Adventures in Wortcunning: Behind the Veil

Adventures in Wortcunning: Behind the Veil May 1, 2015

Behind the Veil - my lillypadWhen I step through the veil, it is a bit like a waking dream. I can fly.

But, mostly I stumble around walking into walls, off cliffs, and into oceans. I’m just learning how. When I do fly, stopping in time is troublesome too. I will often end up stuck — half way in a wall or entirely inside a solid structure, as if I were a ghost. I am trapped there until I teleport out of trouble. And just like a dream, there are times I end up naked in public with no intention or desire to be that way. This is discomforting, too. But like I said, I’m still learning how to do all these things on the other side of the veil.

This is the way things are in my second favorite place to be online. And, this is where I am planning a new herb garden. Welcome to Second Life, and the virtual campus for Grey School of Wizardry!

I am, let us be very clear about this, a Luddite. Preferring brooms to vacuum cleaners, real books over e-books, and sailboats over speedboats, I did not let my children play shooter games and gave them a hard time when they played anything else on the computer. I wish I’d done this differently. My preference for sunshine and mudpies, showed as disdain for the binary. Battles ensued. I knew it was addicting – but I didn’t know why.

But did I mention, I can fly, now? …and swim, without equipment!

Of course, I use a computer for work, always have. And, maybe my work ethic was the problem. Wouldn’t even consider going down that rabbit hole unless my work, my life work, had tied a carrot to a string and got me to give chase. Yet here, I find myself teaching a seven-foot-tall elf with flaming red hair, my avatar, how to dance for a Beltaine ritual. As it is said on this side of the veil: LOL.

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A Dearinth

And, what have these Adventures to do with Wortcunning? It is also here that we are planning a magickal garden. I know, ROFLMAO. My children, now grown, think this is all hilarious. We, in the Grey School Garden Club, meeting weekly at the Greenhouses on virtual campus, do not care. We are planning something grand on a virtual scale, virtual on a grand scale, or both.

It is a Wizard’s Physic Garden we plan, but shhhh…. don’t tell! When all is done, you will be able to visit the virtual campus and walk the garden’s central dearinth, sit beneath its apple tree that grows with the seasons, as well as view and gather magickal herbs from the surrounding beds. Sometimes, it is hard to tell exactly how far down this rabbit hole I’ve gone. I expect to hang up my head phones with dirty hands from virtual mud.

Most days, we sit around like any garden club, and talk about our gardens, pests and plant problems in the real world. Here, on this side of the veil with real earth, er, soil, er, dirt. We have become friends, and I would miss any one of them if their avatars were gone on a meeting day, as sometimes happens. Nothing virtual about that. Some things remain familiar no matter which side of the veil you visit.


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