I Wroted a Thing!

[lwood]

After pulling teeth for, oh, only several months, dpaxson finally got me to cough up an essay on warding for Trance Portation, her forthcoming book on beginning trance techniques, soon to be available from Red Wheel/Weiser.

I have also tacked it up to our seið site, and would like to invite my flist who are experienced in The Spooky Woo-Woo to come up and take some cracks at it. Fair warning: as the book is written for a pan-pagan audience, so is this essay. It'd be a different critter if written for a heathen context, and a longer one if not a bare-bones overview, but it is what it is, and here we are.

Especial thanks to scrwtape, who gave me the first useful warding lecture I'd ever heard.

-- Lorrie

Comments

[estaratshirai.livejournal.com]

Looks good as a basic overview.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

-- Lorrie

[lferion]

Looks good on a first, quick read. One tiny comment: it's "numinous" not numenous.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Blame dpaxson--I spelled it right, she "fixed" the non-typo. ;)

Online version edited...

-- Lorrie

Warding Workshop?

[scrwtape.livejournal.com]

Do you want me to send you the initial "Be a better Warder" workshop? That is technically, "Hip Heathen workshop #1." As long as I'm referenced you or Diana can use anything you want.

I've also still a book/workbook in me on more "Warding." It starts at warding and works its way towards battle fetters, "viking jedi" tricks.

Re: Warding Workshop?

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Diana and I would love to see it--it likely won't make it into this book, but there are more coming...

-- Lorrie

Re: Warding Workshop?

[murstein.livejournal.com]

I, for one, would love to read it.

I'm probably woefully ignorant of what I should read, as the closest to that I've read to date was Cunningham's Wiccan Warrior stuff. (Even as a Wiccan, I knew I was looking for something more active than the usual fluff bunny!)

Re: Warding Workshop?

[scrwtape.livejournal.com]

My workshop doesn't go that far, it's just the essential "warder" stuff.

The book that's been sitting on my backburner for years is the one that i will go more into.

I'll send you the workshop if you wish, just contact me at my email listed in my profile and I I'll send it to you.

Re: Warding Workshop?

[shantak.livejournal.com]

Love your icon. I was just reading that issue the other day.

-smk

[dr-beowulf.livejournal.com]

Uhhh. . . is that the fixed and official book title? 'Cos, not that you asked or particualrly wanted my opinion, but. . . well, to be honest, it sounds a little like a Robert Aspirin book. (Next in the series: Rapid Trance-It, Over the Trance Om, Trance Sects-uality, and Trance and Dental Medication. . .)

Anyway, being a card-carrying cementhead, I'm not sure how useful my comments on the essay will be, but I'll take a crack at it sometime soon.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

*cough* Yes. dpaxson thought it was cute, with a subsequent one to be titled Trance Formations, et al.

I'll certainly give her the rest of your suggestions... ;)

And, yes, I would appreciate a read-through. Good gods, I think the OT Style manual has gotten under my skin: it now seems perfectly obvious that subsection headers SHALL BE bold, surrounded by whitespace, end in a period, and that subsubsections SHALL be italicized, preceded but not followed by whitespace...

-- Lorrie

[dr-beowulf.livejournal.com]

There's always "Last Trance for Mary Jane". . .

There's ravens flyin' through the air,
She's sitting up in a big high chair,
Seein' all the webs that wyrd is weavin',
Tellin' all the people though some don't believe it,
Oh my my, oh hey love,
you got to put on your catskin gloves,
get your blue cloak and staff with the big brass knob,
climb up the seidhjallr and do your job. . .

[ivy]

Last trance for Mary Jane,
Once more down the Tree again, uh huh,
I feel Nidhogg creepin' in, and she's
Faring forth again, uh huh.

hurray, trance with hot green-haired trollops

[wednesday]

After that, the series alternates core Trance adventures with those of the spin-off ensemble cast / detective agency, T.R.A.N.C.E.

Re: hurray, trance with hot green-haired trollops

[ivy]

Eventually culminating in Trance Trance Revolution, the interactive video game.

[shantak.livejournal.com]

As a participant in a few group trance things *and* someone not ready for warding, I really liked the essay. I thought it was as well written as usual. And, a good length, not too much nor too little bit.

Probably my imagination, but I thought I recognised some of your examples. ;)

-smk

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Probably my imagination, but I thought I recognised some of your examples. ;)

Ha! I obfuscate all details to protect the guilty! ;)

-- Lorrie

[emberleo.livejournal.com]

It's difficult for me to evaluate, because I know way too much about almost all of the examples you gave.

--Ember--

[emberleo.livejournal.com]

The one thing I kept waiting for you to say straight up that you never seemed to say was to point out that the ability to Improvise is important.

Another thing that you imply but never say is that good manners and good people skills are important for Infield Warding, and folks who are very shy, introverted, or misanthropic might not do so well at such a job.

--Ember--

[lwood.livejournal.com]

I do say several times to trust one's own judgement, delegate, or head up the chain of command. One doesn't necessarily want a complete newbie improvising too much, until that improvisation is coming from a reasonable field of experience.

I'll be passing this along to Seidhjallr today; please comment there as well!

-- Lorrie

[emberleo.livejournal.com]

It's true.

--Ember--

[lwood.livejournal.com]

*nod* That's fair.

-- Lorrie

[wednesday]

Gave it a once-over last night. My only suggestion, if you're aiming for the pan-pagan 101 crowd, is to possibly split some of the compoundy sentences up. (Not that you should ever have to do this — no one should have to do this — but the audience will already be doing a lot of mental grappling.)

Then again, it's Weiser; I might be underestimating the audience.

Disclaimer: have spent day staring at short phrases.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Weiser tends to pee a little higher on the tree, yes, so that's something. dpaxson already broke up some of my longer-winded phrases, putting it in-tone with the rest of the book.

I don't really want to break it down any smaller--I figure that if one can't take a college-level reading comprehension, then they really shouldn't be learning this stuff from books.

-- Lorrie

[ivy]

Under the "spirits" section, where you're talking about "knowledge is the best tool you can have in the box", it might also be worth mentioning that if possible, having warders familiar with that particular spirit and its personality will be immensely helpful in correctly interpreting actions in context. Saying "Any of these might be the right answer" is totally true, but doesn't give the newbies much help on figuring out how to determine what the right answer is, so a few more pointers towards how to get that savvy might be useful.

I'm not sure how your group works with this, but in the section about being a bouncer, it might also be worth mentioning (if it's the case) shielding the workers and ritual from gawkers, cops called to investigate the Satanic ritual going on, et cetera. (In the group work I've done, people serving this function were bouncers for both physical and metaphysical disruptions alike, but that may not be the case for you.) However, if your target audience is only working in reserved space that's guaranteed interruption-free, this might not be so applicable. I'm used to working outdoors in nature, in areas where the locals were generally not so Pagan-friendly. This may not be the case for everyone, but is for a fair number of Pagans in conservative areas.