Confessions of an American Witch

While I was talking to guests at Smash a Pot earlier this month, I mentioned that I have seen foxes, racoons, and baby bunnies in my yard, yet I have never seen a duck or goose yet in my garden. Well, Monday that changed, for the neighbor brought a duck who needed to rest for awhile to my yard (he has dogs).  Ain't she a cute duck? She stayed in my herb garden for a few hours, recovering from whatever she was resting from. Left sometime during the night, or early morning on Tuesday. So now, I can add Duck to the list of wild life that I have seen visiting my yard and garden. Ah, the blessing of the Earth god, Geb. It's like we created a place for this duck. No sneaking up on this duck.

 Here is a pile of pottery that Khari has reserved for tomorrow's Smash-a-Pot ritual to celebrate our friend getting her new kidneys. We are going to toss these pieces of ceramics at a wall to break them into smaller pieces. Because it's fun to do. And once in the pile of tossing, it can't be removed--sorry. Broken and rejected pottery.

The other day, I made the mistake of looking at the Great Gherkin's website. To see if he was alive. Because he accounts for a significant amount of my pageviews on my old Gleamings from the Dawn blog. Is he (and his model wife) still selling what I was complaining that they were hawking back in the day? No, the video title was about a mind virus. It seems that the Great Gherkin is selling sci fi in the second era of Trump. Probably with Democrats as the alien invaders. I didn't watch the video.  That wasn't my problem with his page. The Great Gherkin will be the Great Gherkin. No, speaking as a teacher that wrote a piece for the Hermetic Golden Dawn Flying Roll commentary book, my issue is the idea that for less than three hundred US dollars, a student can get access to all lessons of every Grade of the HGD system, just so the Pickle can include GD membership as a bonus material to his current scam. How did I get into this book?!? That the understanding of the Golden Dawn ...

Given my experience as a lodge officer and student of the Hermetic Golden Dawn and its offshoots, occasionally I need to explain (if only to remind myself) why I am not allowed to teach and lead in GD.  A who's who of the Golden Dawn community. I was not selected by a lodge to be a leader, or teacher. No, I accidentally declared myself one when attending my first Open Full Moon in fall 1996. Finding myself in the presence of a hundred-plus Denver witches, all who seemed to be experts in some esoteric field or another, I introduced myself with the only thing that I felt confident in discussing: Hermetic Golden Dawn, Thelema, and Aliester Crowley. It was either that, or talk about being an erotica author, right? Everyone who heard that initial introduction of mine, which included the mention that I was a published writer, no one ever allowed me to move past, or forget that intro. I got rewarded, or punished for it, depending upon the ego of the occultist. A couple of shop owners used...