Love In The Asylum

Ways Summer Solstice is Celebrated in New Mexico:

1. Get naked! Because it's 100+ degrees outside and otherwise your skin will melt into your face.

2. Honor the light! Until its constant and unflinching brightness gives you sunstroke, because there is no such thing as shade or cloud cover.

3. SET EVERYTHING ON FIRE. (okay, to be fair, the majority of the southern half of the state has been on fire since May. But today the bosque lit up, and now the entire city is under an air quality alert from the clouds of smoke hanging over. DNW.)

There are some flaws in following a ritual calendar made up by people living in much more northerly and temperate climes, I must admit. The solstices and equinoxes don't change, but Litha is supposed to be the first day of summer, and here we are already well into the most wretched part of the season. Candles and marigold petals just seem a little inadequate in the face of a Southwest summer, you know?

Perhaps I will come up with a holiday for the first day of monsoon season. I'm sure I could find plenty of people here who would celebrate it with me.

It liiiiives!

I just noticed that I've been on radio silence since Monday. Whoops. In my defense it's been a kind of hectic week! What I have been up to:

1. Writing a soul-crushing paper on 12th century French romance for my lit class. In proper form, I picked the one topic that allowed me to go on at length about gendered plot tropes and why the queen thinks the heroic knight is gay, which is mostly because he totally is. Lanval may be one of the earliest examples of the My Girlfriend Who Lives In Canada theme. And I got back the paper on Frankenstein and Dr. Moreau that I thought was completely inane rubbish, mostly because I didn't even pick a topic to write on until 4 in the morning, but my TA apparently disagreed, because I got a very high grade on it. Go me!

2. Researching ways to banish a spirit when sage smudging has already proven to be ineffective, as a favor to a friend who is being particularly hassled by...something. This is not exactly my area of expertise, so I've been hitting up the reference books I have here (which luckily includes my Monster Book of Spells) and relevant members of my family for any ideas of what might work. I wonder if there's a pay-able field for academic magicians?

3. Drowning in a sea of bleargh and phlegm. As it turns out, two and a half all-nighters in two weeks isn't that good for your immune system. Shocking, I know. I started getting sick while I was writing my paper, and the last three days I've just lain around my room whining about how I can't breath through my nose or get my ears to pop or taste anything. And I'm not even sick enough that I can take off class or work, so it's just pathetic all around.

4. Writing fic about Kirk being afraid to give Spock blowjobs because he thinks he'll be allergic to him. THIS IS ALL colourofsaying'S FAULT I SWEAR.

HEY GUYS LOOK WHAT I FOUND

I know I've said before that tarot isn't really my thing, and it isn't, I've never had good luck doing divination with tarot cards. But but but I was giving a friend advice on buying a deck for someone (apparently I am now the resident occult expert?) and while I was looking around I found a deck put out by DC-Vertigo, featuring Vertigo characters for the Arcana. With art done by Dave McKean, who did the Sandman covers. And the tarot guide that comes with it has an intro by Neil Gaiman. YOU GUYS I WANT THIS LIKE BURNING. SERIOUSLY LOOK AT THIS FUCKING ART:

I totally can't afford it, but man do I want this set. I don't even know if I'd use it, I just want to be able to lay it out on my table and stare at how pretty it is.

Of course, now I'm wondering who would be on the cards if DC put out a deck from their main line. Or Marvel. Would Cap be Justice? I'd probably put Zatanna on The Magician card. Who would be Death? Or the Hanged Man? I'm kind of tempted to pose it to noscans_daily and see what they think.

What I should be doing: sleeping, to make up for the four hours I got last night and the six hours I got the night before.

What I am actually doing: birthday shopping for myself (my dad said I could pick a few things out online and he would buy them for me). Listening to the Cable-and-Deadpooliest Cable and Deadpool song EVER (Bullets by Tunng). Wishing M*A*S*H were on on Sunday nights so I could get my Hawkeye/Trapper fix. Plotting Sulu/Chekov hurt/comfort set during Wrath of Khan when Chekov gets earwormed. Making icons.

Here, have some icons.

5x Torchwood (CoE promo)
2x Iron Man
1x Booster Gold
6x Wicca/paganism/nature

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Whoo, first post from my shiny Open Beta paid account on Dreamwidth. I love it. Also, I now have 5 actual invite codes, so if you want one leave a comment with your email and I'll hook you up. First come, first serve!

My necklace broke today during Japanese class, and I'm weirdly upset about it. It's not like it's anything fancy - I think I spent about $15 on it at a fair, and it's just cheap pot metal. It's beaten and scuffed where I caught it on things, played with it, even chewed on it (I have a bad habit of absent-mindedly putting things in my mouth). But, I don't know.

I tend to think that objects and symbols have as much power as we give them - put enough faith and belief into something and it does become an object of power. (This is also why I talk to my computer - I think anything we anthropomorphize long enough does achieve some kind of base-level sentience, even if it's not life as we would think of it) And I've put a lot into this charm. I've worn it more or less continuously (I don't take jewelry off because I tend not to put it back on) for 4 years. It's the receptacle of all the faith I could conjure up through 12 AP exams, my grandfather's brain surgery, my high school graduation - so many important and scary things in my life. At some point, an object becomes significant just through dint of time passed.

And you know, I like having this symbol of my religious identity, as well. I'm pretty low-key about my religion - most of the people who I want to know do, and it isn't anyone's business, really. But I do like that I have this small way of marking myself out. People who know what a pentacle means know what I believe. People who don't have an opening to ask me about it, which gives me the chance to explain what it symbolizes and what I believe in, so maybe there's a few less people in the world who think we worship the devil. Sometimes people compliment me on it, and that's pretty cool. And it's nice to have for myself, a reminder everyday that the Goddess is in my life.

Also, it's weird to reach down to play with it when I'm bored and have there be nothing there.

A few months ago, my roommate and her friend asked to interview me about my religious beliefs for a church retreat they were attending. I went along with it, because I thought it would be kind of fun and I like talking about my beliefs (when I feel reasonably safe about not getting stoned). One of the first questions they asked me was: can I put a curse on someone?

*blinks* Okay, then.

I consider myself neo-pagan/Wiccan, and have been since I was fourteen, although the specifics of my beliefs have changed a good bit as I've grown up. I'm neither particularly in the closet or vocal about it; I wear a pentacle, I keep my books right out on my bookshelf, and I'll answer honestly if someone asks. My parents know, and most of my close friends, although my grandma doesn't. But I don't push it in people's face, trying to show off how unusual and special I am, because that's just dumb. I've been practicing magic since I was eleven: the first spell I ever did was a charm for being confident and making new friends when I was scared about starting middle school (my mom helped me with it, because she is awesome).

So the short answer is yes, I can put a curse on someone. But the longer answer is this: I could put a curse on someone, if they annoyed me or pissed me off or I just didn't like them. I could also walk up to them and punch them in the face. But as a rule, I don't go around punching people I know (or don't know) in the face. Why is that? Well, because it's rude, pointless, will just make them dislike me more, and because it is morally wrong. According to my personal beliefs, I do not have the right to physically assault someone just because they think my favorite singer is a talentless hack; if I did it, I would be doing something bad and wrong.

So the longer answer is: I could curse someone, but I don't, because that would be a mean, nasty, morally bad thing to do, and I'm not a mean, nasty, morally bad person. Or at least I'd like to think I'm not.

And the number of times I've told people that I'm a witch and had them ask me this, or similar questions - a boy in one of my high school classes once asked if I could turn him into a toad - makes me wonder if there are just some basically wrong assumptions that some non-pagans make about the nature of magic as practiced in a context like Wicca.

I was explaining to telyanofcelore  this theory, and she suggested that among people who don't really know anything about Wicca - or only know about from their churches and what they pick up from pop culture, there are a few different reactions when you tell them you are Wiccan. The first group of people think of it as something a bit silly, all crystals and herbs and New Age-y nonsense. The second group (also known as ultra-conservative jerks) think devil worship and Satanism and start condemning people to hell (I've met few of these. I don't like them. Who would?).

And then there's the third group, which is I think the group I'm talking about here: the group of people whose idea of magic and witchcraft is mostly, understandably, shaped by popular culture - movies, fairy tales, all the jazz. They think of witches as old ladies with warty noses and cats, of magic as waving a wand and making the chairs dance and the dishes do themselves. Their idea is mainly power-based - magic is something you learn how to do so that you do things easier, or do things ordinary people can't. You use it to get power for yourself, to control other people, or to punish them. Magic is simply something practical, a means to an end, albeit a supernatural means; it is, as much as any craft, divorced from any moral code.

So it's a logical assumption that if I know how to do magic I would put curses on people. After all, why shouldn't I, if it's in my power to do so? What is stopping me, when it's something that would so clearly benefit me?

But magic in the context of Wicca just doesn't work like that. It's not divorced from a moral code; because it functions as part of religious ritual, Wiccan magic is very much tied up in Wiccan morality. I believe, very strongly, that if I were to curse someone there would be severe consequences for it; maybe not something as immediate and dramatic as a rock falling on my head, but sooner or later I would have to pay for my actions. The Threefold Rule is one of the most basic tenets of Wicca: you reap what you sow. You get back what you send out. If you put negativity into the world, the world gives you negativity straight back. At the very least, I would have to deal with the knowledge that I deliberately tried to hurt someone, and I would be a worse person for it. Why would I want to bring that upon myself? Why would I do that?

Just because I can do something doesn't mean I should do it, and it doesn't mean I want to.

So, when I spent the night at Envy's on Friday, Alyssa and I were talking about, I don't know, something, and the topic got onto comparative oracles, and eventually we decided it would be fun to hook up and have her do a tarot reading for me and me do an I Ching reading for her, and both of us do one for Envy, our token Christian. So that was what we did today - we went to the park and blatantly practiced the occult in front of tiny cute children. And then we got Chinese food. But really it was fun, and the reading I got was, well, very interesting.

She did two readings for me, actually, one to a question I asked and one that was just a three card past-present-future. They both said about the same thing, which I thought was interesting, and it seemed like an answer to my question, which I thought was more so. Basically, my question was if this first semester of college will be a positive experience. Both my readings said, pretty much, that I've been through some major changes, but right now I'm really strong and in a very good place, ready to seize opportunities and what not. And both said for the future, I have challenges ahead of me, mostly caused by my own fear, self-limitations, inability to take risks, etc. However, I do have the strength to break out, take a dive, whatever, and the rewards are worth it once I do. This, to me, sounds about spot on for the situation I'm in right now - about to leave for college, nervous about being on my own and having to define my life from now on, but I think it will all work out good in the end. I'm pretty happy with how the reading turned out. 

On a completely unrelated and irrelevant note, after three (THREE!!!) weeks of desperate attempts and aborted downloads, I FINALLY have successfully downloaded Vanilla. That sort of thing really ought to be celebrated.