Saturday, December 15, 2007

A Formative Year

In a single year
* Protesters disrupted the presidential nominating convention in Chicago.
* Women picketed the Miss America pageant to protest the oppression of women, burning their bras and parading a ewe adorned with tinsel, glitter, and tulle.
* Governor George Wallace split the southern vote on a segregationist ticket, and Richard Nixon entered the White House.
* The Church of All Worlds was founded in St. Louis Mo.
* This same year we founded the Church and School of Wicca and announced its existence in ads.
There was no discernible astrological alignment, so what happened? Anyone got a clue?

Okay, gentle visitors to this blog : We'll keep "Wicca". How about "101 Wicca" for the clowns and cape-swishers and hoodoo fantasists? Then using a grading leading to "501 Wicca" for those who are dedicated (committed)? -- which, by the way, we are sure Greenleaf is.
Shadowhawk, all our wishes and healing energy to your mother.
Blessed be all. GY

11 comments:

Shadowhawk said...

Thanks Gavin and Yvonne Yes my Mom needsall the energy she can get..Ill be heading out in the morning. You know ive been involved in, taught, and sat on the sidelines for all kinds of 01 type classes. The one class i think some could benefit from but i have never seen would be called

The Perils Of Paganism.. Witchcraft and the Pagan Path in the real World.. Letting people know that yes there is a lot of good in the path and our movement but also alot of BS,, like having to fight to get the Pentacle allowed on service mens/womens grave markers.. That people have lost and almost lost the custody of there children for the practicing of a Pagan Path, that there STILL is not a nationally recognized Pagan chaplain for our military services. so on an so forth.. I mean ive looked at the course list for the Church and School, i dont believe i saw an 01 class anywhere in it.. and i mean if thats the case, any advanced topics of learning could i think be better dealt with as people go through there Initiations, and certainly in between times of initiation, From first to second an so forth.. But please lets never get into that instant witch syndrome.. Just add this book or this class for 5 nights at The Old Owl Metaphysical shop, I just dont see it happening in 5 days.. Blessings of the Old Gods to all

Ceraun said...

Hey, you know what else happened that year? My brother was born.

Not sure if that means anything, but there ya go.

Thanks for the vote of confidence. We've all done so much hard work over the years, but as Shadowhawk has pointed out, there is still so much more to do.

SecondComingOfBast said...

Also, 1968 was the year first Martin Luther King was assassinated, and then Robert Kennedy.

No discernible astrological alignment? I'll have to check to be sure, but I think Pluto was in conjunction with Uranus. It may not have been an exact conjunction, but I'm sure it was at least very close to being one. Additionally, this might have been about the time that Pluto was moving inside the orbit of Neptune.

Finally, this conjunction might have occurred on or near the first degree of Libra,where the Sun is during the Autumn Equinox (Mabon).

If I'm right, that would be a very notable type of conjunction, with other alignments possibly coming into play at various times of the year, though it's impossible to say in what way, if any, it would have been pertinent. It's interesting, though.

wushih said...

Thank you, Gavin, for your kind words regarding Greenleaf Coven. Goodness knows, we try. Sometimes, when I spout off, I wonder if you are going to show up on the front porch and give me a good smack...like "straighten up and behave yourself".

On the other hand, I know you respect people who stand up and encourage people to use their minds.

As far as cape swishers go...ho ho! Wisdom has a lot to do with realizing you don't know shit. I think the cape thing was adequately covered in the movie "The Incredibles". You don't want to wear a cape because you could get tangled up in it and get in trouble. I think of the remark you and Yvonne made in your book "Good Witches Fly Smoothly" about leaders getting tangled up in their own underwear.

Ho Ho.
Pat

Hayley said...

Something says that I've missed an important piece of the context here.

Are we speaking of classes and 101 is an introduction to set people on the right path?

Or are we spekaing of a grading system ranking other people/covens on what you feel is dedication?

At which if it's the latter (I'd daresay I'd hope not), the numbering would be misleading.

If it's the former, fine but not all beginners are clowns and yahoos. And I think you're going to dissuade the serious but beginning seekers by referring to them as such.

Just my .0002 cents

Ceraun said...

"Hayley said...
Something says that I've missed an important piece of the context here.

Are we speaking of classes and 101 is an introduction to set people on the right path?

Or are we spekaing of a grading system ranking other people/covens on what you feel is dedication?"

I'm sure they intended it as a tongue-in-cheek statement. Greenleaf has done many 101 classes for people wishing to study and set their feet on the path (personal note - I don't believe there's any one "right" path). No one organization can say one is better than another, unless they are working under a hierarchy and expect to be judged.

In the many years I've taught 101 classes, I've had many students come to me and tell me how much more they learned by having someone to talk to rather than just reading a book. I think, if there is to be a move back to the original fundamentals of Wicca and/or Paganism, there needs to be a move back to actual student/teacher relationships.

Cape-swishers and such might be reclassified as "Wicca-lite."

SecondComingOfBast said...

There's sure plenty of swishers, that's for sure. Until I went into a "new age" bookstore, I didn't realize there were so many people born and raised in the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky area with Gypsy/Hindi/Eastern European/Middle Eastern accents.

I guess they were channeling the goddess and I didn't even realize it. Evidently the old girl doesn't care for southern brogues.

SecondComingOfBast said...

By the way, I checked the Khaldhea ephemeris, and during nineteen sixty-eight Uranus and Pluto were between five and six degrees apart throughout the year, which is a minor conjunction. Still, it would have been pretty powerful during the first half of the month of September, at least, when the Sun would come into conjunction with them over about a weeks period.

They were in more of a direct conjunction though during 1965, which was when the civil rights era unrest pretty much really started to swing into high gear, as did the Vietnam War.

Hayley said...

Ah, my apologies for missing the tounge-in-cheek nature of it all then.

Ignore everything I said. Oops.

Chas S. Clifton said...

Does Wicca 501 have the traditional brass rivets and button fly?

;-)

Alienist said...

Ok, first of all, i have to thank Gavin and Yvonne on all the books that they have published and their good deeds bringing some hope into the lives of many people from around the world who are agnostic by shedding some light on the manner.
Now i must apologized, i cannot call myself a wiccan from the things i have done, rules i have broken and oaths i have ruined. Traumatizing but true but i tell this just to show you a different point of view on the matter at hand according to christo pW groups.
First of all, christ existed but it didn't get fanatical until it became a walking cluster*uck of the chaeldeans of the zoroster, or something like that (i think i spelled it wrong). Anyway they made a thinagig about having an awesome good and an ultimate evil which the religions soon became rivals before cristianity absorbed it. Having twice the followers, they believed everyone has to follow their way.
Being such as this, is it the intent of the christo pW groups to absorb paganism into cristianity to make it "acceptable" to the masses?
I am a bit of a mercenary on the flip-side, employing my "talent" to however would be paying. I remember this one job where the client was a wiccan and i explained my terms and he employed me because i wasn't afraid of the 3fold law. There was people attacking him on the street because he tried to advertise wicca by posting papers on electical poles so he could spread the word, afaid and his "satanic cult" would damage the already gang filled streets. He was afraid for his life so he wanted protection, trust me, he got it. After he tried the paper posts others started to follow in after him, seeking to make a small coven in this belief. So i went there because it was public, to hear what they had to say, maybe get into a debate with them so that maybe they would learn correspondingly to what the real things were. So i touch up on the good 'ol history/ecyclopededia/magic books to get aquainted with the knowledge correctly, hoping my best chances i could not get corrected.
It was nothing that i expected, instead of teaching the origin of witchcraft or the like it began as some kind of girly/guy homosexual faggish get-together with a "let's crank open some dusty tome and play ouija" demeanor. I was so infuriated, i threw up, holding back the murderous rage i surgically use in my spells. After i got their attention with my vomit, i began yelling at them and their child-like minds to understand that they are playing with the primal forces of spectral origin and that it isn't some hippy-ho-da crap that they believed.
My lecturing was to no avail, they thought that as long as they have the books and the will along with their "One God", they will be safe with whatever they agents of satan throw at them. So i wanted to play a game, but my client didn't want me to do anything to them because of the serious extent to how i "guarded" him, but i didn't care.
The game was that whatever they were familiar of, i would 'alieniate' them from it and show them wrong unless they were truely on to something. It isn't my job to judge, but, then again, who will?
The first of my victims was an astrologer, i asked him if he knew if the stars told him what i would do to him. He said that he will be extra careful when he gets home because he thinks that i am going to cast a hex on him(he didn't say this part but thats how i understood his body language).
I simply kicked his ass into next week, leaving him unconscious on the grass bleeding out from his broken nose and missing teeth. Everyone watch me grab some regeants i used for powerful negativity along with the blood of the aspiring astrologer performing what wiccans would definitly call black magic "at its best".
Everyone but me, including my client, went to the hospital. I merely fled the scene when the curses were done.
Moral of the story? What in the flying #uck is wrong with these people these days? Just because it sounds fantasitical doesn't mean that it is, and the point of justifing it with the basis of another religion doesn't make an explanation, it makes a point of view, filtered by the taboos and religious preference of the speakers mind.
What garbage, what ruined animosities are now slipping into the minds of people my age? Why are things that are meant to be "sacred" or "benevolent" so hideously altered just to become acceptable by the masses just because "that is what i believe"?
Why is it that concepts like ninjutsu have to appear "off the wall" when it is all in the book store to learn from (THANK YOU CHRISTOPHER PROWANT AND STEPHEN HAYES!) and why is it so hard to find books on the 'evil' side of magic, encumbering darkness that envolpes all those who you despise with utter loathesomeness?
With the exception of the books that the frosts wrote (because it works, duh!), there are books that have protection against psychic attack that do not work. Apparently, the writers were never attacked psychically...
I am sorry if my stories and ranting offend others, on the flip-side, i could care less if it does or doesn't. I am just mad that christians wish to corrupt something decent once again,i will not idly stand by and watch it crumble into nothingness once more because X amount of people don't either believe in it or don't want it around. And another thing, black magic is not black, its just magic...
I apologize once more to the frosts since i do not follow your customs but i do follow a code of conduct i have developed over the years. I am simply just a different breed of magus but we all come from the same stock, i wish paganism not farewell, without it, i would not be aas knowledgeable as i am today.
Thank you.