For this week’s Pagan Video Tuesday I share a collection of videos that touch on the subject of why a person would leave the religion they were raised in and turn instead to a Pagan path.

I personally have not yet had time to view them myself, but I hope you find them enjoyable.

Blessings

Mama Kelly

“Michael Gorman, “The Druid” tells the story of his spiritual journey from Catholic to Fundamentalist to Druid.”

SybilSilverPhoenix “details (her) reasons for coming to the Path of Wicca and some the ups and downs (she’s) had along the way”
view part 2

Paganperspective “share(s) … why it is (he) call(s) myself what (he) do(es)”

Written by Mama KellyTags:druid, pagan, paganism, video, wiccan, youtube

I love the internet!  You can find anything … literally anything … that you might want to read, watch, or learn.  For example, last night I found a video highlighting the title song of a musical based on a woman who comes out of the closet as a lesbian after her divorce, finds love with a Wiccan woman, rediscovers her own faith, and eventually marries in a ceremony that draws on both their faiths.  I mean seriously, how many plays like that are out there?

“My Mother’s Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding” is a 60 minute long musical by David Hein.  According to it’s creator MMLJWW is “a new musical comedy based on a true story featuring hilarious songs, a live band, and hot lesbian action.” More seriously it is the story of how Mr. Hein’s mom “came out to (him), met her partner and got married.”

The title, while chosen I’m sure for shock value, is not a joke.  As you will hear in the introduction to the song Mr. Hein’s mom is Jewish, her partner is Wiccan and when they decided to marry well it was a “lesbian Jewish Wiccan wedding.”

I have to say that the reviews made me wish the play was here in my neck of the woods:

“David Hein turns autobiography into musical theatre as the story of his two moms is told through songs like “You Don’t Need a Penis” and “Straight White Male,” … an awkward dinner date at Hooters and a sidebar on gay rights in Canada… genuinely moving and well-executed … an all-ages lesson in tolerance”
- EYE weekly

“Director Andrew Lamb skilfully squeezes a live 3-piece band and a gifted seven-member cast onto the small stage while keeping the action fluid and fun, and the audience cheers wildly through 18 witty songs.”
- NOW

“David Hein and Irene Carl have created a very sweet and endearing love musical for his mothers. The crowd fell in love and how could they not”
- Dead Sexy Magazine

It was performed at the The Toronto Fringe Festival, July 1-12.

Enjoy!

Mama Kelly

Written by Mama KellyTags:musical, pagan, video, wiccan

“Barbara Lee, a white witch for 30 years, allows us into her suburban her home in Killiney where she shares her experience of becoming a Wiccan.” – from the RTE show Would You Believe

See her Witchvox profile
for more info.

Blessings

Mama Kelly

Written by Mama KellyTags:pagan, video, wiccan, youtube

This is a particularly loose ritual format.  It is meant to be customized to the needs of your life and your family.  It is meant to allow you to call upon whatever pantheon you usually work with.

It is split over two days because I know that my own energy and time constraints would not allow me to do everything this ritual would require with only one day to do it in.  You may even spread “day 1″ over the course of a week (or longer).  If clutter has really gotten out of control, or your time/energy/health is significantly limited feel free to take as much time as you need to get rid of the clutter, then spend a day getting the house company clean, then another day to do the house warding/blessing.

Day One

Clean your home, top to bottom.  Open the windows and let the house air out.  It doesn’t have to be perfect.  Do what your time and health allow.  But do pay attention to major piles of clutter and clean the important items, trying to clean/declutter something in each room. You want each room to be noticeably different in appearance and “feel.”

While you are cleaning chant something along the lines of:

Dirt be gone
and clutter too
May this home be filled
with troubles few

Day Two

Take blessed salt water and spurge (sprinkle) each room.  A little goes a long way.

Take incense that you enjoy and go through each room, hitting every corner, even inside closets.

Using your athame, a crystal point, or your dominant hand draw either a pentacle or a rune of protection over every entry into your home. This includes every window, every door, every skylight, every drain, every electrical outlet, etc.

If you live in a detached house you can also go outside and draw a protective circle about your residence, walking deosil/sunwise/clockwise, again using your athame, a crystal point, or your dominant hand.

Once your home is completed cleansed and warded it is time to bless it.

Carry a lit candle into each room and call upon the Divine to fill it with love and light and whatever blessings you feel the need for.  You may use the same words in each room along the lines of

God and Goddess hear my call
Touch each floor and touch each wall
Touch each table and touch each chair
Fill each room with blessings fair

God and Goddess hear my cry
Bless each hello and each goodbye
May each guest be trebly blessed
with peace with joy and with rest

Bless each room, bless each bed
Touch each heart and touch each head
God and Goddess hear my plea
Bless my family and bless me

Or you can offer up a customized request for each area of your home.

• You can bless the kitchen by asking that may all who enter it be nourished in body and spirit.
• You can bless the children’s room by asking that it be filled with peaceful sleep and idyllic dreams.
• You can bless the master bedroom by asking for love and passion.
• You can bless the office/art area etc. by asking for focus and creativity.

Written by Mama KellyTags:pagan, paganism, ritual, verse, wicca, wiccan, witchcraft

The above video is a brief 50 second clip from the movie “He’s Just Not That Into You” which shows Jennifer Aniston’s character sitting at a table at a party in which the man she meets identifies himself as “a Wiccan  … a male Witch”, reveals his magical name, and defines Wicca loosely as “a nature-based, pre-Christian religion.”  Her character Beth’s reaction is to mutter “yeah, that’s fantastic.”

I will say upfront that I have not seen this movie and I can’t say that I really intend to.  Not because of this scene, but because I rarely watch much in the way of “chick flicks” preferring instead to spend my TV time with GamerDude who, while a sensitive soul, isn’t about to endure 2 hours of watching women bemoan the lack of a lasting love relationship.

I will also admit, upfront, that I am easily annoyed at portrayals of Wicca in modern media.  I remember being more angry with The Craft for what it portrayed accurately than all of its misinformation as the former was what gave credibility to the latter.  More recently I was a bit miffed by the portrayal of a “killing curse” wielding Wiccan on the CBS show The Mentalist .

The above video is but a few brief seconds in a movie that most viewers, even fans of the movie, probably won’t even notice and almost certainly won’t remember for very long if they do.  But I still found it a bit unsettling.  Not so much Jennifer Aniston’s character Beth’s reaction to her table-mate’s revelation as by the portrayal of the Wiccan in question.

Those of my readers who are Wiccan, or some other Pagan persuasion, how likely would you be at a social function to jump right into identifying your faith right after introducing yourself for the first time?  How likely would you be to reveal your full magical or initiatory name (if you choose to use one) to someone you just met?  Would this be how you would want someone/anyone to hear about Wicca (or your own Pagan faith) for the first time – in an awkward oversharing moment?  Would you want this man, fictional though he is, to be the first Wiccan many Americans meet?Because according to a recent survery most of the United States has little to no idea of what Wicca is and what they do know, scares them?  Now, granted this survey was done by a Conversative Christian polling group but still …

Personally, I rarely identify myself as either a Wiccan or a Witch (unless asked a direct question) unless I know you to some degree.  I do not necessarily need to know you well or intimately but I need to have allowed you to already have gotten to know me a bit so that, whatever the word(s) evokes for you, this revelation will be weighed against what you have come to know about me as a person.  I hope that the impression I give is that perfectly average,  intelligent, kind almost 40 year olds are Wiccan too. 

How do you feel about the portrayal?  How do you feel about Ms. Aniston’s character’s reaction? Please Let us know in the forum.

Blessings

Mama Kelly

Note: Please remember that youtube content, especially when copyrighted, tends to come and go quickly and without notice.

Written by Mama KellyTags:"he's just not that into you", jennifer aniston, media, movie, pagan, paganism, wicca, wiccan, witch

Get Rid of Negative Body Image – Read Dianne Sylvan’s Body Sacred

Body Sacred by Dianne Sylvan

I really don’t clearly remember ever liking my own appearance. The self-loathing that is so common among women started young.

I can remember feeling betrayed by my own body when I first started developing breasts in 4th grade and by 5th grade I was in full throes of developing both a hefty bosom and childbearing hips and was put on my first diet.  That summer between grammar school and junior high changed something about my thinking forever. I can remember looking down at a plate of dry tuna and a few lettuce leaves (I was 11 years old) and sobbing. I felt ugly and fat and freakish and well frankly “bad”.

In fact I was none of those things. But after that summer I never looked at myself in the mirror the same way again.

At my thinnest – in senior year of High School – I used starvation, binging, and purging to “keep my figure” and still felt like a failure because I could never get myself to look like my friends. At the time my measurements were 38-28-38, my weight hovered between 124-128 lbs, and I wore a C-cup. I was by no means obese, I was flabby but I wasn’t really heavy. But I felt like I was. When I looked in the mirror I saw someone who was fat and ugly.

Numerous diets and 20 years later I have caught up to and exceeded my old body image. I weigh around 217 lbs, 10 lbs shy of the heaviest I have ever been. I am truly “the fat girl” I always thought I was.

(as of Summer ’08 I am down to 195)

I could talk about why I gained the weight. I could talk about wanting to lose it. I could make excuses. I could wail and moan.

The truth is, obviously, that I won’t lose the weight until I am ready to. In the meantime, I have to stop loathing myself.

To that end I purchased Ms. Sylvan’s book last weekend. 

It is written from a Pagan/Wiccan viewpoint and covers the following with a meld of humor, compassion, wisdom and honest experience:

• self-perception
• nourishment and self-care
• wellness and energy
• sexuality and sensuality
• movement and spiritual ecstasy
• aging and “blood mysteries”

One of Ms. Sylvan’s biggest beefs is how society as a whole treats women. This gives the book a definate feminist leaning, but it is not male-bashing. As she puts it, the men living today didn’t create patriarchy so its silly to blame them for it.

That being said, the author looks at how current culture and modern society has all of us convinced that the average woman needs to be improved at all cost. The media is constantly reinforcing that women NEED diets, plastic surgery, and cosmetics in order to be beautiful.

The book is replete with comments, personal antecdotes, spells and whatnot; all with the intent of fostering self-love and self-acceptance.

Additionally let me say that Ms. Sylvan’s sense of humor makes me want to meet up with her and go out for coffee dinner. Her book made me chuckle aloud many times and I can only image that in person I’d be laughing until I cried. It is obvious from the outset that this book is written by someone who truly understands, by someone who has already been there.

While this story isn’t part of the book, it could’ve been

and you can get a solid taste of her sense of humor here

This book isn’t about what to eat or how to lose weight but it is about how to learn to love yourself, and enjoy your life, regardless of what the mirror’s reflection or the number on the scale has to say on any given day.

She shares spells, rituals, myths and meditations each designed to help women build a postive self-image regardless of what they look like. The books as a whole encourages women of every age, color, shape, size, etc. to see themselves as a manifestation of the Divine. To believe that they are truly Goddess.

This book is truly one to have on your bookshelf!!

Blessings, Mama Kelly

Related Links:  Dancing Down the Moon - Ms. Sylvan’s blog

Written by Mama KellyTags:beauty, body image, book review, dianne sylvan, dieting, goddess, health, obesity, pagan, paganism, weight, weight loss, wellness, wicca, wiccan

Beltaine Cream Pie
Recipe by Edain McCoy

Prepare and pre-bake a pie shell and have it ready in the pie dish. The pie filling will be warmed but not baked.

1 cup whole milk
1 cup rich cream
1/2 cup or one stick of real butter
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1-1/2 cups sugar
1/14 teaspoon vanilla
ground nutmeg

Melt the butter in a wide cooking pan.

In a separate bowl slowly add the milk to the cornstarch making sure it is fully dissolved and absorbed before adding more milk.

When the cornstarch is fully blended add this and all the other ingredients, except the vanilla, to the cooking pan.

Stir constantly over medium heat until the mixture becomes thick like a pudding. Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla.

Pour the mixture into the waiting pie shell and sprinkle with nutmeg.
Chill the pie to set.

(The above recipe for “Beltaine Cream Pie” is taken from “Witta: An Irish Pagan Tradition“, by Edain McCoy, page 187, Llewellyn Publications, 1993/1994)

******************************

Beltane Marigold Custard
Recipe by Scott Cunningham

2 cups milk
1 cup unsprayed marigold petals
1/4 tsp. salt
3 Tbsp. sugar
1 to 2-inch piece vanilla bean
3 egg yolks, slightly beaten
1/8 tsp. allspice
1/8 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. rose water
whipped cream

Using a clean mortar and pestle reserved for cooking purposes, pound marigold petals. Or, crush with a spoon.

Mix the salt, sugar and spices together.

Scald milk with the marigolds and the vanilla bean. Remove the vanilla bean and add the slightly beaten yolks and dry ingredients. Cook on low heat. When the mixture coats the spoon, add rose water and cool.

Top with whipped cream (not Cool Whip please), garnish with fresh marigold petals.

{The above recipe for “Beltane Marigold Custard” is taken from “Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner“, by Scott Cunningham, page 153, Llewellyn Publications, 1988/1990.)

Written by Mama KellyTags:beltane, food, wiccan