The Slippery Spirit

During the dawn of the 20th century, a group of spiritualists and occult scholars joined together into what we know today as the Orthodox Order of the Golden Dawn. It didn't last very long, but it produced studies and principles that would shake the very idea of what we believed made up the world. Though many witches before them knew of it, the GD introduced into a more mainstream arena the idea of an divine energetic world - one built of an immeasurable stuff called aether - that exists beneath everything we can see, touch, hear, taste or smell. More importantly, this group revealed that human beings had the power to work with this stuff to make changes happen in the world. One particularly charismatic, albeit flaky, member of the GD was named Aliester Crowley. He worked extensively with the idea of manipulating this energy and coined a word for the process. The use of the unseen energy to cause changes in accordance with one's will he called "magick," spelled wit...

Many neo-pagan traditions espouse the belief that candles should never be blown out - they should only be snuffed or pinched out. The idea is that overpowering them with the breath (being either the element of Air or the breath of life force) is disrespectful to the the element of Fire. This never really measured well on my truth-o-meter so I decided to dig up whatever I could find about it. Since we relish blowing out birthday candles, I started there. The tradition of putting candles on birthday cakes started with the Ancient Greeks, who put candles on offering breads in ceremonies to the Goddess Artemis so the breads would glow like the moon. This also allowed prayers to be carried up to the Goddess in the smoke of the candles. There is no indication of how these candles were extinguished and no lasting tradition that demands a ceremonial breath to do the job. Since the 3rd century BC, candles were typically used to keep time. As candle clocks, weights were cast into the sid...

In recent years I've noticed a kind of witch becoming more and more prevalent. I have dubbed them "indoor pagans," though they really are just witches. Their ability to operate as a pagan would (should?) in our modern world leave much to be desired. These are people who have been searching for some spirituality that is other than the dominant triumvirate that currently exists. They want more drama, more mystery, more glamour, and maybe even more deviancy than the others provide. So they find and study witchcraft or one of the traditions of Wicca. Many of them started as people trying to make sense of a world with little apparent morality. Maybe they just wanted a community that allowed them to be a little morally ambiguous themselves from time to time. Let's face it, many of us have our trashy moments, and what's really wrong with that? My point is that they may be witches, but they are not pagans. They don't enjoy being outdoors, unless its a brief nature...

It has become pretty clear that I need some help, and I don't mean help with the shaman thing. I've spent the last few decades labeling myself a solitary pagan and witch. Bully for me. In all of that time, despite starting a few esoteric books, I've found that I'm really not giving my spiritual health very much energy. Of all of the beginners' exercises that are typically recommended, I rarely do any of them. I am prone to starting something and then losing interest and motivation before it's finished, including books, exercises, classes, and projects. This is a real problem. Lately I've allied myself with a couple of online witch "schools." They are providing a structure to people who want to study the esoteric arts. I think that's just what I need -- structure. I'm willing to start at whatever these schools claim to be the beginning. I want no claims of previous study to place me out of any classes. I want to do the entire program fro...