Welcome to Druidchat 10! We’re glad you could make it! Do check out the other DruidChats on other networks. Sorry we’ve been gone so long, but for a few months, we had computer issues.
The original DruidChat has had an interesting history. It was started by Sybok of the Order of the Mithril Star. Tegwedd knows this because he told her this himself. She may have had her issues with him in the past, but she has to admit that he started a good group, and under Aigeann’s leadership. it’s gotten even better. It has hundreds of people in it. When you think about DruidChat, you think about Isaac, who was there a little. Sean’s been there too, from time to time. This is a place to chat about things of interest to Druids of all stripes.
Tegwedd saw a movie Saturday evening that may be of interest to Druids, and others concerned about the environment. It’s called The 11th Hour, to emphasize the fact that something has to be done to get us away from our global addiction to fossil fuels. The dumb part is that there are so many alternatives to fossil fuels that we could have been off of them over 30 years ago, if the Republicans would just stop letting the fossil fuel companies lead them around by the testicles. People are making money off these alternatives and the gas and oil companies could too if they weren’t such dinosaurs. It was produced and narrated by Leonardo diCaprio. The more Tegwedd sees of this young man. the more impressed with him she becomes. He’s a lot more than just a pretty face.
“This movie shows that Leonardo diCaprio’s heart is in the right place,” says Stephen.
According to the film, this planet is a wreck, and getting worse. Unless those who are aware can impress upon those in power (the fossil fuel companies and their tame legislators) that there is scads of money to be made in developing alternate energy sources, that they can make at least as much money in renewable energy as they did in rapidly diminishing fossil fuels, our quality of life will continue to fall, and our time on this planet is coming to an end. Tegwedd is impassioned about this, and she’s on fire. She’s pissed off. The Republican menace must be stopped. These anit-Druids must be tried and convicted of treason because they are traitors, nnot only to America, and the American way of life, but also to the planet. Tegwedd isn’t a political animal, and you guys know that. But our very survival is on the line.
Stephen is very much a political animal, and a militarist who knows about weapons. He thinks that the Republicans all should be vampire food except for Clint Eastwood and Tegwedd’s relatives. She loves her relatives, but they’re all Republicans. It’s all Grover Norquist’s and Rupert Murdoch’s fault. Murdoch’s TV stations and publications conned her relatives into voting against their own best interests. As Druids, we need to be aware of the situation our nation and indeed our planet are in now. All the Republicans and their rich corporate masters care about are short term monetary gains. If there’s any true evil in the world, it’s the Republicans, and their colleagues and collaborators in other countries. For all you politically active Druids and other Pagans out there, vote these bastards the hell out of office. We have a list of all these assholes. You can get it too by Googling the Senate, House of Representatives, and the governors of the states in which you live. You probably know which party your state governor belongs to. If s/he’s a Republican, vote hir the hell out of office. If your Congressman or -woman is a Republican, get hir the hell out of office. The same goes for your state legislatures. If we all get together and rebel, they have to listen to us. Remember that the first 3 words of the US Constitution are “We the People.” If you are apolitical, get involved. Remember that our old friend and Druid’s Druid Isaac Bonewits was politically active. An acquaintance of Tegwedd’s was also politically active, and participated in protest demonstrations to forestall the construction of nuclear power plants. His name was Wally Davis. He sacrificed himself in 1984 so that he could defend his beloved Mother Earth in no-ncorporeal form. It seems that he was right about nuclear power plants being dangerous as the Japanese power plants and the one in New York’s Indian Point bear out.
Enough of the political diatribing already. What do you want to talk about here? As we see it, Druids’ main concerns are nature, natural magick, and priest-craft. Speaking of nature, who of you have heard of the comet Elenin? We’ve only heard a little about it approaching the Solar System. We’ll keep you posted as things develop, or you can post here about it if you get some more information about it. Speaking of comets, do you know what the word “disaster” means? It means “evil star” People used to believe that comets or stars, or planets in the wrong alignments caused cataclysmic events or presaged them.
Sunday Tegwedd and four of the other women from the grove went on a nature hikealong the Sacramento and identified plantain, which is a good remedy for things like bug bites or stings as the leaves when bruised or pulverized and put in a compress suck the venom out of the bite or sting. Then when they got back to Jill’s house, they toured her garden, had a tasty lunch, and worked on their crafts. Meanwhile Stephen did a nature thing of his own, working to tame the backyard of our staff member and friend Lizet Freeman. They identified and saved morning glories. Supposedly the seeds get you high as they contain a small amount of LSD, but they’ll get you sick before they get you high. Stephen thinks they have a magickal use, but isn’t sure what it is. On a purely mundane level, they make good ground cover. The building where Tegwedd lived for 16 years before she moved here had morning glories climbing up the wall. We suggest you do research to find out what its magickal uses are.
Abbott’s Inn International School of Magick is over 40 years old, having been founded in 1970 in Berkeley, CA. It went cybernetic almost 9 years ago. Lizet has been helping us put the school on a more commercial footing, and with her inspiration, Tegwedd started to package the classes into manageable packets. Ms. Freeman did a 3rd website for us almost a month ago at http://abbottsinn.wordpress.com. From there, by clicking on two of the graphics, you can go to either of the other two sites: http://abbottsinninternational.com/ and http://abbottsinn.com/ . You can also get to our network http://abbottsinn.ning.com/ . With her help, we also salvaged some things from his old website, including the mission statement: The Abbott’s Inn International School of Magick aims to provide a gentle nurturing environment that promotes education in both the atmosphere and the specific tools of magick. Our research arm is called the Magickal Research Institute or MRI, not to be confused with the medical MRI, or Magnetic Resonance Image, which Tegwedd had on her right ankle about 9 months ago. Stephen and Lizet came up with the name almost 9 years ago. The three of us have become a very effective working team.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Return to DruidWicca_Coven
Greetings all you DruidWiccans out there! At last we’re back. Sorry we were gone for so long. We were working on other groups. and had computer issues for about 4 months. First my HP Pavilion 1710 died, then Stephen’s laptop died. We were reduced to doing our computing at the library. Then my 2nd ex-hubby brought up his daughter’s old computer for us to use. Then on about the 8th of June, I got the computer I’m on now. She’s a beauty, an HP Pavilion Slimline. She has 3 gigs of memory, and runs Windows 7. And I LOVE Windows 7. It is the most user friendly OS Microsoft has come up with yet. It is so fast that it almost does what I want before I think of it. So we’re back, and to show we’re back, we’re doing posts to all our prior groups.
As many of you know, this group was founded to celebrate the joining of Druidry and the Craft of the Wise in Phillip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm with the drop-dead gorgeous artwork of Will Worthington. How many of you have actually seen this deck? Out of the 425 decks that Stephen has in his collection, he can say this is his favorite deck. A big part of this is Will Worthington’s artwork. My only complaint about the deck is that the cards are a little large for my hands to manipulate. Stephen was a casino dealer in his hounds-toothed career, so he has no trouble shuffling the cards, but I do. In Stephen’s opinion, this is the most beautifully rendered deck he’s seen. The Llewellyn Tarot is its only real rival, in my opinion. Stephen also likes the Arthurian Tarot and the Tarot of Sorcerers. Which other decks do you think belong in this category? I like the Mystic Faerie Tarot because the style of artwork is very Arte Nouveau, which, besides Pre-Raphaelite, is my favorite style of art. The DruidCraft Tarot is published by St. Martin’s Press, New York.. We recommend it highly.
There is a divination “board” made of plastic coated paper that comes with the “Legend” Tarot. Stephen is using it right now for his phone readings. The Legend Arthurian Tarot is published by Llewellyn. Try Llewellyn.com first, then Amazon.com, then Mind-n-Magick.com. Do NOT go to Ebay unless you are both rich and desperate. Stephen believes that the Llewellyn Tarot is still in print from Llewellyn. Try there first, then Amazon, the Mind-n-Magick. Why is the DruidCraft Tarot different from all other decks? It’s the artwork. The artwork is drop-dead gorgeous. Will Worthington did a masterful job on the artwork. And symbolism? It’s got symbolism up the wazoo.
There are other DruidWicca groups out there that are not us. This is a very popular group of ours. One of the things that we want to do with this group, since this is a coven, is to do rituals on PaganSpace.net. We don’t know whether that network still has its instant messaging facility, but I’ll do some research and find out. What do the rest of you think of this? We want your feedback and ideas. We tried to do it before, but that was years ago. We’d like to try it again. Follow us on Twitter. Stephen is abbottsinn on Twitter. I am Teresa Reitan@Tegwedd. We’ll also bring this up on Facebook. Stephen is Stephen W. Abbott and Stephen Abbott. Somehow he ended up with 2 accounts. The person who can teach him how to integrate his two accounts into one gets a reading or a class. If we can use the Instant Messaging, we would like to do readings on it for reasonable rates. This will be promoted on Twitter and Facebook.
This is off-topic, but I’ve gotta talk about it. Last Wednesday, we went to Luigi’s Pizza Garden to celebrate Stephen turning 61 years old undead. Luigi’s is probably the oldest pizza place in Sacramento, having been established in 1953. It’s a pleasantly funky place. The tables resemble picnic tables. Stephen had had a rough day, and was rather grumpy, but started to relax as soon as we got there. We feasted. I had a 12” Luigi’s Special, which had the toppings I like. Oink! Oink! Oink! I ate like a little piggy, just as I said I would, but I still had enough left over to have on Friday for lunch. Stephen had a large 4 meat pizza, which fed him for 3 meals. I mainly mention this event because last year I couldn’t go, since I was in the hospital with a broken ankle. When the 4th of July rolled around, and I did NOT have to go to the hospital, I knew I was going to Luigi’s two days later, and I did, and had myself a time. If you live locally, we highly recommend that you go to Luigi’s. If you want, call our toll free number and we’ll meet you there. Then 3 days later, I got him a birthday gift, the biggest darkest bar of chocolate I could find in Trader Joe’s.
Since this is about Wicca/Witchcraft, as well as Druidry, it might behoove us to discuss some basics about Wicca, for those of you who are rank beginners. Advanced Witches can either skip this section, or use it to review. It’s your choice. How many of you have ever belonged to either a Wiccan study group, or a coven at all? How many of you have studied the Craft on your own? A show of hands. Wicca is a duotheistic (two deities) religion which reveres Nature, and practices magick as an extension of those natural laws. That was the definition I supplied whenever someone wandered into the #Wicca channel on Mirc, wondering what Wicca actually was. We go by one law or counsel, the Wiccan Rede, which goes: “Eight words the Wiccan Rede fulfill: An it harm none, do what ye will.” In Wicca, unlike Druidry, but like in ceremonial or ritual magick, there is the importance of the magickal circle as a concentrator and container of magickal energy until it is sent to its destination. You see, in Druidry, there is no magickal circle, no impenetrable boundary because all of the earth is sacred space, because She is our beloved Earth Mother. Both Wicca/Witchcraft and Druidry use herbs and plants. Wiccans/Witches cast spells and incantations much more than Druidry groups do. In Druidry it’s about the offerings and sacrifices. Druids sacrifice in the hopes that the Deity thus offered to will grant the person’s desire. Stephen claims that Druidry is closer to shamanism than is the Craft, but I disagree. I say the Craft is closer to shamanism. Basically the Craft is European shamanism. Druidry is a priestcraft, and is solar in nature, while the Craft is more lunar and stellar in nature. In the Craft, you can do things like shape-shifting, and Druidry, at least in ADF, you don’t have that, at least to the best of my knowledge. But according to Stephen, in ancient legendary Druidry, there was a plethora of shape-shifting, so in Stephen’s personal brand of Druidry, there is shape-shifting. Of course, we don’t know for sure, since the ancient Druids left no written records. I maintain that his Druidry is closer to the Craft, being essentially shamanic in nature. In the legends and myths, there were Druids who could shape shift, but bot in modern Druidry. Living in the modern world has killed our powers of shape-shifting. Stephen believes that with the right person, practicing the right disciplines, the power could be rediscovered. In the modern world, which saps our powers, we’ve lost the power to do the amazing magick. But with people discovering Druidry younger and younger and living longer and longer, who knows? we may yet rediscover the power. DruidWicca takes what’s best of both magickal disciplines, and combines them. These two disciplines are melded together to create one cohesive whole.
Both Druidry and Wicca have many deities, but in Druidry They’re all individuals, while in Wicca, there but Two, the Lady and the Lord, Who have many names. From Stephen’s perspective as a Druid, he sees many Deities. Now it’s your turn to tell how you would combine Druidry and Wicca together. What did we miss in our approach? A couple days ago we went through Stephen’s old website and selected what we wanted from it. The truth is, we want to use everything in the old site on the new site. I particularly like the mission statement that Lizet had come up with over 8 years ago about creating a nurturing environment for magickal research. Here it is: The goal of Abbott’s Inn is to provide a gentle and nurturing environment that promotes education in both the atmosphere and specific tools of magick. Gain without pain. (unless you want pain). Humankind has pursued magick since the dawn of time.
As many of you know, this group was founded to celebrate the joining of Druidry and the Craft of the Wise in Phillip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm with the drop-dead gorgeous artwork of Will Worthington. How many of you have actually seen this deck? Out of the 425 decks that Stephen has in his collection, he can say this is his favorite deck. A big part of this is Will Worthington’s artwork. My only complaint about the deck is that the cards are a little large for my hands to manipulate. Stephen was a casino dealer in his hounds-toothed career, so he has no trouble shuffling the cards, but I do. In Stephen’s opinion, this is the most beautifully rendered deck he’s seen. The Llewellyn Tarot is its only real rival, in my opinion. Stephen also likes the Arthurian Tarot and the Tarot of Sorcerers. Which other decks do you think belong in this category? I like the Mystic Faerie Tarot because the style of artwork is very Arte Nouveau, which, besides Pre-Raphaelite, is my favorite style of art. The DruidCraft Tarot is published by St. Martin’s Press, New York.. We recommend it highly.
There is a divination “board” made of plastic coated paper that comes with the “Legend” Tarot. Stephen is using it right now for his phone readings. The Legend Arthurian Tarot is published by Llewellyn. Try Llewellyn.com first, then Amazon.com, then Mind-n-Magick.com. Do NOT go to Ebay unless you are both rich and desperate. Stephen believes that the Llewellyn Tarot is still in print from Llewellyn. Try there first, then Amazon, the Mind-n-Magick. Why is the DruidCraft Tarot different from all other decks? It’s the artwork. The artwork is drop-dead gorgeous. Will Worthington did a masterful job on the artwork. And symbolism? It’s got symbolism up the wazoo.
There are other DruidWicca groups out there that are not us. This is a very popular group of ours. One of the things that we want to do with this group, since this is a coven, is to do rituals on PaganSpace.net. We don’t know whether that network still has its instant messaging facility, but I’ll do some research and find out. What do the rest of you think of this? We want your feedback and ideas. We tried to do it before, but that was years ago. We’d like to try it again. Follow us on Twitter. Stephen is abbottsinn on Twitter. I am Teresa Reitan@Tegwedd. We’ll also bring this up on Facebook. Stephen is Stephen W. Abbott and Stephen Abbott. Somehow he ended up with 2 accounts. The person who can teach him how to integrate his two accounts into one gets a reading or a class. If we can use the Instant Messaging, we would like to do readings on it for reasonable rates. This will be promoted on Twitter and Facebook.
This is off-topic, but I’ve gotta talk about it. Last Wednesday, we went to Luigi’s Pizza Garden to celebrate Stephen turning 61 years old undead. Luigi’s is probably the oldest pizza place in Sacramento, having been established in 1953. It’s a pleasantly funky place. The tables resemble picnic tables. Stephen had had a rough day, and was rather grumpy, but started to relax as soon as we got there. We feasted. I had a 12” Luigi’s Special, which had the toppings I like. Oink! Oink! Oink! I ate like a little piggy, just as I said I would, but I still had enough left over to have on Friday for lunch. Stephen had a large 4 meat pizza, which fed him for 3 meals. I mainly mention this event because last year I couldn’t go, since I was in the hospital with a broken ankle. When the 4th of July rolled around, and I did NOT have to go to the hospital, I knew I was going to Luigi’s two days later, and I did, and had myself a time. If you live locally, we highly recommend that you go to Luigi’s. If you want, call our toll free number and we’ll meet you there. Then 3 days later, I got him a birthday gift, the biggest darkest bar of chocolate I could find in Trader Joe’s.
Since this is about Wicca/Witchcraft, as well as Druidry, it might behoove us to discuss some basics about Wicca, for those of you who are rank beginners. Advanced Witches can either skip this section, or use it to review. It’s your choice. How many of you have ever belonged to either a Wiccan study group, or a coven at all? How many of you have studied the Craft on your own? A show of hands. Wicca is a duotheistic (two deities) religion which reveres Nature, and practices magick as an extension of those natural laws. That was the definition I supplied whenever someone wandered into the #Wicca channel on Mirc, wondering what Wicca actually was. We go by one law or counsel, the Wiccan Rede, which goes: “Eight words the Wiccan Rede fulfill: An it harm none, do what ye will.” In Wicca, unlike Druidry, but like in ceremonial or ritual magick, there is the importance of the magickal circle as a concentrator and container of magickal energy until it is sent to its destination. You see, in Druidry, there is no magickal circle, no impenetrable boundary because all of the earth is sacred space, because She is our beloved Earth Mother. Both Wicca/Witchcraft and Druidry use herbs and plants. Wiccans/Witches cast spells and incantations much more than Druidry groups do. In Druidry it’s about the offerings and sacrifices. Druids sacrifice in the hopes that the Deity thus offered to will grant the person’s desire. Stephen claims that Druidry is closer to shamanism than is the Craft, but I disagree. I say the Craft is closer to shamanism. Basically the Craft is European shamanism. Druidry is a priestcraft, and is solar in nature, while the Craft is more lunar and stellar in nature. In the Craft, you can do things like shape-shifting, and Druidry, at least in ADF, you don’t have that, at least to the best of my knowledge. But according to Stephen, in ancient legendary Druidry, there was a plethora of shape-shifting, so in Stephen’s personal brand of Druidry, there is shape-shifting. Of course, we don’t know for sure, since the ancient Druids left no written records. I maintain that his Druidry is closer to the Craft, being essentially shamanic in nature. In the legends and myths, there were Druids who could shape shift, but bot in modern Druidry. Living in the modern world has killed our powers of shape-shifting. Stephen believes that with the right person, practicing the right disciplines, the power could be rediscovered. In the modern world, which saps our powers, we’ve lost the power to do the amazing magick. But with people discovering Druidry younger and younger and living longer and longer, who knows? we may yet rediscover the power. DruidWicca takes what’s best of both magickal disciplines, and combines them. These two disciplines are melded together to create one cohesive whole.
Both Druidry and Wicca have many deities, but in Druidry They’re all individuals, while in Wicca, there but Two, the Lady and the Lord, Who have many names. From Stephen’s perspective as a Druid, he sees many Deities. Now it’s your turn to tell how you would combine Druidry and Wicca together. What did we miss in our approach? A couple days ago we went through Stephen’s old website and selected what we wanted from it. The truth is, we want to use everything in the old site on the new site. I particularly like the mission statement that Lizet had come up with over 8 years ago about creating a nurturing environment for magickal research. Here it is: The goal of Abbott’s Inn is to provide a gentle and nurturing environment that promotes education in both the atmosphere and specific tools of magick. Gain without pain. (unless you want pain). Humankind has pursued magick since the dawn of time.
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