Topic: The Magickal Web

23) I will not bring a Magic Eight Ball to Divination Class.

How many Pagan or Magickal Elders do you know whom you just want to stand near because they give off some energy you wish to learn from? For myself, I can think of three, but that is all. And I've met a lot of people in my travels. I've had people tell me they were Elders because they'd been around for quite awhile, but one glance showed their lives and energy fields were in rather a mess. Nice people, and on their path, I'm sure, but not people [with whom] I would wish to study...

I understand why some people want to claim the title of Elder before they've reached a minimum of 50 years of living experience. They've lived a rough life, undergone some serious trauma, read a lot of books, earned a Ph.D.,or been in charge of others for "a long time". That "long time" could be just a year or two. They feel they have greater, deeper insights into life than their peers. These things are only the beginning of becoming an Elder. They help determine what kind of Elder they will grow into being.

Originating perhaps with the dawn of civilization, magic is the manipulation of unseen forces to cause change in both the realm in which we live and the realm of the unknown. Considered alternately to be both a science and an art, it has been a word used down through the centuries to describe the occurrences of many natural phenomena that were not yet explained by science, such as certain herbs having a healing affect, magnetism, the turning seasons of the crop, and the elements.

One word, no. Can we teach teens who wish to follow our path? No. I understand the laws dealing with minors, and Covens, and solitary Witches not wanting to "deal" with teens. What I don't understand is those who will turn them away completely due to that. Is it not true that our faith grew in the shadows for years?

In the new MGM film Blood & Chocolate, based on the book of the same name, Vivian Gandillon (Agnes Bruckner) has sought refuge in Bucharest, after her family is killed by a pack of angry men, for the secret they carried in their blood. No longer a young girl, Vivian spends her days working at a chocolate shop, trying to live a normal life, while the only times she feels truly free are when she is running through the woods around the city, unleashing her true inner wolf.

“Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell: It fell upon a little western flower…maidens call it love-in-idleness…The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid, will make man or woman madly dote upon the next live creature that it sees.” So claims Oberon in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream, echoing centuries of creepy crones, wizards and shady apothecaries all promising an elixir to call down Cupid. Surely, in our cynical, scientific, deterministic times, romantic love has been discredited by screenwriters and behavioral scientists alike; the promise of a love potion has all but disappeared.

The Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, has been named a presidential distinguished professor at Emory University, school officials announced Monday.

Mention magic to most people and they immediately start thinking about Wicked Witches, Wizards and Sorcerers conjuring up evil sounding spells and poisons from boiling bubbling cauldrons sat on blazing smoking fires. Others imagine comedians on stage with funny pointy hats and black and white wands. Still others think of Illusionists making people disappear then re-appear from boxes and other contrived stage props.

First, we don't venerate evil in any form: our chosen religion is a celebration and affirmation of life and living things, as opposed to their destruction or harm. As we believe that good or evil done will return upon the doer, this does not encourage doing evil.