"I have a Trident that I always place on my altar. I love the way it balances the various objects I place around it with its symmetry. It is small, about the size of my hand, and made of forged iron. Yes, I know, iron is supposed to be bad to have around in ritual, but I think few rules are universal; you certainly cannot rule out iron when you do, as I do, the Blacksmith’s Works."

...To be continued at http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=&c=words&id=11021

Btw, in the stamp above, Daimon Hellstorm is bragging about the size of his trident, sort of a security token he desperately held to wayyy back in the corny days when he went around dressed like a bad xerox of Professor Zovek the late Mexican escapist, before Warren Ellis revamped him out of his misery (all hail Warren! www.warrenellis.com). I asked him to stand around just to scare off any peeking christian fundamentalists!

Well, Deck, I will not reply in your own blog simply because it would be very rude and intrusive to post something from a different religious viewpoint, a respect which you obviously lack. I want to say, however, that I did read what you posted in my blog in full. In fact I even could say that relate to this Kathi Sharpe's experience - just as she was very attached to paganism and had very skewed assumptions on christianism, I used to be very attached to chistianism and used to have tis skewed notion of paganism. Until, just as she heard Jesus actually call her, I heard my Gods call me in a distinct way. And just like she found in him the answers she needed for her plight, I found in them the answers I needed for mine.

So, each of us hopefully gets what they need. Which makes me wonder why Jesus, who seems to be a quite decent fellow to me in the gospels, gets such imposing, bible-wagging believers.

Now, I doubt that this Kathi Sharpe even exists, and I will be very thankful if -no, I DEMAND that you refrain from posting any further christian views in my blog or my mail, because proselityzing and evangelization is very rude, lowly and offensive and any decent God must be ashamed of having proselityzing followers, which is why I NEVER invite anybody to join my faith. I only ask you to respect it and leave me alone. And do NOT pray for my soul, because I consider that an attempt to tamper with my free will. Don't mess with my soul, I won't mess with yours.

May my God drops by to say hello to you, all horns and fire, if you even THINK about posting anything else to me.

Beside the witching stuff,  I was, and I guess I still am, a horror writer. I guess I am now seeing a lot of things from the other side, and many things that used to horrify me were in actuality, as it often happens, mirrors I found too revealing for my safety of mind, and I have since learned to gaze deeply into them.

Will I write more horror stories? Or is that field dead for me, now that I have learned to see the Unknown through its own eyes? I simply don't know; I'll find out when I see what comes out of my typing. But I'd like to, I'd like to do a different nuance of horror, one that will be a harder challenge, because it must reflect another view, my current view. All in all, I guess my greatest fear is slain: that of cosmic horror, the fear of pointlessness. The idiot chaos at the center of all things, of which the mad Arab and the weird writer from Providence were so fond of, has been eradicated, by its counterpart: Fate. she is, therefore it is not.

But that is too ambitious; humanity is petty, it worries about smaller, more immediate things. and more importantly, there is a limit to what we can hope to learn and know. And beyond that borderline, there lies fear. The oldest strongest and strongest kind of fear, quoth Lovecraft- the fear of the Unknown.

But fear lies also in the unexpected.

There is this quaint article by Neil Gaiman on the New York Times today, addressing this very thing, about how fear hides everywhere, not in vastness but in nuances. I'll quote a little piece from it, leave the link as a hook for spirits that may follow its cue...

"Why do you write ghost stories? Is there any place for ghost stories in the 21st century?

"As Alice said, there’s plenty of room. Technology does nothing to dispel the shadows at the edge of things. The ghost-story world still hovers at the limits of vision, making things stranger, darker, more magical, just as it always has ....

"There’s a blog I don’t think anyone else reads. I ran across it searching for something else, and something about it, the tone of voice perhaps, so flat and bleak and hopeless, caught my attention. I bookmarked it.

"If the girl who kept it knew that anyone was reading it, anybody cared, perhaps she would not have taken her own life. She even wrote about what she was going to do, the pills, the Nembutal and Seconal and the rest, that she had stolen a few at a time over the months from her stepfather’s bathroom, the plastic bag, the loneliness, and wrote about it in a flat, pragmatic way, explaining that while she knew that suicide attempts were cries for help, this really wasn’t, she just didn’t want to live any longer.

"She counted down to the big day, and I kept reading, uncertain what to do, if anything. There was not enough identifying information on the Web page even to tell me which continent she lived on. No e-mail address. No way to leave comments. The last message said simply, “Tonight.”

"I wondered whom I should tell, if anyone, and then I shrugged, and, best as I could, I swallowed the feeling that I had let the world down.

"And then she started to post again. She says she’s cold and she’s lonely.

"I think she knows I’m still reading ...."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/opinion/31gaiman.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Graham Masterton, horror novelist best known for his Manitou series and some Cthulhu Mythos works, also authored a novel titled Night Plague, part of his Night Warriors serials, in which his oneiric adventurers face none other than Isobel Gowdie, who -we are told- escaped execution (something that has actually been suggested by a few researchers) intending to embark for the New World, granted wicked dream-inducing powers by her all-too-christian diabolical Master. While I love some of Graham's works, I strongly recommend pagans and crafters to stay away from this particular novel; in spite of the masterful initial sequence where the protagonists visit what seems to be Isobel's old house, full of eerie pictures of her, blindfolded and tormented through several lives, the treatment given to Isobel by the so-called heroes is truly unbearable to read. These "heroes" are psychos! But that does not mean other works by Graham Masterton are any less for that. Let's not judge all books because of just one of them! Graham was very helpful when it came to lending me this info:

Isobel Gowdie was indicted by a Scottish court on April 13, 1662, charged that "thou received honors from the Devil they master and was appointed by him at all times thereafter his special domestic servant." She confessed to her sins, and although there is no record of it, it is extremely likely that she was put to death. Isobel was asked in court if she wanted to repent but said, "I will not be other than I am; I find too much content in my condition; I am always caressed." She said she had met the Devil in the churchyard at Auldearne and made a pact with him. She renounced her baptism and her Christian faith, and then gave her body and soul to him. "I did put one of my hands to the crown of my head, and the other to the sole of my foot, and then renounced all betwixt my two hands to the Devil." She said that the Devil sucked her blood and baptised her with it. She also said that she went out at night and destroyed houses and the people inside them, and that she could create storms by hitting a rock with a wet rag. For this she was rewarded by the Devil copulating with her. Very little more is known about her, so I did slightly embellish her story...but that's fiction for you!

For some forms of British Isles Traditional Witchcraft, the Hearth is a powerful symbol for an entrance or pathway between the worlds.

The following is the symbolism attributed to the Hearth somewhere in the Scottish Highlands. In the Blacksmith's Works, the Hearth is a metaphor for the process of death.
 
A Hearth is a fire burning on the ground and concealed from the weather by stones; the flame appears to burn from within the ground.

Fire and the ground are vehicles of access to the Underworld, or Elfhame, since the ground is the outer layer of the Hollow Hills or Mounds, and conceals the essential world where spirits dwell, which is “within” or “underneath” –therefore, underworld. This is the reason those spirits are called the Folk under the Hills.

The sacred Land is the reality we live in, which comprehends the much narrower world spanned by our physical senses. And Fire is a force of transformation; here, transformation equals transposition, from one world to another; birth and death between our world and Elfhame.

A Hearth is fed from logs –wood which stands for the World Tree, be it oak, walnut or whatever tree is held sacred by each witch-clan. Ashes are the mortal remains which return to the soil; therefore, they conceal a path to the Underworld. And the chimney’s conduct is the vertical pathway that leads smoke –the spirit of the Witch when Mastery is achieved- to the Fields beyond shifting moonlight where the Master Spirits dwell.

I am a writer, I am a pagan, I am a witch. Why should you care? You should nor, I would say. Not unless you mind either, or unless you share any of these specifics, I should suppose.

However, if you would know a bit more, allow me to sate your questions.

A writer, I said; I write mostly horror and fantasy fiction. Or used to, I should say; since in later years I have taken a turn toward Mesoamerican beliefs, Anthropology, Paganism and Neo-Paganism. My most recent book in particular, is a very basic book intended for those who are newly introduced to Neo-Paganism, Wicca and related subjects.

However, I am not wiccan.

I am not. I am aware, Alfred, that you will be reading this and you will be quick to point out that Wicca, and Witchcraft, are words applied to facets of a greater whole, or something along those lines. Let me then detail that I do not identify myself with the thoughts and views of most people who identify themselves as Neo-Pagan or Wiccans; so, indulge me, I prefer to consider myself Pagan, and Witch; of the Hedge-Riding variety, if you please. I know that others who read this will share this preference so let us avoid useless arguments about our pet labels, and deal with more (hopefully) useful matters.

For years I have considered myself a witch. I started -like most- reading books, mostly on Wicca; however, from the very start, I happened upon Charles G. Leland's beautiful "Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches" and it became the core of my beliefs early on. Still, I was very influenced by Wicca, and even when I leaned in full toward Italian Craft I did so based on Raven Grimassi's published recension of Stregheria, which is evidently Strega material poured into a Gardnerian-Wiccan mold. And I used "Wicca" to label myself, for quite some time.

Around this time I wrote most of the materials found in my website, http://luis-abbadie.com/ which has not been updated in too long a time, for which I am at fault. Any who peruse it please bear in mind that it is still a thing of my past and in no way reflects my current vieus and practices, but those I once had. I am working on an extensive update, but it is slow work to go throught the material, and time and again, new activities and writings demand priority.

Until, one day, I happened to listen to the author of the first book on Wicca published in Mexico (mine is the second of three until now) and after listening to her and what she portrayed as "Wicca", and meeting a man I knew among her public, I felt actually ashamed that he knew me as a wiccan after the awful misrepresentation we had both just witnessed!

So, I still fully respect actual Wiccan traditions, such as Gardnerians; but I stopped calling myself a wiccan because I wanted no part of what passes off as Mexican Wicca for those who know certain authors and teachers. And there is more than that; after all, I was practicing a growingly traditionalist reconstruction of Stregoneria. Around this time, I had some curious experiences which seemed to relate to Scottish Witchcraft; I started to ask questions, and in a Fateful way (which others might call fortuitous) I was introduced to a practitioner of a Scottish Hedgecraft tradition.

While a small group began to form where we worked with Stregoneria, I was blessed to take up prenticeship of sorts under a lady of uncanny resourcefulness. I say "of sorts" because circunstances were never favourable.

I'd love to say that I was initiated at midnight in the Scottish heaths, but sadly, no; I lacked the resources to travel to Europe. All the same, my teacher lived not in Scotland, but in the USA East Coast. She traveled just a few times to Mexico, for some unspecified affairs -I never questioned her too hard, but I have the distinct feeling that she came all this way for my sake and just didn't want to make me uncomfortable with it- and she taught me everything she could in those short spans, then sent me off on my own.

Why am I telling this here of all places? Well, as other Crafters shall well know, I have hidden nothing, revealed nothing, that which truly matters cannot be set down in words. A couple of my friends know a lot more of it -not all, since a great part is experienced, not spoken. But, when all is said and done, I am not hiding, I have nothing to conceal. I am a writer, and write about how I experience the world. I am a pagan, and I experience the world. I am a witch, and if this causes intolerance I will stomp out the torches if I have to, but I will stand my ground for my Sprite, Land and Shire. I am a man, with a son I am learning to raise, a woman I am learning to love, a life I am learning to build -and a legacy I am learning to accept.

I am aware that the more I am known to be a pagan and a witch, the more I become suspect of dubious practices, of leading a cult, of practicing some manner of diabolism. In Mexico, Paganism and Witchcraft are not legal; they are not considered spiritual or religious in any way, the way they are at some dregree in other countries. But this is not new to me. Years ago, before I was even a witch, I was suspected of practicing some sort of satanic rites because of my fictional/literary research on the Necronomicon, an exhaustive chronology of which has been my pet project for over ten years now. Horror fiction is somehow not seen as mere fiction by a few people who -obviously- doesn't even read it. But what should I do then?

Sybil Leek once pointed out in an interview that Mexico was the country where as recently as in the fifties, people had been burned for Witchcraft. In fact, I can update this: it has happened just a few years ago, in the melting pot of religious and political strife that is the Mexican state of Chiapas (where a witch I know has good cause to worry). Of course, it was not the authorities, but the people who did this. ut here in my city, about a decade ago, a Catholic priest led a stone-throwing mob who drove the family of a young girl who was said to have the gift of healing and did so for no charge at all. This was not an uncivilized indigenous community; this was in the second largest city in the country, which does not make me proud. Some friends tell me I have nothing to worry about; but knowing this, I cannot feel completely at ease.

But I have nothing to hide, and I am not acting as if I did. So here it is, out in the open, for anyone who cares to know, out of interest, or curiosity, or morbidness, either to dispel their fears or to confirm them. This is who I am, now.

Those who were Fated to read, I trust you will understand.

Those who shake their heads in wonder at my weirdness, it's okay, the light of morning will dispel the shadiness of my words.

Before I go, I leave yet another couple of drifting bottles, links to what I'm currently doing: my Yahoo! Group dedicated to make Traditional Witchcraft materials available in Spanish and comment it http://mx.groups.yahoo.com/group/brujeria_europea_tradicional/ and my Livejournal in Spanish focused on a critical, skeptical approach to occult frauds and pseudo-sciences -but avoiding radical skeptics' stance: http://abbadie.livejournal.com/

With that, I leave you.

With sorrow and sighing and mickle care,

Luis Abbadie