Warmest regards
Me

With faith, hope and love
Steve

Say… would this be the same corn-cob smoking lass that started the whole Sadie Hawkins Dance thing?

Sadie Hawkins is white and smokes a corn-cob.

Baino, there’s a huge difference between being a cashew or pistachio and just a plain-old regular peanut If we’re going to be nuts, we might as well have a bit of an interesting edge!

Medbh; I hear you on the subject of ditzy hippies. I’ve found that in any alternative practice, be it herbal medicine, reiki, homoeopathy or wicca, there are always bubble heads who give the practice a bad name. I would be approaching this as a more private thing to complement my own interests, instead of announcing it to the world or trying to push it on others, perhaps as a religion would. My reference to wicca being akin to religion was with regards to the chanting or incantation element only.

Jefferson, you’ve hit the nail on the head with the pagan ritual idea. I’ve always felt it a crying shame that the old festivals - harvest moon/spring equinox/winter festivals were phased out in favour of Christian holidays. The church then had the audacity to claim these festivals as their own, and tamed them down. How wonderful it would be to celebrate life and nature instead of an ideal created by the church. I’m more skeptical of this Jesus bloke than I am of wicca which is quite confusing for me!

Deborah; Thanks for that link!!! I’ve never come across it before, I’ll have a ball browsing around The book I read is simply called ‘Witchcraft - Theory and Practice’ by Ly De Angeles.
My two year old still hasn’t been baptised, and I’m in inner turmoil about it. The only reason I want to have her christened is so that she won’t feel left out at Communion time, which is a pretty sad reason.

P.S. Money won’t make you happy, but a 2-tonne bag of M&M’s might… what do you think?

Hails; OK so it’s not exactly healthy still, but at least most of the gunk is filtered out, and there are no added chemicals to fk you up. And I agree, the smell is fantastic. Especially the vanilla tobacco! My aim is to start a trend, but Rome wasn’t smoked in a day.

Dad; HORLICKS?!?! Bleeurghh. You know me better than that! I try not to drink anything that’s good for me as a rule.

Robert; Try mixing them!! (vom) I’ll try to make it rain sticky Horlicks for you as your prize

SID; What a spectacularily fandabbydozy idea! Watch this space.

Fat Sparrow; My reference to punishment was to Witches (the misunderstood) not read in books, but learned from observation from films! (Monty Python’s ‘Holy Grail’ for example - “That’s not my real nose!!!”) It was a clue purely to help you guess
I’m not aiming to be part of a cult, or a worshipping gang. I want to learn about wicca because it feels right. I’ve been searching for meaning in so many places, and haven’t found it in my religion. I’m going to stay well clear of the hypocritical because I’ve had enough of that. I’m only interested in the persuit of truth, the idea that there is energy dormant in us all, pushed down by the masses. It’s not about spells for me, it’s about finding this energy and learning about what it can do.

Thank you so much for letting me know you’re into this… I might just be sending you a mail as soon as I find my feet!

You can end up spending a lot of time with brainless, Fluffy Bunny/White Lighters who have less knowledge of history, science, and world religions than your average Evangelical, and that’s saying something.

If you’re reading books that give you this idea “It was very popular in older cultures, yet people were severely punished for it,” you’ve been reading books that are giving you disinformation, because it’s just not true. Paganism was, of course, very popular in older cultures, but don’t confuse Pagans with Wiccans. Wicca is a modern religion, and anyone claiming that is actually based on something older (older than Crowley and the Church, that is) is full of mad dog shite, and they are either truly ignorant of history (and ignorance is no excuse) or they are purposely making claims like this to sell their book, advance their cause, etc. Don’t be rooked in. If people want to create their own religion, that’s fine, but don’t act like it’s all ancient. There are people who do try to follow actual, ancient religions; they’re called Pagan Reconstructionists, and they are very, very into history and accuracy and have a hard time keeping a straight face when the Fluffy Bunny Wiccans start talking.

I’m not out of the broom closet on my blog, but I’ve been a Pagan since 1985 (reached 3rd degree intiation in an Eclectic Wiccan group and was HP for a while), and Medbh has it, dead on, with the ditzy hippie thing. I ran Pagan groups in real life and on the Internet, and if you ever want to know the downside of any type of Wicca (and there are almost as many different types of Wicca out there as there are Christian groups) or Pagan group, feel free to e-mail me and I will bend your ear.

The winner gets a spell of their choice cast by yerself.

Tis great stuff. I found a jar of it just behind the Bovril!