Shopping Tips and Guidance by Mandy Claire

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Last night was a big night here in Snobville. It's "Spirit Week" (wow, just got the double meaning of that!), and the classes at Snobville High participated in their usual competitions, which encourage rivalry in the name of making money for charities and food banks.

My daughter The Spare is a Senior. She has always lived and breathed Spirit Week, but never more than this time -- her swan song as the driving force of the Spirit Week Committee, Class of 2012.

Spare's class chose "Lord of the Rings" as their hallway theme. And she buckled down to work. And they won.

Her contributions ran from the sublime to the ridiculous. In no particular order:

1. Both of my formal Druid Ritual robes. With my warm blessings.
2. A beautiful hand-crafted leather mask I just bought, giving to my sister for the holidays.
3. Costumes made of sheets and tablecloths from the thrift store.
4. A large piece of Astroturf from Lakewood High, Lakewood, Ohio ... scavenged from our property on Polish Mountain.
5. The contents of my china closet, more or less. I hope she didn't take the champagne glasses.
6. Each and every piece of colonial "kit" wear we amassed over a decade of doing Revolutionary War encampments.
7. Faerie wear, all of it.
8. An old bottle we scavenged from Polish Mountain, as above.
9. Two enormous banners that she painted without any help.
10. A Treebeard costume that could go right onstage.
11. Our outdoor fire bowl AND firewood!
12. Kid-sized furniture that has followed me through life somehow, and
13. An enormous amount of sweat equity.

Spare may not rock when it comes to cleaning her room, but tell her to make a hallway look like Middle Earth, and she will deliver! I was extremely proud of her!

On to the sermon:

November 23 marks the end of the Dominionist assault on the Goddess Columbia and our First Amendment rights, at least in its formal stage. I'm not much at math, but I can't understand how they got so far ahead of me that they were able to spend Samhain in Washington, DC ("C" as in Columbia) and eleven days in Philly, while I'm only up to Missouri!

I don't know how you roll, but I'm seeing some synchronicity between DC40's ruthless prayer vigil and the Occupy Movement. It's almost as if people everywhere are feeling the negative vibe of theocracy and are stepping up to stop it, in the name of democracy. Occupy is about more than unemployment and unfair business tactics. It's about bringing our nation into balance through the right to peaceably assemble, which (by cracky!) is also in the text of the First Amendment!

I'm sure to have lots to say about Occupy in the months to come, but this sermon contains an effort to diffuse dark magick.

I found this lovely and effective spell on Facebook. The more of us doing it, the better. The best times for it will be from midnight Wednesday to sundown on Thursday. This is close enough to the Full Moon to effect a new beginning, but far enough from a Mercury Retrograde to enact any unforseen consequences.

This is a send-back spell, meant to contain no more malice than you would expend upon a pair of shoes you ordered online and need to return because they don't fit. The merchant usually makes these returns very easy, so that you feel no bad humor. Please enter into this spell with that mindset: Something has come to you and your state. That something doesn't fit. Return to Sender, postage paid.

You can say this spell or write it on paper that you consign to air, fire, earth, or water. Pay heed to your sense of calm. You are diffusing ardor, and calmness is the best way to do that.

Spell as follows:

By the Power of (Insert favorite matron/patron/nature deity here) all negative prayers and curses issued by the New Apostolic Reformation, including all so called prayer intercessors who took part in the DC40/51 Days of Reformation Intercession campaign between October 3rd, 2011 and November 22nd, 2011 shall be returned to their source and origin intact exactly as they were sent. By the Power of (insert favorite deity here) and the Powers of The Queen of Heaven, Columbia, Lady Liberty and Nemesis, so mote it be. 



"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

First Amendment, United States Constitution, 1791