h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I just read your entry on Blue Star Wicca and decided to check out your entry on yourself! When I saw that you wrote it on my birthday, I wondered if there was a reason I was led here. I've just started a class with the high priest and priestess of a NECTW (The New England Covens of Traditionalist Witches) grove. I'd be interested in chatting once I've learned more about Wicca itself (most of what I know now is from Phyllis Curot's "Book of Shadows" and other mainstream sources).

Let me know if you're interested in comparing notes!

Talix

* waves *

I just posted on your Blue Star Wicca article, thought I should drop by here and what do I find but another Pagan also dropping by to say hello. Nice to meet you.

I'm basically a hedge witch, but still exploring things a lot (rather than just exploring them a little bit - is there a distinction? Maybe not). Fairly heavily influenced by Wiccan literature, some of which is very good and lots of which is very bad. I try and avoid the latter type of course.

Hello, Talix and MaW, and nice to "meet" you both

I'd be delighted to compare notes with you both

Hi, MaW! I don't know what you've read; we just got a suggested reading list as part of our class and I'd be happy to share it with you. I'd also be interested in knowing what you recommend. I like the couple that's teaching my class as people, but I'm not sure yet whether their path will become my own.

Ouf! Over the years, I've read a lot of books - many of them not exactly well-researched! However, I do have some genuine favourites, many of them not specifically Wiccan:

Prof Ronald Hutton's 'The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain' (Oxford University Press), which is the most indepth academic survey of British seasonal customs in existence, and very readable; also his 'The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles' (Oxford University Press), which takes a good look at the physical evidence for religious beliefs in ancient British society; and his superb 'The Triumph of the Moon' (also OUP), which traces the history of Wicca from supportable documents. This last is an absolute must-have as far as I'm concerned - Hutton is very supportive of Pagans, and has spent a lot of time with Pagans of all stripes; he's also an historian, and doesn't go for unsupported claims. Brilliant, just brilliant.

Judy Harlow's 'Wicca Covens'(Citadel Press) explains group dynamics in a really helpful way, along with how to check if a group is healthy and how to lead/facilitate a group in a healthy way.

All of the Farrars' books ('What Witches Do', 'The Witches' Bible Compleat', 'Eight Sabbats for Witches', 'The Witches' God', 'The Witches' Goddess', etc.) for a really good look at how Alexandrian covens worked from the 60s through to the 80s. This is really core material for most modern Wiccan Traditions.

Dr Graham Harvey's 'Contemporary Paganism: Listening People, Speaking Earth' (New York University Press) is an examination of the basic Pagan Traditions current in Britain. Very, very readable, with quotes from Terry Pratchett's 'Discworld' novels at the head of every chapter!

Starhawk's 'Spiral Dance', 'Truth or Dare', and 'Dreaming the Dark' (Beacon Press) contain lots of wrong "historical" information, but her observations on how magic works, her magical exercises, and her observations of "self-talk" and group dynamics are - I think - very valuable. And she doesn't shy away from talking about how to LIVE your beliefs - she chooses political activism, and goes into how religion and politics interact in great detail.

Marian Green's 'A Witch Alone: Thirteen Moons to Master Natural Magic' (Thorsons) is another must-have - it's one of the very best books on witchcraft.

Doreen Valiente's 'Witchcraft For Tomorrow' (Phoenix Publishing, Inc.) gives an overview of Valiente's involvement in Wicca, from her extremely influential priestesshood in Gardner's early coven onwards; she also shared her thoughts on witchcraft as she neared the end of her life. It's well worth reading.

Vivianne Crowley's 'Wicca: The Old Religion in the New Millennium' (Thorsons) is an in-depth look at what Wicca means in ritual terms and in its effects on initiates. I found this hard going when I first read it, but after working in a coven for a while, it "clicked".

James Frazer's 'The Golden Bough' is a classic. Sadly, it's a classic of bad history and anthropology - Frazer was publishing theories that had already been demolished by the mid-1920s, but it didn't stop enthusiastic folklorists from picking them up, and from there they made their way into the formation of Neopaganism. Frazer was basically trying to demonstrate the superiority of monotheism over polytheism and pantheism, but his book ended up romanticising them. Excellent read, though.

Robin Brigg's 'Witches and Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft' (Penguin USA), which examines the Inquisition and witchcraze in an area of France and Germany, and explains how the Inquisition worked in that area. He does diss Wiccans as refusing to deal with academia in the intro, but never mind.

Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's 'Montaillou' (Random House) is a history of the Inquisition's investigation of a whole village in Languedoc for heresy. It's brilliant because it shows how people were able to sincerely believe themselves to be "good Catholics" while practising an heretical religious tradition - it never occurred to them that they might be anything but orthodox in their beliefs. The Inquisition made detailed notes about every aspect of village life, and so did us all a good turn. I love this book.

Dr Simon James's 'The Atlantic Celts: Ancient People or Modern Invention?' (Wisconsin University Press) takes apart and examines the evidence for "Celticness" in Britain, and is completely fascinating (he also has a website at www.ares.u-net.com/celthome.htm).

Michael Harner's 'The Way of the Shaman' (Harper SanFrancisco) provides interesting information on spirit journeying.

Greg Johanson and Ron Kurtz's 'Grace Unfolding: Psychotherapy in the Spirit of the Tao-Te Ching' (Harmony Books) was a really important part of my initiate training - it is basically about what a priest/ess is all about.

Jean Shinoda Bolen's 'Gods in Everyman: A New Psychology of Men's Lives and Loves' and 'Goddesses in Everywoman' (HarperCollins) are short on actual history, but long on psychology; they're really helpful in terms of getting to thinking mythologically.

I love 'The Witches Voice' (www.witchvox.com) website, which includes a huge number of essays on Craft, Pagan-related news, message boards, contact info, etc.; the 'White Dragon' (www.whitedragon.org.uk) website, which includes brilliant articles and book reviews and basically takes no prisoners; and The Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance (www.religioustolerance.org/), which provides information about a gazillion religions.

So that's the kind of stuff I read, along with the Sagas, the Prose and Petic Eddas, various other historical books, and rather a lot of sci-fi

Wonderful! I see I need another bookshelf.

I'm a regular visitor to WitchVox, there are some great things up on that site - I always enjoy reading the essays submitted by the readers, as they offer varied perspectives on the same thing.

Some of the books you recommend have also been recommended to me by other people, although I've not seen such historical texts recommended before and I'm very tempted to looking into them. Wicca doesn't bother me too much, but I'd like to know where what I'm doing is coming from in historical terms, even though I improvise a lot - that, to me, seems to be something in the nature of the hedge witch, at least as I understand the term and how I feel that I am one.

I found Rae Beth's book 'Hedge Witch' to be really rather informative and eye-opening, and by far the best book I have. Another one that I enjoyed a lot was 'Green Witchcraft' by Ann Moura, she seems to avoid a lot of the fluff, and doesn't really write about Wicca, rather about the craft as she was taught it and as she practises it. She has two sequels to it as well, although I'm less sure if I want those. It doesn't seem meaty enough anymore!

Scott Cunningham was recommended to me when I started out - I have two of his introductory books ('Wicca' and 'Living Wicca') which are great for getting into it, but I'm kind of convinced there are better ones out there these days. 'Living Wicca', by the way, seems to me to be better than 'Wicca'.

I'm kind of looking for another book to get, so I'll consider those you've suggested - Mariam Green and Starhawk both seem good authors, and I've learned by now to take the historical stuff in such books with a large spoonful of salt. Or maybe a sackful. Many Pagans, myself included, are entirely misinformed about the historical origins of the Craft as it is today in all its varied and wonderful forms. What I have learned most importantly, I think, is that Gerald Gardner may very well not have been all he's cracked up to be, and that really, it doesn't matter!

This is part of the list that we were given - any experience with these?

Adler, "Drawing Down the Moon"
Gardner, "Witchcraft Today", "High Magick's Aid"
"The Mabinogi"
Piggott, "The Druids"
Murray, "The God of the Witches", "The Witch Cult in Western Europe"
Grey, "Seasonal Occult Rituals"
Matthews, "The Western Mystery Tradition"
Fortune, "Moon Magic", "Sea Priestess"
Leland, "Aradia - Gospel of the Witches"
Anything by Sybil Leek

There's also a book called "Keepers of the Flame" that was written by two of the members of the grove from which NeedFire (my teachers' grove) branched off.

I really appreciate you both sharing your information. There is so much popular "witch" culture that I need all the experienced sources I can find! I can tell I have a lot of research to do.

Tal

Ooh, the very best translation of the Mabinogi I know of is Patrick Ford's - embarrassing to miss out a text so central to my own Trad!

Dio Fortune's fiction's really interesting, but you have to grit your teeth for the 1930s-style racism and classism. Reading her 'Esoteric Orders and Their Work' and 'The Training and Work of an Initiate' are far less fun, and even more teeth-gritty, but it's fascinating to get a look at magic and occultism by one of its most famous proponents.

Scott Cunningham - bless! He was a good 'un. Love his 'The Complete Book of Incense, Oils & Brews'; oh, and if you can get a copy of Lady Galadriel's 'Incenses and Oils', it's great (I'm stuck with a photocopied version - don't tell a soul), and so is Wylundt's 'Book if Incense'.

I found Sybil Leek's books a bit weird - some really good stuff, but lots of slightly bizarre self-publicity. I tend to find that a bit off-putting, so I suspect that I probably missed some of the better bits because of my own bias.

'Aradia' is also weird, though for different reasons. There's a big argument over how much the old showman Leland made up (i.e. did he just make up his informant in order to place a bunch of disparate beliefs and traditions into a coherent system); I go with the Mr-Leland-was-terribly-creative school of thought, but even so it's really interesting stuff, and it's one of those books that bears rereading every now and again.

Murray's work is a bit problematic in that the whole 'God of the Witches' thing was just appalling methodology - it's estimated that she used less than 1% of the then available texts to come up with her theory that the mediaeval "witches" were Pagans - but as an explaination of how Wicca came about, it's pretty vital. Murray was such a dominant figure in the British Folklore Society, of which Gardner was an active member, that her claims really affected folklorists (they say she was something of a Queen Bee, and anyone who disagreed with her got booted out of the club). Gardner, I think, was a big old humbugger, but he was also very creative - I think that even if he didn't believe Murray he still gets big brownie points for starting a religion that WORKS! I'm not sure we'll ever know the full truth, but I'm perfectly happy with being able to tell people who made up my religion, because most people can't tell you who made up theirs

I'm very much with you on doing your own thing. My own experience was of refusing to join anyone's Trad for some years, working out what seemed right and important to me before I joined Blue Star. Frankly, I'm not impressed by the "You're not a witch unless you're initiated into a Trad" argument. For one, not all witches are Wiccans, and for two, I believe that people who sincerely live by Wiccan principles are just as Wiccan as anyone else (though I can see the fear of people wrapping any old rubbish up as Wicca, I still favour a certain freedom). I think that one of the great strengths of the Pagan community is its diversity, and that we can all learn from each other without becoming one homogenous, boring mass

Yes! Wonderful! As people are all different, so should people's religious paths be their own. Certainly, some people will prefer to clump together into groups (covens, churches etc.) but others will prefer to go it alone - some might do both over a period of time. And I think they're quite welcome to! Especially as I tend to stumble around like a drunken elephant reading up on things other people have said, then trampling on the bits I don't agree with and using the rest.

It has been odd, the first year or so of actively 'being a witch', because my angle of attack on the whole thing has changed fairly substantially. I've gone a long way from 'I like Wicca, I'll do that,' to 'I like that bit, and that bit, and that bit, and this felt right when I dreamed about it, so I'll do all of them' - which seems to me like going from picking a religion almost at random and trying to stick to it, to forging my own path. I'm happier about it than I was at the start though.

And why did I get into it like that in the first place, I hear you ask? Many people do things for the wrong reasons, I've observed - especially in the area of modern Wicca. I was looking for something, I thought I'd found it... but then I realised I was three feet too far over to one side. Just missed!

Oh well, nobody's perfect.

Cunningham has a new book coming out posthumously, 'Cunningham's Encyclopaedia of Wicca in the Kitchen' which looks great, I suppose I could be described as a bit of a kitchen witch as well (although I really would benefit from a herb garden).

When I joined Blue Star, I drove the priest and priestess of my first circle absolutely mad. They had never run a circle before and were new to the whole process, and here I was being intransigent and saying "But that doesn't make sense" and (most often) "WHY?" Nowadays, they'd be able to handle easily, but at the time, I made their lives hard

I'm not sure that anyone finds a religion that fits like a custom-made glove (I think I would find it a bit disturbing if they did). There are always bits you winkle out that make you go "No. That's just not right." Fortunately, Pagans have a bit more leeway in that direction than others. Some things that struck me as stupid before about my Tradition now make complete sense, having gone through 3 rites of passage within it. Other things still make me go "No." I belong to a small coven in which we place an emphasis on knowing the ritual format well enough to play with it, so we push the envelope a bit and discover new meanings. Sometimes it works spectacularly well, and sometimes it just falls flat; but the important thing is the exploring and the insights we get from it. Just accepting things because "that's the way we've always done it" doesn't fly.

One of my biggest concerns is the aspect of discipline. I don't want to be someone who takes the "cool" or "fun" or "interesting" parts of a belief system and leaves the "hard" stuff behind. Spirituality is not a buffet table. I believe that some degree of discipline is necessary to truly benefit from a system of belief. I have some gut instincts as to what kinds of things are acceptable to me and what aren't, but I don't want to shy away from the inconvenient simply because it is so.

I just realized that I didn't really make my point, which was that I tend to be relatively weak in the self-discipline area and don't trust myself going too far out on my own.

That is of course important... but in respect to the worry about taking just the 'cool' bits and throwing the rest away, I've found that that's pretty much impossible. If you're truly attempting what you say you are, then certain things become unavoidable, and not all of them are 'cool'. Some things are laid on us by things greater than ourselves.

Now that sounds incredibly fluffy... couldn't think of a better way to say it though. There are some parts of the Craft which are inescapable - no matter how you try and ignore them, if you're doing things anything like the way I've read about, at least in my experience, certain things will be required of you. Or of me, at least... some people may consider this a sign of madness. I don't care!

Maybe I should go to bed, I'm starting to sound like a character from a good but unrealistic TV show.

No worries - sounds perfectly realistic to me!

Yup, this is perfectly true. Whenever you're walking your talk, you find yourself having to do stuff that isn't fun but is necessary. And once you set yourself on a genuine path, you find that even if you try to hide from the inevitable it will find you. I've also found that I go through cycles of discipline in different areas of my life - there are periods of time where I'm very focused on my personal devotions, times when I'm very focused on group work, and periods where it seems that everything slides. I have come to the conclusion that you need periods where you're sort of catching up with yourself, where things you have learned "settle in" and become part of your life.

I think everyone's lives change like that... you go through a period when you acquire and adopt new habits or whatever, then you spend a while rationalising them. I tend to start doing things Pagan, then spend a while just living the life before I add something else to it. Much easier to cope that way, and somehow seems 'right'. Maybe it's the way we're supposed to do it.

I'm glad you didn't think I'm nuts though! So I heard the Goddess speak in my ear, most people wouldn't credit it. I wasn't sure if I did for a few moments. She sorted that out fairly quickly though It's hard to be skeptical when someone's throwing big lumps of Divine love and other such things at you. Not very subtle, but I have a very thick skull.

I'm extremely skeptical - I suppose that's another word for "thick-skulled". I want so much to believe, but then I'm afraid that my wanting will lead me to accept something that's not true. Someone read my totem animals once and my "within" was the raven, whose magic IS magic. The card talked about the struggle between belief and skepticism. Me all over. I have no trouble believing in the wacky world of quantum mechanics which leads quite naturally into energy work and I do believe that "God" speaks to me through other people. I have a hard time believing that there is a supernatural force taking a personal interest in me as an individual. But maybe it's my skepticism that blocks what's trying to be revealed.

Then I think about the house I'm in the process of buying and I know that it is a gift from something outside myself (see my journal for more details). Marianne Williamson said that "a miracle is just a change in my perception." Do I say that simply by doing the next right thing I created a situation that allowed this opportunity to be received? Or is it more?

Am I making sense? This has been the heart of my struggle my whole life. I've always wanted to believe in the "supernatural". And have never truly allowed myself to let go and jump in.

I'm not sure I believe in the supernatural - just the *super* natural, if you get my meaning

I don't think a person is nuts for hearing deity. I've known too many perfectly sane people who've had the same experience to think that. A friend of mine trained as a clinical psychologist, though, and was appalled to find himself in class with a lecturer informing the group that people who hear or have visions of deity are delusional, and cited several cases of "psychotic" patients who had experienced persistent visions/"aural hallucinations" of "what they said claimed to be a god called Herne." Uh oh. So I spend time actively seeking out experiences that a clinical psychologist would brand delusional and psychotic? EGAD!

Aaaaanyway...

I think sometimes people get picked out, no matter what they believe... remember, if you will, the number of stories we hear from time to time of people who've had sudden conversions to one religion or another, of people whom a God of some form or another has dragged out of the depths of despair to a state somewhat approaching contentment. While some of these may very well just be the person themselves trying to find a way to justify their own internal decision-making process and sudden changes in attitude to the outside world, after what I've experience I think some of them are genuine.

I also think a lot of the medical community would automatically discount any such things - they're rooted firmly in the physical, tangible worlds, and I'm not about to go to a psychiatrist and tell them that I've been hearing voices! Well, I might, depends why I was there. I wouldn't accept it if they interpreted it as part of a delusion of some kind though.

It's an interesting thing, isn't it? I know one woman who heard a voice when she was a child, which told her what to do in dangerous situations, and how to protect herself; she told her mother that God was talking to her, and that His name was Thor, so her mother called in the local priest for an exorcism. The priest decided that she was "hearing God's voice in a way that she can understand" and left well enough alone. The voice never went away, and she's now a functional and very cool adult.

A friend of mine hypothesised that different Christian denominations may have different versions of Jehovah, which I think is a very interesting idea. She once introduced herself to Him in a church (just as a courtesy) and reported that He seemed "vast, impersonal, and completely self-absorbed", and that He didn't even seem to notice anyone as individuals, just sucked up their worship. Which was a bit disturbing. We wondered whether it was just the Jehovah of that congregation, that denomination, or what.

It seems to me that you're right about the rejection in the mental health sector of religious/spiritual realities. What may seem to some as bizarre behaviour (i.e. conversations with deity where deity talks back) is fundamental in Paganism and in mysticism as a whole. Imagine tellic Hassidic Jews that God doesn't talk back when they converse daily with Him?? So "mental health" seems to be to me to be a case of adherence to cultural norms, and not an objective thing at all!