The True Cost of Vengeance

Every time I see a meme about how dangerous it is to mess with a witch (wiccan or other) as their revenge will be magikal and horribly destructive, I immediately think how NOT powerful some one with that mindset is. As for me, I found that the most powerful magik I have encountered came from a Hexenmeister, the late Ray Krause, a man who I could almost swear had no idea of the concept of revenge no matter what was done to him.

Ray was a Christian, a Lutheran actually, who had me praying to Jesus while I studied with him more than I had ever prayed to Jesus before (and I was raised Roman Catholic), Still I suppose that as articles to support faith in your religion, vengeance memes help a Wiccan feel pride in their chosen faith. I assume they are as good as the crucifix hanging in a Baptist's kitchen.

It is also an oddity in Wiccan and Pagan faiths and their followers that vengeance is looked at so gleefully. Personally I have found that those that wield the strongest magic outside of faiths like Wicca never, and I mean never, would hold to such ideas of vengeance. In truth, I have never met any Wiccans who together or alone managed to perform meta-physical marvels as powerful as Ray's. Ray, with his thick German accent, loud booming voice, always sounded angry but he was in fact the gentlest man I have ever met. Humble as well. Ray performed miracles, real miracles but never talked about them and gave the credit for them when asked, to Jesus and The Lord.

The most bizarre miracle occurred while Ray was trying to ease the pain of a client with cancer in both breasts that had spread to her chest and lungs. This poor women was going to die but she came to see Ray because she claimed his treatments did more for her pain and general shitty feelings than any of the chemo drugs and radiation treatments she was taking in an attempt to extend her life.

Ray's help would save her life but only because he got some help. Help that I can say now must have come from some sort of being or entity that Ray had summoned with his Faith.

The entity didn't look like any known representation of a mystikal being and in truth I had no idea who or what it was. When I opened the door at it's knocking, what I saw was a tall thick man in light blue jeans and a very ugly Christmas sweater. The stranger greeted me with out giving a name to call him by which only felt odd later on. Ray must have known what the stranger was right away and acted like he had been expecting him. The stranger waved and said hello to Ray

Ray merely said, "So you have come to pray with us for Mrs. V******?" which was strange as Ray was a real handshaker.. The stranger said "Yes" and in a few moments, Ray, myself and the stranger sat in a circle around the middle aged woman and began praying for a time period of about 45 minutes, which was strange as I would have sworn when the session ended, we had only prayed for maybe fifteen or twenty minutes.

As I got up from my chair, Ray's female client. who had been asleep began to awaken. She had been there before and after drinking a cup of Ray's home made tea mixture would fall asleep on the couch while we prayed. Ray, as all good Hexenmeisters learn to, brewed a very strong herbal tea chockfull of pain killing and sleep inducing herbs. That she was asleep was common of Ray's clients who were there because of some illness or sickness. Before she had sat up and looked about the room, she began asking who else was there. I approached the woman and told her a friend of Ray's had dropped by to pray with us but when i looked around the room, I couldn't see him.

When I asked Ray where he went, Ray responded with, "He flew away young Dave" This was followed by Ray giving me that quirky, shit eating grin that he used when he knew I was moments away from being floored by some new mystical event. I went to the front porch to see if I could catch the stranger before he drove off. Ray's small farm and accompanying house had to be reached by a service road that was at least a half mile long, and anything on it would be visible and in sight all the way to the first Route Rural road that accessed the highway. The only vehicles I saw were parked and they were Ray's old Chevy truck and the clients bright blue Datsun.

Though I never heard any engine gunning or revving up for speed, I assumed the mysterious visitor had a motorcycle or perhaps more common and logical, a horse, with which he had cut across the back field or something.

The next day, Mrs. V****** called and said she never had felt better and couldn't wait for her check up though she did not look forward to the chemo as it always made her nauseous. She called again later that evening, absolutely giddy and hysterical. During her check up, her oncologist could find no sign of her cancer. It had apparently just disappeared. She had got to skip the chemotherapy drugs. Before I left Ray's tutelage, about seven weeks later, the cancer had not made a reappearance.

I would ask Ray several times over those last weeks who the Stranger was and where did he go. Ray always answered the same sort of way, "He's an old friend Dave who sometimes when I ask really nicely, shows up to help me out." When I would ask Ray for his name, Ray would give some verbal equivalent of the same answer which went something like this- "You know his name Dave, You've known his name since you were a little boy. That was Jesus."

I don't know if I can accept Jesus but I have no problem going with an angel.

So why did I tell this story after mentioning Wiccan vengeance memes? Because Ray's client was a Wiccan. Despite how negatively most Wiccans I have encountered feel about Christians, Ray did not return this prejudice. He understood what Wicca was and he had no problem rationalizing their faith with his own.

I am sure if this was written by a Evangelical Christian you would have expected this woman to have immediate conversion to some form Christianity. This did not happen. She had no great epiphany and she did not find Jesus and start throwing away all her Wiccan belongings though she did start going to Ray's Lutheran Church on the majour holidays. The only change she made in her Wiccan life was part of the deal she had made with Ray.

Ray taught and preached, and seeing the forces Ray dealt with I do too, is the complete sanctity of Free Will. He had only asked that she never again cast a spell that would interfere with a person's free will. No love spells, no curses, never a twig burned or a candle lit that would take away a person's right to choose. For if God's Greatest Gift to Man was free will, obstructing that would be a form Black Magic. I think most spells of vengeance fall into that category too.

I doubt anyone in a Wiccan Coven will change in the spells they cast or their thoughts on vengeance but if it means I can summon cancer curing strangers from out of thin air, I am going to give that kind of thinking a try.