• Edward Johnson, Esq.

  Sudsbury, Suffold, England 1645

I love when I find something like this. I slowly go through The Witches Almanac so that I have a little something new to read over a period of time. Today I found this and was reminded of why I feel so strongly about my beliefs. Many out there feel like they totally fit into a Christian type-set. I always felt like I was more or less going through the motions. When it comes to nature and being a Witch I feel like I always have been and it just took me a while to find my right place.

Ask about anyone who has ever known me and they will tell you that this verse fits me almost to the letter. The whole worldly goods part I’m a little off on, but I admire them more than NEED for them. I have my ups and downs but I can say that my family and I have nice stuff but it does not run our lives.

As for the beginning; I have always felt closer to animals than to people and have had a draw toward nature since I was a child.

I guess the point of this is I just feel like I know who I am a little more after I read something like this.

After being here for a couple of months I FINALLY set up the home alter and saged the house. Jakob was having some bad dreams so I figured it was high time to cleanse his room and move it around a bit for better energy. So far he seems to be doing a lot better!

In a couple of weeks he is going to be getting his tonsils out. Best to get them out now since he is still young (6), rather than wait for him to get older and have it be more painful. He has needed them out for a while though. Those things are scary big even when they are healthy! Yuck!

Well, time to go be productive or something. Need to sort out some stuff for the garage sale tomorrow, taking the minions to see Cars 2, stuff to do!

The two I grabbed were on two subjects I was sure to get a kick out of. *Sidebar. Why do we, people I mean, feel the need to watch or read about things that we know are going to piss us off? I know reading about Westborough Baptist Church in Kansas is going to make me so made I could kick an old lady, but I do it anyway and it never fails to make my blood boil. I feel so much smarter now! I had NO idea that Halloween was Satan’s birthday. I didn’t know that was THE most important day for Witches and Satanists. Oh and did you know that druids ran around kidnapping women and ritualistically killed them, leaving a carved pumpkin. Seriously, this is what the tract “BOO” is all about.

I wasn’t surprised to see that all the anti witch rhetoric was based on Leviticus. Pretty much every crackpot who thinks they know the Bible quotes something out of that book. No Witches, No tattoos blah, blah, blah. No one ever gets in your face about planning more than one crop in a field that was an affront to God, as was wearing clothing made of more than one material. The list is pretty long and was pretty much THE list of laws to keep before the New Testament.

The other tract I picked up was about Bewitched. Somehow that show is a gateway drug for Ouija boards, drugs and homosexuality. Honestly, is there anyone else out there who thinks this guy’s is nucking futs! I did a little bit of research, I say a little because I don’t feel he is worth much more than a quick google search. Yup, Mr. Chick is one paranoid man. He condemns everyone! Jews, Roman Catholics, Muslim, Pagan, Mormon. You name the group and he is bashing them in one of his little books. Unreal! How does this guy have any friends? Better yet. Where the Hell does he get his info? Not the bible. Maybe his own special version says all the things it does. I can take passages and make them say anything I want them to as well.

Guys like this make me want to go to one of these churches where they cast out demons and have a good giggle. I wonder what they do if you don’t throw yourself on the floor and have a fit? I doubt there is anything they could do to get more that a laugh out of me for a reaction. It would be a huge waste of time though. I wouldn’t prove anything to anyone. They would eventually give up saying the Devil had too great a hold on me. I would never get it through to those types of people that I could care less about the Devil and that I don’t believe in him. How do I give power to something I don’t acknowledge?

Right now I am trying to make a few positive changes to help me to get through the rest of my time here, and to be a bit more productive with my time. I am going to spend a lot less time on some of the social games that Facebook has. I have been playing two for a while now and it just seems to take up more and more of my time. There is so much more I could be doing. I am now looking online for some books on sketching and art, leaning toward the tattoo style. I’d like to spend a bit more time just drawing and see where it takes me.

I’m also going to be blogging more, getting my thoughts out on paper or in the open to maybe help work things out. I think it will help me to deal with some of the stress I have been dealing with. Overall I have been coping pretty well. I get pretty down when I think about being away from my children and from Tania. Work has had its own set of stressors. The hardest thing is dealing with the fact that I can’t do or say anything to anyone to try to get the point across that our leaders are screwing up! I’m just going to focus on me and my family. The things I can control. I’m going to try to regain some of the balance I have lost, get back to the more creative me. I’ve been getting music from people here to get my music collection back up to date. I have been slacking off quite a bit on that so I have a lot of artists to check out. I have always used music to calm myself or to “escape” from things. I did it in high School quite a bit. Not having many friends or a lot of freedom to go out with them I had plenty of time alone. During that time I would tune into music. Use it to be somewhere else. Not that I had an abusive home or anything of the sort! My mom was a single parent who worked a lot to help support us. I didn’t have the best grades or focus in school so she needed me to focus on that more than being out getting in trouble with my friends.

That brings us to art. I have always doodled, but never committed to drawing for any amount of time. Maybe it was/ is lack of focus, ADD, whatever. I want to get back into it for a couple of reasons. To see if I can be any good at it, and to maybe show my sons what it is to draw and help to guide them with art. It seems more and more art is being eliminated from schools. I hate to think that by the time they are in elementary music and art classes might be gone altogether. This way I can show them myself that drawing and art are important.

Well, I think I’m good for now. Going to relax before tomorrow.

The past few days have been so-so. Today it has been occurring to me just home much I miss my sons. Yes, I do miss my wife too, but I get to see her and tell her about the way I feel. It feels different with them. I am trying to be strong about it but it has been getting harder to not just want to be home with them and not here in Iraq.

The fact that it feels like we are here for no other reason other than making other people look good does not make the separation any easier to deal with or justify. As much as I want to be here to train my men, and get the “job” done, I feel like it is just becoming a huge waste of my time. My time could be spent with the boys, playing and bonding and being a dad. I hate feeling like this too. I know dwelling on it doesn’t help, but I have had a hard time not thinking about it when I am not working on something.

What isn’t helping is the prospect of possibly going home early for school. If I get a date, then I could be home in a month. One month…wow! If not then I won’t be home any earlier than mid October. I have been in the mindset of going home later up till now. Even if I get to go back stateside early I will still be away from the family for another two months while at the school. We would still be able to see each other on long weekends and let’s face it. Being back in the states is a lot safer than here; less for Tania to worry about.

I’m beginning to feel like I will not get into the school. The Army placed me on orders to be stationed in Washington state just before the paperwork for school cleared. So right now I am in limbo. I don’t know which way this will go, and it seems like I won’t get a decision till the last minute. That is driving me a little mad! I need to know what is going to happen not only to prepare the family one way or the other but also to prepare myself. I need to know if I am going to have to wait another five months before I can go home.

I hate the not knowing!

So, it seems I was to be heading in the direction of the idea and concept of the Devil, Satan, or Lucifer. One of the journaling points of a book that I am going through (Paganism-An introduction to earth-centered religions: by Joyce & River Higgenbotham) is at the end of the chapter regarding this subject.

Things I believed about Satan when I was growing up were…

He was the exact opposite of god. Where God had compassion, the devil had non. He was the deceiver, the reason the world was full of sin and the lord of Hell. That place you didn’t want to go to because you were going to be condemned to an eternal life of pain and torture for your sins against God. Lots of scary shit! I don’t think I was ever worried that He would jump out of the bushes at me, but I had that kernel of doubt in my mind. What if He is real? Do I want to risk it?

My beliefs about Satan now are…

This is a hard question for me. After being brought up in a Christian home and going to church till I was 18 it’s hard to get past all the guilt and fear used to keep you in line, as it were. I have done a lot of reading since I started the path of Witchcraft. Pretty much everything I had read says that the Devil is a Christian creation, based on their interpretations of Pagan images of the Green man. Outsiders looking in on a Pagan ceremony to the Green Man, wearing horns or represented by the stag or goat, made the assumption that this was the work of the devil and was therefore against the teachings of the church. Voila! The Devil! I am of course talking about the European Pagans here as that is what I have done most of my reading on. In other cultures one of the names used to represent to God or male aspect of The Power was Lucifer. Now, here is where I see some issues. What if the Christians are talking about the same Lucifer? I know just because someone is names Bob, that doesn’t mean he is exactly the same as every other Bob in the world. One Bob could be a saint; another could be a total asshole. Not that I have anything against the Bobs’ of the world. That’s just the name that came to me first…sorry! So what if the two are the one and the same? Pretty much means I have some more reading to do!

My beliefs about demons and evil spirits now are…

I don’t really give them any power. To believe in something, I mean totally believe in it is to give it power for or against you. I believe more in the power and spirit of nature. She and I get along pretty well I think so I don’t really give much thought to evil spirits and the such. I never really believed in the mass hype about possession. I think the mind is a very powerful tool. If you truly believe your problems are due to being possessed by something, pretty so you will have yourself convinced there could be no other explanation. Go to a church were the minister lays hands on someone to expel the evil spirit. It’s mass hysteria. Get a few people twitching on the ground and soon others will follow suit, afraid of not fitting in. I think I would actually enjoy going to one of these. Tell them I am a witch and see where that takes us. Something tells me there would be a very frustrated minister at the end of the day…and a very bemused witch.

Three beliefs I cannot hold while believing the things I do about Satan, demons, and evil spirits are…

I guess I’m not having an issue with this one that much. My biggest thing is going to be studying the history of Lucifer and where the name came from in the Christian since. If it was taken to intentional vilify the Pagan name or what.

The things I fear spiritually are…

Again, it is hard to completely let go of the fears instilled in me since I was young about damnation and what happened after death. I, like most fear the unknown that is after death. I would like to thing we come back as something else; a guiding spirit, reincarnation of some sort. I don’t like the idea of there being absolutely nothing after we die. There are a lot of different beliefs about what happens after we die. Even among other Traditional witches. I just need to find what I feel most strongly fit my own personal belief.

The things I believe can harms me spiritually are…

Doubt. Not allowing myself to fully believe, without a shadow of doubt, in something. That is one thing that was hard for me at the beginning of my path. There are a lot of books and online sites devoted to Wicca. But after quite a bit of reading and personal trial and error there were a few things that are important to Wicca that didn’t feel :right” to me. Most of that had to do with ritual. Casting a circle at my home alter and calling to quarters felt a lot like a part of litany. Something done for the sake of doing, not because I felt it was what felt right. Even one small aspect was a big no-no. I guess in Wicca it is thought to be disrespectful to blow candles out. Here’s my take on that. Yes, blowing them out just for the sake of extinguishing the flame without much thought could be seen as unthinking. I like to be close to the flame and then blow hard enough to put out the flame. Then as the smoke rises from the wick I like to breathe in. Why? Well, firstly I love that smell. Fresh candle smoke is wonderful to me. (I like the smell of gun powder and gas so maybe I’m cracked). Secondly I like to think that by breathing in the last of the candles majickal use I am taking some of that energy into myself. Something to add a bond between myself and the energies associated to that flame. I also will say to the powers represented by flame; “Go if you must, stay if you will”. This may be a part of the Wiccan process but I like it because it feels appropriate. The Power is there at all times, but during that time you are asking for their specific attention. I like to think if the spirits and the Power as a guest. Please be present during this time, when I am done you are more than welcome to stay but are also welcome to leave if you wish.

How did I acquire these beliefs and fears?

Self doubt would have to be my number one obstacle in my life. I have had the hardest time sticking to my guns for worry of being wrong, judged or cast away as an outsider. THE hardest thing I have had to do is accept being an outsider. Sometimes not being just like everyone else is a good thing. I have always had a problem with feeling accepted, from elementary school on. A life of moving around always made me the new kid. I was always eager to please so that I could be accepted. Many times this meant adjusting the way I felt about things to feel like one of the guys, as it were. Now that I am older and have finally figured out what I really believe and feel right about. Some of the old ways still come back to haunt me though! 

What can I do to determine whether my belief and fears are well founded?

READ! This is not a hard question. I just need to study, research and learn. Not much else to do here!

What do I need in order to feel safe spiritually?

Know in my heart that what has been taught to me for years in just not true. Then embrace the teachings of the old ways. Beliefs and practice that pre-date Christian ideology; most importantly make those beliefs my way of life. Not just something to use as a conversation piece. Really bond with the Power and take it into myself. The key is opening me to the old ways.

You could say today was a deep thoughts kind of day!

I am NOT looking forward to this little trip to the high desert of California as it is going to be the longest I will have been away since we had the boys. I am sad, nervous and sad again. I love my family and love the boys like no one else. If there is any good that could have come from the recruiting assignment it would be that I was able to stay home for the entire first four years and 18 months of their lives. Many in the army cannot make that claim. For this I am one of the lucky ones.

Now that I am back to my REAL job, it’s time for me to prepare myself for the deployment to come and with it the year long separation that is going to probably be the hardest thing I have ever done. Not only that but do it with an outside strength so that my family, Tania namely, won’t see how hard this is going to be for me. I am so glad that she is as strong and loving as she is. I think a lesser person would have thrown in the towel long ago. Between me deploying a month after we moved to the states together, through four years of recruiting, as well as my stupid man antics, by all accounts she should be gone, looking for a man who can provide a more stable environment with less stress and drama. Yet here she stays, continuing to love us all, be supportive and hold our home together through field exercises, gunnery’s and another upcoming trip to the sand box.

The one thing that can be said for being out in the desert, be it here in the USA or overseas, is that star and moon gazing are amazing! Being out in the middle of no where, with no light pollution from surrounding towns, cities and whatnot make the whole sky glimmer with the stars. When the moon comes up she seems bigger and brighter than anywhere else. Being drawn to the moon and the night as much as I am, this is my time to reflect and ground myself. I hope to have the time to have some alone time to get my thoughts together while I am away. To be able to reflect on my family and work some simple spells to keep them safe in my absence.

May Diana and Dianus watch over you and yours; protect you and keep you from harm

Over the hedge and back

jason

Good grief! Yesterday was on the stressful side for sure. Got a call at six a.m. from one of my soldiers, major family emergency. So started my last weekend home before leaving for training in California for 4 weeks. Spent the day with him calming him down and getting things for him and his family straight. Tania spent time with the other side of the family as well. Their parents flew in by the end of the day with me taking him to the airport to pick up his dad and then back to the base and then back home. Didn’t finish up the day till a bit after midnight. My guy spent some time here at the house with me, trying to calm down and not get in trouble. LOTS of negative energy, negative vibes, just negativity in general.

The first thing I thought of when I woke up was “I have GOT to sage this house!” I do not need that kind of energy in our home! It seems that while he was here he was a lot calmer than he had been for most of the day. I’d like to think that the positive energy in the house had something to do with that. I like to think also that we have a pretty positive environment here, and though I haven’t really cleansed the house in a while; between the boys positive energy and the love that permeates the house through my wife’s baking and caring for the boys, it stays pretty mellow in house. this though was definitely something that was going to eat up a lot of that positive energy….definitely time to recharge!

Have you ever had company, family or otherwise that just seemed to bring the mood of the whole house down? That sort of thing just seems to linger after they leave causing you to keep bringing up all the negative things they said or did while there. If you’ve ever noticed that, then you can see why I felt the need to get that crud out of our home.

I started out by moving a few things around on the alter. It’s been set up since we have been here, but I find myself constantly moving things around a little bit. Setting it up the way I feel it should be. While skimming back over one of my books I found an alter setup suggestion that pretty much looked like mine. I made a few changes, centered and grounded (with the help of Jake through questions like “can I help?” and Whatcha doin’?” ala Phineus and Ferb) and started lighting candles for the Goddess and God adding Lavender incense as that makes pretty much everyone in the house happy. I have a candle dedicated to the moon and a candle center alter for the elements of fire. I rang a bell and asked for the presence of the spirits, thanking them for being with me.

 After channeling happy thoughts, again made easy with my son watching and helping, I lit the sage while speaking to the energies of the home. I thanked them for our home and family and asked to help disperse and banish the negative thoughts and energies that had been brought into the house. Then I went from room to room with the boys on my heels, circling and thanking the Goddess and God for our happy family and asked to bless and clense our home, paying close attention to the rooms that had the most exposure to negative energy. Once I finished up I returned to the alter and  spent a little time quietly reflecting and extinguished the sage.

As I’m writing this my alter is still lit, honoring the Goddess and God. I figure I’ll leave the alter going for a while giving it time to warm the home. I feel much better now! I know this is more for me…kind of journalling on-line but I wanted to post it. Maybe someone will see it and go “hmmmm…that’s why I feel so Blah after so an so visits!”

Over the Hedge and back,

jason

Also spent a little time explaining things on the alter to Jakob. It was nice showing him what each thing meant. I just want him to understand what I am doing and give him the ground work so that later when he’s older he can understand what it means to be a witch. If he chooses that path then I will be happy for him. If he chooses something else, then I will support that too. I want him( and eventually Aiden too) to be comfortable with believing in whatever way they seem fit. Yes they are young but if they see that this is something that is a part of my life and that it’s important to me them maybe they will learn to respect it and ask more and more about it. I just want him to think and learn things for himself before he goes off the school and hears things from others who may not be as understanding or open. 

Over the Hedge and back again,

jason

I wish I had the answer to how NOT to let things preoccupy my time and push things aside. I’m struggling for balance and focus. I know it’s because I’m letting myself become consumed with all things work. Now that I’m back in the REAL army I’m focused on proving myself. After so much time away I was afraid that I would loose the ability to be a proper leader. So far, I have been doing it and doing it well. Lots of positive feedback, good training and kudos from my higher ups. Maybe it’s time to pull back a little and re-focus on the spiritual side of my self.

It’s been a pretty busy past few months! So much I should have come home and blogged about when it was still fresh in my mind. Soooo guess I’ll knock the cobwebs out and update on the highlights.

A few months ago I was assigned as the Equal Opportunity guy for my unit. That being said I had to go to “school” for two weeks to get the basics of being the rep for my Company. When the course started we were given a little assignment; making our personal badges. The project was pretty simple, a couple of manila file folders taped together creating four panels. Each panel contained personal information such as name, ethnicity, race, religion, then other info on who we see ourselves as. I took the thing home and got nice and creative with it and brought it in for the second part of the assignment, presenting our “badge”. The class started and each person got up in turn and presented their badges, telling everyone what they had put down, then when finished opened up the floor for questions before sitting and moving to the next person.  I was somewhere in the middle so it took a little bit to get to me. As I sat I couldn’t help but notice that the vast majority of the class were Baptist or Southern Baptist ( I am down south after all). Soon it was my turn. I went to the front and started. When I got to the religion part I simply stated that I was Pagan, intentionally leaving it open for people to ask questions. Silence. Well, maybe not total silence, there was at lease one audible “tisk”. I finished and asked if anyone had a question. Nothing. No big deal. I wasn’t wanting to start some huge discussion about beliefs, but was interested on a reaction since about 80% of the class were Baptist.

A few days later the Post Chaplin came and spoke to us about religious accommodation. He had about a 30 minute block of time and pretty much rushed through it. touched on the recognition of “wiccans” and then moved on quickly. Maybe I’m looking for something when it isn’t really there, but I’m pretty sure there was tone in his voice when he said the word wiccans, like it was a dirty word, or it was hard for him to say it out loud. It’s the little things that I notice.

That’s it for now….more later!