Witches Brew

This has been quite a month: George Bush out and Barack Obama in, Rod Blagojevich out and Pat Quinn in. It gives a Witch hope for an enlightened leadership.

Our CIPS book club is currently reading, The Earth Path: Grounding Your Spirit in the Rhythms of Nature by Starhawk. In Chapter Six “The Circle of Life”, the chapter we have been reading. Starhawk begins, “In the Goddess tradition, all ritual takes place within a magic circle. We ground [concentrate and align ourselves with the power of the Earth] and then create a sacred space, calling air, fire, water, and earth, and that sacred transformative spirit of the center.

“The circle is the pattern of the whole, the schematic diagram that lets us know if something is complete.”

Starhawk is known for her progressive politics, She has traveled around the global, protesting on behalf of social justice, the rights of indigenous people, and care for our planet. I wish all of our policy makers would read and embrace her “Elements of Decision-Making.”

Air stands for thought, for the power of the mind. Fire represents passion and energy. Water represents emotion and our subconscious life. Earth provides the stable foundation on which we stand. And Spirit is the power that connects us to the Web of Life.

“When we want to know,” Starkhawk says, “if we have considered all sides of an issue, we can think about the elements and their corresponding qualities: What do I think about this particular issue? What energy do I sense around it? What do I feel? What is my body telling me? What transformation is possible…?

“When making a decision about sustainability, fo example, we can ask.

“How will this proposed action affect the air, the climate? The birds and insects? Will it bring inspiration and refreshment?

“How much energy will this use, and where will the energy come from? Will it use more energy than we take in? How much human energy will it require? Will it energize or drain us?

“How will this affect the water? The fish, sea-life, and water creatures? Will it use more water than we have? How do we feel about it?

“How will this affect the earth? The health of the soil? The microorganisms and soil bacteria? The plants and animals? The forests?

“How does this affect our human community? Will it benefit the poorest and least advantaged amomg us? Does this reflect and further our deepest values? Will it feed our spirit? Will it create beneficial relationships?”

Wouldn’t C-Span be uplifting if our leaders spent more time asking questions that mattered?

Pagans are a media savvy bunch, and Witchvox, “The Witches’ Voice” has been offering daily news and a mind-boggling web of social networking for “11 Years, 11 Months, and 30 Days.”

Actually, I am not sure how founders Wren Walker and Fritz Jung come by this number. The Witches Voice Inc. has been a not for profit 501K since February 1, 1997, and the introductory “What is the Witches’ Voice?” is dated February 2, 1997–but I bet I am not counting Leap Days!

Community supported, Witchvox sells nothing and accepts no advertising. It lists individual Pagans and groups, Pagan shops and clergy. There are 94,159 active accounts. You can find Pagans in Australia and the British Isles, in Malta, Pakistan, and Kuwait.

Illinois has listings for 1,246 Adults, 33 Military, and 86 Teens. There are 96 Adult groups, 33 Family, 11 Teen, 8 College, and 2 Recovery groups. At the moment there are no Military groups. We have 50 Clergy listed, 23 Shops, 122 Services, and 45 Public Notices. WitchVox is the place to go to find local events.

Witchvox is a clearing house for ideas. A half dozen or more essays are published every week by average Pagans on Pagan life and spirituality. There are reams of Poetry, book review, and profiles on Pagan musicians with mp3 files to download. And there is the News. Pagans around the world submit lins to newspaper articles on Christianity and Pagan topics, history and archaeological discoveries.

So Happy Birthday, Witchvox. Thank you, Wren and Fritz and the Witchvox staff. And thank you to all the Pagan folk who have made this a portal to the Pagan Multiverse.

More on the Ceremony of Unity and Blessing in Washington DC (AKA A Clean Sweep in Washington):

Some info from WitchSchool news…

Talking about Pagan news, Don Lewis and I, should everything go
according to plan, will be filming the Ceremony of Unity and Blessing
in Washington DC, and we will have the footage up on MagickTv.com as
quickly as possible. This is part of our overall increase in MagickTV Interviews and coverage. The hosts of the event are asking
people to carry out the ritual at home. You can find it at
http://www.paganreligiousrights.org/ritual.htm and if you do, please
send us photos and even short clips of tape so we can include it in
our very special film about this event.

So what’s WitchSchool, you might ask? WitchSchool is an online academy of Wicca and Magical Education. According to their homepage 206345 students have registered for courses since September 4, 2001. Originally based in Hoopston, Il, WitchSchool has now moved to Rossville. Their students, however, have logged in from more than 80 countries. WitchSchool offers classes in “Living the Wiccan Life,” writing spells, meditation, aromatherapy, tarot reading, dream work, and a lot more.

The new Rossville campus also offers face to face classes and rituals. And it’s the home of the MagicTV studio. The videos are hosted on YouTube. I was surprised by the variety available. There is an interview with artists/writers/Pagan Elders Oberon and Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart. There is a concert from popular Pagan muscian Wendy Rule. They have an ongoing talk show “Living the Wiccan Life,” and a satiric “The Doomsday Show.” There are WitchSchool exercises and an video tarot class.

And I hope, in the next week, we’ll be able to watch Witches clean up Washington, D.C.

On Monday January 19th, before President-Elect Obama takes the Oath of Office, Witches will gather at the Jefferson Memorial to “sweep the town clean” and welcome Obama and his administration to Washington.

“The Ritual of Unity and Blessing is organized by a triumvirate of native Washingtonians, one of whom is the great-granddaughter of slaves, one the great-granddaughter of slave owners, and one the daughter of a populist New Deal Congressman.”

Caroline Kenner is “a Pagan shamanic healer and organizer for the Sacred Space Foundation.” Katrina Messenger is a Wiccan Priestess, “founder of Connect DC and the Reflections Mystery School, and faculty member at Cherry Hill Seminary.” Caroline W. Casey is “founder of Coyote Network News (the Compassionate Trickster Mythological News Service) as well as the host-creator of Pacifica Radio Network’s, ‘The Visionary Activist Show .’”

Casey says, says, “The word “inauguration” comes from the word ‘augur’, the pattern-tracker, the diviner within us all. The augur would walk out into nature to divine the patterns indicating which human was deemed the most responsible steward of the Common Wealth, the well-being of all our relations. And that chosen person would be ‘inaugurated’ as the ruler who weds the land. We invite you to contribute your medicine blessing to our collective brew, and toast our new President, with whom we vow to collaborate: Barack Hussein Obama!”

Drumming will begin at 2:00 pm EST as Witches with festive be-ribboned brooms dance out the old administration and offer a clean start for the new. Caroline Kenner will invoke the Founding Fathers and ask the Lwa Legba to be the Gatekeeper. In Voudou the Lwa are “Angels” or Guardian Spirits, and Papa Legba allows the other Lwa to enter into the ritual. The dancers will call on their own Deities, and Caroline Casey will call upon the Trickster Coyote to show us how to bring about creative change.

Katrina Messenger will lead the blessing of “all the stones of Washington, focusing on the Jefferson Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, the Capitol, the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress, the Treasury, the Smithsonian and all our Museums, the Federal Reserve, the Archives, all of the Veterans’ Memorials, all of the Embassies, the Kennedy Center, the Tidal Basin and our beloved Anacostia and Potomac Rivers.” A quartz crystal in the shape the Washington Monument will be blessed placed in the Potomac River to carry the magic throughout the world.

A map is provided on the Pagan Religious Rights website so that Pagans who cannot make it to Washington for the ritual can participate at a distance. With the map and images of Washington sites, Pagans around the world can add their will to a clean sweep in our new era.

http://www.paganreligiousrights.org

Lat night I spent a very pleasant evening with some members of the Peoria Peace Network. They were preparing a couple of episodes of Peace Beat, a local cable access show. Somehow the conversation turned from turned from politics to religion. One member of the group suddenly asked, “How many of you pray?’ The tally was seven out of eight…

How many are Christians? another asked. Six Christians, 1 Agnostic, and me, Pagan. Well, most of the people there had no idea what a Pagan was, and of course we Pagans don’t have much consensus on that! And I was not inclined to discuss the issue with a group of casual acquaintances. But the same individual turned to me a minute later and asked, “So what’s wrong with Jesus?”

Well, there is NOTHING wrong with Jesus–except that he keeps bad company. Perhaps if I had linked up with a liberal Christian congregation in the 80’s, I might still be a Christian; but the Religious Right assumed ownership of Jesus, lock, stock, and cross in those days, and I had no sympathetic community then. It was The Last Temptation of Christ that finally created the rupture with my Christian heritage; it was the boycotting of movie theaters and the hateful rhetoric from the Christian Right that turned me away from Jesus. Though I had never read Last Temptation, I was a fan of Nikos Kazantzakis. I had been eagerly awaiting this movie. Now, I was forbidden from seeing it. The Gatekeepers had decreed which images of Jesus were acceptable. I was locked out of the Christian community.

It would be another eleven years before I formally declared myself Pagan. –Oh, my Goddess was speaking to me long before that! Thanks to the Women’s Spirituality Movement “Goddess Consciousness” was rising. I could see Goddess energy rising all around me, but I was never able to make an intellectual leap from God the Father to God the Mother. But Hathor, the Egyptian Goddess of Love and Beauty, Music and Dance, Terror and Divine Retribution, had been speaking to me since I was a child. I say now that I have been a Pagan since I was four years old when I first saw the Butter Cow at the Illinois State Fair. That’s a humorous exaggeration, but it’s not an untruth.

Through a friend I had developed an interest in Ancient Egypt when we were both in our teens. We were particularly fond of “The Story of the Destruction of Humankind” where the Cow Goddess Hathor loses control when punishing the impious who insulted her father Ra. She is on the verge of incinerating the Earth when the Gods divert her with a lake of beer died red like blood. She laps up att the blood and staggers off to sleep. Humankind is saved! We styled ourselves The Daughters of Hathor! Drunken killer cows: what’s not to love!

I took “hathor” for my first email handle. I bought my “Apocalypse Cow” t-shirt six months before my revelation. When it finally dawned on me that Hathor was really real and calling to me, I gladly embraced God the Daughter. I work with other Daughters as well: Hecate, Artemis, and Athena.

But there is nothing WRONG with Jesus, and I get on well with his liberal, socially conscious followers. It’s just that I belong to someone else.