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So, I usually don’t like to mix my real life with the Black Witch life but I think now would be the time.
Here it goes:
I currently am in a dire financial strait that could cost me my current apartment. Money has been reaaaaaally tight and it turns out, I can’t pay this month’s rent of $715. If I can’t get all this by May 31st, I’m out on the street, literally. I can barely cover the electricity for this month so the notice I got from the landlord is a real hit in the gut. I need your help.
I really could use donations right about now. Here is a donation link via Paypal , please share this everywhere because this is really important. I don’t know what I can do and if there are any organizations that can help me out, I would really appreciate it.
I’ll be posting this on the regular until all the money is collected or it is May 31st. Whichever comes first (I hope it’ll be the funds.) Please, please help. If I’m out on the street, Black Witch will cease to exist.
So, I usually don’t like to mix my real life with the Black Witch life but I think now would be the time.
Here it goes:
I currently am in a dire financial strait that could cost me my current apartment. Money has been reaaaaaally tight and it turns out, I can’t pay this month’s rent of $715. If I can’t get all this by May 31st, I’m out on the street, literally. I can barely cover the electricity for this month so the notice I got from the landlord is a real hit in the gut. I need your help.
I really could use donations right about now. Here is a donation link (now via Paypal), please share this everywhere because this is really important. I don’t know what I can do and if there are any organizations that can help me out, I would really appreciate it.
I’ll be posting this on the regular until all the money is collected or it is May 31st. Whichever comes first (I hope it’ll be the funds.) Please, please help. If I’m out on the street, Black Witch will cease to exist.
Good friend of mine, Crystal B., has been calling for submissions of the minority Pagan experience to create a follow up anthology to Shades of Faith called Shades of Ritual! Here are the details!
Megalithica Books, an imprint of Immanion Press (Stafford, U.K./Portland, OR, U.S.A) is seeking submissions for a follow up anthology to Shades of Faith, released in August of 2011. This anthology will focus on people of color working in magical communities and their spiritual practices. This anthology will provide another opportunity to get the voices and experiences of minorities within the Pagan community out to the world and address some of the challenges, stereotyping, frustrations and the beauty of being different within the racial construct of typical Pagan or Wiccan groups. These communities include (but are not limited to) groups and individuals working in Wicca, Voodoo, Umbanda, Shaman, and other Pagan paths.
As many of the roots of Paganism come from the lands of people of color, much of the color of Paganism is often forgotten in the cultural mainstreaming that often happens to ethnic cultures. Many people of color within Paganism walk between the worlds of their birth ancestry and culture, and that of their spiritual culture. This anthology is meant to show how that might look within the spiritual practice of one’s home.
Here are some suggested topics to give you an idea of the focus of this anthology.
Rituals
Poetry
Your experience of integration into the Pagan community and how that might correlate with your practice
Magical work
Ancestor work
Deity specific practices and relationships
Integrating your birth culture with your spiritual workings
What magical work are you doing now? How do you describe it? Do you work alone, in a group, or in several settings?
Your birth culture and spiritual workings
Stereotypes and prejudice and the impact on spiritual or magic workings.
Being the only person of color in a coven, group or community
Sharing your culture and history with other Pagans
Cultural history and how that plays a role in your spiritual practice today
Family culture and how that plays a role in your spiritual practice
Cultural appropriations and how that works in your practice.
Rough drafts are due August 15, 2013. These drafts will be edited in a back-and-forth process with the editor. Essays should be 1500-4000 words, although if your work falls outside those limits, do submit it – we can discuss this during the editing process. Drop us an email if you are unsure whether your idea fits into the content. The sooner you start the communication process the better, as after the deadline we won’t be considering additional ideas.
Essay requirements:
• Citations for all quoted, paraphrased, or otherwise unoriginal material
• Bibliography of works cited
• Prefer APA format
Do write in your voice! If you’re academically inclined or trained, feel free to be as intelligent and technical as you like. If your work entirely talks in the first person about your own experience, please include this also. There is a wide range of voices, and we are interested in being as inclusive of style as possible.
Accepted contributors will receive a free copy of the anthology when it is published and additional copies sold at 40% off the cover price to contributors. All contributors will be provided with a contract upon final acceptance of their essays, not when they are accepted for editing. If your essay is not accepted for the anthology, we will tell you after the first round of edits.
The anthology will be edited by Crystal Blanton. She is the author of two books with Immanion press; Bridging the Gap; Working Within the Dynamics of Pagan Groups and Society, and Pain and Faith in a Wiccan World. She is also the editor of the first anthology, Shades of Faith; Minority Voices in Paganism. She may be found online at http://www.crystalblanton.org and her email address for this anthology is crystal@crystalblanton.com .
Immanion Press is a small independent press based in the United Kingdom. Founded by author Storm Constantine, it expanded into occult nonfiction in 2004 with the publication of Taylor Ellwood’s Pop Culture Magick. Today, Immanion’s nonfiction line, under the Megalithica Books imprint, has a growing reputation for edgy, experimental texts on primarily intermediate and advanced pagan and occult topics. Find out more at http://www.immanion-press.com.
So, throughout this weekend I have tried to sit down and bang out a column for The Arts! but I’mma have to do these features for next month because all I’ve been doing is spending time in bed hacking and coughing and occasionally doing a death rattle when not pilfering about on Tumblr. So no post for this weekend. I am feeling better but not good enough that I can write out a decent post within a sufficient amount of time.
Go check out the BWshoppe instead, I added new stuff before I fell really ill.
Next week I should definitely be better so send in questions for Ask Black Witch! Good questions are appreciated, bad questions are eviscerated
So. I’m sick. Been sick with a head cold since Saturday. That means delayed posting so expect the new post between now and Sunday. To tide y’all over, watch this vid of my friend Gurpreet making to Hollywood on American Idol (yes, I have my opinions on singing show but right now A) too sick to care B) part of being a good friend is knowing when not to be a buzzkill)
I always abhorred how the BW shop would be ever so bare! Now it isn’t! Check out the various things I’ve made! Like any? Click the pic and get taken straight to the store!
Stone bracelets
I’m making stone bracelets in various styles (starting with wrapped bead bracelets because I think they’re nifty) and made a ton of amazonite bracelets. I also have sodalite but those will be added later. I really think that these are neat and fantastic.
Watches
Here’s the thing about me and watches, I don’t like strapped down watches. It irks me and my skin so these are all drop down/charm watches. You already saw one above, the amazonite one (and trust, there will be more stone beaded watches) and here’s another below that uses a charm from one of the new mini lines, Wintry Mix.
The little charm on the end is a blue macaroon charm with a blue Swarovski crystal on its shell. It was fun making the macaroon.
Cupcake Necklaces
If you’ve seen pictures of me, you’ll notice I really love cupcake charms. Cupcake rings (which are coming soon), cupcake necklaces, they’re fantastic. These two are from the new mini lines, Wintry Mix and Wonder Witch
I really love the marbling effect of the base! It was an accidental discovery but one I’m glad to make. I’m really hyped on the little ice cream scoop and how well it came out, the tinier they are, the more likely they are to turn out not so cool. With exception to the cupcake base, no molds are used so everything else is made with my hands and tools nearby. And look! Sprinkles! Trust me, they will stay in place.
See, I made a deco cane because I’ve simply been trying to make deco canes because just my luck, there aren’t any with lightning bolts (BW logo) or any other design that I like. Which sucks because deco canes from scratch aren’t always easy. Getting frustrated with the bolt forever being misshapen and only a couple decent ones, I made other designs and that’s how Wonder Witch came about. There’s a marble effect on the base as well in black and white, a drip down effect, a peppermint swirl and cute little twists on the back.
Herbal Vial Necklaces
There’s only one now but expect more! The one currently in stock is a lavender filled vial necklace.
The vial is super durable and the cork is sealed very well so don’t worry about it falling apart on you when you’re running around.
Glowing things!
I have made glowing charms as part of the Glow Night mini line (There’s four of them: Wintry Mix, Wonder Witch, Sweet Fall and Glow Night) the one currently up for sale is the dollop bracelet.
This is so cool, look at what it does after being subjected to light
Rad, right?
These are some of the things that are in the shop. If you liked any of what you saw, click on the picture or section titles, it’ll take you straight to the proper page.
Now a word about the stone and herbal products: None of them are charmed or enchanted in any way, shape or form. I don’t want anyone to get the idea that since a Witch made them, they must be magickal somehow. Newp, they’re just things I made. If you would like to enchant them, feel free to purchase and do whatever you like when you get them.
Now go! Buy and be happy! And don’t forget to use the 25% coupon code ThankYou25. That’s going to last until after Dec 22. Use it!
The BW Halloween chat is today at 4:30 PM EST (That’s about an hour and a half from now). I will be taking questions from twitter (@thisblackwitch) and Ustream. If you want to submit starter topics, please comment below.
I have had a complete run of late posts for the past few weeks and this one is going to be no different, with a post on the latest day ever, Monday. I really feel like I’ve gotta say something now because this is getting ridiculous.
So, I’ve posted on the BW Twitter that my laptop is finally dead. It passed sometime during this week. Can’t blame it, I was pretty hard on it so it was a long time coming, either way, it’s dead.
When it wasn’t dead, it was on its last legs. The screen had stopped working so I had to hook my laptop to the tv which you could imagine reduced the portability of the laptop. Then there’s the fact the laptop had grown so slow and sluggish that it would freeze for minutes at a time if I wanted to just open a document. The longest freeze time was nearly ten minutes. The laptop was bought new in 2009, it’s almost 2013 and it has dealt with being treated pretty hard. So I kinda was waiting for it to go before getting a new one, which will be coming on Tues.
So now the lappytop is le dead. I did have a friend come over so I could borrow his hard drive reader so I could at least yank some of the latest posts for Black Witch and I did but they’re still in an unfinished state since there’s nothing to clean them up to the point I would like it and put them up. Yes, I do have mobile apps on my tablet and cell phone, Documents to Go, which is awesome, and Google Drive to share my files on between my devices but they’re not as good as finishing my works on an actual full sized computer. Linking is practically impossible, pictures are a headache and the spell checker is not as good on these mobile devices as it is on a computer. These mobile devices are good for me to write out ideas and columns in their rough shape, absolutely fantastic, but not to present writings to the world. This is the only exception because I gotta say something since I know readers are prolly wondering why BW keeps updating so late as of recent.
Thus, this does mean that I am writing. I’m working on this week’s write up, Afro-Punk’s extra piece and so on and so forth on my tablet and cell phone. I plan to go to the library if my cold isn’t that bad (well, it’s just a sore throat but I still don’t want to pass it to others and it’s been coooooooooooold in Baltimore) and update there or just wait for the new laptop and go from there. So I am writing, I just can’t update when I like. This means I’ll have to push the Etsy store reopening to Halloween (I’ve been keeping it under wraps because I wasn’t sure what would happen but it was going to be on the 16th) and no trips to NYC for Halloween.
So that’s what’s been going on. Expect the new piece on Monday (Tuesday at the latest).
Another year has ended. Yep. As BW goes into its third year tomorrow, I am still surprised it is still around. To be honest, it has not been an easy year to keep up things and it pretty much, personally, became a year of disappointments and being slowed down to the point I couldn’t achieve major goals for the column/blog. I’m glad people are reading and interacting but I’ve been slipping. I haven’t been on time with the Afro-Punk side of Black Witch, I think for the AP version of “Bedknobs and Broomsticks” I didn’t look at any of the comments, I don’t even know how many are there. I’ve been shrinking away from dialogue and instead caught myself trying to make another cardboard fortress, so to speak, for a few months so far.
I really hate to look as if I’m incapable but what’s been happening during the year has mainly been personal issues, primarily deep seated mental issues, which have been wiping out everything and getting worse as time goes on. For example, anxiety issues ramped to the point I couldn’t look at comments, regardless how many times I said “Oh, I’ll look at them today. They have got to be responded to.” Hours turned into days and days into weeks and so on and so forth. Even if I did respond, I wouldn’t be back. I’ve just very recently reached a breaking point with my issues so I’m currently getting them corrected since I’ve been needing to do this for a very, very long time and it’s getting to the point where I am missing genuine opportunities to propel myself and Black Witch forward.
Now, this doesn’t mean that the column/blog is going to be shut down due to my issues. That’s why I’m getting help, so it doesn’t get to that point. I know, usually when a blogger or a writer of some sort says something along the line of “Oh hai, I haz personal issues but it won’t affect nuffin, just wanna let y’all know”, it’s pretty much the prelude to seeing a “This user has deleted their blog” screen by surprise one day but again, I’m trying to make sure that doesn’t happen, hence why I’m reaching out for once and getting help, something I don’t commonly do. Besides, it didn’t shut down this time last year and I was heavily suicidal to the point I made a couple attempts and was even sent somewhere. Plus, I had to live elsewhere for a while enable to stave off the beached emotions and despite that, still all the postings were regular while dealing. I’m simply trying to make sure those moments don’t come back, for which they’ve tried and even gotten worse in the process.
Now, given that I’m identifying that I have personal/mental issues, it isn’t a bad thing. So if anyone is thinking, “Ha, the fact she think she’s a Witch is driving her crazy”, I’ve had these issues always, most of them from when I was heavily Christian. Besides, everyone has issues, I’m just more comfortable with discussing mine, because, well, everyone’s got problems.
The Meet and Greet won’t be canceled in case anyone was worried. It’s still tomorrow and these are still the facts on it:
Everyone will be meeting at the Washington Monument in Baltimore, Maryland at 12 PM. We will socialize and get to know each other before either visiting a metaphysical shop or simply spend the day connecting and meeting one another. See you tomorrow!
I’m sure that some of you guys have heard of this bill called SOPA and PIPA and how it’s going to censor the internet. That by itself should perk some ears but let me go a little deeper.
Y’see, SOPA stands for: Stop Online Piracy Act, a bill (H.R. 3261) that was introduced by Congressman Lamar S. Smith (R-TX) back in October. The bill, at face value, is supposed to prevent piracy and theft via blacklisting. Now, fighting knock-offs and pirates sound really good right? I mean, no more downloading movies and music. Recording lab- I mean artists can be sure to make every proper dime on their music. Hollywood is safe from people ripping them off and everyone gets a free halo in the mail. Otherwise, prepare to get slammed. Anyone who pirates or participates in any other form of copyright infringement could have the whole site shut down. Yep. A court order could be made to make sure online advertising people don’t do business with the infringing website, search engines such as Google to pretend the site never existed and barring it from showing up in search returns ever, even have internet service providers to block access to such sites. Now if you, dear reader, get caught, you could get hit with up to five years in prison for ten infringements (Ten songs, ten movies, etc.) within six months. The only sites that are immune are those who voluntarily scope through their site and alienate any links, poster or comments on there. If you want to know how such internet censorship works out, ask China.
Then you have PIPA (S. 968), which stands for: PROTECT IP Act, which stands for: Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011, which stands for “someone is trying to break the internets through teh butthurts with sheer wtf and lack of lolz.” In seriousness, it is a bill that is kind of the sister of SOPA and a reincarnation of another bill smacked down in congress back in 2010 called COICA (Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act). This bill was introduced by Patrick Leahy (D-VT) back in May and it is supposed to fight distribution of illegal (read: bootleg or downloaded) copies, counterfeit goods and anti-digital rights management. This bill is supposed to “enhance enforcement against rogue websites operated and registered overseas” and gives servers right to block it. The site could still be reached by its IP address (think of it like a social security card for websites and computers) but not its domain name. Search engines would have to disable access or remove it altogether to the site associated with the domain name in the court order. Or just no hypertext link to the site. Poof, it’s gone.
This vid raises great points on PIPA
To further illustrate:
Black Witch is a site that I made to make sure that Black Pagans would get awesome content to read, listen to and enjoy. Why The Arts! alone would get this site shut down because oh noes! I can’t always get direct blessings from the artists I feature (this is legal under the copyright act of fair use – or should be but SOPA and PIPA don’t feel the same way I do) but even the fact that I do credit – the feature is about them – would make SOPA and PIPA tell WordPress to tell me, “Hey, Black Witch. Cut that out!” or face penalties, even taken off the net. Now this is me but what about my readers? What if one of you guys caught me on a mistake and linked me to a correcting piece, which happened to be copyrighted? Dude, then I’m responsible for you because WordPress is responsible for me and no one wants to be erased from the internets. Then again, WordPress could become hyper vigilant and just take my blog down should they see me post a music video from youtube or feel a twinge of anxiety from the fact I said that Playing Card Divination for Beginners is gouging the price for a book that was originally $10 so, regardless of whether or not I have the okays from the publisher or author, I may digitize it for my readers to use. (That’s piracy, folks). With these laws, you know that instead of fixing the problem with fine-tuned precision, it’s going to be the story of Henny Penny magnified. Even if I play by the rules, not every blogger will and still WordPress could be taken off the internet as if it never existed, taking my site (and Mike Shinoda’s site and Nastassia Davis’ site and the Wondaland wordpress site and countless other sites) with it. Ouch. And this also goes for your email because now that I, Mike Shinoda, Wondaland and others are all apparently digital evil doers out to harm through copyright violations some other guy did – judged by the company you keep, folks – if you so much as link to our content, your provider has to fish it out and rip it out or suffer the same fate as WordPress did.
If it seems a lil’ pointless to the average person still, here’s a really good demonstration using our favorite android, Janelle Monae.
Alrightie, if my twitter and my site and search terms to my site are any indication, I got a lot of fandroids for readers. I even featured one, AngelBopByeYa, since I thought her tumblr was spiffy – but wait! Did AngelBopByeYa ask Janelle Monae if she could have all those JM pictures decorated on her Tumblr? And what about The Audition, Janelle Monae’s EP from waaaaaay back in the early 2000’s? Y’know, the one that can’t be found in stores so either you download (and become a pirate, matey) or just happily go without or wait to spring on Janelle Monae herself and ask for her blessing to have her music in your Mp3 player. And what about those pictures from the last three (four?) times she posed in Vogue? Aw, man, I’m sure no fandroid was asking Vogue to use copies. If AngelBopByeYa so much as even performs “BopByeYa” through singing it or playing it and posting it to youtube, she could get hit with up to five years in non-Cybertronic Purgatory if anyone from Janelle Monae’s crew think that’s not cool and AngelBopByeYa is stealing content. Now, we’re sure Janelle Monae would find this lovely, she loves when her fandroids are doing their thing – Atlantic Records, however, feels otherwise and as her distributor, would be ultra pissed at AngelBopByeYa. Either she better stop posting that Janelle Monae content now (and lose Monae potential new fans and supporters who haven’t heard her music while at the same time locking out fans who may not always have the money to support) or get that tumblr – or Tumblr itself – taken off the air. Now, technically all this would be considered okay under the Fair Use act given that AngelBopByeYa is commenting, criticizing, and reviewing on her tumblr and giving credit. But, SOPA and PIPA is written so loosely that you might as well chuck that out of the window because if Atlantic Records think she’s stealing nonetheless, it’s gone.
Oh, geez. This sucks rocks. It would be totally crappy if a site like FYeahJanelleMonae would get linked here or if I post, like, a picture of Janelle Monae being awesome…like this pic right here where she’s running from a sixteenth note:
Or show a youtube with her song in it, like Salvador Dali’s Disney short film Destino.
Because according to SOPA and PIPA, I just committed a crime on several counts. Sorry, WordPress. My bad it wasn’t a more looked-over crime such as what student loan lenders are doing, and what former president Bush did to Iraq. I guess that’s the pirate’s life for me.
And to make people feel better, here’s a funky PSA on net neutrality: The Internet You Need
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