Oh No, What’s That?
And now for another little trip to la-la land. This time not an angel book, but Essential Wicca. Like the angel book, it is packed full of opportunities to squeal with undignified uncontrollable laughter. As in the angel book, they simply leap off the page. Here’s a bit in a chapter called ‘Working the Sacred’ where we are being told how to do a Working (here’s a hint: it takes place in a Circle, which is Sacred Space, and capital letters appear quite a lot):
It’s good to remember that little children and cats are generally much more sensitive to the psychic/spiritual world than most adults, so they may be a rough gauge of how things are going. If, for instance, your previously content sleeping pussy-cat takes off at a dead run for parts unknown, or every baby within earshot starts screaming, you might want to check what’s going on.
And that’s the end of the paragraph, and the next one changes the subject. One is left wondering (with the sweat beading on one’s brow) what kind of thing might be going on. But the book doesn’t say. It’s like that. It drops hints but then doesn’t go into detail.
Not to mention of course the other hilarities. Especially the cat thing. Notice the absence of dogs. Well fair enough. Dogs would just lie there happily snoring and farting while six kinds of devils turned up and started peeling everyone present with a very blunt carrot peeler. But what about parrots? Eh? The parrots I’ve known have been very god damn sensitive to the psychic/spiritual world. But they just get ignored in favour of those histrionic fakers, cats. I blame Andrew Lloyd Webber.
There’s more scary stuff. Really scary. It gets just a little more specific. This is on the next page (59) where we’re learning about pentagrams and elemental crosses.
You might not want to use a pentagram, because a pentagram can create a strong resonating signal on the astral plane. It calls attention to you for anything or anyone who cares to come and investigate.
Oh my god! Oh jeezis! Did you get that? Anyone or [shudder] anything! Ow, ow, ow, I’m really scared now. I won’t sleep for a month. I mean – damn – so there are anyones and anythings out there, all the time, and the reason they haven’t come in and yanked our heads off and eaten the rest of us on rye bread with mustard is because we haven’t called attention to ourselves? Yet? But we could anytime? Just by using a pentagram? Well hell on wheels. Life is even more precarious than I’ve always thought. (So what are these stupid people doing drawing pentagrams on the pages of their book then? Huh? I mean, brilliant! Tell us how to draw pentagrams and then in the next breath casually remark that if we use them we might call attention to ourselves for the benefit of who knows what ravenous dribbling Thing that’s lounging around in the munchosphere. Do these people have no sense of responsibility? Or is it that they’re actually working for the hungry creatures. That’s probably it. The warning is just a bluff, of course, as well as a way of protecting themselves against lawsuits by the very distant relations of the gobbled-ups. They know damn well that half the people reading this book will be using those pentagrams the very instant they see the warning. Oh well, maybe that’s good. If the gobblers are eating the pentagram users, that means they’re leaving the rest of us alone, at least for now.)
Ophelia,
This: ‘ravenous dribbling Thing that’s lounging around in the munchosphere’ was brilliant. I hope there are more of these in the works, even if picking on Wiccans is a little on the candy/baby side.
MP
I think I’ll stick to Buffy.
Uh-oh. My female cat, Victoria, tends to race around the house for no apparent reason; does this mean that weird devils are lurking in my attic? (Or, perhaps, behind the bookcases?) But Disraeli can’t be bothered. Perhaps there’s a gender* component to the whole feline-as-devil-thermometer thing. Must investigate further.
*–Granted, both cats are, um, ungendered. Or less gendered than they were. Or something.
The thing about Wicca that always ticked me off was how in spite of all their talk about respect for the “female principle”, it was the god that still got associated with the sun and sky above while women were still relegated to the earth below and the moon, which is just a reflector. Same old sterotypes warmed over, is what it smelled like. And don’t get me started on the technophobia.
As for the dangers of the pentagram… gee, maybe we should wipe out all 5-limbed starfish, then we’ll be safe… that is, until they regenerate…or another kind of starfish gets in an accident and winds up with only 5 left, or…oh, dear. How many hundred million years has this menace gone unsuspected? Arright, I haven’t read that book, so I’ll stop; you said it all. Besides, I kind of like starfish. And I don’t even know how psychic they are.
Seems to me if a baby starts carrying on, though, the problem might be in the diapersphere.
Thanks, Mark. You want more? Okay, I’ll do more. Sure, it’s a candy/baby thing, but then – the stuff really is out there, and it’s popular, and people take it seriously (why? why? why?), and global brain-rot is proceeding apace, so – what else can one do?
Could be, Miriam. But then again maybe Vic is just playing tag with an angel. Unless you’ve been doing a Working with a pentagram, in which case it’s clearly something much worse. Cool names by the way.
Well I’m sure the dangerous pentagrams are the ones that have been done on purpose by a real Wiccan. That stuff is powerful, dude. The book keeps saying so.
This reminded me of a comment on another blog; the ‘curator’ of the Museum of Hoaxes posted a comment about some American school which supposedly banned Halloween as being ‘offensive to witches’, including the comment ‘their decision seems a bit confused because witches are not, in fact, real… the Wiccans call themselves witches, but I’ll go out on a limb and wager that they don’t possess any supernatural powers.’
An offended ‘Witch’ responded: “I know dozens of Witches who would beg to differ on your comments. Some are Wiccan, some are not. We all call ourselves Witches. And whether our powers are supernatural or not is a matter of perspective. After all, yesterday’s magic is today’s science.”
I still think of that comment whenever I’m feeling low during the long winter nights…
Bravo! It’s always disgusted me how most sceptics will suddenly become sympathetic and supportive when Wicca comes along because they see in it an ally against Christianity. See, for example, how the Sceptic’s Dictionary deals with it and compare to almost any other entry: http://skepdic.com/wicca.html
A bit off-subject, but kind of related: anyone remember the ‘Wimmin'(Loony Feminist Nonsense) column in Private Eye, 1980s, early 1990s (see e.g.) http://www.trashfiction.co.uk/sexism.html ?
It monitored the wave of popular-fringe culture, University conferences and New Age publications which promulgated this kind of stuff – it was usually associated with ‘deep’ Green / eco-feminist. It pissed off loads on the intelligent left but we were too polite to say so, or felt sympathetic to the Greenham women, and therefore it was acceptable… The fringe in the eighties is now at the centre twenty years on… Thought I’d mention it as it occured to me when reading Francis Wheen’s excellent “How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World” that this stuff hasn’t just appeared in the popular – or high-brow – mainstream overnight…
Check this from ‘Wimmin’ , 1986
‘Wigwam Bam’ – One of the first feminist pop songs, telling the consciousness raising tale of how squaw Mini Ha Ha shed her culturally determined position of subservience and on the dominant role of predator with the joyous yell: ‘Wigwam bam gonna make you my man!’
– Eleanor Levy, Record Mirror
“We now allow men to attend our seminars, but we do not allow them to ask questions. This seems to be a sensible solution because however well-meaning or feminist a man may be, he is still sexist because he is a man.”
– Letter to Times Educational Supplement
Yeah, Wiccans seem to be remarkably good at getting ‘offended.’ People don’t respect them, people don’t understand – the usual stuff.
Interesting, Peter. That entry is quite sympathetic, isn’t it. How odd.
Thanks for the material, Nick!
The pentagram thing gave me an idea for a little experiment. I’ll draw one on my floor with one of my irresistible bacon/cheese/mustard sandwiches in the middle. I’m sure that will call them out (whoever they are). If anything daemonic drops by, I’ll refer them to you.
Great, thanks, Merlijn! I’ll look forward to it.