I may be a non-practising Pagan.

I have never attended a rite with anyone else but my immediate family, and I do not follow any set procedures, routines or times when it comes to “communing” with Divinity.

A non-practicing Pagan is defined as a person that self-identifies as Pagan but who does not attend or perform regular rituals and who follows no regular routine of rites.

But is this a fair assessment?

Is a Pagan made by the rites and rituals he/she attends and performs?

The average practising Pagan, according to Witchvox, observes ritual a mere 8 times a year. A smaller group of practitioners, often Wiccans, also turn out for Esbats, and a seemingly trivial number of “diehards” attend/perform ritual on the 13 New Moons as well. This means that a considerable number of Pagans are celebrating the Divine 8 or 21 - or at best 34 times a year. At the most, this is less than 3 times a month - less than the standard weekly worship tradition of Christians, and much less than the weekly worship tradition of Muslims (merely a quantitative and not a qualitative observation).

Doesn’t that, in a very broad sense, qualify many Pagans as “non-practising”? Shouldn't the goal be to commune with the Divine on a regular basis? But then again, does it really need to be done in a fully ritualised fashion each and every time?

My spirituality is defined by intent, and not by mandated procedures for I accept the sacredness in and of all creation.

So isn’t a spontaneous “hello” to the Divine - creating an instant of timelessness which allows us to slip between the mundane and the spiritual - enough?

No routine, no special time, just our spirit telling us that the now is indeed the right time and the right place to commune with Divinity for surely the time and the place is always right.

If anyone is interested in assisting me in battling it out against the dull wits of a couple of local xtians... here's the link:

http://lowveld.womf.com/207039/Pagan

Pls forgive my irritation - I find it hard to hold the moral high ground on Mondays.

♥R

Witchcraft is the most benign of all the silly religions

Please don't lump witches in with Jedi

Tanya Gold
The Guardian, Tuesday 16 February 2010

Last weekend, a photograph of a witch appeared next to a newspaper story about the 2011 census. This census is reportedly in jeopardy because of "prank responses to questions": 400,000 people listed their religion as "Jedi" in 2001, "in addition to 7,000 people who said they were witches". I paused. Why are witches bunged together with Jedi in the mock-me-I'm-a-twit corner? Why are they being fingered for the disappearance of the census, an institution so boring that, if it were a sport, no one would watch it?

I know it's easy to laugh at witches. You could say they invite it, although all people who malign minorities would say the minorities invite it. I once met a witch wand-maker who took wood only with the tree's permission and offered gifts – usually tobacco – in return, even though trees are not known to smoke cigarettes. "Trees breathe twice a day," he said. Kevin Carlyon, who calls himself the High Priest of British White Witches, believes the human race originated on Mars and that he personally protects the Loch Ness monster.

Another witch has told me that when the Nazis were planning to invade Britain in 1940, the witches sent a "don't invade" spell across the Channel to destroy the Nazis' evil plans. Yet another suggested that, should I develop a wart, I was to bury a Plasticine wart at a crossroads and then the genuine wart would melt away. In all this, I suppose, witches can be lumped together with the Jedi and their insane veneration of the late Alec Guinness as a deity.

But there is more to witchcraft than zapping warts and hexing tyrants. The Pagan Federation, the umbrella organisation for British pagans, does have a PR department, and it sends off emails when they feel particularly aggrieved, such as when someone called Jade Goody a witch on GMTV in 2006. But mostly they are prepared to take the flak from their old enemies, the Sunday papers and Christianity, because it's better now than it used to be. Today, there are pagan oaths in court and pagan chaplains in hospitals and prisons. No witch has been imprisoned for sorcery in Britain since 1944; no witch has been executed since 1727.

But still I feel an urge to defend the witches. Of all the silly religions – and I think that all religions are silly – I believe that witchcraft is the least dangerous and the most benign. It is also the least understood.

This is partly because witches have to be secretive to avoid being mocked, fired or burned. Coming out as a witch today is called "coming out of the broom-closet". It is also because no one is sure whether witchcraft is a modern construct that appeared after the repeal of the Witchcraft Act in 1951, or merely the continuation of Britain's pre-Christian paganism. Furthermore, witches disagree on many issues, and different sects – "traditions" – like to fight among themselves. This is called "bitchcraft". One witch told me, on the record, that he thought Carlyon was "an idiot".

But the things that witches do agree on are benevolent. Witchcraft is the ultimate eco-religion. Witches love our planet. They are pagans who worship the stones and the trees through the prism of their god and goddess, by practising "the art magical". I don't know what this is exactly, because no witch would tell me. It sounds odd, and very time-consuming, but not dangerous. There are no witch Jihadis, and few witch proselytisers.

But I have seen Kate West, author of The Real Witches Handbook, harangue an audience at the Witchfest convention in Croydon to bully politicians into action on global warming, long before it was fashionable. "Go away and turn into a group of nagging witches," she shouted, dressed, incredibly self-referentially, as Grotbags from Emu's World. "We sing to the Mother Goddess and follow her through the cycles of the seasons. But do we stick up for her when she is in trouble?" She then laid into the curse of spray-can incense and battery-powered "flickering" candles – witches, on the whole, do not care about money.

Witchcraft is also a religion that venerates the female. During the witch trials, odd, different or freethinking women – outsiders – were tortured and murdered; it's all in the Vincent Price classic Witchfinder General (1968). Many female witches told me they were drawn in for this reason: there are no shaven heads in witchcraft, no shrouding of the female, no submission to the male. I suspect even Jedis think men are superior to women – the worship of the lightsaber is a telling clue.

But don't witches believe in the devil? I spent an evening with a witch in Hastings once. We watched Inspector Morse while he told me that "witches do not believe in Satan and they do not believe in the devil" every five minutes, like a malfunctioning witch-themed robot. But don't they practise dark magic? Well, they claim they can but most don't, because they believe any evil spell will rebound three times on them. "I could turn someone into a frog," I was told, "but what would be the point?"

It is true that witches often like to practise naked – they call it being "sky-clad". Isn't this a bit dodgy; more fuel for the salivating Sunday papers? When I asked another witch about this, he freaked out. "People always say this," he spluttered. "They think that because there is nudity, there has to be sex. It is absolutely untrue. You exude power from the body. And when you are sky-clad, there is no rank." It is only a form of saggy democracy and, he added, 50% of witches like to keep a robe on anyway.

Greetings

Thanks for your reply. For your information, we cast a Circle on Saturday and asked for protection of the people who would be making submissions against the mining on Monday. I gather that they may have needed more time to prepare, judging from the outcome of our working. I have attached some photographs J. We consecrated Tiger’s Eyes (protection) and meditated upon the Amadiba Community and sent courage and protection to them. We now carry our Tiger’s Eyes with us. We also, worldwide, burned red candles from Monday morning until we heard that the hearings had been postponed. We have kept our pillar candles, which have been charged with our intent, to be relit when needed.

If necessary we will travel to the area to bring protection upon the land at a later stage.

We have news of this issue constantly updated on the internet in “The Spinning Wheel”, the environmental branch of the South African Pagan Alliance’s, page on their website (URL below). The SAPC is represented on the inter-faith committee of The Southern African Faith Communities Environmental Institute.

Bright Blessings

Fey Fand

High Priestess

Celestine Circle of Southern Africa

Hailsa all :)

I've been hunting those elusive Muses of mine again... and I thought I'd share a waterfall with you. I fell into it quite by accident, but it carried me far, far away. Let me know where it takes you.

Dreamland
By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule-
From a wild clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE- out of TIME.

Bottomless vales and boundless floods,
And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,
With forms that no man can discover
For the tears that drip all over;
Mountains toppling evermore
Into seas without a shore;
Seas that restlessly aspire,
Surging, unto skies of fire;
Lakes that endlessly outspread
Their lone waters- lone and dead,-
Their still waters- still and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily.

By the lakes that thus outspread
Their lone waters, lone and dead,-
Their sad waters, sad and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily,-
By the mountains- near the river
Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,-
By the grey woods,- by the swamp
Where the toad and the newt encamp-
By the dismal tarns and pools
Where dwell the Ghouls,-
By each spot the most unholy-
In each nook most melancholy-
There the traveller meets aghast
Sheeted Memories of the Past-
Shrouded forms that start and sigh
As they pass the wanderer by-
White-robed forms of friends long given,
In agony, to the Earth- and Heaven.

For the heart whose woes are legion
'Tis a peaceful, soothing region-
For the spirit that walks in shadow
'Tis- oh, 'tis an Eldorado!
But the traveller, travelling through it,
May not- dare not openly view it!
Never its mysteries are exposed
To the weak human eye unclosed;
So wills its King, who hath forbid
The uplifting of the fringed lid;
And thus the sad Soul that here passes
Beholds it but through darkened glasses.

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have wandered home but newly
From this ultimate dim Thule.

- Edgar Allan Poe

Much love and peace, my friends.
R