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The Winter Holiday

December 20, 2005 / / 8 comments

Okay, so there are these folks who think that there’s a War on Christmas. Blah blah. Let’s just call those folks eccentric, okay?

The Winter Solstice is universal. It’s obviously a significant event, and it’s obvious that lots of different religions and traditions have noted that event. And most have marked it with light because, hey. Light. Birth, too, is a common holiday theme, because the Sun is gone, and then it begins really, really smalll, so that’s like being born, so… (one of the things I adore about Paganism is the simplicity).

So despite the rage against “the Holidays,” the fact is, there are an awful lot of holidays this time of year, only one of which is Christian.

Over at Wild Hunt, Jason (somewhat tongue-in-cheek, I think) agrees with Catholic writer Andrew Greely that maybe Christmas should be moved out of the Solstice season. I disagree. I mean, ain’t my holiday, they can do what they want, but I hope they don’t.

When I was a kid, I keenly felt that left out feeling that everyone had a holiday and we didn’t. Then I became a cynical, Christmas-hating, turn-that-damn-music-off teenager, which suited my cynical teenage sensibility.

One day, I shed my cynicism, and noticed the love, the light, the sense of fun. I started digging it. So it was something of a relief to me, after I became Pagan, to discover that a lot of “Christmas” was, in fact, Pagan. That Santa was Pagan, that decorating trees was Pagan, that exchanging gifts was Pagan. I dove right into all those lovely, yummy traditions.

It’s nice to share a holiday with everyone. And as more and more people got on board with the Happy Holidays thing (as they got “PC”), there were more and more people to share with. In recent years, it’s become easier to fling open one’s arms to Christians, to Jews, to Pagans, to New Agers, and even to Atheists, and say “Happy Holiday Season! Enjoy the Longest Night!” Some years, Ramadan and Diwali also fall around the Solstice, and how lovely it is to find that there is a time of year for universal celebration.

Indeed, isn’t that part of the meaning of most of these holidays? Isn’t part of it about the love of the light of the world? And the more inclusive we are with that love, doesn’t that make us more true to the spirit of Christmas/Chanukkah/Solstice/Yule/
Saturnalia/Kwanzaa/Ramadan/Diwali/Festivus? And isn’t that just bloomin’ GREAT?

Today I feel sorry for those strange, eccentric Christmas Warriors, because they are purposely excluding themselves from the love.

ALL acts

December 15, 2005 / / 4 comments

In Wicca, the Goddess tells us “All acts of Love & Pleasure are My rituals.” This is fundamental to who and what we are as Wiccans. Love and pleasure, in combination, are sacred. They are, inherently, offerings to the Goddess.

Premarital sex? A ritual to the Goddess. Homosexual sex? A ritual to the Goddess. Masturbation? A ritual to the Goddess. Group sex? A ritual to the Goddess.

But…but…sputter…sputter… What about all the bad stuff? Rape? Not love and pleasure: Not a ritual. Child molestation? Not love and pleasure: Not a ritual. Nothing with a victim can be defined as “love and pleasure.” Nothing without consent can be defined as love and pleasure.

The majority of world religions have determined that most human behavior, especially sex, is usually bad, and is only good under special circumstances. These circumstances include variations on the who, the how, the when. NOT with a same sex partner. Or more than one partner. Or less than one partner. Or using the mouth. Or touching the butt. Or during your period. Or, or, or… (Shakespeare’s Sister has today’s list of ways The They are trying to say sex is bad. They’re wrong again.)

Wicca and most of Paganism has the opposite view. Most of human behavior, especially sex, is usually good, and is only bad under special circumstances. Unless it’s non-consensual, or harmful, or willfully and callously spreading disease, or based on dishonesty. The list of “unless” is short and to the point. It’s not designed to trick the unwary.

The thing I don’t get is why they keep trying to supress the Evils of Sexuality™ when it never works. Seriously, folks, you’ve been on this kick for several thousand years. Have you ever succeeded in getting us to stop The Sex?

It’s not just that suppression doesn’t work, it’s that it’s actively counter-productive. Transgressive sex is among the hottest kinds of sex there is. Moreover, denying the idea of good, happy, fun-fun-fun sex leads directly to nasty, unpleasant, non-consensual sex. Priests abusing altar boys, anyone? Finally, suppression leads to ignorance, and ignorant sex is not safe sex. Ignorance increases unwanted pregnancy, disease, and, most ironically of all, fails to teach us how to say no.

It’s the Reefer Madness model. If you teach us the stuff is ridiculously dangerous, once we find out it isn’t, we won’t believe any of your other warnings. Teach kids that pot will make them jump off buildings, and they won’t believe you when you tell them it’ll impair driving. Teach kids that all drugs are equally bad, and they won’t be able to distinguish between the occasional use of recreational marijuana and crack addiction. Just so, teach them that all sex is bad, bad, bad, and they won’t be able to distinguish between freely chosen, consensual sex, and sex performed under pressure. The guilt and shame will add to the damage.

For thousands of years, human beings have been spinning their wheels using the suppression model. Isn’t it time to try another way?

All acts of Love and Pleasure are My rituals.

So mote it be.

This Is Not a Post About Abortion

December 6, 2005 / / 7 comments

I know, it sounds surrealist, like ceci n’est pas une pipe, but trust me, it’s not. This is genuinely about choice. About a woman’s right to choose.

There are people in this country who oppose legal abortion because they are “pro-life.” They believe the fetus is a living being who must be protected. Arguing, even discussing, abortion is often a total impasse because “pro-life” versus “pro-choice” doesn’t work; these are two roads that don’t intersect.

But I’m not talking about that.

See, right now there is an increasingly fervent anti-choice movement in this country. Not pro-life, anti-choice. These people don’t give a good goddamn about the sanctity of pregnancy or motherhood. These people, the James Dobsons, the Jerry Falwells, the entire American Taliban, are really interested in taking away a woman’s right to choose.

What is “choice”? When we talk about a woman’s right to choose, we mean her right to full ownership of her body. Her right to say yes to sex, and to say no to sex. Her right to say yes to childbearing, and to say no to it. Her right to be chaste, her right to be promiscuous, her right to be the master and owner of her body, including all the juicy parts.

The American Taliban is waging war on a woman’s choice. This story was the turning point for me. See, first we have pharmacists refusing Plan B (which isn’t an abortofacient, but birth control, it prevents pregnancy). And now we have a pharmacist refusing to treat a woman for a sexually-transmitted infection. They want to stop women from having sex of which they disaprove. Period. They don’t care about fetuses (I mean, a fetus is protected by treating herpes), they care about controlling our body parts. Not some “unborn child’s;” ours.

Here we have a story about a high school senior who was refused permission to graduate with her class because she was pregnant. Here is a Catholic school teacher fired for being pregnant. These women made a pro-life choice, they did not have abortions, which is what the moralists claim they want. And they were punished for it.

They were punished because the moralists are lying. They don’t care whether these women carry to term or abort. They only care whether these women fuck. And if the women fuck without permission, they’ll be punished no matter what choice they make. They’ll be punished for choosing.

This is consistent with punishing the victim of an alleged rape. A woman’s right to say no is a choice, and the judge in this case cares more about male perogative than women’s choices.

Watch out for this. Watch for people who claim to be pro-life but want you to think, not “life vs. death,” but “slut vs. good girl.” Watch for voices that claim feminism has no vested interest in allowing women to be sexually free. Watch for the pervasive distaste that accompanies images of women who exercise sexual choice.

And don’t be fooled.

Update: Via Shakespeare’s Sister I find that great minds think alike: Maria Luisa Tucker at AlterNet has posted a piece today on the same subject as this one, but with very different examples about how supposedly liberal men are very interested in making sure women don’t fuck whom they want, when they want. Wish I’d written it, it’s terrific. Go see for yourself.

Fat Chicks Don’t Need No Meds

November 30, 2005 / / Comments Off on Fat Chicks Don’t Need No Meds

Via Shakespeare’s Sister, I find that the Boston Herald thinks it’s okay to refer to an overweight person’s “blubber.”

It is not my normal habit to be a Fat Activist, simply because it’s not a way I choose to define myself. I’m overweight, I’m not interested in your diet for me thanks, let’s move on. It’s not nearly as interesting to me as, say, civil liberties, or Wicca, or bringing home the troops, or James Bond. Once you get the ‘love yourself’ paradigm, just keep lovin’.

But this makes me mad, because this endangers people (primarily women, what a surprise). The information about overweight people getting improper medication doses is important. It’s something every overweight person should know so she can discuss it with her doctor before getting an intramuscular injection.

How many women won’t read this article, or learn from it, because the language used was so wounding? How many will read “blubber” and stop reading, because they are rightly offended or because their self-hatred has been reawakened?

As Thesaurus Rex pointed out in his comment to the Shake’s Sis entry,

“If the article were about Asian women, it wouldn’t make jokes about their li’l yellow booties or quote “Me So Horny” by 2 Live Crew. If it was about black women, it wouldn’t talk about their skin color or quote “Brown Sugar” by the Rolling Stones. Oh, but fat people, well, they’re fair game. “

And he’s right. Let’s just leap in and find the fun in this article, rather than inform people that the reason they’re still sick may be because they haven’t gotten proper medication dosages. After all, the only sick people affected are fat, and maybe they’ll lose weight, so it’s all good.

Update: Someone asked if “blubber” isn’t just a word meaning “fat.” No. It’s a word meaning whale fat, from which derives a secondary and insulting meaning of excessive fat. In other words, you’re as big as a whale so I refer to you as one.

New Update, 12/2: I just realized that when I was in the hospital I woke up in the middle of the night in agony, and they had to raise my Demerol to a surprisingly high level. Demerol, of course, is given by IM. So let’s have a blubber joke while I’m in screaming agony because I didn’t get enough meds. Fun, huh?

“Merry Christmas. And Happy Chanukkah to all our Jewish friends.”

November 24, 2005 / / 3 comments

One of the local TV stations used to say, this time of year, “Merry Christmas. And Happy Chanukkah to all our Jewish friends.”

Gods, I hated that. It’s the very epitome of unconscious marginalization. I mean, more than half the people to whom I expressed disgust just didn’t get it. “It’s nice,” they’d say, “It’s inclusive.” Not so much. The implicit statement is: There’s an Us and a Them. Merry Christmas to Us. Happy Chanukah to Those Others.

When they changed the message, maybe ten years ago, I felt vindicated. It proved I wasn’t a whacko who was offended for no good reason; someone else saw the problem and made the change.

I have lots of non-Christian friends. Most of them are Pagans who were raised some version of Christian or Christian/agnostic (i.e. raised by nominally Christian parents but without religious education) or Christian/atheist. Some are Hindus raised in India, or Jews raised in Israel. Allow me to assure you that if you are one of these people; someone raised in your culture’s dominant faith, you just don’t get it.

I remember being one of exactly two Jewish kids in my middle school (in a town that is now very heavily Jewish, by the way). Every year it’s, Do I sing Silent Night in the choir, or do I single myself out by not singing or by objecting, or do I make a non-statement statement by merely pretending to sing? (Me, I’m a single myself out kinda gal, and my mom was really supportive about speaking to the school about their Christian agenda). When the class project is making Christmas trees, you have to raise your hand if you want to make a menorah instead (so that everyone knows who the Jews are, of course). Or maybe you have to raise your hand and ask if you can please make something else instead.

So you grow up knowing I am not one of these people. I am not part of this culture. I don’t fit in. Which, okay, who wants to fit in? Kids do. And tired adults do. Do you know how exhausting it can be to constantly have to explain, No, that’s not me/us, don’t assume I’m part of your frickin mainstream?

The Radical Right that is promoting their ridiculous War on Christmas doesn’t believe there is a real war. They don’t believe they are being oppressed. But they know there’s lots of political capital in having an angry base. They know they have to keep the Right angry, and it’s hard to convince people they’re angry when they run the country, control the media and the meme, and own all the businesses. So they created a war on gays and gay marriage. But the thing is, despite swings up and down, they’re losing that war, and they’re losing a bit of their base by fighting it. So they needed a new war, They needed one where the base wouldn’t erode. And who will walk away from a War to Save Christmas? I mean!

It’s easy to convince people that they’re oppressed if you hammer the point hard enough. My experience is that Left-leaning, free-thinking people who were raised as part of a majority are pretty clueless as to what it means to be made to stand in the cultural corner. And that’s the Left! So it’s not at all hard to whip up the Right.

See, it’s nice that the culture is more inclusive. We talk all the time about how it’s right and just and so on, but it’s also just nice. Nice to go into a store and have them say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” and think they’re saying it to me, instead of thinking, “They don’t mean me” or “They’re leaving me out again” and getting exhausted. Again.

John Gibson and Jerry Falwell probably don’t mean to make little kids feel left out. They probably don’t mean to embarrass kids by singling them out as different in school, just because they’re Jewish or Hindu. They just want their little war to drum up the base. But that’s what they’ll do. They’re not just teaching “the Right” to be angry about Christmas. They’re teaching parents. And those parents will teach their kids, and those kids will go to school and fight their frickin War by belittling other kids. That’s what bigotry is.

Sequined Crop Tops are a Tool of the Patriarchy (and other things I learned at Sears)

November 22, 2005 / / 2 comments

Over on Shakespeare’s Sister we were having this conversation about girls clothing, and Sis said the point I was making could be a whole other post, so here’s a post.

The original topic was about how Certain Forces In Our Culture™ try to confine girls by accusing them of slutitude whenever they wear anything revealing. But Geez Louise, is it really better to force them into slutitude?

If you haven’t been in a girls’ clothing department recently, I encourage you to be shocked and appalled. The [male] clothing manufacturers are genuinely getting mileage dressing girls as sluts, marketing sluttiness as a commodity. Not just sluttiness, also frilliness, ridiculously-girliness, and the like.

There is no simplicity to be had in most girls’ departments, no jeans without curlicues and flowers and sequins, no t-shirts without some sort of I Am A Slut slogan plastered across it.

One time I was in some store (I think Sears) looking for clothes for my son. And there was this cool line of girl’s clothes with a label like “Just Me,” marketed specifically to an unfrilly girl. How I know this is that the staff had shelved it in the boys’ department. They saw NO pink flowers and assumed it was for boys.

Kids R Us, Sears, Kohl’s, it doesn’t matter; even toddler’s sizes look like stripper wear.

Another time recently, I was buying my son new tap shoes, and I was asking the dancewear store manager about appropriate boy’s dance clothing. She started to say there were unisex clothes on the girl’s rack, and then changed her mind; the shorts now are too short, the shirts ride too high, the asses have sayings across them.

Let’s get real, here. We’re not overcoming the patriarchy by dressing our daughters as sluts. We’re submitting to the latest twist in the patriarchy. We’re buying them the clothes and the Britney Spears albums, so that they think they’re little rock stars oh how cute, but we don’t teach them that some people will think they’re not little rock stars, they’re little sluts, and they won’t understand why the same culture that sold them these clothes is now treating them in a particular and unpleasant way. It’s like Joan Cusack in Working Girl not being able to figure out that her look confines her.

Is it better for boys? Hell no! We struggle to find dancewear because my son doesn’t want to dress like a football or basketball player; he’s a dancer and he doesn’t dig sports. There’s little non-Nike to be had in boy’s wear. Being a male dancer is such a no-no that he’s trapped, sartorially speaking. It’s either girls’ slut clothes or boys’ jock clothes; there’s really nothing to buy for male dancers. Doesn’t that just say everything about how clothing sets us up to be the gender stereotype the culture demands we be?

Clothing stores are much more polarized than they were twenty years ago. As the old fogeys say, when I was a kid, it was different. Of course, I was a kid in the seventies, and “hippie” was a unisex look. I was successfully able to deny my sexuality well past the age when I was actually having sex. And that was comfortable for me.

Nowadays, there’s simply no such thing as unisex clothing. Girls have to stand in the slut corner, boys have to stand in the jock corner, and woe be unto you if you don’t want to be a stereotype.

I don’t know for a fact if the slut corner is worse or better for girls than the virgin corner. It’s a fucking corner; I’d like kids to have a whole room, or better yet, the great outdoors.

The Work of Writing and the Reputation of a Publisher

November 19, 2005 / / 4 comments

I’ve been working on The Study of Witchcraft since, I think, forever. Seriously, I think I started it in utero.

Okay, I wrote this book, because I thought it was a good idea. I thought it was something that would be useful to beginners of a studious bent. I wanted it to be a slim volume, for two reasons. First, because I thought it would be interesting as a study guide, where I would point towards knowledge and you (the reader) would go fetch. A Cliff Notes to Wicca, if you will. Second, because everything I write is MEGAHUGE and I wanted to see if I could be more terse. It was an exercise for me as a writer.

So I wrote the book and I shipped it off to Llewellyn. Now, you need to know that this is the fourth book I have sent to Llewellyn, and the first three were immediately snatched up. So I sat home, waiting for snatch to happen.

Not so much.

I hear from Llewellyn some weeks later. They like the book, but it’s too light, too short, too everything I was interested in writing. They want depth, they want length, they want it to be more chewy.

So I added a homework section to each chapter. I thought that was chewy. (Please know that chewy is my word. I have never gotten a letter from an editor requesting chewy goodness. More’s the pity.) I mailed it away with much anticipation.

Too soon.

So now I’m rewriting for the third time. The letter I have on my desk, from my editor, says, in part:

“should be expanded upon”…”should not be limited to the bare beginners’ [material]”…”Do some research”… “flesh the book out more and provide greater depth.” … “Right now the book is too superficial in some parts”… “We need more inspiration in this book, more of the meat”.

If you are Pagan or Wiccan you are now laughing hysterically, because you know, you know, that Llewellyn would never ask such things! “Everyone” knows that Llewellyn is shallow, that they hate scholarship, that they publish only tripe and silly, fluffy beginners’ books.

Yet this is not my experience, and in truth, never has been. I have defended my publisher numerous times, but there’s a limit to how much you can do that, because it sounds self-serving and, well, defensive. And people say, “Well, Deb, they publish you, but other than that they suck,” or “You’re the exception that proves the rule.” But I don’t think so. I don’t think they have editors on staff who write letters like that just for me.

Reputation is virtually unshakeable. People like to believe they know what they know. And people like to feel superior. It is lovely to be able to snort disdainfully when a certain something or someone is mentioned. For a Witch to say “Llewellyn SNORT” is like an art critic saying “Norman Rockwell SNORT.” How plebian. How beneath my lofty self.

Let’s be honest here. Lewellyn has published some suck-out-loud books. Books that have made me snort so hard I inhaled gnats. Books that have damaged both the publisher’s reputation and, quite possibly, the brains of those who’ve read them. But to honestly critique a bad book is simply not the same as dismissing an entire body of work, most of which the critics haven’t even seen.

So…gotta get back to work. Must. Write. The Meat.

Caesar Salad

November 18, 2005 / / 3 comments

A Caesar Salad, in its original form, has

  • Romaine lettuce
  • Fresh-made garlic croutons
  • Anchovies
  • Raw or coddled* eggs
  • Parmesan cheese

    • The whole mess is prepared fresh in a wooden bowl that has been rubbed with raw garlic cloves.

    We used to make a vegetarian Caesar Salad that substituted fresh-crumbled blue cheese for anchovies. It was a good substitution, because the blue cheese had much of the tang and saltiness of the anchovies, and flavored the bowl in the same way. A big salad of this sort was a main course in our family.

    Not long ago, really less than ten years, before “Caesar Salad” was on every menu everywhere, it was a specialty. And if you went to a restaurant and found it on the menu, they’d ask you if you wanted anchovies** when you ordered.

    It’s not that I object to it being On. Every. Menu. Everywhere. It’s just that I haven’t seen a real Caesar Salad anywhere in more than 15 years. Okay, I get that raw or coddled eggs cannot be legally served. (’cause of the salmonella. ’cause of the antibiotic-laden chicken feed. But I digress.) But even given a viable substitution (like an eggy mayonnaise) is there even such a thing anymore as an authentic Caesar recipe? I mean, isn’t “Caesar salad” now some kind of euphemism for “any salad with croutons and Parmesan cheese and probably no tomatoes or carrots”? Last night I ate dinner at Wendy’s (so sue me) and it had bacon bits. Bacon bits? Bacon bits? My outrage is boundless. Okay, it’s bounded. But it’s there.

    Caesar salad is a term that anyone uses to mean anything. So ordering it doesn’t tell you what you’re getting. On a similar note, a “bagel” is a boiled, not baked, bread product. But you’ve probably never tasted one unless you live in Brooklyn. You’ve probably only had fake bagels that are baked. They’re kind of tasty, but they’re not bagels. And nobody knows, and nobody cares.

    Come to think of it, doesn’t this apply to Wicca these days? There’s a core meaning of “Wicca” that was accepted for many years, until the notion of Eclectic Wicca came along. It’s not a matter of Eclecticism being an illegitimate way of practicing religion, not at all! It’s a matter of using language authentically, so things mean what they mean. So that Caesar Salad has eggs, and bagels are boiled, and Wicca is an initiatory Mystery religion.

    Okay, I accept that language changes. In Wicca, there is a real and growing movement of Eclecticism. And as I often say, Modifiers Are Our Friends™. “Eclectic Wicca” is the new thing, “Traditional Wicca” is what we used to call “Wicca,” and everyone is happy, and language plods on.

    But the modifier thing isn’t working, because there’s a huge voice within Paganism that not only believes “anything goes” (wasn’t Kate Capshaw cute singing that? But Temple of Doom is an evil movie. But I digress) but resents the very notion of defining terms to mean something. “Pagan/Wicca/Witch/Goddess must mean whatever I say it means and how dare you say otherwise!” So you have self-contradictory amalgams like “Christian Wicca” (shudder) and “Wiccans” who don’t cast circles or call quarters or worship deities, and people who do all those things but “aren’t Wiccan” because they don’t like the Wiccans they’ve met and don’t want to be associated with them.

    They’re all a bunch of Caesar salads with vinegar dressing and chopped walnuts as far as I can see.

    *A coddled egg is cooked for one minute at low temperature
    **Because some people don’t like anchovies, I guess. Fancy that.

    Watusi & Keeping it real

    November 15, 2005 / / 2 comments

    My cat Watusi has been missing for ten days. It’s taken me this long to be able to write, or indeed talk, about it. She’s been spotted a few times in the complex, but I haven’t seen her and the neighbors haven’t been able to get near her. So I’m hopeful that she’ll return. But meanwhile I’ve been on a rollercoaster of guilt, grief, fear, love, and a kind of longing.

    Longing. I can feel her absence everywhere. Feel the emptiness in my lap, hear the silence in the bathroom (because no one is hovering near the shower and whining), feel how the temperature of the bed is lower with no one sleeping on my feet.

    In Witchcraft, we’re very concerned with the imaginative task. We use visualization as our stock in trade. Sometimes this is tricky. Suppose I’m doing a spell to get Peewee a new job. How do I visualize that? Do I picture Peewee commuting to his desired location, dressed in work drag? Do I picture Peewee receiving, or cashing, a paycheck? Do I imagine a stereotypical Boss Guy shaking hands with Peewee and saying “Welcome aboard!”? Do I question why I have a friend named Peewee in the first place?

    All but the last are the sort of thing often visualized in spells. They require a vivid imagination and an ability to focus on a scenario and make it real. We use meditation to build the ability to silence distraction and improve focus. We practice with guided meditations and learn to build a library of mental imagery that will stand us in good stead. We work in groups so that our disparate mental images overlap and reinforce one another (and we communicate extensively so that they don’t contradict one another).

    Visualization has never come easily to me. I have no sense of dimensionality. I am left/right impaired and I get lost in parking lots. I can’t visualize the rotation of an object and I have never solved a Rubik’s cube. I have used every trick of the Witch’s trade to make it work. Sometimes my mind is stuck in the abstract. I manipulate the abstract to work my will. For example, I might just see the word JOB in big, bold letters in my mind’s eye, rather than (or in addition to) anything more cinematic.

    With Watusi, there has been no problem. My relationship with her is tactile, physical, and present. There’s no abstraction in loving a cat. When I close my eyes, I can feel her, see her, experience her. I am holding her, she is heavy. She is kissing me on the lips (crazy girl), her left eye is running (again). She is meowing and I hear it exactly, in all its nuance of intonation that distinguishes between Good morning and I’m really goddamn thirsty. In a word, she’s real.

    All I want is my girl back. But in the meantime, the experience is teaching me something about Witchcraft, and something about keeping it real.

    The value of Traditional Wicca

    February 17, 2005 / / 5 comments

    This came up as a result of something I posted on Mystic Wicks.

    Eclectic Wicca is an outgrowth of Traditional Wicca, meaning “BTW” trads such as Gardnerianism, Alexandrianism, etc. A lot of Traditionalists believe that they have sole and exclusive rights to the word, that if you practice in an eclectic, non-initiatory manner, you’re not a Wiccan. Well, THAT linguistic horse is WAY out of the barn and frankly, the thing to do is to hold the barn door open in a cheerful manner as if we wanted the horse to get out all along.

    There is nothing wrong with being an Eclectic Wiccan, it’s a totally legitimate path from which a lot of people get a great deal of value. But if you really want to learn about the meat and potatoes of Wicca, the stuff that underlies the pretty rituals and herbs, then you need to read books published by Traditionalists, or that are 15 or more years old and come from a point of view that Traditionalism is the standard. These books simply have more information.

    Of course, keep in mind that these books ALSO have misinformation about things like the etymology of the word Wicca and the true history of the “Burning Times.” That’s just something that comes hand in hand with the fact that the books are older.

    Again, I’m not saying anyone should be oriented towards Traditional practice. I’m saying that learning about Traditionalism will enhance anyone’s practice. Try checking out my Recommended Reading page to get you started.

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