Song Challenge - Wiccan Woes

Subject: Song Challeng - Wiccan Woes
From: SINSULL
Date: 23 Jul 08 - 08:23 AM

There's a song in this:

LEBANON, Ind. - A woman accidentally stabbed herself in the foot with a 3-foot-long sword while performing a Wiccan good luck ritual at a cemetery in central Indiana.

Katherine Gunther, 36, of Lebanon, pierced her left foot with the sword while performing the rite at Oak Hill Cemetery, police said.

Gunther said she was performing the ceremony to give thanks for a recent run of good luck. The ceremony involves the use of candles, incense and driving swords into the ground during the full moon.

Gunther said was aiming to put the sword in the ground, but hit her foot instead.

"It wasn't the first time I performed the ritual, but it was the first time I put a sword through my foot," she said.

Gunther immediately pulled the sword out of her foot, and her companions took her to Witham Memorial Hospital, where she was kept a couple days for treatment.

No charges were filed, police said. The Wiccans were warned that being in the cemetery in the city about 20 miles northwest of Indianapolis after posted visiting hours constitutes trespassing.

Wicca is a nature-based religion based on respect for the earth, nature and the cycle of the seasons.

Subject: RE: Song Challeng - Wiccan Woes
From: SINSULL
Date: 23 Jul 08 - 08:24 AM

I lost an "e" - Challenge

Subject: RE: Song Challeng - Wiccan Woes
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 23 Jul 08 - 10:34 AM

Ok, not a reply to the challenge, but this reminds me of something that happened to an Israeli musician, Aviv Gefen, who is sort of Dylan meets the Ramones with Marylin Mansonish makeup. He decided to smash his guitar after a concert, but he shattered his foot instead.

Subject: RE: Song Challeng - Wiccan Woes
From: MMario
Date: 23 Jul 08 - 10:39 AM

A fiction series I'm reading is based on the "everything has it's price" model of magic - I'd say in this case the price for a gratitude of good luck is a little bad luck.

Subject: RE: Song Challeng - Wiccan Woes
From: katlaughing
Date: 23 Jul 08 - 11:41 AM

Leaves me wondering why on earth someone into Wicca needed to do this in a cemetery. Not that I have anything against cemeteries, just see no need to to perform a ritual of thanksgiving in one.

Subject: RE: Song Challenge - Wiccan Woes
From: SINSULL
Date: 23 Jul 08 - 12:37 PM

He deserved an injured foot for smashing that guitar.

Subject: RE: Song Challenge - Wiccan Woes
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 23 Jul 08 - 12:43 PM

I now realise that when Lionel Harvey stabbed me in the foot, in a gardening related incident at school in 1960, he was in fact trying to engage me in rituals of the Wiccan kind.

Oh how my life could have been so different! The Headteacher, who later went on to die on the school stage in a smoking related incident, interogated us at great length, doubting the gardening explantion and clearly searching of strange practices.

All this is true

L in C

Subject: RE: Song Challenge - Wiccan Woes
From: Charley Noble
Date: 23 Jul 08 - 10:41 PM

What did the Wiccan say when she stabbed her foot with her sword?

Which foot was witch?

I'm no longer well heeled?

I'm pierced to the sole?

Ouch?

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Song Challenge - Wiccan Woes
From: freda underhill
Date: 24 Jul 08 - 11:18 AM

it was a dark and eery night, and all the witches snuck
into the depths of a cemetery, to celebrate good luck...
(not a very lucky place for some you may observe)
yet our flock of witchy wenches nor yet forsook their nerve)
and embracing a ritual dialogue with forces of the earth
one swung her mighty sword and leapt: a dance of might and mirth..

swirling, leaping, pearl and plain
she felt a sudden slash of pain
her tiny foot was cleft and splade
sliced by the might of merlin's blade
but surely, know ye, all and few
that merlin's blade's a symbol true
struck a wiccan girl and cleft
he struck, and run, the girl was left.

She gazed upon the bloody stain
and said, these men are all the same....
and merlin short of sight, a wonder,
he aimed down south, but struck down under....

freda (from downtown sunny Austria, home of many a magic sword...)

Subject: RE: Song Challenge - Wiccan Woes
From: SINSULL
Date: 24 Jul 08 - 11:32 AM

LOL Great Freda!

Subject: RE: Song Challenge - Wiccan Woes
From: freda underhill
Date: 24 Jul 08 - 11:35 AM

ps my daughter informs me that 'foot' has a very different meaning in German, one that would mean that Merlin hit his mark after all!

f.u.

Subject: RE: Song Challenge - Wiccan Woes
From: freda underhill
Date: 24 Jul 08 - 11:48 AM

.. well, the challenge is on now, SINS, it can only get better...!!

freda

Subject: RE: Song Challenge - Wiccan Woes
From: greg stephens
Date: 24 Jul 08 - 11:50 AM

Who could put it better than our William (in the lesser known 3rd Folio edition of Macbeth)

Round about the cauldron go
In the poison'd entrails throw
Shit, there goes my bloody toe

Subject: RE: Song Challenge - Wiccan Woes
From: Hollowfox
Date: 24 Jul 08 - 12:46 PM

Mmario, what's the fiction series you're reading? Bookaholics want to know.

Subject: RE: Song Challenge - Wiccan Woes
From: Bryn Pugh
Date: 25 Jul 08 - 05:29 AM

Although I am Wiccan and have been since Beal Tain 1971, I was brought up on folk tales from the Irish-American side of my family.

One of these was about when Patrick was preaching and trying to convert the High King, Laoghaire, to christianity. It seems that Patrick was using his bacuill (which had a pointy end) to emphasise items in

his sermon, and put the bacuill through Laoghaire's foot.

The High King didn't even blink. (Like you wouldn't). When Patrick saw what he'd done, horrified, he asked Laoghaire what the score was ; and Laoghaire said that he'd thought having your foot pierced by

a bishop's bacuill was part of the christian initiation.

(I, too, am curious as to why this ritual had to be in a boneyard ; but perhaps Wiccans on that side of the pond do things differently.)

Subject: RE: Song Challenge - Wiccan Woes
From: GUEST,Wwwilliam's Wwwitch
Date: 25 Jul 08 - 09:55 AM

The night has been unruly: where we lay,
Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say,
Lamentings heard i' the air; strange screams of death,
Clamour'd the livelong night: some say, the earth
Was feverous and did shake
as I stumbled to the graveyard, yet awake

At my approach, ghosts, wandering here and there,
Troop home to churchyards: damned spirits all,
That in crossways and floods have burial,
Already to their wormy beds are gone.

Yet I am one for fortune, and for dance
alone among the skeletons I prance
yet, is this a dagger which I see before me?
There's daggers in men's smiles and in their eyes
What's done is done I shout, and leap the shadows
Full knowing that I bear a charmed life

Fair is foul, and foul is fair this even'
as old bones arise anew to tread the earth
Nor do I fear thy looks or jest with nature,
When the hurlyburly 's done,yet all is mirth

Them bones, them bones, them dry bones
are all shook up, like battered bread and leaven'
The wrinkles on our flesh are all wither'd
And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven;
The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth
And lean-look'd prophets whisper fearful change.
Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle even so toward my hand?
No, it's the sword of fate descending
into the steps that walk upon this land....

Subject: RE: Song Challenge - Wiccan Woes
From: ClaireBear
Date: 25 Jul 08 - 11:35 AM

Bryn Pugh -- no, we don't. Not that differently, anyway!

If you read this longer article, it seems to imply that the choice of a graveyard was not so much due to its graveyardness, as to its peace & quiet. I'm thinking that possibly it's hard to find a place to work under the full moon in Lebanon, Indiana?

There's a video interview with the sword-sticker/stickee on that site, too.

About things being different in America: There is an African/African American/Caribbean (hoodoo) tradition of graveyard dirt being a source of power, even luck, but I've been reading up on that, and I don't see anything in there about performing thank-you rituals in graveyards...I suppose some U.S. wiccan traditions might incorporate snippets of hoodoo into their practice (though I don't know of any) and come up with something like this, but if this was hoodoo-inspired, it seems pretty far removed from the genuine article.

Claire

Subject: RE: Song Challenge - Wiccan Woes
From: SINSULL
Date: 25 Jul 08 - 12:07 PM

Www Www -
Wwwell done!

Subject: RE: Song Challenge - Wiccan Woes
From: Bee
Date: 25 Jul 08 - 01:35 PM

Freda and Wwwilliam, those are great!

My contribution:

The bishop and the witch

A bonny young witch to the cemetery gaes
To work her charms among the graves
Sae lang she staid and waited lang
For the moon to rise to the spells she sang

The moon at last deigned to appear
But the starry sky refused to clear
Thae billow'd clouds hid the witches light
She must carry on in the darkest night

Beneath the hallowed Christian gound
An ancient Bishop, he lay bound
An' at his side, Saint Pat's bacuill
The same had pierced that old Laoghaire

An' as the witch began her chants
The Bishop's bones began to dance
So sweet and lively was her song
The bones were moved to dance along

The Bishop's spirit, long asleep
Awoke to find his bones a-leap
An angry prelate he was then
An' so did work to be her bane

Above the earth the witch unsheathed
Her shining sword, the airs to cleave
So as she swung it broad and high
The Bishop's ghost did hover nigh

An' whether the Bishop's sharp bacuill
Or a chancy slip of her own true will
All in the dark when the sword came down
her own dear blood did speckle her gown

"OW! Ow!!" she cried at this painful deed
While her pretty little foot did quickly bleed
An' seeing now the Bishop's ghost
Knew that her good night's work was lost

"A curse on thee, thou Bishop cruel
An' on Saint Patrick's old bacuill
I did no harm to your mouldy bones
They danced on their own to my dulcet tones!"

(Apologies for the thoroughly fake antiquing of the language - and the somewhat forced rhyming here and there. ;-))

Subject: RE: Song Challenge - Wiccan Woes
From: SINSULL
Date: 25 Jul 08 - 02:07 PM

aPOLOGIES ACCEPTED bEE.
dAMN cAPSLOCK!

Wonder what Spaw would make of this:
The Bishop's spirit, long asleep
Awoke to find his bones a-leap

Nicely done.

Subject: RE: Song Challenge - Wiccan Woes
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Jul 08 - 02:38 PM

Wicca is a religion like Kwanzaa is a holiday. Entirely made up. Though wicca predates the African fakery by about 70 years.

Subject: RE: Song Challenge - Wiccan Woes
From: GUEST,Wwwitch
Date: 25 Jul 08 - 05:39 PM

Bee, that's Wwwwonderful!!!


Www.