Hi! Welcome to Writing in the New York Finger Lakes. I live in a gorgeous spot near the head of Seneca Lake writing books, essays, short stories and whatever else comes along. I am using this platform to reach out to my audience, so I get to know you. I’m leaving comments open so play nice. And of course, I am setting this up as a newsletter to let you know about my publications. The hot topic of the moment is Witches of Fawsetwood, Book #1 of The Cup and the Ring Series.
On substack, I intend to send out three articles a week. Friday/Saturday is about taboos, things we’re not supposed to talk about in polite company. Things like politics, religion, money, and sex. What else were you told belongs on this list? Let me know in the comments. Maybe I’ll pick that up one of these weekends.
Here’s my approach to taboos. Are you familiar with Tarot? In the Major Arcana there is a religious figure called the hierophant. The word originates from the Greek and identifies the chief priest of the Eleusinian Mysteries or someone who interprets the sacred mysteries to the common folk. Once the image was picked up in the Tarot it references the Pope (Marseille Tarot) or in the Rider-Wait deck he is champion of the social order, the hierarchy, and cultural norms.
In Tarot the meaning changes for most cards when they come up reversed, that is standing on their heads. When I see the reversed Hierophant I think Iconoclast. The one who smashes the idols of our status quo to let the light in. I call it the Lydia card, because she was my first mentor of tarot, witchcraft, and ritual. She stands everything on its head and crashes through most barriers. She is of all things a nonconformist. Thank you, Lydia!
That reversed imagery creating the iconoclast is what the weekend articles for Writing in the New York Finger Lakes will be all about. So since I said it, I might as well say something controversial about religion. In for a penny in for a pound, eh?
You might guess by the title of my new book that I am a witch. Yes, I used to be an evangelical, now I’m a witch. I’m not an angry or hostile witch. I am a woman who believes in equality, love, power, magic and a Goddess with female parts like mine. I can much better relate to the concept of the Divine appearing as a Goddess Woman of Power. Together we champion the rights of the Earth to be free of pollution, the People to be free of oppression, the Culture to embrace beauty instead of war, truth instead of political spin, and the Cycles of the Sun, Moon, and Stars instead of those of the Church and other organized religions with synagogues, temples, mosques etc.
21st century witches are part of a neo pagan movement. Our roots are largely lost in the past and not by accident. We who follow the Goddess and Gods have re-imagined what their practices might have been like. We have organizations, groves, covens, circles, hearths, sisterhoods, communities, whatever group name applies. We have solitaries, family groups and collections of friends. There are no authorative texts that dictate what is a correct or incorrect practice. We work from the heart, ideally, read each others’ books and find what works for us using trial by error. Some of us teach.
But there is also an experience of visionary trance in my practice of witchery that opens up ritual magic and psychic skills in a process of re-membering. Others may share it with me or not. “An that it harm none do what you will” a phrase attributed to Doreen Valiente, a Wiccan witch. Exactly what that means I’ll save for another day.
Friends from the old days are shocked at my desertion of the Christian creed. It simply did not fit. I tried a variety of Christian traditions and none of them fit. Lest someone think I didn’t try hard enough, believe me I did. Baptism, Sunday school, bachelor’s degree from a Christian University, teaching in a Christian high school. It was the last couple of tries that severed me from the organisation. Too much sex discrimination. Too much gas lighting. Too much match making, because of course women have to be married so they don’t fall into sin, the lusty little critters. I can laugh at it now but it was a difficult transition. I stayed outside of any spirituality for 7 years before I circled with Lydia. It was no snap decision.
So is a spiritual practice called witchcraft taboo in our society? Is the label off-putting? I don’t think so but I have been involved for a long time. Others might disagree when they are first confronted by it. When I moved here near Seneca Lake, a neighbor lady came to visit. I thought we were having a nice chat when suddenly she jumped up and ran, making her apologies but getting out of my living room as fast as she could. I thought she was taken ill, but after that I sat in the spot where she was seated. Right across from her by the door is my basket of staves, canes, and brooms all standing on end. They make a nice little display. Apparently, it was a bit too obvious. Oh well
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The other thing about witchcraft controversary I want to touch on and develop some other day is the current trend among witches and pagans to debunk commonly held witch beliefs including claims of antiquity that are not supported by academic research. Some folks have become careful historians and investigators as if they are charged with rooting out or at least exposing practices found in Margret Murray’s writings on the witch-cult of Europe or in Gardnerian Wiccan writings from the 20th century that are embraced in paganism as older than they appear to be. Maybe they mean “no harm”. Even so, I think this discounting exposure in pagan academia (yes there is such a thing) has too often been performed with a gleeful “gottcha”. That in turn has inserted a defensiveness among practitioners who conduct effective ritual, wield power with love and creativity, but are not necessarily attached to forms found in the classics, myth and folklore.
I feel a bit like the child saying “the emperor has no clothes” when I separate myself from the academic crowd. But here I am asking if proving Ostara is not the proper name for the Equinox (which I have done); Or denying a basic earth Goddess practice shared among the ancients; or questioning our sources for identifying the points of the pentacle with the 4 elements and spirit, does any of that make our magic stronger? Does it empower our love to change the downward spiral of political energy with any more possibility for transformation? Or does it lead to witches looking over their shoulders wondering if they are “doing it right” and if internet trolls will eat them alive?
I long for a community like Fawsetwood where witches love each other and play nice. Sadly, even in Fawsetwood, that doesn’t last forever. In fact, it doesn’t last very long at all after we arrive.
So tell me what you think. Is there a witchy correctness we ought to observe? Can we build a community of love and appreciation? Will we win over people in Hierophant organisations to give us room to live in the neighborhood? Does it matter to you?