Ritual Magick

Ritual magick is no different from any other activity that you may carry out in a systematic way. Yes, it is true, it is more formal than folk magick: you are using special tools and following a series of preordained steps based on traditional practice. But this does not mean that it has to be so complicated as to be beyond the capabilities of any normal person. You do not need special powers; and the preparation is just the same as you would do if you were redecorating a room, servicing your car or preparing your annual accounts.

When you decide to do any of these tasks, you set out the necessary equipment in advance, so you are not constantly dashing off to find what you need. You check that it is all in working order and you probably consult a reliable reference book, computer software or calculator to clarify the necessary stages and finer points of the method. And that is exactly what preparing for ritual magick is like.

First, you need to collect any relevant information; for example, you must find out which tools, herbs, candle colours, etc. you may require. Then you must check that your magical tools are charged with power. You must check whether the hour and the day are well chosen to benefit from the energies and are most aligned to the focus. If you are working with a group, you must decide in advance who is to carry the salt and other elemental substances round the circle, who will perform particular parts of the ritual, such as welcoming the Spirit Guardians.

This preparation is important, although, as I have previously said, many of the words and actions in the best rituals remain spontaneous within the basic framework. You do not even need to belong to a coven to create beautiful rituals. Indeed, practising alone, you will find that as you increase in confidence, the natural rhythm of the ritual cycle will amplify your own innate powers and you will feel angelic or devic forces joining with you as you walk around the circle and hear their voices mingling with your chants.

You should not allow yourself to be overawed, as I have been in the past and still occasionally am, by books and practitioners who vaunt their knowledge of obscure magical phrases, measure their circles down to the last millimetre and insist that only their form of working is authentic.

What matters is the actual connection you make in your ritual with the storehouse of natural and higher energies – and that can be done with a kitchen candle if the need is great and the intention pure. Ultimately, the power is within you, and as you become skilled with magick, you may find that the external form becomes less important.

However, formal magick does have its place, for a special need or for raising spiritual awareness, or for focusing magical energies through the accumulated power of tools charged and regularly used for positive purpose. Some people believe also that in ritual you tap into the energies of all those before you who have created circles of power and protection, and within them have raised and called upon the elemental qualities to bring desires and needs from the thought to the material plane.

—Practical Guide to Witchcraft and Magic Spells By Cassandra Eason

THE WITCHES’ REDE OF CHIVALRY

Insofar as The Craft Of The Wise is the most ancient and most honourable creed of humankind, it behoves all who would be witches to act in ways that give respect to the Old Gods and Goddesses, to their brothers and sisters of The Craft, and to themselves

Chivalry is a high code of honour, which is of most ancient Pagan origin and must be lived by all who follow the Old Ways.

Know well that thoughts and intent put forth will wax strong on many planes of existence and return, bringing into creation that which has been sent forth. For this reason the adept must exercise discipline over his or her thoughts. Remember, ” as you sow, so shall you harvest”

It is only by preparing our minds to be as Gods that we may one day unite with the Godhead.

“This above all … to thine own self be true…”

A witch’s word must have the validity of a signed and witnessed document. It is only by developing such mental discipline that great power may be controlled and directed

It is well to refrain from speaking ill of others for not all truths of the matter may be known

Pass not unverified words about another. For the most part hearsay is a thing of falsehoods

Be honest with others. Have them know that honesty is likewise expected of them

The fury of the moment plays havoc with the truth. Strive always to keep your head

Harm not another. Think always of the consequences of your actions

Dignity, a gracious manner, and a good humour are much to be admired

As a witch you wield much power. Therefore exercise much discretion in its use

Courage and honour endure forever.

Offer friendship only to those worthy of it. To associate with younger souls will only pull you down

Those who follow the mysteries must be above reproach in the eyes of the world

Keep pride in thyself. Seek perfection in body and in mind

(Adapted from Rites From The Crystal Well)

What Happens After Death?

Only the body dies. The soul lives on. Some Wiccans say that it journeys to a realm variously known as the Land of the Faerie, the Shining Land, and the Land of the Young.* This realm is neither in heaven nor the underworld. It simply is-a non-physical physical reality much less dense than ours. Some Wiccan traditions describe it as a land of eternal summer, with grassy fields and sweet flowing rivers, perhaps the Earth before the advent of humans. Others see it vaguely as a realm without forms, where energy swirls coexist with the greatest energies-the Goddess and God in their celestial identities.

The soul is said to review the past life, perhaps through some mysterious way with the deities. This isn’t a judgment, a weighing of one’s soul, but an incarnational review. Lessons learned or ignored are brought to light.

After the proper time, when the conditions on Earth are correct, the soul is reincarnated and life begins again.

The final question-what happens after the last incarnation? Wiccan teachings have always been vague on this. Basically, the Wiccans cans say that after rising upon the spiral of life and death and rebirth, those souls who have attained perfection break away from the cycle forever and dwell with the Goddess and God. Nothing is ever lost. The energies resident in our souls return to the divine source from which they originally emanated.

Because of their acceptance of reincarnation, the Wicca don’t fear death as a final plunge into oblivion, the days of life on Earth forever behind them. It is seen as the door to birth. Thus our very lives are symbolically linked with the endless cycles of the seasons which shape our planet.

Don’t try to force yourself to believe in reincarnation. Knowledge is far superior to belief, for belief is the way of the uninformed. It isn’t wise to accept a doctrine as important as reincarnation without a great deal of study to see if it speaks to you.

Also, though there may be strong connections with loved ones, be wary of the idea of soul mates, i.e. people you’ve loved in other lives and are destined to love again. Though your feelings and beliefs may be sincere, they aren’t always based on fact. In the course of your life you might meet five or six other people with whom you feel the same tie, despite your current involvement. Can they all be soul mates?

One of the difficulties of this concept is that if we’re all inextricably tricably tied up with other persons’ souls, if we continue to incarnate with them, we’re learning absolutely nothing. Therefore, announcing that you’ve found your soul mate is rather akin to stating that you’re not progressing on the incarnational spiral.

One day you may know, not believe, that reincarnation is as real as a plant that buds, flowers, drops its seed, withers and creates a new plant in its image. Reincarnation was probably first intuited by earlier peoples watching nature.

Until you’ve decided for yourself, you may wish to reflect upon and consider the doctrine of reincarnation.

Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner
Scott Cunningham

The Spiral of Rebirth

Reincarnation seems to be one of the most controversial spiritual topics of our time. Hundreds of books are being published on the subject ject as if the Western world had only recently discovered this ancient doctrine.

Reincarnation is one of Wicca’s most valuable lessons. The knowledge edge that this life is but one of many, that when the physical body dies we do not cease to exist but are reborn in another body answers many questions, but raises a few more.

Why? Why are we reincarnated? In common with many other religions, Wicca teaches that reincarnation is the instrument through which our souls are perfected. One lifetime isn’t sufficient to attain this goal; hence, the consciousness (soul) is reborn many times, each life encompassing a different set of lessons, until perfection is achieved.

No one can say how many lives are required before this is accomplished. plished. We are human and it’s easy to fall into non-evolutionary behavior. Greed, anger, jealousy, obsession and all our negative emotions inhibit our growth.

In Wicca, we seek to strengthen our bodies, minds and souls. We certainly live full, productive earthly lives, but we try to do so while harming none, the antithesis of competition, intimidation and looking out for number one.

The soul is ageless, sexless, non-physical, possessed of the divine spark of the Goddess and God. Each manifestation of the soul (i.e., each body it inhabits on Earth) is different. No two bodies or lives are the same. If this wasn’t so, the soul would stagnate. The sex, race, place of birth, economic class and every other individuality of the soul is determined by its actions in past lives and the lessons necessary to the present.

This is of utmost importance in Wiccan thought: we decide the lay of our lives. There’s no god or curse or mysterious force of fate upon which we can thrust the responsibility for the trials in our lives. We decide what we need to learn in order to evolve, and then, it is hoped, during incarnation, work toward this out for number one.

The soul is ageless, sexless, non-physical, possessed of the divine spark of the Goddess and God. Each manifestation of the soul (i.e., each body it inhabits on Earth) is different. No two bodies or lives are the same. If this wasn’t so, the soul would stagnate. The sex, race, place of birth, economic class and every other individuality of the soul is determined by its actions in past lives and the lessons necessary to the present.

This is of utmost importance in Wiccan thought: we decide the lay of our lives. There’s no god or curse or mysterious force of fate upon which we can thrust the responsibility for the trials in our lives. We decide what we need to learn in order to evolve, and then, it is hoped, during incarnation, work toward this progress. If not, we regress into darkness.

As an aid in learning the lessons of each life, a phenomenon exists which has been called karma. Karma is often misunderstood. It is not a system of rewards and punishments, but a phenomenon that guides the soul toward evolving actions. Thusly, if a person performs negative actions, negative actions will be returned. Good brings good. With this in mind, there’s little reason to act negatively.

Karma means action, and that’s how it works. It is a tool, not a punishment. There’s no way one can “wipe out” karma, and neither is every seemingly terrible event in our lives a byproduct of karma.

We learn from karma only when we’re aware of it. Many look into their past lives to discover their mistakes, to uncover the problems inhibiting progress in this one.

Trance and meditation techniques can help here, but true self-knowledge is the best means of accomplishing this.

Past-life regression can be a dangerous thing, for much self-delusion delusion exists here. I can’t tell you how many Cleopatras, King Arthurs, Merlins, Marys, Nefertitis and other famous persons of the past I’ve met walking around in high-top tennis shoes and jeans. Our conscious minds, seeking past incarnations, easily hold onto such romantic ideals.

If this becomes a problem; if you don’t wish to know your past lives, or lack the means to discover them, look at this life. You can learn everything of relevance about your past lives by examining this life. If you’ve cleared up problems in previous existences, they’re of no concern to you today. If you haven’t, the same problems will reappear, so look at this life.

At night, study your day’s action, noting both positive, helpful actions and thoughts as well as the negative. Then look at the past week, the past year, the past decade. Refer to diaries, journals or old letters if you’ve kept them to refresh your memory. Do you continually make the same mistakes? If so, vow to never repeat them in a ritual of your own design.

–Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner
Scott Cunningham

The Meaning of the Ancient Myths

It is perhaps difficult for us to realize that the wonderful gods and goddesses of whom we have been reading were once very real to the people who invented them, but the fact that they are commemorated for all time in the names of our months and days shows how real they were. Some of the stories may seem childish to us, and the ideas which they contain are certainly very different from the ideas of God we have to-day, But it must always be remembered that very nearly all that we know about the marvellous world in which we live has been discovered since the days of the Romans and Northmen. They did not have the opportunity of learning what we have learnt, and if their belief seems childish to us, it is because in some ways the people were childish, when we compare them with ourselves. Grown-up people, however, do not make fun of the wonderful stories which children invent, and many of the myths, as these stories of the gods are called, are very clever and very beautiful.

The earth and the sea, the sun and the moon and the stars, the seasons, the rain and the snow, the trees and the flowers were all difficult to understand, and those early peoples explained them as best they could. Most of these explanations seem fanciful to us now, but, after all, they were very natural explanations. We shall see this better if we compare the gods and goddesses of the Greeks and Romans with those of the Northmen. They are very similar in many ways, and many of the stories are similar too.

Jupiter, before he became the ruler of the gods, had to overthrow the Titans, and in the same way Odin had to conquer the frost-giants. The Roman gods had their home on Mount Olympus, from which Jupiter could look down over the earth, while Odin from his palace in Asgard could also see all heaven and earth. Hel, the Goddess of the Underworld, reigned over a dark kingdom, to which came those who died, in the same way as Pluto ruled the underground kingdom of Hades. The Underworlds, too, were very similar; the good among the dead were divided off from the evil, who suffered terrible punishments for their crimes; the entrance in each case was guarded by a fierce dog, Garm in the kingdom of Hel, and the three-headed Cerberus in Hades.

We have already noticed the way in which the Romans and the Northmen explained summer and winter, and the likeness between the punishments of Prometheus and Loki.

In the sun-myths there is much confusion, for although the Greeks and the Romans had a sun-god, Apollo, and the Northmen a god of light, Balder the Beautiful, we find in some stories that the sun is represented by other gods, and even mortals. Frey is really the sun, for it is he who makes the crops grow in the fields, and light like the sun’s rays flashes from his sword and from his golden-bristled boar. Juno is the light of heaven, and in the story of Argus, the Hundred-eyed, gives Io, who represents the moon, into the keeping of Argus, the starry sky, but the light of the stars is slowly put out by Mercury, the God of Wind and Rain. The burning of the earth by Phaeton means a drought which is brought to an end by a thunder-storm, the thunderbolt hurled at Phaeton by Jupiter.

In the story of Diana and Endymion, Endymion is a symbol of the setting sun which Diana watches as she mounts the sky. Hercules, too, probably represents the sun. His conquest of the many-headed serpent is the victory of the sun over the darkness, as is Apollo’s slaying of Python. The twelve labours of Hercules may represent the twelve constellations in the zodiac, or possibly twelve hours of daylight. Hercules’ funeral pyre, which reddens the whole sky like the setting sun, is seen again in the burning of Balder and his ship Ringhorn.

Thor is like Hercules, through his great strength, and just as he put on a woman’s dress in order to recover his hammer from the giants, so Hercules on one occasion was forced to dress like a woman. Thor’s wife, Sif, represents the earth, while her golden hair is the vegetation. When Loki steals the hair, he brings the same misfortune on the earth as Pluto causes by seizing Persephone. Loki has to visit the dwarfs underground in order to obtain the golden hair, and Mercury seeks Persephone in Hades. Persephone’s eating of the pomegranate seeds, which keeps her in the Underworld, is like the refusal of the giantess to weep for Balder.

Another sun-myth is the story of Jason, who obtains the Golden Fleece (the rays of the sun) by killing the dragon, which represents either darkness or drought. Phryxus and Helle represent clouds, as probably do the Argo and the magic ship of Frey. Bellerophon, too, is the sun, who, mounted on Pegasus, the clouds, slays the dragon of drought, and at last, when struck by Jupiter’s thunderbolt, falls from the sky into darkness.

We see then that all these myths were attempts to explain or describe what we call Nature–the earth and the sky, the sun, the moon, and so on. As Christianity spread, belief in the myths passed away, but many interesting and curious stories have been left behind which cannot be forgotten as long as we keep the names of our months and days. These names will always remind us of gods and heroes, of stirring deeds and bold adventures, all of which have been preserved too in the writings of the great poets of all times and lands.

–Sacred Text