I've had this blog for at least two weeks now, and haven't written a thing in it. It's not for lack of ideas, the ideas and half-started posts have been rocketing around inside my skull for at least one of those two weeks, but because (sadly) I can't find a decent screen name that I think fits me. Your name says a lot in the blogosphere - will I be StarFairyRainbowBlossom, the Native-inspired WolfChild, or no-nonesense DragonLady?
Normally, I would just post under my real name, as I have done in past incarnations on both dead- and live- journals. However, circumstances have changed since my first blog's appearance on teh interwebz.
A) I now live in possibly the most red-neck province in Canada (although I'm sure Manitoba and Saskatchewan could give in a run for it's money).
B) I live in a small town in this less-than-uber-tolerant province.
C) My real name is, though not uncommon, fairly unique.
D) Though this is probably one of the most liberal towns out of all the small Albertan towns, thanks in large part to the seasonal influxes of Australian hippie ski bums and Quebecois kids looking to party the summer away, there's a lot of staunch conservative God-fearing folks who I live and work with who may not look to kindly on a self-professed wannabe-witch.
Oh, and E) I don't even know if this is the path I'm supposed to be on. Why come out as a witch only to turn around and announce I'm turning Catholic again!
So yes, I need a screen name. A blogging-persona. Something that is not the name on my birth certificate or driver's license. I've been mulling it over for two weeks, and I can't come up with a damn thing. Nothing comes to mind that doesn't sound like an airy-fairy fluff bunny or an artificially scented feminine cleansing product. (Seriously, check out my name over on
Witchvox. )
I've been an armchair witch for a few years now, and this blog is to choronical my attempts at getting my nose out of the books and starting to really explore this whole "witch" thing. To develop a real relationship with the divinity I feel in the world around me and learn the craft of the wise. To learn to do by doing, if you will. But, as most of my practice has been reading books and all of your lovely and inspiring blogs, I haven't really figured out the staples of the typical witchy-naming-thing. I don't exactly have a patron god or goddess who I mostly work with (hell, I don't even have a pantheon, besides "vaguely-Celtic-but-Egypt's-got-some-cool-myths-too"), I haven't developed an affinity with a certain plant due to a lack of growing space and a really short growing season, nor am I sure if I'll be a kitchen/domestic/garden/witch/Wiccan/whatever, or can I claim to be a really outdoorsy back-woods loving mountain-woman.
What I DO have, is an experience. A couple experiences, to be exact. Those that made me know that the Divine was was more than just within the walls of my family's Catholic church, but out there, vibrant, beautiful, awe-inspiring, and so very much ALIVE.
My last summer living in my native Southern Ontario was a wet and stormy one, filled with massive deluges, floods and windstorms where you could stand outside and feel that there was
something else out there in the storm. These warm, sticky, humid nights made itch to get out of the house and lose myself in the magic of the night. You could feel it, it was alive. I felt if I could just walk for long enough in the dark, somehow I'd be able to lose myself and become part of it. That I could meet that presence I could feel out there, that goddess of the night who called me and made my soul long to join it. Those summer nights were the start of my journey, and the most real thing about my path. When I feel like I might be play-acting at the rest, those nights I
know.
So I'm keeping an abbreviated version of my semi-douchey Witchvox handle, because right now it's all I know for sure.
