Saturday, June 12, 2010

Treading Where We Have No Business.

I live in a house with another couple who routinely babysit. The child they babysit is without structure, discipline or a grasp of inside voice, unfortunately.

As such, anything even remotely iffy (sharp, pinch-able, breakable, valuable, or "marginally inappropriate for children to look at") must be locked up in the Temple. Recently, Child has caught on to the fact that all the dangerous, sharp, fragile, things are locked up in this particular room and demands to be let in there. To which, naturally, I say "No." Child screams, babysitters scream. Everybody suffers.

When I was a wee babe I was taught not to open shut doors, "pilfer dink" around in peoples things or even go into my parents bedroom without permission. Homes, even those of close relations, were considered sacrosanct, and I wasn't to diddle about unless given express-that-instance permission. I was to look with eyes, not hands. In short, I was instructed never to muck about in places I had no business in, or did not have explicit permission to be in.

I feel that no one is taught these things anymore, especially in the occult context.

Sometimes, in the House of Power, there are rooms filled with things that are absolutely none of your business. Opening those doors, or getting tetchy when you find them locked, is the height of rudeness and bad form.

The room labeled "Wica" belongs to the Wica, and there are locks on the door. A LOT of locks. You cannot demand that the room be unlocked so you can wander around inside, picking up things, pocketing them, and wander back out. And you damned well ought not to get angry when you're told "No, that door isn't open to you. Nothing in there belongs to you. You cannot have the keys. We don't want you in our room."

There are other rooms, and those rooms might contain nothing more interesting than a collection of old boxes, or they may contain sharp, dangerous, objects you're not yet equipped to handle. Things that could permanently damage you in ways that are not fun, nor edgy. They may contain the personal belongings of Traditions, or Gods, with which you have no contact, or dialogue.

Behind some locked doors are guardians, and they're not usually the kind of being you want to fuss with. Some doors are unlocked, some are wide open. Fine. Go inside, have a look around. But go well-armed, and with knowledge. Some are open because things inside want company... for dinner.

Yes, people in the House of Power might go in and out some of these doors, but what's behind them is none of your damned business until you're invited in. Is that a difficult concept to grasp? Didn't those of us with siblings ever learn this concept as children?

A lot of occultists fail to see how they're behaving. Pounding on their brother or sister's door, screaming to be let in. Demanding it because they have a "right". Well, they don't. It's not their room, it's not their things. They have a room. It's right across the hall. It's in the same house, it looks out on the same street. It's just a different room. No better, no worse. They only want into the other room because it is closed to them, and the very idea that not everything is community property irks some individuals.

Individuals who never grew beyond ten years old, in vitriolic envy of their sibling's secrets.

6 comments:

  1. The most shocking part of this entry, to my mind, was the fact that you live with other people. I'd always secretly imagined you as being a crazy, dangerous recluse...

    Ahem. The last half of the entry was intriguing, too. And I think I get what you're saying. On the other hand, I always say: "We don't need the key, we'll break in."

    I keep waiting for the Kids to Catch On. But everyone is lucky. No one seems intent on following me around. LOL.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I actually had a long post here about "Some kids have autism" and "some rules are dumb rules" - but Google ate it. Honestly it would warrant its own post if I were to post a response, and then the irony hit that I was dancing all up in your space to post a rebuttal. So maybe the technology gods intervened.

    If you'd like me to whitter on about it, I will, but otherwise, I'll just leave this here.

    ReplyDelete
  3. @Hathor's Bath: I would not have used the child as an ALLEGORY had said child been in any way differently wired. The post ain't about the kid. Or kids in general. It's about people (Adults, specifically) acting like fools because no one has taught them better.

    When someone steals portions of a book, and republishes it as their own that's plagiarism. When someone breaks into your home and steals your belongings, that's burglary.

    Yet, if someone picks the bones of your faith at a Pagan Pride Day, crams a few bits into a stolen Gardnerian BOS, throws in a white-sage smudging and calls it "Wiccan Shamanism" and demands to be let into all the secrets of a wholly unrelated order, we're supposed to nod, smile, do as they ask and accept that they're just expressing themselves. No thanks, it's still theft, plaigerism, cultural mis-appropriation and grab-assed stupidity.

    I'm open to dialogue, but your comment would probably have been wildly far-afield of the topic actually addressed in this post, and I probably would've shelved it with a polite note telling you as such.

    ReplyDelete
  4. @Jumpin' Jack Faust (WHAT?) Yes, I live with people. I used to be a recluse, living in the woods, nocturnal. Then I moved out. I was nocturnal, living with two nocturnal room-mates. Now I have a fiancee (GASP!), and am busting my ass to remodel a house so I can be reclusive again.

    Re: Keys. Well, yeah. And sometimes the Gods go over their heads and hand us the Keys, the Passwords, and the Garage Door Opener. And leave their Priests sputtering with impotence. Sometimes we hear conversations we shouldn't, or piece together things no one things we'll actually manage to make sense of.

    But without the pat-on-the-back from the Magi in situ, we're still not one of THEM. We're speaking to the same gods, doing the same rituals, and not even slightly part of their club. Different room, same house, looking out on the same tree and street.

    That's more what I'm trying to get at. And also that people shouldn't stick their genitals in bear traps, and get mad at the hunter.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Actually, what I was going to do was use your same allegory. And the thing about that allegory is as someone who has dealt with people like that on a regular basis I do have a completely different approach, just like I do as a parent with autism. As I said, it got rather convoluted and would require its own post, hence I didn't bother to retype it out up in your own space.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Yep, I agree,...and there are Native American stories about a youth who walked along and finding many beautiful things lying along the trail, still did not pick them up. And it turned out those were the things belonging to a deity who rewarded the young man for not taking that which was not his, even apparently something that appeared discarded.

    There is also a saying, "Curiosity killed the cat...but satisfaction brought him back."

    ReplyDelete