Stories, Ritual, and Sacrifice

It's been a while from my last post. New job, started classes, blah-blah work-life balance fail. Anyway.

Taun-taun has, twice now, brought a podcast to my attention that I should have immediately started following (second fail!), but is now firmly in my catcher-feed. I've only listened to two, plus a co-host/interview on Inciting a Riot, but I love it - New World Witchery, and it's made of hearts and magic. :)

An interesting question was posited by a listener in the most recent one, of whether or not story-telling and writing (as opposed to straight-up ritual and prayer writing) have a place in ritual and spellwork. I found it interesting in part because my answer was the precise opposite of the lovely host. He talked about publishing and readers as a way to spread the ripples, etc.

I have used writing, stories and poems, as well as art in pictures and scenes, in spell-work before, but not like that. For me, they have served the purpose of sacrifice. In this day and age (and place, for me), it is not always or generally possible to observe the traditional ways of sacrifice - chickens or cows, slicing yourself across the palm, etc; at worst, you get arrested and create a public incident that has the rest of us moaning, "Seriously, WHY?! This press SUCKS!", at best you're still covering for an injury that's not easily explained. (Moon-blood is the only blood I'd term as "freely given", and it has it's place in ritual as well. But that's a different post.)

Creative outlet, though, if you're already prone to it - the pain of burning a story you're proud of, a picture, a poem, is a sacrifice in and of itself. A story written for the ritual, with no copies, never read by another soul, and then consigned to the flames or the water with no recourse - this is a sacrifice for the gods and for no mortal eye.

It hurts. Really. Writing something, pouring your soul into something, and then destroying it to send it into the Beyond, feels the same or worse as getting dumped (Depends on the dumper. This is not the "I dodged a bullet" feeling. It's the "Oh gods, I can't fix this" feeling.) This is what I use as sacrifice, when I'm doing a ritual that is important, when I really want to get Someone's attention. And, it works. I don't do it often, and it's based in no research or historical record, but there it is.

What I'd love to hear is stories of the other way - the published, the passed around, the stories that were told and retold to gain their effect. I love writing, but I'd never think I could write something good enough, entertaining enough, that it could create the ripple effect of passing on and passing down. Now that it's been mentioned though, the idea is fascinating!

Blessed Be,
Pennanti

Sometimes wishing makes it so...

In the past three days:

- a pie pan (that I may or may not have been eating straight out of) flipped over for no apparent reason. It was lying flat on my hand, and I was sitting down.

- the fork I eat lunch with disappeared. We moved everything on the table. I borrowed a coworker's fork. When I cleaned up, it reappeared underneath the cheese bag.

- No one knows where my keys are.

I'm going to take this as a good sign, methinks?
Blessed be!
Pennanti

All those people with horoscope tattoos are going to feel really...wait, they won't care. http://huf

Apparently, some astronomer took it upon himself to "correct" the zodiac. (Um, what??)

I am not going to dispute anything here. I am not an expert on the horoscope - I think it's kinda fun to look at, and definitely a great topic of conversation, what with 5,000 years of historical and cultural depths to explore. I deeply identify with my sign. An expert though, definitely not.

However, one of the reasons I've never tried to be an expert is because there are quite a few out there, and could some of them please weigh in? Because this is looking really stupid from over here in the plebian zone.

Blessed be!
Pennanti

I need a brownie-attracting spell, stat!

I'll just come right out of the closet with this one, and let the puns fall where they may. I believe in fairies. There's reasons for that, among them being that I'm 1st generation Irish American, and I spent whole summers in the country with my Dublin-native grandparents, and also that a few used to live with us. As Catholic as Gramma was and is, she couldn't help herself with the stories and myths of the Fay. The Sidhe. The sprites and pookas and leprechauns. She also "can't help herself" when it comes to the other kind of fairy, to use the vernacular, but that's a source of considerable less glee on my part.

Doesn't everyone have at least one chore, that despite all best intentions, continously and ruinously kicks their butt? In our house, it's the Laundry Demon. The Laundry Demon has been slain, oh, mayhap 3 times in the span of the last 5 years, and rises again, hydra-like, worse than ever every time.

It doesn't make sense. Taun-taun throws loads in several times a week. I fold and put them away. We work on it constantly. We're only two people, but somehow the laundry multiplies as though we were two parents and 8 kids.

This is, seriously, not exactly a problem. Definitely not a problem that you pray/cast circle/summon gods' assistance upon. (Bridgid would laugh at me, and she would be right to.) I don't like calling for anything other than worship or sheer desperation, when you get right down to it. Feels wrong.

And it was these thoughts that made me suddenly remember - I can't remember the last time I sent out a more mundane plea, to fairies or otherwise. High school, I did it all the time. Energy constructs, fairies, small spirits and karmic waftings, whatever. It was a gleeful time, of trying whatever came into my damnfool head, with deeply mixed results. Along the way, as belief grew into devotion, the need for smaller spells sort of dissipated, and the memory of doing them also evaporated. Couplets and cantrips and sprigs of herbs tucked in odd places - you know, the fun stuff! The fluffy stuff.

Anyway, once upon a time, I didn't have this laundry problem. I was actually worse at doing laundry than I am now, but somehow, it wasn't an issue. And reflecting upon that, I remembered the brownie! More of a shy and grumpy gnome, actually. He lived in our basement for years, even followed us from house to house for a little while. In the apartment complex, he lived in the boiler room. Squirt and I had a rule, to always whistle while we were in the basement. That way he'd know when we left and wouldn't have to be scared.

I left for college, and he stayed. I'm sure he's long gone by now, given that neither of my parents are much for leaving out bits of candy and small bowls of Coca-cola when they leave for vacation (I was twelve, you work with what you have. Spilled cola, Dad will forgive or not notice. Spilled milk? Different story.)

How does one go about attracting a brownie? I've quite forgotten, but we'd offer him a lovely home, with an excellent basement and regular 'forgotten' bits of candy or bread. And we would never, ever thank him. Promise!

Blessed Be,
Pennanti

Magic and you. And you, and you, and you, and you...(guest post)

Hello, hypothetical audience. I guess on the intertubes, I'm Taun-Taun. Which really has yet to stop being strange when I see it written referring to me on here.

So why am I interrupting the normal posting habits of my better half? As I told her earlier today, I had something I kind of wanted to talk about and I didn't really have an outlet, so here I am, shouting into the void instead. I was listening to Pagan Parents On The Edge earlier at work, which is an awesome show, so listen to it if you don't already. They were talking about the role of Santa in the holiday season, and, as expected, talked briefly about how children generally stop believing in him as they get older, along with a general waning of belief in the fantastic or magical. Which I agree with, to an extent.

As a society, we obviously are fairly down on magical thinking. You didn't cure your headache with that spell, it was just a placebo effect because you thought about it a lot. Smudging your house with sage doesn't purify it, you just made the place smell funny. So on and so forth. I'm sure we've all heard some version of this at some point or another. But then, I got to thinking, which is always a bad idea. For as much as anything supernatural is generally looked down on, you know who the biggest coven in the world actually is? Sports fans.

Stay with me for a second here. Maybe you're reading this from somewhere in Boston, and you have a Red Sox hat on a shelf somewhere. Or Chicago, and your winter coat is a Cubs jacket. Or maybe you're familiar with any of the ENTIRE FREAKING ARTICLE- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sports-related_curses

I used to be pretty big into baseball until a few years ago, and I saw people, including my own family, doing the craziest crap because they thought somehow it would help their team win. Or that there was some kind of "bad luck" that kept their team from going anywhere in the playoffs. Hell, I watched my mother adjust the position of a roll of posterboard she'd left on the couch by accident one day because we thought if we moved it a little bit, the Yankees might start playing better. Other friends had certain shirts of certain players they would wear so that they would break out of their slumps. Me and my brother wore a small Yankees symbol on a chain like it was a cross. Another person I knew wore a particular hat when his team was playing at home, no matter how gross it got. It couldn't be washed, you see, that would take the luck out of it. We were all just joking, of course. Right?

Looking back on it, I don't really think that was the case. There's a certain level of vehemence that rose to the surface when these goofy little rituals of ours were challenged. I distinctly remember getting yelled at if the Yankees were playing well and I would accidentally knock that roll of posterboard out of place. It's possible that this makes her sound like a nutcase, but the fact is, this is the kind of passion and faith you see people put in superstitions all over the world of sports fandom.

So what's my point here? Is it that sports fans are batshit crazy? That one doesn't need me writing about it. But let's look at the bigger picture, the one that this post only touches on one aspect of. As a culture, we perform rituals. We wear totems. We make sacrifices. Why do we do this? "Well, you know, it's just this stupid little thing I have, but it helps me calm down/focus/keep moving while I'm doing housework/get through visiting my in-laws without killing them/etc." Frequently said with a bit of shame, as though this is something you shouldn't be doing, or is kid's stuff, and how silly it is that you as a grown, mature adult still hold onto a bit of it. The only thing that's silly about this is that we try to hide it and ignore it. "It just isn't the Way The World Works", we adamantly repeat to ourselves. To that, I say- pfft. The Horned One has helped me finish more than one workout when all I've wanted to do is topple to the floor and pass out in a nice warm puddle of my own sweat.

Unlike disco, magic ain't dead. It just updated its wardrobe. Also unlike disco.

Will we get kitties tonight? I hope so!

Insects outnumber every other species by the thousands. Creepy, crawly, and potentially better evolved for the planet, it's something most people don't like thinking about.

So let's talk about kitties instead! I really wonder, if one were to county up the number of pagans, and the number of cats owned by pagans, would the cats outnumber us 10 to 1? Or would it be more like 3 to 1? For certain, for every pagan I've met who doesn't own a cat (Um, have I met any? There must be some out there. Astruar always struck me as dog people, really.) there are two or three who own several cats apiece.

Taun-taun and I are no exception. Some time ago, we started looking into fostering kittens, because we can't take anymore permanently. We want to do some volunteering overseas, and needing to rehome the thousand or so cats we would own if we could wouldn't be good for anyone. And then we backed off, because of Morpheus. Morpheus was my darling, grumpy old man of 21 years, and we didn't want to risk taking in potentially sick homeless kittens while his immune system couldn't handle it.

He's no longer with us, may he rest in peace. So we looked into it again, and got approved....and immediately moved. Not far, but far enough to have boxes everywhere and no clear space to set aside to keep Foster Kitties separate from Our Cuties while we weren't home. (Kali and Isis, we have a Pet Name Theme.)

Yesterday, we discovered a woman, a Cat Saint, who maintains nine lean-tos around our area for homeless cats. Drives around and feeds them, shovels paths, puts out bales of hay and blankets. Every day. One of the lean-tos is right next to our house, and we had no idea who was helping the cats (besides our friends, who live downstairs. They've been feeding them too.) She maintains a blog - thebean10.blogspot.com - if you live in the Rochester, NY area. I immediately recognized her description of The Tiny Cat with Huge Balls, who we captured by accident one evening. He looks exactly like Kali, except for, erm, /cough/ difference. His name is Louie, apparently.

So Taun-Taun spent all night last night getting our bedroom ready for Foster Kitties! Call it the kick we needed. He's going to fill out some paperwork today, and soon, we should have some cute fuzzy bundles of love who haven't found their Forever Home yet. We'll take good care of them until they do.

I hope tonight! But I'll settle for next week.
Blessed Be and I Wish I Could Find My Camera Charger,

Pennanti

Testing Posterous, 1, 2, 3...

In theory, this doohickey is going to post to every social thingamabob I have at once. Which would be nice, since work finally got around to blocking TwitterGadget on igoogle. (Why they haven't blocked iGoogle, which gives me a backdoor into Gmail, and thus Buzz, Aim, and gChat, I will NEVER KNOW.)

So, if this glitches and spams someone's feed, I apologize, in a "please let me know and I'll adjust it" kind of way.

Blessed Be!

Pennanti