This article is excerpted from the Rocky Mountain Pagan Journal. Each issue of the Rocky Mountain Pagan Journal is published by High Plains Arts and Sciences; P.O. Box 620604, Littleton Co., 80123, a Colorado Non-Profit Corporation, under a Public Domain Copyright, which entitles any person or group of persons to reproduce, in any form whatsoever, any material contained therein without restriction, so long as articles are not condensed or abbreviated in any fashion, and credit is given the original author.! With this article, we welcome another writer to our pages: Leanansidhe of Moonbeam is a Dianic High Priestess, currently filling the role of High Priest in an all-female coven in Littleton, Colo. MATERIA DIANICA Last issue I watched kindly old Buck Jump get body-slammed by a Talmudic scholar. It was one of several articles in the October R.M.P.J. that I found utterly terrifying, but first things first; I'll get to the others in good time. Buck Jump. The man of kindly greetings and peaceful farewells. He had the idea that perhaps we might be able to decrease senseless violence. And he got taken down. Dear Lady, you could see the astro-turf fly. His friend, the scholar, convinced him that his premises are erroneous. As stated in Buck's column, the scholar said that there is no such thing as senseless violence, that everyone who behaves violently has a good and carefully thought out reason for doing so. He then proceeded to give examples. All of this sounds very logical, very rational, very reasonable. Why,then, does buck still feel bad? Why, as evidenced in his October article, does he still have the persistent feeling that something ought to be done. Logic only works in logical situations. Negotiating a business deal, working out a mathematical equation, creating the Unified Field Theory -- under circumstances such as these, logic works just fine. Unfortunately, the use of logic in other situa- tions proves to be disastrous, the misuse of an otherwise valuable tool. I, for one, would be unwilling to wipe up spilled baby formula with an Apple IIe(tm). A sponge is better. I use what is applicable, what works. Furthermore, as a nice, cleancut, apple-cheeked, bright-eyed Pagan, I know that in order to make any progress at all, one must stay balanced. Logic is only one quarter of the pie. Emotion, Will, and Physical Reality comprise the rest. Are you hearing me, Buck? Are you hearing me, Mr. Talmudic scholar? Our man here is talking about natural facts, and is using that idea to refute poor Buck (Hang in there, Buck --I'm on your side, honest). At the risk of skinning my dirty Pagan knees on the pristine marble floor of the Temple of Logic, I will myself bring up a number of "natural facts". Presented for your examination: our tough street punk. He lives in a government subsidized development. Welfare comprises the entire family income. He can't get a decent paying job because he's not old enough and he doesn't have the training anyway. And even if he took something at minimum wage, the welfare for the whole family would be cut drastically. So what's the use? Our tough punk doesn't know anything about coffee shops and the refined nit-picking of Talmudic scholarship; all he knows is the street, and that one way to get power is with money, and the other is with a gun. (Governments know the same things.) He's also intimately acquainted with anger, frustration, and hate. So he takes a cheap handgun and holds up the local pizza shop, cleans $15.21 out of the till, aims the gun at the head of the blond, suburban, polo shirted kid behind the counter... Anger. Frustration. Is he thinking? Answer quick, because the next slug might be for you. Take another example. This time our man is 25, high school diploma, out of work for the hundredth time. Unemployment has run out. Bad food. Bad clothes. Trapped. And what's this? Some little bitch walking around in her Yves San Laurent business suit, with a $300 dollar briefcase, thinking she's hot shit because she's got a job and he doesn't. Well, he's gonna show her what her place in the world is. So, he follows her, grabs her at the front door of her Cherry Creek apartment... Anger. Frustration. Is he thinking? Does he have sensible, rational reasons? Or maybe he's just reacting. Answer please, and fumble for your can of mace. Maybe what both of these dudes and their victims need is time. An extra microsecond between the tight -ening of the finger on the trigger and the fall of the hammer; Another minute between the appearance of the Yves San Laurent skirt and the attack at the door. Time to think, time to consider. Or maybe what is needed is a way out. An escape from welfare, from the development. A new job. Some self respect. Or maybe the opportunity for violence simply never comes up. Or maybe the idea of violence is rejected and in its place comes something better, something more constructive. In any of the above alternative scenarios, no one gets hurt. The kid in the polo shirt has hot dogs with his family next Fourth; the woman lies in the arms of her lover that night, talking about dreams. If there is an answer to these situations and the millions of others like them, it has to be infinitely flexible, and it has to encompass the entire world, the entire universe, in the solution. Logic cannot do it. We can argue and plan as much as we want, and as Buck found, it all leads to stasis, inaction, and another cup of coffee. But there is such an answer, and as the body of the Goddess is the stuff of the universe, it lies in our hands: Magick. No, we cannot create a mass mind change, nor can we control the actions of large groups of people. We would not want to. It would be pointless, and in any case that is not the way magick works. What is our goal? We want that kid in the pizza shop and the woman with the briefcase to get home all right. So let us work for that. No it is not logical. But magick never is. Magick finds its own way, takes the easiest route to its goal, whether that route be a microsecond, a sudden idea, or a freak rain storm. Buck's solution was a real, intuitive, emotional one, and it was to work for the world, for our people. Our Talmudic Scholar thinks in logical patterns: in order to end violence, you have to alter nature, or intimidate someone, or cause mass mind change. But our scholar is limited by the tool he uses. Buck is not. Nor are we. Pump enough magic into something, and things start to happen. An it harm none, they will be good things. But we know this already, do we not? Because we feel it. See you next ish. .......FROM RMPJ 12/86