My Field Trip to the Pitt Rivers Museum

I have revisited the Pitt Rivers museum in Oxford after a gap of 20 years. Naturally it doesn't look to have changed much in that time, but has been the cause of my realisation that I have changed considerably. When I first visited, of course I was already a witch really: I just hadn't realised it. Now I am tending to see the collection rather differently, and what most strikes me is the small corner devoted to the paraphernalia of magic. The talismans and what have you in the section are obviously explicitly for magical use. But the collection (intentionally or not) gives the impression that the use of magic has ceased in the modern era. As a modern magician what also struck me about the rest of the collection was that virtually everything could be used for magic at a push - masks and various items of clothing, for example. As I say this means a marked change in my own mindset since I first visited the museum as a student.
The other thing which strikes me is the fact that much of the collection is either of offensive or defensive use, indicating that these are the true motivations of so much human behaviour.
The item which most struck me was a monkey's skull used by headhunters' children in Borneo as a play way of preparing for real head hunting in later life. I want one!

Black Magic

Some themes recur again and again in my life, and thus in this blog. I can get a bit dogmatic about them, but for me they form the major ascesis of my witching life.
One of them is that both the white magic and black magic brigades are on a hiding to nothing. An agency worker the other day was talking an impressive array of weird shit and ultimately said that her mother is 'a white witch '. I am not a white witch. Of course that is a statement which will have people up in arms. What I mean by that is that I am not a person who kids myself that all can only ever be positive and sweetness and light. Put like that it sounds ridiculous, but that is actually what white magic means. Personally I don't have time for all that - the real work of the witch calls and there are rapists out there needing erectile dysfunction.
Neither am I a black magician, although regular readers here will agree with me that my magic inclines towards the 'left hand path' of development by breaking taboos and conventions. The definition of black magic as being for purely selfish purposes is a parody of any magical system ever, and clearly originates in a fear of magic as well as an unquestioning acceptance of our society's equation of black with bad.
In fact any attempt to be all good or bad creates a dualism where the opposite springs into prominence. Hence the invention of the devil. A wholly good monotheistic deity leaves a vacuum which needs to be filled. Similarly attempts to ignore human impulses such as sex and hate creates a dualism where these impulses become the very devil.
I have been scouring the Internet and failed to find a definition I attribute to Crowley that the black magician is one who will not accept change (I'm doing this from memory and can't even remember where I read this so don't quote me). I'm guessing that he meant by that that that sort of magician misses the point of magic - for Crowley, the knowledge and conversation of ones Holy Guardian Angel - and instead aspires to some goal of his own devising. I'm interpreting this half-remembered quote therefore as meaning that 'black' magic misses the point completely. Interestingly in this view the black and white crowds actually fall into the same trap of setting their sights on the wrong thing and missing the point.
More of my little dogmatic opinions are that the Lady will always provide and the right resources will always appear at the right moment. One I think I've talked about less here is the paradox that the adventure of magic both keeps its practitioners young and also ages them. It ages people because magic works to move people on to the next thing, resulting in much illness and trouble in life. It keeps them young, because magic nurtures a childlike sense of play and adventure which the muggles just don't have. A sense of play combined with a matter of fact acceptance of the opportunities the universe sends ones way, is a recipe for a youthful resilience which can be extended well into old age.
The details are nowhere near sorted yet but a major opportunity seems to be arising in my work life. Away from Zippy permanently with excellent prospects for promotion and development. I have viewed my current difficult circumstances at work as an opportunity and so the universe has come up with the goods. Lucky I'm not one of those awful black magicians - damn, I've bitten my tongue, it's so far in my cheek - who set their minds on the wrong things and so don't accept the universe's gift!

The Importance of Memory

In my last post I wrote about cursing my immediate manager. Of course as so often happens I've cast a spell & have wound up being the agent of the spell.

In this case my manager decided she had no option but to take my letter to her boss who is instituting an enquiry into the fairly major concerns I raise.

And here's the Importance of memory. There is a great Christian tradition that if we forget other people's sins & concentrate on our own, God will forget ours. This is one of the things which allows clergy to abuse children with impunity. There is another broader spiritual tradition which also advocates forgetting. Much of the modern therapy culture accents forgiving & moving on. This is bollocks & I am the witness that this is so.

One of the reasons my manager is now furious that this has started (and remember she only had to adjust my duties slightly) is she knows I keep notes. Not mental notes. Actual notes in a notebook. I also save emails of importance in a particular folder. I have a flight bag of things as well, stretching back seven years to the spot of bother at work that made me realize the importance of this.

I know it seems anal, & is such an INFJ thing, but it means I have chapter and verse at my fingertips. I can provide dates I told her things repeatedly & her response. She has none of this, because she's so uninterested in her job she doesn't do any managing at all, let alone keep records.

In fact - my friend overheard her comment that I once left a tea bag on the side in the kitchen. That is the level on which she can answer me.

Witches remember!

(Picture credit: here)

My problem with responsibility

I have been absent from here for some time. One of the reasons for that is that I periodically think to myself 'I must write a blog post', and when I think that I know that writing a post because I feel beholden to this blog in some way is the wrong reason to do it.

I remain in the process of finding a permanent home, and in true witch style, if you should wish to find me you only have to follow the trail of bruised and bloodied estate agents to find me. Honestly, these people actively try to stop themselves doing their own job. I seem finally to have found an estate agent who is up to my standards of sensibleness and reliability. If I email her a question she replies either the same day with the information I require or to say she is finding it out. In fact, she's almost come on side (don't worry, the Hound hasn't forgotten that estate agents are in the employ of the vendor, although you wouldn't think that by the one I had). I was even impressed to find that although they've got a very swanky address in the Jewellery Quarter, they seem to be renting an office in a Georgian building which is at best tatty. Doing their job, instead of 'kippers and curtains'.

My thoughts have mostly been turning to the enduring problem I have with that word 'responsibility'. The heavy emphasis placed on this in the witchcraft community almost implies at times that taking responsibility for a situation means anything that goes wrong is always your own fault. Sometimes it is, of course, and the test of that is a frank evaluation of whether you've actually done everything you can to remedy a situation. There is another team in my workplace which has been having a very hard time, for example. I have limited sympathy for them because when you asked whether they have brought collective grievances, and so on, the answer is of course no. A major part of the problem is clearly themselves.

A very different situation is where someone is misusing power over you. In that situation, although the witch must always attempt to make of the situation what she wills, it is possible that your efforts will come to nothing. Apart from the fact that it is usually in that situation, where your back is to the wall, that magic is most spectacularly effective, ones ability to take responsibility for a situation can be compromised by somebody else's actions. This is seen most simply in a lot of bullying behaviours, which is why they are so tortuous for the target. I will still not allow that word that begins with a v to pass my lips.

And this is nicely where the witch comes in, but not in the way you may be expecting. As witches our bread and butter is taking a situation and making something different of it. This is the real fear which witchcraft will always put into those around us. People don't think that we should be able to create independently. Certainly for the Abrahamic traditions which mainly surround us at this end of Europe, creation is a function reserved to God. Witchcraft, by blurring the rigid distinction between what is divine and what is human, permanently puts the mockers on being told that we can't do something.

That said, one of the phrases I do love in the Christian tradition is 'the sins crying to heaven for vengeance'. There are only four of them, they can be found in the Bible. It is this idea of an act so bad it calls for its immediate divine retribution. I'm going to say something quite radical here – I would love to meet a real Christian. I have a feeling that I would get on with a real Christian extremely well, although they would consider me damned. That simple embodiment of divinity in the world is almost exactly what we witches do, with a few different emphases. They would ask God for vengeance on an injustice – we would damn well create that vengeance. It's what we do best, although as everything else it has a come back for the witch, in that once you've dealt with a particular situation, you seem to attract that situation again. Nature knows you can deal with this particular set of circumstances so those circumstances get sent to you over and over again.

And it should come as no surprise to the witch. It has come as no surprise to me that while I have found one estate agent I'm impressed with and my purchase of an absurdly cheap apartment is going through remarkably easily – that is just the hedge looking after the witch. It's one of the things that happens when you bow deeply to the universe: it bows back (I have borrowed this phrase from Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of Aikido). For the witch, what she needs will literally fall into her lap at the exact right moment. If it doesn't, give something away. Nature abhors a vacuum and will not be outdone in generosity.

But the real responsibility is to know that in the same time frame I will be cursed with an absolutely idiotic letting agent. I'll assume if you're reading this you're a clever person, but unfortunately it is the case that the majority of the world's population don't learn. They keep on ignoring the blatantly obvious and ending up paying the price. It's just another case of moaning but not doing anything to make a change. I'll also assume if you're reading this, you will understand that I am the warning. You don't need to know that I attempt to be both mercy and severity at once to understand that as a human being you should treat me right. I don't expect to be given special treatment, you don't have to know I'm a witch, you just have to do the right thing. This agent took a reference from my employer, which asked amongst other things, about my attitude to other people's property. They were asking the wrong question. They should have asked what kind of enemy I would make. It's not difficult, they only had to mend the gutter. When they didn't, I also made it plain they only had to write me a cheque to compensate me for the damage. When they didn't they made the mistake of trying to intimidate me out of taking legal action. They should really have asked what I am like when the gloves are off, because that's when it gets painful, and it will be painful because they have invited the universe to cause them pain by not treating the witch right.

As usual the hedge has bent over backwards to take care of me, not least because I'm sitting here writing this virtually on top of the river which is the reason for the city. Advertisements have appeared in Birmingham's buses for a solicitors firm which specialises in tenancy problems, and I have put the problem in their hands. They are no win no fee, so I stand not to lose anything, whatever happens. The lettings agency have invited the hedge to give them trouble. It will end costing them much more money (and what's the betting they'll be really pissed off when I turn down monetary offers associated with gagging clauses?), and the negative publicity will cause their business to be dissolved again. I notice a business of the same name was dissolved in 2010. I'm a witch and an INFJ: don't piss me off because I will find out your stuff. And here's what they will do next: they will put up the rent when my assured shorthold tenancy comes to an end. Not a problem – grist to my mill, that is. In something like two months' time I will be all set up in the city centre. And all of this will come out in court. Because they wouldn't take responsibility, this is. They've attracted to themselves someone who will and will take them to school.

Incidentally, I must post the result of another post I've made a little while back, about having a problem with someone at work. I eventually withdrew my complaint, but what I didn't know was that while I sent mine in, another one went in as well. He applied for a promotion, and didn't get it, to his great chagrin. Shame. Shouldn't be an idiot. It's just some people need a firm lesson a right action. And there's no guarantee they'll get the lesson.

How to Tell a Genuine Magical Practitioner from a Confidence Trickster

I'm going to start this by declaring a marked bias: while I understand that people have an ambivalent relationship with the magical arts, it seems to me extraordinary the way people go to other people to do magic for them. To me magic is something you do, you can't get it (except indirectly through knowledge) online. Nonetheless people have always gone to other people & handed over money for the practitioner to get their hands dirty so that they could either say they hadn't done it themselves or thought they'd get better results. This unfortunately leaves people at risk of confidence tricksters, who are relatively secure in the knowledge that people will be too embarrassed to tell the police they've been tricked by a sorcerer. There is a rise of traditional African healers, sangomas, ngangas, & what have you, in Britain. Certainly I get loads of adverts for them put through the door: some make incredible claims, but the phenomenon is giving rise to concern amongst the chattering classes (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-158843/Witchdoctors-exposed.html and http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/british-witch-doctors-charge-3000-3247614). So here, as a public service, the Hound will give his personal take on how not to be taken in, & a way of avoiding the problem completely.
There are two ways to tell a fake, & the first is the more difficult because it requires that painful thing, self-knowledge. If you want final stage lung cancer cured, if you spend every night on the phone to psychic lines wanting to know when your man (whom you haven't seen since 1992) is coming back to you, in the real world you're a sitting target for confidence tricksters. So you must start by asking yourself how possible your desire really is. And here's the thing: by doing this, by subtly changing your world-view & protecting yourself against worries, dangers & people that prey on you, you are actually starting to do magic.
The second key is to understand how magic works. This comes second, because you have to do the magical act of a full & frank self-examination to get into the magical worldview first. All of the definitions of magic involve change of some sort. I like to think it is magic whenever anyone does an act that will result in life improving or at least changing in some way. Anything. Because once you've done that you are taking charge of your life & making change happen.
My personal solution to this situation would be that it is better to do the magic yourself. You have the ability to do it. Stop looking over your shoulder, I mean you. You! No, *YOU*! Reader of this blog, you can work magic.
'But I don't know how,' you may say, which brings me nicely to another point about how real magic works so that people can recognise it. When you need it, the magic will always be there. The means to do it will come to your hand, if you can trust that that will happen, & keep your eyes open to see the means of your liberation come to hand. I'm not giving you instructions, because we all work magic differently, my way may not be your way. But when your back is to the wall, if you have the *will* to do it, the means will come to hand. For example, you may say a prayer. That magic is called theurgy. This may sound terrible if you have a conventional religious background, but I've touched right to the heart of why religion has a problem with magic: the boundary is blurry & religion's in denial! Nor is there a question of technical skill - we're accustomed to getting in experts for IT nowadays, but we're talking about an ancient technology that we have built in, & you don't need an expert for it. People's first spell is quite often incredibly effective: the universe /G*ddess, what have you, will not be outdone in generosity.
I must say something about cost. I personally have grown up in the school of not equating magic with money. It fixes the magic to only one of the four 'elements', ultimately limiting it if you're not carefully. My other problem with this is that magic is very expensive. But not in monetary terms - usually if you've got your back to the wall you'll already have paid for it.
So if you still insist on getting someone else to do it (there are circumstances in which I would ask someone to do it for me, but in my experience a soul mate will appear at that moment) a genuine magical practitioner will broadly speaking fit in with these characteristics of magic. S/he will speak directly to your situation at the time, opening up new insights & actually helping you in the process of change that is magic. A good sorcerer will have a personal code of ethics that they should be able to explain to you & should turn down certain types of work. Merely meeting them will make you feel like a burden's been lifted - this is what magic should feel like.
Certain things should indicate the practitioner should be avoided completely. The classic is telling you you've been cursed & it will require further work to sort it. Most people actually curse themselves, but anyway don't go near this person again. Also don't fear that they will curse you (they may threaten you, in which case ring the police) - they don't understand curses & clearly have no magical ability. A requirement for rare herbs that can only be gathered from some strange place far abroad at great expense is also bullshit of the highest order & indicates a confidence trickster who doesn't understand magic. The American folk magic system of hoodoo originated in the practices of slaves who were cut off from the West coast of Africa & had to adapt to what they had at hand. *That* is real magic. Any use of cold reading techniques is incredibly suspicious, or 'barnum' statements. Avoid them. Work that doesn't have an end date or full price equals confidence trick - avoid them. (Are you seeing why I say it's better to do it yourself?) A friend (who is an incredibly powerful witch) recently accompanied a friend to a traditional sangoma, who didn't pick up or acknowledge that she's a witch. Believe me, you can't miss it. Suffice to say, even I'm in awe of her. I'm tempted to say take a witch with you, but I really genuinely think it's better to avoid these people. The means will always come to hand when you need it.
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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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How people get drawn to the witch

I've been thinking this week, not for the first time, of the way the witch functions in the world - not really in terms of polarity as such, but certainly in terms of attraction. The received wisdom is that what you give out returns to you, indicating that what comes to you is somehow of your own causation. This is patently nonsense. If it was true, I would only be surrounded by well-wishing people who just want to get on with life & make the world a better place. I'm writing this with a completely straight face. Instead yesterday I remonstrated with a bus driver who thought it would be hilarious to pretend not to hear me after I asked her to let me off when the bus was just sitting in a stop, instead driving off. I could have told her that she really ought to get her stomach problem looked at by a doctor, & instead I happen to know that the irritations she causes to other people have all come back at once. Similarly, the doctor's rceptionist was very disappointed when I actually asked for an appointment on a date when she couldn't find a 'reason' not to give me one.
What's going on here? - my feeling is that people end up in the orbit of the witch to get something they need, whether it be a healing, a lesson, a cosmic slap, whatever. In no way do we judge or create these scenarios, we don't need to, they just happen. The so-called Law of Attraction (or return) is right, insofar as we live in a universe of interacting substances. Just as homeostasis is maintained by the continual interaction & competition of numerous substances & entities, so situations will be drawn into the orbit of the witch who can & will do what is necessary. We all have a magical 'signature' & that is what draws the scenarios best dealt with by our kind of magic, into our orbit. I am *not* saying that you attract what you do to happen to you, I am saying that you attract (by positive or negative feedback) the situations that are corrected by the things you do. I would even go so far as to say that you could consciously slightly change your magical signature, & hence what you attract to yourself, but in reality this interaction is also influenced by where the witch is herself, so while not being quite fated, the point is much more how you personally respond. Since feedback comes in positive & negative forms, your response can still influence this either way & may increase or decrease the occurrence of the same situation. Hence the importance of divination, to see the things you 'can't' see.
Once a person takes on the mantle of the witch figure, her interactions with the whole world change. I fully expected, when I started this blog, that it would be visited mostly by witches. I'm sure this is partly the case - certainly the high number of page views from America & the relatively high number of searches for witchy things that come here, would suggest this is the case. But I've also been surprised at some of the searches that unwittingly bring people into the orbit of the witch. Google 'gay men and their mothers', for instance, & this blog is on the first page of results. Some people find themselves reading my pages on the spirit of place, having searched for information on specific places. Just to finish: this is the list of searches that have brought people here this week. I'm just sad that Philipp Tanzer, who appeared last week, is missing. I've literally just mentioned him *once*, talking about tattoos! The point of this is that people don't find themselves in the orbit of the witch because they are consciously looking for a witch, but for all sorts of reasons. Even the witch won't always see the bigger picture or know why, but my conviction remains that it is our duty & privilege to help & heal all that comes to us. Our ability to do so depends on it, this is what Robert Cochrane was referring to when he spoke about accepting all that comes, partnered with using all means necessary, which does not mean a passive acceptance of things as they are, it means an active acceptance of everything as part of homeostasis.

Entry Pageviews
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ye bok of ye art magical.pdf
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Witches know (2)

My goodness, the weirdness has been coming thick & fast this week: this is (obviously) a continuation of the last post. One of the things I've been thinking about is how we witches see things on all sort of levels (by which I mean the planes of occultism) & thus also act on all those levels.

Where we left this was after a friend did a reading indicating that a criminal activity was going on in a certain street of the city, which was being covered up by powerful people, but that this situation was on the turn. Of course I kept this reading to myself, I mean I wouldn't want anyone to think I was weird. Actually the real reason was that I've been thinking this matter was something that was a 'task' being put in my way. Needless to say this was confirmed by a friend, who doesn't know the area. She told me that it was the *street* that needed clearing up, rather than the - to me - immediate problem of the criminal activity, & that was what I needed to do (she said there was a load of yuck that has been building up there for centuries & it just attracts more). She said that the illegality is so close to being sorted, the police would be close on my tail. The perpetrators would all be arrested & convicted except one who would get away.

By this stage it was so obvious that I was being prodded into action I had to do it. In the morning I visualised the street opening up & a wind blowing through it, cleaning it up. I did this for no reason at all - I just awoke with the conviction that the street I'm still not naming was somehow 'blocked'. Certainly when I got there later in the day it felt radically different, & for the first time I could actually walk that street without discomfort.

I started by invoking Hecate, & is she pissed. It was clearly her pushing me into doing something about this: the situation is the kind of thing that makes her angry. I'm a great one for using whatever is to hand for magic, so I continued by calling on all the angry, discontented spirits of the place, everyone who has suffered there over the centuries (it's one of the older areas of the city). This will ensure that that one perp who thinks he's getting off scot-free will end up throwing himself on the mercy of the law. What the witch has for him is much worse, much much worse: he will have no peace anywhere, none, not the slightest moment of rest, peace, relaxation or calm. And this is justified, oh how this is justified. Turds like that are *exactly* what the Goddess Hecate hates most. And the best bit (for me) was making a union with the dead in that place, using their anger, using the slime that has built up there to make sure this cannot continue. This is the heart of witchcraft: transforming cruelty into good, balancing the books, calling it what you will.

Next I walked the street sprinkling sea salt & mentally uttering a cleansing charm. I did this in broad day light (I hate that street at night) by having the salt in a carrier bag with a hole in it. Good indicators are that I felt no disturbance at all when I came back, & that I've been feeling like the itch has gone. I've rearranged something on a very deep level, now to see what happens on our plane. Watch this space: I've got a Birmingham Mail, & just haven't looked at it yet...

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Witches know

Something I keep banging on about is the Hedge, which is the environment in which the witch finds herself, on all levels. The hedge of course refers to boundaries & the ability to see ones environment on lots of different levels at once. It is in the hedge that we find the challenges that need to be faced, & which cumulatively constitute an initiatory experience for the witch.

I have recently come across a challenge in my hedge, which I'm not sure what to do about yet, but I'll use it here as an example of witches knowing & the ways we know. It also partly illustrates what happens when a witch makes her way into the hedge: it gathers itself around her & interacts with her.

There is a street in the city centre which at certain times I find unbearably uncomfortable. For reasons that will become apparent I will not be naming it - I don't want certain people searching the name of the street & coming to this post - nor any details of what I think is presently happening there. Suffice to say that it is a street to the south of Birmingham's present city centre. It has existed for centuries, & was among the streets of teeming slums around there in the eighteenth century that became turned over to industry in the nineteenth century.

I first became aware of something wrong in that area on one of my tramps through the city. The feeling I get to either side of that street is the comfortable, welcoming, busy Birmingham one, but on one particular evening the street made me intensely uncomfortable. I'm not easily weirded out but I had a distinct sense of being watched, in a very hostile way. I literally could not wait to get away from that street. I have been back twice since, once in the day & yesterday in the evening & it seems that the place has somehow closed to me. I got absolutely nothing there on either visit: it felt completely closed, & giving away absolutely nothing to me. I feel this may be significant.

Of course I have done investigations. After the first visit I asked a friend to do a divination. She does not know the street, does not even live in this country, but got the sense of unrelenting violence, dangers, murk murk murk, & murdered children & prostitutes. Her advice was very clearly not to go there at all. She also felt that a certain illegal activity was going on there now. Thus far my differential diagnosis was the centuries of desperate human existence had created a spirit of place which was predisposed & invited illicit, dangerous activities.

My next step was to go to the library & see whether any of this had made the history books. The sort of things I was looking for were murders, brothels, gangs, etc, in that street & surprisingly the written history of that street is completely pedestrian & normal. I was amazed. On the other hand, the kind of thing that I was looking for are the kind of crimes that people are usually keen to keep hidden. In fact, now I put it like that, I feel that I'm being directed more clearly to another aspect of spirit of place: this street keeps its secrets hidden. It's not often I can't get to the bottom of something psychically or through history. So my diagnosis remains that there may or may not be a spot there that attracts this kind of thing, that also attracts cover ups. What remains unexplained in any way is why it is just that street: it seems bizarre that that kind of energy would be confined to the man-made unit of a street, I would normally expect it to be spread further. I would also expect the surrounding streets to have the same energy but they don't at all.

I have been mulling this over for a while now. Then yesterday evening the whole situation leapt into relief for me. I was in a pub with a witch friend (that is the pretext for the picture, illustrating me at the bar), talking about this & he brought out the tarot cards. Even I was amazed at the clarity with which a cesspit of abuse & corruption, all carefully guarded & covered up, appeared in the cards. This thing, kids, is huge, & it's powerful people, the apparently great & good, running the show. The good thing that appeared was that this situation is on the turn & can't continue indefinitely.

Then we went from one pub to another by a route that crossed this road at one point. Once again I sensed absolutely nothing - the spirit of place was completely closed to me, & I normally can't contact individual entities unless I'm on my own. My friend got a sense of a strangled prostitute & was quite distressed by the experience. He also got the same feeling of the roads either side feeling completely different.

Then a lovely thing happened - we went to another pub & both made contact at once with an ex-landlady from the 1960s - her bleached blond hair in a beehive gave her away, also the chain smoking which gave her the lung cancer that killed her. She thought we were a couple - everyone thinks that, as it happens we're not each other's type, but she really liked us. She'd seen some wheeling & dealing in her time, but nothing like as dodgy as the road I've been writing about. It was a pub that has not long re-opened after being derelict for many years - the present landlord could do with cranking up the friendliness a bit, but who needs that when you can chat with the landlady from 50 years ago?

As for the street I've been writing about, I'm trying to discern whether this is something that has turned up for me in my hedge. My personal hedge is changing, as I noted in my last post, so it is to be expected that the next thing for me to do is going to be different. By now I'm assured enough that I also know the resources will be available for the task when the time is right to do it. This is the responsibility of the witch's knowing - because we know things in a way that others don't, we end up knowing about things that we have to do something about. Plus I feel this one may be so big it will be in the papers when it is undone...watch this space!

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A particular problem in dealings with non-witches

This one has only really dawned on me recently, even though it helps to explain much of the ridiculousness in the world.

First things first: delineate what I mean. It is apparent that there are a number of ways in which people approach their daily round, & deal with the people they meet. The exact opposite from the witch's approach may be that of a clergy sexual abuser: they are quite happy to proclaim one thing, some of them may be tortured by their urges (although plainly a lot of them are simply not bothered), but what they say & what they do are two different things. I am *not* saying anything about Christians per se here, I have chosen this as the perfect example of the opposite of the witch's approach.

The witch's approach is this: this morning I gave a bag of stuff I've cleared out to the RSPCA shop round the corner (Hecate will accept this as an offering: she has a particular fondness for Guidedogs for the Blind, but actually cats & red mullet were also sacrificed to her in the ancient world). I signed up for gift aid to stop Mr Taxman taking more than the law insists. This, from a Witch point of view, is a holy, a sacred action, the work of the Divine through us & within us.

This is also reflected in the attitude the Witch takes to it. I may merely be giving a bag of stuff to a charity shop, but my Will is that cruelty to animals stops, & those who are cruel to animals are punished. There should be no small action of the Witch's life which is not willed in such a way. When I put my clothes in the washing machine, my Will is that I am clean & nice-smelling. At work my Will is to give the best service possible, to earn in return the money I live on.

Like this, each action fits into a greater 'plan' of living the Willed life. By doing this I affirm my importance in the world, the importance of each of my actions, & the relative importance of everyone one & every thing else. For example my donation to the RSPCA affirms the importance of protecting animals thrown out at this time of year. The ideal for me would be that no one of the Witch's actions is thoughtless, unWilled, unconsidered, on the spur of the moment. The Witch *must* aim to be completely trustworthy, completely living a Willed life, because sooner or later we will have to exert our Will to changing reality, & if we're not in shape, we won't be able to.

And this is where it becomes difficult when dealing with non-Witches, who won't feel the need to have something so for no other reason than that I say so. Between the completely Willed life & the other extreme where you think everyone is pretending (which is what you get in a personality disorder), there is a huge chasm of people who aren't bothered. They 'get away with' whatever they can: they do as little as possible at work, they steal what they can from people, they make *no* effort to Will their life.

Once again please understand that I am talking about two extremes & lots of shades in between. Witches fail in their Will, & similarly people who don't call themselves Witches can live in the way I describe, they might just label it differently. And I certainly don't have a problem with that if that is their Will. Imagine then what I thought on coming home today to find two girls 'delivering' collection bags for the RSPCA in my street: in reality dropping them on the ground outisde each house. They obviously were not bothered, & plainly were quite shocked suddenly to have a man giving them a bollocking (I didn't feel the need to hold back) for this: as far as they were concerned they were doing the minimum required.

My Will is that cruelty to animals stops. This will plainly be best served by efficient fundraising & donation collection, rather than turning the collection bags into litter sponsored by the RSPCA. I have used the magic tool of an email complaining about this & telling the RSPCA's head office how I shall not be donating again (the local shop didn't answer the phone). My Will is that this stops, so I have also put that out in a little spell. Those girls are going to stop doing that or they are out, for their lack of consideration.

Over-reaction? Nah. Once you start the Witch you might just as well give up now, because this is the other thing living the Willed life does: it makes you act decisively & effectively. Just watch it if you're delivering charity bags!

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A sorbet opportunity

I was going to make a colossal linguistic error in this post by commenting on how the Chinese character for 'crisis' includes the character for 'opportunity'. Fortunately I checked my facts before writing this, & it turns out the component mistranslated opportunity is better translated as crucial or critical point (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_word_for_%22crisis%22), which as it happens better suits where I want to go with this post anyway. This is the test for evidence-based witchcraft: when you find confirmation in the hedge, you're in the right direction.

Years ago I read Margot Adler's 'Drawing Down the Moon', in which she has an interview with Z Budapest. I don't have the exact quote in front of me to hand, but Budapest speaks about her suicide attempt being a turning point in ther life. After that she returned to the true attitude of a witch, that of turning bad things around & using them to your advantage.

This definitely refers to an outlook on life characteristic of us, refusing to be put down or give up. This is what has happened to me this week. I was actually talking to someone at work about how I was fed up with doing the same incident report for a matter which is obviously not being solved.

Than a customer's relative presented me with my crisis/critical point, & blasted the matter into a whole different playing field. She thinks she is being critical of me, she thinks I am the root of the problem she's identified, but with knowledge she doesn't have I know I am not. I have been thinking about bringing a grievance about this matter, but if I turn this crisis into a critical moment, hopefully I won't need to.

Give a Witch lemons, & she'll turn them into sorbet.

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On right questioning

The illustration to this post has set me thinking about certainty, doubt, authority & questioning, from a Witch point of view. You see, the phrase 'question everything' makes me uncomfortable since nobody ever actually questions everything, everybody actually always has some certainty, or at least theory on which to build. The sarcastic example here, of course, would be to comment that the person who sprayed that graffito obviously didn't question his or her right to deface a public place with an inane comment!

'Question', in this context, I suppose is therefore a criticism of some kind of authority. The implication is 'Don't believe everything you're told', which is different from not believing anything. At its extreme it leads to an excessive dualism where nothing is real - dangerous when taken to where Christian Science takes it, although they merely deny the reality of the 'physical' & accept the reality of the 'spiritual'.

From a Witch point of view we have an embarrassing relationship with evidence for our position, namely that there isn't any. We also end up red-faced in the search for authority for our position: attempts to find an authority - usually founded on an invented or mistaken history - leave us without an authority. My personal opinion is that since Witchcraft as a modern religion has always been created in conscious opposition to virtually everything conventional religion stands for, we might as well continue this & take the position that we do not need an authority for our Witchcraft.

This also draws nicely on another element of the Witch figure, that of the outsider onto whom people project everything that they don't want, making us these anti-authority figures. I mean, these same people are quick enough to turn to us as an authority when they need some magic!

It is, of course, essential to examine our own presuppositions & the basis on which we pin our certainties. This is in a great magical tradition of the necessity of knowing yourself, since it's the magicians who have some unacknowledged interior stuff going on that tend to come unstuck. I do love the story of the chaos magician who did a paradigm shift to that of a fundamentalist Christian & has been one ever since.

Which brings me nicely to the question of 'everything' - it is actually humanly impossible to doubt everything at once, since you really would go off your head. Perhaps a better word would be 'examine', & this is another activity that can bring magical people into trouble, if they neglect it when necessary. My anecdote for that is the famous one of Tanya Luhrmann, who was completely upfront that she was seeking admission to Gerald Gardner's original coven for the purpose of research. She comments in her book on the perceptive shift she found happening in herself, by which she became less questioning & more inclined to interpret things as caused by magical agency.

I personally don't have a problem with this idea, since in magic the principle of 'It is so because I say it is so' is so often the turning point to the free exercise of the Will which causes real change to occur. I'm sure she would hate this idea, but she actually cast her spell on the coven. I have limited sympathy for the coven's feeling of betrayal when she published the inner workings of the coven: she was upfront about what she was doing, but she describes them forgetting this. Their failure to examine what was happening caused the 'betrayal': they should either have refused her admission or come to some other relationship of limited exposure with her.

In true Witch fashion I have come full circle back to where I was at the start, the nature of questioning, the need to do it, & what everything can mean. Also in true Witch fashion I don't feel inhibited from tackling these truly monumental questions in a single blog post!

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Not cosy

There is something about this time of year - my favourite time of year - that changes what I want to fill my mind with. Often I have turned to Boswell's Johnson in the past, or sometimes to Sherlock Holmes, only short-term because I want to slap Holmes. This year I'm finding myself listening to cosy Golden Age murders. One I listened to recently, Agatha Christie's The Moving Finger, has set me thinking.

It is very clear why these Golden Age mysteries continue to be popular, despite their often cardboard characterisation & plots holed like old socks, the reason is the world they portray. The Moving Finger is set in a village, with all the characteristic intrigue you get in a Christie village, despite the simplicity of the solution, which Miss Marple insists is perfectly obvious. She fulfills the role of providing a safety net in a world invaded by a dangerous murderer, but which otherwise is inhabited by safe stock characters. The book invites the reader to become a native of the village for a time, which would necessarily mean being surrounded by people one had known all ones life. The feeling of familiarity & safety would be incredibly seductive.

But the point I want to make is that this is not real. For me personally the very idea of living in a village makes me want to flee to the nearest city screaming for anonymity. The life in a Christie village would be so stifling, & actually not cosy at all. Small communities have ways of imposing their own standards on their inhabitants. Having grown up in a Black Country village - one which was superficially well in communication with larger places near by - I can witness to the horizon-narrowing effect of small communities.

Those kind of places are the kind of places that people like me get out of at the first opportunity. If anyone is tempting to hurl the 'snob' epithet at me, do an experiment: move to a small village. Act as if you are a transsexual, without saying 'I am a transsexual', but otherwise act as if you were. Believe me, you'll want to be out of there in no time.

It boils down, as so many things do, to the person that you want to be. Obviously sometimes it's to do with the person that you just are, when it includes such things as sexual orientation, gender, & race. Sometimes you just have to get out of where you are.

When other people do things that we don't want, we have the option if we swish to try to negotiate with them about what they are doing, in addition to the option of getting out. Otherwise you have the potential to create yourself as you will yourself to be. Sometimes they mix. For example, I am very very high maintenance - but you'd sussed that, hadn't you? I take offence very easily & throw a hissy fit easily. So, for example, if I send a friend a text & he doesn't reply I will automatically start looking for reinforcing evidence that I'm not being paid enough attention. And of course sometimes that is actually true: as we change our relationships change.

But here's the nub, & the bit that will explain why I can't do cosy, because living the Willed life is never cosy. I don't want to be a touchy old queen. I don't want to be a difficult old man - at least no more difficult than I already am. My will is to become hopefully more flexible & easy-going as I get older. Hence the recognition of my own touchiness & a lack of comfort at it is essential. Cosy means stagnation, & I flatly refuse to go there.

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More thoughts on the Library of Birmingham

I've now been into the library a number of times & actually used it so am in more of a position to assess its quality as a library.

There is a very clear difference between this one & the previous one, illustrated by the two pictures I've chosen. One shows the secret garden on the top but one floor. I went up there after sunset yesterday evening. It was exhilarating being up there in the dark during rush hour with the traffic out of the city like ribbons of light way below. I had this sudden strange urge to ask the security guard for sex & I assume it has that effect on other people because of the large signs warning about CCTV.

The other picture shows the space under the old library's inverted ziggurat as it was originally meant to be. And this is the difference: the old library was a statement in architecture & shape, sacrificing function to form. The present library is designed for its users.

I have a few qualms about its likely effect on its staff. Despite the large sign at reception stressing how important welfare of the staff has been, my impression is that the staff are very exposed to the all-critical eye of the public. There are walls of glass into offices & meeting rooms: the sense of continual scrutiny must be extraordinary.

In terms of using the library it doesn't have the strange 'underground' feeling of the old one - caused by little natural light & few windows. It's actually the other way around - it's spacious to the other extreme! Once you get your head round where the subjects are thing - with the *huge* exception I will mention below are actually easier to find now. There are a variety of places & things to sit on on every level.

The only major criticism I have of the library as a building is I think mistakes have been made in some of the surfaces used. I mean in terms of usability: the fashion in public spaces is away from carpets, but they would make it much less noisy than it is. Also I mean in durability: some of the floors & walls are looking rather scuffed, weeks after library's opening. And, darlings, black shows dust. If you're going to have empty black shelves high up you have to organise the dusting of them or your new library looks very tatty.

My other criticism isn't really of the Library of Birmingham as such but a criticism of the management of the central library for the past forty years. The old central library had two catalogues running at once, one a card index, the other electronic. There was an overlap but the card index seems to have been what was taken from the previous library in the 1970s, & a single catalogue was never created. This is something that should have been remedied when an electronic catalogue was created. Similarly the works that were done to move to the new library such as rationalising, preserving & cataloguing the collection, all seem to me tasks that *should* be the day to day work of a library. The impression that the bread & butter work of maintaining the collection has been neglected is irresistible. I understand that in the public sector there are no doubt financial constraints to taking on the personnel in Britain's second-busiest public library, & that I have the impression that the excellent staff's  customer service may have been prioritised at the expense of behind-the-scenes work.

It was a relief to notice the complete absence of card indexes in the new library. I therefore assumed that there is now a single catalogue. I therefore thought that I'd wander through the catalogue at home to see what I could read on a visit today. I found the location of a children's book that I've been wanting to revisit for some time: I wish I'd pinched more than one copy from school all those years ago: I could sell them for £30 a time on ebay now.

Then a terrible thing happened. I've been wanting to read Philip Hesleton's biography of Gerald Gardner & I wondered if they'd bought it, so I just did a keyword search for Gerald Gardner. Nothing. In. The. Whole. Of. Birmingham. I thought that must be wrong, they used to have a first edition of Witchcraft Today, so I did an author search for Gerald Gardner. Nothing. A title search produced nothing. An awful fear came over me. So I searched for the (first edition) Witch Cult in Western Europe. Nothing. Had they got rid of them?

I got my answer today: the stack is not yet fully catalogued or accessible at all. This to me is a real problem, & here's why. Libraries have difficulty making magic books stay on the shelf, not because they fly around but because magical people are dodgy people & steal books. For this reason the best stuff in that library has always been in the stack, as far as I'm concerned. I don't object at all to either presenting extra identification  even to sit in the reference library with a book, or have to sit right under the eye of the staff, if this is what it takes to keep expensive magical books in the library rather than nicked by some muppet.

What is good is that recataloguing will create a catalogue of what they've actually got, since the card catalogue was not altered to reflect what was missing over the years. However as I say this should have been done well before now, because the sum result is that the majority of the library's stock, & much of what is of interest to me personally, is inaccessible still. And that, for whatever reasons it's happened, isn't a lot of use, is it?

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Tarot: The Hermit. Also Telford, Solitude & the Apparent Soullessness of the Modern Town

There is a received wisdom that the modern city is impersonal & somehow soulless. Of course there is a truth to this: the adage that 'we spend money we haven't got, to buy things we don't want, to impress people we don't like' holds true, whether at Birmingham's Bull Ring on a Saturday afternoon or any other Maul. The spelling is deliberate.

I am writing this at Telford Central station, waiting for a train to take me on to Shrewsbury. I had never been to Telford, & don't really intend to go again: the town centre is one large shopping centre with all chain stores. You can't get anywhere without using bridges to cross motorways. It's a planning disaster.

But the day hasn't entirely been wasted so far. Being me, of course, I left the pedestrianised way & had a nice little walk in a less-tamed green bit, & contacted the underlying spirit of place. Unbeknown to me I suddenly started feeling outlandishly frisking & desiring a farm boy to leap into the bushes with. Of course! This is Shropshire Lad Country! I love this parody by Humbert Wolfe, who must surely have been shopping in Telford, of Housman's verse:

When lads have done with labour

In Shropshire, one will cry

"Let's go and kill a neighbour,"

And t'other answers "Aye!"

So this one kills his cousins,

And that one kills his dad;

And, as they hang by dozens

At Ludlow, lad by lad,

Each of them one-and-twenty,

All of them murderers,

The hangman mutters: "Plenty

Even for Housman's verse."

The point here for the purpose of this post, is that some people both have a well-developed sense of self & also can sit with their own presence. The people who do not have these things are the ones who go wrong in the 'soulless' - in reality distractionless - environment of the modern world.

This is what the Hermit card depicts: when you are without distractions from yourself, the lack of escape can literally make you go mad.

So people seek distractions, & *how*! Shopping, drink, drugs, anything other than sit with their own company, which for many people is the most frightening thing in the world. This also explains why religious people are frequently the *most* dysfunctional people you could ever wish to meet: religion can make another attempt to fill up people's perceived emptiness or deal with the thoughts we think we shouldn't be having, sexual ones for example.

In the solitude our own 'demons' come up, & from these there really is no escape. Meditative practices can assist us to become more comfortable with them without being beaten over the head by them. I know mine: anger at the people who've done me over, grief at my inability to build a liveable relationship with my mother, my distrust of people & expectation of unconditional obedience.

This is what the Hermit card feels like: the totality of our existence, but particularly the shitty bits. I've always had a sneaking suspicion myself that the character (at least in RWS) is actually part of a procession, a wildly dysfunctional procession where people aren't talking to each other.

A most unusual interpretation is that of a friend of mine who refers to the hermit as the 'wanker' card. This is of course a realistic interpretation: he's in solitude with his own sexual predilections & is dealing with them as best he can. This is a kind of 'reversed' interpretation, the 'negative' side of the more positive spin I've put on sitting with your own company. Just be grateful I haven't illustrated the post with that image!

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I can't avoid psychic vampirism any more

Quite the nicest sort of vampire

I have been trying to avoid this post but mother's early training means I'm ridiculously early for everything so have some time to kill before starting a late shift.

Yesterday I went to the doctor's for a prescription for eye drops. There was an elderly lady there with her son (who must have been pushing seventy) waiting for an ambulance to take her to hospital, whence she had obviously been discharged too soon the day before, after treatment for a stroke.

What this has to do with psychic vampirism is this: the son, who wasn't excessively debilitated himself, had driven his mother to the surgery, put her in a wheelchair, & taken her in. This was a total distance of about 25 yards, but I heard him on the phone to his daughter saying how that had exhausted him.

The exhaustion is the point: it is no coincidence that I mentioned my mother at the beginning of this post, since some people live off other people. I'm not overly concerned by the distinction you read about between those who do it consciously & unconsciously, since the end product is the same.

And here's the real problem with these people: because their life source is other people any attempts to solve the problem as perceived by those around them - that is, them draining the life out of you - is doomed because this isn't a problem for the vampire. A short sharp cut from all relations with them - if this is possible - can be the only way.

Those who do it unconsciously may be prepared to change some of their behaviours & may even be cured of it if we make an alternative source of energy available to them. If after a divination the conclusion is reached that the person does it consciously there are several routes available.

The only way in which a psychic vampire will ultimately stop being parasitical of those around them is through a full & frank realisation/admission of what they do & a resolution to change. Confronting them with it in a non-confrontational way may therefore help. It is no coincidence that the maxim of 'know yourself'' is a major element of magical traditions, since knowing oneself is the key to discerning your own 'stuff' from things happening around you. The magician who doesn't know him or herself is a danger, and amongst other things is in danger both of vampirizing others and being sucked dry by them.

The people whose energy they sap must ensure their defences are up: unfortunately this will then make them vampirise someone else. Those who adhere to the Wiccan rede will be able to see at this point that the use of nonconsensual magic on a psychic vampire is essential to prevent harm to anyone.

What the vampire wants is energy so a longer-term solution is to attach them to an energy source - a volcano, a river, a nuclear power plant, whatever.

If the vampire is your nearest & dearest - an elderly or ill relative is common - sharing the person out with others reduces the drain. Be wary of having children near a vampire - they often have no defences at all. If the vampire is obsessed with a single energy source - a person or group of people - to the extent that they won't leave alone, the only option is an amputation. In my own case a motherectomy stopped it. They won't accept it, but the vampire's own actions lead to this point.

Finally as magical people we have to be aware of our own energy levels & sources, so that we don't become psychic vampires ourselves. Virtually all magical practices connect the practitioner to greater sources of life & energy in addition to the self-awareness mentioned above.

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Some reflections on candle magic

My reference for the 'textbook' way to do candle magic for this post is Cat Yronwode's page on hoodoo candle magic divination at http://www.luckymojo.com/candlemagicdivination.html, which links to other pages on the excellent Lucky Mojo site about candle magic.

I have recently been rethinking the way I do candle magic. The main thing I have changed is that shibboleth you read in all the books that you must never never under any circumstances blow out the candle. The reason given for this in Wiccan sources, & others that use the elemental approach, is that the candle represents the perfect balance of the elements, & that blowing it out disrupts this. The hoodoo sources don't seem to give a reason for this, but it is still maintained as something you must not do.

I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that no way of putting out a candle does not disrupt the elemental balance (even using a snuffer, which obviously works by making the candle use up a restricted supply of oxygen, thus removing one element of the fire triangle). I have also become dissatisfied with pinching them out as I always find some of the wax dried on my fingers afterwards.

This may sound like an uncharacteristically nit-picking approach to magic for me (at least I hope it does, I'd hate it if I routinely came across as nit picking), so I have taken the bold step of deciding that I will blow out candles mid-spell & not be held to rules laid down by others that don't work for me.

What does continue to do it for me, though, is what happens to the wax, both how it burns, of this more anon,  & also how I dispose of the remains of the candle. The traditional way of disposing of the remains would be to bury it under your doorstep if the spell is to bring something to you, or to put it in flowing water, or a graveyard, if the spell is to get rid of something. If I want something more exciting than a mere vanishing trick to befall the person I like those bins for dog mess. So does the Goddess.

Because this is something that really does it for me - plus I like not having the remnants of spells hanging round - it is gratifying to find that when I'm doing a spell for someone else I can do what they want with the remains of their candle without qualms. I'm obviously not in the habit of doing spells for other people (while *to* other people doesn't bother me at all, if they deserve it), I'd rather teach people how to do it themselves, but in the circumstances where someone can't do it, debilitated by illness for example, I will.

I have recently done three candle spells. I use just candles for them, I don't fret over what colour they are. I do it when the time feels right. The candles I've used for these spells were quite cheap so have burned badly & allowed scope for divination by the way the wax has dripped.

Cat yronwode says that candle workers in spiritual churches are looking for three witnesses to how the spell is working - how it's burning, the appearance of the flame, & what's left at the end.

I'm tending to focus on the first & last of those. The first spell (the first picture) was a healing spell for a person with fibromyalgia.  The candle burned very quickly, with the wax running off in a single stream, until the flame got into the flower-shaped wax thing caused by it running onto the candlestick. There it burned very slowly, it took several evenings to get to the point where it couldn't be lit again.

Now my interpretation of this & that of the person concerned is completely at odds with what I read on the Lucky Mojo website. Because there was a large amount of wax left, the problem should be unresolved - no doubt true with such a chronic condition - & the running wax would indicate tears.

The person the spell was for felt nothing until the long slow burn at the bottom, when she felt all the pain leaving her (which we would equate to the wax running off) & returned her to feeling as normal as she has for ages. Don't you love magic - miracles to order, & frankly who cares if it's psychosomatic, she *feels* better, that's the point!

The second spell (the second picture) was a spell to fix a boss, so the candle - all three candles came from the same cheap box from the shop round the corner - was anointed with Boss Fix oil. This time the wax ran off in multiple rivulets, which knowing the situation the spell was for I feel means the layers & layers of stuff that this boss has caused will be coming out all at once & biting her on the bum.

The third candle (third picture) was for another boss, & anointed with Boss Fix. I seem to be getting a reputation for sorting out bosses. This time the candle burned less quickly, but the wax - and less of it ran off - ran into the sweet little curlicues you see in the picture. Once again I would interpret this as multiple schemes & deviousnesses coming out into the open.

I have no doubt I'll be returning to this subject, I wanted to post on the subject of how the Hound approaches candle magic - that is, not completely as you're supposed to, but you expected that, didn't you?

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The Meaning of Witchcraft

I am shamelessly hijacking the title of Old Gerald's second non-fiction book on the subject for the title of this post, because it best suits what I have to say. The modern witchcraft moevement is an extraordinary phenomenon, & I think there is great significance in its arising when it did. This post at least partly consists of the thoughts I'm continuing to have about my previous post concerning the United Nations & the Catholic church.

The *only* evidence for a religious movement drawing on the witch figure before the twentieth century is Leland's Aradia. This sentence is almost a direct quote from Hutton, I'm writing this out & about but if you want me to, email me & I will find the actual reference in my notes. My opinion is that without the sort of movements which preceded it, as also laid out by Hutton, & particularly the occult explosion at the end of the nineteenth century, it could not have happened.

And what makes it extraordinary is that our way of life should be a load of quackery & romantic nonsense. It is inconceivable that people on opposite sides of the world can have the same experience without meeting, but it happens. It is inconceivable that we can influence events magically, but it happens.

I feel there is a sea change going on, that has been happening for some decades & we are part of it. In many ways the old order is being confronted by modern powers (ie RC church/UN for example). The old order is struggling for survival.

We, on the other hand are a movement which as a movement is a completely new (ie twentieth century) thing, yet is built almost completely of older ingredients. Our tendency to idealise a fictional past is part of this: we are taking stuff from the past & magically changing it into a new thing. It is not for nothing that Dion Fortune's adage of 'all gods are one god, all goddesses are one goddess, & there is one initiator' is so popular among us. We witness to human ability to make all things one.

This is of course open to criticism as cultural imperialism, but this is really what I'm trying to say. I have a sneaking suspicion that the cultures of the past are actually melding together, so that what may seem imperialism may actually be people coming together as one.

The insight that you are me & I am you is both magical & a genuinely ancient insight of 'spiritual' people.

Even the old divisions of mind/body/spirit are coming down. The internet is partly responsible for the spell cast over the world.

Crowley defined black magicians as those who would resist the natural process of change, which is life itself, & I think to resist this process may be the most futile exercise there is. It is merely to invite death, & transformation into another entity who will be able to change.

When people say that witches go with natural cycles this is exactly what they mean. I personally am not willing this, I am describing the tides of time that I can sense going on in me & around me. The challenge for us as humans is to go with this. The challenge for us as witches is to enable this to happen. The point of witches is to witness to, & move this process on.

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