Category Archives: Spirituality

Taking a Break

After the thunderstorms and torrential downpour yesterday, when I was afraid to turn on the computer, I’m tying up the revision of the second half of the manuscript today. I’m being good to myself. Usually I plough onwards, eyes glazed, saying, “I’ll just finish this chapter, I’ll just finish this chapter.” Today, I’m taking a break when I catch myself saying it. I seem to be in much better humour for it.

Last night HRH and I joined Elim, our tradition’s healing nexus, for a healing ritual, and damn, but it was good to play with experienced people. I love each and every one of my students, but it’s refreshing to do something without being an example or keeping an eye on others while we do it. I’d rather not have had to do the ritual at all, of course, but the clan was asked to do healing work for a young lad of six who has an inoperable brain tumour. I’ll gladly act as a channel for something like that.

The gussets didn’t work as well as I’d hoped. I dyed another dress instead, which worked better than I was told it would. So there.

Advanced Witchcraft, Devolving Production Values

After a coven discussion yesterday afternoon on the power of words and how form affects the content, I came across this spelling/editing error in Advanced Witchcraft: Go Deeper, Reach Further, Fly Higher, a book that I’m reading for review:

“He sites the example of […].”

(This, coveners, is what made me throw the book across the room yesterday evening and sit down to write that lengthy e-mail about form and content. Blame the author, Edain McCoy (who ought to have caught these in revision), and her editor, Rebecca Zins, for my mood.)

Siting an example would be surveying the surrounding land and establishing a latitude and longitude for it. If you quote something, you cite it. It’s not the same thing.

Gods! Errors such as these in published material are unforgivable! Gritting my teeth, I moved beyond it. I bristled, but I knew what the author meant. (Just to add fuel to the flame, she was referring to Jean Markale. My indignance on his behalf knows no bounds.)

Apart from this textual slip, the labels on the chart of elemental symbols were scrambled, so that the symbol for Air is identified as Water, the symbol for Fire is identified as Air, the symbol for Earth is identified as Fire, and the symbol for Water is identified as Earth. Errors like this make me mistrust a text identified as “Advanced Witchcraft.” I know they’re layout problems, but still; a production team can make or break a book, and the production team allowing spelling errors and chart errors is doing nothing to support the content of the text. My ultimate review will reflect this.

Apart from this, the book’s not bad. It’s about walking the walk, and talking the talk. It admits that what we did in our first two or three years is nothing like what we do now; in fact, lots of the info we wrote down back then no longer is part of our practice. It compares making magic with spirituality, the way of life that magic becomes as you progress in practice and study. Lots of philosophical musing; not many exercises, which of course is one of the things advanced practitioners are looking for. I’m only halfway through. I’ve yet to find new information that I don’t already know, or have come up with on my own. (That’s one of my standard measures: Does this book tell me something new? Or does it re-state something I already know in a better fashion?)

Today I get to go into the bookstore for a meeting. The newly-arrived four-volume set of Grimm’s Teutonic Mythology, unavailable for years, a price of over $200, and a must for anyone who studies a Nordic path, is there, and I don’t know if I possess the self-control to ignore it until my next cheque comes in. Perhaps I’ll distract myself with the 8×10 colour posters that my publishing company sent out to promote the new series I’m editing. They have a picture of me and the first two books being released this fall on them. I’m glad I was warned, otherwise when I stopped in on Friday night for a workshop I might have seen them, panicked, then turned and run away. Mentioning this to the editor of the local Pagan journal, she kindly told me that the same info was in the books & publishing section of the issue that had just hit the newsstands. I have good friends. They know that I love what I do, but they also know that the whole using me to promote the series thing is still freaky to me.

I think I’ll go downtown early and poke about the dressmaker’s supply shop.

The Importance of Supernatural Belief

Christopher Whittle has written an interesting article on the presence of paranormal belief in modern culture, published in the March 2004 Skeptical Inquirer and available for reading here.

A sample:

We are taught about angels, witches, devils, spirits, monsters, gods, etc. virtually in the cradle. Some of these paranormal beliefs are secular, some are religious, and the most pernicious are crossover beliefs, beliefs that are at times secular and at other times religious. Santa Claus, angels and vampires, ghosts and souls, and the Easter Bunny are examples of cross-over beliefs. Crossover beliefs are attractive to children (free candy and presents), and on that basis they are readily accepted. The devils, ghosts, and monsters are reinforced through Halloween rituals and the mass media. As the child matures, some crossover beliefs, called “teaser” paranormal beliefs, are exposed as false. Traditional religious concepts are reinforced as “true and real.” They give us Santa Claus and we believe in an omniscient, beneficent old elf and then they replace Santa with God, who is typically not as generous as Santa Claus and whose disapproval has more serious consequences than a lump of coal. We learn about God and Santa Claus simultaneously; only later are we told that Santa Claus is just a fairy tale and God is real.

In a synergy of cultural indoctrination and the individual’s cognitive and affective development, a general belief in the paranormal and the supernatural forms. Once we have knowledge of the paranormal, we can then experience it. One cannot have Bigfoot’s baby until one is aware that there is a Bigfoot, or aliens, or ghosts. In other words, you cannot see a ghost until someone has taught you about ghosts. Countervailing influences, experiential knowledge, and knowledge of realistic influence have little effect on paranormal beliefs because they are applied after the belief is established through cultural and familial authority.

I don’t necessarily agree with him throughout the entire article — there are a couple of leaps — but he raises some interesting points.

(Found via Arts & Letters Daily.)

Witches Weekly

Witches Weekly for July 10, 2004 — Pagan Community

1. How did you choose the specific path you’re on? (Druid, Wiccan, Sumerian…)

Choose? Sometimes I feel as if I’ve been railroaded into it, and all the while Spirit was snickering up its sleeve.

The story’s been told before. Namely, I was doing research for a character whom I decided would be a modern witch, and rather than making it all up I chose to visit the local metaphysical shop and pick up a couple of introductory books. The rest, says the author/priestess/teacher, is history.

Come to think of it, I did the same sort of research on ferrets last November for my NaNo novel, but I didn’t become a ferret fan. Any more than I already am, that is. Ferrets are a nice idea, but too fast and nippy in person for my taste.

(For a more detailed answer to this question, visit the Owldaughter: Believe page.)

2. What do you feel you contribute to the pagan community?

Ahem. I’m a once-bitten type of girl, which means that I stuck my neck out in the Montreal pagan community about four or five years ago, and was disgusted with the hypocrisy which abounds. I was one of the four original founders of the Montreal Pagan Resource Centre, which is still going strong. It was the first pagan resource centre in Canada. I got tired of the community backbiting the people who were attempting to provide a common space and ground where everyone could meet, and resigned two years later. (Tangent: The amount of political crap that goes on in the Montreal pagan community never ceases to amaze me, however. It whines and moans about the lack of community, then snaps and backstabs any attempt at community support. I once told an interviewer that the Montreal pagan community eats its young. It’s a curious truth. End tangent.) For the past four years now I have taught a four-level program which studies a broad spectrum of comparative religion over the ages (N.B.: this is not a spiritual path; it’s a survey program which examines techniques and beliefs of various cultures). I also write articles and reviews for our local pagan journal, and I think my editing of the New Age imprint counts as well. For the first time I’ve realised that I’m a part of an international community as well as my local community, and I try to lead by example.

3. How long have you been an active member of the pagan community?
I never really hid what I was; after all, it’s a spiritual path, and frankly it’s nobody’s business. I became unmistakeably part of the Montreal community when I began to work in the city’s largest and oldest metaphysical shop. It’s hard to deny that you’re not part of the community when you’re immersed in it every day.