Fairly Take and Fairly Give

I believe no matter what path you’re on, you can learn from different paths.  With this in mind, on Saturday I sat in an Intro to Wicca class. When the teacher announced an exam for October, I protested. This class was suppose to be fun.  The HPS pointed out the class was designed to measure how much we students had learned, but the explanation did little to satisfy me. The word “test’ reminded me of all those basic algebra tests I had flunked and the ensuing feelings of being a numb skull.  Even today, when JH tutors our son, I sit beside my son, sponging up the knowledge.

“Okay, you mean the material from last month?” I thought well, since the class began in August, how much material could there be? Besides, I’m not a stranger to witchcraft. There were no surprises for me in the last class.

The HPS reminded the HP that I had come in the middle of class — meaning that I had missed months of material. She handed me what amounted to a book designed as an aid for first degree priesthood. I flipped through the pages. Uh oh. There seemed to be much I didn’t know about witchcraft.  As much as I realized I was in for some karmic comeuppance for having flipped the HP so much shit during the  last class, I felt pleased that she trusted me with the book.

“I’ll give this back to you.”

“No, you keep it.” She said.

Immediately, I made up my mind the book would become the beginning of a bos. I was overjoyed, which somehow mitigated the galling sensation that I was scheduled for a bit of humble pie dished out by our teacher.

“Does anyone here like rose petal cookies?” asked the dark-haired girl with the European accent.

Judging from the responses, a number of people liked or was willing to try rose petal cookies. The girl revealed someone in her family baked rose petal cookies, and she would try to bring some back from Europe.  For months, I had hoped to run across the herbal cookies after I sampled lavender cookies.

At this point, I was in a very good mood indeed. I wasn’t bad at crafting candles. Why not bring candles for everyone in class — especially since Virgo JH had figured out the ratio for mixing the colors to achieve black dye ? Not that I was going to mix enough dye, so that everyone would get a black candle.  Hell, I had plenty of navy dye laying about.

I was mulling over this “fairly take and fairly give scene”  (although I liked it better when I misspoke it as “freely take, and freely give” ) when rose petal cookie girl asked the HP to bless her necklace. She seemed pretty edgy about   her flight to Europe. The HP obliged her, calling for the blessings from a goddess  of whom I had never heard.

After he finished, I turned to cookie girl and told her, “You will return home safely. I feel it in  my gut.”

She looked at me as though I were nuts. Who could blame her?  Solid, hard as a rock feeling is harder to explain than intuition. When you observe 2 and 2 consciously or unconsciously, you add it up to get 4. In contrast, when you “know,” you don’t have a thing to fall back on except a hard feeling in your gut.

Perhaps, I better heed “speak you little, listen much” before I get any more “Are you nuts?” looks. Yeah, I know that isn’t the entire line, but it’s what I’m going to write here.