Scene From a Pagan Household

Jow (said slowly so as to not cause sudden movements from Deb): I kind of want the new Picatrix.

Deb (crossly): No. You don't play with the Pictatrix you have now.

(Jow looks sad) (Deb glares anyway because there are nine MILLION magic books in their house threatening to overtake their rabbit burrow/condo at any minute)

Deb (tries to be reasonable): Why do you need the new Picatrix when you don't play with your old Picatrix?

Jow: The new one is going to be way better because - (blahblahblah, something)

Deb: Does it come in eBook format?

Jow (crestfallen): Not yet. But it might I guess . . .But the book is only $65.

Deb (who has grown accustomed to ridiculously priced books desired by Jow knows that this is not bad especially compared to the first one): Fine. If you sell your old Picatrix.

Jow: Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

Deb: Fine. I don't really care what you sell but books have to go. I mean it. You manage to manifest stacks of free books in the mail like a junkie and it's getting out of control. Space in this house is finite. Get a storage space if you're that attached but some have got to go before you get a new Pictatrix. And not, like, 'I'll sell them some day and they've lived in a rubbermaid for two years!' But gone gone.

Jow: Deal!

The end times are coming. He's actually sorting. If they all actually leave the house then you know to get into your bunkers.

Building a Dilettante

My approach to magic can at best be politely be called eccentric but there are a lot of sources that helped me get to where I am as a third wave riot girl hearth witch. Should you ever be curious about how I got here.

Reading List for the Dilettante Hearth Witch

Our Bodies, Ourselves - I'm not going to lie, it still appalls me how many women don't know their birth control options or how their bodies work or anything.

WomenSpirit Rising - Just blew my tiny brain open about religion and started me thinking about how to be a riot girl in religion.

The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle - This is When Shit Got Real for me as a Women's Studies major.

The Spiral Dance 20th Anniversary - Because you always remember your first, because she still updates it with new info and changes in philosophy. Also I'm mad at Z. and she knows why.

A Subscription to Real Simple - It's the perfect hearth witch mag imo - realistic recipes, how to clean just about anything, financial planning, realistic planners, gardening and essays about various real world stupid motherfucking problems. The real world guide to being a motherfucking adult.

Old Style Conjure Podcast - Oh man do I love me some Momma Starr, she just is the cat's pajamas. I'm going to butch this horribly but when someone essentially says on a hoodoo podcast, "But you don't just want him back, you want his money. So you're going to Bend Him Over in Jesus' name!" I'm going to love you forever.

White Wolf Mage: The Ascension Role Playing Game Books: Dreamspeakers, Cult of Ecstasy and Spirit Ways - As long as you understand that they are *fiction* for a *pretend role playing game*, they're helpful as they're well researched.

Animal Speak - a great primer on some basic Native American Shamanic concepts

Hoodoo Herb and Root Magic: A Materia Magica of African-American Conjure - Super helpful hoodoo reference book.

Compendium of Herbal Magick - Really helpful Euro magical herb compendium

Rules of the Game - teaches basic NLP techniques and I find it helpful in my glamoury work

Eat, Pray, Love - it really encapsulated my post divorce spiritual journey and helped me focus on what I'm trying to accomplish.

Evolutionary Witchcraft - This book really helped me come to terms with being a Reclaimist. The Iron Pentacle meditation has changed every group I've led it for, it's that amazing.

Rune Soup - Because magically speaking, Gordon really is my better half.

I'm telling you it's not a trick/ pay attention, don't be thick/ or you're liable to be licked . . .

So, admittedly, it takes a while for the idea that someone could be crossed or jinxed to permeate my brain meat that's hazy with too much Teen Moms and the nine billion things I need to accomplish in a day. But Jow gives me more credit by reminding me that my magical vetting process has more in common with the Vatican than with the Neo-Pagan movement, so it's going to take a whole lot for me to think that it's on the table.

Hoodoo Crossroads writes an excellent post on how to identify if someone has been cursed, which is helpful. My friend "Danny" always had shitty luck, some of it has been frankly of his own making. Poor decisions and whatnot. So generally, my advice was to fix x issue or y issue. But even when he was working on it, things had a way of spectacularly falling apart with unforeseen outside issues. He's really been hitting rock bottom lately and I was out of ideas about what he could do to fix it. After a few conversations where I just sympathized with his situation and new information on how an already bad situation got worse due to outside influences, I finally asked.

Do you think . . .it's *possible* you're, like, jinxed or crossed or cursed?

Danny only vaguely believes in a very vague sort of paganish paradigm and is not someone I would categorize as religious or into magic. I've never asked anyone that, but I was out of ideas and the more I thought about it, the more I thought, maybe it was *possible*. After a thoughtful pause, Danny said, it's really funny you should say that. There's been a family rumour for years that my immediate family might be, something about a neighbor who may have been practicing something years ago.

It's not that I'm sure Danny is cursed. He's not someone to think he's constantly UNDER PSYCHIC ATTACK or even particularly believe in it. But my thought was, well, if he is, then this could really help him turn things around. If he's not, no harm no foul. I don't wander off into well magic/the gods is just an archetype so you can use any herb for anything blahblahblah whatever, but I was a psych minor so while I dutifully use the proper herbs for whatever and believe the gods are separate (as much as anything or anyone is separate) beings unto Themselves, I also dig Jungian psych, NPL, etc. I think if Danny even allows for the possibility that whatever spell work I suggest is possible then a lot of subconscious and let's get crazy, magical stuff could go down. However, I also believe that if he really wants to fix this, he needs to take that big step and do the working himself, at least to start. If he tries it and it doesn't work, then I would step in and see what I could do from my side. At the time I gave him this spell work, he said he would give it a go. He has not yet done the spell work yet, but says he plans to. It was interesting to try to plan a spell using ingredients that a non-magical working/not too heavy into cooking household would have.

Him: Yeah, so I don't have a lot of room around the perimeters of my room.
Me: That's okay. It's only a sprinkle of salt/sage.
Him: Oh. Yeah. I see that now.
Me: . . .There's a saying in witchcraft, "To Know, To Will, To Dare and To Keep Silent". If there's a cup and a half of salt/sage spread around your room in big clumpy piles, that's . . .not very silent. A lot of people would ask a lot of questions about that.


Curse Breaking/Luck Bringing Spell for Danny

1. Take a shower. While showering, use some salt like a scrub and scrub your body with it. Imagine your bad luck going down the drain with the water.

2. Open your bedroom window and wave all the crappy luck out of it with a broom.

3. Mix about a tablespoon each of sage and salt together and sprinkle it around the perimeters of your room. Once you have done that, recite the 37th Psalm. While reciting it, keep picturing your crappy luck leaving.

4. Think about what you need in your life to be happy. Also think about what you can do to get them (the second part is important in magic).

5. Without your pen leaving the paper, write down the things that you want in your life. Be specific.

6. Sprinkle cinnamon and allspice on the paper and fold the paper *towards* you while saying,
Father Coyote*, this dog's luck is nothing but crossed
Please bring me what I've asked for before all is lost.

7. Put the paper on the reflective surface with the candle on top. Light the candle. Repeat the prayer to Coyote. When extinguishing the candle, don't use your breath. Use a lid or a spoon or a dish. When relighting the candle say the prayer. Do this until the candle is completely used up.

8. Take the piece of paper and the melty wax that melted on top of it. Put it in a small ziplock bag and put it in your dice bag with your luckiest gaming dice. You carry your dice bag with you all the time anyway, so keep doing that. Do your best to not show anyone the ziplock bag. Dab the dice bag once a week with good booze and repeat the prayer to Coyote.

* Coyote is Danny's patron deity which is why I picked him for this working.

A Patchwork Soul

I generally will be open to discussion and debate about a lot of stuff ranging from politics to food to shit my mom wants me to consider and generally willing to change aspects of my opinion due to more education and intellectual discussion as well as said topics just rattling around in my head. This breaks down whenever we get into the idea of the soul not being one piece. Don't get me wrong, I think it's perfectly fine for *you* to have more than one soul a triple aspected reclaimist buddhist thing of wonder, I'm sure, but I'm not interested.

I tried the triple aspected soul thing through Thorne's Reclaimist theory and I really wanted to believe it. Jow would try to re-explain all the . . .stuff about a stickyself and I don't even remember the other parts to be honest and I would try to process it. But at the end of the day, I felt a resounding, nope.

I'm usually (despite strong opinions) pretty go with the flow and open to discussion, but this is like when the part of my yoga dvd tells me to let my mind be a distant observer, my brain just locks that shit down. Jow finds this curious as to why I'm so reluctant to consider . . .this soul being a patchwork of shards of different lives all converging to this one new soul or whatever.

I just don't believe it on a visceral level. I guess this is where my vague Shamanic training and experiences become less vague and more absolute. The way a Shaman sees a soul (at least as it's cobbled together in my brain) is that you have this one soul being that's the you that (for me) lives in my stomach. It doesn't need crazy amounts of enlightenment and book learnin' and meditation, it's going to sit there and be. And sometimes it does stuff - dreams, spirit walks, falls apart a little, etc. And when shit falls apart, you have specific ways of fixing it.

Maybe you go through a trial where the gods and your spirit guides throw shit at your stubborn head until you get what they're saying and that it's important. For me, a trial has never been AND NOW YOU WILL DO WHAT YOUR LORDS YOU GODS HAVE DEEMED AND I WILL KEEP HITTING YOU HARDER UNTIL YOU COMPLY.

As an aside, going with the whole gods argument I've been vaguely following, I side with RO's general outlook on the matter and go a little further with, seriously? You think you are that important in the scheme of the world, you, ant #656 who lives in NJ that your gods are going to spend a whole lot of time FORCING THEIR WILL UPON YOU UNTIL YOU COMPLY oooooooor are they going to find someone who is more pliant and less of a pain in the ass and/or really focus on bothering people who are changing the entire chess game (here's a hint, that's probably not you)? I mean, frankly, I don't seen MY DESTINY as being important enough for my gods to have anything more than a parental reciprocal relationship - I make them mud pies and cry about what I want and say thank you for feeding me and sometimes as they are bigger and have more stuff they will then halp me or let me flounder if I need to be taught a lesson and/or irritated them a lot that week with my piddling requests and/or I dinged their car. I mean, what do I do in a day? I try (try) to be nice and not bite, I go to work, I make dinner, I spin yarn, I watch like five episodes of Degrassi, maybe a small magic working or creative endeavor and I call it a day. This . . .is not the stuff of need for EPIC GOD INVOLVEMENT really.

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnyway. So as my life does not require EPIC GOD INVOLVEMENT, neither do my trials. My trials can be painful, don't get me wrong, but I think it's more like, No. No, Marge. We are going to let her put her little hand in that hot water. It's not boiling and we've told her no a million times and tried giving her a little whack with a wooden spoon on the hand and saying no bad, but she keeps doing it anyway. Let her learn. And then I'm like, OMFG! OOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW! That's hot!!!!!!!! And then I think perhaps my gods do an I told you so dance. This usually translates more directly as, you're not headed in the right direction in your life, killer. Here are some signs so you can think about what you're doing. And being slightly older and slightly wiser by the second sharp whack across my knuckles with a wooden spoon, I'm like, okay, okay I get it. Stop hitting me! Jeez. And then I work really hard on figuring out what I'm supposed to do and get some kind of Scooby snack for my effort.

I'm not a great or even good spirit walker. I can do a little before bed but generally it needs to be spoon fed to me through my dreams where it's very, DEB! THESE ARE YOUR GODS SPEAKING! PAY ATTENTION! YOU NEED TO HEAL THIS THING/WRITE MORE/THINK ABOUT THIS. Sort of like when your mom gets on your case about buckling down about something. I can chose to not follow their advice, but typically it's at my own peril. Not because THEY WILL END ME FOR MY INSOLENCE but because they're usually annoyingly right and not following their advice ends up with me learning my lesson the hard way and the Told You So dance.

I also feel like, okay, if I have this one soul that's had many lives, maybe I have a shot at fixing some things this life. Not everythang, but some things and maybe next life I can fix a couple more and so on and such forth. It seems perplexing to me to attempt to fix like sixty shards' problems that hold like eighty past lives each. I like things linear and organized and frankly no one can empirically tell me otherwise so I figure if I want to believe we're all sort of like Daxes (or fine, a Doctor), only like . . .human and not a conscious continuous memory stream of past lives, it's my prerogative.

It also makes sense to me as U2 sings, "and you give yourself away" in terms of your soul. You give people big and small pieces knowing and not knowing it all the time. Sometimes you give people too much and you need to reconfigure and sew yourself back together, ideally finding the pieces you gave away and need back. But to me, as someone who also sews, it's sort of the difference between cutting up one piece of fabric and reassembling it and getting a stack of fat quarter quilting blocks and assembling that. As you can see, it's not the same fabric. This is where I find Thorne to be *extremely* helpful and I find myself back on the same page with her with the Iron Pentacle Meditation which has helped me immensely to piece stuff back together.

Right now? I'm piecing myself back together and it's a boring laborious process requiring magic, journaling, talking, more talking and a lot of exhaustion. But I know it will be worth it when I feel myself again and can go back to my usual Stepford wife/Courtney Love hybrid where I can smile at you while I'm cooking poison into your soup.

Chop wood, carry water.