: ...weorðende... :

the blog is dead. long live the blog! find me at paganspace or http://418mirrors.blogspot.com

Daryl told me that I seem like I've changed a lot from previous postings.

          It's just that I stopped thinking about a lot of shit. Whether to stay in this country or move back to China is a decision that won't come for another 3-4 years. (Though I'm probably going to move back eventually. We who are raised in "expat, not immigrant" families almost always do. But the constructs we call "nations" don't give a shit.)  I still sometimes feel guilty about being in an interethnic relationship - both from the left wing 'people of color activist' and the third-position 'Chinese Nationalist Alliance' viewpoint - but at least I'm not in an interclass relationship (about which I would feel more guilty). I'm more about being a pagan community leader and activist. About my religion.

          To tell you the truth, I don't see race and class and gender and disability and shit when I see people anymore. I see these as paradigms. Paradigms always shift. Like I don't identify as a Northeastern Pagan, but as a person who happens to live in the Northeast and practice a Pagan faith. By another reckoning (not that of Assiah or Midgard), I am a Northeastern Pagan in that it is the field and formula in which I operate. Nation, class, race, gender, sectarianism and shit like that are impermanent. The gods are real. If you don't get that what's meant by 'the gods' means neither the literal existence of gods (in which I believe, but YMMV) nor psychological archetypes (in which most people believe), then please get off my site.

          The difference between 'true will' and sociobiological destiny has become apparent to me. Scientific materialism seeks to equate them. Scientific materialism is just as much a creed as Christianity, Heathenry, or Wicca. And the two: linkages between people and linkages within people. And the two forming a web, the Web of Wyrd, Indra's Net of Stars. 

"Also thou art beyond the stabilities of Being and of Consciousness and of Bliss; for I am thou, and the Pillar is 'stablished in the void."

Had a wonderfully healing dream last night - it was so simple and weird.

I had that dream where I unpackaged a really shitty record (this time it was a 'new' Backstreet Boys album I hadn't heard of) from a mainstream record store, thereby legally stealing it. So I did something I never did in that dream-type before - I returned it, admitting my mistake. And it was accepted. And I never went back there again. I was chill - no nerves or anything, just went back to my apartment in the dream world. And I'm pretty sure my most immediate past life was in California, because so many of my 'realistic dreams' take place there...

Dug up my Enochian scrying journals, too. Does everyone get the Rubik's cube thing in the 30th aethyr....

     I was thinking about the various cultural parts of Western Hermeticism / Ceremonial Magic today and how many different sorts of folks I see practicing it. I remember asking Egyptian-American and Greek-American folks I know about whether they knew of Thelema and Hermeticism, and most of them did not - so I'm making this proposal.

    I want as wide of a perspective as possible from practitioners of Hermetic, Qabalistic and Thelemic traditions. How has your cultural background (especially if you're from a culture that's featured prominently in occultism) shaped your understanding of, influenced your practice of, and affected your views on the Path?

     For example, I know that a lot of Jewish and African-American folks feel empowered by the usage of Qabala and Egyptian imagery in magick, yet as many find these offensive and colonialist. Wicca and Theosophy are pretty popular in India, but so are attitudes against Westernization.

   As a Chinese, I feel that my background gives me a deeper insight into the I Ching and Taoist elements in Western Occultism, yet I sometimes feel like I'm appropriating when I use the Egyptian stuff because I grew up associating that with 'Black Power'. These are the insights I want to see - I hear a lot of absolutist stuff- either 'we've gotta stick to our own cultures' or 'the world is all one'. I want to hear the real-life thoughts of practitioners with views and experiences in between.

So... thoughts please? 

    
Politics
        
              My school currently has at least 4 radical socialist clubs that constantly try to recruit students. Remember that student march a few months ago? The chant went from 'reduce the $600 tuition hike' to 'free tuition, open admissions'. Yeah, scary. While I agree with some Left ideas, I'm appalled by how much these guys are ignorant of the national debt, and call for more and more subsidies. I got some crap for disagreeing with elements of the House Democratic health care bill, particularly the dramatic tax increase for folks who aren't rich, but who make an above-average middle class income.
              That's going to affect doctors and nurses, and disgruntled doctors aren't going to make us healthier. I don't know where I stand politically. On one hand, I'm a feminist, transnational, queer rights, immigrant rights, bell-bottom wearing vegetarian - but not a pot / drug activist - who should probably move to Berkeley. On the other hand, I oppose universal health care for reasons including the national debt - and people are literally offended when I express my far from hard-right fiscal views. That's why I don't talk about politics IRL.

Religion 
             
               Folks here already know that I am dual trad. I've become triple trad. I am large, I contain multitudes. Soon I'll be every religion on the planet. LOL. Ana said if you don't walk a path, how do you know if it's your path? This is part of the meaning of 'do what thou wilt'. We're young, either chronologically or in the heart. We're not uncommitted, but more strongly committed - it takes time and energy to be multi-trad. Being eclectic doesn't mean you're ignorant or 'pick and choose'. However, lots of folks are offended by my views on religion. Whatever. Bounces off of me and sticks to you.

"Tami," said Johanez, "I've been having these weird-ass dreams. I wonder if local teens are feeding me shrooms at night, but they'd never waste precious drugs on a bum." 
"Yeah? Tell me about 'em."
"So you're having them too? Mine are like, hardcore Star Trek shit. Like, some intergalactic conspiracy. No, wait - more Phil Dick than Trek I'd say."
(Oh, nevermind) "Yeah...... that's cool. I like that. You sound like a creative person."
He grinned, showing off his gappy teeth.

        Tami made him sleep on the dirty couch and he couldn't fall asleep without trying to watch the Sci-Fi channel on illegal cable. Vandene. She'd heard that word somewhere -

        - and around her the stars whiled nauseously, then settled over a blue-amber world, surrounded by clouds. Vandene. Something fishy was going on there, yet she was at Ruriella because the High Lady Wrest apparently found white crystal deposits on one of her moons. Granted, it was the most important substance in power storage today, but Milia and Wrest were essentially going to hang out and smoke another type of white crystal.
         Bella Wrest sat on her gem-encrusted throne amidst the conflagration of gold that was her reception room.

         "Dear - dear Milia!" A smile bloomed on Wrest's pale, overly-Botoxed face. "I haven't seen you!" Wrest's voice sounded affected, but years of aristocratic Ravuellian 'family training' meant it was naturally so.
         "So I hear you've found crystal. We need that to strengthen defenses on Vandene."
         "Ah..." Wrest snapped out of her customary vapidity. "My research team found rich veins of material on Rava 7, previously hidden from scanners by thick heavy metal deposits. Over a mile underground."
         "A concerted effort?"
         "Digging foundation for a resort. We'd never gone that deep - or that high. Sky cable resort, see the clouds from your window."
         "Nice."
         "Indeed - the best in luxury. I hope to make the Rava the finest place to visit in all the Nine Worlds. Some mint tea?" 
         A serving woman, seemingly made of porcelain, brought her a tiny cup of the same material.
         "Thank you." The Empress sipped her tea: it was overly sweet, as usual for this world.
         "She's lovely, don't you think?" said Wrest.
         "Yeah, though I think she'd be lovelier as a he, and stripped to the waist." Wink.
         "Ruriella's best engineers made that, not some Great Architect in an unknown heaven." 
         Milia noticed the brush marks on the android's face as it collected their cups. Like the painted sky, shifting mechanistically beyond Wrest's windows. Only the High Lady herself knew where the palace was located, deep within the prize-filled earth.

         Rava was one of three systems in Ravuellia, a veritable pleasure dome. Most of its citizens either worked in the entertainment business or left the world altogether. Wrest and the Empress strode through an artificially sunny plaza on Rava, eating slushies as paparazzi tried to burst through the crowds.
         Wrest was holding another one of her hedonistic parties tonight, gobbling up now-plentiful fuel for fireworks and megawatt strobe lights that illuminated scantily-clad nobles, frolicking in the climate-controlled scene.
         "Now, I will set sparkers off from that mountain - "she pointed a gold-gloved hand at a distant hill - so that they cascade upon our guests, a benign display of our wealth. And as they land on astonished brows they transmute into the gentlest of white feathers," she said with mock beatitude.
         "And how will you achieve this alchemy?"
         "That is for you to figure out."
         Somewhere in the distance, a crash, and a cry. What was with these godfucking satellites? Milia followed Wrest, continuing to walk through the obliviously fashionable throng.
         The side of her Boysenberry implant bleeped frantically, so strongly that her temples tingled. Where was Ember when you needed him? She saw a tall, dark brown shadow run through the crowd. He was saving people again, or something.
         "Come now. No use dawdling," and Wrest grabbed the Empress' hand.

I.
        She was sitting on the crystal throne on top of the crystal tower, and could see the vast sienna desert, shifting beneath and around her. She sipped her Klair d'Estrel sour as Ember, naked and sun-blackened, fanned her with an immense white feather. She admired Ember's rippling thigh muscles, intricate tattoos swirling around them, and the diadem of worlds that glittered in an airless cobalt sky.
 
        Bleeeeeeeprrrrrrrrrrr....  Her Boysenberry snapped into view, a violet square at her retina's rim. Message marked urgent. Before she could call it up, fire erupted in the sky. Blue flames the shade of fresh blood, melting into empyrean. Exactly like those flowers, she mused, that the duke of Mistrea sent her last year.

       "Send an update," she said coolly through the Boysencomm.

       "Just meteor activity, hit a satellite. Nothing too bad, no civilians injured. Lost communications on Vandene Delta. We've sent some men to check it out." 
 
       "Milia out, seal of approval."
 
       "Seal of approval."

       Ember brought her a glass of wine. Having finished her cocktail in a fit of nerves, the young empress sipped the fluid. Fortified plumwine, a Vandene special that was now in obvious short supply. Vandene.. of all Nemody, she was least familiar with the Vandene system. It lay a few dozen parsecs away from the true heartland, the seven stars of Nemody proper. The only thing further was her own habitat, consisting of a single dim sun and the desert planet Hintegarthe. It wasn't even a world. It contained only Ember, the Empress, and various robots and slaves. Emptying her crystal glass, she closed her eyes to revel in the deep, shifting visions it induced. She traced a sigil onto her throne's smooth arm, and the whole seat dissolved, plunging her into cool water that filled the crystal tower- brought with mighty effort from Hintegarthe's most distant orbits.

       Insistent rhythms jolted Tami out of her nest of unwashed sheets. She detested reggaeton, the obscenity-filled Spanish dance music that had kept her awake on many a college night. But her single-wide trailer had no better alarm system to cut through the cat noises and constant-TV that formed an unnoticeable din. She poured herself some old coffee and Canadian vodka (half and half of each) and combed her hair out of half-rotted rollers. Stumbling into professional drag, Tamika Heru managed to find herself in the car and on the road.

       A while passed before Tami was aware of her surroundings. She was filling orders and it was half past noon. She put a wrap, a beverage, and medium fries in a bag and handed it to some beast that retreated quickly back into the agyss of D-Mart. It handed her some cash. Filtering coins from bills, Tami found a small business card marked in golden tracery, almost too fine to be legible:

                                                     GRAND DUCHY OF VANDENE
                                                     203 468 8764    5142 Morth Lane
        
        On the back, in a cultivated, shaking hand: 
                                     Tami: It's Johanez. Meet me here at 11 pm.
       Then a weird symbol that nobody but her Sociology TA could think up. They'd been pretty close, but she couldn't think of any reason he would want to ahng out. So she took another swig from her flask and continued her odious duties. At the end of the day, she punched out and drove. Around her the scenery changed from lush suburbia to yet another ghetto, and she saw the Grand Duchy loom ahead, a crappy restaurant-cum-porn theater. Neon female silhouettes flashed on its glass and mirror walls, and a reek of fried chicken filled the smoggy night.
          
        Tami saw the tattooed, stringy-haired white guy as he entered the joint. He waved a skinny hand and motioned her over. Over a tray of onion rings and cheese balls they reminisced about school and discussed their current shitty jobs.
       
        "So Johanez, what the fuck is up with you getting some freak to slip me a card at work?"
        "Well, I knew you probably didn't have a cell. I don't. Actually I do on days I can find enough coins to pay the bill."
        "Don't you TA at the community college?" 
        "Not anymore, they scrapped all non-tenured faculty there. Now I hand out flyers at the mall for this place, trying to turn 14 year olds to the porn side of the Force. I don't even have a car anymore, and -
         - he gestured to the surrounding area, empty fields scattered with decrepit broken trailers and corrugated steel shacks.
        "Sux."
        "That's why - man, nobody would let me crash."
        "So I'm your last resort, someone you haven't seen since college. Or are you just trying to get into my pants?" 
        ".... Sort of?" He was hesitant to admit the truth.
        Tami thought for a minute.
        "Tell you what. You do work in my house, laundry and shit, and you can stay."
        "Sort of like reparations?" 
        She lol'd. Johanez smoked a cigarette butt and drank from a bottle of dirty water.

          This is a quasi-update to my controversial post about children's behavior problems. I'm going to focus on instinct and innate skill, and contrast them with modern (not postmodern) views on willpower.

          Maternal / paternal instinct and the "biological clock" are seen as innate to humans and a major reason why adoption and population control are unpopular. Maternal instinct has been criticized by gender scholars, including myself. I don't feel the need to nurture things. I find nurturing things to be annoying and a chore. I see children as small adults, and treat them like human beings. However, given the choice, I would rather hang out with mature individuals (age does not matter).

          Now, onto the idea of innate skill and discipline. We as a society focus too little on the latter and too much on the former. This is a huge problem that I have as an individual, as well. Up to this point, this blog has been an outlet for my whiny behaviors. I bitch about my parents, gender, racism, religious issues, societal issues, and all kinds of crap. In fact, I'm bitching right now. This shit has got to stop. The gods don't want us to be whiny losers. I'm going to go study.

          We were talking about the ideas of Western, Eastern, folks from one group practicing stuff from another culture, adopting the romanticized view of your own background, people having truly hybrid backgrounds etc. And I remember talking to some of my friends in the Radical Traditionalist / Heathen revivalist movement, and they said that it's because we live in the Kali Yuga, the Wolf Age, and everything's all mixed up, modern and degraded. But the jumble has been going on since way back, though on a much smaller scale. I've also heard lots of thinking cats, everyone from the aforementioned neo-nationalists, Black Power, Zionists and the like, talk about the importance of family and roots and rootedness. And learning about the Native Traditions, we're getting down to those roots and really analyzing these things.

        I've also come to the conclusion that a lot of my being all gung-ho about mysticism, spirit work, interacting with spirits and the fact that magick is real comes from being raised as a total atheist, and having my spirituality mushed down by my family and society and whatever. Though, traces of the gods remained, glimmering in the waning sun.

        A clear memory emerges: I was 6 or 7, and had obtained a Bible from one of the street preachers. I was reading it, and father came along and went, oooh imaginary stuff, that's like a sci-fi you know, it's made up by ignorant people who had no science, blah blah blah, and I was thinking about what the preacher was saying: you're gonna go to hell if you don't believe in God, and I prayed in secret. I also remember my family not celebrating Christmas because "we do not believe in god" (you could hear the decapitalization). I said: sure, you guys don't and I got in trouble for that, with my parents retaliating: we're Chinese and therefore atheist, this is not our holiday. The same thing - we wanted Christmas and the tree and whatnot- happened to many friends of mine. And the reason we didn't celebrate Chinese New Year was because we didn't have relatives in this country or get off work for the holiday. You don't tell a small child that Santa Claus isn't real. God is the ultimate Santa Claus. I remember thinking up all sorts of arguments, such as- if we were natural atheists, then why did the Chinese language have a native term for the monotheistic God, or if we're proud of our roots and those roots are Buddhist, then why didn't I grow up with it (reason: religion is "for ignorant people with no science"). And I remember swearing that I'd become an astrophysicist and find God, spirits etc, so my parents would have to believe in Him. Other memories, like seeing "delusions" written on my psych chart because I believed in spirits, etc.

        So for me at least, believing is an act of rebellion - like many young people turn to the Craft because of a Fundamentalist upbringing. I could not (immediately) embrace my cultural traditions either, though I was led there afterward, and then led to more eclectic stuff. I associated them with something that my parents associated with fiction and rural ignorance, but through that I associated that stuff with my parents and their world and I guess it's all part of individuation. Raven Kaldera said something about this, about not wanting to be chosen by gods from his Norse background because he associated it with Nazism. It's like Westerners looking to explore beyond Christianity first looked to the Eastern/Native American traditions, because it was too... hurtful is too powerful... rather, not right at the time- to look toward Druidry, mythologies, and the stuff that came before Christianity. They were afraid of inauthenticity, because the traditions had been discontinued. They felt hurt by their families and culture and straitlaced Western society - all the churches, corsets, proper ladies and gentlemen, logic and reason - and Celtic knots were too close to that notion of clean-cut patriotism, but incense and gurus, tepees and martial arts were different enough whereby they could explore freedom of belief without the notion that they're breaking the ancestral terra firma. John Smith couldn't be magickal but Bhakta Wolf Rainwalker-chan can.

        That's part of the reason we have magickal names, and why we do initiation and have covens and orders and imagine ourselves to be 10th century Vikings or ancient Egyptians or 10th century Plains Indians or 14th century Samurai. This is not about me, but about who I want to be. And I want to be at peace with the idea that part of what attracts me to religion - my own shadowy, blood-dripping unnamed path, no longer clinging to any shore of Wicca or Buddhism or Asatru or Christianity, is the idea of getting back at my rents. And I'm now at peace with the fact that my dad and the idea of God don't get along- and that's fine with me, the world needs atheists. My brother has grown up to be a hardcore atheist, and I'm okay with that. I've given him spiritual stuff to read, and he has perused and rejected it. And I also grok that my parents do not represent all of Chinese culture, that 1 billion people of diverse faiths don't think like my parents, and that the folks who attend temples in Chinatown probably think my parents are damn weird.

        Folks say that "it's all the same", and at one level it is. That's what's called Sophia Perennis, the Perennial Philosophy. There are these little truths, like don't be a douchebag, stick up for yourself, and make offerings to the spirits, that float out of every culture. But that's not everything. There's both positive and negative connections. Your friends, your family. Friends are where goth spirituality and Otherkin and Golden Dawn and all that stuff comes from. Family is where people turn to Santeria, Heathen, Hindu, Native American, and other culturally specific stuff their family does. Collective soul (not the band lol). But the shaman, the mage works alone. The modern shaman must find his own tribe. I've cast down my bucket where I stand, like George Washington Carver. My path is shaped by what came before and what is coming after. I cannot wallow in the past, but I cannot ignore it! I've made peace with - yes, I'm a rebel and still bitter toward my family and parents and whatever. But they live their lives, and I live mine. When I call upon the ancestors, I call upon my intellectual guides and those who have gone before me in terms of experience and spirituality. Rebels, freaks, metalheads, those who are not afraid to speak up. I hope to be strong enough to make spiritual contact / make peace with my actual ancestors, despite the fact that I don't know anyone in my family who died (I don't know most of my relatives). There is power there for many people, though it doesn't have as much of a resonance for me. But I must cast down my bucket - wherever I stand.

       That goes not just for honoring, but also departing from. My parents told me that I was not "mature enough" to have a real profession, which is the opposite of what most Asian parents do. I thank Woden for pushing me into studying accountancy.

He had not slept in over a month, and stars formed behind the third eye, behind his browbone. Pure muscle memory enabled his continual movement as Tiratèm approached the fortress. A crowd of soldiers, expectant, descended upon him, and he slew each man. He heard gunfire, which took out a few assailants; he then saw Neriah, now nearly headless and lacking in most of the torso: his spine was broken so that his arms could no longer be upright. He fired from an angle and walked with a limp, dragging one gangrenous, slime-trailing foot. He had no more eyes, nor lips; a single bottom row of teeth remained, yet he continued to fight. Tiratèm could not bear the sight. He turned away, leapt into the building, slammed the bulletproof door as the senseless Neriah sprayed a shower of fire toward his erstwhile lover.

More Imperials descended upon Tiratèm: he fought them with no regard to himself, with his automatic, a shower of flame. The hallways were thick with troops: they took his eye and pierced his flesh, hacking off his firing arm, yet he kept going, kept pushing to the secret molten heart. He plunged the white blade into the commander’s chest, through layers of armor, holding it there until it ceased to beat. Punching in the passcode, he made it within the inner sanctum as soon as the remaining troops reached the hallway: again did bullets spray across a surface made to repel them. Tiratèm systemically slew the defenseless technicians, making his dispatch quick and painless, one bullet to each man.

He assembled himself into the command seat. The might of the Empire, the might of man around him was arrayed at this moment. He worked: he pulled a lever, punching in codes. A great roar rose around him from the distance. He took the heavy lever in his remaining hand, pulled, and felt the immensity of fate shake about him, ultimate brilliance vibrating from his cells to the vastness of the universe. And this overwhelming the world, flaming it to a burst of nothingness. A winged thing, black, rimmed in crimson, descended as he immolated. And –

And it was written that she knew her own.

In the East sprang a fire.

In the West, a vacancy.

North went as it did, the equator’s flames barely shaken.

And the South melted, sank below the horizon.

The circle is not broken.

And she knows her own.

                                                Great beasts issue forth

                                                travel through ice and flame

                                                return home.

                        16384 retractions

                        To 128, to 32

                        To that inimical duality,

                        To one. Oh, Mother swell and shrink and back to the beginning when lights were not yet

  Too soon for elements

            Too soon for plant-kind and worm-kind

Too soon for intelligence

            And fire, and ice

Where black and warm and red

            Surrounds me softly

Before pricking things like guns and swords and red light, lightness in the red like

Fire and flesh UNDER

Fire THROUGH    illuminating

            WITHIN                      flesh.

                                                                                    Viscera like…

Oh, knowing too well how lovers disintegrate, the cool clay of Neriah’s brains in your hands, he who once advised and protected you, Mama’s cooling, coded body, both of them and the 3^rd Primeval makes triple goddesses, cooling tea with a raven’s breath on boreal hurricanes, love, hate,

Fluttering

             Feathers

A (funeral) veil, a (birth) caul 

On your face, grasping for its teat which exudes pure water, catalyzed by the white heat of a nuclear reaction. The water brings awareness of lips, mouth, throat,

-          Oh, how achingly it flows!-

-          Chest, belly, hours and it swelled the inguinal region, against which cool thighs pressed, knees touching pointed elbows, aching arms, shoulders flesh cool, warm and moist, veined, feathered sky.

The sky undulated, ruddy veins against pure black. Wind – something brushed his face, brushed tears from new-discovered skin. Pure sensation. New pain. He could cry no longer: he pissed himself, not knowing how much the new flesh needed retraining. Slowly the east and western skies retracted, their constellations scrunching, replaced by brilliance beyond whiteness. And the southern sky grew a great black head in that whiteness, a raptor’s head coming into view, black diamond eyes set in deepest scarlet plumage. Black ruby wings, gleaming in the muted sunlight. It held a morsel of blood-dripping flesh in its beak: Tiratèm opened his mouth, swallowed the proffered bit, savoring its battle-flavor and the energy it brought him. Something tasted familiar: the eucharist of his lover’s seed immediately came to mind. The bird began to shed feathers, covering him in a flurry of black ruby, of flaming obsidian shards as soft and sweet as uncarded feather-wool.

Animals walked in the distance. Drifting in and out of consciousness, tongues and paws caressed him, as if out of pity. He closed his eyes again, and was alone, though still swathed in feathers, of which he could take only one because of their sheer size. He walked through the deadened plain, naked, pale, hairless and weak of muscle. The sun burned his pale flesh, the wind buffeted his bare form. He stumbled in the Southern direction, walked for days past ruined forests and burned-out villages. There was only a grayness. Nothing else. He did not eat or drink, for there was nothing. 

 

 

"Summer solstice your hand in mine
Summer solstice so divine
A pledge to keep to sun above
A pledge to you my love"
     - Of the Wand and the Moon

       Hope everyone had a great time this Solstice, with plenty of mead and/or non-alcoholic mead substitute. If anyone went to any early-morning sorts of events, please report on them. The Holy Tide knocked about some dust bunnies in my skull, as Holy Tides are wont to do. 

        Earlier today, I perused the articles on Witchvox. Somebody did an article which, to me, suggested that being an inner city witch is weird/abnormal/requires compensation e.g. camping or gardening. Now I admit an irrational bias against suburban/rural areas, but in this immediate bioregion, more witches practice in the inner city than anywhere else. From Williamsburg Wiccans to underground Vodoun rituals, urban areas are where it's at. Yes, you can be a country witch and be into the country crafts, agriculture and things like that, but the reason we call it 'paganism' is because the sticks historically had less Christian/Islamic penetration. There is as much nature in the city as outside of it, it's just different forms of nature. The city also seems to work as a spell concentrator, at least to me. There is less power of manifestation in the suburbs and suchlike, from an esoteric as well as exoteric perspective. It probably has something to do with chaos or the amount of "magions" floating around. 

        Folk in rural and suburban areas are more likely to have feet of clay. I think ideas such as personality being something you're born with, or that getting a sex change is weird, that you can't truly heal a mental illness, that you just have one destiny, one true love, or that you can't change your career when you're 50, probably originate in these areas. It's a resistance to reality. It's 'immature' escapism. City folk are closer to the "smoke and ash between people". Closed-mindedness and homogeneity are a part of it, but another huge part I feel is the type of 'juice' that those areas have. I can't generalize - again, I'm talking about my immediate cultural and biological region. This relates a bit to the idea of rootedness that the Matthews talk about- the tribalist mindset, deep ancestry, and having your own plot of land. But I see rootedness and the study of history as a catalyst for accepting change. 

        There's a fearless dynamism that comes with living in such an area, whether it be urban, or rural to such a degree that you might find a bear in your house and that you have to hunt to survive. A lifestyle that catalyzes change and brings you in contact with the ur-flow of the unexpected. It forces skill, adaptability, evolution, change which I see as the blood-dripping heart of nature itself. I see this in the runes and their progression, since they are about change and progression and dynamism, from creation to Ragnarok. I assume most people know the etymology of witch, from "to shape or bend". I remember how Robin said that witches' job is to turn the wheel of the year. Turning, being accessory to natural change. That's what the Holy Tides celebrate - they balance change and repetition and help to organize natural forces. Since actively beginning practice, I now always know what day it is. Witchcraft is like finance. The correspondences, the separation of the year into its constituents, the usage of formulae to divert the flow for ourselves /  to divert ourselves back into the flow. Like the old song: she changes everything she touches and everything she touches changes.

        The purpose of religion, which is cognate to yoga (both mean to yoke or tie oneself) is to bind oneself to something. Traditionally they would call it Ain Soph, or Tao, Sophia, or simply God. But such terms are to refer to something universal to all areas. I see these flows and dynamism and the blood-dripping heart of nature itself as something dirtier and darker than frilly, peace and light Ain Soph. It is not outside and shining over all, but it is deep underground, painful and causing quite a bit of nausea. I don't see it as something to be universally followed, either, like the Tao or Sophia or the Anointing. We sometimes have to go against it. We need to be cognizant of this flow and work either with or against it. Often we use force of the current to power the engine that generates a countercurrent. And this is what separates magic from regular religion. Regular religion is about sensing this power and either following it, or sometimes supplicating spirits to intercede. Witches are feared because we are in direct contact with the blood-dripping heart itself. The inner city and deep forest are feared because they are where the lifeblood flows most thickly.