I show up early for the Camille Paglia reading at Borders this evening. The place is packed. I find a seat and then, here’s Chris, sitting with Nina, and they’ve saved me a seat in the second row. There are a lot of saved seats. Next to me is a seat saved with a copy of a book called “Wicca – a Guide for the Solitary Practitioner… over 400,000 copies sold.” At first, I think, 400,000? So we’re screwed... And then, I think, well, apparently not. Two women show up and claim the Wicca seats. One says, looking at the book, “Oh, cool. I’m kind of interested,” and the other says, “Me, too.”
September 20, 2010
That night I sat down with the witches.
In the comments on that last post, Irene says: "Wicca seat savers: I had almost forgotten." Oh, yes! How apt, in these witch-hunting days. The text, from my old post about going to see Camille Paglia at a bookstore in Madison:
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27 comments:
This stuff never really goes away, although The Blonde's favorite nephew thought he might get into the non-judgmental side of it until he and his aunt attended a pagan pride event.
Pagans, he learned, are freakier than witches.
What does a witch do anyway?Is it a domination art using spells and incantations to overcome the will of another person? Or is it a funny dress-up like Halloween?
400,000 solitary practitioners...that's a lot of pent-up rage.
'Practical Magic' is a great witch movie.
traditionalguy said...
What does a witch do anyway?Is it a domination art using spells and incantations to overcome the will of another person? Or is it a funny dress-up like Halloween?
Apparently, there's a lot of spells and stuff for health, prosperity, etc. White magic.
You're thinking of black magic.
And I'll let that one slide.
Now I get it!
Now I see how O'Donnell's bewitched days segues into her views on masturbation!
"Solitary Practitioner" !!!
Nudge - Nudge! Wink - Wink!
Say no more!
Say no more!
Used to sell tons of books/trinkets from the "Wiccan" and "Majick" section of a big bookstore back in the Nineties. About half of it to high school age girls.
The same kids who were back for their Barron's Guides and dorm-sized reading lamps a year or two later. Dumb but harmless, like much of adolescence.
WV: comyxes
What the wytch does in her cauldron.
Working in a hippie bar back in the 80's, we had a surplus of wiccan waitresses who loved to regale us about wiccan-ism.
My fav was one night one of the waitresses was pretty ticked off - I asked her what the problem was. Turned out her coven had - as we say today - self organized into a more hierarchical organization from which she had been excluded from the upper levels. In short - some animals are more equal than others.
I loved this as it just proved that any organization built by humans enviably turns into a pyramid.
So can't they just cast a spell and fix the economy? No? Then to Hell with them. Back to the real world of Hope and Change.
How the hell people can take a religion invented in living memory seriously is beyond me.
(Scientology, Wicca, whatever.)
Hippies.
Can't live with 'em.
Can't legally set them on fire.
Anymore.
I nominate Witchy Woman for O'Donnell's campaign song.
No mention of Hillary's locks?
You're slipping, Althouse!
Oddly nobody seems to make much of NPR talker Margot Adler's wiccan practice (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margot_Adler ). Maybe its more commonplace among the NPR set. Nevertheless, when an O'Donnell, or a Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter, present themself, the "progressives" can't resist getting all populist on them.
Crack shows up early for the Camille Paglia reading at Borders this evening. The place is packed. Crack finds a seat and then, there’s Chris, sitting with Nina, and they’ve saved him a seat in the second row. There are a lot of saved seats. Next to him is a seat saved with a copy of a book called “Wicca – a Guide for the Solitary Practitioner… over 400,000 copies sold.” He thinks, 400,000? So we’re screwed...Two women show up and claim the Wicca seats. One says, looking at the book, “Oh, cool. I’m kind of interested,” and the other says, “Me, too.”
And that's when Crack looks at Chris and Nina and changes seats.
Lincolntf,
Dumb but harmless,...
I always love how the unseen consequences of "spiritual" thinking leads others to assume such thinking is "harmless" - it's a major reason why few do anything to stop it - that and the fact it's mostly practiced by women.
My ex-wife killed three people, and destroyed my life as I knew it, doing what others - supposedly really smart others - told me was "harmless". There's a whole website dedicated to the dead and injured of what NewAgers (and others) say is "harmless".
Think of all the unnecessary arguments this leads to, all the broken relationships and families - all the divorces - before these women grow out of it. Think of all the shattered lives they leave behind, without so much as an apology. Think of the deaths. The exploitation, manipulation, and head games - look at Moose's story, for instance - not to mention these people vote.
There's nothing "harmless" about any of it. I couldn't help thinking about how things like this wouldn't happen (and we wouldn't waste so many resources) if this society would stress the various forms of destruction - personal and otherwise - that arises from such "dumb" ideas.
Big deal.
What about the time Hillary Clinton sat down with a witch, a bitch, a snitch and a nasty snatch.
And she was having dinner by herself at the time.
Trooper,
Man, you and I should never meet, because, I swear, I'll die laughing!
I find it impossible to take religions invented in the 1970s seriously. Ancient religions at least have the weight of tradition.
Crack
Well, maybe not "harmless", (and I'm sorry about your experiences, that's ugly) but I was a lot more worried about the middle-aged crones getting all huffy because we'd mislabeled some stupid crystal or "magic bundle" or something. I'd try to play with them a little bit, but they were utterly humorless about their "Majicks".
OLD TIME RELIGION
We will pray to Aphrodite
She's beautiful but flighty
In her silken see-thru nightie
She's good enough for me.
We will pray to Zarathrustra,
Pray just like we used-to,
I'm a Zarathrustra booster,
He's good enough for me.
We will pray just like the Druids,
Drinking strange fermented fluids,
Go dancing naked through the woods,
They're good enough for me.
We will pray to the god Buddha,
Of gods there is none cuter,
Come in silver, brass or pewter,
He's good enough for me.
We will pray with those Egyptians,
Who built pyramids to put our crypts in
Covered up with strange inscriptions,
They're good enough for me.
We will pray to Ra and Ahmen
Just like Tutankhamen,
And teach our friends embalming,
They're good enough for me.
Hare Krishna he must be laughed on,
To see me dressed in saffron,
With my hair only half-on
He's good enough for me.
I will rise up at early morning,
When my Lord gives me the warning,
That the solar age is dawning,
He's good enough for me.
We won't worship like the Persians,
We'll sacrifice no virgins,
Please control your carnal urgin's,
It's good enough for me.
We will all worship the Mother
Not the womb of any other
Virgin, crone and mother
She's good enough for me
We will pray for New Age Aquarians,
And hang out in Planetariums,
Lotta um are Unitarians,
They're good enough for me.
We will pray to a god named Odin,
In their wooden boats go floatin'
Filled Europe with forbodin'
He's good enough for me.
We will pray to the Quakers
Oft confused with the Shakers,
Of war they are not makers,
They're good enough for me.
We will pray to the god Shiva,
the one with many sleeva's
Who destroys all disbelivas
He's good enough for me.
We will pray to rev Moon
All our friend will think we're loony
As we sing this crazy tune-y,
He's good enough for me.
old time religion
Sorry, sunsong; I was born a snake-handler and I'll die a snake-handler.
One of the great things about my senior year in Austin was Bugsy Siegel's niece came over to a friend's house. She said she was a witch; dabbling in witchcraft was part of a pretty impressive lady.
Wicca is for the fairly attractive to abhorrently ugly fat chicks who could never make it as goths. HA! This makes me remember the old fat chicks joke. Why do fat chicks give such good blow jobs? Because they are always hungry. HAR!!!
Villager: We have found a witch, may we burn her?
Crowd: BURN!! BURN HER!
Sir Bedevere: But how do you know she is a witch?
Villager: She looks like one!
Other Villagers: Yeah! She looks like one!!!
Sir Bedevere: Bring her forward.
Witch: I'm not a witch, I'm not a witch!
Sir Bedevere: Er,...but you are dressed as one.
Witch: THEY dressed me up like this.
Villagers: No! Nooo! We didn't! We didn't!
Witch: And this isn't my nose, it's a false one!
(Sir Bedevere lifts up the carrot to reveal the woman's real nose, which is in fact rather small.)
Sir Bedevere: Well?
One Villager: Well, we did do the nose.
Bedevere: The nose?
Villager: And the Hat. But she's a witch!
Villagers: Yeah! Burn her! Burn! Burn her!
Bedevere: Did you dress her up like this?
Villagers: NO! No, no, no, no, no, no...
One Villager: yes.
Villagers: yes. yes. yes. A bit. yes. a bit. a bit.
Another Villager She has got a wart...
Sir Bedevere: What makes you think she is a witch?
Villager: Well, She turned me into a newt!!
Sir Bedevere: a newt?
Villager: I got better...
Villagers: BURN HER anyway! BURN! BURN! BURN HER!
Sir Bedevere: Quiet, quiet, quiet, QUIET!!! There are ways of telling whether she is a witch!
Villagers: Are there? What? Tell us, then! Tell us!
Sir Bedevere: Tell me. What do you do with witches?
Villagers: BUUUURN!!!!! BUUUUUURRRRNN!!!!! You BURN them!!!! BURN!!
Sir Bedevere: And what do you burn apart from witches?
Villager: More Witches!
Other Villager: Wood.
Sir Bedevere: So. Why do witches burn?
Villager: Because they're made of ... wood?
Sir Bedevere: Goooood!
Other Villagers: oh yeah... oh....
Sir Bedevere: So, how do we tell whether she is made of wood?
One Villager: Build a bridge out of 'er!
Sir Bedevere: Aah. But can you not also make bridges out of stone?
Villagers: oh yeah. oh. umm...
Sir Bedevere: Does wood sink in water?
One Villager: No! No, no, it floats!
Other Villager: Throw her into the pond!
Villagers: yaaaaaa!
Sir Bedevere: What also floats in water?
Villager: Bread!
Another Villager: Apples!
Another Villager: Uh...very small rocks!
Another Villager: Cider!
Another Villager: Uh...great gravy!
Another Villager: Cherries!
Another Villager: Mud!
Another Villager: Churches! Churches!
Another Villager: Lead! Lead!
King Arthur: A Duck!
Villagers: ooooooh!
Sir Bedevere: Exactly! So, logically...
Villager: If... she... weighs the same as a duck... she's made of wood.
Sir Bedevere: and therefore...
Villager: A Witch!
All Villagers: A WITCH!
Gabriel Hanna said...
"I find it impossible to take religions invented in the 1970s seriously. Ancient religions at least have the weight of tradition."
See, shows what you know. Wicca was invented in the 1940s by a retired British colonial civil servant. He cobbled it together by borrowing from religions that were at least 50 years older than that. So it's practically ancient.
And witches do do crazy things in their rituals. Not as crazy as, say, ritual cannibalism, which is the apogee of Christian practice, or the murder of unbelievers, which is commanded to Muslims. No, the Wiccans wave a knife around and chant. They're weird.
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