Not Witch — Voodoo — ???

My search to find out why fellow church members call me a witch and set out to destroy my property, demolish my home, kill my pets, and force me out onto the streets, continues (see previous post for more info if you are reading this post first.)

As you may or may not know, I’m one of the Angels on Squidoo, which means I spend a lot of time on Squidoo, not only building my own web pages, but also moderating & promoting the activities of other page builders. My job is to look for spam and get it off Squidoo’s home page, while looking for non-spam and getting it out in front of others. It’s a very time consuming “job” but I love it, and it has opened my way to finding thousands of wonderful web pages written by thousands of wonderful page builders, whom I other wise might not have found. Well, today is such a day.

I personally know several of the local Squidoo lensmasters offline and we get together to talk every few days. One of them was mentioning that she had found a lens she liked, but forgot to bookmark it, and a few days later was unable to go back to it to finish reading it, because she did not know the name of the lens, nor did she know the name of the lensmaster. Me being a Squid-Angel, meant that there was a pretty good chance I knew the lens title, so she started describing it to me. Well, I did not know the lens itself, but from her description, I was pretty posatve I knew who the lensmaster was. I told her I thought it must be one of VoodooMama’s lenses and that I’d look it up and let her know.

Well, last night, which zipping around Squidoo blessing lenses, I suddenly remembers I was supposed to be looking for that lens URL for my friend, and so I headed on over to VoodooMama’s list of lenses and sure enough, there it was. I sent the URL on to my friend, but than I went back to VoodooMama’s lenses and started reading them. I had seen her lenses in passing several times, but it seemed that whenever I had found one of her lenses I was always late for something and had to log off and leave the house, than never got back to reading what she had written, because by the time I’d log in again, I’d be thinking about something else (yes, my scattered brain mind had a very short attention span and I can switch from one topic to the next “at alarming speeds” or so I’ve been told on several occasions.)

Well, since I didn’t have anything planned for this morning, I decided to head back to VoodooMam’s list and spend a few hours reading her lenses. And that’s when it dawned on me – I think I know why the members at church persist in calling me a witch and went all hysterical and violent.

Okay, lets explain a few things.

Online, I talk about a lot of my hobbies, usually though I only talk about those hobbies which make an income, because I’m usually advising others on how to use the hobby to make an income. As such, almost every one online knows that I am a writer/author and an artist/painter. Due to the nature of the constant questions about my clothes and my constantly being puzzled as to why I’m always being questioned about my cloths, has resulted in my asking people online if they thought my clothes were strange too, and thus most people online are also aware that I am a fashion designer who recreates patterns from 1300-1600 eras and sews them up and wears them every day. I am thus often mistaken for a CosPlayer, and Anichronist, or a Life Actor as a result.

Here’s what you don’t know, unless you know me personally because I never talk about it online:

I’m a doll maker. I make a lot of dolls, including poppets of various sorts — poppets = dream dolls, worry dolls, healing dolls, etc, or in other words, I make what is more commonly as Voodoo Dolls.

I am well versed in the use of color, crystals, stones, plants, herbs, etc, due to the fact that I spent about 7 or 8 years studying Feng Shui and Crystal Healing.

All corners of my land and home are hung with various bags, bundles, mirrors, ect. which use color and crystal theory to harmonize and protect.

I am an expert embroiderer. I took up embroidery at age 6 and never stopped. I use my embroidery skills to create Indian medicine bags, dolls/poppets, and color patches (similar to quilt patches).

I live at one with nature and though my verbal skills with humans and human language is terribly limited, I can speak “bantam” very fluently and can talk to most every bird (and cat) that enters our yard. This results in my always being surrounded by wild birds and feral/stray cats which just gather in my garden and than never leave.

Both of my grandmothers were half Indian, one Cherokee and the other Kickapoo. The Kickapoo one was widely regarded as a “weather witch” and many people were terrified of her apparent ability to change and control the weather. She too, had a way with animals much like my own. She was a vegan Seventh Day Adventist and lived a semi-Amish life style. Much of the things I know, I learned from her. Like me, she lived 24-7-365 in muumuus and kimono and prairie dresses. I inherited her wardrobe when she died, and what cloths I now wear that I did not make myself, were once hers. Her name was Eva Viola Atwater, and in her own circles, esp in Maine and Hawaii, she was quite famous.

Okay, end of explanation, moving on . . .

So I’m reading one of VoodooMama’s lenses and I’m thinking . . . “Really? THAT’s Voodoo?” She a Voodoo . . . uhm . . . something, I don’t know the proper titles, but she’s a Voodoo something or other in any case. I get done reading the first lens and go on to the next. She’s not telling me anything new, I already know how to make these dolls and how to sew them out of certain colors for certain reasons and how to put certain crystals in certain dolls, etc, etc. I already know how to make and use these little bags (which she refers to as mojos and gri-gris, though I know them as medicine bags). I know how to use the sticks and water “magic” because it’s all in the Old Testament, that’s how Jacob turned all the white cows spotted. I know all about the whole what goes around comes around law of energy, that results in you never needing to “curse” a person because any harm they do you will fall back upon them 70×7 (Jesus said it in the Bible, so I know it’s true.) She says 3 fold return not 70×7 like Jesus said. . . . The list of things just goes on and on, with her explaining the nature and rituals and magic of Voodoo, and 20 or so lenses later, I’m looking at this and saying to myself: “That’s not Voodoo, that’s Hebrew Gnosticism. Everything she’s saying is Voodoo, can be found in the Bible. It’s all the things practiced by the Old Testament Prophets, the Magi, and Jesus Himself!”

Okay, time for another explanation: I’m EXTREMELY well versed in the Bible. At age 8, I was pulled out of public school and enrolled in the ORIGINAL Christian Liberty Academy (CLASS)(which is VERY different than the Christian Liberty Academy of today). Originally CLASS was run by a headstrong Calvinist preacher who spent most of his time in shoot outs with the government and was in and out of prison throughout most of the 1970′s and 1980′s due to his extremely radical views on Satan’s control of the government and public schools. He founded CLASS basically to raise up an army of Super Christians to follow in his footsteps. He was killed under questionable circumstances about 20 years ago, and after his death, CLASS underwent some major changes. CLASS today, is just your average ordinary private Christian School. Gone are the days of outspoken rebellion against America, and the overtly Calvinist text books.

Back when I was first enrolled in CLASS and the rebellion was on going, it was required that before any student did anything else, that they must read the Bible cover to cover and write a report of EACH chapter of each book of the entire Bible. Once that was completed we had to read Calvin’s Concordance, and reread the Bible using the concordance as a guide, and write a report on each chapter of the concordance. This all had to be done with in the first 3 months of enrollment, so that I would have time to next read The McGuffies 4th Reader, and than, start my text book studies. In addition to the 5 days of text book studies, I also had to do daily one hour Bible studies, and 4 hours of Bible studies on Sunday (not including Sunday School attendance I did through the Mormon church!) I was 9 years old. The superintendent of the Old Orchard Beach schools, looked at my required workload through CLASS and said that I was “a 4th grader doing college studies”, he was than farther amazed when he returned three month later, to find that I was not only keeping up with the work load, but that I was ahead and taking on extra work via Book of Mormon studies and writing 12 book 4 page reports per year. In Grammar and Composition, I had to digram 100 sentences per day, 6 days a week, every day, every year, as well as being required to write at least one letter of protest to the government each month. (This is how I got started writing letters of protest to Proctor & Gamble, I asked CLASS for permission to write to P&G instead and the request was approved). The Old Orchard Beach super was flabbergasted at the work load. He said that the work I was doing was more advanced than anything he had ever done himself even in college.

That was just 4th grade. This process repeated itself each year, until I reached 10th grade, my last year at CLASS and the year of the reierment of CLASS’s outspoken controversial Calvinist preacher turned school headmaster. In 10th grade everything changed, and suddenly I went from mountains of Biblical studies, to almost secular textbooks, which through in a few Bible quotes to make them sound Christian. I was devastated. I was not able to adjust from the mountains of written work and homework studies to just simple text book question and answer fill in the blank and be bored out of my mind studies. I wrote a request to CLASS asking to finish my last two years using the same program I had used my entire school life, but they said they had changed their system and that if I could not use the new system of study than I could not graduate. From 4th grade to 9th grade I was a straight A+ (all of my work had been graded by the headmasters at CLASS in Illinois). In 10th grade my grades plummited to C- . The murder of my best friend that same year (1991) and the court trials that followed, did not help my grades any either. Depression and a morbid fear of humans set in, and I after the court trails, I stopped talking. CLASS’s new headmaster (a former public school teacher) was now sending letters threatening to flunk me if my grades did not improve. I wrote back telling them that I had never used this new system before and had absolutely no idea how to do any of the work they were giving me, again requested that I be allowed to finish using the old system. They wrote back, saying that the old system was an outdated style that had not been used anywhere since the 1700′s and that CLASS was required to enforce the use of government approved textbooks from now on. I requested some sort of instruction as to how to use the new system and was told, that I simple read each chapter of the text book, and than answer the questions in the back, with 15 word or less sentences.

The 15 word or less sentences was killing me. Since 4th grade I had never written an answer with less than 4 sheets of paper. I had no idea how to write a complete answer in less than 4 pages let alone 15 words. I continued to write the 4 page answers for each question, even though my answers were longer than the chapters in the texts books. I was chided again and told they had no choice but to flunk me if I didn’t stop writing a composition for ever question in the textbooks.

Worst of all, was the cutting of classes, namely Bible Studies. Since 4th grade, CLASS’s system had required Bible first and last every day. An hour in the morning, an hour in the evening, 7 days a week . . . extra hours on Sunday. And it was not just reading the Bible . . . it was writing theories, compositions, and thesis on each chapter of every book, every single year. Suddenly it was gone. I asked CLASS why. They said that there had been hundreds of complaints from parents, saying that their children were not able to do the workload of the rigorous Bible Studies; that for years CLASS’s founder had ignored their complaints saying that they were not true patriots of Christ if they complained of too much Bible Studies; but now that he was no longer headmaster, his command no longer controlled the school, and the new headmasters felt it was in the children’s best interest if the Bible Study class was dropped and replaced with a text book version which summarized the basic Bible stories. I requested to finish my last years with the same system I had grown up with. They said it was gone and none of the CLASS students would ever use it again. I was devastated, and that’s when my problems really got going.

I tried as best as I could to read the Bible text book and answer it’s questions, but by this time I had read the King James Version of the Bible cover to cover, writing reports about each chapter, a sum total of 7 times. For extra work, I had done the same thing twice with The Book of Mormon and had started doing it with the Doctrines & Covenants and The Book of Josephus but never finished those two. I had also done the same thing with each of 16 other translations of the Bible (Amplified, NKJ, NLB, etc.). Now I was 15 years old and I had been handed a text book which summarized the Bible and I was supposed to fill in the blanks in the workbook. This lasted about 3 chapters before I flipped out, went into a roaring rage (my former headmaster would have been very proud — I learned from the Master!) and instead of answering the questions in the textbook, I wrote up a 12 page report about all the errors, mistakes, and mistranslations I had found in the textbook, and sent that back to CLASS headquarters instead of the answers to the questions. Needless to say, that was the last thing I did in school as I was not allowed to finish my 10th grade class and refused admittance into CLASS’s 11th and 12th grades. I was too much like CLASS’s founder Dr. Paul Lindstrom. Though they were proud of his “good” achievements, they wanted to erase all memory of his radical rebellion, and students who followed in his footsteps too closely(as I had done) were not tolerated under the new leadership of the school.

Okay, so now you know, what I mean when I say I am very well versed in the Bible. I know the Bible inside out and in 16 different translations. I loved the book of Daniel, I loved the stories of the Magi. I was very curious to see if all the “magic tricks” used by the prophets of the Old Testament really worked. I refused to believe that dancing a certain way by certain moon fazes, while holding certain types of twigs, really worked, unless I had first tried them out myself, and so, I at about 12 years old, set out to doing all of the weird little rituals and magic spells used by Moses, Daniel, Jacob, Abraham, Enoch, Elijah, Jesus, and all the rest. And that’s how I learned about making all these medicine bags, and using certain crystals and herbs for certain things – from the Bible and the Book of Mormon. When I tell you I’m a super strict Mormon who lives the old ways – well, Joseph Smith had all the stones and crystals and herbs too, and that’s how he talked to God. . . granted you’ll have to find church history books published (by the LDS church) prior to 1978 if you want to find out any of the old church history and the un-photo shopped photos of Smith, Young, and the Navoo Saloon, your best bet is books published by the church in the late 1800′s, though these are extraordinarily rare and hard to track down.

But anyways, back to VoodooMama’s lenses. I was reading her lenses about the things they do in Voodoo (which is a break off of the Catholic church btw . . . yes Voodoo’s ARE Christians and NOT pagan witches) and suddenly it occurred to me, that Voodoo is what they call someone who practices the rituals of Moses, Abraham, Jacob, Danial, and Jesus as they were written in the Bible.

Well, next thing I know I’m one Google and I’m searching for info on comparing witches to Voodoo, because one of the more common things for my fellow Mormons to accuse me of, in addition to witch, is being a “Voodoo witchdoctor”.

Ahhh! Now we are getting somewhere. Apparently, they are accusing me of being a witch because I live by the Bible and do the same things the old prophets did, but that the only Christians today who continue to do these things are members of the Voodoo religion, and they are mistakingly referring to me as a witch, because they believe that a witch and a voodoo witchdoctor is in fact the same thing and for some odd reason voodoo witchdoctors are the only people who follow the words of the Bible as they are written, rather that trying to interpret meanings into the words.

So I suppose, the question now at hand is no longer “Am I a witch, like my accusers say?”, but rather, “Am I a Voodoo witchdoctor?” because it seems very likely that I am on some “unofficial” compacity, seeing how I do everything a Voodoo witchdoctor does.

But that brings up another question: Does that mean they did the things they did out of religious prejudice, and if so, isn’t that a federal crime?

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

. . .

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If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:
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Not Witch — Voodoo — ???

My search to find out why fellow church members call me a witch and set out to destroy my property, demolish my home, kill my pets, and force me out onto the streets, continues (see previous post for more info if you are reading this post first.)

As you may or may not know, I’m one of the Angels on Squidoo, which means I spend a lot of time on Squidoo, not only building my own web pages, but also moderating & promoting the activities of other page builders. My job is to look for spam and get it off Squidoo’s home page, while looking for non-spam and getting it out in front of others. It’s a very time consuming “job” but I love it, and it has opened my way to finding thousands of wonderful web pages written by thousands of wonderful page builders, whom I other wise might not have found. Well, today is such a day.

I personally know several of the local Squidoo lensmasters offline and we get together to talk every few days. One of them was mentioning that she had found a lens she liked, but forgot to bookmark it, and a few days later was unable to go back to it to finish reading it, because she did not know the name of the lens, nor did she know the name of the lensmaster. Me being a Squid-Angel, meant that there was a pretty good chance I knew the lens title, so she started describing it to me. Well, I did not know the lens itself, but from her description, I was pretty posatve I knew who the lensmaster was. I told her I thought it must be one of VoodooMama’s lenses and that I’d look it up and let her know.

Well, last night, which zipping around Squidoo blessing lenses, I suddenly remembers I was supposed to be looking for that lens URL for my friend, and so I headed on over to VoodooMama’s list of lenses and sure enough, there it was. I sent the URL on to my friend, but than I went back to VoodooMama’s lenses and started reading them. I had seen her lenses in passing several times, but it seemed that whenever I had found one of her lenses I was always late for something and had to log off and leave the house, than never got back to reading what she had written, because by the time I’d log in again, I’d be thinking about something else (yes, my scattered brain mind had a very short attention span and I can switch from one topic to the next “at alarming speeds” or so I’ve been told on several occasions.)

Well, since I didn’t have anything planned for this morning, I decided to head back to VoodooMam’s list and spend a few hours reading her lenses. And that’s when it dawned on me – I think I know why the members at church persist in calling me a witch and went all hysterical and violent.

Okay, lets explain a few things.

Online, I talk about a lot of my hobbies, usually though I only talk about those hobbies which make an income, because I’m usually advising others on how to use the hobby to make an income. As such, almost every one online knows that I am a writer/author and an artist/painter. Due to the nature of the constant questions about my clothes and my constantly being puzzled as to why I’m always being questioned about my cloths, has resulted in my asking people online if they thought my clothes were strange too, and thus most people online are also aware that I am a fashion designer who recreates patterns from 1300-1600 eras and sews them up and wears them every day. I am thus often mistaken for a CosPlayer, and Anichronist, or a Life Actor as a result.

Here’s what you don’t know, unless you know me personally because I never talk about it online:

I’m a doll maker. I make a lot of dolls, including poppets of various sorts — poppets = dream dolls, worry dolls, healing dolls, etc, or in other words, I make what is more commonly as Voodoo Dolls.

I am well versed in the use of color, crystals, stones, plants, herbs, etc, due to the fact that I spent about 7 or 8 years studying Feng Shui and Crystal Healing.

All corners of my land and home are hung with various bags, bundles, mirrors, ect. which use color and crystal theory to harmonize and protect.

I am an expert embroiderer. I took up embroidery at age 6 and never stopped. I use my embroidery skills to create Indian medicine bags, dolls/poppets, and color patches (similar to quilt patches).

I live at one with nature and though my verbal skills with humans and human language is terribly limited, I can speak “bantam” very fluently and can talk to most every bird (and cat) that enters our yard. This results in my always being surrounded by wild birds and feral/stray cats which just gather in my garden and than never leave.

Both of my grandmothers were half Indian, one Cherokee and the other Kickapoo. The Kickapoo one was widely regarded as a “weather witch” and many people were terrified of her apparent ability to change and control the weather. She too, had a way with animals much like my own. She was a vegan Seventh Day Adventist and lived a semi-Amish life style. Much of the things I know, I learned from her. Like me, she lived 24-7-365 in muumuus and kimono and prairie dresses. I inherited her wardrobe when she died, and what cloths I now wear that I did not make myself, were once hers. Her name was Eva Viola Atwater, and in her own circles, esp in Maine and Hawaii, she was quite famous.

Okay, end of explanation, moving on . . .

So I’m reading one of VoodooMama’s lenses and I’m thinking . . . “Really? THAT’s Voodoo?” She a Voodoo . . . uhm . . . something, I don’t know the proper titles, but she’s a Voodoo something or other in any case. I get done reading the first lens and go on to the next. She’s not telling me anything new, I already know how to make these dolls and how to sew them out of certain colors for certain reasons and how to put certain crystals in certain dolls, etc, etc. I already know how to make and use these little bags (which she refers to as mojos and gri-gris, though I know them as medicine bags). I know how to use the sticks and water “magic” because it’s all in the Old Testament, that’s how Jacob turned all the white cows spotted. I know all about the whole what goes around comes around law of energy, that results in you never needing to “curse” a person because any harm they do you will fall back upon them 70×7 (Jesus said it in the Bible, so I know it’s true.) She says 3 fold return not 70×7 like Jesus said. . . . The list of things just goes on and on, with her explaining the nature and rituals and magic of Voodoo, and 20 or so lenses later, I’m looking at this and saying to myself: “That’s not Voodoo, that’s Hebrew Gnosticism. Everything she’s saying is Voodoo, can be found in the Bible. It’s all the things practiced by the Old Testament Prophets, the Magi, and Jesus Himself!”

Okay, time for another explanation: I’m EXTREMELY well versed in the Bible. At age 8, I was pulled out of public school and enrolled in the ORIGINAL Christian Liberty Academy (CLASS)(which is VERY different than the Christian Liberty Academy of today). Originally CLASS was run by a headstrong Calvinist preacher who spent most of his time in shoot outs with the government and was in and out of prison throughout most of the 1970′s and 1980′s due to his extremely radical views on Satan’s control of the government and public schools. He founded CLASS basically to raise up an army of Super Christians to follow in his footsteps. He was killed under questionable circumstances about 20 years ago, and after his death, CLASS underwent some major changes. CLASS today, is just your average ordinary private Christian School. Gone are the days of outspoken rebellion against America, and the overtly Calvinist text books.

Back when I was first enrolled in CLASS and the rebellion was on going, it was required that before any student did anything else, that they must read the Bible cover to cover and write a report of EACH chapter of each book of the entire Bible. Once that was completed we had to read Calvin’s Concordance, and reread the Bible using the concordance as a guide, and write a report on each chapter of the concordance. This all had to be done with in the first 3 months of enrollment, so that I would have time to next read The McGuffies 4th Reader, and than, start my text book studies. In addition to the 5 days of text book studies, I also had to do daily one hour Bible studies, and 4 hours of Bible studies on Sunday (not including Sunday School attendance I did through the Mormon church!) I was 9 years old. The superintendent of the Old Orchard Beach schools, looked at my required workload through CLASS and said that I was “a 4th grader doing college studies”, he was than farther amazed when he returned three month later, to find that I was not only keeping up with the work load, but that I was ahead and taking on extra work via Book of Mormon studies and writing 12 book 4 page reports per year. In Grammar and Composition, I had to digram 100 sentences per day, 6 days a week, every day, every year, as well as being required to write at least one letter of protest to the government each month. (This is how I got started writing letters of protest to Proctor & Gamble, I asked CLASS for permission to write to P&G instead and the request was approved). The Old Orchard Beach super was flabbergasted at the work load. He said that the work I was doing was more advanced than anything he had ever done himself even in college.

That was just 4th grade. This process repeated itself each year, until I reached 10th grade, my last year at CLASS and the year of the reierment of CLASS’s outspoken controversial Calvinist preacher turned school headmaster. In 10th grade everything changed, and suddenly I went from mountains of Biblical studies, to almost secular textbooks, which through in a few Bible quotes to make them sound Christian. I was devastated. I was not able to adjust from the mountains of written work and homework studies to just simple text book question and answer fill in the blank and be bored out of my mind studies. I wrote a request to CLASS asking to finish my last two years using the same program I had used my entire school life, but they said they had changed their system and that if I could not use the new system of study than I could not graduate. From 4th grade to 9th grade I was a straight A+ (all of my work had been graded by the headmasters at CLASS in Illinois). In 10th grade my grades plummited to C- . The murder of my best friend that same year (1991) and the court trials that followed, did not help my grades any either. Depression and a morbid fear of humans set in, and I after the court trails, I stopped talking. CLASS’s new headmaster (a former public school teacher) was now sending letters threatening to flunk me if my grades did not improve. I wrote back telling them that I had never used this new system before and had absolutely no idea how to do any of the work they were giving me, again requested that I be allowed to finish using the old system. They wrote back, saying that the old system was an outdated style that had not been used anywhere since the 1700′s and that CLASS was required to enforce the use of government approved textbooks from now on. I requested some sort of instruction as to how to use the new system and was told, that I simple read each chapter of the text book, and than answer the questions in the back, with 15 word or less sentences.

The 15 word or less sentences was killing me. Since 4th grade I had never written an answer with less than 4 sheets of paper. I had no idea how to write a complete answer in less than 4 pages let alone 15 words. I continued to write the 4 page answers for each question, even though my answers were longer than the chapters in the texts books. I was chided again and told they had no choice but to flunk me if I didn’t stop writing a composition for ever question in the textbooks.

Worst of all, was the cutting of classes, namely Bible Studies. Since 4th grade, CLASS’s system had required Bible first and last every day. An hour in the morning, an hour in the evening, 7 days a week . . . extra hours on Sunday. And it was not just reading the Bible . . . it was writing theories, compositions, and thesis on each chapter of every book, every single year. Suddenly it was gone. I asked CLASS why. They said that there had been hundreds of complaints from parents, saying that their children were not able to do the workload of the rigorous Bible Studies; that for years CLASS’s founder had ignored their complaints saying that they were not true patriots of Christ if they complained of too much Bible Studies; but now that he was no longer headmaster, his command no longer controlled the school, and the new headmasters felt it was in the children’s best interest if the Bible Study class was dropped and replaced with a text book version which summarized the basic Bible stories. I requested to finish my last years with the same system I had grown up with. They said it was gone and none of the CLASS students would ever use it again. I was devastated, and that’s when my problems really got going.

I tried as best as I could to read the Bible text book and answer it’s questions, but by this time I had read the King James Version of the Bible cover to cover, writing reports about each chapter, a sum total of 7 times. For extra work, I had done the same thing twice with The Book of Mormon and had started doing it with the Doctrines & Covenants and The Book of Josephus but never finished those two. I had also done the same thing with each of 16 other translations of the Bible (Amplified, NKJ, NLB, etc.). Now I was 15 years old and I had been handed a text book which summarized the Bible and I was supposed to fill in the blanks in the workbook. This lasted about 3 chapters before I flipped out, went into a roaring rage (my former headmaster would have been very proud — I learned from the Master!) and instead of answering the questions in the textbook, I wrote up a 12 page report about all the errors, mistakes, and mistranslations I had found in the textbook, and sent that back to CLASS headquarters instead of the answers to the questions. Needless to say, that was the last thing I did in school as I was not allowed to finish my 10th grade class and refused admittance into CLASS’s 11th and 12th grades. I was too much like CLASS’s founder Dr. Paul Lindstrom. Though they were proud of his “good” achievements, they wanted to erase all memory of his radical rebellion, and students who followed in his footsteps too closely(as I had done) were not tolerated under the new leadership of the school.

Okay, so now you know, what I mean when I say I am very well versed in the Bible. I know the Bible inside out and in 16 different translations. I loved the book of Daniel, I loved the stories of the Magi. I was very curious to see if all the “magic tricks” used by the prophets of the Old Testament really worked. I refused to believe that dancing a certain way by certain moon fazes, while holding certain types of twigs, really worked, unless I had first tried them out myself, and so, I at about 12 years old, set out to doing all of the weird little rituals and magic spells used by Moses, Daniel, Jacob, Abraham, Enoch, Elijah, Jesus, and all the rest. And that’s how I learned about making all these medicine bags, and using certain crystals and herbs for certain things – from the Bible and the Book of Mormon. When I tell you I’m a super strict Mormon who lives the old ways – well, Joseph Smith had all the stones and crystals and herbs too, and that’s how he talked to God. . . granted you’ll have to find church history books published (by the LDS church) prior to 1978 if you want to find out any of the old church history and the un-photo shopped photos of Smith, Young, and the Navoo Saloon, your best bet is books published by the church in the late 1800′s, though these are extraordinarily rare and hard to track down.

But anyways, back to VoodooMama’s lenses. I was reading her lenses about the things they do in Voodoo (which is a break off of the Catholic church btw . . . yes Voodoo’s ARE Christians and NOT pagan witches) and suddenly it occurred to me, that Voodoo is what they call someone who practices the rituals of Moses, Abraham, Jacob, Danial, and Jesus as they were written in the Bible.

Well, next thing I know I’m one Google and I’m searching for info on comparing witches to Voodoo, because one of the more common things for my fellow Mormons to accuse me of, in addition to witch, is being a “Voodoo witchdoctor”.

Ahhh! Now we are getting somewhere. Apparently, they are accusing me of being a witch because I live by the Bible and do the same things the old prophets did, but that the only Christians today who continue to do these things are members of the Voodoo religion, and they are mistakingly referring to me as a witch, because they believe that a witch and a voodoo witchdoctor is in fact the same thing and for some odd reason voodoo witchdoctors are the only people who follow the words of the Bible as they are written, rather that trying to interpret meanings into the words.

So I suppose, the question now at hand is no longer “Am I a witch, like my accusers say?”, but rather, “Am I a Voodoo witchdoctor?” because it seems very likely that I am on some “unofficial” compacity, seeing how I do everything a Voodoo witchdoctor does.

But that brings up another question: Does that mean they did the things they did out of religious prejudice, and if so, isn’t that a federal crime?

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

. . .

————-
If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:
.
.

.

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Not Witch — Voodoo — ???

My search to find out why fellow church members call me a witch and set out to destroy my property, demolish my home, kill my pets, and force me out onto the streets, continues (see previous post for more info if you are reading this post first.)

As you may or may not know, I’m one of the Angels on Squidoo, which means I spend a lot of time on Squidoo, not only building my own web pages, but also moderating & promoting the activities of other page builders. My job is to look for spam and get it off Squidoo’s home page, while looking for non-spam and getting it out in front of others. It’s a very time consuming “job” but I love it, and it has opened my way to finding thousands of wonderful web pages written by thousands of wonderful page builders, whom I other wise might not have found. Well, today is such a day.

I personally know several of the local Squidoo lensmasters offline and we get together to talk every few days. One of them was mentioning that she had found a lens she liked, but forgot to bookmark it, and a few days later was unable to go back to it to finish reading it, because she did not know the name of the lens, nor did she know the name of the lensmaster. Me being a Squid-Angel, meant that there was a pretty good chance I knew the lens title, so she started describing it to me. Well, I did not know the lens itself, but from her description, I was pretty posatve I knew who the lensmaster was. I told her I thought it must be one of VoodooMama’s lenses and that I’d look it up and let her know.

Well, last night, which zipping around Squidoo blessing lenses, I suddenly remembers I was supposed to be looking for that lens URL for my friend, and so I headed on over to VoodooMama’s list of lenses and sure enough, there it was. I sent the URL on to my friend, but than I went back to VoodooMama’s lenses and started reading them. I had seen her lenses in passing several times, but it seemed that whenever I had found one of her lenses I was always late for something and had to log off and leave the house, than never got back to reading what she had written, because by the time I’d log in again, I’d be thinking about something else (yes, my scattered brain mind had a very short attention span and I can switch from one topic to the next “at alarming speeds” or so I’ve been told on several occasions.)

Well, since I didn’t have anything planned for this morning, I decided to head back to VoodooMam’s list and spend a few hours reading her lenses. And that’s when it dawned on me – I think I know why the members at church persist in calling me a witch and went all hysterical and violent.

Okay, lets explain a few things.

Online, I talk about a lot of my hobbies, usually though I only talk about those hobbies which make an income, because I’m usually advising others on how to use the hobby to make an income. As such, almost every one online knows that I am a writer/author and an artist/painter. Due to the nature of the constant questions about my clothes and my constantly being puzzled as to why I’m always being questioned about my cloths, has resulted in my asking people online if they thought my clothes were strange too, and thus most people online are also aware that I am a fashion designer who recreates patterns from 1300-1600 eras and sews them up and wears them every day. I am thus often mistaken for a CosPlayer, and Anichronist, or a Life Actor as a result.

Here’s what you don’t know, unless you know me personally because I never talk about it online:

I’m a doll maker. I make a lot of dolls, including poppets of various sorts — poppets = dream dolls, worry dolls, healing dolls, etc, or in other words, I make what is more commonly as Voodoo Dolls.

I am well versed in the use of color, crystals, stones, plants, herbs, etc, due to the fact that I spent about 7 or 8 years studying Feng Shui and Crystal Healing.

All corners of my land and home are hung with various bags, bundles, mirrors, ect. which use color and crystal theory to harmonize and protect.

I am an expert embroiderer. I took up embroidery at age 6 and never stopped. I use my embroidery skills to create Indian medicine bags, dolls/poppets, and color patches (similar to quilt patches).

I live at one with nature and though my verbal skills with humans and human language is terribly limited, I can speak “bantam” very fluently and can talk to most every bird (and cat) that enters our yard. This results in my always being surrounded by wild birds and feral/stray cats which just gather in my garden and than never leave.

Both of my grandmothers were half Indian, one Cherokee and the other Kickapoo. The Kickapoo one was widely regarded as a “weather witch” and many people were terrified of her apparent ability to change and control the weather. She too, had a way with animals much like my own. She was a vegan Seventh Day Adventist and lived a semi-Amish life style. Much of the things I know, I learned from her. Like me, she lived 24-7-365 in muumuus and kimono and prairie dresses. I inherited her wardrobe when she died, and what cloths I now wear that I did not make myself, were once hers. Her name was Eva Viola Atwater, and in her own circles, esp in Maine and Hawaii, she was quite famous.

Okay, end of explanation, moving on . . .

So I’m reading one of VoodooMama’s lenses and I’m thinking . . . “Really? THAT’s Voodoo?” She a Voodoo . . . uhm . . . something, I don’t know the proper titles, but she’s a Voodoo something or other in any case. I get done reading the first lens and go on to the next. She’s not telling me anything new, I already know how to make these dolls and how to sew them out of certain colors for certain reasons and how to put certain crystals in certain dolls, etc, etc. I already know how to make and use these little bags (which she refers to as mojos and gri-gris, though I know them as medicine bags). I know how to use the sticks and water “magic” because it’s all in the Old Testament, that’s how Jacob turned all the white cows spotted. I know all about the whole what goes around comes around law of energy, that results in you never needing to “curse” a person because any harm they do you will fall back upon them 70×7 (Jesus said it in the Bible, so I know it’s true.) She says 3 fold return not 70×7 like Jesus said. . . . The list of things just goes on and on, with her explaining the nature and rituals and magic of Voodoo, and 20 or so lenses later, I’m looking at this and saying to myself: “That’s not Voodoo, that’s Hebrew Gnosticism. Everything she’s saying is Voodoo, can be found in the Bible. It’s all the things practiced by the Old Testament Prophets, the Magi, and Jesus Himself!”

Okay, time for another explanation: I’m EXTREMELY well versed in the Bible. At age 8, I was pulled out of public school and enrolled in the ORIGINAL Christian Liberty Academy (CLASS)(which is VERY different than the Christian Liberty Academy of today). Originally CLASS was run by a headstrong Calvinist preacher who spent most of his time in shoot outs with the government and was in and out of prison throughout most of the 1970′s and 1980′s due to his extremely radical views on Satan’s control of the government and public schools. He founded CLASS basically to raise up an army of Super Christians to follow in his footsteps. He was killed under questionable circumstances about 20 years ago, and after his death, CLASS underwent some major changes. CLASS today, is just your average ordinary private Christian School. Gone are the days of outspoken rebellion against America, and the overtly Calvinist text books.

Back when I was first enrolled in CLASS and the rebellion was on going, it was required that before any student did anything else, that they must read the Bible cover to cover and write a report of EACH chapter of each book of the entire Bible. Once that was completed we had to read Calvin’s Concordance, and reread the Bible using the concordance as a guide, and write a report on each chapter of the concordance. This all had to be done with in the first 3 months of enrollment, so that I would have time to next read The McGuffies 4th Reader, and than, start my text book studies. In addition to the 5 days of text book studies, I also had to do daily one hour Bible studies, and 4 hours of Bible studies on Sunday (not including Sunday School attendance I did through the Mormon church!) I was 9 years old. The superintendent of the Old Orchard Beach schools, looked at my required workload through CLASS and said that I was “a 4th grader doing college studies”, he was than farther amazed when he returned three month later, to find that I was not only keeping up with the work load, but that I was ahead and taking on extra work via Book of Mormon studies and writing 12 book 4 page reports per year. In Grammar and Composition, I had to digram 100 sentences per day, 6 days a week, every day, every year, as well as being required to write at least one letter of protest to the government each month. (This is how I got started writing letters of protest to Proctor & Gamble, I asked CLASS for permission to write to P&G instead and the request was approved). The Old Orchard Beach super was flabbergasted at the work load. He said that the work I was doing was more advanced than anything he had ever done himself even in college.

That was just 4th grade. This process repeated itself each year, until I reached 10th grade, my last year at CLASS and the year of the reierment of CLASS’s outspoken controversial Calvinist preacher turned school headmaster. In 10th grade everything changed, and suddenly I went from mountains of Biblical studies, to almost secular textbooks, which through in a few Bible quotes to make them sound Christian. I was devastated. I was not able to adjust from the mountains of written work and homework studies to just simple text book question and answer fill in the blank and be bored out of my mind studies. I wrote a request to CLASS asking to finish my last two years using the same program I had used my entire school life, but they said they had changed their system and that if I could not use the new system of study than I could not graduate. From 4th grade to 9th grade I was a straight A+ (all of my work had been graded by the headmasters at CLASS in Illinois). In 10th grade my grades plummited to C- . The murder of my best friend that same year (1991) and the court trials that followed, did not help my grades any either. Depression and a morbid fear of humans set in, and I after the court trails, I stopped talking. CLASS’s new headmaster (a former public school teacher) was now sending letters threatening to flunk me if my grades did not improve. I wrote back telling them that I had never used this new system before and had absolutely no idea how to do any of the work they were giving me, again requested that I be allowed to finish using the old system. They wrote back, saying that the old system was an outdated style that had not been used anywhere since the 1700′s and that CLASS was required to enforce the use of government approved textbooks from now on. I requested some sort of instruction as to how to use the new system and was told, that I simple read each chapter of the text book, and than answer the questions in the back, with 15 word or less sentences.

The 15 word or less sentences was killing me. Since 4th grade I had never written an answer with less than 4 sheets of paper. I had no idea how to write a complete answer in less than 4 pages let alone 15 words. I continued to write the 4 page answers for each question, even though my answers were longer than the chapters in the texts books. I was chided again and told they had no choice but to flunk me if I didn’t stop writing a composition for ever question in the textbooks.

Worst of all, was the cutting of classes, namely Bible Studies. Since 4th grade, CLASS’s system had required Bible first and last every day. An hour in the morning, an hour in the evening, 7 days a week . . . extra hours on Sunday. And it was not just reading the Bible . . . it was writing theories, compositions, and thesis on each chapter of every book, every single year. Suddenly it was gone. I asked CLASS why. They said that there had been hundreds of complaints from parents, saying that their children were not able to do the workload of the rigorous Bible Studies; that for years CLASS’s founder had ignored their complaints saying that they were not true patriots of Christ if they complained of too much Bible Studies; but now that he was no longer headmaster, his command no longer controlled the school, and the new headmasters felt it was in the children’s best interest if the Bible Study class was dropped and replaced with a text book version which summarized the basic Bible stories. I requested to finish my last years with the same system I had grown up with. They said it was gone and none of the CLASS students would ever use it again. I was devastated, and that’s when my problems really got going.

I tried as best as I could to read the Bible text book and answer it’s questions, but by this time I had read the King James Version of the Bible cover to cover, writing reports about each chapter, a sum total of 7 times. For extra work, I had done the same thing twice with The Book of Mormon and had started doing it with the Doctrines & Covenants and The Book of Josephus but never finished those two. I had also done the same thing with each of 16 other translations of the Bible (Amplified, NKJ, NLB, etc.). Now I was 15 years old and I had been handed a text book which summarized the Bible and I was supposed to fill in the blanks in the workbook. This lasted about 3 chapters before I flipped out, went into a roaring rage (my former headmaster would have been very proud — I learned from the Master!) and instead of answering the questions in the textbook, I wrote up a 12 page report about all the errors, mistakes, and mistranslations I had found in the textbook, and sent that back to CLASS headquarters instead of the answers to the questions. Needless to say, that was the last thing I did in school as I was not allowed to finish my 10th grade class and refused admittance into CLASS’s 11th and 12th grades. I was too much like CLASS’s founder Dr. Paul Lindstrom. Though they were proud of his “good” achievements, they wanted to erase all memory of his radical rebellion, and students who followed in his footsteps too closely(as I had done) were not tolerated under the new leadership of the school.

Okay, so now you know, what I mean when I say I am very well versed in the Bible. I know the Bible inside out and in 16 different translations. I loved the book of Daniel, I loved the stories of the Magi. I was very curious to see if all the “magic tricks” used by the prophets of the Old Testament really worked. I refused to believe that dancing a certain way by certain moon fazes, while holding certain types of twigs, really worked, unless I had first tried them out myself, and so, I at about 12 years old, set out to doing all of the weird little rituals and magic spells used by Moses, Daniel, Jacob, Abraham, Enoch, Elijah, Jesus, and all the rest. And that’s how I learned about making all these medicine bags, and using certain crystals and herbs for certain things – from the Bible and the Book of Mormon. When I tell you I’m a super strict Mormon who lives the old ways – well, Joseph Smith had all the stones and crystals and herbs too, and that’s how he talked to God. . . granted you’ll have to find church history books published (by the LDS church) prior to 1978 if you want to find out any of the old church history and the un-photo shopped photos of Smith, Young, and the Navoo Saloon, your best bet is books published by the church in the late 1800′s, though these are extraordinarily rare and hard to track down.

But anyways, back to VoodooMama’s lenses. I was reading her lenses about the things they do in Voodoo (which is a break off of the Catholic church btw . . . yes Voodoo’s ARE Christians and NOT pagan witches) and suddenly it occurred to me, that Voodoo is what they call someone who practices the rituals of Moses, Abraham, Jacob, Danial, and Jesus as they were written in the Bible.

Well, next thing I know I’m one Google and I’m searching for info on comparing witches to Voodoo, because one of the more common things for my fellow Mormons to accuse me of, in addition to witch, is being a “Voodoo witchdoctor”.

Ahhh! Now we are getting somewhere. Apparently, they are accusing me of being a witch because I live by the Bible and do the same things the old prophets did, but that the only Christians today who continue to do these things are members of the Voodoo religion, and they are mistakingly referring to me as a witch, because they believe that a witch and a voodoo witchdoctor is in fact the same thing and for some odd reason voodoo witchdoctors are the only people who follow the words of the Bible as they are written, rather that trying to interpret meanings into the words.

So I suppose, the question now at hand is no longer “Am I a witch, like my accusers say?”, but rather, “Am I a Voodoo witchdoctor?” because it seems very likely that I am on some “unofficial” compacity, seeing how I do everything a Voodoo witchdoctor does.

But that brings up another question: Does that mean they did the things they did out of religious prejudice, and if so, isn’t that a federal crime?

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

. . .

————-
If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:
.
.

.

>Not Witch — Voodoo — ???

>

My search to find out why fellow church members call me a witch and set out to destroy my property, demolish my home, kill my pets, and force me out onto the streets, continues (see previous post for more info if you are reading this post first.)

As you may or may not know, I’m one of the Angels on Squidoo, which means I spend a lot of time on Squidoo, not only building my own web pages, but also moderating & promoting the activities of other page builders. My job is to look for spam and get it off Squidoo’s home page, while looking for non-spam and getting it out in front of others. It’s a very time consuming “job” but I love it, and it has opened my way to finding thousands of wonderful web pages written by thousands of wonderful page builders, whom I other wise might not have found. Well, today is such a day.

I personally know several of the local Squidoo lensmasters offline and we get together to talk every few days. One of them was mentioning that she had found a lens she liked, but forgot to bookmark it, and a few days later was unable to go back to it to finish reading it, because she did not know the name of the lens, nor did she know the name of the lensmaster. Me being a Squid-Angel, meant that there was a pretty good chance I knew the lens title, so she started describing it to me. Well, I did not know the lens itself, but from her description, I was pretty posatve I knew who the lensmaster was. I told her I thought it must be one of VoodooMama’s lenses and that I’d look it up and let her know.

Well, last night, which zipping around Squidoo blessing lenses, I suddenly remembers I was supposed to be looking for that lens URL for my friend, and so I headed on over to VoodooMama’s list of lenses and sure enough, there it was. I sent the URL on to my friend, but than I went back to VoodooMama’s lenses and started reading them. I had seen her lenses in passing several times, but it seemed that whenever I had found one of her lenses I was always late for something and had to log off and leave the house, than never got back to reading what she had written, because by the time I’d log in again, I’d be thinking about something else (yes, my scattered brain mind had a very short attention span and I can switch from one topic to the next “at alarming speeds” or so I’ve been told on several occasions.)

Well, since I didn’t have anything planned for this morning, I decided to head back to VoodooMam’s list and spend a few hours reading her lenses. And that’s when it dawned on me – I think I know why the members at church persist in calling me a witch and went all hysterical and violent.

Okay, lets explain a few things.

Online, I talk about a lot of my hobbies, usually though I only talk about those hobbies which make an income, because I’m usually advising others on how to use the hobby to make an income. As such, almost every one online knows that I am a writer/author and an artist/painter. Due to the nature of the constant questions about my clothes and my constantly being puzzled as to why I’m always being questioned about my cloths, has resulted in my asking people online if they thought my clothes were strange too, and thus most people online are also aware that I am a fashion designer who recreates patterns from 1300-1600 eras and sews them up and wears them every day. I am thus often mistaken for a CosPlayer, and Anichronist, or a Life Actor as a result.

Here’s what you don’t know, unless you know me personally because I never talk about it online:

I’m a doll maker. I make a lot of dolls, including poppets of various sorts — poppets = dream dolls, worry dolls, healing dolls, etc, or in other words, I make what is more commonly as Voodoo Dolls.

I am well versed in the use of color, crystals, stones, plants, herbs, etc, due to the fact that I spent about 7 or 8 years studying Feng Shui and Crystal Healing.

All corners of my land and home are hung with various bags, bundles, mirrors, ect. which use color and crystal theory to harmonize and protect.

I am an expert embroiderer. I took up embroidery at age 6 and never stopped. I use my embroidery skills to create Indian medicine bags, dolls/poppets, and color patches (similar to quilt patches).

I live at one with nature and though my verbal skills with humans and human language is terribly limited, I can speak “bantam” very fluently and can talk to most every bird (and cat) that enters our yard. This results in my always being surrounded by wild birds and feral/stray cats which just gather in my garden and than never leave.

Both of my grandmothers were half Indian, one Cherokee and the other Kickapoo. The Kickapoo one was widely regarded as a “weather witch” and many people were terrified of her apparent ability to change and control the weather. She too, had a way with animals much like my own. She was a vegan Seventh Day Adventist and lived a semi-Amish life style. Much of the things I know, I learned from her. Like me, she lived 24-7-365 in muumuus and kimono and prairie dresses. I inherited her wardrobe when she died, and what cloths I now wear that I did not make myself, were once hers. Her name was Eva Viola Atwater, and in her own circles, esp in Maine and Hawaii, she was quite famous.

Okay, end of explanation, moving on . . .

So I’m reading one of VoodooMama’s lenses and I’m thinking . . . “Really? THAT’s Voodoo?” She a Voodoo . . . uhm . . . something, I don’t know the proper titles, but she’s a Voodoo something or other in any case. I get done reading the first lens and go on to the next. She’s not telling me anything new, I already know how to make these dolls and how to sew them out of certain colors for certain reasons and how to put certain crystals in certain dolls, etc, etc. I already know how to make and use these little bags (which she refers to as mojos and gri-gris, though I know them as medicine bags). I know how to use the sticks and water “magic” because it’s all in the Old Testament, that’s how Jacob turned all the white cows spotted. I know all about the whole what goes around comes around law of energy, that results in you never needing to “curse” a person because any harm they do you will fall back upon them 70×7 (Jesus said it in the Bible, so I know it’s true.) She says 3 fold return not 70×7 like Jesus said. . . . The list of things just goes on and on, with her explaining the nature and rituals and magic of Voodoo, and 20 or so lenses later, I’m looking at this and saying to myself: “That’s not Voodoo, that’s Hebrew Gnosticism. Everything she’s saying is Voodoo, can be found in the Bible. It’s all the things practiced by the Old Testament Prophets, the Magi, and Jesus Himself!”

Okay, time for another explanation: I’m EXTREMELY well versed in the Bible. At age 8, I was pulled out of public school and enrolled in the ORIGINAL Christian Liberty Academy (CLASS)(which is VERY different than the Christian Liberty Academy of today). Originally CLASS was run by a headstrong Calvinist preacher who spent most of his time in shoot outs with the government and was in and out of prison throughout most of the 1970′s and 1980′s due to his extremely radical views on Satan’s control of the government and public schools. He founded CLASS basically to raise up an army of Super Christians to follow in his footsteps. He was killed under questionable circumstances about 20 years ago, and after his death, CLASS underwent some major changes. CLASS today, is just your average ordinary private Christian School. Gone are the days of outspoken rebellion against America, and the overtly Calvinist text books.

Back when I was first enrolled in CLASS and the rebellion was on going, it was required that before any student did anything else, that they must read the Bible cover to cover and write a report of EACH chapter of each book of the entire Bible. Once that was completed we had to read Calvin’s Concordance, and reread the Bible using the concordance as a guide, and write a report on each chapter of the concordance. This all had to be done with in the first 3 months of enrollment, so that I would have time to next read The McGuffies 4th Reader, and than, start my text book studies. In addition to the 5 days of text book studies, I also had to do daily one hour Bible studies, and 4 hours of Bible studies on Sunday (not including Sunday School attendance I did through the Mormon church!) I was 9 years old. The superintendent of the Old Orchard Beach schools, looked at my required workload through CLASS and said that I was “a 4th grader doing college studies”, he was than farther amazed when he returned three month later, to find that I was not only keeping up with the work load, but that I was ahead and taking on extra work via Book of Mormon studies and writing 12 book 4 page reports per year. In Grammar and Composition, I had to digram 100 sentences per day, 6 days a week, every day, every year, as well as being required to write at least one letter of protest to the government each month. (This is how I got started writing letters of protest to Proctor & Gamble, I asked CLASS for permission to write to P&G instead and the request was approved). The Old Orchard Beach super was flabbergasted at the work load. He said that the work I was doing was more advanced than anything he had ever done himself even in college.

That was just 4th grade. This process repeated itself each year, until I reached 10th grade, my last year at CLASS and the year of the reierment of CLASS’s outspoken controversial Calvinist preacher turned school headmaster. In 10th grade everything changed, and suddenly I went from mountains of Biblical studies, to almost secular textbooks, which through in a few Bible quotes to make them sound Christian. I was devastated. I was not able to adjust from the mountains of written work and homework studies to just simple text book question and answer fill in the blank and be bored out of my mind studies. I wrote a request to CLASS asking to finish my last two years using the same program I had used my entire school life, but they said they had changed their system and that if I could not use the new system of study than I could not graduate. From 4th grade to 9th grade I was a straight A+ (all of my work had been graded by the headmasters at CLASS in Illinois). In 10th grade my grades plummited to C- . The murder of my best friend that same year (1991) and the court trials that followed, did not help my grades any either. Depression and a morbid fear of humans set in, and I after the court trails, I stopped talking. CLASS’s new headmaster (a former public school teacher) was now sending letters threatening to flunk me if my grades did not improve. I wrote back telling them that I had never used this new system before and had absolutely no idea how to do any of the work they were giving me, again requested that I be allowed to finish using the old system. They wrote back, saying that the old system was an outdated style that had not been used anywhere since the 1700′s and that CLASS was required to enforce the use of government approved textbooks from now on. I requested some sort of instruction as to how to use the new system and was told, that I simple read each chapter of the text book, and than answer the questions in the back, with 15 word or less sentences.

The 15 word or less sentences was killing me. Since 4th grade I had never written an answer with less than 4 sheets of paper. I had no idea how to write a complete answer in less than 4 pages let alone 15 words. I continued to write the 4 page answers for each question, even though my answers were longer than the chapters in the texts books. I was chided again and told they had no choice but to flunk me if I didn’t stop writing a composition for ever question in the textbooks.

Worst of all, was the cutting of classes, namely Bible Studies. Since 4th grade, CLASS’s system had required Bible first and last every day. An hour in the morning, an hour in the evening, 7 days a week . . . extra hours on Sunday. And it was not just reading the Bible . . . it was writing theories, compositions, and thesis on each chapter of every book, every single year. Suddenly it was gone. I asked CLASS why. They said that there had been hundreds of complaints from parents, saying that their children were not able to do the workload of the rigorous Bible Studies; that for years CLASS’s founder had ignored their complaints saying that they were not true patriots of Christ if they complained of too much Bible Studies; but now that he was no longer headmaster, his command no longer controlled the school, and the new headmasters felt it was in the children’s best interest if the Bible Study class was dropped and replaced with a text book version which summarized the basic Bible stories. I requested to finish my last years with the same system I had grown up with. They said it was gone and none of the CLASS students would ever use it again. I was devastated, and that’s when my problems really got going.

I tried as best as I could to read the Bible text book and answer it’s questions, but by this time I had read the King James Version of the Bible cover to cover, writing reports about each chapter, a sum total of 7 times. For extra work, I had done the same thing twice with The Book of Mormon and had started doing it with the Doctrines & Covenants and The Book of Josephus but never finished those two. I had also done the same thing with each of 16 other translations of the Bible (Amplified, NKJ, NLB, etc.). Now I was 15 years old and I had been handed a text book which summarized the Bible and I was supposed to fill in the blanks in the workbook. This lasted about 3 chapters before I flipped out, went into a roaring rage (my former headmaster would have been very proud — I learned from the Master!) and instead of answering the questions in the textbook, I wrote up a 12 page report about all the errors, mistakes, and mistranslations I had found in the textbook, and sent that back to CLASS headquarters instead of the answers to the questions. Needless to say, that was the last thing I did in school as I was not allowed to finish my 10th grade class and refused admittance into CLASS’s 11th and 12th grades. I was too much like CLASS’s founder Dr. Paul Lindstrom. Though they were proud of his “good” achievements, they wanted to erase all memory of his radical rebellion, and students who followed in his footsteps too closely(as I had done) were not tolerated under the new leadership of the school.

Okay, so now you know, what I mean when I say I am very well versed in the Bible. I know the Bible inside out and in 16 different translations. I loved the book of Daniel, I loved the stories of the Magi. I was very curious to see if all the “magic tricks” used by the prophets of the Old Testament really worked. I refused to believe that dancing a certain way by certain moon fazes, while holding certain types of twigs, really worked, unless I had first tried them out myself, and so, I at about 12 years old, set out to doing all of the weird little rituals and magic spells used by Moses, Daniel, Jacob, Abraham, Enoch, Elijah, Jesus, and all the rest. And that’s how I learned about making all these medicine bags, and using certain crystals and herbs for certain things – from the Bible and the Book of Mormon. When I tell you I’m a super strict Mormon who lives the old ways – well, Joseph Smith had all the stones and crystals and herbs too, and that’s how he talked to God. . . granted you’ll have to find church history books published (by the LDS church) prior to 1978 if you want to find out any of the old church history and the un-photo shopped photos of Smith, Young, and the Navoo Saloon, your best bet is books published by the church in the late 1800′s, though these are extraordinarily rare and hard to track down.

But anyways, back to VoodooMama’s lenses. I was reading her lenses about the things they do in Voodoo (which is a break off of the Catholic church btw . . . yes Voodoo’s ARE Christians and NOT pagan witches) and suddenly it occurred to me, that Voodoo is what they call someone who practices the rituals of Moses, Abraham, Jacob, Danial, and Jesus as they were written in the Bible.

Well, next thing I know I’m one Google and I’m searching for info on comparing witches to Voodoo, because one of the more common things for my fellow Mormons to accuse me of, in addition to witch, is being a “Voodoo witchdoctor”.

Ahhh! Now we are getting somewhere. Apparently, they are accusing me of being a witch because I live by the Bible and do the same things the old prophets did, but that the only Christians today who continue to do these things are members of the Voodoo religion, and they are mistakingly referring to me as a witch, because they believe that a witch and a voodoo witchdoctor is in fact the same thing and for some odd reason voodoo witchdoctors are the only people who follow the words of the Bible as they are written, rather that trying to interpret meanings into the words.

So I suppose, the question now at hand is no longer “Am I a witch, like my accusers say?”, but rather, “Am I a Voodoo witchdoctor?” because it seems very likely that I am on some “unofficial” compacity, seeing how I do everything a Voodoo witchdoctor does.

But that brings up another question: Does that mean they did the things they did out of religious prejudice, and if so, isn’t that a federal crime?

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

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