lady pixie moondrip's guide to craft names

8/14/2019 Lady Pixie Moondrip's Guide to Craft Names

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Lady Pixie Moondrip's Guide to Craft NamesIntroduction

In the Olde Days, when our pagan ancestors were going through the persecutions we now

invoke to justify various kinds of current silliness, witches took craft names to conceal

their identities and avoid those annoying visits by the Inquisition. In the course of years,

it was noticed that these aliases could also be used as a foundation for building up a

magical personality, carrying out various kinds of transformative work on the self, and

the like. It's clear, though, that these were mere distractions from the real purpose lying

hidden within the craft name tradition. It took contact with other sources of ancient,

mystic lore - mostly the SCA, role-playing games, and assorted fantasy trilogies - to

awaken the Craft to the innermost secret of craft names: they make really cool fashion

statements.

It's in this spirit that Lady Pixie Moondrip offers the following guidelines to choosing

your own craft name. Such a guide is long overdue; the point of fashion, after all, is thatit allows you to express your own utterly unique individuality by doing exactly the same

thing as everyone else. (Those who are particularly drawn to this element of the craft

name tradition will find the Random Craft Name Generator near the end of this guide

especially useful.)

The approaches given here can be used separately, or combined in a single name to

produce any number of interesting effects. Given enough cleverness (and lack of taste),

the possibilities are endless!

Starting Off Right

Whatever else you do, you should certainly begin your craft name with "Lord" or "Lady."First of all, it's pretentious, and that's always a good way to start. Secondly, it makes an

interesting statement about a religion that supposedly has its roots in the traditions of

peasants and rural tribespeople. Thirdly, since most Craft groups use exactly these same

words for the God and the Goddess, this creates a (by no means inappropriate) confusion

about just who it is that we worship.

Divine Names

Along the same lines, you can always take the name of a god, a goddess, a mythological

being or a legendary hero as your craft name, thus putting yourself on the same level as

the powers you invoke. Having once watched two fifteen-year-old boys get into afistfight over which had the right to call himself "Lord Merlin," Lady Pixie has a high

opinion of the possibilities of this approach. She notes, however, that there seems to be an

unwritten law among those who have made use of this type of name already, and it's no

doubt wisest to follow suit: the more grandiose the name that you choose, the more of a

complete nebbish you should be. Nearly anyone can carry off, say, "Lady Niwalen," but it


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takes a special kind of person to handle a name like "Lord Jehovah God Almighty."

Fortunately, there are those among us who are equal to the task.

Nonhumans

A related approach involves taking a name that implies (or, better yet, states openly) that

you are an elf or some other kind of nonhuman, magical being. This works best if you arewilling to act the part obsessively, and to get really petulant when anyone fails to respond

accordingly. Subtlety should be avoided; nobody will catch something like "Lord

Elrandir" unless they know Tolkien inside and out. Try something more like "Lord

Celeborn Pointears the Real Live Elf."

Fantasy Fiction

The burgeoning field of fantasy fiction offers another source for fashionable craft names,

and in many cases, for interesting complications as well. One popular approach is to

choose the name of your favorite character; as with nonhumans, this works best if you

play the part, and throw a tantrum unless everyone else plays along. Given luck and asense of the popular, you may be able to choose everyone else's favorite character, too,

and end up tussling over a name with a dozen other people. (Mercedes Lackey is a good

author to try if this is your goal.) Both this and the last category have the added advantage

of making it clear that, as far as you are concerned, the Craft is simply a setting for make-

believe games; this can help spare you the annoyance of actually having to learn

something about it.

Inventing A Name From Scratch

The best way to do this is to come up with something that sounds, say, vaguely Celtic,

perhaps by mangling a couple of existing names together, and then resolutely avoid

looking it up in a Welsh or Gaelic dictionary. Luck is an important factor here, but there

is always the chance that you'll manage something striking. It took one person of Lady

Pixie's acquaintance only a few minutes to blur together Gwydion son of Don and Girion,

Lord of Dale, into the craft name "Lord Gwyrionin," and several months to find out that

the name he had invented, and used throughout the local pagan scene, was also the Welsh

word for "idiot."

Following a Grand Tradition

Though the ink is barely dry on most of our modern pagan "traditions," there's at least

one ancient European tradition that many people in the Craft follow: the tradition of

stealing things from non-Western peoples. Fake Indian craft names are always chic,especially if the closest thing to contact with Native American spirituality you've ever had

is watching Dances With Wolves at a beer party. Better still, mix whatever Craft

teachings you've absorbed with a few ideas you picked up from a Michael Harner book,

break out the buckskins and the medicine pouches, and proclaim yourself a shaman.

Mind you, there are people out there who have received real Native American medicine


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teachings, and they may just turn you into hamburger if you piss them off; still, that's the

risk you run if you want to be really trendy.

The Random Craft Name Generator

On the other hand, if you are individualistic like everybody else you may be looking for a

name that expresses the uniqueness of your personality but still sounds like all the othercraft names you've ever heard. Fortunately, this isn't too hard. Several years back, a

gentleman of Lady Pixie's acquaintance told her that the best way to get laid at a pagan

gathering was to have the PA system announce, "Will Morgan and Raven please come to

the information booth?" Since the resulting crowd would include at least a third of the

female attendees, he went on, it wouldn't be too hard to meet someone interesting. While

Lady Pixie has not tried this out herself, she has tested the principle behind it in a series

of controlled double-blinded experiments, and discovered a rule that she has modestly

named Moondrip's Law: 80% of all craft names are made up of the same thirty words

combined in various not particularly imaginative ways.

The discovery of this principle has allowed her to make the once difficult task of creating

craft names easy, by means of the Random Craft Name Generator, release 1.0. To use the

RCNG, take either two or three of the following words (using any convenient

randomizing method, including personal preference). If you take two, simply run them

together; if you take three, one of the words becomes the first part of the name, and the

other two are combined to form the second.

Wolf Raven Silver Moon Star Water Snow

Sea Tree Wind Cloud Witch Thorn Leaf

White Black Green Fire Rowan Swan Night

Red Mist Hawk Feather Eagle Song Sky

Storm Sun Wood

Try it out: "Rowan Moonstar." "Raven Blackthorn." "Silver Ravenw..." -uh, never mind.

For the expanded version (RCNG 1.01), come up with a name by any of the methods

covered elsewhere in this guide, or take some ordinary American name, and add a two-

word name produced on the RCNG to the end: "Gwydion Silvertree." "Sybil

Moonwitch." "Squatting Buffalo Firewater." The possibilities are endless!

(Note that this list will change with shifts in fashion; Lady Pixie expects to bring out an

upgrade to RCNG 2.0 in a year or two.)

Outro

It may be objected by the narrow-minded (who are probably all covert Christians,

anyway) that members of the Craft have better things to do with their time than the above

guidelines would suggest. This shows a complete lack of insight. First of all, in an

increasingly blase and tolerant culture, it's becoming hard for white middle-class


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Americans to get that rush of self-righteous gratification that comes from pretending to

be members of a persecuted minority; we may not be able to get burned at the stake by

calling ourselves silly names, but at least we can get laughed at, and that's something.

Secondly, if we keep on treating craft names (and the Craft as a whole) as fashion

statements, that spares us the unpleasant drudgery of actually learning magic and making

it part of our lives. Finally, if we're pretentious enough, those people who actually knowenough to magic their way out of a wet paper bag will roll their eyes and go somewhere

else, and we can keep on fighting our witch wars, casting vast astral whammies and

invoking powers we don't have a clue how to control, all in the serene certainty that no

one is actually going to get hurt.

On the other hand, we could take the Craft seriously...but who wants to do that?

-- Lady Pixie Moondrip

The process of choosing a magickal name varies from person to person (like so many things in

magick). A magickal name should either describe your present strengths or interests, or reflect

qualities you'd like to grow into. Some also choose a name based on numerology. Some Wiccanstake two magickal names, a public name and a private name. The public name is the name you

go by among fellow practitioners. The private name is a name known only to you and the Lord

and Lady, only used in sacred space.

Some choose names related to their patron deities (please don't name yourself directly after a

deity). Some choose names from old legends, folk lore, or history. Other possibilities include

animals, herbs, flowers, the elements, or gemstones.

Research the names that have caught your eye thoroughly. Learn as much as you can about the

name's origin and symbolism. This will help you decide if the name is right for you. Be mindful

of how the name sounds, what negative connotations it may possess, and whether it lends

strength to you or whether it detracts from who you want to be.

Some feel that adding numerology into the mix helps to "attune" the name to you. I personally

don't believe this, however, at the time I chose my magickal Wiccan names, numerology was

presented as a necessary step, and it certainly hasn't hurt. This step certainly does add to the

length of time and work you put into finding a name, and perhaps due to that it will be more

valued. I want to emphasize though that the Gods will not strike you down with lightening if you

choose not to do this.

To decide on a name based on numerology, add up all the numbers in your date of birth, and

continue to add till it's reduced to a single digit. For example, say you were born January 1,

1970: 1 + 1 + 1 + 9 + 7 + 0 = 19. Then 1 + 9 = 10. Then 1 + 0 = 1. This final single number iscalled your Birth number. Your goal would then be to find a name that numerologically matches

your Birth number. This is done using the Pythagorean system of equating the letters of the

English alphabet with the first nine numbers:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

A B C D E F G H I


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J K L M N O P Q R

S T U V W X Y Z

Say you researched and like the name Amber. Under the Pythagorean system, A = 1, M = 4, B =

2, E = 5, R = 9. Therefore "Amber" would be 1 + 4 + 2 + 5 + 9 = 21 = 3. Sorry, it doesn't match

your Birth number. Using this example (Birth number 1, name number 3), you would need to adda "7" to the name to make it match your Birth number. So you could experiment with

modifications to the name such as adding a "G", "P", or "Y" to it. This, though, usually ends up

mangling the name beyond all recognition, in which case it'd be best to just try another name.

Oh, and please read this before you start selecting a name:Lady Pixie Moondrip's Guide to

Craft Names. A funny guide on avoiding the pretentious cliches that are rife among Wiccan

magickal names.
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