March 8th, 2010
In our third Essence of Magic Class we focused on Energy Raising, trying out different methods and finding what suited us… We experimented with rattling, chanting, dancing and raising a cone of power.
Different things suit different people but I think it’s an essential part of magic and ritual. It’s kind of putting yourself on the line - more than just bringing focus or intent, it is throwing one’s whole being into it. And hopefully, at some moment, one slips over the line of self-consciousness into oneness with the chant, the dance… the intent, the magic itself and it starts to happen.
It’s as if each step - Casting a Circle, calling an intent, invocations, raising energy allows us to take one further step into the magical realms - and hopefully we are ambushed by it, a state of immenence, of co-creation, of magical flow… and for a few seconds we hold the threads of the webs of our own lives in our hands and can turn them, one way or another… or just observe them.
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March 3rd, 2010
Gardening is often the most vexing, exhausting and sometimes demoralising hour of my whole day. Today I sweated for an hour - inbetween showers of torrential rain - in a section of garden I had already planted out a couple of months ago. This section is on a steep slope and with some wind, plus all this rain, a lot of the cardboard mulching I had carefully laid around the small plants in a jigsaw fashion - locking each piece into the next so they wouldn’t shift around too much - had been washed away entirely, down to the bottom of the hill, suffocating some plants and leaving others exposed for the bush turkeys and bandicoots to try to dig up. (Not sure why they want to dig them up, but they do.)
About two or three thousand weeds had taken advantage of this temporary absence of mulch to get started up and grow ferociously fast. Digging down and uncovering the burried plants, then remulching almost the entire slope, dealing with weeds as I went has been slippery, exhausting and not that rewarding (so far). Someone once said to me that gardening is my form of therepy - that is, I experience all my emotions about my life in the garden.
It’s true that sometimes (not today) being in the garden can be very beautiful - hearing and seeing the birds all around and being part of the fertile-growing-shaping experience of the garden. Watching the things I’ve planted thrive, grow, flower and take over their own patches of ground is wonderful and I’m very grateful to those that are big enough not to need more than an occasional quick weed around the edges. But sometimes it’s just all too much.
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March 1st, 2010
In the second class of Essence of Magic we practised Casting Circles… and Casting them and Casting them and Casting them… (by the end we were standing in about 14 Circles). We used energy and touch, sounding and movement, rattling and traditional calling-to-the-quarters.
It was noted how the shift from ceremonial magic to pagan/earth-centred magic has changed the emphasis in casting a Circle - we are no longer so concerned with keeping various energies IN and OUT of our circles, but more focused on creating a sacred space and recognising elementals and aspects of Goddess that we consider present anyway, whether we acknowledge them or not… but in chosing to acknowledge them, we hope to bring them more stongly into our consciousness and align with them more closely.
Casting a whole variety of different Circles, in different ways, is a good method of finding out what works for you or your group. Some people or groups like to follow a standard format each time, others like to experiment or develop something unique for that moment and purpose. I don’t believe there are any correct, or better ways - just what words for you, in allowing you to step through the mundane world into the sacred and magical (or inner) worlds… practising feeling that energy shift is the main thing, however you get there!
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February 27th, 2010
Men’s Business, Women’s Business: the Spiritual Role of Gender in the World’s Oldest Culture by Hannah Rachel Bell is a book I am reading, admittedly only one chapter at a time. I think it’s very admirable, in the depth it goes into Aboriginal culture and I think it would be particularly good for all those non-Australians who say “What can I read about Aboriginal culture?”
It really conveys the depth, integrity and power of one tribe’s culture, in a way I haven’t seen done before. (Not that I’ve read widely on the issue.) There was a part where it was describing an old man, very revered within his tribe, spending weeks preparing and then days in a trance, receiving a new ’song’ (teaching); then coming back and over a period of 4 nights teaching it verse by verse to the whole tribe. The author likened it to an entire opera. From that point on, that song will be a part of their tribal ‘library’ - the elders then spend many nights discussing it, searching for understandings, teachings and aspects of law within the new song.
Sadly, I think Bell fails to really elucidate her main thesis, the intrinsic value of splitting men’s business from women’s business - although her broader point of how each person has a very highly defined place according to age, status and gender is well-covered. Her chapters each cover a particular stage of life - from birth through to death and at each stage she compares the Aboriginal/tribal way to the Western way.
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February 24th, 2010
Last Tree of Life meeting we agreed to each take one Path and study it. I chose the Path between Hokmah and Binah, Path 4, aligned with the Empress card in the Tarot. It is the Path between two almost opposite aspects of Goddess - Sophia as she has been split in two, as one commentator put it. Originally I saw them in opposition to each other - Hokmah so restrained and ethereal, while Binah feels raw and bloody and all over the place, but I’ve come to see them as complementing and almost bracing each other.
That Path is the first one that goes horizontally across the Tree - like a bracing piece, for what then comes below. Also, I had it in a dream as a fold-line - if you fold the Tree over at that point, Kether comes to rest in Da’ath - the allness swallowed up into the nothingness; perfect! With Binah and Hokmah on either side, like guardians - indeed, pillars - the tops of the Left and Right Pillars.
I am seeing them now as extremities that are linked - holding some of the corners down. Together with Kether they make up the top portion of the Tree - and I also think they are strongly aligned with the beginning of the Feri myth of the origin of the Universe, with the Star Goddess (Kether) creating a mirror (Hokmah) in which to see herself, and then reaching in and drawing forth that being (Binah) who then existed separately and began to dance (down, through Da’ath) into the Universe…
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February 21st, 2010
We began Essence of Magic Classes last Friday night, and I included the beginnings of a simple spell.
Spell for increasing or bringing Magic into your life: Choose a symbol of your magical self (could be a crystal, book, feather, ring - anything). Cast a circle in some way and raise energy by chanting, dancing or meditating. Then speak your intent aloud: “My intent is to invite magic into my life” (or similar). Now place the symbol of your magical self on your altar (if you haven’t got an altar, you need to create one now, although it can be very simple). During the coming week, undertake ONE ACTION using your magical-self symbol and/or your altar - this could be making an altar! Or placing your magical-self symbol under your pillow every night… Or lighting a candle on the altar each day… Or creating some ritual just for you and your magical self!
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February 18th, 2010
A beautiful collection of stories, essays, musings and talks by Russell Hoban, one of my all-time favourite authors. Writing about such intangible things as the moment under the moment, the universal mind and its darknesses, realities that lie just under the surfaces of things, these pieces are a diverse introduction to this writer who has written such amazing things.
His Riddly Walker is one of my 3 most influential books ever, (first published 1980) where he magically rewrites the English language into a post-apocolyptic mythic poetry. More recently, I loved Her Name was Lola (2004) for its wry take on relationships, aging and the truths of love. Hoban is a fantastic collection of complex, seductive ideas and beautiful language presented with a vulnerable humility and wonder that just about makes his writing edible.
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February 15th, 2010
I’ve been visiting another of my favourite swimming places! Coogee Ladies’ Baths in Sydney- a sea-swimming pool, with waves washing over the rock sides… it is absolutely beautiful. I used to come here about 25 years ago and it is still exactly the same, including the entry price I’d say - 20 cents a visit.
I was there for a couple of hours the other day and there must have been at least 40 women through in that time - women in their twenties, sixties and everywhere in-between - women with small children, women having picnics, sun-bathing, doing laps, drifting around in the water chatting - I heard about 4 different languages - it seems like several hundred women a day must go there. It’s just gorgeous - and I enjoyed the relative warmth of the sea (compared with my river swimming) and its surprising bouyancy! There’s a whole sense of a special secret - yet shared with any women who come along…
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February 13th, 2010
My Tree of Life group did a Da’ath Ritual last time we met. The Tree was laid out on the floor (large decorated cardboard discs for the Sephiroth, plus chalk lines in various colours and directions!) and each one of us stood in the sphere we had moved into, to study for the upcoming month (I was in Binah). It was dark, though we had lit a menorah of candles, placed in Da’ath which provided quite a lot of light.
To begin with, we spoke about possible meanings of Da’ath, including the possibility that - like a black hole - it is actually holding the whole system together, it is the gravitational force of the Tree. We meditated silently on what we don’t know/don’t understand in our own lives and settled on one issue to investigate in the ritual.
One by one, each of us stepped forward. Each time someone stepped forward, they were asked by the group, in unison (more or less) “What do you seek?” to which the answer was given, “Knowledge”. Then the group asked, “What do you leave behind?” to which the answer was given, “Everything”. At that point, the person took a further step, into the (invisible) sphere of Da’ath and we all took a step back, so the whole Tree lay open and began to sing the person’s name, starting quietly and building up in volume and intensity.
At this point, the person usually began moving - either along Paths, to various Sephiroth or just wandering. Almost everyone who did this ended up somewhere, and felt they had transited through Da’ath towards some knowledge of what they were seeking. I ended up in Tiferet, facing Kether across Da’ath and that night had a powerful dream about the relationship between Kether and Da’ath.
I also felt the curiosity, amazement and obviousness of Tiferet being a place I have never being (literally - I haven’t visited yet in the system we’re working, as well as metaphorically - the open heart) - and how perfect, that the answer to something I don’t know will have to reside in a place I’ve never been!
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February 11th, 2010
I’ve just been to a family wedding - my partner’s neice - which was big, formal, well done… Church and reception and speeches and a bridal dance… It was quite beautiful.
I got to reflect on how completely different it was from my own wedding (only our children and the celebrant!) and how, in their twenties, this bride and groom were making a formal declaration before their extended families/communities on their intention to create a new family unit. It seemed a very essential human, social act; something that has been repeated in slightly different formats throughout probably all cultures and times. Whereas my own bond with my partner was more in the nature of a private, spiritual and emotional commitment - I didn’t want or need the notice of the world. Perhaps it is to do with age, or stages of life, or retiring personalities…
I’ve been involved with a few weddings lately (as a Celebrant) and just find myself admiring the way people find the right ways for them - to express in words and symbols what they want to. So ritual is still alive and people still know how to do it - at least for the big things. Taking that further and further into ordinary life is one of my purposes…
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