Day: January 7, 2016
Other Ways to Enhance Energy Practice

Other Ways to Enhance Energy Practice
Try creating increasingly more complicated shapes with the energy. Stars. Cubes. Spirals.
Remember, even when using divine or earth energy, personal energy is still used to help steady and direct it. It’s important that we maintain energy and health. Treat your body as well as you would treat any tool that is sacred and spiritual.
Beyond just sensing and shaping energy, feel and hear it. Understanding and being aware of the energy around will give us information that we can use. Keep track of when you feel a change or shift in the energy around you and what happen before during or after. Eventually, you may find a pattern.
Ashlyn Hawthorne, Wiccan Basics: Solitary Suburban Pagan Guide
PRACTICE WITH ENERGY

PRACTICE WITH ENERGY
After a few attempts at drawing and grounding energy, we have a better idea of the similarities and differences, as well as how we interact with each type of energy. Now, we need to practice shaping and moving it.
Start by pulling personal energy into your dominant hand. Then hold your hands palms facing each other, about three inches apart. Send the energy from the dominant hand and receiving it with the non-dominant hand. Allow it to flow back into your center creating a loop of energy. Trying varying the distance between your hands. Try to decrease the energy to a trickle. Try to dial it up a little more than you have before if you feel confident controlling it.
Center and stabilize the energy.
Try the same exercises sending the energy with your non-dominant hand and receiving it with you dominant one.
After a few sessions of sending and receiving, it’s time to try shaping and molding the energy.
Pull personal energy into your dominant hand, holding it palm facing non-dominant hand. Instead of receiving it this time, use your hands to shape the energy into a ball. Expand it or contract it. Spin it. Toss it from hand to hand. When you’re done, allow the energy to be absorbed, centered and stabilized. Next time, try creating a square or other simple shape with the energy. Then try it with the other two types of energy.
Once you feel confident, try various combinations of energies. Pull earth energy and allow it to pool with your personal energy before sending it into your hand. When done with the exercises, do the same but with divine energy. Pull both earth and divine energy and have them both flow into your hand to work, bypassing your personal energy as much as possible. Finally, pull both divine and earth energy and let it mingle with your personal energy before practicing.
Ashlyn Hawthorne, Wiccan Basics: Solitary Suburban Pagan Guide
DIVINE ENERGY

DIVINE ENERGY
We connect to divine energy in a very similar way to how we call on earth energy. Begin with centering and anchoring to the earth. Once stable, focus on the top of your head and feel the energy there, sort of like sunlight shining down on your head. Open yourself to it. Often, you will feel it flow down your neck and spine. Repeat the exercises with your dominant and non-dominant hand.
After you’ve finished, you’ll need to ground the energy the same way you did with the earth energy.
As before, note how it feels in comparison to the energies you’ve already worked with.
Ashlyn Hawthorne, Wiccan Basics: Solitary Suburban Pagan Guide
EARTH ENERGY

EARTH ENERGY
Start by centering and grounding, the same way as with personal energy. (We won’t be calling on personal energy directly in this exercise, but we will use it to ground, and we’ll also call on slightly to help direct the earth energy.)
Once you feel strongly anchored in the earth, see the connection thicken and strengthen a bit more. Feel the energy of the earth. Invite it to move up your anchor and into your body. Feel its movement as you draw it into your dominant hand and repeat the same exercise as you performed with personal energy. Then move the earth power to your non-dominant hand.
Note how the earth energy feels. How it’s the same and how it’s different from the personal energy in order to add it to your journal later.
When you’re done, send the energy back down through your body, along your anchor and ground it into the earth.
Don’t try to hold on to the earth energy. It can make you feel light-headed, ill or out of sorts. Return your attention to your center, calming your own energy. Then release your anchor and allow your consciousness to return to normal.
Ashlyn Hawthorne, Wiccan Basics: Solitary Suburban Pagan Guide
Personal Energy

Personal Energy
When connecting with personal energy, we have to understand where, exactly, our own power comes from. We have to start by asking ourselves where we feel energy and emotion in times of intensity. Most feel it somewhere in the center of our body. The chest, the solar plexus, or the stomach.
Once we locate our personal energy center, we have to center ourselves. Start by concentrating on that spot and focus on keeping your awareness there. Breathe in and out, practicing extending the time when we can hold our concentration.
Next, we have to ground ourselves, anchoring our mental and emotional ‘bodies’ in place. Some people imagine tree roots connecting them to the earth beneath them, others see a line of energy. Choose whatever image feels sturdy and substantial to you. Once feeling anchored and secure, go back to your energy center and make sure your focus there is still strong.
Now, see that energy seeping/flowing/stretching/weaving itself out from the center and making its way to your dominant arm. Feel the warmth/tingle/movement as it expands. Allow it to pool in your dominant hand. Stretch out your fingers to expand it. Curl them back to condense. After getting comfortable with it for a few minutes, focus again on your center and pull the energy back until it has all returned to your energy center.
Repeat the same steps, but let the energy move into your non-dominant side. This may or may not be more difficult. It may feel different. Make a mental note of it while you’re experiencing it and write it in your journal later. Pull the energy back. Once with this exercise, your energy center may feel larger or more active. Focus on calming it back to the way it felt when you first connected with it. You may need to ground some of the energy along roots, releasing it into the earth.
Once you feel centered and stable, disconnect from the earth, allow your consciousness to release its focus on your energy center and return to normal awareness.
Ashlyn Hawthorne, Wiccan Basics: Solitary Suburban Pagan Guide
Energy
ENERGY
We have to have strong focus in order to work with the energies around us. We need strong mental skills to sense, draw, shape, and direct energy.
We have to have strong focus in order to work with the energies around us. We need strong mental skills to sense, draw, shape, and direct energy.
There are multiple types of energy around us all the time, but it’s easiest to look at the ones we use the most as falling into three categories:
Personal energy-energy that comes from within us.
Divine energy—energy that comes from the deities or other parts of the spirit world.
Earth energy-energy that we can draw from the aspects of nature around us, both in the ground beneath our feet and in objects drawn from nature like flowers, stones or wood.
Ashlyn Hawthorne, Wiccan Basics: Solitary Suburban Pagan Guide
A Little Thought From Me to You…..
A Little Humor for Your Day – How Not To Get Invited Back To A Circle
How Not To Get Invited Back To A Circle
- Take the ritual sword from the altar and make sounds like Darth Vader — “Luke, I am your father!” — and start making light saber noises.
- Start skat-singing when chanting.
- Take the ritual athame from the altar and start cleaning your nails with it.
- When taking a sip of the ritual wine, act like a wine snob and comment on it.
- When doing the spiral dance, make it a Conga line.
- Call down the Goddess with “Get your ass down here, Big Momma!”
- Call down the God with “Our father, who art in heaven …”
- When chanting the names of the Goddess, randomly include Pokemon names.
- When being smudged, complain vehemently about second-hand smoke.
- In a drumming circle, laugh insanely and start drumming the beat to Wipe Out!
- Ask the people in the circle “When are we all gonna git nekked?”
- When in a skyclad circle, randomly point and laugh.
- When the ritual wine goblet is passed to you, chug it and ask for more.
- Invoke Satan.
- Take out a Bible and start evangelizing.
- Light-up a cigar.
- Bring a cute furry creature and offer it as a blood sacrifice.
- Talk a lot about casting spells for revenge against people who have offended you.
- At a handfasting say “Thank God! Maybe now i’ll get some grandchildren!”
- When in circle, answer your cell phone.
- Respond to “So Mote it Be!” with “Amen!”
- Invite people to “Come to the dark side.”
- Bring you kids and ask the group to invoke the baby sitting Goddess.
— concept by Azriel LittleHawk,
with edits and ammendments
by Turok and contributors
Published on Turok’s Cabana
WOTC Quiz: Who Will Be Your Guiding Goddess for 2016?
Who Will Be Your Guiding Goddess for 2016?
Which face of the Divine Feminine is by your side in this New Year, urging and encouraging you to be the person you are meant to be? Take this quick quiz to see which goddess is your guide:
Which statement is TRUE for you?
1. This year, what I long for MOST is freedom.
2. This year, what I long for MOST is a fresh start.
3. This year, what I long for MOST is love.
4. This year, what I long for MOST is to be healed.
5. This year, what I long for MOST is wisdom and learning.
6. This year, what I long for MOST is creativity.
If you answered TRUE to 1, ARTEMIS is your goddess. To the ancient Greeks, this goddess was a feisty, wild woods-dweller, in tune with nature and animals. Artemis encourages us to connect with the outdoors, with animals, and with our own fiercely independent spirits.
If you answered TRUE to 2, KALI is your goddess. This Hindu deity is the one to call if something in your life needs to go in order to make room for something new. Kali destroys what is stale so that new life can come in.
If you answered TRUE to 3, VENUS is your goddess. If love relationships or the longing for love are paramount for you this year, the Roman goddess Venus can help you to open your heart.
If you answered TRUE to 4, KWAN YIN is your goddess. This Asian Bodhisattva is the most prayed-to deity on earth. Kwan Yin reminds us that the healing power of her understanding and compassion are always available to you.
If you answered TRUE to 5, ATHENA is your goddess. The ancient Greek goddess of wisdom and learning is often shown companioned by an owl, the traditional wisdom-bird to many. If you desire deep wisdom or want to do well in some course of study, Athena will help you to clear your mind.
If you answered TRUE to 6, BRIGID is your goddess. This fiery Celtic goddess of poetry and crafting (among other things) is a great help in unlocking your creative potential.
You might want to do a little research on your goddess, and then find images or statues of her to remind you of her help and guidance as you follow your path throughout the year.
By Cait Johnson, co-author of Celebrating the Great Mother (Inner Traditions, 1995).
Astronomy Picture of the Day – High Energy Andromeda
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2016 January 7
High Energy Andromeda
Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, GSFC, NuSTAR, GALEX,
Explanation: A mere 2.5 million light-years away, the Andromeda Galaxy, also known as M31, really is just next door as large galaxies go. In this (inset) scan, image data from NASA’s Nuclear Spectrosopic Telescope Array has yielded the best high-energy X-ray view yet of our large neighboring spiral, revealing some 40 extreme sources of X-rays, X-ray binary star systems that contain a black hole or neutron star orbiting a more normal stellar companion. In fact, larger Andromeda and our own Milky Way are the most massive members of the local galaxy group. Andromeda is close enough that NuSTAR can examine its population of X-ray binaries in detail, comparing them to our own. The background image of Andromeda was taken by NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer in energetic ultraviolet light.
Scanning the Skies: Jupiter Retrograde, January 7 through May 9
Your Daily Influences for January 7
Your Daily Influences
January 7, 2016
Queen of Pentacles Reversed
A lack of trust may prevail. Obligations and duties are not attended. Failure is feared.
Wunjo
Wunjo reversed may represent a basic discord and failure in your life. Possibly good fortune is not looking down on you at this time. If so it must be remembered that Wunjo also represents change, which could mean your bad luck is soon to change.
The Serpent
This aspect will be affected by someone’s illness being shed. Their healing will cause positive changes within this aspect for you.
Your Daily Influences represent events and challenges the current day will present for you. They may represent opportunities you should be ready to seize. Or they may forewarn you of problems you may be able to avoid or lessen. Generally it is best to use them as tips to help you manage your day and nothing more.
Your Ancient Symbol Card for January 7th is The Believer
Your Ancient Symbol Card for Today
The Believer
The Believer represents Faith and the realization that you have an important place in the workings of the Universe. Although The Believer may not always understand why things are the way they are, they none-the-less feel an underlying cosmic rhythm which is moving events in a direction that is good. The Believer rejoices in their celestial role, because they realize their life has purpose on a grand scale.
As a daily card, The Believer denotes a time when you will benefit by embracing and exploring your place in the Universe. The Believer confirms that you have inherent value far beyond our secular existence; that you are an important part of the both the grandeur and the mystery of our Cosmos.
Your Daily Witches Rune for January 7th is the Crossed Arrows
The Daily Witches Rune
The Crossed Spears
Meaning: The presence of the spear signifies arguments, negative events, and all manner of strife of an upsetting nature. However similar to the ‘Tower’ tarot card if next to a positive rune it could mean the end of an argument or quarrel. If with the rings it means the healing or renewal of a relationship. If there are military connections it could mean promotion. If illness is within the equation it means a speedy and successful recovery.
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