Why you are here

The question often asked is: Why are we here? Wicca offers a remarkably simple answer, namely: We are here to learn and to grow. The growth is in our awareness: some might call it our consciousness. We believe that every living thing has some level of awareness, even if only the awareness of how to reproduce or how to avoid danger. The most elemental living organism gains awareness by simply being alive. After it dies, that awareness (or, if you like, its spirit) reincarnates at a level slightly more advanced or complicated, and thus is able to have more experiences and gain more awareness. We could say, its spirit grows. The process of life/death/growth continues as the elemental being develops through many levels and eventually inhabits a body suitable for the level we know as homo sapiens. We are not willing to say that homo sapiens is the highest life form on this planet--or elsewhere in the multiverse--but just for now let's say that it might be. The spirit that inhabits you has been many things. At the human level it starts with lower awareness and gradually develops more. In Wicca we have a tendency to say that because the female has the opportunity of giving birth and of nurturing a child, she has the opportunity to gain more awareness than does the male. It behooves us to gain awareness by experiencing as many different things as possible during each incarnation. That may take the form of several different jobs in several different levels of prosperity; it may take the form of several different relationships. The old-fashioned Abrahamic idea of one man and one woman being married and experiencing only each other for a whole lifetime is contrary to the spirit's need to gain awareness and experiences. ... Unprofitable ... stultified/ stultifying?? And overall a non-win? The feelings of love and comfort must be some of the most important in the development of a full awareness of the meaning of your existence. We do not mean that you can't be firmly committed to one other person, but nor do we mean that you should forever endure a relationship so archaic and rigid. Once you have completed all your assignments and have gone on, it is generally believed that you meld with other spirits to become a larger awareness. Such an awareness may inhabit some other life form than human, perhaps in another sphere or realm of existence; then once it has cleansed itself of individuality and selfishness, it may re-join the Ultimate Great Spirit. There's more. From being a part of the Great Spirit tiny pieces are continually separating, once more to inhabit life forms at the lowest level and repeat anew the cycle of growth. Thus we say that the whole system is just a method of growth and awareness. It's simple. It's easy. It's obvious, once you extract it from the billowing clouds of piled-on guilt, shame, and fear. It's a game everyone can play. Don't cut off your chances at growth by following the teachings of any one self-appointed guru or moldy old book. Don't follow even us and our ideas. Examine the claims. Ask yourself, Cui bono? Who stands to gain if I follow this path? Blessed be Gavin and Yvonne

Grace and Spirituality

Recently we heard a Spiritualist minister discuss grace. In the subsequent discussion it became apparent that no one present really knew what grace was or is. In my own mind grace is very similar to consciousness: (a) It is something we all recognize as being real, though we don't know how to get it, and (b) We don't know whether conscious animals and living things have it--or even whether they wish for it. If I built an automaton from parts that replicate a human being and its functions, would the automaton have consciousness? Would the consciousness be built in? If it does not have consciousness, why not? If it had conciousness would it also have grace? Having consciousness has been compared to knowing the color red (or, for that matter, any other color) if I were to be completely color-blind and could see only in black and white and in shades of gray. Could you describe to me, your bereft friend, what red is--or what seeing red feels like? Does a mouse, who is not color-blind, understand red?, whereas I have no hope of being able to do that. Does a mouse have consciousness--at least more than my replica human being, the automaton? Are consciousness and grace emergent traits? We know that, for instance, flocking for birds is an emergent trait. As soon as you put a group of birds together they form a flock and act in unison. Yet a bird and even two birds do not seem to be naturally friendly with one another. Somewhere in their genome, over ages birds have learned that flocking has advantages. Therefore when a group forms, they flock. Does consciousness have a survival advantage? If you can dream up an advantage for consciousness, can you for grace? Obviously in time past, when the Inquisition was rampant, being able to say that you had grace was an advantage: You hopefully wouldn't be burned. But today? Blessed be G&Y

An it Harm None ?

The ostensible sacred writings of Craft people often quote the Wiccan Rede: An it harm none, do what you will. But what is an? We've seen it misunderstood by journalists, by office staff, by a range of individuals. So far as we can search out, its only current use is by Snuffy Smith of the Sunday comics, when he addresses Lowizee: "if'n". Apparently that 'n was once an, though it survives now only in the remotest reaches of the Smoky Mountains if at all. An may appear in the King James version of the you-know-what, though I haven't taken time to pursue that possibility. And in fact, I heard once somewhere that James himself insisted his scholars use a style of English already archaic, in a quest to make their translations (and incidentally his own Daemonologie) appear to be sanctified by age. So anyhow, in my personal thinking I have dropped an altogether and replaced it with if. What you retain or drop is a matter of your own choice. Yvonne

revisit gay marriage?

We hear that the United States Supreme Court is thinking about revisiting the constitutionality of gay (same-sex) marriage. As a taxpayer I ask, "Why, Your Honors?" I detect the iron hand in its iron glove of conventional Abrahamic religions throwing their weight around again--and the Wiccan in me mentally shouts, "Wait a minute!" Let's reflect on some facts here. Whether they be welcome or unwelcome, they are true. 1. Optional is not mandatory. If you choose not to participate in a gay marriage, you don't have to. 2. Even gay people pay taxes. Recall the placard from the days preceding the American Revolutionary War: Taxation without representation. Does all this feel fair? If not, make your thoughts known and put a little of your money where your thoughts are. Send the package to Americans United for Separation of Church and State 1301 K St NW / ste 850 E Washington DC 20005 What do you say we all join those good people at Americans United* in their valiant efforts to maintain said separation? If I wanted to live in a theocracy, I'd go to Saudi Arabia or to Iran. The time is come (indeed, is way overdue) for somebody to get a reality smack. Blessed be Y'all Yvonne *au.org

Uighura and China

Call me befuddled. From time to time we hear of how an ethnic group known as Uighurs are persecuted and bullied by the Chinese government. Apparently the Uighurs long to be something apart from the official Chinese communist government in Beijing, and Beijing won't let 'em go. As we understand it from reporters on BBC America's newscasts, * Chinese army troops are stationed long-term in one of the westernmost provinces of China, * geographically closer to Baghdad than they are to Beijing. * The troops constantly are shooting dead, beating, and imprisoning menbers of the Uighur population--elderly, children, women, what have you-- * at enormous expense in military wages, ammunition and equipment, and who knows what else --for the fact that said population resents the Chinese presence. * Uighurs are largely Muslim, not communist or whatever other "faith" they are officially supposed to espouse. * Uighurs and Chinese communists hate each other for the above reasons and probably for many others which the BBC reporters are not allowed air time to enumerate. I don't understand. Can someone suggest a rational grounds on which China clutches that population and those square meters of land, refusing to let it go, either (a) to independence or (b) to affiliation with some other contiguous nation ? I'd be grateful for some fact that would help me understand such behaviors. Blessed be. Yvonne

Amazon SMILE for scholarships

Amazon SMILE scholarships to inmates In the early days of the Church and School of Wicca, we were able to award scholarships to worth-while inmates and to support other inmates in their quest for freedom to worship while incarcerated. Partially as a result of that policy, in the case of Dettmer versus Landon Wicca became a federally recognized religion. All of us still owe a debt of gratitude to those courageous people who put their chances of parole in jeopardy by persisting in their drive for freedom of worship. Recently, though, the Church and School has been unable to financially support such efforts. We have looked for people who will sponsor inmates from among society at large, and have failed to get any--any! The Church and School is now part of Amazon SMILE Program. In the program Amazon donates 0.5 percent of the purchase price of any object to the charity designated by the purchaser. Some friends of the Church and School have designated the Church and School as their SMILE recipient. What we now plan is that we will use any SMILE proceeds--every last cent of it--to support worth-while inmates. Your help in this matter will be appreciated: by us ourselves, of course, and by the target inmates. All you have to do when you make a purchase from Amazon is to designate the SMILE money to go to the Church and School of Wicca. Keep in mind that all such outlay on your part is tax-deductible. Thank you from us and from recipients, and Blessed be! Gavin and Yvonne

Goldilocks and God

"God" in the title of this blog isn't meant in any conventional sense. Instead you might want to call it the First Cause (hereinafter TFC). There are a series of far-out coincidences that allow us to exist on earth. The first and obvious one is the temperature, that allows a carbon life form such as ourselves to exist. This is where Goldilocks comes in: The planet we call ours is not too hot and it's not too cold; it's just right. But there are a lot of other "coincidences" without which we could not live on this planet. It has been argued that life forms based on other elements could exist. The one most frequently posited is silicon, the element closest to carbon on the Periodic Table. We can imagine the life form that exists and uses silicon dioxide as a source of energy, though silicon dioxide is a solid, not a gas. A silicon-based life form could probably show some semblance of life as we know it, but it's probably difficult for most of us to imagine how. Other carbon-based life forms could also exist. We know that they exist near volcanic vents on the ocean floor in areas of extreme pressure and heat, though again, it's difficult to imagine a planet that could support them, simply because of the pressure and heat that it would have to continually generate. So what about other planets that have an environment similar to earth's? As you know, earth's orbit is an ellipse, and that helps. It is tilted relative to the plane of its revolution. The tilt is only about 2 percent. It can be calculated that if the tilt were 4 percent, then for half the year the oceans in the northern hemisphere would freeze and those in the southern hemisphere would boil. Our distance from our star, the sun, is also highly critical. Again, a small percentage difference would give us an atmosphere in which life as we know it could not exist. The so-called probabilistic argument considers all these probabilities and concludes that the chance of conditions favorable to any life happening is one in 1018. Since the latest SWAG (SWAG: scientific wild-ass guess) of planets is 1011, you can see that you simply can't be here. This always comes back, then, to the question of: How did life as we know it arise? Was it by a miracle performed by TFC? Or was it something that could not have failed to happen? Recent experiments with what are called hard vacuums and the CERN Giant show that matter blinks into existence and almost immediately disappears. Such a generation of matter from apparently nothing is, shall we say, somewhat puzzling to today's physicists. We do not find such spontaneous creation-of-matter in anything but the hardest vacuum, and so far the theory is that a vacuum could be filled with virtual particles that occasionally collide to form real matter. The renormalized mathematics which shows why matter blinks in and blinks out is as weird as anything even a Christian could envision--unless perhaps Einstein's famous equation E=mc2 is reversible. To wit: Put in a large amount of energy, and matter is formed So then the question arises: whether it is from these first infinitesimally small pieces of matter that everything was built. Apparently it is possible (at least theoretically) that such a thing can happen--but apparently it can happen only when the conditions are just right: firstly in the plasma of the first creation, then developing in the nuclear furnaces of stars, then to a Goldilocks planet where semi-intelligent life forms can presume to ask the question: Is there any need for an existential god or goddess--a juju? We guess we do need a TFC, to write the equations ... or do we? If this makes you feel like soaking your head, join the crowd. Blessed be. Gavin and Yvonne