Diana's Owl
Author:
Posted: August 12th. 2001
Times Viewed: 2,991
You may not believe me. If fact, it's probably almost a certainty that you won't believe me, any of you, but that will never stop me from believing. I, me, Wick Green, saw the Owl of the Goddess Diana. Yes, I did. Honest. It was perched on the peak of the roof of the house I was renting at the time. That time, the autumn of 1998. And you'll never guess why it was there. Because I asked her to come. I asked the Goddess herself.
It was a year earlier that I had begun my journey down the Pagan Path. The intention to walk that path had never crossed my mind. It was all just an accident. These days when I think about it, I don't believe it was any accident. A new acquaintance had remarked to me, "when you are ready to walk the Pagan Path, the Path appears". I think what he really meant was that you do not choose Paganism, but Paganism chooses you. And that happens when the Goddess and God feels you are ready. But, of course, at the time Paganism made it's appearance in my life, it certainly seemed like an accident.
I am a writer, a few moderate successes, so, of course, I still earn my living by other means than my writing. Anyway, back at the beginning, I was contemplating writing a new screenplay. As opposed to what had usually motivated my choice of topic for the story I was to write, this particular time, I had decided that Hollywood be damned, I wasn't going to try and find a commercial theme in a familiar genre that I thought would help the script to sell. Nope, this time I told myself that if I was going to put all that time, all that effort into a body of work, I was going to write about something that I would really enjoy writing about. Can you guess what I chose? Yep, witches. I had been spellbound by witches and all things witchy ever since I was a kid. Unlike just about every other kid I knew, Halloween was my favorite holiday, and Christmas was a distant second. These days Christmas has become a distant third as I've really begun to go crazy about the 4th of July. I love to barbecue. Anyway, that being here nor there, I had decided to write a screenplay with witches as the main characters.
I wanted a bit of realism. At the time I had no idea about alternative spiritual paths, had never heard of Wicca, nor had I heard of Druids, or even Paganism as a spiritual choice. Being raised a Catholic, a Pagan, as I was taught, was a non Christian, a non believer. But I did think, possibly, that somewhere there were people, not like the ones as portrayed mostly in Hollywood movies, nor in novels written by those who were not Pagan, but real people who dressed in black robes and either played the part of being witches or truly believed that they were, indeed, witches, with magic powers of course. That from my experience had defined witches to me. Magic powers, flying on broomsticks, stirring bubbling cauldrons, and casting magic spells. They were, in my mind, fantasy, but I did admit to myself that certainly there people out there in the world somewhere who firmly believed that they were witches just like what I had always thought witches to be. How they convinced themselves that they could fly on broomsticks was not something I had any desire to investigate. So, with my topic firmly sold in my mind, I went in search.
Bookstores seemed the mostly like place to find the information that I was looking for. I had always loved to cruise through bookstores, looking at the new releases, doing a bit of reading, they were magical places to me. But this time I wasn't browsing for I had a specific goal in mind. Much to my great surprise, and suppressed excitement, there were people who actually did believe that they were witches, not like the storybook kind, but a different kind, the religious kind. And they all seemed to be talking like there was nothing wrong with it. Seeing the pictures of all these people wearing robes, some with flowers in their hair and around their necks, and tables filled with food in the middle of some field, well, of course, I knew right away that these people were, you know, a little off, a few cents shy, had missed the bus to reality and had to walk to the next town. This wasn't the type of book I had set off to buy, but it certainly was something I had not expected to find, and that in itself was intriguing, alluring. So, buy it I did.
The book was written by Margot Adler and it was entitled, 'Drawing Down The Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers And Other Pagans In America Today'. As I started reading, I was discovering that there appeared to be quite a bit of these Pagan-like people out there. Even if I was an idiot, not that I'm admitting anything here, no matter how deeply entrenched into my psyche the notion that a Pagan was not a Christian and therefore not good, but bad and with no hope of any chance of eternal happiness, I simply could not believe that all these people from all these places, from all these walks of life, could all be bad and doomed for eternity. It was simply too much too swallow. So I read on, and it only confirmed what I had first surmised. These people, these Pagans, they weren't different from me, they simply believed something different. And they seemed to be pretty committed to the path that they had chosen, which was a lot more than I could say for myself at that time, and a lot of other people I knew who were raised under similar circumstances as my own. But, of course, as interesting as the book turned out to be, as illuminating as it was, it certainly wasn't anything I could ever take seriously, allow into my life. But I got some good material for my screenplay, which turned out to be sort of half and half. The main characters were witches, yes, but they were good witches, attractive witches, witches with hearts of gold, at least some of them, and the rest, all Hollywood green. And one thing else that seemed to linger around me, like a light mist, barely perceptable, but there nonetheless. In one scene, I had one of the characters read 'The Charge Of The Goddess' amidst a circle of other witches. And to me, at that time, that rendition gave the script all the authenticity it needed. As ignorant as I was, I still knew, felt inside, there was something there, something mysterious, something powerful, something beautiful. And now something I was just a little bit afraid of.
Well, the writing of that script had opened something up inside me, and that something was empty. There was a place inside me that needed to be filled up, that needed to nurtured and cared for. It was a spiritual longing, a need for spirituality in my life. A need that Catholicism had never satisfied for me. I began slowly. I read the beginner books, Scott Cunningham's "Wicca: A Guide For The Solitary Practitioner" and A. J. Drew's "Wicca For Men". I bought candles and incense and cast circles alone in my room. I knew almost immediately that I liked it. I had sat in churches all my life and simply stared and listened. But this Wicca stuff, well, it was quite different. It was so much more exciting, more fulfilling, more satisfying. I had found what I was missing. Now, for the first time in my life, I was practicing my religious beliefs, I was a participant in my own spirituality. And I was loving it.
Unfortunately, I was the only one in my life that was loving it. After awhile, maybe six months, I had begun to let others know, a few friends, a few members of my family, about my study of Paganism, of Wicca, and they were not loving it, not by any stretch of the imagination. I was beginning to doubt if I had made the right choice. Almost to a person they decried that choice. Some were vocal, vociferous, in their feelings against what I was doing, mainly those family members, and some, the few friends I had shared with, were subtle, quiet, almost truly understanding of what they perceived to be my temporary insanity. Funny thing, somehow I sensed from all of them a belief that sooner or later I would come to my senses and leave that Pagan Path and come back to them, come back home. It seemed to me that maybe they were right, that this Wicca stuff was silly, strange, not even a real religion, but still, inexplicably, I couldn't let it go. I was truly enjoying myself. For a short time, I had put away my candles, incense, the few magickal tools that I had acquired and tried to play the game that I was taught. But I knew I wasn't happy. And I thought to myself whose life is it anyway? I wanted Wicca. But could I truly embrace it? Then one day, a Sunday afternoon, I was alone, and I decided to ask the one person whom I thought could help me decide what to do. I stood in the living room and looked up and said aloud, "Goddess Diana, help me, give me a sign". And then I turned away and went about the rest of my day. And, in truth, after a few hours, I had forgotten about that request for a sign. But someone else didn't forget.
Pasadena, California, October, 1998. Having let all thoughts Wicca slip from my mind, forgetting about my request for a sign that I had made earlier that day, I had decided to go for a walk. It was about nine pm in the evening. I walked for about a hour. It was a beautiful autumn evening, a warm breeze was blowing. As I made my way up the sidewalk towards the small house I was sharing, I stopped. Through the branches of the tree planted in the front lawn I saw something. Something was there on the peak where the two halves of the roof met, right at the very front of the house. I couldn't tell what it was. It looked like an ornament, like something at the front peak of a ship, a statue of some sort. But I knew that we didn't have any such thing on the roof of the house. What was it? As I passed the tree and turned up the front walk I got that closer look. I stopped. It seemed impossible, but my eyes couldn't be lying. I stared for a moment. How could it be I thought? But it could be, it was. There, perched on the peak of the roof, was an owl. Now, I had lived in Pasadena nearly five years by then. I had never ever seen an owl, not anywhere, not at any time. I saw huge green parrots on occasion. A local Pasadena native, an acquaintance of mine, had told me that a fire at a pet store in Pasadena had broken out and some parrots escaped and that's why they were there. Let me tell you, these parrots were big, the size of pigeons, and the squawking they made was unmistakable. When those parrots were in the vicinity you knew it. But never an owl. Not one. But there I was standing dumbfounded, and staring up at an owl. And the owl stared back. It just seemed too weird to be real. Where did it come from? Finally, I simply looked away and walked into the house. An owl, how strange. It wasn't until nearly an hour later that the wind was knocked out of me. An owl out of nowhere. Was it possible? Had someone, maybe Diana, the Goddess herself, heard my plea? I ran back outside, but the owl was gone. Had the Goddess heard me? Did she appear in one of her forms, an owl, as a sign to let me know she was there, that what I sought was truly worth seeking? It couldn't be I thought. Could it?
Well, this August of 2001 I am still living in Pasadena. I still take walks, nearly every night. And I have never, in almost three years since, seen another owl. When I think about it now, there is no doubt in my mind. Magic happened that night. That was no ordinary owl. It was one very special owl. It was the owl of the Goddess. Diana's Owl.
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