From: eshin@ddsw1.mcs.com (Eshin-Fun)
Subject: Re: : (
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1992 13:05:14 GMT
Organization: ddsw1.MCS.COM Contributor, Chicago IL
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL3

>>st923058@pip.cc.brandeis.edu (Rosaleen Dhu) writes:
: Fellow pagans, I am down in ze dumps today. Last night, my friend Diana and I
: made the stupid mistake of trying to do a ritual. There were only four of us,
: the other two were a guy who knew a little about Wicca and his clueless-but-
: curious friend. We didn't really have anything particular in mind, just an
: Equinox celebration, and I guess our lack of focus was the main problem.

: didn't sound like someone doing a religious ritual--it sounded like someone
: talking to friends. This is how I talk to the elements during my spellworking,but it was so manifestly different from what Diana and Brian had in mind that
: it set a lousy tone and it was all my fault.

:So, all in all, I do not consider this successful. I feel as though I'vedone something terrible, and Diana does too but she won't talk. I'm having a
: really tough time trying to get things done today because every time I start
: to pay attention to something, I keep seeing that confused look on Kevin's
: face, and hearing Diana's and Brian's poetic invocations for Water and Fire
: and then having them turn to me to do the one for Earth and hearing my
: own voice, rough and un-poetic. <:-( 
: 	Just wanted to get this off my chest. I feel a little better for having
: told someone who might understand.
: 					Rosaleen<<


>>aaldrich@encore.com (Al Aldrich) writes:

Does misery love company? I also attended a very unsatisfying equinox 
celebration. For me, it was unsatisfying because it was organized by a 
woman who invited many people who were not at all interested in
participating, but observing, so the `spirit' was not with us and
 no power or energy was raised. The few rituals that were done were
treated as party games by those who did participate and I found the
whole thing rather distateful.<<<


"Some times the magic works, sometimes it doesn't!" Or so was the statement of the indian chief in "Little Big Man" film.
The problem is that today most alleged celebrants are self appointed
ecclectic, self taught and self annointed presumtious, conceited arbiters
whom probably have no foundation or knowledge of what to do.

If, with the above qualifications you do something for yourself, you can be successful because if nothing else you can delude yourself to your enthusiam.
But when you go beyond the self, in that conceit the true worth of what you
really have is inadequate.

True, in order to throw a ball, you must go backward in motion before you
can catapult it from your hand. And the further back you reach the farther
 it will go. But in an conceited age as ours, where cynicism and self opinion 
abounds it is very hard to find a "source" worth while.

It is infantile to rationalize ad-lib, improvisation for rituals that alledgedly
call down forces of remote ancient origin.

Note: when you invite the alderman or mayor of a city, regardless what you
may think of them politically, you take great pains and care to prepare
your house. If you were to invite the president or the queen or king of
a foreign country, that care and concern is more than utmost assidious
detail paid.

Well, when you intend to call down the powers and gods that rule all the
heads of humanity why do anything less?

If you are dissapointed, it is your own fault for lacking as much discrimination
in what you do as your celebrant monitor chose to do or not.

Our Equinoxical festivals were fabulous, even though several hundred attended
but discriminately without advertisement. And I might add they had nothing to 
do with the "Lucumi". Just simply ancient "Pagan" ritual. But then again
to quote Rudyard Kipling: "That's another story" (Jungle Book)

Eshin-Fun