Back to the Blogging Board

The other day I was reading my boss's blog, and enjoying it thoroughly, when I realized it hadn't been updated since July of 2009. I thought, "I should really encourage her to get back to writing in her blog" when the irony of the fact I haven't been keeping up with my own blog hit me. When I asked her about her abandoned webspace she defended herself with "Oh, I just don't have anything to write about." Which I promise you is not true. Even if the library wasn't going through a complete overhaul of our cataloging and circulation system (which we are) the day-today workings of a public library leave ample room for all manner of interesting anecdotes. I appreciated her sentiment, though. I, too, have not written recently for what I deemed lack of subject matter. I haven't done anything new/groundbreaking/vaguely interesting to anyone with Athena worship in a while, and, with the season of the Witch upon us, I've been poking around in Cochrane's letters and wishing I had the gumption to actually follow the Spiral Castle Tradition full time.

What is the Spiral Castle Tradition, you ask? Gentle reader, allow me to introduce you to a Tradition of Witchcraft in the 1734/Clan of Tubal Cain mold that Laurelei and I created whole hog from immersing ourselves in the Robert Cochrane letters and Graves' seminal The White Goddess. It is a ecstatic mystery tradition with legitimate roots in British Traditional Witchcraft. It is a three-degree initiatory tradition, although we make no claims of succession to anyone, apostolic, or otherwise. Our calendar is based on the eight festival cycle, along side a lunar calendar related to tree-months and totemic animal cycles. The central Deities of the tradition are the Red God: Tubal Cain, and two Goddesses, the White and the Black. Note 7/18/2011: We're blogging about it here.

Is anyone actually a part of this oh-so-nifty tradition? Well, sort of. I mean, if you count myself and Laurelei. I currently practice the tradition when it suits me, along with the Athenian festival calendar (when it pertains directly to Athena) and Thelemic practices including Liber Resh vel Helios and the Star Ruby (because who doesn't love using Greek in ceremonial magick?). So , yeah, my spiritual practices have been very *ahem* eclectic as of late. This is in addition to my loose studies in Goddess/feminist spirituality such as the Women's Goddess Retreat. I just can't seem to focus on one thing, which is probably why, although I am filled with good intentions to mentor to the local occult community, the student have thus far not appeared.

I have grand plans for all of these irons in the fire. I've started three different books, but none of them are anywhere near completion. The first, Under Her Aegis, is my attempt at a guide to the modern worship of Athena. The next is an untitled book on Thelemic Witchcraft. I can hear you laughing, but really, Gardnerian Wicca owes a huge debt to Crowley, and the promulgation of Thelema in the New Aeon has found its most vital medium in NeoPaganism. The systems compliment each other very well. The third work is a monstrosity I fear I will never finish. It is my attempt to distill my collected knowledge of Witchcraft into a single book. I see it as my Great Work, and, because of that, I wonder if it is even meant to be completed. It is more than a simple Book of Shadows. On my best days I see it as a greatly expanded volume in the spirit of Huson's classic Mastering Witchcraft.

All of this, and I still intend to go back to library school. I have always had lofty aspirations -- a good trait in an occultist.

Life is not all coven-planning and writing the next great treatise on Witchcraft. I fret over seeing my family for Thanksgiving later this week. I worry about our Yuletide gift-giving budget. I go to work happily and hope that the forthcoming new catalog and circulation system will run well and smoothly.

And, hopefully, I continue to blog. :)

133.33 and the Librarian Occultist

I am vexed, dear reader. It will come as no shock to you that I'm a librarian. I'm upfront about it right here in the "About Me" blurb on my blog: "I'm a librarian, a Hellenic Polytheist, a Traditional Wiccan, and an occultist." I first started working a library when I was in high school and I am now seeking my Master's degree in Library Science.

The overlap between my passion for libraries and my passion for occultism doesn't come up very often. True, I do see my work as a librarian as an abstract way of honoring the power of Athena, but I am "in the broom closet" at work. I am happy to serve quietly in my own way.

My frustration comes from a kind of open secret among the librarians I have known concerning occult literature. The secret is that books on occultism walk. What I mean by this is that these books (133.33 in the Dewey Decimal classification system) once checked out from the library never find their way back to the library. Often these books are not even checked out, but are blatantly stolen from the library. Go to any public library and examine the 133.33 section (it is an old habit of mine that I always go there first whenever I am in a new library). You will find it to be sadly lacking.

I've witnessed several responses to this dilemma. Some libraries choose to keep occult materials in a special "restricted" section, usually behind the circulation desk where they cannot be stolen outright. Other libraries keep the books as reference materials only so that they cannot be checked out. Still other libraries, and this breaks my heart, have elected to not carry occult materials at all. This is, of course, censorship, even if the library feels that it has no other course of action.

I have wondered for many years just who these occult book bandits are. The public library systems I have worked in have all been in very conservative rural communities. Is it rebellious teenagers looking for the small thrill of lifting a Wicca 101 book, or is it the rabid Christian fiction reading matrons attempting to save their community from "Satan"?

Who benefits from this form of censorship? Certainly not sincere seekers like the one I assisted earlier this week. Our online catalog showed twenty books on astrology, all of them listed as "long overdue" or "lost processing". The poor man simply wanted to know the stories behind the zodiac signs. I wanted very much to share with him the information orally, but, again, I am closeted at work and feared drawing attention to myself.

I am at a loss for a solution to this problem. Here at home I've enchanted my own personal library (which would make anyone with even a passing interest in witchcraft green with envy) so that any book loaned out (which, granted, only ever happens with those I trust implicitly) will find its way back home to me. The task of enchanting a public library collection seems daunting at best, and brings up some gray ethical issues for me.

I dream of someday directing a library filled with controversial books. Dangerous books. Books that open the reader's mind. For now I work quietly and wonder where have all the occult books gone?