A Long Term Goal Has Been Achieved
Back in the "good ole days" when I finally came back to the practice of Wicca, I found the Coven of the Far Flung Net, the online teaching coven of the Church of Universal Eclectic Wicca. The more I read, the more interested I was in this group, as it was filled with real thinkers; people who didn't take spoon fed religion at face value. The idea of carefully deconstructing and analyzing every facet of one's personal religious practices was strangely refreshing, and something I was truly interesting in pursuing.
Luckily, I was accepted to a Clan of CFFN, and progressed with them through the First and Second Circle of CUEW. I knew at the beginning that I was quite interested in going through to Third Circle, and looked forward to accepting the 'calling" as it were of leading a spiritual life as a Priestess. I knew from the outset that it was going to be a LOT of work, including a lot of soul searching, as well as learning things about myself that perhaps didn't quite like. However, onward I went, damn the torpedos, and started my at least one year long Third Circle Project.
My project was the transcription and analysis of a nineteenth century Spiritism book called "Art Magic, or Mundane, Sub-Mundane and Super Mundane Spiritism. A Treatise in Three Parts and Twenty Three Sections." The book was published by the Progressive Thinker Publishing House in 1898 and edited by a noted Spiritist, Emma Hardinge Britten. The book was one of approximately 350 produced, that were purchased largely by people who were subscribers to the Progressive Thinker magazine. The book was given to me by my grandmother, who will not tell me who in the family had been a subscriber to the magazine, or who had these types of "occult" leanings. That will be the subject of another project, it seems :-).
This rare glimpse of the "occult" as seen through the eyes of a nineteenth century medium was quite interesting, and showed that some of the ideas are still pertinent to modern Wiccan thought. Some of the beliefs they espoused are quite similar if not identical to what we believe today, and I found it very interesting to analyze the methods in which material that was "slightly out of normal" was presented, as well as what the beliefs themselves were.
The working group that was formed at the beginning of the project assisted with typos, and with what their ideas were about what they had read. This was not a simple task, as the information was presented in a decidedly Victorian manner, with rather thick prose that was far from straightforward. A lot of it was also pretty fluffy (like today) and many ideas were presented with a "because someone important told me this was the way it is" (also like today). However, there were still some nice gems in there of interest, that were worth reading.
At the very least, another almost forgotten book (although the Library of Congress DOES have a copy) is available in electronic form, and can be read by as many as desire to delve into it. The great library of the Internet has another work to be examined. The link to the project is http://www.enchantedworks.com/artmagic/index.html
Today, Kaat MacMorgan, head of CUEW, announced to the world that my project had been accepted, and I have been accepted as a full member of the Third Circle of CUEW.