BROOM HANDLE, the sequel!!

Well, here I am.  Unpacking in a new virtual blog home!

Tried LiveJournal...hated the layout, found the editing cumbersome.  WordPress didn't have enough bells and whistles for what I like to do.  MySpace just plain sucked.  Facebook was also out of the question since I am on that under my real name and need to preserve my bit o' anonymity amongst my work colleagues and extended family.  The quest for a place that was idiot proof  user friendly and didn't require a masters degree from DeVry to use...lead me right back to Blogger.

So I'm back....but at a new address.

Let us all join hands for a moment and intone a little chant so that the diabolical, digital-age gremliny jerkfaces who had hijacked my last blog last time after my 4 year run won't find it good sport to also run this one into the ground.

Thus I'm putting out the official GOOD JUJU WELCOME MAT in the hopes of reconnecting with some old friendly faces, perhaps with some new friendly faces soon to follow. 

For now, I beg forgiveness with the daily changes in layout.  It will likely take me awhile to figure out how to modify and witch-ify this new space.  I'm utterly inept when it comes to all things HTML and have to rely on trial-and-error color schemes and ready-made layouts afforded by this provider until I can create something that will be spiffy to look at while not causing seisures.

For those who are already familiar with the wordiferious stylings known as "Flying Off The Broom Handle," you can bet that I'll soon be unpacking the several years worth of salvagable ---and hopefully educational, if not also entertaining--- loads of old blog entries.  Some will have to be spruced up a bit before they are reposted here, to make their content more befitting the current conditions.  Just couldn't bear the thought of some of those delightful, witicism-filled rants disappearing from the blogsphere.  Had to save them from the jaws of the hackers' extinction spree.

So over the next week or so, some of the content will feel like a deja vu fest. 

But give me awhile and soon there will be fresh, shiny-new things for me to stare at with gaping mouth in the modern pagan community....and then blog about with loquacious abandon about the remarkable, the ridiculous, the righteous and the just plain wrong that occurs whenever pointy-hatted folk congregate for any length of time.

For those who are new to Broom Handle in all its....er, glory....allow me to introduce you to the meanderings of my blog's goal.  I am a 40-something gal living in the suburban wilds of a major metropolitian area in the midwest USA.  The area boasts a lively and exotic bunch of pagans, heathens, occultists, spiritualists, esoteric practitioners, ceremonial magicians, theosophists, universalists, some very  sanctimonious yet often undeclared pseudo-intelligensia....and more varieties of witch than you can shake a broomstick at.

The latter category is comprised of a wide range of folks:  from the newest neophyte who has declared themselves a grand-high muckety-mcuk after thumbing through a Llewellyn book while sitting in the aisle of a bookstore, to the high school retro-goth sect trying to reinvent Crowley as both a fashion statement and mindset, to the ooga-booga highly pressurized sales jockeys manning the counters of the few remaining pagan-friendly hot spots in the city, to the suburban parents who think that having a garden full of herbal tea starter plants from Home Depot makes them a Green Witch, to the hardcore oldsters who can quote from the Farrars or Valiente or Bardon and scare the beejayzus out of the fluffy-bunnies with their stories of back in the 1960s & 70s when you had to get nekkid in the woods in order to be considered legit.....

From the staunchest of  traddies, to the "why can't we all just get along" middle-roaders, to the "I make my own shit up and you have to accept me because I say I'm a fellow pagan" folks, to the "I'm a werewolf-vamp witch of the first magnitude" to the eccentric Christo-Buddhist-Jew-Zen amalgamated bullshit slingers, to the decent folks who practice quietly out of the PAGAN PRIDE public eye, to the handful of half-assed roleplaying nutjobs who whine that there are still witch wars to be battled at every turn. 

The rumor mill turns on the gristle of every warcry.  Some of us who have been in and around the so-called 'pagan community' for a decade or more can only shake our heads and bemoan the latest onslaught of "progressive" and "reinvented" versions of what we've long-held dear.

This blog is a forum for my rants.  It contains my opinions of first-hand conversations, of online interactions, of in-person meetings, of attending public circles, classes, festivals and just day-to-day run-ins with people claiming to be a peer. 

Nearly all of the time, there is something to be learned from these interactions.  Lessons come from good teachers and bad examples alike.  Often with a side dish of humor or wincing, but wisdom via clue-by-four is still the best way for the Gods to drive a point home.

So strap yourself in and be welcomed. 

Laugh, marvel, and get pissed off with me....or at me.  We are all students and we are all teachers here.  I'm just brave enough and/or stupid enough to put my words and thoughts out on the blogosphere for all to see and respond to.

I'll be seeing you soon,
Albiana