Each year at my birthday, I set aside time to review my accomplishments of the past year and set goals for the coming year. Then I give myself until the end of the calendar year to make adjustments to my goals. I’ve been writing this post for about two months now, time to publish it . . . (I can, occasionally, get so caught up in the organizing /to do list making that I never actualyl get to the projects themselves.)
Sent to CBS.com (my thanks to Jason at The Wild Hunt for pointing this out to me):
The episode of The Mentalist that aired on January 13th was profoundly insulting to me and to anyone who identifies as a witch, or Wiccan. We have spent decades attempting to explain to frightened and superstitious outsiders that: a) we are not crazy for our belief in a power greater than ourselves with the ability to interact directly in the physical world; b) we are not delusional about our belief in our ability to take personal control of our reality; c) our fundamental precept to harm none and a general agreement that it is our responsibility to better ourselves and our community by living as ethical beings.
Your writers clearly read a few essays and cobbled together a few terms in the creation of the character Tamzin Dove and in doing so did a grave disservice to a thriving, well-adjusted and non-violent religion: Wicca. Would it have been appropriate for her character to have been a Seventh Day Adventist? A Mormon? A Buddhist? Perhaps then the plot would have revolved more aruond the fact that she was a psychologically damaged individual rather than a witch.
It’s a shame, because in general The Mentalist is an amusing show with good writing and I have been enjoying it. Your writers need to learn respect.
Want to share your opinion with them? Here’s the link: http://www.cbs.com/info/user_services/fb_global_form.php
I’m interested in writing an essay about NeoPagans and their view of marriage and I need your help. I’m looking for anecdotes and experiences from people who are married, handfasted (or the equivalent of ‘joined but not according to the State’), and/or performed such ceremonies.
Please feel free to tell me more, but the above are the key points I’m looking at for now. I am perfectly prepared to keep everything shared with me strictly anonymous and confidential; if you are comfortable with me using you/your story as an example please let me know that (otherwise, stories will be altered to make a point and not break confidentiality). Responses via the ‘comments’ feature on this blog are great, or you can write to me directly at lisa*@*cybercoven.org (remove the spambot-foiling *)
Share this message far and wide — I want to hear from as diverse a group of NeoPagans as possible.
Samhain Litany of the Dead
October 29, 2008 CE
Dagonet Dewr, Compiler – dagonet.dewr@gmail.com
Celayne, Co-Compiler
Feel free to reproduce with attribution
As always, this is done by research and accumulating information throughout the year. I may have — no, I’ll guarantee I did — miss people, especially in the Pagan section. For that, I apologize in advance.
I’ve disliked my tradition’s Samhain ritual for years. YEARS. Its got a vaguely condescending tone to large swathes of it, it doesn’t show so much as TELL, there are bits that don’t align with anything else in our mythos, and — worst of all — it is incredibly wordy. (Less of a problem in person, but online — deadly!)
Since last year, yes a full year, I’ve had it on my ‘to do’ list to rewwrite the Samhain ritual. Let me just point out that I am not a procrastinator. But I am at the mercy of the Muse and although I tried to tackle this task a number of times throughout the year, I failed. I had conversations with various people. I researched alternate styles and methodlogies and mythos’.
I failed.
Today, at 1:30 — a mere five hours before we were to gather in preparation for the ritual — the Muse came to visit. Two hours later I had a completely redone ritual. Completely.
And you know what? Its damn good. (and I don’t say that lightly.)
Many blessings, Muse. Many thanks.
The Johari Window was invented by Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham in the 1950s as a model for mapping personality awareness. By describing yourself from a fixed list of adjectives, then asking your friends and colleagues to describe you from the same list, a grid of overlap and difference can be built up.
Which words do you associate with me? http://kevan.org/johari?name=Lisa+Mc+Sherry
I’m interested for a variety of reasons — and you know I can take criticism. I promise I’ll share the results (presuming more than five people reply 🙂 otherwise it isn’t terribly valid.)
The Season of the Witch – what on earth does that mean? Traditionally, Samhain (pronounced SOW-in or SOW-aine and which non-Pagans call Halloween) is the celebration of the end of the old year and the beginning of the new. The word comes to us from Old Irish word for the month beginning on November 1. The feast celebrates the end of the harvest – a huge effort for agricultural communities as they rushed to gather the grain and fruit (August and September) and then slaughter the meat needed for the harsh winter months (October). Once that was over, they could rest and throw a party.
ysabetwordsmith posted (from another LJ) the “10 commandments of Coyote” and I found them amusing. They inspired me to do the following:
1. I am the Divine;Â by whatever name you shall call Me, I AM
2. Worship Me, not My image.
3. My name — any one of them — is Sacred; to speak it is to invoke Me.
4. Keep the holy days in ways that are pleasing to Me.
5. Honor those who raised you.
6. Take not the life of a sentient being.
7. Engage only in consensual adult sexual pleasures.
8. Take not another’s earnings.
9. Do not lie.
10. Eschew envy.
A friend of mine recently went to the Universal Life Expo — a gathering of vendors and speakers all espousing a ‘white light’ perspective. This is a perspective in which all is good, all is positive, all is light. There is no shadow (and most certainly not Dark), or if there is shadow it must be eradicated completely so that there is no dimming of the light.
As a witch, I find this perspective appaling. My belief system not only acknowledges that there is shadow, there is Dark, and that my role in physical manifestation is to understand both the Light and the Dark within me and my world and BALANCE it.
As my friend said: “If you turn on a light, a shadow is cast.”
Light and Dark and not just opposites, there are a fundamental part of ordinary physical reality. Neither is good, neither is bad. They simply ARE. You cannot eliminate one without doing dire harm.
In talking with my friend it occured to me that the ‘white lighters’ have been actively promoting their agenda (via the new age movement, most notably) for about 20 years now. I wonder if the serious problems we are seeing in our world is in DIRECT reaction to their constant, unrelenting sending out of light into the world?
Think about it.
(and, as always, comments welcomed)
Aries is the first sign of the zodiac and rules new beginnings. It’s a fire sign so we’ve got that extra oomph for releasing, starting fresh as well as getting in touch with our instinctual warrior nature; the raw animal part of us. This year the hotheaded Moon in Aries of new beginnings is opposed by “the great negotiator” Mercury and Sun in Libra, trine Pluto in Sagittarius (routing out and letting go of dogmatic beliefs), sextile Neptune/Chiron/North Node (collective healing of divisions and wounds) in Aquarius (radical change), and is coupled with Venus/Mars (loving action) in Scorpio (death of the old and rebirth into the new).