What 2020/21 taught me

In the ongoing dumpster fire which is the past year or so I have realised I didn't know something I thought I knew. I claim to be relatively diversity aware but have realised that I didn't know as much as I thought I did. A turning point was reading an account by a Black doctor in the US who was wary about taking the Pfizer covid vaccine. Her reflection was prefaced with how her own father's medical needs and concerns were neglected because he was Black, and went on to describe how she felt she had to do her own research into the vaccine to make sure it was safe because of the apparent speed of its licensing.

Remember this is an actual *doctor* and not some insane antivaxxer. She only became reassured when she saw pictures of Black people involved in the research. Far from a paranoid rant, this brought it home to me how endemic racism is and how Black people are literally terrified for their lives.

This coming on top of the BLM protests and the attempted insurrection by white trash in Washington, which was majorly averted by a Black police officer and then the wreckage was cleaned up by Black janitorial staff, has really brought this home.

The rioters actually carried 'blue lives matter' flags with them. Firstly there is no such thing as a blue life, and if you are carrying that flag and overpowering police it means it's not about respect for the police, it's about racism.

The rise of far right, unreasoning, extremism is really scary. At the absolute least Trump needs to be tried and this needs to be tackled.

Harvest

I like it lots when things I have sown years before come to fruition. Regular readers will remember the spot of bother at work I had some years ago, largely because of my manager at the time, Zippy. She was a bit screwed up to start off with, but was hit by the menopause, lost any interest in her job, and started asking any man she met to impregnate her. She shagged a friend of mine on the organisation's premises - sadly I couldn't cause her grief because although he had given me a rather sickening blow-by-blow account, I have a certain loyalty to him. She then tried to get him in trouble the day after for doing something which really wasn't a thing, which merely indicates what a cow she is. Then she married the least evidently heterosexual man in world history who made her pregnant in circumstances I don't care to think about. Another of her former friends who she has stabbed in the back told me that Zippy's husband doesn't like sex - since he previously gave me the come on with a very obvious hard on, I feel he likes sex perfectly well, just not with his wife. She miscarried his baby and then discovered she had Lady trouble, and they spent a fortune on IVF which failed - all while they didn't own a house or even a bed, and their baby was conceived on a mattress on the floor. She was already pushing fifty at this point and had stopped doing anything which might look like management of the team.

This is all background to say that I saw a job advertised in the team this week and Zippy is no longer manager. I got the cards depicted as an explanation of what happened and that's definitely pushed by a lot of stuff coming home at once. I love it when a plan comes together.

After the Revolution

I posted recently on the dangerous religious idea that something is willed by God, using the example of apartheid in South Africa to illustrate the kind of dangers that this idea can cause. Since then I have continued my reading around (mainly Southern) African history: I have actually been to Africa, to Kenya, but haven't really read the history. I'm horrified at the effect this reading has had on me: I'm in danger of getting to the point where I no longer believe anything anyone says on this subject because of the sheer contradiction & the sheer nonsense spouted by some people. From pseudo-scientific justifications for apartheid to the writings of those who explicitly want to remove Whites from Africa permanently, I'm finding a complex world of contradiction. Colonialism, even without apartheid, leaves a legacy of resentment, jealousy, paranoia, guilt, distrust, & a permanently dodgy power dynamic.
This kind of history is also well nigh impossible to come back from.
In the middle of all this, I was watching a Youtube video by a South African man talking about murders of whites, when I was captivated - he obviously assumed that everyone would know who this was & what it meant - by footage of a Black woman saying 'With our boxes of matches & our necklaces we shall liberate this country.' This refers to a particularly brutal form of murder with a peculiarly South African significance, since used on informers or collaborators in the townships. It's a horrendous death, but if you've been necklaced you're probably better off dead than rescued. The quote is one that is forever associated with the controversial Winnie Mandela. I was horrified to realise what she was talking about, but my friend in South Africa assures me that the beatings & imprisonment she's been through would be enough to turn anyone violent. This lengthy preamble brings me to the point of this post: what happens after the revolution is over - you'll notice that even I'm ducking facing the odious Mugabe, so my reflections on post-revolution revolutionaries will largely be based on an interview with Winnie Mandela (http://www.standard.co.uk/news/how-nelson-mandela-betrayed-us-says-exwife-winnie-6734116.html Quotations in this post are from that interview). The point of this in a blog about witchcraft is that we are accustomed to think that it is important not to limit the power of our magic - 'Impossible is nothing' should be our motto - but when you are in the middle of effecting change, it is easy to lose sight of what you want the final outcome to be, or even what you want the effect of the change to be on yourself. I realise that I am again using an extreme situation to illustrate a process of change that will usually be more subtle, but extreme situations make good illustrations, if bad law.
For a start it is impossible to avoid the legacy of the past, in fact Winnie Mandela talks about how the bizarre situation in South Africa had become normal:
'No, she was not happy. And she had her reasons. "I kept the movement alive," she began. "You have been in the township. You have seen how bleak it still is. Well, it was here where we flung the first stone. It was here where we shed so much blood. Nothing could have been achieved without the sacrifice of the people. Black people." [...] "The ANC was in exile. The entire leadership was on the run or in jail. And there was no one to remind these people, black people, of the horror of their daily reality; when something so abnormal as apartheid becomes a daily reality. It was our reality. And four generations had lived with it - as non-people."'
Similarly the sheer process of revolution leaves a legacy of trauma:
'"Yes, I was afraid in the beginning. But then there is only so much they can do to you. After that it is only death. They can only kill you, and as you see, I am still here."
'I knew that the apartheid enforcers had done everything in their power to break this woman. She had suffered every indignity a person could bear. They had picked her up in the night and placed her under house arrest in Brandfort, a border town in Orange Free State, 300 miles from Soweto. "It was exile," she said, "when everything else had failed."'
It was the above passage that really made my witch ears prick up & pay attention, since to me she is clearly describing an initiatory experience, with the key elements of death, danger & having to make decisions with no way back from them or even a way of knowing their possible outcome. And this is the point of using an extreme illustration here: outside of what might be called 'ritual' witchcraft, the world of magic is a powerful, scary life-changing, yet -threatening thing.
And of course you cannot predict where these decisions, necessarily made with no possible way of knowing the outcome, have results that are unexpected:
'"Look what they make him do. The great Mandela. He has no control or say any more. They put that huge statue of him right in the middle of the most affluent "white" area of Johannesburg. Not here where we spilled our blood and where it all started. Mandela is now a corporate foundation. He is wheeled out globally to collect the money and he is content doing that. The ANC have effectively sidelined him but they keep him as a figurehead for the sake of appearance."
'The eyes behind the grey tinted glasses were fiery with anger. It was an economic betrayal, she was saying, nothing had changed for the blacks, except that apartheid had officially gone. As she spoke of betrayal she inadvertently looked at a portrait of Mandela.
'I looked at Winnie. Maybe she did not know when to stop. Maybe that is the bane of a revolutionary: they gather such momentum that he or she can't stop. I saw that although her trials and tribulations had been recorded, the scars on the inner, most secret part of her spirit tormented her.'
And of course hindsight is a wonderful, if painful, thing:
'"You know, sometimes I think we had not thought it all out. There was no planning from our side. How could we? We were badly educated and the leadership does not acknowledge that. Maybe we have to go back to the drawing board and see where it all went wrong."
'This was Winnie the politician. This was the phoenix. Publicly, the ANC leadership, who made her a minister in the first post-apartheid government in 1994 and welcomed her back subsequently, distanced themselves from her amid allegations of corruption (in 2003, she was convicted of fraud and given a suspended prison sentence). But for the masses, she spoke their language and remains popular with those who feel their government hasn't done enough.
'We could see why the ANC had needed this obdurate woman. She was bold and had an idea of her worth. She was the perfect mistress for the ANC in the bad times but then she became dangerous.'
Despite my horror at some of the things she has been implicated in, I'm finding her a sympathetic character. I can't begin to understand what these people must have been through, it is too complex, foreign, extreme. Also she makes a very important point that the struggle should not be forgotten. It is a curious thing about humans that we tend to want an easy life, so soothe ourselves by looking at the past with rose-tinted spectacles. But that is not the way of the witch, since learning the lessons of history is the only way to ensure history doesn't keep repeating itself. Since, as a witch, I place so much importance in my life on living purposefully, instead of lurching from crisis to crisis, I can learn lessons from other people's pasts as well as my own.
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Gay Marriage is Self-Hatred

I keep saying this. I don't intend to stop saying it anytime soon. The 'gay community' is making a colossal mistake in pursuing 'marriage equality' with heterosexuals. I also keep on saying the real reason for this: homosexuals have internalised society's hatred of homosexuality to such an extent that they hate their own homosexuality & want to be heterosexuals. No, seriously. Otherwise why would they be seeking to buy into *the* major heterosexual institution?

Not that people say that. They will give various superficially-reasonable reasons for this, but now & then the real reason sneaks out. This, for example, is from an account of how All Saints Episcopal (that's Anglican to us) church in Los Angeles eventually came to bless same-gender relationships in the 1990s:

'Mark Benson and Phil Straw were among those who pushed Regas further. In November 1986 they first asked for a blessing on their union. When Regas offered to do something quiet and small in his office they politely declined. They had something else in mind � a service just like straight folk.' (http://walkingwithintegrity.blogspot.com/2012_01_01_archive.html?m=1)

The desire to be (including ape, imitate, seek equality with) something you are not indicates a profound dissatisfaction with who you are. Apart from anything else the heterosexual world presents major dangers to all homosexuals: the *most* innocuous of these is the 'opportunity' to buy into a heterosexual institution. This post was actually prompted by the picture of Alan Turing. I didn't know until today he has been granted a Queen's pardon. No, seriously. He's been pardoned for being given a choice of jail or chemical castration that drove him to his suicide. *This*, kids, is the society the marriage equality gays are buying into. I can't put it better than Ally Fogg in the Guardian:

'In announcing the pardon today, the justice secretary, Chris Grayling, said: "A pardon from the Queen is a fitting tribute to an exceptional man." Turing was certainly an exceptional man but the tribute could not be less fitting. It says that the British state is prepared to forgive historical homosexual acts providing they were performed by a national hero, academic giant or world-changing innovator. This is the polar opposite of the correct message. Turing should be forgiven not because he was a modern legend, but because he did absolutely nothing wrong. The only wrong was the venality of the law. It was wrong when it was used against Oscar Wilde, it was wrong when it was used against Turing and it was wrong when it was used against an estimated 75,000 other men, whether they were famous playwrights and scientists or squaddies, plumbers or office clerks. Each of those men was just as unfairly persecuted, and many suffered similarly awful fates. To single out Turing is to say these men are less deserving of justice because they were somehow less exceptional. That cannot be right.' (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/24/alan-turing-pardon-wrong-gay-men)

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Birmingham Peace Garden Again, Trauma, Wounds, Apologies, & the Function of Memory

I have been a couple of times since the work was done to make the church ruins safe, but neither was really conducive to photo-taking. Suffice to say that the actual remains of St Thomas's church are no longer fenced off, & some strapping stuff has been put around the top, presumably to stop bits falling off.

St Thomas's church, Bath Row, had its foundation stone laid by the Bishop of Worcester in 1829, & was what was known as a commissioners' church:

'The Church Building Act of 1818 granted money and established the Church Building Commission to build churches in the cities of the Industrial Revolution. These churches became known variously as Commissioners' churches, Waterloo churches or Million Act churches.' (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Commissioners)

It was bombed to ruins (apart from the tower) in 1940, the grounds then being turned into a public space, & ultimately into a peace garden in the 1990s. What is left of the church building is well & truly scarred within an inch of its life. My point here is that real peace cannot be achieved without some kind of acknowledgement of the wrong that has been done. I have written repeatedly about my strong reservations about 'forgiving & forgetting': mark my words, when you look carefully at a conflict you will frequently find the protagonist urging the object of the confict to forgive & forget.

I do not use the v-word, as is used on one of the plaques in the church: I will often not even allow that word to pass my lips. It is also, to my mind, one of the more twisted psychological mechanisms - by perpetually being the vistimised or oppressed one you eternally invite victimisation & push the other into the role of aggressor. This is one of the more manipulative ways to manoeuvre other people into actually being 'bad'.

None of this actually helps - nor does ignoring a wrong or creating some mechanism whereby we can 'move on' - the fad for apologising, from governments to popes, is one of the more dangerous ones in the modern world. This is *exactly* the approach that let's people get away with the same injuries to others over years, decades, centuries. Similarly it carries the danger of manoeuvring the target of a wrong into thinking there is something wrong with them because they don't feel able to just let it go. The kind of things that often get apologised for - wars, negligence, clerical sexual abuse - are the kind of things that we can reasonably expect to leave far-reaching scars that may never 'heal' in any substantial way.

You will of course raise the completely legitimate point that I'm not really proposing a final answer to this. I don't have one. Certainly in my own mind *nothing* is too bad to happen to the person who psychologically abused me. I will also not entertain the idea that something bad happening to the perpetrators of abuse will not actually help, because retribution would feel damn good, & I refuse to get into the mindset where I 'shouldn't' entertain that idea. What *should* happen is that the harm is acknowledged & not negated, the person is effectively prevented from being in positions of power (& believe you me, the powers that be *know* about this person & when his downfall comes you will read about it here), & receive these things as the consequences of his actions. Perhaps this is what I would be proposing on a greater scale - obviously it would require neutral intervention & what have you.

To me, at this length of time, World War II is a bit of an abstraction. Perhaps it takes at least fifty or sixty years for a trauma of that sort to begin to fade & become history. Of course we then come up against the mindset that refuses to learn from history. Perhaps it's a witch thing - because we notice stuff, we notice patterns of behaviour, even while trying to avoid our own tendencies towards repetitive nonproductive behaviour. I suppose this is another reason not to sweep previous trauma under the carpet - if it is still there hopefully people will notice it & not repeat our forefathers' regrettable actions.

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Hidden City: Dingley's Passage & The City Under The City

This is a post about an apparently insuperable problem in the history of my personal Hedge: it isn't solely an excuse to make rude remarks about getting to the bottom of Dingley's Passage if it kills me, so I'll get that out of the way right at the start. I discovered this place purely by chance on the way somewhere else: surely the best way to find somewhere, although I can see, like the hound I am, I'm going to have to annoy this one 'till I get to the bottom of it.

You see there's a particular difficulty in the exploration, history, & psychogeography of Birmingham, which is caused by the spirit of place itself. A Birmingham 'thing' is the mania for demolishing whole areas of the city every few decades & rebuilding them in the fashion of the time. This is not even something confined to the post-Second World War reconstruction, although that is perhaps the most apparent example. Another example would be the flattening of a whole swathe of city to create Corporation Street in the nineteenth century. A more minor example is the current relaying of lines for trams. I say relaying because actually they're being put down where the trams used to run anyway, before the rails were taken up on the perfectly reasonable rationale that things that run on rails are inflexible to say the least. The Hound's prediction is that in around a decade the present disarrangement of public transport (in bus form)  to several stopping points around the edges of what was the city centre in the days of the inner ring road, will be decried as ridiculous & buses will run down Corporation Street again.

The point of this lengthy digression from Dingley's Passage (it's not over yet, I somehow can't break myself of the habit of only getting to my actual subject in the last paragraph of a post) is to make the point that as a rule only the most recent reincarnation of the city is visible. Not that there is nothing old here: the soil under the Eastside Park has been analysed & shows evidence of deer farming in the Middle Ages. Even at the height of the concrete jungle days you just had to know where to look to find the history of all sorts of times. I suppose this inverts the 'witches look up' motif, to make it 'witches look down' or perhaps even 'witches look beneath'. This is necessary because in the case of Birmingham, there are frequently *no* indicators of what was there before (Dale End is a good example of this, see http://peteashton.com/2007/01/before_the_concrete_collar/ which has links to a further good collection of before pictures). The only other place I know of that changed so much is Sheffield: I can't think of anywhere else with such a new building mania. Coventry doesn't count because it came from necessity rather than a local tradition of frequent demolition & rebuilding.

In the case of the place I'm writing about today, it isn't the place that's hiding, it's actually any history or origin. The first picture shows the actual place - it's just an open space, beside a car park, leading to nowhere, but tarmaced & signposted with a very new-looking sign. It's on the corner of Moor Street & Albert Street: Albert Street shows its Victorian origins to a tee, & I was hoping Dingley's Passage would prove to be one with a history, like Christchurch Passage. But I was to be disappointed. The first thing I did was to search on Google: the passage appears on Google Maps, but nothing. No evidence of any history at all, just people wondering online the significance of Dingley's Passage. Exactly as I am doing here.

So I went home & looked on my 1901 Ordnance Survey map of the city centre (Witches look things up). It's not there. So, heart sinking, I went to the Library of Birmingham (Witches will not beaten by a mere street name). Anyone who's seen the local news recently will know that it's still not up & running ('Shambles...' Thundered the headline in the Birmingham Post), the staff are few & far between, etc. So I did something that normally never fails - picking books on the open shelving that looked hopeful & looking in the index for Dingley's Passage. Nothing. Their larger scale maps (for 1887, a snapshot of that corner is the second picture) also do not show it. It isn't even as if that corner has been too much altered: the inner ring road was right there, but I believe the road plan just there to have remained unaltered.

So then I had to tell the woman (who clearly normally works in a different department) that I needed Kelly's directory. Once she'd shown to the ones for Dundee & I found the Birmingham ones myself, I made the unsurprising discovery that Dingley's Passage does not make an appearance (I picked the 1958 one at random).

I do, however have a tentative theory. What appears on the 1887 map is one of the old courtyard buildings (they've all gone now except the National Trust one). My theory is that Dingley's passage could have started life as the passage marked under Victoria Buildings or the one into court 23. I wouldn't go to the stake for this theory, since Dingley's Passage seems to go at a different angle to either of those. It retains its mystery as to its origins & the reason for its continued existence.

There is a possible connection (quite likely, given the unusual name) between the Passage & a hotel that stood on Moor Street called Dingley's Hotel. Phyllis Nicklin's photograph of it in 1960 is the third picture. Memories abound of this hotel - it was dead swanky, frequented by businessmen & the great & the good. It is said to have been built c.1745. The memories of it may not quite agree with the reality - I notice from the Birmingham Post Year Book & Who's Who of 1960-1 that it had only 16 bedrooms - the second smallest of the twelve hotels in the city centre - & was recommended by neither the AA or the RAC. At the other end of the scale the Grand Hotel had 220 bedrooms & was recommended by both.

I am therefore forced to consider the name Dingley by itself. They are obviously quite some family locally: even today there are no fewer than nineteen professionals with this relatively unusual name on linkedin in Birmingham (I can't reference this, I can't get on the site, but that came at the top of a Google search for <Dingley Birmingham>). There is or was also an award & badge manufacturing firm in Warstone Lane.

On the principle of the most simple explanation being the most likely, I'll have to postulate that one or more of the Dingley family/ies either owned land around there or was even a leaseholder on the buildings. I'm fully expecting now that the history of this place will in the near future leap into my lap - maybe even from a visitor to this site - purely because I've dug down below the surface, so have no doubt I've disturbed whatever is down there.

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1960s images of Birmingham

This post is a reflection on a particular time in the history of my personal hedge. These images are screencaps from an old TV programme called Public Eye, some of which are set in Birmingham. The town planning of Birmingham of the sixties was notorious, although as I have commented before, the ephemeral nature of the 'concrete collar' round the city centre is what made another redevelopment possible: retention of the original buildings would have led to more listings & crippled development.

Several of the scenes are round the Bull Ring, also capialising on the Rotunda. The one with the actor running along a concrete wall is by the old bus station. Some scenes in the programme are actually shot in the Bull Ring bus station, but I didn't feel inclined to include them - it always was unsavoury.

What these images do do is show how visually effective Birmingham's sixties design was. The last two scenes are from underpasses (I don't know which, just generic underpasses), which could almost have been designed as settings for a gritty sixties TV series about a private investigator! I also like the architectural nature of the tile mural in one of them. Although the design was widely criticised virtually from the start, these images serve as a reminder of what Birmingham was like for a relatively short period of time, when a despised element of its history was all new & shiny!

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What Witchcraft means to me

I am frankly still reeling from meeting the newcomers to our group last week, & the shock of meeting someone who actually believed that the Law of Threefold Return is an actual objective physical law. One of them seemed to own a greater influence from Buddhism & the other was so busy trying not to be pigeonholed that I'm frankly unable to tell what his major influences were, although there must have been a Neo-Pagan influence at some point for him to take the LoTR so seriously.
If it is any indicator of the difference in milieu between their Pagan/Buddhist approach & we witches, they went home at 10ish to meditate & we carried on drinking in the pub, divining what the sexy one's penis was like with tarot cards. Whatever else, witches have more fun.
I already posted why I think the Law of Threefold Return is an existential nonentity, the via negativa approach, so now I'll post a few thoughts on what I perceive witchcraft actually to be, the via positiva approach. This is not really a final statement even for me personally, nor does it represent the views of any group, & even before I've started this post proper I just know that I am going to contradict myself multiple times!
Witchcraft is a nebulous, multivalent entity, almost impossible to define because of the multiple uses of the word over the centuries, most of them negative. We who call ourselves witches in modern times are plugging into this entity of egregore which exists in our communal mind. Witchcraft is the very simple, yet radical & to some extremely dangerous, idea that as individuals we should be sovereign over our own lives & destinies. This should be reciprocal so that it does not mean infringing the sovereignty of another. Witchcraft is to live as divine in a divine world. We recognise other entities as gods & goddesses, but our refusal to create an artificial separation between the divine & everything else means we see events around us in an almost epic way, & the smallest actions assume an importance they would not otherwise have. From individual sovereignty follows the idea that we need not feel obliged to accept whatever comes in our direction, whether by the actions of another person, or seemingly by fate. Witchcraft means having an obligation to discern all parts of a situation, including making a full & frank inventory of the part we ourselves play in it. The classic example of this would be the woman who keeps marrying abusive husbands: yes, the husbands are wrong, but if you keep on doing something you have to own the part you play in it sooner or later. Sovereignty means you have no choice but to accept ownership of your actions. From sovereignty & ownership come consequences, responsibility & privilege. Actions are both more & less important for us, I feel no obligation to beat myself up if I cock it up, knowing that a messed-up opportunity will come round again. I will resist with every last breath in my body, any notion of divine, existential or temporal punishment for myself or others. The fact that the majority of the world's population starves in poverty is because of the minority's greed. This does not always provide an explanation for when shit happens of course: my feeling is that the witch's way here is not to over-analyse but to get on with dealing with it. Witchcraft is having an obligation to treat those who come to you for ministration (and believe you me, they do come, even when they have no idea you're a witch) with respect & what they tell you with confidentiality. To be a witch is to be presented with situations where you feel a duty to improve something or to correct something, & often you are the only person who can do anything about it. This is both a privilege & a challenge, because... Witchcraft is to find your daily life wrapped up with your own & others' ontological development, so that your simplest actions attain a seemingly disproportionate importance. There is no comfort here since usually what you are placed in a position of having to do the one thing you don't want to do. Conversely, witchcraft is to know the ecstasy of the Goddess: this is attainable to all without need for 'conversion' or to believe anything. However if you're a witch & you're not also having more fun than the muggles even in the midst of matters of great moment, you're doing something wrong. (Ah ha! Think I've found a way in to my post on 'mirth & reverence' that has been giving me so much trouble). Now, to anyone who says, 'That isn't in Scott Cunningham!' - I say, Great! I'm a witch, not the pope! I actively want people to do what I outline above, & am very happy to have people disagree with me, because that is you accepting your personal sovereignty. Anyone who would see me as beginning some kind of tradition of witchcraft or laying down rules for others to follow, really hasn't been paying attention & should begin reading this post again at the top.
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Coventry and modernism revisited, and Rod the God

Last night I was watching Danger Man & conceived the notion of an outing to Coventry today. The titles of that show so make me think of Coventry station: forty years ago they would both have summoned up the same idea of modern city sophistication, forward-looking & unhampered by the bonds of the past.
Recently in my reading about urban exploration on the internet (not doing it myself, I hasten to add, I might break a fingernail) I've come across a reason why modernism has ceded to postmodernism. A search for modern derelict, abandoned, loved/loathed buildings shows that they are precisely those buildings that embody an ideology whose time has passed. In Britain perhaps Park Hill flats in Sheffield would be the best example of that, although they, like the (in)famous Trellick Tower in London are in the throes of gentrification. Both of those were designed by architects and councils who wanted a better life *for other people*. It seems hoi polloi have rarely bought into modernism; albeit Park Hill was seen as heaven when new until the rot set in.
Modernism as the embodiment of someone else's ideology in Cold War western Europe may be seen in some relics is communist architecture in the former Eastern Europe, such as the former Communist Party headquarters in Bulgaria. From the west in the 1980s this must have had the appearance of regimentation, a closed system which allowed corruption & ultimately the Chernobyl disaster, a corruption & creeping decay hidden under the appearance of a bright new future. The communist headquarters had 'forget your past' in huge letters above the door: the exact opposite of what anyone in the west who wanted to avoid the menace from across the curtain would have wanted to do. The mosaics in the headquarters are drop dead gorgeous to my mind: extremely reminiscent of the sort of public art put up in the doomed underpasses of the post-war town planners' Britain. Once again the theme of regimentation & an enforced bright new future which doesn't really happen, appears. Also the brutalist/regimented/socialist/communalist ideology draws on motifs alien to us in the west. The person from whose blog come the last three images (acknowledgement: www.thebohemianblog.com) thinks that the final picture is a depiction of the pre-Christian Slav God Rod. It seems there is some debate about his standing in ancient pantheons, but in neo-pagan systems he has become a central deity. I don't think for an instant his name is pronounced to rhyme with 'god', but I have been unable to find the correct pronunciation online. To the inhabitants of western 'Christendom' modernism may therefore seem a heathen imposition of ungodly values & doomed. Ironic that since then not only has Western europe become increasingly post-Christian, but Christianity has had a real resurgence in the east, along with neo-paganism, and the full revelation of how corrupt western Christendom really is! The bigger picture is this: political systems come & go, they and religions have declines & resurgences. Our present realities can seem different in hindsight. By all means construct your future, but be careful not to forget your past because that is the source of the present. Even if we need to dis-member it to re-member it as an archaic future, it is essential not to deny it because it might just bite you on the bum.
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Hand to the plough

I have had a Christmas card from some family friends. It says 'we hope you are well & that you will go to see your mother over Christmas. She is the only one you will ever have.'
This initially made me angry: she has obviously been telling them that I've made no effort with her (I have), that she doesn't know why I'm not seeing her (that'll be because she doesn't listen), that she's got dementia (she hasn't), that she can't remember anything (she doesn't, but only because she doesn't listen; she has no memory deficits & this is a volitional forgetfulness), that I want her to go in a home so I can have her house (I have a home of my own & need or want nothing of hers). I was minded to ring them up & put them straight on a few things, but it's really difficult to know what one would say in the circumstances. 'My mother has led me a merry dance for the past few years (in fact decades) & I've had enough'? 'My mother is lying to you as she has repeatedly to me over the years'? 'There is actually nothing wrong with her at all'? 'How about you have a go at trying to help her with the difficulties she herself identifies & see what happens'?
Several things have fallen into place for me this year: people who have known her years have told me things that have illuminated things that have happened over the years. I feel, in fact, that my mother may have an undiagnosed personality disorder, which she is now less able to keep hidden. I thought she could be dementing because of a change in personality, but she has tested as negative, so I am forced to see that what I see now has always been there under the surface. The actual effect on me has been what we occultists would call psychic vampirism (I don't know how cowans cope with life).
For me as a witch, how this affects me is that I have to protect myself, because she will quite happily drain the life out of me. I was expecting reactions from family friends because this will be the first Christmas we've been estranged. I'm used after knowing her for four decades, to everything being my fault. I'm also used to people telling me what I *ought* to be feeling & doing. In fact I would consider the people who wrote me the card to be a model of playing at happy families: this is the woman who never bothered telling her family she had had breast cancer till one of her daughters died.
Guess what: I don't feel obliged to justify or explain. I have made a decision which is best for *me* after having tried to obtain the outcome I really wanted & been unable to. Yes, it's selfish, but for the first time in my life it is not being run by my mother. In fact I think this may be the first really grown up decision I've ever made. I've put my hand to the plough & will not now look back.
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