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Saturday, November 12, 2016

You're Infernal.

As I've stated before, I got into witchcraft in the 90s when I was a teenager. I had been raised in an entirely secular household - my mom had an interest in ghosts and fortune telling, while my dad was (and remains) more interested in the teachings of Buddhism, but religion was a non issue. I think I'd been to church once in my life with my grandmother.

I had moved twice in the span of a year when I settled in the Bible Belt. I had recently experienced - twice over - the sort of catty adolescent friend breakups that so often go hand in hand with entering high school. So there I was, friendless and culture shocked by Jesus.

I think it was either conform or rebel. We all know which way I went.

Now, when I was just a baby witch, I was a staunch defender of misconceptions about the Craft. Being the Bible Belt, any deviation from popular religion was considered Satanic. "There's no devil in the Craft," I would tell people. "Satan is a Christian construct." "I don't worship the devil."

This much was true - I didn't worship the devil. But let's face it, when you're surrounded on all sides by such a dualistic culture you tend to pick sides. In doing that, I found myself reading everything I could that might give me a better understanding of this whole God VS the Devil thing. And thus grew the roots of my obsession with the Satanic Panic.

The History of the Satanic Panic - and why it's not over yet

The Fight to Save America From Satan's Subliminal Rock Messages


While on the topic of the devil in music... In October I went to see Ghost in concert. It was one of the most religious group experiences of my life, right up there with seeing Magic Mike XXL in the theatre. Standing in a packed crowd, dressed as a skeletal nun, I found myself raising my voice with a throng of people as we threw up the horns for the Nameless Ghouls and Papa Emeritus III.

"Are you ready to swear right here, right now
Before the devil?"

The devil doesn't need backmasking to get us to rally with him. Let's face it, when the 'moral' side is the one hurting people, anybody with a heart isn't going to want to join up with them. Instead we should stand with the people others would tell you are the outsiders. Especially in light of world events, we all have to remember not to get swept up in fear and hate. Rebel in the name of love.

Hail Satan. Rock'n'roll.

Sunday, November 6, 2016

Mad World

Well, would you look at that. It's November. You wouldn't think so much could have changed since the last time I posted, but here we are.

AbraCadaver was a smashing success this year - I count it among one of our best shows. I honestly couldn't be more proud of both all the performers and also of us producers and writers - Melody Mangler and my sister Voodoo Pixie were fucking brilliant. I'm even happy with myself.

Although my wig made me look like my mom.

by FubarFoto


With AbraCadaver over, my sister and I settled into October. "We have a whole month to do Halloween things!" we said. My sister is always booked solid with Halloween shows because she's one of Vancouver's spookiest dancers, but we figured we'd still have loads of time to check out haunted trolleys and ghost trains.

Then we found out that our apartment building had been sold, and consequently the rent was going up.

And so, we found ourselves moving in the middle of the month. My sister and I moved back in together into the main floor of an old heritage house with stained glass windows, just a block from the ocean. We were blessed to have family and friends to help us, and although we moved in the middle of a storm warning it was truly not traumatic. We've acclimated to being in one another's space very quickly - the fact that the house is larger than we're used to no doubt helps. Surprisingly, I was gifted with the bigger bedroom, which clearly used to be a dining room. The size means that not only is it my bedroom, but also a perfect magical workroom. It even fits all of my books,

Speaking of books... You really ought to put your pre-order in for Glamour Magic: The Witchcraft Revolution to Get What You Want. I just did.

So. October went by in a blur. On the interpersonal level, I came to the decision to distance myself from people with the emotional intelligence of potatoes. This was a harder decision to make than perhaps it should have been, simply because one of the people in question was a part of the witch meetups I had been hosting. Consequently, I was trying stubbornly to make it work in spite of feeling disrespected more often than not. But ultimately I realised that I cannot work magic with someone who does not trust me, as it in turn destroys my own trust. It's a rotten cycle that leads solely to doubt and anger. That realisation made me reexamine other aspects of that relationship, and ultimately I found the negative outweighed the positive. So it was time to pull back. Thankfully I don't feel any genuine malice towards this person - mostly I just feel stupid.

More positively, this week I discovered that a lot more of my girlfriends at work are into fortune telling than I had suspected. I fully intend to organise a wine-and-tarot evening sometime this month, and perhaps try another magic night with the ladies who I know are a bit more open and honest.

My sister, as always, reminds me that I should settle for nothing less than love and respect.

Voodoo Pixie (and Sweet Pea McGee) as photographed by Bob Ayers.


Tuesday, September 27, 2016

to control my mind

Every year I forget that the month leading up to AbraCadaver will be chaos, and every year I forget that said chaos will inevitably lead to stress manifesting itself physically. I woke up at 5 AM with a splitting headache, and I couldn't decide if it was caused by me clenching my jaw as I slept, the shit food I've been eating, not enough water, PMS or just general mental catastrophe.

So tonight I rolled on the floor.

Music for release.

Music for equilibrium.

Monday, September 5, 2016

Sunday, August 28, 2016

When the grass is withered from the summer heat and stretches out in the lonely spaces between homes and business, sometimes the sky turns. Streaky, barely-there clouds roll in and create a peculiar quality of light - harsh, it hurts the eyes while not being precisely bright. Everything looks leaden and somehow ominous.

I remember walking under this ominous sky a lot when I was a teenager in the valley. No matter where you went everything always felt deserted, and the few cars or people you would see seemed inexplicably hostile.

I'd been out for a short visit with my best friend, who still lives in the city we spent our youth in, and this morning I found the world awash once more in that heavy, desolate light.

Now I'm back in the city - MY city - where the trees are green and the clouds above are simply grey and opening up to release fresh rain. The cat is curled up on the couch, burning candles are giving off the soft scent of absinthe and mint, and I can rest comfortably in a sweater. It's safer here.

Still, I think about that quality of light. It is unsettling, and yet anytime I experienced it I find that a part of me is quite pleased.

Saturday, July 2, 2016

Occult Link Roundup


The Witches Guide to Getting What You Want. - "Understanding the why behind the want is another key element for witch-kind. How will achieving your desires ultimately make you feel? And exactly why do you want the things you do?"

Louder for my not-very-introspective sisters at the back!

The Care And Feeding of a Pagan Group

Demonic Voices

Ruby Slipper Horoscopes July 3 - 10

Sunday, June 19, 2016

Fifteen

Saturday was another witch meetup. Half the girls couldn't make it, meaning that there was in total only four of us. ("Four would make a circle....") Ultimately this worked out well, as it meant that we had an opportunity to do more than just talk.

After the talking and sangria, it quickly became apparent that the issues facing people were not exterior problems but rather internal. I decided that we should do a reading to help clarify, and so I pulled out the Vertigo deck and shuffled it up. Each of us picked a card, and then I drew an additional three to see how our individual needs connected and what to do about it. I had everyone interpret their own cards. The reading confirmed that the issues facing each of us were emotional and mental, and not something quite as cut and dry as "I need more money."

The intersect cards were The Devil, the Four of Swords, and the Three of Swords. Once again I asked the girls to give me their thoughts on the cards, which they did. They were all very insightful, and I admit it was fascinating to hear what other people felt and saw in cards that I myself am so familiar with.

The key to crafting magic in this case was The Devil. The Vertigo's Devil is Lucifer from the Sandman comics - the fallen angel who handed over the key to hell and escaped his prison. In the card, Lucifer's wrist is shackled. That to me was the crux of the matter - we had these sword cards, and then here's a shackled figure. We were in bondage, perhaps willingly.



So what does that mean? Well. You want to break free, obviously.

We did a five minute sitting meditation, and then an exercise I learned in dance class. This exercise is a variation on one my sister had assigned as 'homework' last month to everyone in the group - the ideal way to do it is to be able to roll across a length of floor with your eyes closed while music plays. The idea is that gravity can't fuck with you when you're already laying down, so your body can move in ways it cannot when you're standing. It can express movement more freely, even if you can't do a full roll - you just need enough room to starfish in.

My apartment isn't big enough to allow four grown women to starfish at the same time, so instead we used the up-and-down variation: you begin in essentially child's pose, and move in between that and standing. My house, my music, so we used Chelsea Wolfe.

So why make anybody do this before sitting down to cast some spells?

It is entirely possible to do magic without emotion - there are plenty of instruction manuals out there that you can use to follow formula, and you will see results. In my personal experience, however, the most successful magicians are those who can navigate their own interior landscapes. How are you supposed to traverse other wolds when you cannot look within? If you don't know who you are, you can get lost more easily, and if you don't deal with your emotions you are at their mercy when they eventually overwhelm your defenses.

We carry emotions in our bodies. This isn't news - plenty of people have stress induced muscle pain, particularly in the neck and shoulders. Lots of people clench their jaws or grind their teeth. Exercise can lift our mood. If you are lucky enough to have a range of movement, allowing your body to express itself can help you bypass the thinking mind. You don't analyse your emotions, you simply feel them. They move through you.


The key to escaping our shackles was the Devil. Traditionally, this is a card associated with indulgence in 'base' desires and impulses. The old goat will not tell you deny your body. He won't tell you to restrain your emotions, either.

The spellwork itself was focused on ridding ourselves of things we
were chained to, and I feel that doing the exercise directly beforehand made the spellcasting portion much, much easier. There was a sense of surrender to whatever needed to happen - the entire evening revolved around freedom from painful coping mechanism and blockages, and attempting to control that freedom would simply smother it instead. Open, we could accept the change that is coming.

What remains to be seen, of course, is how we deal with it when it happens.

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

"This is good for you."

So, sometimes I wind up being a sort of low-rent shrink for people. This week it's been for more than one person, most of whom are coming over on the weekend for our monthly witchy meet-up. So I decided to ask Ye Olde Spotify Oracle, "how should I handle these girls on Saturday?"


Jesus effin Christ.

Sunday, May 29, 2016

Basic Bitch Witchcraft

Slim, minimalist gold font on glass. One word stands out: metaphysical. "Whoa, whoa, hold up," I tell my sister. We share a glance and say as one, "we gotta go in."

It's a hipster occult store.


My sister and I were in Gastown  because I had a hair emergency. I had recently had my cousin take my hair from teal to a perfect cool pastel purple, but a little over two weeks had passed, and it was fading out to a sort of pale blue. Because I was to be on stage as a thespian that night, I figured I'd freshen it up with what looked like the same colour. Oh how wrong I was. 'Lilac' turned my hair a steely blue. I texted my sister in distress, and so off we went to buy bleach and pink dye from the goth shops on Cambie.

The goth shops in the Gastown area have been around longer than I've been living in the city - I remember coming in from the 'burbs to check out Cabbages and Kinks (which burnt down in 2004) and I bought my first corset from Venus and Mars. The area around them, however, has been undergoing a shift for a few years now as old second hand stores and smoke shops have been replaced with high-end (yet not mainstream) clothing stores, and places where you can buy bundles of twine for twenty bucks. 

My impulse is to call the area 'hipster' but I'm not sure if that word really has much meaning anymore. I think we all know the vibe I'm thinking of, however - it's vintage furniture, home brewing kits, locally sourced honey, fish tacos and well manicured beards.

The store that caught our eye used to be a skeevy convenience store, if my memory serves. Shawna and I walked in to a small space that had been completely gutted and painted white. There were shelves with a few products for sale - tarot and oracle decks, bath salts, spell kits in little cardboard boxes shaped like houses. The front of the store by the window was taken up with small tables - it was, as it turns out, a tarot bar.

The store, called 'The Good Spirit' bills itself as a "tastefully curated, modern, metaphysical boutique." My sister and I looked around, and I whispered to her that it was an Instagram filter made physical.

In fact, the shop's Instagram account says more in a few photographs than I could with this entire entry. And if you're on Instagram, Pinterest, or even tumblr, this is one hundred percent an aesthetic you've seen before. It's rose quartz and yoga mats and sage and talks about sending your energy out into the universe.

It's basic bitch magic.

The irony of the situation is not lost on me - I saw this store as I was on my way to turn my hair into THE 'basic' hair colour of the moment. Also not unnoticed was my knee jerk reaction of "I should hate this."

But I don't. I don't hate it. It's like when fucking Urban Outfitters was selling spell candles.* Whether you fall on the crusty old occultist side of the spectrum, or the dirt-witch hand-making everything yourself side, the impulse when presented with this sanitized pop shit is to distance yourself from it as fast as possible. If you're a serious occultist/witch/pagan/whatever, you should be making fun of this so hard.

I honestly thinks that this reaction is the newest incarnation of the fluffy bunny backlash. Initially, the term fluffy-bunny was used mainly to describe people who stubbornly refused to consider the darker aspects of magic and paganism and preferred to focus on ideas like universal love and the idea that everything is going to be okay if you think enough positive thoughts. Gradually, however, the term started to be applied to newcomers to the craft in general. "Oh, you read Scott Cunningham? I GUESS that's an okay starting point." Cue eyeroll and snickering.

You know who a lot of those newbs were? Young women. You ever notice how we make fun of anything young women like?

The internet is full of people bitching about what is and isn't real witchcraft. Jesus, just look at Patheos's pagan section and be bored to tears after the tenth article on the subject. That hasn't changed since the dawn of the internet, and it never will. The only thing that changes is the target everyone is trying to tear down. Pastel Instagram-worthy witchcraft is a fucking easy target because it looks shallow as hell.

"Oh, you think you can cast spells because you reblogged some sigils  and like crystals? I GUESS." Cue eyeroll and snickering.

The subtext is that if you're a young woman who, god forbid, likes something popular? You're vapid. And so is your magic.

I got into witchcraft because of a movie.  I was a teenage girl, and witchcraft - even a popular version of it sold in bookstores - was a way to have SOME kind of power. It doesn't matter how stupid it was, because it worked. And so will your indie-darling sorcery. You can use your ink-and-watercolour tarot. You can use your scented soy candles and rose quartz crystals. You can read an overpriced pamphlet on moon phases and magic herbs. Just because it isn't handed down through family traditions or written by some dead white guy in a funny hat doesn't make it invalid. You want that magic, girl? Take it. Take it and make it yours.

As for us old farts... Look. People can and will make magic look cool. They will make it marketable. We've seen this several times before. It's not going to kill occultism. It will bring magic to a wider audience, to another generation hungry for power and for meaning. Magic will fall out of fashion as it always does, but the people who it touches will remain. Why is that a bad thing?

If we're really concerned that popularity waters down the practice of sorcery, then let's be honest: we're not talking about real magic. We're talking about being scared that our ivory towers are falling.

https://www.thewildunknown.com/products/tarot-deck


* - But seriously, fuck Urban Outfitters, they're evil. I regret even giving them ten bucks for cool candles, and in the future would find out who the maker was and go directly to the source.

Sunday, May 15, 2016

Occult Link Roundup

7 Rules Regarding Tradition vs Ingenuity

How 'The Craft' Realized the Power of Teen Girls and Made Witchcraft Cool

The Craft, now 20 years old, is a vicious love letter to teen girl rage 
(Between the blogs I follow and my friends sending me shit on FB, I got a lot of "hey, did you read this article about The Craft?" this month.)

Magick Primer 02: Banishing - Adventures in WooWoo is a great site, you guys, and from the above post there is also a link to Ramsey Dukes talking about protection while holding his cat. It's precious.

Organizing Your Grimoire  (tips from a neat freak virgo)

Sunday, March 6, 2016

Review: The Witch

I saw Robert Eggers' The Witch for the second time last night. I left the theatre unable to stop smiling, which possibly creeped out the cashier at the IGA when I stopped to buy potatoes.

The following reviews contains SPOILERS. So very, very many spoilers. It's spoilertastic.


Sunday, February 28, 2016

definition of being alive

I saw The Witch yesterday and I have a lot of feelings about it, but right now I feel like a horrendous shit beast because of this cold, so I just want to make a brief post about something that just happened.

A few weeks ago, my sister and I helped another pair of sisters. The elder, who travels all over the word as part of her job, had for years been haunted by something. Without going into too many details, I can say that what we did was name it, draw it up, and get it to fuck off.

(I owe a lot to Lon Milo DuQuette for the inspiration for that ritual.)

Anyway, the sisters just dropped by. The elder gave my sister and I a gift. Years ago, she picked up two stones in Laos. She's carried them around as talismans, and tonight she gave us one of them. It was just such a sweet gesture - I nearly cried, and not just because I'm all hopped up on cold medication.

It's good to help people, in whatever way you can.

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Cascade

I had another seizure.

This one I feel is my own damn fault - I'd been very lax in taking my medication, because it had been over three years since I'd last seized. I was at work and felt nauseous, so I went to the bathroom and knelt in one of the stalls. Obviously I don't remember what happened next since I came to as I was being loaded into the ambulance, but it turns out one of my coworkers found me. My sister currently works in the same office as I do, so she was on hand to accompany me to the hospital.

I took the next day off work and got a very nice card from my coworkers, as well as some trashy magazines and chocolate.

Seizures blow. Not only because you chew up your tongue, but because they really ram home the fragility of your body. "What if I have one on the stairs? Near traffic?"  The possibilities for serious damage are too many to count.

So in reaction you dye your hair a fabulous mermaid colour and then cut off most of it, apparently.

One of the stylists watching my cousin cut it referred to it as a ‘micro bob’ and said, “it was big in the 90s.”
He looked 12. “I know,” I replied, “I was there.”


The Dark Entries show went off decently well.  The attendance was mostly friends, but that didn't really matter to me very much. The next time we do it, however, I think we should do only two films max - three was really pushing our time limit, and there were a ton of notes I didn't even get to. David and my sister were both very articulate and funny, and I would like to do a live show again. Maybe even strangers will come next time!

The Comedy of Terrors monthly show will be ending this Thursday. We had a really good run, but all of us involved are just too busy to give it the attention it deserves. The plan is to resurrect it as a bigger, better show that only happens a few times a year as opposed to monthly. I would prefer a different venue, too. But for now we just need to give it one last hurrah... and then we can all relax. Monthly shows take a lot out of you, and I don't even have to do most of the work on this one.


In spiritual news, I've backed off from the Old Man. It seems like once you get into the Norse pantheon you have to deal with Heathenry whether you want to or not, and that whole scene just sort of rubs me the wrong way. There's also the fact that I am stunningly uninterested in the rest of the pantheon and actively avoid one particular member, neither of which seems conductive to a close working relationship.

There are a few other things going on, however, so I'm certainly not bored.


Fran continues to be adorable.


Monday, January 11, 2016

"Ain’t that just like me."

Yesterday I made a friend watch the videos for both Blackstar and Lazarus by David Bowie. "It's almost like he's planning the return to his home planet," I joked.

Last night not long after midnight, my sister texted me to tell me that David Bowie - the man who fell to earth - was dead.

I was stunned. I had strange dreams all night, and when I woke up this morning and checked the internet to really confirm the news, I found myself much sadder than I thought I'd be. I'm still sad, if I'm honest. I've cried a little, which seems sort of stupid as I never met the man, but there it is.

I was born in 1981, and so my first introduction to Bowie was Labyrinth. As I got older my mother informed me that the Goblin King was the one singing many of the songs I loved on the mixed tapes she would make. I remember playing Modern Love on my baby-pink tape player - running on batteries - in the back of my mom's car. She, my sister, and I all sang along. As I grew older I would discover Station to Station, Ziggy Stardust, Diamond Dogs... all of it. My sister and I watched The Man Who Fell to Earth, and for a while Voodoo even had the same hairstyle as he did in that film. He was a fascinating character who never truly faded from public consciousness, and the more you learned about him the more interesting he became.

David Bowie was more than just a rockstar. I think anyone who ever enjoyed his work felt that.


We were lucky to have him.

Sunday, January 10, 2016

Majesty

It's a brand new year, and the blogosphere is full of articles on how to make this one the year of a new you.

I think Matt Bellassai has the right idea about that, really.

Hey, I've tried it. You can look at this very blog and see that. I'll be honest with you - every year it's usually the same shit: exercise more, meditate more, write more. 

This is not to say that I have not improved in those areas or that it's bad to have goals. I actually think it's great to have goals, because it gives us something concrete to slog towards when the going is tough. But once you reach a goal, there's another and another and another. It's not like you finally run that 5K and then just quit altogether.

Will I be the same person this year as I was last? Yeah, pretty much. I'll probably still drink too much wine, judge the outfits of every last one of my co-workers, play music too loudly and hate meditating. But there will be new shit, too.

The monthly show I help produce with Voodoo Pixie and Aleister Crane, The Comedy of Terrors, will be coming to an end. We had a good run, but we all have other demands on our time. I have a job scheduled to run through to the fall that is shaping up to be pretty demanding, Voodoo and I are trying our hands at a new project - a series of roundtable discussions on horror and an accompanying podcast, both called Dark Entries. (Why yes, I did pick the name.) I'm cancelling my membership at the YMCA, but my running is picking up again and I plan to take pole dancing.

Slowly, I am developing some sort of relationship with the Old Man. I'm still not sure what it's going to become. At the same time, I have discovered Sabbatic Witchcraft and find myself eager to read more about it. (How has this been hiding from me for so long? And now I seem to trip over it all over the tumblr and on blogs.)

Life progresses, although rarely in an instantly dramatic fashion. We shouldn't expect massive changes just because we said "happy new year" and we should not hold ourselves to such an insane standard. On the other hand, we also cannot use the fact that most often life is a case of same-shit-different-day as an excuse for our own inertia.

So do the shit that you want to do. Your habits now will help shape who you are ten years from now, so maybe make sure at least some of that shit is healthy. I highly doubt much of what is over the horizon will be easy, but I'm also quite confident that we're all a bunch of tough motherfuckers and we can handle whatever may come.

New year. Same you. (ie: still badass.)