BrainStream: Life is good. I took

Life is good. I took a nice little break this afternoon and for once in my life had dinner with my wife and stayed downstairs with her to watch a bevy of our favorite shows - Gilmore Girls, Charmed and CSI. Though the later two are at competing times so we only get the jist of either. But we've been watching Charmed for longer....so it tends to win.

I've been a bit unfocused these past 2 weeks. Mostly because the Chinese vs. US hackathon caught me offguard and kept me extremely busy. I got to do my first live BBC interview at 11:30 at night and got back in the swing of things. When ZOT was beginning to hurt, I gave up Attrition to concentrate on my Harry Potter fan site, and to concentrate on my classes. I'm glad I've had some time to return to the fray.

Well, I've filed for unemployment. Tomorrow I send in my first "claim" form for the last 2 weeks. I've always thought unemployment had such a stigma until I realized companies pay unemployment insurance specifically for this purpose when you get laid off. So I've been going back and forth between these 3 really great job opportunities, all of which have been "hurry up and wait". At least with an unemployment buffer, I can concentrate on trying to get some book contracts and not have to rush out and get the first job offered to me. I had the same opportunity with ZOT and was very lucky but let me be the first to say the only thing harder then sucking it up and filing for unemployment is not having any income at all and having to rush out and take the first job you find. I live in fear of having to join the rat race rather then put my talents to good use at an organization I want to work for.

Speaking of my classes, I believe I had mentioned that I was continuing with my courses at Artemisia Botanicals and have currently finished 3 weeks of a 6 week course in Witchcraft. No, not the flashy "Witches of Eastwick" or "Charmed" or "The Craft" but the Earth-centric religion of Wicca.

I don't think I've ever talked about my search for spirituality and up until a few years ago, I wasn't really looking. As a child, I was raised Methodist. I went to a great little church in a small Southern Maryland town where in Sunday School I was at the top of my class and in pageants I always played the lead. Then a shakeup in my family caused everything to go sour and I had some real bad experiences in a family member's church.

Every time I attended it seemed more and more like I was sucked into a televangelist's show - the pews had been replaced by an auditorium with theatre-style seating. There was a stage instead of an altar and pulpit with a five piece band on risers behind it. The singers....ugg the SINGERS sounded exactly like what you'd expect from a televangelist's show - cheesy, sappy, and superficial.

Then one holiday, (I think it was Thanksgiving), the pastor asked everyone in the audience to give thanks for what god had given them and that's when the disgust (and revulsion - as one of my brothers put it) set in. People began to stand up and give thanks for "god forgiving me for cheating on my wife" and "god helping me through my nasty divorce" and "gods help to get me off drugs". It was ridiculous. My middle brother just looked at me with an expression that said exactly what I was thinking. Rather than staying and mingling after the service, all 3 of us retreated to the car to wait and discussed how situations like this made us embrace atheism and agnosticism.

That was just one reason I choose to move towards Pagan religions and definitely not a deciding factor. As I mentioned before, there are many good things about christianity as there are with all religions. It was the beginning though, and after that everything bad about christianity seemed to stack up over the years.

It's little things here or there - specifically the religious right's infringement upon the freedom of choice (abortion) and same-sex rights (including the right to marry). Both the Anti-Abortion movement and the concept of homosexuality as a sin has its roots in christianity and as a result, it has effected and socialized our entire society. It's also the fact that some people point to passages in the bible and recite them in order to show how something is a sin or something is wrong. Because god said so. Maybe your god....but no deity I worship would condone things like murder and violence.

There are many reasons I've been drawn to Wicca. The first is personal responsibility. I want a religion where I am responsible for my actions and where accountability is key. I don't want to deal with a god who's son died for me so I can do whatever the hell I want and as long as I confess my "sins" I'll go to a nice place when I die. The Wiccan religion has 2 primary rules - And ye harm none, do what ye will (also known as the Wiccan Rede) and Anything you do, will come back 3 fold (also known as the "3-Fold Law" and more commonly as karma).

I love it! Do anything you want, just don't hurt anyone (including yourself) and be careful what you do because both good and bad things performed by you will come back 3 times as evil....or wonderful depending. The fact that there are these 2 rules is also nice because there's no one to stick this big old book in your face that has probably lost a lot in the translations in the past...oh say 2000 years and show you everything you're doing wrong.

The second reason is that Wicca is a religion closely tied with the Earth and nature. As no doubt you've seen, I have become incredibly environmentally conscious over the past year mostly due in part to the election of a President intent on destroying our Earth simply to make his fossil fuel generating, polluting contributors happy for his 4 years.

As a child, I lived for almost 13 years in Southern Maryland on almost 10 acres of land. We had trees as far as the eye could see, gullies, ditches, streams, creeks, marshes, cliffs and lots and lots of wildlife. It was all beautiful and I miss it a lot. Later, I joined the Boy Scouts and attained the rank of Eagle all the while spending many a weekend camping and enjoying the wild and even spending 9 weeks for 4 years in a row working at a summer camp in the gorgeous rolling mountains and lakes in West Virginia. Wicca is a religion that reveres nature and worships all the Earth....and that's something that is a close part of me. I've been suffering a bit in Salem without having many luscious green areas to play in.

The third and fourth reasons are, of course, the magic and multiple deities. As a teen I can always remember being fascinated by mythology. I use to read as many books in the library as I could. Greek, Roman and even Norse mythology kept me busy for hours at a time and filled my mind of a grand polytheistic landscape. It was so hard for me to believe that one god rules over so many things - they'd have to be schizophrenic. In the Wiccan religion, you can call upon any goddess or god you wish depending on your specific need. But the best thing is you have a whole pantheon to choose from - Hawaiian, Egyptian, Norse, Roman, Greek, or Celtic. Pagan means non-Christian and Wicca is a pagan religion that is not limited to any one or small group of deities. If you are doing a spell where you need to call upon a fire deity call upon the Roman god Mars or the Celtic god Lugh, or even the Hawaiian goddess Pele.

And magic....who wouldn't want to do magic? While magic often conjures up the thoughts of Harry Potter or the mutants on X-Men or even references to some of the movies I mention above, that's far from what magic is. Rituals and magic are prayers for something that you put all your spiritual energy into performing.

You have a need. Visualize that need as well as the solution to that need. Now close your eyes and act as if that need will happen. You've performed a simple spell. Now, add more parts to it. What exactly is your need? What deity would fulfill that need or rules over that particular aspect in your life. Choose a deity to call upon and ask for that need to be met. Next, think carefully about what your need specifically is. How do you want that need to be met? Keep in mind there are many ways to come to a solution for a problem - you want the best ending possible.

Take that "perfect solution" and put it into words. Make sure your words rhyme to have more of an effect and call upon your chosen deity asking for their assistance in coming to your solution. You have the beginnings to a Wiccan ritual. Add a little music, some drums and begin to dance. Light a candle, ring a bell, "cast a circle" or do several other things that will help bring you closer to your chosen deity and you have just cast a spell and performed a ritual.

Now mind you, what I have just said is more of an oversimplification of Wiccan magic but hopefully you get the point. I still talk to so many people who believe Wicca is hocus pocus or devil worshipping (mind you Wicca is a Pagan religion, Pagan means "non christian") and our President doesn't even believe it's a religion.

I have been researching Wicca now for almost 10 years. I came across it when I had my first connection to an Internet-like environment through Prodigy, where there was a religion news group all about Wicca. I can remember printing out reams of paper on the subject and reading voraciously. Later at Summer Camp, I bought my first witch book - Gypsy Love Magic by Ray Buckland. It was a cute book probably meant to appeal to young people investigating the craft like myself at the time. I can remember taking a staff I had found one summer (a perfect piece of ironwood found leaning against a tree in the woods - never carved) and leaving out in a thunderstorm to "charge it". I had no clue what I was doing...but it sounded cool.

As time went by, I became interested in several other things and occasionally Wicca would cross my path again and catch my interest. I visited and read a lot of Web sites during that time and learned that like the computer security community, many "newbies" were looked at with disdain. I speak, of course, of all the teens who dress in black and call themselves "goths" angsting their way through high school with black makeup, sour dispositions, and several piercings. I'm also talking about adults with too much time on their hands who need a hobby and choose Wicca to dabble in and point out where everyone else is wrong.

I learned the hard way how embarrassing it is to jump into the fray claiming to be an expert on something you're not when I made a big deal about "tracking" the kids who defaced the NCAA Web site back in 1997 and got flayed by the computer security and hacker communities for being a media whore and a fraud. Years later, I am on the other side of that often exposing frauds and pointing out loudly when the media badly reports on computer security. I was careful to apply this same practice when researching about Wicca - read a lot and keep my mouth shut unless it's to ask carefully thought-out questions. So that's what I did.

Little did I know that I would end up in a town known for its Wiccan practioners and witch community. So when I got here, my instinct was to take advantage of it. I subscribed to a lot of email list and upped my studies purchasing books and reading Web sites. I learned about all the basics and much about the different practices of various sects. The next logical step was to take classes.

So here I am, taking classes with Teri Kalgren at Artemisia Botanicals. I know what I want out of Wicca and am slowly learning how to make it a part of my spirituality and who I am. I spent a lot of time thinking and talking to my wife, to make sure she's comfortable with it. As long as I don't start dressing in black and walking around in public in weird clothes, she's fine. Sound familiar? To me, that's not part of what Wicca is (which I explained) and the only reason I'd be dressing up would be for a personal ritual or joining a coven for circle. I have no intention on flaunting my religion. I dislike it when christians do it...why would I?

I'm not ready to call myself a witch yet. I still have at least 3 classes in my current course and I need to feel comfortable performing rituals and merging Wiccan spirituality into my life before I'll consider myself part of the others. But that day will come, and I'm looking forward to it.

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