User talk:Grey witch

Athame, secret societies

The secret society statement seemed a bit far-fetched to me. I admit, I don't have the Farrars' book in front of me, but I don't recall this theory being mentioned. It is common for people to speculate that the switched elemental attributions may be a "blind" (i.e. an incorrect attribution introduced into the written material to prevent outsiders from copying our rituals). What seems more likely to me is that some groups have copied the Golden Dawn/Crowley attributions, while others have thought a bit harder and realised that these don't really make sense for what we're doing. But the idea that this is purposeful sabotage from another secret society is pretty weird! If you want to put that back in, provide a reference/page number; I'd like to confirm it for myself.

The other bits of info I've removed are ideosynchratic or non-representative, such as calling the cup a "graal": that's a minor modern innovation from non-Wiccan sources; most occultists give the graal a different significance, although the cup becomes representative of the graal at times...

...The mention of keeping the athame's energy attuned to the owner: an unattributed theory that (according to my knowledge/training) is only a small aspect of the reasoning behind not using the knife for cutting.

Etc. Sorry, I didn't mean to be a bulldozer, but I'm trying to clean up a whole load of misrepresentation regarding Wicca in this encyclopedia. When I find statements I'm pretty sure are wrong I remove them, in the hopes that if they are reinstated they will be accompanied by solid citations. Thanks, Fuzzypeg☻ 23:23, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm at work at the moment, and can't check my books, but it sounds like you've checked this carefully, so feel free to add it back in (with citation, so others don't do what I did and promptly remove it again!). Sorry, Fuzzypeg☻ 00:12, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I've added your statement back in, with a citation. Hey, if you ever want to add info to wikipedia and don't know how to format it properly, just add it as best you can. For a reference, just add it in brackets () or even just write "so-and-so says on page x of such and such," etc. Someone else will come along and clean it up. The main thing is to get the information, not to make it look pretty. I still have the feeling that what the Farrars are describing is a simple blind, but I'll find out some time soon. Keep up the good work, anyway. Fuzzypeg☻ 04:38, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

How to revert vandalism

I've left a warning on that user's page, and fixed a couple of remaining problems from their edits. Thanks for the heads-up. If ever you come across vandalism or a particularly poor edit to an article, it's very easy to revert it. Click on the history tab at the top, choose the version of the article you want to go back to (by clicking on its date/time link) and then, with that old version of the article on your screen, click on the "edit this page" tab. An edit window will come up like normal, with a big red warning at the top telling you that you're editing an old version of the article, and any changes made since that version will be discarded. Put an explanation in the edit summary and hit "Save page". Easy as that.

One thing to be careful with if you are reverting bad edits, is making sure you go back far enough to get rid of all of it, because if other editors see that someone's reverted some vandalism they often don't check carefully to see if it's all gone, and the remaining bits can stay in the article unnoticed for a long time.

Anyway, that's one more weapon to your arsenal. No-one enjoys cleaning up vandalism, but at least they've made it easy to do... Cheers, Fuzzypeg☻ 20:04, 16 January 2007 (UTC)