MaW’s Blog

Rob blogged about how people break the ten commandments every day. Obviously as a Pagan I don’t hold to the ten commandments, although there’s some good stuff in there — not killing people is a great idea, as is the avoidance of theft. Someone else (I can’t remember who, sorry) complained that I don’t blog about my religion very much. That’s because I don’t usually have much to say, but I think I’d like to make the effort to say something more regularly — if nothing else, to help me sort things out inside my own head.

So I’ll start off with a short post but with a link to a Pagan classic: The Charge of the Goddess by Doreen Valiente. Doreen was one of Gerald Gardner’s students; Gerald Gardner was the man who invented Wicca, one form of modern Paganism. The references to secrecy come from a more guarded time, based on the tradition of secret meetings of witches carried on under the noses of the dastardly church for hundreds of years. Whether that’s true or not I don’t know, but the need for secrecy is far less great today — although some secrecy is still generally regarded as a good thing for reasons I’m not going to cover right now.

Also, most people tend to disregard the bit about being naked. That of course would be another reason why it might be advantageous to hold rituals in a ’secret place’. You’re not going to work very good magic if your ritual is broken up halfway through when everyone is arrested for indecent exposure. Or alternatively, when you all die of hypothermia. Rituals generally keep the participants warm, but I wouldn’t want to rely on it at Yule (the winter solstice).

I shall repeat my favourite part of the Charge here:

I who am the beauty of the green earth, and the white Moon among the stars, and the mystery of the waters, and the desire of the heart of man, call unto thy soul. Arise, and come unto me. For I am the soul of nature, who gives life to the universe. From me all things proceed, and unto me all things must return; and before my face beloved of Gods and of men, let thine innermost divine self be enfolded in the rapture of the infinite. Let my worship be within the heart that rejoiceth; for behold, all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals. And therefore let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honour and humility, mirth and reverence within you. And thou who thinkest to seek for me, know thy seeking and yearning shall avail thee not unless thou knowest the mystery; that if that which thou seekest thou findest not within thee, thou wilt never find it without thee. For behold, I have been with thee from the beginning; and I am that which is attained at the end of desire.

My blogging’s been terribly lax this year. I did intend to post regular updates during NaNoWriMo, but that’s over now and I blogged about twice during the course of the month — during which I didn’t say anything at all interesting. This is unfortunate, and not a state of affairs that I intended. So far each year the effort required to do NaNoWriMo has been different, and has affected me in different ways, but this might be because I’ve been in a different situation for each of those three years. Next year I suspect that it will probably be different again.

The story’s not up simply because my story markup to HTML conversion programme is still broken. At such time as I fix it, I’ll post this year’s Nanovel. However, it’s a bit choppy, needs serious editing, is full of mistakes, changes from first to third person very abruptly for no readily apparent reason (other than that it wasn’t working) and doesn’t actually finish either.

I’ve already started work on my next story. As yet untitled, it’s a distillation of some of the plot from this year’s Nanovel into a new fantasy setting with new characters. I’m feeling very confident about it, so bits of that might appear here from time to time as well. In fact, bits of that probably will.

I’m even drawing a map.