wtf pills

I totally have a rash. This means I must stop taking my seizure med, Dilantin, at once. And go to the doctor tomorrow. You know, a few hours before we leave for Las Vegas for the BHOF.

AWESOME.

Honestly, I'm sort of happy - Dilantin sucks balls. I spent an hour bawling today because I couldn't pick something to make for dinner. That's so not normal for me. It makes me hella drowsy and dizzy, and it's just... yeah. Not a fan.

So we'll see what the doctor says tomorrow morning. In the meantime, no more pills.

The Girls.

Today after rehearsal we went to the mall.

Voodoo and I love the mall. I tell people this sometimes and they look at me with such confusion that you'd think I just told them I was born with a conjoined twin that still itches my ass for me. But here's the thing - we grew up in the Bible Belt suburbs. We lived in a town where if you weren't part of a youth group, there wasn't a whole hell of a lot to do as a teenager. So, even as gother-than-thou little misfits, we wound up hanging out at the mall a lot.

Also: we like shopping.

So. The main goal for today was to get my hair trimmed by our cousin Michelle, who works in the mall. Secondary goals included getting some decent flats and false eyelashes because we leave for the Burlesque Hall of Fame on Wednesday. And, you know, since we were there ANYWAY... may as well have the whole mall experience. This includes the food court.

But I'm not here to tell you about my addiction to fried chicken. As I said, we were looking for shoes. In the mall, there's this shop that we refer to as "the hooker shoe store" because it sells ridiculous stripper-esque shoes. This is where you can go if you need a pair of five-inch stilettos where the heel is made out of fake bullets. It's glorious. Anyway, while my sister looked in vain for anything in a size five, I perused the silver shoes because I need a pair just in case for Vegas. (I'm an alternate in the group number.) One of the girls who worked there asked if I needed help, and then interrupted herself as she stared at my chest.

"I'm sorry - are those REAL?"

I told her, yes. And when she asked I told her my cup size. (Which is an I in European sizing.) She promptly called over the other girl working there to ogle my tits. Which sounds really bad, but she was awfully sweet about it. She then went on about her own desire to have a boob job, and was horrified to find I have considered reduction surgery. I told her just to get fat if she wanted bigger ones.

Later, buying insanely colourful underwear, another salesgirl asked about my chest size. (This made more sense since we were in LaSenza, at least.) She too was torn between envy and horror.

I don't take particular pride on my breasts. They're just THERE, getting in the way more often than not. I don't dislike them (usually) but when this sort of thing happens I can't help but be amused.

Happily, I manage to fit my big ol' boobs into a stunning dress after that. I'm wearing the hell out of this on Thursday night when Voodoo preforms I think. Yay!

K is for Kitchen WTF

Another entry in the Pagan Blog Project

The Kitchen Witch. I feel like somewhere along the way this iconic image went from being a real thing to being some twit with a box of Betty Crocker muffin mix and a wand. Sort of like how I'm sure once upon a time Etsy actually had awesome hand-made crafty shit but is now a shitshow of remarkable WTFery.

Now, I'm certain there really are kitchen witches out there - people who are intimately familiar with the gardens they grow outside their homes or in window boxes, and who if you went to their house could whip you up a potion in three minutes flat that would cure your cold and restore your sexual potency. People who are basically Sandra Bullock in Practical Magic. (And fuck you, I think we all wish we were Sandra Bullock sometimes.) These people are living their quiet lives all across the world, doing magic mundanely and maybe posting arty photos of their peach cobbler on Tumblr.

And then there's the microwave set.

Now, don't get me wrong - I'm not about to mock people for being shitty cooks. I didn't cook for YEARS. I had to ask my sister how to make mashed potatoes. (Which I intended to eat a pot of. With nothing else. Yeah, I was like twenty-two, I was a pig.) I fucked up instant coffee. It was sad and pathetic, and I think the most we ever used the minuscule kitchen in our first Vancouver apartment was the time we ran out of laundry tokens and so hung all our underwear in it to dry.

So I'm not going to point and laugh if you burn water.

It's a brew!

I will point and laugh if you burn water and then call it a spell, though.

Look. We look silly enough, you guys. To normal people, magic itself is out there enough that you look like a bit of a ninny on a good day, what with your candles and arm gestures and all. But to then claim you're stirring love and good health into a pot of spaghetti-os... Yeah. No.

Kitchen witchery is not JUST intent. Yes, intent is very important in magic, but it's not the only thing. If it were, I'd be rich and surrounded by sex bitches right now, who would be gently filing the calluses off my feet. Kitchen witchery is all about well, shit you do in the kitchen, right? Cooking, making home remedies, that sort of oldschool wholesome thing. If someone tells me they're making gingerbread cookies with menstrual blood in them to bewitch a lover, alright, that seems like kitchen witchery. If someone is just thinking really hard at a box of oreos... not so much.

These examples I hope illustrate the disconnect that seems to go on with a certain type of people. It's almost like they're not Brit Trad Wiccans, they're not Recons, and they find Chaos Magic too anarchic. They're basically eclectic Wiccan-esque in terms of belief, but it's too much effort to bother much with the witchcraft side of things. So they look around for something that sounds legitimate and that they can easily say "well, sure, I do this daily" about. And we all need to eat, which means we all need to cook.

So. You're on your pagan message board or whatever, and someone asks "what the fuck are you?" and a whole bunch of people go, "kitchen witch!" And the explanation is that they think stuff while they cook.

I dunno, ya'll. I'm all for simple spellwork, but that just seems fucking lazy.

Grandma would not approve.
image from www.theblackcatcloset.com

trepanning?

So. I had a seizure on Thursday morning. This would be more exciting news if it were my first, but it's my fourth so as sick as it sounds I'm kinda old hat at them by now. I bit my tongue up, but not as bad as the first time - it's still a bit numb and weird feeling at the tip today, but the side seems mostly okay.

The doctor put me on Dilantin. I'm not sure I'm thrilled about it - it's played merry hell with my balance, which means I actually left rehearsal on Sunday in tears. Oh, yeah. It also seems to be playing merry hell with my emotional state as well. So that's fun. I need to make an appointment with my regular neurologist and see if I can't maybe switch to the meds I was on in Dublin instead.  Being seizure free is nice, but I'd also like to be relatively sane and not prone to bursting into tears over old Degrassi episodes.


Hey! You know what?! It's almost summer! That means it's time to start thinking about Halloween! No, seriously. Here, have a post to put you in the mood prematurely.

J is for Journaling

For the Pagan Bog Project.

"The Record is both chart and log to the bold Sea-Captains of The Voyage Marvellous." - Aleister Crowley

If there's one thing I would say you need to do in order to practice magic, regardless of whether it's high or low, that thing would be this: you need to keep a magical diary.


Why keep a journal logging your magical practice? What's the difference between that and a Book of Shadows or a grimoire? What format works best for your diary, and what exactly should you be recording? 


Fuck, you ask a lot of questions.


A magical journal is an important tool for the would-be magician, as it is the best way with which to keep track of your workings. It's the easiest way there is to monitor successes and failures, and if you are diligent in recording all that you do it makes analysing the failures much easier. If you preform a ritual and the intended goal is not reached, you can look back through your diary and see if you can substitute one element for another, then try again and record those results. 


You can gauge your improvements easier when they're written in black and white, and over time a magical journal will reveal your 'high points' - times when your energy soars and your work comes easier.  This is good to know, since then for important workings you can better time them to coincide with these periods.


A magical diary is not, in my opinion, quite the same as a Book of Shadows or grimoire - the latter two are more like instruction manuals than anything else, while a diary is a personal collection of notes. Your diary can certainly provide material for your B.O.S. in the form of spells that have been successful. Those you can copy into a notebook or add to a scrapbook or however you want to do it.


Speaking of formats... Although I am a fan of online journals (obviously) I do feel that just plain old pen and paper works best for magic diary keeping. For me personally, even if a journal entry is set to 'private' on a blog, I find that I still write as though someone else is going to read it. I can be more honest and raw in a physical book. 


As an added advantage, a notebook can go almost anywhere... even a graveyard at midnight in the middle of Buttfuck, Nowhere. My laptop's not that durable, and my phone sucks balls. If I'm staked out somewhere weird, a pen and a flashlight will work better for my needs.


Now, as for what you should record? The answer to that is simple: everything. No, really. Everything you can think of, anyway. And if you can't think of anything, well, you're shit out of luck.


Except not, since here's a list to get you started. You're welcome.


Time
Date
Moon Phase
Planetary Phases (if you know them)
Place
Ingredients
Tools
Emotional state before, during and after the working
Any occurring phenomena


Once you're done your spell, you should also be careful to record any potential results. This could be months later, so you can see why settling into the habit of keeping your journal regularly is important. Record good results and shitty ones, or the fact that there were none at all.


Keeping a magical journal helps prevent you from making the same mistakes over and over. It also gives you a rich personal history of your practice. Whether you're working in a group tradition or entirely on your own, it's exhilarating to look back on your early rituals and see exactly how far you've come. Hindsight also reveals many synchronicities and unusual events that at the time were overlooked because you were too busy trying to keep your head above the water. 

In short, a magical journal is truly one of the most important tools to keep in your arsenal.

Linky links.

Couple of things to kick off your Monday.

How time stands still in women's magazines. I was never a big magazine girl myself - I bought a few issues of YM and Seventeen when I was fourteen, but quickly decided to boycott them. My rule was "if someone else has one, I'll read it, but I won't give them my money." That way I could enjoy the 'Say Anything!' stories in the back, enjoy the fashions (or mock them) and still be snotty about not buying into the whole anti-female thing. This is a rule I still abide by today. I don't buy the glossies, for many of the reasons the article there touches on, but I'll flip through em when I get my hair done.

The Atrum Traba. Completely unrelated! But a damn good post. If you're mucking about with spirits, you ought to know how to do this stuff. While we're on the topic, if you haven't read Lon Milo DuQuette's Low Magic and My Life With the Spirits yet, you should. The former has a wonderful example of the exact technique the Bad Witch is talking about, and by wonderful I also mean hilarious.

Also! A roundup by Blue Morris of the media coverage of the VIBF!

J is for Jewellery

Another entry for the Pagan Blog Project.


Pagans like jewellery.

This much is apparent at any sort of pagan festival, or any metaphysical-oriented store. Rings, bracelets and pendants - oh the pendants! Gemstones, pentagrams, ankhs, triskelions, goddesses, fairies... as a group, we're mad for hanging shit around our necks.

Back in the days when my entire wardrobe was black, I wore approximately five pounds of jewellery at a time. Almost every finger had a ring on it, and I'd be clanking about with several necklaces at a time. I had one very small pentagram that I bought at Spencer's Gifts for ten bucks, which was accidentally tasteful of me considering I could have got one the size of a small hubcap. Less so was the inverted crucifix with a wolf's head on it, that I swear I bought at Claire's or one of those other chain teenager-aimed jewellery stores. I think the pentagram is still kicking around, but alas, not the ugly wtf wolf cross.

These days, I don't wear as many necklaces. (For one thing, if they're too long they get trapped in my cleavage, and since I'm short most chains are indeed too long.) I also don't tend to wear much overtly 'pagan'  jewellery anymore. I still have a lovely pendant that is a crescent moon encircling a pentagram that my mother and sister gave to me years ago, but I couldn't tell you the last time I actually wore it. I have another pentagram that I bought mostly because perched on top of it is a crow - the piece is lovey, but again, I don't wear it often. I almost think I'd prefer it as a pin instead of a necklace.

I own two other pieces of crow jewellery. I have a miniature skull that is one half of a pair - I gave the other to my sister. I also own a a glass pendant that is about two inches long and very thin that has a crow painted or something on it in black. These are pieces I consider to be magical to me now, because they remind me of unbreakable bonds and the things I truly love.

I still own a lot of rings. I don't wear as many at one time, but I do love them. Here I feel I can indulge my desire for talismanic objects a bit more easily, as there's gems galore available in ring form that won't clash with my outfit. Currently, I have four rings that I cycle through for magical purposes: moonstone, blue onyx, obsidian, and a blue tiger's eye. I find rings work better for me magically as well because they're on my hands, which are not only more visible (I don't actually look down at my tits very often) but also what I generally use to direct energy (which I certainly don't use my tits for).

My jewellery doesn't identify me as pagan right away, and honestly I don't see any reason to change that. For one thing, anyone who is even moderately perceptive can probably figure out my spitirual slant by looking at the giant freaking arm tattoo I have of two witches making rain. For another thing... I just don't think it's my style anymore. Unless I find a replica of Margaret Krusemark's necklace in Angel Heart. I'd wear the shit out of that thing.

So. Religious symbols, magical tools, or just pretty shiny things - or hell, all three! -is it any wonder witchy people love their jewellery?