This short essay was written a year or so ago after I did research to better understand the history of my religion.  I have an insatiable need to go digging about and figuring out how and why things turned out the way they did.  This is one of the many things that lead me to study anthropology in college. 

This history goes back threw the timeline that most Americans will find more useful.  America > Britain > Roman/Egyptian > Cro-Magnon > Primitive.  I left out most of the native spiritualities that are present around the world.  Attempting to write a history that detailed would be a lifetimes worth of research :)

History of Paganism

By: Sesh

          Paganism is an umbrella term that means any religion that didn’t come from Abraham – anything besides Christian, Islamic, Jewish or Muslim (which are all descended from the same teachings).  Paganism is the world’s oldest religious practice, dating back to the dawn of human conscious, and going forward into the present day and into the future.  Even though the Abrahamic religions did much to exterminate Paganism in their areas of the world, there are many religions that were never touched or influenced by them, such as Hinduism, Native American beliefs and Shintoism.

Ancient Burial Mounds

          Pagans are people whose practices are usually based around the primal and personal aspects of life.   These practices are used today as they have always been: to ensure plentiful food, wealth, safety, health and fertility.  

  

To ancient peoples, everything had a spirit and every spirit had a purpose.  Archeologists say even primitive humans had a concept of the afterlife that sprang up about the time the first recorded religious practice did. 

Ancestor worship is probably one of the first religions in the world.  Ancient cultures began to see death as a transition and sets of beliefs sprang up to theorize what happened to the human psyche when the body died.  From primitive cultures to ancient times humans believed in life after death and the ability of the dead to influence us today.  The Ancient Egyptians and Romans held such beliefs.  The latter of who borrowed heavily from the Greek and Etruscans.  Modern cultural religions that still follow this belief include the Japanese, Chinese, Native American and most of the indigenous African religions.

Shamanistic Medicine Man

          Another of the oldest forms of religion is animism and shamanism.  Humans were afraid and became reverent of the animals in their everyday world.  Traces of animism survived primitive times and were continued into ancient cultures and then onward into modern cultures.  Osiris and Jehovah were worshiped as Bulls; Jesus was the Lamb of God; most Egyptian gods had animal counterparts, and the Holy Spirit of Christianity was a Dove and Shamans work with and invoke animal spirits.

As humanity realized it could plan crops and grow food, rites and superstitions developed around agriculture.  This lead to the rising of the first Deity, a fertility Goddess.  Examples of early Goddesses include Venus of Willindworf and the Willendworf Goddess.  It was though that women alone held the power of fertility and so the first God to be worshiped was actually a Goddess.  It wasn’t till much later than men realized that *ahem* they had a hand in the process.

Venus of Willendorf

             The earliest religious symbols were found in Kalahari Dessert in Botswana and Willendorf Austria.  A famous image amongst modern pagans, the figure from Austria shows a woman who is obviously well fed and maybe pregnant.  This statue, thought to be an ancient fertility or crop Goddess, and is also though to be a magical talisman.  The shape of the statue, and the implications behind how someone could also look that way, is though to be a plea to the early Deity of Willendorf for as much food and fertility.

The carved head of a python found in the Kalahari Dessert dates to 70,000 years ago and has recently been discovered to be the oldest religious artifact in human history.  This supports the theory that animism and animal worship was the world’s first religion.

Sympathetic magic is probably the oldest magic known to date.  Examples, such as rain dances, are still used to this day.  The stamping of the feet symbolizes the rain batting the ground.  Great importance was put on using sympathetic magic in hunts, fertility rights and to make crops grown.  Anyone familiar with the Arthurian legends will recognize the last vestments of the ancient fertility and hunting rites in the way Author came to impregnate his half-sister.

As groups of people moved from being hunter-gatherer tribes and settled into agrarian cultures, people started making offerings and working religious rites in honor of the spirits who rules over crops and wealth.  This is the beginning of true religion.  These Deities were though to be separate entities, and not just archetypical stereotypes.   The names of early Gods and Goddesses are lost to us, but other ancient deities (i.e. Celtic, Egyptian and Roman) are well known and worshiped to this day. 

Deities became a part of everyday life for ancient cultures around the world.  Emphasis was put on appeasing and appealing to these Deities for everything from finding lost objects to getting a good mate.  As man-made occurrences such as war and marriage came to exist, more and more specialized Deities evolved. 

The evolution of Deities can be traced back for thousands of years, threw names and associations- even from one culture to another.  During the Hellenistic period in Egypt, for instance, swapped Deities quite often.  New names evolved from the combination of two cultures religions and Gods such as Serapis were created.

Makes this Guy... Somehow

This Guy

Plus This Guy

There was a Deity for everything and everything had a Deity.  Every house and family had their shrines to household guardians and ancestors.  Eventually, these God/desses began to take on other responsibility that was sympathetic to their original aspect.  The rain, for instance, came to clean not just the body but the spirit and soul.  God/desses were given names and personified.  Along with war and marriage, crafts and cooking and government came to have their own God/desses.

Selu, Corn Woman

Beliefs started to vary between groups of humans around the time the Deities started taking on names and specialized priesthoods.  Agro-tribes met other agro-tribes and settled into communities.  With their shared knowledge, helping hands and their religious practices, lifespan lengthened, disease took a back seat and language and writing developed.  Communities became towns and towns became races and races became kingdoms.

             Whenever one country would invade another they would do one of three things: Adopt the loosing countries God/desses (as in the previous Serapis example) and blend them with their own, quench the native religion or allow the current Deities to be worshiped, but erect temples to their Gods.  The Romans were such victors.  They would allow a current population to worship their own but demanded they pay homage to Roman Deities.

Egyptians, Not Christians, Invented Monotheism

            A notable major religious revolution happened around this time in history.  Ankanatan attempted to unite all of Egypt under one All-Powerful God – the Atan.  He at first though to gradually replace the traditional Deities with his One Deity.  Latter all the temples of other Deities were closed and their priesthoods disbanded.  However, after Atenatens death, the polytheism returned to Egypt. 

            Several theories suggest that the Christian religion is a continuation of the religion of the All Powerful Aten.  Latter it is though that Mary and Jesus were taken from Isis and Horus the Savior.  Since the Christians did not believe other Gods existed they refused to pay homage to Roman God/desses.  They weren’t persecuted, as so many believed, for being Christian; they were punished for disobeying the law. 

Can I have What's Behind Door Number 2?

              For a long time the Romans hesitated to do anything to Christians.  But for their insistence that there was only one God, the Romans would have left them along.  This threatened the stability of religion in the Roman’s vast empire.  One thing that kept native people placated was the right to worship their own Gods.  Christianity threatened to take that right away from the people.  Also, with their refusal to perform ruler worship to the current Emperor, they were being disloyal subjects and were punished thus.

               How the Christians became so powerful is a matter of study.  Without going into those details, one theory suggests it was the Christians willingness to become martyrs for their God that willingly converted enough followers that eventually rulers were converted.   Another is that the Christians did what the Romans before them had done and gradually took over the ancient spots of worship and either replaced those Dieties with the Christian pantheon or adopted those Deities and latter declared the old worship of those same Deities as against the new religion.

Celtic Goddess turned Christian Saint

              Constantine I (Emperor of Rome) was the first Roman ruler to convert to Christianity and lift the bans on that religion.  Shortly after Christianity was declaired the official state religoin of Rome.  As a result, Christianity spread threw the wold whiping out and persecuting Pagans as far as they were able to reach.  Only a few places excaped such forced conversion and millions of pepole died.  As a result, many religions went underground or moved to other locations.  America, for instance, seems to be a melting pot of folk religion from Germany, England, China and all over the world.  

            Most of these underground religions died, but enough of some of them survived.  Secred societies were able to take them up and use them to compliment already existing practices.  Freemasons, The Order of the Golden Dawn, Bavarian Order of Illuminati, Ordo Templi Orientis (Crowley’s Group) and many, many others.

Though there aren’t any proven links to ancient Celtic, Italian, etc relgions,  bits and pieces have survied in one form or another.

          In England in Elizabeth’s day John Dee, a phychic, practiced witchcraft openly and in the 16^th century Charles Leland claimed to have gotten “The Gospel of the Witch” from an Italian witch who’s practices, she claimed, survieved the Burning Times.

Colonel Sanders?
Nope, Try Again

          In the ‘50s the last of England’s witchcraft laws were repealed and Gerald Garner started Wicca.   This brought Paganism into the light again and thoes hungering for a religion that accepts our connection and oneness with nature quicly took the idea and ran with it.  Garner is the father of the moder Neo-Pagan movement and modern practitioners are still writing the history.

          In 1955 the last of the Witchcraft laws in England were repealed.  This allowed thoes who had been practicing these religions threw secret societies or in small clutters of folk religion to come forward into the light.  This allowed validation for thoes who have always felt that Abrahamic religions were not sufficient, to shop around for a religious experience that appeals to them. 

          In 1985 Wicca was given legal status in the United States.  America, being the land of consumerism, ate it up by the doses.  The earliest recorded non-Wiccan Pagan religion was the Neo-Pagan group called the Temple of Aphrodite in Rhode Island.  Structured Paganism filled a very real need for a more personal and deep spirituality amongs the Americans.  It also allowed us to connect with our non-American roots.  As a country that is a melting pot of all the countries of the world, we don’t have firmly established roots as a country and therefor are missing out own indiginous religion.

          Neo-Paganism differs from Paganism as one is a moder reconstruction of the ancient religions and the other is a continuation of the ancient religions.

Modern Paganism includes the following list:

Secret Societies – Bits and pieces of ancient religious parctice combined with information from modern sources.  Most are eclectic and borrow tradition from a variety of sources and are heavily reliant on symbolisn and internal alchemy.

Reconstructionists – Piecing together a true and acurate ancient religion and bringing thoes practices forth into the modern age.  Two kinds of reconstructionist types exists: One that is attempting to bring forth ancient religions without changing the religion or faith at all (example includes Kemetic Orthodox Faith).  The other is attempting to use ancient practices but change them to reflect changes to modern society (example includes the Isian faith).  Examples include debating animal sacrifice’s place in modern religion.

Buddhist Nuns Praying

Neo-Paganism – Constructing a very general religion based on bits and pieces of ancient relgions cobled together from various sources.  Neopaganism started with the Wiccan religion, but has since branched out to mean any modern-day reconstruction-type religion that is following ancient practices but not from any specific ancient religion.

Pagans – Religions which have not be influenced by the persecution of non-Abrahamic faith and have continued threw hundreds, if not thousands of years.  Native American spiritualities and Hinduism are amongst these. 

Sources

1. Paganism: Past and Present
2. Serapis
3. History of Ordo Templi Orientis
4. Aradia, or Gospel of the Witches
5. Constantine the Great (Constantine I)
6. Venus of Willendorf
7. Blunt use of Search Engines
8. Oldest Known Religious Object - Carved Python Head
9. Anhenaten and Atenism
10. Witchvox: History of Paganism in America

Loreena Mckennitt and Pagan Music

Dear Neophyte,

If my religion had a soundtrack it would be played and sung by Loreena Mckennitt.  I have an entire playlist on Youtube for songs that evoke worship in me and most of it is her!  It's kept in a separated list from my other music so that when I turn on shuffle I dont wind up with my religious music as background noise.  Nothing kills the mood faster than the song that's suppose to set your heart a-flutter playing while you'r trying to pwn noobs in WSG.  

At one point I had heard her songs so much that I was actually skipping past them; they no longer evoked that sense of mystery or the energy that originally made me love them to begin with.  This music is almost sacred to me and too much exposure wears out the 'lore' and the feelings evoked.

Minerva - Goddess of Music

Currently I'm updating the playlist to remove all old videos that got 'copyblocked' (my term for 'cockblocked' when discussing music rights) by copywrite and small print.  I'm going threw and attempting to find the videos that have the best quality of music, not just the prettiest videos.  In face, videos mean nothing to me as I will only watch them maybe once and never see them again.  My playlist stays on in the background of whatever I'm doing.

Ms McKennitt isn't the only artist present in the list, but she is the most prominent.  As I discover better artists I've been adding songs slowly.  Woefull to me I discovered that there are not a lot of good Pagan artists (IMHO), but a LOT of them there are.

I start reading the lyrics to some songs as the music is winding up and I'm liking what I'm reading and in my mind I'm already hearing the words being sung in some angelic or gentle masculine voice and then - OMG EAR RAPE!  I don't know who told some of these people they could sing but they need to be shot lied to you! 


It's so hard to find good Pagan themed music that for a very long time I had must Loreena on my list and that was it.  Slowly I would come across The Spiral Dance or look up chants like The Goddess Song and find that someone did it and put it up for public use and now I know how it's suppose to sound.  It's just sad that 90% of the music slanted at Pagans on Youtube is just stuff you cant listen too.  It's grating on the ears, the music is all wrong, it's cheaply produced (which make sit harder to listen to than a bad vocalist) or it's obviously being sung wrong.  Not to say they author of the song is singing it wrong, but that it rubs me the wrong way to listen to it period because I dont feel the words need be sung that way.

"Female Musicians"
modern take on an ancient mural

Also, not everything has to be sung by five people!  You can do solos!  Just look up Healther Dale.  She sings solo or with her own voice as accompaniment and a lot of her songs are beautiful.  Granted, they are not targeted at Pagans, but a fair few of them are open to interpretation.  Crashing Down is one such song, and could be about any regime being toppled.

It seems as if most Pagan themed music would sound a lot better if you heard and saw it live.  If you could see the expression on the artists faces as they made instrument and voice slip together and create a harmony maybe it would make you not pay attention to the fact that there is only one real verse and the rest is the singer (or ten) doing scales and repeating one line over and over again.  If this is the case then these bands need to realize that in order to market to today's discerning American, they need to step it up a notch with production and sound.

So far nothing I have heard comes remotely close to Loreena McKennitt.  When I hear her I just want to cast a circle and worship.  I want to ride the celestial winds threw the grass while dreaming up at the crescent moon.  The image this woman's artistry puts into my head and what she pulls out of my soul remind me that I am a Witch.  I am a Pagan.  I am a Goddess.

Everything is Sacred.  We all come from the Goddess, and to Her we shall return.

Tools like Youtube made it so much easier to study Paganism since they allow you to see rituals, hear music, feel the beat of the drums and the candescence of the chants.  I'ts been an invaluable tool for me in place of a coven or even any other Pagans that live near me.

One last note: I also like the group Celtic Women.  Most of their stuff is Christian and while their songs evoke a sense of awe and wonder (Orinoco Flow), they don't pull worship out of me the way the Ms McKennitt does.

Salutations,
Sesh

To Kill a Fluffy Bunny

Dear Neophyte,

In and about the year 2001 I became hooked up to the internet and threw the internet I discovered Wicca: real witches practicing real witchcraft.  Not only that but I discovered that the 'dead goddesses' I had been worshiping and giving praise to in my heart for most of my life were real, alive and waiting for me to find them.

A decade (more or less) ago I was a part of the Wiccan counterculture.  That is, the Hunters of the Fluffy Bunny.  Me and my fellow Hunters were on a crusade to keep Wicca pure.  We used phrases like, "Wicca is NOT like, whatever you want it to be!"  and passed around witty emails about the Know-It-All High Priestesses and Indigo babies.

Most of you will hopefully not ever be accused of being a Fluffy Bunny (which used to be abbreviated to FB, but that was eons before Facebook came out), but if you ever have then you know how much it hurts to have someone so thoroughly disrespect your religious views on such a deep a profound level.

In the same manor as most of you did, I probed the internet for information because I didn't have access to the books or teachers to teach it to me properly.  I picked and chose which parts of the Wiccan religion I wanted to practice.  For me it was about reverence to the Gods and staying in tune with nature.  Spell craft was never really my big thing, at least not till I had the reverence down.

In 2004 I discovered The Obsidian Mirror and the seed of hatred was planted.
The Obsidian Mirror's message was clear: Kill the Fluffy Bunny, and all his articles are very good and damn near spot on.  Even deconstructing the Rede ("We need some Rede be Gone") is poignant and revealing.  The message: Question Why!

In that same year I discovered Fluffy Hossenfeffer, a yahoo group designed to allow 'true Wiccans' to swap stories and mock those among our community who arnt truly Wiccan.  That is, we all sat around cackling to each other and pointing fingers, drinking up our spiritual superiority and gloating about how we were doing it right and everyone else was wrong, wrong, wrong!

This was also where I met Harlequin, the pen name of a man who took one of my posts and published it as an article on his own website.  I have my original post, but I never did the get link to his website and now it has shut down.  (Most of us have moved to other areas since then.)

Then, in this group I discovered Daven's Journal.  Keep in mind that when I was original reading this journal it looked a LOT different.  Daven was still Daven and a disciple of Raymond Buckland and his particular brand of Wicca.  What Daven has done since then I'm not sure, but all of the older articles are still up and I highly recommend reading them even if you are an Elder of the Wiccan community.

I went on a crusade and took a lot of other people along for the ride.  Not just Harl, but Bodica and a lot of other members of various groups I was a member of.  We crusaded and we taught; we infiltrated newbie groups and set things in order; we led threw example and we changed a LOT in the online Wiccan community.  For about three years our little group of Bunny Hunters shot ever Fluffy we could fined, skinned them alive and hung them up for the rest of the newbie Wiccans to see.  Lessons learned the hard way.

Why, you ask?  Because we didn't want our religion to dissolve into nothing.  Wicca is NOT an umbrella term meaning "Pagan".  The word "PAGAN" is the umbrella term and Wicca is under it.  We didnt want to be laughed at anymore by people who took our circles names at face value and though we were trying to become a Wolf or Silver Sun; we didnt want to be discredited because our rituals only date back 50 years; we didnt want newbies telling everyone Wicca was thousands of years old; we didnt want people thinking we believe our way is the only way; we wanted to get away from Satan and his influence over the Christian hearts; we wanted to reconstruct an older path but make it work for the modern world.

In the end I discovered that we were fighting to hold a religion together that was made from pieces of other religions to begin with.  Garner invented Wicca.  Alex Sanders invented Wicca.  Raymond Buckland invented Wicca.  The list goes on, and with every new piece of information added from another source it grows further and further away from being 'real Wicca'.  That it, it quits being what Garner invented and starts being something else.

This is what we crusaded for the hardest: to keep Wicca pure.  To keep it free of other influences.  To keep ALL the traditional practices together.  To not allow seekers to just cast off the parts they dont like, gloss over the ones that only mildly interest them, start invoking unicorns for protection and start casting spells from some random glitter-clogged internet site where they have you invoke a goddess from a damn list (!), who's name they cant even pronounce and who's story they dont know, and believe that there is no such thing as wicked in this world.

The magic circle does not stop the Goddess from smacking you with the Cosmic 2x4.  If you disagree then YOU are part of the problem with the direction Wicca is going.

In the end I left the Wiccan community.  Most of the so-called Wiccans cant even tell you which way widdershins is, most can make a sound argument against having a boline and they probably have no clue that, YES, WICCANS HAVE LITURGY.

You can only take so much away from something before it quits being something else.  The amount of authors out there (R.I.P. Scott Cunningham, you should have wrote fiction) who are saying that you should always do what is best for you, what feels right and if anyone tells you otherwise they are missleading you... are misleading you.

More on this: 

Teachers Distorting Religious Teachings

(Found this in another blog, so glad I did!)

No one ever learned to write because scribbling worked for them so their teachers let them do it.  Wiccan seekers NEED a strong foundation of ALL the basics before they are allowed to 'pick and choose' what is right for their own personal practice.

And for heaven sake, admit when what you're doing isn't Wicca anymore.  I have two altars, one for Isis and one for Hekate.  When my room mate asked me why I dont just say I'm Wiccan I responded, "Because I'm not Wiccan.  I'm Pagan."

You dont have to force yourself to be something you are not.  If you find yourself ignoring directions for invoking circles (i.e. not invoking them at all), rewriting the Charge of the Goddess to be about your specific Deity, incorporating rosary into your practice, working with totem animals, practicing Voodo, calling on angels or Saints or in general doing anything that is not an integral part of practicing Wicca, then YOU may dear are a Fluffy Bunny if you keep calling yourself Wiccan.  You arnt.  But that's ok.

The whole Anti-Fluffy-Bunny movement spawned something else years and years latter:  Project Pagan Enough

This project is moving and growing within the Pagan community.  People like that Hunter I am (no longer active, but still hold these beliefs, articles to come) now have to contend with people like Mr. Lyte.  I hope we can work together to allow people to express their true selves threw religion while still maintaining the integrity that Pagans are striving towards and value so much.

I do NOT want to take a step back to the days when $ilver Ravenwolf was the number one author on every Wicca 101 list.   Thanks to crusaders like me the seekers of that community no longer need to contend with the likes of her.  Unfortunately, we cant make the likes of her go away.  Fluffy Bunnies like her are not true Wiccans, teaching her own brand of spirituality that is more in tune with Dutch magic and animism than Wiccan Lord and Lady worship, but ...

... they are Pagan Enough.

Salutations,
Sesh

A Dream of Bran the Blessed?

Dear Neophytes,

I had a dream.

In this dream I was attending school, I think it was high school but it could have been University.  It was my first day and I was being driven there by one of my mothers careless boyfriends (the kind you love to speak ill of in their presence cause they cant lay a hand on you).  I was wearing this very Egyptian style dress that sorta resembled this:

Shae from Game of Thrones

I kept thinking that if I didnt walk carefully that it would flash open and everyone would be able to see my chest.  I'm particular about keeping that covered so I didnt want that to happen.  My dress was very, very white and had an Egyptian style pectoral collar:

Tutankamun and Ankhenamun

The van that we were in, my sister and I, was black.  I was sitting up front and fretting about my first day.  My sister was in back, the perpetual troublemaker who will never attentions a school (University or whatnot)  .  The van stops in front of this school where students are already lining up to get instructions.  I'm late and I dont want to miss anything.

I get out of the van and then start grabbing my things.  I close the door once and start to walk off as the van pulls away.  Remembering I forgot something else I call for the asshole boyfriend to stop.  He does, saying some nasty stuff about me being a goody-goody (for attending a school this nice), and I shut the door again. Turning around once more I remember I've forgotten my shoes.  In my waking life I go barefoot as often as I can.  Comes with the whole Barefoot Hearthwitch and Pagan territory.

This time the van doesn't stop.  I run after it screaming bloody murder because I cant go to school (not the first day especially.  The jerk won't stop.  I don't know if it's because he cant hear me or because he's just being an ass. Either way, my sister pulls a Buffy move and dives right out the side of the van thinking that if she's not in there that the ass behind the wheel will stop.

We watch him drive away together, upset the plan had failed.

Now I had to contend with no shoes, an armload of stuff I don't know if I need (I don't know why I didn't have a bag for all this stuff), a dress that was barely staying closed and my little sister!  Lets just say that when I turned around and saw all the other students standing in neat little rows with their pleated skirts and logo-ed shirts that I felt a little out of place.

Them

Cloning's Greatest Success:
Find the black sheep!

Versus Me

I want this dress!

Needless to say I stood out so they put me, and my sister, right up front.  For the next half an hour or so we all got a lecture on the values of the school, our place in society, what the school has churned out so far and then going further into the schools official unofficial religion.  I

[Note: Most Greek organizations (that is, sororities and fraternities) have a 'matron goddess' or 'patron god' of their specific organization.  Usually this deity is not actually worshiped in the house, but is honored as being the embodiment of one of the values the house holds above all others.]

n the meantime I'm trying to hide my feet under my dress so no one can see that I dont have any shoes on.  In my waking life I've done this quite often if I was wearing a long dress/skirt and didnt feel like donning 'proper' footwear. 

"Our deity is Bran, who governs commerce."

At least, I think she said that... I should have written it down when I woke up.  I know I got the name "Bran" right because I automatically though of Bran from Game of Thrones and his wolf dreams (yes, I am reading the books).  In his dreams he is his wolf because he was crippled in the first book and can't walk.

Bran from Game of Thrones dreaming that he is his wolf.

Now that I'm writing this I wonder if this is just another way Wolf is reaching out to me?  Probably not since I didn't think wolf at anytime in the dream.  I didn't see any animals at all actually. 

My initial reaction was to research "Bran" and see if there is any deity of any sort by that name and if he had anything to do with commerce, merchandise or business in any way - at least as far as money was concerned.  

Bran the Blessed 

Country of Origin: Welsh, Pan-Celtic  (Of which I have ancestry; but what white American doesn't?) 

Mother: The Goddess Iweridd, else Pendarddun

Father: The Sea God, Llyr

Physical Features:  Giant, legend says he was too large for any house built and he laid across a river so his troops could march over his back to invade Ireland. 

Most Notable Accomplishment:  Making bad choices of husband for female relatives. 

Died:  Poison arrow threw the foot.

Buried:  Tower Hill, which is known today as the Tower of London

Animal Associations: Ravens

Rules: Prophecy, arts, war, writing, and a popular theme among the Celtic religions: cauldron god who could revive slain soldiers and make battles take forEVAH, bra!

Raven's from the Tower of London

Trivia:  Bran's head was buried on Tower Hill (modern home of the Tower of London) facing France to warn off invasion.  When King Author dug the head up as a way of having a pissing contest with a deity figure, he claimed he could keep Britain safe sans mystical talking heads.  Of course, when that failed they started keeping the ravens that had moved into the Tower. Don't know what happen to the head when it was dug up, but new legends say that if the ravens ever leave the Tower that the British empire will fall.  Needless to say that even the modern Brits don't take this lightly and the ravens have their wings clipped so they cant fly away.

Anyway, none of this has anything to do with merchandise, commerce, schooling, shoes, me dressing in flowing white when I'm suppose to be in a prep school blazer and if it is a deity dream... wouldn't animals be in it at least? 

At least this time the dream wasnt about zombies, so that's a step towards healing, right?

Salutations,

Sesh

Against the color Black

Dear Neophyte,

Warning: Incoming swearing, judging and finger pointing.  The first part of this blog is a rant, the second part is the part missing from every other blog rant out there: my attempt to fix the problem.  This went on longer than intended and may bet separated into two posts at some point in the future.

Part One:

Against the Black

Unoriginal, Lack of Creativity, No Imagination

Black is not our defining color as witches.  It's not.  There are so many other colors out there, thousands of different shades and hues.  To say we worship Mother Nature and revere all life and then balk at utilizing all the colors She's given us is just a slap in Her face.

I don't want to be the one to tell the Pagan community this, but USE OTHER COLORS BESIDES BLACK.

Do all Christians dress in all brown because churches are made out of wood?  No.  Nor do they dress in gray because that's what color Jesus was when he died.  Ok, bad zombie jokes aside (lol), there needs to and has GOT to be a limit here!

Check yourself:

Makeup is black?

Clothing is black?

Car is black?

Pet is black?

Jewelry is black?

Home decor is black?

BoS is black?

Computer is black?

FOOD is black (god's sake, get help!)?

Fashion accessories are black?

Dinnerware is black?

If all of this applies to you then you may be what is commonly refereed to by the cowans as "Unoriginal", "Boring", "Scared", or what I like to call "Hello my Name is: Emo".  More on this in a minute :)

Now most of the time I really don't mind what color all of someone elses' crap is because it's your personal crap to color however you want.  But what has tipped me over the edge today is that EVERY Pagan blog out there seems to be black with some vivid and garish colored lettering.  And what isn't black is still dark red (like dried blood cause your SO wicked...).

Now, work with me here.  Go read wikipedia for about 20 min (any article, just pick one at random), then go back to your blog.  I don't mean search for it in the engine but already have it pulled up.  Then just click on it and when it loads tell me what the first thing you see is.  If you're like me then the first thing your brain does is have a seizure because of the color difference.  Read your blog for 20 min then go back to wikipedia.  Repeat about 3 times.  By the time you're done your brain hurts.

Your black blog is ugly and this needs to be said.  It's tacky, unoriginal, plan and very, very, very boring.  Whatever article you wrote in it takes about 20 min to read threw (if that) and then someone goes to another  blog.  After visiting three or four blogs, the sensible ones of which will be in other colors BESIDES BLACK, and the tacky ones of which will be ON BLACK, your eyes start to hurt.

My frontal lobe is throbbing just thinking about it.

I've also noticed that people with huge graphics, logs of flashy links to charities all up and down the sides of their blog and all printed ON BLACK in some garish teal or purple writing are the people who have the least to say.  They don't post experiments with magic, they don't do original 101 lessons, they don't keep up with spiritual insights they've gained threw living their religion.  They don't do anything.  They just want to have a black blog with lots of 'free the whale' advertising on the side and not actually keep a blog.  That or they will just link their blog to other people's blog in that lazy manor that would be illegal in most states were they trying to publish a book in such a manor.

So the lesson here is that if you want anyone to be ABLE to read your blog and WILLING to come back to it, then you need to set the background color to something that is LIGHTER than the writing itself.  This makes the words pop out and it's less taxing for the eyes + brain to process.  The older a reader is the quicker their eyes get tired.  I don't even bother to try to read blogs with black backgrounds anymore so be assured that this is one less reader, subscriber, comment-or, ad-sense clicker, sweepstakes participating in, or whatever other interactions I may have with you because of your blog.

No.  I'm not doing it anymore.  If you cant make the effort to even make your blog readable then I'm damn sure not going to read it, just to realize 10 min in that you've been quoting The Wild Hunt all along.  You know what they say about fool me once...

Part Two

Colors

Creative, Expressive, Open

So 45% of the reason people dress in black and have all black stuff is because they want to be mysterious.  The other 45% is because they lack creativity, imagination and are attempting to throw up a wall between themselves and the world.  What about that niggling tiny % leftover?  Well, that is for true goths... the people who went threw the goth phase for all the reasons listed in the next paragraph, but grew up.  They just kept the fashion because they like it and (are one of the few) it looks good on them.  You can convince yourself your in that smaller % if you want, but just realize that it doesn't change your reality just because you want it to.

News flash: You can't throw up a wall and still be mysterious at the same time.  The wall itself has graffiti all over it that says what is on the other side.  Hurt.  Trauma.  Anger.  Depression.  Abuse.  People don't push other people away because they have an un-abused heart that was not toyed with, smashed, frozen, burned, stolen and used.

That is the 10% at least.  The rest of you just want attention.  You pretend to have trauma and you create drama where there is none.  You're posers and assholes.  Yeah, attention wanting, drama creating, trauma faking ASSHOLES.

Hell, you don't even notice the real suffering in this world, do you?

Lemmy share a true story:  I left a bar one night with 18 phone numbers and all I did was read chapters 3-15 of Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern while sitting in a booth surrounded by 8 other people.  Not one of the dancers on stage got hit on all night (I was the guest of one of the dancers).

Why?

Because BRIGHT ORANGE and YELLOW broom skirts stand out in any place where people are draped neck to deck in black leather, sequins and feathers.  When the matron of the bar asked me if I wanted her to make the men leave me alone (she's a friend of a friend) I asked her what was up.  She said something I'll never forget: "In a sea of glitter you're the only thing shining.  In an ocean of black and silver, your the bright spot in the night.  All fish are drawn to the light; set your hook for the right kind."  Helpful dating advice and social commentary from an unlicensed therapist.

Follow this plan for transitioning out of wearing all black:  Black >Red > Brown/Blue > Orange/Yellow > Pink > Tan/Cream >White

My sister and I grew up in separate houses.  At home she was wore black exclusive to any other color.  To the point where if anyone bought her anything of another color she'd dye it black, regardless of how terrible the resulting mess turned out.  As long as it was black.

At my house though?  (not a picture of my sister, but of her what she really likes to wear)

It took getting her out of that house and into her own life before she branched out into colors.  To this day you'll find maybe four articles of black clothing in her closet and those she reserves for her punk rock concerts and bar fly nights.  She, like most girls, go to bars to hang out with friends so the idea here is to blend in.  Black does that for her, just like everyone else.

But how can yo go about getting rid of your black on black on black look?

First off, stop buying black. I know you think it makes you look witchy and mysterious and exciting, but what is the point when there is no warmth in black and no one is going to be approaching you give you that attention you so desperately want?

Try yellow.  Yellow is an energizing color for me.  It's the Sun God and warmth and openness and it gets my brain juices flowing.  It's also the 'color' of the air and conversation.  It's easy to approach someone who is wearing yellow.  Its easier to live in a room with yellow walls and match a yellow necklace to any other number of colored clothing I own.

If you don't like yellow then take a look at some color swatches (online if you don't have any colored clothing on hand) and see which ones match your eyes.  Anything that matches your eyes looks good on you.  My eyes are light blue so I look good in light blue and creams, lighter colored copper jewelry and turquoise stones.

Try a different color scheme for your blog.  I like to go with lighter themes or seasonal themes since they are the most open and inviting, and change them every few months.  This way it stays new and fresh.  I logged into an old LJ from years ago and the theme alone brought back traumatic memories of what was going on in my life the last time I logged into that journal to write it all down.  Needless to say I deleted the journal.

For dishes, go with lighter colored dinnerware.  You can't see the color of your wine in a black glass goblet and YES the color is a nice thing to see.  Unless it's Dia de los Muertos, I also suggest shying away from black dinnerware.  The plate is a canvas and whoever heard of painting on a black canvas invented the Velvet Elvis and is still being mocked to this day for being cheap and tacky.

Pets?  90% of Pagans with pets don't claim they are familiars and don't have black pets.  Even if they are, choosing a pet just because it's black is mean to all the other pets out there that may have been way better for you (or could have even been your real familiar) if you had only been less bias.  Having a black pet doesn't not make you Pagan.  Having a long haired Persian that rips down your altar cloth and sleeps on it after you lock her outside your bedroom at night, and then you cant get the two inch long white hairs out of it to save your life... that makes it a real Pagan's pet!

I could go on and on but this post is going on and on and you get the point.  But, you ask, how will people know I'm mysterious?  The real question is... why do you want them to?  But, you ask, how will they know I'm different?  The real question is... why do you think you're not?  But, you ask, how will they know I'm Pagan.  Because if you're that needy for attention then the question isn't 'how will they know your Pagan if you're not decked out in all black'... but how will they not?!

Your hubcap sized pentacle necklace, complete with enameled ivy, moon, wolf, wand, broom, raven, towers and drops of fake blood is kind of a dead giveaway!

Salutations,
Sesh

"Seeker", a poem

Dear Neophyte, 


If you're like me then you have this insatiable need to be a know-it-all.  Knowledge is power, and we of the mind know this for a fact.  We collect knowledge, horde it and use it as a shield to defend our softer selves from the constant buffering of the world.  If we're smarter than everyone else, we're safe.  Right?


Seekers by Sesh
Too much on my plate
Oh, HALP me, gods of fate
Take this need to be so knowing
And get my mental flame a-growing
Sit me down to my desk
And bid me write at your behest
Need to be right in every effect
My ambition's way out of check
Need to be practical with my pace
Giving myself time and grace
Piles of books heaped everywhere
Ink stains and paper cuts to spare
Smell of the books 
The Look of the looks
Of Drawings and figures
And message-less saviors
Pouring forth both effort and time
For rights to say 'I have a good mind'
Be it all for nothing in moments of truth:
Knowing all this has stolen your youth.


Salutations,
Sesh

My Witches Rune

My version of the Witch’s Rune, compiled from five different versions on Feb 16, ’12.

The Witchs’ Rune has (at least) three different versions.   These are the most common three:

1.  The Echo version with the echo power raising chants included at the beginning and/or the end, as well as the verse that seals the power of the poem and the magic.

2.  The Short version with the echo power raising chants included at the beginning and the end but that are missing ‘unneeded’ verses.

3.  The Long version with the rhyming points being different than those of the long Echo version and also missing the echo power chant.

The rune is used during Wiccan Rituals as a way to raise energy.  All the witches chant the poem, sometimes whilst they are dancing in a circle, snaking in and out of each other, while they repeat the run.  The HPS will indicate when the power has been raised and the HPS will shout ‘down’ as the conveners drop to the ground and the energy is released towards the intended purpose.

Eko, Eko, Azarak,
Eko, Eko, Zamilak,
Eko, Eko, Cernunnos,
Eko, Eko, Aradia!

Darksome night and shimmering moon 
Harken to the Witches Rune 
East then South, West then North 
Here come I to call thee forth

 Earth and Water, Air and Fire
Wand and Pentacle and Cup and Sword
Work ye unto our desire
And harken ye unto our word.

Cords and Censer, Scourge and knife
Power of the Witch's blade
Waken all ye into life
And come ye as the charm is made.

 Queen of Heaven, Queen of Hell
Horned Hunter of the night
Lend you power unto our spell
And work our will by Magick rite.

By all the might of moon and sun 
As I do will, it shall be done 
By all the powers of land and sea 
As I say, so mote it be.

(alternate to previous verse)

By all the power of land and sea,
By all the might of moon and sun
As we do will, so mote it be;
Chant the spell, and be it done!

(repeat until read)

Count the elements fourfold,
In the fifth the spell shall hold.

(alternate to previous verse)

Eko, eko Azarak
Eko, eko Zamilak
Eko, eko Cernunnos
Eko, eko Aradia.