nicnevyn

Long story most of the details of which I will not go into so as to protect the not so innocent. But basically some 6 months ago I had a very near scrape with an ”interesting” personality that is more than just a little well known for causing witch-wars. The way I dealt with it then was to take them at their word, when they signed off the flurry of e-mails I recieved over a number of days, which stated things like “This will be the last you hear from me”, “I will never contact you again” and other such affirmations; and didn’t respond. Eventually they did stop, and a few weeks later the furore died down.

So imagine my surprise when a few weeks ago, said person contacted me again, professing to want closure, professing to want to move on, professing to want to be able to clear the air so that the “moving on” process could be done with a lack of animosity. Yeah I know call me a bloody idiot, after weeks of thinking about it, reading and re-reading I figured that perhaps they were being genuine and an adult discourse that would enable this could ensue. Fool, fool, fool, fool!

It took me weeks to respond, writing and rewriting my responses, even getting a non involved and objective 3rd party to vet what I was saying. Now don’t get me wrong, what I had to say was harsh, but it was fair, neutrally worded and non confrontational. I knew I wasn’t going to make a friend from what I said, but that wasn’t what it was about, it was about disscussing like adults, clearing the air and moving on right? WRONG!

So in future if anybody ever contacts me in a similar manner I shall remember the words of my husband, when last night I showed him the angry and defensive emails that had dropped into my box during the day:

“they didn’t want a rational conversation that facilitated closure, they wanted to have the last word and can’t stomach the fact that you have replied and particularly in a manner that meant a few home truths were spoken”

So the lesson for today, is don’t EVER poke the nutters with a pointy stick, even when they are doing a very good job of pretending to be a rational human being.

Well we’ve done the math, and I mean really done it. We reckon we can reduce our outgoings by a third without really feeling the pinch too much. So the decision is made, I am taking a few months off work, this is crunch time, the book it appears is going to be written whether I want it to be or not. I suddenly feel like a huge weight is off my shoulders.

Ah well the PTB’s work in mysterious ways.

It has now been suggested to me several times that I ought to commit the last 5 years worth of research and work to print, the idea has been growing on me exponentially over the last month or so; initially I was very resistant to the idea as I really wasn’t sure that I had the level of knowledge or experience to justify putting my work out to the general pagan/magical populace.

I suppose the final clincher was running the workshop the other weekend, there I was sat in a room telling people about my research, how I used the research to create ritual in which I could better gain a working relationship with the entity in question, how you could extrapolate other syncretic areas of folklore, mythology and the occult to create a tangible working system based around said entity, guiding them in pathworkings and leading them in a ritual based upon the materials I had given them to study.

And for the first time ever, I realised, I did actually have something worthwhile to give to others. A something that has, with a few notable exceptions been mostly neglected in the genre of popular occultism, in fact I can only think of two books in the entire marketplace that actually address this entity within a magical context, most of the extant texts are the result of a Phd thesis or other academically focussed work.

So here I am with an outline of what I want to cover and how, and I am pondering two questions and I am sure somebody on wordpress will have the answers if they read this. Firstly what is the average word-count required for a manuscript; I believe 50,000 is considered a novella - so would 100,000 be a good ball park figure? Secondly how far is too far when expounding personal inverifiable gnosis, can you put just about anything down as long as you make it VERY clear that what you are writing is gnosis and cannot neccessairly be backed up with cold hard fact?

Oh which leads me to thirdly, when writing a “magical” book what is a good balance between academic and practical; especially considering that there is a woefully inadequate amount of decent academic techniques employed in many magical/pagan pbulications?

Thanks in advance to anybody that see this and can perhaps give me some sage words of wisdom.