Public hexing--tool of justice or simply overkill?

One of the things that I occasionally joke about is that it is not a good idea to piss off a witch because they will hex you back into the Stone Age. And that is exactly what some witches decided to do earlier this month to convicted rapist Brock Turner.

For those who missed all the excitement: Brock Turner, a Stanford student and competitive swimmer, was tried and convicted of sexual assault on an unconscious woman who attended a fraternity party in January 2015. Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky sentenced Turner to six months in county jail and three years of probation; Turner must also complete a sex offender management program and register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

That sentence, as well as the defense of Turner – including a letter written by the boy’s father stating that twenty years of prison was an unjust sentence for “twenty minutes of action” – exploded on social media. Turner, who had a blood level double the legal limit at the time of the assault, has expressed regret for being drunk, but not for the sexual assault itself. This omission of regret resulted in Turner’s picture being plastered all over Facebook with people calling for the judge to be recalled, and for people to rethink the crime of rape.

One of the people on Facebook that took offense at the light sentence for Turner was Iowan Melanie Elizabeth Hexan, who works as a belly dancer and midwife. Hexan also self-identifies as a Priestess of the Elder Craft. Hexan created a ritual to punish Turner using a hex. “Witches doing spells in times when they’re otherwise powerless goes back thousands of years,” Hexan said on Facebook.
Hexan created a page for the spell on Facebook, which included an instruction to chant, “Brock Allen Turner, we hex you. You will be impotent. You will know constant pain of pine needles in your guts. Food will bring you no sustenance. In water, your lungs will fail you. Sleep will only bring nightmares. Shame will be your mantle. You will meet justice. My witchcraft is strong. Our witchcraft is powerful. The spell will work. So mote it be.” Originally, the curse was meant to be performed by just Hexan and her twelve coven sisters, but thousands of witches joined the event on the night of June 7th.

And as is typical of social media, there are plenty of people who believe that Hexan, and the thousands of witches who joined her, have stepped over the line of what a witch is allowed to do. Hexing people is wrong, and the court has already sentenced Brock, claimed some people on Facebook, making the curse unnecessary.

Now, it should not surprise anyone that I have an opinion about this. Regular readers of my commentary might even remember one of the more interesting times I weighed in on this subject.
A few years ago, an unidentified man was sexually assaulting women in the neighborhood that I lived in. Given the multiple assaults, and the fact that the police had not yet caught him, a few of the local covens decided to get together to bring the serial rapist to justice. The coven that I worked with did such a working. And one of the questions that came up during the planning of the ritual was whether or not the coven was willing to perform a death curse on the rapist, if that was the only way to prevent him from sexually assaulting other women. Those of us doing the working decided that we were perfectly OK if the rapist accidentally stepped under a bus.

This particular working became part of my own instructional material on ethics. It is a weighty question. Part of the origin myth of Wicca is that witches, in the days of yore, would get together to seek justice denied to them by those in power, by performing spells to redress the injustices done to them. The difference between the days of yore and today is that thanks to social media, one is not restricted to the witches of one’s coven when one performs a working. Today, one merely has to post an idea to do a working, and one could potentially have hundreds of witches involved. Most of the time, your idea will reach a few dozen of your friends; but thanks to the power of social media, one could find oneself brewing up a storm in a viral teapot.

Performing mass rituals is not a new idea. During World War II, the English ceremonial magic teacher Dion Fortune sent out instructions to the members of her organization on how to perform a series of meditations designed to protect England from invasion by the military forces of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. And today, there are occult leaders who organize rituals designed to bind and destroy terrorist organizations, and to protect citizens from the excesses of government.

There is some debate on how effective mass rituals can be. One of the difficulties with mass rituals is that outside of the overall intent, which is often rather nebulous and ill-defined, different people will use different symbol sets and have different ideas of what needs to be done in order to accomplish the main goal of the ritual. Without a common set of symbols and a well-defined goal, a lot of mass ritual simply fails due to the lack of cohesion. It is difficult enough to coordinate and direct a ritual done by a single coven which has been trained to work together; let alone attempt to perform a worldwide mass ritual being done by hundreds or thousands of people.

In fact, the difficulty of doing mass ritual is one of the reasons that I argue that there is often an ulterior motive behind such workings. Fame, the desire to lead others, wanting to appear to be an important voice in the community; these seem to be the real purpose of such mass rituals. I would be suspicious that the creators of such mass workings were attempting to siphon off the energies raised for their own purposes; but given the fact that there are easier ways to raise and stockpile energy, I am willing to give a mass ritual organizer the benefit of the doubt on that one.

The mass hexing of Brock is actually one of the few that I have seen that I think might have a chance to work as a mass working. Hexan gave detailed notes and suggestions, and the participants had a specific target. It is hard to bind an organization like ISIL whose public perception is ambiguous, and which acts like a hydra when attacked—an organization that has its own legion of supporters praying for its success. It is a lot easier to target an individual, where it is a specific crime being punished, and you have the necessary biographical and identity markers to target that single individual. And the rage over the light sentence would be a boiling cauldron which in the right hands could be used to leverage the probabilities surrounding the individual.

So was it ethical to do? Earlier I mentioned a working I had been involved in. Some of the people who heard this story actually decided that based on my decisions that I was permanently unfit to be an occult leader, something that they used to justify the formation of another lodge of the tradition I worked. Maybe they were right. Or it could just be that they wanted to lead the parade, and I was in their way; it is always so hard to tell in these matters. But some of the mental gymnastics that they used to get to the place where they decided my judgment was completely untrustworthy makes me a little sick to my stomach. For instance, some of the people who thought that I was morally unfit declared that we did not even have the right to use a spell to help speed up the capture of the offender. Let me remind you that at the time of the working, no one, including the police, knew the identity of the serial rapist. Declaring that none of us had the right to do such a working implies that no one has the right to magically defend themselves and their community. I can understand being uncomfortable with death magic, but declaring magic to help discover the identity of a serial rapist off-limits seems to be overkill to me.

Was the mass hexing of Brock overkill? Perhaps, if all the spells descended directly upon him. If he burst into flames, then it would probably be overkill. But if it just causes him to feel guilt and shame for performing the crime he did, then no, it is not overkill. And while I am uncomfortable with the media attention that the mass hexing received, for I am still trying to convince people that witches are mostly harmless, it might not actually be such a bad thing. I have argued before that witches need to be visible if we want the government and politicians to take into account our concerns.

And in the case of rape, there is the sad reality of how it is dealt with. When it comes to offenders, the concern is often that it is wrong to punish them for a single mistake, or even worse, multiple mistakes, and that we should allow them some freedom to reach their full potential. The victims, on the other hand, tend to be blamed for the crime, with people asking what the victim did to have caused a sexual predator to descend upon them in the first place. Part of this cultural bias is created by the dominant religions of our culture, which have holy books that state that the poor condition of the world, of mankind’s expulsion from paradise, was caused by a woman. Furthermore, the holy books of the dominant religions state that women are second-class citizens at best, and really should be happy with their place in life as property of their betters, the male of the species. And don’t even get me started on the fact that wealth is used to get offenders off the hook for their crimes, or at least, to get more lenient sentences.

Perhaps, a few more public hexings are in order. Perhaps, we should be loud about the fact that our religion does not give men a free pass to rape and pillage as they please. Perhaps, it is time for us to point out that certain actions are unacceptable, and that our magic is powerful, and that we are not afraid to use it. And perhaps, even, it might be good if Brock suffered spontaneous combustion. Yes, that would be death magic, but it would send a message that rape was unacceptable.

[This post appeared originally in the June 2016 Hearthstone Community Church's newsletter. And if you would like to write an article or commentary about this public hexing, there is room in the next issue of Denver Witch Quarterly for it.]

A little junk A little glue Behold a new Tarot card (Tarot Blog Hop June 2016)

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Hi everyone!

I am the wrangler of this particular Tarot Blog Hop. The theme I picked was "junk mail" Tarot--an art project for non-artists. The idea was to take some random artwork or photos, which one could find in their junk mail and turn it into a Tarot card using scissors and a little glue.

Let me just say---I was amazed at the number of my TBH bloggers that told me that they no longer get junk mail. Not that it stopped anyone from doing the Hop because we are all a bunch of inventive individuals.

In my case, the best card I ended up with was created from trash and not junk mail. (And yes, I am only showing you my favorite because otherwise, we could be here all day.) The following card was made from a Puffs and a Kleanox box.

Junk Mail Tarot--Ten of Bones

Behold the Ten of Bones. I am not sure what traditional suit I would actually assign this one to, mainly because I can see elements of all four suits in the card. There is a kind of overwhelming abundance; or lack, thereof, depending upon if the bones themselves are viewed as a desirable substnace, or if one views them as lacking meat. There is a layer of indecision, and a layer of things that once was. This (in my opinion) would be a card that would be hard to give a nutshell reading guide to.

One of the stories that I remember being told while I was a child was the story of a dog that is carrying a bone when he comes to a bridge crossing a river. Looking down he sees another dog with a bone in its mouth also. Being greedy, the dog drops his bone to grab the bone from the other dog, who disappears, along with his bone, as the real bone sinks into the river.

And that story also somehow enters into this card.

So anyways, that is my complicated card made from stuff that should have tossed into the trash, along with all the junk mail that I recieve.

Thanks for reading, and please consider visiting some of the other fine Tarot bloggers who took part in this Tarot Blog Hop.

PreviousBlog/ MasterList/ NextBlog

TBH Master List June 2016

Master list for the June 2016 Tarot Blog Hop

1. Morgan Drake Eckstein  http://gleamingsfromthedawn.blogspot.com/2016/06/a-little-junk-little-glue-behold-new.html
2. Joy Vernon  http://joyvernon.com/Blog/junk-mail-tarot/
3.  Jay Cassels  http://metaphysicalangels.co.uk/tbh2
4.  Chloe for Inner Whispers  http://www.innerwhispers.co.uk/art-project-spell/
5.  Deird Doran  http://www.thewillowpathtarot.com/2016/06/21/tarot-blog-hop-a-tarot-art-project-with-the-kings/
6. Kristen (Over the Moon Oracle Cards) http://overthemoon-oraclecards.blogspot.com/2016/06/tarot-blog-hop-junk-mail-tarot.html
7. Meniscus (by Ania M) http://meniscustarot.co.uk/a-world-view/
8.  Chloe for Celtic Lenormand http://www.celticlenormand.com/2016/06/here-comes-sun.html
9.  Aisling http://tarotwitchery.blogspot.com/2016/06/june-2016-tarot-blog-hop-not-just-junk.html
10.  Ania M http://aniam.co.uk/blog/royal-mail/
11.  Karen Sealey https://pureblessedtarot.wordpress.com/2016/06/21/yesterdays-news-tomorrows-tarot/
12.  Katalin Patnaik https://katalinpatnaik.wordpress.com/2016/06/21/june-2016-tarot-blog-hop-junkmail-tarot
13. Stella  http://www.usgamesinc.com/tarotblog/tbh2016june/  
14. [Last minute dropout--please pardon any inconvience that this causes.]
15. Shada McKenzie https://warmheartsemailtarot.com/blog-hop-6-of-cups/
16.  Arwen http://tarotbyarwen.com/?p=18816
17.  Boglarka Kiss http://vadrozsatarot.blogspot.com/2016/06/junkmail-tarot.html

The task assigned to the bloggers was as follows:

The theme for this blog hop is "Junk mail Tarot." This is what I call a "Tarot art project for non-artists."

The idea is to take some photos and\/or artwork that someone else has done, and turn it into a Tarot card. Yes, I am assuming that you get junk mail and\/or magazines. If not, there is plenty of random photos on the internet, including stock photo sites. And then, there are the meme making sites.

Here are some examples.

Junk Mail Tarot 1

Junk Mail Tarot 2

Junk Mail Tarot 3 (based on random book covers and TV shots, and badly drawn)

Now for the writing part...because search engines love indexing text and words and stuff like that.

For the writing part, talk about why you choose the images, and how you are associating them to a particular Tarot card.

What if I want to do more than one card? Go for it! I am sure that I am going to do more than one myself.

Contributors wanted (Denver Witch Quarterly)

A Modest Magical Magazine Proposal (Volume 1, Issue .1 Prospectus)--Denver Witch Quarterly

A few years ago, back in the Stone Age of Xerox and mimeograph machines, small press occult magazines were locally produced in people's basements and kitchens. I did some of my first writing as "MDE" for some of the ones being produced in Denver. And I thought about publishing my own. But I never did get around to attempting it...

...until now. Behold the Prospectus for Denver Witch Quarterly, a magazine devoted to paganism, Wicca, witchcraft, magick, and the occult.

I am looking for submissions. If you would like to submit something (editorials, non-fiction, rituals, poetry, fiction, artwork, photographs), you can email your submission to basttemple@msn.com

(This may or may not be a paid opportunity--it will all depend on whether or not, anyone actually buys small press magazines anymore.)

The Prospectus is available for purchase from your favorite ebook retailers.

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Scribd

Kobo

Smashwords

Reminder--I am on Patreon

Just a reminder that I am on Patreon, where you can sponsor and encourage me to make more art, bad videos, horrible blog posts, and witty satire.

https://www.patreon.com/madunclemorgan

A fairy ritual in poetic form (June 2016 Hearthstone Open Full Moon ritual)

The June OFM ritual will be presented by Morgan Drake Eckstein. The ritual will utilize High Ceremonial Wicca techniques, along with the symbolism of four types of fairies (sylphs, salamanders, undines, and gnomes), to provide an omen (fairy fortune) to each of the attendees.

When: June 17, 2016---7 pm to 9 pm (doors open at 7:00 pm, community announcements 7:30pm, ritual starts after community announcements).
Where: First Unitarian--1400 Lafayette, Denver, Colorado
Cost: Free (suggested donation $5)

You are to be called Azulina (From The Black Princess and other Tales from Brazil), 1916 by Florence Mary Anderson

Happy Ghostbusters Day!

Do you remember where you were on June 8th, 1984?


(I was actually in Army boot camp---*sigh*---so I actually missed the most important event to ever happen on that day.)

June 8th, 1984, was the day that Ghostbusters opened in theaters. Who are you gonna to call? Ghostbusters!!!

And here are some Ghostbusters memes that I found on the internet.

For all those old D&D players out there---a GB alignment chart.

If you be drinking while watching the movie...

One of the best lines in the movie.

See Dogs and Cats living together---mass hysteria!

The fearsome Gozer the Gozerian, the Destructor of the night's silence.

This is the only sequel of Ghostbusters that had to be made.

(And for the record, I am withholding judgment on the new all-female requel until I see it...I mean, it won't be that bad...of course, I might not see it until it hits DVD....because I am poor...and use the library for my movie watching needs...not because I am afraid that my face might melt off if I look directly at it....but I am going to be watching my Facebook newsfeed just in case, it does melt people's faces off. After all, knowing is half the battle--GI Joe!)