The Weight of Ordination

The Question:

❝ Mr SuperHippy asked: ☛ I wanna be an ordained reverend at the Universal Life Church too! What would you advise me on this issue? Yea, I’d be joining my Grandmother, The Beatles, my Mom, my Rabbi …❞

¡Think … Feel … Breathe — while it is still Legal!

» Thom says: ☛ Some years ago I went after the “Ministry in a Box.’ It came with some certificates, a doctorate and some title. As I looked over the lot, the Doctor of Metaphysics was the only honorary degree I could live with, as was the title “Magus,’ as both are more in accord with whom I was at the time.

So, you want an Honorary degree. You do realize it is just that, an honor. It alone carries neither honor, nor authority, and given the paper it is on, might not even help start a fire if you were cold. The Degrees and Titles offered by the Universal Life Church have less power than the Ordination itself, and if you tell the wrong person where you got your ordination your relationship with them might change, radically. Like the Ordination, you and you alone can make that ordination and degree worth anything. All they send you is a booklet and a certificate. Can you show more than a piece of paper to prove you have the right to call yourself “Doctor of Witchcraft?’ if not then you can either make it real with an education (not necessarily formal), or simply try really hard to get people to believe you have earned it.

Suggestion: Get the education. It could be formal, like taking an addiction counseling course at your local community college. It could be semiformal by reading a load of books, attending classes like the Lucky Mojo Curio C^o, or any of a number of places on line. It could even be rather informal by just being there when something needs to be done; or spend time with someone dying, and read to them. Then, the honorary degree might be worth something … eh, more than the paper you use to pay for it. ~«

Yours in love and blessing under Woden and Kali-ma;
Thomas Potter, Warlock; ReiKi 2°;
BronzDragon; First Church of Satan, DarkSide Coven

Offerings to the Gods

The Question:

❝ Offering to the Gods / Goddesses could be any thing. Like you suggested “foods, and/or shiny and pretty things” and I also have another suggestion, that is abstaining from something that gives one some kind of a pleasure. For example, I gave up my week end beers for a wish to come true. It worked!

«What are your thoughts on this kind of an “abstinence” as an offering?❞

¡Think … Feel … Breathe — while it is still Legal!

» Thom says: ☛ First, one should understand a particular god before making offerings to that god. This is because of two reasons: Just like being careful of the sort of people you would like as friends (a group of queens with knives, or a band of bible-thumpers with knives), one ought to take care of the gods we have relationships (one who demands human sacrifices, the younger the better, or one who demands personal risk and sacrifice). Making an offering is similar to offering to buy someone lunch, it is a way of strengthening the first contacts.

Second, some gods don’t want certain things. For example, if you give Wodan food, he will pass it onto his wolves, hunger and greed. If you offer him wine or meed, he will take it, drink it, and then offer you some of his own. Morh Rhiogain loves blood, but it had better be your own, not some other person or animal.

As to abstinence, what do you mean? Sex? There is a time to abstain, and a time to indulge. This is an issue where the wrong choice (not so much the abstinence from sex but the reasons for it) can have major repercussions throughout a person’s life. If you see the movie ShortBus, you might begin to understand how confusion in one’s sexual identity can ruin so much of a person’s total life. From certain foods? drinks? I go with the conclusions of Siddhartha, too much of any extreme is more of a problem than a fix. Abstinence from human or animal contact, or particular populations would be fundamentally a mistake, in my educated and considered opinion. Humans are social animals, and require, fundamentally, the interaction and even the touch of other living beings, especially humans. Babies die without it, older people languish, become depressed, and even die of mind if not of body without it.

Personally, I’ve adopted more of a middle road sort of approach to life. Too much abstinence creates obsessions and compulsions. Too much indulgence leads to pains and sufferings of a different sort. Finding the happy balance, either through an absolute center, or a dynamic mobility of pathways, is a more satisfying and life affirming way of doing things. ~«

Yours in love and blessing under Woden and Kali-ma;
Thomas Potter, Warlock; ReiKi 2°;
BronzDragon; First Church of Satan, DarkSide Coven