Combined Blog" What's New & Exciting

This is a combined blog. We’re both writing this. Welcome to all our new members. First an update on me. Today I returned home after 3 days in Kaiser Hospital, and 10 days at a skilled nursing facility. You see, a couple screws in my ankle came loose, and had to be repaired. So now I have to go for 5 more weeks off my ankle. It is so nice to be home now. I missed my computer, the putties, my vitamins, yes even Stephen. I’m still on pain meds, and will be for the foreseeable future. It’s only a light dosage of Vicodin and acetaminophen, so I don’t think it’ll alter my thought processes much. Not like those damned Percocets they had me on after I broke my left ankle. Because Medi-Cal partially paid for this little escapade, they won’t let me have any narcotics. I’m just as happy without them. Opiates make me mean, stupid, and constipated. That’s a combination you don’t want to be around. I did a spell to get out early. I got the idea from Instant Magick by Christopher Penczak. It was one of those little spells using my magickal trigger and a visualization. I had to do my legwork, of course. I had to be good enough at my physical therapy that they felt I was ready to go. Remember that just because it’s magick, doesn’t mean it’s instant. You still have to do your research and work. You have to back up your magick with work on the Earth plane. Magick can give you that edge over your rival, but it’s no substitute for good solid mundane work. Stephen says that too many people believe that once you do your spell, that’s it. You need to repeat the spell. Three times is a good number. You want to do it an odd number of times, 3, 5, 7, or 9 times.

When my arrival home finally woke up Stephen, he told me about all the changes there have been in my absence. And now we’re telling you. That is what this blog is mostly going to be about. Stephen has been working with the guys at Yellow Book to perfect our website with them. This afternoon, whilst I snoozed, he and Ryan made broad sweeping changes to the website. http://abbottsinninternational.com/ is the URL. Hie ye there. We would like to promote Yellow Book, and congratulate them on the fine job they’re doing on the website. If you can afford $29 a month we recommend you go this route for your website. You get a really good deal. When finances permit, we’re also going to put a listing for Abbott’s Inn International in Yellow Book. Since it’s near the beginning of the alphabet, we’ll be in a prime spot. I saw the site today, and I was mightily impressed. This is a class operation, folks. I went over the spelling mistakes, and they were corrected. There are several pages to the website, and plenty of cool graphics. In two hours, Stephen managed to, with Ryan’s oh so capable help, completely revamp the whole thing. We like to promote people who do good work for a reasonable price, and these folks do a good job.

Soon to come: http://dragonslair.ning.com/. Watch for it. The Abbotts Inn constellation will be a pentagram, with Dragon’s Lair in the sacred center. Soon also to come: music, video, and live chat on our other two ning networks. So watch these pages for more updates. If you go to the website and find mistakes, please tell us about them, and we’ll have them corrected. Stephen wants to stay on top of this daily. Any day now, the website Julie is working on will be finished. It’s another website for Abbott’s Inn International. Next month, when finances permit, Dragon’s Lair will be started, and brought to the 2nd level. Abbotts Inn 93 and the Abbott’s Inn International. To that end, we are encouraging donations. Dragon’s Lair will be dedicated to Doc’s memory. The website is dedicated to Isaac’s memory.

One of the bullets on the website will carry you directly to PRN, the Pagan Radio Network. If you haven’t been there before, go there; it has great music and podcasts, You can join the forum, and the network. There is also a bullet for the upcoming Dragon’s Lair network. Today Stephen also signed up with Adsense and Adword to get the site listed in the search engines. And as soon as I can find out where my ebooks are being offered for sale online, I’ll put that on the website as well.

Isaac Bonewits died August 12th. I met him a bit over 36 years ago. He signed my copy of his book Real Magic [sic] “All my Lust, Isaac”. I was a shapely 27 years old back then. I attended a ritual of his grove back in the summer of 1974, which was followed by sundaes at Bridgeman’s Ice Creamery, and an orgy at his place. I was afraid I’d break him since he was so thin and fragile looking, but then I looked at his first wife, who later would become David Geller, and decided that if she hadn’t broken him I certainly wasn’t going to. I became a 1st Order Reformed Druid in the Schismatic Druids of North America that day, I enjoyed knowing him, since he never took anything seriously, including the religion (the ADF) he started in 1982. He was always up for a pun, the more outrageous the better. Even much later when he was sick, he had a sense of humor. One time we talked to him on the phone in my room whilst we were working, and he was cracking jokes even then. That was the last time we talked to him before he died.

Stephen met him in 1970. He and Isaac talked back to the Campus Crusade for Christers that day. It must have been hilarious. Those two young men really showed up the jesoids for the ignoramuses that they were. The two hit it off immediately. They also fought off the scientologists. Stephen got an advance copy of his book. At that time, Isaac’s room mate was Robert Larson, who is now also dead. Isaac invited Stephen to their apartment. The three men talked, thrilled with the discovery of all the common interests they shared. Then there came a knock at the door. Isaac peeked out. There were two overdressed men on the stoop. Larson went into his room, and emerged in full Viking regalia. His bass voice thundered out: “Have you read your Eddas today?” The two jesoids fled, fearing for their lives. They were never troubled by door-to-door religionists again. Stephen, Isaac, and Robert were fast friends until Robert’s and Isaac’s deaths.

As for Doc, I could say so much about him that this blog would quickly become a book, and fill up the floppy disk it’s on. Also, it wouldn’t fit into the space in the network for it. I actually met Doc twice. The first time was at the last Time Co, back in 1991. I attended a panel discussion about Renaissance. The persona I had in mind back then was a Lady DeWinter type, a woman of intrigue. For some reason Doc fascinated me. I kept encountering him at the convention. Then a few weeks later I met him again. My then husband, Richard Segel, was interviewing him with a view to Doc possibly joining San Jose Lodge #10. Doc got both of us into Renaissance, but I stuck with it, and Richard didn’t. Doc was also a Richard, but I only called him Richard around his mother and brother, who is still a dear friend of mine. Miles and I adopted each other as brother and sister.

We decided to take an apartment together. I got my lump sum payment from Social Security, and I used it to pay the deposits on the apartment. Because Richard was a Mason, and Doc aspired to be, we had to keep our budding romance on the down low. I don’t know when I first realized that I loved Doc. All I know is that he filled an emptiness deep inside me, an emptiness that Richard never touched. Richard was busy filling his inner emptiness with other women, trying to achieve his dream of the perfect Pagan open marriage. As a result, we grew farther apart. Doc and I grew closer together. On October 3rd, 1993, we got handfasted for the first time. It was performed by His Grace, Duke James Melville, Chief chamberlain to Mary< Queen of Scots. In early 1995, Richard served me with divorce papers. He too had found the love of his life, a woman who would prove to be way more possessive and controlling than I ever had been, even in my worst, most psychotic moments. But Doc helped me through it. He got his 2nd degree, and started to study for his 3rd degree, a status he would never reach because of the coronary that took his life on July 17th, 2008. Doc applied himself to his Druidry and his Wicca with the same intensity he applied to his Masonic studies, and his college studies to become a medical assistant, which he achieved in 2000. I know this, because I helped with all four of these studies. With his Masonic studies, I helped by showing him how he could take apart the precepts of FreeMasonry, hang them on mental hooks composed of the magickal categories, such as the elements, and learn them that way. As a result, I learned more about FreeMasonry than I probably should have known, being a woman, and a non-initiate. Doc encouraged my writing, and described NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) as “The Olympics for writers.” I thought this was so cute that I told it to everyone I know. He celebrated with me when each of my ebooks was published, and made it possible for me to carry on an interview with an online radio show host. I got the fame bug bad, I admit it. But Doc was by my side through all of this. As a Druid, he was perfectly happy as a Preceptor, which is the equivalent of the Summoner in a Wiccan coven. He even had his own newsletter, the Unhewn Megalith, which came out sporadically. He helped me with my newsletter, The Greymalkin Gazette. Look for The Unhewn Megalith to come back as a group, just as we brought back the Greymalkin Gazette as a group on Facebook.

Stephen met Doc at Dundracon in 1989. Doc attended one of Stephen’s Pendragon games, and the two became friends almost immediately. Stephen encouraged Doc’s dramatic side. Doc liked Pendragon because it appealed to his deeply romantic side. Doc liked all the Chaosium games. Runequest, Call of Cthulhu, Arkham Horror, and Pendragon were all Chaosium games. Eventually Stephen told him about the Hazelnut MotherGrove. Doc attended at least one presentation at Stephen’s apartment on 11th Ave. in San Jose. By this time I had met him. He crept into Druidry slowly. His primary interest was gaming, but then he was invited to attend a Druid ritual, and accepted. From then on it was Druidry all the way. But he never got over his love of gaming. He had one character: Crouton the Salad Barbarian, who I loved talking about. Early on Stephen made him preceptor, which was a job he loved. He remained Preceptor even after he was ordained to the 3rd Order. We ordained him to the 3rd Oder. During his vigil in Stephen’s backyard in Rancho Cordova, we read to him from the pages of the Faery Wicca Tarot. I think doing that affected him deeply in a very positive way. Stephen appreciated his dedication. “Once he got his claws into something he wouldn’t let go. The two men were into a lot of the same things. He especially liked to see all the magick Stephen liked to put into Call of Cthulhu and Pendragon. Stephen loved his sense of humor, it was so dark and droll. Stephen was in shock when I told him that Doc had died.

Stay tuned for more updates to the Abbott’s Inn International pentagram, and don’t forget to call 916-455-2267 or 1-888-611-7982. for all your divination, magickal classes, and magickal resource needs.