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Sunday, December 26

Weekly blogs? And more ahead...

Hey all.

I know I keep saying I want all you to let me know you are out there. Well, If I expect something from you, I should expect something from myself as well. In light of this, I expect to start making a blog post every week. Expect to hear from me at least every Sunday. Feel free to go off on me if I don't make it in by midnight Sunday.

So for today's post, I want to address the issue of witch schools online. After listening to a podcast from the Dark Side of Fey, I found myself wanting to address it here. While I enjoy the podcast, the episode on witch schools raised a lot of issues for me. Fey said a lot of things about why witch schools were unethical and have no value whatsoever. While she is entitled to her own beliefs, I cannot help but address why I think she is wrong. There are a lot of witch schools out there online. While I do not have personal experience with them, I have no reason to write them off because of that lack of experience. First, I will address the issue of the subject matter in the courses. If the course covers nothing more than something that can be found in a book, not only is this failing to provide valuable information to the community, it also borders on plagiarism. The same goes with websites, if nothing of use is added to the community, then there is no motivation for its existence. If the courses teach their students to interpret information or examine it in a manner not done before, then it has a reason to exist. Next, there is the issue of money. Many say that if a course charges, it is unethical because traditional witchcraft was taught free of charge. I would like to point out that not all communities have the type of elders that is needed for decent education. Within my local community, unless you join a coven, the only classes that can be found are horribly expensive for a class that only lasts a few hours. The idea of quality classes, even online, for a reasonable price, is wonderful especially when someone is not out of the broom closet and might not be able to freely search for a teacher within the community. While traditionally, it is right to offer teaching services free of charge, we live in a world where covering personal charges for a class may cost quite a lot. A basic charge could be useful, especially in making sure that the people involved are looking for something out of their class, rather than just having information fed to them. In short, if a class is made with the best intentions and does not charge for the course in order to make a profit (costs are designed to cover charges), then there should be no problem. Online classes provide an important service for those who cannot get a quality education in their community.

As always, let me know what you think of today's topic. Any future topics you have are welcome and I will try to address as many as possible.

Blessed be!

Friday, December 17

Defining Belief

I am taking some time now to finally write out for myself what it is I believe. Hopefully I will have the time to go into detail as to where I got ideas from or why I believe in the way I do. Because of this, I am starting to see the importance of reevaluating those things we believe in. There is nothing more important than knowing why we believe in the way we do. There is so much more to life then blindly believing something just because it was told to them. I grew up in an atmosphere where belief is fed to the next generation and we are expected to believe every bit of that information that was passed on. Question the Bible even when personal interpretation does not correspond with what you have been fed, and people will automatically jump on you for being wrong. When we learn to question that blind faith, sometimes we forget that questioning belief means we must question everything. All aspects of belief must be understood on a personal level, rather than just because we have been taught to believe it. Main point here – question everything. If there is a belief you haven’t looked at in awhile, maybe it is time.