Blast! (From the Past.)

Today was a good day for blogging. Where to even start?

Links. Let's start with links.

The crow, psychopomps and Morrigan. Weirdly, I was just thinking about The Crow last night, proving that the universe doesn't believe in coincidence, and also that I am old. 1994, people!

The other thing I was thinking of, after wandering onto a blog written by someone who is like... half my age, was what it was like to be a teenage witch.

Lo and behold, Gordon at Rune Soup posted this. He mentions this post as well, which had me smiling. Everyone was so fucking YOUNG at one point, and it blows my mind.

Nostalgia.

I found this image by Googling 'cheap tarot.'

I got my first tarot deck at age fifteen. It was on sale after Christmas at Cole's books, for like $12.99 and my mother bought it for me. It was fucking hideous. But I dragged that deck and the book that came with it everywhere, doing readings at lunch for everyone who was willing to let me practice on them.

The first occult book I purchased  was Bucky's Big Blue. From there it was a hop, skip and a jump into the Farrars, Cunningham. and then horrible dreck like D.J. Conway. Silver Ravenwolf came a bit later, although I managed to miss the 'Teen Witch Kit.'

Not that I needed one. My first athame was a letter-opener. My wand a stick, my chalice an old silver cup that my mother kindly let me borrow. A pentacle, well. I painted one on a cardboard box I'd painted black to serve as an altar.

My sister and I cast spells on the little patch of grass by the patio of our ground-floor apartment, under the light of the moon and the nearby streetlamps. With my mother's blessing, we tried to magic her out of her smoking habit. Didn't work. We did freak out the neighbours, though - we lived in the Bible Belt, and anyone chanting after the sun went down was clearly a Satanist.

It wasn't until I was in my early twenties that I started to branch out from the Wicca 101 tomes that clogged the shelves of my local occult bookshop. I remember clearly being in Surrey, in a bookshop I'd looked up online. My mother and sister were flipping through tarot cards, and I wandered over to the bookshelf marked 'Magic', not 'Wicca and Paganism'... and this prompted the clerk to come over to me.
 

"Do you ever feel... less than fresh?"

"We don't get a lot of women in this section," he said. He wasn't saying it in a condescending manner - he was just honestly surprised, and I remember I felt vaguely proud. I was looking at Jan Fries' Visual Magic, which the clerk proceeded to say was very good. He then pulled Phil Hine off the shelf and said, "Have you ever heard of Chaos Magic?"


I shook my head, and politely declined the book. 'Chaos' was something I associated with drama, and with a point in my spiritual path I'd rather have forgotten. Months later, impressed with Visual Magic, I would hunt down Condensed Chaos, and have my magical practice change even further. Suddenly magic was not limited to moon phases, and even that old devil Aleister Crowley was beginning to look accessible...

I missed out on Crowley when I was younger. I would come across the name, and everyone I knew who was into magic - all women - would mention lurid tales of sexual sadism and talk about how 'evil' his work was. One online acquaintance claimed his books were so terrible that just having one in her home was enough to cause all sorts of paranormal ruckus! Utter horseshit, really, but I was young and I believed her.

Although... my local bookshop DOES keep all his books under lock and key. (My mother, on the other hand, does not. But she is evil. ...hi, Ma!)

I have been studying magic for fifteen years now. I can look back and laugh, sometimes hysterically, at my first forays. But there is one thing that I can see now, something I see reflected in younger pagans and magicians: a deep sincerity and eagerness. The world has never again been quite as exciting as it was when I first realised, yes, magic was for real, and it was mine.

As I've said before, there's plenty of stupid things I've done. But on a self-taught path, you have to learn to allow for ignorance.

But a sense of humour also helps.