I was reading Angels & Demons by Dan Brown last night and before sleeping, thought about the Illuminati’s obsession with the four elements. And not only the Illuminati, but also other cultures/religions/beliefs. And that reminded me of my Wicca days, of the days of when I thought I wanted to become a Wiccan. People usually associate witches with evil and bad and hags in black costumes running around on broomsticks Then Charmed happened. And now witches are all about power and spells that rhyme and follow a certain rhythm. Pentameter, iambic pentameter or whatever you call it when syllables have to match on most lines. In other words, it has to sound "sing-songy". In one page (p268 or somewhere near), Robert Langdon, the main character in the book, said that the four elements also correspond to certain… emotions? Aspects?… anyway, air corresponds to knowledge, fire to passion, water to emotion, and earth to power.

Like I said before, I was interested in Wicca before and it wasn’t just me. My friends and I were going to have this coven Jam was fire, Lee was water, Trish was earth and I was air. We tended to follow our zodiacs except that Jam – a Capricorn and thus an earth sign – called herself fire before I could, and I’m a Leo a fire sign. Lee was Pisces which is water, and Trish is Virgo – earth. So we had two earths, a fire, and a water but no air. Looking back, I realize that it’s not really fair, Jam or Trish should’ve decided which of them want to be air, but Jam called fire so I ended up air. No big anyway. I like air. Hehe

Aaanyway, there were others’ in Trish’s barkada who researched to become solitary practitioners. I had all the information copied in a diskette that, unfortunately, is now corrupted. Then again, I guess it’s not really so unfortunate now since following the Wiccan way wasn’t really an all-burning passion for me. Or any of us, I guess, since we’re all not Wiccans right now.

But there’s one aspect that I particularly liked in Wicca, and that was the calling of the elements. Kind of the like the Catholic practice of simple prayer that reaffirms your faith, or in Wiccan terms, reaffirms your element or something. In the movie, The Craft it went like this:

I call to the Guardian of the Watchtower of the East, power of Air and Invention, hear us.
I call to the Guardian of the Watchtower of the North, power of Fire and Feeling, hear us.
I call to the Guardian of the Watchtower of the West, power of Water and Intuition, hear us.
I call to the Guardian of the Watchtower of the South, power of Mother and Earth, hear us.

Isn’t it funny how they all correspond to what I learned in Dan Brown?

On a lighter note… Nora Roberts is also into witches and her versions are slightly different. She included Charmed’s sing-songy way. Actually, come to think of it, when I checked out the other "spells" (or prayers or whatever you wanna call it) last night, they’re all rhyming and sing-songy. So I guess Charmed and Nora Roberts aren’t far off the mark. I haven’t read the Key Trilogy of NR but I do like her Three Sisters Trilogy and their calling to their elements:

I call the Air, both restless and sweet
On her breast my wings will beat
Rise and run and blow your breath warm
Come stir the wind, but do no harm
I am Air and she is me
As I will, so mote it be

I call to Fire, her heat and light
In her heart life burns strong and bright
Flame like the sun
Bring harm to none
I am Fire and she is me
As I will, so mote it be

I call to the Earth, generous and deep
In her, we sow that we may reap
Give us your charm
And bring no harm
I am Earth and she is me
As I will, so mote it be

We are the Three
We call to Water, stream and sea
Within her great heart, life came to be
With your soft rain
Bring us no harm, no pain
We are Water and she is we
As we will, so mote it be.

Interesting eh? Or is it only me? LOL

Lately, I’ve come to realize/remember just how interested I am in, well, everything. At the expense of sounding incredibly dorky, I like learning. I love figuring out ways to refute arguments, yknow, fight two sides of the same issue, regardless of what I believe in I love learning about philosophy, in what philosophers believed in and finding the logic behind those and yet as well, finding the loopholes (if there are) and other arguments about it.

I love history, in learning about a place, a people, a culture, that used to live. In ways of life that died, in what they believed in and how they compare to our present beliefs and modern world. In finding out and figuring out the little information that authors usually use in their books and going "Aha! So that’s where it came from!" Dan Brown is one author I really admire because he is able to integrate a variety of factual information into a fiction story. And yet fantasy authors are also cool because they usually create their own worlds and peoples and sometimes, they have a basis in our own world, our own history.

Likewise, I’m interested in learning about religion, not just of Roman Catholic, but also of the Western and Eastern religions as well as any of the ‘dead’ religions.

I like learning. Period. About the body (why I’m taking up medicine), philosophy, history, and religion. If I had all the time in world, I’d read everything ever written about all those. And maybe a bit more.

Socrates was asked to recant everything he ever said in order to avoid dying by drinking hemlock, but he said "An unexamined life is not worth living" and I believe that’s true. Just as I find it amusing that, until the end, Socrates was arguing with his executioner. I’d like to die like that, believing in something with all I have until the end, and dying for that belief. I think death like that has meaning, has worth. Almost heroic, if you will.