Final Wishes

A Witchvox reader recently asked me what I thought should be done to ensure that her wishes were followed to have a Wiccan funeral, what to do for the funeral and what to do about her Catholic family, though her children are fine with her religion.

My response:

The best thing you can do imo is to start by making a will if you haven't already with your wishes in it and inform your kids (or next of kin) about your decision. Having this document legally drawn up by a lawyer will insure that your wishes are followed. Next, I would say you want to decide who you would like to conduct your burial for you and to inform them that while you are not dying, you want to plan for your future and ensure someone you know and trust conducts the ceremony for you. I personally would then consider a few points:

* How do I want my life celebrated? It's often natural that some people will be sad and grieve if your passing is sudden or unexpected, how would you like to celebrate your life while still leaving room for grieving? A picture board? A dvd with your happiest moments? For people to share memories of you?

* Think of this as one of the most important rituals you'll go through. What do you want to wear for it? Which chants/hymns, etc. do you want to be sang during it? Which god/dess/es do you want invoked to assist you in your passing? Are there any readings from any sacred texts that you want? Do you want to be buried with any other objects? Or herbs? What kind of flowers or charities do you want to use?

* How do you want to be buried? In the ground naturally? Cremated and your ashes spread in a special place? Interned? A standard burial with a fancy coffin? What cemetary do you want to be buried at if you want to be buried? What kind of headstone if so?

* Your family who is Catholic are going to need to grieve your loss too. Are you willing to do a traditional wake in addition to your Wiccan burial? Have a priest involved at all even for a short prayer for them? Prayers to Mary? Or allow for a memorial service where you're not present but gives them a chance to grieve in a way that's familiar to them?

* Make sure your affairs are in order - that your children (or next of kin) know where your important papers are, that they know how your life insurance works (if applicable), how to access security boxes and bank accounts, where your deed and car title is if applicable and that they know who your lawyer is and what your wishes are in terms of a long hospital stay (do you not want to be kept alive through machines? Do you want a do not resuscitate order? If you have a long term terminal illness, do you want hospice care?)

Have a question? Email me at corvaxgirl [at] gmail [dottie] com

On the Magic of Self Care

So, roles within our family are always changing and evolving. Motherhood has done something awesome to my sister in that she now can think calmly and rationally no matter how pissed off she is at someone, a skill I lack in the utmost of capacity. So now our conversations about estranged family that is making all the badness with my uncle in ICU go worse go something like this:

Me: (screams a bunch of psycho rabid dog stuff about our estranged family)
She: (calmly agrees with what I said but rightly points out x, y and z as to why we need to get along with them)
Me: (begrudging agreement because she is now the saner sister)
She: Now go grind some meat* and feed Jow dinner. Also, jinx family member Z.
Me: . . .really?
She: Yeah I'm co-signing. Go make a doll and call him Fredo and do what you need to do.

When everything is falling apart hardcore, it's the little things that are pleasing. Just planning all the jinx-y inconveniences I would do to Fredo (syph! get caught in all his lies! Never drive a nice car!) made me feel better, better enough that if Fredo has any bad low level luck, well, maybe it's my fault in a low level Malocchia sort of way but not in a super intentional sort of way.

Self care, real self care (not just in the form of a pizza or whatever other comfort food you can jam down your throat) during a time of crisis is hard to come by, especially when you come from a family of do'ers who like to burn themselves out. But it's important, even vital to the process.

When contemplating self care, I also contemplate how maybe this time/energy should be put into magic. But the more I thought about it, past trying to do my japa practice, send reiki and make some heart felt petitions/novenas to Our Lady of Guadalupe, it just hasn't felt right. I'm a mess, I'm not thinking clearly and the world as I know it may be changing in drastic, permanent and sad ways. Sometimes, past prayer. . .in my opinion, magic just isn't the answer. A shocking view among us here on our corner of the blogosphere, I know. If I were a "proper" magic user (whatever that is right?), I wouldn't be daunted! Nay! I would gather my magical tools and beat god/dess/es in a show of SHEER FORCE OF WILL! I will win this, universe!

Except . . .I can barely manage to shower (fibro during times like this? Also not awesome), how exactly am I going to show the universe who's the bitch in this relationship? And here's another phrase that is supremely unpopular among magic users (including Jow on most days), I can't.

Yep. That's right.

I can't.

I mean for me, firstly, honestly, because I don't believe I can best the universe in a pissing match for it is much bigger than me but *mostly* because I don't have the will. And magic is all about will. Dorking out, in White Wolf roleplaying games, Willpower plays a role in your character sheet. If you're playing Vampire**, willpower is so important that if you lose all your willpower, you will immediately go into a vampire frenzy and will be unable to see logic or reason and kill everything in your path. And in WW's Mage, willpower can affect your ability to cast a spell. At the risk of sounding like someone who believes that D&D is truefax, I think it's true in real life spell casting.

In WW, you can regain your willpower points which helps you be more effective through various methods. I will share here some of mine:

- Sleep. Sleep works like whoa. Sleep makes you a lot more sane, calm and rational.

- Cooking. Even if it's baking bread in the bread machine, making something from scratch start to finish gives me a sense of accomplishment. I find also making a full meal with fresh ingredients and eating healthy foods help too.

- Bitching. Not to the point where it becomes word vomit but to the point where you can release it as best as possible.

- Exercise. It gives you a place to put your aggression.

- Mind Rotting TV. I always feel better after an episode of Intervention or 16 and Pregnant. My problems seem downright manageable afterward.

- Focus on things you can control. I personally focused on teeth whitening and self tanning as well as my spring looks.


Sometimes I feel like I could be doing something super awesome right now with my time but the truth is, it's hard enough to get through the day. And that's okay. Regaining willpower through self care is a necessary and dare I say sacred act and right now that trumps just about everything but what I am using to deal with my fam's medical crisis. It would be nice to be having a grand time of it right now, it's spring, sort of, I have ideas and plans for things I'd like to do and wouldn't it be fun to be dressed nice and go someplace awesome and do something spontaneous? It sure would be! But it's not where I am. And owning where you are makes it possible for you to get to the next place, which will hopefully be better. Where ever that is.


* When I went through my divorce, using my meat grinder attachment on my MixMaster was one of the few things that kept me remotely sane. It was weirdly therapeutic, I don't know, I guess the Sweeney Todd aspect of it or whatever. If you have a MixMaster but no meat grinding attachment, buy one right now. I mean it. It will change your life.

** I want that 20th Anniversary Ed of Vampire: the Masquerade so bad I can taste it and I don't care who knows!

Pizza and Dead People

But first, real life. My uncle is in the hospital in ICU right now. This has been difficult for my family for a lot of reasons. a) If he passed, that would leave my uncle fatherless at 19. No one I knew who is part of the "dead dad" club who lost their father around that age came out unscathed. My cousin . . . is troubled would be the kindest way to put it and he has a lot of things working against him. He *just* started to pull his shit together a month ago. If my uncle passed, it would be a one way trip down the spiral, hard. We all can see it. (b) For Italians, we're a small family. We're still rocked from losing half of M.'s family two years ago unexpectedly. We only have (1) baby on that side. It would just . . .make us that much more inconsolable. There's only like 14 of us now total.

When we first got the news that he was in ICU, we had no information. Generally I take point in these kinds of situations, but my sister wanted to go and she's an adult now so I wanted to give her the chance. I wanted me to have the chance to stay behind and tend to the home fires and take care of her kid. I could be patient and calm and wait.

Wrong.

Apparently family roles exist for a reason. If it was a movie, it would almost be comical, me at home with her child screaming and inconsolable, me looking stricken and gasping in panicky breaths, pacing and pacing, at a loss with nothing to do but sit on my hands and try futilely to get the baby to calm down. She at the hospital, stricken and overcome by the sight of my vibrant uncle, hooked up to so many tubes and machines that she didn't know how she would handle it and didn't know what to do with my mother or the situation. Both of us whispering to each other through text we chose wrong, this isn't what we're good at, not at all.

Since then, we've gotten a routine. Every other day either she goes with my mother to the hospital two hours away and I stay home with her kid or vice versa. I grill the nurses, nag my mother. She does my uncles laundry and replaces household items.

We're getting there. He's getting better, little by little. We're not out of the woods yet but the outcome looks promising at least.

My sister and my mother are troopers. I'm not strong like they are, I've been sleeping til noon, exhausted. My sister cares for her kid, my mom goes to work. But I hope that when I take a little time to breathe and recharge, I can help them do the same, have a clear head to help find answers, make them take breaks, etc. The days are long, going til midnight every other day.

I haven't been able to light a novena candle yet, but I think about it a lot, Our Lady of Guadalupe sitting serenely on my altar and I think about Her prayer that I don't know by heart but know the gist of and lighting the candle in my head and hope that it counts, almost as much. My japa practice has become erratic, but I think about that a lot too and say a few mantras when I can remember. I think about the rosary in one of my uncle's mittens, prayed on by so many of my ex-aunt's family members. I try to pray before bed, try to go to my internal meditation space and clean that out since I haven't had the time to in my actual home. I think about asking to go to Umberto's tonight, my father's favorite pizza place out in NY. So much so that when he passed, a cousin ribboned a box beautiful and displayed it at his wake. We go there, whenever we go to the cemetery, whenever we go to a wake, sometimes when we're leaving the country out of JFK, sometimes just when we're visiting my uncle and we can be happy as a family. But mostly I think about pizza and dead people and how it's a part of our pilgrimage to visit our beloved dead, just like the shitty diner in south Jersey we go to when we visit my dad's grave where we always order pancakes and burgers.

My mom is my family's keeper of the dead, I guess that's where I get it from but she's hardcore. She specializes in what I call "drive by cemetery visits". She's got a wreath in her hand, twine, scissors, whatever she finds around the cemetery to help hold up wreaths, flowers, palms, she's the MacGyver of the Cemetery. She knows where everyone's buried and has inscrutable markers in her brain that helps her find whoever. She does drive bys because she'll decide on a day's notice that that is what she's doing and then gets put out when I can't decide on a whim (and really, who decides to drive two hours to either cemetery on a whim? Fran [our last name], that's who.) to go visit all of our beloved dead. Sometimes I think I'm too soft and squishy because I get all emotional and shit about this kind of stuff, but when it comes down to doing, I can get through it all nice and neat like my mom does, once I'm there. It's just getting there. But I'm learning, or at least trying to because some day this will be my job. We have the same organized brain though and the same black humor. We talk about where everyone's buried like normal people talk about files. I explained my eventual plan to get everyone in one general area in a mausoleum all nice and neat and she laughs ("We'll just move Dad and put him like across the street from Grandma and Grandpa and then everyone will be organized, right Ma? Keep everyone close and nice and tidy!"). So I go with her and she tells me family secrets off handedly (it's the only way to get them out of her) and I try to figure out the bunny trail of our beloved dead. I'm learning. Slowly. And then we get a slice of sicilian and try the Arancini di Riso and head home, back to central New Jersey, back and forth between life and the dead as sure as an abacus.

Into the Dark

I think everyone wants answers through their spirituality for the bigger questions. Why are we here? How do we know the gods exist? Do we have souls? What happens after we die?

With larger, more unified faiths, there's usually a pat answer (except for Judaism as far as I know). Heaven. Reincarnation. These religions also tend to have clergy where one of their jobs is to give you answers to these questions.

While Pagans have clergy, we don't have a unified lengthy training program. Many of our clergy need to have day jobs to support themselves, which is a different topic in and of itself, and many Pagan clergy members don't set themselves above their fellow Pagans.

So we ask each other. And some of us answer with confidence from the work we've done, the spirits who speak to us, the austerities we accomplish. We ponder and sometimes fight with each other about fine points of practices and faith here on the blogosphere to try to find answers.

As many of you know, I like order and routine. So I put together a neat little package of answers to my questions so I can get out of bed every morning and most days that's enough.

But should I ever be considered to be in a position of authority, I don't want my neat packet of answers to be mistaken for deep, unshakable faith. Because, I don't have that. I did, as a child and teenager in Catholicism, but somewhere along my dad's long, painful drawn out death, I needed more answers. As a mad girl scientist, I immediately thought, books! I took classes in college on the Old Testament, Western Religion, searching, searching and still coming up shaken. I became a Dianic Wiccan shortly after I attended a circle as part of my class assignment (to attend a service for a faith other than mine).

For those of you who have ever seen it, Scrubs is generally a comedy about working in a hospital told through the eyes of JD. But once in a while, they have a serious episode and that's when it's a cascade of tears for me. "My Last Words" is about a man dying who has a lot of questions and no sure faith in anything in particular. JD and his friend Turk start out with platitudes and other reassuring things, but end with, I don't know. We have to fight death every day and we don't know and it's terrifying. And . . .that's how I feel. As a Crowgirl who has attended far more funerals than weddings, I still don't have any answers. In the episode, they use a song by one of my favorite bands, Deathcab for Cutie called, "I Will Follow You into the Dark" which really sums up my feelings on the whole matter.

I don't have answers. Death scares me. But, the lyrics of the song sum up how I feel.

The last bit of the episode. Deathcab's alternative video using a picture book with rabbits. Amanda Palmer's cover.

Love of mine
Someday you will die
But I'll be close behind
I'll follow you into the dark
No blinding light or tunnels to gates of white
Just our hands clasped so tight
Waiting for the hint of the spark

If heaven and hell decide that they both are satisfied
Illuminate the no's on their vacancy signs
If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks
Then I'll follow you into the dark

In catholic school, as vicious as Roman rule
I got my knuckles bruised by a lady in black
And I held my tongue as she told me "Son, fear is the heart of love"
So I never went back

If heaven and hell decide that they both are satisfied
Illuminate the no's on their vacancy signs
If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks
Then I'll follow you into the dark

You and me
Have seen everything to see
From Bangkok to Calgary
And the soles of your shoes
Are all worn down, the time for sleep is now
But it's nothing to cry about 'cause we'll hold each other soon
In the blackest of rooms

If heaven and hell decide that they both are satisfied
Illuminate the no's on their vacancy signs
If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks
Then I'll follow you into the dark
And I'll follow you into the dark.

But business is business and business runs in the family/ We tend to bruise easily, mad in the blood . . .

Yesterday was a bad day for my mother, sister and me. The details are personal, but most of the time we fight like typical Italians do - fast, hard, loud, mean and with forgiveness quickly following. Yesterday for a multitude of reasons, I think we all saw how fragile even the strongest threads could get. I was miserable, I left work early, I had been crying all day and felt sick to my stomach worried that some of the things said just . . .couldn't be forgiven.

Then where would I be? The idea of being untethered from my mom and sister was unbearable, we had been through so much together and we always loved each other through it, even if we didn't agree with each other. The amount of love and support I received from them was unmeasurable, to be without that was unthinkable, there would always be a huge gaping hole in my heart. While for once the issue wasn't about me per se, I could see things unraveling and while I tried to have the conversation reasonably, too much flew out of my mouth when I got heated and while I apologized to my sister and then things managed to escalate further, I was feeling cast adrift.

Jow and I went to the grocery store, one we didn't usually go to. It had an impressive amount of candles to all sorts of saints and the big JC and Mary. I had privately thought I would have liked to have done all sorts of spellwork to remedy the situation in a way I found favorable but I knew I was mad and hurt and that this mess was so deep, I knew in my heart I wouldn't even *know* what the right outcome was. The candles were on sale, only a $1.15 each, I grimly asked Jow if any of them could do :::lots of unnecessarily snarky suggestions::. While there was a Certain Saint who probably could, She and I don't have a great reaction to each other and she doesn't get along overly well with one of my patrons.

I stared at the candles dumbly and I thought about how I wasn't Catholic anymore, my sister was lapsed, but my mom still was devout. Who would be interested in hearing my family problems after I had left the Church anyway? I couldn't even manage a relationship with St. Expedite. Jow pointed out how Mary loves everyone and doesn't seem to care much if you take up with pagan gods, She just wants your family life to be good. And I thought about how dysfunctional and difficult her family life must have been ("Sooooooo. . . .um, there was angel and not only did He have something to tell me but . . .") and how faithful and calm She had always been. I thought about the GoG Crowning of Mary and how I still felt at home there. I thought about my mom and how she tried to emulate Mary in raising two hellion daughters as best as she could. I hesitated between Traditional Mary and Our Lady of Guadalupe. I liked the prayer on OLoG candle better and Jow pointed out that She is the Virgin Mary of the Americas. I also figured the current family drama was a lot of Standard Ethnic Drama so the "translation" wouldn't be hard. I later learned that She's associated with being somewhat of a riot girl and synchronization with other previous goddesses which is a good fit for me.

I got home and I said the prayer and lit the candle on our altar. We went about our business making dinner and a few hours later, my mom had spoken to my sister and my sister had texted me and my mom called me and in the typical dysfunctional round robin my family uses to solve problems, things were better. Sincere apologies were exchanged and laundry was aired. We're on the same page with Mary burning brightly in the background of all of it and I feel whole again and I felt my heart open up to be more compassionate, to be kinder. I shyly told my mom that I had lit a novena candle to Mary and said a prayer to her and now things were better. She sounded happy when she said, prayer always works. I think she understands that she doesn't understand how my faith works, but somewhere in there there's still a piece she understands.

All of this for $1.15 at the grocery store reminds me sometimes all you need is your heart on your sleeve for magic to work.

Seven times I pierce my heart/ Now I feel the magic start . . .

Kenaz had a great post on Cursing and RO followed up with a great post on personal responsibility and cursing.

Dark secret time: I am a complete pussy when it comes to cursing.

It's true! I was raised Catholic where God was supposed to dyg (do it your godself) all your cursing for you and you were supposed to turn the other cheek like a Certain Awesomely Chill Child of the Big G. And then, I was Dianic Wicca where it was all, rule of three! Rule of three! Fingers point back to you! Black magic is for Bad Ponies!

Then I started hanging out with the bad kids or at least more magically neutral kids over at GoG and our Señora Druid said, some of the worst things I've done magically was to try to help other people and some of the best things I've ever done was in being selfish or doing "gray area" magic. And I started thinking, hmmmmm. Maybe cursing is something I should be able to do.

But I hesitate. I've done a few things that can be construed as "light grey area" stuff, but how does one go from a Good Girl Catholic/Wiccan to a Curse Slingin' Dilettante? That was always what caught me, okay I do totes agree cursing is a sometimes food, but when exactly is that sometimes?

After pondering both K & RO's entries, I came up with a model that works for me. Now, those of you who don't know me, I am a *huge* crime show/Judge Judy junkie (hey! we're here to bitchily judge my magical practices, not my tv consumption).

My model is sort of L&O based and as Jason cautioned us both on modeling and what happens when you drink & blog, it's subject to change.

1. Egregious crime is committed!
2. Investigate said egregious crime, what happened? What evidence is there that this person's narrative sounds right? Is my own narrative correct? Ideally cross check with someone.
3. Prepare case to go to gods "court" with.
4. Go to trial! (i.e. commit curse)
5. Await judgement by the gods to see if this was a correct action or not.

So okay, in this scenario, I'm one of Jack's omg hot, young, plucky ADAs. Since I'm young and boffing Jack, I need to really genuinely believe in my case because I'm young and passionate and still have morals and shit and have not yet been broken down by the system. If I really believe in my "case"/curse, I can go in with mundi manus, clean hands, in my own eyes. If I really believe in my own case (i.e. I'm not just mad and being ridiculous) or someone else's case, I really feel like then I am willing to commit the curse because I'm willing to put my own ass on the line with my gods and do the work to make sure this is the right thing to do.

Nice to Meet You, Charmed . . .

My layout is thanks to Dossy! He rocks my socks, whenever I am limited by my own low skill level, I can Veruca Salt whine and he fixes because he's cool like that.

So, a bit about me as I'm sure you're *dying* to know. My regularly scheduled blogging is over on el-jay as we say over on that 'hood, but my SO has been trying to talk me into blogging about my magicy goodness over here. Apparently, if I want discussion based discourse, this is the place to be. I had been fairly quiet on the blogs I syndicate over to my lj because (a) omg a drag to click a link and log into my gmail and (b) I have a big mouth and am not always known for my massive amount of tact. Keeping my opinions to myself is not really where I excel, I tend to have that Angelina Jolie like need to blurt out anything I'm thinking.

Anyway. I was Catholic for the first 18 years of my life, CCD, confirmed, church every Sunday, confession, the whole nine. I came from a pretty progressive church so I don't have a lot of baggage, it just wasn't for me anymore. I wanted to be able to at least be a deacon, which I thought was fair but the Pope disagreed.

Then I "turned my back on thousands of years of family tradition" as my mother so colorfully put it when I came out of the broom closet, by becoming a Dianic Wiccan. I'm still part of my circle and I'm an initiated Priestess there, I consider it part of my "public" practice. Dianics can heal like whoa and I find it a good way to get connected to the Goddess within. I've been Dianic for 13 years. The other part of my public practice is Grove of the Other Gods, which is one of the largest groves with ADF. We're sort of the snake handling part of the organization. I consider GoG a good way to get connected to the gods and goddesses without. I have led rits there as well. I have been part of GoG for 9 years.

In my private practice, I consider myself primarily a hearth woman. I have been initiated as a shaman (9 years), I do a little hoodoo, I do a little kitchen witchery, I do pooja based Hindu practice, and some divination.

Gods/Goddesses/Beings Bigger than Me I work with to varying degrees but have altar space in my home: Yemaya, Crow, Parvati, Durga, Shiva, Demeter, Persephone, Hecate, Eris, Bast, Pan, Nyx, The Morrigan, and Diana.