Muscular Witchcraft

Fr O'Malley liked to put the altar boys through their paces on a Friday night

This post's title is a shameless parody of the idea of 'Muscular Christianity', which came into vogue from Victorian times, and stressed both energetic masculinity and fitness, and energetic evangelism. This Christianity was vigorous, stressed clean living and doing things for others. Its remnants remain in organisations originally created to promote its dual ideals: nowadays we think of YMCA as meaning a gym, but it stands for Young Men's Christian Association.
Muscular witchcraft is decidedly different from its Christian variant (and the fluffbunnies will find it somewhat controversial no doubt). As humans we continually have to decide how much to give to other people, when to say no, and what priority we can give to looking after ourselves over looking after other people.  There is a great Christian tradition of considering yourself the least, and putting yourself behind everyone else (although I am wary of the motivational issues around Christian selflessness, since the bloke who started it all said that that putting yourself last actually will make you the first), a tradition which is almost entirely absent from all modern magical and esoteric traditions. However if the problem for muscular Christianity is a contradiction in their theory of positioning the problem for witches here is that we have a real problem with competition and power, related to our public relations problem around the w-word which still means the personification of 'evil' to the muggles, to the extent that many witches are frightened to do anything that may imply they are acting without others' consent and so these people become paralysed in the face of others' aggression. The problem here is that we are a new tradition without a great tradition of ethics, whose ethical systems have been created by people with no great training in ethics.

What were they thinking of?

I have no doubt that I will return to the subject of witchcraft ethics in this blog, but the point of dragging the subject of the use and abuse of power, and the literal or metaphorical flexing of muscles, into this post is an entirely personal one. Last year I stopped smoking. While I was smoking I had a metabolism like a sprinter and could shovel back the food and never put weight on. Since I stopped smoking I have put weight on every time I've gone into the kitchen. I've tried eating sensibly, I've tried walking home from work a few times a week, and keep losing a little weight only to put it back on again, and have a gradually increasing waistline. I've not tried dieting, and wouldn't, as diets just put you temporarily into starvation and don't work in the long run - another of my bugbears.
But I seem to have found a solution to this problem: my will is to use all of the means at my disposal to ensure I remain as healthy, supple, and fit as possible for the rest of my life. Given that my will is to use all of the means available, and having exhausted some, I have resorted to using means which I never thought I would: I have actually been exercising at home. To anyone who has known me for any length of time this will seem out of character, but not smoking and exercising mean I am probably the fittest I have been in my life. Only a few weeks in I am feeling the benefits in terms of feeling firmer, being more flexible, and having better balance. If I had known that it would be this simple to feel this good I would have done it years ago.

My PE teacher missed his vocation

Of course the reason I didn't is that I didn't know it could feel good, and I am afraid here I have to put the blame firmly on the shoulders of one man: my school PE teacher. I wonder whether in today's target-driven schools teachers actually make an effort to engage the interest of their pupils, and lay the foundation of a possible interest in their subject for the rest of their lives, which in the case of physical education would mean a foundation for health and fitness for life. My PE teacher was a bully. If you were 'good at sport' to start off with, he nurtured you carefully, you could get away with murder in the gym, and so forth. If you were not a 'jock' to start off with, his continual humiliation would ensure that you gained no interest in fitness and you would be left to associate physical training with being screamed at and humiliated. Although he did wet himself when a boy who was frankly obese actually had a heart attack on the running track, since he had been given a task which he was plainly not up to.
I have since wondered about the culture of the school, since in retrospect there were a number of teachers with this attitude. Of course as a child you don't look at grown ups and have the resources to work out what is happening for them. At the time he was just a turd, but with hindsight I can say two things with complete certainty (I don't know them, or course, but I do g-now them, and in my gut feel one or both must be true). Either he wanted to get into the armed forces and wasn't fit enough, or he wanted to do a degree in something brainy and couldn't get the exam marks he needed. A recent google search of his name reveals that he has worked with the Royal Marines since I was at school. What was driving him was plainly his own bitterness at never getting to what he wanted to be.

The best days of your life?

So I say to him: I'm fitter than I was. I'm on the way to being even fitter. I have found an interest in fitness despite your best efforts. Your bullying ways have not been enough to stop me. I will not allow you power over me for the rest of my life. And I lay on you an obligation: you will treat people with respect, and you will treat the privilege of being allowed to train young minds and bodies, with respect. If you bully people, they will flourish at your expense. Their strength will be taken from yours, tendon from tendon, muscle from muscle, bone from bone, blood from blood. The power of personhood you take from other people will be taken from you and given back to them. This is my will and it is done, as rising moon and setting sun.
As for me, starting to exercise has cast my spell on myself. Obviously I feel no obligation to forgive those who wrong me, but I am now free to develop my interest in fitness. It could have been developed 25 years ago, but he took it from me. As a witch, I have a responsibility to ensure this doesn't happen to others, hence the spell. Please don't email me telling me I'm a black magician, if you read my sepll carefully, you will see that if he treats people right nothing will happen to him. I have been freed from a 25 year old wrong, and Aradia says to all those who are oppressed in any way: 'You will be free from slavery.'

(This post comes with due credit to S, whose offhand comment inspired it. You know who you are)