest that I have a fair bit of the other elements mixed in there too, but when it comes right down to it, I am a essentially a creature of the earth.

So I ask myself again a question that has come up before - how did I end up with the name Nixie? I'm an earth fairy of Scottish ancestry, not a German water sprite!

When I began to study witchcraft and discussed the choosing of a magickal name, many sources suggested that as you change over time and become the witch you are going to be it is not an uncommon practice to change your magickal name. I chose the name Nixie before I actually started my formal training. It seemed to fit at the time and I liked it. Is it time to reconsider?

I do love the water. I'm drawn to the ocean and often feel at peace there. I also love the feeling when the waves are crashing on the beach and the wind is blowing all around. I also possess the intuitive qualities that the element of water tends to manifest in us, so it is not entirely inappropriate to think of myself as a partly watery woman.

In her book Tarot for Beginners my friend Susan Levitt offers the most accessible discussion that I have found for understanding the concept of elemental alchemy, at least for beginners. Very simply, she explains the symbolic significance of mixing the four elements. For example, she describes the mixture of fire and water as "an alchemical balance of emotion put into action, or action stemming from strong emotion." The mixture of air and earth "is the alchemical balance of making ideas reality and changing physical reality through ideas, values, thoughts and beliefs." What she fails to tell me, however, is what happens when you mix earth and water.

Well, any child can tell you what happens when you mix earth and water. You get mud!

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 10:24 AM | Comments (2)

Saint Patrick is most known for driving the snakes from Ireland. It is true there are no snakes in Ireland, but there probably never have been - the island was separated from the rest of the continent at the end of the Ice Age. As in many old pagan religions, serpent symbols were common and often worshipped. Driving the snakes from Ireland was probably symbolic of putting an end to that pagan practice. While not the first to bring Christianity to Ireland, it is Patrick who is said to have encountered the Druids at Tara and abolished their pagan rites. The story holds that he converted the warrior chiefs and princes, baptizing them and thousands of their subjects in the "Holy Wells" that still bear this name.

Interestingly enough, the person who was to become Saint Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, was born in Wales about AD 385 and his given name was Maewyn. Far from being a saint, until he was 16 he considered himself a pagan. At that age, he was sold into slavery by a group of Irish marauders who raided his village. During his captivity he became closer to God and later decided that it was his calling to convert the pagans to Christianity.

As was often the case in those days, rather than attacking paganism, Patrick used pagan symbols to win converts. It is said that he used the three-leafed shamrock, the traditional pagan symbol of spring, to explain the concept of the Trinity; hence its strong association with his day and name. He superimposed the pagan symbol of the sun onto the Christian cross giving the celtic cross its shape.

So then, how should we pagan-leaning folk view Saint Patrick?

Continue reading "How Do You Solve A Problem Like Saint Patrick?"

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 01:51 PM | Comments (0)

A Nixie is a water fairy. I chose Nixie as my magickal nickname and nom de blog because I have always been drawn to the ocean, it has been suggested that I have descended from fairy folk, and the name seemed to fit my personality. (There is more to it than that and I'm writing a longer article about choosing a magickal name - to appear later.) Lately though, I've begun to question my choice.

The thing that got me thinking about this was a fountain at my friends' house in Minneapolis. It's a large pot with a plant in it and water that bubbles constantly through a pump. At first the sound was pleasant. After a few days of listening to it, though, it started to drive me to distraction and I had to ask them to turn it off. Is it possible that I don't have as strong an affinity with water as I thought? So I started to examine my feelings about the ocean. I love sitting by it, listening to it, sailing boats on it. I occasionally like swimming in it but I have an irrational fear of sharks and I get nervous when I can't see what scary things might be in the water beneath me. How can I be a nixie who's afraid to be in the water? Sounds like some sort of fractured fairy tale!

So, I thought, if I'm not a waterbaby, which element am I?

Continue reading "Which Element Am I?"

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 05:36 PM | Comments (1)

Among the many contentious topics discussed within the pagan community, a question of spelling gets a tremendous amount of play. It's the "magic" vs. "magick" debate.

The use of "magick" is generally understood as a means to distinguish ritual and sacred work from stage magic tricks. Aleister Crowley is credited with coining the term and there are a number of esoteric bases for his choice, including numerology and ancient Greek creation mythology. Crowley defined magick as "the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with the will". The idea that Will is an essential part of magick is valid regardless of how you choose to spell it. But is the "k" really necessary?

There is a discussion thread on this subject at The Cauldron. The people who participate in that forum are a great group and have smart, thoughtful things to say:

I spell it "magick" when using English. Not to tell stage magic and "the other kind" apart, as I do not need to make such a distinction in the places where I do use written English and discuss anything related to magick.

The 'culprit' behind my usage is uncle Al. Aleister Crowley, that is. The "telling apart" -thing does not come into play, nor does any "coolness factor" whatsoever. I know why the k is there.

Crowley's writings were my introduction to modern magick (and where I always seem to return to) and the spelling stuck. Lately, I've seen moving away from spelling magick-with-the-k and even downright sneering at those who still use that particular spelling ("Oy ye ignorant fool! Trying to be cool, eh? Do you even know where it originates? It was Aleister Crowley, that evil evil man!" or something of the sorts). Oh well, I'm not inclined to change the spelling I use for others' sake.

I always spell it sans 'K' because that's the historical spelling and also, I want to differentiate it from Uncle Al. Not a diss at him, but everytime I see it spelled that way I assume that's what kind of magic the person is talking about.

Also, it seems for many people (the uniformed ones) it seems to go in hand with this weird Medieval British / 18th century Gothic novel/ New Age spelling which creeps in when ever anything occult is discussed. (sort of like Chaucer , Shakespeare and Radcliffe take LSD together and read the Bible out loud in an 'alternative' store).

Of course, others have expressed a view on the subject. This was in response to my fluffy bunny post:

Im not triying to be rude or something like that, but if its true that you are not a Fluffy Bunnie, then dont use the word magic with a K, it is only wrote like that by fluffy bunnies

I use "magick" because my teacher, Christopher Penczak, uses that spelling. For me, it's as simple as that.

I found references to "magick" and its origins at Answers.com and Thelemapedia. They are both very good sources of information and I'm sure you'll find them interesting.

So, which is it for you? Magic or Magick?

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 03:20 PM | Comments (2)

If you've done any reading anywhere, especially on the web, you've heard this term. Fluffy Bunny. An obviously derogatory term aimed at newbie witches. Before I began Witchcraft One, and was simply doing research on the web and reading lots of books, I saw this term and wondered if it applied to me.

It wouldn't be the first time I've been called a bunny. When I was at Smith, those of us who lived in larger houses on a quadrangle on the edge of campus were referred to as Quad Bunnies by the women who lived on central campus and watched us walk home from class on the path that lead past their houses to ours. You can imagine the various stereotypes the term encompassed, but largely I think they took us for unserious party girls. Damn right I'm a party girl! And proud of it! But that doesn't mean I can't be serious about something when I need or want to be.

Since you are reading this blog, you know that I am new to witchcraft and have just begun more formal study. My approach to learning the craft is serious, but to all outward appearance I fit the description of a fluffy bunny - or at least the characterization as I interpreted it. I'm girly and into fashion (goth is not a good look for me). Look at my site: I wanted it to be fun and a reflection of my personality. My approach to magick notwithstanding, I have to laugh when I imagine the expressions and comments I'd get from the Wicca For The Rest Of Us crowd. Needless to say, I was reluctant to post in some of the pagan forums that interested me for fear of offending anyone with my lapininess.

With a bit of experience and education to my credit, I've revisited the idea of the fluffy bunny. What does it really mean to be a fluffy bunny? Am I a fluffy bunny?

Continue reading "Am I a Fluffy Bunny?"

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 04:19 PM | Comments (3)

I told this story in a post on another blog I read when the question was asked if anyone had had any spiritual/supernatural experiences (it's not a pagan blog, so you'll have to forgive the supernatural reference). Someone commented that I must be an "A-one broadcaster" and I realized that she's right!

A few years ago, while I was living in San Francisco, I had been dating someone who I was convinced was THE ONE. I was very much in love. The day after I got back from a business trip, where I got the sickest I have ever been in my life, he broke up with me. I was devastated. I couldn't eat and lost 30 pounds in one month. My heart was shattered. Shortly after this happened, my best friend from college, who was living with me at the time, got an email from my childhood best friend and high school boyfriend. He said that he had been trying to find me and found her because she mentioned me in a post she made on an alumnae website. He asked her to forward his contact info to me. So I got in touch with him. He said he had a dream about me and the next day he knew he had to find me. We had lost touch and hadn't had any contact in over 10 years! Then, I was at a dinner party at a friend's house. One of her other guests (whose mother was a voodoo priestess in Haiti) had called her up to say that he had a vision of one of her friends and that he needed to come to the party. He described the person in his vision and she told him, that's Angela. He told me that he had a message for me; the message was that everything was going to be okay. He said I should get some green beads because he had seen me wearing them in the vision. So I bought a peridot necklace. I wore it without taking it off for a few weeks, including while I was on vacation on Nantucket. On the airplane back to San Francisco after my vacation, I met a man and we fell in love.

I believe without any doubt that when my heart was broken so badly I was sending some sort of cry for help out into the universe. My old friend Steve picked up on it because we had been so close. And Garrett picked up on it because he had the ability to and we were connected through my friend. I also believe that we all have the ability to psychically connect when we need to and if we can tap into that energy within ourselves.

Something finally clicked in my head about what my teacher, Christopher Penczak, had been saying about how even the thoughts we have are powerful and can have consequences for us. I realized that if I have the kind of power to broadcast to people far away from me - and whom I've never met! - then imagine what I'm broadcasting through my thoughts to the people in my every day life!

Continue reading "Broadcasting"

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 07:33 AM | Comments (0)

My mother comes from a family of Southern Baptists. I have seen a lot of hypocritical and sometimes downright hateful stuff coming from them under the guise of religion. That, and numerous intellectual inconsistencies, turned me off Christianity at a pretty early age. For a very long time I have been agnostic. I believed that there was some sort of force/power/energy in the universe but I wasn't sure what it was exactly - and to be truthful, I didn't spend an awful lot of time thinking about it. Over the past couple of years, I have grown more and more interested in pagan ideas of spirituality. I have done massive amounts of reading and have begun to study witchcraft. I consider myself a student and am still searching for my path.

There have been a few deities to whom I have felt a connection - Ganesh and Brigid being the two most meaningful (you see that I'm pretty cross-pantheon at this point). But right now, I don't have faith in any gods or goddesses in the sense of faith that most Christians feel for their god or that some other posters say they have for their gods and goddesses. In fact, I feel a bit squeamish about the idea of the God and Goddess as creators of the universe. I think this is due to my very negative feelings about Christianity and organized religion in general. Maybe my feelings will change as I advance through my studies and practice.

Continue reading "What Do I Believe?"

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 03:50 PM | Comments (0)