Welcome to Gaia! ::

I'm in the 10 year intro now and she's much more specific with dates and age. She's also much more politically focused. Only a few more pages till I get to the actual book.

Oh but Raven! Those 6 or 7 pages were not meant to be taken as historically true! They were origin myth! Surely that's okay! rolleyes



So that must make it ******** chapter 2 now. Am hoping there is something in the way of a helpful exercise or whatever instead of more blatantly dishonest bullshit.

On Chapter Two:

Reading her notes for page 43 is alarming. Apparently she has no affection for science unless it is directly applicable to her every day life. Oh, this part of the brain is related to that, you say? I don't care because I'm not brain damaged or a neurosurgeon! Knowledge for its own sake is interesting - horrifying that she will reject it on the basis of it being "not relevant". No wonder her history is so poor.
The 20 year note is even more distressing, as apparently women's brains are super special awesome and not bound by laws of physics or biology. We don't have special areas of our brains for special things like those limited men do! CRISSAKE WOMAN. READ the ******** articles if you're going to damn well comment on them!
She also appears to deeply misunderstand what Ornstein was talking about regarding the brain, as she apparently distinguishes different forms of processing as different levels of consciousness (lolwut?).

She keeps using the word "thealogy". It is pathetic and annoying.

My university was of the opinion that psychoanalysis was occasionally-dangerous bullshit, and their opinion transferred to me. Behavioural and Cognitive > psychoanalysis. I am reading her Freudian crap going "lol? wtf is she on about?".

"The Picts stained themselves blue with woad, according to our traditions, in order to identify with Deep Self." OF COURSE, because your traditions trump the traditions of the ACTUAL CULTURE. I mean, let's not bother researching other cultures and their history! Let's just reinterprate their traditions and actions to suit our beliefs! Nevermind that it was probably a complete misunderstanding of Caesar's text! ******** you, Starhawk. ******** you and your egocentric, imperialistic, ******** "traditions".

I don't have much to say on parts of this chapter as they're all her tradition, and neither anything to do with me nor particularly interesting to me. I am, however, a little discouraged that she presents them all in a chapter named "The World View of Witchcraft", so despite saying "the Faery tradition believes" there's still an implication that there are similar beliefs in other forms of witchcraft.

"They are poetry, not theology" - someone hasn't read the Song of Solomon. As if poetry and theology need be separate things.

.....
.....
GET ON WITH IT WOMAN. What you are saying is not interesting enough for it to take up this many pages!

Rain is menstrual blood? Excuse me while I go throw up.
Interesting that rain in her theology is menstrual blood of the goddess, rather than the product of a god (most often sperm). (That's a generalisation, of course.)

Notes page 268: "the animal world, all beings whose blood contains hemoglobin". b***h, you tellin' me molluscs aren't animals now? Or just not animals represented by your Horned God?

This woman puts altogether too much weight on what Robert Graves says. "The White Goddess" is an interesting text as an inspiration for various witchcrafts, but dude, it's not anthropology, history or comparative mythology. It's made up. It's the musings of a man who was interested, but not really all that educated in what he was looking at. So read it for interest's sake but PLEASE WOMAN, stop thinking it's a scholarly work!

Her concept of, for example, the death of the deer in the hunt being made out of love is bizarre and alien to me. Honour its sacrifice all you like, but the deer didn't do it because it wanted to nourish your body with its flesh. It did it because you chased it down and hurt it until it gave up the ghost.

It must be disappointing for her, the new evidence from Catal Huyuk showing that the civilisation there was neither matriarchal nor apparently worshipped a mother goddess figure. (cite)

"Women... risk death in service to the life force with every pregnancy and birth." (p56) lol, she makes it seem like they got pregnant willingly.

Better than the last chapter, but again a totally misleading and incorrect title. Very disappointed not to find a world view of witchcraft. Would have much preferred her to title it "world view of Reclaiming", which would have been accurate.

I'm not up to there yet, so bear with me wink I may have quite different comments to make when I've read over those sections.

I tried exercise two, as I'm not much of a drawer, but I didn't do it for very long. There was only one sound to be heard and it became dull. However, I approve of observation as an exercise for a witch in the general sense. I do intend to try out some of the exercises as I go along.

There are related aspects between ritual and theatre - I don't think the implication is meant to be "perform" as in play pretend for an audience, but "perform" as in fulfill particular roles in something that is repeated and ongoing. A lot of groups do have set roles, lines to learn, things that must be done and so forth. I wouldn't call it theatre myself, though. That may have to do with the different flavour of my own rituals to hers. It may be she is using the word with a slightly different nuance - perhaps "theatre" as in atmosphere and drama rather than as in Punch and Judy.

Her appendix notes regarding solitaries do reflect her changing attitudes, and also the changing social statistics regarding solitaries. In the 70s covens and groups were probably the norm because it was harder as an individual to get information. (Of course, historically, solitaries were more common.) And she was Feri taught. It's just very vexing that she generalises Feri to all witchcraft, when it was vastly different even to Wicca which is also initiatory. It's like she never even bothered learning about other types of witchcraft outside her limited sphere before writing the book.

I'm finding that I just don't care for her writing style for some reason. I'm not entirely certain what about it bothers me but I'm having a rather difficult time getting through the thing. It's not that it's dense. It's just...annoying.

Chapter three!

The type of thing at the beginning, her notes from when her early coven first formed, remind me of the way Paxson started her chapters with her fictional kindred. Not in construct, just in the way they made me feel a little like I wanted a group like that xp I don't think I'd like to worship with others, but hanging out with them in that manner I wouldn't mind. That's why I loves my Tree regs! 4laugh

One of the reasons I have a problem with her "witchcraft is a religion" thing in the context of this book, even, is because I really don't know whether she's talking about Feri or about Reclaiming or about some wider thing, or whatever. I don't know whether it is appropriate to object to this or that comment because the very subject she is discussing is totally unclear.

"The coven structure makes it possible for rabid individualists to experience a deep sense of community without losing their independence of spirit." p59
Whaaaat the fuuuuuck is she talking about here?!
Rabid individualists don't WANT a "deep sense of community", because they are rabid individualists. WOMAN. As a fiercly independent person myself I don't want to join a coven either, I don't understand this "deep sense of community" and I have no interest in experiencing it. The most I want is a mild and fleeting sense of community, so that I can think "hmm, that's nice", smile briefly and then get the ******** out of there.

I'm glad her 20 year notes recognise the utter bullshittery of the priest-related comment at the top of page 60. I am rather surprised she didn't mention it in the 10 year notes.

Every time she uses the word "thealogy", a fluffy gets her wings.

I don't understand why initiations are so important for her coven when apparently her coven formed when a bunch of friends sat down and started chatting...?

In her notes for page 63 she laughs about how she called herself and the other coven members elders, although they were technically by CoG standards. She says "what this sentence brings home to me now is how few true elders we had to guide us". It's a talking point, really, comparing then to now, as there are still very few elders outside of specific coven traditions to guide new witches. The big famous names turn out to be nothing but overhyped windbags, from Starhawk herself (as I am currently discovering) to Oberon Zell-Ravenheart (I still keep wanting to call him "Otter") to... who is there, even? Bonewits is dead now, and he was one of the rarities who seemed a bit sensible. Buckland I just don't have time for. Cunningham was a sweet thing but, again, quite dead. Seriously, how many BNPs are there, really, who aren't twits or upstart Llewellyn authors? Hold up, this deserves its own thread, I'ma go make it.

I find myself pretty disinterested in reading about her coven rituals. I mean, okay, it was nice and all, not all that interesting... she didn't include the ritual structure, so I can't really envision it... she said what they did but not how. I'd have liked it if there was more in the way of discussion there. She could have even said "our rituals are totally freeflow and almost entirely without structure" and that would have been fine by me. But overall I find myself completely flummoxed as to why she included it at all. It doesn't appear to be related to what she had been saying the page before or to what she says the page after.

I don't know why I am finding this chapter so utterly unfulfilling. Maybe it's because there's not really much in here to get me mad, and nothing at all I find inspiring, so instead I just feel rather ambivalent and apathetic.

She seems to think starting a coven is super easy. How on earth does she suppose one manages to get enough people together who all believe the same thing? It's bloody impossible!

Her way of starting off group meetings sounds like the part of a new class everyone really dreads, when you're all forced to answer insipid and impossible questions and to listen to the strained answers of 20 other people who would rather be doing anything else in the world at that moment than standing there in the spotlight. No one I have ever met enjoyed that part of any first meeting. It was a forced and universally hated unpleasantness, like going to the dentist when you have a cavity. Has this woman never experienced that unpleasantness, or does she not care, or what?

On exercise 6: How does this even work? You just KNOW someone is going to start singing whatever is in their head, and you KNOW it's going to be something from like Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog or Weird Al or a TV theme song. And I 100% support the singing of Dr Horrible! But! Her example is soooo unlikely to happen! xd

Laundry day, see you there, underthings, tumbling.
Wanna say, love your hair, here I go, mumbling...
with my freeze ray I will stop!
the world
with my freeze ray I will find the time to
find the words to -

I don't understand. Those exercises were her ritual? That was her magic? She didn't do anything! She raised energy and then didn't do anything! No gods were honoured, no purpose was marked, it was just "hey, let's raise energy and then not do s**t with it! Hooray waste of time and energy!". And that's not how you cast a ******** circle you dishonest ho! And I don't consider magic to have been "worked" if you don't actually do anything for crissakes. ARE you a witch, or do you just enjoy chanting in a ******** circle? And it wouldn't be hungry work if you didn't toss all your energy into the earth instead of retaining the proper amount.
I'll give her the benefit of the doubt here because my impression was that she was talking about a new group. But seriously. I don't know why I am so annoyed. Perhaps it's because I'm not sure what she's really talking about from one moment to another, because she seems to chop and change between topics without warning. It's a very disorganised chapter.

My impression on her thoughts regarding solitaries, iKill, is that she appears to be really naive. I'm not sure if it's naivety regarding solitaries or regarding different forms of witchcraft.

Why no alcohol??

Coming to her comment about "ritual is partly about performance & theatre" at this point seems bizarre, as all her descriptions of rituals thus far have appeared to be very anti-theatre. It's a great shame she hasn't bothered to explain any of the rituals she may or may not have performed that do.

Why the s**t is she going on about relaxation and visualisation and so on? Lady, it's a chapter about COVENS. Stick to the ******** brief!

Oop, oop, subject changed back to covens, and then changed again to apprenticeship and teaching new witches, and then slightly changed again to be the author talking to the reader as a new witch and telling him or her what he or she should be doing. How the hell did this get published?

p79 Hey folks! A book of shadows is a magical diary! Because the traditional way was too time-consuming, so instead, we turned the book of shadows into a xeroxed stack of pages, and renamed the personal journal "book of shadows".

SUBJECT CHANGE GO! Now from journalling as a daily activity suggested for neophytes to covens again. The subject change was so abrupt I really didn't know what she was talking about for a moment there.

Overall a very poor chapter. I was glad to see more exercises in there, but uh.... they were in the wrong chapter. They really had no place in a chapter about the coven. Sure, they were group exercises - except for the weird section that had everything to do with personal work and nothing to do with covens - but most of them were essentially irrelevant to the text. And the text itself was really disjointed, jumping from subject to subject with greater and greater frequency. It was muddled, confusing and I got lost more than once. I'm left wondering how the ******** it got published with that chapter in that state.

On the positive side (maybe?) this chapter has highlighted for me why I don't like covens personally. First is the forced love-in, where you have to like everyone. (I mean, maybe I would like everyone, but I don't like that it has to be a requirement. It makes me feel contrary.) Second is the forced sharing of energy, which in this form I find manky and undesirable - like someone else's bizarre sexual fetish. Third is the exercises; while some of them are fine, like the tree one, most I find boring and irritating. This is often the case with some guided meditations and so forth, also, and were I in a group running that sort of thing I would either sit it out or stop quite early on and start doing my own thing. They all seem really pointless and I don't understand why they are performed, which is a large part of my irritation... the other part is that they are apparently well-valued by the person running the exercise and everyone should want to do them and find them somehow beneficial (????). I naturally resist "instruction" when the purpose and reasons for it are not adequately explained, and often even when some reason is given I change the exercise to something I consider more appropriate anyway.

I was personally still struggling through chapter two but I have currently forgotten the book at a friend's house. I'll be rejoining the discussion when I can retrieve it on Tuesday.