Namaste, Bitches

Sometimes things happen. Coincidences. Synchronicities. They tend to happen quite often in my world, and it's why I'm Pagan.

A day or two before my surgery, I did a one-card draw from my Goddess Oracle deck, and received Abundantia, a Roman Goddess similar to Demeter or Ceres. Abundantia is more along the lines of the bounty of the harvest whereas Demeter and Ceres are the grains themselves. I'm always a tad skeptical when I draw Abundantia because money is always scarce.

I worry constantly about money, about what will happen if I lose my job, or we go broke, or can't pay the bills. I lived in poverty for the first 20 or so years of my life, and it's sort of embedded in my mentality and emotions. Lexapro kind of helped me break out of the cycle of actively worrying and having cyclical money anxieties, but that starving wolf is always lurking in the background of my mind. Granted, we usually have enough money to cover the necessities, and Rob's folks do help us out when we are in dire straits, but we live pretty close to the bone for the most part. Going out to a fancy restaurant, or going to a show (yeah, right, as if I would actually go to any of the shows out here - the average ticket price to see even a mediocre comic or magician is around $60 per person. Whenever I do fork out money for a 'show', it's a concert), or the movies usually means sacrificing groceries, so we don't do it.

When I was preparing for my leave of absence, I withdrew myself from the active Union roster so they wouldn't try to pull dues out of non-existent paychecks. At the same time, they sent me a form for disability benefits. I had my doc fill out his part of the form, and I filled in my part of the form. The top section of the form was for the HR representative to fill out. It consisted of my name, employee ID#, dates of my leave and I think my social security number or something. To save time I filled it in, even though it said 'for office use only'. When I took it to HR, the agent refused to accept it because I had filled in the top part. Oh fucking well, I screwed up. I didn't really have the time or inclination to request a new form, have the doc fill it out again, and make the trek back to work - and I was a little pissed off at myself and the HR rep. Rob tried to push me into it, but I was like, "fuck the HR rep & the horse she rode in on, so I lost out on some smidgen of money that I probably won't see til my leave is over". End of story.

Whenever Rob or I use our health insurance, we get these Explanation of Benefits forms that tells me exactly how much money the medical visit or procedure cost, how much the Union covers, and what my share to pay is. They very rarely contain any pertinent information, and they're not bills. I've gotten so used to seeing these things that most of the time, I just throw them away. I've been opening them recently because when Rob went to the ER, we received a bill for the entire amount, and later received an EOB stating the event wouldn't be covered unless we sent in the ER reports (my insurance wants to make sure any visit to the ER is 'medically necessary'. In other words, if I or Rob go to the ER w/gas pains, thinking it's a heart attack, I have to pay for that motherfucker). So since we're still getting Rob's bills, I've been opening the EOBs instead of chucking them. As a result, I've had a stack of them sitting on my desk for the past three or four weeks that I just hadn't gotten around to opening.

I had to reinstall McAfee last night, and the Dragon Cave was down for regularly scheduled maintenance, so I had some downtime. I started going through the EOBs. One looked kind of funny because instead of saying 'Explanation of Benefits' it said 'Explanation of Disability Benefits'. I tossed it in the trash can & then had a "Wait, what?!" moment because when it landed in the trash it landed check-side up. Needless to say, I started opening and actually reading those EOB forms & found another check for the first week of my leave.

Some way, some how, my disability benefit request was filed and approved. I don't know how or who, but it occurred to me that the card with the Goddess Abundantia was still sitting on my nightstand.

I get the feeling that I've been praying to the wrong Gods my entire life.

I should have taken the opportunity to go to Haiti when I had the opportunity, lo those many years ago. I think my life would be more satisfying somehow.

I'm whipped today. Just whipped. I waited around most of the morning to find out if I was being laid off or not. To my utter dismay, I found out not only am I not being laid off, but I am expected to justify every single minute of my day. I just don't think I want my job enough to do that. I mean, I need my job, and it would be nice to keep it long enough to get my hysterectomy... but this is going to get ridiculous.

I used to be a gore-whore. If it was sick, twisted, depraved and monstrous, chances are I've seen it. Suicides? No problem. Flaming martyrs? No problem. Obscure, graphic crime scene photos from the 20s? Torture? Animal experimentation? Zippocat? No problem.

One would think, with our department being the IT Help Desk, that we would not have much to do with the criminal cases that flow through the office at the rate of about 1600 per week. However, we have a great deal of exposure to the media behind the cases - surveillance videos, stupid people filming their own shenanigans, autopsy photos & video, crime scene photos and video, the criminal documents themselves. I watched a man with a gun hunt another man down in a grocery store. I've seen the autopsy of a small child that wasn't even recognizable as a human anymore, it was that badly beaten. The left overs of a home-made car bomb, or the occasional case of - well, suffice it to say, bad things happening to small people. Brutality inflicted on humans by humans is at my daily disposal, and at first I was titillated when I found the folders full of images of dead bodies, because I am somewhat of a necrophiliac. It just doesn't turn me on anymore. I thought all the years of gore sites like rotten.com, bangedup, ogrish & Stiles had hardened me to things like this. I thought I was immune.

I think it was seeing the crime scene photos of a lonely grave out in the middle of the desert. A woman's body, badly burnt, turned into a mummy, shrunken and unidentifiable, that did it to me. Someone had a CD full of crime scene photos & they couldn't get the CD-Rom to read it. I opened the disk, changed the view to thumbnails & the person I was assisting enlarged one of the photos in the top row, which just happened to be a close up of this woman. It was startling and unexpected, and every time I closed my eyes for the rest of the day, there she was in photo negative. She didn't continue to haunt me, but the setting did. There are a million places out here that look just like that grave site did - abandoned lots, construction sites, quarries, the vast empty wasteland of Nevada is full of sagebrush and windblown trash. There are so many places outside Nevada just like that, too, even in the most crowded cities are places where bodies can lay undisturbed and unnoticed. Within my beliefs, the shell we leave behind is just like that windblown trash - it's really of no use to anyone anymore. We slough it off like a cicada's husk when we die. To the living, though, that husk is the last vestige anyone will ever see of a loved one. The funerary rites are necessary to put ghosts to rest, necessary for the survivors to heal and move on. Every body forgotten and discarded in abandoned lots, quarries, dumpsters, the Great Big Empty, is a door that will never close.

I feel bruised and battered inside - every day I am exposed to more murders or assaults or kidnappings, and so much more... mankind's imagination when it comes to causing grief and harm seems infinite. I try to fill my off-time with playful things, captioned cats, comics, artwork, news articles that highlight the weirdly funny instead of the weirdly malicious. It's the things that creep out on the sidebars that nail me - like the pit bull yesterday or Monday, or the man who injected his wife with his own HIV-infected blood so she'd fuck him again - and someone trying to defend him because apparently enforced celibacy makes men do things like this & they should be excused for their actions. I think about some of the work I've been doing on myself regarding becoming more compassionate, meditations, protective and healing mantras I'm learning, and then another day at work makes me wonder why I'm trying to be more sympathetic to the human plight. We, as a species, are not all that worthy of compassion and sympathy - but I suppose, simply because of that, I should be all that more determined to open myself to those feelings. When I pray for one, I pray for all, and when I pray for all, I pray for myself.

Every once in awhile I like to sit up late at night and surf the dark underbelly of the ‘Net.

No, not 4chan… but the purveyors of the strange. The bloggers whose blogs read like HP Lovecraft and Charles Fort. The birth defects, teratomas and momento mori sites. Auctions of dolls and clowns gone horribly awry. Schizophrenic artists. I have satisfactorily ruined sleep for myself tonight.

It’s a day for it, though.

Let me describe my back yard to you, just to set the scene. The lot our house sits on is roughly square, divided into a front and back yard with the house plopped into the middle. The back yard forms a U around the house - on either side is a narrow walkway with the rectangle of the yard behind the house. Around the perimeter is a cinder block wall - on either side it’s about 5 ½’ tall - I can barely see over it. In the back, there’s a retaining wall & the main wall is about 8’ up. On the kitchen side of the yard, the walkway ends in a block wall, & on the other side, we have a padlocked gate. I am not the most nimble person around, and I am short, and I would have trouble scaling these walls. I don’t think anyone could do it quietly, or without the dog taking notice. I doubt, seriously, that anyone other than myself or the dog was in the backyard today.

Rob had gone on errands. I was sitting here at my computer, and the dog was laying on the floor next to me. The wind was blowing a little - breezes, really. We have a wrought-iron grate over one side of the back sliding-glass door, w/a gate on the door side. We usually leave the gate open during the day. Sometimes the wind will slam it, but today the breezes weren’t moving it, and it was open halfway, sticking out into the porch area.

Someone knocked on the back sliding glass door and I heard a child’s voice say, somewhat indistinctly, “I know you’re in there”. Chelsie startled at the same moment I startled & looked at me like, “Did you hear that?!” She got up when I got up, but it seemed like she was reluctant to approach the door. Usually when something makes noise she begins barking her fool head off, running from front door to back door, wanting out… but today, not so much. I don’t know if it was because I hesitated or if it was because she felt something not-quite-right herself.

We’ve got a black-out style curtain hanging over the back door, so I couldn't see the back door. But I had heard no footsteps leading to or from the door, and of course by the time I had shaken off my paralysis and gotten up, whoever it had been was gone. The wrought-iron gate was still in the exact same position, so I know the wind hadn’t smacked it against the grate on the other side or the door itself.

The household goms have ramped up a notch or two over the past few weeks. I think the weather’s keeping them active. We’ve been getting a lot of weird noises lately - knocking on doors, metallic banging. At least it all seems to be coming from the outside, and they haven’t been knocking on Rob’s headboard or smacking the back of my chair.

( And a little extra that I wouldn't feel comfortable telling on fb... )

Well, it's 4:03 and it might be able to get some sleep finally.

When I think of calm, comforting, nurturing elements in my life, I usually think of either the Moon or the ocean. If I was somewhere with a coastline, a desire for a loving deity would send me straight into the arms of the Pacific. To me, She is a Goddess in Her own right and when I lived in California and Washington, I actively offered worship to Her, in all Her moods and tides and weather. I don't talk about it much, but I did like living in southern California, and if the cost of living wasn't so high, I'd much rather live there than anywhere else. I think my Grecian soul found it familiar, with its pseudo-Mediterranean climate, the endless expanse of sand and sea that made up its coastline... at heart, I am a California girl, lol.

But here I am, in the Great Big Empty, no ocean in sight. So to whom else can I turn when the ocean isn't there?

All along, I've always thought of the Moon as 'Mother Moon', and gazing upwards at Her has always filled me with a sense of peace and stillness. She's always been there, like the sea, watching over me, watching over us all. Honestly, I don't think of Her as Diana or Artemis, or Luna or Selene - They are not the Moon, but the Moon is in Them. The Moon just is. I have a little in common with Bob in that - he's a moon-dog, a lunatic, and so am I. I watch Her cycle closely, I follow Her across the sky, I keep in tune with Her rhythms. I have a kinship with dogs and coyotes and hares... I see Her face in my favorite drum. Maybe all along I have been just neglecting to see what's always been there.

I just got out of the bath tub, which was heaven after being on a bathless restriction due to the kidney surgery & subsequent stent. I was reading a book about the QBLH, and had some revelations, and was seriously going to sit down and blog my ass off.

However, when I got out of the tub, Chelsie wanted to have a towel fight. When the towel fight was over & I sat down and started to upload my Autumn avatar, she started pacing around the door. Rob, who is absorbed in Wintergrasp or something, says, "I think she needs to go out". I tell him, "give me a minute". Chelsie then goes over & starts licking Rob's feet, which cued him to ask, "Does she have water?" Much back and forthery ensues because I've got to get up to let her out, anyway (which means going outside with a flashlight and an extra shoe in the event of a zombie scorpion apocalypse). So I fill her dish from the filtered water pitcher, and give her food. Then I had to refill the filtered water pitcher with water it could filter. So I saw the coffee pot, sitting there empty, and said to myself, "well, while I'm in here..." & set up the coffee pot for the morning. Since I was in the kitchen, filling up dog bowls, pitchers and coffee pots, might as well take my pills, right? After circuiting the kitchen, I took the dog out, scanning walls & the porch ceiling for armored invaders. Figured, well, I'm outside, might as well say my thanks to the Great Mystery. The dog finally peed. She came inside and dropped a cricket on the floor. Dog had to go back outside while I scooped up said drool-covered cricket & threw it outside. I haven't even gotten out of my towels from the bath at this point, so my first attempt at scooping the cricket up meant the towel wrapped around my hair unfurled and the plastic container, piece of paper and drooled-on cricket all went to the floor.

Finally, here I am, no crickets in the living room, hair brushed, night gown on, dog fed & watered & relieved, teeth brushed, coffee pot filled... Rob still doing fuck knows what in WoW.

This whole chain of events is actually quite hilarious, considering my revelation.

When I was a younger woman, I was dissatisfied with my existence and sought to change it. Using the QBLH for many things, mainly its nifty system of correspondences, I practiced magic(k) and witchcraft to inflict change I desired on the world around me. The QBLH helped me put spells together...

Malkuth, earth, oak, dog, bull, green, North, Cerridwen, Demeter
Binah, Saturn, graveyard dirt, goofer dust, black, Les Barons, Saturday

As I got older, and moved away from trying to inflict change on the world around me, I instead began using the QBLH to transcend the world, to rise above it, to reach enlightenment. I spent more time in the Ain Soph Aur than on Earth. My life was spent in Daath and Kether, always seeking a way out.

Now, I've come to realize that I've somehow reconciled those two halves of myself. I no longer seek to change the world around me, at least not much. Yes, I'd like to live a more comfortable life, free from health problems and money worries. I like having the security of a good job. I'm also always trying to be more than just a clod of clay and salt. I still believe in the lessons of Jonathon Livingston Seagull, that we are all limitless beings of light, the Divine Spark still burns brightly within each and every one of us.

Here's what I seem to have integrated. I can be of the world and in the world, and still be a core of fiery light within an egg of chaotic potential. Instead of seeking to change the world to bring it more in line with my vision, or seeking to change myself until I am no longer recognizable as being part of the world, I am bringing my vision more in line with the heart breaking, breath-taking awe and wonder that is the Divine Mystery right here on earth. Which is why, when I came out of the bath, filled with heady thoughts about how amazing my revelation truly was, there was the dog and Rob to pop my little pink balloon. Yes, I am a limitless being of light - but I am also me: short, fat, tired and achy, needing to go to bed.

I think I am going to embark on some Qabalistic pathworking. Not the officially sanctioned, accredited degree system PathWorking™ of the OTO or Golden Dawn or Newly Reformed Hermetic Orthodox of Isis the Multi-Veiled Triple-Aspected Priestess of All Things Eris Has Nothing to Do With Whatsoever... just my own journey down the trails of the Tree of Life. I think it'll be interesting to see who I meet now that I've got slightly different eyes.

( Kidney Pie, Beware )

Monday night, when I was ready to just commit seppuku, I decided to apply some friendly advice. I went outside with the dog, and it's my new habit to say thank you to the Great Mystery for the day and the night, not just when it rains, but every night. So, along with the thanksgiving, I actually asked for help. (Yeah, Hel probably froze over, pigs flew, some God popped out of an abandoned refrigerator & wreaked havoc on unsuspecting locals, you name it). I asked the Great Mystery if it could send me someone or something to help me with the pain.

When I went to bed with my heating pad & hot water bottle (and resorting to taking enough Phenergan to just knock my ass out), I sent a request out to the Unknown - just to please help ease the pain and comfort me, as I am orphaned and have no parents, and I am all alone.

Yesterday, it was weird. No more cramps. Nothing. Just a minor backache, which I always have. I was still bleeding like a stuck brontosaur (and still am - I know the saying is 'bleeding like a stuck pig', but a pig would have already bled to death by now), but it didn't hurt. My legs didn't feel like they were being torn off, I could stand up straight. Didn't even take any regular Tylenol. Last night I said thank you to the Great Mystery and to Whoever or Whatever helped me and gave me relief.

Today - I don't even have a freaking back ache. Well, I do, but it's that sort of relieved bruised feeling you get when a cramped muscle relaxes. For like, the first time in 15 years, my back feels fine. Of course, I'm stuck at work & can't do anything about not being in chronic achey back-pain. So I guess something out there does like me enough to offer a helping, healing hand, and it is greatly appreciated. I would kind of like to know Who, though, but much of the world runs on kindness from strangers.

I came home to a message that I've got another interview at the County Recorders Office, too :D

This has been kind of percolating through me, and my boss being in a meeting all afternoon has given me a rich opportunity to brew it into a heady draught of words. And I'm not sticking this one behind a cut, so there.

Life as an Archetype: The Warrior

 

I was born the same year that the Vietnam conflict ended, and in the early 1970s, there was still a lot of animosity towards the returning armed services. They couldn’t get jobs, they got spat on while walking down the street, people would drive by and throw stuff at them… I remember Jody, my oldest sister, carried the POW/MIA stickers everywhere & plastered them everywhere. Many of her friends who had come back from Vietnam buckled under the constant pressure of hatred and became drug addicts, alcoholics and suicides. Back in those days, syndromes like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and traumatic brain injuries were not well understood and received little, if no, treatment.

 

Many of my male relatives are veterans. My father was a vet, although due to his propensity for story-telling, I don’t know what branch of the armed forces he was in and he had so many social security cards on him when he died – none of which were his – that the Veteran’s Association could not find any record of his service. I know from his photographs (now lost during multiple moves) that he did serve during the early years of Vietnam. His father & older brothers served in the Prussian army & the early days of Germany, and fled when Hitler rose to power. I’ve got uncles on my mother’s side who are veterans, one of whom has PTSD and suffers from intense flashbacks. He served during the last part of WWII and in Korea in the Navy. Jody was in the Army but received a discharge during boot camp. Rob was in the Air Force, but received a discharge during Tech School. Rob’s dad served in the Army during Korea, and many of his uncles and grandparents fought in civil conflicts in Yugoslavia, Prussia & Hungary. I’ve got a good friend who put his time in the Navy and still serves in the Naval Reserves.

 

I am a pacifist. I pretty much have been all my life. I do not support wars on foreign soil. I’m not an active pacifist – I don’t feel like getting arrested for protesting, but I do support those who are willing to put their civil rights on the line. I try not to invest in companies who support the war machine, and I let my conscience guide me at the voting booth. I’m not a militant pacifist, though. I believe that countries should have the right to defend their own borders against invaders. I understand that sometimes, wars are necessary – for one, it thins out the human population. Secondly, even in real life, there are ‘bad guys’. I’ve also had a strong opinion brewing since September 11, 2001. Hate the government, not the soldier.

 

One of my coworkers’ (I’ll call her Alice to minimize confusion) boyfriend was serving active duty in the Air Force in the years following September 11, 2001. So far he had managed to avoid being called into the Middle East – he stayed home and maintained and guarded the air base. It was a constant source of worry and stress for them both, though. She was equally worried about the possibility of another invasion. John Mayer’s song, Waiting on the World to Change came on the radio & it made Alice angry because she felt he was protesting the movement against Iraq & how people like him were no better than the terrorists. It was mostly the lyric, …”When you trust your television, What you get is what you got, Cause when they own the information, they can bend it all they want’… that pissed her off the most. How dare this guy insinuate that the media and the government were lying to us all? Very quietly, although apparently loud enough to make everyone in the room inhale and turn to look at me, I said, “He’s right, though.” Alice called me out on it, “You think the government is lying to you? You think that none of us are in constant danger? That no one’s actually dying in Iraq right now?!” I told her that not one of us really knew for sure how big a threat these terrorists were, if they were indeed going to attack us again, and at that point, many of Bush’s commands had been proven to be, shall we say, ineffective and mislead. Even Bill O’Reilly had apologized to America for supporting Bush’s search for weapons of mass destruction. Alice took it the wrong way – she felt that my saying that meant I did not support our troops, the boys in blue and green who were in Iraq or serving at military bases across the U.S.

 

I let it slide. Things were tense between us for a couple of years, but eventually as her man was home more and the constant stress lifted, things were forgotten. I don’t know if she thinks about it whenever she hears John Mayer on the radio. What got me to thinking about it was another song entirely – Offspring’s Hammerhead.

 

… I'm just doing what I'm told

Every single man and woman who chooses to serve in the military, be it our military or another country’s military, is living life as an archetype. They may be a clerk, a medic, a general, a grunt, a runner, a pilot, a ground unit, a mechanic, a special forces elite… they are all embodying an ancient ideal. They are all warriors.

 

In ancient times, mighty Gods and heroes arose Who were the patrons of the warriors. Ares/Mars, Athena, the Morrigan, Thor, Tyr, Freya, Achilles, Cuchulainn, Anahita, Indra, Mithra, the Badb, Huitzilopochtli, Ogoun, Sekhmet – the list is probably endless, and many of these Gods are still propitiated today by modern Pagans. In ancient cultures as in modern society, people filled various roles and duties in society – there were healers, priests and priestesses, hunters, farmers, rulers, administrators, crafts and trade people, builders, and warriors. There used to be rituals and ceremonies central to each little group – harvest and planting festivals for the farmers, rituals for healers to perform on the sick and on themselves to cleanse themselves of illnesses, sacrifices and thanksgivings for the hunters to keep the game in balance with the predator, blessings of new buildings for the architects. There were also rites of passage – a child becoming an adult, marriage, birth, death… and for the warriors, there were rituals not only of initiation, but rituals to ensure success on the battlefield, propitiating the Gods that ruled war so as not to be chosen to end up among the slain, protective runes and rites, and very important rituals to ease their reintegration back into society once the fighting was done.

 

It’s easy for a pacifist like myself to sit back and think, “What a fucking idiot. That soldier is putting his life on the line because of some whack-job politician’s misguided attempt at foreign-policy-via-blunt-force-trauma”. Who am I to think I have the right to judge an archetype? That’s really what the soldier is – he or she is one of the most ancient archetypes – the Warrior.

 

Living the Warrior archetype means being willing to kill someone (in some cases, it also means assassination, torture and slavery). In many societies and cultures, killing another person has always been a major taboo. Although it doesn’t always seem this way, murder is not generally condoned. Condoning murder means lawlessness prevails and communities crumble. The warrior has to be able to bridge the cultural inhibitions that prevent a logical, community-minded person from killing someone else.

 

I am the one, camouflage and guns
Risk my life to keep my people from harm
Authority vested in me,
I sacrifice with my brothers in arms
…
 
I'll take a life that others may live

 Not everyone has the ability to do this, to make this choice. A warrior on the battlefield, whether it was an ancient plain where people fought face to face with axes and spears or a modern scenario where bombs are dropped on an enemy from miles above, faces that life-or-death decision every time he or she goes out to fight. The soldier may simply be protecting him or herself against another soldier, or he or she may be protecting his or her squadron, or some gods-forsaken outcropping of rock in a strategic position… but underneath it all the soldier is protecting the greater ideals of his or her country, his or her fellow citizens, his or her government and all for which it stands. I’m not making the distinction here of ‘right or wrong’ – to the soldier, the warrior, there is no ‘right or wrong’ because he or she is serving. He or she has made the decision to put the life of his or her countrymen before his own.

 

Stay the course, reasonable force
I believe I serve a greater good

 

Society has lost many meaningful rituals. We still have our small rites of passage – weddings, funerals, graduations, baby showers. I think it is still important to draw those bold, heavy borders on the timeline. I think something that may help people like my shell-shocked uncle reintegrate back into a life of peace would be some small ceremony – cleansing away the taboos of murder, removing the stigma of serving an unjust government, opening a heart that has closed itself off to pacifism so it can cope with killing. Even a ‘Welcome Back’ party could serve as this – a time to say thank you, a time to let the Warrior step off the tank and gun turret and be healed by companionship and re-acceptance into society. Hopefully the next few years will see many homecomings and opportunities to reunite with friends and loved ones who have been gone far too long.

 

I think, as a whole, most people have forgotten that the soldier is an archetype. I believe in free will, and I believe that people can make choices in their lives that will keep them safe from harm. I tend to assume that people follow their logic. Until recently, it had not occurred to me that maybe, even without a mandatory military draft, the soldier may not really have a choice. It could be that the need for that archetypal role to be filled by someone pulls the soldier, the Warrior, into service. Part of why I wanted to write this out was to, in some small way, honor the men and women who are fulfilling that archetype.

 

Thank you, Warriors, soldiers, servants of the armed forces, for stepping forward in times of need to protect us all.

I've been finding it harder and harder to define values that are a part of my spirituality, a part of me being Pagan. Most of my values have developed independently of my faith.

There is one value that has everything to do with my faith and very little to do with my mundane life.

When I speak to the Gods, spirits, elementals, spirit guides, totems and assorted and varied entities that surround me, I speak to Them directly. I have no need of a priest or intermediary to speak to my Gods for me, or on my behalf. I have not met a theistic Pagan yet who felt they needed a priest, priestess, clergyperson, minister, reverend, or any other person to translate their words to their Gods. The only exception to this has been when the person is possessed. It's kind of hard to talk to your God when your God is wholy in you and whatever is you is subsumed by that greater entity. It's why the lwa tell the attendees at a Vodou ritual, "Tell my horse!" when they have something important to tell the person they're riding. Of course, no one at a Vodou ritual would dare misinterpret the words of the lwa to the one the lwa possessed. The lwa also have the modern gift of speaking in relatively plain English (or French or Creole or Haitian).

It is a great feeling to know that when I pray, I am not praying to some guy in a funny hat who is then passing my words on to whatever deity it is to which I'm talking. There is no confessional, either. If I transgress (which is relatively hard to do, considering my deities haven't handed me any rules), I pay for it in karma, not by counting little beads or flogging myself. If I do step on toes, the entities Themselves let me know, and it's usually quick and unpleasant and not soon forgotten.

Of course, this is not unique to Pagan experience. Priests were once absolutely necessary in the Christian faith because of literacy. The common, average folk could not read, so their Bible was useless to them. They needed the priests, the learned men, to read the book to them and clarify the laws and tenets of their own faith. Nowadays, I've seen among Christian people that there is no longer a great need to attend church to have the bible read to them. They can read the Bible themselves, interpret the words for themselves and apply those words to their own lives. It is a blessing of modern times.

I think this is a large part of the reason why I've always been a solitary practitioner. When I was Wiccan, I tried to start a coven a couple of times, but realized that I didn't want to be a leader or constantly have to tell people what to do. I've also tried to get involved with covens, but it's almost impossible for me to hand over my autonomy. I was banished from a Wicca class for using an oil that was not ordained by the Priestess/instructor. Who was she to tell me I couldn't use an oil I preferred in a homework-assigned spell? If I wanted to follow rigorous and rigid instructions, I would have joined the military. And if I wanted a bunch of sheep blindly following me around, I would have started a cult.

Another part of spiritual autonomy means I don't have to go to a special building to worship. I don't necessarily need to be outdoors to feel the presence of the Divine. Sometimes it shows up in my kitchen, or even comes through the front doors at work (not my current work, but jobs that have been open to the public) to say howdy. I may, on occasion, build a shrine or an altar, a place to focus my attention while I pray or someplace to leave an offering, but I don't need the place to feel sacred. The world around me is sacred, every last bit. It is thoroughly infused with the spark of the Great Divine, the Great Mystery. It flows through everything, sanctifies everything. My backyard is no less sacred than a huge marble temple or a small wooden church. I remember going to churches with my friends when I was little, sitting in Sunday school. Sunday school always seemed to be held in a stuffy little room, away from the main church. It was, if nothing else, almost exactly like a school room. I remember looking out the smeary windows onto a rolling lawn that no one ever got to walk on, or play on, or pray on. I don't know why all the churches I went to had such beautifully manicured lawns. Funerals, maybe? I played in more cemeteries as a child than on church lawns. We never had Sunday school outside. The first church I ever went to that utilized its outdoor space was the Greek Eastern Orthodox church in Memphis. I almost converted because of sitting out on the lawn after Mass, eating barbecued goat, watching the men furtively pass around a flask of ouzo - which even crossed the priest's hands a time or two, watching the sun move through the trees that flanked the lawn and cast long shadows that never seemed to touch the church itself.

Even though Christians say God is everywhere, I get the feeling that some of them may not truly believe that. Why else build churches and temples? Why else expect to spend Sunday mornings cooped up in a building instead of going out and enjoying God in the wild places? Sometimes I wish I could be like one of the Christians who converted to Paganism, so I could more fully understand the whys and hows of the religion. No matter how many times I've read the Bible, how many Christians I've spoken with, it's still baffling to me. I probably confuse Christians, too - I mean, how is it possible for me to believe in their God but not worship Him? I always think of Him as "that God named God". I believe in their God because there are so many millions, probably billions, of people who believe in that God called God... but it is a privilege of my polytheism to believe without the need to worship.

As a Pagan, one of my values is education. Humans have an immense capacity to learn.

Now, if you believe in the Burning Times, a lot of knowledge was supposedly lost to the ages. People could not maintain an oral tradition, they could not write anything down, nothing could be made public, everything was locked away and hidden from plain sight.

I used to believe very much in the Burning Times, but as I grew older and read more history, political and religious, it wasn't really that much of a Big Deal. Yes, people did lose their lives in the Inquisition and the witch hunts, but it wasn't so much witches or Pagans who were specifically being hunted down. It was people who owned land the Church wanted. It was people who were heretics in the eyes of the Church. It was people who just weren't liked by their communities. I don't know if the common '6 million' figure is accurate or not, but a good number of innocent people lost their lives due to (to borrow a phrase from Rob Zombie) superstition, fear and jealousy.

I know that in some African countries, people do still lose their lives for practicing, or being accused of practicing, witch craft. In some more conservative areas of the U. S., occult and psychic stores are vandalized and protested into closing up shop. I've been pretty much a west-coaster all my life, and luckily I have never encountered persecution. I've met a few Holy Rollers who were obnoxious beyond belief, but I've always had the rare privilege of being a 100% out of the broom closet Pagan. When I was a teenager, I was quite militant about it. I wore enough pentagrams and crystals & mojo bags to ensure my death by drowning if anyone pushed me into about a foot of water, I had the ACLU's phone number memorized, I could quote state statutes banning witchcraft from the birth of the nation, I lobbied for looser regulations on psychic arts business licensing (in Clark County, it's a time-consuming, rigorous and expensive process to prevent con artists from taking advantage of people), I wore robes in public.

Today, though, anyone with an internet connection or a library card can obtain a great amount of information about witchcraft and Paganism. I think in all total, there are probably more Pagan forums, commercial occult & psychic stores, occult websites, etc. than anything else online except maybe porn. Hel, there's even Pagan-centric porn out there (no, I'm not counting this one website Rob & I encountered featuring 'vampire lesbian nuns sucking Satan's big red cock).

Bearing all this in mind, I think the Pagan community as a whole does not place enough value on passing on information. There are many who complain of poorly researched and written books, the abundance of 'Witchcraft 101' books on the market, the 'fluffy bunny' take on Paganism that many of these poorly researched and written books have. But, when it comes down to it, very few people are willing to teach. I used to complain about this one AOL chatroom called 'Ask a Witch'. I don't know why the majority of people were in that chatroom, other than to pounce on the unexperienced & unsuspecting & make them rue the day they ever tried to ask a witch anything. I can understand that yes, in a situation like that, it is going to attract a lot of people who either want love spells or want to murder someone. It would be like me throwing a hissy fit anytime anyone asked me where the restrooms were at the Excalibur. Just because 15,000 people have asked me that doesn't mean that it's not the first time they all asked that question. They honestly didn't know where the bathrooms were (even if they were standing right in front of them) & I happened to be the closest thing to an employee they saw walking by. People also tend to forget that they were new once, too.

I think bad attitudes chase people away from exploring Paganism on a deeper level. They get kicked around so much when they first discover it that mistreatment turns them off & makes them wish they had never gotten the urge to explore it in the first place. I know Paganism is not evangelical, we don't get gold stars for converting people to the pack, so to speak. But if a person walked into a Catholic or Christian church, or a Jewish or Muslim temple and asked someone there to tell them about this God they'd been hearing so much about, would anyone blow up in their face? No. They'd be welcomed in, invited to explore & hang out. I don't know why it's so hard for Pagans to do the same thing. I mean, we're not telling people to go out and tell all their friends about us, but... what does it cost to be nice to someone? (Yeah, I know, coming from me that's a lot. For me, being nice is like slicing my face off or something... but I have the capacity to change, too - don't forget that).

It also irks me that it's always the whack-jobs who end up on television telling people about Wicca or witchcraft or Paganism in general. Always gotta be the whack-jobs. Why can't it be a relatively normal Pagan? Yeah, Tom Cruise screwed the Scientologists over on Oprah, but he's just one guy - every Pagan who ends up on t.v. seems to be a Tom Cruise. I go on web sites & read comments left by other Pagans whenever one of these whack-jobs shows up on the national news or a talk show & they all complain or 'try to set the record straight' about whatever damaging image the whack-job presented... but it's all after the fact. No one cares what people have to say when they're in damage control mode. We need more proactivism and less hindsight. And what is one of the easiest ways to be proactive about the image of Paganism in the media?

Teach.

Whenever someone asks me a question about my beliefs, I just try to be open, straight forward and honest. I don't go all New-Age white light and bunnies, and I leave out Unkle Al and Anton LeVey and the thing about the hot dogs and buns... and I just answer the question. I never generalize, and I always remember that I am not just speaking for myself, I am a representative of every other Pagan out there, whether it's Wiccans, reconstructionists, neo-Pagans, Dianics, Druids, Odinists, Asatruar... If I am the first Pagan someone meets and has a conversation with, I want them to be comfortable thinking that one of their neighbors or babysitters or banker might be Pagan, too. I don't want them to look at me and think I'm going to sacrifice their cat to my Gods. It costs me nothing except some of my time. I'm also never afraid to give referrals - books, stores, websites, forums, other resources.

I think it would be amazing if 'Mystery Schools' were opened, physical campuses dedicated to Pagan religious studies. Model them after the Catholic schools, so the students are still getting the fundamentals - history, literature, the sciences, but supported by Pagan concepts and attitudes. I know there are correspondence classes online, but why not colleges? If I had the resources at hand, I would consider it, but I'm mostly broke and have no background in education, lol.