#utterly wicked

[wortcunningwitch]

quick question for witchblr, specifically people who are knowledgeable about hoodoo practices: i’ve seen the books “of blood and bones” by kate freuler and “utterly wicked” by dorothy morrison recommended by a lot of people for those who want to learn about baneful magic. however, i’ve also seen a few other people say both books are appropriative, specifically of certain elements of hoodoo. what are y’all’s takes on this? are they worth reading?

[softlass27]

hearing lorna’s fic ideas like

[skepticalmagick]

Dorothy Morrison at the Witchery

Well, this being the inaugural post and all, I just want to say thanks for stopping by and ask how the hell you got here. That last bit is rhetorical, since you can’t actually answer me.

My sweetie and I spent Saturday and Sunday making the trek from our home to the Witchery in Galveston to attend a two different sessions with guest speaker, author and witch, Dorothy Morrison. If you’ve never been to the Witchery in Galveston, I highly recommend it. Clyde and Kim run a very nice occult shop on Post Office, which is very tastefully decorated with antique display cases that match very well to the period style of the building itself. You can take a look by visiting their web site, though the photos don’t really do it justice. Originally, no visit to Galveston was complete without a visit to the Witchery, now it is usually the purpose behind the trip.

So anyway, as stated we did two of Dorothy’s classes, one on the “Swifting of Energy” and the other on “Swamp Witchery”, which I think was shortcode for “Don’t get strung out about ceremony and use what you have on hand.” I would have called it the “Bat Utility Witch”, but that’s just me.

I thought the notion of the Swifting of Energy was quite interesting and Dorothy is good to listen to. She’s very down to Earth and being a native Texan, I found her accent and stories quite comforting; it’s all in the delivery, really. I also appreciate that she tends to punctuate her sentences with the word “fuck” as I often do, so I was at ease with her as a speaker. That’s not always the case for me at these sorts of things.

Anyway, the concept behind the swifting of energy is to convert any bad mojo thrown at the practitioner into energy that benefits that practitioner. The spell itself is outlined in her book, “Utterly Wicked: Curses, Hexes & Other Unsavory Notions”, which, really, is just a bitchin’ title, though I do wish she went over the mechanics of the spell a bit more. Again, if the approach of this site is to accept the notion of the reality of Magick, then understanding the Nature of how a given spell functions would be nice. I don’t think that is so much Dorothy’s happy place, though as she stated quite plainly at one point, “I don’t know how it works, it just does.” I think she also followed that with something like not knowing how a car works either and being totally comfortable with that. So I’m going to accept that. Maybe if all this stuff turns out to be real I can be a Magick Geek and try to define its Nature so it can be hacked, which is really what I’m all about.

Anyway, the spell she offered was pretty simple and doesn’t require the building of circle, calling of quarters, making certain the moon is right, so I think that’s going to make for a fairly decent first experiment. We shall see. Sweetie and I will have to come up with the plan: the desired outcome, a deadline for that outcome, and then determine repeatability, if possible. We’ll also have to allow for the “coincidence factor”, so I’m guessing we’ll have to do it at least twice. I’ve always been a fan of trying new things 3 times, just in case the first two times were flukes. Likewise, my Sweetie says Magick is supposed to look like it could have occurred naturally, so I think that will have to be factored in. Or out. I’m new at this and not certain.

I’ll keep ya’ll posted. Thanks for stopping by.

Oh, also, like any good blogger, I seldom proof read anything, so, if you see mistakes, do give me a holler.

Dorothy Morrison at the Witchery was originally published on Skeptical Magick