Merry Meet Temple Newsletter

Vol. 1

No. 5

Goings On

Rituals & Gatherings

Curriculum Update

Love & Healing Light Request

Outside News

Book Reviews

A Witch's Grimoire

Pagans and the Law

The Complete Magician's Tables

The Tarot Bible

Llewellyn's 2008 Herbal Almanac

Dodo Baa

Giving a television interview is not easy.  Trying to explain a religion in "sound bites" is also not easy.  The media loves sound bites, short to the point comments.  These, however, are sufficient to explain a religion, any religion.  On May 16th, an interview that I gave was aired on television.  Shortly thereafter, the criticism began. 

As many of you know, I am the first to admit that I have much to learn.  I do not know everything, nor do I want to.  I have learned much from this interview and its three-fold. 

First, I have learned that I do, indeed, have much to learn.  I have much to learn about giving interviews.  I have much to learn about how easily some people get their feelings hurt.  I have much to learn about many things.

The second thing that I learned is that it is a lot easier for people to criticize from the broom closet than it is for those people to step out of that closet to give an interview.  It is easier to stay in the shadows than to risk being known as a wiccan.  I understand this...been there, done that.  However, if a person refuses to step up to be interviewed, then that person needs to be careful and considerate about any criticism that is given.  Either that, or consider stepping out of the broom closet to give your own interview.

Third, I have discovered that some people are supportive and understand how little of the interview was actually shown.  I appreciate their support and understanding of what I was trying to do.  I did tell the interviewer that I could not speak for all Wiccans.  I could only speak for the ones that I know, that are a part of my group.  I also appreciate the ones who have not given interviews but understand how gutsy it was to put my face and my real name on television.  Further, I appreciate the ones who realized that neither the interviewer nor the station had an agenda and gave them kudos for that fact.

Why, then, did I give the interview?  Of all the Wiccans and Pagans in Floyd County and the surrounding area, including Roanoke County were the television station is located, few wrote to express their opinion about the original "Wiccan Festival hoax" story.  Several were asked for an interview, most declined.  When I was asked, I agreed to give it because I decided that it would be a good idea to let it be known that Wiccans do not do the things that were talked about in that news story.   I agreed to speak out in defense of my religion and my beliefs.  I was not perfect, but then no one is.  Every experience is an excellent moment to learn things.  From this experience, I have learned much.  However, I do still have much to learn.

Brightest of Blessings,

Lady Damorea

Going's On

Rituals & Gatherings

Merry Meet Temple's Midsummer Ritual will be held on Saturday, June 16, 2007 at 3 pm.  Please bring a potluck dish, drinks, or a dessert to share.  If you want more information or directions, please contact Events@merrymeettemple.org.

Merry Meet Temple's Lughnasadh Ritual will be held on Saturday, August 4, 2007 at 3 pm.  Please bring a potluck dish to share.  If you want more information or directions, please contact Events@merrymeettemple.org.

Curriculum Update

Course descriptions are complete.  I am currently putting them into the curriculum database on my computer.  I will be posting the curriculums online in the coming months.  We will also begin offering seminar weekends.  For more information, contact Events@merrymeettemple.org.

Love & Healing Light Requests

Please keep the victims, families, friends, students, faculty and staff of Virginia Tech in your hearts and minds.  Continue to send them love and healing light.

I realize that many of us have had severe disagreements with the speeches, writings, and teachings of Jerry Falwell.  I am asking, however, that you send love and healing light to his family and to those who loved him.  After all, grief is still grief and his death has affected many.

Outside News

Wiccans Keep the Faith With a Religion Under Wraps

Stephanie Kuykendal for The New York Times

A stay-at-home mother of two in Northern Virginia who was raised Southern Baptist keeps her Wiccan faith secret. Not even her mother knows.

DUMFRIES, Va. — Above the woman’s fireplace hangs her wedding picture, taken in a Lutheran church years ago. Below it, on the mantelpiece, is a small Wiccan altar: two candles, a tiny cauldron, four stones to represent the elements of nature and a small amethyst representing her spirit.

Stephanie Kuykendal for The New York Times

A pagan family’s altar. Wicca, a form of paganism, celebrates the divine in nature. But its symbols and practices elicit suspicion from outsiders.

The wedding portrait is always there. But whenever someone comes to visit, the woman sweeps the altar away. Raised Southern Baptist in Virginia and now a stay-at-home mother of two in this Washington suburb, she has told almost no one — not her relatives, her friends or the other mothers in her children’s playgroups — that she is Wiccan.

Among the most popular religions to have flowered since the 1960s, Wicca — a form of paganism — still faces a struggle for acceptance, experts on the religion and Wiccans themselves said. In April, Wiccans won an important victory when the Department of Veterans Affairs settled a lawsuit and agreed to add the Wiccan pentacle to a list of approved religious symbols that it will engrave on veterans’ headstones.

But Wicca in the civilian world is largely a religion in hiding. Wiccans fear losing their friends and jobs if people find out about their faith.

“I would love to be able to say ‘Accept us for who we are,’ but I can’t, mainly because of my kids,” said the suburban mother, who agreed to talk only on the condition of anonymity. “Children can be cruel, and their parents can be even more cruel, and I don’t want my kids picked on for the choice their mommy made.”

She worries that because most people know little about Wicca, they will assume she worships Satan. She fears that her family and friends will abandon her and that the community will ostracize her.

David Steinmetz, professor of the history of Christianity at Duke Divinity School, said, “Wiccans have so many things stacked against them, from what the Bible says about the practice of magic to the history in this country of witch trials, that the image of them adds up to something so contrary to the consensus about genuine religion that still shapes American society.”

Wiccans worship the divine in nature. Some practice it privately in their homes, and others worship with large congregations. Most people do not grow up Wiccan but come to it from another religion.

“It’s a very open religion,” said Helen A. Berger, a sociology professor at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. “Each person can do what they want, and they don’t have to belong to a group. They take things from a number of different sources, like Eastern religions, Celtic practices. You are the ultimate authority of your own experience.”

But its symbols and practices elicit suspicion from outsiders, Wiccans and religion scholars say.

Many Wiccans practice some form of magic or witchcraft, which they say is a way of affecting one’s destiny, but which many outsiders see as evil. The Wiccan pentacle, a five-pointed star inside a circle, is often confused with symbols of Satanism. (The five points of the star represent the elements of nature — earth, air, fire and water — and the spirit, within the eternal circle of life.)

It is unclear how many Wiccans and other pagans there are. The 2001 American Religious Identification Survey by the City University of New York found that Wicca was the country’s fastest-growing religion, with 134,000 adherents, compared with 8,000 in 1990. The actual number may be greater, Ms. Berger said. Some people may have been unwilling to identify themselves as pagan or Wiccan for the survey. Others combine paganism with other religions.

Wiccans face less backlash now than in the past. The Internet provides information about Wicca, and the popularity of the Harry Potter novels has made magic seem a force for good, scholars and Wiccans say.

David and Jeanet Ewing, coordinators of two pagan groups in the Washington area, estimate that at least 1,000 Wiccans and other pagans live in Northern Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia. At least half actively hide their faith from their relatives, Ms. Ewing said. Many also hide their faith from their employers, Mr. Ewing said.

One such person is a 58-year-old former Roman Catholic who has been an auditor for 30 years in what he calls “one of the most buttoned-down departments in one of the most sacrosanct agencies” of the federal government.

“I put on this Joe Taxpayer suit, and it’s like living two lives,” he said. “A minority would have a problem with me, but it would be a big problem. They would assume we are doing weird things, illegal, immoral things, at all hours. They wouldn’t want to really know what we do, but they would go with their presuppositions instead.”

The auditor said that by “coming out of the broom closet,” he risked ostracism at work and perhaps being pushed into early retirement, which would affect his pension. “I don’t even want to contemplate it,” he said.

A New York marketing executive finds the city so secular that being passionate about religion is often met with a smirk, and it would be worse if people knew he was Wiccan, he said. “In my personal and private life, I like to be taken seriously,” he said. “Pagans are associated with the ’70s and hippies and counterculture. New York is a Type A city, and it’s all about getting ahead, and the kooky ones don’t get ahead.”

Members of other religions, including Jews and Catholics, have sometimes been forced to mask their faith in the past because of religious bias, Professor Steinmetz said. But it is rare, he added, for people to keep their religion from parents and grandparents, as many Wiccans do.

The Virginia mother has not told her mother or grandmother that she is a Wiccan. “I have a deep-seated fear that they will say, ‘I can’t be a part of this, you’re raising your kids as evil,’ ” she said.

She attends classes about Wicca on Friday nights, and she has yet to caution her older child, a preschooler, not to tell anyone about them.

“My son says, ‘Yeah, Mommy’s going to witch school,’ ” she said. “I’m just waiting for the day he says that in front of a teacher.”

A Witch's Grimoire

by Judy Ann Nock © 2005 Adams Media

ISBN 1-59337-407-0
256 pages Paperback $12.95 (U.S.) $17.95 (Canada)

The subtitle of this book is "Create Your Own Book of Shadows". As such, it offers potentially invaluable assistance to those who do not have the benefit of coven-based training. It's not like this information isn't available elsewhere.  It certainly is. But this book offers the advantage of collecting it all in one place.

I don't agree with everything the author says, because of different life experiences. In fact, on page 1 she makes a statement which I find difficult to agree with: "Most often, today's grimoire is handwritten by individuals for their own personal use." Not in my experience. Today's grimoires are usually printed out from computer files, not handwritten. That is the sort of disagreement I have with this book - not with the material, but with the presentation.

The author provides lots of room for masking notes, if you are one of those individuals who can bring themselves to write in a book (I can't, but that is a personal bias). She also provides plenty of formats for creating your own forms for recording rituals and such.

I have to say that, for some reason, I found it difficult to "get into" this book. I'm not sure if that was a function of the author's style (I kind of doubt that), my own lack of interest in yet ANOTHER "101" book (possible), or the early onset of warm humid weather in our region (also a distinct possibility). So, while I can't give this a whole-hearted recommendation, I can say that it well-written, easy to use, and contains an abundance of useful information in one, easy to access place.

For an individual just starting down this path, or for one who has not felt the need previously to keep a Book of Shadows, this book will provide valuable guidance. I'm sure there are other books which offer such guidance, but this is first one I have seen which is devoted exclusively to the subject.

She does offer some input on topics which typically fall outside of the "101" books, such as channeling and aspecting. And I have a few minor qualms with including such topics in a basic book. Channeling and aspecting, while not inherently dangerous, do provide opportunities for those with insecurities to invite problems into their lives. While it isn't necessary to be in a coven to work with these topics, the presence of a mentor is a real plus.

She includes some basic reference lists of candle colors, herbs, Goddess forms, etc. These are intended to be a starting point and are by no means extensive or all-encompassing. Any of these topics can easily fill a book (or more) on their own. The examples are all commonplace, but they do give a good start.

Reviewed by Mike Gleason

Pagans and the Law: Understanding Your Rights

by Dana D. Eilers © 2003 The Career Press

ISBN: 1-56414-671-5 

247 pages Paperback  $15.95 US

This is a book that every pagan should have in her/his library and in the library of every pagan group.  It is also a must read.

Our group is starting to offer classes online and on location.  This book will be one of our textbooks.  Many pagans find themselves in need of legal advice, just like many non-pagans.  Topics covered include various rights, child custody, discrimination issues, land use, and more...all from a pagan perspective.  The cases that are discussed are real.  The covered cases provide an incredible amount of information that can be applied to similar cases. 

The chapter on "Pagans and Their Lawyers" covers finding a good attorney, proving the attorney's credentials, and much more.  Having met an attorney who knew that he would be meeting a witch, I can tell you that the experience is an interesting one.  He was very respectful and asked good questions.  He also asked good questions in court.  Finding a good attorney is not always easy.  This book tells you what to look for in your attorney.  The chapter also covers representation provided by the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union.  As with the rest of the book, the topic coverage in this chapter is concise and understandable. 

Cases that are covered include The Church of the Iron Oak in Florida, Sacred Well Congregation, and many more.  The lessons that can be learned from these cases are important and timeless. 

The chapter notes and bibliography are stuffed with excellent resources.  This book, in my opinion, is a must have for every pagan.

reviewed by Lady Damorea

The Complete Magician's Tables

by Stephen Skinner © 2006 Llewellyn Publication, Ltd.

ISBN 10: 0-7387-1164-0

432 pages Hardback $44.95 US  $49.95 Canada

This is not the first book of Tables that I have gotten.  This one, however, is different.  Skinner starts with the history behind the tables, which are direct competition for Aleister Crowley's Liber 777.  In my opinion, Skinner took on an incredible task and did extremely well.  The explanations for the changes made in the tables will help those who are familiar with Crowley's writings.  These explanation also help readers who are new to the information. 

Skinner further explains the arrangements of the five different formats of the Tree of Life, including the Golden Dawn and the Luria versions of the Tree of Life.  Skinner also explains that the tables can be used with any format of the Tree of Life with little difficulty.

The tables are laid out in a logical, easy-to-use order.  "ZEP", or Zodiac, Elements, and Planets, order to the tables makes sense.  It is not as random feeling as was Crowley's.  This layout also makes it easy to locate all the information and correspondences needed for ritual and magick.  The tables include information on the Angels, Buddhism, Christianity, Alchemy, Geomancy, and much more. 

This book will be useful to ritual magicians and researchers, as well as anyone who finds the history of modern magick interesting.  In my opinion, this book is a must have.

Reviewed by Lady Damorea

Tarot Bible, The

by Sarah Barnett © 2006 Sterling Publishing ISBN 1-4027-3838- 2 400 pages Paperback $14.95 (U.S.)

Over the years I have given hundreds of Tarot readings; have owned and used several different decks and have probably read dozens of books on the subject, so I'm not sure why I was drawn to this book when I saw it. To be sure, it is colorful and has very clear illustrations. And it is a heavy book (I mean that in a physical, as opposed to a philosophical way). I'm not sure I agree with the subtitle: "The definitive guide to the cards and spreads." I always have a problem with any book which claims to be "the" anything.

This book is profusely illustrated with examples from different decks, although the dominant illustrations come a Waite-Rider variant deck (The Universal Tarot).

Each of the Arcana (both Major and Minor) contains some key words and key phrases as well as an in-depth analysis of the card and what it may indicate in a variety of positions in a reading. All of this is accompanied with an illustration from the Universal Tarot. The explanations are clear and concise. These two sections, plus the introductory section, take you a bit beyond the middle of the book. The remainder of the book is dedicated, primarily, to the various layouts. It contains some correspondences and other suggestions to expand your experience with the Tarot.

Many of the spreads illustrated are very simple and easy to use. Especially for those who are just starting to use the tarot these spreads help to build confidence and experience. Some of them are truly unique and offer insights into relationships and personalities.

On a personal level, I have a problem with some of the instructions - including the author's insistence on sitting on the floor to do your readings - but I freely acknowledge that as a personal bias. Overall, I found the book to be clearly written, informative, and quite a valuable resource.

The final 50 pages of this book give information on using the cards for spell work as well as giving information on combining astrology, numerology, the Kabbalah and crystals with the Tarot. Obviously, these are only basic suggestions, given the space limitations, but they should help to inspire further personal research.

reviewed by Mike Gleason

Llewellyn's 2008 Herbal Almanac

 © 2007 Llewellyn Worldwide ISBN 0-7387-0554- 3

312 pages Paperback $8.99 (U.S.) $9.99 (Canada)

Every year Llewellyn offers a variety of almanacs, date books, and calendars. And every year people find some reason to complain about them. If for no other reason their sheer dependability makes them a worthwhile addition to your bookshelf.

The basic astrological data (which is traditionally Llewellyn's strong suit) is the least of the reasons to buy this almanac. The articles (36 of them, in six sections, by 24 separate authors) are the strong suit. I look forward to this almanac every year, even though I am, by no stretch of the imagination, an herbalist. In fact, I sometimes use that as a guideline when reviewing books. If a subject is beyond my areas of comfortable knowledge (things I trust my memory on, with no urge to verify my memory), and the book under review doesn't send me to check alternate sources, I feel safe in saying that it is a worthwhile addition to the "average" Pagan or Witch's library.

The articles are divided into six broad categories as they are every year (Growing and Gathering Herbs; Culinary Herbs; Herbs for Health; Herbs for Beauty: Herb Crafts; and Herb History, Myth and Love). They cover a broad spectrum within each of these categories, and there should be something to appeal to everyone.

The disclaimer about only being a collection of folk knowledge and not intended for medical use, etc. is the same as it is every year (and as it must be in this litigious society). I understand and agree with this disclaimer and with the recommendation to start with small amounts to check for reactions.

This is a book to be savored and enjoyed. Don't rush through it. Pick and choose. Read an article when you have half an hour to kill. Let the information seep into you. A simple read-through cannot begin to exhaust the information contained in this book.

Whether or not you agree with all the information (and I'm betting there will be an occasional "Are you kidding?" moment for everyone), you should find some "Aha!" moments as well.

Don't buy this book for the astrological and astronomical data. Buy it for the articles.

reviewed by Mike Gleason

Dodo Baa

Today's grimoires are usually printed out from computer files, not handwritten.

Having met an attorney who knew that he would be meeting a witch, I can tell you that the experience is an interesting one. 

Skinner starts with the history behind the tables, which are direct competition for Aleister Crowley's Liber 777.  In my opinion, Skinner took on an incredible task and did extremely well.

Each of the Arcana (both Major and Minor) contains some key words and key phrases as well as an in-depth analysis of the card and what it may indicate in a variety of positions in a reading.

Don't buy this book for the astrological and astronomical data. Buy it for the articles.

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