This has been floating around the Web for awhile. If you haven't read it, do yourself a
favor and read it now. We have no idea who Lady Pixie Moondrip is but she should come
forward and take credit for one of the funniest things that we've seen in a long time. Intro:
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 Iquisition. 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 that
it 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 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 a fistfight 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 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 are
willing 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 a sense 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
aquaintance 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 Michael Harner book, break out the buckskins
and the medicine puches, and proclaim yourself a shaman. Mind you, there are people out
there who have recieved real Native American medicine 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 everyone else, you may be looking for a
name that expresses the uniqueness of your personality but still sounds like all the other
craft names you've ever heard. Fortunatley, 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-blind 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.
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
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.
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 possiblities are endless!
(För att göra det ännu lättare för dig, och mycket roligare, har jag "skapat" en rcng där
du inte ens behöver använda fantasin! Klicka här för den svenska
versionen och här för den engelska.) Outro:
It may be said 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 complet lack of insight. First of all, in an increasingly blase
and tolerant culture, it's becoming hard for white middle-class Americans to get that rush
of self-righteous gratification that comes from pretendning 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 magick and making it a part of our lives. Finally, if we're
pretentious enough, those people who actually know enough to magick 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
