I was talking recently with a new friend and made an off-hand comment about stopping the rain long enough to get somewhere dry, when she gently chastised me for even considering it, quoting the line about "not knowing what it may cause elsewhere".
That idea, believe it or not, comes from an old episode of I Dream of Jeannie. I haven't found any reference predating the show to anyone believing it's true, but that's not the whole basis of my belief that it's just bunkum.
I live in California, on the west coast of the United States. In the midwest, there are tornadoes and hail storms that we don't have here. On the east coast, there are hurricanes that we don't see here. I can have a perfectly sunny day while on the east coast they have 90mph winds with driving rain and homes being ripped apart and floating away. Their weather doesn't affect my weather patterns.
So, if natural weather patterns on the east coast or in the Sahara Desert have no impact on my weather here, why would anyone expect any weather magic I do to affect my local environment to have a greater impact than Nature herself? It's not logical, and the facts don't back up the myth.
I have about a 70-80% success rate with the weather magic I've done over the years, and it's stayed pretty consistent. But I don't kid myself - if Mother Nature decides we're going to have a certain type of weather, and she's insistent about it then there's nothing I can do to change it. I'm humble enough to know my limits!
I don't expect everyone to believe me, I think some people need external, artificial limits to their belief structures. But let go of the fear about it for goddess' sake, I'm not going to single-wandedly bring about Global Warming or the next Ice Age.
Well your right that one person isn't going to make such a huge impact on the greater picture. What does become a problem is when a large group of people put out energy for a weather change, and then we see that change to an extreme.
ReplyDeleteI'm reminded of a story I read as a child. I vaguely recall it, but at one point the protagonist cuts a trapped wizard out of a tree. Asking the wizard why he didn't simply use his magic to free himself. He replied that it was because the tree was rooted to the Earth, which was a far greater power than he possessed. Can you believe they let us read that in a right wing Christian third grade class? This, of course, was long before Harry Potter. Just like the wizard was not more powerful than the Earth, neither is a weather "magician" stronger than the global weather patterns. Many Christians have been praying for the gay-killing hurricane for a long time... it ain't happened yet.
ReplyDeleteI'm reminded of when we were suffering an unnatural drought in my area meany years ago. I had thoroughly studied our weather patterns and their history to ensure the drought was not some natural pattern, and then proceeded to do my thing to bring rain, highly successfully over the course of the summer as it turned out. Yet some acquaintances were convinced that I would bring about a hurricane! One, I told them, you give me far too much credit to think I can singlehandedly bring down Katrina upon us. Two, our natural rain patterns have nothing to do with the weather patterns that cause Atlantic hurricanes, indeed the more natural rain we get during our wet season the fewer hurricanes we get, so if anything my efforts made us safer from hurricanes, though only indirectly. But hey, maybe it's best such people don't take on things that are beyond their apparent comprehension, such as weather magic.
Beautiful illustration of the point, Fishmonger! If I change the weather, it's because the Gods let me. They have veto power over every bit of magic I do, and they've used it in the past. But if I'm raising wind to blow a forest fire back on itself (which is almost an annual thing in California), or reducing the severity of a storm to avoid flooding, I do so as an attempt at preserving life (not just humans). If it works, I figure I have permission. I am *not* more magically powerful than the Gods I pray to - my ego isn't THAT big :)
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