Black Witch

Ah, dabbling. Doing anything half-hearted or basically doing something in the occult that you simply have no business in. When warning people about dabbling and how it’s not a good idea, I’m often looked at odd or folks think I’ve being over the top (yes, I’m over the top but when I tell those very same people I’m a Witch, they’ve jumped to the roof. Yes, makes perfect sound sense). I understand not everyone believes in magick, witchcraft or even the fact that different pantheons exists but still, dabbling is not a good idea.

Any Witch, Pagan, Wiccan or Occultist worth their salt will warn vehemently against dabbling. Yes, it seems harmless but so is lighting a candle and saying a few words over it but that can also be seen as witchcraft. Every Pagan book directed at teens will warn against dabbling, it isn’t smart. Even the books that I started with such as Where to Park your Broomstick by Lauren Manoy and Ellen Dugan’s book Elements of Witchcraft had a whole section on it.

Since I like being a fairly responsible columnist completely and totally aware that I have young readers as well as non-Pagan readers and newbie Pagan readers, I’m gonna say the same thing.

Dabbling – or “messing with” – usually doesn’t bode very well for folks who know less about occult and esoteric than the newbie Pagan. Here’s a little story from when I was younger of one of my friends who thought “Hey! An Ouija board. That’s interesting” – wait, no, it was his friends who thought that, my friend was staunchly Christian and not cool with it. How do I know? Because he told me as we were chatting over instant messenger. Went something like this:

Buddy: I’m havin a party at my house but I’m not there.

Me: Why not?

Buddy: One of my friends pulled out a wegie board

Me: An Ouija board? Why?

Buddy: They wanna see what they can get with it. Is it safe?

Me: Okay, even I don’t mess with Ouija boards and I’m a Witch, those things can be big trouble. It’s your house, tell ‘em to knock it off.

Buddy: Nah nah, I don’t wanna do that. It doesn’t seem bad anyways, look like an old board game. I just told them I’ll be in the kitchen while they do that stuff.

Me: Where are they doing it?

Buddy: Living room.

Me: It’s your house. And this really isn’t a good idea, you don’t know what can come through if you don’t know what you’re doing. Even if I had to use one, I wouldn’t do it without a circle of some sort around me.

Buddy: Circle?

Me: Witch stuff. Circles are casted either with energy or salt or chalk and they’re there for protection to make sure what stays in stays in and what stays out stays out. So if you summon some weird thing, it won’t trash anything (hopefully).

Buddy: Hopefully?

Me: Wellllllll, if you’re not very strong but you get a spirit or a demon that is, that could be problematic. Let’s hope we don’t get that.

Buddy: They’re trying to summon Elvis.

Me:….Seriously?

The friends were really trying to summon dead folks but I gotten an IM the next day from my buddy:

Buddy: Hey, uh, Olivia?

Me: Something went wrong, didn’t it?

Buddy: It trashed my living room!

Me: What?!

Buddy: Look, I was in the kitchen minding my own business after talking to you and then I hear all this noise in my living room and then all my friends running in to the kitchen with scratches and stuff on themselves! I think they summoned a demon or something! It wrecked my living room! Everything is everywhere!

Me: Dude, seriously? Is it still there? Wait wait. You’re Christian, have you made a prayer to Michael?

Buddy: Help me out!

Buddy: Michael?

Me: I have to explain to you St. Michael? Archangel Michael? Dude with flaming sword? Big name in your religion?

Buddy: No, no, I know who you’re talking about. But will it work?

Me: This is up his alley unless something changed, just ask him for protection, annnnd pray to Christ for the same thing, this is what they’re for, man! And if you know any Latin, that would help.

Buddy: Latin?

Me: Lord’s Prayer in Latin tends to work but I’m sure you don’t get points taken off for saying it in English, just say it.

Buddy: What?

Me: This is just to keep the demon, it doesn’t sound strong.

Buddy: They were trying to get Elvis! What the –

Me: Yeah, about that. If you don’t know what you’re doing with spirit stuff, anything is bound to pop out. And get your friends to help clean up. They made the mess, you didn’t even want that thing in your house!

Buddy: Nah, it’s fine.

Me: You’re too nice. And one more thing?

Buddy: What?

Me: Make your friends help clean up – and get new friends.

Dabbling simply can open up a big can of worms for whoever is messing around with it. I think I’ve had countless people come to me and tell me of their brief experiences with witchcraft and how it usually ended spooky or left them straight afraid of metaphysics, occult and magick, which isn’t that scary with some study.

Also, what dabbling produces: Fluffy bunnies.

For example: I can bet five bucks right now some random kid in the world right now is trying to summon Thor or Loki, both Nordic gods, simply because they saw The Avengers. Dabbling is this kid not really bothering to look up Thor or Loki’s back story and mythologies, simply and mostly going to go off what Marvel is telling them and remembering faintly somewhere that at one point in human history, these two were regarded with serious business. Thus, somewhere in this kid’s head, it’s a fantastic idea to seriously attempt to summon an actual god of Thunder and an actual god of thievery. Well, at least those two deities get along like Kenan and Kel, so there’s that but they’re definitely not for noobs, especially when one of the deities is known for being a trickster. If things go well, here’s lies a potential Asatru fluffy bunny. If things go disastrous because, well, summoning tricksters isn’t always a good idea, nor gods that like life loud, then you’ll have an unnecessarily frightened person who will shut up like a telescope and squawk like a parrot when they meet other people who do magick or anything with metaphysics or the occult. If nothing happens, that could just be one more annoying kid for Pagans to deal with (“Iiiii tried summoning Thor but he didn’t come. I guess it’s just fantasy after all. Do you really believe in that stuff?”). They’re not being patient, they’re just jumping in and without proper guidance or information, it can be problematic.

So if you’re a noob to Paganism and Witchcraft, keep researching. If you’re not interested in Paganism or Witchcraft, you just wanna see something happen, please head to the nearest exit. There’s not a lot of room for dabblers and less room for people who’ll actually put up with them.

That’s all the Black Witch for today! Next week is The Arts! and this is who is being featured next week:

– Busty Comics

– Princeless

– Afro-Punk Festival

I consider myself a casual gamer. I love playing games but not overly obsessed with them – unless EA Games puts out a new The Sims or some really violent or interesting game comes out, then I’m a hermit.

One game I’ve recently played is God of War. I’ve played 1 and 2 and I’m thinking about getting 3 (I’ve tried the demo), it’s not a bad series. Usually I can play a game without analyzing it – okay, I analyze a little but that’s just the person that I am. While playing, you have to pretty much slaughter the pantheon because the character, Kratos, is a myopic guy who backed out on a deal he initiated with Aries, the God of War. Besides seeing an example of why people should never make deals with deities, it became a little weird slaughtering some of the very deities I pray to. I know I kinda cringed some when I had to rip off Apollo’s head pretty gruesomely to use him for a lantern and a weapon in GoW 3 because weeeeeeeell, he’s the god of creativity, the sun and music. I think as I had to make Kratos slowly pull and twist the head of Apollo, sinew by sinew I would say, “Sorrrrrrreeeee. I have to do this to progress in the game! This is totally not personal, I like ya! Plz don’t give me writer’s block and creative dry spells.”

While playing, a thought hit me: “There are a lot of games and movies based on various mythologies but I wonder what would happen if there were a Christian version of God of War? I dunno… maybe title it Son of God or Saviour or something. Like someone wants Jesus to bail them out of something in exchange for undying servitude and then gets sick of it but Jesus doesn’t like that and thus Heaven or Hell! Let’s rock!” I have a feeling if someone had to play a game where they had to stab and pretty much obliterate their deity – I dunno, stab the spear of destiny straight through Christ and try to break the holy dude apart using the cross or something – it probably would ruffle a few feathers because of the common complaint, “Dude! This is…aw man, I am so going to Hell. He did not die on the cross for this.” Granted, Aries is a god of war so it’s a good setup for a bloody action game but if you’ve been around gaming for a long enough time, you learn just about anything can be a bloody action game. Look at American McGee’s Alice and Alice: Madness Returns (my favorite series). Heck, I think I even played a game on Newgrounds once where Jesus got sick of being Mr. Nice Guy and went on a straight rampage, even used his cross for a weapon. The thing is, however, if there were a big release of a game that type or one where Jesus plays the bad guy you’re supposed to destroy, it would still rile up a lot of people because of how much instilled reverence Christianity has that other religions don’t get.

There are so many games based on mythology. There’s even this list on Wikipedia that tells you the bulk of games that involve them. I especially remember Shin Megami Tensei because of how it used beings from various pantheons and mythologies, even the Abrahamic* ones, which just about never happens. This is spiffy but the downside of using gods in games is that the gods kinda get rendered to seem like pretend, as if they don’t exist and were nothing but stories told way back when before the Abrahamic religions came along. Depicted as ancient thinking, pretty much.  For example, though the superhero Thor is indeed a character, he is a creative spinoff from the actual Nordic god of the exact same name.

Sticking with Thor but going beyond games. The most recent popular movie is The Avengers, which has two Nordic gods in the whole showing, Thor and Loki. I haven’t seen the movie yet but I would pay massive money if Christ were ever included or had his own flick in such a fashion, where his likeness is turned into a superhero down to the matching name, and have to fight evil that way (I dunno, he’ll fight the Devil or something). Commonly in movies, either the gods of old will aid the explorer or adventurer, be the source of a curse, a challenge for the modern average person, anything that polarizes what is supposed to be the norm (which is usually Christian focused), or turned into a superhero to help save the world. They’re comedies or actions, but more dramatic movies about faith are usually reserved for Abrahamic faiths – okay, Islam and Judiasm, though it doesn’t risk getting whittled down to fodder like other the pantheons, does get demonized (especially Islam) so it’s mostly Christianity that mainly gets the chance to be seriously considered in film. I mean, The Passion created a lot of stir when it came out and I mean a lot. I think about two people died during viewings, there were cases of stigmata in the theatre and there was mucho controversy. Even The Secret and The Da Vinci Code were taken with seriousness and those were a joke of a movie, book and theory but because it was related to Christianity, it didn’t get sloughed off as simply bad movies in and of itself.

Now, would I become offended if there were as many God of War games as there are Final Fantasy? Nope. Didn’t stop me from getting God of War 1 after playing the demo, which didn’t stop me from getting God of War 2, and that didn’t stop me from trying out the demo of God of War 3. There are already so many pieces of media that involved non-Abrahamic mythologies (Hercules, Thor, The Avengers, Kid Icarus  etc etc) that it would not make me rage, really – I mean, there was already a lot of action going on in those pantheons’ mythologies so why not? As long as the pantheon is not demonized (*koff*constantproblemofafricanreligions*koff*) I’m a spiffy kitty. I mean, I’m thinking of looking at Thor and maybe The Avengers because hey, Nordic deities. I’m a sucker for superhero movies and mythology. Plus I think it’s a little cool that there are games where I can interact with some of the very deities and sprites I believe in and I can watch movies where they’re being awesome or odd or however they are. Despite it all, it’s pretty rad, just has its weird feeling parts.

Black Witch Meet and Greet next Saturday!

Where: At the Washington Monument in Baltimore, MD
When: June 9 @ 12 PM
Why: Meet Black Witch and socialize with other Black Pagans
What: Meet and greet. If it is not too far a walk, to a metaphysical shop and library. There will be cupcakes cakepops.
*Abrahamic: Christianity, Islam, Judaism