There’s a war on. Whenever someone says “Happy Holidays” to you instead of “Glad Yule,” threaten to sue. If someone displays a Nativity and the Lord is not properly Horned, file a complaint. When Santa is connected to Christmas rather than Yule, protest vigorously.
Rally about, folks! The War on Yule must not succeed!
[The preceding was brought to you by the Department of Righteous Sarcasm. If your sense of humor has not been upgraded recently, your page may not have displayed correctly.]
A Caesar Salad, in its original form, has
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.
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.
I found this article about the spiritual and health benefits of labyrinths. Ignore the silly price for a portable fabric labyrinth. I also found The Labyrinth Society web page. It’s kinda weird because it never explains why you would wish to walk a labyrinth. On the other hand, it has many lovely, amazing animations showing how labyrinths are constructed, and also a “worldwide labyrinth locator.” So that’s something.
Good stuff also at Lessons for Living.
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.
