[continued from previous message]   
      
   She sighed.  It had been a whle now, a decade or so, since her last spell.    
   Since the time she put down her old copy of the JPS Tanakh, down into the   
   bottom of her bookcase, and got down on her knees and prayed to God and said   
   she would not practice it    
   any more, and that, if he would, that he would forgive her.  And that had been   
   a decade ago, and the normality she was seeking had become the new issue for   
   her life focus, and that witchcraft, as she promised God, was gone forever.    
   No more to be    
   practiced.  She felt, perhaps, that she was in better moods these days, and a   
   little happier in life.  Perhaps.  But not that much had changed.  Just normal   
   life.  And, because of that, she questioned wether it had really been that big   
   a deal anyway, and    
   that maybe she was over-reacting, and that her white witchcraft was holy   
   witchcraft and that, really, God didn't mind.  Did he?  No he didn't.  Did   
   he?  Or, did he actually mind?  Did he actually want her to choose her new   
   life, to choose her new world    
   of normal, to choose him?  Did he?   
      
   Yet, whatever witchcraft was, whatever the source of its power, whatever its   
   origin, even wether there was good magic and bad magic, no longer did it   
   matter.  No longer.  The choice for Lucy Potter was, in the end, a choice of   
   the heart.  A choice to    
   cleave to a power greater than even that of magic itself.  The power which,   
   she guessed, even created the magic for whatever purposes he had.  And that   
   power was that of Yahweh, God Most High, maker of Heaven and Earth.  Yahweh's   
   spiritual power was, in    
   the faith she had been born into, Almighty.  His name El Shaddai suggested   
   that truth.  It was a power greater than that of other powers on earth or   
   heaven.  Greater than all the gods of the ancient world, which Yah counted as   
   nothing.  Nothing but mere    
   idols.  Greater than electricity, or fire, or plasma, or gravity or nuclear   
   power or anything really.  And, most importantly, and most fundamentally of   
   all divine truths - greater than the power of magic.  Magic couldn't save her,   
   in the end.  There was    
   no great bible on the salvation of the soul in the tomes of witchcraft which   
   Torah offered.  No great point to life, rather than to use magic to advance   
   ones own life and ones own concerns.  No, it was not the same.  Never the same.   
      
   She chose God and Karaism, she guessed, because it was not a trivial thing for   
   personal advancement, but a whole way of life, a whole halakah of the soul,   
   which taught her moral and decent rules for getting along in the world with   
   everyone, for    
   respecting the life of neighbour, for respecting their property, for   
   respecting their spouse, and, more importantly, for respecting and honouring   
   God himself.  It was holiness - the divine calling - which gave an answer to   
   her hearts search for truth,    
   the higher principles, higher than a witches code of honour, higher than an   
   eastern mantra, higher than a new age gurus chit chat about past lives.  It   
   was the highest truth to the mind of Lucy Potter, the decency and concern of   
   heart to be a proper,    
   true and moral person.  And in that truth the convenience of spellcasting to   
   get ahead was sacrificed on the altar of genuine works, genuine faith, genuine   
   love.   
      
   It was sacrificed on the altar of the natural world.  The natural law.   
      
   Oh, witchcraft had those things too, in its own way, things of morality,   
   things of decency, and love was not the divine stranglehold of one religion -   
   it was universal.  It always had been.  No, iIt was not devoid of morality,   
   and a white witch always    
   chose good over evil.  But the bible was the source which defined those very   
   truths.  The bible was the ultimate book which taught you to reject the   
   knowledge of evil and choose the knowledge of good only.  And in the faith of   
   Karaism the morality of    
   choosing what, in the end, were shortcuts on the natural life of creation,   
   shortcuts on living the regular way God had made his humans to function, which   
   appealed to the growing and expanding moral heart of Lucy Potter - the   
   morality of choosing    
   shortcuts in life which magic offered every day with every spell and ever   
   incantaion - were replaced by that Karaism which didn't, in the end, putting   
   it bluntly, cheat.   
      
   The natural world was the design of Yah.  It followed natural rules and   
   functioned in a natural way.  And the sign of her covenant with God was the   
   rainbow - a remarkably beautiful, but totally natural sign.  In all the ways   
   of nature, the sheep    
   following in a line, bees buzzing after honey, the spider spinning its web,   
   the rain falling at its natural time, the sun shining according to its natural   
   rules, the waves flowing in order from the moon - all these things which made   
   her world work the    
   way it worked - all of them happened in a natural way.  According to the   
   physical laws and rules designed by God Almighty for earth to function upon.    
   And witchcraft, the whole purpose of which was to obviate the natural order   
   and find shortcuts to    
   advance oneself - well - well for Lucy Potter, in the higher sense of morality   
   she had always aspired to, such shortcuts, in her good conscience, could no   
   longer be taken.  Such shorcuts, for the mind and heart of Lucy Potter, in the   
   end, no matter what    
   source the spiritual powers of magic came from, wether good or evil, such   
   shortcuts were cheating on the regular life.  And Lucy Potter wouldn't do that   
   any more.  Lucy Potter would be holy.  Whatever else she would be holy.   
       
   She thought on Bewitched and Darren.  Always saying to Samantha to do things   
   the proper way.  To not use witchcraft.  To get along with the world, and not   
   upset that nosey neighbour, and be a regular family.  And she thought on   
   Samantha, who listened to    
   Darren, but still did witchcraft anyway.  Lucy had her Enrique, but he never   
   minded.  In fact, she really couldn't think of anyone who did mind.  Of anyone   
   who was bothered by her practicing witchcraft.  It was like that, now, in the   
   world.  People didn'   
   t mind so much anymore.  The real power of the church age had waned a while   
   ago, two or three centuries ago, and in the 20th century a more secular world   
   emerged, fuelled by the vision of science, fueled by a more rationale approach   
   to religion.  A more    
   humanistic viewpoint.  And, because of that, serious respect, serious   
   intellectual respect diminished, and the slur term 'Fundie' got used to keep   
   the extremists embarassed,not objecting, in their place.  Oh, right wing   
   conservatism responded at times,    
   she remembered their power, but the freedoms which had been bought with the   
   dismissiveness of religion actually impelled freedom of religion itself,   
   amongst all the other liberalities it had gained.  And with that freedom old   
   fashioned witchcraft had    
   resurfaced, with a new vigour, a new strength, unleashed from the power of the   
   Church to keep it in check like it had long done.   
      
   Really, she should have been offended.  She should have been gravely offended   
   at this biblical God, this Yahweh, and his presumptiveness to think he could   
   tell her what she could and could not do.  She should have been offended.    
   Witchcraft was her right,   
    wasn't it?  She was free, wasn't she?  But as much as she might wanted to   
   have been, there was also a fateful yearning towards the very power which   
   condemned her practices, a yearning for a strength which, so it claimed, knew   
   better.  A strength, so it    
   claimed, which knew more.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)