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Witchcraft - Rituals, Spellcasting - Sorcery - Theory and Practice (PDFDrive)
Witchcraft - Rituals, Spellcasting - Sorcery - Theory and Practice (PDFDrive)
Once you have chosen to take upon yourself the obligations of the practice
of Witchcraft, then the effects, or the immanence, of this way of life will be
bestowed on you from aligned intelligences, and so will the tests that
accompany them.
Once initiation has occurred, there is no turning back you will quest all your
life; it is not a thing to do thoughtlessly.
-Lv de Angeles
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ly de Angeles has been an initiated priestess for twenty-nine years. She is
High Priestess of an Australian coven known as Coven Crvstalglade, and has
been involved in the occult arts and sciences since her introduction to it
when she was eleven years old.
The author of The Way of the Goddess and The Way of Merlvn, Ly is a
worldwide Tarot consultant and has taught Tarot and similar occult subjects
for the past fifteen years.
If you wish to contact the author or would like more information about this
book, please write to the author in care of Llewellyn Worldwide and we will
forward your request. Both the author and publisher appreciate hearing
from you and learning of your enjoyment of this book and how it has helped
you. Llewellyn Worldwide cannot guarantee that every letter written to the
author can be answered, but all will be forwarded. Please write to:
Ly de Angeles
% Llewellyn Worldwide
P. O. Box 64383, Dept. K782׳x
St. Paul, MN 55164-0383, U.S.A.
Please enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope for reply, or $1.00 to
cover costs. If outside U.S.A., enclose international postal reply coupon.
2001
Llewellyn Publications
St. Paul, Minnesota 55164-0383, U.S.A.
Witchcraft: Theory and Practice © 2000 by Ly dc Angeles. All rights
reserved. N o part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from
Llewellyn Publications except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
critical articles and reviews.
FIRST E D I T I O N
Fourth Printing, 2001
Llewellyn Publications
A Division of Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd.
P. O. Box 64383, Dept. 1 - 5 6 7 1 8 - 7 8 2 - x
St. Paul, M N 55164-0383, USA
www.llewellyn.com
A
Printed on recycled paper in the United States of America
"... and when you know the magic believes in you, how can you not?"
-Ly de Angeles
CONTENTS
xv Prologue
xxi Introduction
3 The Center
6 Meditation
10 Contemplation
10 Silence
11 Visualization
17 Self-Analysis Techniques
2Q Mulengro
32 Fear
37 Preparation
38 Intent
38 Focus
39 Personal Power
40 Service
42 On Passion
47 To BeWitch
57 Full Moon
57 New Moon
60 A Witch's God
85 Reiving
Q4 The Rite
gg The Ritual
137 Letting Go
138 Fith-fathing
146 Familiars
146 Fetches
155 Glamouring
172 Techniques
175 Omens and Portents (־Including More About the Geas)
186 Vampirism
18q Getting and Hexing (The Hows, Whys, Pros, and Cons)
217 Time
227 Non-Fiction
245 Index
PROLOGUE
ithin the corner of a darkened room a woman sits on a chair and
hums a repetitive tune. Her eyes are closed and she rocks back and forth,
back and forth, back and forth-seeming to sway in some invisible wind like
the rushes on a lake shore. Her hands are moving between threads as she
weaves and plaits them, every now and then stopping to tie a knot; the
silence more permeable for the lack of song.
She sits, thus, for hours until the room lightens with the glow of the rising
Moon, the shafts of which pierce the window to land at her feet. The
monotonous humming stops, the rocking stops, the dancing fingers
stop-her eyes are open.
She stands and walks to the center of the little room where her table is set
with the instruments of her birthright: cup, picking up the glow of
moonlight and dripping it onto the cloth beneath; knife with the hilt as black
as jet that glints with streaks of silver that have been set into the ancient
runes that surround the base, and with a double-edged blade that flares and
tapers finely to its point of power; pentacle that glows with burnished light,
the symbols on its face deep and meaningless to any save its owner; wand of
willow wood, finely carved with her own hand into an intricate set of spirals
and swirls, worn in places where it has been lovingly worked; unlit candles
of purest white to compliment the Moon's glow, and a heavy silver
medallion on a cord, older than even she knows, that has been passed down,
along with her knowledge and her sword, the Initiator, from one to the
other, in secret nights and ancient tongue, from one to another, by right of
succession and ancient oath, until to her it was bequeathed with all that
belongs to the passage; a bowl of burning coals that glow and shed warmth
round about, upon which she drops juniper twigs and wood from the dead
bough of an apple tree. From the coals she lights a taper, then the candles,
one by one-all in silence and certainty of what is to follow.
Her shapeless dress is unbuttoned and dropped to the floor; her hair,
bound about her head in a tight braid, is unraveled and spreads around her
in a wild, burnished copper haze. The medallion she takes lovingly in her
hands to greet with a soft kiss before raising it to the Moon's glow for
approval; she then drops its cord over her head onto her breast, drawing
comfort from its familiar coldness on her skin.
She kneels, raises her arms above her head, breathes deeply, and waits.
Very soon the Moon is fully risen and the shafts of silver cover her body and
radiate around her. She cries out, in the ancient tongue of the Lands of
Lirian, that she is ready to greet her Goddess, whose name she summons by
the name she knows, and it rings around her thrice, like the secret chiming
of bells.
She slowly stands and takes the cup, this sacred chalice, now filled with
water, later wine, and walks around the little room sprinkling as she goes. A
soft, melodious chant is rising, rising from her as she quickens her pace,
deosil, deosil, leaving trails of moonlight glowing in a circle all around her.
She feels the force field, an almost imperceptible swishing that grows to a
hum. When it is constant she stops, moves back to her table, proclaiming it
altar. Now she dips her wand into the cup and uses the sacred water to seal
her body from all things impure or mundane, thinking, "Be ye far from us,
oh ye profane ..." She kisses the wand's tip and lays it back on the altar. She
refuels the brazier and inhales the sw^eet-smelling smoke-a tribute to her
Goddess. She takes the pentacle between her two hands and raises it above
her head, calling forth the force of the Four Winds to act as sentinels to her
rite. She takes the dagger, the power of her birthright, and presses it to her
breast to fill it with her own essence, and then she stands. The dagger is now
athame. She raises it slowly; her whole being is poured from its magnetized
tip in shafts of blue fire as it pierces the night for the acknowledgement she
knows will come.
Her breath is still. The night is still. The forces of life wait expectantly, and
suddenly the light returns to flood the roomthe priestess of the Moon cries
out to the primordial mother, to whom she was bequeathed before the dawn
of time.
The mother answers with the heartbeat of a thousand million lives and
acknowledges her daughter, sister, self. They fuse and are one-was it ever
any other way?
The cycle is complete, and the priestess of the Moon is assured. The magic
of her fingers will soothe where they lay, and the magic of her voice will heal
where it is heard, the magic of her eyes will light the Earth, and all things will
grow where're she looks upon them.
The Way of the Goddess will continue, though to most her name is
unknown. As long as even one remembers will the knowledge proceed and
the Earth be sustained.
Though the foolish fear what they don't understand, the magic goes on
and the secret survives, for the priestess of the Moon is witch, and what she
represents is at one with what's living, and all that she is will continue-for
without her the Earth would weep and the night wrould never understand
and so would cease to be. She is the spiral of life-the oceans, the rivers, the
falling of the dew, the changing of the seasons. She is the corn at harvest
and the birth of birds. She is the wind on the mountain and the spider's wreb
at dawTi.
All things of beauty are the name that she summons, for she is the mirror
of the Goddess that is life, and the mother of all living things. If she could
not continue, or was the last of all, then all hope wrould cease to be.
INTRODUCTION TO THE
REVISED EDITION
en years have elapsed since The Way of the Goddess was originally
published, and I am as aware of what I didn't write as I am of what I did. I
was only a few years out of the closet, you see, and the confusion and lack of
awareness of a biased public kept me cautious.
Two things I would like you to be aware of regarding this work: it was
intimated to me over the years by many of my readers that the work
displayed a bias toward women. "Not so," say I. It was necessary for me to
recount the practices in as personal a genre as possible to forestall it being
viewed as a work of dusty authority, and I am, incidentally, a woman. I have
amended much of the ritual accordingly, without losing the intent of the
content. Secondly, the original work was, as far as I'm concerned, a light
work; very much a primer. I have taken this material much further (without
dishonoring my sacred oaths), as though I communicate with the students
and initiates whom I train.
The Way of the Goddess was primarily directed to witches of the Southern
Hemisphere because, at the time, nothing else did. While sales in the south
lands were predictable, those in the Northern Hemisphere were quite vast. I
will, therefore, include you more directly in the cross-associations,
seasonally, for ease of training.
INTRODUCTION
O/ I 11 ז of the techniques described in Part One, Section One are basic
requirements for most self-development training }in occult traditions. Parts
Two and Three are devoted to the rituals and workings of Witchcraft.
Whatever you learn is automatically projected into your personal and
environmental energy field, and that, in itself, denotes changes not only to
your own basic lifestyle, but to the lives of those with whom you associate.
You may find yourself with little or nothing in common with people with
whom you have consorted for years. You may find yourself in conflict and
turmoil, misunderstood,' and daunted at every turn, unwilling to accept
confines to which you may have previously (often unwittingly) acquiesced.
There wrere a few of us at my home one night, including this woman, and
we talked about her problem (she hadn't invited her husband, he stayed
home with the kids). We discussed what he believed and what she was
learning; she also stated that she didn't wrant to leave her husband. We
asked her how certain she was of the ways of magic that she was learning
and, because she was determined to continue her training, why she engaged
in argument with him at all. She said, "He doesn't want me to follow my
path, and I'll be damned if I'll let him interfere!" We asked her how he was
interfering and she replied, "He rubbishes me." We asked how, if she was
caring about her family and still following the path, his rubbishing could
have an effect; that if she really wanted to do it, then he couldn't stop her,
and that only through being who she professed to be could she find peace.
Sooner or later, if she were loving and laughing and still doing what she
knew was right for her, then he would come to accept and appreciate her.
This is universally true, for only by living who you really are and what you
learn (and not just talking about it) do you ever really grow.
Sometimes we take risks that cannot be avoided. The point is to decide for
yourself. We do not allow others to assume that they can dictate how we
seek and perpetuate truth; start by looking inside yourself for the answers.
Whatever your choices, you are ultimately going to affect many people,
some of whom you will never meet. The wrork you do (developmental^ and
rituallv) will change your own life-always it will change your own life.
Be awrare of whether you are using your trained will to effect these
changes4 or are just playing at training (that will mean trouble!). Many
events will occur outside of your conscious control; they occur for good
reasons. It is not the incidents themselves that matter, but how you deal
with them. Once you have chosen to take upon yourself the obligations of
the practice of Witchcraft, then the effects, or the immanence, of this way of
life, will be bestowed on you from aligned intelligences, and so will the tests
that accompany them.
Once initiation has occurred, there is no turning back-vou will quest all
your life; it is not a thing to do thoughtlessly. Most people's belief I
structures are conditioned from a very• early age by the environmental and
socio-cultural norms within which we live. In response to the religious
dogma condoned as acceptable by both our parents and peers, we grow up
accepting, albeit apathetically, some degree of that dogma, and relate to
manifest reality, considerations of deity, and all things termed sacred by the
decrees set down by those dogmas. Many people remain consistent with
these norms and do not question or pursue them to any depth (I am
generalizing).
What is it then that causes some to reject these structures? I guess there
are as many reasons as there are people who question, but some reasons
stand out more than others. One is anger. Anger has its roots in fear. People
who have been taught to fear the wrath of God may become angered at the
intensity of this form of manipulation and threat. They will question the fool
who wrould placate them with, "It's the will of God" when a brutal murder by
a crazed shooter takes out the life of their schoolmate; they may question
the priest who tells the destitute mother of several children that it is wTong
to use contraception; they'll question the might of the few to suppress,
annihilate, or imprison the many, by whatever justification, for the
viewpoint of the many; they'll question the logic of genocide and/or bio-
cide6 for economic or governmental supremacist ideology; they may
question wars fueled by religious divisionist regimes; they may question the
right of the cruel and arrogant to prosper above and beyond the loving
followers of a pacifist faith. On the one hand, they are being told that "God is
love," and on the other they are being told that this same God will cast them
into the depths of an eternal fiery hell for any transgressions. If that isn't
cause for fear, then I don't know what is. What causes the anger is that the
questioner was conditioned into acceptance in the first place.
Then there's that other thing! A feeling, a gnawing within the very depths
of self that says, "I know Truth, I just haven't found it in my life." Yes! I've
heard that one before! There's the breakaway who will not settle for the
standards set by others. Not all of them are witches, but all witches know
what I mean. It's a notof-this-life geas - that shadows the individual through
every existence. These people seek their knowledge in unacceptable places.
They want to know enough to risk going against the opinions of others, and
if they cannot find established groups with whom to share their knowing,
then they are quite likely to form their own. They are the illumined
individuals who are guided from other realms in their pursuit of Truth, and
who are driven to pass on the knowledge gained.
All of these breakaway reasons are valid, and seekers can be found
everywhere. The only groups to be wary of, in my experience, are those
whose attitudes are hypocritical in practice, or uninformedlv critical of
others' ways.
Another thing I find unjustified is the need for people to consider God to
be in man's image. Why not woman's? Or a bird's? Or even everything all
together for that matter? Why is it necessary• to give form to something that
is supposedly eternal, omnipotent, and vast enough to be capable of creating
entire universes? To say that God is like man is to endow God with the
qualities of man and to therefore assume that man is supreme (as opposed
to what?). This is preposterous, and also too limited! I do consider that the
tool, or the vessel, of the imagination is the gateway for the forces that we
term divine to express themselves to the individual-that these forces can,
and do, mantle themselves in recognizable images to effect communication
in recognizable ways. We call these forces, in their divine aspects, Goddess
and God; we name them, svnergize with them, dance with them in the way
of the sacred, are both at one with them and individual to them, represent
them, and revere them, and, in understanding this, weave magic as a matter
of course.
Well then, there you are. There are two definite aspects to the work and
training of a witch; the first is the discipline of training the magical will
through tried and true methods, as shown in Part One. The second, and as
important, is the religious training, ritual observances, and spellcrafting
techniques that you will find in Parts Two and Three.
As the first section deals wholly with many of the training techniques and
understandings that ensure, both magically and analytically, that weakness
and ineptitude do not hamper the work side of your chosen path, so the
second section deals with the practices of the priest/ess witch. To those of
you who can find an authentic coven through which to train, I recommend
the process of succession rather than self-initiation. There is nothing that
compares with the communion of like souls, welltrained, working the rites
of Earth and Sun and Moon and Stars.
T H E DISCIPLINES
Hallowed Be Thy Name
S e c t i o n .(Due
FIRST STAGE TECHNIQUE
REQUIREMENTS
T H E CENTER
he center has been called spirit, essence, soul, consciousness. It is
the deep you that seeks to know and understand not only who you are, but
why you are here. It is the whole of you as opposed to the sum of your parts,
it is the gateway to all knowledge, and it is why this book has called to
vou-like attracts like!
You are aware that you have five senses: taste, touch, smell, hearing, and
sight. The aspect of you that is termed the center is the sixth (seventh,
eighth, ninth, etc.) sense, or inner sight/sensation. It can best be accessed
by considering the other five senses as the perimeter of a circle and all things
perceived there flow inward, literally, to the center. The center is also a
doorway through which influences not instigated by the conscious mind or
from some other source can enter, be assessed, and assimilated into the
understanding.
To activate your center consciously (most are already aware of it, but this
awareness may not be conscious) it is necessary to consider the center as a
watcher. It will use all your five senses to assess not only how you react to
others, but how others react to you. It is actively telepathic when you are
clear of undisciplined attitudes and "Pavlov's dog" mentality.' It will take
note of what you are spending your time thinking about and will pass,
consciously, just exactly what is valid in terms of what you say, think, and
do. It will assess and reassess your reactions to circumstances.
Exercise
Set aside one hour each day and consciously recognize everything you
think, do, say, and feel. Imagine that you have an extra set of senses that
acts as a camera and recorder, and work at storing all input received during
this hour.
Later in the day, claim some quiet time to yourself, recall all the things
that you recorded during your designated time, and write them down in an
order such as:
• what I saw;
• what I heard;
• what I smelled;
• what I touched;
• what I tasted;
Remember that the center (and its ally, the Nemet) is totally
nonjudgmental. It is an observer and a conscious purveyor of how you react
and respond within a manifest environment. It will be your task, through
your innate understanding of whether you can refine yourself, to act
accordingly to whatever the wratcher has relayed to you. You may then
eliminate or add as you see fit. Take it slowly, as I have seen too many
idealists, perfectionists, and impatient people turned into tortured souls,
downright bigots, or self-righteous bores through lack of leeway and scope
and the ability, like the willow, to bend not only to circumstances, but to
ideas and principles that may have been set for you and not by you!
MEDITATION
Meditation is a very ancient technique that has been used worldwide by
sages, magi, magicians, witches, wizards, and monks who have taught
people who have in turn taught others. The actual word "meditation" is a
modern Westernized term for the taming of what could be considered a wild
beast-the foreground of one's mind.
There are degrees, or depths, of meditation that you will become aware of
the more you practice this technique. If you work on the premise of the
circle again (see The Center), then meditation is going within, first to keep
within the bounds of that circle, and secondly, to reach the center.
Stop reading for a moment and close your eyes. You will be awrare of
myriad thoughts and impressions passing through your mindscape. Try this
at intervals during the day and behold! it is ahvavs the same-constant
mental activity. One of the most difficult but necessary means of not only
understanding your true nature, but also of using the mindscape in practical
magic, is through this technique or its variation, contemplation, in a field of
either active or passive silence."' Otherwise, all you are doing on your quest
is accruing more and more external data for your mind to sift, sort, and
categorize. This is an addiction inherent in the current collective of the
Western seeker-eclecticism ending up being a diffusion of personal powrer,
as the individual who doesn't stay with a Way can never master the tools
inherent in the deepening of that Way.
In the day-to-day round of most people's lives, there are constant assaults
on the emotions, body, creativity, and intellect. Meditation is the art of
halting and transforming these assaults through a positive act of will. The
result is not only coping with these assaults, but riding them (as opposed to
having them ride you) towrard a desired outcome with a tranquil mind.
MEDITATION AND RITUAL
It is necessary, within ritual, to be completely clear and centered in order to
enable the work to proceed with profundity and intensity. The center is like
a doorway to things not currently recognized by the conscious mind. It is
your power pack and acts as a lever to not only affect your interactions with
the mundane world, but to actualize reception and transmission of
information and perceptions from other realms of reality. The process of
meditation is like a stimulant that helps your center open and close freely
and intentionally and more obviously than before.
THOUGHT, TELEPATHY, AND THE MATRIX—
T H E KEY TO MANIFESTATION
It is advantageous that you realize just what is accessible through this
technique. I have spent many years charting and understanding the concept
of thought and the body of the mindscape as a way of understanding and
tapping into what I was sure was there as a latent or uncontrolled power. I
have always been subject to random flashes of telepathy and have traveled
the timescape through the use of Tarot to predict future events that have
occurred exactly, explicitly, and, in many, many cases, word for word. It is
not in my nature to leave things that are open to misrepresentation alone
until I have an understanding of their pattern, so I experimented with the
concept of consciousness to gain a handle on the function.
What I uncovered is the pattern of thought-it moves as light moves and is,
therefore, instantly there and instantly not. It is both particle and wave, as is
light, which, incidentally, is why spells are told to no one. To speak a thing is
to collapse the wave, sending the spell into a form of manifestation that may
not be material in the observable sense, but is vibratory, therefore having
presence in material reality. Please think about this! There is both
foreground thought and background thought dancing through the
mindscape at differing rates of recognizable frequency, and they both exist
within a medium; this medium is like space through which both energy and
matter realize themselves, but which is a vessel in its own right. Space, both
within the mindscape and within recognizable manifest reality, is a
matrix-and the matrix is the medium through which all things travel. It is a
thing of profound silence. It is the spaces between thought, and it is through
consciously accessing this medium that telepathy and all forms of
spellcrafting find their expression. There are no dividing lines here between
that which is within and that which is without. Fully realizing this removes
the illusion of separateness that is the stumbling block to the activation of
spellcrafting.
Exercise
1. Do not do the following exercises in bed until you are used to the
technique, as it is likely that you will fall asleep.
2. Have a soft, dim lamp or a lighted candle behind you somewhere, as direct
or overhead lighting can be very disconcerting.
4. Begin (with eyes closed) by taking several deep breaths, filling your lungs
to capacity and then exhaling totally. Be aware of breathing by counting
your breaths. Take no fewer than ten to begin.
7. Allow7 just a few minutes the first time, and remember not to apply force
against your unwanted thoughts, just gentle pressure. The aim is to still
your foreground. Your center is somewhere within that velvety-blackness.
When you have reached a state of nonthought, you will have reached your
center, which is a state of tranquillity.
Continue this process daily, even if only for a few minutes. Give yourself
the gift of making time. You are doing three things:
• discovering the sublime silence at the center of your being and activating
that center;
• preparing the ground for active and intentional magic.
You will find this technique invaluable when you get down to more
specific magical workings, so it is truly desirable to continue practicing and
to begin all future exercises with the meditative process.
CONTEMPLATION
Contemplation is a very natural way of focusing and inspiring the
mindscape. It is best accessed through an activity (sometimes repetitive)
that doesn't require the mental concentration of reading or learning (e.g.,
rocking, watching a fire, simple weaving, unhurried gardening, unhurried
cleaning, unhurried, purposeless walking). Contemplation is a
time-to-spare active meditation that also gives surcease to foreground
mental activity. Out of all of the above, I recommend rocking (preferably in a
rocking chair) where no interruption will occur. Issues will arise that require
resolution, and in the state of contemplation, they will be resolved.
Restraints of consciousness will be recognized in this state; doubts in
relation to one's integrity can be addressed here; lies that we perpetuate, or
that are perpetuated against us, will come into the full light of awareness. In
a state of true contemplation, revelation can also occur, and the space to
create change in accordance with these realizations is available.
SILENCE
With both of the above techniques, I reiterate, silence is your greatest ally. It
is akin to space, and it is the mutuality of these two that keeps the
gate-between-the-worlds open. It is the bridge between that which is seen
and unseen, that which is known and unknown, that which is, and that
which is, as yet, unrealized. It is the medium for contact with forces that are
drowned out by excess noise and babble. It is aligned with secrecy that is not
an elitist function, but a tool of nonadulteration of intent.
VISUALIZATION
Proficiency at visualization is most important to all occult training. I have
encountered only one or two people in all the years that I have been
teaching who were unable to visualize. However, they had the ability to
conceptualize with similarly accurate results.
Without the ability to visualize, projection into the astral realms is almost
impossible (at least consciously; it is done automatically in the sleep state)."
The ability to visualize is integral to spellcrafting and can lead to dramatic
changes and accomplishments, especially if you are freefalling.'Z
The term "visualize" has been described in various ways in many books
and by many people. Still, there are some who do not think they can
visualize because of how it has been described. The problem is one of
communication. The word that best articulates the function within the mind
that can visualize is imagination. To enable me to do justice to this chapter, I
would first like to shed light on a common misconception concerning this
remarkable power.
As meditation is the process of stilling the mind while relaxing the body,
so visualization utilizes that peaceful, relaxed state for the creation of altered
states, increased awareness through controlled and conscious intent,
contact, manifestation, and summoning. What begins with the exercise of
controlled creation of a one-dimensional image, becomes the creation of a
three-dimensional image, then the transmutation of a concept or idea into
an image or a series of images, then in turn to the activation of things and
people, and the creation of situations that eventually transpire in the realm
we understand as material. From there you will seek through the aid of (1)
the center, (2) meditation or contemplation, and (3) visualization to
transcend the realm of the physical in search of truths that can only be
obtained elsewhere.
There are several exercises presented here. You are to train systematically,
starting with the first exercise and continuing until you are competent
before proceeding to the next. Some of you may find the exercises extremely
difficult, while others just sail through. If you are working these techniques
in a group venue, please do not get competitive. The initial harnessing of the
controlled image is the important thing to keep in mind, so do not hurry!
Exercise 1
4. Hold the image of the circle exactly as it is for the count of ten, then
eliminate it as before.
If you lose control of the image for even a moment, do some deep
breathing and begin again. You might not achieve this much in your first few
attempts, but continue working at your own pace until you are competent.
Exercise 2
3. Turn the circle into a sphere and move it around in an attempt to see all of
it. Note its texture, size, and color. If it has no color, give it some. Play with
it a little. Increase its size, change its substance, etc.
4. Hold your sphere for as long as you like, and then choose consciously to
discontinue. Do not allow stray thoughts to interfere. If they do, begin
again or come back to the exercise later.
Exercise 3
5. See your own hands holding the fruit. Peel it. Taste it. Chew7 it. Swallow7 it,
and wratch it go all the way down to your stomach (if you do not know your
anatomy, look it up; it must be an accurate visualization). Eat the entire
fruit following the same procedure. Again, if you have any stray thoughts
enter your controlled visualization, stop and either begin again or come
back to the exercise later.
Explore an assortment of these image creations when you have mastered
the fruit. When you have control of your conscious visualizations, it is time
to proceed to the next stage: that of creating a moveable image from an idea
or a concept.
Exercise 4
3. Contemplate the word to evaluate its meaning for you, both personally
and collectively (these concepts need not necessarily be generally
accepted).
It is advisable not to discuss these later exercises with others. From here
you will probably have control of your conscious visualizations, so the next
step should be easy. It involves the creation in your imagination of an event
that will occur within a set timeframe in your material reality. At this stage,
keep things simple and avoid manipulation and egoistical desire-fulfillment
events.
Exercise 5
As you may have gleaned by now, not only does this technique require
control and have, inherently, limitless possibilities, it also demands a certain
ethic. Be aware that even though you can utilize this technique within the
realms of manifestation, you will ultimately bear the consequences. The
Law of Congruitv," of cause and effect, should be contemplated.
NEVER TO WALK IN
ANYONE'S SHADOW
SELF-ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES
Have a good honest look at your life as it is right now: the people, things,
and events around you, the way they affect you, how you react or respond to
them, what you think about when thinking about the individuals who are
close and not so close to you, and about those who pepper your life. How
much time do you spend dwelling on past events? How much time is spent
speculating on the future? There! Hours of time!
Why? When did it transpire that another ordinary person was given the
power over your life to such a degree? Whatever happened to freedom of
choice? Everyone has the power to change their living arrangements if they
are threatened or disempowrered by what is happening to them. To lay the
blame of one's own inadequacy of responsibility on someone else and expect
them to comply is to deny both you and them the right to a mind, a spirit,
and the pleasure of living.
Exercise 1
1. Choose a quiet place where you will not be interrupted. If you are working
the technique alone, you will need pencil and paper. If you are working
with someone else, they will need the pencil and paper. They will question
you and record the replies.
2. Write at the top of one side of the page, What I Want. Under that, write
the numbers one through twenty down the page.
3. Write at the top of the other side of the page, What I Need.
4. Fill in all twenty lines of the first side with anything you want. Be honest
with yourself. Say the things aloud as you write, and list twenty things
(you can write more, not fewrer).
5. When you have completed side one, turn the page over and write twenty
or more things you need. Write until you have exhausted your answers.
7. Take another piece of paper and write at the top, Why? Go ahead and ask
yourself, honestly, why you want what you want. Then do the same, on
the other side of the paper, for your list of needs.
Contemplate, for all answers, what wT0uld really happen to you if you
didn't get what you want or need, and what you wrould really feel if you did
(some people I have wrorked with have included in their "need" list things
they already have-pav attention to the question).
Gauge for yourself how7 important these things are to your wTell-being. If
they really are not that necessary, then clear them from your mind because
they are excess baggage, but if you could fill in twenty lines in the first place,
then the excess was already there and your self-esteem would have been
consistent with it.
Exercise 2
This exercise makes use of what is called the Book of Elements. It's going to
be one of your primary grimoires. The technique is commonly used by most
of the occultists whom I have known (myself included), and it works on the
premise that practitioners will consistently work at erasing any mundane
conditioning complexes that inhibit their ability to concentrate on, and
control, whatever they do within their Craft.
The self (the circle) is divided into four somewhat equal parts (I say
somewhat because although they are, in essence, equal, it is usually the case
that the section dealing with emotions takes the most practice to balance.)
The four parts are Fire, Water, Earth, and Air. The qualities of these
elements are as variable as the manifest elements themselves, so I prefer to
present the manifest expressions prior to relating them to personality
expressions.
Manifest Expressions
Fire
• Electricity
• Fission
• Friction
• Combustion
• Light
• Brilliance
• Heat
Water
• Wetness
• Liquid
• Nonconforming limitlessness
• Mutability
• Magnetism
Earth
• Tangible reality
• Ground; both in its electrical sense and in its relativity to that which
supports life (as we understand it)
• Dimension
• Time
• Existence (as a sensate phenomenon)
Air
• Gases
• Space
• Theory
• Frequency
• Noumenon
Personal Expressions
Fire
• Spontaneous
• Optimistic
• Lusty•
• Impetuous
• Blatant
• Outspoken
• Demonstrative
• Combustible
• Ruthless
Water
• Artistic
• Empathic
• Passive
• Feeling
• Sensual
• Confused
• Unpredictable
• Dreamy
• Indecisive
• Doubtful
• Inscrutable
• Enigmatic
• Romantic
The qualities of intuitiveness, inventiveness, responsiveness, nurturing,
and the use of innuendo, self-pity, and victim-consciousness because of a
lack of personal boundaries are demonstrations of a Water-dominant
personality.
Earth
• Productive
• Precise
• Calculating
• Sexual
• Determined
• Stubborn
• Aesthetic
• Petty
• Belligerent
• Brave
• Predictable
• Changeable
Inspirational
• Logical
• Intellectual
• Idiosyncratic
• Exacting
• Unpredictable
• Challenging
• Abrasive
• Solitary
• Musically inclined
• Expansive
• Explicit
• Technical
• Scientific
To work the Book of Elements, you will first need to purchase a notebook
and divide it into four equal parts. Title the first section Fire, the second
section Water, the third Earth, and the fourth Air. Divide the pages of each
section into two equal columns, one side titled Acceptable and the other
titled Unacceptable. Down each side, list your own qualities and habits
relative to those headings.
1. Witchcraft is a way of life for individuals, not the masses, and there's no
point in you coming toward the Craft if you are a wimp, a follower, a
coward, or a fool, as sorcery is both a practice and a priesthood, and it is
not a garment that can be discarded when the going gets tough. The main
emphasis of the above technique is to understand your own nature well
enough to get clear of fear based on speculation rather than actuality (we
will cover fear later in this section) and to weave your webs accordingly.
2. Your aim is to get to the center of yourself and your motivations, and to
find the big issues that undermine your capacity to respond in true will,
after first having eradicated the blinds to those big issues (e.g.,
self-justification based on the opinions of others).
When you have completed your Book of Elements and have gone over it
and over it to see if vou can add or subtract anvthing, I suggest vou get rid of
it!
Mulengro
I'll tell!
I'll tell!
How are you to know what is really true or false when Mulengro clouds
your vision? It is like a voracious weed seeking to smother a mother forest. I
warn you that the eradication of these acceptable modes of behavior will
place you squarely outside of the general flow of the social stratum. That's
okay. The Way of a witch is not for even• one.
NOTES ON HUMAN NATURE
The most important aspect of a well-trained initiate is the acquisition of
balance. There are four sides to the nature of people:
1. The bright, laughing, joyous side, the side we have been taught in our
culture to honor and to seek to show the world; the side that is at peace
and is not fulfilled.
2. The quester; the one that seeks to change what is immediately perceived
as limiting. This side of people's nature is concerned with what is on the
outside. It is the side that seeks to imprint one's very existence on both
other people and our environment (it seeks the relevance of immortality),
and it is not fulfilled.
3. The third side is all mixed up with learning and patterns, understanding,
creativity, and curiosity. It is a very brave side, but it is not fulfilled.
4. The dark side? The hidden one? In our culture, because of Mulengro, we
are taught this side is wrong and should be suppressed, destroyed, that it
is evil and dangerous. We are taught to seek to fulfill the other three (to be
nice!) and to deny the fourth, and, as a consequence, it becomes a dragon
within the self! All our pain, both physical and emotional, all our dead
ends, our unresolved angers and resentments, all our futilities pour down
the tunnel of the psyche to the individual underworlds of each of us-and
stay there! The person who has not been touched by hurt is not lucky,
they are defenseless or they are lying.
This is our wild side! As those who have known pain will tell you, it is the
most powerful side, as within it resides not only all our experiences, but our
racial and instinctual memories, our attachment to the collective
unconscious, our ability to perpetuate the first three on the list, to transcend
considered limitations, to survive-even our will to live. Within it resides our
ability to protect as wrell as to procreate and perpetuate, our sense of union
with our planet and with those things on our planet that have not yet been
subdued, tamed, or destroyed, and our ability to wrork sympathetic magic.
This side is like a wild horse. There are different ways to coerce it to
become ridable. Brutality is certainly one way (but what about the horse's
spirit!). Empathy, firmness, and patience are another wav-a way that
ensures a different kind of mount. All of the techniques in Part One are
about establishing the bond between horse and rider.
I have a wonderful etymological dictionary that often assists me in
understanding manners of communication at a deeper level than is
acceptable in the common vernacular. I read my first dictionary, like a
paperback novel, when I was twelve years old because I'd won it in a Book
Week competition at school and thought it was the correct thing to do with a
new book. There's power in words. Oral communication is like a gift from
the gods or one's worst nightmare, depending on its application.
My dictionary informs me that the word "fear" comes from the Old
English word faer, which is related to the word faerie and means to cast
enchantments. Faerie, or fairy, has roots in the word fae or fay, meaning of
the Fates, or fate, which, in turn, is linked to faith, derived from the Latin
word meaning to trust.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you might say; however, I leaped into the whole fear
concept several years ago because I was hearing so many people use the
word often and so commonly: "I'm afraid this will happen," "I'm afraid to
think," "I'm afraid things haven't turned out," "I'm afraid of what I'd do if I
didn't have this job." Even, and perhaps more aptly, "I'm afraid for my life!"
From this I calculated that fear is about not having, and it rises up into
consciousness when one is not ready, or prepared in some way, for certain
expected or anticipated eventualities. Fear always seems to be of what's out
there or unknown, but I heard much that was irrational, and so I looked to
myself in this matter.
I am a particularly resilient witch and put much of that down to one of the
first philosophies I was ever taught by one of the women in my family,
which was "Fix it or forget it!" If you can't fix it, then let it go! If I am staring
down the muzzle of a tiger, it is easier to relax than to fight the inevitable.
The fight or flight syndrome, which describes the physiological symptom of
threat, leaves out freeze, which is what fear is also about. The freeze instinct
is important and should not be misrepresented. Being a witch, I summoned
Fear as an entity, and he was beautiful!
He appeared, when I first summoned him, tall and stooped, big, hooded,
and draped in mists and swathes of gray, from pale to almost black. There
was a line between him and me. He walked over the line and stood just
behind my left shoulder. He's there now. He stoops and whispers in my ear,
"Watch out!" "Don't trust what you're hearing," "Slow the car down," "Trust
the omens!" He is Fear. He warns me of probable danger, and I listen to him
because he is always correct.
Let t h e river r u n u n a i d e d ,
let t h e m o u n t a i n s t a n d u n t e n d e d ,
let t h e t e m p l e s t a n d w i t h i n t h e j u n g l e lost to t h o s e w h o
T h e s n o w - l c o p a r d h u n t s in silent w h i t e ,
t h e w a t c h e r is a n d docs in silcncc.
Shhhhh . . .
instinct, Focus, s i l c n c c —
T h e r e is p o w e r in t h e wait w h e n t h e w a i t i n g is n o m o r e —
The nature of initiation will keep you questing for the rest of your life.
There will be no surcease. There is no walking away from this once it has
called your name and you have willingly answered. The forces that you work
with will continue to feed and inspire you; and everything ends up being
looked at through eyes that know how to see.
Like attracts like is also a certainty. You will come into contact with others
of the Craft with whom you can share and synthesize. These like-minded
individuals can become an important focus for honor and truth, and they
will be powerful allies should the need arise. It is most important that you
establish ethics at the onset of your relationships so that honor is not
betrayed later. The ability to abuse the forces with which one is aligned has
been perpetrated before, and the ego is always responsible. This could be
considered a conditioned response, as we are brought up in a society that
promotes competition and aggressive striving for sometimes superfluous
success-the seeking of power for its own sake being one of the false reasons
for accessing this quest. This is an identity-seeking excuse for lots of people.
Their desire to access the landscape is, itself, valid. They often have the
feeling without the knowing to mirror themselves. I am wTiting this manual
mainly for them.
You will hear more in a conversation if you truly listen; you will see more
going on around you if your observation entails more than simply looking.
There is a leap that is actualized through exercising trust in your own
cognitive ability to understand how interactive energy is used in either
honorable or manipulative ways.
As your awareness assists you in being prepared for whatever you are
doing, or for the next stage of your quest, so preparation is a necessary
function of intent.
INTENT
Know, at all times, why you are doing what you are doing. Know your own
motives well. Exercise caution in your undertakings, as each action, each
thought, is to be clearly of your own choosing. Each thought and every
action will engender, progressively, a response relative to it for which you
are solely responsible. I say progressively because you will become aware, in
this manner, of a deepening of self as the illusions drop from you like a
snake shedding an outmoded skin.
Your service is to the truth of that which you perpetuate and the need to
be on call when you are moved by the intelligence of these forces. Nothing is
required beyond the truth, and while the truth may be exceedingly
confrontational to either you or another, it does not engender harm. You
will strive to dispel unwarranted fear by reaching beyond the face of fear to
seek its source.
You may have fixed concepts about what you believe will provide
happiness, and this may be a false focus. You will trust that the thrust of
your destiny, which places you in a situation you don't consciously wrant to
be in, is leading you on your quest. At all times, when these events occur,
you will seek to understand why without necessarily comprehending the
entirety of the process, as this will, in retrospect, become obvious in its
patterning. You will most certainly consider the phrase "your gods will not
barter," because they wron't־no matter how you moan. Personal gain may
not come to you in material form; that is a limited ideology of wrealth-the
universe does not necessarily consider the need for payment for services
rendered in recognizable goods.
Know the Law of Congruity! Understanding yourself is the first key;
seeking to reconcile seeming opposites is the second key; coming to know
that, and how, magic works is the third key.
THE LAW OF CONGRUITY
The Law of Congruity is the law of cause and effect: every action has an
equal and opposite reaction. That does not imply that the effect is either
relative or recognizable in any human evaluation-it simply is what it says it
is. The Law of Congruity does not apply to matter only, but to thought and
energy (such as speech and mood). The Eastern term for this law is called
karma, and it is balanced by dharma, the recognition of the law of karma
(which is like fate or destiny) that allows the balancing of imbalance through
right speech, thought, and action.
All of our techniques so far have been for the purposes of control and
clarity without force. All of the techniques so far have aimed at opening you
up to the reality of the Law of Congruity. The point here is that you now
know how to redress dysfunctions so that your magic is untainted by
ineptitude and your priesthood in Witchcraft is clear of false images. You
know now. Once you know a thing, you can't unknow it.
Once you know a thing, any deviation from the truth of that knowing will
go crashing out of control, not only through your own consciousness, but
out into the wrorld of manifestation, much, much louder than it would have
been before you knew, therefore arcing back to you the experiences relative
to the harmonic of that dysfunction. Do you see now? The clearer you get,
the louder the clang of any deviation from that clarity-that's the Law of
Congruity. So, also, is the harmonic of clear, focused will when it travels
from you, ensuring that the return arc is synchronistic. That's spellcrafting
at its maximum effectiveness.
The Law of Congruity: every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
Please contemplate this. It is the foundation of successful spellcrafting.
ON PASSION
Hard core? Austere? The works written for you, thus far, are the training
requirements that I have been through, and each initiate that I have trained
has been through, in their own way and in their own time. I don't want you
to misunderstand. This is not a recipe for an ascetic, because that's not
Witchcraft! Austerity is not the way of the Craft, ever! The trainings are
there to help you become clear, to allow your brightness and purpose to be
absolutely awakened along with any and all latent psychic talents; but it
takes art to keep the balance.
I am Power ... beyond anything you can imagine! Mine are the eagle and the
tiger.
Why!!!
Suppress anxiety; Overcome the "tragedy'Take both your hands and hold
them up and cry Freedom!
The Warrior is the weapon, Not the weapon in the hands of the Warrior!
Witches are priestesses or priests, initiates to these powers, and are never
laity. They are secretive in their undertakings and do not proselytize. Certain
of us wrork with the publishing trade to reach others of our kind and also to
dispel the ignorance that has, at certain times, arisen to cause harm to those
who wralk a different way than that which is considered orthodox.
Many of the ways of working magic will be described for you in the
following sections of this manual. They are things you will want to know
about at some time or other, whether the need to use them arises or not.
Although I will provide you with many techniques, the ability to wrork them
will be dependent on who you are and whether you are a witch (based on the
definitions above).
1. It's in the blood, no matter how many generations it may not have been
acknowledged (and self-preservation may very wrell have been why seven
or ten or fifteen or more generations ago your ancestor shut up about it
and did not pass the knowledge down the line). Like a dormant seed, it
waits until the season is fertile for it to germinate.
2. Unless the witch is willing to take initiation when the magic calls, and to
actively, consciously, and with free will, walk across the line to live in the
wrorld but not of it, and to take the oaths of priesthood, then the line is not
crossed. The powrer will withdraw because it knowrs the witch is not ready.
"Some other time," it seems to say. That's okay, too, understand, because
you wron't be the same as even• one else. Even the vernacular of witches,
when they gather, is either hooded or inscrutable to cowrans (the term for
people who are not witches-it's an insider wrord and not an elitist one!).
Witches work sacred ritual to Earth and Moon and Sun and Star (these
are covered in this section and the next) as an outcome of the priesthood
and as a means of removing the barriers of separateness that are the
current blindness of our species. As a way of keeping the powers strong
within our pattern as a people of the Earth, the pattern is of the cycles of
the seasons of Earth and Moon and Sun and Star. It is also our
responsibility to develop our deeper talents (each to their own) of psychic
capacity and the ability to cast enchantments; to study and come to know
and understand the ways of the sacred of other people; to constantly
strive to broaden our capacity to learn in whatever areas life presents to us
and in whatever areas we choose; to treat the whole bloody thing as the
art that living most assuredly is, and to perpetuate and project that art as
the gifts wTe can give to life.
D o A s YE W I L L , E ' E R IT H A R M N O N E
The term "harm" is perpetrated through either ignorance or intent.
Ignorance is a social problem brought about because the flesh we eat is
prepackaged and is often not considered flesh; because our fruit and
vegetables are all stacked on the shelves at the local shop and other foods
are boxed or jarred or tinned or wrapped in neat containers that very often
give no hint of their having lived at all; because at some time or other
hunting became product distribution and disassociation, and separation
became acceptable. It's all a lie, isn't it? Absolutely everything we consume
was killed to feed us. Mass producers of trendy foods appeal to the hedonist
in people. They use trickery to coerce the public into believing their products
are "good for them" or are somehow socially impressive. The ease of fast
foods is a trickery that caters to the idea of affluence, creating a false sense
of detachment to the whole life-and-death process.
Intent, relative to harm, is all about cowardice, as Oscar Wilde said in The
Ballad of Reading Gaol when he wrote,
The Beginning
We stood upon the shore of a great sea. We looked out to the horizon from
whence we had come with a longing so painful that none of us could talk
about how we felt. Lost upon the shore of an unknown land in the night of a
new age with none but ourselves to call upon as friends.
We had been warned; the Oracle had gathered those of us who now stand
here and had told us that the Sun had taken toll of the great Crystal and that
all was finished. An end to our lands must surely come and the voice of the
stars had said, "Go!"
So we took to our boats with nothing but that which we treasured, our
Knowledge, our Names and our Inheritance.
Now the Plain lies behind us, lit by strong moonlight. It beckons us to begin
the voyage of timeless restoration and so we turn from the longing and the
remembering and, one and all, Priest and Priestess alike, set out to fu fill
that which had been foretold.
We stand, now, among the Great Stones, and seek through our rites to the
Moon and Sun to bring peace to this ravaged land. The Great Stones shine
as once did the Crystal, and the answer comes to the Oracle that much will
change but that the seeds of our past shall reach into the distance of time.
Further, it is said that what we know will not die but will be carried within
the being of the children of our race, who will be born again and again and
again...
-Ly de Angeles
GODDESS AND G O D OF MY PRIESTHOOD
To be able to present this subject at all has taken me years of deep
introspection and, currently, days of figuring out how to tell you without
pretension, without resorting to easy answers, as easy answers are far too
common. I have been involved, with others of my kind, in a quest for several
years now, a quest concerned with the true nature of communication.
There's power in communication-to talk when there's something to say, and
not for the sake of just hearing oneself, to say what is said without lying,
generalizing, or profaning the art. The experiment of both speaking and
thinking, as well as evaluating, in this manner clears away vast
misconceptions, trivia, and dross, and creates a psychic, spiritual, emotional,
and intellectual ability to understand things at a profound level and,
therefore, to live within the landscape of magic as a clear vessel of that which
we, as initiates, represent.
Through communion with the bipolar nature that we call Goddess and
God, we align with their immanence to consequentially realign that which is
at variance to their pattern. We now7 understand this: that it is not what one
feels one should be doing or should not; not what one might be or might
not; not what is termed right or wrong, but who one is, as well as what one
does, that engenders change-that is the magic! Because so much of who we
are is connected to a philological perspective (even, and especially,
pertaining to consciousness and conceptual religion), it is by drinking from
the wrellspring of clear communication that the intelligence of an individual
is aligned with the sacred.
It is by the intentional use of certain words that I seek to have you know
how I know of Goddess and God, and thence, how they are understood at a
cultural level. To simply rattle off the considered phrases associated with
this force is where I let others down in the original publication of this work. I
want to talk this book to you, not at you; to have you understand that
everything is personal and we all get to the point where dry rote
authoritative texts are just plain babble.
To comprehend the next phase of writing, I ask that you look up each
pertinent word in the following text for its etymological significance rather
than simply reading it quickly, as the contemplation of the idea behind
certain words opens one up to the entity or the genii of that word. It's
somewhat of a Pandora's Box at times, but profound for all that!
So, how does one define something infinite? The Goddess is ineffable,
inscrutable, immense, immanent, indivisible, profound; yet She is explicit in
the projection of Her nature into the consciousness of either an individual
or a people, personal in Her mutuality. She is that-which-is and, as such,
there is nothing that is not Her! All Her brothers, lovers, sons are the
expressions of our God. Behind their many names is one force that
expresses itself in many ways for the love of itself in its own diversity
(divided for love's sake on the chance of union). She is the chain reaction of
time's expression, but She is not time. Life is Her setting for the eternal
dance of transformation, hence the cycles and the seasons of everything
from personal experience to galaxies. She dances with God in a dance of love
and hate, elation and tragedy, death and resurrection, destruction and
rejuvenation because they are not simply life, but the experience of living!
Progenitor, matrix. We think of Her only as "She," but the very fact that
we do think of Her as "She" informs us that that's the way She wants to be
known to us as a people. What is it that makes a woman a woman? With or
without a womb, with or without having made children, fertile or infertile,
there is a quality inherent in the creation and continuum of woman that is
Hers alone, just as there is a quality inherent in man that can never be of
woman. I refuse to profess to define it! Therefore, within us, as a species,
woman expresses Goddess (whether consciously or not) and man expresses
God (whether consciously or not) and within them both, as with Goddess
and God, resides the other-right down to the DNA, in either the living or
once having lived, to varying and inscrutable degrees, all things being
individual and yet collective in their infinite expressions. Therefore, woman
can know both Goddess and God, but by her very incarnate self it is the Lady
that she represents; man can know both Goddess and God, but he is born as
man, therefore it is God that he is here to express.
I haven't given you any human qualities associated with either Goddess or
God, have I? I'm not going to because human qualities are human qualities
and are irrelevant when discussing or considering that which is ineffable,
inscrutable, immense, immanent, indivisible, and profound.
A WITCH'S GODDESS
A witch's primary power (deity) is her/his Goddess. She is known by many
names, derived from many cultures, and all are aspects of the One. The
Moon in its waxing and waning, in its phases of full, new, and dark, is how
witches dance with the birth, life, and death of their undertakings and their
experiences. Through ritual and observance wTe align ourselves with our
Goddess in Her ancient, but perennial, robes of maiden, mother, and crone.
A priestess will "draw down the Moon," a process of invocation, within
herself to awaken and empower that within each of us that is essentially of
the Goddess.
She is also the Earth and is known by Her ancient names of Dana,
Demeter, Isis, Inanna, Gaia, Brigid, Aphrodite, and Cer- ridwren, as wrell as
the many others known by individuals and cultures alike. She is a
warrior-goddess, known by such names as Ishtar, Brigantia, Artemis, and
Nemesis. She is Goddess of the dark places, the Underworld, the
unconscious, the Fates, and, especially, sorcery and Witchcraft. She is
Persephone, Hecate, Isis, Tiamat, Morgan le-fey, Cerridwren, Diana, and
Aradia.
She is Goddess of the stars and space and sea and, therefore, She is Binah,
Astarte, Mari, Asherah, Arianrhod. She is Goddess of wisdom, learning, and
the arts. She is Sophia, Shekinah, Binah, Isis, Vivienne. She is the path of
the incarnate priestess and witch who is Her representative in our wrorld,
and She dwells in seed within all that is female. She is the sister, lover,
mother, ally, and enemy to all that is male, a necessary interplay for the
ways of life and death.
Both Goddess and God are representative of all of the eight Sabbats of the
Wheel, but, like day follows night, and as inherent in the day is the night
(and vice versa), one face of this dual force will seem more manifest than the
other in either the Fire Festivals or the Solar/Earth Sabbats.
The Feast of Bride: The rise of the child Goddess, virgin queen, Goddess of
all wild things. The time of the-wTaking-of-theworld. The Feast of Bride
initiates spring.
Beltaen: The Great Rite of the Goddess. Sacred marriage to the Sun King
through his rite of the hunt. The summoning of the power of the Great
Stag; celebration of fecundity. Beltaen initiates summer.
To different cultures, He was known as the bull, the stag, the lion, the
bear, the eagle, and the ram. He is named Dionysis, Osiris, Dumuzi, Heme,
Apollo, Cu Chulainn, Aengus Og, Yeheshuah, Baphomet, Cernunnos,
Llugh, Lucifer, Zeus, Baal, Shamash, Shaitan, Odin, Thor, and Pan. He is
Arthur, Merlin, Lancelot, Gwidion, Galahad, and most definitely, Robin
Hood! Many of the planets are allotted one of His many names. Most of the
days of the week are named for Him. He is known as the Lord of Life and
the Lord of Death, is both the good guy and the bad guy, defender and
destroyer.
What is life but all these things? Even in the Christian legends, Jesus is
known as "first star of the evening." Lucifer is considered the Morning Star;
but that's Venus! It's all one light! Venus is also the Goddess, whether as
Stellar Mans or Mari Lucifer.
As Dion Fortune wrote, "All Gods are one God, all Goddesses are one
Goddess and there is but one initiator." So, it is so.
Living the Wheel enables us to flow more freely with our individual
destinies. It enables us to achieve by flowing with the pattern rather than
with the dominant paradigm. The Solar/Earth progression awrakens (after
the sleep of darkness, marked by Samhain) at the Winter Solstice (the first
phase of the waxing year) and continues through spring, summer, and
autumn. Interwoven with these Sabbats are the Fire Festivals.
ESSENTIAL SYMBOLISM OF
SOLSTICE AND EQUINOX
Winter: Rebirth of the Sun God. The boyhood and training of the once and
future king.
Spring: Symbolic and actual mating of the Sun King with the daughter and
priestess of the Moon. His initiation as both priest and king.
Summer: Sacrifice of the Sun King, leading to the harvest of his reign.
Transformation.
Autumn: His descent into the realms of the Underworld. Power from the
Dark Lord to the Virgin Queen of Initiation.
T H E EIGHT-FOLD W H E E L OF THE YEAR
Sabbat Southern Hemisphere Northern Hemisphere
Witches work ritual at each of these Sabbats, and at the correct phases of
the Moon, throughout the Wheel of the Year.
The Pattern
Within the following story, the symbolic interplay between myth, magic, and
the revolution (the Wheel of the Year) are displayed. Please contemplate.
The Force of Merlin is summoned into the form of the Wisest of Men; the
Force of Morgan is summoned into the Form of the Wisest of Women, and
They know7 each other always.
Of the Four Fire Festivals, we all know. Of the four, the Wisest of Queens is
the Queen who wears the Crown of Morgan-le-fev, Whose presence is felt at
the Time of Samhain. She never quite dwells outside of the Mists, but Her
Form is seen in the Priestess of the Moon, both upon the
Island-Outside-of-Time and in the World- WithinTime.
Know the Legend! For if the Legend were to die, so would the Magic. Magic
is the Gate-Between-theWorids, and the Gate must be kept open.
So, understand the above and listen, with mind and heart, to the legend ...
In the Caves beneath the World there exists many things, like Dragons and
Merlins and Sleeping Kings. To awaken the Latter we must summon the
Former-the Power of the Sacred Seed! It blossoms within the Womb of an
Ancient Queen Who does not age, nor lose Her ability to bear fruit. Her
representative in Time is the Priestess of the Moon who is not known, nor
acknowledged, within the World of Men. She bears the Dragon through the
Darkness and to the Daughters of the Moon is born a Son:
HeWho-will-Be-King.
The Lady Morgan anoints His body with perfumed oils and together They
enter the Bower of Flowers that has been prepared for Them.
י
As the Cup is as both woman and Goddess and Athame is both as man and
as God so it is by Their Union that all is Bountiful!"
... with the Dawn They come, loving each other and the One Who-is-Yet-to-
Be. The Queen of the Lake hands Him Her Sword, most Sacred of the Sacred
Regalia within the Caves of the Blessed Isle, as yet within its blood-red
Scabbard, and says to Him: "One is nothing without the Other... Justice and
Compassion is the Law of the Sword."... and He returns to within Time to
defend the Places of the World and so to fulfill His purpose.
He grows Strong in Truth and His Power is known throughout the Land and
the People sing His praises, "Oh, Beloved of the Lady!" and the Earth bears
Fruit.
. . . but the Wheel spins and spins and His Fruitfulness is replaced with the
Wisdom of the Age ... and He knows His stay within Time has run its
course-the Harvest begins! and His Body is scattered throughout the Fields;
He is corn and oats and wheat and barley and all the fruit and flesh and
grain of the Time.
... and His remains are deep within the Earth and the Land lies waiting the
Child-of-Promise ... and it all begins again
-Ly de Angeles
THE ELEMENTS (PART 2)
SIGNIFICANCE IN RITUAL AND
IN THE WAY OF THE SACRED
The four elements are both a protective and a balancing factor in Witchcraft.
You learned in Part One of their importance in selftraining through
understanding and the work of the Book ofEle- ments. Here you will work
with them in a different way.
Exercise 1
Please take note of the following associations so that you are aware of their
corresponding symbols and entities. You will need to know this prior to the
v
practical rituals that follow.
Earth
Color: Black
Elementals: Gnomes
A
Air
Direction: East
Elementals: Sylphs
Color: Red
Elementals: Salamanders
v
Of the Holy Regalia: the Spear
Water
Direction: West
Color: Purple/blue
Elementals: Undines
Athame-Black-Handled Dagger
The athame is never used to draw blood. It is never used by anyone else.
When not in use, it is to be secreted away (as all your ritual things must be).
It is associated with Air 8. The consecration of your athame is in Part Two of
Section Two.
The Cup-Chalice
This is a practical dagger that can be used in your ritual circle and in your
day-to-day use-but not by anyone else! The blade can be double-edged or
single-edged, sickle or curved, it matters not. It is consecrated to your use by
your athame (as is everything else you will use in a ritual way). It is used for
cutting herbs for specific use, preparing food, caning the wand and staff,
dressing candles, when hunting, and, if the need should arise, self-defense.
When not in use it, too, is to be kept away from others' use.
The Pentacle
After having inscribed it as above, prepare your pentacle for ritual use by
burying it in the earth in the path of the passing Moon at the time of the
New Moon. Leave it there until the Full Moon, when you will dig it up and
consecrate it with the Ritual of Esbat. If it is copper, it will have turned green
within that time-that's okay, the pentacle is allocated to Venus, and is
associated with Earth V.
The Wand
The length of your wand will be from (approximately) the tip of your
middle finger to the inside of your elbow. It is cut and carved from one of the
traditionally sacred woods: foremost is willow, a wood most sacred for the
symbolism of its bending and flowing; then there is hazel, oak, rowan,
hawthorn, blackthorn, birch, beech, applewrood, and elm. The wood is not to
be taken from a productive tree. Either wait until winter dormancy or until
the branch is dead. The wand is associated with Fire L.
Censer
You will need a censer (also called a thurible, brazier, or incense burner) and
incense. You will be burning incense throughout most of your rituals, and
making your own is ahvavs preferable to joss sticks. Some wrell-known occult
supply outlets have people make up specific incenses for sale. Most of these
are usually beautiful and I recommend them if you cannot make your own.
The censer can be of any material that will withstand heat, but whatever it
is, it should be aesthetically acceptable for a sacred space. Place sand or soil
in the bottom of your container and have some wire mesh to support the
charcoal block on which the mixture of incense is to burn. You will need air
under the block for effective burning.
Incense
Five Candlesticks
One particular candlestick for your altar flame (without the light from which
no ritual is activated) and four others for each of the gates of Earth, Air, Fire,
and Water.
Robe
Other Tools
You will also need a container for your salt, rock salt for use in
consecrations, a container for the water you will use for consecration, and
cords for both marking the perimeter of a circle, when desired, and for
certain kinds of Witchcrafting. You will need an amulet or talisman, which
can also represent the robe and will give others of the Way the possibility of
recognizing you in a public place. You will need a staff (can be with a tang)
for certain ritual purposes, preferably made of a native hardwood and
decorated to your desire. You will need oil, usually olive oil with a few drops
of your preferred essential oil or oil blend, and a vial in which to store it.
There are three books you will need. They are covered in the next section.
KEEPING RECORDS—•THE BOOK OF
SHADOWS AND VARIOUS GRIMOIRES
A Book of Shadows
This book could just as easily be called A Book of Secrets because it is a book
that is yours only, forever, and not for public exhibition; a secret is no longer
a secret when it is no longer a secret! My Book of Shadows is one of my
precious possessions. The rituals in its pages are not only my secrets, but
those of my coven and of the coven before me and of the covens before
them. The rituals are specific to our line. That's not to say they are not
known to others, they may very well be, but I have not shown them, and
neither have the witches of my coven nor the witches of the covens before
me. Each time one of the rituals in its handwTitten, leather-bound pages is
worked by either me or my coven, it is worked with all of the awe that
accompanies a secret. A secret is kept, like an oath, so that the
understanding of what it represents is never profaned. Inherent in the word
"secret" is the term "special." Each witch that I initiate will faultlessly copy,
into his or her own Book of Shadows, the legacy of sacred days that is
specific to our inheritance.
That may, at first, seem to be a problem to you if you are using this book
(and any other associated with the subject) to assist with your self-training,
but it is not so. Most of the creditable works published in recent years
present you with variations of their own Books of Shadows (not necessarily
its specific content), thereby retaining their oaths that may very well pertain
to keeping the book secret while giving you adequate guidelines for creating
your own.
What is integral is that you create your own and choose to write up the
rites of Sabbat and Esbat according to your cognizance of the material you
research. A Book of Shadows, in addition to being a witch's book of secrets,
is a work of art. I have not seen a fully created Book of Shadows that was not
meant to be a legacy to the ancient future, that was created to be other than
an ancient artifact, of incredible durability and beauty, that could be
discovered by some ancestor two thousand years hence, and revered for its
presence alone.
Grimoires
These volumes are created with the same respect as one's Book of
Shadows in that they are beautifully covered in leather of the highest quality
and stored away from profane eyes. Because your grimoire will be filled with
the notes, sentiments, recipes, techniques, and spells that are specific to
you, it should be as neat or as messy or as extravagant or as detailed as any
artist's or professor's would be (which is, of course, exactly what a witch
tends to be, no matter how eccentric).
If I had not kept records over the years, I would not be constantly
surprised by what I forgot that I know! You never knows when you will need
to repeat a certain kind of spell in the future, and when you have worked a
spell that works, it is best to remember the formula.
There is a power to hand writing and hand copying certain texts, as the
exercise alone deepens the absorption of the material, as does the
memorization of all, or most, of your Book of Shadows. Working ritual is
best done when the ritual is a part of your second nature. There is no
stumbling and there are no mistakes when the outline of a working (which
is what the written ritual is) is so comfortable that it allows for more than
itself.
Dream Diaries
I will cover dreams, specifically, in Part Three. Your Dream Diary will do two
things:
2. It will teach you over time to differentiate your dreams and to interpret
them according to their type, perhaps assisting others, through your
understanding, to interpret their own.
THE HERMETIC QUATERNARY
To Know
With all the information that you acquire, it is important that you take
time to utilize the quality of discernment to enable you to ascertain the
difference between what is hearsay on the part of the authors or experts
concerned, and what rings true. All things are to be analyzed, which will lead
you to a balanced and enriching viewpoint.
No information is wasted, and it's necessary to know enough to trust your
own findings from deep within the occult places of yourself when they
awaken. Ignorance is never bliss, and all material that you view can only
extend, through reflection, your ability to live your Craft.
"To know" is the foundation of the triangle; being also the element of Earth;
the pentacle and the shield.
To Will
In its lesser forms, the will (consider intent) of an adequately trained witch
should be capable of directing his or her life, in accordance with both pattern
and balance, to deep satisfaction, and, likewise, for great personal benefit as
well as for the benefit of the evolving whole.
"To will" is the right wrall of the triangle; being also the element of Air; the
athame and the swrord (Excalibur).
To Dare
I am wTiting this on the hypothesis that you have done the training set out
for you thus far (if you haven't, this won't do you any good at all!). You are,
as a result, in a position to experiment with what you have learned. Refer to
the technique of visualization and look to the sections whereby you created
an event of an outside nature.
"To Dare" is the left wall of the triangle; being also the element of Fire; the
wand and the spear.
To Keep Silence
In all things this is a very important function (it is also a most underrated
power). Unless you have the utmost faith in the integrity of the person with
whom you desire to discuss the Way of witch, you will say nothing.
Experience has taught that unless your cup is full and overflowing," you will
deplete what you wrant to store by tossing it around (and, after all, what is
your motive?). Be aware that ignorance and bigotry toward Witchcraft is still
rife in most lands where the dominant paradigm is "with us or against us"
religions. They'd be okay if they didn't interfere in the ways of others, but
they do!
The techniques of spellcrafting that wT0rk for you may not wT0rk for
everyone, so there is no reason to dilute the powrer by discussing what you
are doing with anyone who is not working on a project with you. Record all
your successes in your personal grimoire of spells and incantations for
future use.
Silence is a profound teacher and a hard taskmaster. Learn her art when it
is offered; there is much to hear within her temple!
"To Keep Silence" is the circle that surrounds the other three tenets; the
element of Water; the chalice and the grail.
RITUAL PROPER
REIVING
eiving is clearing, cleaning, and preparing your place of work. The
place where you are to cast your circle must be clear of all unnecessary bits
and pieces (distractions!); the less you have around you, the less there is to
consider. This is difficult only if you live with others who are not of a kind or
if you don't have a room that you can set aside for use as a temple.
You will, however, find a way to have a clear space, be it indoor or outside,
and to ascertain your privacy. You will sweep, dust, and wash any and all
things within the proximity of your circle (anything else is not our concern
here). You will do it in a state of contemplation and focus, intent on
excellence, as though you were creating a most special gift for the person
you love most in your life-that's reiving.
You will prepare the things that you will have with you for the ritual
(make the incense, trim the wicks of the candles, have a bottle of good red
wine or fruit juice, such as apple or grape, ready for the rite) being certain to
omit nothing-that's reiving.
When the time is approaching, you will bathe or showrer, still in the space
of contemplation (you won't want to be drawn into conversation that is
irrelevant to the magic), with the intention of neutralizing any energies that
are not your OWTI (it's got nothing to do with soap) and being clear of all
things that could be extraneous to the wrorking-that's reiving.
The final step of reiving is to ascertain that the doors are locked and the
phone is off the hook, ensuring that you are undisturbed for as long as you
desire.
RITUAL
PHASE O N E : T O CAST A RITUAL CIRCLE
The Prologue of The Way of the Goddess is the process of reiving and the
preparation leading to the casting of a circle for the purpose of ritual, in story
form. The technique described there is that of a witch who has, however,
been about the business of Witchcraft for a very long time. The technique of
casting a circle that you will work, according to this text, is that of a witch
who has not, as yet, consecrated the necessary implements of the Craft.
Please consider:
4. Gateways are then summoned into existence by using the seal of the
invoking pentagram at the four compass points of south, east, north, and
wrest. Guardians, of an elemental nature, are summoned for the duration
of the ritual. The purpose of this is dual: (1) to allow the flow of your
working to reach the substratum of the powers of life through their
participation in the intent of the ritual, and (2) once summoned, they will
serve as both sentinels and protectors of the sacred space that you have
created.
These seals are pentagrams. They are inscribed into space at the gateway of
their element, initially by your hand, and later by your athame. A pentagram
is one continuous line, a symbol of power, so practice the invoking
pentagrams until they are familiar. Pentagrams summon and protect, bind
and banish, depending on how they are used. They are also one of the main
symbols of a witch's amulet.
To Invoke: Begin the sigil at "I" and follow the arrow to invoke the seal that
opens the elemental gate.
To Banish: Begin the sigil at "B" and follow the arrow to banish the seal that
closes the elemental gate.
I
I
Earth
South: Southern Hemisphere
Fire
Air
East
Water
West
5. Within your sacred space you will have an altar. It is placed at the
midnight point of your circle. The midnight point is the place of all things
possible, whereas dawn, midday, and sunset are obvious phases of life
(i.e., the birth, growth, and fulfillment of any living thing) The midnight
phase of life is the unseen or the unknown, the hidden phase of life, and is
considered as an outside-of-time phase; hence "all things possible."
6. On your altar will be whatever you require for the specific rite.
Exercise
1. Choose a night.
3. Reive the place where you will be working and set your things up (i.e.,
altar in its correct place; altar candle upon it; incense, water, and salt
there, too; one well-secured candle on the floor at each of the compass
points; matches to light the candles, and incense.)
4. Bathe with the intent of purification (reive your body to cleanse it of the
static built up through interaction with the day).
6. Lay the cord around the perimeter of your temple, making sure that the
two ends overlap. Light the candles, beginning with the altar candle and
walking deosil from south (north in the Northern Hemisphere) through
east, north (south), west, and back to south, lighting the candles as you
go-
At no time, during the rite, do you move in any direction other than
deosil. This keeps the power flowing in accordance with the pattern-any
and all movements being akin to dancing the circle's intent!
7. Seat yourself before the altar and prepare yourself as a vessel, as you were
taught in Part One, Section One.
8. When you are centered, take the container of water in one hand and
describe the seal of the invoking pentagram of Earth over it. Using your
visualization technique, you will see the pentagram in vivid electric-blue
light. Then infuse the wrater with it. Replace the container of now-charged
wrater and do the same with the salt. Then mix the salt into the wrater. This
is now consecrated water! (You can bottle this consecrated wrater and keep
it in your secret place for use at other times. It is not necessary• to create
consecrated wrater each time you craft; however, it is advisable to add what
little is left in this bottle when you create the next batch; it keeps the flow
continuous (the same applies to your consecrated oil).
9• Walk the boundary of the circle, from south to south (north to north in
the North Hemisphere), being conscious of the understanding and the
vision of what this circle is. Walk slowly so you can control the process
involved in the casting of the circle.
Note: Many texts have been written using words to cast one's circle. I have
definitely found that words get in the way here, but if they work for you,
then use them.
10. Summon the guardian of the gate of Earth (south in the Southern
Hemisphere; north in the Northern Hemisphere) by tracing the invoking
pentagram of Earth with your hand at the appropriate compass point of
your circle. Summon the guardian of Air with the relevant invoking
pentagram at the eastern compass point of your circle. Do likewise for Fire
at the northern point (southern point in the Northern Hemisphere) and
for Water at the western point.
11. Now take the time to sit and contemplate your place of ritual and what
you have achieved.
12. That area will not be the same once you have worked it.
13. When you have given yourself adequate time in this manner, go to the
gate of Earth and silently honor the powers of that element before you
describe the relevant banishing pentagram; likewise for the other
elements.
14. Extinguish your altar candle and break the seal of the circle by opening
the cord.
15. To ground and center yourself after ritual, you can do one of two things:
(1) stand with your legs akimbo and breathe your energy into the floor or
earth, or (2) eat.
PHASE T W O : CONSECRATION AND
EMPOWERING YOUR ATHAME
Once you have completed this section, you'll be ready, if you choose, to take
the steps of self-initiation (should you be unable to locate a copacetic coven
to take you through).
This time you will have a proper censer and specially prepared incense.
You will also have prepared your pentacle and wand, and you will most
certainly have procured your chalice. Ascertain that you have a magnet to
charge the blade of your dagger.
Please read this ritual through several times and commit it to memory, if
possible (have it handwritten, anyway, and with you in your circle).
Requirements
1. The above.
2. Your dagger (already wiped wTell down both sides of the blade with the
magnet).
3. Wine in the chalice, consecrated wrater, your vial of oil, and five candles
and their holders.
Note: your oil will not be acceptable for use until it is infused with a
minute quantity of your own essence (saliva, a blooddrop, tears, semen, or
vaginal secretions). No one is permitted to use your personal oil for any
reason thereafter. Do not allow the vial to completely dry up at any time; top
it up before that happens.
Do not eat a heavy meal for quite a while before this rite.
Reive and prepare as you did in the last exercise (but this is a rite of power
and not considered an exercise), and have your athame, chalice, pentacle,
and wrand on the altar along with the censer and incense, the vial of prepared
oil, and the altar flame.
THE RITE
Light the candles and the incense, and seat yourself before your altar to
center yourself. When you are focused, cast your circle as you have been
taught. Then go to the gate of Earth, raise your arms, and summon the
powers...
Walk deosil to the gate of Air, raise your arms, and summon the powers ...
Come ye, of the East Winds,
Place of first Sun and rise of Moon,
Place of Inspiration,
Guard this circle set outside of Time.
Acknowledge the purpose of this Rite!
Open for me the Gate of Air!
Cast the seal of the invoking pentagram of Air. Walk deosil to the gate of
Fire, raise your arms, and summon the powers ...
Go deosil to the western gate, raise your arms, and summon ...
Come ye, of the West Winds,
Place of the setting Sun,
Home of the Island Remembered,
Place of Wisdom;
Guard this circle set outside of Time.
Acknowledge the purpose of this Rite!
Open for me the Gate of Water!
Describe the invoking pentagram of Water.
You are then to take the consecrated water and sprinkle it, deosil, around
the perimeter of the circle.
Take up your dagger and wipe it all over with consecrated water; hold it
tightly to your body; fully will your power into it! You will then kiss your
athame on both sides of the blade and the hilt.
To cause your athame to awaken to the powers of Earth, you will place the
athame on the pentacle, raise it up, and say, slowly:
By the Dance
And in the Darkness
By the Door and by the Drum
By Enchantment
The Eye of Midnight,
The Inner Shield
I bid thee come!
Wait until you sense the field, then say:
To cause it to awaken to the powers of Air, refuel the censer, hold your
athame in the smoke, and slowly say:
To cause your athame to awaken to the powers of Fire, you will hold it
with the blade passing in and out of the flame of the altar candle and slowly
say:
To awaken your athame to the powers of Water, place the tip of your
athame into the consecrated Water and slowly say:
For the consecration to be complete, you are to do two more things: (1)
With much passion and focus, place the tip of your athame into the cup of
wine and charge it with the concept of conjunctio (symbolic sacred sexual
union). Place your athame in your lap while you drink from the cup. (2)
Gently oil the blade with your specially prepared oil.
Take your athame, go deosil around your circle honoring each element in
their turn, and using your will, extended through the blade, describe each
banishing pentagram. Extinguish the candles.
Open the circle by drawing the energy of the force field into the blade of
your athame. Then place the point into the ground to discharge it into the
earth.
Put all your ritual things away before you do anything-then have
something to eat to ground yourself.
Well done!
PHASE THREE: T H E PROCESS
OF SELF-INITIATION
We come so far and often know that we can go no further without a
milestone, without crossing some unseen, but potent line. There's
something about taking initiation that is akin to the first time we had sex-it
marks the passage of girl to woman or boy to man more so than any other
rite of passage.
The difference between initiation and one's first sexual encounter is that
one's first sexual encounter is not always as clearcut a matter of choice. They
both, however, access certain powers of creativity that would remain
dormant otherwise.
If you have challenged the sincerity of your desire, and know that the Way
of witch is the most certain thing in your life; if witch is what you feel, then
witch is what you are-so you cross the line.
This rite affirms you as what is called a solitary, but it does not preclude
you from joining a coven (as a duly initiated witch), should you choose, and
should you find one synchronistic to your individuality. They will either
honor your self-initiation or seek to have you go through again at their
hands. It will be your choice, as well as theirs, but what you do here is as
true and effective an initiation as any other you might take. This is your
first!
Step one is to take a full lunar month to seek your name. A witch's
initiation name is their true name-and it is both secret and sacred. It
contains all the essences of your power and is never spoken of unless it is to
another initiate in whom you have absolute trust. You may receive your
name during periods of ritual or visualization, from the significance of an
association with myth or legend, or inspirationally. It will always be
appropriate to your chosen path and symbolic of your aspirations.
T H E RITUAL
It is required that you enter into a personal initiation as seriously as if you
were being initiated at the discretion of a witch of High Priesthood.
Therefore, you will be required to fast from sunset of the day before until
the dark of the night you have chosen, and to speak as little as possible
(preferably not at all). Contemplation is part of the preparation. You are to
be between-the-worlds for this time.
You are to learn the ritual by rote. You can tape the journey and play it at
the appropriate time (your tape player is to be battery-operated as you won't
have an electrical cable crossing the border of your circle), but have it
written in your Book of Shadows, and have this book in your circle with you
(as well as a pen).
Requirements
2. A bottle of very good red wine (or fruit juice if you desire something
nonalcoholic).
3. Four candles (colors of your choice) for the elemental gateways, one black
and one white candle (representing the understanding of duality) for the
altar, and one white candle for your altar candle.
4. Prepare a specific oil for this night, sufficient to cover your whole body,
but have your vial of magical oil on the altar. You will use it tonight for the
second time.
5. Have all ritual equipment and tools within the circle with you (don't forget
matches or a lighter), as well as your Book of Shadow's, a pen, and the tape
player and tape of the journey.
Between sunset and full dark of the day of your initiation, you will reive
and set up your sacred space in preparation. Bathe with intent. Have all
necessary things on the altar (including the silver pentagram necklace and
the bowl of specially prepared oil) within the boundary of your circle.
Make the incense of your choice and pour the wine into the cup.
Cast the circle as you have learned. Move deosil at all times.
Light only the candle in the west (do not invoke any of the guardians at
this time).
Seat yourself before your altar and prepare yourself as you have learned.
When you are ready, make the sign of the invoking pentagram of Earth with
your athame over the container of specially prepared oil, then rub your
entire body with it saying:
Note: I use "we" and "1" and "the rider" in particularly interwoven fashion
throughout the journey to indicate both you and you-within-the-vision.
Don't let it disturb you. Once you've read the vision through, you'll
understand.
The Journey Between the Worlds
I see before me the Tunnel of Time. I project myself toward this place and
am drawn down and down, back and back, way, way back to before the dawn
of Christendom in a land of emerald green and ageless beauty.
I am flying low over rolling hills and moorlands, circling freely over forests
and small hamlets of country folk, over manor and mere heading toward an
inevitable destiny.
I slow7 and close the distance between my world and this. The timelessness
of a winter's night is silent; not even the sounds of the hawk or the owl can
be heard through the thickening pall. I descend.
Now I hear muffled sounds from the marshland below me. I come to
ground level where the mist is not so thick, but moving, steadily
shapeshifting as it swirls around the mire.
We think of naught; we must not lose our thoughts upon any other theme
than that of following the almost imperceptible path through this empty
place.
No life here. The lights of a thousand lost souls glint through the mist to
remind us of our peril, but we hesitate not and heed not their warnings. My
destiny burns within my soul and would destroy me were it not fu filled.
I can see myself clearly by the light of the lantern; outlined with the
ravages of many a sleepless night, I am gaunt. My jaw twitches with my
effort, and my eyes are haunted by the dream. I am physically strong,
cat-like. I clench the lantern, vice-like, in my hand. My clothing is simple:
thonging criss-crossing the furs about my calves and woolen leggings as
thick as mail about my thighs. My jerkin is the skin of a wolf snared in some
past day and my cloak is russet and of heavy woven wool that hangs limply
along the sides of my mount. I wear a hood of leather, but my hair lays in
tangled rivulets down my back.
The length, thus far, of my journey lays heavily upon me, and my
shoulders are bent forward with fatigue; but we may not stop until we are
past this dreadful place.
Hour upon hour we move, well into the midnight, until at last the horse
raises her head and snorts as she stumbles onto the grassland. We travel
slowly still until the rider is certain of our bearings, then we roar with
triumph and we are off running like the wind, as the plain thunders beneath
us!
I know not why, but know7 it I do, that the rider wishes to be seen by no
one, so we ride by night and hide by day so that none may know7 that we are
abroad.
We unsaddle the mare, crooning to her as we do so, and rub her down
with the blanket from beneath the saddle. A smile crosses the rider's face,
and a look that stirs my soul with its intensity and passion. Our task done,
we proceed to prepare a small fire over which we roast potatoes and a strip of
dried meat. We draw a leather flask from our pouch from which we quaff
deeply, the contents sweet and fiery. Having eaten of our simple meal, we
stamp the fire and curl within the cloak to sleep away the daylight hours.
... at one point I rise above the trees and seek to ascertain our safety, for
although the rider is furtive and afeared of notice, I ache for the quest,
knowing it is also my own, and my compassion reaches out to the strength
within our sleeping form who would do no harm withoutgood cause. I know
not how I would rouse us should danger approach, but there is no farm or
village within distance, so I fear not for us.
I return to find us turning about restlessly in our sleep, the dream causing
much mumbling and sighing; and so it is for a few hours more until I am
woken by my own shouts. Sweat beads upon my face, and I stand and
remove my hood and cloak, and walk to the stream to wash myself, and so
lose the dreaming. I again light the fire and draw7 from my pouch a large
cup that I fill from the stream. I brew a draught of strong herbs to help me
to wakefulness for the long night ahead.
My journey will be done, thus far, on this night-at least where riding is
concerned. The journey of the rest of my life is just beginning, the end of
which is assured in my mind. There is no turning back from what I so
earnestly seek but what I so earnestly dread, for it is unclear to me what
ventures will befall me between the present moment and some eventual
death.
I stamp the fire and cover its remains with dirt and brambles so that none
may know that any had passed this way. I call to my horse and she comes
from her grazing by the stream. I saddle her and attach my pouch to my belt.
I don hood and cloak, and mount. We move slowly through the trees in the
direction of the setting sun. We reach the edge of the wroods and wait.
When the night is black, I ride; hour upon hour do I ride. This night is
clear and I wratch the stars for a bearing. Sometimes I wralk the horse,
sometimes it almost seems that she flies. Rising behind me the Moon glowrs
full and high, lighting the way.
Ahead I see monolithic rocks rising to the night sky and the mist of ocean
reaches all about us. The tang of salt is in the rider's nose and I see my
nostrils flare and my eyes widen with that same unseeing passion. We
approach the cliffs and I hear the roaring of waves thrashing upon the rocks
below as if relentlessly drawing all within themselves. A wild place is this! I
see a vast expanse of ink}• blackness within each rock's shadow, which is
also the sea over which the Moon glowrs, causing a pathway between herself
and the things beneath the wraters.
I stop to light the lantern for the path is rough and the mare troubles with
each step. I sigh and lay my head upon my arm before raising myself straight
within the saddle. "It is now, " I whisper, "We wait and seek no more! As
known, I have arrived." I look ahead to a rock}• outcrop like a finger upon
the sea.
I ride hard then, sparks flying from the horse's hooves upon the granite
way. As we approach the peninsula, I see a faint glow, as if from another
lantern. I slow down now, and throw my own light over the cliff 1 am wary
and seek to approach unseen. I dismount and walk toward the glow. I see a
small cottage almost buried, so deeply was it built within the overhang of the
cliffs, like a tiny fortress against the wild winds and sea. A lonelier spot I
have never known.
The rider's face is set like stone and I cannot perceive what thoughts are
veiled within. We walk with dignity, as if to our death.
"I am called (your ritual name)," I shout. There is a laugh from within and
the door is swnng wide. There stands a small woman dressed in male attire,
with wild copper hair cascading down her back.
"You are doubly welcome, (name), and thrice! We have waited long for
vou!"
"I knew it to be true!" I reply, although I smile not. "Was it you who called
me here?"
"It was your own dream, (name), and not of our doing. Enter. I shall
tether the mount and see her well."
"What name have you?" I ask, without moving; but she just smiles and
shakes her head and again bids me enter.
The room is dark save for the lantern in the window and the fire in the
hearth. I see that only the first of the cottage is manhewn and that the rest is
of solid rock formed from the depths of the cliff. A hooded figure stands
from a chair beside the fire. Straight of frame and as tall as an elm, but with
the whiteness of hair to tell ofgreat age, that falls to shoulders that show no
stoop, hallowed with fireglow. He wears a robe of heavy dove gray wool, and
as he moves toward me he smiles. I see great love in the smile, but as I look
into his eyes I flinch at their blackness and depths. There is unfathomable
power within them as though they had seen the passing of time from its very
conception and had learned from the travel all that had been there to learn.
"I've missed you, (name)! Blessed be!" he says, as though he knows me
well. He takes my arm and leads me to stand before the fire. "We have
known that you wrould come. "He laughs with obvious glee.
"Who is the woman? By all the Gods, wrho are vou?"I demand, as,
although this whole thing excites me, I fear it also and am tired of the
mystery• that has haunted me waking and sleeping.
"Her name?"
"Call Her (a name from myth with which you resonate), and She will
answer you!"
"(The same name from mvth) is one of the names that I am known to be,
child."
"To learn, (name), the secrets of life and fire! To be at one with Her and
mold tomorrow with all of my yesterdays!" he says.
-Ly de Angeles
You will return, then, to the place of your circle and proceed with the rite.
Refer to your Book of Shadow's only if absolutely necessary•. Go deosil about
your circle and light all the candles, then the incense. Consecrate the wrater
with your athame, making the sign of the pentagram in it. Consecrate the
salt, likewise, and add it to the wrater.
Now stand and, beginning at the gate of Earth, hold aloft your pentacle
and bear it about your circle, leaving it at the gate once you have returned
there. Do likewise from the gate of Air, with the incense; at the gate of Fire
with both the black and the white candles of duality (that you have on the
altar); and from the gate of Water with the consecrated water, sprinkling as
you walk your circle.
Return to your altar and drop the pentacle necklace over your head.
Take up your athame and place the blade, oh, so sensually, into the wine
in your chalice and say:
Stand and take the vial of sacred oil. Put a little on both of your feet
saying,
Drink deeply now from the cup, leaving a libation that you will pour onto
the earth.
Take up your athame and circle from Earth to Air to Fire to Water,
farewelling each guardian and closing each gate.
Write in the back of your Book of Shadows the ritual name that you have
taken and the date of your initiation (and any other pertinent details).
Then open your circle using your athame to withdraw the force field;
earth it as you have been taught. Put away all things of ritual.
Before you go to sleep that night, and each night for a couple of weeks,
repeat silently, or whispered, using your ritual name:
I a m (name),
Priestess (Priest) a n d witch.
SECOND STAGE TECHNIQUE
PROGRESSIVE
0
his next section deals with what you might not consider logical, or
even rational. These are techniques that presuppose your progress and your
study and your experience of the exercises given thus far. These projects are
early experiments into the more mystical elements of magical practice; we
will then progress to the many specific techniques of sorcery.
REALMS OF ACCESSIBILITY
Bv "realms of accessibility" I mean realms or places that are other than
physical. They are not perceived by the five senses at the perimeter of your
circle, but are accessed only (through the tool of imagery) by the doorway of
your center. None of the techniques require any form of mind-altering
substances, and will be accessible if you have utilized true inner control.
There are several books available that give pathworkings in detail; however,
I prefer to provide the setting and the framework and let you freefall within
these parameters.
There are ten realms that you will travel; the first realm has four initial
phases through which you will pass before proceeding to the others. The last
three realms are not to be accessed without having traveled all others in
succession, due to the intensity of their intent.
Exercise
Take the position you have become accustomed to for the meditation and
visualization exercises. Employ either active or passive silence. Begin with
meditation, taking yourself as deeply as possible without losing conscious
control. Take your time.
Visualize within that circle a vast expanse of black, empty space. In that
space are countless millions of miles of sheer velvety blackness, but way
past that is a speck of light. Travel toward the light. On your way, you will
pass many floating objects created to delude you into thinking you are not
going where you will yourself. Destination: speck of light. These objects will
consist of anything from chairs, tables, houses, and people to scientific
equations, mathematical formulae, and quotations from books. They may
be anything that your five outer senses could perceive.
What you are doing is passing through the dimension of your conscious
mind. You need to be awrare of this in the background of your voyage
because at this stage you are still within the first part of the first realm.
Continue the voyage until you reach the point of light in the distance. See it,
as you approach, as a vast illumined portal that you are to pass through.
When you have passed through the portal, you will find yourself standing
on stone steps. Around you as far as you can see there is a boundless
expanse of wrater. The only way to progress is to go in the wrater and merge
with it. Dive into the wrater and look around. Begin to move forward. Become
like a swift current in the wrater. Be observant at all times; however, don't
allow anything you see to deter you from your journey. After traveling thus
for a while, observe a portal in the distance. Travel towrard the portal. When
you reach it, go through it.
When you have passed through the portal, you will find yourself bathed in
brilliant light. There are massive pillars that form a corridor; the pillars to
your left are black and the pillars to your right are white. They shine like
polished marble. You can see nothing but the path beneath your feet due to
the brilliance of the light around you. Follow the path. You will hear a loud,
continuous, roaring sound (like a huge grindstone turning slowly at the
bottom of a deep wrell). The path you wralk on leads you toward the sound.
After having traveled thus for a time, you see ahead of you the source of the
sound; you see a huge vortex or whirlpool.
As you enter the vortex, your initial sensation is of falling and spinning
down a vast chasm. The roaring sound is all around you and you can do
nothing but let the falling take you deeper and deeper down into the vortex.
Experience the sensation of falling, falling. You need have no fear as you are
now traveling through the doorway of your own center; through the
doorway of existence. You will eventually land in a small chamber that has
only one door; engraved into it is a circle with an equal-arm cross. You are to
open the door and pass through.
Second Realm: Astral
You are in deep night. The landscape is desolate and barren, but beautiful in
its moonlit, misty austerity. You can see, by the strong light of the Moon's
glow, a path beneath your feet that winds off into the distance leading
toward a mountain of rock. You walk the path. Observe everything as you
travel toward the mountain. The path ends at the base of the rock, and built
into the face of the rock is a pale, wooden door with a thin lunar crescent
(1)), made of silver, set into it. You knock on the door and wait. It is opened
from the other side. This is the Gate of Moon-the doorway that is the
entrance to most inner-plane encounters.
The door is opened by a small woman with dark hair, mysterious and
veiled, and swathed in violet robes. She is the guardian of the Moon gate.
She says nothing to you until you have passed into the mountain of rock.
You enter and she tells you to make the journey alone. You go on your way
for a while, observing everything.
When you have wandered through this mountain and found whatever
information or knowledge that is significant to you there, the little,
dark-haired woman appears again and guides you to the next door. This
door is the color of the rising sun and has the symbol of Mercury• (Y) carved
into it. It shimmers with liquid mercury. You knock on the door and wait
until it is opened from the other side.
The door is opened by the guardian of this gate-a being robed in orange,
intelligent and alert of visage. The entire place that you have just accessed is
diffused with a deep red glow. The guardian who opened the door is more
female than male, but is definitely a mixture of both. This being is both the
master and servant of this realm, and as you move through this place, you
are to observe and listen to everything. You are accompanied by the
guardian, who will either tell you and show you many things, or may choose
to tell and show you nothing, leaving you to your own devices. Just flow
with whatever happens until you are shown to the next door.
This door is the color of a wooded glade and has the symbol of Venus (?)
carved into its surface, set with copper. You knock and wait until it is opened
from the other side.
Fourth Realm: Second Inner Plane
The guardian who opens the door is sensual and earthy, robed in emerald
green. The entire environment is lit by a deep orange/amber glow. The being
who opened the door is more male than female, but is definitely a mixture of
both. This being is both the master and the servant of this realm, and as you
move through this domain, you are to observe and listen to everything. The
guardian accompanies you and chooses to either tell and show you what is
there to be known, or leaves you to find out for yourself. Flow with whatever
occurs until the guardian takes you to the next door.
This door is the color of the sun at midday and has the glyph of the Sun
((D) carved into its face, set with gold. You knock, as before, and await its
opening from the other side.
The door is opened by its guardian, glorious and noble, robed in saffron
garments. The place is a haze of yellow. The guardian is androgynous. This
being is both the master and the servant of this realm, and as you travel
through it, you are to observe and listen to everything. The guardian will
accompany you, and may choose to impart much that is important to the
furtherance of your quest, or may leave you to your own devices. Flow with
whatever occurs. When your time here is done, you are guided to the next
portal.
This door is the color of blood and has the sign of Mars ((j') carved into its
face, set with iron. You knock and wait.
The door is opened by the guardian of the sixth realm-a being robed in
scarlet with a visage savage, clear, and powerful. All within this place is cast
in a deep green haze. The guardian is more female than male, but is
definitely a mixture of both. This being is the master and the servant of this
realm, and will accompany you through it. The guardian has the right to
either show you what is important here or to leave you to discover those
things on your own. No matter what happens, flow with the experience until
the guardian takes you to the door of the next realm.
This door is the blue of a tropical lagoon and has the sign of Jupiter (4),
cast in tin, set within its surface. You knock and wait.
The door is opened by its guardian, robed in sapphire blue, its visage wise
and compassionate. The fifth inner plane is awash with crystal-blue light.
The guardian is more male than female, but is a sure mixture of both.
Master and servant of this realm, the guardian who accompanies you
chooses whether or not to communicate with you. If you are left to your own
devices, you are to remember everything you observe on the journey
through this place. Flow with the experience until the guardian leads you to
the door of the next realm.
This door is as black as obsidian, the sign of Saturn (hJ, set in lead,
hinting at the force you are yet to encounter. Knock and wait until the door
is opened from the other side.
No one opens the door, but the door opens just the same. The atmosphere
of this realm is thick with the glow of purple. Ahead of you is a fissure in the
far wall leading to a narrow passageway down which you will proceed. The
destination of the passage is a vast cavern that has been cut from the
bedrock of the mountain by unknown forces. The purple glow is all around
you.
At the end of the cavern, a woman, dressed in diaphanous black robes that
glitter with jewels of jet, is seated on a throne that has been intricately
carved from the cavern rock. She is veiled. There is a large silver disc set into
the floor before the throne, upon which are engraved the pentagram of the
art and seals and sigils inscrutable to you at this point in your quest. You are
to approach her and sit down on the silver disc. She either will, or will not,
speak with you, but she is capable of projecting images and concepts directly
into your mind, which you wrould do wrell to heed. Forget nothing!
She is the guardian of this realm and image of the Queen of the Deep,
Goddess of the Underworld.
This realm is diffused with a glow that is as white as pearl and has the same
sheens. Again there is a passageway that leads you to a bright, bright cavern
with many high-arched windows that look out onto more whiteness. The
pearly glow7 is everywhere.
He may or may not use language to communicate with you, being capable,
as was the woman, of projecting directly into your consciousness those
things that he wants you to know. Forget nothing that you come to realize.
There is no servant here. He is master of this realm and the image of the
God of Light.
Upon completion of your union with this realm, he will direct you toward
the way through the final point that you will pass on this journey. It's not a
door, but a portal, swirling with hints of all the other colors that you have
passed through; more like a veil of the possibility of color than actual color
itself. You have simply to wralk through; no one bars the way.
Now it's appropriate that you leave. To do so, all you do is turn around
(wherever you are standing), and you will find a vortex into which you will
project yourself. The vortex will carry• you back to the outside of your circle
and into the wT0rld, where your body awaits you.
You can make this journey a thousand times and not receive the same
information from any one realm. You can enter any realm through the
vortex after accessing the Gate of Moon, except the last three, as these
realms are the result of a journey through all the rest and accessing the
answers they have for you.
The guidelines are specific-it is pointless doing this exercise unless you
adhere to them. When you have completed your travels, you are to record all
pertinent information in your grimoir. Don't seek to analyze the experience
in a logical sense. Just acknowledge it and be willing to accept it for now.
During the days following your working, observe the events that occur that
are pertinent to the experiences of the inner planes.
RELEVANT N O T E S O N QABBALAH
There is no reason for me to introduce you to either the ceremonial or
magickal (a term coined by A. Crowley to distinguish ritual magic from the
public's idea of stage conjuring) significance of Qabbalah, as it is not my
concern here; however, a basic knowledge of this extraordinary system is
relevant as a way of understanding both the self and how events actualize.
Qabbalah is also known as Kabbala, Kabbalah, the Tree of Life, Otz Chim,
the Ladder of Lights, the Asherah Tree, QBL, and Qbblh. It has been
expounded on as both a mystical Hebraic system of comprehending the
"body of God," and the soul of Adam Kadmon since, specifically, Moses de
Leon introduced the Zohar to the West in the thirteenth century. It can be
recognized in the biblical Old Testament in writings from the Pentateuch to
the Book of Ezekiel, but it can also be seen, previous to this, in the ancient
texts of the legends of Sumer, where it was known as the Ladder of Lights. It
is commonly called "the Tree" amongst practitioners of the occult. It is
interesting to note just how many of the legends of ancient people resonated
with the Tree-from the Druids of ancient Britain to the Norse legends of
Yggdrasil.
My notions pertinent to the Tree are heretical from the viewpoint of both
the religious perspective relative to the subject and the ways and practices of
Qabbalists (who also call their tradition High Magick). For this I make no
apology.
The above is a matter for contemplation. The magical workings are the
offspring of the previous techniques you have accessed and the profundity
available through understanding the following information.
THE TREE
There are three factors to be understood:
1. The Glyph of the Tree, as it manifests from its seed (Kether) to its
realization (Malkuth), through the cycle of its own becoming (from the
pattern of itself inherent in the seed to the fruit within which the same
seed perpetuates itself through reproduction, ad infinitum). The tree is
immanence, which is why it represents eternal life.
3. The Worlds (four) of the Tree tell us the way of manifestation; tell us how
time happens, tell us the laws of actualization (in alignment with the Law
of Congruitv)•
It's all within the pattern, you see? The outcome to any scenario is
inherent within it! It's always seed to root, to leaf, to stem, to flower to
fruit... to seed, do you see?
T H E GLYPH
1. Each of the circles of the glyph are known as spheres.
2. Collectively, these spheres are called Sephiroth; singularly they are called
Sephirah.
3. There are ten objective Sephiroth and one subjective Sephirah (known as
Da'ath).
5. The twenty-two obvious paths that link the Sephiroth (there are infinite
paths that are not obvious) are also the Major Arcanum of the Tarot.
IMuio *
THE TREE OF LIFE
6. The planets of our known zodiac are the manifest expressions of the Tree
(the Tree, then, is also a star map), and the qualities of the planets are
relative to the qualities of an individual, a society, a culture. Their balance
or imbalance being understood via an understanding of these qualities.
The further we explore the frontiers of science (see The Death of Forever
and Music of the Mind by D. Reanney, and Chaos by J. Gleick) through such
fields as quantum physics and chaos theory, the more obvious the
complexity and viability of much that is considered ancient wisdom.
The concepts inherent in the theory of the Tree, in its infinitude, are
reflected in the wreirdness and profundity of the Benoit B. Mendelbrot set as
seen in both Chaos and Mendelbrot's own text called Fractal Geometry of
Nature.
T H E DIVISIONS OF THE SOUL
(THE BODY OF THE TREE)
1. Neschamah is the triad of Kerber, Chokmah, and Binah. It is called "spirit"
and it is the predetermination factor immanent in both awareness (soul:
Ruach) and manifestation (body: Nephesh). Neschamah could be
considered the pattern of both destiny (on an individual level) and
evolution (collectively). Kether is immanence; Chokmah is force (realizing
an uncontained energetic principle), and Binah is form (energy coherent
within measurable parameters, or time).
One could postulate, then, that there is no free choice if the pattern is
already set, but varying factors will always determine the presentation of
experience. Life rejoices in diversity. Magically, it is the clarity of choices
that determine the quality of future experience. Manifestation is malleable,
dependent on the vessel through which an experience is summoned.
Therefore...
What does this mean? Consider yourself to be Tiphareth (Sun), and that
you are central to everything you experience, think, do, and express (and, of
course, by the very fact that you are, all things are experienced by vou!). The
nature of the Sephiroth revolving and swirling around you will mirror
themselves in your day-to-day living and will be reflections of who you are
because all experiences are perceptions of reality rather than whatever
reality may or may not actually be (take light, for example; wTe see only a
minute fraction of the actual spectrum of light-all else concerned with light
is vibratory, or wravelike, and requires other factors to enable us to interpret
it-this is so with all reality).
Your ability to be clear about what you do perceive as reality, and your
participation within it, is what practical magic is reliant on (see Section One).
Therefore, to seek to know the nature of experience, wre use a framework of
recognizable parameters (like the nature of the planets and all else relative
to the Sephiroth) and to eradicate dysfunction. The primary way of doing
this is to know your own nature. Life will mirror it! That's the Law of
Congruity, and future seeds will integrate the information (bearing in mind
that death is part of the cycle of all things and can occur many, many times
in the course of one apparent lifetime. The seeds of how you live are the
determining factor of the future lives of the Tree (individually).
3. Nephesh is both the stage on which life presents its unfolding drama, and
material reality, as we know it, personally and collectively. It is the domain
whereby that which is conceived in Neschamah is fulfilled. It could,
therefore, be considered the outcome of life (i.e., Death ... life ... death ...
life ... death ... life. Death in this frame of reference being understood as
transformative). Creation continuous!
I'll keep this as concise as possible. You are to consider the four worlds in
accordance with two principles: (1) the essential four worlds and (2) the
process of creation and time. To cause an event or phenomenon to occur
(manifestation implies time, as it implies actualization), it is necessary to
comprehend the principles of creation in the first place, and creation
requires reciprocation!
THE ESSENTIAL FOUR WORLDS
Malkuth is the only Sephirah in the world of Assiah, but there is a Tree in
Malkuth. This is our concern here: to access the four worlds through Assiah,
therefore consciously linking Assiah to and within the other worlds.
Example
One day I am struck with an idea (Atziluth) that springs from a need: I want
to make a special box to keep my valuable ritual things away from others'
eyes. To make my box, I will need particular ingredients, like the wood,
maybe glue, hammer, nails or screws, a screwdriver, ruler, saw, pencil
perhaps, hinges, and paper for drawing up a plan.
That all sounds very simple, doesn't it? It is, if the box is simple, if the
equipment is readily available, if I have an understanding of the
mathematical conditions necessary for box-making, and if the ingredients
are willing.
Consider the w7ood (wTe'll leave out the other things, but you'll know what
I am aiming at if you've ever had trouble with even one nail!): a piece of
wrood is something on the way to becoming something else (just like a
hydrogen atom was, at one point). At some phase of its progression, it was
probably a tree; before it was a tree it was a seed ... backwards through time
to when it was nothing of the sort. Through random selection or perfect
design, it became that which is now7 recognizable as wood. I add that wrood to
an overall grouping of objects and it reciprocates by considering them
worthy companions for the interim term of its journey as "box." Three
billion light years from now, will it possibly retain that memory?
Three billion light years from the time I was other than what I am now,
did I understand the nature of wood, when it was other than wood? Chances
are, the answer to that is yes.
The crossover point between the two circles is like Assiah-it's where we
are right now. The furthest distance from the crossover point, on either
circle, is Atziluth. The journey between the crossover point and the furthest
distance is the intermeshing process of Yetzirah and Briah. The two
opposing furthest distances are mirror images of each other. One furthest
distance could be considered as the past, one could be considered the
future; one of the furthest distances could be microcosmic, the other
macrocosmic. Assiah is the ever-happening "now." What is interesting,
however, is that in three dimensions we see:
A Mobius strip (on the Tree it is considered the veil that separates
Neschamah and that which is above the abyss, from the rest of the Tree, or
that which is below the abyss) is one circle with a twist. The circle has two
faces and two sides-it represents duality in all its guises, always being only
one thing (i.e., the circle with its twist). The twist is time, it causes us think
that we are not participating in tomorrow when we are! The twist is there so
that life can never underestimate its own next trick; but it's all there.
Everything that was, is, and ever will be.
Time is a tool invented by us to help us (1) gauge the age of a thing, (2)
plan, (3) measure the distance from one aspect of the cycles and the seasons
to another, and (4) attempt to render finite that which is understood by way
of its currently perceived state of reality. We are not governed by it,
controlled by it, or in any way degraded by it. Time is manifest eternity! So
that one could say that Atziluth is the pattern of now (Assiah) that is only
recognized retrospectively, and that the process of getting to that
retrospective state (memory or reflection concerning the past), which is
Yetzirah and Briah inclusively, is the modus operandi of creation.
The simple fact that we can make anything at all assures us of our
participation in the process of creation־we are reciprocal to the process.
No. IV
Love is in detachment from the strings that end up tying tighter than love
was ever meant to be. Love without fear of what may come tomorrow-for
that is what love is. It belongs to no one but yourself and cannot be taken or
given as a token or a gift. Your worries and fears have nothing to do with
love-thev are extensions of either the world around you, or your own
shortcomings. Compare them not to love or you will lose your choice in the
matter of love...
... and if love be not free and exhilarating then it is not love but demand
and desire for possession of that which you are not.
Love allows.
It is not reactive,
The Moon in you and you and you and you ... The Moon in you belongs
right where it is or it would not be there!
_Water, wind, air, and earth, stones and sea and stars, "sweat, and softly
moan before the fire ..." Wild places and songs you can't quite catch hold of;
things that whisper to you in the night that wake you suddenly ... and the
only reason you don't follow7 them? Let it go! Others needn't see. Others can
continue to know you the way they know you. This is a secret world, the
Way of the witch who weaves songs into actuality; a secret way that you may
have been taught, sometime, by someone, "is only for the children, or the
truly mad!" It's a fine line we walk; that's why so many of us are deemed
weird... but where's the madness in wonder?
I'm awake at dawn. I've been awake for hours. The deep night called my
name, woke me up, said, "Think, Ly!" So I did ... for hours. The sun will be
up soon, but right now the ravens call and I can hear the way the day will go
by the way I know7 our song. The magpies tell that it will rain today; I wish it
wouldn't because I love the sun, but they're ahvavs right, just like the
plovers.
That's the first way to know about making things happen. You've got to
7
w alk the way of the wild things, because humans tend to force things, to
twist things around, to w7ant so much that they forget that it's all just out
there. Like making the box, in the last section, magic is all about knowing
that what will happen w7ants to happen!
... and if the magic believes in vou, how can vou not answ7er its ancient
call?
So, what I'm not going to do in this final section is provide you with a
recipe book. I will give information and instruction pertinent to the
techniques. The fine print, and the artistry, will depend on your needs.
FITH-FATHING
This is one of the best enchantments that you can use to acquire or
affect-anything. A fith-fath is also called a poppet or a dolly, though it
doesn't always look figure-like unless your spell is specifically aimed at
affecting another person. We'll begin, however, with the person thing.
Whether you are drawing the human likeness to you, binding it from
causing harm, assisting it in deciding an outcome in your favor, or
performing a healing, you are going to need to give it life.
You'll want to have all requirements gathered and to work your sorcery• in
a well-cast circle. You won't tell anyone of your work (but I've said that
enough, by now, so I'm sure you've got the message!). Everything about the
making is to be felt; be aware of every emotion and keep the reason for
fith-fathing foremost in your thoughts.
One of the most seductive ways of working this spell is to create a short,
but pertinent, rhyme-just a four-liner-repeat the rhyme over and over in a
monotonous rhythm until you lose the words and simply end up making a
hum (to the same rhythm).
When you've completed the making, you will breathe it alive; you will tell
it what you want, not just with soft wT0rds, but with physical interaction
(depending on the intent!). For example, should you desire to prevent a
violent person from perpetuating their dysfunction, you will bind them with
colored cord (I'm oath-bound not to give you the exact colors, but for a
binding of this kind, needless to say, the cord wron't be pink!). For a healing,
you will fill the fith-fath with specific herbs or healing aids, or you will
soothe the desperate spirit if the person's destiny is to experience
body-death. By now, you've trained well enough and long enough to be able
to focus your intention without effort. Understand that if the working
requires effort, then the symmetry is not achieved. Once the spell is done,
you will put the fithfath in an extremely appropriate place, one you will have
arranged beforehand.
Warning: With all sorcery there is risk, so you are to be very sure of why
you are doing what you are doing, and don't do it very often unless it
becomes your forte. Be wary of meddling.
Example of Fith-Fathing
You have just been informed by a close friend that her teenage son has been
given free tastes of smack (heroin) by a well-known, respected member of
the local community. The son of your friend became disturbed when his
friend, who had also been given free tastes, began needing money when the
man informed him that if he desired more he wrould need to pay. The
stirrings of desperation in his friend's developing addiction was what led the
son of your friend to inform his mother. The boy says he refuses to talk to
police. Worried about consequences, she has come to you. What do you do
to help her?
If you know of the man but cannot get anything belonging to him, then
his image within your mind will be enough. If you do not know7 the man, you
will need the boy's complicity. It is enough that he can imagine the man's
face, his voice, his actions, his clothing, his size, age, hair, skin, eye color,
any and all distinguishing features. The mother will need to have the boy
write a description, and his feelings about the man. Details are significant.
Preparation for the rite (note that when it is required that you call upon
the names of the Lady and Lord, you call upon those names to which you
are personally attuned).
First, reive as you have learned. Have all things for the making of the
fith-fath in readiness for the rite.
Set on your altar the altar candle in its holder, salt and wrater in their
containers, your athame and your pentacle, incense, charcoal blocks and
censer, thread to bind the fith-fath, and the chant you have prepared for the
rite. Set the candles and candleholders at the elemental gates. Surround
your workspace with your white cord. Have matches or a lighter within the
space, and the ingredients for the fith-fath. Robe if desired, but this (as are
most solitary rites) is best done skvclad.
THE RITE
Cast the cord around the perimeter of the circle and place the elemental
candles at each of the compass points.
Seat yourself before the altar and light the altar candle and the charcoal
blocks, placing a small amount of prepared incense on them when they are
fully burning.
Center yourself as you have learned to do. When your mind is clear and
you are focused clearly on your undertaking, stand, take your athame in
your hand, and cast a circle around the boundary of the cord, beginning and
ending at the Gate of Earth.
Return to the altar and consecrate the salt by placing the point of your
athame into it and saying:
Return the container to the altar. Take your wand in one hand and the
altar candle in the other, and summon the guardians of each element.
With the altar candle, light the candle at the gate of Earth, and then place
it on the ground near you. Raise your wand aloft as you say:
Light the candle at the gate of Air, from the altar candle, which you will
then place on the ground near you. Raise your wand aloft as you say:
Light the candle as before, raise your wand aloft, and say:
Center yourself again, and prepare yourself to be a vessel for the power of
magic to flow through you and into the Pith-fath. Raise up your athame and
call on your Lady and Lord to add their power to the intent.
Aradia, Queen of all witches,
lend your power to my spell!
Cernunnos, Lord of the Wild,
lend your power to my spell!
Lady and Lord of Life and Death
lend your power to halt the harm!
Assist me to bind the one who seduces the gullible.
Do as you Will where he is concerned.
By my actions we seal him in!
Place your athame on the altar. Breathe the power of the Lady and Lord
into yourself. Breathe deeply and exhale fully a number of times until you
feel your hands tingle slightly. Allow your breathing to become a repetitive
hum. Hold this wordless chant as you make the Pith-fath. Allow your mind
to consider the circumstances that have induced this spell. Don't invent
emotion, simply be aware and feel freely. When you have made the poppet,
refuel the censer.
Place the fith-fath on the pentacle, hold the blade of your athame over it,
and draw an invoking pentagram of Earth saying:
Pass the Pith-fath through the incense, hold the blade of your athame
over it, and draw the invoking pentagram of Air saying:
Pass the fith-fath through the flame of the altar candle, hold the blade of
your athame over it, and draw the invoking pentagram of Fire saying:
Sprinkle the fith-fath with the consecrated water. Hold the point of your
athame over it, and draw the invoking pentagram of Water saying:
Lift the fith-fath to your mouth and breathe on it three times with the
breath of life, then begin to bind the figure with the thread chanting your
rhyme. An example of this rhyme:
Return to your altar and breathe deeply several times to center yourself,
saying:
Blessed Lady, Lord of the Wild,
I thank you for aiding me.
Take the intent behind the rite
and see it done, so mote it be!
Open the circle by symbolically cutting the boundary with the blade of
your athame. Take up the cord and place it and all other ritual things away.
When this is done, put the fith-fath where it will not be disturbed (burying it
is sensible) and consciously let it go; forget it. There will be no need to think
about it or mention it to anyone.
The familiar will always choose you. It will bring you gifts. It will have a
life of its own apart from you. What makes it a familiar is its behavior and
the simple ability to communicate with you. You can change places in the
night (because the night is ahvavs the time when the way of a familiar is
most blatant) and not be disturbed when you arise in the morning with twigs
in your hair and scratches along your shoulders!
A familiar can come and go from a circle without breaking the seal. They
are messengers and spies and companions for life. Even after the
body-death of one of my familiars, he has continued to be useful, stalking
the boundary of my property as a barely recognizable entity.
FETCHES
You make a fetch (like you make a fith-fath), but they are not a
representative of humanity and they are most definitely to be unmade, once
their time is up, for the spell to manifest.
You will gather bits and pieces, like feather and bone and fur and claw,
anything that resembles, or has inherent within it, the qualities of your
intention. These things are elemental by nature, but fixed in a pattern for a
short duration. Your main ingredients are beeswax and string. Beeswax is
malleable when it is slightly warm, and your bits can form themselves within
and around it. The string, which will be plaited, will bind the spell to its
purpose.
A fetch is easier than astral projection, and its aim is to seek and find
whatever you desire to come to you. You are to write, on paper, exactly what
you want. Don't generalize and don't be vague, for again, these tools are not
selective; they have no feelings and they have no conscience.
You are to evoke the powTer of Earth, Air, Water, or Fire (or all) into the
fetch bundle and focus on your desire.
Accord a time frame, not more than one month, for the process to be
fulfilled. Note that the process is not the outcome. The outcome will not
occur until the fetch has returned! Think and speak from Moon phase to
Moon phase (by w^eek), or from solar cycle to solar cycle (by day). Then send
your fetch off to do its job.
Sample Rite
I use dance within the ritual to symbolically represent the desire. I won't
focus on any specific outcome, as pleasure is most dynamic when it is both
surprising and spontaneous.
1. The desire, written on a small piece of paper, will be placed within the
belly of the fetch.
2. Earth, when mixed to a paste with oil, is used to empower the fetch and to
represent the element of Earth (stimulation of body) when rubbed into
the body of the fetch. (In Australia, I can find ochre rock that can be
pounded to a powder as red as blood. As such, is often an integral addition
to many of my spells, of both passion and healing.)
4. Feathers to give the fetch flight and swiftness, and to represent the
element of Air (stimulation of mind).
6. Water (excitement and emotional stimulation) that you will rub in the
belly of the fetch.
7. String for the plaiting of the desire (to charm the spell) which you will also
place within the belly of the fetch.
2. The appropriate tape or CD (without lyrics), and a player, which you will
have with you in your circle.
3. All ritual equipment: chalice (with wine for consecration), athame, wand,
pentacle, altar candle, four elemental candles, censer, incense (and
charcoal blocks), and matches or lighter.
4• This rite is best worked skvclad.
THE RITE
Have all things that you require for the rite on your altar and place the
elemental candles at each compass point. Light the altar candle.
Using your athame, cast a circle around your work space. Seat yourself
before your altar and breathe to quiet the mind.
When you are ready, take up your wand and the altar candle. Go to the
gate of Earth, light the candle, raise your wand aloft, and say:
Go around your circle, then, to Air, to Fire, to Water, and summon the
powers of each element. Then return the altar candle and your wand to the
altar, and light the charcoal. When it is glowing, place incense upon it.
Take your athame and hold it, blade point down, over the chalice of wine.
Focus on the understanding of the act of consecration as you lower the
blade into the wine saying:
This Cup is the symbol of Woman and Goddess,
this Blade is the symbol of Man and God.
Cojoined, are They, in the way of Creation!
Life within Death, Death within Life.
Blessed be the fruit of the Vine!
Drink from the cup and sprinkle a few drops on the ground in libation. Put
the music on and let yourself go with it in a dance-to-raise-power. Really let
yourself go! Dance 'til you drop, aroused with pleasure, at your altar. Wait
until your breathing, while still deep from the dancing, becomes regular,
then hold your hands, fingers spread, over the makings of your fetch and
say:
With your athame, cut the thread into three even lengths, tie them
together at one end, place that end between your teeth, and plait the three
lengths together while breathing the chant:
Of course it won't come out of your mouth sounding like the words!
You've got the string between your teeth! It's the sound, the repetition, the
intent that is woven into the plait. When the plait is complete, tie off the
ends stating the intention of the spell and breathing on it three times. Place
the plait into the cavity of the fetch and seal it. Say to the fetch:
As I make you so I will break you! You have until (state time frame)... to
fetch my desire only then will my hand set you free!
Visualize the entity of the fetch flying swiftly from its body as it seeks its
purpose.
Refuel the censer, drink a sip of the consecrated wine, raise your athame
in one hand and your wand in the other, and give thanks to your lady and
lord for their assistance in this rite.
Then, taking your wand only, go to each elemental gateway and give
honor and farewell to the guardians gathered there, describing the
appropriate banishing pentagram before snuffing each flame. Cut your circle
open with your athame and snuff the altar candle saying:
Wrap the fetch in some cloth and place it away with your ritual things
until its allotted time.
When the time frame is up, you will summon the entity back into the
fetch, from within your circle, break the thing to pieces, and consign the
pieces to the earth. Only then will the spell unfold.
You can use this technique to arrange transportation, to get a new vehicle,
to have the vehicle you currently own fixed easily if it's broken, to procure
money or means when necessity dictates, to aid you in acquiring a holiday or
journey, or to provide you with the means to change any unwanted situation
in your life ... after first exhausting all reasonable traditional techniques.
Use your capacity to make decisions and choices first! Don't run to sorcery
for any and every little thing!
You will need to know the heart and soul of the creature(s) you are to
become before you undertake the experience. Each of us has the building
blocks of all life available at an atomic level, and we are unspecificallv
connected with all life at the very source of our physiology-the pattern of
individual structure is simply the way of art.
To achieve this state, you can't just take a liking to one or another
creature. The understanding is of a deep, deep kinship.
You will require the techniques learned in Part One to take you to the
stage of relinquishment necessary• to first summon, see, and merge with the
form of the creature, and secondly, to become, individually, that creature.
The process equates to: 1=0=1. Because you are in a state of trance when
the process of transformation takes place, there is no way of knowing
whether your human form remains at home. Even when I have had others
perform the objective-observer role, it's hard to know7 for sure, as you're not
in an ordinary• time-svnapse when any magic is worked.
The power of the animal into which one shapeshifts is not, please
understand, an outside thing. My very nature is horselike; my appearance,
my very body, is horselike. When I do my physical training, it's with this
awareness. My deep-self, my clairvoyance, my very soul is ravenlike-not my
appearance, not my attitude. So, there's the three of us already within me,
and it's nothing to move from one to the other. It's natural.
That's what you've got to know. That's what you've got to realize-not who
you are, but all of who you are!
Exercise
Lie flat on the floor with an appropriate incense and with music that
indicates your desired state of consciousness. If you are more at ease within
a cast circle, then by all means utilize this skill. You won't need to do any
invocations or summonings though.
Visualization
When you have achieved your purpose in that shape, you will return to
the tunnel and farewell your image. This can often be an emotional and
difficult goodbye, as we become deeply attuned to this ally. Then return to
waking consciousness.
You will shapeshift into the same form consistentlv-it tends to become
your alter-self. Some may know it's you when the raven or the owl or the
dragon lands on the window ledge calling to them loudly, but only if you've
told them that this beast may, just possibly, be you!
GLAMOURING
The danger zone!
A witch has done the work. A witch will recognize the game. A witch will
take the mask on and off as is required... but a witch knows what the mask
is!
I once wrote a story called A Quest of Veils that talks about all the
identities we assume to enable us to feel worthwhile, and how difficult it
becomes for others to read a person who doesn't pretend. When there is no
game and nothing to win or lose, one holds a vital power. You see, a
persona, a glamouring, is like a mirror, and the image in the mirror is
something of whoever looks into its glass. Understand this; contemplate it.
The very fabric of time, space, matter, and energy are as ordinary as you,
are relative to you, are you. Therefore, they can be played with.
What is interesting is that doing all of the above tends to transform you
into just what you are desiring, as that much observation and education over
a lengthy duration would change a person to some degree. That's okay if you
want to change your lifestyle overall; what would be terribly uncomfortable,
though, is if you felt that you were really a liar, a charlatan-if the face that
you present to those you seek to attract or effect has no substance to
support the glamouring.
The witch also uses glamouring. Know what it means! A knowledge of all
of the above is advantageous, especially when working with many people. It
will allow others of diverse backgrounds to be very comfortable in your
presence, especially when you are a healer, advisor, guardian, or teacher.
Knowledge of glamouring will help you enter into psi-empathy and
telepathic union with those you seek to attract or effect by educating not
only your powers of observation, but also your energy field.
There are lots of unwanted and random energies and entities floating
around one's environment. The following techniques are required
understandings for any witch. You will need to keep your own environment
clear of these unwanted wraiths, and you may also, over time, be called on
by others to clear these things from their houses or their lives.
Nothing ever goes away, you must understand. Things that are made of
matter are not made only of matter, and can just as easily be energetic.
Matter does not imply intelligence-soul does (and that's a rather ineffable
concept). So why is it considered that intelligence inhabits only things of a
material nature (like biological species)?
Entities can be either material or nonmaterial. They can be left over from
extreme emotional discharges. They can be other and therefore, not of a
recognizable origin.
One particular haunting in the bushy outskirts of Sydney, many years ago,
was exactly this kind of situation. The people who had bought the land had a
lot of money at their disposal, and were quite ignorant of occult matters.
They had built this huge monstrosity of a house, put in both the indoor and
the outdoor swimming pools (complete with statuary in the style of the
ancient Greeks), and had, out of boredom on several consecutive evenings,
played a game called Ouija, calling on whatever spirit could move the glass to
answer their foolish questions. Phenomena began occurring, nightly,
thereafter. A wall partition would shudder in pulsing waves, windows would
refuse to open or close. The people would lock the house at night (including
whatever windows that would close) to find the entire house wide open next
morning-every morning! Their adult daughter, very pregnant at the time,
began dreaming of horrifying mutilations to her unborn baby and was told,
night after night, in her dreams, that she would not live through labor.
The experience was astonishing. Three of us worked our way through the
house, placing sensitive taping equipment in certain rooms that felt weird,
while being increasingly aware of a piece of cold that was following us from
room to room (of which there were many) seeming to be seeking to attract
our attention. All this time the inhabitants of the house were confined to the
kitchen.
Two coven members were, meanwhile, out scanning the grounds (about
three acres of it, bordered by the Ku-ring-gai Forest) and one of the men
spotted first one rock with distinct markings and symbols shallowlv carved
into its surface, then another and another and another. The whole area was
marked with them!
They joined us inside with their news. We had, by this time, completed
our feel of the house and had recovered the recording systems. There was
nothing to be heard on the first one. On the second was the faint, but
distinct, sounds of what seemed like two clacker sticks being rhythmically
struck together, advancing on the sound system, then retreating.
We were sure that the seances the family had happily entered into as a
game had awakened something from the earth of the place. The clear
sensation that we all got, though, was that it didn't want to be awakened;
that it wanted to be at one with the earth. It couldn't return on its own. It
had to be sung back. We would have to suffice, as we knew of no Kadaicha at
the time. So we sang it back the best we could.
We sat the family down in their lounge room when we had completed our
rite and spoke to them of the sacred stones around the property (of which
they were completely unaware). We warned them of the responsibility of
living on consecrated ground, and that it seemed they had woken the thing
that had been disturbing them. We suggested they leave the Ouija alone.
Even• psychic knows that accumulated psychic grunge is heavier than air
and will fall to the floor (and sometimes stick to windows). So the first thing
that I do is vacuum the floors with intent. A vacuum cleaner is one's
contemporary besom (broomstick), and much quicker than the manual
tool; I do this myself. There's no point having the house occupants do it, it
just never feels as clean. I will then set up a candle in each room, light it, and
close off whatever doors there are. I get the charcoal burning, then take a
showrer with intent of purification.
Each room, from one end of the house to the other, is to be lightly
encircled with your dagger (these encirclements are meant to be embracing
rather than encapsulating), encircled with the smoke of the incense, and
encircled with the consecrated wrater. With each circumnambulation, you
will raise aloft each implement to the four directions, calling on their powers
of protection and harmony. As you exit each room, you will extinguish the
candle with your fingers (don't blow it out), and leave the door open.
When you are done, you are to pack up all your things and leave without
entering into conversation with anyone.
BANISHING (GETTING RID OF A T H I N G )
The occupants of the place you are to banish are to understand beforehand
that they are not to engage in any form of dispute in the place, or to sully it
with resentful or bitter emotions for the cycle of one Moon after your work.
More often than not, their behavior would have been empathetic with
whatever entity was causing them discomfort. Things are attracted to strong
blasts of emotion as much as they are attracted to psychic activity. I like to
call this the iron-filings-to-a-magnet syndrome, and you need to be aware of
this phenomenon in association with all your magical practices, but
especially where protections and enchantments are concerned.
You must attend to two priorities before you go near the place! First, you
will seal off all orifices, psychic and actual, of your own body. A man has
twelve, a woman has thirteen. For both: eyes, nostrils, ears, mouth, nipples,
umbilicus, anus (eleven). For a man: penis (twelve). For a woman: vagina
and urethra (thirteen). Secondly, you will take with you your boline, just in
case you encounter the need for self-defense.
You will wT0rk the same process as reiving, but you will seal each portal of
the house with a banishing pentagram of Earth. You will keep the intent of
banishing clearly in focus at all times (wrords or no words).
You will work from a central point in the house to the outermost part of
the property. You will conclude by encircling the entire property and laying
seals on the ground at all entrances and exits.
WARDING (KEEPING A T H I N G O U T )
Warding is keeping out unwanted influences.
This is trickier than the previous two techniques because you'll require
certain powers to assist you. You would not do any of these techniques as a
beginner, anyway, so you'll have had plenty of time to accumulate the
requirements of warding. They are certain talismans that you'll have
gathered from the wild places, like bird skulls, feathers, bones, spiders'
webs, the discarded bits of animals that have moved from whatever form
they inhabited before they died to that form, certain stone entities and wood
entities, specific shells, and symbolic amulets. All of these kinds of things
will call you, and you will collect them. They will be part of your company of
entities and are like familiars but are not the same, for their powers are
dormant until they are formed as wrards.
Before a warding, prepare as you would for a banishing. You will also need
to choose whichever of your company of entities you require to create the
ward.
You are to bless and consecrate all things that make up the wrard (you
wron't need much; keep it simple), wTap it in cloth or leather, and seal the
way into the package with sealing wax. The ward will remain active until you
break the seal yourself.
You will also require a small piece of meat. This will be buried on the
property and the ward will remain active while the meat decomposes. It will
feed the ward.
You are to ascertain that your scent is on both the package and the meat,
so rub them both with your hands before you leave them at the site.
You will create the ward beforehand in your own home, within a cast
circle. On the night of the warding, cleanse with intent of purification and
seal your orifices with consecrated water. Take your athame and a bottle of
consecrated water, as well as a packet of ordinal7{ ־table salt. You will also
require a small hand trowel (or a bloody shovel if the ground is presumed
hard!).
You will go once around the property7 or the area casting a circle of
protection. You will repeat the encircling with the consecrated water, and go
around a third time sprinkling a fine circle of salt.
All is to be done with focus and intent. You are to be really clear about
who you want to keep out!
You will summon the entity, that is, the accumulative of all things within
the ward, to come out into the area of protection (these entities, once
released, are never small, I warn you, but they are lovely; they are your
creatures!). You will then bun 7 the ward very well and very secretively,
placing a rock over the spot if possible to dissuade any passing beastie from
digging it up. You'll bury its food close by (ditto with another rock).
Then cut a zone into the circle with your athame allowing those in alliance
with the person you are assisting to come and go, but you will seal it with a
banishing pentagram of Earth.
Then you leave. You are to tell the person you are assisting that you have
set up protections for a certain duration only, and that you will return to
remove them when the allotted time is up. They are to understand this and
to agree to do whatever they must, in that time sequence, to prevent further
dysfunction.
At the appointed time, you are to return to the site and dig up your wrard,
summoning the entity back to you. You will then return home, break the
seal, and put the bits back in their usual places, where they will remain
dormant (which is their current, natural state).
Should the person you are assisting still be in danger after the allotted
time, you are to fith-fath the aggressor if you still choose to remain involved.
SIGILS AS SEALS
In this instance, we are talking about longterm talismans of protection that
can be set wherever you choose. You will require however many flat stones
you want. You will, within a cast circle, paint the predecided sigils on them,
encircle them with the paint, and consecrate them by Earth, by Air, by Fire,
and by Water, charge them with your athame, and will their purpose,
through your dagger, into them. There are many books on specific seals and
sigils pertinent to differing magical traditions, but these are patterns of your
own deciding, specific to your intent.
Once created, they are to be left at the desired places for as long as
protection is required.
DREAM WALKER
(INCLUDING ASTRAL PROJECTION)
There are doorways to many functions, and recognizing, retrospectively,
what has been happening or where you have been, is important. Following
are the different states of the realm of dreams.
• There's the voyage through your own mindscape: the sort function
whereby bits and pieces will be remembered, seemingly disjointed, of your
daily routine. It's like a cleanup function that sorts, categorizes, interfaces,
and stores according to relevance and memorability the many experiences
of apparent waking reality. These dreams are often seemingly scattered,
irrational, but that's because the sort function doesn't depend on apparent
logic or linear perspective. It just sorts the bits (like ants carrying
necessary loads to the appropriate places in the nest).
• You can have dreams that are precognitive, that prophesy events yet to
occur within the waking timescape.
• There are those powerful dreams whereby you leave the landscape of
recognizable reality and voyage, through the dreamweb, to other worlds
wherein you also live, retaining the memory of experiences upon waking
into your current recognizable reality.
• Then there are the times when you'll meet with gods or beings from the
landscape of magic; the times when you'll be in the company of people
you know from the past, present, or future.
The plane burst into flames on takeoff, just above the tree line. What was
astonishing was that her experiences of living were to continue after death,
as though nothing of impact had really happened. These are on tape. One of
the experiences was of her going to Sydney "not for the reasons you think
you're going," for lots of tests and examinations; another was of how angry
she'd be at the authorities performing these tests and of how she'd be in the
Department of Births, Deaths, and Marriages while she was there. Her body
was flown to Sydney for an autopsy before the death certificate was
validated, and the death recorded in that department, but she would be
there to experience these things, consciously. There are several other
postdeath experiences on the same tape.
Night is the time to practice this technique, as you will require deep,
undisturbed concentration, and the airways are less likely to be cluttered
during the dark of the day. You will be using the visualization function
initially, but instead of retaining internalization, you are going to externalize
your consciousness (as in shapeshifting).
Observe the back of your head, your height, your stanceeverything about
yourself that you can see. It is not possible to observe your own face in this
context, just as it is not possible to observe your own physical form (except
in a mirror), as we are aware only of our internalized externalization of
image and not the way we appear to an observer.
Next you are to project your consciousness into your body. By this I mean
that you are no longer the person observing, but the person being observed.
Look around your immediate environment. Go to the doorway and walk
around the room, looking at everything: look behind objects, inside
cupboards and boxes, look closely at books, pictures, everything. Continue
this exercise nightly until you are familiar with your immediate
surroundings. Always reenter your prone material body the way you left.
Phase 2
Phase 3
Begin with meditation. Project your consciousness into your selfimage. You
can now leave the house and move around outside. Be aware of the time.
Observe all that is around you. Now you can begin the process of expanding
your entity. If you bend your knees and jump, you will discover that you are
weightless and can keep rising into the atmosphere as long as you desire.
You can also think your astral body from one place to another without
necessarily following a familiar route.
Practice this often, but don't forget to follow the return-tobody procedure!
I tend to stress this like a mother-hen. I've had horrible postastral
dysfunction occur due to both interruption and lack of experience, and it has
sometimes been days before I stopped feeling dizzy and/or nauseous and
disoriented. Sleeping lots tends to fix it, though.
Phase 4
Phase 5
Do as ye will...
Remember, earlier in this text, when I discussed the good witch as being
someone who was proficient, as opposed to one who is on the way to
becoming so? This applies here. A good witch, in all matters, will consider
her own opinions, relative to circumstances, as either correct (in the
interpretation of current data) or in training to become so; honoring the
opinions of another, when that other is more adept, is sacrosanct.
Awrake! Be awrare of what passes you, of what touches you, of the color of
the day. Listen to the pattern of your lifescape and recognize whatever
speaks to you that usually doesn't. Carpe diem!
Examples
• A sequence invades your day: the same, or similar, things are said by
seemingly random people. Your awareness of the pattern of the sequence
puts you on alert.
• You see fleetinglv someone you know, again and again, only to realize
it's someone else. You will either be contacted by that person or you must
make contact.
• You dream of someone you know well. Tell them what you have
dreamed. The message will be important to them either now or soon.
• Waking deep within the night without apparent reason. Something will
have called to you. Open yourself to contemplation.
• The overwhelming desire to get away from whomever you are with; to be
alone to wT0rk ceremonv-do it!
It's all geas. Omens and portents are looping tools that the geas will use
automatically to enable it to fulfill your destiny. It's all natural. It's as natural
as the function of your heart beating!
Tarot
Ominous . . .
This built-up haze of rage upon a people!
Weave softly through i t . . .
They do not know I taste them when they're lying;
On the surface they pretend, inside they're dying . . .
And all the while they say how hard they're trying
But trying doesn't work—to live you do it!
I am Tarot; Revolution;
I'm the Raven that sits, and whispers, on your shoulder . . .
I can name the savage beast that lurks behind you;
I'm the mirror of the Thing you hope won't find you
And you fear me, for I cannot but remind you
That you're older now . . . and will get so much older.
She comes to see herself in m y reflection
In the hope that I will tell her nothings wrong;
T h a t behind the weak betrayal she is strong . . .
T h a t she can change the places where she can't belong . . .
T h a t she can handle life without love's lost affection.
You can work this technique using a fith-fath of the person, but it is not
nearly as effective as having them with you in the flesh. You are going to
temporarily banish the person, you see, and without a distinct, short-term
time frame, not only could the individual you have banished cease to be
(like die!), but they could, also, simply disappear, which wT0uld leave you
stuck with the consequences of the ghost of the reason for the invisibility
spell attaching itself to your destiny! The person who has made the request
for the spell of invisibility must agree to your terms and promise to return to
you for the removal of the shade when the allocated time frame is complete!
So ... the technique is quite simple. You will require your cloak, four dark
blue, gray, or black candles, your white cord, incense and censer, a lighter,
and your athame. It is best to wrork this enchantment on the wrane of the
Moon, but sometimes necessity requires spontaneity.
THE RITE
Parti
1. Wrap the person in your cloak and seat them on the floor in the center of
the environment prepared for the rite. Coil your cord around them closely,
forming a tight circle. Place the four dark candles at the compass points
just outside this little circle.
2. Cast a circle around you and the inner circle. Light the four dark candles
and the incense (the incense is, necessarily for this spell, very smoky, so
you will require lots of oil in the mix).
4. When this is done, take the incense and walk around the person in the
opposite direction (deosil), seven times. You will then open your own
circle with your athame and ground the energy as you have been taught.
Blow out the candles-Earth, Air, Fire, and Water-and undo the little cord
circle, coiling the cord as you do so (you will not uncoil the cord until the
time frame is complete and when you re-encircle the person to undo the
enchantment). Remove the cloak and put it away. Tell the person not to
speak to you again until they return. Tell them to dress as inconspicuously
as possible during the time frame, to be as normal as usual, and to
discourage eye contact with others as much as possible. Then tell them to
leave.
Keep the four dark candles for the rite of completion, but have four red
candles ready for that night.
Part 2
1. When the time frame is over and the person comes back to you, you will
repeat Part 1 up to where you originally encircled them seven times (you
won't do that this time).
3. Light a red candle from the dark candle at Earth, snuff out the dark
candle, remove it from the holder, and replace it with the red candle. Do
the same for Air, Fire, and Water. Have the person step out of the ring of
candles and stand, waiting, while you disengage your own outer circle and
earth the power. Only then will you snuff the red candles.
When the person leaves, take a shower with intent of reiving the field of
the enchantment from your own field.
Other forms of invisibility are lighter:
• Visualize your energy field as misty and insubstantial when you are
having a bad-hair day and don't want anyone to register your existence.
• When too many people want a piece of you, banish the telephone for a
few hours or take your cloak and pass it around your body three times
while expressing your desire for invisibility in a whisper with each pass of
the cloak.
Know that you can't be seen. Don't be silly (like some witches I have
known, myself included when I was young and vague) and cast a spell of
invisibility about yourself and then go out on the town to see who can see
you! That's like an oxymoron!
PSI-EMPATHY AND PSYCHIC PROTECTION
Bv now, understanding the preceding work and putting it into practice, you
will have become very finely tuned. This is not without its seeming
drawbacks. I find it very difficult to be around large groups of people, as I
pick up on the randomness and the chaos of desire and expectation that
permeates these gatherings when the majority of people present do not
know each other. They may be out for a good time (rallies for clear purpose
of ideal do not exemplify this as most minds tend to be directed toward a
goal or message), or may simply be part of a crowd in a plaza or on any
big-city street. I become increasingly distressed, as psi-empathv cannot but
hear the messages of energy and instinct that fill the airways.
Let's throw away the Count Vladimir the Impaler image. Let's relegate to
someone else's lifescape the concept of the go-for-thethroat night stalker,
and let's talk about the wannabes. These are your Western-style vampires
and they dwell in the shadows of other people's lifescapes, sucking on their
lifeforce to substantiate their existence and wearing the masks of niceness to
perpetuate their own lack. They are usually very adept at vampirism,
learning from a young age how to get what they want without effort or
conscience, having been taught how to "suck" by other vampires. They're
difficult to identify, initially, wearing the guise of kind to attract your
attention, and attentive they will be-buying their way into your lifescape by
way of flatten 7 or gifts (remember not to eat or drink while dwelling in the
land of faerie!). They will talk the jargon of your language, but they will seek
to have you tell them of their importance, their potential, their prowress.
They will seek to, in some way, become you!
How7 do you recognize one? Gifts and flattery-just to be able to talk solely
about themselves. Gifts and flattery-seeking to buy their way into a field that
requires doing. The moment they are confronted as to their motives, they
become excessively offended and you probably won't see them again. Gifts
and flattery are all very nice, but always ascertain what the giver wants in
return.
If you have fallen into the trap of being around a vampire for any length of
time (and Mulengro is always their game), remember that it is very easy to
be caught by one. They are rampant. You must cleanse yourself of their
energy by showering, swimming, or bathing with intent (reiving). They can
leave a kind of clag (residue) attached to your energy field, as they have been
puncturing your field, sucking or biting bits from it, while in your company.
We will not spend much time on psychic attacks as, you are to
understand, only a very adept occultist or an extreme emotional cripple can
achieve this feat. You would have had to have let them in for them to have
breached your personal boundaries (Sun Tzu's Art of War discusses what to
do if you've let the enemy inside your defenses-in love and war, gifts and
flattery)• Many people claim psychic attack when it is not so. Simply because
one's life is in seeming disarray does not mean one is under attack; it's likely
one has left things undone, unresolved, and this must be attended to in
order for disarray to transform into art.
GHOSTS AND HAUNTINGS
The ghosts and hauntings covered in this section are not the ectoplasmic
kind, but the memory, or the transference, kind. Be clear not to take on
another's ways (like your mother's, father's, boss's, or hero's), as you are not
them. The attitudes of others who impress you (i.e., make an impression in
whatever capacity) can be like ghosts-thev can haunt your mind and possess
you with their alien attitudes. All arguments are hauntings, as opposed to
healthy debate or discussion. I'll leave you to contemplate this without
filling in the examples.
Emotional cripples suffer from ghosts in the psyche and hauntings from
the past, impeding their capacity to allow. Many emotional cripples can
develop other powers to make up for their inability to function in
equilibrium (if you can help or heal them without becoming subject to the
transference of cause and effect, then by all means do so, but be careful, as
many can drop off some unseen edge without forewarning). One of these
powers is a subterranean psychic wildfire that can strike you, astrally, and
leave you waking in terror or, conversely, unable to sleep due to unspecific
anxiety.
Much in the way of psychic attack takes place when you are asleep and
therefore vulnerable. If this happens, you are to encircle your bed, dome a
pentagram of Earth-banishing over you, and only then, send out tendrils to
seek the source of the attack. The source may be a random event sending
out a harmonic that passes you in the night, but if you discover that the
attack has a sinister source, you can deal with it through warding (or, as is
warranted, fith-fathing).
(Hey! I'm sitting here typing, and a pencil, lying across from me, just
bounced off the desk and hit the side of my head! Don't you just love it when
weird things like that happen?!)
Okay. I can tell you the kind of spellcrafting that works for me. I'm not
going to generalize or summon up other practitioner's techniques for your
experimentation. You can explore for yourselves.
Most of Part Three has been guiding you to this point, and certain
discussions in Part Two under the subject of the Four Worlds (Relevant
Notes on Qabbalah), so you will need to go back and forth to glean the
entirety of the pattern to ascertain how the whole lot weaves together.
Spells of getting and hexing are always worked in a circle. You will focus
your intent on the outcome and not the process, as it is necessary• that you
get out of the way of the process. This takes more practice than it sounds. To
achieve an outcome that is not necessarily inevitable to your destiny (by
your current assessment of events), patterns of flow will be diverted from
their current course. This can precipitate any number of seemingly
discordant extremes of experience. What is sure is that change requires
change, and you must be willing to go with the flow of those changes, in
perfect trust, realizing that they are the necessary• process involved in the
attainment of a specific outcome.
You are to know how you wrant to feel in response to the achievement of
that outcome. The bricks and mortar of reason will get you into deep wrater
here because you can achieve the realization of a goal only to find that it
doesn't fit you. You could end up being very successful in the wTong place,
in the WTong enterprise, with the WTong lover, or in the WTong job. What
does , \vrong" mean in this instance? It means that where you end up, or
what you end up doing, is what you thought would make you happy because
you didn't understand that it was how you wanted to feel that mattered-the
bricks and mortar are irrelevant.
Once the feeling of the outcome is firmly understood, you will sing the
event into manifestation, within your ritual circle, using a tool of focus
(from the plaiting of threads to zoning out on a candle flame). The aim is to
call the eventuality to you.
Gather, with focus and intent, as many bits and pieces as symbolize your
desire. Be careful to cover all options. I once summoned a house in which to
live considering clear specifications based on a burning desire for a
particular feel in my living environment. I even specified that it was to have
a fireplace as I don't like to be cold. I attained what I wanted, except I had
neglected to specify a fireplace that works. The chimney had been removed
and the roof had been tinned over. With that quirk}7 little exception, the
house is excellent for my tastes. So, specifics in the gathering of symbols is a
requirement.
You don't want a lot of bulk to the spell (we're employing sympathetic
magic here), and you want all things to be willing to symbolize your intent so
that there will be a certain symmetry and interactive passion between the
objects and the intent (that's a kind of creation). For example, possible
ingredients for a love spell: red rose petals, white silk, jasmine oil, the idea of
the person you desire wTitten on vellum in a flowing script, leaves or twigs
from an evergreen, a small piece of good bread to symbolize stability and
nourishment, bells and shells to represent laughter and shelter, small
gemstones of garnet and pearlall placed in a black velvet pouch tied thrice
with red thread.
You will consecrate your spell by Earth, by Air, by Fire, and by Water. You
will sing it into life. You will bless it by sprinkling it with consecrated wine,
and after you have completed the ritual, you will bur}7 it in some fecund
place and plant above it.
Hexing
Hexing is always personal (as opposed to fith-fathing, which can be done to
aid or fix the problems of another person). Hexing is slightly more difficult,
as you will require things belonging to, or personal to, the person. Hexing is
specific, whereas getting is preferably not. The bundle principle is the same;
however, the ingredients will be more malefic than in spells of getting (e.g.,
other than the bits belonging to the person you want to hex, you will require
such things as bent and rusty nails or pins; junk plastic; something that
smells bad; your desire written in a stilting, jagged hand; and your anger tied
once, twice, three times onto string. Place the ingredients into a paper bag
(so that it breaks down quickly), tie it with string, and bury it.
If you have an unjustifiable reason for the sending of a hex, it will come
back to you with a vengeance. Some say threefold; some say sevenfold;
some say tenfold!
"Do as ye will, e'er it harm none" (go back and reread To Be Witch) is
appropriate where both getting and hexing are concerned.
TWTO things to remember (at the risk of repeating myself): (1) don't meddle
in other people's business, and (2) never boast, never threaten, just do, and
do quietly.
T H E CIRCLES OF L I G H T AND D A R K
Consider for a moment what life could be like for both yourself and the
Earth on which we dwell if you could see and understand the patterns of
change, in their cyclic entirety, without getting caught up in concepts of time
and personalization. I recommend reflection on the circular rather than the
linear. Consider that all things within the known universe revolve around
each other in everwidening patterns, eternally and infinitely, from the
smallest to the vastest, to the furthest reaches of revolution.
Light and dark are to be considered in the same context. Light could be
considered infinite in its possibilities, as could darkness. One can see light
only in relativity to darkness. The positive, attractive, and expansive force of
not only your own soul, but also of the universe, can be truly understood
only if one takes the time to consider the negative, repulsive, and
contracting-or the circles of light and dark.
I wrant to make it quite clear that the language of magic, and its ability to
evoke reaction within the wx>rld, as it does between the worlds, is that of
both image and symbol. When a concept is embodied in either an image or a
symbol, it takes on a form of life that is not synonymous with the spoken or
wTitten wrord unless it becomes the wrord (i.e., a sigil of the enchantment that
is summoned to represent what the spoken wrord could never do, despite the
incredible powTer of the spoken and/or the WTitten wT0rd when they are
expressed in particular ways). This theoretical, practical manual is intended
to summon from within you the images that represent more than the work.
The spoken ritual, for example, without the attending visualizations, would
be a gesture only, and would have no validity as a magical procedure
(understand that the landscape of magic is between the worlds. You may
work sorcery and ritual in the place of Assiah, your Earthplane temple, but it
will reverberate through other planes of reality in order to effect your
desire).
So, when working all magics of an external nature (i.e., those that affect
your personal world, those that assist you with conscious, inspirational and
creative pursuits, and the achievement of that to which you aspire), the
circle of light is when and where you will wrork: the waxing lunar cycle (from
New Moon to Full); the wraxing solar year, for long-range projects (from
Winter Solstice to the day prior to the Summer Solstice). When working
with planetary influences, you will wrork when the planets concerned are
direct, not retrograde, and when planetary or stellar influences are at zenith,
not nadir.
When working all spellcrafting and ritual of an internal, repulsive (in the
literal sense), or deep-diving nature, all banishings and bindings, you will
wrork best when accessing the circle of dark: the wraning lunar cycle (from
the second day of the Full Moon to the day prior to the New Moon); the
wraning solar year, for long-range projects, from the Summer Solstice to the
day prior to the Winter Solstice; when the planets or stellar influences are at
nadir (retrograde is not advisable at all).
The work and the research that you perpetuate will prove invaluable,
progressively, and self-alchemy will allow you to remain within your own
disciplined, and wrell-charted limitations. These limitations, like Saturn, are
merely there as guidance to personal control. To wralk outside your own
boundaries without first having acknowledged them means to lose control,
and that will never do! This does not mean that you cannot explore the
fullest potential of your emotional, physical, mental, or creative faculties; it
means that within that fullness you do no harm. If, however, you do not
realize your own limits, then you cannot supersede them, if that is what is
required, or, like the Devil card, you run the risk of becoming trapped by
them, therefore creating wrebs of unwanted habits, patterns, or obsessions.
These three phases are knowTi as First Rite (or Degree), Second Rite (or
Degree), and Third Rite (or Degree). The Second and Third Rites are termed
"the Deepening." The Second Rite will strike around a year and a day after
your initiation. I say "strike" because it is a danger zone. You will be
challenged by the forces of your calling, in whatever area you have taken for
granted, and the stage will ahvavs be set in the ordinary wrorld, the
challenges will always be associated with your ego and your hidden agendas,
and it is ahvavs devastating to some degree.
Second Rite is the alchemical phase of your training whereby the dross,
self-delusionment, apathy, and cowardice of your ego will confront very real
adversity. Through action, intent, and true response to this adversity, the
crud is burned off, revealing the gold, the folded and tempered steel, the
bread of your clear understanding and self-honor.
The third year sees you through it. In traditional covens, Third Rite
bestowrs the position of elder and/or high priesthood. This is not a
hierarchical powrer trip (which has been known to happen, unfortunately, in
some obscure covens), but a responsibility to be a clear vessel for the flow of
justice and compassion, a willingness to take on the requirements of a
teacher, and the capacity to be responsible for the initiation of other witches.
You will do this by knowing what to look for and how to respond to the real,
as wrell as the illusory, in the pattern of the applicant. When you are in the
position of high priesthood, you should be willing to take on the
responsibilities of a coven and of the correct training of each of its members.
They are the way-showers who choose to teach others in the various
capacities already existing in standard occult practices. They wrork the rites
of Earth, Moon, Sun, and Stars, and live magic through the line of the
Merlvn or Morgan le-fae. They are the musicians, the poets, the talkers, the
storytellers, the writers, and the artists who express to others by way of both
art and science. They teach by example. They may find themselves within
the framework of modern society, in the wrorld but not of it, and may often
be found in standard, contemporary occupations while living and working
the Craft and creating their art as a lifestyle.
The stuff of the Second Degree is the thing, as they say, of what legends
are made, even if that is seen only by the person's loved ones and closest
allies, those who will be around when the challenges strike, when the forces
of the Way of the quest see what the initiate is made of. As long as you keep
the faith and remind yourself that what is happening is training you, you'll
break through the barriers that are what I call "the Dragon's Egg." You'll find
the way to freedom.
For many initiates, the functions of the arts associated with magic are
their natural line-of-least-resistance, and they will specialize in the
associated fields. Their symbol is the staff. The Primum Mobile of the
Second Degree Initiate is the Red Line.
The witches who have come to know of the Earth as the Great Provider, who
have come to understand and be at one with the rituals and rites of their
inheritance and the myths and mysteries of their line, will come to the
thresholds and remain betweenthe־wrorlds.
These are the initiates of the inner mysteries, who seek to invoke the very
essence of their goddess/god into themselves for the specific purpose of
influencing the course of the evolving whole through their honor of the
evolving whole-honor being the foundation stone (the Lia Fal) of them all.
They are the star seeds, their purpose being to keep the magic on this side of
reality. They are alive! to serve the forces of revolution (which, in esoteric
terms, has to do with the innate rightness of the overall patterns of change).
They are the wralkers of the inner planes, and their temples, while being
earthed in our considered reality, have their parallels in the deep and
ancient future past.
The Third Rite Priestess or Priest is a warrior in the way of magic; in the
ways of the sacred; tried and tested and undaunted by the appearances of
the wrorld of men-champions of Goddess; sisters and brothers of God-face to
face. They dare to be different, will move out of mainstream lifestyles, and
will keep the gate open.
They are the teachers of the initiates who are in, and passing through, the
Green Line and the Red Line, as wrell as the passerson of reestablished links
with the ancient past to those who have learned and sought to work the way
of magic in the now.
Their symbol is the sword. The Primum Mobile of the Third Degree is the
Black Line. They are dragon riders, one could sav-ragged though they may
appear to those who cannot see them. Robed, often, in a weird anonymity
that allows those who are kind to apprehend them easily, but not others.
They use the art of glamouring well!
I conclude our work here with the understanding of the three degrees for
two reasons:
1. So that you will not fail wiien the "shit hits the fan" at Second Rite
(because it's simply like the musician who goes from scales to Bach!).
It is also my will to ask you to make contact with me as the need arises,
through my publisher, so that our relationship, and the network you may
require, can proceed. Those of you who take the self-initiation are truly of
my coven-the Coven of Crvstalglade. This book is the training of the initiates
of this coven (with a few7 exceptions, you understand, which I am oathbound
to shut up about). You are simply of a different kind, linked to us by the
audacity of individuality! (I've ahvavs been a rebel). Given the auspices of
circumstance, I hope that wre may perchance meet, perhaps by wrord, if not
by deed, along the timeline of the future or in a wralk through the
dreamscape!
I
It's me, you see? . . .
The gypsy-woman-born-of-no-one,
Who holds this priest, her friend,
With love that's free . . .
For love of you and love of Life,
For love that simply dwells in me . . .
I'll see it through with laughter
And with mystery and majesty;
For I am sister to the man
And I am sister to the Moon
But to witches I am Queen, you see,
And holder of the Sword and Key!
• • •
And I have a sacred oath as well
To set the wizard in you free
And have you understand . . .
That all you had to do was live this long!
Was to fight to be so soft and strong;
Was to pass the harshest,
most unyielding test
Of trusting that you could be blest
To walk differently to all the rest!
•• •
Today is the 26th of May, 1998, and this country is having a National "Sorry"
Day because generations of the children of Australia's indigenous people
were stolen from their families and forced to grow up in "good Christian
missions," in "decent, white-man's clothes" with the grandiose idea that they
would be better off.
The current commonwealth government will not say, "Gee, guys, our
forefathers were bastards! We know better. We're sorry, so sorry, for what
was done to you and it won't happen again." Although people from all over
this land, from all backgrounds, do concede the inhumanity perpetrated
against the Aboriginal Nation, holistically, the government does not
(methinks they dare not!). There is an entire agenda occurring off center
stage, like at Jabiluka, tribal land currently being mined for vellow-cake, the
authorities arresting the rightful owners of this sacred site for trespass,
while they seek to eradicate native title and perpetuate a race election to
divide us, in true Machiavellian fashion, further!
Since the invasion of this continent by the British two hundred years ago,
ethnogenocide has been wraged against the tribal communities. Like
apartheid in South Africa, the Black & Tans in Ireland, and the Holocaust of
the Second World War, these events are not events that should be forgotten,
because forgetting can lead to the sleep of freedom.
It happened to us.
Not just witches, but heretics of all backgrounds who wrere not in accord
with the agenda of the dominant, current regime. Not just witches, but an
entire multi-indigenous culture-the inhabitants of the British Isles before
the invasion of the bloody Roman Empire. The annihilation of the history,
equality, legend, music, art, language, religion, tradition, and inheritance of
a tribal people-the sins of the father. If you wrere not Roman, you wrere no
one. People wTere bought, humiliated, absorbed, or slaughtered. Rebels
fought, and fought, and ran away to live to fight another day. For centuries.
Then, after Constantine hedged his bets and declared Christianity to be
the religion of the state, the second wave to overthrow the ways of the sacred
began. The last attempts (even of a Celtic Christianity) of individuality were
quashed as a result of the Synod of Whitby in 664 C.E. The pursuit and
eradication of the heretics (from the Greek hairetikos able to choose!) of an
older faith were dealt with "bv way of a hostile sword" (Bede).
The ways of the ancients (outwardly, and in the majority) were blanketed.
Our feast days were overwritten by Christian saints' days or Christian holy
days. Singing, the playing of music, dancing, and learning were outlawed, as
was the tattooing of the clans and their sorcerers (who became the property7
of the Crown and, in this country, today, are still considered outlaw7). Hedge
schools, the ways of teaching the young by the Druids, was outlawed, as was
the recanting of tribal lineage and legacy by the Bards.
The Stones still stand to remind us-thev didn't pull them down. Why?
Because if they'd pulled down all the Henges and they'd eradicated the
Sheila na gig from the church lintels and the Green Man from above the
tavern door, possibly no one wrould remember, and the people wrould not
deduce that theirs is an inheritance of magic that exists from before the
unacceptability of passion became the norm. The secret will of the soul of a
people is why!
This book is not only the way I live in the Way of witch, it is my
inheritance (which is my humanity, inherently magical!). In one way, it was
wiitten so that others who need to know7 this kind of magic can live it also,
having another witch's opinions to assist them, but, the truth be told, it is
the power of the individual, it is the honor of differences that I seek to
perpetuate-mv difference, your difference-that's why I have never said "you
have to," ever, in this work.
In secrecy and in mystery, and behind the veils of sacred ritual, the people
do remember! There's no reason at all why the tapestry of different thought,
passion, and faith cannot live in symphony, each honoring the instrument
of the other.
A few years ago, I had my face tattooed with the symbols of deep meaning
that mean everything to me. I did so because I had come to the turning point
that we all, sooner or later, approach-how much do I care to be acceptable to
those wrho are not of my kind to the detriment of the truth of my
commitment? I did it for my mother, and for her mother, and for hers-for as
far back as time remembers-and I felt them all there with me, the songline
of my ancestors who dare not, for the sake of their children, and the children
who came after, make magic obvious.
This book is for (in order of age) Adam, Jarrod, and Serenity, children of
my body, who keep me true to myself, and for each of my initiates and those
who have trained in the collectives (outer circle), children of another kind of
mother... ad infinitum.
END NOTES
1. From The Sea Priestess by Dion Fortune.
3.1 italicize the word because the misunderstanding, in and of itself, will be
illusory. You can be very clear and concise in communication, and when
you no longer play by the rules of the anticipated roles that you have set
up for yourself so that you will be considered acceptable, then you may
often be misunderstood.
5.1 have italicized the word belief because, in my opinion, inherent within
the word is the word "doubt."
7. Geas is an antique witch's term for something like "the raven that sits and
whispers on my shoulder," something that is one's destiny to pursue.
10. Regarding active and passive silence, active silence is the use of
manifest, background sound (e.g., music, thunderstorms when they are
around, the wind in the trees, the ocean's song) as an aid; passive silence
is silence without sound.
18. Read The Moon Under Her Feet by C. Kinstler, and The Women's
Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets by Barbara G. Walker.
REFERENCES
PLANETARY SYMBOLISM
Sun: Q Center of the self. Symbolism: spiritual flame. Represents your
purpose of being along the timescape of your destiny. It is the principle of
self-actualization. It is your essence, and therefore your will to be (as in
becoming) and your ability to create and express yourself as an individual.
It is expansive and electric, but it can tend to blind you to the subtleties of
the diversity of nature, both individually and collectively. It is fortissimo.
Moon: D The Moon receives and reflects the Sun's rays and light. It
represents the cycles of change; ebb and flow; the tides of both the
individual and the collective. It is both contractive and magnetic, blatant
and occult. It is the facility that endows you with your intuitive/psychic
faculty, that determines how the energies of the self are used. It indicates
the subconscious mind and is also the matrix image of your being. It
connects you to both your genetic and instinctual memories. It is the
source of adaptability and the instincts of self-preservation.
Mercury: Y The conscious mind and the workings of the conscious mind.
Mercury endows you with your basic attitudes toward your interactive
environment. It rules communication on a contact level (to extend
yourself into your environment via communication of your identity). It
endows the expression of perceptions with an intelligence through the
spoken and/or written word. It rules the sciences, movement and magic,
logic and learning. Mercury is the quality of thought as distinct from the
quantity, and the ability to focus thought and direct it toward application.
Mars: d' Mars indicates your basic excitations and the quality of initiative
and decisive action. It denotes your aggression and your striving nature. It
is responsible for your directed sexuality, your familial, tribal, communal,
and cultural affiliations. It is your sense of justice and your concept of
taboo. It is your capacity to defend. Mars rules the muscles and all
physical energy. It is your powerful, aggressive preservation instinct, and
it is more social than personal.
Jupiter: Ii. Jupiter represents your basic capacity for expansion, idealism,
and compassion in any given endeavor. It also represents your ability to
improve yourself through education (in this respect, it is polarized with
Mercury). Jupiter governs conditioned and ingrained traditional
philosophies, judgments, and morals-from religious affiliations to political
preferences. It also pertains to the devotional aspects of the self, and one's
awareness of what is personally and collectively sacred. It is how you are
in a public sense, rather than a private one.
Saturn: t. Saturn defines your limitations. (This planet has been so maligned
due to a misunderstanding of its deeper nature, that I would like to quote
the mathematical meaning of the term limit: a definite quantity or value
that a series is conceived or proved to approach but never reach. The
italics are mine.). It relates to your concrete creative faculties and is the
crystallization of the Sun's (in this instance, our personal star) energies
(the self). It represents all concepts of conditioning, as well as
conditioning itself, both in yourself and in society as a whole. It presents
you with the awareness of binding and restriction, as well as being that
which is both binding and restricting. It is there to give you the
opportunity to break through the immobilization of your own limitations.
Saturn symbolizes that which is ordered, ancient, deep, and profound. It is
achievement within the acceptable cultural paradigm of present-day
society, based on long-standing traditions of what constitutes success.
Qabbal- isticallv, Saturn represents Binah, the Great Sea, Almah Mari. On
the outward journey of the Lightning Flash, Binah is where force
(Chokmah), which is pure, unbridled, and unrecognizable energy, has
entered into the dimension of time to be able to know itself. It arcs, and
turns back on itself in order to recognize itself; hence life, the galaxies, and
everything that is within space (the theory of relativity, after another
fashion: time is to space, as matter is to energy).
On the Tree of Life, t represents the Assiah of Binah and is directly linked
to Kether ״, IV, to Chokmah)g (through Da'ath), Geburah C, and
Tiphareth (D.
On the Tree of Life, it represents Daath, or the bridge above (or that veils)
the abyss. Da'ath represents knowledge not necessarily gained from a
recognizable source (i. e., inspiration that leads to discover}7), and it links
Chokmah)g to Binah tt on the path of the Lightning Flash, and KetherT,
IV with Tiphareth o by way of the High Priestess card, which broaches the
abyss.
Uranus: )g Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto are known collectively as
Ambassadors of the Galaxy. Uranus relates to the vision you can have
beyond and above recognized traditional norms. Uranus is that which
breaks down the walls of accepted standards and deconditions the
personal ego. It will lead you into situations that will shatter preconceived
ideas you may have of yourself, established by your socio/environ- mental
upbringing. It can be like the lightning-struck tower in the Tarot insofar as
its eruptive and destructive blatancv can be as dangerous as exposed
electrical wiring to wet hands in a thunderstorm! It is, however, the powrer
of the urge for differentiation and the revolution of independent
consciousness, and it is characterized by the expression mental vision.
On the Tree of Life, ' represents the Assiah of Kether and is linked to
Chokmah )g, Binah F, and Tiphareth Q (through Da'ath) directly.
Pluto: T WTiat's left of you after Uranus and Neptune have had their go at
you is what Pluto is all about! All concepts of a spiritual nature are
pulverized onto a screen, on which is projected your new image. Pluto
relates to the transcendence and transformation of your life-pattern
boundaries. It is the action that is a result of the mental of Uranus and the
feeling of Neptune. It is, therefore, the Planet of Enlightenment.
On the Tree of Life, IV dwells on the lip, or at the point of the unknown,
where Kether becomes Ain Soph Aur, therefore indicating another Tree
(an unperceived reality). One could speculate that this is Malkuth (g), after
another fashion, in which an entire Tree springs from the death of the
fruits of the Tree that it was, is, and ever will be, through the seed that is
born from Pluto's promise.
You can use these interpretations in just about any way you choose.
Contemplate their significance to you, personally, to understand the
passages of the pattern of your own life. Compre !!ending the planetary
symbolism by way of the Tree of Life is a great secret of weaving.
Understand the qualities of each planet in relation to your own nature to
enable you to work magic according to your own nature (i.e., the line of least
resistance).
TAROT (MAJOR ARCANA)
I have been asked on many occasions to produce a book, or a how-to
manual, teaching Tarot, as I have taught the subject to many people over the
past fifteen years, but what I teach is not static. Tarot, particularly as a tool
of divination (which is its purpose, as far as I am concerned), is the epitome
of malleability! Prediction requires the presentation of many patterns, or
groupings, throughout a reading, using all seventy-eight cards. The value of
each individual card is dependent on those cards it is grouped with.
Basically, the seventy-eight cards are like seventyeight letters, the groupings
are like sentences, and the whole of a reading is the telling of a story that is
inherent in an individual's destiny, different for each individual. How can
that be put down in a book and be even remotely credible?
If I were to read the same story for even• one (variations of a theme being
the dominant paradigm), then perhaps-but it's not that way; it is never that
way. I can explain how it works and why it works now that I have a handle
on the principles of quantum physics (wherein lies Tarot's secret, as it does
defy the laws of probability), and I can teach small groups of dedicated
students how to interpret the language of patterns-but by word of mouth,
ahvavs by word of mouth.
What is the probability ratio of the patterns Tarot exhibits in one reading?
In one reading alone there will be distinct series of information, based on
pattern, that will be repeated over and over, with variations relative to each
experience that one person will have (in the case of my readings, that will
generally cover an approximate two-year interval). Names, places, dates,
and descriptions of experiences not based on the person's current situation
are often given, and they do occur, often wT0rdf0r־wT0rd. No one could record
each and every story they read, for several thousand people, in any one
book, and teaching to read the language orally and experientiallv (which is
what students of the Tarot learn) can really be achieved only through
personal interaction.
Therefore, the notes wTitten here have nothing to do with divination in its
foretelling aspect (I wrould require you in my class for that). These notes are
oracular, and therefore of benefit to both the psyche and to spellcrafting
based on emotion and ideal.
Each Major Arcanum has a planetary, elemental, or zodiacal association
stemming from its connection to la Rose Croix, and the value of these
associations is to be contemplated, as it can be of great assistance in seeking
to understand each card's significance. I'm presenting you with a
contemplation of each principle, and though each principle may very well be
the answer to a question of importance to your development or the
development of an endeavor, it could also simply be a time sequence, yet to
come, based on an experience, yet to come, whereby the answer will be
forthcoming. Tarot very definitely deals with time, but in time's unfolding
sense of an ever-present continuum (i.e., past, present, and future being
what the Aboriginal people of this land call a songline).
She explained the way of time to me, when I was young, like this: "Let's
say you're living on a sphere. Let's say the only things of significance on the
sphere are a bloody big door in a bloody big door frame in the middle of
nowhere with a path that leads away from that door in a dead-straight line.
Let's say the door's behind you and your feet are on that path, and you
decide to walk it to see where it goes, 'cause there doesn't seem to be much
of anything else to do.
"So you walk that path for a long time, and lots might happen to you while
you're walking it, but, sure thing is, you end up behind that bloody big door.
What I want you to ask yourself is: when you walk through that door, close
it, and stand on the other side looking out at the path in front of you, are you
in your past? Are you in the present? Or is it the future you've just walked
into? Or is it maybe all three at once and it's just the journey that mucks you
up in the head about it all?" (She was an Aquarian. Her birthday,
interestingly enough, was February 2).
That's it, yes?
MAJOR ARCANA
0 The Fool A The essence; the concept or
inspiration; prelife; the unpre-
dictable; inevitability; destiny;
the principle of the whole being
greater than the sum of its
parts.
The initiation of the Fool's journey into the dark night of the soul.
XII Hanged Man V Clear and absolute faith in your
convictions; the demands from
the depths of the soul; sacrifice
of safety because of a greater
love; willingness to be true to
what you know to be right
action in the face of
overwhelming opposition;
the illusion becomes the
illumined; the testing of trust,
and trust itself; honor; the
grail quest and the love of
Shekinah; letting go.
First phase in the Fool's journey through the dark night of the soul.
Second phase of the Fool's journey through the dark night of the soul.
XIV Temperance J The alchemy of any endeavor,
and the alchemist; tightrope-
walking through the dark
night of the soul; the
balancing-act of ingredients in
the lifescape; leftover,
unresolved issues threaten the
balance; the ego undergoing
strident discipline through
experiences; new ideas
surround and influence,
testing one's resolve; tread
carefully, aim carefully; not too
heavy, but not too light either;
mutable.
Third phase of the Fool's journey through the dark night of the soul.
XV Devil ]3 Self-entrapment; the face of
pompous self-contentment;
false and true knowledge; a
trap; an adversary; the dross of
old, outmoded confusion; the
threat of danger; either/or
morality; self-righteousness;
fear-consciousness; unaccept-
able situations that you refuse
to let go of through lack of self-
alliance; "There's a beast upon
your shoulder, and there's a
fiend upon your back . . . "
(from Jethro TulPs Broadsword
and the Beast album).
Fourth phase of the Fool's journey through the dark night of the soul.
This completes the Fool's journey through the dark night of the soul. Here
begins the second phase of the Fool's journey-the true child. The Fool's
conscious conception.
The Fool's journey begins another revolution in the great wheel. Tarot
begins again, but after another fashion-it will be different the next time and
the next.
T H E T I M E SEQUENCES OF
THE SOLAR/EARTH W H E E L
(ACCORDING T O THE M A J O R ARCANA)
The following dates are generalized. You would need to refer to an
ephemeris for the exact dates in each calendar year.
The exercise here is to consider each number and expand on the concept
by putting pen to paper, using your own experiences to guide you to
expanded contexts; and to understand how each conceptualized number
pertains to your life, both experientiallv and mystically. I have reduced the
meanings of each number to their finest potency and expressed them as key
words.
Please contemplate.
Exercise
1. Write the name that you were first officially given (i.e., on your birth
certificate.) Any subsequent name changes can be taken into account as
secondary information only. Your first legal name is some kind of weird
Assiatic contract between you and your unfolding lifescape.
2. Equate each letter of your entire name (i.e., first, any middle, and last
names as per your birth certificate) with its corresponding letter as shown
in the following chart (using your own name in place of the example).
B C D E F G H I • •
J •
• L M
M NN OO P P Q QR R K • •
S TT UU ״ • WW X X Y Y Z Z • • • • VV •
The total of all the numbers in your whole name are reduced to a base
number by adding the digits. This number gives you the Total Self. You also
need to equate your Soul Self by way of the breakdown system using only
the vowels, including the letter Y, and your Personality, which is discovered
byway of the breakdown of the consonants. Example:
J A N E MARY S M I T H
1 1 5 5 4 1 9 7 1 4 9 2 8
JANE MA R Y SMITH
1 5 1 7 9
6 8 9 = 23 = 5: Soul Self
Consonants Only
J ANE MARY S M I T H
1 5 4 9 1 4 2 8
6 13/(4) 15/(6) =34/(16) = 7: Personality
3. The first letter of your first name is called the foundation, which is the
harmonic of power that supports who you are.
4. The total of the letters of your first name is called your key, and the
properties of this number aid you in interrelationships.
5• Problem areas in your psyche are indicated by whatever numbers are
missing from your name (in the case of our example, these numbers are:
3,5, and 6. Using the chart, we can see that missing 3 means a lack of clear
ability to express herself; missing 5 means a dysfunctional attitude toward
change; and missing 6 indicates difficulties in mutual relationships.
6. Cycles of time are decided from your date of birth. Set out your
information as in the following example:
7. You have three Saturn cycles in your life. The number symbolism for each
is determined as follows:
0-29 years: the first Saturn Cycle, taken from the month of your birth.
2
956 ־years: the second Saturn Cycle, taken from the day of your birth.
56 years onward: the third Saturn Cycle, taken from the year of your birth.
8. To evaluate your personal year (beginning from your last birthday, and
ending the day before your next birthday), add the day and month of your
birthday with the calendar year of your last birthday. Example for Jane
Man• Smith:
Total Self =3
Soul Self =5
Personality = 7
Foundation = 1
Key = 3
Destiny = 7
What is most important is that you use the tools of understanding, oracle,
and divination with caution, never seeking to use them as an excuse to deny
free will.
Table of Correspondences: T h e Elements
Sun Yellow, Sunflower, mistletoe, Gold Topaz, yellow Olibanum. wood- Sunday Lion, phoenix, eagle,
gold heliotrope, goldcnrod. oak, diamond aloes, c i n n a m o n stag, gorilla, shark,
blessed thistle, saffron, bay salmon, kangaroo
Moon Violet, A l m o n d , willow, Silver Quartz Camphor, Monday Elephant, owl, toad,
silver lavender, violet, hazel, crystal, jasmine hare, bat, spider,
h e n b a n e , cohosh, moonstone stingray
foxglove, m a n d r a k e
Mercury Orange Vervain,styrax, Quick־ Agate, Narcissus, storax Wednesday JackaJ, twinserpents,
cinquefoil, alder, silver, amber lizard, fox. d o l p h i n ,
m o r n i n g glory, aspen cinnabar sylphs, salamanders
Venus Green Myrtle, fennel, apple, Copper Emerald, Ambergris, lotus, Friday Lynx, cat, dove, wolf,
yarrow, rose, gardenia, jade gardenia, rose cow. bear, shellfish,
wattle, pennyroyal n y m p h s , dryads
Mars Scarlet Absinthe, rue, poplar, Iron, Ruby, S u l p h u r , tobacco, Tuesday Basilisk, m a n . crow,
t h o r n , h a w t h o r n , ginger, pyrice carnelian, dragon's blood, adder, king brown snake,
peppercorn, wolfsbane black-boy vulture, echidna, seagull,
plant, resin b a b o o n , boar
I able of Correspondences: P l a n e t a r y Symbols, c o n t i n u e d
Jupiter Royal Agrimony, rue, olive, Tin Sapphire, Aloes, balm, Thursday C e n t a u r , u n i c o r n , dog,
blue elm, woad, cedax, sage, lapis lazuli sandalwood, horse, buffalo, albatross,
rosemary, Solomon's seal frankincense hawk, Tuatha dc D a n n a n
Saturn Indigo, A<h, rowan, indigo, boab, Lead O n y x , jet, M y r r h , alum, Saturday Wyvern, w o m a n , raven,
black. hemlock, holly, fungi, obsidian nightquccn black jaguar, crocodile,
silver pomegranate, redwood DNA
Adler, Margot. Drawing Down the Moon. Boston: Beacon Press, 1981.
Baigent, Michael, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln. Holy Blood, Holy
Grail. New York: Delacorte Press, 1982.
Buckland, Raymond. Witchcraft From the Inside. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn
Publications, 1995.
The Hero With a Thousand Faces, 2d ed. Princeton: University Press, 1968.
Crowley, A. Magick in Theory and Practice. York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser
Inc., 1973.
Crowley, Vivianne. Wicca. London: Thorsons, 1996.
De Chardin, T. The Future of Man. New York: Harper & Row, 1969.
Denning, M. and 0. Phillips. The Sword and the Serpent. St. Paul, MN:
Llewellyn Publications, 1987.
Drury, Neville. Don Juan, Mescalito and Modern Magic. N.p.: Viking,
Penguin, 1983.
Estes, Clarissa Pinkola. Women Who Run With Wolves. London: Rider,
1992.
Farrar, Stewart and Janet. Eight Sabbats for Witches. London: Robert Hale
Ltd., 1981.
Graves, Robert. The White Goddess. New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux,
1966.
Hall, N. The Moon and the Virgin. New York: Harper & Row, 1981.
Harner, Michael. The Way of the Shaman. New York: Bantam, 1982.
Jung, Carl Gustav. Man and His Symbols. New York: Doubleday, 1964.
Kharitidi, Olga. Entering the Circle: the Secrets ofAncient Siberian Wisdom.
N.p.: HarperCollins, 1996.
Matthews, John and Caitlin. The Western Way, vols. 1 and 2. London:
Arcana, 1986.
Murray, Margaret. The God of the Witches. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1973.
Reanney, Darrvl. The Death of Forever. Australia: Longman Cheshire, 1991.
Richardson, Alan and Geoff Hughes. Ancient Magicks for a New Age. St.
Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1989.
Spence, Lewis. The Magic Arts in Celtic Britain. London and New York:
Ryder & Co., 1915.
Stewart, R. J. Power Within the Land. Dorset, UK: Element Books, 1992.
Stone, Merlin. When God Was a Woman. London: Virago Press, 1976.
Sturzaker, James. Kabbalistic Aphorisms, 2d ed. United Kingdom:
Metatron, 1981.
Tzu Sun. The Art of War. Boston and London: Shambhala, 1988.
The Sea Priestess, rev. ed. Wellingborough, UK: Aquarian Press, 1989.
Kinstler, Clvsta. The Moon Under Her Feet. San Francisco: HarperCollins,
1991.
Paxon, Diana L. The White Raven. New York: Avon Books, 1989.
Scott, Michael. Irish Folk and Fain• Tales. United Kingdom: Warner Books,
1992.
Starhawk. The Fifth Sacred Thing. New York: Bantam Books, 1993.
Black Line, 1 9 9 - 2 0 0
blade, 7 3 - 7 4 , 93, 9 5 - 9 8 ,
110, 1 4 4 - 1 4 5 , 149
Briah, 125, 1 2 9 - 1 3 3
Brigantia, 56
Brigid, 56
Cancer, 72, 2 2 7
candle, 8 , 2 1 , 7 1 , 9 1 , 9 3 , 96,
100, 1 4 0 - 1 4 5 , 1 4 8 - 1 4 9 ,
151, 163, 183, 190
candlcsticks, 7 6
Capricorn, 69, 2 2 7
cards, 2 1 5 - 2 1 7
cauldron, 7 2
censer, 7 5 - 7 6 , 9 1 , 9 3 - 9 4 , 96,
140, 143-144, 148, 151,
163, 181
centaur, 152
center, 3 - 7 , 9, 13, 26, 9 3 - 9 4 ,
113, 115, 120, 122-123,
141, 143, 145, 160,
171-172, 182-183, 202,
209,222
Cerridwen, 56
chalice, 2, 72, 74, 84, 91,
9 3 - 9 4 , 110, 130, 1 4 8 - 1 4 9
chaos theory, 38, 126
charcoal blocks, 76, 140-141,
148
Chayoth ha-Qadesh, 6 9 - 7 2 ,
120
Chcscd, 125, 127, 129, 209,
211,213
Chokmah, 125, 127, 129,
209,211-214
clans, 203
cleanse, 38, 91, 141, 166,
187
cloak, 76, 103-104, 156,
181-184,221
clockwisc, 13, 88, 182
color, 14, 6 9 - 7 2 , 116-121,
140, 175
consecrate, 73, 75, 108, 141,
165, 167, 191
consecrated water, 72, 9 2 - 9 3 ,
95, 97, 108, 110, 142,
144, 163, 166
Constantine, 203
contemplation, 6, 10, 13, 38,
5 4 , 8 5 - 8 6 , 99, 123, 171,
178, 1 9 7 , 2 1 6
Council of Nicea, 57
counterclockwise, 88
coven, 42, 78, 93, 98, 159,
161, 197, 200
cowans, 49, 163
Craft, 20, 26, 3 5 - 3 6 , 42,
8 2 - 8 3 , 87, 92, 187, 198
creation, 11-13, 15, 55, 95,
111, 128-129, 131,
133-134, 149, 156, 180,
1 9 1 , 2 1 9 , 226
crone, 56
crystalgladc, 200
C u Chulainn, 60
cup, 66, 72, 74, 8 4 , 9 1 , 9 7 ,
100, 104, 110-111, 149
e n c h a n t m e n t , 59, 96,
1 8 2 - 1 8 4 , 194
Ephemeredes, 175
Equinox, 58, 6 1 - 6 3
evocation, 2 0 7
Excalibur, 70, 8 3
Feast of Bride, 5 8 - 5 9 , 6 3
fetch, 1 4 6 - 1 4 8 , 1 5 0 - 1 5 1
fith-fathing, 1 3 8 - 1 4 0 , 189,
192
focus, 9, 34-35, 38-40, 83,
85, 87, 97, 139, 147, 149,
164,166, 190,210
Fool, 2 6 , 2 1 6 - 2 1 7 , 2 1 9 ,
222-226
Fool's Journey, 2 1 6 , 2 1 9 ,
222-224, 226
four compass points, 88
four directions, 163
Gabriel, 72
Gaia, 56
Galahad, 60
gate, 28, 64, 89, 92, 9 4 - 9 5 ,
108-111, 116-117, 121,
141-143, 145, 149,
182-183, 195, 199, 226
Ireland, 2 0 2 - 2 0 3
Ishtar, 56, 150
Isis, 56
Journey Between the Worlds,
102
Jupiter, 118, 123, 1 2 5 , 2 1 1
Kabbah, 122
Kabbalah, 122
Kadaicha, 160-161
karma, 41
Kassandra, 176
keeping a thing out, 165
Kcther, 124-127, 1 2 9 , 2 0 9 ,
212-214,228
king, 59-60, 62, 6 9 - 7 2
King of the Land, 60
King Stag, 60
Koori, 152, 160
la Rose Croix, 216
Ladder of Lights, 122
Lady, 55, 66, 140, 143, 145,
150-151, 158
magic, 6, 9 , 3 1 , 3 5 - 3 7 , 39,
4 1 , 4 7 - 4 9 , 53, 57-59,
6 4 - 6 5 , 7 5 , 8 1 - 8 2 , 86. 97,
122,128,132,138,143,
152-153, 160, 169, 181,
187, 191-192, 194,
198-199, 2 0 4 - 2 0 5 , 2 1 0 ,
215
magick, 123
magnet, 93
maiden, 5 6 - 5 7
Major Arcana, 215-216, 219,
227
Malkuth, 124-126, 129-130,
2 1 0 - 2 1 1 , 2 1 4 , 228
Mari, 56, 6 0 , 2 1 2
Mars, 118, 125,211
matrix, 7 - 8 , 55, 123,210
meditation, 6 - 7 , 10, 12-13,
15, 114, 172-173
Mercury, 116, 1 2 5 , 2 1 0 - 2 1 1
Merlin, 60, 6 4 - 6 5
Michael, 71
midday, 71, 90, 117
midnight, 69, 90, 96, 103
mindscape, 6 - 8 , 10, 168
Moon, 49, 52, 54, 56-58,
6 2 - 6 6 , 7 4 - 7 5 , 88, 94,
105, 116, 121, 125, 136,
147, 164, 182, 194,
197-198, 2 0 1 , 2 0 7 , 209,
225, 228
moon phase, 147
Morgan Ic-fcy, 56
Morrigan, 152
Mother, 29, 5 6 , 6 1 , 123,
140, 160, 188, 2 0 4 - 2 0 5 ,
217
Mobius, 133
Mulengro, 28-30, 155-156,
187,206-207
name, 2, 2 8 - 2 9 , 35, 9 8 - 9 9 ,
101, 105-112, 137,
179-180, 229-231
necklace, 99-100, 109-110
Nehushtan, 126
Nemesis, 56
Nemet, 5, 37
Nephesh, 124-125, 127-128
Neschamah, 124-125,
127-128, 133
Ner7.ach, 125, 127, 129,
209-211
New Moon, 57, 74, 194
Nixsa, 72
numerology, 81, 228-229,
232
O . B. E., 171
occult, 11-12, 27, 36, 7 5 , 8 2 ,
114,122,155-156,160,
175-176, 198,210
ochre, 147
Odin, 60, 123
oil, 7 6 - 7 7 , 92-94, 97, 100,
110-111, 147, 182, 191
oracle, 52, 232
Oracular, 1 7 5 , 2 1 6
orifices, 164, 166
Osiris, 60, 123
Ostara, 61
O t z C h i m , 122
Ouija, 160, 162
out-of-body, 169, 171
Pan, 60, 123, 150
pathworking, 216
Pegasus, 152
pentacle, 69, 7 4 - 7 5 , 82, 91,
93-94, 96, 108-110, 130,
140, 144, 148, 197
pentagram, 74, 88, 91-92,
9 4 - 9 5 , 97, 9 9 - 1 0 0 ,
108-110, 119, 142-145,
149, 151, 164, 166,
182-184, 189
Persephone, 56
personal power, 6, 35, 39,
206
Pisces, 72, 228
plaiting, 148, 190
planetary symbolism, 209,
215
planets, 60, 120, 126, 128,
194-195
poppet, 138, 144-145
portent, 177
preparation, 37, 39, 73, 76,
87, 99-100, 140
priest, 5 2 , 6 2 , 108-110, 112,
158, 199, 201
priestess, 52, 56, 59, 62,
6 4 - 6 5 , 1 0 8 - 1 1 0 , 112,
158, 199-200, 2 0 6 , 2 1 3 ,
219
priesthood, 2 6 , 4 1 , 4 7 , 49,
5 1 , 5 3 , 6 1 , 9 9 , 196-199
protection, 142, 156, 163,
166-167, 185-186,
188-189
psi-empathic, 185
psi-empathy, 158, 185, 187
psychic attack, 188-189
psychic protection, 156,
185-186, 189
Qabbalah, 2 9 , 8 1 , 122, 190
Qbblh, 122
QBL, 122
Qliphoth, 29
quantum physics, 126, 215
quest, 6, 35, 37, 40, 5 3 , 8 1 ,
104, 118-119, 156, 198,
222
Raphael, 70
realm of dreams, 168
realms of accessibility, 113,
197
Red Line, 198-199
reiving, 8 5 - 8 7 , 163-164,
184, 187
Robin Hood, 60
Ruach, 124-125, 127, 209
runes, 175
runestones, 175
Sabbat, 58, 63, 78
Sabbats, 58, 6 1 - 6 3
Sacred Marriage, 59
sacred space, 37, 75, 88, 90,
100
Sagittarius, 71, 227
salamanders, 71
salt, 69, 77, 87, 9 0 - 9 2 , 105,
108, 1 4 0 - 1 4 2 , 1 6 6
Samhain, 58-59, 6 2 - 6 4
Saturn, 119, 125, 195,
211-212, 231-232
Scorpio, 72, 227
seal, 74, 8 8 - 8 9 , 9 1 , 9 3 - 9 5 ,
120, 143, 146, 150,
164-167
sealing wax, 165
Second Degree, 198
Sephirah, 124, 129-130
Sephiroth, 114, 124,
126-129, 228
service, 40, 229
Shaitan, 60
shaman, 153
Shamash, 60
shapeshifting, 102, 152-155,
172
Sheila na gig, 204
sigils, 7 4 - 7 5 , 1 1 9 , 1 5 9 , 167
silence, 6, 8 - 1 0 , 34, 38, 72,
84,94, 108,114, 2 0 6 , 2 1 9
skyclad, 76, 141, 148
solar cycle, 147
solitary, 25, 84, 98, 141
solstice, 5 8 , 6 1 - 6 3 , 1 9 4 - 1 9 5
Sophia, 56
sorcerers, 203
sorcery, 26, 47, 56, 113, 135,
139,152,157,194
spear, 71, 83
Spell, 8, 79, 138-139, 143,
146, 148, 150-151,
181-182, 184, 191-192
spcllcrafting, 8 , 1 1 , 42,
8 3 - 8 4 , 9 0 , 134-135, 168,
189, 1 9 4 , 2 1 6
spells, 7, 79, 84, 148, 155,
190, 192
spheres, 121, 124
spring, 5 9 , 6 1 - 6 3 , 65, 70
Spring Equinox, 61, 6 3
staff, 71, 74, 77, 130, 198
star, 49, 60, 126, 197, 199,
212, 224, 227
summer, 59, 6 1 - 6 3 , 7 1 ־
194-195
summon, 15, 65, 73, 88, 90,
92, 9 4 - 9 5 , 141-143, 145,
149, 151, 153, 166, 189,
192, 194
tools, 6, 29, 6 9 - 7 3 , 7 7 , 1 0 0 ,
147, 161,168, 178, 232
training, 11-12, 18, 42, 62,
83, 153, 175, 185,
1 9 6 - 1 9 8 , 2 0 0 , 206
Tree, 75, 114, 122-133, 154,
170, 2 0 9 - 2 1 5 , 228
Tree of Life, 114, 122, 125,
129, 2 0 9 - 2 1 5 , 2 2 8
Underworld, 54, 56, 5 9 - 6 0 ,
62, 119
Uranus, 120, 1 2 5 , 2 1 2 - 2 1 4
Uriel, 69
vampire, 187
vampires, 186
vampirism, 186-187
veil, 2, 120, 133, 156,219
Venus, 60, 75, 117, 1 2 5 , 2 1 0
vessel, 8, 36, 39, 53, 74, 76,
91, 127, 143, 158, 196
vial, 77, 93-94, 100, 110
Virgo, 69, 227
visualization, 11-15, 83, 91,
99, 114, 154, 172
visualize, 11-15, 114, 149,
151, 172, 184
Vivienne, 56
wand, 71, 7 4 - 7 5 , 8 3 , 9 1 ,
9 3 - 9 4 , 1 4 2 - 1 4 3 , 145,
148-149, 151
wands, 71, 75, 227
waning, 56, 58, 194
ward, 165-166
warding, 165-166, 189
warlock, 47
waxing, 56, 62, 194
web, 39, 87
white cord, 90, 100, 140, 181
will, 4 - 6 , 8 - 1 0 , 13, 15-18,
20, 25-29, 31-32, 35,
37-42, 48-50, 52, 56, 58,
68, 70, 73-88, 90-101,
103-104, 107-108, 111,
113-121, 127-128,
131-133, 136, 138-148,
150-159,163-168,
170-179, 181-200, 202,
204, 206, 2 0 9 , 2 1 3 - 2 1 7 ,
219, 226, 232
wine, 2, 74, 86, 93, 97,
99-100, 110, 148-149,
151,191
winged bull, 69, 120
winter, 5 9 , 6 1 - 6 3 , 69, 75,
102,194-195
Winter Solstice, 61-63,
194-195
with the sun, 88
world, 7, 30, 41, 49, 56,
64-66, 99, 102, 121-123,
130,136-137,194, 196,
198-199, 202, 226
worlds, 39, 122, 124,
129-130, 132, 169, 190,
194
Yeheshuah, 60, 123
Yesod, 125, 127, 129,
209-211
Yetzirah, 125, 129-133
Yggdrasil, 122
yule, 61
Zeus, 60, 123
zodiac, 69-72, 120, 126
Zohar, 122
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Buckland s Complete Book
of Witchcraft
RAYMOND BUCKLAND
Here 11 the most complete resource to the study and practice of modern,
nondenominational Wicci. T h i s is a lavishly illustrated, sell-study course
for the solitary or group. Included are rituals: exercises lor developing psv-
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beliefs, dreams, meditation*, divination, herbal lore, healing, ritual clothing,
and much, much more. This book unite* theory and practice into a com-
ptehemivc course designed to help you develop into a practicing Witch, one
of the "Wise Ones." It is written by Ray Buckland. a very famous and
respected authority o n Witchcraft who first came public with the Old Reli-
gion in the United States I urge format with workbook-type exercises, pro-
fusely illustrated and full of music and chants, l a k e s you from A to Z in the
study of Witchcraft.
Never before has so much information on the ('rait of the Wise been col-
Ice ted in one place. Traditionally, there arc three degrees of advancement in
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0 - 8 7 5 4 2 - 0 5 0 - 8 . 272 pp.
8% x I I , illus. SI 6 . 9 5
T o o r d e r , call 1 800־-THF. M O O N
I'ncn «ub)«1 ui dunj? wuhout noiu
m Italian Witchcraft
'!"he O l d Religion o f S o u t h e r n Europe
RAVES GKIMASSI
Discover the rich legacy o f magick and ritual handed down by Italian
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T o o r d e r , call I - 8 0 0 - I T U M O O N
Plicc* •ubjcii to dunfjc »tthoui naULt
Living Wuca is the long-awaited sequel to Scott Cunningham'S wildly MIC-
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added insight* that will enable them to blaze their own spiritual path*—to
become their own high p r i n t s and priestesses.
Living Wicca takes a philosophical look at the questions, practices, and
differences within Witchcraft. It coven the various tools of learning avail-
able to the practitioner, the importance of secrecy in one's practice, guide•
lines to performing ritual when ill. magical names, initiation, and the
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Unlike any other book o n the subject. Living Wuca is a stcp-by-step
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T o o r d e r , call 1 - 8 0 0 - T H E M O O N
1*זico nibfrcl to dunfc without nonet
Coven craft
W i t c h c r a f t for T h r e e or M o r e
AMM׳K K
EDAIN M C C O Y
Inside a Witche' C/ntn gives you an insider's look at how a real Witches'
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Maybe you're thinking about joining j coven, bur don't know what to
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1-56718-666-1,224 pp.
5/» X 8 $9.95
T o o r d e r , call 1 - 8 0 0 - T H E M O O N
PTKO •ubfccl in change without notitt
New Age / Wicca & Witchcraft / Spells
Cfl uxitch,
like the (Larth, can be both
immeasurably ancient and1 J-vreveryciing
All things c o m e full circle—reclaim the ancient power that sings within
your blood through sacred ritual to the Earth and M o o n and Sun and Stars.
I.v d c Angeles < Australia) has been an initiated High Priestess for twenty-nine years. An o u t -
spoken jiul p u h l k witch, Ms de Angeles it also the author of l'/v IKpr tftbt CinUtn and The
Way of Merfyn. both published in (•real Britain.
Table of C o n t e n t s
Prologue
Introduction to the Revised Edition
Introduction
Section One: First Stage Technique Requirements
Meditation
Meditation and Ritual
Contemplation
Visualization
Section Two: Never to Walk in Anyone's Shadow
Mulengro
Notes on Human Nature
Fear
The Ethics of Personal Power
Awareness
Intent
Personal Power
Service
The Law of Congruitv
On Passion
PART Two: THE WAY OF THE GODDESS
Section One: Required Understanding Preparatory to the Practice of Ritual
Do As Ye Will E'er it Harm None
Goddess and God of Mv Priesthood
A Witch's Goddess
Full Moon
Dark Moon
Essential Symbolism of the Four Fire Festivals
A Witch's God
Solstice and Equinox (Known as the Four Lesser Sabbats)
Essential Symbolism of Solstice and Equinox
The Eight-Fold Wheel of the Year
The Elements (Part 2)-Significance in Ritual and in the Way of the Sacred
A Witch's Most-Valued Possessions (The Instruments, Tools, and Weapons
of the Art)
78 Keeping RecordsThe Book of Shadows and Various Grimoires
The Hermetic Quaternary
Section Two: Ritual Proper
Ritual-Phase One: To Cast a Ritual Circle
Phase Two: Consecration and Empowering Your Athame
The Rite
Phase Three: The Process of Self-Initiation
The Ritual
Section Three: Second Stage Technique Progressive
Relevant Notes on Qabbalah
The Tree
The Divisions of the Soul (The Body of the Tree)
The Four Worlds
The Essential Four Worlds
The Principle of Creation
Time and the Four Worlds
PART THREE: SPELLCRAFTING (־SORCERY)