I'm Dreaming of a Green Wedding

Obviously, we want our wedding to be as “green” as in eco-friendly (as well as the color!) as it can be.
Here are some websites helping me out with this:
http://www.greatgreenwedding.com/
I will be giving away baby trees as wedding favors.
http://www.arborday.org/shopping/gifttrees/weddings.cfm
The tube the tree comes in can be turned into a birdfeeder. How very cool!
I just need to come up with a clever little saying to go on the little card that’s included.
And something else… you know, for people who don’t have yards to plant trees in…

Not Just Green, but Green

I have decided that I am getting married in green.
Screw white.
Purple and Green are my favorite colors. But I’m not particularly fond of wearing large amounts of purple, I prefer it more of an accent color, y’know. So, I want my dress to be green. Like a moss green with a sort of dusty purple ribbon/cumberbund thing with echinacea flowers decorating the back. Yea. That’s my idea. But alas, I don’t know how to sew. My mother will have to help me, but I’m not sure she’ll be able to work with the type of fabric I’m thinking of. (I’m thinking layers of gauzy type fabric, but it has to be soft, not that stiff stuff)
Oh jeeze. I’m going to make a faerie dress for my handfasting.
Call me fluffy.
Well, anyway, I’m going to have to go shopping for fabric and find a pattern and work with my mom on this. I want it done by August 17th. (Not the morning of the wedding like last time)
Here are some fabric links…
http://www.aurorasilk.com
http://www.srfabrics.com/
http://www.fabricandart.com/HTML_files/Fabrics/hemp_and_organic_cotton.html
So I am in love with a delicious Karen Millen confection from last summer’s line.
It’s just a wee bit beyond my price range…

Wedding Rings

Mr Rabbit and I have have a no ring agreement. In fact, before we hooked up, when we were just sniffing at each other, I launched into a Valentine’s Day induced tirade about how stupid diamonds are. I may have ranted about this before, I don’t know. Anyway, I said I never wanted diamonds. For one, the diamond industry is notoriously anti-social and when I got married before, my husband hooked me up with this giant diamond ring that always felt awkward and heavy on my hand and always caught on things and I was sure at some point it was going to catch on something I didn’t notice and rip my hand off. In the end… about three days after I got the clunky thing, it disappeared somewhere. And oh the guilt.

Anyhow, moral of the story, I don’t want a diamond.

But it turns out last year when we went to visit the future inlaws, Mr Rabbit got a whisper in his ear about a family diamond or something. So, it looks like I will be getting a diamond after all. I want the diamond recessed into the band though, so it doesn’t stick out, and oh I hope it’s not too big…

Anyway, so we have to go visit the inlaws to get the diamond. That will be our “pre-honeymoon” in July. I don’t want to sound selfish, like that’s the only reason we’re going because we had planned to go anyway, but the original plan was to go after the wedding.

So, this part of the goal is to get to the inlaws. That means saving money, arranging daycare, packing, etc. What a pain in the butt getting married is.

News Roundup and Some History

Did you know that in the 1600s a group of New Yorkers (then New Amsterdam) stood up for religious freedom?
http://www.adirondackdailyenterprise.com/Columns/articles.asp?articleID=10382

Sometimes it’s a little scary to see who speaks for us… Jonathon Sharkey, of the Vampyrs, Witches and Pagans party is running for President. Among others
http://cornellsun.com/node/27652

A Las Vegas High School student was recently kicked out of class for refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegience. Go boy. How does this relate to us? He’s from a Wiccan family. I’m not sure why that part was relevant to the story, but it was reported so it ends up here.
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/183418,student-booted-for-not-standing-in-class.html

Check out this true crime murder mystery from the UK http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2008/02/10/2008-02-10_the_black_dog_murder_mystery.html but don’t get offended. Remember that witchcraft elsewhere, and in different times, is not what witchcraft is in modern America.
And we end today’s session with more history. Archaeologists in the UK believe they have found the first evidence of Druids. Until now, we’ve relied mainly on anectotal evidence from their conquerors and folkloric evidence. This is cool stuff
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/02/11/druid-grave.html

All the Queen's Mess

The issue revolving around the Miss Toronto Tourism debacle (discussed in my last blog) has, of course, not escaped the notice of the Pagan community-at-large and the pageant itself was held this past weekend, and the Pagans represented. Of course! And of course, the Pageant people engaged in a furious backpedaling operation that was, well, pathetic.
Now I’m sure that if you’ve read my blogs before you know that I have no patience with Pagans who scream discrimination based on their religion when they are simply being discriminated against because, well, they are stupid. Like that lady that was burning a cooler in her backyard while disturbing the peace half-naked. That was not discrimination. That was one person being dumb and getting cited for it.
This, however, appears to be a clear-cut case of discrimination.
If you recall, when this issue first came to light, the article cited a letter received by Miss Conover, who is Miss Canada Plus, that went like so:
“She states that her hobbies are yoga, reiki and tarot card reading.
“Our board of directors has eliminated her as a judge as tarot card reading and reiki are the occult and … not acceptable by God, Jews, Muslims or Christians.”
Then a Biblical quote about mediums and “spiritists.”
Then: “We hope that Stephanie Conover will turn from these belief systems and will repent from her practice of them.”
(Find these quotes in the article at http://torontosun.com/News/OtherNews/2008/01/27/4796226-sun.html)
The quote in question?  Leviticus 20:6, where God states: “I will set my face against the person who turns to mediums or spiritualists to prostitute himself by following them, and I will cut them off from his people,” although fortunately for Stephanie, she’s apparently been exempted from the requirements of Leviticus 20:27, which mandates that “A man or a woman who is a medium…shall surely be put to death; they shall stone them with stones.”
http://torontoist.com/2008/01/miss_toronto_to.php
In this article, http://torontosun.com/News/TorontoAndGTA/2008/02/03/4809929-sun.html Karen Murray, who was quoted in a previous article thusly:
“We just got her bio a week ago and we don’t agree with it,” said Karen Murray, Miss Toronto Tourism pageant director. “We want someone down to earth, not someone into the dark side or the occult.” is refusing to comment. And so we have a new player in this drama. Ainslie Baillie (there’s a Pagan name if I ever heard one!) who is also a member of the Miss Toronto Tourism board who claims that her religion isn’t an issue. She says “I was just told that she wasn’t qualified. A lot of it has to do with judging experience, not religion.”.
Yea lady. I’m sorry, but somebody put an entirely different position in writing.
Miss Conover plans to file a complaint with the Human Rights Commission of Ontario next week. I say go for it. This sort of thing needs attention. And again, it’s not because I think that privatized events like this don’t have the right to exclude people based on whatever the heck they want to exclude them based on, it’s because I think they must make it absolutely clear.
If the Miss Toronto Tourism pageant considers only those who follow Biblical law to be worthy of being associated with them, then it must be clearly stated where anyone can see it. It cannot be hidden.
Further, if you want to run a pageant that is that selective, you really need to separate yourself from official government bodies. Every article has made it absolutely clear that the Miss Toronto Tourism pageant is an organization that promotes historic sites in Toronto and that it’s not associated with the city or the official Tourism Toronto and that’s good. But if I were in charge of Tourism Toronto, or a member of the city board, I would want them to take the city’s name off of their pageant if they are going to be discriminatory!
Says Andrew Weir, vice president of Tourism Toronto, whose Web site www.torontotourism.com shares nearly the same name as the pageant: “It’s caused some confusion but it has nothing to do with us and we have nothing to do with them. All I can say is that’s not how we market the city.”
Of course, the Pagan community is up in arms about all of this, and why shouldn’t they be? And not only Pagans should be upset, but anyone who isn’t a member of the “dominant” culture, and, well, anyone who opposes discrimination.
Said Michael Makaid, an organizer of the Toronto Pagan Conference: “We were shocked that a non religious beauty pageant that supports multiculturalism would do this. As a Torontonian that enrages me. It’s about discrimination not paganism. We have loads of people who are pagan and non pagan who are upset about this.”
From http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/toronto/archive/2008/01/31/toronto-pagans-target-beauty-pageant-over-snub-to-wiccan.aspx
The Toronto Pagan Conference and other groups picketed the event and called sponsors to see what they thought about it. Ralph Hamelmann, who runs The Psychic Brunch, said 16 of 18 sponsors have withdrawn their sponsorship of the pageant.  I guess their sponsors don’t take kindly to discrimination either. Not everyone jumped on the bandwagon though. Alfredo DiGenova, general manager of Adrenalin Fitness, has no plans now to withdraw despite pressure. “I’ve received seven e-mails since Tuesday asking me to drop my sponsorship. I think the whole thing is blown out of proportion. It’s their pageant so they can have whoever they want.”

Battle of the Beauty Queen

Here is the article I’m about to expound upon
http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/297985
And now I begin.
So, basically, here’s what happened. Ms. Canada Plus is a Wiccan (cool, huh, I thought so) and the Ms Toronto Tourism pageant invited her to be a judge. But when she submitted her bio, presumably for their marketing materials, she mentioned tarot cards under “hobbies” and they withdrew their invitation. (Which is very silly, because if they just looked at the Miss Canada Plus website, they would have seen her bio there, could have decided then, and would never have needed to embarrass themselves by issuing the invitation in the first place! http://www.mcpp.ca/candidates.html)
“We just got her bio a week ago and we don’t agree with it,” said Karen Murray, Miss Toronto Tourism pageant director. “We want someone down to earth, not someone into the dark side or the occult.”
Grammatical nightmares not withstanding (How does someone not agree with a bio? A bio is not an opinion to be disagreed with.) How does Tarot cards make someone not down to earth? I dunno, there are a few headintheclouds Pagans, probably alot, but there are quite a few down to earth Pagans too. I like to think of myself as down-to-earth and I read Tarot cards. My atheist lover and I read each others cards before we go to bed at night. It helps us wrap up the day, put things in perspective and communicate with each other about the things that are on our minds and make plans. Very down-to-earth, practical stuff. And the “dark side of the occult”? If this lady thinks tarot cards are the “dark side” of the “occult”, she doesn’t know much about the occult, does she?
A letter to the Miss Candada Plus people said “We need a judge who has an upright reputation and we would be proud to introduce to the audience,”
It is my understanding that these pageants only award the Miss Somebody title to people who they feel is “upright” and has a clean reputation. It would seem that the Miss Toronto Tourism people do not think the Miss Candada Plus people are capable of determining who has a clean reputation, because they went on to explain:
“Our board of directors has eliminated her as a judge as tarot card reading and reiki are the occult and is not acceptable by God, Jews, Muslims or Christians. Tarot card reading is witchcraft and is used by witches, spiritists and mediums to consult the dark world.”
The letter went on to quote a couple of passages from the Bible, including one from the book of Leviticus that warns, “Do not turn to mediums or seek out spirits for you will be defiled by them.”
“We hope that Stephanie Conover will turn from these belief systems and will repent from her practice of them,” the letter reads.
Now, this confuses me slightly, because we’re talking about the Miss Toronto Tourism pageant, not the Miss Good Christian Pageant, so what’s the deal here? The article is quick to point out that the Miss Toronto Tourism pageant is independant of Toronto’s tourism department, and bully for Toronto then, because if it wasn’t we’d be looking at a clear case of state-sponsored discrimination. As it stands Murray said her group doesn’t get government funding and has the right to decide who acts as a judge in their pageant. and that’s the truth.
What I don’t understand is how the crazy Christian lady feels vindicated: Murray insisted Conover is “trying to stir up trouble” by raising the issue in the press. “She’s obviously a very vindictive person,” she said.
No lady, the public has a right to know that your pageant is discriminatory. Will you snatch the crown away from Miss Toronto Tourism when you discover that she reads Tarot cards? Since there is absolutely nothing about Miss Toronto Tourism that would cause someone to even suspect that someone into things Christians don’t approve of would be automatically disqualified. I mean, check out the website, it doesn’t say anywhere that you have to be a follower of an Abrahamic religion http://www.misstorontotourism.com/
Check it out
1. Canadian Citizen
2. Single, not married or living common-law
3. No dependents
4. Good health
5. No criminal records or criminal offences
6. Height of 5 feet and 0 inches and up
7. Good Will To Others
8. Good character
9. Born female.
10. 19 to 27 years of age.
Nowhere there does it say “Must adhere to the principles laid for by the God of Abraham.”
What we have from Miss Conover is a public service.
If you’re going to run a Christian pageant, call it that. But they’re not religious says Murray:
Asked if her group is a religious one, Murray replied, “We adhere to God’s principles. We’re God-fearing. I wouldn’t say we’re religious.” Isn’t that a little contradictory, I dunno?

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?