December 2004 Archives

You know, it's really quite ironic. After Artharaja and I talk about the Sacred Texts website and the supposed "Gardnerian BOS" they have on there, I find someone posting about that very thing on a message board. I think I managed to express amusement about the whole thing rather than annoyance. Though to tell you the truth, I'm both amused and annoyed.

Of course, whenever someone says "Look, I got the Gardnerian BOS," I first have the urge (and gave into it this time) to ask, "Really? Which one?" I mean, really, the idea of the Gardnerian BOS makes about as much sense as the idea of the paper towel. There's a bunch of them. It's my understanding that Gardner rewrote his BOS a few times himself -- or at least had each High Priestess he trained copy a slightly different version of it. And it's also my understanding that each High Priestess added to it as they passed it on to their own initiates. And that's the way it's been going ever since, though it's my understanding that some lines are more likely to add than others. So at best, any Gardnerian BOS would be one version of the Gardnerian BOS as received and possibly appended by a particular initiate. In this case, the culprit would be Aidan Kelly. And to be perfectly blunt, considering the smear job he attempts to do on his tradition's founder (and what I understand to be his shoddy research), I'd be dubious of any claims he makes.

Of course, the other thing that always gets me is that I don't see why people get all excited over finding a copy of "the Gardnerian BOS" anyway? Hello? This is (supposedly) the BOS of the tradition that most eclectics think is just a bunch of "arrogant elitist bastards," anyway? Remember that? Do they remember how they spend all this time justifying themselves by saying "well, Wicca has evolved beyond that, now." Well, if it's evolved beyond that, then why give a fuck about the BOS you've evolved beyond? Or is this just a case where deep in their hearts, they still believe that those "elitist bastards" might actually have something they want?

Honestly, people turn their nose up at Gardnerians and covet whatever they think they might have at the same time. It's sad, amusing, and annoying all in one.

Apparently, part of me wants to be nasty, caustic, and snide. Anything I see that I think is stupid, I just want to mock the person in some way. Two prime examples of this happened on a message board in a topic discussing witchcraft and magic.

First of all, a 14 year old Christian came in and made a pronouncement: "I rebuke the spirit of witchcraft and all other demonic things." I rolled my eyes. Part of me wanted to make some smartass comment like, "Well, I rebuke the Spirit of Saint Louis. That wicked plane!" I figured I'd have to mention that the Spirit of Saint Louis was a plane because quite frankly, I get the impression that this kid wouldn't have gotten the reference. And let's face it, if you have to explain a smartass comment, it takes all the fun out of it. I suppose if I was more caustic, I could've taken more pleasure in the fact that the person I was mocking didn't get my statements, but I guess I'm just not that advanced of an elitist bastard/intellectual snob.

The next person came in on the same thread. Her pronouncement? "I don't believe witchcraft and magic is real." To her, I simply wanted to do the online equivalent of giving her a patronizing pat on the head and saying, "That's nice, now I trust you can find your way the to the exit on yourself." I mean honestly, if you don't believe in something, don't enter into a conversation about it. Is this really that difficult of a concept to grasp? But then, I guess that such an action wouldn't give them the opportunity to sound so smug.

But then, can I blame them for wanting to do that? I mean, aren't I wanting to do the same thing with my own caustic rejoinders? So I surely don't have the moral high ground from which to criticize. But screw the moral high ground, I say. At least here. This is my chance to express my annoyance.

I suppose that's why I'm writing this here. It gives me a chance to give into a bit of base pettiness and give "silent voice" to my snide remarks in private while I maintain my poise in that conversation. Part of me finds this a bit two-faced, but another part of me finds this a right action. After all, I am only human. I'm bound to have my moments of weakness, where my less than stellar side rises to the need for expression. And is it not better to give it this more private voice where it at least somewhat contained?

I suppose some day, it would be nice to reach a point where such nonsense truly does not effect me. Then, even such a private expression of annoyance and invective would not be necessary. That would be ideal. But while I strive for that ideal, I think it best to give place to the less-than-ideal reality of my personality, and acknowledge it forthrightly. After all, this is better than repressing it until it builds and bursts out beyond my restraint.

It amazes me how sloppy people can be with the facts sometime. Take a recent entry I read on one diary site claiming that people were denied the right to have a Christmas parade in the Midwest. This person went on to decry that this was a violation of Christians' Constitutional rights. Had her information been correct, I would've actually been inclined to agree with her. However, in my naive sense of idealism, I had my doubts about the details. So, I asked the diarist to send me to her original source.

The diariest quite nicely pointed to another entry on the same diary site. I immediately noticed the first discrepancy. In this version of the story (briefly mentioned by this diarist), she mentioned that it wasn't a case of a request to have a Christmas parade being denied. Instead, this one stated that some religious groups were denied the opportunity to join an established Christmas parade based on the grounds that their entries would've been "religious in nature." Immediately, I found myself curious to find out more, so I asked this diarist for her source. She happily pointed me to a FoxNews article by Bill O'Reilly. While Mr. O'Reilly's mention of the parade incident was brief and a small point in a larger political commentary, I am grateful that he finally mentioned a source that gave the name of the town: Denver, Colorado.

Armed with this knowledge, I was able to do my own search and discovered a story by a local Denver News Station on the topic. From this entry, I was able to find out that the parade is being sponsored by the Downtown Denver Partnership. With this information, I was able to find the Downtown Denver Partnership's site. And from there, I was able to find the following statement from their "About Us" pages:

Downtown Denver Partnership, Inc. (DDP) is a non-profit business organization that creatively plans, manages and develops Downtown Denver as the unique, diverse, vibrant and economically healthy urban core of the Rocky Mountain region.

In otherwords, the parade was being organized by a private organization. As such, as parade organizers, they are within their rights to set any standard they wish when evaluating whether to permit a given organization's entry into their parade. In effect, contrary to the first diarist's opinion, there is no Constitutional violation involved. (There may well be a question about whether most of us feel the parade organizers did the right thing, but that's another matter.)

What truly concerns me here, though, is how this story has changed. In the first entry I read, it was presented as a case of a city denying religious groups the right to start a parade. In the second entry and the commentary by Mr. O'Reilly, the facts were more correct in that religious groups were being denied the opportunity to march in a parade already being planned. However, even in those cases, the identity of the parade organizers was kept vague enough so that people might infer that city officials themselves were organizing the parade and were denying these groups the opportunity to participate. (This is further exacerbated by the fact that Mr. O'Reilly mentions that the mayor of Denver had recommended changing a sign saying "Merry Christmas" to "Happy Holidays" without clarifying that this was actually a separate incident.) It's not until I dug a bit further that I discovered that the parade organizer was a private organization. (And one must then wonder why Mr. O'Reilly -- who supports the BSA's right to exclude certain men and boys from their organization on the grounds that the BSA is a private organization -- would turn around and cry foul when another private organization exercises the same right.)

In the end, I'm reminded of the old game of "telephone." Someone whispers something to another person, who then whispers it to a third person. Unfortunately, due to poor enunciation and possible hearing problems, the message gets distorted, and what is passed along by whispers eventually bears little or no resemblance to the original statement. That's exactly what's happened here. By not carefully reading what they've read and taking care to repeat it as accurately as possible, the story eventually gets changed into something it's not. And the sad part in this case is that a large number of people -- who didn't take the time to trace the story back like I did -- will be crying "Constitutional violation" over the wrong situation.

Every now and then, I hear various eclectics throw around the phrase "a year and a day." And to be honest, I somewhat cringe when I hear it. It's one of those cases where they've taken a phrase that came out of Traditional Wicca, taken it somewhat (if not completely) out of its original context, and changed what it's all about.

In the context most eclectics use it (and I suspect it can be traced back to some author somewhere, though I'm not sure which one), the idea is that one must study for a year and a day to become a Witch. It's also often assumed that one must study at a certain degree for that amount of time when for a year and a day before you can move on to the degree. In either case, it's not entirely correct.

First of all, "a year and a day" was not originally a hard and fast rule. In fact, I'm not sure it's a hard and fast rule today, but more a "rule of thumb." But before a certain time (sometime in the 1980's, if I've pieced together my information correctly), it wasn't even that. You see, back in the hay days of the 1950's, 1960's, and possibly even the 1970's, it was not unheard of to initiate new Witches on the spot. It also wasn't unheard of to Initiate new Witches into all three degrees in the same weekend. This was done for various reasons, all of which I doubt I'm even aware of. However, the basic reason boiled down to the fact that those who were doing these initiations felt it was the necessary, correct, and proper to do things at the time. (At the time, I believe it was primarily motivated by the feeling that it was necessary in order to ensure the survival of Wicca.)

At some point, the various High Priests, High Priestesses, and Elders slowly came to the conclusion -- both individually and collectively -- that this was not such a good idea anymore. They found that it didn't give New Witches the chance to truly come to grips with the Mysteries they were being introduced to, nor were they getting well prepared to run their own covens before being thrust into the position of High Priest or High Priestess. In effect, they got "fly by the seat of your pants" style training. Also, as they felt that the survival and continued propagation of Wicca was now assured, they decided that it would be more appropriate to slow down the training process and give Initiates a chance to truly grow in the Mysteries before thrusting them to the third degree and all of the responsibilities it entails. So Witches, covens, lines, and traditions began to set up systems of training to guide their Initiates (and in some-cases, their candidates for Initiation) through what they needed to properly experience the Mysteries of Wicca and work its magics (both big and little).

In addition to this, some of those Witches, covens, lines, and traditions considered the Mysteries. Recognizing that (1) a Witch's experience of the Mysteries gets deeper in each degree (or in some traditions, each degree involves slightly different Mysteries) and (2) to experience the full range and subtleties of the Mysteries requires the observance of the full Wheel of the Year, they decided that it would be wise for each Witch to experience the full spectrum of Mysteries at each degree by spending a minimum of one turn of the Wheel before moving on to the next degree. And hence, "a year and a day" was born.

It is important to note that, to the best of my knowledge, this is not a unilateral requirement among all lines and traditions of Wicca. This is just what some -- and probably even many -- have determined is a good thing. It is also important to note that this is often considered a minimum. It is not unusual at all for the teacher or student to decide that more time is needed, for whatever reason. One common example of this is in a case where a student does no live close enough to the covenstead to attend all of the rituals in the year. In such a case, the student may find it necessary to take a few turns on the Wheel in order to experience all of the rituals and their particular aspects of the Wiccan Mysteries. Or there may simply be a matter in the Witch's personal life that makes a longer timespan necessary.

You see, I think that's what bothers me. Eclectics seem to think that "studying a year and a day" guarantees one's Witchiness in some sense. It doesn't. No amount of studying -- either a year and a day or a decade and a year -- will ever accomplish that. The only thing that does that is the processes that makes one a Witch.

I also balk at the idea that "a year and a day" is always associated with studying. It's as if studying was what it's all about. It's not. Don't get me wrong here. I think studying is extremely important. But studying alone accomplishes nothing. It is the process of experiencing the Mysteries that make Wicca what it is that is important. And that's what "a year and a day" was originally all about.

Today, I had another visit to the endocrinology department. I didn't see Dr. Lee, though. This was my chance to have follow-up meetings with Jen and Faith. And I have to admit that I had quite a pleasant time with them. Of course, the good news right at the beginning helped that a ton.

I got to the office at about 2:45, checked in, and paid $100 on my outstanding bill. That's about half of what I owe from my last visit. I would've paid the other half too under other circumstances. However, with this being a non-payday week and already having spent a significant amount of money on other bills this past week, I decided I should wait another week or two to pay the full amount. At least I figured roughly 50% would be a "good faith token" that I am paying it and will continue to do so. So having checked in and taken care of the business portion of the visit, I sat down in the waiting room and patiently waited for my appointment. Faith was running a bit late and didn't get to me until almost 3:15, for which she apologized. I didn't mind, other than the fact that I was beginning to wonder if something had come up or something, but things turned out fine.

So before leading me into her office to pour over my food diary, Faith has me jump up on the scale to see what I weighed. And there was the pleasant surprise. It seems that since November 2, I have lost 18 pounds. I was a bit shocked. I had known I had lost some weight and I was hoping it was at least five or even ten pounds, but I'd never expected such high results. Needless to say, Faith was quite ecstatic, too. So we rushed into her office and I pulled out my food diary for her to look over. She went through it and was quite impressed with it. She commented that I was missing a few foods on the first page, which I explained was due to the fact that my mother and I had to spend the first few days doing some grocery shopping to help with my change in diet. (My family has never been very good about incorporating an adequate amount of fruits and vegetables in our diets, so it meant doing some serious restocking of foods for us.) She also commented on the few days where I seemed to "skip" meals and was fairly relieved when I explained that this was due to me forgetting to update my food diary in a timely manner and not being able to remember what I just ate. I did assure her that I ate, though, and she was satisfied. She said that I seemed to be doing quite well at making sure I hit all the major dietary needs as well as spreading my food intake throughout the day.

We even talked about my weight loss, and she reiterated her position on that. I actually like it. Her whole philosophy is that while she's always happy to see her clients lose weight, it's not her main aim. Her main aim is for them to do the work of eating a properly healthy diet of the proper proportions. In her mind, the weight will then take care of itself in turn. So I'm endeavoring to keep that in mind, because I think it's a helpful philosophy. So my plan is to continue to keep track of what I'm eating in writing and monitoring my glucose levels. Then I can let the weight take care of itself.

After our conversation, Faith told me she'd like to see me again in a couple months and we determined that we could schedule my appointment on the same day that I go back to see Dr. Lee, which is March 3. After this, she handed me the paper and went to see if Jen was ready for my appointment with her. Jen was ready, so Jen popped in Faith's office and had me come talk to her. Faith had already filled her in on the whole weight loss thing, and Jen was equally excited about it.

She went over my exercise calendar and saw that I've consistently met my goal of taking three twenty minute walks each week. She was quite pleased with this and inquired if I'd given any thought to any changes I might want to make to my physical activity. I told her that I had thought about it and decided that I did not want to increase the number of days I'm walking, due to the fact that it might prove difficult to make it someplace to walk more than three days a week when the snow starts falling. (Speaking of which, it was flurrying on the way home, but that's probably best left for a different entry.) However, I did mention that I was considering the possibility of increasing the length of each walk to twenty five or even thirty minutes instead of the current twenty minutes. She felt this was an excellent idea.

I also discussed my plans to try and recall as many of the ballet exercises I did in my college dance class and make a twenty minute workout of that. She thought this was another excellent idea, especially as it would add a number of stretching exercises to my physical activity. Overall, that meeting was quite positive, and she commented that I wouldn't have to come see her again as long as my therapy kept moving in a positive direction (i.e. going off medications rather than needing more). Since I've been walking so much, she also gave me a free pedometer from a bunch that she gets as gifts from one of the pharmaceutical companies. I checked it out when I got home and it's kind of neat. It's a talking pedometer, which I think is kind of cheesy, but it's still a neat idea. Tomorrow sometime, I plan on measuring the length of my average step and entering it in. Then I can start seeing roughly how many steps and miles I walk during my exercise routine. Also, Jen suggested that I see how much walking I get in from a typical day when I'm not taking my walk.

Apparently, I also have Jen to thank for my reduced medication. According to her, Dr. Lee missed the numerous glucose readings in the fifties a couple weeks ago. He had sent her a copy of my readings with his recommendation of "no change." She immediately sent them back to him with all the low values circled and a strong suggestion that he cut my glyburide. So it's thanks to Jen that I haven't been bottoming out this week. Well, other than Wednesday. But that was due to an insufficient supper, I think.

This was a highly positive visit for me. It seemed great to see the weight loss and know that I've made my goals. And it's really encouraged me to keep going. I think I've about convinced myself to keep up with keeping track of my exercise and food diary, even after I don't have to show them to anyone. And to celebrate, I ran to Vestal and ate at the Chinese buffet. It was absolutely tasty. I thought I'd had a bit too much, but I guess I didn't do too badly. When I got home and tested my blood sugar two hours after eating, I was at a 78.

I’ve been listening to Frank Peretti’s “This Present Darkness” on tape again. It’s a highly enjoyable book for the most part. Some of the theological implications make me wonder at times, though. I suspect part of that is just because I’m not a Christian. But a lot of it even makes me wonder how well it fits to a Christian perspective.

Take for example the one part I listened to on my way to work this morning. It takes place shortly after the church votes (but just barely) to keep Hank as their pastor. Hank and his wife, Mary, are sitting together in the kitchen of “Grandma” Edith Duster. Edith is one of Hank’s biggest supporters, and she spends much of this particular conversation encouraging Hank. In it, she makes the comment that if Hank wasn’t where God wanted him to be, he wouldn’t be accomplishing as much as he can. The more that I think about this, the more it seems like “divining” the will of God from mere circumstance. And to be honest, that strikes me as an odd, fickle, and possibly dangerous thing to do.

Back in my college years, I remember learning about the concept of “fleecing.” It’s a term used in certain Christian circles to describe a certain way of “testing” for the will of God. The idea is based on the Old Testament (from the book of Judges, if memory serves) story of Gideon and his fleece. In that story, God calls on Gideon to save the Israelites from the enemy (the Philistines, I think, but don’t quote me on that). Well, Gideon is doubtful and God offers to prove His desire for Gideon. One of God’s “proofs” involves a fleece that Gideon put outdoors overnight. This happens twice. During one time, the fleece is left bone dry while the ground is wet with dew. The other time, God causes the fleece to be wet while the ground around it is completely dry. Such a miraculous event helps to demonstrate God’s power and will for Gideon. Gideon then agrees.

The idea of modern day fleecing works the same way. A Christian decides on some sign that will demonstrate that a given choice is God’s will. This concept is actually demonstrated in another Peretti boo – “The Visitation” – where young Travis Jordan decides that God will show him when he is supposed to head out to join Billy Graham’s ministry by making it so that a banjo head he ordered arrives at the music store. In that story, Peretti demonstrates one of the great problems in fleecing; that is, the “sign event” is often something that is bound to happen anyway. So there’s no real proof that the event is just happenstance or a legitimate sign from God. And I know other writers and theologians who have given much deeper explanations on the problem with fleecing.

But it seems to me that Edith Duster’s comment is as much a sign of fleecing as any test involving a banjo head. It seems to me that it’s still a matter of relying on a matter of circumstance or circumstances – that may well occur on their own without God’s miraculous intervention – to determine whether one is following God’s will. It just strikes me as a shortcut to honest introspection and seeking the Will of God.

Now, I readily admit that part of my opinion on this is almost certainly influenced by my non-Christian views. In fact, I’d say it’s further influence by the fact that I’m a witch. After all, it seems to me that relying on circumstance to divine anything – be it the Will of God or some impersonal force such as Fate – flies in the face of underlying philosophy of my beliefs as a maker of magic. That’s why I have an equal problem with Neo-Wiccans who attribute their circumstances to fate and karma and then choose to passively live whatever life the world deems willing to give them. But it seems to me that the idea that something as fickle and highly susceptible to just about every influence as circumstance should be chosen as a litmus test for anything should bother anyone who remotely believes in free will and personal responsibility.

(Of course, the irony among some Christians is that many who will tell you that they must be in the Will of God because of all the good they're doing will then turn around in times of trouble and tell you that their tribulations are signs that they're in the Will of God because it's obviously Satan trying to keep them down. But that's probably a whole different entry.)