Ask eWitch!

It's 'Ask eWitch' week here on the blog! New to your path? Have a question about Wicca? About Paganism? About life and general? Need suggestions for setting up your Altar, or a good recipe for honey cakes? Listen, we don't have all the answers, believe me, but we may be able to point you in the right direction! So leave your questions, great and small, in the comments, and someone from eWitch will seek out the answer!

Religion: You're doing it right!

LunThe idea of one God, one single ‘right’ deity in a world of thousands of cultures with millions of deities has always seemed ridiculous to me. Or at the least, unfair. Wouldn’t it be a piece of cake for one all knowing, all powerful God to make pretty sure that EVERYBODY believed in Him? Why allow us even the possibility of worshiping Someone Else, if He’s such a jealous and vengeful God? Does that make sense?

So, when I was a young person full of unanswered questions trying to figure all this out, it occurred to me that if there wasn’t just one ‘right’ answer, then pretty much everyone had to be right. That’s right, you heard me, you’re all doin’ it right. Give yourself a pat on the back. Seriously though, I think it’s like this: an all powerful, all knowing, creative force in the universe is probably so complex that our animal brains wouldn’t even be able to comprehend it. So we put faces on this power that we CAN comprehend. We give it names, we find the aspects of it that we need or desire to commune with. For me, every God or Goddess is simply an aspect or facet, a way for us to access the love and creative power that surrounds us.

One facet, or aspect, that I turn to most is a Goddess called Scathac. According to ancient Irish myth, Scathac is a Scottish Goddess from a time when Gods walked the British Iles like men. Scathac is a warrior woman, teaching Cuchulainn, a great Irish hero. Because she knows the ways of war and the human body, she also knows the arts of healing and magic. It’s this dichotomy that appeals to me. As a martial artist myself, I love the beauty, spirit, discipline of the martial way. On the other hand, I have no desire to become a soldier, to kill or hurt anyone except in self defense. Likewise, I like healing people and study herbalism and other types of remedies.

I appeal to or approach Scathac for all sorts of issues - when I need strength, spiritual or physical; when I seek protection or healing for myself or others. Because Scathac was a strong, independent woman who rules her own fort, I come to her when I need to fight for my own things, like keeping my home. I worship her through prayer, but I also will dedicate performances of martial skill to her. I decorate her altar with healing herbs from my garden as well as small, beautifully made weapons. Scathac, in the myths had a daughter, so at times I will come to her seeking the emotional love and support of a mother, as one of her warrior daughters.

There are other Gods or Goddesses I worship or pray to at times, including Lord Ganesh and Kwan Yin. It is Scathac, however, who identify with the most. She is the facet of the creative forces that I most seek to emulate, and identify with.

Get Familiar With My Familiars

It's Magical Animal week here on eWitch, so I thought I would introduce you to my special animals - my cats! Of course, the supernatural Witch's Familiar of legend comes to mind. However, my fur (and furless) children are more like soul mates and best friends. Heinlein put it best when he said "Women and cats will do as they please...." I have yet to find the spell to allow me to make my will clear to my cats and cause them do my bidding. Oh well. I have to settle for two special beasts with super powers who found me out and decided to stick around, giving me the purest, sweetest love. I would say 'unconditional,' but lets be honest - they are cats. I am often in the dog house around here...



This is my Cici cat. Cici is actually C.C. - Chupa Cabra. She is a Sphinx cat (hairless) and follows me around like a puppy; she also rides around on my shoulder like a gargoyle. She gambols and plays and greets me at the door with a special sound she makes only for me. Cici's super power is that she can always put a smile on my face, no matter how bad my day has been.



Here, Cici and her brother, The Brute, sit like Gargoyle bookends and get some sun on their naked little rumps. People are often put off by the Sphinx - they think they look ugly, or scary. However, just a short amount of time spent with these beauties proves their tremendous sweetness. The Brute is really my soul mate. He knows my moods and knows when I need to be herded into bed for a cuddle. He can be a bossy thing - he doesn't understand why we ever leave the warm blankets, and can be quite vocal about his displeasure when I get up in the morning. His love, however, is true, which is his superpower. He loves (and trusts) me more than anything or anyone, and that kind of love is a strong medicine.

Brutie and Cici may not lend their supernatural powers to my spells, but they lend me their strength and love and are my real support group.

Practical/Magic

While I was trying to decide what to write on for this weeks post, I kept thinking about Luna's post from last week, about her Grimiore, or Book of Shadows. She mentioned that it might be more practical for us to keep our Book of Shadows as a file on the computer, "But still," she says, "I like having something pretty that can be passed on." I can get behind that idea - I love feeling my own book in my hand, I love the immediacy of it, and I am deeply in love with the idea that I am doing something that people have done for centuries - writing down my thoughts, discoveries and observations onto paper with ink.

I ponder this link to the past a lot. As modern Pagans, we are trying to walk an ancient path, but this is complicated by the modern world. We can keep our journey book on the PC; several pagan themed apps are available for the iPhone, including a Voodoo doll app, a tarot app, a Wiccan Ritual Calendar app; we can take classes in Witchcraft, Magical Herbalism, Sorcery, over the internet. Where is our ancient past among all of the shiny new tech of the future?

Not to mention that so much ancient wisdom has been lost over the centuries, we are forced to reexamine and extrapolate so much in order to fill in the blanks. We read and study and google, and yet, so much is still left to our own imaginations. I can't help but wonder what we are creating for the future, these amalgamations of old and new. I think, though, that this is also why Paganism, in it's different flavors, appeals to so many people now: We are watching the ancient past evolve into a bright future. Our link to ritual, magic, other worlds, folklore... these things give the cold, tech filled void of the present and future a meaning. Our rituals, our recipes, our methods of gathering herbs or building ritual tools - the things passed from one of us down to another. These things may seem impractical, and yet they bind us to one another, as well as to our past and our future, as a culture. I find that idea really beautiful, and it helps me understand better my own motives for somewhat esoteric way that I have chosen to exercise my faith.

Does it matter if we keep our spells in the computer? Or that we use our iPhones as a script prompt for our rituals? I'm not certain. In terms of spirituality, we may be living in our own Brave New World on a certain level, and perhaps we must make some things up as we go. A few centuries ago, Christians feared that science undermined the value and teachings of their God. The ancient Celts wrote almost nothing down, though they had a written language - was this because it was a dishonor to the knowledge that was being passed down? Or because keeping something in writing meant that you didn't actually have to learn it? I don't think anyone can really say. It does seem possible, however, that both of these cultures stood at a threshold of the future and felt the need to protect, strengthen and preserve a sense of spirituality. Maybe keeping our leather bound grimiores and other methods of maintaining or ancient collective spiritual histories in the face of these other, more 'practical' methods is our own way of preserving the spirit, the sacred link that connects us all to the Creative Forces of the Universe.

The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle (Lynelle)

My favorite book is Peter S. Beagle's "The Last Unicorn." I read it as a teenager and it's been my favorite ever since. I know it almost by heart! It's a tale about an innocent unicorn who leaves her forest to go on a quest to find her people. Along the way she encounters events and people who touch and change her, as she touches them. The experiences leave her wiser but changed from who she was when she started out, which is, in Beagle's world, both beautiful and sad. The prose is lyrical and full of magic and beauty, and the characters have an eccentric charm. It's a perfect book to read in the sun dappled light of a park or garden.

The Last Unicorn is a tearful tale of the last existing unicorn's journey out of her familiar forest to save the species. On the way she encounters evil magic, dark castles, cursed towns, and a particularly interesting sea shore. The character's in this magical story invite you to learn with them, while Peter S. Beagle poetic prose are something to remember as he tells a story of bravery and courage. Do love, freedom, and happiness prevail? Or will we forever live in fear in a world without unicorns?

A Quick Note from Bright

Bright blessings, ladies. I'm sorry I haven't been very active in the discussions lately - this week has been rife with personal drama which is sucking up my time and energy like a sponge. Which makes me very glad that we started out with the Imbolc Ritual: I feel like it lent me a lot of strength and personal courage, which I need right now.

It was a beautiful ritual, also, and it was very lovely to know that we were all doing it together, our energies reaching out and connecting in spite of the distance. RAD!