What sharp teeth you have!


Should we stay safe and protected?

When I have had time to explore the pagan web lately, I'm been paying special attention to the divide between the the "white lighters" and others.

"White lighters" isn't a phrase that originated with me, it obviously comes from the television show Charmed. I'm indebted to Jazon Pitzl-Waters at The Wild Hunt Blog for pointing it out in this context though.

The "white lighters" seem to believe that the Divine is a permissive and loving parent, all sweetness and light and never, ever a threat to the really enlightened. Oddly enough there doesn't seem to be a pagan context for this view, although the Christian Heaven and the Islam Paradise come fairly close. For a "white lighter," it's always the sheltering hand of Deity that keeps the nasties and the boogums at bay. All the unpleasantness of life is safely beyond the border where they don't have to look at it. I suppose if one wanted to be Jungian about it, we'd say that they play in the sunlit meadow and never in the deep, dark forest.

I've touched on this before, and I've talked about how some are what I call True Believers, who can't stand to have their dogma questioned. And if this was all I was talking about, it would be a boring post.

So instead I will talk about how our expectations shape our perceptions.

One of my pleasures lately has been Alan Moore and Melinda Gibbe's Lost Girls. It's erotica, not pornography. Brilliant too. It brings up all sorts of alternative interpretations of Alice In Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass, Peter Pan, and The Wizard of Oz.

And that got me to thinking about other fairy tales. We know that the Victorians "cleaned up" nursery rhymes and fairy tales. We also know that the Brothers Grimm cleaned up their stories in later editions of their famous fairy tales.

Neopaganism in the West has been one of the fringe elements, as as such can look beyond cultural norms.

Can, not necessarily will.

The forest can be scary you see. Noises we don't recognize, muscles we're not used to flexing, sensations we don't know how to process. It calls to something deep inside, some people let loose with howls of their own.

Others run back to the meadow. To the Safe Place. Sharp teeth work great on a guard dog, they are worrisome on your grandmother.

To move through the forest, you need teeth of your own. Not that you are attacking everything you can, but just so you can discourage pests. And defend yourself as needed.

Magick is the essence of change and evolution. That was one of my first lessons. Wrap everything in cotton candy, and you slow change. Until something eats the candy to get to the crunchy center.

I am not sure that you can wield magick effectively without drawing on all of it.

Maybe that is the difference between wielding magick and being wielded by magick.

Posted: Tue - October 3, 2006 at 04:18 AM
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