A Little Bit About Me

1.My spiritual history

There are two events that have shaped both my spiritual and my physical life. I put the two together as I feel it is inappropriate to separate out the spiritual from the physical in that I believe their needs to be a balance between the two.

The first was the death of my Grandfather and it started me thinking about death as a doorway not as an ending. He was taken into hospital to have a minor operation and the doctors pronounced that he would be out within the week. This proved not to be the case. He called a meeting of all the family at which he announced his death. He said that he had had a good and long life and that he had decided that now was a good time to die. He apologised for leaving us behind and was sad to so, but said we would anyway meet again later on. This basically stopped me thinking of death with the fear and trepidation instilled from my Church of England upbringing, as I now saw a man approaching death not only without fear but actually looking forward to it. Not looking forward as an ending of life but as the beginning of a new one.

The second event predates the first and was an experience related to me by my Grandmother. She was taken into hospital for an operation and according to the surgeons and doctors present died. On pronouncement of death all life support was removed and all tubes disconnected. She was put onto a trolley and wheeled of to the morgue. Still on the trolley and just before she got there she came round: was rushed back to surgery and the operation was then finished. She lived for many years to come. Her half of the story is as follows.

At some point she felt that she was falling into a winding twisting tunnel that took her to a beautiful landscape, a vast grassy meadow with flowers and birds singing. There she met a man who she took to be Jesus. He said that her time to come back was not yet and that if she wanted she could return to her life; or if she wanted, as she had now arrived, could stay. She chose to return as she thought she still had things to do and that my Granddad would not be very good at looking after himself.

Though she put a Christian slant on these events it taught me that life is only a stage in our existence and that death should hold no fear. It started me thinking about reincarnation and about how and why we are here in this existence. This became the foundation point from which I developed my thinking about spirituality and existence. I have total faith in reincarnation even if I am undecided about its exact mechanisms.

From my science training all I wish to say about the cycle of the year and its quarters, cross quarters and ritual times is that, for me, it makes sense of a world that has got very out of step with its self. I am not averse to science and technology but feel it is like a child that has grown up and left home and is now only just realising the value of the family and the home it left behind. In this case the family and home can be thought of as Earth based religions and the earth we live in. Rebellious teenager's often return to the family fold and I am convinced that science, as it moves out of its teenage period, will return people to a more earth sensitive existence. This I believe is starting already, with Quantum philosophy, and will in turn point people back towards faith based Earth religions such as Wicca/Witchcraft and the Druid way.

2. What does being a Witch mean to me?

Witchcraft to me links the earth based religions of the past with a mode of practise practical to today's society. To be a Witch is to hold a belief in the Sacred nature of our world whilst still being aware of other planes and existences. It makes sense of both the spiritual and the scientific, as is now beginning to be seen in the development of unification theories: based not just from Quantum mechanics,but also from the less convoluted strand of extending Newtonian physics. (Universal matrix theory)

Concerning Wicca: I think that its historical development after the repeal of the Witchcraft act in the UK fifty years ago is often used as a red herring to the fact that it has a much longer spiritual lineage. This is a lineage that I have faith in, confirmed when I look at the sky, the land, rivers the sea and forests. When I look at the changing seasons, grow food crops, play music and breath the air. It is a faith and as such cannot be fully explained. In fact I feel no need to dissect its every minutia as I have more than adequate evidence in my everyday life of its functional validity.

3. Why study Witchcraft?

I hope it will give me a better understanding of my spiritual nature. I hope it will lead me to enough of an understanding to make me a better person in this existence and thus advance towards a closer relationship with my Deity. Maybe this will also make me a more tolerant person and allow me to correct some of my personal faults.

More importantly I believe study within Witchcraft will inform and help my development in both this life and lives to come. With a better view of the path I should, hopefully, trip over less often!

I wish to honour my Deity more deeply; will not a deeper understanding of them help this?

4. How long have I been studying Paganism?

I have been looking into paganism sporadically for twenty five years but have only been seriously following a Pagan path for just under ten years.

5. Do I like to read?

My home is filled with books and could not be without them. I tend to multi read, a skill I learnt whilst studying for my PhD. ...So yes.

6. What does "eclectic" mean to me? Why is it valuable to tradition?

Eclecticism, to me, is the drawing from and using appropriate knowledge from all sources and paths. I believe it is important for the development of a spiritual individual. It would be arrogant to assume no other path or culture or society can offer insight and value and knowledge; especially to a neophyte in this area such as my self.

6. How do I see the Divine.

The Divine is in everything and is universal but can be visualised for easier access as a Deity structure. I find it very hard to describe my ideas in this area as this is an area I am constantly considering and have never draw a definitive conclusion. But maybe that's in the nature of the Divine... its beyond a human description. Thus our need to use individual visualisations. If I had to take sides between pantheist's and panentheist's I would at at the moment describe my self as a panentheist.

7. Did I have a former religion, and why did

I leave it? What do’s Witchcraft offer

that it didn't?

I was baptised into the Church of England as a baby and have be brought up in this path. I followed this path for many years not out of spiritual satisfaction but out of momentum. As I became an individual and started to question the philosophy and theology behind Christianity so I began to see the many cracks and anomalies it held. I started to look for "other truths" but never found something I could feel comfortable with until I started to look at paganism and finally Witchcraft. Witchcraft seems to me open and flexible enough to dispel many of the criticisms I had of Christianity, whilst still retaining a strong moral and philosophical base.

9. Does magic play a part in my spiritual lifeand how does it works?

I use magick on an everyday level for healing. I organise an online healing group with about thirty healer from different paths. I use small spells to enhance my life in general but do not use any heavy ceremonial magic. Most of my magic is green magic using herbs and plants I grow (I follow Moon gardening techniques) and objects that I find around me. I caste circles and do magic based rituals of my own design at the major festivals and at full/Dark Moon; thought I may be out of sink with most people as I use traditional time and instinct to calculate when these points are! On ritual days I try to work with a feeling for Witch time so as to keep planetary influences in line for what I do.

I tend to go with Scott Cunningham's definition of magick.

"Magick is the projection of natural energies to produce needed effects."

I was meditating on the nature of magick some time ago when this idea came to me.

Magickal energy is in everything, its is all pervasive. It can travel too and from a place, it can be dissipated or concentrated. Certain places seem more magickal that others. It is possible to make a place magickal as it is possible to take away its magickality. Magick energy can be channelled along paths and it can be stored and contained.

Now substitute the terminology of Magick for the terminology of water and you get a remarkably good analogy for the physics of Magick.

Like all other forms of energy, magickal energy can be used to effect change. As electrical energy passing through a thin metal filament in a light bulb changes the temperature of the filament to produce light, so magickal energy can be directed through spells be used to cause physical effects. Exactly how this works, at present I can't say. I just know from experience that it does

10. What I you love? what do I value? what is most

important to you in my life? And conversely, what do

I hate? what is it that just burns me up when I

see it?

I love:-

This world, its beauty, its majesty, its wonder in both the macro and the micro. I love my children, my Deity's, the touch of cool water, the smell of the soil, the touch of a fox, the stars at night, storm clouds, fish, birds, animals. All of creations cycles, from the growing from the earth to the rotting back to soil, from the season of the years to the seconds of a day,

I'm not certain how to answer this properly without recourse to trite answers. Sorry! But it does describe what I feel.

My family and friends are important to me as is my religion. Justice and equality are important values by which I try to gauge my behaviour. I value the freedom to be who I am whilst knowing that this freedom is not available to all.

There are many things I dislike; but hate...that is a very strong word.

I hate injustice and arrogance, wonton waste and destruction, war and killing. I hate rape, child abuse. I hate the strong abusing the weak in all forms, social economic and physical.

If only people would treat others with due respect.

What I hate and what burns me up are one and the same thing and can be seen at all levels from tiny individual actions through to the excesses of governments and international bodies. Sometimes it is hard, to live in a world where such beauty is balanced by such ugliness without being angry all the time that this is as it is.

11. What is my philosophy on conflict resolution?

Talk and try to empathise with views that are in opposition to your own.

12) Are there any issues on which I will not compromise?

Sorry but yes, the safety and well being of my Children. I can theorise and philosophise as to common good and a greater moral servitude but deep down I know that I would do anything to protect my children.

Dave the Flute

(I am usually known as "Dave the flute". This is because at one level I am a musician; but more importantly a flute is nothing 'till it is player by a musician. I try to be an instrument that can be played by my Deity)