Week 3: The Pursuit of Greatness

I'm a movie fan and I just watched 12 Years a Slave. I couldn't bring myself to actually go to the movies to see it. I figured it would get messy and I would want to be alone when that happened. As predicted my eyes are still sore and the skin on my cheeks feels tight from the tears.

Once it was over, while I was still in the post movie... I want to say glow, but this was more of shock I think, I watched a few actor's interviews on YouTube. I wanted to know if there was some insight into how they (particularly those who had the task of doing and saying some rather horrific things) handled that. How were they able to get through it. I did read that in one scene Michael Fassbender actually passed out - not sure if that's true.

The actors were all very professional, and said the usual 'I tried to blah blah blah when portraying my character blah blah' answers.  Not sure why I needed to know, I guess I wanted to see if they were affected by the story as much as I was.  (I'm pretty sure that unless they were sociopaths they would have been in some small way).

Anyway, it was while watching Fassbender's interview that the inspiration for this blog post came because something he said struck a chord with me. (And it had nothing to do with the original reason for watching the interview - lol).  He said he read the script and told Steve McQueen that he wanted to be a part of it. Even if it were just a small role with a 1-2 day shoot, he didn't care. Obviously he would prefer the lead role he got, but he just wanted to be a part of something important.

That got me thinking. Isn't that something that a lot of people strive for? To be part of something important. To feel like they made a contribution and rather than just being on the sidelines, they were a part of the making of something great? In the movie world in NZ I wonder if that extends to people who wanted to be a part of the Middle Earth phenomenon that took over our little country. Just to be able to say, I was a part of that.

For myself I've been wondering.  What part of greatness have I had a hand in, or want to have a hand in helping to achieve?

I've come to the realisation that greatness doesn't have to be on a grand 'let's change the world' scale.  Yes people who fought for women's right to vote, marriage equality or against any number of human rights atrocities, have a hand in what I would call greatness.  However I don't think it necessarily needs to be on that scale.  At the end of their life, I believe most people would like to be able to look back and point at something and say, I did that or I was a part of that and that was my contribution to the world.

It's my birthday today and I've been joking with friends that I'm officially closer to 70 than birth (which is an arbitrary figure if you think about it).  I guess it's helped spur me on to contemplate whether I would look back on my life and say there's where I achieved, or helped to achieve, greatness.  I'm not sure I've done it yet.  The problem is, I'm not sure what I want that greatness to be.

My other question is, how does one recognise that they are in the midst of doing something that is 'great' or is it that for us mere mortals greatness is the sum total of all the little things we do and the little victories we have?  Or are we destined to move into oblivion with no more impact than a bug on a windscreen?  

Just a bit of navel gazing today.... 

Week 2: Short Story - Sacrificing Beauty

This piece was inspired by a discussion on a facebook group that went up and down like a roller coaster with insults, thou shalts, and real witches blah blah. Reading through it the idea for this story came to me, so it got written especially with this blog in mind.

Vegans beware?


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Sacrificing Beauty

The creature’s heart raced rapidly beneath her hands as the girl worked to calm it. She cooed soothing sounds while her hands gently stroked soft velveteen fur. The young doe kicked its legs out struggling against the inevitable, but the girl held on tight, calling for the doe to cease fighting; willing it to settle. Over time the intensity of the struggles subsided and the animal’s heart slowed.

Earlier, as the first beams of light rose over the distant Eastern horizon and while dew still clung to a soft green mix of grass and mossy groundcover, the girl had taken her place in the small clearing. Barefoot and unadorned save for a simple white shift she’d sat cross legged for hours meditating on the task before her. In her mind’s eye she had seen her mother as she was, a cacophony of tubes and machines beeping and whirring in sync to keep her alive. It was an accident, side-swiped on the passenger side by a red light runner and while she knew in her mind that it wasn’t her fault, as a learner driver her heart betrayed her into taking the responsibility on her shoulders. Slowly the vision morphed into her mother as she wished her to be. Conscious and back on her feet smiling, full of life and vitality.

Softly she hummed to the animal, weaving a hypnotic web of assurance and safety. Singularly focused on her task she was unaware of her surrounds. Rays of waning sunlight broke through the high canopy of trees, speckling the woodland floor below. Birds in the distance chirped cautiously but none enter the small clearing occupied by girl and captive. After fifteen more minutes she loosened her grip and the doe remained in place, sitting before the now kneeling girl.

She’d known what might be asked of her, in return for her desire, and she’d come prepared. A sharp blade lay to her right, untouched since morning. It wasn’t until the doe had wandered into the clearing and come to stand beside her that she’d been certain how this day would end. The initial struggle of the doe had almost undone her. Would she be able to go through with it? To become someone who could do such a thing? The fragile look of panic and vulnerability when the girl first captured the doe still hung in her mind’s eye, in contrast to the calm beauty before her. Quickly she replaced that image with one of her mother, as she wanted, needed her to be.

Her heart raced as she felt around for the blade, keeping her eyes locked on the doe’s. Unwilling to break the spell she had woven. The light from above caught the swing of the highly polished blade. Red spray now marred the girl’s white dress as a single tear slid down her cheek. She leaned forward, kissed the doe’s still head and whispered, “I’m sorry but thank you.”

Week 1: A Decision and not a Resolution

It's been quite some time since I wrote anything here.  I'm not sure the real reason why, but I'm pretty positive that if I thought about it I would be able to come up with some excuses about how my life is too busy, or I just haven't had the inspiration.

It's a bit like my Pagan life to be completely honest.  I've been in a bit of a hibernation with my practice and I can't say for certain why that is. I'm not saying I've been too busy to be Pagan, because that would be like saying I'm too busy to breathe or be human.  My Paganism is a part of me that can't be separated.  It's not something I do, it's something I am.

That being said, I have been lax of late in my overt practices, whether they be ritual, or spell craft or even just simple meditative observances of the changing world around me.  So do I still feel and believe what I did before I stopped being an active participant in all things Pagan?  You bet.  I still have my own truths.  I still feel the call of the Goddess, but somehow that's been less demanding, like She knows I needed some 'me time' instead of 'We time'.

What has prompted me to write this today?

All around me (in cyberspace that is) I've seen people posting their New Year's resolutions, or non-resolutions, and while I can't help but think that for the majority they will lead to failure (because isn't that what generally happens) it has inspired me to be a little introspective.  It's January 3rd, 2015 and I felt inspired to make a resolution, except that I don't do those because they inevitably end in failure - see previous sentence.

Since I'm not going to make a resolution, I'm going to make a decision and make that decision public (which is not a resolution because of semantics okay? - lol).  I love to write, and it seems that I have the perfect forum for this writing passion in the form of this blog (and a number of ongoing projects) so I've decided that I'm going to publish at least one piece of my writing, be it a blog rant, a short story or a excerpt from the novels I'm working on, on this blog, each and every week until people get sick of me. While I'm still in this 'hibernation' in my Pagan life (and perhaps it'll help bring me out of it) I'll try to keep my nonsense on topic (this is the Cauldron's blog after all so most of it will have a Pagan theme) but I can't promise that will always be the case.  Sorry.

If you have any feedback please feel free to express it either in a comment below or by PMing me.  I will reserve the right to disable this facility if my fragile ego gets too much of a battering, but I'm also going to use that as both inspiration and motivation to keep going. So help a sister out.  :)

Anyway, that's my decision for now.  Let's see if we can keep this going without it turning into one of those failures that a resolution has a tendency to become.

Intent is All You Need

I keep seeing this said in comments on spell requests. 

Intent is everything or If you have pure intent then that's the best you can do.

I find myself wondering if the people who say this have ever really performed successful  magick.  Because quite simply, this isn't true.  This is very similar to Wishcraft or Begcraft as some friends like to refer to it.  Using prayer instead of spells and not understanding the difference.

So what is the difference you may ask?

Prayer is asking for something else, Gods, Spirits or some Higher Power to do it for you.  What is missed is that it is at Their discretion.

Spellcrafting is taking matters into your own hands and doing it yourself.  This may or may not include the guidance or assistance of a Higher Power, but it is not relying purely on Them to bring about the change you are asking for.

I often get a picture in my head when someone talks about how much they've prayed for something or over something.  It's a picture of their Gods looking down on them and saying "Again?! I've given you the tools, grow up and deal with this stuff yourself!"

How does Intent fit into this?

Intent is the purpose for a spell.  It is what you mean to achieve and the change you are creating.  It goes deeper than "meaning well" or "thinking positive" or "trying to help".  It is all your true motivations, emotional need, whim and fancy that goes into the reason you are casting a spell.

If intent is all you need, then you should just sit back on your chuff and assume that your every wish will be provided for.   How do you think that will work for you?  Let me assure you it won't.

It may be your intent to get a job.  But until you actually do the work - like applying for some and putting your cv or resume out there - it's not going to happen.  No one goes out of their way to find a person they've never heard of to hire them with no knowledge of their experience, personality or work skills.  The people who get headhunted for jobs are the people who are already showing brilliance in their field or are well known to the employers.

Intent is what you mean to do.  This is a world away from actually doing it.

Everything takes work.  Intent is a great beginning, but that is all it is - a beginning.

Blessings



Debbie

The Colour of Magic

This is a subject that rears it's head with far too much frequency.  Putting colour to the type of witchcraft that people are drawn to or like to label themselves.

Always there are arguments about what constitutes each colour, as though the world should conform to such a narrow view and those who, like me, reject this classification completely.

White Magic

White magic is most commonly seen as good and selfless.  It is positive and constructive and involves healing and harming none and yoga and tantra and all sorts of feel good positive self-esteem stuff.

People who claim to only use white magic or be white witches often spout platitudes regarding karma, threefold law, personal gain is bad and not using magic to affect the free will of another.

Black Magic

This is the nasty stuff.  This is doing magic to destroy or harm - binding, cursing and hexing primarily.  In some texts, a black magician is not a real witch because they only do good things. 

Sometimes this is also referred to as Dark magic or Shadow magic.  The people who like to claim this will often also try to convince you of how twisted, tortured and terribly gothic they are. 

Grey Magic

This is a balanced place.  Using both sides of the polarity as needed.  It's a middle path that sometimes seems to have one foot on both of the other paths.

Grey magicians will use phrases like "harm none but take no shit" or "I do only positive magic unless you threaten me or mine".

What These Really Mean

Each of these colours are completely vapid ways to categorise and classify witches and magicians in such a way that the person doing the labelling comes out in a morally superior position.  It is nothing more and nothing less than a way to sit on your high horse and look down your nose at someone you feel is less than you.

Doing only White Magic means you do no magic.  None at all.  In fact it means you do nothing in your life. 

Harm None - in modern popular usage, not it's traditional meaning - is a completely impossible rule to live by.  You may choose a vegetarian diet for this, but plants have feelings too, the rainforests of Sumatra are being stripped for palm oil plantations which has made the native tigers endangered and severely harmed the survival of other species of rainforest flora and fauna.  Where were your shoes made?  Under what conditions were the materials obtained?  Do you drive a car?  Do you have any idea of the worldwide damage that comes from fossil fuels?  Not just climate change, but wars for control of oil fields, the damage to the land from roads (the road itself, the emissions and the volume of animals killed on the roads) and the thousands of people killed and injured every year in normal vehicle use. 

Free Will is one of my favourites.  I think that not affecting the free will of another is the same as a truly selfless act - there is no such beastie.  If you do magic to protect your property from theft, burglary or unwanted intrusions, you are restricting the free will of the thief, burglar, the Jehovah's Witnesses or your mother-in-law.  If you look deeply into any spell, there is nothing you can do that will not affect the free will of another.

Doing only black magic means you build nothing in your life.  I also believe it's like true anarchy or chaos - it doesn't really exist except as an abstract concept.  An order will arise regardless - growth and patterns will emerge and there will be constructive elements and not just destructive.

Grey magic is a difficult one for me.  It describes how I feel for the most part, but I still don't like the colour application.  I frequently say that I have two hands, why would I tie one behind my back and not use all the tools at my disposal?

I also feel that while polarities can be useful to partition up the world around us, balance must come from more than two points (black and white).  When casting a circle, you are creating a crossroads of north and south and east and west, but also your place between upperworld and underworld.  There, you are at the centre of six directions made up of three polarities.  Those polarities are also symbolic of states of mind or being - active and passive and logic and intuition among many others. 

I've heard it said recently that white and black magic came from racist roots - that the implication was that white magic was tied to white folk and black magic to black folk.  I personally think this is a superficial look at the origins of the terms.  I believe that in the black vs white usage regarding magic white is tied to light - to daytime when most things are visible and seen, when we are made to be active and doing things to improve our lot in life.  Black is tied to dark - to night-time, to sleep and dreaming and shadows.  To the times when most things are concealed by the darkness and our fears come out to play.

All Colours of the Rainbow Magic

But then we have other colours of magic now coming into popular usage.  People are describing themselves as purple witches and red witches and all colours of the spectrum.  I can cope with Green Witchcraft - that is less of a colour descriptor and more of the colour of the things they work with.  Green Witchcraft concerns a lot of plant work, herbcraft in particular.  But the rest don't seem to make a lot of sense to me.

There are spells that use colour correspondences for a specific area of life.  I suppose it can be turned around to say that an emotional spell is blue magic or warlike spells are red magic but it feels rather contrived and simplistic to me.  I am aware that Isaac Bonewits used this system of classification in his book Real Magic: An Introductory Treatise on the Basic Principles of Yellow Light.  I haven't read the whole book, but I have read the excerpt in which this system is described and can only hope that the content improves. 

While it may be a useful (or not depending on your viewpoint) way to classify different spells, I still struggle with taking that "colour of magic" and turning it into the colour of the practitioner.  Does this mean that a red witch will only do magic for anger, sex and the things they're passionate about?  Are they unable, unwilling or does it not fit their path to do magic for wealth or healing?  How does that work?  It seems terribly limiting and to be honest, rather childish to narrow your options down in such a way.

I know that some people like or need to categorise the world to make it easier to understand.  To be able to file things in little boxes in their minds and have everything cross-referenced from there.  I don't get it.  I like to try and see the whole picture, rather than cut it up into small chunks.

Blessings



Debbie

The New Modern Super Powers.

I've come to the conclusion that reading comprehension and critical thought are fast becoming super powers.  Rare gifts that only the few special people possess.

Quite frequently, it seems that knickers get knotted, tempers rise and people everywhere get themselves worked up into a right old state over a non-issue that could have been avoided simply if they bothered to read the source properly.

The event that has brought this up for me is not a new thing.  A pseudo-news site (although not noticeably a satire or troll site) took a fragment of an article out of context and turned it into something totally different.

I think it's probably best if you begin with the original article.  Time Magazine's article about the surge in popularity of the TV Witch.  I found it to be an interesting piece about how witches are currently film and tv winners.  The fascination with witches and a bit of history and opinion about why this is.

A quote from a book, explaining some of the hysteria around witch-hunts (specifically the Salem Witch Trials) became the basis for this piece of ... well, I can only call this trolling.  Actually, a number of words leap to mind, but I'm not going to use them.  This little shit-stir article that is doing the rounds of facebook and getting the "more persecuted than everyone else" brigade all up on their high broomsticks.

It's even led to this piece of head-deskery.

I found a great blog post that summed up my issues.  It can be found here.

Sadly though, there will be people who think that Time has given Witches and Pagans a Bad Name.  Most either will not bother to go and read the original, or if they do, they'll skim it to find the bits they can be offended by.

What they don't seem to realise is that their whining, hand-wringing pleas of "an offensive portrayal of a positive religion" actually do far more damage to paganism and witchcraft than what they think the article said could ever do. 

Simple reading comprehension - reading through an entire article and concentrating enough to absorb what is really being said - shows that such a reaction is completely unfounded.  Nothing in the Time article had any relevance at all to modern witchcraft or paganism.  But who cares right?  Who lets the truth or reality get in the way of a good tantrum and moan.

Let's make all witches and pagans seem like a group of ignorant whiny little bitches who can't read properly.  That's so much better.

Even sadder, it seems to be a trend.  I made the mistake of not going back to read the original for a similar type of shit-stir "this big reputable media outlet just said something really offensive" article a few months ago.  I felt a bit of a twat when I realised what I'd done.

I applaud the writer at The Inquisitr for misrepresenting the original so badly.  As I know from personal experience, the writers get paid by page views and she'll be laughing all the way to the bank from this one.

There are writers making money from taking snippets of articles, twisting them into something attention grabbing and playing mind games with readers.  They'll keep doing it too, because reading the original without buying into the bias placed on it by the muck-raking article takes critical thought, it takes the ability to comprehend what you read and as I said at the start, they seem to be extremely rare super powers.

Blessings

Debbie

Yet Another Halloween Rant.

Last year I had a bit of a rant about Halloween.

This year, Halloween has inspired me again, but in a different direction.

Just like last year, the people preaching, judging and making claims about what everyone else should and shouldn't be celebrating has been a theme this week not just on facebook, but also on our local news website.

Everywhere I look this week, I seem to be confronted by people complaining about other people's choices.  Choices that in no way have any real impact on the complainants, no effect at all except to offend their sensibilities or in other words, be different from their own choices.

When it comes down to it, I know the origins of Halloween.  I know the connections to Samhain, I know that it's changed over the years, generations and geography.  I'm quite over having to explain that Halloween is not the same as Samhain.  The origins are cool to know, but they're not relevant to every single discussion or mention of Halloween.  Nine times out of ten, no one cares and the person pontificating again just gets ignored.

As such, I'm quite baffled by all the people who think they have some right to tell everyone else that they can't celebrate anything in the way they want to.  My news feed this morning was filled with New Zealand pagans and witches moaning about how often they have to tell people that it's Beltaine, not Samhain and so they shouldn't be dressing their kids up in scary costumes for school parties or to go trick or treating.

Hang on, who gave any of you the right to dictate such a thing?  And isn't this the kind of thing you complain about when someone else does it to you? 

Why do you care so much what other people choose to do with their time?  How does that affect you at all?

As I said elsewhere, celebrate what has meaning to you.  Don't celebrate the things that don't have meaning to you. Don't rain on the parade of anyone else doing the same.

In other words, Wheaton's Law applies - don't be a dick.

Blessings

Debbie