Monday, January 28, 2008

How Do You Spell Murder?

I’ve been pondering commenting on this for some time because it’s really quite mindboggling. I’ve had some serious family issues to deal with lately and haven’t had the time for mindboggling other peoples issues. But it deserves comment because most of the comments I hear about it from others are about as mindboggling as the event itself.
What event?
Well, you probably already heard about the Iowa murder of two young girls by their stepfather who claims that it was a spell gone wrong that led to their deaths. If not. Read about it here
http://www.ksfy.com/news/local/13561742.html
and more here http://www.radioiowa.com/gestalt/go.cfm?objectid=6953AF58-D8D7-AD22-3E898F48E4276659

Now, by all reports the man claims to be Pagan. But the comments garnered about the spell, the murder and what possible relation they could possibly have from a Pagan standpoint have been garnered from “experts” on Wicca.
Wicca? Why Wicca? Once again the world seems to think that Wicca=Pagan and Spell=Witchcraft=Wicca.
First off, there are many spells that are not Witchcraft, and much Witchcraft that is not Wicca. I suspect that this man was not Wiccan. Indeed, I suspect that IF there was a spell involved, it was not a Wiccan spell. He may indeed have been Pagan and the spell may have been Pagan, but when I look at a “spell that went bad” and I see two dead little girls at the hands of their supposedly loving stepfather, I think Goetia. I don’t think Wicca. Granted, Goetia is NOT Pagan, but that is what makes it so dangerous to Pagan practitioners. But Wiccan magic is low magic, the evidence here supports High Magick. High Magick is a little more difficult, a little more dangerous and, in High Magick, it’s a little easier to screw things up.
It sort of irritates me that Wicca has been implicated here. Wiccans are, now forgive me if I offend, as I do so in defense, a bunch of fluffballs who generally don’t go around hurting people (except perhaps themselves). Wicca is annoying, perhaps misguided, but it is, for the most part harmless.
Here’s more from the experts. http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/articles/2008/01/08/news/local/f1b72d9ec4df985c862573ca000e720e.txt Notice again that they focus on Wicca in exclusion of all other forms of Magick or Paganism.
Now that I have thoroughly pissed off the Wiccans, let me return once more to other forms of Magick that could, indeed, have produced these unfortunate results. Many Pagans experiment with different forms of magic besides witchcraft. When a Pagan dabbles in Magick that is not Pagan, he treads dangerous terretory. Goetia, for example, is an extremely dangerous magical art, for the Pagan. It is an Abrahamic art, said to have its roots with King Solomon himself (That is, King Solomon the wise of Old Testament fame.) The story goes that King Solomon, when offered a wish, wished for wisdom and it was granted. The story not often shared in Sunday School says that he was granted the wisdom to control djinn and demons and through their aid built a marvelous temple and a castle. The Goetia, or Lesser Key of Solomon is a book that professes to contain the means by which these demons are controlled and, theoretically, one can use the sacred words and symbols within to summon and control demons even today. Now the demons in question are under eternal damnation by God who created them and have power over them. The person who summons them, MUST be under the protection of the God of Abraham in order to maintain control over them. Obviously, a Pagan who attempts to summon these demons is going to have problems, because Pagans generally don’t worship the God of Abraham, if we believe in Him at all, and therefore, have no business claiming His protection.
Now I can sense the collective eyerolling, even by the Magic-users among us and I must ask: Why, if you can believe in the Astral Plane, if you can use divination, if you can talk to the dead, elemental spirits, faeries, Gods and a host of other beings, if you can cast a spell for any purpose at all, would you write off the summoning and control of demons under an Abrahamic belief system as foolishness? Was not Wicca invented in the 50s? Even if you believe that it is remnants of the long past, you cannot argue that most of this past was lost so that we can only guess as to whether or not we have it right when we attempt to recreate the rituals. Yet they work. Don’t they? Why, how? Doesn’t matter. What matters is that it works. So the Goetia can only be reliably traced to the 17th, and questionably to the 16th century, it is based on an older belief system. There have been many who claimed it worked for them and many who claim terrible things happened to them because of it. It doesn’t matter if the demons are real in the literal sense, what matters is that they are real in the mind of the practitioner.
Let us not linger on Goetia though, there are many other forms of magic that involve the summoning of potentially dangerous entities. The Necronomicron is one. Yes, I know it is a made up book, but really folks EVERYTHING is made up. It’s the truth. If you summon entities and they are dangerous, and your Will is not as strong as yours, and you don’t have any Divine assistance, there’s a very good chance that they will either A. Do something you don’t want them to do OR B. Force you to do something you wouldn’t normally do.
Let us not forget the cardinal law of evocative magick. Do not evoke (or invoke) what you can’t banish. If it were not a possibility, it wouldn’t need to be mentioned.
Am I saying that Pagans can’t do Goetia? Not at all. But unless you really understand it and you are confident that your Will is stronger than that of your summonee, you are playing with fire. That’s all there is to it! And even if you are absolutely certain that your ducks are all in a row and your Will is bigger than your ego, never, never, ever summon a potentially dangerous entity (Pagan, Abrahamic or Make-believe) in the presence of children.
And that brings us back to the point. What spell could possibly lead to a man stabbing and strangling two children he had hitherto professed to love and leave a man in a state of surprise at the culmination of the affair? Not a Wiccan spell, that is for certain. I am willing to bet that if this man did kill those children with his own hands under the influence of a spell (and the possibility exists that there was no spell and he’s just saying it), the man was ridden. Wiccans don’t generally allow themselves to be ridden, particularly by potentially violent entities. What is amazing about this is that Wicca was brought into it at all. Unless, of course, he said he was Wiccan, which nothing says he did. Even his wife said “Pagan” not “Wiccan”. That is the danger of Wiccans riding ahead brandishing their brooms in defense of all Pagans. Most Pagans are in fact not Wiccan, and don’t resemble them in the slightest, but nobody will know that as long as they keep speaking up.
One of the tricky things about working with conscious and powerful entities, as opposed to your own or earth energy, is that you really have to be specific. Entities can be trixy and they don’t necessarily like being bossed around. They are famous for taking ones words and twisting them to misfortune, there are many stories of djinn, for instance, granting wishes in ways the wisher wouldn’t want. According to this article http://action3news.com/Global/story.asp?S=7601645 the guy claims he was trying to help the girls through this spell. This reminds me of the story of Media, one of the most famous of the legendary Greek Sorceresses. She worked that her sons might never know suffering, and lo, they died. Well, a dead boy can’t know suffering.
Unfortunately, we may never hear the actual details of this case. It is hidden behind sensationality and misinformation and, well, Wicca. If they would have only asked the man what spell, and reported it, I would have more answers. But alas, nobody asked me. They asked the “experts”. And they asked them the wrong questions.
Further digging finds this http://www.ktiv.com/News/index.php?ID=21358
He kept a spellbook (which one, I wonder? Or did she mean a Book of Shadows?) and corresponded with the Church of Satan. Why again was Wicca even brought into this conversation???
And… if something was summoned that day. Something that got out of control… where is it now?

How do You Spell Murder

I've been pondering commenting on this for some time because it's really quite mindboggling. I've had some serious family issues to deal with lately and haven't had the time for mindboggling other peoples issues. But it deserves comment because most of the comments I hear about it from others are about as mindboggling as the event itself.
What event?
Well, you probably already heard about the Iowa murder of two young girls by their stepfather who claims that it was a spell gone wrong that led to their deaths. If not. Read about it here
http://www.ksfy.com/news/local/13561742.html
and more here http://www.radioiowa.com/gestalt/go.cfm?objectid=6953AF58-D8D7-AD22-3E898F48E4276659

Now, by all reports the man claims to be Pagan. But the comments garnered about the spell, the murder and what possible relation they could possibly have from a Pagan standpoint have been garnered from "experts" on Wicca.

Wicca? Why Wicca? Once again the world seems to think that Wicca=Pagan and Spell=Witchcraft=Wicca.
First off, there are many spells that are not Witchcraft, and much Witchcraft that is not Wicca. I suspect that this man was not Wiccan. Indeed, I suspect that IF there was a spell involved, it was not a Wiccan spell. He may indeed have been Pagan and the spell may have been Pagan, but when I look at a "spell that went bad" and I see two dead little girls at the hands of their supposedly loving stepfather, I think Goetia. I don't think Wicca. Granted, Goetia is NOT Pagan, but that is what makes it so dangerous to Pagan practitioners. But Wiccan magic is low magic, the evidence here supports High Magick. High Magick is a little more difficult, a little more dangerous and, in High Magick, it's a little easier to screw things up.

It sort of irritates me that Wicca has been implicated here. Wiccans are, now forgive me if I offend, as I do so in defense, a bunch of fluffballs who generally don't go around hurting people (except perhaps themselves). Wicca is annoying, perhaps misguided, but it is, for the most part harmless.

Here's more from the experts. http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/articles/2008/01/08/news/local/f1b72d9ec4df985c862573ca000e720e.txt Notice again that they focus on Wicca in exclusion of all other forms of Magick or Paganism.

Now that I have thoroughly pissed off the Wiccans, let me return once more to other forms of Magick that could, indeed, have produced these unfortunate results. Many Pagans experiment with different forms of magic besides witchcraft. When a Pagan dabbles in Magick that is not Pagan, he treads dangerous terretory. Goetia, for example, is an extremely dangerous magical art, for the Pagan. It is an Abrahamic art, said to have its roots with King Solomon himself (That is, King Solomon the wise of Old Testament fame.) The story goes that King Solomon, when offered a wish, wished for wisdom and it was granted. The story not often shared in Sunday School says that he was granted the wisdom to control djinn and demons and through their aid built a marvelous temple and a castle. The Goetia, or Lesser Key of Solomon is a book that professes to contain the means by which these demons are controlled and, theoretically, one can use the sacred words and symbols within to summon and control demons even today. Now the demons in question are under eternal damnation by God who created them and have power over them. The person who summons them, MUST be under the protection of the God of Abraham in order to maintain control over them. Obviously, a Pagan who attempts to summon these demons is going to have problems, because Pagans generally don't worship the God of Abraham, if we believe in Him at all, and therefore, have no business claiming His protection.

Now I can sense the collective eyerolling, even by the Magic-users among us and I must ask: Why, if you can believe in the Astral Plane, if you can use divination, if you can talk to the dead, elemental spirits, faeries, Gods and a host of other beings, if you can cast a spell for any purpose at all, would you write off the summoning and control of demons under an Abrahamic belief system as foolishness? Was not Wicca invented in the 50s? Even if you believe that it is remnants of the long past, you cannot argue that most of this past was lost so that we can only guess as to whether or not we have it right when we attempt to recreate the rituals. Yet they work. Don't they? Why, how? Doesn't matter. What matters is that it works. So the Goetia can only be reliably traced to the 17th, and questionably to the 16th century, it is based on an older belief system. There have been many who claimed it worked for them and many who claim terrible things happened to them because of it. It doesn't matter if the demons are real in the literal sense, what matters is that they are real in the mind of the practitioner.

Let us not linger on Goetia though, there are many other forms of magic that involve the summoning of potentially dangerous entities. The Necronomicron is one. Yes, I know it is a made up book, but really folks EVERYTHING is made up. It's the truth. If you summon entities and they are dangerous, and your Will is not as strong as yours, and you don't have any Divine assistance, there's a very good chance that they will either A. Do something you don't want them to do OR B. Force you to do something you wouldn't normally do.

Let us not forget the cardinal law of evocative magick. Do not evoke (or invoke) what you can't banish. If it were not a possibility, it wouldn't need to be mentioned.

Am I saying that Pagans can't do Goetia? Not at all. But unless you really understand it and you are confident that your Will is stronger than that of your summonee, you are playing with fire. That's all there is to it! And even if you are absolutely certain that your ducks are all in a row and your Will is bigger than your ego, never, never, ever summon a potentially dangerous entity (Pagan, Abrahamic or Make-believe) in the presence of children.


And that brings us back to the point. What spell could possibly lead to a man stabbing and strangling two children he had hitherto professed to love and leave a man in a state of surprise at the culmination of the affair? Not a Wiccan spell, that is for certain. I am willing to bet that if this man did kill those children with his own hands under the influence of a spell (and the possibility exists that there was no spell and he's just saying it), the man was ridden. Wiccans don't generally allow themselves to be ridden, particularly by potentially violent entities. What is amazing about this is that Wicca was brought into it at all. Unless, of course, he said he was Wiccan, which nothing says he did. Even his wife said "Pagan" not "Wiccan". That is the danger of Wiccans riding ahead brandishing their brooms in defense of all Pagans. Most Pagans are in fact not Wiccan, and don't resemble them in the slightest, but nobody will know that as long as they keep speaking up.

One of the tricky things about working with conscious and powerful entities, as opposed to your own or earth energy, is that you really have to be specific. Entities can be trixy and they don't necessarily like being bossed around. They are famous for taking ones words and twisting them to misfortune, there are many stories of djinn, for instance, granting wishes in ways the wisher wouldn't want. According to this article http://action3news.com/Global/story.asp?S=7601645 the guy claims he was trying to help the girls through this spell. This reminds me of the story of Media, one of the most famous of the legendary Greek Sorceresses. She worked that her sons might never know suffering, and lo, they died. Well, a dead boy can't know suffering.

Unfortunately, we may never hear the actual details of this case. It is hidden behind sensationality and misinformation and, well, Wicca. If they would have only asked the man what spell, and reported it, I would have more answers. But alas, nobody asked me. They asked the "experts". And they asked them the wrong questions.

Further digging finds this http://www.ktiv.com/News/index.php?ID=21358
He kept a spellbook (which one, I wonder? Or did she mean a Book of Shadows?) and corresponded with the Church of Satan. Why again was Wicca even brought into this conversation???

And... if something was summoned that day. Something that got out of control... where is it now?


Saturday, January 26, 2008

Feeling Philosophical

Lately, I am feeling rather philosophical. It could be that I, having run out of reading material, picked up one of my partner’s philosophy books from college and have been reading that in the bathtub. I didn’t take philosophy in college. I had a really hard time with it, because so much of philosophy is based on the monotheistic viewpoint. I am reading, for instance, about all these arguments about whether or not God exists and I’m thinking to myself, well this is stupid. If you realize there’s more than one God, you know that this particular issue isn’t an issue at all. When I took Sociology of Religion in college and World Religions, I also had a hard time. Sociology, it seems to me, is all about deviance. What’s normal, and what’s not. That’s why I am generally irritated by “therapists” as they tend to be Sociology majors and they have that whole “normal” attitude instead of just allowing people to work through what’s right for them.
*sigh*
School isn’t for polytheists, I think.
I would love to start a private school for Pagan kids. That will be one of the things I will do when Hermes grants me lottery luck.

Feeling Philosophical

Lately, I am feeling rather philosophical. It could be that I, having run out of reading material, picked up one of my partner's philosophy books from college and have been reading that in the bathtub. I didn't take philosophy in college. I had a really hard time with it, because so much of philosophy is based on the monotheistic viewpoint. I am reading, for instance, about all these arguments about whether or not God exists and I'm thinking to myself, well this is stupid. If you realize there's more than one God, you know that this particular issue isn't an issue at all. When I took Sociology of Religion in college and World Religions, I also had a hard time. Sociology, it seems to me, is all about deviance. What's normal, and what's not. That's why I am generally irritated by "therapists" as they tend to be Sociology majors and they have that whole "normal" attitude instead of just allowing people to work through what's right for them.
*sigh*
School isn't for polytheists, I think.
I would love to start a private school for Pagan kids. That will be one of the things I will do when Hermes grants me lottery luck.

Friday, January 18, 2008

An Historical Funny

"And what, then, is to be thought of those witches who in this way sometimes collect male organs in great numbers, as many as twenty or thirty members together, and put them in a bird's nest, or shut them up in a box, where they move themselves like living members, and eat oats and corn, as has been seen by many as is a matter of common report? It is to be said that it is all done by devil's work and illusion, for the senses of those who see them are deluded in the way we have said. For a certain man tells that, when he had lost his member, he approached a known witch to ask her to restore it to him. She told the afflicted man to climb a certain tree, and that he might take which he liked out of a nest in which there were several members. And when he tried to take a big one, the witch said: You must not take that one; adding, because it belonged to a parish priest" (Kramer & Sprenger 121).

Monday, January 7, 2008

An Historical Funny

“And what, then, is to be thought of those witches who in this way sometimes collect male organs in great numbers, as many as twenty or thirty members together, and put them in a bird’s nest, or shut them up in a box, where they move themselves like living members, and eat oats and corn, as has been seen by many as is a matter of common report? It is to be said that it is all done by devil’s work and illusion, for the senses of those who see them are deluded in the way we have said. For a certain man tells that, when he had lost his member, he approached a known witch to ask her to restore it to him. She told the afflicted man to climb a certain tree, and that he might take which he liked out of a nest in which there were several members. And when he tried to take a big one, the witch said: You must not take that one; adding, because it belonged to a parish priest” (Kramer & Sprenger 121).