Witch Trads' Journal

major_kusunagi1 @ 9:19pm: Info Pleze
Besides the usual stuff in Google does anyone have any info about Uairebhuidhe.

:{)

annabellle @ 10:05pm: Right, so i have a golden dawn question.
recently, i've been very curious about it. I thought i new what i needed to know, in the sense i knew the jyst of it. But then i heard some where that it was no longer in existance, then some one told me that it was a school now. I"m a bit confuzzled.
then every site i've been to aside from wikipedia (which i don't trust very much) was trying to get money off me.
who wants to help sum it up for me? :)

mrj15 @ 9:52am: Test

C:\DOCUME~1\dell\LOCALS~1\Temp\SENDINGPOST\diary.html

queenofillusion @ 4:10pm: If Anyone Local is Interested
Hi all. Am forwarding this because I thought it might be of interest to anyone in the Twin Cities region. Certainly, I'm going to go!

B.G. (Before Gardner), was Old Craft: the indigenous witcheries of Old Europe, rooted in the Land and ancestral tradition. If you're looking for a wiser and a deeper Craft, come confer, converse, and otherwise hobnob with your fellow witches. (If you don't stir the cauldron, the stew's gonna burn.) Hosted and immoderated by Steven ("Radio Paganistan") Posch. Hold on to your broomsticks, folks: it's gonna be a wild ride.

Eye of Horus, 2717 Lyndale Ave. South, Minneapolis
First Meeting: Tuesday, 15 July 7-9

Please forward as appropriate...would someone kindly forward this to the Paganistan List as well?

Steve

elfwreck @ 2:41pm: Modernizing the Measure and the Oath
Modernizing the Measure and the Oath

In many pagan traditions, it is customary to "take the measure" at initiation, and to require certain oaths of the novitiate.

The measure is a cord or string, knotted at points signifying various body measurements, such as height, arm length, inseam, circumference of the head, waist, distance from shoulder to opposite hip, middle finger length, and so on, exact details varying by specific tradition. The measure is kept by the High Priestess or High Priest of the coven, to insure the safety of the group, should the new initiate "go bad": they have the person's attributes in a physical form, which can be used for sympathetic magic, to bind or damage.

The oaths, which also vary widely by religion and specific tradition, tend to involve a commitment to the Craft, to their fellow initiates, and sometimes to others, with promises of dire retribution should they fail to keep them.

"…I further swear that initiates of the Craft shall be to me, each and every one, as my parent, my sibling or my child, born of one blood with me, and that no one sealed by oath to the Goddess shall appeal to me in vain.
And if I betray any secret revealed to me here, or prove false to my oath, then I shall submit myself to the Elders of the Craft for such discipline as they shall choose; and if I fail, then may every person's hand turn against me, let them slay me like an animal and consign my body unburied to corruption and my soul to the mercy of the Goddess."

[adapted from the Oath of the Free Amazons, by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Similar, but not identical, to many Craft oaths.]

Sometimes they have more gruesome details—( ... homeless, jobless, broke and floating in the bayCollapse )

annabellle @ 1:56pm: I was just wondering, are there any special rituals or magickal properties for the leap year's February 29th? anything spacific it represents? i've had a thumb through my books and haven't really found anything.
cheers!
~Sage :)

elfwreck @ 7:10am: Dark Mother questionnaire
Dark Mother Survey, by paintedjaguar. I figured some people here might like to answer it. Note that it's for a "writing project," so answers may be shared elsewhere; only post if you're willing to put up with that.

She hasn't got many LJ friends, so her survey won't get a wide covering unless it's pimped around. I'd rather like her to see some answers from people who know their stuff. Someone else can decide if they want to share it with nonfluffypagans or something like that.

snowcalla @ 10:07am: Questions for Seekers
I have a few questions to pose to anyone who considers themselves a new Seeker, remembers being a "newbie", or is not new to Paganism but is still trying to find what their Path or Tradition is. I am cross-posting this to other communities, my apologies. I really do appreciate any and all answers to these questions. I am asking them as the beginning part of a private project. This is, as you can tell, not scientific, but is merely to help decide if a more in depth approach is worth pursuing.

*edited to include (thank you for the suggestion) my email address for those who do not feel comfortable posting this information in public cschulz@exhibitormagazine.com


( Read more...Collapse )

queenofillusion @ 8:57pm: Found this online and thought I would pass it along, a channeling and a small, though hopefully long reaching, bit of ritual. Plan on lighting a candle myself soon's I can. :)

"Rise up. Rise up. Take back what is yours, what has always been yours. The time for skulking in the dark is almost at an end. The flame shall rise, it shall fire again. Do not forsake your own shores, your own light, your deepest self. Take delight in all that is yours to give. Do not tarry, do not flee, do not cry oh rescue me--for yours is the power, the glory of the mighty dark and the splendid dawn. Yours is the cry to shatter chains. Lead the way, dream the dream, and do not fear for the world marches with you."

Please feel free to light a candle if you would like to put your thoughts and energies into renewing the flame of Freedom, particularly the freedom to be who you are best meant to be, and pass along the idea if you know anyone who might want to do the same.

I guess I do think that witches of all flavors need to step up the plate and help out during these changing times. Certainly, I feel its pretty dark out there some days, and not in a good way. Has anyone else been seeing or getting words from the Gods or their spirits regarding needing to put a little bit of light and freedom back into the world?

BB,

V

elfwreck @ 5:49pm: Spell analysis
Someone on a forum posted this spell, said it had been written by a friend who was "new to wicca" or something like that, and asked for people's thoughts. My answer got much longer than I expected, and I decided to post it here.

The original spell:

To Bind

During the waning moon on a Saturday during the hour of Saturn, gather together an object belonging to or relating to he (or she) whom you wish to bind, a jar or bottle with a cap and a black (or white) candle.
Erect an altar to any protection Deity of your choice facing west.
Put the object of choice belonging to or relating to whom you wish to bind inside of the jar or bottle and screw the cap on.
Seal the cap with the candle while chanting the following 9 times over:
By the powers of land, sky, and sea,
(Name),
I bind thee.
Bury the jar or bottle in the ground where it will not be disturbed (or you may keep it where it will not be disturbed in a drawer, closet, etc.).

My detailed comments. Long. 1300 words of analysis for a 137-word mini-spell. ( too much thinking insideCollapse )

... and I'd be happy to hear other people's analyses, critiques, comments, whatever. I think if we explain what some of the problems are with all these "quick-fix" spells floating around the web, people might be more careful about using them.

elfwreck @ 7:49pm: Critique of the idea "wicca, witch, all the same"
This is inspired by, and directly related to, Mike Nichol's witchvox essay, A Witch By Any Other Name (The Great Wicca vs. Witchcraft Debate) (ETA: The article also exists on his site at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/7280/wvsw.html. This version includes an addendum based on emails he's received.)

While I generally love Mike's articles, I strongly disagree with this one. I think he's got many flawed premises. I also think he hasn't met much of either the new "eclectic anything goes but no harm" neoWicca crowd, nor much of the non-Wiccan witch crowd, both religious and not. And I think he's not noticed the biggest linguistic gap in modern paganism: that we have no word for "that religion with a god and goddess, circle-casting, magic, meditation, and reverence for nature"--and has decided that religion is "witchcraft" or "wicca," usable interchangeably.

But those weren't quite what bugged me... what bothered me was the lack of coherent logic in his essay; his premises are flawed, and they don't prove his conclusions. This essay (or rant) focuses on the logical fallacies in his essay. ( Click for a long, semi-technical discussionCollapse )

I'm considering cross-posting this; any suggestions for where? (I'm thinking NFP and maybe FMPPH_trads. I'd post it at black_cats if I thought they'd appreciate it. Should I post it to wiccan?

harrietbrown @ 9:12pm: New to the community
Merry Meet All,

I'm new to the community and I noticed you don't have the Minoan Traditions listed in your interests: Minoan Sisterhood, Minoan Brotherhood and the Minoan Fellowship.  I'd just like to suggest that you could add more traditions.  There's the Proteus tradition, too.  It might make your LJ community easier to find. 

elfwreck @ 8:54pm: Source of "Wiccan but not a witch?"
I've seen on *dozens* of message boards, this idea of "I am" (or "my friend is") "Wiccan, but not a witch." WHO CAME UP WITH THIS? Is there some Llewellyn 101 book that says Wiccans aren't all witches?

I'd been blithely accepting that it must be common in what I think of as "those wiccie-books", but then I realized that Ravenwolf doesn't say it, Cunningham doesn't say it, Amber K doesn't say it--these are all fond of stating that "witch" and "Wiccan" are interchangeable terms. Where did this notion that the word "witch" and practice of "witchcraft" could be removed from the religion Wicca?

(Crossposted a few places; I really do want to know where this came from.)

elfwreck @ 12:46pm: About paying for training
Crossposted to nonfluffypagans. Debating whether to crosspost at pagan or wiccan and watch the flamewars.

I separate types of payments for Craft work:
( Inside: four types of payments, and my very solid anti-payment-for-religious-training stanceCollapse )

firning @ 1:41pm: A book you might like...
This autumn, treat yourself to Witch .

Read the life story of the first woman executed for witchcraft in Salem, and rediscover this chapter of American history told for the first time in a woman’s voice.

Never was there a better time to remember how tricky religion can be, especially when it is heralding a new world order.

content_relic @ 9:48pm: a question
Why is it that certan trads conciter themselves more revilent because of thear suposed age?

content_relic @ 4:48pm: A topic for discussion if i may :D
A discussion on Poetic metaphor is always a table turner

content_relic @ 3:25pm: New member.
Hello everyone i just came across this group and decided to join, i am a dedicant of the Blue star trad and look forward o reading many entresting post

seshen @ 3:51pm: new member
This looked like a community with great scholarly potential, so thought I'd join up. Hopefully I can help add to the fray... err, intelligent discussion.

sanacrow @ 11:08am: Query #2
On a somewhat related note... In the course of working on some of these projects, I'm looking at some of the permutations of Craft and how it falls into various patterns of social organization. I've seen examples of very individual-based forms, tribal-based forms and family-based forms... but there's a lot of overlap and some of the fuzzy grey lines are broad enough to almost make classification impossible.

Some of the questions keep leading back to even more basic questions: What makes a Trad a Trad? What distinguishes a particular path from all the other related or similar paths? How important *is* that distinction? Why?

I'll mosy back with some of my thoughts along these lines shortly, but I'd like a few other folks to chime in first...

sanacrow @ 11:03am: Query
I'm working on a couple of different projects that have one thing or another to do with the topic of secrecy... and I'm interested in getting a broader range of opinions...

Note: this is not Wicca-specific, or oath-specific. In the broadest form, this would include any form of witchcraft or magic-user, and would apply to "folk-traditions" as well as to the more formalized Trads. For the purposes of this question, "secrecy" covers things that are considered private as well as things that are formally oath-bound.

So... What is your position on secrecy in Craft? Why do you feel the way you do? Where are *your* lines drawn?

elfwreck @ 2:40pm: The Witching Month
It's that month again... pumpkins, bats, spiders... and witches.
Lots of witches. Green-skinned pointy-hatted pictures all over the place. I like the ones that look like they've gone splat into a wall. I imagine that their faces weren't green & lumpy, but whiteface with black lipstick, wearing seven silver pentacles & triskelles, and that they'd just kick-started their Genuine Llewellyn-Issue Wytche's Besom™ (not bothering to read any of the 30-page instruction manual) and immediately crashed it into the nearest flat surface.

So.... it's that month when friends & family crawl out of the woodwork & wander into pagan & witchy chat boards & say, "Don't you people sacrifice cats?" or "My sister says she's a witch; is that dangerous?" or "I'm a Wiccan and these girls at school say they're Wiccan but they cast love spells and isn't that against the Rede?" And there will be swarms of "I'm not a Wiccan but I'm kinda interested in spells and can you tell me how to summon spirits on Halloween?"

And, of course, there will be at least two "horrible" displays, somewhere in the country, that involve witches in silly, degrading, or historical fantasy settings, and the cry will go out on sixty-five email lists to "stop this atrocious insult on our religion!!!!"

So I'm posting this so we can swap horror stories, give each other advice & moral support, and brainstorm for any new & creative ways to deal with these recurring idiocies issues of concern to the Witchcraft communities.

lilairen @ 10:54pm: So, a question to kick the community off . . .
(Vaguely inspired by an exchange with elfwreck about raising children in the household religion, which hooked into some of my current obsessivenesses.)


How difficult is it to raise children in a religion that's explicitly initiatory and heavily mystery-based? What sorts of things do they tend to be involved in and what not? How difficult is it to navigate around the dual issues of oathbound knowledge and age-appropriate knowledge*?

My household is heavily mixed-religion even without the possibility of me going through formal initiatory training (which is currently the rough shape of my plans). All of the other religions in the family, though, I have a clear sense of how to present to children and involve children with. I'm sure that getting training will probably help me work through this question as well, but since it's on my mind, I thought I'd ask.



(That there exist widely varying definitions of "age-appropriate" is a given; I know mine are not mainstream.)

apollonides @ 9:44pm: We are here!
So now what? :-)

Seriously, are there any planned topics to kick off with?

elfwreck @ 10:48pm: Interests
Potential interests to add (other ideas welcome):
initiation, initiatory witchcraft, stregha, stregheria, brujeria, BTW, oral lore, oral traditions, covens, clergy training, voudoun, coven training, henotheism, book of shadows, traditional practices, trancework, drawing down the moon, great rite

Maybe's ('cos I'm not sure how many interests we're allowed)
blue star, mohsian, gardnerian, gardner, valiente, alexandrian, buckland, pagan authors, pagan books

I might remove:
philosophers, philosophy, reading, literature, books, anthropology, archeology, discussion, faeries
Not because there's anything wrong with them, but because an interest search for any of them is unlikely to be looking for us. (If/when LJ ever allows searching for two interests at once, they'd be great.)

(I know, I'll be able to add these myself soon. But I wanted to note them while I was thinking about it. I don't want to remove anything without discussing it first.)