nicnevyn

This has always been an area of deep interest for me, and something came up today on another blog (http://goldenthreads.wordpress.com/) which sparked me writing something that I have been pondering posting for sometime.

For a long while it bothered me that so many people in the Pagan and Occult comunities seemed to “suffer” with such an extensive and bizarre range of physical and mental illnesses. I listened and analysed this phenomena fairly carefully and the suffer’s seemed to fall into three distinct categories. Those that professed they were ill and expected it somehow to make them very very special as a result. Those who professed they were ill (and most likely were) who would shout and stomp about the first group and how it “was giving the real sufferer’s a bad name” but would then use ranting about group one as an excuse to do exactly what they were blaming group one of doing which was making themselves look special via thier “oh so awful illness”, both of course whilst claiming some kind of specialness also using it as an excuse not to actually do any magic or any of the work that pertains to it; and then there are those who definitely were very ill but just got on with it, never mentioned it, this final group I designate as “The beautifully wrecked”, but I will come back to them in a bit.

Fairly early on in my path, I became quite worried that somehow I had allied myself with unstable characters, that the pagan comunity was full of kooks and hypochondriacs looking for a way to be special, to gain self validation, to find a meaning. But then I spoke to my sister who has worked her way through just about every denomination of christian church available to her and really it doesn’t seem to be much different. There is something about “cult” communities that draw those that need whatever the “something” is, that group particpation gives. From that point on I stopped railing against either group one or group two, thier actions were thier way of getting whatever it was that they needed. That said, I did make a concious effort not to “feed” thier need, lol as my mum said, if you ain’t got anything good to say, don’t say anything.

I then came across the interesting concept of the “Occultists Disease”, this is often cited as being Asthma, but in reality seemed to cover a range of respiratory and pulmonary disfunctions. Big names such as Crowley, Chumbley, Gardener and Bennett are all cited as having suffered. I looked into this futher and discovered current real life practitioners who also suffered. I asked my mentor one day, does the act of practising magic eventually destroy you, and thier answer was “if your doing it right, then yes”. Take what you will from that statement and don’t neccessarily take it at face value either!

But the one thing that does stick out, is that all those names achieved after thier own fashion, “greatness” they were active participants in thier Great Work, they were beautifully wrecked. They did not, it seems use thier “disease” as an excuse. So now adays when I come across someone claiming to be a practitioner, but add the caveat fairly shortly after that they have an illness, I look at or listen to thier words very closely, if they are beautifully wrecked then I take heed of thier words, the others I just quietly walk away from.

I’ve been thinking further about my previous post regarding accessing particular strains of a magical current. And some interesting conundrums have come up, so I am going type as I think (it’s preferable to staring at lines and lines of computer code which currently mean nothing to me as I am brewing the mother of all migraines unless I can get to the pharmacy at lunch).

I suppose the first thought is, why do a lot of lineaged folks get so shirty at the idea that outsiders might actually have a magical “handle” on at least part of thier current without being initiated?

I suspect it comes down to two reasons, nothing more, nothing less. The first being that there are so many Grand High Pooh Bah 10th Degree MucketyMuck High Priestesses, who are 17 years old but they have been running a coven since they were 12; yeah right, okay these folks don’t actually exisit in quite the extreme I have described. I’ve been doing the online and real life out of the broom-closet type thing for more than a few years now, and very rarely do you find one of these types.

But the paraody description proves a point, there are so many out there claiming to be something they are not. Who have read a couple of llewicca books and think it’s all about green candles dressed in patchouli oil. They give themselves a title and post on a few forums, attend a few moots and declare themselves a “witch” or “magician” or my favourite a “shaman” lol with an emphasis on “sham” hahaha! These folks are dangerous, if you took them into a magical operation and you got a full corporeal manifestation, they would brick themselves, run a mile or run amuck, placing you and everybody else participating in the ritual at risk. So it seems to distance themselves from this particular type of practitioner, it’s best to make the blanket statement “Your not in our gang there fore you cannot know the password to get into the club house”!

The second and less common reason is, I believe because their magical world view is incomplete. It is beyond thier comprehension to understand that others may have managed to tap the current, outside of thier own praxis. Please note though, this may be down to the limitations of the particular lineaged individual, rather than representative of the group into which they are initiated, it may also be down to the limited teaching they themselves recieved, both here and now from thier superiors and also from the current itself.

I have discovered though over the years, that the real practitioners, esepcially the lineaged ones, get the idea that what they access isn’t unique to them and are happy to have “inter-trad” discourse, within oath bound limitations. It’s interesting how many folks complain about trad-crafters and thier riddles, but it is amazing how much oath bound material can be “transfered” through the act of riddling without breaking oaths at all. Esepcially as most of the mysteries are hidden in plain sight for those with eyes to see

Which of course then leads nicely onto the main focus of my ramblings, the concept of the magical current and the oath breaker, or as the more romantic and dramatic person might call them, the warlock. I’ve heard of people who have been stripped of thier lineage/initiation/placed under the ban, what ever you want to call it. I’ve even met a few, and have worked magically with one or two.

Now this of course is something that I wouldn’t reccomend as a general rule, oath breakers are, after all, just that, and lets face it would you trust someone mundanely if they cannot keep a promise, let alone magically. However, the two I worked with, one was stripped of thier lineage, because it turned out thier HPS was the oathbreaker, the other for political, “mob rule” reasons, so neither were technically untrustworthy magically, things might have been different if they were.

BUT and this is a big but, does the actual act of stripping a person of thier lineage stop them accessing the current, or thier ability to pass it on. Now I have given this some thought and will discuss this with those older and wiser than me at an appropriate time.  Yes it is magically possible to physically block a persons access, it could be done in a number of ways, including a direct working against the practitioner or via petitioning the enitites of that particular frequency of the spectrum.

However, in reality I doubt this happens very often, it’s more like a “sending to coventry” in the manner we all saw when we were kids, cut them out, turn your back and make damn sure as many of the other kids in the playground hear about the misdeed so as to ensure that nobody else will play with them.

Which of course then leads to another interesting conundrum, does the act of banishing an oath breaker actually remove anything other than the mundane label given to them by thier club? I suspect not!

Following a rather interesting blog entry by http://pagantoday.wordpress.com/ who I have enjoyed reading since I signed up, it got me thinking, not so much about the great wiccan/Wiccan debate and the validity of self initiation, but more the implications of such actions. But I suppose, loathe as I am to do it, we need to look at the purpose of initiation.

Talking to hardliners, they will tell you that you cannot access the mysteries unless you have been initiated into what ever the Trad is that you are claiming to be. Now I tend to think they are both very right and horrifically wrong. These so called “initiations into the mysteries” in my opinion is just the vehicle with which a particular group accesses a magical current.

I’ve been struggling with the term “magical current” and how to explain it. As a priestess of my chosen path, I can feel it and use it, but it is harder to convey in mere words, but I think I have come up with a good analogy.

If we consider magic to be much like the entirety of the light spectrum, some wavelengths are accessible by everybody and are there to be used, we could liken this to the visible spectrum of light. But further, with careful training and appropriate “filters” put in place it might be possbile to access the invisible spectrums, ultraviolet, infrared, microwave etc. Different groups will tap different parts of these unseen spectrums and this is thier current and “transmission” of the way to access these spectrums are formalised in the initiation ritual.

Now it is perfectly possible as a solitaire to also access these currents; in fact there is some basis for the argument that by being a solitaire this allows a freedom not enjoyed by others who maybe either through ignorance or deliberate choice be limited to a singular current and nothing else.

The problem arises as to what current the solitaire is actually accessing though; for example: Solitaire A decides to self initiate, and either through luck or hard work successfully accesses a part of (or even the entirety of) one or more magical currents, but what she has accessed is Luciferian rather than Wiccan (which is what they are after), what should they call themselves?

It then gets more complicated, what if Solitaire A actually accesses the current they are after, then finds a suitable Coven of the lineage they are hankering after.  Should thier existing link to the current then entitle them to a “fast track” scenario, especially if it is also obvious that they have put in the prerequisite practical and academic work in?

Lets say this happens and Solitaire A quickly makes it through their neophyte grade as a result of partial access, but they also have partial access as a result of thier self initiation to an other current. How will that affect the coven they are working with, this stuff is pretty viral you know, so then all of a sudden does the Coven have the right to claim thier name as associated with that current? Or should that part of the neophyte be “purged” for the sake of lineage and purity?

Tricky isn’t it? I do not profess to know the answer to any of it, my knee jerk feeling is that self initiation is perfectly possible and totally valid, as long as you do not claim to be of a named current (after all you will not really know if the current is the right one). If you feel like you need a name, call it yours, give it, it’s own name. After all that is what most of the big names in times gone by did.

I am not in a position to run a group, but the time is drawing nearer and nearer, and I suppose at some point I am going to have to discuss this with those older and wiser than me, but as for embracing or exterminating access to other currents brought in by self initiated neophytes; my gut says that as long as it isn’t at the complete other end of the spectrum or destructive, it should be integrated in a manner that benefits all. That’s how witches/magicians grow and progress, rather than becoming stale and dogmatic.

But of course all this is just my personal opinion and your mileage may vary.

I’ve spent best part of a fortnight now perusing different peoples blogs, it kills the time at work whilst I serve out the remainder of my notice and start looking forward to the new role awaiting me at the back end of this month.

Something has really struck me about the wordpress community is how little “flaming” and “trolling” goes on, even on the more heavily trafficked blogs. Opinions are given and discussed in an adult and appropriate manner. People seem to accept that not everybody is going to agree with everybody else. There is also a distinct lack of attention seeking “ranting” with heavily vieled comments refering to “somebody” else, never quite naming them but making sure every bugger in the world will know who is being spoken about.

Just people sharing thier thoughts, thier work, thier days and nights with little desire for anything other than the need to write it down. I am seeing little of people screaming out for validation. It’s really rather wonderful and I am really feeling good about creating a little place here where I can prattle away to myself and quietly enjoy the cathartic process of blogging.

Does make me wonder though, him indoors and I have joked about what archaeologists of the future will make of us; will there be in 10,000 years time a dig that uncovers a landfill full of server disc’s, will they surmise that in the early 21st century that there were different tribes; the wordpress tribe, the LJ’ers, the Moveable Types, the Blog Spotters. How will they define those tribes?

Hahaha perhaps the Moveable Types were Nomadic, the LJ’ers were group oriented warlike tribe, the Blog Spotters solitary creatures; but what would the wordpress tribe be? Lol the Druids perhaps

And who would they surmise our gods to be, assuming that God is even a concept in 10,000 years time, well of course there would be the great gods google and wikipedia that is for sure, would they assume that we were like the ancient egyptians we found cats sacred when they stumble upon Icanhazcheeseburger? Will leet speak be the new sacred alphabet, with great minds pondering for hours in a monastic and scholarly manner on the occult meaning of the words ”pwned!!!!” and “kthnxbye”