Outrageous Claims of Magick
Looking at the light drizzle spitting down on a sabbat, I joked to the acting high priestess that she should do something about the rain so we can have ritual outside.
"Oh no," I was informed, "we don't do weather magick. Not since Katrina..."
Pardon? While not outright stated, the clear implication is that Hurricane Katrina was a magickal blunder, if not the direct fault of members of this circle. While the high priestess was saying this with a slight grin, I regret to report having too often heard otherwise responsible and reasonable Pagans retroactively lay claim to disasters, both man-made and natural.
The incident I found most personally galling occurred in 2001. (Yes, you see where this is going.) At the time, I was a jewelry seller at the New York Renaissance Faire at Sterling Forest. My boss was one of the multitudes of psychics and card readers on Mystics Waye [sic]. I hawked jewelry to and they read fortunes for a lot of people from New York City. September 15, I put on my poet shirt and puffy pants and showed up for work, feeling completely beyond having fun but obligated to provide uncorrupted fantasy for those who had just faced the hell of reality. I set up my booth, then went to Mystics Waye to ask why. Why, with all their supposed divine gifts, hadn't they had the slightest inkling what Tuesday the 11th would bring? Perhaps I was just echoing what so many of us asked then, but most people didn't have access to a bevy of the mystically attuned from a variety of disciplines. They immediately and unapologetically insisted they had known by virtue that they kept drawing the Tower card but weren't sure what it meant until the World Trade Center was attacked. These were people who could pinpoint an unexpected and unknown pregnancy to the date of conception, but they couldn't admit that none of them saw cause the weekend before to tell a customer, "You or someone you love will be killed very soon and live on TV." But, they insist, they knew and I shouldn't doubt them.
I realize it comes down to a need to feel important and special. The witch who claims to forbear her magick for fear of causing the next Indian tsunami is really saying that she is more than powerful enough that she can kill thousand of innocent strangers when all she meant to do was water her mugwort. She can't be challenged to produce evidence of this, because doing could provoke earthquakes and Africanized bee attacks. Those who state such things are denying the vagaries and improbabilities of the very nature they claim to love. Further, they are claiming for themselves the very power of the gods who, if I am reading my mythology correctly, tend to reward such hubris with ironic and often fatal punishments.
It is perfectly fine that your spell doesn't do much of anything or that you can't actually prophesy the future, that doesn't make you any less of a witch. Whether they admit it or not, most Pagans fall into exactly that category and that is okay. Religion is not about whose invisible friend can do the best magic tricks, it is about communion with the sacred. If you are only adhering to Wicca because you think it will give you the power to hex the girl who made fun of your boots to you in Home Ec… well, I won't say you picked the wrong religion. You will have a lot of company, unfortunately, but you are further diluting what is otherwise a beautiful path for connecting to the divine.
Right now, I am doing a spell to urge you to rethink your priorities in pretending you can end the world by sneezing at the wrong moment. Is it working? No?
I'm okay with that.
