D is for Dipshit

This is a response to the Pagan Blog Project.


I sat down in front of my computer with a cup of tea this morning, still in my stylish orange spider pyjamas, and I said to myself, "the letter D, eh? Clearly, I should write about the Dark Side."

Because, you know. Ooky spooky. Plus possible Darth Vader references.

Or! Death! Yeah! I'll sit my ass down, discuss the dissolution of the soul, theories on what makes up the soul, the idea of the Second Death... all that good shit.

But it's drizzling outside, I have a bunch of errands to run, and other people will probably cover those topics in more detail than I would. So instead... D is for Dipshit, everybody!

It's my firm belief that everyone who chooses to go down an occult or pagan path does some really amazingly stupid things along the way. I'm talking metal-in-the-microwave stupid. Now, pagans and magicians tend to be a really well-read lot on the whole, because books are where most of us first start out. But being well-read does not mean you're suddenly wise, does it? We all fall down, especially when it comes to actually putting things into practice.

When I was younger, my reaction to acts of stupidity by others was generally outright mockery. I've noticed this is actually a pretty common thing - you point at someone else making a jackass of themselves because deep down you know you WERE that jackass before. It's a way to separate yourself from the baby!pagans... and your memory of being one.

I'm older now, and I can look back and say with certainty that I was a jerk. And I was (and remain) also really fucking dumb sometimes.

As I've probably mentioned before, I discovered witchcraft in the 1990s. My sister and I and several other young ladies naturally decided we should all totally form a coven, you guys! And you know, nothing screams intelligence like a bunch of teenage girls learning magic from the few Wicca 101 books we could scrounge up the money to buy. (Bear in mind the Internet was a much smaller place back then, populated mostly by terrible Geocities websites with embedded midis and spinning graphics. This did not help matters.)

For some reason lost to time, the process of 'Drawing Down' was explained in a few of the books we had access to. This is essentially a form of voluntary possession, and is typically preformed by a High Priestess in a Wiccan coven who has had things like experience and proper training. So of course we tried it.

Looking back, I can say that 99% of such 'possessions' were bullshit - pure play-acting on the part of the 'possessed.' But there remains one incident that to this day I can't completely write off, and it was a bad one. Nobody was hurt, for which I'm thankful, but it was a dangerous situation that spiralled out of control because we were inexperienced, and arrogant enough to think that that didn't matter.

We were dipshits.

Lest you think this affliction strikes only the young, I can relay a more recent example. A good friend of mine and practising magician was having some trouble recovering lost property a year or two ago. Fed up (and, well. Drunk.) we high-tailed it to a crossroads, with the intention of offering a sacrifice to Papa Legba, because we were free-wheeling chaos magicians and I had some prior experience with the loa. Well. My friend offered up his significator card: the Knight of Cups.

Think about that for a second.

Well. The lost property in question DID eventually get returned in an unexpected and pleasant manner, but only after a lot of heartache, stress, and personal change. The joke was on us, as it so often is.

"Hey, dipshits," seemed to be the overarching theme of that one.

But the point (I have a point?!) is simply this: you're going to fuck up. You can do all the research and planning in the world, and you're STILL going to slip. You're going to do really dumb things in pursuit of gnosis, power, and sparkly things. Show me a witch who hasn't done anything stupid and I'll show you an armchair magician.

You're a dipshit sometimes. But maybe that's okay.