Wicca 101 - Class 1

I'm kind of noodling about how I'd teach Wicca 101.  I'd love some feedback!  I've got ideas for the first three classes (I expect that there would be 10 to 13 classes in the series.  

Class 1 – nature, not nurture.

       In this class everyone is outside for the entire class.  Summer is the best time for it.  Tick, and maybe mosquito repellent is recommended.  Go out looking at wild flowers.  See that sex is everywhere in nature.  See that all the sex isn’t hetero – much of it is a 3-way of one male flower part, one female flower part, and it doesn’t work without a female bee in the mix (or wasps or flies of any gender, for that matter).  Note that some flowers are male only (easiest to see in spring, when mulberries and pine are spewing semen/pollen all over the place), some are female only, some are hermaphrodites.  

      Actually, with the mulberries, I suppose Wind/Air takes the place of Spirit.  I'll have to ponder the implications of that, besides the obvious connection of air/east/beginnings.

   

     Also note that sex is, sometimes, NO WHERE in nature.  Ferns – a topic dear to MY heart – are asexual, with a whole different type of reproduction that includes not just spores but a haploid version. 

     Note the yews, with sexed plants PLUS asexual spreading/survival.

     Meet some chickens, where the female are XY and the males are XX.  And where XY females have been known to become fully functioning males if the flock needs it.  Thus, transexuality is build into nature, too.

     From here, the discussion goes into how polarity is not duality, it is subtle, shifting, mutable.  Much of Wicca’s theology and magic is based on the dance of polarity.  Remember this when talking of The God and The Goddess.  Mutable. Dance. Subtle.

aBinary

Blessings, Darlings!

Are you a good witch or a bad witch? Are you for us or against us? Is it good or is it evil? Is he gay or straight? Is that a man or a woman? It's us vs. them!

There's a lot of pressure to see everything through the lens of dualism. 

To some extent doing so is probably hard-wired into us humans.  We, as a species, seem to be 'categorizing animals', probably as a result of evolutionary pressure that started with "food or not-food" and went from there.  Categorizing, even generalizing, are shortcuts to decision making in an environment that requires LOTS of decision making.  It is a useful thing.

But - categories are mere representations of reality, and therefore by definition limited.  For while categorizing is black/white, the universe is technicolor ... and has at least three dimensions.  Never confuse the map with actual reality.

Apparently, some neopagans out there combine the concept of duality with the concepts of good and evil, to the point that they feel that the concept that good and evil forces must always be in balance. Which seems odd to me, since most neopagans also say that there is no God/dess of Evil a la Satan, no anthropomorphized or demonized Evil. Being the snarky judgmental Druid Bitch that I am, I assume that this is another way to shortcut making decisions and taking actions in life.  If good and evil MUST balance, then you don't - maybe even SHOULDN'T - take action against evil being done, for you'd upset the balance.  Throw in misunderstanding the Rede, and some can't stop those harming others because they might harm the perp.


For me, of course, I see myself as the Hands of the Gods on Earth, bitchslapping those the Gods would have bitchslapped.  Which means self defense, which  means throwing the occasional curse, etc.


I'm also not pre-occupied with balance.  The universe isn't into balance, it's into entropy. Assuming we don't have the cyclic universe some theorize, then the universe will end, and end without even a whimper as energy and matter diffuse out to uselessness. 


But that's the long, long, long term.


In the short term, we can look at our world, and see how human society has changed, and it doesn't show balance, either.  A friend - Henry over there who commented about Hinduism in a previous post, in fact - who once made a great case on how we show all signs of coming OUT of the Kali Yuga not descent into it.  Lifespans are growing longer, more humans have more rights than even, more children are surviving infancy, more people have at least some level of voting rights than ever, a smaller percentage of the human population is in slavery, etc, etc, etc.   Is this evenly distributed, even in the US? Oh, heck no. Ask an African American who lived 100 years ago if there has been real progress, the answer will be yes.  Ask a transexual woman, and she'll explain in detail how the answer is no.


I'm NOT saying that life is rainbows and unicorn farts.


Of COURSE there is still a long way to go to promote 'good' and reduce 'evil'/abuse of people.  What I'm saying is the promoting good, making changes that increase the good and reduce the evil does NOT mean that evil is just going to break out elsewhere to 'balance' it.


For that matter, I suppose that some folks feel that all good in their lives must be balanced by evil in their own lives.  It may bring some 'pie in the sky' solace to those who have survived abuse, but.... that good is not going to spontaneously arrive.  Good CAN and WILL happen in lives, but working for it, demanding an end to evil and abuse, working for ending abuses and for good is going to get a whole lot more good in your life than passively sitting back and waiting for it to get dumped in your lap.  


And those poor, scared, folks who think that all good that happens to them must be balanced by evil happening to them - that every moment of joy MUST be balance by moment of sadness, that every love must be balanced by hate!  Life sometimes sucks.  It does not HAVE to. Prepared for challenging times, but don't feel you MUST SUFFER because you are loving life at other times. It doesn't have to be that way.


Frondly, Fern