Category: Articles

Pagan Myths Debunked: Where Did You Think That Pointy Hat Came From, Anyway?

Pagan Myths Debunked: Where Did You Think That Pointy Hat Came From, Anyway?

by Lilith Veritas

It’s never been easy to be a pagan in a world where differences are feared and minorities are persecuted. It’s made even tougher by how little nonpagans usually know about the realities of our lifestyle and beliefs. How many times have you had to explain that Satanism is not Wicca, or that Wiccans are not the only pagans? Most nonpagans get their information about Wicca, neo-paganism and other Craft-related beliefs from the mass media, which has faithfully clung to stereotypes and painted a sensationalistic picture of pagans, just like they do about everything else. TV shows like Charmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer have contributed much to making paganism seem less frightening and more acceptable to the mainstream, but they’ve also continued to support misinformation and superstitions that have plagued pagans throughout modern times. Shows like Sabrina, or even the old favorite Bewitched, leave nonpagan viewers with the impression that witchcraft is all fantasy and special effects, and anyone who believes in such things might have a screw or two loose. Really, do you know anyone who has a talking cat or has developed a working teleport spell?

The reality is that the majority of pagans today come from other religions and backgrounds and are at least partly self-educated, and many bring some of these ideas with them! It’s really difficult to educate the nonpagan public if we’re not clear ourselves on the history of witchcraft and the origins of our symbols, tools and stereotypes. While it’s hard to change deeply held beliefs, the truth is a powerful weapon against fe

and prejudice, and acknowledging our own history is the only way to move forward to a (hopefully) enlightened future.

For a quick example of the history of a pagan tool, let’s look at the Book of Shadows. Many pagans take it for granted that these books are an integral part of being a pagan. The term itself has been popularized by the media; the sisters on Charmed have a family Book of Shadows, which seems to be a universal encyclopedia of all things magickal, and the sequel to the popular Blair Witch Project movie was called Book of Shadows. The common perception seems to be that Books of Shadows have been handed down from medieval times and contain wisdom gathered hundreds of years ago. How accurate is that perception?

The first recorded reference to an actual Book of Shadows was in 1939, by the founder of modern Wicca, Gerald Gardner. He claims to have received pieces of this book during his initiation into the religion now known as Gardnerian Wicca. Both Doreen Valiente and Aleister Crowley appear to have added to the book, after Gardner “restored” it. Prior to that, however, there is no known recording of a Book of Shadows, at least not by that name, and few references to grimoires or books of knowledge used specifically by pagans. The book Aradia: Gospel of the Witches was written by folklorist Charles G. Leland in 1899 and appears to be the closest historically, but it would hardly have been ancient knowledge a mere 40 years later. Books of Shadows are now used by many pagans, both Wiccan and non-, but that name seems to be solely a creation of Gardner and his contemporaries.

Many pagans would like to believe that there is a written source for ancient spells, rituals and traditions to which they can turn to validate their current practices. They may forget that in ancient times, and often through the first part of the twentieth century, the common person didn’t know how to write or read! Most pagans in the Western world today can both read and write, and even those deemed “illiterate” can often do both enough to get by. During the height of the witch hunts and in rural areas where folk medicine and pagan rituals may have continued more or less uninterrupted, literacy was not common, and it is unlikely that many witches, if any, kept such a book. Most commoners didn’t keep books at all!

There is another argument against the idea of ancient grimoires being commonplace: Anyone found with such a book would likely have been found guilty of heresy and possibly put to death, and the book summarily burned. This threat would have been lessened for someone of the upper classes, but for typical rural folk would probably have been too big a risk to take. During the times when herbal healers had to be very careful to hide the tools of their trade and be sure to put their best Christian face forward, it would have been virtual suicide to have a book of “arcane knowledge” laying around the house, even if most of your neighbors couldn’t read it! Having books at all was cause for suspicion amongst the lower classes, since they were poorly understood by most and rarely read by any but high society. The few documented grimoires likely did belong to folks of higher classes, as they were the ones who could afford them and could also afford to learn to read.

As I mentioned, many pagans would like to have a historical book of knowledge to justify their current practices. While it would be nice to trace such things unbroken into the past, “new” does not mean “bad” or “invalid.” Newer ideas aren’t automatically bad ideas! Now that we have the means to write down our beliefs and rituals to pass on to future generations, or just to remind ourselves, many of us will choose to do so. Knowing where a practice comes from allows room to change and grow, and keeps folks talking from a place closer to truth than superstition. And knowing that new practices are springing up will hopefully keep the pagan paths alive and vital instead of bogging them down in the dogma so common in many mainstream religions.

Moving into the realm of stereotypes, many Americans think of the pointed black hat as the key identifier of a witch. These folks are often the most surprised when they meet a real, modern witch wearing jeans and a T-shirt. But where did the stereotype of this pointy hat come from?

One thing to keep in mind in the search for this stereotype’s origins is that it is peculiarly American and Western European, particularly from the British Isles, and it is a fairly modern invention. Witches in Eastern countries do not appear wearing pointy hats or any of the accoutrements that we commonly associate with the Halloween-style witch. Early woodcuts of witches in the Middle Ages showed them wearing scarves, or hats popular at the time, or even with their hair flying in the wind. Our media has popularized the view of witches with pointy hats as well as green skin, warts and brooms. I suspect the Wizard of Oz movie released at the dawning of the media age has more to do with the current stereotype of the “wicked witch” than does historical evidence!

The most positive interpretation I came across was echoed by Doreen Valiente as the probable source: Pointed hats were actually a visual representation of the Cone of Power that witches drew upon during their rituals. While this puts a nice, witch-friendly spin on the image, I find it to be rather unlikely. People in previous centuries who were creating woodcuts of witches tended to paint a very unkind picture and did not include positive aspects of true witchcraft as it existed at the time. Witches were portrayed dancing with devils and participating in all varieties of heinous rites, not drawing down the moon and healing the sick. It is unlikely that someone projecting a witch in such a light would bother to represent a Cone of Power, which is typically a positive force.

There is another, commonly held belief that the pointed hat originated with another persecuted group in Europe, the Jews. While Jews did wear pointed headgear, most scholars now believe these hats were not a likely source for the witch’s pointed hat. After all, pointed hats were fairly common throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

This fact leads us to the source I find to be most believable, and most mundane, for the Pointy Hat Look. During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, commoners in Wales and England often wore pointed hats. As fashions changed, the last to retain the old styles were the rural and peasant folk, who were considered “backward” by higher society and were usually the ones accused of heresy and witchcraft. Much as we today have stereotypes of the sort of student who might commit violence at a high school, so did the medieval people have their ideas of what sort of person might be a witch.

Along these lines, Gary Jensen, a professor of sociology at Vanderbilt University, postulates a connection between the persecution of Quakers in America and the stereotypical appearance of witches in our folklore. Quakers did wear pointed hats, and the negative image of witches wearing conical hats in America became common about the same time anti-Quaker sentiment was at a peak. Quakers were thought by some to consort with demons and practice black magic, things also associated with the early American view of witches. Once again, an easily recognized symbol of an oppressed minority may have become generalized to a group equated with them.

In the final analysis, it’s likely that more than one of these issues came into play to ingrain the pointy hat into the mainstream idea of what a witch looks like. After all, the ideas that stick most firmly in the mind are the ones repeated from different sources, and many things in history can’t be traced to a single root cause or moment.

In the Craft, as in all aspects of human culture, the powers of media and modern communication weave together a new “truth” from bits of folklore and whispered traditions, and picking apart this fabric to get at the real foundation requires persistence and the willingness to view your own ideas in a new light.

For those interested in further reading about pagan stereotypes and history, I suggest the Internet as a great source of information, if one takes the information found with the proper grain of salt. Two articles in particular that I came across stand out in my mind, and I believe it would benefit pagans in general to read and consider the implications of both of them.

First of these is a speech by Doreen Valiente at the National Conference of the Pagan Federation on November 22, 1997. As a founding influence on the modern practice of Wicca and a contemporary of both Gerald Gardner and Aleister Crowley, Valiente had a unique perspective. In this speech, she questioned many “truths” about Gardnerian Wicca and presented views that some may find surprising. Transcripts of her speech can be found at http://www.users.drak.net/lilitu/valiente.htm.

Second is a very well-researched essay about the Burning Times by Jenny Gibbons, which can be found at http://www.cog.org/witch_hunt.html.

While I don’t endorse either of these sources as the absolute truth, they are certainly thought provoking.

Some other sources:

The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft, by Rosemary Ellen Guiley

Best Witches site, http://www.rci/rutgers/edu/~jup/witches

“The Witching Hours,” by Shantell Powell, http://shanmonster.bla-bla.com/witch

Magickal Meanderings: Traveling the Mystical Highways of Life

Magickal Meanderings: Traveling the Mystical Highways of Life

by Bronwynn Forrest Torgerson

Over time, it has become increasingly clear to me that while we may be the ones who pack the cooler, check the tires and top off the tank, there comes a time in every trip where the best charted course goes astray. It is then that we lay the map aside and rest while Deity drives. Spectacular vistas unfold in this way, and the harvest of tales is terrific.

When I left my hometown of Peoria, Illinois, last October and headed toward Washington state, I yearned for the sequoias up the California coast. However, after several leg-cramping days on the road, motels that chomped deeply into my budget and a first taste of winter’s ice and fog and snow, I seriously considered cutting my journey short and opting for a more direct route home.

In Salt Lake City, I cursed my luck and their road construction. I-80 had abruptly ended, thanks to rerouting for the upcoming Winter Olympics, and I was forced into town. I rolled down my window at the first business I came to, a car wash, and asked two men for directions. They conferred, then one turned back to me. “If I were you, Ma’am, I’d hang a right on Redwoods Boulevard.’ A word to the Wiccan was sufficient, and I found my route again, forgoing the connection to I-90 and forging on to the trees.

One bittersweet theme that wove throughout my journey Northwest was my nightly phone call to my sister in Illinois, whose husband was dying of cancer. Hospice was involved, and his time would not be long. Just south of Eureka, California, I was tired and the gas gauge low. No motel signs in view and the prospect of sleeping in my crammed-to-capacity van looked grimmer by the moment. Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw a small, faded sign. “Accommodations,” it read, with an arrow pointing down the road, right into the middle of nowhere. Down a dirt road, over a trestle bridge, past a winding creek I drove, astonished to find myself at the driveway of a small cluster of stone villas! The local cat ran out to brush my legs, then sped off toward the circular courtyard, where a grove of five redwoods stood sentry. That night, sad news awaited. My brother-in-law had passed away that morning. Later that night, when the stars came out, I adjourned to the courtyard alone. I lit some sage in the abalone shell decorating a white wicker table, and sent prayers in many directions. My stay at that stone villa was the least expensive night of my trip. Deity had provided, in every single way.

Bellingham has proven to be no exception to serendipity. Earlier this year, a postcard for an artist’s reception and the promise of free French food and wine coaxed me from my home. I arrived at the Jody Bergsma Gallery on King Street, where gurgling fountains and candlelight led one to the door. Inside, a visual as well as edible feast awaited. I seated myself in the loft where a musician unknown to me would soon perform.

As Christopher Bingham took the stage and launched into his first song, the lyrics dropped my jaw. “Calling up a Horned One, calling up a Green Man, we are gathering here!” Stunned, I noticed the pentacle patch sewn to his guitar strap! By the end of the first set, I had purchased a CD and become a forever Gaia Consort fan.

As a mistress of magick, here are some highway travel tips I can offer you. After checking out of your motel room and consulting your atlas, trace an imaginary pentacle over your steering column, intoning, “Spell and magick, three times three, swift, safe journeys grant to me that I might reach my destination without accident, incident or cops unless I need them.”

When freeway traffic is frozen, through unseen hazards or misfortunes up ahead, you can send positive energy to unblock the obstruction and speed you and fellow travelers on your way. To do so, wave your power hand in an undulating motion saying, “Ebb and flow…ebb and flow…swiftly, safely, on we go.” Surprisingly soon, you’re rolling right along.

In closing, let me say that while it’s good to consult your travel agent before embarking on adventures, don’t forget to pack blue protection candles or to invite the gods along. Safe journeys, good winds and Godspeed as you travel the highways of life!

Creating and Using Roles of Power: When Wisely Used, This Ritual Bond Can Multiply Your Energy

Creating and Using Roles of Power: When Wisely Used, This Ritual Bond Can Multiply Your Energy

by George D. Jackson

The establishment and utilization of a pole of power is probably the most far-reaching magickal operation you will ever attempt. A pole of power can be defined as a person or persons joined to you on the five levels of intellect, emotion, creativity, spirit and the physical through empathy and consensus to perform powerful magickal acts. In joining, the other person or persons and yourself form a gestalt, an integrated structure or pattern that makes up a unified experience and has specific properties that can neither be derived from the elements of the whole nor considered simply as the sum of these elements. In short, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

The formation of this gestalt means a pole of power can be viewed as one of the most significant power multipliers available to a magickal adept. This bond is in fact a magickal marriage, and its offspring are magickal operations that the individuals involved would have difficulty performing on a solitary basis. Groups such as covens operate on this principle but utilize numbers to make up for an individual commitment to the circle that is (usually) less than between a paired couple working as poles of power.

Most magick users operate in a solitary mode, occasionally forming temporary group gestalts. The solitary approach is perhaps the least vulnerable and most unhindered from a personal standpoint, but with some notable exceptions it is also the least powerful. Even when practicing magick in the solitary condition, an in-depth personal psychological preparation is strongly advised. Many individual practitioners venture into areas where their power levels are too low to properly cope with what they locate, or where they cannot comprehend the circumstances they find themselves in. Among the unfortunate results of this type of journey can be deep states of depression, as well as from time to time hallucinations. Exploring the magickal unknown on a solitary basis frequently means the practitioner has few resources when it comes to falling back, regrouping and establishing a magickal defense. For such exploration, strength in numbers can be very valuable.

Poles of power are utilized at three levels. The first is a temporary union of two or more magick users to perform a predetermined magickal act. Practitioners often form poles of power on this level at festivals or magickal gatherings, and the most common usage is the erection of the magickal circle and the wards. The second level is semi-permanent and frequently involves a coven, guild or religious organization. The most common magickal actions at this level fall within the area of invocation (addressing a deity). The third and final level is the state of the permanent pole of power.

The permanent state does not have to be between a male and female, but that formation is the most common. A permanent state is almost always bipolar, with each pole contributing the psychological orientation the other lacks and reinforcing the other’s abilities. To effectively create a permanent state, the magick users involved should view the state as they would choosing a marriage partner in consensus reality.

To create the bond effectively will very likely demand that each partner perform some very honest self-evaluation. This is a formidable type of personal survey. From what participants learn in it about how they relate to themselves and others, they may find it necessary to perform some psychological engineering upon themselves before entering into a permanent pole-of-power relationship. To understand the level of work involved in such engineering, consider how many self-help books are being sold and how many people are undergoing some sort of psychotherapy. The initial groundwork of self-evaluation, empathy and consensus make a permanent pole-of-power state one that is best not rushed into.

It is also well to know at this point that, because the pole-of-power state is a magickal bond, an automatic energetic feedback loop is created on the quantum or elemental level. Once this loop is formed, violating your partner’s sense of propriety is going to have consequences. Also, it is well to know that the subconscious does not forget anything that you do. You will become vulnerable to actions connected to this bond, and the stronger the emotional value of the occurrence the more vulnerable you will be.

Should the participants decide to go forward, the emotional and intellectual status is laid down for a permanent pole-of-power relationship by establishing a state of trust and honor and a desire to work for mutual benefit. This mutual trust and cooperation in turn will provide energy for the spiritual, creative and physical portions of the bond. The process is hinted at in the Wiccan “In perfect love and perfect trust” and the Thelemite’s “Love is the Law, love under Will.”

Once you have done the groundwork, you are ready to perform ritual, and some if not all of the power evoked will remain with you for the rest of your life.

The ritual is performed in the following manner. The first thing to do is establish the statement of intent, which is for both parties to commit to being each other’s pole of power. The next thing is to build a “free space” or place of power in which to perform the ritual. In the male-female mode, it is recommended that the rite be done in the nude, symbolizing that both parties have nothing to hide from one another. A banishing spell is then done to clear the area of hindering forces and is followed by the primary bonding ritual. An example follows:

We are one mind, me and thee, together when apart; near when far;

Thoughts within thoughts, aware when unaware; bound within the circle

Now until whenever!

We are one spirit, me and thee, together when apart; near when far;

Will joined to Will; felt within and without; bound within the circle,

Now until whenever!

We are one body, me and thee, together when apart; touching when separated;

Flesh of the same flesh; bound within the circle,

Now until whenever!

As a form of reinforcement, which is not a requirement, the ritual may be culminated in sexual union. Aleister Crowley frequently used sexual union in bonding rituals, and practitioners interested in including this technique in their ritual are referred to his works. After this step, the wards are then dismissed and the circle is taken down.

I can tell you from personal experience that the pole-of-power circumstance has many benefits outside of being a power multiplier. It can be an excellent early-warning system when the bonded pair explores unknown spaces. What might have a limited impact on one person can affect the other quite strongly, which information can allow both to make a strategic retreat from a threatening situation. A pole-of-power bond is also very good for long-range nonverbal communication. It sets up that “call me” feeling that crops up in the back of one’s consciousness.

There are other advantages that vary with the people involved. While the bond does not prevent the highs and lows that occur in interpersonal relationships, in my experience it very definitely shortens the duration of the lows. Finally, there is a personal connection that persists even when the people involved have drifted apart in time and space. When consensus is joined once more, power is immediately renewed.

George D. Jackson is an Adept V of the Sorcerer’s Guild, a group dedicated to the enhancement of magickal work among its membership that is open to initiates of most magickal traditions.

Powering Up the Circle

Powering Up the Circle

by George D. Jackson

One of the problems I have become aware of in our community is the low level of power we raise in the circles we cast. I have noticed this mainly through listening to and reading a litany of complaints from various practitioners in several magickal paradigms. At first I thought perhaps this problem was just in these people’s perception, but after inquiries among some long-time magickal practitioners in the region, I have found that these people are not alone in this observation. I also found a number of our fellows out there seeking solutions.

Several reasons exist why we may be having difficulty in raising high levels of power within our circles. Sometimes, low power levels in public rituals are deliberate so as to shield neophytes from psychic overload. I have some reservations concerning this, as I was originally drawn to my magickal paradigm by feeling the power present in a series of semipublic circles.

Another significant reason for lack of power is that some of us come from the major religious paradigms where group activities were performed in a follow-the-leader type of approach and the magickal dynamics were never explained. The leader of these activities probably had some concept concerning the methods being used to unite consciousness, but he sure wasn’t going to call them magickal. Also, any power that was raised was directed to the benefit of the religious organization involved. The congregation, powerwise, was left in a dead zone and just accepted that as normal. Because people learn from experience and many magick users go from major religions to being solitary practitioners, attendance of public magickal rituals with low power levels was not remarked on.

Another reason why there are difficulties in raising power in the group environment is connected to the personal psychological defense screens that most of us have installed in our individual subconscious minds over the course of our lives. These are necessary for us to go on with our day-to-day lives without being overwhelmed by outside forces. However, many of us don’t know how to lower these screens when the need comes about. The following is an exercise that can give the individual magick user the ability to drop her or his screens at Will when the circumstances warrant it.

This exercise includes a method used in the Huna (Hawaiian magick) paradigm. It involves using a pendulum to talk to your “basic self,” otherwise known as your subconscious mind. The Huna approach considers an individual as a gestalt entity consisting of three selves existing in the physical body. The middle self is the conscious analytical mind, tasked with aiding the evolution of the basic self as well as its own; the high and basic selves are both contained in the collective unconscious. The high self is the most evolved and is the source of individual power; the basic self is primal and is the source of emotion, as well as storing all memory, processing environmental items into energy and running the autonomic nervous system. It is also the conduit between the high and middle self, and as such it needs to be educated.

The materials needed for this exercise are a pendulum and a piece of paper with a circle drawn on it and a cross within the circle. The first thing one needs to do is set up the parameters of the operation. Suspending the pendulum over the center of the circle by finger and thumb, you tell your basic self that forward and back is “yes” and side to side is “no.” Around the circle is “I don’t know.” Now ask your subconscious to show you yes, no and I don’t know.

Once this agreement is set in place, you are ready to proceed. Holding the pendulum over the circle, you tell your basic self to lower its barriers and allow outside energy to flow through you. You then ask your subconscious if it understands this command and will comply. When it answers “yes,” reward it by telling it how much you approve of this decision.

This exercise is designed to be performed by two or more people who have learned to drop their barriers. The people involved join hands and command their basic selves to drop their barriers and allow the energy flow. Power flows into the right hand and out of the left. It should be cycled at least three times or until one can feel the tingle or surge passing through them. Practitioners can then direct the accumulated power into the center of the group and use it to perform operations agreed on before the gestalt (the whole that is greater than the sum of the parts) was formed. Alternatively, the power can be directed outward to form a cone of power. Once the group’s goals are accomplished, be sure to ground the power and raise the pre-existing personal barriers. This kind of work is a temporary magickal bonding. If it is not dissolved at the end of the ritual, you are going to leave with more than you planned on.

Like most worthwhile things, this exercise takes a period of practice. Once it becomes commonly used, it becomes second nature. One thing it does is allow the user to rate the levels of energy in any circle the user participates in. When among close associates, it allows for a lot of fine-tuning. I use this in my “Path of the Adept” magick course, and my students are strong!

Strengthen Your Magick by Learning Your Personal Color Key

Strengthen Your Magick by Learning Your Personal Color Key

by Melanie Fire Salamander

As I write, the deep green-blue of earliest dawn fades to clear royal blue, which lifts to a hovering grey that turns peach-yellow. Goddess Aurora, the herald of the sun, washes the east with color as every day begins.

For the sighted, color defines the first visual experiences of life. Before we see shapes, we see dappled colors moving before our infant eyes. From these shifting colors, the forms and the meanings of our lives come into focus.

Yet often, pagans take the color meanings for our magick from tables of correspondences. The rich traditional associations for color can certainly help drive your workings. But to work my own color magick, I have found it useful to discover the color meanings that already lie in my own deep symbol-speaking subconscious — the personal meanings that my deep self has accumulated for each color over my lifetime, and perhaps before. My teachers and my own work have shown me that the deep self is one of the main drivers of magick, and I find that my deep color resonances affect what my magick brings me. You too will probably discover that what your deep self associates with each color has resonances that affect your magick.

To discover your own personal meanings for colors, try the simple meditation following.

Color Meditation

1. Choose the colors you want to meditate on. For my work, I chose five: orange, green, red, yellow and blue.

2. Find a pure, unpatterned example of each color. I worked with sheets of colored construction paper, but use whatever you have handy, for example magazine pictures or plastic color gels. For best results, choose unmixed colors, without too much black or white muddying or clouding the tone. I chose colors that were all of similar intensity.

3. Cut a medium-sized, rectangular swatch of each color, say about five inches tall and three inches wide.

4. Set up your space for meditation. Find a comfortable place where you won’t be disturbed; take the phone off the hook and if necessary shut out your pets. Make sure an even light falls where you will place each color swatch, so you get the best visual image of each.

5. Set the first color swatch at easy eye-level for meditation, and set the others so that they’re ready to trade for the first swatch.

6. Ground, center and get into light trance.

7. Meditate on each color swatch in turn for five to ten minutes, enough time that you feel that you’ve worked through all the meanings your deep self has to bring forward for you. Write down your results, if you so desire.

My Results

One reason I’m glad I performed this meditation is that I didn’t always get what I expected from each color, as you’ll see.

Orange, I found, raised my energy immediately. It made me feel tense and nervous; the feeling was intense and unpleasant. That didn’t throw me, but I was a little surprised at how quickly I felt the energy change and how negative it was, because when just looking at the color I liked it.

Green also changed my energy level immediately and strongly — I felt a strong, pleasurable sexual sensation in my groin, most intense about the level of my ovaries. The color warmed me up physically, and I felt an almost smug pleasure. I had an image of the woods and thought of the god Pan. I felt horny, but not for anyone specifically — just that energy, without an object. I’ve found that green correspondingly works for me in love and sex magick. (Note that, for best karmic results, it’s best not to work love or sex magick to change another person’s will, but rather work to let the universe bring you your best partner or partners, whomever that may be.) Orange and green were probably the biggest energy changers of all for me.

Red wasn’t as intense for me as green or orange. I felt a slight headache, and a change of emotion rather than a strong change in physical energy. The emotion I felt was one of yearning or longing, not so much mine as of an ancient tragedy. I had an image of smoke over a battlefield, and I thought of the goddess the Morrigan. That was interesting to me, because I’ve always consciously associated red with love: Valentine hearts.

Yellow was moderately intense, more so than red, not as much as green or orange. I liked yellow. It raised my energy in a positive way, made me feel cheerful and made me smile. I thought of grassy lanes in sunlight.

Blue I found trancing; it had a reverberatory effect. It didn’t change my energy as the other colors had, because blue had for me the same deep thrumming energy as meditation itself. Blue did intensify and deepen my meditation, and I felt it strongly in my heart chakra. Its strength was on a par with yellow.

Your Own Work

You don’t have to work with the same colors I did, of course. Try meditating on the colors that you like best or that repel you, and find out why you react that way. If you like, you can use meditation to clear a color of negative meanings — simply bring that color up in your mind’s eye and run neutral cleansing energy through it until its energy changes. When visualizing color, I have found it best to work with transparent colors; if you find muddiness or cloudiness in a color you’re working with, try running cleansing energy through it. Check in with colors over time — you may find that their meanings change for you.

Once you know your personal color meanings, try using those in your magick. Find out which colors mean willpower or cheerfulness for you, and wear those to draw those feelings to you, or incorporate them in spell-work. If orange helps you concentrate, use it for your computer desktop and in spells about mental tasks. If blue or purple calms you and makes you trancy, paint your meditation room with it. If a clear pink means sex to you, dress your love rituals and your boudoir accordingly. Knowing your own personal color associations will make color an even more useful tool in your magickal toolbox.

A Romp Through the Palette of Life

A Romp Through the Palette of Life

by Freya Ray

Personally, I love color. I’m not an especially visual person, and yet I am vibrantly aware of the magical properties of color every day. Since theory fails to fascinate me, and inspiration to play around with the possibilities of this luscious world always fascinates me, let’s have a romp through the rainbow, shall we? Here are some bright ideas for expanding the palette of your life, for fun and profit, color by color. And it’s my romp, so we’re not doing equal time — some colors are more fun than others.

Luscious, Bloody, Sexy Red

Red. The root chakra. The primal invitation to life. The blood of birth and death, the red clay of the mother between our toes, that haze that comes over your vision before you do something really really stupid, fire, rage, passion, life. Red is a color that knows it’s alive, that feels the heartbeat of its own jugular, that wants and demands more. More what? More of everything, most especially more life. Red does not ask why it’s here or if these pants make its butt look big. Red is too busy sinking its teeth deep, growling and getting lost in the sensations of the juice running down its throat. By all means, if your life has gotten a bit academic or routine lately, invoke red.

Wear lipstick of that shade fondly called “Fuck-Me Red.” Paint your nails to match, especially your toenails. Dye your hair.

Char a big slab of steak, leaving the center bloody. Cut it into strips, pile them in a bowl with the blood released by your knife, and eat it with your fingers. Drain the bowl, knowing in your mind you’re drinking the blood of the beast as you do it. No, tempeh cannot be substituted. Have dark chocolate for dessert.

Paint your body with tribal designs of your own delirious inspiration. Use red finger paint, or lipstick, or menstrual blood, or catsup. Dance naked, covered in slashes and spirals, to the beat of a drum.

In feng shui, red is the color of the “fame” corner. Red always screams “pay attention to me!” Wear the color and act as though you deserve to be noticed. Call attention to yourself in outrageous ways. Laugh loudly and refuse to be cowed.

Feel your heartbeat. Feel the blood pulsing just below the surface of your flesh, and know you are beast. Know you are life. Know you are passion, awaiting expression. Know your blood, your heartbeat, is the blood and heartbeat of all your ancestors, all the ancestors, all the peoples and creatures of this planet. Know that the pulsation of all life is one, in you.

Juicy, Tasty Orange

The belly chakra. Relationships, sexuality. It’s a great color, I’m sure, but it makes me look like I have hepatitis, so I have a slightly estranged relationship with orange. Nevertheless, I can make a couple recommendations.

Bake cookies with cinnamon in them. Add saffron to your rice. Make juice from fresh oranges — it takes what, five minutes, and what a difference! Better yet, let someone you love wake up to fresh-squeezed juice and your silent smile.

Meditate on a candle flame, letting the shifting play of tones awaken your memories of warmth, family or sexuality. Let the connection of the belly and the flame lead you back through the past, before this life, to the beds of all your wonderful lovers. Let the memories of loving bliss wash over you in waves of time and space. Light all those candles scattered about and make love to someone in a glow of shifting orange reflections.

Want what you can’t have, and then answer the question, “If I could have it, or the feelings that I believe it would evoke, how would I get it?”

Let lust — primal, unreasoning attraction — lead you to a new friend. Let yourself acknowledge the little belly flutters of lust you feel sometimes, in unguarded moments, for a dear friend. Know that all of life is about connection, and that lust and love are allies.

Yellow, the Sun of Shining Self

The light of all life. The shining disk of the solar plexus, the home of the will, of personal power. The gold glitter of success. Yellow evokes happiness, confidence and power.

Get some sun. I know it’s early spring in Seattle, but on those days when Father Sun emerges, go worship him properly. Get out your shades and tip your face up to the sky. Paint your entire body with gold glitter and go dancing. Have a power dinner: warm melty brie and crusty bread, crab legs and dripping yellow butter, champagne…

Meditate on your solar plexus chakra, seeing a shining sun at home there, and feeling the strength of your will, your ability to create the world of your choosing.

Abundant, Grass-Stained Green

The color of money. The wonderful power of our nation’s choice of paper currency. This color is also associated with healing and the heart chakra, but, truth be told, I think first of big wads of cash and second of doing summersaults down an immense hill.

Play with money. Do some fun work with your abundance issues: take $200 out of the bank in one-dollar bills. Scatter them all over your bedroom. Clear wads of them out of your bed so you can sleep at night. Find them everywhere. When they gather in the corners, pick them up in handfuls and toss them into the air. Money is energy crystallized. A truly magical photosynthesis, as the energy of work is stored in flat paper. Nothing more than love in material form.

Engage with life in a basic form — the creatures that photosynthesize so that the rest of us can live. Buy some houseplants, or more of them, and make a luscious jungle inside your home. Plant a garden in a couple of months. Grow wheatgrass and feed it to your cat. Notice the moss in the sidewalk. Find trees and hug them already!

Have a healing circle with some like-minded friends. Allow the healing color of green to travel where it is needed. Meditate on ideas of love and connection, your relationship with all life. Be in love, without concern for a suitable object. “I’m in love” is a sentence without referent, and a beautiful place to be.

I Ain’t Got No Chakra But Boy Do I Rock Pink!

Blushes. Where would we be without pink for blushes? Challenge yourself: find the compliment outrageously true enough to get every one of your associates to blush.

In feng shui as in Valentine’s Day, red, pink and white are the colors of love. Live it up! Decorate the back right corner of your home as a love altar with candles, ribbons, pictures of Hindu goddesses, massage oils, photos of your true love — whatever evokes the concept of loving connection for you.

Pink is your friend. Pink has never had a self-important moment in its entire career as a color on this planet. It is impossible to stand on your dignity or take yourself too seriously when wearing pink. This is good!

Calm, Cool Blue

Blue is a money color in feng shui. Adding an aquarium to your home or business is said to bring prosperity. Create an abundance altar in the back left corner of your home, including the colors of red, blue, and purple, along with candles, plants, lights, stones and pictures that evoke abundance for you.

Meditating on the color will put one in touch with calming influences and the state of mind where creativity can be expressed.

Water — deep, flowing blue water — is one of the most profound healers on the planet. Soak in it, bubble in it, stand under a moving stream of it and ask water to take away that which no longer serves you. Offer yourself naked to the ocean. I guarantee a rebirth as you emerge.

There are some very groovy blue stones, including sodalite and lapis lazuli.

Royalty Loves Purple

If red says, “Notice me,” purple says, “Respect me.” Perhaps even, “Obey me.” Purple is a power color, and wearing it is guaranteed to help you feel on top of your game.

Violet light is a strong tool for cleansing in visualization. Amethyst is known as the “sobriety stone” and has a remarkable ability to puncture denial.

Violet is the color of the third eye, of psychic awareness. Put some lavender oil in the bath, light a bunch of purple candles and see where your insight takes you. See that violet flame between your eyes, and let the images of your deeper mind flow into your awareness.

Basic Black

Black has been the color of choice for clergy in many traditions. It gives the sense that the person wearing it has access to mystical information, mysterious secrets. I could tell you more, but as my own wardrobe is mostly composed of black clothing, I’m going to leave this color as an exercise for the reader.

Champagne

I’m mentioning this vital color for two reasons. One: I look like crap in white and so ivory, champagne, whatever, is my best option for trying to look innocent. Not like anyone buys it anyway. Two: it’s the color of vanilla-scented candles, which are on the short list of reasons why this is a cool planet to live on. Put a vanilla bean in your sugar bowl.

Oh, and girls! Buy some pearls. Your grandmother knew about pearls, even if many of us have forgotten, and have caught the delusion that somehow diamonds are more important. It’s crap. Diamonds are the junkyard of stones, collecting every stray bit of energy that comes through their life and they can’t be cleared. But pearls, well, get enough strands of them so that you can feel their weight (cheapest method: gem show, buy a hank, string them yourself). Drape them on yourself, and you will know you are woman. Guys, by all means do this when you’re wanting to access your feminine side. But beware, they will bring up fonts of estrogen you didn’t know you had!

White

They say white contains all the colors together. Visualizing white light is a tree-hugging crystal freak cliché, but you know, it works. For healing, protection, and clarity, see that clear, bright, almost bluish light of a halogen bulb or clear sunlight on a brilliant day.

It’s also a reflection of the truth that all of life is a hologram, every part contains the whole, every individual is connected to all of the cosmos. The Akashic records are always available, and in every moment it is possible for you to know everything you need to. Practice believing that there is no separation. Even if you only pull it off for a moment. We are all one, the light of each soul shines brightly if we only choose to see.

Bathe yourself in moonlight. Put a jug of water outside at the full moon, and drink the essence of lunar wisdom. Know that everything happens in its own rhythm and in its own time. Know that the only guarantee is that all life is learning love, and that we will all find that loving union in time.

White is your canvas. Draw on it what you will, and harm none.

The Happy Side of Magick

The Happy Side of Magick

Author: Poppy

I have never really used many spells or chants, and when I have it is often at a time when I feel I can do nothing else… one of those ‘may as well try it’ approaches. I understand the mechanics of spell casting, how it works and how the desired effect is achieved, the problem I find with it though is that I was brought up with fairy tales and stories about Witches who cast elaborate spells with confounding results, and I find because of this upbringing that spell casting is intrinsically linked, in my mind, to fanatical stories and make believe lands.

I say this only to give you, as a reader, some sense of understanding how much effort had already been applied before I decided to cast a love spell. It was not a compulsion spell, merely creating a cosmic attraction field. I do understand that there are differing views on the appropriate use of love spells, of any kind, ranging from never-to-be-used to ‘use all the time, everyday!’ However I am not writing to discuss the pros and cons of casting a love spell, nor even, to some extent, the morals that must be thought through before one is cast, I am simply writing to explain and inform how mine worked, and how I would recommend it to anyone in the same situation, or any situation.

As previously stated, I was in pretty dire straits when I preformed this spell, (I know some would not consider that an appropriate term for being out of love, which some deem as a trivial matter. I believe it is a very apt description.) and as such, was not expecting any results. At the time, I had become rather disenchanted with Wicca. I cannot pinpoint exactly why as no major life events had occurred to make me believe that the Goddess was absent. It was more just a lack of connection, which is probably part of the reason I believed the spell would fail.

It was one of those long term/ three months spells, which meant that I wasn’t too fussed when nothing appeared after a few weeks. So I promptly forgot about the spell due to an influx in collage coursework and activities, and was asked on a date. To me this had never happened, and so I was, understandably I believe, rather surprised. He asked me over text, which I later found out his friend had actually composed, and we met up six days later.

I have to admit I had no idea who he was. Even after finding him on Facebook, I had difficulty in pinning him as the guy who was in my quiz team, Never the less, we started talking, and despite his apparent obsession with football and The Killers (who are a fine band, just not my style) , I agreed to a second date, and a third, and so on.

Now it was around the fifth date that I remembered about the spell I had cast, mainly by finding it whilst looking through my Wicca box. I didn’t connect the spell with my newfound boyfriend as I was having what I believe to be a bit of a slow day. I had become captivated with Wicca once again mere weeks after casting the aforementioned love spell. I proceeded to look through the ‘requirements’ for the person I wished to meet and found, to my surprise, that my recently obtained boyfriend met every criteria… and not in a vague ‘well I suppose’ sense, more in a height/weight/age/exact personality sense! I was literally speechless. I think I should mention now that the spell cast was for a soul-mate (I know, I just jump right in to it!) not just general love. I can say now, with our year anniversary just gone, that it has definitely worked.

I know some of you may be sitting there scoffing at my perhaps pitiful year long relationship, but to me, it is a success… especially considering that for the last three months he has been away at Canterbury, which is a good five hour train journey from where I live, making the relationship harder.

I didn’t really put off telling my boyfriend about my religion, more it just never actively came up. He informed me from the start that he was ‘devout’ atheist, and indeed some of our more interesting conversations have been on the concepts of souls and deities. However, I believe him knowing my religion made our relationship better. But I would not recommend the way in which he found out.

I am afraid I am going to diverge slightly, and I apologize if any view it as an unwanted interruption. I feel that what occurred was a breach of trust, and really just a show of a lack of morality in some people. My boyfriend found out about my religion through one of his friends, who happened to be a sergeant at the cadets I attended and a devout Christian. “At cadets”, for those of you who may be unfamiliar with the dress code, we were allowed to wear necklaces as long as they were hidden and for religious purposes.

I wore a plain silver pentagram at the time, and the chain occasionally showed, causing questions at least once a week. Usually I could just say it is a religious necklace (as trying to explain it to people who aren’t listening and are just desperate to be told you summon the devil is tedious) . However this time he walked a little way, turned as though an afterthought and asked “Yeah, what religion?” I answered, “I’m Wiccan” and we carried on our separate ways.

I thought nothing of this until I got a call from my boyfriend asking if I was a Witch. I was a bit bemused by how he had come to that conclusion, as, like spell casting, the word brings to mind Grimm’s fairy tale type characters and so I do not use the word. I answered that no, I wasn’t a Witch but I was Wiccan… and how did he come to hear of this information? It transpired that at the first possible chance this Christian friend, who I still believe had gained this information in an environment that did not warrant outside gossiping, had run to him at the first chance and said “Do you know your girlfriend is Wiccan?” We both believe it was to try and drive a wedge between us for reasons only known to him. Anyhow, this rant is almost over, and I shall end it and resume back to my original purpose by saying that I believe it was extremely ill-mannered and uncouth to divulge this information. I have always been raised to not speak of other religions or beliefs unless with express permission or belief that the knowledge would be useful in some way and that the person to whom is being referred does not mind.

I suppose what I am trying to get across with this article, is that magick does work. If you believe in something and you are prepared to go that little extra, it will change your life in wondrous awe-inspiring ways. I think it cannot be expressed better than through love of something else. I suppose it is also partially about dis-enchantment of Wicca (which I overcame by a sudden realization that I was still actively talking to the Goddess when I got really stressed) .

I am not trying to actively express feelings either for or against love spells, as I believe that, as with all magick, it depends entirely on the intentions of the caster. But I know that even in dark and desperate moments, magick and belief and everything joyous in Paganism can just seep in, lift you up and make everything just a little bit better.

Thank you for reading this article. I hoped you got some enjoyment, or really anything, from it, and to feel free to email me if you wish.

Initiatory Witchcraft and the Beetle in the Box

Initiatory Witchcraft and the Beetle in the Box

Author: Rhys Chisnall

Although I should know better and haven’t done so for years, and will probably not do so again for many more, I recently took part in a debate on the Craft on the inter-web. Generally speaking, I think this is a bad idea, as the anonymity the Internet provides tends to make some folk feel that politeness is optional. Also the net does not convey body language and tone of voice, which can lead to misinterpretation of intent, context and meaning. Happily this remained a civil debate amongst, for the most part, intelligent people. However one of the participants was someone who used the debate to have her faith position confirmed and became defensive when it wasn’t. Her position was that you could only be in the Gardnerian Craft if you had a literal belief in the Gods.

My experience of initiatory Craft is that it does not have or require orthodoxy of belief. As a mystery tradition it does not offer easy ready-made answers in the way that exoteric religion does. There is no one faith position, but positions as numerous as the individuals that practise, hard won through the processes and arts of mysticism and liable to change in light of new experience. This lady had a religious faith, and a faith can’t be changed in accordance with evidence or experience, else it would not be religious faith (as commonly understood) . Someone told her that a certain faith was required for initiatory Craft and she expected everyone to think the same.

“Why then”, this person asked, “Do we have the word ‘Gods’ if we don’t all have to literally believe in them?” To my mind it is because the meaning of words such as ‘God’, ‘Goddess’ and ‘Divine’ are not as fixed in meaning as she might think.

In the theory of language called descriptivism, a word’s meaning depends on its extension and intension. Its extension is what the word refers to in the real world. This is what Hillary Putnam meant when he said that ‘meaning is not in the head’ (Putnam as cited in Barber, 2010, p., 193) ; the conclusion he came to from his famous Twin Earth thought experiment. So water means water because it refers to a substance in the real world. That substance has the chemical formula H2O and it does not refer to something that looks exactly the same as water with a different formula says XYZ (Barber, 2010, p. 43) , even if we can’t tell the difference.

The lay person learns the meaning of a word through deference to an expert who fixes its meaning. However, as you have no doubt have spotted, this can’t be the whole story as we have words for things that aren’t real, such as phlogiston. There can be no extension of the word phlogiston to fix its meaning. So a word’s meaning is also fixed by its intension. This is the lexical description of what the word means, which we carry around in our heads. For example water is wet, colourless, falls from the sky, can drink it, swim in it, favoured by fish, etc.

This would seem to make the Lady’s assertion that Gardnerians should all believe the same thing by the word ‘Gods’ to be correct. So far it seems that for the word to have meaning it must have an extension, but it is more complex than that. Descriptivism also claims that words can have intension and no extension. For example, we can talk about Santa and Phlogiston without them existing (Ok, ok… so Santa is real) .

But should the words we use all have the same intensions? Ned Block says no, because meaning can be narrow or wide (Block as cited in Barber, 2010, p 248) . Narrow meaning is when concepts vary from person to person. For example, Jocasta is Oedipus’s mother and wife is the wide meaning of the concept Jocasta, but the narrow meaning for Oedipus is that Jocasta is my wife and not my mother (Barber 2010, pp 245-246) – until he finds out differently. So, if narrow meaning varies amongst individuals, then how can words such as ‘Gods’ be used in discourse amongst those who hold it to mean different things?

To my mind Ludwig Wittgenstein, without a doubt one of the most important philosophers of the 20th Century provides us with an answer. In his famous thought experiment from his book, ‘Philosophical Investigations’, he writes:

“Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a “beetle”. No one can look into anyone else’s box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle. Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine that such a thing is constantly changing. But suppose the word “beetle” had a use in these people’s language? If so it would be the name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language – game at all; not even as a something; for the box might even be empty.” (Wittgenstein as cited in Beaney 2010 p., 131-132) .

Wittgenstein was using his thought experiment to illustrate how it did not matter what the subjective meaning of ‘pain’ meant for the word ‘pain’ to mean what it means. But I think the analogy can be extended, and even works better for the experience of the Gods and the mysteries. For example, in the Craft we all have individual subjective experiences of what we call the Divine. For some, it is see as an experience, which is interpreted, as a literal god; for others it is interpreted as a Jungian archetype, and for others, it is simply interpreted as a mystery. We cannot look into each other’s heads to directly see what the experience was. Even if we could, we could not have that experience of the other person, in the subjective first person and in the same context. The only way we can know anything about what the other person experienced is by using language.

Herein lies a problem. Experience of the mysteries is transcendent of language. This is the definition of mystery; it comes from the Greek musterion, meaning ‘to close the mouth’. It is ineffable and can’t be adequately described with words. Perhaps it would be better to follow Wittgenstein’s advice in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus where he says, “whereof what we cannot speak there-so we should remain silent”.

However, we are a chatty species and do like to communicate using words. The words we are using in this case are words like ‘God’, ‘Goddess’, ‘Divine’ and ‘Mysteries’. These words from Wittgenstein’s perspective have a function in discourse that is not directly attached to their extension, or even intension. They are words that are learnt when we learn English and are used in a specific way. In this case, they are words used to describe our own gnosis ‘ (gnosis’, when used in English, refers to spiritual knowledge) .

Therefore the words refer to different things to different people but can be still used in discourse where the function need not rely on the direct reference of the experiences that they pertain to. In other words, in using the language of the Craft when we are engaging in its myths and ritual, we can use the same words, as their functions are not fixed by lexical intension or literal extension, but by discourse. Therefore Initiatory Crafters don’t all have to believe the same thing to share a common language and use words like ‘Gods’.

Footnotes:
Barber, A., (2010) , Language and Thought, Milton Keynes, Open University
Block, N., (1994) , Advertisement for a Semantic Psychology, in Barber, A., (2010) , Language and Thought, Milton Keynes, Open University
Putnam, H., (1994) , The Meaning of Meaning, in Barber, A., (2010) , Language and Thought, Milton Keynes, Open University
Beaney, M., (2010) Imagination and Creativity, Milton Keynes, Open University

From Bars to Blessed: A New Beginning

From Bars to Blessed: A New Beginning

Author: ADDvst

I am an Eclectic Wiccan. I have not always been. In fact, before I heard the term “Wiccan”, I didn’t have any faith at all. Not even in myself. I wanted to write this essay and to share my story as to why I chose the goddess and the god.

When I was a child, I was very rambunctious. Getting into trouble in school was my daily routine. I would fight, steal, lie, and cheat. The worst part was I had no idea as to why I did those things. My grandmother used to say, “I was possessed by the devil”. When I grew to my teenage years, things slowed down a bit. That is, after being placed into state custody. At the age of 15, I found myself in a foster home, as my biological family didn’t want anything to do with me. It was there that I encountered the most wonderful girl I have ever met, Nicole. I started to understand what it meant to love someone else and care about someone other than myself. But I was still making some stupid choices.

On August 29 2001, three friends and I broke into a convenient store, stealing everything that could be moved and carried. This time I didn’t get a slap on the wrist. I was sent to state prison for a term of two- to – six years. I lost everything I ever knew that day. And, the worst part, that girl who taught me how to love… she also was charged for a crime that I talked her into committing.

In 2005, I found myself again in trouble with the law. This time the sentence was harsher: six years in state prison. It was there, sitting in a jail cell, that I began thinking about my life, and how to change it around. I remembered something Nicole had said to me when I asked her to take me back. She said that she had too much to lose. Funny thing is, she didn’t have a thing at all. She just didn’t want to be involved in my constant screw-ups. So that was it. Just me and a cold jail cell. No family. No friends. No money or possessions. So what would the normal miscreant think? Yes. You guessed it. It’s time for an end. And a new beginning.

My first thought was the conventional way of ‘ending the bad’. Shoe string. Bed sheet. Instead, for some odd reason, I decided to pick up a book and read. So I read and read and read. For two years I lay in a cell and read.

One day, a Christian tried to sit down and preach the Bible to me.” No, I don’t find it to be true, ” I told him. He asked, “Well, what do you believe?” And so I started writing every belief that I had down on paper. Then, I went and read about the different religions.

I came across a book called Wicca: For Beginners by Scott Cunningham. I was actually shocked at how everything made sense. I became very interested in learning more. So without delay, I ordered a few more books from the library. After reading the books, and being sure I wanted to learn the way, I did a self-dedication rite. I did this rite by myself in my cell. I simply fell into a meditation and invited the lady and the lord to join me. That night, sitting in that cell, I could actually feel a transformation take place. A new lease was given to me. I soon found it easy to control my thoughts. A feeling of happiness and joy washed over me. My heart became a soft, warm life force. I began seeing the earth in a light that I never seen before. I began to see the old religion in a lot of every day events.

Through meditation, I began to concentrate on the wrongs that I did to others. This does not come easy, or without regrets. We have all heard the expression “you don’t know what you have till it’s gone”. Me, I still try to find that way to get it back. Time… I can’t turn back that clock, but I am grateful to have memories of those that showed me how to love, and inspired me to make a difference. It is very heart-wrenching to have the woman you love the most tell you she don’t feel the same… and that you’re to blame.

It has been four years since I dedicated myself to the way –“harm none do as ye will”- These four years have been remarkably enlightening to me. I made two promises to myself and to the powers that be: 1: never harm again; but help others whenever possible and 2: do everything in my power to better my future, to give back instead of take away.

After being released from prison, the first thing I did was move out of my old town. I headed straight to New York City. In just three weeks, I have enrolled into college and found a job. I continue on a daily basis to nurture my relationship with the lady and the lord. In my heart, I don’t believe that I would be where I am today, with the mindset that I have, if I had never picked up that book. I would never have the connection with the earth and the mother. I would never have been able to understand my own life, past, and future.

I am a son, a brother, an uncle, an ex con. The latter I am not ashamed of. It brought me to my rightful place, with the goddess in my heart. My experiences will someday help my teach someone else, and maybe help change their life.

And I dare not to forget; about two years ago I wrote letters to every person that I betrayed. Today I can happily say that I have made amends and rekindled old friendships. I spend time with my family. It is a wonderful feeling to have them in my life. There yet may come a day when that woman who saw too much too lose in me, may see the world with me. It’s never too late to change and find your calling!

I am thankful to all who give guidance to people like me who need a little direction. And I am beyond grateful that the lady and the lord gave me a new beginning!

Blessed be! And thank you for reading.

Horoscopes and Tarot Cards: Handling Daily Readings

Horoscopes and Tarot Cards: Handling Daily Readings

Author: Raven Morgana Fae

Horoscope and Tarot Card readings are both forms of divination, and divination is the ability to tell the future. But how seriously are we to take these readings? And how are we to, in effect, to use this foretold information, to our advantage?

Millions of people read their horoscopes on a daily basis, most of the time at the beginning of the day. So at the end of the day they say to themselves, “Well, my scope was a little off today.” These people don’t realize that they might have somehow twisted their own fate just a bit that day. If someone has had a negative reading it makes him or her think in some way they are going to have a bad day. This sort of thinking occasionally makes some people put the day’s readings in the back of their heads, but subconsciously, they are telling themselves, “I’m not going to have a bad day.” The same can be said for anticipating something good to happen. It kills the moment, sometimes making the outcome different then expected.

The way to take advantage of a reading is to make those subconscious decisions, conscious ones. One thing I have learned is to not associate a reading with your day as a whole. It could very well represent one solitary event. But also don’t look for things to happen! Don’t expect anything; do quite the opposite: live your normal life and stop living like a paranoid schitzo!

No, I’m just kidding. Serious, in essence, but kidding about the whole paranoid schitzo thing. 🙂 So… first thing in the morning, we read our divination readings of choice, absorb what it could all mean, how it pertains to what is happening in the present, and once absorbed completely, forget. Forget what you read this morning off of the newspaper right next to the comics section under Dear Abby, for at least the next twelve hours. Did the undesired happen? Perhaps it passed you by. Or the worst thing that happened to you was traffic on the way home. You’ll find that when you don’t dread on things, like having just read your fortunate or unfortunate fate, they pop out when they have to.

Throughout the day, follow your routine as you normally would. If and when any situations make it so that something in your readings “pops up” in a way, make a note of it, and save it for later. At the end of your day, reflect on your day altogether. The ups. The downs. Now make any connections between your reading earlier that morning. Compare notes with your day; bring up your “pop up” moments, whether it is one simple word or phrase, or the entire reading altogether.

For example, here is how I handle my daily readings:
[NOTE: In terms of the way I define my tarot card reading, this is simply an example of how I perceive the cards. The meaning of any one card may vary slightly amongst psychics. This is why it is often said that art of divination is purely subjective; identifying the meaning in any one card is identified through one’s own perception of what is going on in that particular moment during that particular reading.]

October 25, 2010
Daily Horoscope (From “The Daily” News for iPad) – Capricorn: What occurs over the next few days will prompt you to accept that maybe you don’t know it all. It will force you to consider the possibility that what you call “truth” is in fact a rather fluid concept.
Tarot Card of the Day- XVI The Tower: Quarrel. Combat. Danger. Ruin. Destruction of plans. / Ambition. Courage. Sudden death. Escape from prison and all it implies.

Morning “At A Glance” Thoughts
At first glance I can already see that I am going to go through a sort of coming of realization according to the horoscope reading. Connecting that with actual events in my everyday life, I can say that I have been doing a lot of reading lately, mostly pagan articles. I have also wanted to start a daily exercise routine, and I have also wanted to start up my hobbies as I once did.

I just moved to Texas a couple of months ago, and have been doing little to nothing out doors since I have been here. In the last few days, I have come up with the resolution that exercise, hobbies such as blogging and geo caching, re-engaging in pagan practice, and taking care of myself are things I have to do to get out of what I felt like, has been a rut since I’ve been here. In the past few days, those are the truths I have come up with for myself.

Even though I know these truths, I have been a bit shy, and in some instances, pretty much scared, to begin my journey into re-establishing who I once was. All of last week I did my crunches, telling myself, that starting this week, I would start going to the gym (which I have available to me in my complex!) for AT LEAST 20 minutes. Monday, which was yesterday, came, and I didn’t go to the gym. And today is gonna pass and I still haven’t gone. Out of fear of being seen, or not being able to finish the 20-minute session because I haven’t worked out in over a year, or fear of starting and not continuing day after day. Who knows… XVI The Tower: Ruin and Destruction of plans.

End of the Day Reflections
There are two views or sides to every tarot card. The trump card of The Tower possesses the negatives aspects such as combat and ruin, but it also possess the positive aspects of ambition, courage, and escape. So a way for me to have consciously turned the fate of the card that was dealt to me today, per say, would be for me to go ahead and have gone to the gym tonight, even though I usually like the morning, when its empty. I, in a sense, (If I were to have gone.) possessed the courage to go on with my plans and perhaps upon going, I would have escaped from the “imprisonment” of the fear I once had of going. But let’s be honest, I didn’t go to the gym today either. Returning to its main negative aspect- Ruin and destruction of plans.

About an hour after my morning reading, I found myself in a sort of “lover’s quarrel”. But that was only brought on by my partner’s combative nature, and I had no way of going around it. This is an instance of a fortune unfolding itself, leaving me to deal with the situation. I quickly and swiftly corrected the situation upon remembering my earlier reading (ya, know, the one we are suppose to ignore till the end of the day. Well… you are supposed to put her back there because she comes in handy! I wasn’t thinking about it, but it came up.) In this situation I believe that I did not let the negative aspect of The Tower take control of my life in this particular moment in time by putting an end to what would have been a sizable argument. I, in a sense put “sudden death” to anything that would cause “destruction” or “ruin”, and then the situation was put behind us.

Even though we consciously try to live our lives to the best of our intentions, there are still times when what is foretold, whether positive or negative, cannot be bent around or changed.

Later on in the evening, my boyfriend’s uncle came by with his 3-year-old daughter, asking me if I would be willing to braid her hair this weekend. An escape from prison and all it implies. I can’t seem to get myself into the groove, so fate has brought it to me regardless!

If there is one thing I love, but haven’t done in ages, it’s braids! If I do a fair job, I will be doing her hair on a weekly basis for a small price. I was willing to do it for free, might I add! It was so strange how just seeing the little girl enlightened me in some way. I automatically wanted to just follow her around. I kept patting and touching her little hair bun. (LOL!) I was asking myself, “How would I part her hair to trail out the braids? Would it look better this way? That way? She’s a little baby so I have to do as little as possible…” I felt myself WANTING to do something. A sense of ambition.

Tomato… Tomatoe
It is important not to be looking for things to happen! For example: I woke up this morning and I’m out of toilet paper because my cat decided to teepee to living room (mistake for RUIN by the paranoid) , true story, btw. Or my Netflix got cut off (SUDDEN DEATH) . Also, did happen today. (-__-) . Not everything has something to do with that pesky little paragraph you read this morning! And not everything you read is LITERAL. “An escape from prison and all it implies, ” does not mean you are gonna get locked up today, and escape. “Sudden death” doesn’t mean that someone or something is gonna drop at any second. Your escape could just as well mean you finally were able to get out of the house to go get that mani/pedi you’ve been dying for. As a matter of fact, the definitions I posted for the tarot reading are not concrete definitions.
As I have mentioned before, divination is a practice that is subjective. The meaning of any one particular card changes from one person to the next depending on his or her own perception and concepts. One word can bring about different emotions and feeling amongst different people. The Tower card, to me, is entrapment and irritation, needing to find a sense of release but not being able to find one. Kind of like Rapunzel, stuck up in a tower, looking out into the world and all it’s beauty, but not being able to experience any of it. On the opposite side I see an escape by jumping off the side, or climbing down, which takes major courage and true deep desire for freedom and/or exploration. Is my form of expression in any way similar to what is written in text? I may say it differently, but the symbolism turns out somewhat the same. Tomato… Tomatoe…

Footnotes:
1. Crowley, Aleister. 2006. “Instruction for Thoth Tarot Deck.” U.S Games Systems, Inc.

2. Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot Deck

Of Witch’s Work, and Child’s Play

Of Witch’s Work, and Child’s Play

Author: Moly

“Yes, the spirits are real. Yes, the spirits are imaginary. Most of us, however, cannot imagine how real our imaginations are.” — Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford.

There are times when our study of the Great Work changes the way we look at life. That is, after all, why we study it. There are other times, perhaps rarer, and certainly more precious, when everyday life turns our understanding of Spiritual Alchemy entirely on its head.

When I was fresh out of college, I found myself working in a daycare, changing the diapers of two and three year olds. It was unglamorous, but the daily drudgery of mopping the floor and applying band aids to tiny fingers was offset by the very real joys of play, and being with people for whom the entire world was new.

The true downside was the lead teacher. She was a behemoth of a woman, an ex-professor of some hard science like thermodynamics who had gotten her degree in the Soviet Union, and who, despite having experience personally designing jet engines, had to start her education all over again, and was none-too-pleased at becoming a school marm. Everything about the job made her angry, and her misery was contagious. Anything out of the ordinary caused her to yell at the top of her lungs, and I, being possessed of a slightly nervous disposition, lived in fear of her wrath.

One day, during naptime, I was left alone with the children while the lead teacher, we’ll call her Marya, went on break. My instructions were simple but absolute: kids stay on mats. Clean the counters. Barring a natural disaster, I intended to follow these instructions.

The room was dark when Marya left, and the children were sleeping peacefully — or so I thought. I turned my attention to my chores.

Suddenly, I heard rustling. Two children, Anna and Jon, age three, were up off of their mats, and were apparently attacking the wall, throwing invisible stones, or maybe swinging invisible swords. Marya wanted kids on mats, so, dutifully, I went over to try and right the wrong.

“Anna and Jon, back on your mats, now.” I said. Jon did not pause for a moment to acknowledge me, but Anna turned her huge dark brown eyes on me, her small, light-coffee colored face filled with grave seriousness, and shook her head vigorously.

“No. We have to get the blug before it gets all the children, ” she explained. Reflexively, I scanned the area that Jon was attacking, but detected nothing that I recognized as magical, and certainly no kind of entity that I had ever encountered. I did not discount the possibility that something was there, but judged it harmless due to the low level of energy in the area. Ana continued to explain — very loudly– about the “blug” and how all the children were in danger. I steered her away from the sleeping children.

“Ana, kids are sleeping, you can’t shout like that.”

Ana was not listening. Jon had stopped hurling the invisible stones, and was frozen in place. He and Ana seemed to be looking at the same point on the wall, following some invisible something as it moved slowly along the wall over the sleeping children. Each child in turn shuddered in their sleep as whatever it was passed over them. I realized that I was not feeling “nothing, ” what I sensed, I realized, was the energy and color of a “pretend” thing.

In a daycare, there are thousands of these baby thought forms. A plastic dish has an artificial elemental spirit shaped like a steering wheel stapled to it. There is a stationary “godform” of Princess Jasmine near the dress-up area. Teddy bears are “consecrated” to keep away monsters. But as a discerning practitioner, I fancied that there was a real, functional difference between the pretend things fashioned by adults, and those dreamed up by children. One was “magic, ” the other, fantasy. I had taught myself to screen out flights of fancy from my radar.

“The blug is real, and I have to go help Jon-Jon now.”

“I believe you, ” I said, “just let me take care of it.”

“No, you can’t!” Ana was on the verge of hysterics, her eyes darting back and forth between me and Jon. ” You’re a grown-up”

The blug, whether real, pretend, or both, was a problem I wasn’t going to be able to solve through a brutal application of authority. I taped together two Popsicle sticks with masking tape and handed it to her. “Here, take my sword, it has a plus six against blugs.”

She nodded, and took the sword, but we were too late. As I watched, Jon was suddenly blasted backward, as though hit in the chest by some unseen force, lifted off of his feet by the impact. He fell to the ground and onto one arm. Ana wasted no time to explain, but dashed and stabbed at the ground twice.

Jon did not get up. I was shocked. I don’t exactly remember if I said anything, or if I ran over, or walked. I remember taking his vitals, checking for injury or concussion, opening his eyelids and shining a light to see if his pupils were dilating unevenly. He was breathing and apparently uninjured, but I did not dare move him. He was not twitching, there was no sign of seizure, but he was completely unresponsive.

Ana stood, looking over my shoulder as I did this. She said, “I didn’t hit him, I swear. He falled down by hiself.”

“I saw, Anna.”

“I didn’t hit him, ” she repeated, more quietly. “Tell Marya I didn’t hit him.”

I called 911. About thirty seconds before the ambulance arrived, Jon woke up, and immediately started crying. You will be happy to know that Jon was fine, and that the Children’s Hospital found nothing wrong with him. Still, this incident drove home for me the deadly power of the human imagination.

At times, those of us who practice magic have difficulty separating mystical experiences from imaginary ones. That is because, in a very fundamental way, they are the same thing. We bring order to these experiences, magical, religious, fantastical or imaginary, by playing games. Whether we are playing the game where you are the fire-man and I am the doctor, or the game where you are the hierophant and I am the neophyte, the game where we put out a chair for our imaginary friend “flopsy, ” or whether we are pouring out a libation for our “imaginary” friend Odin, we are accessing the same –very human– faculty.

As seriously as we take our religions, I assure you, children are just as serious about the games that they play.

The “Gloria Mundi” discusses the Prima Materia (that First Thing, which the Alchemist must find before any Alchemy can take place at all) , saying that it is…

“Familiar to all men, both young and old, is found in the country, in the village, in the town, in all things created by God, yet it is despised by all. Rich and poor handle it every day. It is cast into the street by servant maids. Children play with it. Yet no one prizes it, though, next to the human soul, it is the most beautiful and the most precious thing upon earth and has the power to pull down kings and princes. Nevertheless, it is esteemed the vilest and meanest of earthly things.”

When I consider the disdainful way that many of by pagan colleagues discuss the imaginary, or when I think of my own mother telling me to get my head out of the clouds, I could believe that the imagination really is “esteemed the vilest and meanest of earthly things.” Has it pulled down Kings and Princes? Imagining one’s self richer, or more powerful, or in possession of more land certainly has. Children certainly play with it, and if our everyday retail worker is the modern day equivalent of a servant maid, then for certain, I have seen many in this field so tired, crushed and frustrated by their work that imagination no longer had a space to breathe.

Everyone, though, rich and poor, has a flight of fancy, at least daily. And indeed, if you subscribe to the idea of a Creator, how could such a being create without first having imagined the end product? Possessing an imagination may be what is meant when it is said that we are made “B’Tzelem Elohim” or “in the image of the divine.”

Considering all this, I realized that the purpose of spiritual alchemy, for me, was the refinement of the imagination. It’s purpose was to gain control over flights of fancy, not only so that I could make better godforms, or craft stronger elementals, but so that, in casting a spell, or even in preparing for a board meeting, my imagination would not conjure up images of failure, and thereby undo all of my handiwork.

That which is dangerous is powerful, that which is powerful is dangerous. Be careful what you dream, because your dreams just might come true.

Grow Your Own Lunar Calendar

Grow Your Own Lunar Calendar

Author: Bran th’ Blessed

The earliest lunar calendars were small sticks into which some Neolithic hunter carved notches to count the days between full moons. This hi-tech device required no battery replacement and was accurate within plus or minus three days of the actual lunar cycle from new moon to new moon. Depending on the hunter, of course.

By such means, it eventually became clear that the full moon occurred every 29 or 30 days. Rather than leave the one finger uncounted on the third go-round, the length of the lunar cycle was set at 30 days (three hands of days) . This length worked well with the estimated duration of the *Celestial Calendar* year, which was 360 days. You may think that the year-counting stick was not as accurate as the month counting stick, but there is always with us humans the expectation of symmetry, and even today it doesn’t set well with us that our year should not end at the end of the twelfth month—as our 12-month Gregorian calendars so clearly attest.

It is because our years were set to 360 days—in order to match precisely with twelve 30-day months—that the circle is ascribed with 360 degrees. The zodiacal path is set to 360 degrees for the 360 days the Sun takes to encompass that circuit, one degree per day.

The Moon, too, encircles the zodiacal path, but it takes only 30 days to do so. In those 30 days the Sun moves 30 degrees, so the Moon must move 360 + 30 = 390 degrees to catch up to the Sun again. While the Sun moves one degree each day, the Moon moves 13 degrees each day. At the end of 30 days, they are united again, but at the beginning of a different zodiacal sign: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer; Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio; Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces…the signs (constellations) of the zodiac. (I have excluded the zodiacal signs, Doris and Butch, as these have grown into disuse over the ages. Pity.)

The Celestial Calendar provides further symmetries with 24 fifteen-day *Esbats* in each year, corresponding with the risings and settings of the zodiacal signs. There are three esbats (45 days) in each of the eight *Sabbats* of the year: The Solstices (Yule and Litha) , Equinoxes (Ostara and Harvest) , and four Cross-Quarter Sabbats (Winterwatch, or Imbolc; Beltane, Lughnasa, and Samhain) , and there are two sabbats (90 days) in each of the four seasons of the year.

This Celestial Calendar, however, is poorly matched by the realities of our astronomy. The Earth takes 365¼ days (not 360 days) to move from Winter Solstice to Winter Solstice. The Moon takes 29½ days (not 30) to move from full moon to full moon, and twelve months is actually only about 354 days. Alas, for a more perfect world, eh?

My *Pagan Seasonal Calendar* corrects the Celestial Calendar’s error in the measure of the year by adding five intercalary days to every year, four midseason, cross-quarter sabbat days and one end-of-the-year day. Winterwatch is added between the third and fourth Esbats (my calendar begins and ends at Yule/Midwinter) . Beltane is added between the ninth and tenth Esbats. Lughnasa is added between the fifteenth and sixteenth Esbats. And Samhain is added between the 21st and 22nd Esbats. Year’s End is added at calendar’s end. At the end of every fourth year (called a Span) , a sixth intercalary day called Span’s End is added, equivalent to our “leap year’s day”. The Span’s End day is not added to the 32nd and final Span of a Gaian Era (which is 128 years) . These few adjustments make my Pagan Seasonal Calendar, incorporating the Celestial Calendar, more accurate than the Gregorian Calendar we use with respect to the length of the year. But of course, it does nothing to resolve the problem with the month.

Real lunar months cannot be conveniently aligned with real seasonal years. Various cultures have tried to devise methods for utilizing a lunar calendar, but the two cycles don’t dance the same dance. The Julian Calendar of the Romans and the Gregorian Calendar of the Catholic Church both follow the lead of the Celestial Calendar in making months as long as desired, 28 or 29 days, 30 or 31 days. Lunar calendar systems make each year twelve of thirteen moons in duration, but the systems are either complex or set by visual observations. For my calendar system, I decided to look for a lunar calendar system that is accurate and works well on its own, and then fret the details of coordination later. This isn’t rocket science after all. The lunar period data available today is accurate to ten decimal places and more, and a handy pocket calculator (batteries included) is all I needed for the simple division problems. So here we go.

The period from one full moon to the next is very close to 29½ days. Two moons are twice that, or 59 days. This 59 day lunar cycle is called a *Doublet*. The *Morning Moon* of any doublet begins at midnight opening the 1st day of the doublet and ends at midday of the 30th day of the doublet; the *Evening Moon* begins at midday of the 30th day and ends at midnight closing the 59th and final day of the doublet. Morning moons begin and end in the morning, between midnight and midday; evening moons begin and end in the evening, between midday and midnight. Both moons go halfsies on the 30th day of the doublet.

The degree of error in a 59-day doublet is such that one day must be added after sixteen such doublets (32 moons) . This period of 32 moons is called a *Cynthiad*. The sixteenth and final doublet of each cynthiad has 60 days instead of 59 days. That makes each cynthiad 945 days, or precisely 135 weeks. The degree of error in a cynthiad is much smaller and in the opposite direction, requiring us to eventually remove one day after 47 cynthiads. This period of 47 cynthiads is called a *Lunar Age*, and it’s about 121 years and pocket change. The last doublet of the last cynthiad in each lunar age does not have a day 60. This last modification keeps the calendar within one day of accuracy for about 66 lunar ages—which is eight millennia and pocket change.

Every cynthiad in this age begins on Sunday; it’s the 7th Age of Balder (or some other Sun God/dess of your choice?) in this *Lunar Epoch*. Because of the dropped day at the end of each age, the cynthiads of succeeding Ages begin one day earlier than those before them. Thus the next Age will be the 7th Age of Saturn, in which all the cynthiads will begin on Saturdays…then Fridays (Freya) , Thursdays (Thor) , Wednesdays (Woden) , and so on. (The Age of Woden, with its Wednesday cynthiads, will begin the 8th cycle of ages.)

As I write this, the upcoming new moon of October 26th, 2011, will be: the 1st day of the Elder Moon, the 16th Morning Moon of the 41st Cynthiad in the 7th Age of Balder, and the 1311th moon in that 46th full Age of the Lunar Epoch. This is the first day of the 16th doublet in the 41st cynthiad of this age.

I associate the 32 moons of a cynthiad with various totem creatures, although I’m not settled on any but the 28th moon (Crow Moon) at this time (and that of course only because it is the moon of my birth, so I name it for my own totem animal, the Crow) . Here are the sixteen doublets of a cynthiad and the names of their morning and evening moons. You should change these totems where you feel it appropriate, but I hope you’ll leave the 28th (Crow Moon) as it is.

Doublet – Morning Moon and Evening Moon
01 – Oak and Owl
02 – Redwood and Bear
03 – Ash and Fox
04 – Walnut and Deer
05 – Hawthorn and Rabbit
06 – Willow and Dove
07 – Pine and Coyote
08 – Cedar and Snake
09 – Holly and Otter
10 – Maple and Mouse
11 – Cottonwood and Buffalo
12 – Hickory and Hawk
13 – Cypress and Spider
14 – Sycamore and Crow
15 – Birch and Badger
16 – Elder and Wolf

There are only six and a fraction doublets in any given year. The doublets of this year (2011) have begun or will begin on the following dates.

(0) – November 6, 2010
(1) – January 4, 2011
(2) – March 4, 2011
(3) – May 2, 2011
(4) – June 30, 2011
(5) – August 28, 2011
(6) – October 26, 2011
(7) – December 24, 2011

(To find later dates, simply count down eight weeks and over three days on your calendar from the last known beginning doublet date.)

On the smaller scale of time, each moon (month) is viewed differently in this lunar calendar system. Three days make a *Lunar House* (or *Temple*) . Three houses belong to the *Maiden Goddess*, three more to the *Mother Goddess*, and three to the *Crone Goddess*. These nine houses mark the visible days of each moon. The other days of each moon belong to the dark moon House of Kore/Persephone. The days of each doublet are as follows:

Day 01 – (Morning Moon Begins) – Dark Moon – House of Kore/Persephone

Day 02-04 – Early Waxing Crescent Moon – House of Selene/Luna (Maiden)
Day 05-07 – Late Waxing Crescent Moon – House of Artemis/Diana (Maiden)
Day 08-10 – Early Waxing Ovate Moon – House of Hanwi (Maiden)

Day 11-13 – Late Waxing Ovate Moon – House of Ngame (Mother)
Day 14-16 – Full Moon – House of Ishtar/Isis (Mother)
Day 17-19 – Early Waning Ovate Moon – House of Nana (Mother)

Day 20-22 – Late Waning Ovate Moon – House of Mawu (Crone)
Day 23-25 – Early Waning Crescent Moon – House of Cereddwyn (Crone)
Day 26-28 – Late Waning Crescent Moon – House of Hecate (Crone)

Day 29-30 – (Morning Moon Ends) at Midday 30 – Dark Moon – House of Kore
Day 30-31 – (Evening Moon Begins) at Midday 30 – Dark Moon – House of Kore

Day 32-34 – Early Waxing Crescent Moon – House of Selene/Luna (Maiden)
Day 35-37 – Late Waxing Crescent Moon – House of Artemis/Diana (Maiden)
Day 38-40 – Early Waxing Ovate Moon – House of Hanwi (Maiden)

Day 41-43 – Late Waxing Ovate Moon – House of Ngame (Mother)
Day 44-46 – Full Moon – House of Ishtar/Isis (Mother)
Day 47-49 – Early Waning Ovate Moon – House of Nana (Mother)

Day 50-52 – Late Waning Ovate Moon – House of Mawu (Crone)
Day 53-55 – Early Waning Crescent Moon – House of Cereddwyn (Crone)
Day 56-58 – Late Waning Crescent Moon – House of Hecate (Crone)

Day 59 – (Evening Moon Ends) – Dark Moon – House of Kore/Persephone

I hope this lunar calendar will be useful to those who hate to wait for the Farmer’s Almanac to come out each year in order to know the new and full moon dates, which is what I used to do back in the age of dinosaurs when there were no computers. I have found this doublet system quite reliable for well over a decade. Sometimes the moon dates may be off about a day due to astronomical variations or when an intercalary day is coming due or has just been added. But I have noted very little such inaccuracy actually. I hope I have provided enough information for you to take it from here should you so choose. – Bran th’ Blessed

Footnotes:
None

Spell Casting: The Prayer Warriors

Spell Casting: The Prayer Warriors

Author: Widdershins

In a small community nestled along the Ohio River Valley, a high school football team had an incredible year as they went to a state championship game undefeated. The wife of the head coach was openly Christian and in an effort to help her husband win throughout the season, she started a small prayer circle known as the ‘Prayer Warriors’. The group would meet weekly to pray for their team’s victory. This was not only about the kids having a safe trip or about getting through a game without injuries, this was also about winning. In other words, they were consciously attempting to channel their spiritual energy in such away that it would cause their team to win, or for the other team to lose. Could this have been an actual coven of Christian Witches?

I imagine that if any of the women involved were to hear that they were being compared to a Coven of Witches they would be upset and it is not my intent to pass judgment, but they were spell-casting, and not in a good way either. Now, if they were good Witches they would have adhered to the Wicca Rede that states: ‘An it harm none do what ye will’. Praying that the other team loses isn’t exactly a no-harm approach. Then there is another moral guideline that is referred to by Wicca as the Threefold Law that states that what ever you put out there into the world will come back three times. So if you were spell casting or praying for the other team to lose I would imagine that it would come back in the form of three losses for the home team.

So based on some of the rules of witchcraft and spell casting, this ‘coven’ of football supporters was practicing some black magic, but they can’t be blamed because they were Christians and how could they have known about the Wicca Rede? But they did have a Bible, or as they call it The Good Book, which very clearly states “Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 7:12) , otherwise known as the Golden Rule. By the way, they lost the championship game to a private catholic high school team. One could only imagine what they must have thought.

I’m not trying to be mean-spirited. I have just never put the two together. Spell casting and prayer have a fundamental relationship that goes beyond just trying to make something happen that you want to happen. The two address a deeper human need for coping with things in the external world that we have no control over and it’s only human to feel anxiety when one perceives a loss of control.

I believe that the only logical approach for coping with the external world and our need for control is to alter our perception and thought processes from within. I also believe that the human race has intuitively developed ways to address this need and I would say that some such strategies have come in the form of spell casting, prayer and meditation.

To put a bit of a scientific spin on my reasoning, one must first understand that a thought is more than an abstract event, but an actual physiological reaction that spreads across the brain by activating an electrochemical impulse. This impulse is spearheaded by the activation of neurotransmitters that leap across synaptic gabs uniting million upon millions of neurons, each impulse within its own unique pattern. Each pattern becomes associated with a thought and like the tracks along a well-worn path these patterns grow stronger and deeper with each passing.

Not only can we change the levels of neuro chemical activity in our brains with the physiological reactions of our thoughts but we can also change the physical connections between neurons creating an unlimited array of patterns; this is a process that neurologists refer to as plasticity. The sheer power of thought can change the very landscape of our brain.

The concept of brain plasticity is a relatively new concept to science. Until just recently, neurologists theorized that our brains were fully developed by the time we reached our mid twenties and from that time forward very little, if any, changes accrued. Resent studies have suggested that this isn’t the case at all. It appears that our brains have the capacity to change throughout our entire lives.

I would go so far as to suggest that the ancients intuitively knew about the plasticity of their own being and that the internal dialogue, that we refer to as our thoughts, was some how a very important part of this plasticity and spiritual well-being. It appears that they some how understood that to remain both spiritually and physically healthy they had to maintain a command or a sense of discipline over their own thoughts. As a result, they developed ways to focus and concentrate on their thinking as a way to create meaningful and fundamental changes in their lives.

Transcendental meditation, which appears in early Buddhist literature, talks about focusing on one’s own thoughts while guiding them from a third party perspective. In spell casting, one learns to focus via careful preparation and concentration, and as recent neurological research suggests the key to plasticity is focus and concentration.

If the Prayer Warriors were to take a closer look at their situation, they would have came to the understanding that it wasn’t the outcome of an external event, such as a football game, that was driving them to engage in prayer for victory, but rather it was an internal neurological event. Their thinking leads them to believe that winning would relieve the anxiety that they were experiencing. This is where they fell short; they were unable to identify what they truly wanted to change. They wanted the anxiety to go away. Herein lies the secret of good spell casting.

One must meditate and focus on the true cause of their emotional responses such as, fears, desires, and anxieties and develop an internal dialogue that reassures and strengthens the neural networks that drive the emotions. Whether it is through transcendental meditation, prayer or spell-casting, one must focus on the internal and develop strategies to realign the thinking. As Wiccans, we establish and focus our mental energies by visualizing deities, writing and reciting poetry, chanting, ritualistic dancing, and so on, all of which is carefully thought out and planned and repeated as often as needed.

If the Prayer Warriors would have used their prayers to establish energy and clarity to better understand the feelings that they were having they may have come to realize that what they were feeling was normal and rather than fearing it, they could have embraced it and thanked their God for the opportunity to be human. They may have understood that once the game was over, and regardless of whether they won or lost, the anxiety would dissipate. The spell that they should have been casting was for clarity and understanding and the wisdom to enjoy the whole experience regardless of the outcome of an external event.

As one develops the correct habits of spell-casting, prayer and meditation, the brain begins to rewire itself in a way that allows one to perceive experiences and emotions through a positive filter. If such habits are developed incorrectly the brain rewires and the filter becomes negative. Either way you look at it, there is powerful magic afoot, or abrain, and it is not to be dealt with lightly.

How To Create Harmony in the Midst of Religious Intolerance

How To Create Harmony in the Midst of Religious Intolerance

Author: Annah

As we are all aware, Christianity has not been terribly good to us (understatement, I know) , but it is nice to know things are at least getting a little bit better in some areas. I wanted to share from my experience as I am in a Christian Seminary getting a Masters of Divinity and a Ph.D. in World Religions.

First of all, it depends on the church affiliation you run into that determines the usual anti pagan rhetoric. However, I can say from my own experiences, while these verbal attacks are hurtful as much as a physical attack, if you show them your heart many eventually will break down their “spiritual walls” and come to like you as a person and, eventually, begin to accept what you worship. When it comes to the actual moment that someone confronts you or asks you out of curiosity who and what you are, usually these specific church denominations break down and it is normally you and the Christian, not you and the Roman Catholic Church.

Why in the world did I want to go to a Christian Seminary? Well, I wanted a Ph.D. in World Religions and I also want to work, vocationally, in the Universalist Unitarian Church and in order to do that, one need to have a Masters of Divinity. I found a local seminary that appealed to me and I enrolled. My Ph.D. is for personal fulfillment. I love learning about the history of religious practices that has formed and evolved across the world. The most interesting aspect of these studies is seeing how the Goddess and the God has been a universal theme for every religion I have encountered, including some aspects of the Catholic Church. But that is for another article!

For me, my first day in Seminary was very scary. Not only am I a Pagan and a witch with a very pretty pentagram necklace adorning my neck in absence of a cross but also I am an out of the closet bisexual girl. The two usually do not mix well in a Christian Seminary and being a girl engaged to another girl only stirs a beehive in such a setting! The first week was rough and I would admit that. However, once I showed my heart to those around me, those barriers began to crumble.

Also, it helps to have open discussions with people so that they can learn more about you. Most people are afraid of witches because they know very little about us. They usually think we are satanic little devil worshippers who casts spells upon an altar of blood and pain. Once they begin to see that we actually worship earth, our Goddess and God and all things in our rituals are very peaceful then their defenses come down.

Understandably, I do not tell them details of my rituals. Not only is it not their business to know, but also I have oaths to keep. These oaths do not mean I am doing naughty secrets at the altar; it stems back to when we were persecuted and killed for our beliefs and it’s a tradition of secrecy I hold today. However, that does not mean I cannot be open about my practice. I just keep my specifics of worship to a minimum.

Through displaying your heart and your true intentions can another truly grasp the concept of acceptance. Show them your heart but do not show them too much. Be frank with Christians who ask you questions but do be frank too much. If they ask you a question, answer it within your boundaries of conviction and then ask them a question about themselves of equal value. If they do not answer, then you do not proceed with the questions and you close that door behind you because it is not fair for you to open your heart and soul and not the other person. However, if a dialogue or question and answer develop between you and a Christian then let that be a sign that doors are beginning to open.

Some may say “so what? I really do not care what any person thinks of me. I am my own person.” And that is a good philosophy to have. You are your own person and only you can control your own ship. However, I know from experience and being a lesbian, education is often the key to acceptance. Many times as I grew up, I heard gays, lesbians, and transgender people say “so who cares what they think. I do not need to explain myself to them.” I understand that concept. Trust me. However, when you talk to those who have opposing viewpoints, it is wise to open up and discuss the differences between the two people.

Persecution is a result of fear. Fear is a result of ignorance. Ignorance is a result of a lack of education. Educate those around you. Show them what a pagan is and show them what a pagan is not. Goddess never wants discord among us. They may be Christians. They may be Jews. They may be Muslim or Buddhist or Hindu but they are similar to us because they are our brothers and sisters of this earth and Goddess made them with just as much care as She made us.

I am rounding the end of my first year at Seminary. Everyone knows I am a witch. I am the only Wiccan listed as a Wiccan in the student directory. I am also class head of the diversity council and I am involved in many committee meetings and social events at the school as well as my local community. I may be the only Pagan at the seminary, but through the opening of my heart to others at the school I have been accepted by everyone and I pray you will to wherever your journeys take you!

I hope you take this advice and apply it if ever the time arises and I wish you well!

The Nameless Path

The Nameless Path

Author: Celtic Crystal

I have no name for the Spiritual Path I follow. I started off seeking the Wiccan Path, but I have a tendency to see shortcomings and limitations in following a specific set of rules. I would start reading/ learning/ practicing about a particular Path, and then begin to “see” the pattern- and conclude that following x-path is similar in nature to Y-path with a twist of whatever other path. Then I would mentally chuck the X-Path out and lie still, mentally for a while.

I create my own. Really. Yes I understand the power of ritual, and the stages that the individual’s mind gets into at every step in the ritual process. But I always feel the need to go with the flow, and when I come upon people who begun to speak about how things must be done, I really get turned off.

How can any other being dictate what a spiritual path is for someone else? In knowing myself, I have come to realize that visuals are extremely important for me to connect to the All. As a Painter, I feel most connected to All Things, when I am conceptualizing and executing a painting. As such, I incorporate drawings and pictures in part of my ritual. One of my most effective ways of magicking away a nagging problem is by drawing the object and burning the bugger in a spell.

Is this a disciplined practice? Not yet- but it may become one in future years.

I feel an affinity to blues, purples and yellows and gold. Colour Therapy indicates that these are spiritual colours, wisdom colours and leadership colours. Nothing makes me feel more connected to All Things like swirls of those colours together. And yes I do feel a sense of power in the creation of anything using those colours.

I feel an affinity to my herbs. These are carefully collected, based on whatever I happen to be working on inwardly at the time. I prefer to grow mine from the seedling, and create a psychic bond with them as they grow. This way part of me is in them when I use them. Once I attempted to use moon blood to nourish them, but somehow I got the feeling they didn’t like that.

I create my own gods, my own entities that assist me in my work. I craft them out of energies of air, fire, water and spirit. I also craft them in memory of the dead…. the creativity of Monet, with the tender care of Mother Teresa…. you get the drift. This way, if I don’t find a god or goddess that is applicable; I make up my own.

I once envisioned a spirit being, which lived in one of my plants, and did my bidding, as I needed. But I became guilty about leaving Selena (as I called her) trapped in my basil plant and let her go free. I hope she is happy; I couldn’t stand to feel her trapped in the plant. The plant died though…lessons learnt.

I have toyed with creating my own Tarot cards, which would be more applicable to the challenges that I face, and the goals that I wish to attain. The ideas behind them: the need to keep focus on my goals and to remind my mind to continuously vibrate my desires. This project is still in the conception stage of sketches because my goals keep changing.

The sign of an undisciplined mind? Perhaps. But I would rather be flowing with the waters of change, than boxed in by ritual and process created by others and followed “religiously” by most that none of it becomes part of me.

As such, I am often “The Fool” starting back at “0” and beginning a new path again.
Why am I writing this? Not too sure, definitely not for reassurance that I am doing the right thing. It’s just my point of view that Tradition, while a launching pad for a journey, should only be a base from which you fly. What you add or subtract to give a different flavor is what makes it part of you, from you… you giving back creativity to the All Creative.

Speaking of flavours…I cook too- as part of a spiritual practice. Cooking to me, is my connection to the women in my life who have taught me, who have passed on. I fill my cupboards with spices and powders and dried leaves. I try as much as possible to gather things fresh. I dry my own herbs, and label them in “Witchy” names because it’s more fun! (My dried chili peppers are labeled “Dried Tongue of Fire Dragon!” LOL!)

Cooking is a creative process limited only by my imagination. I whip up a breakfast for breaking barriers, or a lunch for conquering “lack”, my butter being to add richness to my spirit, and the salt to purify my thoughts and body.

Understanding yourself, and the symbols you find in things around you is key to the creative magicking process. You need to read into the things around you: the animals you see, the birds that come near to you. There are messages in the Universe, and there are constant conversations around you if you know how to listen.

I have no desire to choose a label for this thing I practice as a Spiritual Path. Our minds are such that to place a label, will start to exclude the things that it is not. No label leaves it open, free to add or take-away whatever is needed at the moment to affect the spell. ‘No label’ will leave my mind open to interpret things from various magickal angles. If I decide that a ritual involving the roasting of marshmallows will work, I am free to do so — because my mind cannot tell me that the task is not magickal.

Be free in your spirit; be childlike in your spiritual expression. Be blessed…blessed be.

How I Wear the Pentacle (or Not)

How I Wear the Pentacle (or Not)

Author: Dessie

If I had to guess I would say that most of the people who identify themselves as Pagan are familiar with this symbol: the pentacle. The pentacle is perhaps one of the most widely recognized Pagan symbols. It is seen in books, on Pagan websites, on television, and on Pagans and Wiccans themselves.

Whether you wear one yourself or you know someone who does, chances are you know that jewelry featuring pentacles is very popular with some Pagans. I myself have a pentacle necklace that I love to wear whenever I can. I’ve had some interesting experiences when wearing it or seeing someone else wearing one.

Probably nine times out of ten, if I’m wearing my pentacle necklace, it’s hidden under my shirt. This is just easier for me. This helps me avoid any unwanted conflict. But this also brings up questions from friends who know I’m Pagan and can’t seem to understand why I’d hide it. I’ve been asked way too many times, “Are you ashamed to let people know you’re Pagan? Why are you so embarrassed, girl?”

Very rarely do I wear my necklace where others can see it. If I’m at home, I don’t really care if it’s hidden. My family is aware of my Pagan beliefs and has come to accept them (at least a little bit) over the last several years (It’s been a long process) .

Sometimes, if I’m going somewhere alone or with Pagan friends, I’ll wear my necklace so it can be seen… really, just to see what it’s like and what might happen (a social experiment, if you will) . Thing is, this social experiment usually has negative results: everything from the nasty glares in the frozen foods section of Wal-Mart to the outright laughter and nasty comments at the movies with friends. But truly, I think that those people are a minority; most people don’t notice at all.

If I’m on campus (I’m a college student) and I’m wearing my pentacle necklace, it’s always hidden. The university I go to has a fairly strong Christian presence, and though I don’t think anyone would be truly nasty, I’ve never felt quite comfortable with the idea of being openly Pagan there.

If asked, for most of these last few years, I’ve always identified as a solitary Pagan. I’ve made Pagan friends in my own town, from my old high school, and online. I’ve even been in this situation in high school: I’d heard a rumor that a girl in one my classes was a Wiccan, so I pretty much just asked her at lunch, and we’re still good friends.

The first time I heard of Wicca or Paganism, I was more than halfway through my freshman year of high school. It was awesome at first. I met a group of friends (There were like six of them, not including me) who said they were Wiccan and started hanging with them. I borrowed books from them; we had conversations at lunch about witchcraft and the Goddess. We thought we were it. We were just totally awesome. Then I told my mom about my new interest and she freaked out. My parents convinced themselves I was worshipping Satan, but it was also just a phase that would pass. (Soon I’d decide I’d done bad and become a good Christian girl.)

Then the other students noticed. That’s when things started getting really bad. Some of my classmates cornered me after my last class (gym) one day and held a mock exorcism with someone’s cross necklace and “holy water” from the water fountain. A teacher who witnessed this did nothing to stop it. I also had a pentacle necklace I wore back then. I took it off one day because a bunch of students were laughing at me. It disappeared from my bag sometime between the end of lunch and the end of the school day. Summer was a welcome break that year. My parents thought I was over the whole “Wicca thing.”

Summer break was over too soon.

My sophomore year was miserable. Apparently, the rumor mill had a longer memory than I’d thought it would. I was picked on constantly from the first day back because of the group of friends I hung out with. I was lectured for reading articles on this website using the library computers during lunch. My teachers found out and started giving me these “that’s so sad” looks. How could such an intelligent honors student get caught up in something so bad?

It was a shock to have people react that way. I pretty much jumped head first into the “broom closet” (and I hadn’t even heard that term at the time) .

I reconnected with some (and made new) non-Wiccan friends (while ignoring the Wiccan ones at school) . I showed up at Christian events like “See you at the pole” before class and helped out when a local church held a food drive. I fought to make even better grades, to impress teachers and my parents. I felt like a poseur, a fake, and a liar. While junior year wasn’t exactly awesome, it wasn’t as bad as the first two years.

My senior year was awesome, and by far the best year of my high school education. That year made up for most of the horrible crap that went on during the first three years. By then the rumor mill had pretty much stopped buzzing, there were far more important things going on: college applications, class cookouts, and all around celebration. We were seniors! I was the “good girl” again by graduation day.

Over those years, my beliefs didn’t fade away, they grew stronger. My parents noticed this and I think that my being the “good girl” has made it easier for them to believe that I’m not worshipping Satan every night after they go to sleep. I read more and more. I tried to reconnect with those Wiccan friends (only to find that all but a few of them were “over it”) . For them, it had only been a fad, a passing phase to get attention from classmates. Others were angry that I’d pretty much abandoned them (and they had every right to be) .

At some point I can’t remember, I stopped calling myself “Wiccan” (with lots of exclamation points and smiley faces) and just became “Pagan.” I’ve had people tell me that I started out as a “fluffy bunny” and finally grew up and became a “serious Pagan.”

So, I’ve been asked many times: “Why don’t you wear your pentacle so people can see it? Are you ashamed to be Pagan? Why are you so embarrassed?”

The answer is no, I’m not ashamed. I’m not embarrassed and I don’t want to be. I’ve just learned that there is a time and a place for everything, including displaying religious symbols and beliefs. I’ve learned that this world isn’t the all-accepting place I’d thought it would be. Even though the First Amendment guarantees “freedom of religion, ” that doesn’t mean that others will accept or understand my beliefs. It doesn’t mean that they have to know about them either. I learned all of this the hard way.

I’ve worked so hard to make it to college, you don’t even know. I’m lucky that I made it at all; it’s not an easy thing to do. It’s expensive, the coursework is difficult, and if I can walk away better educated and with a degree in four years, then I’ll be better off for it.

Yes, overall college is a more accepting place with better people than I grew up with. I won’t trust it that much though. My early high school years were horrible. I don’t want my college years to be the same. I won’t risk it, and if you think I’m less for that…well fine, that’s your prerogative and your way, not mine.

If I’m wearing my pentacle necklace, chances are you won’t see it. It might be a long time before I change my religion on Facebook to “Pagan” (if I ever do; right now I’m thinking that won’t happen) . I don’t tell everyone I meet while walking down the street that I’m Pagan. My beliefs and my spirituality are my business and mine alone if I don’t want anyone else to know. That doesn’t mean I’m less proud of my beliefs than you are.

Limitless treasure

Limitless treasure

Every moment is a new opportunity to more fully experience and express the value of your life. The value you live is the value you give.

What you get out of life is not merely a result of what you put into it. What you get out of life and what you put into it are precisely one and the same.

Every moment is an opportunity to invest yourself in meaningful purpose. The quality of that investment at any given time is what defines the true quality of your life.

Fulfillment is not about acquiring something that exists outside of you. It is about more richly and more completely experiencing the unique, magnificent value that is already and always within you.

Life’s circumstances do not, in and of themselves, enhance or detract from the value of your life. Each event, each circumstance gives you a new way to explore and experience that value.

The best you can live is the best you are willing to give, and there’s no limit to what that can be. Fully invest yourself in each moment, and delight in the limitless treasure that is already yours.

— Ralph Marston

The Daily Motivator

Daily OM for Thursday, March 8 – Earth Living

Earth Living
Following Nature’s Cycles

 

We cannot have harmony and balance in our lives if we forget to include the earth and natural rhythms in our lives.

Nature, in all its myriad forms, is the most powerful force on earth. Although mankind has tried, we have not found a way to match its awesome power, but we have found ways to work with it. Science often confirms the wisdom of the ancients who observed and then harnessed nature’s rhythms and cycles to shape and enhance their lives. We can begin to do this in our own lives by first paying attention to our own natural rhythms, such as when we wake or when we feel the need to sleep. If possible, we may want to try to rise and sleep with the sun or live without electricity for a weekend and then monitor how we feel. We can make the choice to eat the foods of the seasons and to seek fresher, locally grown, or organic produce whose own cycles have not been tampered with by technology.

We can create harmony in our homes by making a smooth transition between our indoor and outdoor spaces. By bringing some of the outdoors inside and taking some of our indoor décor out, we can simultaneously enjoy nature and the comforts of home and the feeling that our living space is expanded. Then, whether inside or out, we can lounge on a comfortable piece of furniture and feel the wind, inhale the scent of deeply breathing plants, listen for the many songs of life, and observe the moon and the stars. As we do this more often, we may find ourselves noticing the pull of the full moon on bodies of water, as well as the water in bodies, or the music of the night acting as a lullaby.

When we seek balance in our lives, we want to balance not just our roles in life but also the natural elements in our spaces. Having representations of the elements in the colors, shapes, and textures of our homes will appeal to our mind, body, and spirit. We may find that when we sync ourselves with nature’s rhythms, we ride the waves of energy to feel more in harmony with life and the world around us.

Understanding Negative Energy: Choose Your Words Wisely!

Understanding Negative Energy: Choose Your Words Wisely!

Author: Ryan Hatcher

How often, as energy workers, are we told that negative energy is ‘bad’? “Cleanse it of all negative energy!” “It’s been tainted by negative energy.” “I can feel a lot of negativity here” and so on. Personally I feel this use of the word ‘negative’ to be wrong.

Let’s look at the word negative, and then you might see what I’m getting at. The word negative is the opposite of the word positive. In terms of physics, negativity is a description of a charge, such as positively charged particles and negatively charged particles (protons and electrons respectively) . The poles of a battery are labeled + and – or positive and negative. However, as energy workers we generally consider ‘negative’ to mean ‘bad’, ‘harmful’ and, in an extreme, ‘evil’.

Does this mean that half of a battery is evil? Or since electricity is a flow of electrons and so has a negative charge, does that mean electricity is inherently evil? Well…no, if we think about it, they’re not inherently bad, harmful or evil, although electricity can be harmful if it is misused, like any other energy.

If we look to the Far East, we can look at the ideas of positive and negative from a more spiritual perspective. What I refer to is the concept of Yin and Yang from Taoism and traditional Chinese medicine. Yang, roughly meaning Sun, is positive, masculine overt and open in Chinese. In the Taijitu (the typical Yin-Yang symbol) , Yang is represented by the white section. The concept of Yang energy is that of active, dynamic, masculine aspects, the sun and fire are forces associated with Yang as well as the God principle. Yang is the positive side of the polarity.

In Chinese medicine the Yang part of our body is the right side of our body. There are also Yang organs in the body, associated with active and energizing attributes. Yang is the energy within us that drives us forward, is our passion, and keeps us energized. But if we have too much Yang in our lives, we can end up feeling hyperactive, aggressive, suffer insomnia and eventually burn ourselves out.

Yin is roughly translated as shade, moon, feminine, negative, lunar and hidden in Chinese. In the Taijitu, the black section represents Yin. The concept of Yin energy is that of the passive, stillness and the feminine. The moon and water are forces associated with Yin, as well as emotions, intuition and the Goddess principle. Yin is the negative side of the polarity.

In Chinese medicine, the Yin part of our body is the left side of our body and, as with Yang, there are Yin organs in the body associated with passive, fluid attributes. It is the serenity within us that keeps us calm, allows us to sit and just observe the world around us, are the deep waters of our mind and keep us grounded. However, too much Yin in our lives leaves us feeling lethargic, depressed, lonely and alienated, suffering from hypersomnia and getting nowhere in life.

A balance between the two is imperative to be able to experience life to the fullest and to feel as present in the now as is possible for us as human beings at that moment. The Yin and Yang, together in the Taijitu, are inseparably linked, entwined together to form the whole, the perfect and infinite circle. One cannot exist without the other, just as a shadow cannot exist without a source of light. Also, if we look at the Taijitu we can see that the individual Yin and Yang parts contain a part of the opposite. This shows that opposites exist within everything and the importance of a balanced polarity.

There, polarity, that is the point I’m trying to aim for. Is it possible, looking at the Yin-Yang model to see negative as inherently bad as we have done for so long? If we did, it would mean that everything feminine, including the Goddess, would be bad, harmful and possibly inherently evil. I’m sure no one has any intention of doing that any time soon.

Positive and negative, light and dark. They are just opposites in the balance of polarity and have no sense of moral right or wrong, any more than do the poles of the aforementioned battery or the north and south poles of a compass, or even the earth. They’re just opposites of the same force.

So what do I propose we use instead of the word negative? Personally, I use the words ‘impure’, ‘unclean’ and ‘harmful’ when it comes to describing unwanted energy because that is really what we’re talking about isn’t it? Unwanted energy. Unwanted because it is harmful, impure and unclean. It is the energy that taints our work and our tools, whereas simply ‘negative’ energy could in fact be beneficial, providing a feminine aspect to our tools and working, and thus providing that balance of polarity which is what paganism and ‘the great work’ is supposed to be all about: unifying opposites to create a balanced whole.

Sometimes I feel that, though we understand thoughts and words have power, we still need to choose our thoughts and words more carefully when working directly with the energies of the universe. We need to make sure we know exactly what it is we are asking and that the words we use match our intention and directed will. The universe has a cruel, and sometimes ironic sense of humor (for a non-corporeal, non-specific entity anyway) , and sometimes you get what you’ve asked for, and if you’ve asked using the wrong words, then you’re likely to get a nasty surprise!

So from this moment I ask that we are all more mindful of the words we choose to use, both in our day-to-day lives as well as in our magical lives. Doing so we may just find things flow in the way we want them to and we can each live a happier, more peaceful existence.

Blessed be

Footnotes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yang

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taijitu

How to Banish

How to Banish

Author: Taliesin McKnight

The first thing that one should learn to do in magick is to banish. This is a simple precautionary measure. Before conjuring things up, intentionally or unintentionally, banishing should be well understood. Banishing can be defined as cleansing an area (or person) of negative energies or entities. There are various hostile forces in the spirit world that need to be warded off at times.

There are three basic ways to get rid of negative vibrations. These techniques are used in virtually all systems of magick: Wicca, Voodoo, Santeria, ceremonial magick, to name just a few. Once the art of banishing is understood, then it can be done for others as well. After all, magick is not just about your base desires and self-glorification (sobering thought, I know!) , but about helping others. You will be a cunning man or woman, an instrument of the Divine. The three basic methods of banishing are the burning of herbs, the sprinkling of holy water, and ritual.

The burning of herbs is a very ancient form of exorcism (exorcism is another word for banishment) . But not just any herbs are used; they must be cleansing herbs! This may include such plants as vervain, onion, patchouli, and hyssop. You may now be asking yourself, do those herbs really have any power in themselves? This issue is highly debated in the occult community. Some are of the opinion that different herbs have various mystical properties, which can be harnessed and employed by the witch. Others, however, think that it is simply the belief in the mind of the practitioner that makes the employment of herbs effective. Whatever the case may be, virtually all forms of witchcraft regard herbs as highly powerful agents to be made use of in magick.

The basic technique involves burning the herbs and allowing the smoke to touch the area (or person) being cleansed. The smoke is said to drive away impurities. Warning: Do not merely use the incense sticks or cones! Many would-be magicians are conned (intentionally conned by the manufacturers) into using these. Typically, there is no herb in the incense at all. It is merely the “fragrance.” Thus, if you buy lavender incense, chances are there is no lavender in it. So try to avoid merely using the incense named after the plant.

There are various methods for procuring your herbs. The plants can be bought or grown. Most pagans like to grow their own so they can incorporate the seasonal practices of planting and harvest into it. They may also be purchased at your local metaphysical store or online. Another alternative is to simply go to the grocery store and just see what you can find. If nothing else then many of the herbs can be found in the “spices” section. Onion, garlic, black pepper, and rubbed sage are easy to find; these are all powerful herbs used for banishing. Tobacco can be blended with such herbs to help them burn. Tobacco is often used to replace sulphur in old grimoires. It is connected to Mars (the god of war) . The herbs may be burned upon charcoals. Smudge sticks are also quite popular. These are often composed of a mixture of rubbed sage and bluegrass.

The concept of holy water is found in many different systems of magick. Please note that this does not necessarily refer to holy water from a church. The use of holy water predates Christianity and is used in virtually all forms of Paganism. At its most basic, it is water mixed with sea salt. Various other formulas exist in which one mixes the water with various cleansing herbs such as sage, hyssop, and vervain. This is all up to the individual witch. The herbs are boiled in water and then are strained. This is how such herbal mixtures are made. Marie Laveau water (highly prized in New Orleans Voodoo) is one such example. It is composed of 1 cup of rainwater, 1 cup of spring water, 1 cup of lavender water, 1 cup of rose water, and holy water from a church.

Holy water should always be blessed in some way, which can be accomplished by an elaborate spell or a simple prayer. The water is then sprinkled in the area to drive away evil and any negative, hostile forces. This ancient practice goes back to the very beginning of magick.

Ritual is the last of the three methods. Of course, sprinkling holy water and burning herbs do serve as rituals within themselves, but there are other more elaborate forms of ritual. One of these is the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram. This ritual comes to us from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which was a secret society that taught initiates the practices of ceremonial magick. Although this rite is derived from ceremonial magickal tradition, practitioners of many different paths and systems have used it. This is simply due to the fact that the ritual is so effective at cleansing the environment of negativity. Another technique is the ringing of a bell, a method used by a number of cultures.

Those of a Christian background may call on the power of God by invocation and prayer. Another practice is to cut an onion into quarters and to place these in the four corners of a room. The idea is that the onion will absorb the negative “vibes” and is later discarded or burned. Chanting may be employed or various candle spells may be used. Once again, there are countless rituals that can be utilized as rites of exorcism.

Remember, banishing is the first thing that should be learned in the practice of magick. From that point on you may proceed, somewhat safely, on the path of the occultist. The three methods outlined above (the burning of herbs, the sprinkling holy water, and ritual) are used in virtually all forms and systems of magick around the world. They are tried and tested methods that have been successfully employed by witches for many thousands of years. When all else fails, appeal to a Higher Power, however this may be defined.

Always remember that the Ancient Ones are there to aid you upon your path.