It’s been a really busy week, I’ve done an awful lot. This is kind of a catch up entry, read on, I’ve cut it into sections – people may want to skim over the oral sex bits…
Monday
Gave the first lesson of Witchcraft 101 to Pagan Society, rather chuffed with it actually, I think I’ve got it into a form I’m happy with. We had four new freshers and a lot of old faces, all in all it was enjoyable. For those who are interested I think I’m probably going to post up lessons here.
Witchcraft 101: Introduction
What is Witchcraft?
Witchcraft is a way of doing magic. The most useful definition of magic that I’ve found being A. Crowley’s ‘change brought about in accordance with will’. Witchcraft is practiced on a day to day, practical level mainly for useful things rather than hermetic or ceremonial magics which are often used for more esoteric reasons. It is practiced by using what the witch has found, usually through experience (not necessarily personal) to work. This may seem to coincide with some of the principles of Chaos Magic – but other than the method (use what works) Witchcraft is quite distinct from Chaos Magic. For example a witch will not deliberately move between paradigms but may shift and expand her/his own explanation for magic in accordance with experience.
What is it for?
What you decide to use magic for is entirely limited by your own decisions and abilities. You can use magic for anything, it’s for whatever you believe or decide that it’s for. We will have a lesson on the ethics of magic which may well influence your decisions on what magic should be used for but really – you can use it anywhere.
What This Course Covers:
Wk 1 – Introduction to Witchcraft 101
Wk 2 – The Moon (It’s affect on witchcraft, how to use it, when to use it, what to do with the energy raised)
Wk 3 – Charms and Circles (The circle in magic, introduction to ritual, basic charm creation)
Wk 4 – Correspondances (How to use tables, spell construction)
Wk 5 – Ritual Witchcraft vs. Practical Witchcraft ( When to use what, further introduction to ritual)
Wk 6 – Words, Pictures and Sigils (Further charm creation, introduction to sigils, introduction to poppets)
Wk 7 – Altars, Candles and Visualisation (Introduction to candle magic including visualisation, sacred space in witchcraft, do Gods have to come into it?)
Wk 8 – Divination within Witchcraft (Is divination really ‘practical’? Brief introduction to tarot, runes and palmistry, basic scrying excercise)
Wk 9 – Spirit Guides, Tolpers, Fetches, Familiars and Servitors (Why would you want one? What’s appropriate? Woodland visualisation excercise)
Wk 10 – The Ethics of Magic (Morals vs. Ethics, religion and witchcraft, personal choices)
I don’t intend for this course to be heavy on the theory but rather a practical course. Questions are welcomed at any point obviously.
Quick Cookie Charm:
1 Double Choc Chip Cookie
1 Tube of Icing
First figure out what it is you want, simplify that in your head until your are just thinking about the one main thing it is you want, until you want it very, very much – so much you can practically taste it. Once you’ve got that in your head figure out how best to make a picture of it – one that you can very simply draw onto the cookie with the icing. For example, I drew the letter of the word that I want.
Once you’ve decided what you will draw concentrate hard on the thing you want and draw out your picture on the cookie. Next concentrate hard on the wanting of your object of desire, look at the picture and, when you are ready eat the cookie knowing that you are taking into yourself the object you desire, know that this is the first step towards getting it.
Well done, you’ve done your first cookie charm!
Tuesday
Tuesday wasn’t so magically focussed, I instead got up early and took the train to London. Got into Euston and headed off to Enfield, where Cuddles works to meet her and the Torch for lunch. Managed to confuse an old guy on the train to Enfield as I was reading a book on Physics (still trying to figure out quantum) and revealed that I wasn’t in fact a Physics student.
I used to think of Shinjuku as being a bit like Euston times ten, familiarity has gone the other way at the moment. Trotting across the court with my rucksack on my shoulders felt like the beginning of a real journey, it was all I could do not to buy a travelcard one way to Heathrow – but I restrained myself. Anyway, Cuddles and the Torch and I had some lovely sarnies for lunch.
Books and the British Museum
After I got the house keys off Cuddles over lunch during which the Torch and I caught up – first time in ages, and we all discussed work more than life, I headed back to their place (which I pretended was ours) and dropped my luggage before heading over to Seven Dials to check I knew where Coco de Mer was before I had to be there that evening. It turned out I did even if I did get stuck in Poste Mistress for a little while…
I then spent the afternoon in the British Museum in the African bit for a while, then the Egyptian and checking out the Living and Dying room as well – hey I have favourite bits but I also like checking out new things!
After the British Museum I made my way around the best bookshops in London, starting with Atlantis as it was closest. Then I wandered around to Treadwells via a quick tube trip and up along to Cecil Court for a last hour or so. (The Nymph would probably kill me for some of those titles I saw in the rare children’s bookshop – gods I wished I could afford the Alices). Mind you I had a heart attack when I saw ‘Goth Craft‘ in Watkins. Of course whilst in Watkins night fell. Possibly this explains Covent Garden’s stalking nature…
A brief diversion into the stalking nature of Covent Garden
Now previous to this trip to London I had stated that I never go to Covent Garden deliberately, for such a big place it’s ability to sneak up on you is somewhat surprising.
Now I’m vaguely aware that I know certain areas of London reasonably well – Kensington (mostly South Ken – I hada boyfriend around there), Trafalgar Square near the Tate – I was an art student afterall, the South Bank and it’s galleries as well for much the same reasons, Bloomsbury, The British Museum and surrounds, due to family connections etc. London has never been a particularly alien place. Anyway, my point is I know that these places all link together in some sort of real world way but in my mind they don’t, they’re separate areas that you reach via the medium of the Tube and that really is the only explanation for Covent Garden’s ability to sneak up on me and pounce unexpectedly entirely upsetting my sense of direction.
I’ll explain further. After some time in Watkins I headed off for Coco de Mer leaving good time to get back and Covent Garden pounced! Since it wasn’t my intention to be there I attempted to head away from it. It was having none of that so I tried to turn around and head back to Cecil Court when it corralled me onto the Strand – it was at this point that FJ helpfully started to text me about game options for Tuesdays at LURPS. Whislt texting him back I decided to admit defeat and head into Covent Garden, figuring if it swallowed me whole I could probably get back to Leicester Square from there in order to retrace my steps along St Martins Lane, but the beast had me. It would not let me go so finally I sought aid from Treadwells (which is the opposite side of Covent Garden) and Christina gave me a map and some directions which allowed me to escape the lumbering beast of Covent Garden. I made it to Coco-de-Mer despite it’s best efforts.
How To Thrill A Man – Joystick Secrets
Oral Sex Warning: If you don’t want to read about it then skip this next bit!
So I got in to Coco-de-Mer and settled down next to a lovely french lass with a glass of bubbly (which was kept topped up all night) then Midori came on and started the workshop. Now, I didn’t know anything about her, sure I’d read up on the salon on the Coco-de-Mer website and I knew she wrote books on sex but it has to be said that when flicking though her Wild Side Sex book I found it mostly quite tame and a bit plastic – maybe I need to sit down and thoroughly read it, I don’t know. But it did mean I was a little surprised that since I got back and have mentioned her name to anyone who is vaguely d/s inclined that they’ve totally KNOWN her name… oh well, I am pretty much out of the loop I guess. In anycase I didn’t know she was a famous female domme…so I was a little surprised by how much the class was a crash course in how to domme. Which y’know, as a sub, comes in handy when you need to switch but did mean I disagreed with her on a number of things.
The class started with a quick intro excercise with all of us girls, champagne in hand, shouting out all the names for ‘cock’ we could think of – most relaxing and amusing and a little educational (there were some Scandinavians sat at the back and I wish I could remember more than the word ‘pik’) and then Midori starts out with a metaphor I at first agreed with and then disagreed with:
‘Men are like dogs, women are like cats’
Ok. As far as it goes I guess I like it. I’ve been tugged into furrydom often enough to disagree with it and agree with it. But she goes on:
‘Each kitty different. For dogs all touch is good touch.’
Ahh. Now once upon a time I might have agreed with that one because for a lot of boys this does seem to hold true. Unfortunately I’d go on and say that for me this holds true. (I wonder if it generally holds true for subs?) However, I’ve slept with a few men and no, not every touch is good touch – sure, men will put up with some really crap sex becausen afterall, it’s sex and I’ve done the same myself as long as I’m not intending on getting anymore than ‘sex’ out of a night. I will also put up with crappy sex if the emotional investment is such that it overwhelms the sex (if that’s the case though I’d expect the sex to get better). Mind you, it’s been years since I ‘put up’ with crappy sex – if I’m going to bed with someone then I will usually try for it to be as good as it can be, especially if it’s just a one night thing. Anyway, my point is – all men are different, if you go with the maxim ‘anything is good’ then you aren’t going to reach the heights that heterosexual sex can reach. Possibly as a bisexual woman I’ve always had to try harder when it came to heterosexual sex and found lesbian sex a lot easier, I don’t know if it holds true across the board but figuring out that I can’t figure out what men like as easily as I can women did make me wonder about Midori’s rather dismissive seeming attitude.
Anyway, we started the practical side of the workshop by learning how to lick and stroke, and to be honest – all the things we learned went down rather well with the Jellicle on Thursday ‘Oh my god what the hell are you doing?!’ being the best complement to a reverse lick and suck combination (see I have nice little labels for all the moves now 😉 ). Then I learned how to put a condom on without using my hands – and oh my gods I actually did it and several other rather interesting things, I tried out a whole lot of different tasting lubes etc. and really rather enjoyed myself, not nearly as much as Midori sucking on my fingers at the end though – which actually did give me a different and mroe practical perspective on fellatio.
Then I came home and talked about the surprise I’d felt about the questions at the end when some poor slightly subby woman tried to talk about throat-fucking and instead of dismissing it as dangerous Midori seemed to rather dismiss the entire submissive angle to fellatio. I got told that giving head is a dommy activity. Has to be said I rather disagree, and to quote what a rather lovely dom said to me ‘You don’t give head, you take it’. The thing is I never liked going down on men as much as I liked going down on women (well to be honest all emotional relationships aside I’d still probably lick pussy for preference) until I got into doing it with an edge of d/s to it – now that I enjoy. But it’s a sexual act, thus it can be done from both sides of the delicious power play that is d/s, ok I’m never going to be more than a paddler in that ocean (I’m still claiming a great deal of vanilla to my sexual needs and desires) but it seems to me that no sexual act is actually inherantly d or s – all can be done in a position of dominance or submission – context is everything.
The other thing that made my hackles rise was the notion of the women surrounding me, that to have sex as a submissive woman is somehow a bad thing and should be seen as anti-feminist. Gah! You have to be a feminist to be a sub if you’re a girl! If you aren’t you can’t seriously consider yourself to be submissive – how else are you aware of who you are to be petted, taken and submit. Bah. The practical elements of the workshop were surprisingly good though.
I headed home to the Torch and Cuddles to give them my rather enthusiastic description of the evenings events. The Irish Boyfriend kept quiet throughout…
Oral Sex Briefly Over
Wednesday
I woke early and slid across to the Soan Museum for a brief enjoyable wander both into the museum and around Lincolns Inn Fields before heading down to the Tate Modern for my dip into art, I can’t think of going to London without seeing some gallery or other – seems like the degree did rub off on me. Anyway, after a whole morning of architecture and art I felt exhausted and so headed to London Bridge for the tube and Plodosexual. We had bacon sarnies in her rather lovely flat and then spent an afternoon nattering, eventually culminating in icecream on Clapham Common – and all the world felt good. I headed back across London to dip into Poste Mistress again – even if I can’t afford anything there I do love to be surrounded by such well designed shoes and then back to Coco de Mer via a Sushi shop where the weirdest thing ever happened!
I met one of my students! From Japan! he served me a bento and a Pocari Sweat and nattered about Yamanashi and how he was in London at university. It was very weird! But I had a sex class to get to so I headed off!
How To Eat A Peach – Pleasuring Her
Oral Sex Warning Again: If you don’t want to read about it then skip this next bit!
I was pretty much the only girl. There were some other women there but they were with their boyfriends, me on my own did start to wonder if real lesbians (not the half ‘n’ half I am) just don’t need to improve their skills or maybe they just think they don’t…
We started the same way as the previous night, by shouting out names for the ‘cunt’ – yes that was what I shouted out first. I kind of feel a bit guilty about that, I’d had a couple of glasses again and I was into the swing of the workshops whereas I think me and the other women present were actually just making the men nervous – maybe it’d have been better for them to have a men only class too. Well anyway, it was just me and the girls pretty much shouting things out and I’ve done the Vagina Monologues… so I was pretty much shouting things out in the order they come in that scene in the Monologues muttering under my breath: In Westchester they called it a
Pooki!
in New Jersey
twat!
There