The Pen

Here’s a bit of trivia for you. I’m sure that most of you have never heard of the 1st Baron Lytton, whose proper name was Edward Bulwer-Lytton. He was an English novelist, poet, playwright and politician of the 19th century (1803 – 1873). Though you probably don't know his name, you do know some of his words. He achieved immortality by giving us several expressions that we commonly use today, including:

“the great unwashed”
“the pursuit of the almighty dollar”
“it was a dark and rainy night”

Now I want to talk about a particular Magickal Weapon, related to the wand and staff. This Magickal Weapon is typically around 6 inches long and fits easily into the hand.

I want to talk about the common pen.

Right about now you’re probably thinking something like: OK, Kerr’s about to make a joke. He’s about to wax humorous.

Actually no, I’m not.

Or maybe you’re thinking: Why is he changing the subject? I thought that we were talking about authors.

I am.

Imagine that you are a police recruit in the academy. You’re in a use of force class and I am your instructor. “I don’t need to tell you,” I begin, “That it is a jungle out there. I am sure that you are all aware that that you need to be on the lookout at all times for suspects armed with weapons. I’m sure that when you hit the streets you’ll be looking for knives and bats and guns. That’s good. What you probably don’t realize is that in reality, the weapon that the suspect uses against you most of the time will not be one of these weapons. It won’t be a knife, a gun or a blunt object. Statistics prove that this weapon will most likely be what happened to be at hand, not a weapon that the suspect had brought into the area with the deliberate intent of being used in an assault.[1] For example: the most common stabbing weapon after the knife is the common screwdriver. A very common stabbing weapon is the common pen or pencil. Your heart is just an inch beneath your skin. It is possible to stab someone to death with a pen.”

I hope that you are all now taking the pen seriously. I always have. Not just because I used to be a cop, either. I am a writer, after all.

I defended this Pagan community for 25 years. I didn’t show up at churches armed with a bat, a ritual sword, or even a pen. I did show up at churches like Vancouver’s Glad Tidings Church to deal with evangelists like Bob Larson face to face. I went there with empty hands. I was armed with words. I took on the hateful con artists and frauds that disseminated misinformation causing endless suffering to members of our community. You know how I did it. You’ve seen my 182 articles in the Witch Hunts column on The Witches’ Voice web site. You’ve probably read my book Witch Hunts. I fought them with words. On several occasions I attended civil courts to give evidence in defense of members of the Pagan community. I wasn’t packing a side arm. I was simply armed with words. It was words that I used to defend the rights of Pagans in the emergency services when I was leader of Officers of Avalon.

At each Armoring ritual that I conducted before I founded the Order of Scáthach in November of 2007 at least one of the eager persons that came forward seeking to dedicate themselves to the Warrior path carried a particular Magickal Weapon. What was the weapon that they placed on the altar to be consecrated as part of this ceremony? It was a pen.

This did not surprise me. I didn’t question this. I did nothing to prevent them. The wand and the staff are connected to fire energy, and that is the energy of inspiration and creativity. What better symbol of that but a pen? When it was time to return the Magickal Weapons after the Armoring oath I looked them in the eye, handed the pen back to them firmly, and said: “Receive this from the hands of the Goddess, and know that you are welcome in this company.”

The Seneschal at my Armoring at Florida Pagan Gathering in 2005 wasn’t surprised either: She was Wiccan author Kristin Madden. Nor was the Seneschal presiding at my Armoring ritual at Convocation 2006 in Michigan. She was Denessa Smith, founder of the Tempest Smith Foundation, which fights against bullying in schools. Nor did another of the Warriors assisting me at that Detroit Armoring: Wiccan author Chris Penczak. All three of them understood the power of words.

After the Arming ritual at the recent Warrior workshop in September 2008 in Nanaimo, I was approached by one of the people who had come there that day to learn from our Knights. They asked if they could ask me a question. I told them to go ahead. They’d noticed that one of our new Knights being initiated had presented a pen as her Magickal Weapon. “I thought that the initiate was supposed to present a weapon to be consecrated”, this person said, “But she had a pen”. I smiled and nodded... and waited patiently in silence. The person asking me this question looked puzzled for a moment. Then their face cleared as it suddenly dawned on them. And that person then said to me another famous line by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron of Lytton, this one from his 1839 play Richelieu:

“The pen is mightier than the sword.”

“Exactly,” I said.

Yes, there are definitely times when you’ve got to grab a serious weapon like a sword or a stick to deal with a situation. I’ve survived many fights over the years that I was a cop and in some cases used weapons to overcome adversaries. You all know that I still train with martial arts weapons. However, as Knights we also know that one of Sun Tzu’s precepts was: "Those who win every battle are not really skillful- Those who render others' armies helpless without fighting are the best of all."[2] Very often the way that these Warriors achieve that is with words. Thus the pen is a perfect example of one of our precepts: Minimal appearance, maximum content.

BB
Kerr

[1] ROWETT, Colin. (1986.) Violence in Social Work: A Research Study of Violence in the Context of Local Authority Social Work, pg. 135.
[2] Sun TZU, Thomas CLEARY, trans. (1991). The Art of War, pg 18.

Warrior Magick Workshop

Dear Friends:

I'll be doing a Warrior Magick Workshop at Grimoire's books in New Westminster at 5 PM on Sunday, February 15. You can check out their web page and get directions at: http://www.grimoiresbooks.com/

Bb
Kerr

Seattle Armoring

We've got an Armoring ritual and Scathach training session planned for May 10 in Seattle if anyone is interested. Let me know if you are. It was originally planned for April 19, but we've rescheduled it to allow everyone in our Surrey group to get their new "enhanced drivers licenses" to facilitate crossing the border.

BB
Kerr

Obama Macaroons

Gluten free. Makes 2 1/2 dozen macaroons. I made these in honor of the inauguration. They’re half black and they bring a smile to your face. Seemed appropriate.
Ingredients:
1/2 teaspoon salt
5 egg whites
1 1/4 cups superfine sugar
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 cups sweetened shredded coconut
8 oz 70% dark chocolate
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. and line cookie sheets with parchment paper. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, add salt to egg whites and beat with an electric mixer to form stiff peaks. Add sugar slowly and beat just until sugar is dissolved. Stir in the vanilla and coconut, gently mixing to combine. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto the parchment. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes. Slide parchment onto the counter and let stand for 1 minute. Loosen cookies and cool on wire racks. Melt chocolate in double boiler. Dip half of each cookie into the chocolate. Set aside to cool on a sheet of parchment paper.

A & E's Paranormal State

I was contacted yesterday by Christine Mahin, Associate Producer of A & E Network’s show “Paranormal State” (season 3). She was looking for information on the “ram's head image and its link to the paranormal and witchcraft.” I spoke to her on the phone and sent her a pile of e mail information. I’ll keep you all posted on where this ends up.

Indifference

On January 10 I worked police dispatch for district 3. This is the south east corner of Vancouver, a large and busy district, especially so on a Saturday night. At about 2230 hours it was raining mixed with snow. A lady was walking home with her child in the 7800 block of Champlain, which is a major thoroughfare in this part of the district, composed of townhouses, a school, a community center and some minor businesses. Suddenly a 12 year old Asian boy ran up to her dressed only in flannel pajamas in his bare feet in the rain, telling her that his parents were fighting and begging her to help him. She refused, pointing to the Royal Arch Masonic Care Home that they were in front of, and telling him to run there, as they would help him. She then walked on, leaving him to his own devices. She told us later that she last saw him running towards this care home. About 15 minutes later she arrived home and, starting to feel a bit guilty I suppose, called 911.
Needless to say the call taker that took the call was appalled. So was I when the call appeared on my dispatch screen a moment later. The call taker immediately tried calling the Royal Arch home to see if the staff had the kid with them. No one would answer the phone there.
Meanwhile I’ve got the sergeant heading over with multiple police units, one going to the complainant’s home to get more details and one straight to the care home to see what they could tell us. The staff came to the door when the police officer buzzed the intercom. The duty nurse told this police officer that yes, the boy had come to the door soaking wet in his pajamas, crying, begging for help. The care home staff refused to open the door for this boy as it was “against their policy” and told him to seek help elsewhere. The last that they saw of him he was running away from their front door. Needless to say the police officer at the door blew a fuse and demanded to know why they didn’t call 911. If you can believe it, the nursing supervisor then told this police officer, “Oh yes, we did call 911.” The police officer got REALLY angry then. He told her that we WERE 911 and we knew for a fact that they had made no such call. They hadn’t. I can’t imagine how they thought that we’d think that they had.
Due to the bad weather our helicopter with its infrared scanning equipment was not in the air, but I threw every other resource that we had at this. Units checked every single street and the dog unit checked all the trails in the vicinity: Unfortunately our dog unit couldn’t track the boy because by the time we got this call and he’d got to the scene so many people had come and gone from the care home that it would have been impossible to tell who he was tracking.
Assisted by the call taker, I checked the history of every block of houses out several blocks in every direction looking for any residence that might have a history that would give us a clue where this kid might have come from. Even if the family involved had an extensive history, all that it would take is for them to move to a new house where we hadn’t had any calls yet and we’d never be able to find them that way.
The call taker and I found nothing useful.
The initial area search produced no results.
The duty officer (basically the acting chief constable) arrived on scene and got units to go door to door from the care home outwards looking for anything that would help. In the first 15 minutes of this door to door search we discovered 6 witnesses, all who had seen the following: Our Asian boy in his pajamas in the middle of Champlain Crescent, trying to stop passing cars, yelling ang begging for assistance.
All of the cars drove around him and went on.
Not one of the 6 witnesses called 911.
After three hours of searching we never found him.
The dispatchers and call takers in the ops room shook their heads and said things like: “What is this world coming to?”
Some people in the Pagan community have asked me: “Why would you want to create an order of Knights?”
Because this is what the world is coming to.
I heard a lot of people on the ops floor say things that night like: “When you hear of things like this you wonder what hope is there for the world.”
Some people in the Pagan community say: “An order of Knights? That’s rather archaic. What use is it?”
Why are we all gathered together as an order of Knights?
WE are the hope.
We came together, attracted by the precepts and principles of our order. WE stand for honor and responsibility. WE are the example for the rest of our community and the rest of the world.
I know that every single one of you in our Order would have done everything you could to help this poor boy. We have ALL taken an oath to help the weak. That’s just one of the reasons that I’m so proud of you all.
I can only imagine what he must think having reached out to so many who simply turned away. Let us all hope that this boy is found safe and that a solution is found to his problem.

BB
Kerr

Training in 2009

Dear Friends:

We're out of the holiday season and back into our regular training schedule, starting Sunday, January 11 at the Motherhouse.

Wednesday, January 21, 7 PM: Stick and bo class at the Motherhouse.

Sunday, February 1: Geri’s candle making workshop at the Motherhouse 3 PM. Imbolc ritual 7 PM.

Sunday, February 8: Day long Reiki workshop by Lyn. Cycle III Knight training at the Motherhouse. Advanced Magickal Weapons.

Sunday, February 15: Cycle I Novice and Cycle II Squire training at the Motherhouse.

The photo shows the new stained glass Scathach logo in the front window of the Motherhouse.

BB
Kerr