Self Assessment

I think in order to really take a self inventory of my struggles with communication, I have to at first make a self reflection of who I am, from where I was. For starters, I have not always been this outgoing, gregarious individual. I have since come along way in my personal struggles, but I have to acknowledge that was a part of whom I was. I began life in a very hard and aggressive home that for lack of a better word scared the living hell out of me everyday. My father is an alcoholic whom resented me because I was a symbol of every missed opportunity in his life. My father was an extremely smart man who was blessed with a very deep and introspective insight on the world that as a young man he would pursue in the avenues of science and philosophy. Unfortunately he took every opportunity he was ever afforded and then did the complete opposite. Because of his pain and rage he used the alcohol to numb his brain and used me like a punching bag to express his rage. Some of my earliest memories are of getting thrown around and beaten like a rag doll for something as simple as being a gimp child with a birth defect that would drain my father for the rest of his life. I have a vivid memory of being thrown down a flight of stairs, smashing into a wall and then careening to the floor with a sudden stop. Needless to say, I was in the emergency room quite often with head trauma and concussions during those formative developmental years. Doctors spent a great deal of time worried that had critical damage to my speech processing center of my brain, and they were right. I was quickly diagnosis with a severe speech impediment and that I had failures in my cognitive processing as well as my auditory processing centers. I was also diagnosis with severe dyslexia due to head trauma, short term memory issues and a few other learning disabilities. These medical statements rolled their way into my scholastic experience. When I entered the Chicago Public School system I was immediately given an Individual Education Plan or I.E.P. for short. An I.E.P. is basically, in short, is a legal document the school system needs in order to push through students that are expected to perform at below student levels based on some physical handicap. Apparently getting punched in the head by a large man qualifies you for an I.E.P. My particular document said that I was in need of services to help my handicap and everyday I would go to Speech Pathology in the dank, dark and freezing basement of the school. I was pretty much written off by administrators and I was shunned off into the corner of my Kindergarten classroom in the hopes that I would not be a drain on the schools’ resources. My teacher Ms. Lyle, however, saw something else in me. To this date I have no ideal why she did it, but Ms. Lyle began to tutor me personally. She would actually bring me to her house afterschool and pick me up in the morning to work with me in reading and writing. I know from experience that most teachers will go above and beyond for their students to help them excel, but this was much more than that. It was as if her need was maternal in nature because I most certainly saw her as a surrogate mother. Not only did I feel safe around her but I also knew that the education that she was exposing me to was essential to my survival. I worked very hard, and after a month of dedicated study I was reading at a first grade level and well on my way to much more challenging tasks such as math and logic reasoning skills. My speech was still impacted but I now had something very crucial in my life’s development. For the first time, I was empowered by new found skills in logic and reasoning and the awareness of my world almost instantaneously changed. My mind was unlocked and opened to any and all knowledge that it could digest. Now the world was no longer composed of the cockroach infested and slum lord ruled broken home on the wrong side of the tracks. The world held the possibilities that were only limited to my own imagination and will to fight. My childhood continued and was filled with periods of either sitting around in a wheelchair waiting for my bones to heal from multiple surgeries on my clubbed feet or running around the country with other child actors and performers. Still, my love of learning and reading continued unabated. Before I was in second grade I had read and digested the “The Space Shuttle Operator's Manual” which was an unofficial primer on flight operations for NASA’s vehicle. I was completely enthralled with the ideal of joining NASA and working in the Astronaut Corps going on as many missions as I could. It was a singular vision and it was the passion that I had that kept me motivated and moving past all the abuse going on at home. Around the third grade, I was having my fifth surgery on my feet and I was a completely immersed sponge all things aeronautically and astronomically important in the world. I have a vivid memory of watching the Space Shuttle Challenger launch with Christa McAuliffe and I was selected by my science teacher Mrs. O’Brian to provide explanations to my classmates as to what was happening while we watched the launch. I was annotating the broadcast of the launch, explaining every little thing that happened during the launch process. I was the center of attention in the room even after I proclaimed after explosion, “They’re all dead!” It was the first time that I came to realize that my voice and more specifically my words could influence the emotions and perceptions of others. As I understood the use of words and their influences, I began to become very introspective and I began a rigorous investment in philosophical and religious understanding. I forsook the Catholic Church and soon explored the other various Holy Books of the Judeo-Christian world from the Koran to the Gnostic Gospels. As I digested these works, I also sought Plato, Socrates, Kant and Machiavelli to supplement the ecclesiastical works with more mundane grounding in ethics and reason. From there I explored Buddhism and as you know Paganism. Later on in life, I began to come to a deeper understanding of my connection in the Universe and started my journey along the Path of the Warrior. High School and the rigors of adolescence were not good to me. I spent a good deal of time alone and ostracized because of my size and general lack of knowledge of how my peers acted. In this chaos there was no time to develop real socialite skills and my teen years paid the price. Everything from awkwardly trying to catch a date to the prom to dealing with conflicts with my peers became a giant struggle. This all came to a head the beginning of my junior year of high school when I was confronted by a very large mass of a bully during my lunch. Honestly, I cannot for the life of me remember what this young man’s name was let alone what he looked like. All I can remember is that he was from the football team and was intent of pushing me into a fight. When I was challenged, I did what I normally did which was to try and ignore him and his insults and all that served to prove was that he became more aggressive and began pushing me around the room physically. I felt that blind anger rising to the surface and I knew that I had a choice: I could let him be the aggressor and beat me up or I could take the first swing and still get beat up. My prospects were looking fairly slim. I opted for a third choice; I could fight back with my words! It was a glorious fight. Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Joyce were just some of the inspirations came to me as I fired a steady stream of off the cuff insults at my attacker. My words cut like red hot knifes through blocks of ice! I was pulling off what every nerd in the history of nerds has dreamed of doing: I used my brain to beat up a bully! It was one of the most proud moments of my teenage life as I verbally ripped my opponent to shreds. There was nothing he could do to fight back; I had completely outclassed and outmaneuvered him. The only response that he had was to swing at me and the Varsity Football coach tackled him to the ground before he ever made contact. At the end of the battle, my brain had bested the brawn of my enemy. Of course you can imagine the sort of impact this had on me. I now had a concrete proof that the power of words was great indeed. The pen truly is mightier than the sword. I spent my years in college engaged in wielding my new found skills with words with almost reckless abandon. I quickly found myself understanding that words and their applications can make people, for lack of a better parlance, do whatever you want them to do. Charisma plus vocabulary plus positioning equals a quick way to begin manipulating people to your needs. Now, the philosophically driven and responsible Rob would have used these skills for the side of good only, except that I was also practicing that noble of collegiate pursuits: heavy drinking. Pretty soon, I found myself the center of the campus’s attention and had people begging to be my friend or even still a hanger-on to leech off my notoriety. Life was good; or rather I thought it to be. I was completely “satisfied” living this hedonistic lifestyle tending to any immediate self gratifying need that I could bring to mind. As far as I thought, I had it all including the extra seventy five pounds that I decided to drink on to my body. Towards the end of this haze of alcohol and lust, I looked back on everything that I was “achieving” and it was hollow and bitter. In college, I had an English professor who would tell me: “If it wasn’t for your disabilities, you would probably be the next Albert Einstein.” I don’t see it. It is very hard for me to see any greatness within me. If I was born in China or Japan a hundred years ago, I most likely would have been cast aside as “unclean”. This is the reason why I fight as hard as I do. This is why I motivate myself to shine like the brightest beacon in the darkest night. Coming out of college I was a dark person who was filled with a lot of rage. I wanted to feel good about myself again, and since I was not exactly thinking, I made the connection that drinking made me feel good about myself. You know what they say about the children of alcoholics? Needless to say, it is very true. I was drinking, pretty aggressively almost every single day. I wasn’t even drinking to fulfill the chemical need that an addict experiences, I was drinking to feel empowered. I wanted to recreate that self empowerment that I had experienced at the end of high school and the beginning of college. I wanted to feel as if I was in charge of my path and I thought this was the solution. One night, when I was twenty five, I had just finished running a full night of karaoke and then DJ’ing the after party until three in the morning and I was full to the gills with drink. I decided that after about nine hours of heavy drinking, I was going to get into my car and drive home to my apartment off of State and Roosevelt. I was in Alsip at 119th and Pulaski. This trip normally takes around thirty five to forty minutes, and in my inebriated state I made the trip in less than twenty minutes and I have no conscious memory of the trip. It was this cathartic realization that made me turn my life around on a dime. Of course, none of this even resembles who I am today. This is a story about how I lost my way – that I had always used the power of words as a tool to help improve my life. Instead I lost site of all that and in the pursuit of what is hollow in the world, I could have done worse to my life than simply wasting seven years drunk. There are other things that of course happened here. There are other lessons that I have learned and other tools that I have acquired. This is not the place or time for that conversation. In telling this story, I am reflexive on how I have overcome so much in my life through words. There have an inherent power; in fact written words were for the longest time how people expressed power and magick in the world. When you are “spelling” a word, you would be creating a “spell”. There is a silent truth there. Words can change the world. My place within those words is to maneuver successfully in their application. Often too many times have I let my personality get the better of the intention behind my words. This is something that I have only recently become aware of. Recently - as in this self reflection. I have an extensive vocabulary, one that I have cultivated over the years and I have worked very hard to retain that vocabulary. When I use it, I am not trying to lord it over the person that I am speaking with. Typically I eagerly share the meaning of a word someone might not know because I tend to think that people would be proud to learn a new word. I know that always am, because it is so hard for me to do so. I try to make people comfortable with my laughter and smile because I know that for some people, including myself, interaction can be very stressful. The sad thing is that, I have built this very “positive” mental image of myself that when I speak with people I come off as a jovial inviting person instead of the very large man in front of them. For the life of me, I will never understand why people think that I am threatening. I can only see myself as this average build, average height young guy and not the large mass of a man that I am. It is important to remember that as your life changes you are only the sum of your experiences and the lesions that you have learn from them.

A Letter to the Unawakened, or Do Something!

I close my eyes, and every time that I do I see a cataclysm that seems like it cannot be avoided. I see unspeakable horrors that await us around the corner, of long dead Gods returning to this sphere raging with jealousy and hatred towards the gifts of consciousness that the Divine bestowed on us. Of my comrades, friends and family lying on the floor of the charnel house that the battlefield of the End of the World becomes. To see that there are fates worse than death that awaits those who rebel against this horror that has not unfolded yet. I see all of this and more every time I close my eyes and the one and only thing that I know how do is to just fight back. You don’t have to be Awakened to understand any of this. You don’t even have to understand concepts like magick, mysticism or psychic phenomena to see that this plane of existence is getting ready to explode with a force of momentous energy that will alter the way that we conduct the day to day activities of life on this planet. You can see this change happening everyday as it sparks “normal” people to start acting in definitely socially accepted normal manners. From law abiding citizens to family driven supermoms and dads, the common human is starting to express their instinctual reactions to this dramatic change by doing things like randomly burning down their house and crashing their plane into the IRS building or going on a random shooting spree indiscriminately killing all they feel is appropriate. Their tanks are hitting full of the chaotic energy that is pooling around the world, ready to reach a critical mass and then really shatter our reality. This world is dramatically changing at breakneck speeds and we are driving straight for the wall with eyes wide open. I talk to non sensitive types all the time and they keep telling me things like, “something is happening”, or my favorite, “the energy feels off” as if it was something that was fact and not relegated to the annals of witches and warlocks. “Normal” people, or rather people who for a vast majority of their life lived as if their standard lemming-like “Sheepeople” was all that mattered, are beginning to see more than the three feet in front of them. These Sheepeople are slowly removing the blindfolds that cover their eyes and they are starting to realize that there is more to the world than their fucking lattes, minivans and bunko nights. People are starting to realize that a small little Muppet in the early 80’s was right – “Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter!” That there could be something to our lives that exists in more than the gaps in the trips to Starbucks; that we exist on the physical plane as well as a spiritual plane and that our connection to the Universe is deeper than we will ever quite understand. I think the British band Muse said it best when they said: “If you could flick a switch and open your third eye, you'd see that we should never be afraid to die” and that is a very simple yet hardcore fact. Why fear death? If we are merely the physical expression of our soul, then who care if the body gets damaged? Our bodies will fail; one day they just stop working, either from intentionally caused damage or they just give out because they don’t come with really great warranties. Our souls go on, just cruising on by waiting for the next moment to be reborn. But didn’t I start all of this with an apocryphal doom and gloom statement talking about end of days? Yes I did, but all of this is related. You see, if there is something that is chaotic and full of wraith and hate for us little people and we are beings that are physical expressions of our spiritual selves, then doesn’t behoove us to not want to let the whole thing go to pot? I mean, think about it, for the last 600,000 years (or 3,000 if you are a Christian Fundamentalist) modern human species has been running around on this planet. This is our home. It is the only one that most of us have ever known. If a burglar was to come into your home and try to steal your crap you would put up a fight. Hit that burglar with a baseball bat, call the police and have him prosecuted within an inch of his life, because you know, how dare that burglar break into your home and try to take from you….right? Then why don’t we fight for our larger home, you know the Earth? “Cause it’s not my problem” or “I’m not a dirty hippy” or whatever your narrow minded excuse is it is just a steady stream of bullshit. If you are going to be using words like “the energy of the room is off” then you are responsible to do something about it. I don’t care what it is either: volunteer to clean up the messes that we have collectively turned a blind eye towards, perform Reiki and send healing energies to the incarnation of the planet, teach and show the younger generations how not to make the same fucking mistakes that we seem to collectively keep making. Do something positive; lend your “energies” to fixing the problem that magickally inclined and non-magickally inclined folk seem to all be seeing. Don’t sit by and let this opportunity shoot pass you a Warp Speed. On a side note, if you are reading this and you have no clue to what I am speaking about, well I am sorry that you have stumbled on to my ramblings. However, you were shown this for a reason. It is for you do ascertain the reason; maybe you are supposed to make some profound change in your life. Or not, honestly I have no clue. Just don’t say this is a nonsensical rambling. Do something positive for your world, your family, your friends and yourself. Don’t just say it’s not your problem. This is all of our problems, face it….you got no where else to go!

Hanging Out At The Bar

Funny thing life is; one minute you are at a bar feeling like the world is just too much to deal with and the next minute you are tapped into the collective energy of that bar with a shit eating grin on your face. Confused? Good, cause I most certainly was last night. But, I have a theory.... Yesterday was an entirely shitastic day at work filled with a steady stream of people thinking that their inability to be responsible gets them special privileges. I had been yelled at, insulted, and lastly pleaded with in an endless pursuit of something for nothing. The exhaustion of trying to use logic and reason to solve issues within my 9 to 5 had reached a point of utter futility that the only escape was the bar and its karaoke within. I made all haste...who the hell says make haste? Anyway.... I settled in with a beer and a song and slowly the world started to begin normalizing. As things slowed down, I started to think about my day and all the stressors within it. Honestly, it drives me absolutely nuts that I am working where I am dealing with all the whining bullshit people put out in a world that has absolutely zero responsibility. I normally have to sing out the rage of my day before I can start to calm down, but I started thinking that I couldn’t be the only person who deals with issues like this. There’s no way. This got me thinking about the people in the bar with me. Most of them were a young lot; their early twenties and eager for a good time. Looking around it dawned on me that most the people if not all of them also had shitty jobs like me, but they were all wrapped up in the moment. They weren’t thinking about what drama tomorrow would bring, rather they were thinking about the pleasures of the right now. This actually intrigued me. Not because I’m into mindless hedonism…all of the time. But rather it was their living in the moment, focusing on the positive (i.e. pleasure of the moment) rather than their particular situation. Granted to live this way would lead oneself into the poorhouse and a Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, it did show me that it is truly important to try and remember the small things in life that bring pleasure in the confines of your daily struggles. Let me be clear, I’m not saying that you need to get smashed in order to deal with your issues and problems. What I am saying though is that you have to spend an equal amount of time dealing with your problems in this life as you do on feeling good. If you spend nothing but time and energy on how to get a better handle on the hurdles that life throws at you, all you will do is spend time handling hurdles. Take a minute to just chill and remember that while everything maybe falling apart and exploding into thousands of little pieces you are still breathing and able to affect a positive change in your life. This is the hardest lesson for me to learn. For me, it has become almost second nature to see the surprise around the corner or the trap that is ready to spring forth. It is becoming a personal challenge for me to become better at letting shit go. I know I have a long way to go, but I think that I can do this. Either way, it will be a challenge and I don’t like loosing. Merry Meet Merry Part And Merry Meet Again Blessed Be!

Transition

tran•si•tion   [tran-zish-uhn, -sish-] noun
Movement, passage, or change from one position, state, stage, subject, concept, etc., to another; change: the transition from adolescence to adulthood.

The current theme in my life seems to be transition. Honestly, there really isn’t anything wrong with that; it’s actually pretty exciting. I have just moved from being the Guardian of the Coven to its Priest, which I feel is a giant move for me. It has been the culmination of a journey that at one time almost came to grinding halt.

Around three years ago, I was “promoted” to Priest because of the need for a larger leadership base for our growing Coven. At that time in particular we had ten people and it was becoming a bit too much for my wife to handle by herself. She asked for me to step up and serve as the Coven Priest. Of course I said yes to the whole venture because I was very interested and vested in making sure that the Coven continued on. It was exactly then that I knew I made a terrible, terrible mistake.

The thing was that our Coven was a very “young” Coven at that time. What I mean by that is that a majority of our membership had either just began their Paths or had only taken a few steps ahead on that path. This included me as well; I had been a practicing Pagan for exactly five minutes longer than the others in Coven and now I was suppose to be their insight for Paganism. This of course made me feel insanely secure about myself and this “giant” repertoire of knowledge that I had apparently learned via osmosis. Over night of course….

In this role as Priest, the first time around that is, I was a spectacular disaster. It was that train wreck that you know you have always wanted to see: freight train verses clown car. I mean, I’ve always wanted to see that shit. Look, I know that it’s morbid, but come on...it’s a clown car. They will need the Jaws of Life to cut everyone apart the way they get packed in there....

I sense I may have lost my track here. Anyway....

As a new Priest I was able to do the worse thing that one could do in that position – fake my way through everything! Yep! I had a bullshit answer for everything and I was just vague enough that people thought I was actually dispensing advice and guidance. In reality all I was doing was buying time to figure out what the hell I was suppose to do as well as some breathing room. It was not enough to actually do anything but frustrate myself and those that I suppose to be serving.

It all really came to a head when one night I had three different people come to me for help and advice. They weren’t asking anything that was too difficult or impossible for me to deal with. It was just like something within me just snapped like a twig and I couldn’t take the pressure any more. The next thing I knew I was flying off the handle yelling and screaming at these poor people about how I’m stressed to and my life sucked to....it wasn’t pretty.

I didn’t mean to explode like that, I just couldn’t take the job anymore. I didn’t know what I was doing and I felt that someone would figure that out sooner than later. Fortunately there was someone in the wings who could step up and take the reigns from me with very little transition. Kyotee became the Priest, Rhiannon was the Priestess and I took the Guardian.

This was a job I could do. A job that I felt confident in: keep the boogies away from the Coven and teach people how to defend themselves. Yep, this was where I was called! I was the Guardian for the Coven for over three years. In that time, I have seen and dealt with shit that will turn you white! I was (and still am) very good at what I did. There wasn’t a supernatural force on the planet that I don’t have the stones to go toe to toe with on any given day, but I felt like something was missing. (I promise war stories about things I did while as a Guardian to follow soon)

I looked at my failure as the Priest as an area to improve on, because I knew that one day I would want to have that role again. But before I could transition back to that role, I knew that I needed to work on some things. The first thing that I needed was knowledge, cause I had virtually none.

I started reading everything on Wicca that I could get my hands on. From the really good stuff to the really, really, really bad stuff. I just ate it all up as fast as I could. Once I had my fill of Wicca, I moved on top Paganism in general. Then Mythology. Then Astrology. Divination. Ritual design. Path working. You get the ideal. The point is, while I was looking as this as filling a deficiency in my ability to serve others I should have been looking at it as an opportunity to fill up my knowledge base. About half way through my studies, I realized that all this study should have been meant for my own Path and since then my studies have become more focused. Don’t get me wrong there are things that I will read that I have no interest in and I am reading it simply so I can have a understanding over a particular subject. A majority of my focus is spent on my own study, and this focus has helped me define my Path and where it’s direction would take me.

The other thing that I did was I learned how to listen. This is actually harder than it sounds. When you are learning how to listen to anything, the first lesson that you need to learn is how to shut the fuck up. Mind you, not just your voice but everything. You need to silence your mind both in the rational and the emotional and take everything in without bias. Consider all the possibilities and then wait for the ability to provide the feedback that you have formulated.

This is not an easy task. Your first reaction will be to blurt out the first good ideal that comes to mind. Or even verbally vomit just how stupid it is what you are hearing (I’m guilty of this one...a lot!). The level of control that you have to exert over your instincts is very intense, but with practice this control comes with ease. You find that you are calm and receptive. Also, you find that you are remembering a lot more detail when people are talking to you.

The last thing that I needed to learn was how to relax when everything is falling down around me in a violent explosive mess. Kyotee taught me how to do a lot of this. At times, I think that he would purposely arrange some event of personal explosive pooh-pooh just to watch and see what I would do. I of course know that this is bullshit, but coming from someone named Kyotee....

So, here I am again. Priest. A bit wiser. A bit more prepared, but definitely ready to get this right. I am confident.

Merry Meet
Merry Part
And Merry Meet Again

Blessed Be!

It’s Beginning to Look A Lot like Christmas Sales

Ho…Ho…Ho…

Tis the season to be jolly, as well as bitter, that people don’t get that the holiday season is about idealistic values that we should all strive to achieve everyday and not just once a year. Fa la la la la…la la…la…la.

It must be that time of the year, because all around me I can see cheap plastic displays setup in Malls. And then don’t forget the leaked internet ads for Black Friday, you know cause the spirit of the holiday revolves around the core premise of massive discount retail shopping. People are just missing the point. The point of what this season is about and I don’t mean the shopping bonanza.

This time is about hope. Hope for something better in this world. That humanity can live to higher expectations. That we can all live under the principals of love, truth, justice and community and with these values do what is right for our fellow man, rather than what is convenient for us in the here and now. That it doesn’t really matter what you call this time of the year; whether you call it Yule or Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanza or Ramadan, it is about the spirit of the season, not the savings of the season.

The ideal of giving gifts comes from various different Pagan sources, but the most information comes from the Romans who during the feast of Saturnalia would give small little tokens of appreciation in celebration of their holiday. Soon there after, the gifts became more elaborate as people were able to gift based on their means. When the church took more of a political root it became verboten to give gifts due to the evil pagan witchcraft (you know because giving a gift to someone is from the Devil), however, people began to equate gift giving to the acts of the Magi in the Nativity Story.

We are supposed to give gifts as a hallmark of our generosity, not because of some need to stimulate the economy. Hell, we shouldn’t really be even giving gifts to those we know; we, in what is the spirit of the season, should be giving to a complete and total stranger. Not saying that it isn’t ok to show love and appreciation for those who are close to you, but isn’t the ideal to show love and appreciation for even the most complete of strangers?

Share with your fellow man! I’m not saying you need to go buy something for every person you meet out in the world, but I am saying that it is apropos to give with the love that should be in your heart. And it doesn’t have to be material possessions either; it could be giving time at an animal shelter helping out or making a donation of canned goods to your local pantry. Or hell, if you have the means, adopting a family who doesn’t have the means to celebrate this joyous season by providing food for them. There is a cold hard truth to the lyric from Everclear’s “I Will Buy You A New Life”; “They have never been poor, they have never known the joy of a welfare Christmas.” Your generosity can make the difference.

Here’s something else to consider as well: when people took to political correctness in order to attempt to appease everyone all of the time, we began to treat the holiday season as just that; the holiday season. No more Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Merry Yule or the like just Season’s Greetings. Or my personal favorite, Happy Holidays; which tends to generate the emotional appeal of dried unbuttered white toast. It was never meant to suck the life out of the holiday, but rather make everyone feel as though their holiday was included and special. To hopefully turn the perception that people were not taking other’s rights to celebrating the Season in their own way. That each and every holiday during the Season is meant to celebrate the diversity of the world and its similarities in the way that we all can attempt to better the world around us in our own unique way. That was the effect at first until the retailers got their claws into it.

I can remember a time in this country when nobody ever used to say “Happy Holidays”. It was “Merry Christmas”. Everyone used to walk down the streets saying it openly to strangers around them. And the thing was, it wasn’t like people were really saying, “Merry Christmas…cause you know all the other holidays are bullshit and anyone who thinks so is fucking moron because nobody really celebrates Rama-ding-along-ling-dad or that Jewish Chewbacca”, they really were saying “Merry Christmas…I mean it…its about giving and love…” Now, everyone says Happy Holidays and what they really mean is “Happy Holidays; now buy your shit and get out.” Walk into any store on Black Friday and you will see some of the most joyous people this side of an Assassins Convention. Not because they are the dregs of society, but because they get to see firsthand what this has degraded into.

The Holiday Season has turned into the I Want season, and we are all responsible for that. We need to remember what the heart of this Season is, and that is it is the season of love and caring for your fellow man. It is more important than that new iPod you want or that new game you want. Take the opportunity to use that energy that is out there in the world and do some good for the world. It is the reason for the season, and I hope that you take some time to reflect on that. While it is good to want things, try not to want them more than the want to heal and care for those around you.

Merry Meet
Merry Part
And Merry Meet Again!

Blessed Be!

Hello...cyberspace...it's me. It's been awhile

Hello…cyberspace….it’s me. It’s been awhile. How are you? I’m not too bad, thanks for asking. Where have I been? Well, it’s kind of a long story; do you have the time? Oh good, I love story time too…let me get my wooby.

….I mean, hi! Sorry I haven’t been on here, in like a year. That’s my bad, truly is. However, I have a really good excuse for it. I have been really busy, and not that I’m dodging bill collectors and crazy ex-girlfriends busy but truly busy. For starters, the Coven in which I am the Priest for now has almost forty members. That’s no longer a coven, it’s a freaking movement, and no not in that Glen Beck really scary Christian fundamentalism meets political neoliberalism kind of a way, but rather in the true beginnings of a large nexus of community and hearth among the Pagans in Chicago. It is a lot for me to sink my teeth into sometimes and sometimes I wish I could just take them all and put them in a sack like a bunch of kittens and throw them in the river, but this time has been some of the best and busiest time for me as a Pagan, Warrior, Priest and Leader. (I was totally kidding about the kitten in the river thing, only a heartless bastard would waste perfectly good Chinese food like that.)

As a Pagan, this growth has pushed me farther along on my path than I could have ever done on my lonesome. I have learned all sorts of new and exciting things that I was able to be exposed to because of the amount of people that I now share Circle with. I have been taught some of the most painful lessons, deepest understandings, and largest euphonies that I have ever taken part of and frankly it is because of those people who stand in Keepers with me. Now, this isn’t a recruitment statement – because truth be told, we are rapidly running out of space at Witchy Wearable’s. No, this is rather a statement that I hope will inspire Solitary Practicioning Pagans to go out and either find community with other Pagans or to encourage others to do so.

I understand being a Solitary Pagan. Technically, I am a Solitary Wiccan Warrior participating in the Irish Witta tradition and I happen to belong to a Coven of other Solitary Pagans. That’s a mouthful to say. But never the less, if I was to stop going to Coven, my path would go on and everything that I do and believe in would just continue as if I never missed a beat. My Practice would continue because it is mine and no one can define my direct connection to the Universal Divine. How I express it is how I express it and I need no Priest or Priestess to tell me how to connect to the Divine. I would continue to walk along my path as I always have, but it would be a considerably lonely experience.

Oh sure, I would have friends and family that I would continue to associate with. Dropping out of Coven or any other social spiritual experience wouldn’t mean that I would become a hermit. I would continue to be a social butterfly and have positive social growth experiences gaining new friends and associates along the way. The one thing that I know is that I would have a hell of a time progressing along my way all by my lonesome. Having a group of people who share the burden of spiritual growth within you, these people become vested in seeing you move forward. Conversely, you have to be equally vested in their growth – you know equivalent exchange of energy or what not.

There is a symbiotic relationship that forms amongst Covenmates that pushes one another. You begin to find that people you are practicing with become more resourceful than any Scott Cunningham or Raven Silverwolf introduction to Wicca book ever could be. This is because people that you come to work with will have their own unique perspective on everything from Ritual to Lore. Not only that, but the community that you work with will also be there to offer encouragement and advise along the path you walk.

While I’m not saying that a Coven is for every single pagan out there but I will say that community does go a long way to make the path seem less lonely. It gives us the connection that makes us feel not alone and helps encourage us along our path…whatever it is.