INTRODUCTION TO THE OLD RELIGION
LESSON 1
I. GODDESS RELIGIONS IN THE OLD WORLD
A. Gravettian-Aurignacian Cultures (25000 BC-15000 BC)
1. The Upper-Paleolithic period, though most of its sites have been found in Europe, is the conjectural foundation of the religion of the Goddess as it emerged in the later Neolithic Age of the Near East.
a. There have been numerous studies of Paleolithic cultures, explorations of sites occupied by these people, and the apparent rites connected with the disposal of their dead.
b. In these Upper-Paleolithic societies, the concept of the creator of all human life may have been formulated by the clan's image of women, who were their most ancient primal ancestors.
(1) It is believed that the mother was regarded as the sole parent of children in this culture.
(2) Ancestor worship appears to have been the basis of sacred rituals and ancestry is believed to have been reckoned through the matriline.
(a) The beginnings of Roman religion were based on survivals of the Etruscan culture and ancestor worship was the earliest form of religion in Rome.
(b) Even today, the Jewish people determine who is and is not a Jew through the matriline.
2. The most tangible evidence supporting the theory that these cultures worshipped a Goddess is the numerous sculptures of women found throughout most of Europe and the Near East. Some of these sculptures date as far back as 25,000 BC.
a. These small female figurines, made of stone, bone, and clay, most of which are seemingly pregnant, have been found throughout the widespread Gravettian-Aurignacian sites in areas as far apart as Spain, France, Germany, Austria, and Russia.
(1) These sites and figurines appear to span a period of at least 10,000 years.
3. Johannes Maringer, in his book 'The Gods of Prehistoric Man' says- "It appears highly probable then that the female figurines were idols of a Great Mother cult, practiced by the non-nomadic Aurignacian mammoth hunters who inhabited the immense Eurasian territories that extended from Southern France to Lake Baikal in Siberia."
a. It was from this Lake Baikal area in Siberia that tribes are believed to have migrated across a great land bridge to North America about this time period, and formed the nucleus of what was to become the race of American Indians.
(1) This tends to support the observation that European witchcraft and American Indian shamanism have similar roots.
B. The Roots of Western Civilization
1. Western Civilization began in Mesopotamia and the Nile Valley, where it traveled into Palestine and Greece.
a. From Greece civilization traveled to Rome,and as the Roman Empire grew it spread to Spain, France, Germany and England.
2. Mesopotamia ( 3500 BC - 539 BC )
a. Mesopotamia ("the land between the rivers") is the name used to describe the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the southern area of which is mostly lowlying swampland and marshes.
(1) The fertile lands of Mesopotamia lie between the desert and the mountains. The northern part has regular rainfall while the southern part, stretching down to the Arabian Gulf, suffers dry scorching summers from May to October.
(a) In what is now the southern part of Iraq, Sumer existed as one of the world's first civilizations.
b. Between 2800 and 2400 BC the city-states of Sumer were at their strongest and wealthiest.
(1) The Goddess was worshipped under various names which were epithets, or characterizing phrases, such as 'Queen of Heaven' and 'Lady of the High Places'. The name of the city or town that She was the patroness for, was often attached to Her title making Her name even more specific.
(a) An example of this is the temple erected about 3000 BC in the city-state of Uruk which was dedicated to the Queen of Heaven of Erech.
(b) This city was made a major power and rival to its sister city Ur by Gilgamesh's son.
c. About 2350 BC an ambitious king, named Sargon, attacked Sumer, and made it part of his huge Empire. His capitol of Agade gave us the name by which Sargons empire is known- the Akkadian Empire.
(1) The Akkadian Empire was the first successful attempt to unite a huge area under the rule of one man. It eventually gained supremacy in about 1900 BC and gradually superseded the Summerians as the cultural and political leaders of the region.
(a) The Akkadian language of the Babylonians became the international language of the Near East, just as French would become the language of diplomacy thousands of years later.
(b) The new Babylonian culture incorporated the Sumerian religion, and the Sumerian language was adopted as the language of the liturgy much as Latin is used as the language of liturgy for Roman Catholics.
(c) The sumerian Goddess, under the names Inanna, Eriskegan and Irnini, evolved into the great Babylonian Goddess Ishtar.
d. Approximately 1600 BC Babylon was sacked by an Indo-European people known as the Hittites who came from Anatolia, off to the northwest.
(1) During the confusion that ensued, the Kassites seized the throne of Babylon and ruled peacefully for 400 years.
(a) Ishtar's power waned as the Babylonians were influenced by the warlike Hittites and Her temples were taken over by a male-dominated priesthood, which called the Goddess Tiamat and wrote stories of how their god Marduk had killed Her in the struggle for control of the region.
e. In the centuries following 1103 BC the Assyrians rose to power and expanded into most of Mesopotamia from their homeland which lay between the cities of Asher and Nineveh on the Tigrus River.
(1) In the eighth century, the Assyrians conquered most of Syria, Palestine, Phoenicia and had invaded Egypt as far as Thebes (Luxor) before the Egyptians drove them back.
(a) Looking to legitimize their new empire, they 'married' their god Asher to Ishtar, whose followers had secretly kept Her worship alive.
(b) The joining of Ashur with Ishtar produced a son named Ninurta, and this is the first formally recorded triad of Goddess, Consort, and Divine Child in the Near East.
(2) From 631 to 539 BC much inter-city warfare occurred as the Assyrian empire fell apart.
(a) In 539 BC Nabonius, the last king of Babylonia, surrendered to Cyrus II of Persia who was busy building the greatest empire ever attempted.
3. Anatolia
a. Anatolia, which is also called Asia Minor, is a broad peninsula jutting westward from the Asian continent itself. To the north lies the Black Sea, to the south the easternmost part of the Mediterranean. At the entrance to the Black Sea are the Dardanelles and it is here that Asia comes closest to the continent of Europe. Not surprisingly, Anatolia has always been the main link between the Orient and the Occident.
b. In Neolithic Anatolia (present day Turkey) the Great Goddess was worshiped in the shrines of Catal Huyuk around 6500 BC.
c. Anatolia was invaded sometime before 2000 BC by the Indo- Europeans and a group of them settled in a part of Anatolia known as Hatti. The invaders and local people came to be known collectively as the Hittites.
(1) These are the same Hittites who sacked Babylonia in 1600 BC and suppressed the worship of Ishtar in favor of their god Marduk.
d. Most of the references to the Goddess in the literature and texts of Anatolia alluded to the older Hattian deities despite the fact that the only records allowed to survive were written after the conquest of Anatolia by the Indo-Europeans.
(1) One of the most important female deities to survive was the Sun Goddess Arinna. After the conquest she was assigned a husband who was symbolized as a storm god.
(a) At the time of the Hittite invasions of other lands, many of the people who were Goddess-worshippers may have fled to the west. The renowned temple of the Goddess in the city of Ephesus was the target of the apostle Paul's zealous missionary efforts (Acts 19:27). This temple remained active until 380 AD.
4. Crete
a. The Aegean Sea is an area of the Mediterranean, lying between the mainland of Greece and the western coast of Anatolia. The Aegean Sea is dotted with a great number of mountainous islands and the largest of these is Crete, which is just about 60 miles southeast of Greece.
(1) Crete was the society that is most repeatedly thought to have been matrilineal and possibly matriarchal from Neolithic times to the Dorian invasion.
(a) Reverance of the double headed ox as a symbol of the Mother Goddess and a reverence for the sexual vitality of bulls were two notable aspects of Crete's early culture.
(b) Bull leaping is thought to have been the origin of Spain's bullfighting, although in Crete the bull was never harmed.
(2) After viewing the artifacts and murals at Knossos, the Archaeological Museum at Iraklion and other museums in Crete, there is little doubt that the principal sacred being on Crete for several millenia was the Goddess and that women acted as Her clergy.
5. Egypt (3100 to 30 BC)
a. Egypt is a hot, desert land divided by the fertile valley of the Nile river. Hardly any rain falls there and the summers are scorching hot. Even today, most of Egypt is arid desert.
(1) The Cultivation, a strip of land on each side of the Nile river, is one of the most fertile stretches of land in the world.
(a) Although the Cultivation is only 12 1/2 miles wide, it runs for about 620 miles from Aswan in the south to the broad farmlands of the delta where the Nile empties into the Mediterranean.
b. In prehistoric Egypt, the Goddess held sway in Upper Egypt (the south) as Nekhebt and She was depicted in the form of a vulture.
(1) The people of Lower Egypt, including the northern delta region, worshipped the Goddess as Ua Zit (Great Serpent) and depictions of Her show Her as a cobra.
c. From about 3000 BC onward the Goddess was said to have existed when nothing else had been created.
(1) She was known as Nut, Net, or Nit which was probably derived from Nekhebt.
(a) According to Egyptian mythology, it was the Goddess who first put Ra, the sun god, in the sky.
(b) Other texts of Egypt tell of the Goddess as Hathor in this role as creatrix of existence, explaining that She took form as a serpent at the time.
d. In Egypt the concept of the Goddess always remained vital. Eventually the Goddess evolved into a more composite Goddess known as Isis.
(1) Isis (Au Set) incorporated the aspects of both Ua Zit and Hathor. Isis was also closely associated with the Goddess as Nut, who was mythologically recorded as Her Mother; in paintings Isis wears the wings of Nekhebt.
(a) Isis was also associated with another triad which included Her husband, Osiris, and their son Horus.
(b) Isis' cult was introduced into Rome and the last temple of Isis was closed in 394 AD by Theodosios.
6. Canaan (8000 - 63 BC)
a. The biblical land of Canaan, the 'land of milk and honey' was an area about 90 miles wide running north and south along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean.
(1) In modern times the region includes the states of Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and part of Syria. The area made up of Jordan and Israel used to be known as Palestine.
b. Images of the Goddess, some dating back as far as 7000 BC, offer silent testimony to the most ancient worship of the Queen of Heaven in the land that is most often remembered today as the homeland of Judaism and Christianity.
(1) In exploring the influence and importance of the worship of the Goddess in Canaan in biblical times, we find that as Ashtoreth, Asherah, Astarte, Attoret, Anath, or simply as Elat or Baalat, she was the principal deity of such great Canaanite cities as Tyre, Sidon, Ascalon, Beth Anath, Aphaca, Byblos, and Ashtoreth Karnaim.
c. In Egypt, the Hebrews had known the worship of the Goddess as Isis or Hathor. For four generations they had been living in a land where women held a very high status and the matrilineal descent system continued to function at most periods.
(1) Judging from the number of Hebrews who emerged from Egypt in the Exodus, as compared with the family of the the twelve sons who supposedly entered it four generations earlier, it seems likely that a great number of those Hebrews known as Israelites may actually have been Egyptians, Canaanites, Semitic nomads and other Goddess-worshipping peoples who had joined together in Egypt.
d. Archaeological records and artifacts reveal that the religion of the Goddess still flourished in many of the cities of Canaan even after the Hebrews invaded it and claimed it as their own on the authority that their god had given it to them.
(1) And just to the east, all most at their doorstep was Babylon, where the temples of Ishtar were still going strong.
7. Persia (3000 - 331 BC)
a. Throughout its early history Iran was often invaded by nomadic peoples.
(1) Some came through the Elbruz mountains east of the Caspian Sea.
(a) Others, like the Medes and Persians, entered Iran through the Caucasus mountains in the Northwest.
b. By the 9th century BC the most powerful group in Iran was the Medes, who kept the Persians as their servants.
(1) In 612 BC the Medes, together with the Babylonians, captured Nineveh, Ashur, and Kalhu, which were in the heart of the Assyrian empire.
(a) The Assyrian empire collapsed and its vast territories were divided between the Medes and the Babylonians.
c. About 550 BC the king of the Persians led a revolt against the Medes and from that point on the Persians, led by their King Cyrus the Great, ruled over Iran.
(1) Cyrus captured Babylon and gained control of the whole former Babylonian empire.
(a) Virtually all of western Asia was now under Persian rule.
(2) The nest two kings extended Persian rule to Egypt in the south and to the borders of India in the east.
(a) Egypt revolted later and won its independence for a short time, but was forced back into the empire just in time to be part of the prize won by Alexander the Great of Macedonia when he conquered the Persian empire in 331 BC.
II. PEOMAGOGIC HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSAL GODDESS RELIGION
A. Definition of Poemagogic
1. Term coined by Anton Ehrenzweig
a. The special function of inducing and symbolizing the ego's creativity.
(1) It has a dreamlike 'slippery' quality.
(a) One aspect slips into another just like a dream.
B. Legend of the Universal Goddess
1. The craft is a religion which has an unbroken tradition that dates back to Paleolithic times (approximately 35,000 years).
a. As the last ice age retreated the tribe of nomadic hunters worshipped the Goddess of the Wild Things and Fertility and the God of the Hunt.
(1) Semi-permanent homes were set up in caves carved out by the glaciers.
(a) Shamans and Shamanka conducted rites within hard to reach portions of the caves, which were painted with scenes of the hunt, magical symbols and the tribes totem animals.
2. The transition from Hunter-Gatherers to agriculturists was reflected in the change of the 'Lady of the Wild Things and Fertility' to the 'Barley Mother' and the 'God of the Hunt' to the 'Lord of the Grain'.
a. The importance of the phases of the moon and the sun was reflected in the rituals that evolved around sowing, reaping, and letting out to pasture.
3. Villages grew into towns and cities and society changed from tribal to communal to urban.
a. Paintings on the plastered walls of shrines depicted the Goddess giving birth to the Divine Child - Her son, consort and seed.
(1) The Divine Child was expected to take a special interest in the city dwellers, just as His Mother and Father had taken an interest in the people who lived away from the cities.
b. Mathematics, astronomy, poetry, music, medicine, and the understanding of the workings of the human mind, developed side by side with the lore of the deeper mysteries.
4. Far to the east, nomadic tribes devoted themselves to the arts of war and conquest.
a. Wave after wave of invasion swept over Europe from the Bronze Age onward.
(1) Warrior gods drove the Goddess' people out from the fertile lowlands and the fine temples, into the hills and high mountains, where they became known as the Sidhe, the Picts or Pixies, and the Fair Folk or the Fairies.
b. The mythological cycle of Goddess and Consort, Mother and Child, which had held sway for 30,000 years was changed to conform to the values of the conquering patriarchies.
(1) In Canaan, Yahweh fought a bloody battle to ensure that his followers had "no other gods before me."
(a) The Goddess was given a masculine name and assigned the role of a false god.
(b) Along with the suppression of the Goddess, women lost most of the rights they had previously enjoyed.
(2) In Greece, the Goddess in Her many aspects, was "married" to the new gods resulting in the Olympic Pantheon.
(a) The Titans, who the Olympians displaced were more in touch with the primal aspects of the Goddess.
(3) The victorious Celts in Gaul and the British Isles, adopted many features of the Old Religion and incorporated them into the Druidic Mysteries.
(a) The Faerie, breeding cattle in the stony hills and living in turf-covered round huts preserved the Craft.
(b) They celebrated the eight feasts of the Wheel of the Year with wild processions on horseback, singing and chanting along the way and lighting ritual bonfires on the mountaintops.
(c) It was said that the invaders often joined in the revels and many rural families, along with some royalty, could claim to have Faerie blood.
(d) The College of the Druids and the Poetic Colleges of Ireland and Wales were said to have preserved many of the old mysteries.
5. In the late 1400's the Catholic Church attempted to obliterate its competitors, and the followers of the Old Religion were forced to 'go underground.'
a. They broke up into small groups called Covens and, isolated from each other, formed what would later be known as the Family Traditions.
(1) Inevitably, parts of the Craft were forgotten or lost and what survives today is fragmentary.
6. After nearly five centuries of persecution and terror, came the Age of Disbelief.
a. Memory of the True Craft had faded as non-members who could remember how they once had met openly died and those who came after never knew of them.
(1) All that was left were the hideous stereotypes which were ludicrous, laughable or just plain tragic.
7. With the repeal of the last Witchcraft Act in England in 1954, the Craft started to re-emerge as an alternative to a world that viewed the planet as a resource to be exploited.
III THE ARCHETYPE OF THE GODDESS
A. The Craft has always been a religion of poetry, not theology.
1. The myths, legends, and teachings are recognized as metaphors for 'That which cannot be told'; the absolute reality our minds can never completely express because of the limitations placed on it through biology.
a. The mysteries of the absolute can never be explained - only felt or intuited.
b. Symbols and ritual acts are used to trigger unusual states of awareness in which insights that go beyond words are revealed.
(1) When the phrase 'secrets that cannot be told' is used, it is not a matter of oaths taken or the threat of penalties that might be imposed.
(a) The true meaning is that the inner knowledge literally cannot be expressed in words.
(b) It can only be conveyed by experience and no one can legislate what insight another person may draw from any given experience.
(c) This is why the Craft is not a spectator religion, where you can refuse to put any effort in and gain anything meaningful for your own development.
(d) This is also why entrenched priesthoods foster the belief that non-priests must go through a hierarchy of priests, heads of churches, and eventually through chosen prophets and sons of the deity in order to receive special attention by the deity.
B. The primary symbol for 'that which cannot be told' in the Craft is the Mother Goddess. She has an infinite number of aspects and thousands of names because She is the reality behind many metaphors for the creation of the universe.
1. Unlike patriarchal systems, the Craft sees the Goddess as giving birth to the world rather than creating it out of nothing.
a. The fertile Lands were made from Her Flesh, the Waters from Her own bodily Fluids, the Mountains from Her Bones, and the Winds from Her own Breath.
(1) The Goddess does not rule the world, She IS the world and since She gave birth to us all, we have the potential to reconnect with the spirit of Her in all Her magnificent diversity.
(2) Religion for us, then is a matter of relinking with the divine within and with Her outer manifestations in all the human and natural world.
(a) One of the basic beliefs that the Craft is founded upon is what Stewart Farrar call the 'Theory of Levels', which recognizes that reality exists and operates on many planes.
(b) A simplified but generally accepted list would be - physical, etherical, astral, mental and spiritual.
(c) It is recognized that each of these levels has its own laws and that these laws, while special to their own levels, are compatible with each other and their mutual resonance governs the interaction between the levels.
(d) The point of this excursion into the esoterica of how the universe works, is to point out that we do not separate our physical existence from our spiritual existence. In the Craft, spirit and flesh are joined together and physical aspects of being human such as sex are not considered 'dirty ' or 'sinful'.
C. The importance of the Craft for women, is a direct outgrowth in the decline of Goddess religions and the rise of God dominated religions.
1. Male images of divinity are characterized in both western and eastern religions today, and women are thus deprived of religious models and spiritual systems that can speak to female needs and experience.
a. In the extremes of male dominated religions, women are not encouraged to explore their own strengths and realizations.
(1) They are taught to submit to male authority, to identify masculine perceptions as their spiritual ideals, to deny their bodies and sexuality, and to fit their insights into a male mold, no matter how ludicrus that may seem.
2. The image of the Goddess inspires women to see themselves in a very different light.
a. As Daughters of the Goddess, they are divine, their bodies are sacred, and the changing phases of their lives are holy.
(1) Their aggression is healthy, and their anger can be purifying.
(a) Their power to create and nurture as well as their ability to limit and to destroy, when necessary, is seen as the very force that sustains all life.
(2) Through the Goddess, women can discover their strengths, enlighten their minds, own their bodies and celebrate their emotions.
(a) They can move beyond narrow constricting roles and become whole people.
3. For women, the Goddess is the symbol of the inmost self and the beneficent, nurturing, liberating power within all women.
a. The cosmos is modelled on the female body, which is sacred.
(1) All phases of life are sacred and age is a blessing, not a curse.
(a) The Goddess does not limit women to their bodies. She awakens their minds and spirits and emotions.
(b) Through Her, they can know the power of anger and aggression, as well as the power of love.
D. The Image of the Goddess has a great deal to offer men as well as women.
1. Men are also oppressed in a God ruled, patriarchal society.
a. Men are encouraged to identify with a model that no human being can possibly live up to.
(1) Men are expected to be mini-rulers of their own very narrow universes.
(a) Men are internally split between a spiritual self, that is supposed to conquer their baser animal instincts, and their emotional selves.
(b) They are at war with themselves. In the west, they are expected to overcome the tendency to sin, while in the east they must suppress the desires of the ego.
(c) Needless to say, no man comes away from this type of struggle undamaged.
2. Every male who is raised by a mother, will from birth carry within him a strong feminine imprint.
a. This is so, because women give birth to males, nurture them at their breast, and in our culture, are primarily responsible for their care until they reach adolescence.
(1) The symbol of the Goddess allows men to experience and integrate the feminine side of their nature without danger of losing those feelings which are the touchstone of their masculinity.
(a) The Goddess becomes: the mother who will never abandon her child: refuse to nurture him when he is feeling his most vulnerable: tempers her justice with compassion and understanding, all these in ways not always possible in human women and other men.
3. For a man, the Goddess is his own hidden Female self, as well as being the Universal Life force.
a. She embodies all the qualities society teaches him not to recognize in himself.
(1) His first experience with Her may therefore be somewhat stereotypical, in that She appears as the cosmic lover, the gentle nurturer, the eternally desired Other, or the Muse. All that he is not.
(a) As he becomes more whole and becomes aware of his own 'female' qualities, She seems to change, to show him a new face. Always holding up a mirror, She shows what may seem ungraspable to him.
(b) He may chase Her forever and She will elude him, but through the attempt, he will grow until he too learns to find Her within.
IV THE ARCHETYPE OF THE HORNED GOD
A. The Horned God is born of a Virgin Mother
1. He is a model of male power that is free from father-son rivalry or 'Oedipal' conflicts.
a. He has no father, because He is his own father.
(1) As He grows and passes through the changes on the Wheel, He remains in relationship with the prime nurturing force of the Goddess.
(a) His power is drawn directly from the Goddess and He participates in life through Her.
2. The Horned God represents powerful, positive male qualities that derive from deeper sources than the stereotypical violence and emotional crippling of men present in our society.
a. When a man strives to emulate the God, he is free to be wild without being cruel, angry without being violent, sexual without being coercive, spiritual without being unsexed, and able to truly love.
3. For men the God is the image of inner power, and of a potency that is more than merely sexual.
a. He is the undivided Self, in which mind is not split from the body, nor spirit from flesh.
(1) United, both can function at the peak of creative and emotional power.
b. Men are not subservient or relegated to second class spiritual citizenship on the Craft.
(1) But neither are they automatically elevated to a higher status than women, as they are in other religions.
(a) Men in the Craft must interact with strong, empowered women who do not pretend to be anything less than what they are.
(b) Many men find this prospect disconcerting at first.
4. For women raised in our present culture, the God begins as a symbol of all those qualities that have been identified as male, and that they, as women, have not been allowed or encouraged to own.
a. The symbol of the God, like that of the Goddess, is both internal and external.
(1) Through meditation and ritual a woman invokes the God and creates his image within herself.
(a) In this way she connects with those qualities that she may lack.
(2) As her understanding moves beyond culturally imposed limitations her image of the God changes and deepens.
(a) He becomes the Creation, which is not simply a replica of oneself, but something different and of a different order.
(b) True Creation implies separation as the very act of birth is a relinquishment or letting go.
(c) Through the God, women know this power within themselves, and so, like the Goddess, the God can empower women.
5. In the Craft, the cosmos is no longer modeled on external male control.
a. The hierarchy is dissolved and the heavenly chain of command is broken.
(1) The "divinely revealed" texts are seen as poetry not the "word of God."
(a) Instead, a man must connect with the Goddess who is immanent in the world, in nature, in women, and in his own feelings.
(b) She is immanent in everything that childhood religions taught needed to be overcome, transcended, and conquered, in order to be loved by 'God'.
b. The very aspects of the Craft that seem threatening also hold out to men a new and vibrant spiritual possibility: that of wholeness, connection, and freedom.
(1) Men of courage find relationships with strong powerful women exhilarating and they welcome the chance to know the Female within the self.
(a) They enjoy the chance to grow beyond their culturally imposed limitations and become whole.
c. Within Covens, women and men can experience group support and the affection of other women and men.
(1) They can interact in situations that are not competitive or antagonistic.
(a) Men in Covens can become true friends with other men, without giving up any part of themselves, or subjecting themselves to derision or ridicule.
V. ETHICS AND VALUES SHARED BY MOST MEMBERS OF THE CRAFT
A. The ethics of the Craft are more positive than negative.
1. Rather than being exhorted with a plethora of "thou shall nots" the Craft is guided by principles more along the lines of "blessed be they who...."
a. The Craft is a joyous creed; it is also a socially and ecologically responsible one. Witches delight in the world and their involvement in it on all levels.
(1) They enjoy their minds, their psyches, their bodies, their senses and sensitivities; and they delight in relating, on all these planes, with their fellow creatures and the Earth Herself.
2. Wiccans believe in a joyful balance of all human functions.
a. This outlook is perfectly expressed in the Charge of the Goddess, which is an integral part of most of the rituals of all witches.
(1) "Let My worship be within the heart that rejoices; for behold, all acts of love and pleasure are My rituals, and therefore let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth and reverence within you."
(a) This provides a model of a balanced ethic which presents eight qualities that are positive and not restrictive.
(b) Compassion means empathy, not condescension; humility means a realistic appraisal of your own stage of development; reverence means a sense of wonder.
(c) The Wiccan is always conscious that compassion must be partnered with power, humility with honor, and reverence with mirth.
3. Love of life in all its forms, is the basic ethic of the Craft.
a. We are bound to honor and respect all living things and to serve the Life Force.
(1) It has been said that we all serve the Goddess, even if only as compost.
4. Witchcraft recognizes that life feeds on life.
a. We must kill in order to survive, but life is never taken needlessly, never squandered or wasted.
(1) To ensure the survival of the species, females are not hunted as game, for they share the sacred bond of motherhood with the Goddess.
(a) Serving the Life Force also means working to preserve the diversity of natural life, preventing the poisoning of the environment and the destruction of species.
5. The World is seen as the manifestation of the Goddess
a. What happens in the World is important because the Goddess is directly affected.
(1) While the seasons of the year renew the Goddess, She needs the participation of Her creations to keep the cycle going.
(a) This is the real function of the Sabbats. They reinforce the ties between humankind and the Planet that gives us life.
(b) Unlike other gods, that allow humanity to exist at their sufferance, the Goddess needs us just as much as we need Her, and we are partners in the pageant of Life.
6. Justice is seen as an inner sense that each act brings about consequences that must be faced responsibly.
a. This is based on the belief that all things are interdependent and interrelated.
(1) Therefore, we are all mutually responsible because an act that harms anyone harms us all.
(a) This is summed up in the form of a law known as Karma, which dictates that all actions bring about changes.
(2) There is a saying in the Craft that illustrates the effects of Karma known as the 'Threefold Law of Return'
(a) 'Whatever is sent out is returned three times over.'
(b) It is a sort of amplified 'Golden Rule'
7. Honor is a guiding principle of the Craft.
a. It is an inner sense of pride and self respect
(1) Refusing to do anything which would make you ashamed of yourself strengthens your magical will and leads to the self respect that comes from setting your own course, guided by your own inner sense of right or wrong.
(a) This makes you rightfully proud of past accomplishments and encourages you to stay the course.
b. The Goddess is honored in oneself and in others.
(1) Women are respected and valued for all their human qualities.
(a) The Self, one's individuality and unique way of being, is highly valued.
(2) Like Nature, the Goddess loves diversity.
(a) Oneness is attained not through losing the Self, but through realizing the Self's potential.
8. Self development and the full realizatin of one's unique yet many aspected potential is a moral duty for a witch.
a. Life is seen as a gift from the Goddess and it is up to us to push the evolution to mankin
(1) If suffering exists, it is not our task to reconcile ourselves to it.
(a) We must work for change in all ways at hand.
b. That which helps this evolution to come about is seen as good and desirable while actions that thwart it are to be avoided because each of us is a factor in the cosmic evolutionary process.
END OF LESSON 1 INTRODUCTION TO THE OLD RELIGION LESSON 2
I. THE MODERN SCIENTIFIC VIEW OF THE UNIVERSE
A. Foundation
1. Nearly three thousands years ago, the Greeks started to emigrate eastwards towards Ionia. They settled on the islands in the Aegean Sea and on the coastline of Asia Minor.
a. The conditions found in Ionia were difficult.
(1) Backed by inhospitable mountain ranges, they settled in small walled towns and supported themselves with dry farming, capable of producing only some olives and a little wine.
(a) With farming ruled out as an option for survival, the Greeks turned towards the sea and soon found that they were the neighbors of two very large empires, the Babylonians and the Egyptians.
(b) Trade with these two empires seemed to be the natural solution to their problem, but they needed to resolve some basic questions concerning the founding of their society.
b. Both Babylonian and Egyptian cultures had developed urban civilizations based on an abundance of arable land and plenty of water.
(1) Their societies were theocratic, ruled by kings with magical powers.
(a) There had been little technological or scientific novelty, due to the extreme regularity of their physical environment and the rigidity of their social structures, which were based on the need to build and maintain vast irrigation systems.
(b) Babylonian mathematics and astronomy were restricted subjects whose study was permitted only to the priesthood. Egyptian geometry served exclusively to build pyramids and measure the area of inundated land or the volume of water reservoirs.
(2) Both cultures developed mythical explanations for Creation.
(a) With gods being responsible for all aspects of the world, and with minimal science and technology developed for practical necessities, their simple cosmology was complete.
(b) Unlike the Greeks, the environment made no demands on them which they were not able to meet. So other than figuring out how to kill their enemies more efficiently, there was no inducement to learn to think or to develop their science and technology further.
c. The colonial Greeks were forced by their environment to adopt a more dynamic outlook.
(1) With no theocratic traditions to hold them back, they rejected monarchies at an early stage.
(a) They opted, instead, for republican city- states in which a small number of slave-owners governed by mutual consent.
(2) Babylonian astronomy, which had aided priests to make magic predictions, was pressed into service as an aid to maritime navigation.
(3) Contact with the Egyptians had planted the seeds of wonder in the intellectuals who accompanied the Greek traders on their trips around the Aegean.
(a) Rejecting the cosmologies of the Egyptians they formed the rudiments of what was to become philosophy.
(4) Seeking explanations to the world around them, they found ways of exploring nature in order to explain and control it.
(a) The Ionians took the geometry developed by the Egyptians and made a tool with many applications; such as measuring the distance from the coast to a ship at sea.
(b) Geometry became the basic instrument for measuring all things. All natural phenomena including light and sound, as well as those of astronomy, existed and could be measured in exclusively geometrical space.
(c) Simple analyses of natural phenomena such as water, beaches, clay deposits, phosphorescence, magnetism, evaporation and condensation as well as the behavior of the winds and the changes of temperature throughout the year led to the discovery that nature is made up of opposites.
(5) These simple analyses of phenomena and the observation of the presence of opposites combined with the political and economic structure of Ionian society produced the dominant intellectual structure which is the basis of modern western science.
(a) Geometry rendered the cosmos accessible to examination according to a common standard, quantitative scale.
(b) Together with the concept of pairs of opposites, geometry was to become the foundation for a rational system of philosophy that would underpin Western culture for thousands of years.
(c) Rational thought followed a new logical technique developed by Aristotle called the syllogism, which provided an intellectual structure for the reconciliation of opposing views.
(d) In this way, the Ionians before him, and Aristotle, produced a system of thought that would guide men from the limited observations of personal experience to more general truths about nature.
B. The Middle Ages
1. During the latter part of the Roman empire, interest in science as founded by the Greeks waned and practically all Greek manuscripts went to Arabia.
a. In a way, Greek science was preserved for posterity by the Arabs, who themselves added very little to it.
(1) They did introduce to science the so called Arabic system of numbers, which used the zero as a place holder.
(a) To be sure, Alhazen produced a work on optics, but generally speaking Greek science was not improved upon to any appreciable extent by its translation into Arabic. (b) Science was still based upon the authority of Aristotle.
2. Between 700 and 1100 AD, a beginning was made toward a revival of learning in Europe.
a. Large universities developed under the shelter of the Church.
(1) Trade spread, and both Greek and Arabian manuscripts gradually found their way back into Europe.
(a) The Crusades assisted in this process.
b. Since the Church had survived the Roman state and had become all powerful, it was natural that the revival of learning should take place under its influence.
(1) Many of the scientific manuscripts were translated from the original Greek into Latin by monks, in monasteries where merchants and knights bringing treasures from the east would often seek shelter for the night.
(a) These scholars were satisfied just to make exact translations, and so the science which they passed on to the world through the Church was the original Aristotelian version.
(2) Although the church had re-established science in the various large universities, it is important to remember that Church domination flavoured it to suit itself.
(a) The doctrines of Aristotle came to have the power of law behind them.
(b) Truth was not discoverable, by that time truth was dictated by the Church.
(c) It became a crime of the first order even to question the Church sponsored views of Aristotle, to say nothing of suggesting that experimentation might be a better way to establish the truth.
C. The New Awakening
1. During the Renaissance, universities were able to free themselves from Church rule and science was able to see the light of day without being shrouded in theology.
a. All of the following produced revolutionary ideas which led to their authors spending some part of their lives in prison because, while the Church did not have a stranglehold on the human mind, it still ruled with an iron fist and was always on the lookout for heresy.
(1) Copernicus developed the heliocentric theory of the universe.
(2) Galileao, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler established the fundamental ideas of modern celestial mechanics, based upon observation first, and theorizing afterward, thus revolutionizing scientific thought.
(a) Galileo in particular stressed the idea of controlled experimentation to such a degree that today he is recognized as the father of the modern scientific method based upon inductive rather than deductive reasoning.
(b) Galileo carried observation to the quantitative stage by making accurate measurements. He truly emphasized the 'how', as contrasted with the 'why' of Aristotle.
(c) By quantitative observations on falling bodies and other mechanical motions, assisted by instruments of his own invention to improve the accuracy of his measurements, Galileo laid the foundation for the discoveries of Newton.
(3) Sir Isaac Newton is considered by many to be the greatest scientific genius the world has produced thus far.
(a) He crystallized the scientific thought of his time into a few fundamental statements now accepted as laws of nature.
(b) These include three famous laws of motion and the law of gravitation in the field of mechanics alone.
(c) In addition, he invented calculus and contributed greatly to the field of optics.
(d) His role was primarily that of a co-ordinator of information or a systematizer of knowledge. He formulated the over all pattern by which scientific knowledge was to be organized in the great classical period that was to follow his time.
D. Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Classical Period.
1. Science was really gathering momentum by this time and becoming very complicated.
a. The various branches of physics received recognition as fields that, while related, were becoming too complex to be included under the general heading of physics.
b. Chemistry was coming into its own after a balky start as the secret science of Alchemy.
c. Electricity was an infant science, with a great deal of promise.
E. The Modern Period (1890 to Present)
1. With the discovery of radioactivity and x-rays, along with the isolation of the electron, and the formulation of the concept of the electrical structure of matter, science moved into today.
a. In the early days, science was concerned with the observation of natural phenomena and the search for explanations of WHY they existed.
(1) As the emphasis shifted to HOW the phenomena worked the body of knowledge grew dramatically.
(a) Many varied disciplines developed to encompass general fields of specialized knowledge and sciences such as geology, oceanography, and meteorology came into their own.
(b) In the light of this tendency to form subgroups, the mother of all sciences, which was and is dedicated to the study of the physical world, came to be known as Physics.
b. The field of physics deals with three 'realities' of the physical world and has developed three interconnected world views to explain them.
(1) Classical Newtonian Model of the Universe
(a) This model of the universe works well when you deal with objects consisting of large numbers of atoms, and velocities which are small compared to the speed of light. In other words, our mundane world.
(2) Einstein's Relativistic Model of the Universe
(a) This model works well when considering objects on a planetary and larger scale that may be many light years away from each other. In this model the shortest distance between two points is not always a straight line, because gravity curves space.
(3) Quantum Theory of the Universe
(a) Quantum theory was developed to explain the behavior of subatomic particles. It is similar to Relativistic physics in that it deals with speeds approaching, and sometimes exceeding, the speed of light, but it considers small groups and singular particles at a time.
II. THE CRAFT VIEW OF THE UNIVERSE
A. Craft cosmology is rooted in the paleolithic Shaman's insight of the universe being made up of swirls of energy.
1. Everything is seen as vortexes of moving forces which are either swirling into existence or out again.
a. These vortexes of force set up currents in a sea of everchanging possibilities.
2. The appearance of separateness exists where fixed objects exist within a linear stream of time.
a. Reality, as we know it, is actually a temporary solidification of a field of energies into a physical form.
B. Rationale of the Two Principles
a. Stewart Farrar has proposed the following explanation of how Crafters integrate every phenomenon from chemistry to clairvoyance into a philosophical framework that allows them to constantly explain, examine, develop and improve their philosophy.
(1) The Theory of Levels maintains that a reality exists and operates on many planes.
(a) That each of these levels has its own laws.
(b) That these sets of laws, while special to their own levels, are compatible with each other.
(c) That mutual resonance governs the interaction between the different levels.
(2) The Theory of Polarity maintains that all activity, all manifestation, arises from the interaction of pairs and complementary opposites.
(a) Pairs of opposites such as positive and negative, light and dark, content and form, male and female are not conflicts between 'good and evil', but a creative tension like that between the earth and the sky in a lightning storm.
III MODES OF PERCEPTION
A. Ordinary Waking Consciousness
1. Sees the world as made up of separate parts of matter.
a. While some of the arrangements of matter are recognized as living, few are recognized as intelligent.
b. Evolved as a means of survival.
(1) Allows a differentiation between things that are potentially threatening and those that are not.
(a) It works by narrowing the field of conscious perception to one thing at a time, isolating it from its surroundings.
(b) Starhawk describes it as viewing a dark forest with a narrow beam flashlight that illuminates a lone leaf or a solitary stone.
c. It casts a net across reality which allows us to break the whole down into pieces which can be examined one at a time or fitted together to get the 'whole picture'.
(1) It is based on a culturally transmitted system of classification which acknowledges the existence of phenomena that is perceived as valid by the majority and ignores anything that is not.
B. Extraordinary Waking Consciousness
1. Views the world as broad, holistic and undifferentiated.
a. Allows us to see patterns and relationships between all the vortexes of energy that make up the universe.
(1) Frees us from the constraints of our culture, but prevents us from sharing it with others who have not experienced it.
(a) The psychic and magical aspects of the Craft are concerned with shifting into and out of this mode of perception at will.
C. The Hemispheres of the Brain
1. The brain is actually composed of two specialized organs, which provide us with our perception of reality.
a. The brain is made up of several different structures, which are believed to have evolved as we became more adaptive to our environment.
(1) The Spinal Cord
(a) This is the oldest part of the brain, stretching from the neck down to the base of the spine.
(b) The two principle functions associated with the spinal cord are simple reflexes and to provide an electrical connection between the brain which controls the body and the nerves which cause the muscles to move the body and provide feedback to the brain.
(2) The Brain Stem
(a) This is situated on top of the spinal cord. It still possesses the tubular form of the spinal cord and in some respects can be thought of as an extension of it.
(b) There is a very intricate network of nerves in the brainstem known as the reticular formation. The reticular formation is the central point from which and to which all nerves run between the body and the brain.
(c) Visualizing the reticular formation as a telephone operators switchboard helps to understand its function. It sends all stimuli that has not proven to be benign to the brain for immediate attention and suppresses all other stimuli.
(d) The brain is still aware of all of the other stimuli, but it need not focus on all of it at once.
(3) The Cerebellum
(a) Connected to the brainstem is the cerebellum, which somewhat resembles the cortex in terms of its neuronal structure though it is much older than the cortex.
(b) The cerebellum is primarily concerned with the co- ordination of movements. It seems to integrate the information coming from all the senses with all the muscles so as to produce smooth, finely tuned movements rather than jerky unco- ordinated movements.
(4) The Midbrain
(a) The midbrain consists of the Thalamus, the Limbic System, and the Hypothalamus.
(b) The Thalamus sits on top of the brain and relays information from the sensory organs to the cortex and between different portions of the cortex and the reticular formation and the limbic system.
(c) The Limbic System is a group of structures in the middle of the brain that play an important role in emotion and motivation. Included in the limbic system is the pineal gland, which is thought by some to be the 'third eye.'
(d) Just below the thalamus is the Hypothalamus, which regulates the internal balance of the body. The pituitary gland is located here and it is the gland which tells all the other glands when to produce hormones.
(5) The Neocortex
(a) The Neocortex, or Cortex, as it is commonly called, makes up only one quarter of the brains total volume, but it contains 75% of all the neurons that make up the brain.
(b) The cortex is also known by its greyish color which is a result of a greater density of blood cells in this region. For this reason, the cortex is sometimes called 'grey matter' and the rest of the brain is called 'white matter.'
(c) Some areas of the cortex play particular roles in sensory activity. The rear of the cortex is associated with the processing of visual information, a small area on the side with auditory information, and a strip extending from the top center of the cortex down each side is concerned with the sense of touch and also with muscular control.
2. Large parts of the cortex do not appear to be very specific in their function.
a. Rather, they seem to be concerned with the integration of information from several different senses.
b. In other words, the cortex builds up a total world view based on all the information that is relayed by the body's senses.
c. In reality, the cortex is not just one structure, but two, which appear to have developed separate, but complementary, specializations.
(1) The left side of the cortex seems to have specialized in analysis.
(a) It is here that math ability is found, along with understanding language and a sense of linear time.
(2) The right side of the cortex seems to have specialized in synthesis.
(a) Creativity, all forms of art, the sense of rhythm and music and a distinct lack of time sense characterize the states of consciousness which are attributed to the right side of the cortex.
d. To make things really interesting, these two sides of the cortex are connected by a mass of nerves, which form what is called the corpus callosum.
(1) It just so happens that the corpus callosum wires the brain up so that the right side of the body is controlled by the left side of the brain and vice versa.
IV. THE CONCEPTS OF THE SELF
A. Classical Psychoanalysis
1. Freudian and Jungian Psychology
a. The Id and the Personal and Collective Unconscious
(1) Contains sensations, emotions, basic drives, image memory, intuition and diffuse perception.
b. The Ego
(1) Organizes the impressions of the unconscious, gives those impressions names, and classifies them into systems.
c. The Super-Ego
(1) A set of verbally understood precepts, that encourages us to make judgments about right and wrong according to the society in which we reside.
2. Transactional Analysis (T/A)
a. Child
(1) Corresponds to the Id and the Personal and Collective Unconscious.
b. Adult
(1) Corresponds to the Ego
c. Parent
(1) Corresponds to the Super-Ego
B. The Craft Concept of the Three Selves
1. Younger Self or Child
a. Corresponds to the Child mode of T/A
(1) Indirectly experiences the world, through the holistic awareness of the right hemisphere of the brain.
(a) Due to its limited verbal ability, Younger Self communicates through images, emotions, sensations, dreams, visions, and physical symptoms.
2. Talking Self
a. Corresponds to Adult and Parent modes of T/A
(1) Speaks through words, abstract concepts, and mathematics.
3. High Self
a. Does not easily correspond to any 'scientific' concept, because science refuses to accept the existence of a non-physical soul.
(1) The High Self, or God Self, is the Divine within the Self.
(a) It is the ultimate and original essence, the Spirit that exists beyond time, space and matter.
(b) It is our deepest level of wisdom and compassion and is conceived of as being both male and female, two forms of consciousness united as one.
C. Interactions Between the Three Selves
1. High Self is connected directly to Younger Self, and does not know how to communicate with Talking Self in a direct manner.
a. In order to communicate between High Self and Talking Self, we must learn to speak in Younger Self's language.
(1) We utilize symbols, art, poetry, music, myth, and the actions of ritual.
(a) These translate abstract concepts into the language of the unconscious and thus we can communicaate to the High Self through the Child Self.
V. THE FOUR PRICES OF FREEDOM
A. As in everything else in the world, nothing is free.
1. There are four prices that a Wiccan must pay in return for the wisdom and power that they can gain through the Craft.
a. Paying these prices awakens our true potentials and allows us to be 'as gods', and thus help us to creat a better universe.
(1) Discipline and Responsibility
(a) To awaken the extra-ordinary mode of consciousness is a natural step in any Wiccan development but it requires a great deal of practice to develop and train it properly.
(b) Powers and abilities gained through this heightened awareness must also be used responsibly, for otherwise they will destroy their possessors.
(2) A Willingness to Play
(a) We unleash a great power when we are willing to let go of our adult dignity and laugh for no particular reason, without worrying about looking foolish.
(b) For example, we can make believe that a wand has magic power, and it becomes a channel for energy.
(c) Humour and play awaken the sense of wonder that characterizes Wiccans, and is the basic attitude that the Craft takes into the World.
(3) The need to maintain a balance between the different states of consciousness.
(a) The difference between magic and psychosis lies in maintaining the ability to step back, by an act of will, into the ordinary mode of perception.
(4) A willingness to face the most frightening of all beings, one's own self.
(a) The depth of our inner selves are not all sunlit.
(b) To see clearly, we must be willing to dive into the dark, inner abyss and acknowledge the creatures that we may find there as being a part of what makes us what we are.
VI. ANALYSIS OF THE CREATION MYTH
A. The Creation Myth which is located at the beginning of the Chapter Two of "The Spiral Dance" by Starhawk, expresses the attitude of wonder, to the world which is Divine and to the Divine which is the World.
1. In the beginning, the Goddess is the All, virgin, complete within Herself.
a. The female nature of the ground is stressed because the process of creation is a birth process.
(1) The world is born, not made, and definately not commanded into existence.
2. The Goddess sees Her reflection in the curved mirror of space.
a. Water is the original mirror on earth.
(1) The image conveyed is similar to that of the Moon floating over the dark sea, watching Her reflection in the waves.
b. There is yet another aspect of the mirror.
(1) A mirror is a reversed image. It is the same but opposite, of reverse polarity.
(a) The image in the mirror is the embodiment of the universal paradox.
(b) All things are one yet each is separate, individual and unique.
3. The Goddess falls in love with Herself, drawing forth Her own emanations which take on a life of its own.
a. Love of self for self is the creative force of the universe.
(1) Desire is the primal energy that motivates and that energy is erotic.
(a) It has been expressed as the attraction of lover to the beloved, moon to plant, and electron to proton.
(2) Blind Eros becomes Amor
(a) The love that is personal, directed towards an individual rather than the universal sexless charity of the Christian Agape or indescriminaate sexual desire.
(b) The Goddess' reflection takes on its own Being and is given a Name.
(c) Love is not only an energizing force but an individualizing force as well. It dissolves separation and yet creates individuality. Again, it is the universal paradox.
4. The sense of wonder, of joy and delight in the natural world is the essence of the Craft.
a. The world is not seen as a flawed creation from which we must escape, nor is it in need of salvation or redemption.
b. However it may appear from day to day by the nature of its deepest being, the world fills us with wonder.
5. Divine ecstasy becomes the fountain of creation and creation is seen as an orgasmic process.
a. Ecstasy is at the heart of the Craft.
(1) During ritual we turn the paradox inside out, and become the Goddess, sharing in the primal throbbing joy of union.
b. The Craft is a shamanistic religion, and the spiritual value placed on ecstasy is a high one.
(1) It is seen as the source of union, healing, creative inspiration, and communion with the Divine.
(a) Ecstasy brings about harmony.
6. By its very nature matter sings.
a. The song is carried forth on waves that become spheres.
(1) The waves are the waves of orgasm, light waves, ocean waves, pulsating electrons, waves of sound.
(a) The waves form spheres as swirling gases in space coalesce and form stars.
b. It is a basic insight of the Craft any energy, whether physical, psychic or emotional, moves in waves, in cycles that are themselves spirals.
7. The Goddess swells with love and gives birth to a rain of bright spirits.
a. It is a rain that awakens consciousness in the world as moisture awakens green growth on earth.
(1) The rain is the fructifying menstrual blood, the Moon's blood that nourishes life.
(a) It is also the bursting waters that herald birth.
(b) And birth is the ecstatic giving forth of life.
8. The motion or vibration becomes so great that Miria is swept away.
a. As She moves further and further from the point of union She becomes more polarized and more differentiated, until She become mostly male.
(1) The Goddess has projected Herself.
(a) Her projected Self becomes the Other, Her Opposite, who eternally yearns for reunion.
(2) The energy field of the cosmos becomes polarized.
(a) It becomes a conductor of forces exerted in opposite directions.
VII. ANALYSIS OF THE MYTH OF THE WHEEL OF THE YEAR
A. The rituals of the eight Solar Holydays, the Sabbats of the year, are derived from the Myth of the Wheel of the Year.
1. The cycle of the Goddess which occurs on a monthly basis is contrasted to the slower cycle of the God, which takes a full solar year to complete.
a. The Goddess reveals Her threefold aspects as--
(1) Maiden
(a) She is the Virgin, Patroness of birth and initiation.
(2) Nymph
(a) She is the sexual temptress, lover, siren, and seductress.
(3) Crone
(a) She is the dark force of life, which demands death and personal sacrifice.
b. The God changes -- from Son to Brother to Lover, and eventually becomes His own Father.
(1) He is the eternal sacrifice who is eternally reborn into a new life.
(a) All things are divine as manifestations of the Goddess.
(b) The death of the grain in the harvest, or the death of a deer in the hunt, was considered to be a divine sacrifice freely made out of love so that life might go on.
VIII. EXAMINATION OF THE ALL AS TWO GREAT FORCES
A. The view of the All as an energy field polarized by two great forces is common to almost all traditions of the Craft.
1. These forces have been named Female and Male. And Goddess and God.
a. Which in their ultimate being are aspects of each other.
(1) It is important to separate the concept of polarity from our culturally conditioned images of female and male.
(a) The Female and Male forces represent a difference, yet they are not different in essence.
(b) They are the same force, flowing in opposite, but not opposed, directions.
2. The Female force is seen as the Life-giving force.
a. It is the power of manifestation, of energy flowing into the world to become force.
3. The Male force is seen as the Death-giving force.
a. This is death in a positive rather than a negative way.
(1) Death is seen as the Force of Limitation that is necessary to provide a balance to unbridled creation.
(a) It is the force of dissolution, of return to formlessness.
b. Each principle contains the other.
(1) Life breeds death and feeds on death.
(2) Death sustains life and makes evolution and new creation possible.
c. They are opposing halves of a complete cycle.
(1) They area each dependent upon the other.
4. Existence is sustained by the on/off pulse, the alternating current if you will, of the two forces in perfect balance.
a. Unchecked the life force is a cancer whereas the death force becomes unbridled war and genocide when allowed to go unbalanced.
(1) When held in balance they are in harmony and work to renew and sustain life.
(a) We see the effects of this balance in the changing cycle of the seasons, and in the ecological balance of the natural world.
IX OLD AGE IN THE CRAFT
A. The Craft does not maintain, like the first Truth of Buddhism, that "All life is suffering." On the contrary, we maintain that life is a thing of wonder.
1. Old age is a natural and highly valued part of the cycle of life, the time of greatest wisdom and understanding.
a. We look forward to the time when we are freed from the cycle of reproduction so that we may devote more time to our preparation and contemplation of the journey into death at the end our years.
(1) This does not mean that the joys of sex become lost to us but that the urgency that wells up in the Spring and rides us through until the Autumn subsides and we get to go at our own pace.
(a) While the quantity sometimes decreases, the quality invaribly increases.
2. The Crone serves as a role model for both women and men in their later years.
a. A tendency to withdraw from society to a certain degree is coupled with a diminishing of compassion in favor of a little more emphasis on justice and balance.
(1) People soon find that appealing to the Goddess as the Mother brings help tempered by a mother's willingness to overlook the fact that most children bring problems upon themselves.
(a) Appealing to the Goddess as Crone however, gets a full measure of justice for all parties involved.
(b) The Crone does not play favorites, She has the severity of a strong will to see justice done, that prevents Her from doting on any of Her grandchildren.
3. Old age sometimes brings suffering.
a. Where suffering is a natural part of the cycle of birth and decay, it is relieved by understanding and acceptance. By a willingness to give over to both the dark and the light in turn.
(1) Disease can cause misery and suffering but it is not seen as something to be inevitably suffered.
(a) The practice of the Craft has always been connected with the healing arts, herbalism, and midwifery.
b. When suffering is the result of the social order or human injustice, the Craft encourages active work to relieve it.
(1) Witches are naturals for getting involved in the ecology movement and other movements that try to address the issues that they feel make society as a whole ill, both physically and spiritually.
4. Nor is death fearful in old age.
a. It is seen simply as the dissolution of the physical form.
(1) It allows the spirit to prepare to be reborn into a new life.
X. DEATH AS SEEN BY A MEMBER OF THE CRAFT.
A. The experience of death is a lesson for the living.
1. The people most affected by death are the people left behind who must learn to deal with their sense of loss.
a. In the Craft, death in this world is seen as a birth into the "other" world that has been given many names.
(1) The Summerland, Tirn-nan-og, and Avalon are all names given to a pleasant land, usually in the West, where people go to examine their past lives, grow young again, and prepare to be born into this world again.
(a) There are two theories about why the world beyond is thought to be in the west. One is that the last rays of the setting sun 'die' in the west and lead the way into the dark. While the other is that since the invaders always came from the east, the people who were being invaded came to think of the west as being safe because it was the direction they were running toward in order to get away from the invaders.
b. Rebirth is not considered to be condemnation to an endless, dreary round of suffering as in Eastern religions.
(1) Instead it is seen as the great gift of the Goddess who is manifest in the physical world.
(a) Life and the world are not separate from the Godhead. They are immanent in the divinity.
2. Since death is seen as a part of the natural order of things and the Witch is taught that the departed spirits go on to the next life to be watched over by the Goddess and the God until they are reborn, a Witch should not grieve over the loss of a loved one.
a. The realization of how much the departed person meant to the ones who are left behind is gauged by the memories that live on in the people still living.
(1) It is said that the departed do not die as long as their memory lives on in the hearts of the ones left behind them.
(a) Keeping the memory alive and participating in the seasonal celebrations prepares the people left behind for being visited by the departed when the two worlds come close to one another at Hallows.
(b) It is always important to remember that a death in this world is a birth in the other world, and just as you did not have a lot of time for anything other than learning to function in this world when you were young, newly departed people have to learn to function in their new world and may not be able to visit as often as you would like.
3. The belief the Karma ties a certain number of souls together over and over again in many lives reassures people of the Craft that they will meet the departed in a new life.
a. Part of the training of the Craft is learning to see your own past lives in relation to the people around you and their past lives as well as discerning patterns of Karma in your everyday dealings.
END OF LESSON 2 DEVELOPMENT OF THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS
A. Introduction
1. The development of agriculture had a profound and far reaching effect upon the spiritual development of humanity.
a. No longer content to worship the Goddess of the Wild Things and the Lord of the Hunt, early mankind sought to interpret their deities in the physical surroundings of the places where they settled to grow their crops.
(1) Volcanic mountains, such as those surrounding ancient Persia, gave rise to Fire Gods whose priests evolved a cosmology which postulated a universe based upon a struggle between good and evil.
(a) A Fire Priest named Zoroaster would eventually lay the foundation for Zoroasterianism, which would lead to Mithraicism, which would greatly influence religious thinking of the early Christian church.
(b) Even today, the spiritual center of the Japanese people is the volcanic mountain Fujiyama.
(c) And the major deity of the Hawaiian people is the volcano Goddess Pele.
(2) Natural opening into the earth were seen as gateways into the domain of the deities and shrines were built around them.
(a) The most famous of these openings was the shrine at Delphi where, through a succession of goddesses and gods who served as patrons, the priestesses received visions of the future for a fee paid to the temple.
(b) There is some conjecture that the visions were brought about by inhaling the gases rising from the chasm, over which the priestesses were suspended on a tripod seat.
(3) In the British Isles, prominent hills or Tors, such as Glastonbury Tor in Somerset, and the Welsh mountains in Snowdonia, became the focus for local rites.
(a) In Ireland, each river was believed to have its own Goddess, was well as the Goddesses which hold sway on dry land.
b. The one common thread running through all of this was that while the people were becoming urbanized, they still felt a need to identify with the countryside around them and religious rites evolved around some natural power spot so that anyone wishing to partake of the religious experience of these rites had to make a pilgrimage to that religious shrine and be initiated into those rites by the local priestesses or priests.
c. As the cities grew up it became necessary to spread out into the countryside and the shrines were sometimes enclosed in temple building and sometimes opened 'branch offices' on the other side of the city, or in neighboring cities, for the people who could not or would not make the pilgrimages.
(1) This led to the establishment of temples, for public worship and offering, in all the cities of the ancient world.
(a) Usually, these temples were dedicated to the local Goddess or God, that the people of the city worshipped as their personal deity.
[1] An example would be Athens, which was named for its patroness Pallas Athena, who is the Greek Goddess of Wisdom and Beauty.
(b) Not surprisingly, these deities were sometimes tribal deities, which were urbanized as the city grew in size.
[1] And the rites that grew up around the temple were seasonal rites performed to insure the common well-being of the city as a whole.
[a] Religious rites for personal spiritual development was a foreign concept to all but a very few members of the priest/esshood who were responsible for seeing after the well being of their followers.
2. Once the concept of ownership of land for growing food gained a foothold, the need to defend the land from 'outsiders' became a primary concern.
a. This led to the development of standing armies and navies whose purpose, while initially defensive, soon became offensive.
(1) Time and again, the justification for attacking their neighbors was wrapped in religious robes and it became a matter of one city's Goddess/God supplanting the other in the conquered city.
(a) Usually this did not create too much of an upheaval for the common citizen because the attacker was usually a nearby neighbor and through long years of trade with each other, they were familiar with one anothers rites and beliefs.
(b) Most people saw it as a problem only for the priesthoods, who lost control of the temple monies to the conquering priesthood.
[1] Sometimes it was seen as an improvement for the city could only benefit from having a more powerful God/dess ruling over it and as long as the priesthood kept up the seasonal rituals to insure prosperity the common citizen was not too worried about who was ruling the city.
3. The founding of the Mystery Religions can be tentatively dated back to 331 BCE, when Alexander of Macedonia completed his conquest of the world around the Mediterranean and the Near East.
a. To give some perspective on how this brought about such a drastic change in the world order we need to look at astronomy and see if we can discern a pattern that repeats itself.
(1) Ancient humanity used astronomy and astrology to guide their lives.
(a) The zodiac was seen as a measurement system which allowed humankind to divide the solar year up into 12 equal parts, although some believe that the original zodiac had only 10 signs.
(b) The sign of Virgo-Scorpio was broken into two parts by inserting Libra (the Balance) in between them. This created eleven signs plus Libra, establishing the 'balance' at the point of equilibrium between the ascending northern and descending southern signs.
(c) Each year the sun passes entirely around the zodiac and return to the point from which it started, the vernal equinox, and each year it falls just a little short of making the complete circle of the heavens in the allotted space of time.
[1] As a result, it crosses the equator just a little behind the spot in the zodiacal sign where it crosses the previous year.
[a] Each sign of the zodiac consists of 30 degrees, and as the sun loses about one degree every 72 years, it regresses through one entire constellation or sign in approximately 2,160 years, and through the entire zodiac in about 25,920 years.
(2) Among the ancients, the sun was always symbolized by the figure and nature of the constellation through which it passed at the vernal equinox.
(a) For nearly the past 2,000 years the sun has crossed the equator at the vernal equinox in the constellation of Pisces (the two fishes).
[1] Christianity developed about the beginning of the Piscean Age and the fish was an early symbol for them.
[a] Christianity was only one of two new religions that were based, in part, on the teachings of Judaism.
[2] About 630 years after the founding of Christianity, Mohammed founded the religion of Islam, and his followers are known as Muslims or Moslems.
(b) For the 2,160 years prior to then, it had crossed through the constellation of Aries (the ram).
[1] Just as the Age of Aries began, a new religion developed which would prove to be one of the most enduring Monotheistic religions on Earth.
[a] Judaism was founded by Abraham of Chaldea, who made an agreement with Jehovah that he and his offspring would spread the doctrine that there was only one God.
[b] In return Jehovah promised Abraham the land of Canaan (Israel) for his descendants. The only problem is that the Jews and the Arabs both trace their beginnings back to sons of Abraham, and now both claim Israel as offspring of Abraham.
[2] About 600 years later Hinduism developed in India.
[a] From 600-300 years before the Age of Aries gave way to the Age of Pisces, Buddhism, Taoism, Confuscianism, Zoroastrianism and Mithraicism developed.
(c) Prior to the Age of Aries, the vernal equinox was is the sign of Taurus (the bull).
[1] In ancient Egypt, it was during this period that the Bull, Apis, was sacred to the Sun God.
[a] And the Winged Bull was the spiritual symbol of the Assyrians back when they had city-states dedicated to Goddesses.
[b] How interesting - that just as humanity was discovering agriculture during the Age of Taurus, the bull was domesticated so that it could pull a plow.
(d) We are about to enter a new age. The Age of Aquarius which promises to turn the world upside down.
b. Getting back to gaining a perspective on how Alexander the Great changed the world order, we need to understand that there is a pattern where the world order changes about every 2,000 years - militarily, economically and religiously.
(1) At any given time through history one or two of these conditions may change, but it is rare that all three change around the same time. When they do people live in what the chinese philosophers called 'interesting times'.
c. The 400 years preceding the Age of Pisces can be compared with the same period of our time, which is bringing in the Age of Aquarius.
(1) About 331 BCE an upstart military leader named Alexander of Macedonia led an army into the very depth of what was then known as the Persian Empire after defeating the troops of Persia who were trying to maintain control of Greek cities in Asia Minor.
(a) Once he had effectively wrested control of the empire from the Persians, he proceeded to take the best of what the empire and his native land had to offer and he created a new world order by which he and his generals divided up the known world and planned to rule.
(b) After Alexander's death the generals ruled as best they could, but they slowly lost control of the great empire until a new military power, Rome, came along and took over.
[1] It is important to keep in mind that the Roman empire did not spring up over night. Under the inspiration and protection of the Macedonian Empire from foreign intervention the Romans were able to defeat the Etruscans who had ruled most of Italy until that time.
[a] It was the peace brought about by the Grecian empire that allowed the Roman republic to last for 200 years and embrace many of the loftier ideals of Greek culture.
(2) In the mid 1700's, a colonel in a rag tag band of irregulars attached to regular troops of the British Empire, started to make a name for himself among the colonists of a British possession.
(a) The British, who were the ruling elite just under 300 years ago, thought of the colonial colonel as an uneducated barbarian and did not take him seriously when the colonials declared their independence and named as their supreme military leader the barbarian from Virginia.
(b) History has recorded how George Washington had his day in the sun when, after defeating the mercenary troops of Britain at Valley Forge, General Cornwallis surrendered to him at Yorktown.
[1] Again the world was turned up side down, and the empire of old was supplanted by a new order, only on a smaller scale.
[a] While it is true that the British Empire did not collapse with the loss of the American Revolutionary War, it marked the beginning of the breaking up of the Empire.
[b] And despite recurring clashes, like the War of 1812, the new country was allowed to grow and develop as a Republic for 200 years until now it is very common to refer to America as the new Rome.
(3) Like Alexander before him, Washington and his supporters took the best of what they liked in Britain and combined it with the best thoughts and ideas of the Colonies.
(a) Washington refused to be made the king of America, and they hammered out a new form of government, new laws of commerce, and assurances that the old religious order would not hold sway in the new country.
[1] Not long after the American Revolution, the French Revolution, based on American ideals, rocked Europe with its deliberate shaking off of aristocratic rule.
[a] Even the Russian Revolution was originally a revolt of the people against their aristocracy. It was only after the revolution left a vacuum of leadership that the Communists stepped in and assumed power.
d. If you look around at our capitol, you will see that the architecture is reminiscent of Grecian and Roman Temples, and the principles that our country was founded upon, principles like freedom and democracy, are Grecian Ideals.
(1) This is not a coincidence. The Founding Fathers were scholars of Greece and Rome, for knowledge of the history of these two countries was considered an integral part of a classical education.
(a) It will be interesting to see if America, like Rome, falls into the trap of being forced into becoming an Imperial power in order to support the welfare state at home.
[1] One of my favorite sayings is "A people who refuse to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it."
B. The Social Significance of the Mystery Religions
1. In order to understand the needs and desires which found satisfaction in mystery religions, it is necessary to take a broad view of the general social situation in the Greco-Roman world.
a. And to define, if possible, the outstanding religious interests of the Mediterranean people in the 1st century of the Piscean Age.
(1) Greco-Roman society with all of its complexity was, even so, a closely knit social fabric unified in large and significant ways.
(a) Politically, the Mediterranean world of the Augustan Age was a unit for the 1st time in history, welded together by 300 years of military conquests preceding the beginning of our era.
[1] To hold this Mediterranean world together in an imperial unity, Rome had thrown over it a great network of military highways reaching to the farthest provinces and centering on Rome herself.
(b) Cultural and commercial processes operated even more effectively than military conquests and political organization to unify the peoples of the Mediterranean area.
[1] Society under the early Empire continued to be as highly Hellenized as it had been during the 300 years previous.
[a] Greek continued to be the language of culture and commerce, with Latin as the lingua Franca of diplomacy.
[2] The sea, cleared of pirates, was a great channel of commerce that led to all the Roman world, and the military highways provided the necessary land routes.
[a] Because of the easy means of communication, there was a free mingling of races and classes in the centers of population.
(c) Free competition on a world scale gave the individuals their opportunities.
[1] Before the days of Alexander, the interests of the individual were quite submerged in comparison with those of the tribe or state.
[a] The larger social group was the end-all of existence and personal concerns were properly subordinated thereto.
[b] But in the changed conditions of the imperial period, all was different.
[2] Individual interests came to the fore and those of the state receded to the background.
[a] The Roman Empire meant far less to the citizen than the Greek polis had meant.
[b] Rome was too large and too far away to be very dependent on each citizens support or to contribute to their happiness.
(d) In the ruthlessness of conquest and the stress of competition, local customs were ignored, traditions were swept aside, and the unsupported individuals were thrown back upon their own resources.
[1] Happiness and well-being, if won at all, must be won by the individual, and for the individual alone.
2. Religion, like the other phases of Greco-Roman life, felt the effect of these changed social conditions.
a. For the masses, the former religious sanctions and guaranties no longer functioned.
(1) In the old, pre-imerial days, the individual was well satisfied with group guaranties that were offered by local and nationalistic religions.
(a) Granted, the relationship to the state deity was only an indirect one - through the group to which they belonged.
(b) Also granted, the goods sought were chiefly social benefits, which were shared with their fellow citizens.
[1] But so long as the God/desses protected the state and the state protected the citizen, they were well content.
(2) Successive conquests by foreign powers, however, rudely destroyed this complacency, and the victory of Macedonian and Roman arms wrecked the prestige of merely local and national deities.
(a) As racial barriers were broken down and the individuals felt free to travel and trade, they became conscious of needs and desires they had never known before.
3. As a practical matter, the time honored customs of an individuals parent and grandparent could not be maintained in foreign lands. New sanctions and assurances of a more personal sort were needed.
a. In line with the general social movements of the times, there was a distinct breakdown of traditional religion, and national cults, popular in the Hellenic period, fell into disuse.
(1) But the masses of people did not become irreligious by any means, they instead turned to religions of another type and sought satisfactions of a different variety.
(a) Their quest was no longer for a god/dess powerful enough to save the state but rather for one who was benevolent enough to save the individual.
[1] Oracles were consulted, not so often in the interest of the community but more frequently for the guidance of individuals in their personal affairs.
[a] More than ever before the home became a temple and the daily life of the family was filled with the trappings of piety.
[b] The shrines of the healing gods/esses were overcrowded, and magicians, who were considered the chief mediators of divine power, carried on a thriving business.
4. In particular, people turned for the satisfaction of personal desires to the group of mystery religions, which were very ancient cults that had hitherto been comparatively insignificant.
a. Most of them came to the Greco-Roman world from the Orient, with the authority of a venerable past, with an air of deep mystery, and with rites that were most impressive.
b. But the chief reason for their popularity at this time was the satisfactory way in which they ministered to the needs of the individual.
(1) Completely denationalized and liberated from racial prejudices, they could be practiced anywhere within or without the empire.
(a) They no longer depended upon a natural focus such as a cave or spring or mountain, so it was possible to worship anywhere they found themselves.
[1] This allowed popular cults like that of Isis to spread thoughout the Roman empire with little or no resistance
(b) Being genuinely democratic brotherhoods in which rich and poor, slave and master, Greek and barbarian met on a parity, they welcomed men of all races to their membership.
C. What the Mystery Religions had to offer Humanity
1. A new birth for the individual
a. When the neophyte was initiated into the cult he became a new man.
(1) In earlier centuries, when the emphasis in religion was tribal or national, this had no special advantage.
(a) Then the individual felt certain of his salvation because of his birth into a particular tribe or race. This still holds true for tribal religions like Judaism, where it is not enough to be a good Jew. All Jews must be good because they are the chosen people and their God will not make good on His promises until the whole tribe meets his requirements.
(2) Men in the Roman world had confidence in neither racial connections nor in the potentiality of human nature.
(a) The first century Roman wanted a salvation that included the immortality of the soul as well as the present welfare of the body.
(b) An essential change of being was felt to be necessary, and the mystery religions guaranteed this by means of the initiatory rites.
b. The mystery initiation met the basic religious need for individual as opposed to racial guarantees.
(1) Mystical experience was a common denominator of all the Greco-Oriental cults of the mystery type.
(a) The imperial age was a time when religion was turning inward and becoming more emotional, while philosophy, converted to religion, was following the same trend.
[1] There was a cultivated antagonism between spirit and matter and a conscious endeavor to detach one from the other by means of ascetic practices.
[a] It was a period of world-weariness and other worldliness.
[2] There was a demand for fresh emotional experiences, and the culminating effort was to overleap the bounds of nature and to attain union with the divine in the region of the occult.
[a] These experiences found expression in the popular religions of redemption, in the mysteries of Eleusis and Attis and Isis and the rest.
2. Fulfilling the yearning for the mystical type of religious experience.
a. Two considerations that have a direct bearing on why the yearning for mystical religious experience arose at this time are:
(1) The thought world of the average person had suddenly enlarged to proportions that were frightening. The horizon of a Syrian trader in Nero's time was vastly more inclusive than that of a few hundred years before. And this new horizon included a far greater number of facts to be classified and accounted for, and a constantly enlarging group of problems and difficulties to be settled. This expanded thought-world of the middle of the 1st century was in a very chaotic state. The social structure of an earlier age had been completely wrecked. Greek democracy and Oriental despotism alike had been crushed by imperial power. National and racial distinctions, once considered very important, had been all but forgotten. Whole classes in society had been wiped out. Old things had passed away and what chiefly impressed the ordinary man about the new order of things imposed by Rome, was not so much its orderliness as its newness. The citizen of the Greek Polis had lived in a friendly town that was his own; but the Roman citizen found himself bewildered in the crowded streets of a strange city that was everyman's world.
(2) The man of the early empire felt that the ultimate control of his disordered universe was not at all in his own hands, but that it rested with supernatural powers on the outside. According to the 1st century point of view, the more important relationships of life were with the controlling powers in the supernatural realm. Whether these powers were friendly or unfriendly or both or neither according to circumstances, there was a great variety of opinion; but generally speaking there was no doubt of their power.
(c) One way the common man had of establishing safe relations with the occult powers was the way of mysticism. He either projected himself emotionally into the supernatural realm and so came into contact with deity, or else by magic and sacrament drew the God down into the human sphere and in this fashion realized the desired alliance. Not until this 'unio mystica' was accomplished did many men feel completely secure in the face of the uncertainties of life. The mystery religions offered this form of salvation through union with the lord of the cult. This alliance with the lord of the cult robbed the unknown spiritual world of its terrors and gave the initiate the assurance of special privilege in relation to the potent beings who controlled the destinies of men. In the background of each of the mysteries hovered the vague form of the supreme power itself. The Anatolian Magna Mater Deum. Or the Ahura Mazda of the Persians. In the foreground, ready for action, stood the mediator who chiefly mad the divine power manifest in life and nature. The youthful Attis, or the invincible Mithra. The mystery Gods and Goddesses were also potent as netherworld divinities. Persephone reigned as queen of the dead and Osiris presided as judge of the souls of the departed. By means of initiation into their cults, the devotee was enabled to share vividly in the experiences of these divinities and even to attain realistic union with them.
(d) United with the Gods themselves, the initiate was in touch with currents of supernatural power which not only operated to transform his very being but rendered him immune from evil both in this life and in the next.
3. Providing emotional stimulation through the mystical experience of contact with a sympathetic savior.
a. The mysticism of the cults was not of the intellec- tualized type but rather of a more realistic, objective, ecstatic and highly emotional variety.
(1) This emotional character of cult mysticism answered directly to an inordinate appetite for emotional stimulation among the masses.
(a) This abnormal craving, directly or indirectly, was due to the terribly depressing experiences through which society had passed during the wars that filled the years immediately preceding the Piscean Age.
[1] For 400 years the wars had been unceasing. The Mediterranean world had known war at its worst, and this long series of conquests, civil wars, proscriptions, and insurrections had produced an untold amount of agony.
[2] All these military operations had entailed terrible suffering for all classes. There was, of course, the killing and maiming of the combatants themselves. Bread- winners had been drafted into service, leaving their families to fend for themselves. Crops over large areas had been destroyed to prevent the enemy from living off the land when the armies retreated. Leaving the local farmers as well as the invading army to starve. Conquered lands had been plunged into debt and bankruptcy, while thousands of men, women, and children, formerly free, had been sold as slaves.
[3] The indirect consequences of these military operations were quite as disastrous for the happiness of large numbers of people as were the direct results. One of the most deplorable effects was the practical destruction of the middle classes, which had been the backbone of the society. This left a bad social cleavage between the wealthy aristocratic class on the one hand, and the masses, including the slaves, on the other. Conditions were such that the upper classes had the opportunity of becoming more wealthy and prosperous, while the proletariat correspondingly became more destitute and wretched. Enormous sums of gold and silver, the accumulated wealth of the east, was disgorged on the empire. This created a demand for more luxuries, raised the standard of living for the rich, and multiplied the miseries of the poor. Throughout the period, the number of slaves was constantly being augmented. This lowered the wages and drove free laborers to the idleness of cities where they were altogether too willing to be enrolled on what we would call welfare. The first lesson new Emperors learned, if they were to keep their crowns, was to feed and entertain this huge number of idle workers so that they would not decide to overthrow the government. This is where the phrase "give them bread and circuses" came from.
[4] With such an unequal distribution of the goods of life, it was inevitable that both extremes in Roman society should feel the need of special emotional uplift and stimulation. The aristocrat felt the need of it because he had pleasures too many. There was a disgust with life, bred of self-indulgence and brought to birth by satiety. It was the weariness that comes when amusements cloy and the means of diversion seem exhausted. And the poor freeman because he had pleasures too few. There was a genuine sensitiveness to suffering in this age born of a sympathetic understanding of its pain and an earnest attempt to provide alleviation. It was a period when all classes were sensitive to emotional needs, but chiefly the inarticulate masses who were most miserable and knew not how to express their misery.
b. Generally speaking, the officials of the state religion remained unresponsive to this need and the marble Gods of Greece and Rome had no word for men in agony.
(1) Judaism, which had itself gone through a prolonged martyrdom, should have learned from suffering to minister to personal need, but it had not, for its hope was still a national one, not personal.
c. The religions of redemption that came from the east furnished exactly the emotional satisfaction that the age demanded.
(1) They told men of savior-gods that were very human, who had come to earth and toiled and suffered with men, experiencing to an intensified degree the sufferings to which flesh is heir.
(a) These savior-gods had known the agony of parting from loved ones, of persecution, of mutilation, of death itself. In this hard way they had won salvation for their devotees and now they stood ready to help all men who had need.
(2) The rites of these mystery religions were impressively arranged to represent the sufferings and triumphs of the savior-gods.
(a) In this way it was possible for the initiate to feel as his God had felt, and sometimes more realistically, to repeat the archetypal experiences of his lord. His initiation was a time of great uplift, that elevated him above commonplace worries and gave him an exalted sense of security. In after days the memory of that great event remained with him to bouy him up amid the hardships of his daily lot, or in such special crises as might come to him.
4. By means of initiatory rites of great impressiveness, the mystery cults were able to satisfy the desire for realistic guarantees in religion.
a. The majority of people were not satisfied with a merely emotional assurance that the desired mystical union had taken place.
(1) Something more tangible and objective was required to supplement the evidence furnished by subjective experience.
(a) Both the Greek and Romans conceived of their Gods as being very real and humanistic.
(b) They gave them admirable representation in painting and sculpture and sought to secure their favor by rites that were correspondingly realistic.
[1] At the beginning of the imperial period, when the uncertainties of life made man feel more dependent than ever on supernatural assistance, the operations whereby they strove to assure themselves of the desired aid became, if anything, more realistic than ever. In such an age and amid people who thought in these vivid terms, the rites of religion, in order to satisfy, had to give actual and dramatic representation of the processes they were intended to typify and induce. This was what the ceremonies of the mystery cults did, and this was another reason for the great attractive power of the cults.
b. Most of the rites of the mystery religions had come down in traditional forms from an immemorial antiquity.
(1) Originally performed among primitive people in order to assure the revival of vegetable life in springtime, they were enacted in these later imperial days for the higher purpose of assuring the rebirth of the human spirit.
(a) Yet, among the masses at least, the efficacy of these ceremonials was as little questioned as it had been in their original primitive settings.
(2) The baptismal rite, in particular, whether by water or blood, was regarded as marking the crucial moment in a genuinely regenerative process.
(a) Once reborn the initiates were treated as such, their birthday was celebrated and they were nourished in a manner appropriate for infants.
(b) Childish though those rites may seem, yet they were frought with spiritual significance for the initiate.
(3) The semblance of mystic marriage and the partaking of consecrated foods were other realistic sacraments in which the neophyte found assurance that he was really and vitally united with his lord and endowed with the divine spirit.
(a) What usually gives the modern student pause is the very sincere conviction of pagan initiates that their spiritual transformation was not only symbolic, but was also really accomplished by these dramatic ceremonies.
5. The personal transformation which was the initial feature of cult mysticism had its ethical as well as its religious aspect, thus producing a blend of ethics and religion.
a. The early imperial period was a time of great moral disorder and confusion, paralleling the stress and strain in other areas of life.
b. The continuous social upheavals of the Hellenistic and republican times, the free mingling of populations in commerce and conquest, and the enormous increase of slaves furthered the process of cutting thousands of human beings loose from moral restraints.
c. However, the general trend in society as a whole was not only a period of moral anarchy but of ethical awakening as well.
(1) Interest was alive on moral questions.
(a) Almost every characteristic vice in Roman society was being met with the most vigorous protests and sometimes by active measures to correct them.
(2) There was at this time a particular demand for a greater correctness in ethical teaching.
(a) Teachers of the time studied the writings of philosophers and moralists to find texts and maxims to use with their pupils.
(b) Catalogues were made of virtues and vices and the former were summarized as certain cardinal qualities especially to be desired.
(c) There was a call for living examples, which could be referred to as demonstrations of the practicality of these ideals.
(3) The conditions of life were such that most men did not have confidence in their own unaided ability to achieve character.
(a) They looked to the supernatural realm for the powers that controlled personal conduct as well as the more ultimate destinies of humanity.
[1] What the men of the 1st century wanted was not so much ideals, but the power to realize those ideals; not a code of morals, but supernatural sanctions for morality. In the last analysis, it was divine will, and not human welfare, that was the generally accepted criterion whereby the validity of any ethical system was tested. Accordingly, the religion which could furnish supernatural guarantees along with its ethical ideals had a preferred claim to 1st century loyalty.
(b) The stern morality of Judaism was very attractive. The element that fascinated was not the inherent excellence of Jewish rules for living, but the fact that there were venerable sanctions bearing the impress of divine authority.
[1] The Law of the Jews was quoted as the ipse dixit of Yahweh himself and the scriptures were referred to as authentic documents proving the genuineness of the representation. Such confirmation was impressive to men who were seeking for divine authority to make moral conduct obligatory.
(c) The religion of the Egyptian Hermes was one that offered supernatural guarantees for its ethical ideals.
[1] In the process of Hermetic rebirth, the powers of the God drove out hordes of vices and left the regenerated individual divinely empowered for right living.
(d) That was Mithraism's point of strength also, and accounted not a little for the vogue it continued to enjoy for some time after the beginning of the Christian Era.
[1] The "commandments" of Mithraism were believed to be divinely accredited. The Magi claimed that Mithra himself revealed them to their order.
[2] One of the chief reasons why the high Mithraic ideals of purity, truth, and righteousness had real attraction, was because Mithra himself was the unconquerable champion of these ideals and the ready helper of men who were willing to join with him in the eternal fight of right against wrong and good against evil. Mithraism was the outstanding example of a mystery religion which gave supernatural sanctions to the demands of plain morality.
d. The mysticism of the mysteries came in effectively at just this point to give both realistic content and divine authorization to the ethic of brotherhood.
(1) The ideals of the group found personification and embodiment in the divine Lord or Lady who was the object of the cult worship.
(a) Osiris was the model righteous man who functioned in the divine state as the judge of the departed. Hence the Isian initiate, reborn as the new Osiris, was supposed to exhibit the Osirian type of righteousness.
(2) So, too, in the other mystery systems, the initiate realistically united with his Lord, and actually transformed by the virtue of the union, had his ideal incorporated within himself as a part of his very being.
(a) In the end, mystical experience became the theoretical basis and practical incitement to good conduct.
(b) In this close articulation of mysticism and morality, the cults made an important and distinctive contribution to the ethical life of the age.
6. The mysteries were unusually well equipped to meet the need for assurances regarding the future.
a. The ultimate pledge that the mystery religions made pertained not to the present but to the future.
(1) It was the assurance of a happy immortality.
(a) Whatever attitude a man might adopt on the continued existence after death, he could not well avoid the issue.
b. The mystery cults from Greece and the Orient specialized in future guarantees.
(1) Originally intended to assure the miracle of reviving vegetation in the springtime, they were perfectly adapted to guarantee the miracle of the spirit's immortality after physical death.
(a) These were the cults which in the form of Dionysian and Orphian brotherhoods had first brought the promise of a happy future life to Greece in the religious revival of the 6th century BCE.
(b) In Hellenistic times the Greek cults merged with similar religions from the east which offered equivalent guarantees, and in this syncretized form came into their own.
(2) In the early imperial period of Rome, they were more popular than ever, for they gave positive and definite answers to the questioning of the common man about the future.
(a) Their answer had the authority of revelation and it included the guarantee of divine aid in the realization of that blessed after-life which they vividly depicted to their devotees.
C. Summary
1. When consideration is given to the fundamental character of the interests represented by the mystery religions, one can well understand their popularity in the Greco-Roman world.
a. In an era of individualism, when men were no longer looking to religion for guarantee of a racial or national order, the mystery cults offered the boon of personal transformation through participating in rites of initiation.
b. At a time when men were seeking a larger life through contact with supernatural powers, the mysteries guaranteed absolute union with the divine beings who controlled the universe.
c. In an age when men were craving emotional uplift, mystery initiation gave them such encouragement as they could scarcely find elsewhere.
d. At a period where realism characterized thought in all departments of life, the religions of redemption offered men realistic rites to guarantee the actuality of spiritual processes.
e. The supernatural sanctions were sought to validate ethical ideals, the mystery cults provided a unique combination of mysticism and morality that was effective.
f. When, as never before, people were questioning about the future fate of the individual soul, the mysteries, through initiation, gave guarantee of a happy immortality.
2. At every one of these points the mystery religions of redemption were effectively meeting the needs of large numbers of people in Greco-Roman society.
END OF LESSON 3 PART A INTRODUCTION TO THE OLD RELIGION LESSON 3A
D. Prominent features of a Mystery Religion
1. A Mystery Religion was a religion of symbolism
a. Through the use of myth and allegory, iconic representations, blazing lights and dense darkness, liturgies and sacramental acts, as well as suggestion, the intuitions of the heart of the initiate were quickened until s/he was provoked into a mystical experience.
(1) This experience led to a feeling of regeneration, which was the object of every initiation.
2. A Mystery Religion was a religion of Redemption.
a. It professed to remove the estrangement between man and God, to procure forgiveness of sins, and to furnish mediation.
(1) Means of purification and the formulae of access to the God, and acclamations of confidence and victory were part of the apparatus of every Mystery.
3. The Mystery Religions were systems of Gnosis.
a. The Mysteries brought men into contact with that God "who wishes to be known and is known to his own."
(1) They offered an esoteric equipment by which the initiate might ward off the attacks of demons, thwart the menace of Fate, and after death reach the abodes of the blessed mysteries.
(a) There was something, whether doctrine, symbol, or divine drama, which could not be imparted except by initiation to those duly qualified to receive it, a supernatural revelation which gave the recipient a new outlook on life, the world and the deity, and security that was denied to the uninitiated.
(b) The 'mystery' consisted of an objective presentation of the history of the cult Deity, in his or her struggles, sorrows, and triumphs, repeated subjectively by the initiate in sacramental acts, together with prayers and liturgic formulae.
4. A Mystery Religion was a Sacramental Drama.
a. The Sacramental Drama appealing primarily to the emotions, aimed at producing psychic and mystic effects. Thus the neophyte experienced the exaltation of a new life.
5. The mysteries were eschatological religions, having to do with the interests and issues of life and death.
a. For the multitudes, it was the mysteries which illuminated the hereafter.
6. A mystery religion was a personal religion, to which membership was open, not by accident of birth into any particular class, but by a religious rebirth.
7. A mystery religion, as a personal religion, presents another side, which is the necessary compliment of an individualistic religion; that is, it takes on the character of a cosmic religion.
a. The ancients lived in a world in which the primitive association of man's life with the earth and plant and animal life was axiomatic, in which the Universe itself was a rational living being, in which man by his good deeds might be elevated on the path of the divine.
II. A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE MAJOR MYSTERY RELIGIONS
A. Fundamental Force Behind Development
1. Once, there was no purely 'native' or 'hermetic' tradition; only a universal response by the Firstborn to the Earth-lore and the Star-magic of their shamanic priests.
a. Later, as the single religious impulse of the Foretime split into separate cults, these two approaches, which we may think of as earthly (or chthonic) and stellar, grew further apart, until the beginnings of the Hermetic traditions were seeded in Egypt and the Hellenic world, while in Europe the Native traditions remained more or less grounded in the magic of the earth.
(1) This is not to say that Greece and Egypt did not have their own native traditions, or that development of religion and magic in the Celtic West was so primitive and slow that it required cross- fertilization with other sources to pull it into subtle realms of experience.
B. The Major Mystery Religions.
1. It has often been said the the Egyptian mysteries are the true foundation upon which the Western Hermetic systems are built.
a. This is due in part to the early identification of the Egyptian God Thoth, scribe and guardian of mysteries, with Hermes Trimegistos, the supposed founder of Western occult practice.
(1) Egypt had many mysteries, none more important that those of Isis.
(a) Her name is said to mean 'throne', 'wisdom', or 'savior', though she possessed many other titles which testify to the universality of her cult.
(2) The deepest mysteries of Isis, and her consort- brother Osiris, the God of the Sun, revolve around his death at the hands of his brother Set, who cut Osiris' body into 14 parts and scattered them through the world.
(a) Isis undertook a terrible journey, suffering great hardship, seeking out the broken body of her lord and reassembling the parts.
[1] She found and reassembled all but one part, the phallus, which was thrown into the Nile and consumed by a fish.
b. Despite this, such was the creative power of Isis that she was able to conceive by means of an artificial phallus, and bore the child Horus who avenged his father by killing Set.
(1) This is an archetypical mystery-telling, introducing themes found later in the teachings of the Hellenistic schools and in the work of modern esoteric orders.
(a) It prefigures the death and rising of many gods and show forth the power of the Creative Principle.
(b) It also establishes Isis as Queen of Heaven, more powerful in the eyes of many than even the great god Ra himself, whose representative upon earth was the Pharaoh.
3. In Mithraism, which descended from the Persian Mysteries, Mithra stands as a mediator between light and dark, a position adopted by his followers.
a. In humanity, the battle for the soul is fought out in the territory of the flesh. Mithra, entering there, keeps all in balance.
(1) Mithraism was the Freemasonry of the Roman world.
(a) Like the other cults of Oriental origin, it moved with the vast commerce in human beings that was such a notable feature of the ancient world.
(b) The cult of Mithra is one that traveled well, from Syria to Scotland.
(c) The Mithraic community was all men: women gravitated to the parallel cult of Cybele or the exclusively female one of Bona Dea.
(d) The congregations were small; no surviving Mithraeum could house more than a hundred, but of course bigger lodges may have formed, and dissolved, at army camps, because Mithraism was extremely popular among the Roman Legions.
(e) There were no social barriers, so that slaves and privates could become high initiates. The ceremonies were solemnly enacted and the initiations were quite awe-inspiring.
b. Mithra was born on the 25th of December, called the "Birthday of the Unconquered Sun."
(1) This date was not taken over by the Christians for the birth of their Savior until the 4th century BCE.
c. Some said that Mithra sprang from the union of sun god and his own mother.
(1) Some claimed his mother to be a mortal virgin.
(a) Others said Mithra had no mother, but was miraculously born of a female Rock, the petra genetrix, fertilized by the Heavenly Father's phallic lightning.
2. In the many histories of the ancient world, only one figure is described as being of greater importance than Hermes. This is the Persian mage Zoroaster, who may actually have lived around 1000 BCE., or even earlier, but who clearly did not predate the foundation of the Egyptian mysteries from which he drew heavily for his own system.
a. It is from the Persian mysteries that we derive the dualistic spectre which has haunted esoteric philosophy and teaching ever since.
(1) In the Zoroastrian pantheon these opposing forces are Ormuzd and Ahriman, who derive ultimately from Ahura Mazda, the divine principle.
(a) Known as the Holy Immortals, or Amesha Spentas, they correspond to the levels of creation, clearly foreshadowing the teaching of later mystery schools such as those of Orpheus and Mithra.
(b) Against the Spentas are arrayed the Devas, the companions of the Evil One, who are seen as ruling over the earth.
[1] The position of Persian dualism is confused by a Zoroastrian heresy called Zurvanism, which is often mistaken for mainstream Zoroastrianism.
[a] In Zoroastrianism proper, Ahura Mazda is supremely god: his Spentas are not on the same footing.
[b] In Zurvanism, however, Ahura Mazda is made into a lesser creator or demiurge, hence the cosmic struggle of good against evil which takes place in the world of matter.
(2) In Zoroastrian teaching, a savior or saoshyant was to be born, who would combat evil and bring the struggle to an end once and for all, thus betokening the Frasokereti, the making perfect at the end of time.
(a) In this we see an echo of the Egyptian mysteries, and a prefiguring of the gnostic position, as well as the appearance of a third figure which becomes a requirement of all dualistic thinking sooner or later. This third figure who will balance out the struggle is a Messiah.
(b) Mithra's birth was witnessed by shepherd and Magi, who brought gifts to his sacred birth-cave of the Rock.
d. Mithra performed the usual assortment of miracles - raising the dead, healing the sick, making the blind to see and the lame to walk, casting out devils.
(1) As a 'Peter', son of petra, he carried the keys of the kingdom of heaven.
e. His triumph and ascension to heaven were celebrated at the spring equinox, when the sun rises toward its apogee.
(1) Before returning to heaven, Mithra celebrated a Last Supper with his 12 disciples, who represented the signs of the zodiac.
(a) In memory of this, his worshippers partook of a sacramental bread marked with a cross.
[1] This was one of the seven Mithraic sacraments. It was called mizd, in latin-missa, in english- mass.
(2) Mithra's image was buried in a rock tomb, the same sacred cave that represented his Mothers' womb.
(a) His image was later withdrawn from the cave and was said to live again.
f. What began in water would end in fire, according to Mithraic beliefs.
(1) The great battle between the forces of light and darkness in the Last Days would destroy the earth with its upheavals and burnings.
(a) Virtuous ones who followed the teachings of the Mithraic priesthood would join the spirits of light and be saved.
(b) Sinful ones who followed other teachings would be cast into hell with Ahriman and the fallen angels.
g. Mithra's cave-temple on the Vatican Hill was seized by the Christians in 376 CE.
(1) Christian Bishops of Rome pre-empted the Mithraic high priest's title of Pater Patrum, which became Papa, or Pope.
4. While the Mithraic mysteries succeeded those of Zoroaster, they followed those of Dionysus, through which the core of Hellenic mystery teaching found its way into the Western Mystery Tradition.
a. Two streams of consciousness are discerable within the Classical mysteries, which might be called Dionysian and Apollonian.
(1) The Apollonian mysteries related to reason, to the heavens and to order; this is in contradistinction to the chaotic mysteries of Dionysus.
(a) The priests of Apollo were more interested in wresting the political power away from the earlier Goddess worshipping peoples who held sway as the Oracle at Delphi, and so their mysteries were not so widely spread because they were tied to a specific location and shrine.
(2) The Mysteries of Dionysus were those of the sacrificial king: they pertain to the underworld side of things, the chthonic and ecstatic cult of maenads and bacchantes.
(a) Of all the mystery Gods, it is Dionysus whose character has become most firmly fixed in the collective imagination. His worship spells orgies and drunkenness; he personifies the irrational and uncontrolable urges of mankind and beasts; he drives to frenzy the maenads and the poets.
[1] The myth of Dionysus' origins tells that he was first born from the union of Zeus with Persephone.
[a] Zeus designated this 'Zagreus' as his heir, but the jealous Titans lured him away while he was yet a child, killed, dismembered him and devoured all the pieces except for the heart, which Athena rescued and preserved.
[b] Zeus, in anger, reduced the Titans to ashes, from which the new race of humanity was fashioned. Thus each person contains a fragment of Dionysus within their 'Titanic' earthly body.
[c] From the heart of the god was brewed a love- potion, which was given to Semele, a mortal, who then forced her lover -Zeus again- into revealing himself to her in his primal form. This unveiling was so overwhelming as to annihilate her, but the child she was carrying was saved by Zeus enclosing it in his loins until the time came for its birth as the second Dionysus.
[2] The young god grew up in Thrace, suckled by goats and raised by satyrs and sileni. When he reached maturity, he descended through the Alcyonian Lake to rescue the shade of his mother Semele from Hades and then raised her to Olympus.
[a] Afterward, accompanied by a motley train of semi- human beings, maenads and panthers, he set off on wanderings throughout the world, from Libya to Arabia to India and thus back to his homeland.
[3] Everywhere he went he brought humanity knowledge of agriculture, arts and crafts, and most especially the cultivation of the vine and wine-making.
[a] On the Isle of Naxos he discovered the Cretan Princess Ariadne, abandoned there by Theseus, and joined with her as her husband. Together they ascended to the heavens, whence he offers a similar blissful reward to his devotees, temporarily in this life and permanently after death.
5. There had been an initiatic institution in Greece at Eleusis at least since the 8th century BCE, with both Greater and Lesser Mysteries.
a. The function of all lesser mysteries, and equally of the lower grades of initiation was to impart information on the nature of higher worlds.
(1) The Eleusinian symbolism of corn, pomegranites and poppies refers to the unseen forces which affect humanity via the vegetable kingdom, building the body and informing the mind.
(a) The intuitive grasp of this relationship, in all its wonder and complexity, was summarized in the famous climax od the Mystery, so disappointing to non-initiates, the displaying of an ear of wheat.
(2) Certain information was also given at Eleusis by word of mouth, including the 'password to the Paradise of Demeter' to be used after death.
(a) In the Lesser Mysteries of other gods, it is suggested that the fact of heliocentricity was revealed.
[1] Jewish esotericism includes the teaching of reincarnation.
[a] So Lesser Mysteries give the initiates theoretical knowledge which changes their whole view of humanity and the cosmos, and stands them in better stead when they have to leave this world for the unknown.
b. The Mysteries of Demeter were celebrated every five years at Eleusis.
(1) The candidate of the Lesser Mysteries underwent a symbolic journey in which the quest of Demeter for her lost daughter Persephone in Hades was reenacted with the would-be candidate in the role of Demeter.
(a) The journey within was that of the darkened soul: the candidate passed through a door into total darkness: if they survived the experiences met within they passed through a second door into brilliant light - symbolizing rebirth into the heavenly sphere. Here they actually meet the gods, experiencing Demeter's journey as their own recovery of lost enlightenment.
c. The function of the Greater Mysteries of Eleusis was to bring about direct contact with the beings who inhabit the higher worlds.
(1) The higher grades of initiation were conducted individually rather than collectively as in the Lesser Mysteries.
(a) The Initiation of Isis were given to those selected by the Goddess through having had significant dreams, whether they were laity, priests or priestesses.
(b) In the inner truth of the Eleusinian mysteries, the birth of the soul into matter is seen as death; only through participation in the mysteries can the initiate rise to a timeless reality where he is utterly free and alive.
[1] The soul sleeps in the body for most of the time, awakening only when it has been transformed by ritual and the use of an initiatory drink.
[a] To die without this experience is to sleep forever or to wander houseless in the caverns of Hades.
(2) The primary objective in these initiations was to take the candidate through the gates of death.
(a) As in shamanic, Masonic, and other later initiations, the candidate was placed in a trance, the consciousness taken out of the body, and in this state to experience higher states of being and meet some of the denizens of the invisible worlds.
[1] Through direct experience the candidates would learn that they could live freely without their physical bodies, and that the gods they worshipped were perfectly real.
[a] Then they would return to earth fully convinced of their own immortality and prepared to meet death fearlessly, knowing it is the gate to freedom and the soul's true home.
6. As a descendant of Dionysus, Orpheus is the intellectual image of a demi-god, raised to deity by his sufferings in the underworld: a perfect symbol for all who follow the paths of the mysteries.
a. The movement from the cult of Dionysus and Apollo to Orphism, marks a change from a more primitive religious response towards an ethically-based philosophy and mysticism which included belief in the transmigration of souls, reincarnation and the final assumption into godhead.
(1) Orpheus has the lyre and the gift of music from Apollo, yet ends like Dionysus, torn apart by Thracian bacchantes.
(a) The shamanic practices of the Native Tradition overlapping the priestly function of the mystery school.
[1] The suffering of Orpheus, who loses Euridice (through fear, the first pitfall of all mystery knowledge) and is then dismembered by the Maenads, is a paradigm of the suffering and rebirth of the sleeping soul.
b. The Orphic mysteries are complex in the extreme.
(1) The most important aspect of the Orphic Mysteries was that humanity and the gods are related.
(a) At a most subtle and sensitive level a blurring of the edges occurs, an overlapping of human consciousness and divine awareness.
[1] "Everything that lives is Holy" becomes a reality in the interaction of the divine and the mundane.
(2) The hierarchy of spiritual creation is supremely complex, but the gods are like a ladder, a system of related possibilities, the potentiality of which is seeded within the whole of creation.
(a) We are all related, not just in a familial sense but also to everything else: earth and water, sky and stone; not only because all of creation is made up of different combinations of molecules, but because we are all a part of the divine hierarchy.
[1] This is the true meaning of the mystery teaching concerning the divine spark; the god like potential of humanity is far better expressed by this means.
[a] The divine fragment is that part of us which is always seeking reunion, a reassembly of separated parts into the whole from which they were created; a return to the paradisial state.
c. The Orphic school was, above all, syncretic.
(1) Orpheus is credited with the dissemination of the mysteries, with passing on rather than inventing much that became the basis of subsequent Greco-Roman theosophy.
(a) Pythagoras followed many of the Orphic teachings and made Orpheus the central deity of his own esoteric system, establishing a canon of Orphic Hyms.
(2) Between the Orphic mysteries and their partial revival in the Rennaisance, there is a long gap not only in time but in understanding.
III CHRISTIANITY VIEWED AS A MYSTERY RELIGION
A. The Foundation of Christianity
1. Most people think of Christianity as if it were a single specific thing, a coherent, homogeneous, and unified entity.
a. Christianity is nothing of the sort.
(1) There are numerous forms of Christianity
(a) Roman Catholic
(b) Russian Orthodox
(c) Greek Orthodox
(d) Church of England (Anglican), formed by King Henry the VIII
(e) Various other forms of Protestantism
[1] From the original Lutheranism and Calvinism of the 16th century to such relatively recent developments as Unitarianism.
(f) There are multitudinous "fringe" or "evangelical" congregations.
[1] Such as the Seventh Day Adventists, the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Assembly of God.
(g) And there are assorted contemporary sects and cults.
[1] Like the Children of God and the Unification Church of Reverend Moon.
b. If one surveys this bewildering spectrum of beliefs - from the rigidly dogmatic and conservative to the radical and ecstatic- it is difficult to determine what exactly constitutes Christianity.
2. If there is a single factor that does permit one to speak of Christianity, a single factor that does link the otherwise diverse and divergent Christian creeds, it is the New Testament and more particularly the unique status ascribed by the New Testament to Jesus, his Crucifixion and Resurrection.
a. Even if one does not subscribe to the literal or historical truth of those events, acceptance of their symbolic significance generally suffices for one to be considered a christian.
3. If there is any unity then, in the diffuse phenomenon called Christianity, it resides in the New Testament - and more specifically, in the accounts of Jesus known as the four Gospels.
a. These accounts are popularly regarded as the most authoritative on record.
(1) And for many Christians they are assumed to be both coherent and unimpeachable.
b. From childhood one is led to believe that the story of Jesus, as it is preserved in the Four Gospels, is if not God-inspired, at least definitive.
(1) The Four Evangelists, supposed authors of the Gospels, are deemed to be unimpeachable witnesses who consistantly reinforce and confirm each other's testimony.
c. Of the people who today call themselves Christians, relatively few are aware of the fact that the four Gospels not only contradict each other in more than one way, but at times they violently disagree.
B. The Origin and Birth of Jesus
1. So far as popular tradition is concerned, the origin and birth of Jesus are well enough known.
a. In reality, the Gospels, on which that tradition is based, are considerably more vague on the matter.
(1) Only two of the Gospels - Matthew and Luke - say anything at all about Jesus' origins and birth; and they are flagrantly at odds with each other.
(a) According to Matthew, Jesus was an aristocrat, if not a rightful and legitimate king - descended from David via Solomon.
(b) According to Luke, on the other hand, Jesus' family, though descended from the house of David, was of somewhat less exalted stock.
(c) And it is on the basis of Mark's account that the legend of the "poor carpenter" came into being.
(2) In short, the two genealogies are so strikingly discordant that they might well be referring to quite different individuals.
2. The discrepencies between the Gospels are not confined to the question of Jesus' ancestry and genealogy.
a. According to Luke, Jesus, on his birth, was visited by shepherds.
(1) But according to Matthew, he was visited by kings, the Magi.
b. According to Luke, Jesus' family lived in Nazareth.
(1) From here they are said to have journeyed, for a census (that history suggests never in fact occurred) to Bethlehem, where Jesus was born in the poverty of a manger.
c. But according to Matthew, his family had been fairly well to do residents of Bethlehem all along, and Jesus himself was born in a house.
(1) In Matthew's version Herod's persecution of the innocents prompts the family to flee into Egypt, and only on their return do they make their home in Nazareth.
3. The information in each of these accounts is quite specific and - assuming the census did occur - perfectly plausible.
a. And yet, the information itself simply does not agree. The contradiction cannot be rationalized.
(1) There is no possible means whereby the two conflicting narratives can both be correct, and there is no means whereby they can be reconciled.
(a) Whether one cares to admit it or not, the fact must be recognized that one or both of the Gospels are wrong.
[1] In the face of so glaring and inevitable a conclusion, the Gospels cannot be regarded as unimpunable.
[a] How can they be unimpunable- when they are inconsistent with each other?
4. The more one studies the Gospels, the more the contradictions between them become apparent.
a. They can not even agree on which day the Crucifixion took place.
(1) According to John, the Crucifixion occurred on the day before the Passover.
(a) Whereas, Mark, Luke, and Matthew insist that it occurred on the day after.
b. Nor are the Gospels in accord on the personality and character of Jesus.
(1) Each depicts a figure who is patently at odds with the figure depicted by the others.
(a) A meek, lamblike Savior in Luke.
(b) A powerful and majestic sovereign in Matthew who comes "not to bring peace but a sword."
c. There is further disagreement about Jesus' last words on the cross.
(1) In Matthew and Mark the words are, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
(2) In Luke, the words are-"Father, into they hands I commend my spirit."
(3) And in John they are simply "It is finished."
5. With these discrepancies, they can only be accepted as highly questionable, and certainly not as definitive.
a. They do not represent the perfect word of ANY God; or if they do, God's words have been VERY liberally edited, censored, revised, glossed and rewritten by human hands.
C. Jesus and the Essenes
1. As we have seen, the Judaic religion was still a tribal religion offering little chance for individual salvation during a time when people were looking for some assurance that they mattered beyond which tribe, or city or province they came from.
a. Mystery religions were well established in the east and making inroads into Rome herself.
(1) In addition to the Pharisees and Sadducees who were vying for control of Jerusalem at the time of Jesus' life, there was a sect of ascetics known as the Essenes.
(a) It has been said that the Essenes were the founders of a Mystery religion based along the lines of the sun worshipping Persian anchorites, who in turn evolved their system from Jain yogis professing to work miracles by living apart from the world and practicing extreme self denial.
[1] From historians and chroniclers writing at the time, it is known that the Essenes maintained communities throughout the Holy Land.
[a] A large colony of Essenes occupied the Qumran community from 110 BCE to the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE, with a significant period of vacancy during the reign of Herod, 31 BCE - 4 CE.
2. Jesus, John the Baptist, and Simon Magus are said to have been trained in Essenic communities.
a. Jesus' parents, Joseph and Mary, are also said to belong to the Essenic movement and Jesus may have received his rabbinical training in their schools.
(1) John the Baptist is thought by some to have been an 'advance man' to prepare the way for Jesus to fulfill the old prophecies of being the Messiah.
(a) But there is abundant evidence that Jesus not only knew what the prophecies were concerning the Messiah, but went to great lengths to plan for and carry out the prophecies.
3. The Essenic hierarchy included a chief priest called the Christos (Annointed One), "head of the entire Congre- gation of Israel."
a. There were ordinary priests called the "sons of Aaron", and another functionary known as the Messiah of Israel.
(1) The Messiah of Israel was also called Teacher of Righteousness.
(a) He suffered physical abuse in atonement for the sins of the entire community, enduring "vindictive sentences of scourging and the terrors of painful sicknesses, and vengeance on his fleshly body."
D. A Radical View
1. The following is a scenario of what the historical Jesus might have been all about based on looking at the Gospels without the trappings added after Christianity was transported to Rome and changed to bring it into alignment with competing religions.
EDITORS NOTE: THESE ARE CONJECTURE BY THE AUTHOR, NOT A STATEMENT OF KNOWN FACT BUT BASED ON THE FACTS KNOWN AND THE HISTORY OF THE TIMES AND OTHER RELIGIONS.
a. Included in this scenario, but of little importance to our discussion, is that Jesus may have been married and have living descendants to this day. Remember that Rabbis had always been allowed to marry.
(1) Jesus was a priest-king, an aristocrat and legitimate claimant to the throne of Palestine, who embarked on an attempt to regain his rightful heritage.
(a) He was believed to be a native of Galilee, which was a traditional hotbed of opposition to the Romans.
(2) He had numerous noble, rich and influential supporters throughout Palestine, including the capital city of Jerusalem.
(a) One of these supporters, a powerful member of the Sanhedrin, may also have been his kin.
(3) In the Jerusalem suburb of Bethany was possibly the home of either his wife or his wife's family; and here on the eve of his triumphal entry into the capital, the aspiring priest-king resided.
(a) Here he established the center for his mystery cult.
(b) Here he augmented his following by performing ritual initiations, including that of his brother-in-law.
[1] A mystery initiation being the meaning behind the 'miracle' of raising Lazarus from the dead.
(4) Such an aspiring priest-king would have generated powerful opposition in certain quarters.
(a) Amongst the Roman administration,
(b) And perhaps amongst the entrenched Judaic interests represented by the Sadducees.
[1] One or both of these interests apparently contrived to thwart his bid for the throne.
[a] But in their attempt to exterminate him they were not as successful as they had hoped to be.
(5) The priest-king had friends in high places.
(a) These friends, working in collusion with a corrupt, easily bribed Roman procurator, appear to have engineered a mock crucifixion, on private grounds, and thus inaccessible to all but a select few.
[1] With the general populace kept at a convenient distance, an execution was then staged.
[a] In which a substitute took the priest-king's place on the cross or in which the priest-king did not actually die.
[2] Toward dusk, further impeded visibility, the 'body' was removed to an opportunely adjacent tomb.
[a] From which, a day or two later, it 'miraculously' disappeared.
2. If Jesus was a legitimate claimant to the throne, it is probable that he was supported, at least initially, by a relatively small percentage of the populace.
a. His immediate family from Galilee, certain members of his own aristocratic social class, and a few strategically placed representatives in Judaea and the capital city of Jerusalem.
(1) Such a following, albeit distinguished, would hardly have been sufficient to ensure the realization of his objectives or the success of his bid for the throne.
(a) In consequence, he would have to recruit a more substantial following from other classes.
[1] Jesus promulgated a message that attempted to do just that.
[a] A message to offer hope to the downtrodden, the afflicted, the disenfranchised, the oppressed.
[b] It was a message with a promise.
[2] There is no evidence that he promulgated this message with cynicism, for he truly acted as though he took his role as priest to the people of Israel as seriously as he did his role as heir-apparent.
[3] His message was ethical and political.
[a] It was directed toward a particular segment of the population in accordance with political considerations.
b. Jesus' message, as it appears in the Gospels, is neither new nor wholly unique.
(1) But if the message, as such, was not entirely original, the means of transmitting it probably was.
(a) Jesus himself was undoubtedly an immensely charismatic individual.
[1] He may well have had an aptitude for healing and other such 'miracles.'
[a] He most certainly possessed a gift for communicating his ideas by means of evocative and vivid parables.
[b] Which did not require any sophisticated training for his audience, and made them accessible, in some sense, to the populace at large.
c. Moreover, unlike his Essene teachers, Jesus was not obliged to confine himself to forecasting the advent of a Messiah.
(1) He could claim to be that Messiah.
(a) And this, quite naturally, imparted greater authority and credibility to his words.
3. It is clear that by the time of his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Jesus had recruited a following.
a. But this following seems to have been composed of two quite distinct elements; whose interests were not precisely the same.
(1) On the one hand, there seemed to be a small nucleus of "initiates" - immediate family, other members of the nobility, wealthy and influential supporters.
(a) Whose primary objective was to see their candidate installed on the throne.
(2) On the other hand, there seems to have been a much larger entourage of 'common people' - the rank and file.
(a) Whose primary objective was to see this message, and the promise it contained, fulfilled.
b. It is important to recognize the distinction between these two factions.
(1) Their political objective - to establish Jesus on the throne - would have been the same.
(a) But their motivations were very different.
E. Christianity after Jesus
1. When the bid to put Jesus on the throne of Palestine failed, the uneasy alliance between the two factions fell apart.
a. The strength of the message that Jesus had used to gain his following had captured the hearts and minds of the followers who were not "insiders" and they fought to keep the hope alive.
(1) Little is said of the followers who backed Jesus in the hopes of garnering power from having helped their friend to the throne but it may well be imagined that they continued to fight for independence from Rome and many may well have perished at Masada.
(a) The first major crisis for the early christians was whether they could afford to be associated with the Jewish peoples, who were becoming increasingly rebellious toward Rome.
[1] It was clear that Rome would have to take action against the rebels.
[a] Against this backdrop the early christians needed to decide whether it was necessary to first be a Jew before becoming a christian.
<1> Saint Paul, always adept at reading the writing on the wall, decided it was not. It was also Paul who decided that the best place to take the new religion was the heart of the empire where there were many oppressed and downtrodden gentiles who, very possibly would be receptive to the message of hope.
2. The new religion was oriented primarily toward a Roman or Romanized audience.
a. Thus the role of Rome in Jesus' death was of course whitewashed, and guilt was transferred to the Jews.
(1) But this was not the only liberty taken with events to render them palatable to the Roman world.
(a) For the Roman world was accustomed to deifying its rulers, and Caesar had already been officially instated as a god.
[1] In order to compete, Jesus, whom nobody had previously deemed divine, had to be deified as well.
[a] In Paul's hands, he was.
3. Before the message could be successfully disseminated from Palestine to Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, Egypt, Rome and western Europe, the new religion had to be made acceptable to the people of those regions.
a. And it had to be capable of holding its own against already established creeds.
b. The new god needed to be comparable in power, majesty, and in his repertoire of miracles, to those he was intending to displace.
(1) If Jesus were to gain a foothold in the Romanized world of his time, he had to become a full-fledged god.
(a) Not a Messiah in the old sense of the term, not a priest-king, but God Incarnate.
[1] Who, like his Syrian, Phoenician, Egyptian, and classical counterparts, passed through the underworld and the harrowing of Hell, and emerged rejuvenated, with the spring.
[a] It was at this point that the idea of the Resurrection first assumed such critical importance, and for a fairly obvious reason, to place Jesus on a par with Tammuz, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, and all the other dying and resurrected gods who populated both the world and the consciousness of their time.
(b) For precisely this reason the doctrine of the virgin birth was promulgated.
(c) And the Easter festival, the festival of death and resurrection, was made to coincide with the spring rites of other contemporary cults and mystery schools.
4. Given the need to disseminate a god myth, the actual corporeal family of the 'god' and the political and dynastic elements in his history would become superfluous.
a. Fettered as they were to a specific time and place, they would have detracted from his claim to universality.
(1) Thus, to further the claim of universality all political and dynastic elements were rigorously excised from Jesus' biography.
(a) Also all references to Zealots, for example, and Essenes, were also discreetly removed.
b. Such references would have been embarrassing.
(1) It would not have appeared seemly for a god to be involved in a political and dynastic conspiracy. Especially one that failed.
5. In the end nothing was left but what was contained in the Gospels.
a. An account of mythic simplicity, occurring only incidentally in the Roman occupied Palestine of the first century, and primarily in the eternal present of all myth.
END OF LESSON 3 MAGIC IN THEORY
A. Origins of the word Magic
1. Derived from the greek "Magike Techne" meaning the art of the Magi.
a. The Magi were priests of ancient Persia (Iran) who also practiced in Chaldea and Babylon.
(1) They were similar to the Druids, in that they wore white robes and favored a simple mode of life and a vegetarian diet.
(2) The Magi worshipped no idols.
(a) They chose the Divine and Sacred Fire as the symbol of their Divine Being.
(b) The Divine Fire burned in their sanctuaries and was never allowed to go out.
(c) Parallels to this exist in the practices of the Vestal Virgins in ancient Rome and the Presence Lamps that are always kept burning over the altars of some Roman Catholic churches.
2. The Greeks were unaware of any other caste of priests that practiced the magical arts so they thought the Magi were responsible for them.
a. This shows how isolated and ill-informed the ancient peoples were of their own world.
(1) The Egyptians had quite a formidable magical system based on the Egyptian Book of the Dead many years before the Magi appeared in Persia. There is also a Tibetan Book of the Dead, which details a magical system derived from Tibetan funeral rites.
3. The Greeks may have gained their root word for magic from the Indo-European root word MAGH (meaning to be able, to have the power to act.)
4. Aleister Crowley started the custom of spelling magic as MAGICK as he felt it would help in differentiating between the illusions that are the stock in trade of stage magicians and real magic as practiced by serious students of the occult.
B. Working Definition of Magic
1. The ability to recognize and understand the underlying forces of nature and the laws which govern them.
a. Starhawk pares this down to the ability to change consciousness at will.
(1) To someone who understands these laws, magic is a very natural part of the Universe.
(a) People who do not understand these laws or who refuse to recognize them, see magic as a supernatural act performed against God and therefore unnatural.
C. Foundation of Magical Theory
1. All of magical theory is based on the development of the human brain and subsequent attempts to gain control over a hostile environment.
a. The single most important development in the evolution of humankind was the development and subsequent use of the cerebellum.
(1) Until humans developed a 'higher brain' they had only their 'animal brain' to guide them through life.
(a) This 'animal brain' is responsible for those functions that people sometimes call instincts, but are really functions of the autonomic nervous system.
(b) The autonomic nervous system monitors and maintains vital functions such as heartbeat, digestion, circulation, hormone production and immediate responses to dangerous situations.
(c) Recent research in Biofeedback and Cybernetics have revealed that the autonomic nervous system (known commonly as the automatic nervous system, because it takes no conscious thought to operate) is actually capable of being directly controlled by conscious thought.
b. With the development of the 'higher brain', early humanity was able to see the world as an integrated whole in which they played an independent role.
(1) The development of this 'higher brain' led to self- consciousness and started us on the road to questioning how our world worked and how we could gain control of our environment.
(2) The subsequent development of the cerebrum into two specialized organs interconnected so that they could work independently or co-operatively as needed, led to the ability to examine the world from two different viewpoints.
(a) The right half of the brain enabled humankind to form holistic concepts of the interactions of the forces of nature in a dynamic way.
(b) The left half of the brain allowed the development of verbal skills which ensured the transmission of knowledge learned through trial and error and thus gave humanity the peculiar ability to learn without the need to directly experience.
II. MAGIC IN PRACTICE.
A. The early magical systems were based on the observation that all of reality is based on the interaction of various natural forces.
1. The two basic magical powers that are taught to all humans as their birthright are the ability to embody complex concepts in symbolic words and to divide the world into 'pieces' so that they can examine it for short periods of time as though it were caught in a 'freeze frame.'
a. We dismiss the ability to embody complex concepts in symbolic words as being too fundamental to consider, but it is the basis for all learning.
(1) This process, which we call naming, is vital to our understanding of the world around us.
(a) By creating names that embody specific concepts, we create a vocabulary by which 'initiates' in the subject can manipulate the relationships between the different concepts to reveal new truths that lead to a better understanding of the world around us.
(2) Gaining control over something by learning its name is one of the oldest forms of magic.
(a) In the Christian Bible, God instructs Adam and Eve to name all the plants and creatures and to exercise dominion over all of them.
(b) In societies which practice magic, mothers give their children 'true names' and 'public names' to protect them from harm by someone wishing the child ill.
(c) Most people have heard the story of Rumplestiltskin, where the heroine must guess the villains name, otherwise she will be unable to stop him from carrying out his evil deeds.
(d) Or the story of the wizard who manages to summon a demon to do his bidding, only to wind up becoming a slave to the demon because he did not know the demons proper name.
b. Once humankind began to exert its influence on the world, the need to differentiate its parts and count them became very important.
(1) We differentiate the world through the use of DISCRIMINATION and this allows us to count the separate parts.
(a) Discrimination is the ability to separate an object from its shadow, trees from a forest, your child from a group of children, and your friends from your enemies.
(2) Counting took on additional significance when trading surplus food for finished goods became the basis of early commerce.
(a) The merchants needed to develop a method of keeping track of their transactions. At first they used a picture code similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics, which involved drawing a picture that represented the goods traded and which were then assigned a numerical value in accordance with how much could be traded for the goods.
(b) This was before the concept of money and allowed merchants to trade for credits of non-tangible assets.
(c) As competition grew the merchants started abbreviating the pictures of their trade goods and the symbols became the letters of the various alphabets, with the number values still attached.
(3) As astronomy and astrology were developed, the people who were learning to recognize these interactions of the forces of nature needed to record their knowledge, and they seized upon the merchants secret trade codes, or alphabets (named after the first two letters in the Phoenician script.)
(a) Because they placed great importance on the measuring of things they also adopted the numerical values of the letters as representing the numerical truth of the symbols they were using to record their new knowledge.
(b) This led to the magical system called GEMATRIA, which is based on reducing the letters of someones name, etc to a number which is assigned special significance.
c. Gematria was especially popular with biblical scholars. In the thirteenth chapter of Revelations in the Christian Bible, a beast "comes up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns and ten crowns, and on its heads the name of blasphemy". One of the heads had been 'wounded to death', but the wound had healed. "Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred, hreescore and six."
(1) It is generally accepted now that the Beast was meant to stand for the Roman Empire and its seven heads for the seven Emperors.
(a) The head which was wounded to death but healed, looks like an oblique reference to Nero, who took great delight in persecuting the new Christian faith and its followers, one of the more well known of which was letting them fight lions bare handed in the Coliseum. He was murdered in 68 AD, but there were persistent rumors that he had risen again and had escaped to the East, and would soon return with an army to take his revenge.
d. Aleister Crowley adopted the name of The Great Beast which, when reduced from greek into numbers using gematria, equals 666. He did this partly to shock the good people of the late Victorian era and partly as an exercise in imitative magic.
e. Another story told of the importance placed on the interpretation of the Christian Bible through gematria involves the same chapter of Revelations and the Social Security Administration in the United States of America.
(1) In chapter 13:16-17, the author speaks of a second beast which comes after the first. 'Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to marked on the right hand or the forehead,' 'so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name.'
(2) These verses were quoted over and over from pulpits in the United States when it was announced that everyone was to be issued a Social Security number for purposes of identification, and that all government files would require the populace to submit their Social Security number along with their name, to be sure they were properly identified.
(a) The citizens, whipped into a fury by the clergy, deluged their Congressmen with letters of protest.
(b) The Congressmen, being pragmatists, came upon a plan to soothe the savage breasts of their constituents and still get their own way.
(c) They made it a part of the Social Security Act that the number was not to be used as identification for any purpose other than for Social Security. This is why all Social Security cards bear the legend "Not to be used for Identification."
(d) Many years later, around 1973, this was set aside when Military Service numbers were abandoned in favor of using Social Security numbers to identify military service personnel.
(e) Even today the Social Security card is not generally accepted as identification, not because of the original objection, but because it does not have a photo of the bearer.
2. The ancients, in seeking to bring order and understanding to their world, developed the concept of the Elementals.
a. They recognized that everything was the result of the interaction of four great natural forces.
b. These Elementals were not seen as what the world was made of, like todays' elements in chemistry, but a shorthand way of explaining the way things interacted.
c. After a while the process of visualizing the Elementals as personifications of the natural forces produced thoughtforms which were able to act independently of their creators.
(1) The major force that exhibited the principle of motion was ascribed to the Element of Air.
(a) In visualizing airy beings the race of Sylphs were actualized on our planet. These creatures had wings of gossamer, with very slight and tiny bodies, their facial features were made up of sharp planes and they tended to very short attention spans, and this usually left them in very good spirits because it was not their nature to brood. Childhood stories retain a racial memory of the Sylphs in our present day Fairies, much as Walt Disney drew Tinkerbell.
(2) When the natural attribute of a force was expansion it was said to have a Fiery nature.
(a) The Elemental creatures of Fire were the Salamanders. These creatures loved to play in the warm ashes of fireplaces and their skin glowed with alternating colors just like a hot piece of charcoal.They were quick to take offense and could carelessly allow a fire outside of the fireplace, if the family they chose to live with allowed the ashes to get too cold for them to be comfortable. With our present dependence on natural gas and electricity to provide our heat, we have lost touch with the fire Elementals, but the big brothers of the Salamanders were dragons, which possessed the airy quality of flight, the fiery quality of being able to exhale fire and the earthy quality of being fascinated by bright jewels and glittering gold.
(3) The natural force of contraction was assigned to the Elemental of Water.
(a) The race of water Elementals were called Undines after the undulating property of water, which rises and falls in synchronization with the movements of the Moon. The Undines were thought to be related to the Sylphs but of a stouter character. They were slow to anger and slow to soothe, and steadfast unless stirred up by the Sylphs.
(4) The epitome of the solid earthiness the last Elemental was the Gnome and his burrowing cousin the Dwarf.
(a) Gnomes and Dwarves were as big hearted as they were diminutive, but they did not take kindly to anyone who harmed the earth. The forest was the natural habitat of Gnomes and they knew all the secrets of each bud, leaf, root, and tree. The Dwarves lived inside the earth and mined the treasures that were uncovered by dint of their delving. Skill in metalsmithing developed alongside their shrewd sense of trading and woe to the person who got between a Dwarf and his treasure or bested him in a deal.
d. In the early stages of humanity's development, the personifications of the Elementals lived on the fringes of human settlements, and developed their own societies and kingdoms.
(1) But as humans started to infringe upon their domains and closed themselves off to seeing the Elementals, they in turn withdrew into the higher planes.
(a) Since they were originally expressions of natural forces on earth, they are bound to it and serve as caretakers for the earth until humankind is wise enough to care for it without their help.
(b) Because they were actualized on this plane by the strength of human thought, they owe a debt of brotherhood to the human race and will appear and help those humans who learn how to summon them.
3. Confronting the twin mysteries of Birth and Death, early humanity was forced to consider the existence of a Supreme Being responsible for these Mysteries.
a. Why some societies chose to see these forces as warring or opposite, while others chose to view them as mutually beneficial or complementary, we can only guess.
(1) What we can be sure of is that a lot of their rituals and magical acts were motivated by their particular world view.
(a) The body of accepted rituals and magical acts were codified and served as the basis of the religion which would grow up to explain how the world began, how someone was supposed to act while in it, and what happened after s/he died.
4. Imitative and Sympathetic Magic evolved as a means of influencing the world around the Ancients.
a. These two forms of magic were based on the principles of mimicry, contagion, and the belief that man is a microcosm of the macrocosm.
(1) Imitative magic is the general category which covers magic performed on a model,doll or actor representing the real world counterpart, which is to be affected.
(a) Examples of this type of magic would be cave drawings depicting successful hunts, love poppets and Voodoo dolls, and the survival of ancient folk dances wherethe dancer dons the skin and horns of an animal while the other dancers act out the stalking and killing of the "sacrifice."
(b) Mimicry of a real life situation, while utilizing parts of the subject to form a bond is the basis for imitative magic.
(c) Underlying imitative magic is the Theory of Contagion, which holds that parts of a living being contain the essence of its life, even after being separated. In simple terms, a magical link exists between ourselves and our parts.
(d) American Indians and Orientals did not want their pictures taken, for fear of losing their spirits inside of the camera.
(e) Many of the Grimoires from the Middle-ages warn against allowing nail clippings, locks of hair, or old articles of clothing to fall in the hands of your enemies for fear of the harm your enemies could bring against you by harming them.
(f) As a side note, the dancers in the mummers plays took great care to ensure that the skins and horns of the animals that were used in their dances were taken from male animals, this ensured that the females were left to breed and produce new game for the future.
(2) Sympathetic magic is based on the belief that man is a miniature reproduction of the universe, that he is the microcosm to the universes macrocosm.
(a) This is based on the drawing of analogies between two like beings.
(b) Many of the important magical analogies are not natural to most peoples minds today, but have been handed down by tradition from the remote past.
(c) Salt is used to ward off demons. All demons are supposed to detest it and no salt should be used in ceremonies designed to attract them. Salt is anti-demonic because it is a preservative. Since demons are creatures that corrupt and destroy, anything that has a preservative quality is contrary to their nature and is disagreeable to them.
5. Attempts to group observations into a codified system of relationships resulted in the development of the many Tables of Correspondences, which have been handed down through the ages and serve as source documents for creating new rituals.
a. These tables usually ascribe variously corresponding items to one of the old Astrological Planets.
(1) Each planet is ruled by a Goddess or a God from the local pantheon and has its own number, color, musical note, metal, gem stone, hour of the day, herbs and flowers, and attributes.
III. WESTERN TRADITIONS OF CEREMONIAL MAGIC
A. Hermetic Magic
1. This is the main tradition of the West and has been championed by many secret societies such as the Freemasons, Golden Dawn Society, and the Builders of Adytum.
a. Franz Bardon has written three volumes of instructions for aspiring Hermetic Magicians.
2. What we know of Hermetic Magic dates from the first century AD.
a. Hermetic Magic is a mixture of traditions. It combines Egyptian knowledge with ideas of the Greeks and Jews who lived in Egypt, principally in Alexandria, at the time of Jesus.
b. These three groups all claimed that the knowledge they held in common was divinely inspired. There are two different accounts of how the knowledge had been received.
(1) The first account derives from the apocryphal Book of Enoch.
(a) In a passage that amplifies Genesis 6:1-5, Enoch tells how 200 angel descended from heaven to Mount Hermon and took wives from the "daughters of man."
(b) The angels taught their knowledge to these women and to the children they bore. For this presumption, the angels were thrown out of heaven.
(c) Hermetic scholars recognize in this account a parallel to the myth of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
(d) In the Gnostic interpretation of Adam and Eve's fall, Jehovah is not The Deity, but a powerful though lesser spirit, who built the material world and rules over it.
(e) Because of his jealousy and pride Jehovah forbade knowledge to Adam and Eve hoping they would worship him as the Highest God.
(f) The serpent, in this interpretation, is not Satan, but the spirit Ouroboros, sent by Wisdom (Sophia) to liberate the minds of men and women.
(g) Magical knowledge is thus seen to be a higher and more pious wisdom than obedience to Jehovah and the serpent Ouroboros, far from being humankinds enemy, is seen as one of its greatest saviours.
(2) In a second account, magical knowledge came from Hermes Trismegistus (Thrice Great Hermes) who has given his name to the magical sciences.
(a) Hermes was a god of Greek settlers in Egypt, and was also identified with the Egyptian God Thoth.
(b) Through the agency of an ancient Egyptian king, this god gave humankind 42 books of knowledge, of which 14 short fragments, in Greek, survive.
(c) The most important of these is the Emerald Tablet.
(d) What we derive from Hermes above all is the Doctrine of Correspondence: "That which is above is like that which is below."
(e) In other words, each man and woman is a small model of the cosmos. Each mind is a model of the Divine mind.
(f) The four material elements - water, earth, wind and fire - are models of the four universal principles.
(g) The Ptolemaic scheme of the solar system is a model of the system of the astral spheres.
(h) The Doctrine of Correspondence is essential to magic, and to all occult studies.
c. From Hermetic Tradition we derive not only Ceremonial Magic, but also Alchemy.
(1) Magicians have usually practiced both sciences; and both are said to have been taught by the angels of the Book of Enoch and by Hermes Trismegistus.
(a) The difference between them is that, in alchemy, the magician tries to bring about a special physical manifestation of ether. This is the Philosophers Stone, the prima materia. With it the Alchemist can transmute base metals into gold, which is the highest material form.
(b) The Ceremonial Magician on the other hand, manipulates the ether to call upon spirits and to learn from them.
(c) Obviously, these are two similar, though very different branches of one science.
B. Faustian Magic
1. Faustian magic is the evocation of demons, and it began to develop well before the 16th century when Faust lived.
a. We do not know how much Faustian magic the 16th century wizard, Dr. Johann Faust, actually practiced.
(1) There are several copies extant of a book attributed to him.
(a) Doctoris Iohannis Fausti magiae naturalis et innaturalis, printed in Passau in 1505.
b. The most significant of the magical practices advocated by these books is the use of a book of spirits or Liber Spiritum.
(1) The Liber Spiritum must be written on virgin paper.
(a) On the left hand pages are pictures of demons and on the right hand pages are oaths that those demons have taken to serve the sorcerer.
(b) Each oath is signed by the demons mark.
(c) The book must be consecrated by a priest, who says three holy masses over it.
2. The process the good doctor had to go through to evoke the demons and force them to swear oaths to him was very involved.
a. Here is a short biography of Faust.
(1) Johann Faust (ca. 1480 - ca. 1540 ) probably born in Swabia and was described by a contemporary as "a most filthy beast, the midden of numberless devils." He was as notorious for his homosexuality as he was for his reputed pact with Mephistopheles. When he died there was "a great noise and shaking of the house that night......In the morning he was found dead, with his neck rung behind him; the Divell whom he served having carried his soule into Hell." Although he sold his soul for material gain, he seems to have died in poverty.
C. Enochian Magic
1. What we know of Enochian Magic comes from a book called "A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed For Many Years Between Doctor John Dee and Some Spirits", edited by Meric Casaubon and published in 1659.
a. The book is a memoir of the Welsh scholar John Dee (1527- 1608), concerning the experiments he conducted with the aid of the psychic Edward Kelley (c. 1553-1595).
(1) John Dee was a mathematician and astrologer at the court of Elizabeth I of England, while Edward Kelley was a psychic; he was also probably a sorcerer and necromancer.
b. Dee learned the Kelley had a gift for contacting spirits by means of crystal gazing, and from 1582 to 1587 he used Kelley in arduous attempts to learn the wisdom of the angels.
(1) Kelley, for his part, was never sure he was communicating with angels and he constantly tried to with- draw from the experiments, but Dee convinced him to continue.
c. Eventually, the spirits (chiefly a guide named Enoch) communicated through Kelley a spiritual language.
(1) This Enochian language had an alphabet of 21 letters. The spirits supplied 19 invocations in this language and they translated these for Dee. They also dictated magical diagrams, primarily squares, some of them containing as many as 2,401 letters and instructions for their use.
2. Despite the wealth of knowledge it encompassed, Enochian magic fell into obscurity for many years.
a. It was revived by the Order of the Golden Dawn and is currently on the market titled "The Book of Enoch", and claims to present the complete Enochian system in a simplified and easy to use format.
D. Abramelin Magic
1. This branch of magic is based on an 18th century french manuscript titled "The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage".
a. Abramelin set forth the semi-Gnostic doctrine that the world was created and is maintained by demons who work under orders from angels.
(1) A magician given the help of a Guardian Angel, could learn to control the demons for his own purposes.
(a) An adept depends heavily on word magic in the process and especially on palindromic magic squares.
IV. THE GREAT BOOKS OF MAGIC
A. All great fairy tales mention the Magic Book of Spells, kept by the great magicians of times long ago.
1. These are records of incantations and gestures that have been tried out hundreds of times before and proved to be most effective.
2. Medieval magaicians collected any and all books on magic they could get their hands on.
a. There was an explosion of magical books in the Middle Ages.
(1) Most were imperfect copies of each other as they were translated from language to language and back again.
(a) These books were called Grimoires, perhaps an adulteration of the french word for Grammer, which was applied to books used to teach the basics of different subjects to the children.
b. Actually there were only about five books of magic which had any claim whatsoever of being authentic and most of the others were incomplete, and usually incorrect, copies of these basic five.
B. History of the Grimoires
1. The Testament of Solomon is the first great book of magic known to us.
a. It was published in Greek between 100-400 AD.
(1) Probably copied down by hand in the 2nd century.
(a) Speaking of the book as being published is of course strictly a convention since all books were hand copied until the invention of the printing press.
b. This book purports to be Solomon's autobiographical memoir of the building of the Temple in Jerusalem, which he accomplished with the slave labor of devils.
(1) With the help of a ring given to him by the angel Raphael, Solomon bound the vampire devil Ornais and forced him to work on the Temple.
(a) Solomon learned the names of the other devils from Ornias and bound them as well.
(2) By the 12th or 13th century, a list of 51 useful demons had crept into copies of the Testament of Solomon.
(a) These were demons who could be persuaded to bring material benefits to the sorcerer.
2. The Key of Solomon is perhaps the most famous of all the magical texts.
a. There are many versions in various languages.
(1) The bulk of these are in French and Latin, some dating from the 18th century.
(a) The Grimoire itself is believed to be much older. In the 1st century AD Josephus referred to a book of incantations for summoning evil spirits supposedly written by Solomon.
(b) A Greek version in the British Museum may date back to the 12th or 13th century.
b. The Key was prohibited as a dangerous work by the Inquisition in 1559, although like most books of magic, the local clergy were allowed to keep (and to use) copies as long as they did not step out of line and/or defy the authority of Rome.
c. The Key was concerned almost wholly with the practice of magic for personal gain.
(1) It contained no hierarchy of demons, but it did offer a system of magic based on the drawing of pentacles, which are five pointed stars inscribed with charms.
(a) These were grouped according to astrological signs.
(b) The pentacles for Saturn, for instance, were useful for causing earthquakes, inciting demons to fall upon victims, and in general bringing about ruin, destruction and death.
3. The Lemegeton, or Lesser Key of Solomon, appeared mot long after the Key of Solomon.
a. It was divided into four parts.
(1) Goetia
(a) Wier, Agrippa's pupil was said to have drawn on the Goetia for his Grimoire called Psuedomonarchia Daemonium.
(2) Theurgia Goetia
(3) The Pauline Art
(4) The Almadel
(a) The Almadel was mentioned in writings dating back to the 1500's.
b. The Lemegeton included a complete hierarchy of 72 demons, whom the sorcerer could evoke for his benefit.
c. The origin and meaning of the Lemegeton is unknown.
4. The Constitution of Honorius first appeared in 1629.
a. It was attributed to Pope Honorius III (1216-1227) and its main contribution was to put a strongly Roman Catholic construction on magical evocation.
(1) Manuscript copies (corrupt ones) of the Constitution of Honorius made their way to Germany well before 1629. These had been translated from Latin to French leading some to believe that it had made its way into France before coming to Germany, where it was translated from French into German.
b. Elements of the Constitution mingled with certain other available texts and from these arose the strange mixture of practices that can properly be called Faustian magic.
5. The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage is another puzzling text with no definite source.
a. As far as we know, it began as an 18th century French manuscript, dated 1458, and it claimed to have been translated from Hebrew.
(1) MacGregor Mathers, who founded the Order of the Golden Dawn, came across the text in the British Museum and translated it into English. Since then it has had a strong influence on the practice of magic.
C. Other Grimoires
1. As previously noted, there was an explosion of Grimoires in the Middle Ages and they continued to proliferate with the advent of the Rennaisance.
a. Most of these Grimoires were rip offs of the Key of Solomon or later additions by lesser known magicians to works attributed to well known magicians.
(1) Grimorum Verum, written in French and supposedly published in Memphis by Alibeck the Egyptian in 1517, although it probably dates from the 18th centuryand seems to be based on the Key of Solomon.
(2) Grand Grimoire, was written in French and dating from the 18th century.
(3) The Red Dragon, a version of the Grand Grimoire
(4) True Black Magic or The Secret of Secrets, a French version of the Key of Solomon published in 1750.
(5) The Arbatel of Magic, published in Latin at Basle, Switzerland in 1575.
(6) The Black Pullet, supposedly published in Egypt in 1740, it probably dates from the late 18th century.
(7) The Fourth Book, added to Agrippa's Occult Philosophy after his death, and rejected by his pupil Wier as a forgery.
(8) The Magical Elements of Heptameron
(a) Attributed to Peter of Abano, who died in 1316. It was probably written in the 16th century as a supplement to the Fourth Book.
LESSON 4A
I. THE TRAINING OF A MAGICIAN
A. How Ceremonial Magic Works
1. We have seen that magical texts always appeared in print many years after they were written.
a. By that time, the texts had become corrupted, secrets had been suppressed, and whole new doctrines had been grafted onto the older teachings.
2. The practice of magic is a highly individual matter.
a. A true adept works out his own methods of evocation after sifting through all the available material and adopting techniques that resonate with his own inner self.
(1) Magic is an inner discipline. The errors that crept into the magical texts were errors of form as opposed to errors of substance.
(a) The inner meaning is what gives the work its power. What matters is the magician's state of mind, which produces the psychic force he invests in the invocation.
3. Before one can practice magic he must attain a high level of development in the mental, psychic and physical planes.
a. In order to practice ceremonial magic it is necessary to strengthen and develop the physical and etheric.
(1) Become expert in the techniques of astral travel and psi.
(a) And master the symbols of the Universal Mind in all their forms.
4. Magicians are reputed to be able to make spirits appear and talk to them face to face, materialize balls of fire or watery globes and set them to work, penetrate people's minds, and travel to the farthest parts of the world as quickly as thought.
a. They area said to be able to do these things by mastering the use of the universal energy called ether.
(1) Some call the universal energy AKASHA which is a Sanskrit word meaning bright or shining.
(2) Ether is not matter, but it is the origin, or substratum, of all matter.
(a) It infuses the entire universe. The universe being considered to be nothing but ether in its various states of existence.
(3) Ether emanates directly from the Deity. At its purest, the point at which it is closest to the Deity, it is pure light.
(a) As it emanates outward in all directions it becomes more and more gross.
(b) The different levels of what we call the astral plane are levels of ether.
(c) What we call the material plane is the lowest, grossest form of ether.
5. Magicians use the Ptolemaic scheme of the universe as a map of the etheric levels.
a. In this scheme, the universe is made up of 10 astral spheres and four material spheres.
b. It is further grouped into the Higher Astral, Lower Astral, and the Material Planes.
(1) The Higher Astral Plane
(a) Primum Mobile (First Mover)
(b) Crystal firmament
(c) Fixed stars
(2) The Lower Astral Plane
(a) Saturn
(b) Jupiter
(c) Mars
(d) Sun
(e) Venus
(f) Mercury
(g) Moon
(3) The Material Plane
(a) Fire
(b) Air
(c) Water
(d) Earth
c. In describing the Material plane magician use the ancient division of four elements: earth, water, air and fire.
(1) Ether serves as the fifth element or (in Latin) the quinta essentia, or quintessence.
(a) Because ether (or akasha or quintessence) has no bounds of time or space, anyone who learns to use it will be able to penetrate all levels of the universe thoroughly and instantly.
(b) The magician who is adept in his craft can thus work equally well on the mental, astral, and material planes.
B. The Apprenticeship
1. It is possible to stumble across your hidden talents, but it is better to follow a set course of study in magic.
a. This provides guidance along the way and because you are following a path that has been trodden before, you will come across milestones that will help you gauge your progress.
b. The following information is derived from a 10-stage program of initiation based on the contemporary German magician Franz Bardon's book Initiation into Hermetics.
2. Before you begin you must give up the idea that you own your own thoughts.
a. Most people believe their thoughts are part of their minds, just as their hands are a part of their bodies.
(1) Your thoughts live freely in your mind, just as wild animals roam freely through a forest.
(a) Each mind is connected to the Universal Mind and thoughts, as well as thought-forms, swim through it occasionally surfacing in this mind and that.
(b) This concept must be mastered if you are to understand and master the process of magical evocation.
b. The spirits you will evoke inhabit your mind just as independently as your thoughts. They live in your mind because it is a part of the Universal Mind.
(1) For this reason if you evoke a spirit of the sphere Venus, it will not arrive from outer space but from within your own mind.
(a) The spirits originate in the mind but they are quite real. The spirits do appear and work on the material plane, but you must look within yourself for them.
(b) The point is that whatever you seek must be looked for within, for you only delude yourself when you look for the answers outside yourself.
3. Once you have grasped the material above fully, you can begin the ten stages of the initiation.
a. tThe exercises will prepare you menetally, psychically, and physically for the practice of magic.
(1) Mental- Now that you are aware that your thoughts are like living beings, you must become more aware of them. Meditation, perhaps coupled with yoga, is a good way of doing this.
END LESSON 4 THE MEANING OF RITUAL IN WORKING MAGIC
A. The Need to Change the Wiring in our Brains.
1. Learning to work magic requires that a certain amout of neurological re-patterning of our brains takes place.
a. To be effective, we have to change the way we use our brains.
(1) Magic requires the development and integration of the right hemisphere way of thinking with the left hemisphere way of thinking.
(a) The spacial, intuitive and holistic patterns of awareness that characterize the right hemisphere modes of consciousness must be able to communicate and work in harmony with the verbal, analytical and linear patterns of awareness so characteristic of the left hemisphere.
(b) A person's growth, creativity and personality is deeply influenced during this process and it eventually leads to a person who is truly functional as a whole person.
B. The language of magic is expressed in symbols and images.
1. Images bridge the gap between the verbal and non-verbal modes of awareness.
a. Symbols and images implant certain ideas in Younger Self who passes them on to High Self.
(1) By allowing the critical and analytical functions of Talking Self to relax, Younger Self may respond fully and emotionally to what happens during your magical workings.
(a) Ritual, which is defined as "a specific set of images and symbols attached to certain actions", allows us to deliberately alter our states of consciousness so that we may perform works of magic.
2. All humans relate to their environment through symbols and rituals.
a. Except during rare occasions, we do not experience our environment directly.
(1) Our left hemisphere patterning awareness developed so we could safely ignore anything in our environment which was not potentially dangerous.
(a) A direct benefit of this survival tactic was the ability to concentrate, which allowed us to examine the world around us and led to experimentation.
(b) Experimentation led to better ways of doing things, such as making tools, and technology was born. It has served as a goad and a goal since then.
b. The way our left hemisphere works is fascinating
(1) Working as a filter of all the stimuli coming into the various senses of a human, the left hemisphere examines everything closely and then files the new sensory data away as images, tastes, smells, etc. where it stays in memory.
(a) The majority of this activity occurs when we are young and enchanted with the world around us.
(b) Maturity is usually judged by the degree to which your enthusiasm for examining the world around you has diminished.
(c) Ironically, when you become too mature, you withdraw from the world around you and lose interest, this is usually marked by a tendency to live in your memories instead of the present. This condition is called old age and people who give in to living in the past are called senile.
(d) Those of us who never lose our sense of wonder toward all the world has to offer are often accused of having never 'grown up' or if, we have managed to live long enough, to be going through our 'second childhood.'
(2) As we approach something in our normal everyday activities we receive an image from our eyes and a part of our brain searches through our memory for an image that matches the one at which we are looking.
(a) If there is already an image on file, even if it is not a perfect match, the image on file is fed to that part of our brain which 'sees' what we are approaching.
(b) In this instance, assuming that we have not associated the image in memory with something dangerous, we will walk past the object without paying it any attention or actually seeing the object.
(c) If there is not an image on file we will stop and examine the new object as if we were seeing it for the first time, which we are.
(d) Then having classified and categorized it, we then file it away in our memory for future reference and continue on our way, oblivious to our surroundings.
(3) This behavior allows us to concentrate on more abstract things than worrying if our favorite armchair is going to have us for brunch.
(a) An extension of this type of behavior is the formation of habits. Habits are ways of interacting with our environment, based on assumptions made using our stored images and experiences as a true picture of reality.
(b) In effect, habits are pre-programmed responses to everyday occurrences.
(4) A little known fact relating to habits is that habits do fulfill a psychological need.
(a) And you cannot break a habit, you can only replace it with another that meets that same psychological need.
II RITUAL ETIQUETTE
a. The Ritual Bath
1. Before performing a ritual it is necessary to prepare yourself for the work ahead.
a. A ritual bath washes away the dirt and grime of the everyday world along with the tensions of the mundane world
(1) Draw a hot bath and add some essence, oils or perfume that makes you feel good.
(a) If you have studied the uses of oils and scents in magic, you might want to tune your additives to the work to be done.
(2) Turn off all the lights and light a single white taper.
(a) Make sure that it is in a candle holder that will handle it without you worrying about it setting fire to anything or spilling wax where you do not want it. Votive candles and holders work very well for this.
(3) Light a stick of incense or place some on a glowing coal in a censer that you can pick up.
(4) Place some sea salt in a white dish or small bowl.
(a) Being so close to the sea (southern California) it is easy to collect sea salt by just taking some ocean water home and letting it evaporate in the direct sunlight until all that is left is the salt crystals.
(b) If you cannot get sea salt, you might want to use some iodized or rock salt from the market. It is essentially the same thing but personally I like the idea of making or collecting my own salt.
(5) You should have some purified water in a cup or vial.
(a) Fresh spring water or stream water is ideal but most of us living in the desert have to make due with bottled water from the store.
(b) Rain water, collected, strained, and kept in glass bottles is a good substitute.
(c) It is definitely preferred that you not use tap water because of the additives in it.
b. The following is a very simple ritual for consecrating the ritual bath.
(1) Lock the doors and unplug the phone.
(a) This is to ensure that you are not disturbed.
(2) Once the bath is drawn and any oils have been added to it as desired, take the candle and make three slow passes over the water as you say the following evocation.
(a) "By this creature of fire do I purify this ritual bath. May all impurities flee before its light."
(b) Set the candle down so that it is out of the way but still sheds light on your work.
(3) Take up the dish of salt and, sprinkling three pinches of the salt into the water say the following.
(a) "By this creature of earth do I purify this ritual bath. All impure creatures may not approach it."
(4) Set the dish of salt aside and pick up the incense or censer and make three passes over the water as you say the following evocation.
(a) "By this creature of Air do I purify this ritual bath. May my hopes and aspirations rise upon the smoke to be carried by the winds to the Lady."
(5) Set the incense aside and pick up the water. Pour the water into the bath. You may form patterns that appeal to you if you like. Say the following.
(a) "By this creature of water do I purify this ritual bath. May this bath contain the Waters of Life that spring forth from the Heart of the Mother."
(6) Settle into the bath and soak until the water starts to get too cold to stay in or until you have fully relaxed and left the tensions of the world behind, which ever comes first.
(a) This is a good time to meditate on the work you wish to do.
(7) Dry off with a freshly cleaned white towel, that has been allowed to dry in the sunlight if possible.
(a) Again, the color of the towel can be coordinated with the work you intend to do. I prefer large bath sheets that I can wrap around myself until I am ready to dress.
(8) Apply any anointing oils that you plan to wear and dress in fresh clean clothes, or in robes if you do not have to travel to your working site.
c. There are provisions made for 'emergency' ritual baths in the event that you cannot take a real bath.
(1) These usually involve dousing yourself with specially prepared solutions that serve the purpose.
(a) These are not favored as they do not allow any time for relaxation and meditation.
(b) Any good 'formulary' should have the recipe for instant ritual bath solutions.
B. Handling Ritual Tools
1. A Witch's tools are more personal than her toothbrush.
a. Generally, it is considered extremely bad form to handle another persons tools without prior permission.
(1) Some witches charge their tools so that others who handle them incorrectly can receive a nasty jolt of psychic power to teach them to keep their hands to themselves. Personally, I do not approve of this practice as it may result in harming someone too innocent to know that they should not be handling the tools.
2. Some Covens maintain ritual tools that they only allow their own members to handle.
a. If you are a guest, it is always best to avoid offending anyone by not handling anything unless it is specifically offered to you.
C. Entering and Leaving the Circle
1. A witch's magic circle is designed to keep the power raised within it contained and concentrated.
a. Leaving and entering the circle during the ritual tends to weaken it and for this reason it is not encouraged.
(1) Animals and small children can pass through the barrier of the circle because they live in a 'state of grace' under the protection of the Goddess.
(a) Even so, animals and children should be kept out of the ritual area unless they are a specific part of the ritual because they are distracting.
b. When it cannot be helped, the High Priestess will open, or 'cut' a door in the circle so that people who need to, can pass into or out of it.
(1) Naturally, after the person has passed through the High Priestess will set a guard or close (seal) the circle.
c. Walking across the barriers of the circle is considered to be extremely disrespectful and only someone who wants to test the patience of the High Priestess will do it knowingly.
D. Movement Within the Circle
1. Movement within the circle is in accordance to the order found in nature.
a. As you face South you can track the Sun and Moon from your Left to your Right.
(1) This is the order of how we move in the circle, from side to side when doing things such as lighting candles, etc.
b. Continuing the movement from the West to the North and back to the East we have inscribed a circle in a clockwise or Deosil (for 'as the sun travels') motion.
(1) Deosil is the direction the Circle is cast in, and all circular movement within the Circle should be in a clockwise direction.
(a) There are times when we would move in a counter clockwise direction but that would be only under the specific directions of the High Priestess and even then only after explaining why we were doing it.
(b) The general rule is "Always move in a clockwise direction."
2. Each Coven maintains its own practices for giving salutes during invocations, evocations and blessings.
a. Invoking and banishing pentagrams are also used in setting up the Circle and during other rituals acts.
(1) Imitating the others in the group is a 'safe' way to avoid any social blunders.
(a) When in doubt, do not do anything that you feel uncomfortable about.
III CREATING MEANINGFUL RITUALS.
A. Creating Sacred Space
1. We define a new space and a new time whenever we cast a Circle in the Craft to begin a ritual.
a. The Circle exists outside the boundaries of ordinary space and time. We say it is between the worlds of the seen and the unseen.
(1) It is a space in which alternate realities meet, in which the past and future are open to us.
b. Casting the Circle is an enacted meditation.
(1) We create an energy form which serves as a boundary that limits and contains the movement of subtle forces.
(a) In group work, it is usually the High Priestess or her assistant who casts the Circle.
2. Casting the Circle is the formal beginning of the ritual.
a. It is the complex 'cue' that tells us to switch our awareness into a deeper mode.
(1) In ritual, we 'suspend disbelief' just as we do when we are watching a play or reading fiction.
3. In the permanent stone circles of the Megalithic era, where rituals were enacted for hundreds of years, great reservoirs of power were built up.
a. There was no need to draw out the circle as we do today, because the stones defined the sacred space.
(1) Casting a temporary circle as we do today probably began during the time of persecution when tearing down stone circles was a popular sport of christian mobs.
(a) To further the 'destruction' of our circles, the church ordered that christian churches be erected over the old sacred spots in the countryside.
B. Evoking The Guardians of the Watchtowers
1. The concept of the quartered circle is basic to the craft, as it is to many cultures and religions.
a. The four directions each correspond to and resonate with a quality of the self, to an Element, a time of day and year, to tools of the craft, symbolic animals and forms of personal power.
(1) These correspondences are usually set down in a table similar to the one in the back of The Spiral Dance and provide the basis for visualizations throughout the ritual.
(a) Constant visualizations of these connections create deep internal links, so much so that physical actions during ritual can trigger the desired inner states.
2. The Guardians of the Watchtowers are energy forms.
a. They are the Spirits or Wraiths of the four Elements.
(1) They bring the elemental energy of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water into the circle to augment our human power.
(a) The vortex of power created when we evoke the four Quarters guards the circle from intrusions and draws in the higher powers of the Goddess and God.
C. Each Movement in a Ritual has Meaning
1. When we move deosil or sunwise we follow the direction the sun appears to move in, and draw in power.
a. Deosil is the direction of increase, of fortune favour and blessing.
(1) When we move widdershins, or counter clockwise, we move against the path of the sun.
(a) This direction is used for decrease or banishing.
D. Cosmic Power Times
1. Some traditions assign one of the four seasons to each of the four Elements.
a. When this is done, they will orient their altar to face that quarter which represents the season that is being honored.
(1) The East is associated with Air and the Spring, South is associated with Fire and Summer, West with Water and the Autumn and the North with Earth and Winter.
2. Depending on the time of day or night, some traditions encourage facing towards one of the four directions to draw power and perform magic appropriate to the Element used.
a. From sunrise to noon you should face East, Noon until sunset face South, sunset to midnight face West and midnight to sunrise face North.
E. Raising the Cone of Power
1. Energy is raised in coven rituals and most often molded into the form of a Cone.
a. This is called the Cone of Power. The base of the cone is the circle of coveners; its apex can focus on an individual, an object, or a collectively visualized image.
(1) At times the cone is allowed to rise and fall naturally without being sent anywhere.
(a) At these times the cone is used to renew the coveners personal power.
(2) It may also be sent off in a burst of Force, directed by one person who may be a part of the circle or may stand in the center serving as the focal point.
b. Rhythmical drumming, hand claps and dance movements may all be used to raise the Cone of Power.
IV. FORMAT OF A TYPICAL RITUAL
A. Creating Sacred Space
1. The High Priestess or assistant casts the circle.
a. The circle can be marked out by stones, chalk, salt or any other natural material.
(1) No one is allowed to enter the circle until it has been properly cast.
(a) Once cast, other members of the ritual enter the circle through a pre-arranged 'door' in the circle. Usually in the north.
B. Evoking the Guardians of the Watchtowers
1. The guardians are evoked, one at a time and welcomed.
a. The circle can be purified by that Element assigned to each Guardian, as the Guardian is evoked or later, after all the Guardians have been evoked.
C. Invoking the Goddess and the God
1. Many traditions invoke the Goddess in all their rituals.
a. Some invoke the Goddess and God at Sabbats and the Goddess only at Esbats.
(1) Some traditions invoke either the Goddess or the God, in accordance with the Season.
D. Feasting
1. The ritual feast can consist of eating a simple meal of ritual cakes and wine or a full blown feast in honor of the Goddess and God and the season.
a. It is traditional to pour a libation from the chalice out onto the ground 'for the Goddess' before anyone else has a drink.
(1) Some traditions have a modest meal of cakes and wine and then, after the circle is over, settle down for some serious feasting.
E. Working Magic/Raising the Cone
1. Any magical work or healing is usually done at this time.
F. Grounding of the Cone of Power
1. Some traditions perform a ritual to rejuvenate the Earth Mother by grounding any unused energy raised during the formation of the Cone of Power.
G. Thanking the Goddess and/or the God
1. A formal declaration of thanks for attending the rites and for any special favors granted.
H. Thanking and releasing the Guardians
1. A formal thanking and leave taking of the Guardians.
I. Closing the circle
1. Either the circle will be banished so that it cannot be discovered or a maintenance spell will be placed upon it to allow it to retain and grow in power.
END OF LESSON 5 I PHILOSOPHY OF CONSTRUCTION
A. Well to do Crafters
1. Well to do crafters, who have the ability to pay for fine workmanship, may buy only the finest articles made of silver and gold.
a. Following the belief in the law of contagion, they will set aside their tools and use them solely for their magical work.
(1) Many have velvet or silk covers made for the tools which will keep them nice and shiny with a minimum of polishing.
B. Garden Variety Kitchen Witches
1. These people place more value on making their own tools, even if they are not the prettiest to look at.
a. They feel the tools become charged with their will as they are formed by their minds and hands.
(1) Many times the tools will do double duty in the kitchen and it takes someone who knows how the tools are used to figure out that they are magical.
(a) This necessitates that the equipment be reconsecrated each time they are to be used for magic ritual.
(b) A direct benefit of this is that you get lots of practice in consecrating tools. And you inject a certain amount of magic into your everyday life.
II. NAMES AND THE USES OF THE VARIOUS TOOLS
A. Clothing
1. The Ceremonial Robe
a. Most traditions adopt a robe of a particular color.
(1) This serves the same purpose of going skyclad, in that it makes everyone more or less equal.
(a) Colors tend toward symbolizing purity (white) identifying with nature (green) or camouflage for outdoor work (brown or black).
b. The robe is usually hooded for outdoor use but many crafters who only work inside use robes of a lightweight material with no hood.
(1) The robe is supposed to be made of a natural fiber such as cotton and sewn by the owners own hand.
(a) Some witches will say a blessing over each stitch which helps them concentrate their magical will on the purpose of the robe as they are making it.
(b) Having someone who is good at sewing or using a sewing machine to make the robe is not unknown, although rigid purists would probably turn their noses up at the idea.
c. To ensure that the robe retains its ability to trigger subliminal responses it is only worn for ritual purposes and usually stored in a chest set aside for ritual equipment when not being used.
(1) Many traditions adopt a specific incense with a distinct aroma for their ritual work and the robe absorbs the scent.
(a) The scent can be another subliminal trigger.
2. The Cingulum or Cord.
a. This is a cord, usually braided, which is worn about the waist and tied in a simple knot.
(1) The cingulum symbolized the witchs' bond to the Goddess and is used in knot magic and binding rituals.
(a) It is usually made of a natural fiber such as cotton, silk or wool.
(b) Some traditions favor one color for all members (such as red) while other traditions prefer a different color for each degree.
(c) When there are different colors for each degree the highest achieved is worn or all cords earned are worn braided together.
(d) The length is traditionally tied to laying out a typical circle with a nine foot diameter. Some cords are 9 feet long and others are a little longer than 4 1/2 feet long.
(e) To lay out a nine foot diameter circle with the shorter cord the witch would mark the center of the circle with a stick or athalme and tie one end of the cord to it. She would then use the other end to measure out the circumference of the circle by walking around it with the cord held taut.
3. The Cloak
a. This is a large loose fitting cloak or cape of heavy material with a hood.
(1) The color is usually black, dark blue or grey.
(a) This is a totally functional piece of equipment. It was worn as a witch travelled to the Covenmeet. It allowed her to blend into the shadows of the night.
(b) Having the ability to disappear into the surrounding shadows of a forest at night while wearing this cloak led to the belief that witches had the ability to turn invisible.
(c) As night wore into dawn, the cloak was worn to keep away the chill of morning on the return trip. Sometimes a lining of a common color such as brown was sown into the cloak so that it could be worn inside out on the return during daylight.
B. Jewelry
1. The Necklace
a. Almost all statues of the Goddess from ancient times depict Her as wearing a necklace.
(1) For this reason a modern female witch may wear a necklace as a sign of her attachment to the Goddess.
(a) The necklace is made of a natural substance such as a strand of amber beads alternating with beads of jet, or seashells.
(b) A necklace made of acorns incorporates the connection with the Goddess, and the God, whose tree is the oak and the acorn is an ancient symbol of fertility.
(c) Necklaces with symbols that make the witch feel 'witchy' are very common and they are usually fashioned of silver which is the Lady's metal.
(2) In most traditions the male witch is not required to wear a necklace, but when he chooses to it might be silver in identification with the Goddess.
(a) Or gold in identification with the God. Designs could be traditional, like a torc or pentagram or anything else that appeals to him.
2. The Bracelet
a. Some traditions use bracelets as magical amulets and female witches, especially high priestesses, will wear copper bracelets which help them to identify with the solar aspects of the Goddess or the God.
3. The Ring
a. I have no knowledge of any tradition that requires its members to wear a particular ring.
(1) Most witches have a favorite 'magic' ring that they like to wear during rituals.
(a) Most magical texts contain numerous instructions on how to construct and decorate magical rings to bind demons, cloud minds of people around you, and turn you invisible.
(b) The drawback to these is that you must learn to design and cast your own jewelry. Not to mention getting the gold and other precious metals and stones required in the formulas.
4. The Garter
a. Most properly an article of clothing, the garter has come to be used as a badge of office rather than a necessity for holding up stockings.
(1) There is a cave painting from the paleolithic era showing a male shaman, dressed in his robes and surrounded by his tribe, as they perform a magical ritual and, while his legs are bare, a garter is very plainly shown around each thigh.
(2) The garter may have been used as a talisman at one time, as noted above, but today it is used to designate status in the Pagan community.
(a) A silver buckle is added to the garter when ever a Priestess leaves the mother coven. The High Priestess of the mother coven may then add a buckle to her garter to symbolize this hiving off of a new coven.
(3) There is a story about a ball that King Edward the Third of England gave. During this ball the dancing apparently got pretty wild and one of the Lady's of the Court lost her Garter.
(a) The King picked it up and tied it on his own leg and spoke the words "Shame to him who thinks ill of it."
(b) This was the basis for the Order of the Garter, which is perhaps the oldest Order of Knighthood in Britain. The Kings words became the motto of the Order; "Hont soit qui mal y pense."
5. The Moon Crown
a. Ancient statues of Diana show her with a band about her head and a crescent moon affixed to it across her forehead, to show her dominion over the moon which is her celestial sphere.
(1) High Priestess are crowned with a Moon Crown during the invocation of the Goddess. This serves as a reminder that she speaks for the Goddess and acknowledges the High Priestesses connection with Her.
6. The Horned Helmet
a. The God is a Horned God, and when He is invoked into the High Priest during ritual the Priest is crowned with the Horned Helmet, for essentially the same reasons.
(1) Horns were the original form that crowns took as they represented the virility of the leader of the tribe which was important to its survival.
(a) The words for 'horns' and 'crown' were the same in Hebrew, and when Michaelangelo did his research for his statue of Moses he was unaware of this and that is why his statue shows Moses with horns.
(2) Once tribal society gave way to urban society crowns were fashioned in the shape of buildings, with a defensive wall around them.
(3) Crowns did not start to resemble the religious crowns of the Catholic Church, with its attendant orbs and crosses, until the false Donation of Constantine was created in 754 CE.
(a) Before this, a King was chosen by his people and recognized by the Church. After the "Donation of Constantine" the Bishop of Rome was recognized as the "Vicar of Christ" and vested with the power to create Kings and Emperors.
(b) It is from the "Donation of Constantine" that the subsequent power of the Vatican in secular affairs ultimately derives.
C. Simples
1. Candles
a. Candles are used for their light and their flame as the symbol of the highest manifestation of ether on the material plane.
(1) Most altar setups use two candles for polarity
(a) They can both be white or one white and the other red or black.
(2) Some altar setups use a single white candle called the Maiden's Candle.
(a) This is the first lit and all other candles, as well as the incense used, are lit from this candle.
(b) The Maiden Candle is usually kept in a holder that allows it to be picked up and moved about the circle without danger of spilling hot wax.
(c) It can be used as the symbol of fire when purifying the circle and as a portable light as needed.
(3) Most traditions use candles to mark the four quarters of the circle.
(a) Colored candles to match the Elements they represent are sometimes used instead of the traditional white.
(b) Some practical-minded witches, with the wherewithal to do so, use polynesian kerosene powered torches for their outdoor circles at the four quarters.
2. Incense
a. Most traditions adopt a particular scent that becomes a subliminal trigger for them.
(1) Just about any incense will do, as long as it is pleasant and does not produce too much smoke.
(a) Typical incenses are Frankincense and Myrrh combinations and Sandlewood.
(2) In older times, some of the incenses were compounded using mildly hallucinogenic plants, but todays incenses are used mostly to scent the air.
(a) Although I have seen incenses used that were also prepared so as to drive away night insects.
3. Annointing Oils
a. Used in annointings and blessings.
(1) It can be as simple as a good quality olive oil or as complex as a fine mixture of rare essence oils.
(a) One advantage of working skyclad is that you don't collect oil splotches on your robe from repeated annointings.
(b) Of course, you can always remove your robe for the annointings, but then it is up to personal and group discretion.
D. Working Tools
1. Athame (ath-ay-me) or Athalme (ah-thal-may)
a. This is the witches basic working tool
(1) It is a steel bladed knife, usually with an edge on both sides, and a black handle.
(a) Some old-time ones were made of chipped flint with the handle made of twine or a small rope made from plants, which was then died black with berry juice.
(b) Some modern ones have a bone handle or a deer hoof for a handle.
b. The Athame is a physical symbol of the witch's magical will.
(1) A knife was probably the first efficient cutting tool developed by humans with which they could kill their game.
(a) Just as the dog was the first wild animal that mankind domesticated, the knife was the first truly human piece of technology.
(b) It is used in the circle as a symbol of authority and a badge of faith.
(c) Because the steel was forged in fire, the athame is typically ascribed to resonate with the element of Fire.
(d) Although there are traditions that assign it to the element of Air.
2. The Sword
a. More popular with Ceremonial Magicians, the sword can be seen as a large version of the athame or the athame can be viewed as a small version of the sword.
(1) Most covens possess only one sword which is community property. It is rare that an individual witch will own their own sword.
(a) In earlier times, everyone was expected to own a knife, it and the spoon were the main eating utensils before the fork was developed. Only people of the nobility or of high rank were allowed to carry a sword because it was considered a weapon of aggression.
(2) As with the athame, the element of the sword is thought to be Fire.
b. The sword, if used, can be used to cast the circle and during the initiation rituals.
(1) Some people like to use a sword instead of an athame but I find it gets crowded enough with thirteen people jammed into a nine foot diameter circle, without having someone swinging a sword this way and that.
3. The Boleen or Boline
a. This is the witches white handled knife, used for fashioning other tools.
(1) You may think of it as a magical pocketknife, although it is not usually a folding knife.
(a) With the large amount of tools available today, ranging from simple hand-tools to Dremel mini powered tools, it is not very common to see a boleen in use today.
4. The Kerfan
a. This is the traditional golden sickle, which the Druids were fond of using to cut mistletoe.
(1) Not many traditions use a Kerfan today, but those with a Druidic leaning might favor them.
5. The Rod or Riding Pole (Broomstick)
a. The Rod served many purposes in the olden times.
(1) It was a walking stick in days when everything was not paved over with concrete.
(a) And what with the desire to escape the city for rituals, it still does a pretty good job.
(2) It usually represented a phallus and the end that was not touching the ground was carved to enhance this effect.
(a) The practice of using it as a riding pole during fertility rituals is self-explanatory.
(b) During the dances, the witches would leap amongst the grain in the fields astride their 'broomsticks' to show how high they wanted the crops to grow. This led to the belief that witches fly on their broomsticks.
(3) In addition to camouflaging the pole so as not to offend outsiders, tying bunches of broom plants to the end of the Rod provided a practical tool for sweeping the twigs and leaves from around the area that the witch wished for her circle.
(a) As a side note, the people who did not understand the purpose of the Rod, but had seen it used in dances, turned it around so that the 'broom' part was going away, behind the witch, as she rode it in their illus- trations.
b. Traditionally, the Rod was cut from a tree that was sacred to the Goddess or the God.
(1) Practically any good hardwood will serve.
6. The Magic Wand
a. Like the Riding Pole, the magic wand is really a phallus, which serves as the symbol of the virility of its wielder.
(1) It is also traditionally cut from a tree which is sacred to the Goddess or God.
(a) The Key of Solomon says that the wand should be cut from a hazel or nut tree, and that the tree should be virgin (no more than one years growth.)
(b) The wand is to be cut with a single stroke on the day of Mercury at sunrise.
(c) Some traditions require that it be cut using a golden sickle (kerfan).
b. The traditional length is from the tip of the middle finger of the right hand to the tip of the elbow.
(1) This made it easier to hide in a robes sleeve.
c. The wand is considered a tool of persuasion rather than command, and in most traditions is assigned the Element Air.
(1) Although, in those traditions that assign Air to the athame and Sword, the element Fire is assigned to the Riding Pole and the Wand.
7. The Pentacle
a. In magic, a pentacle is a mandalla or focal point for the work it encompasses.
(1) Most pentacles were made of a maleable material, such as wax or cast in the metal corresponding to the astronomical planet that the Magician was evoking in his/her works.
b. In most traditions of the craft, the pentacle is an Earth pentacle incorporating the symbols that are meaningful to the members of the tradition.
(1) It is the centerpiece of the altar, on which objects are consecrated; the water and salt bowls are placed upon it for blessing.
c. Some traditions call it a Moon Pentacle, and the symbols, while basically the same, are carved into a silver disc.
(1) The idea being that consecration and blessing is performed in direct contact with the Goddess.
(a) The silver metal of the pentacle providing the link necessary for contagion.
d. When the pentacle is an Earth pentacle, it is usually made of a metal such as copper.
(1) It is normally round, and 5-6 inches in diameter.
8. The Scourge
a. Typically, a whip made of a handle of nutwood and eight tails of cords with five knots tied in each tail.
(1) The scourge has two uses.
(a) Symbolic, a sign of power and domination.
(b) And for gentle, monotonous, semi-hypnotic application to affect the blood circulation as an aid to 'gaining the Sight.'
9. The Cauldron
a. The cauldron was one of the most useful items in the kitchens.
(1) It was essential for cooking, brewing, processing many kinds of food and medicines, treating hides, washing, dyeing, making household items like soap and candles, and carrying water or fire.
(a) It's small wonder that the broom and cauldron became the two most widely recognized symbols of a woman's dominion over domestic matters as represented by hearth and home.
b. The cauldron is an essential symbol of the Craft and embodies sacred truths that reflect the witch's world view.
(1) Seen as a 'cooking pot' the cauldron was endlessly churning, turning, a boiling matrix, a soup of elemental raw materials in the cosmic womb.
(a) The cauldron represents the stuff of creation, the Mother's eternal flux.
(b) The cauldron symbolizes creation, that occurs not just once as in some other religions, but constantly, as long as the universe lasts.
(2) But the cauldron was not only a symbol for the womb of the Mother. It was also a symbol of abundance.
(a) Just a Nature overproduces to assure the survival of a species, the cauldron is seen as an endless source of nourishment for the followers of the Goddess.
(b) The Cauldron of Danu kept by the Dagda.
(3) The cauldron was also seen as the source of wisdom, inspiration, understanding and magic.
(a) Both Western and Eastern myths insisted that the aspiring Father God was obliged to steal his power and/or wisdom from some version of the Mother's vessel.
(b) Odin managed to drink the Wise Blood from the three cauldrons in the womb of Earth (Erda), by tricking the 'giantess' who was tending them, and taking the sacred substance when she wasn't looking. He was also able to illegally acquire knowledge of reading and writing the runes, mastery of magic, shape-shifting ability, and understanding of cosmic matters which were formerly the Goddess's exclusive property.
(c) In India, the sky god Indra also stole Wise Blood, from Triple Kali's three cauldrons.
(d) The Welsh stories of the Tale of Gwion Bach, and the Tale of Taliesin present Cerridwen as a witch who brews up a potion in her cauldron to give her son magical abilities. The boy she has tending the fire for a year and a day gets splattered and burned on the hand by the brew and sticks his fingers into his mouth. He then goes through some difficult times as he shape-changes to escape the pursuing Cerridwen, until finally she catches and consumes him, and nine months later gives birth to Taliesin.
(4) A worldwide cycle of myths reveals that the cauldron was also a symbol of rebirth.
(a) Mycenaean Demeter made a god of the sacri- ficial victim Pelops by resurrecting him from her magic cauldron.
(b) This sort of magic was still attributed to the female Trinity of the Fates in the late Roman Empire.
(c) Irish Celtic mythology speaks of a cauldron owned by Bran which would restore dead warriors to life.
(d) Welsh mythology also has a similar cauldron known as the Black Cauldron.
(5) All over Britain, both Pagans and Christians alike continued to utilize the ancient holy wells and springs, especially those in the earth-womb caves, or those whose waters bubbled and boiled like seething cauldrons.
(a) This was because their Pagan ancestors regarded such places as healing shrines. The ancient peoples thought them earthly manifestations of the cosmic womb, where all life could be endlessly regenerated.
c. Traditionally the cauldron is made of cast copper or cast iron, with a bail so that it could be suspended over a fire on a tripod, and had three feet or legs in remem- brance of the Triple Goddess whose womb it represents.
(1) It is not unusual today to see a fire kindled inside of a cauldron in deference to fire safety.
E. Altar Equipment
1. The Altar
a. Usually a table or some other handy item, which is large enough to hold all the necessary equipment and flat enough to keep everything from rolling off.
(1) Some traditions like to use a square or cube which represents the material world, while others insist that it be round like the circle.
(a) Square and rectangular shapes are also popular since they are more common within the average home.
(b) As with so many other things, going with what you've got and feel comfortable with, works just fine.
b. Some traditions feel that the altar top should be made of slate or some other stone, while others prefer the light weight of wood.
(1) If it is a permanent altar outside you might just want to make it all out of stone and cement.
c. Something that is often overlooked is that the altar should be tall enough not to give you a backache as you work over it.
d. Some people like to use different colored table runners or cloths to cover the altar, while others prefer a 'bare' altar top.
(1) Personally, I prefer runners and cloths that are color coordinated for the season and I am not above placing flowers and fruits of the season on the altar.
2. Candles
a. There should be two candles on the altar for polarity.
(1) Depending on your orientation, you will want to use either silver candlestick holders or gold, copper or some other solar metal.
(2) The candles represent the polarity of the Goddess and the God.
(a) They should be either both white or one white and the other red or black. White is for purity and black is for the shadow. Red can be substituted for black if black has too many negative connotations for you, since red represents the love and passion of the blood.
(b) It has been known for people to use red and green candles, but I prefer to use white on the altar and colored candles for the four Quarters of the circle.
3. Censer or Bowl of Incense
a. A censer can be as elaborate as those that the Catholic Church employs or as practical as a small hanging pot from the garden shed that has some sand in it to keep the incense from burning the altar.
(1) Incense burners from curio shops are handy, but you should be able to either pick them up or place sticks of incense in them.
(a) I prefer to use incense burners that have three legs in accordance with the tradition associated wit the cauldron.
4. The Bell
a. The Bell is used to draw the Elementals, particularly the Sylphs, to your rituals.
(1) Some people prefer bells with clappers while others like bells that must be struck.
5. The Pentacle
a. Although we have already spoken of the Pentacle, it is usually thought of as a piece of altar equipment, and so it is mentioned it here.
6. Small Cauldron or Bowl of Water
a. It should be half-filled with spring water
(1) Typically, it is painted black on the inside if it is to be used for scrying.
7. Vessel of Salt
a. Simply a bowl of salt to represent Earth.
8. Chalice or Drinking Horn
a. This is the cup from which you will drink a toast to the Lady and Her Lord.
(1) It is a smaller version of the cauldron with all the attendant symbolism.
(a) The Arthurian legends speak of the quest for the Holy Grail, which was much older than Christianity.
(b) One of the Mysteries attached to the Grail was that the King and the land were one. If the king were to grow old and frail without passing his kingdom along to a younger, more virile successor, the land would wither and die.
(2) A major portion of any ritual involves the symbolic mating of the Athame and Chalice, in recognition of the life forces of the God and Goddess.
(a) While most traditions have the Priest wielding the Athame and inserting it into the womb-chalice which is held by the Priestess, I feel it is more meaningful to have the Priest and Priestess exchange symbols and enact the rite as though they were on the Astral Plane.
9. Statuary or Symbols
a. Some traditions use statuary of the Goddess and/or the God as focal points for concentration.
(1) We do not worship the statues as embodiments of the Goddess and the God, though they might take on the properties of being a talismanic link between us and them.
(a) We do not worship the statues. Our goal is to invoke the Goddess and the God into our hearts and minds, not into inert art.
b. Other traditions, still afraid of being accused of being idolaters, will use symbols of the Goddess/God instead
(1) Moonstones and other stones with holes naturally worn into them are sacred to the Goddess.
(a) Sometimes stones will be carved with occult markings, of which only local initiates know the meanings. These are often called 'mason marks' by those who do not understand the meaning of the marks.
10. The Candle Snuffer
a. While technically not a tool of ritual, this is a carryover from Ceremonial Magic.
(1) In Ceremonial Magic, where the world is seen as a battleground between good and evil, the light of a candle represents the purity of the Good, while darkness is seen as the evil of the Bad.
(a) To allow the pure flame of a candle to be blown out supposedly weakens the effect of the flame, so Ceremonial Magicians always snuff out the candle to show that they did so by an act of will and not as a victory of the Bad over the Good.
b. It can be made of silver or brass, depending on your preference.
III. SYMBOLS USED TO CARICATURIZE WITCHES
A. Clothing
1. Each article of clothing associated with the witch has a long and chequered history.
a. By the 17th century most witches were busy hiding while the witch craze ran rampant across most of Europe.
(1) The majority of stereotypical clothing supposedly worn by a witch was modeled on the style of clothing which was just going out of style as the craze was gaining momentum.
(a) Not surprisingly, the older women who were tortured into confessing that they were witches, tended to favor the mode of dress which was going out of fashion.
2. The typical image of a witch shows a woman wearing a cone shaped hat, wrapped in a cape with a girdle around her waist, gloves in hand, and wearing long toed shoes.
a. We shall see that all these items were perfectly normal items of clothing, which would not raise an eyebrow, unless the observer had a twisted mind in the first place.
(1) The conical hat-
(a) These types of hats have been in fashion from time to time, with and without a brim, and they are always condemned as being diabolical because they led people to have carnal thoughts when they realize the phallic symbolism of the hat.
(b) The brim was in vogue in the 17th century, but we recognize it as the hat of a "princess in distress" when we add the obligatory scarf and change the color from black (married or widowed) to a lighter color.
(c) The Church required Heretics to wear the conical hat, while they were on public display for ridicle and abuse, as a symbol of the horns of the devil he was supposed to worship.
(2) The magic Cape-
(a) More appropriately the domain of the magician, locked away in his tower with his books, the magic cape, with mystical moons, stars, and other astrological symbols sewn or painted on it is supposedly worn by the witch.
(b) This was supposed to make her invisible, and sometimes to give her power to fly.
(c) A more likely explanation is that, back then capes were used much as we use coats for warmth today, and the markings were probably added later just to enhance the effect of strangeness.
(3) The Witches Girdle-
(a) A girdle is simply a belt, used to hold the wallet used at the time. Neither men not women used pockets very much so they both wore girdles or belts which held their pouch-like purses.
(b) The girdle was said to consist of 12 or 13 puffballs, or other decorations, strung together with the magical pouch hanging in their midst.
(c) We now know that 12 is a number representing the 12 signs of the zodiac, and that there are 13 moons in a solar year, so the symbolism is not surprising. Keeping in mind that pickpockets used to be called cutpurses, is it any wonder that an old woman would want to carry her purse hanging in front or near the front of her girdle?
(d) The pouch is supposed to be made of skin and to contain the witchs charms, amulets and herbs. More likely these were old coins or religious medals and herbs made into medicines or cosmetics.
(4) The Gloves
(a) When gloves are mentioned, they are said to be made of catskin, with the fur turned inside.
(b) These were supposed to give her the swiftness and quiet of a cat in the night.
(c) More than likely they kept her arthritic hands warm.
(d) You can still buy gloves with the fur inside in the colder parts of the US.
(5) The Shoes-
(a) Properly called the poulaine, it was the long-toed (phallic) shoe that was very popular in the 15th century.
(b) They were the original 'high heels' or 'platform shoes', but with toes so long that sometimes they had to be tied by a string leading from the toe to just below the wearers knee.
(c) It has been said that playing the game of 'footsie' with the person opposite of you was thought up by someone wearing these shoes. The sexual connotations of the pointed toes is obvious.
B. Physical Appearance
1. Accused witches were as often young and sexually attractive as they were old and ugly.
a. Whether exceedingly beautiful or horribly ugly, she menaces men in a patriarchal society.
(1) The Church taught men to fear women.
(a) Ecclesiastical writings called woman the 'confusion of man', 'an insatiable beast', 'a continuous anxiety and a daily ruin.'
(2) The infamous Malleus Malleficarum said that witchcraft arose from female carnality.
(a) And 'all wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman.'
b. Few attempts to understand the real causes of the persecution of women have been made but here are a few high-lights found by a male researcher.
(1) Men feel a sense of inferiority in relation to the female archtype of power, which he draws from his infantile experience of total dependence on his mother.
(a) Adult men try to blame women for anything or everything that goes wrong in their lives, as a child might blame his mother for her failure to anticipate his every need.
(2) Few female actions arouse so much male bitterness as what the child typically fears his mother might do: simply walk out, and refuse to return to him.
(a) Medieval religion did not allow men to think of the simple solution of studying how to please their women so they would want to stay close and would enjoy being wives.
(b) Instead, they were taught to think of their women as personal slaves.
(3) The motive of sexual jealousy must be considered a contributing factor in the persecution of women.
(a) Men in an intensely patriarchal society are, in general, very poor lovers, because they are not taught to pay attention to their partners needs or feelings.
(b) Not seeing the connection between their own insensitivity and the dissatisfaction of their women, they assumed that the women preferred demon lovers with huge penises, which only fed their own feelings of inadequacy.
(4) Men's hidden sexual inferiority complexes then fostered misogyne (miso-hate, gyne-women), which was propped up by tales of women preferring to take demon lovers and other, less supernatural but perhaps more intimidating lovers as rivals to their husbands.
(a) Members of the male hierarchy seldom trusted one another, in view of the fact that almost any woman could be the sexual prey of any man of a higher rank.
(5) Christianity gave men the best of all reasons for hating women when it laid down its doctrine of Eve's responsibility for men having to die.
(a) Ever since the early telling of this doctrine, every man who feared the approach of death was taught to blame women for it.
(b) The limitless ferocity of the clergy toward witches probably stemmed from the fact that they served the Church that claimed to have conquered death, yet they continued to see death all around them, especially in the terrible century of the plague.
(6) Women's sexual magnetism is still experienced by males as a disquieting sort of magic, still poorly under- stood, inflicting a sense of helplessness.
(a) This has probably been so ever since men began to fear women's uncanny ability to force embarrassing responses from male genitals, even across a distance, by words or gestures alone.
(b) Often it was their sexual attractiveness that led women to be denounced in times when such things as erections and wet dreams were reputed to be caused by bewitchments.
(7) Since the pagan ruler of death was usually the Crone in the guise of an old woman, and elder priestesses had occupied the honored positions in pagan temples, old women became the most frequent victims of witch persecutions.
(a) Women after menopause no longer served the purposes of the patrilineal family system, which viewed women as breeding machines and even made 'barrenness' a legal reason for a man to abandon his wife.
(b) The same Church helped codify laws that deprived elder women of the wealth and property they used to control under the rules of mother-right.
(c) Consequently, the old woman was an ideal scapegoat: most times too expendable to be missed, too weak to fight back (though sme did), and too poor to matter.
2. In some sense, the word "Witch" is synonymous in our minds with the word "woman".
a. Perhaps this is because we associate woman's creative powers with the manipulation of vast unseen forces.
b. Or perhaps we intuitively understand that during the long centuries when women were semislaves of society, they were naturally drawn to witchcraft as a cure for their powerlessness, a means of manipulating a world that otherwise painfully manipulated them.
END OF LESSON 6 I. MAGIC IN THE CRAFT
A. Working Definition
1. Magic is the craft of shaping and has been defined as "the art of changing consciousness at will".
a. The art of changing consciousness at will is a demanding one, needing long and disciplined apprenticeship.
(1) The outward acts of waving a wand, lighting a candle, or crooning a rhymed incantation, are meaningless without the proper mental preparation.
(a) But when the force of a trained awareness is behind the gestures, they are far more than empty motions.
B. The Witch as Cosmic Artist
1. We exist on this plane as multi-faceted jewels, which conceal a spark of the essence of the Goddess in the heart of each jewel.
a. Each facet of the jewel that is ourself is likened to shells, or "bodies" in which we wrap the heart of our jewel.
2. These "bodies" are divided into two groups.
a. The Individuality
(1) Upper Spiritual- Consists of pure or abstract Spirit. Sometimes call the 'Divine Spark', it is substance and energy from the Great Unmanifest which we symbolize with the archetype of the Goddess.
(2) Lower Spiritual- This is the individualized spirit which has separated from the abstract. This is where the spirit embarks upon it's own journey of self-discovery. And where it eventually returns before it adds its experiences to the Great Whole and rejoins it as a drop in the endless ocean of being.
(3) Upper Mental- This is the realm of the abstract mind. Individualized spirit begins to be self-aware, and form polarities which lead to the development of the personality.
b. The Personality
(1) Lower Mental- The person develops a concrete mind held together by form and memory.
(2) Upper Astral- Level of abstract emotions. Attraction of polarities leads to a desire for union.
(3) Lower Astral- Level of instincts and passions. A desire to attract other polarities and to possess things develops.
(4) Etheric Body- Tenuous energy-web of near-matter which links the Physical with the subtler planes. Without the Etheric body to hold the physical body together, individual sparks of the spirit cannot manifest on the physical plane.
(5) Physical Body- Made of dense matter.
3. Taking a broad look at the Personality, we find that it is an instrument, or machine, consisting of three distinct 'bodies'.
a. These 'bodies' are built up during one incarnation and discarded in the Summerland after they have served their purpose.
(1) A physical form that naturally moves and acts on instinct and orders from your mind.
(a) This physical form has its own set of laws that govern it.
(b) It exists in time and space, and it has to be acted upon; it is not capable of thinking.
(c) We know that our body is not the cause of us, because it has to be acted upon to function. And anything that has to be acted upon is an effect, caused by something else.
(2) An emotional 'body', operating from laws similar to hydrodynamics.
(a) If our emotions become blocked, we are like a river whose flow is dammed up, building up untold pressure until some release occurs; or we go dead inside and stagnate, diseased and toxic to ourselves and others.
(b) Crafters know that pent-up emotions are to be released and understood, so that this constricted energy can be expressed for the purpose of validating our existence.
(3) A mental life, our unique world of personal thoughts, that is creative by nature, and has no limits except those it chooses to construct for itself.
(a) Since we exist in a Universal Mind that is all knowing and limitless, we know that limitation is not a universal law, but only exists in the individual use we make of these universal laws.
4. Our Personality is responsible for our being able to function on this plane and it is through our personality that we create the world around us.
a. Without our input the world is neutral, colorless and meaningless.
(1) It is only when we assume the role of creators or artists and paint an image of the world in our minds, colored by our feelings, does the world affect us.
(a) This is way two people can have the same experience and respond in two entirely different ways.
(2) We constantly choose moment-by-moment what our world is like.
(a) A person who opts for a negative experience descends into a universe that contains all the potentially negative forces that are waiting to make up reality.
(b) And no matter what someone outside does to make it less negative, it will not change.
(c) Having set up the polarity for a negative experience, the negativity acts as a magnet, attracting more and more negativity until it is overwhelming.
(d) On the other hand, a person who opts for a positive experience, ascends into another universe, that immediately cooperates, and instantly, forces begin moving to manifest a positive result.
5. The main work of a person on the Path of Return is to integrate the creative aspects of the Personality under the guidance of the Individuality, or Essence, so that they can develop as a member of the universe in full harmony with the rest of it.
a. When this happens the Seeker discovers an inner state of harmony where all actions begin corresponding to a deeper truth resident within.
(1) It is as though every thing flows naturally and easily.
(a) Even what had seemed 'impossible' before fades into non- existence and a new possibility takes its place.
II. CULTIVATION OF THE MAGICAL PERSONALITY
A. Magic is the Craft of Witchcraft
1. The power of magic should not be under-estimated.
a. It works, often in ways that are unexpected and difficult to control.
(1) But neither should the power of magic be over- estimated.
(a) It does not work simply, or effortlessly and it does not confer omnipotence.
B. Learning to work magic is a process of neurological repatterning, of changing the way we use our brains.
1. In order to manifest anything on the physical plane, it must be formulated and given life on the mental plane.
2. Unless a person can concentrate his thoughts and desires down into a tightly controlled set of symbols, the mental plane has insufficient information to create what is desired.
a. The Archtype of the Magician in the Major Arcanum of the Tarot deck teaches some valuable lessons in concentration.
(1) The traditional picture of the Magician shows a man dressed in a white robe, encircled by a belt in the shape of a snake holding its tail in its mouth, and he is wearing a cloak of vermilion.
(a) He stands in a garden with four white lilies and five red roses, behind a table where he has laid out his magical tools.
(2) With his right hand, the Magician lifts a wand upward toward the sky. His left hand makes the universal gesture of attention, pointing with extended forefinger toward the fertile earth at his feet.
(a) The message inherent in this gesture is that the Force of the higher levels flows through the Magician to whatever he gives his full measure of attention.
(3) The garden in which the Magician works represents the subconscious field.
(a) It is from this subconscious field that the hidden powers come that the Magician directs in his quest for increased freedom.
(b) These powers are symbolized by the lilies which stand for various aspects of truth and the roses which are symbols of human desire.
(4) The Magician is a transformer and transmuter of experience.
(a) He cultivates the flowers in his garden, improving them and by force of his control of their development, takes them far beyond the conditions spontaneously provided by nature.
(b) Taking things as he finds them, he watches until he perceives the underlying principle at work in what he observes. Then he applies that principle in novel ways so as to produce a different situation.
C. The Language of the Old Belief, the Language of Magic, is expressed in Symbols and Images.
1. Poetry, which is itself a form of magic, is magic speech.
a. Spells and charms worked by witches in rhyme are truly concrete poetry.
b. The American Indians would call them Songs of Power.
2. Images bridge the gap between the verbal and non-verbal modes of awareness.
a. They allow the two sides of the brain to communicate, arousing the emotions as well as the intellect.
b. The vast storehouse of symbols, which embody all the possible realities of this universe is the subconscious mind.
c. The Archtype representing the subconscious mind is the High Priestess.
(1) The High Priestess is depicted as a solitary woman, seated on a cube placed between two pillars of opposite colors. There is a veil hung between the pillars with pomegranites and hearts of palms woven into it.
(a) She is dressed in a white garment adorned with an equilateral cross on her breast and surrounded by a blue robe that flows down and out of the picture.
(c) She wears a silver crown, made of two crescents and an orb and holds a scroll in her lap.
(2) The message conveyed by the High Priestess is two-fold.
(a) First she represents memory. Everything that comes to the attention of the mind of her counterpart, the Magician, is recorded on her scroll.
(b) Like all languages, the records she keeps are symbols for the reality they represent and it is the second function that she represents that makes the knowledge available to the Magician.
(c) The imagery of water flowing through this tarot card is reinforced by the blue color of her robe, and the way it pools down at the bottom right side of the card and seems to flow off the card. Water is the universal symbol of the astral essence of the higher planes and just as waterways on earth served as highways of communication and commerce in the old ways, it is the astral essence that serves as a bridge between the different planes.
(d) In order to recall things stored in memory as written down on the High Priestess's scroll it is necessary to still the waters so that they become a mirror and reflect the images you are seeking.
(3) The ability to concentrate to the point where a still calmness in the mind is achieved, coupled with the images that surface from the subconsciousness leads to the point where new realities can be visualized.
D. All manifestations on the physical world are rooted in the mental and astral planes.
1. In order to change your physical reality, you need to be able to use creative visualization to plant the seeds of your new reality in the higher planes.
a. The Archtype of the Creative Imagination is the Empress of the Tarot deck.
(1) In direct contrast to the virginal High Priestess, the Empress is a pregnant matron. She is Venus, goddess of Love, Beauty, Growth and Fruitfulness.
(a) She is seated in a garden backed by trees, with a river cascading down a waterfall and forming a pool at her feet.
(b) Wheat grows at her feet and her gown is the color of Spring. She holds a copper shield with a dove on it and a sceptre of an orb divided on two and topped by a cross.
(c) A crescent moon is at her feet and a crown of 12 stars over her head. She wears a necklace of 7 pearls.
(2) When the Magician is joined with the Empress, the cold virginity of the High Priestess is transformed into the rich fertility of Venus.
(a) The Empress is imagination, the mind's power to make new combinations from remembered experiences.
(b) What you make the object of your attention is what you become, sooner or later. Fix your attention on images of misery, poverty, and weakness, and their actual physical embodiments will become part of your surroundings.
(c) Change the patterns by attending to their opposites, and presently creative imagination, symbolized by the Empress, will begin to build you a new life and will impress even the conditions of your environment with new ideas.
(d) Remember, even your physical body is part of your environment.
E. The generation of mental images at the level of self- consciousness is a necessary forerunner of changing your circumstances, but it does not do any good if you do not prepare the ground for the seed to grow.
1. Creating prosperity thoughtforms and then doing nothing to allow them to come through on the physical plane is as senseless as buying a high performance car without any tires.
a. Getting control over your own environment is a necessary first step in preparing for the changes you are working for.
(1) Working with the resources at hand, you need to gain control over your environment.
(a) Physical and spiritual cleansing of your environment clears away the clutter of old worn-out thought- forms.
(b) Actively seeking out knowledge of how to effectively manage the conditions you are trying to bring about sends messages to your subconscious that you are serious in you work and ar not going to waste any gifts that come your way.
2. Regulation and supervision are implied by every- thing in the Archtype of the Emperor.
a. Supervision is overseeing. Thus the function of sight is chief among our senses.
(1) The Emperor is seated on a cube on the edge of a cliff overlooking a river which has worn a channel through the mountains turning them into the soil that serves as the base for the garden of the Emperor.
(a) He is dressed in armour, symbolizing his willingness to impress his will on his surroundings but he sits in a passive stance content to observe the conditions that exist before he acts.
(2) The quality of our vision or observations of how things are determines the course of our progress towards liberation.
(a) Unless we imagine, we do not really see.
(b) The mind is the true seer. Unless we learn to supplement what our eyes report with imagination based on other senses no true vision of the world can be made.
b. Regulation is dependent on the ability to reason which is the second aspect represented by the Emperor.
(1) The basic function of reason is to oversee and control.
(a) Through the development of our ability to reason we learn to supervise and control our daily activities.
F. After we have learned to concentrate and visualize what we want to do using symbols from the unconscious and prepared for the work to manifest on the physical plane through observation and regulation of our daily lives we are ready to manifest our new reality through our Personality.
1. Our Personality is not what we truly are, but how we express our Inner Self. It is important that we work in accordance with the guidance of our true 'Essence'.
a. The Archtype of the Hierophant represents the Self.
(1) The Hierophant sits between two pillars in a temple like the High Priestess.
(a) He is the Inner Self who is also the Emperor. Only the spheres of operation are different.
(b) The ministers kneeling before the True Teacher wear garments which are embroidered with the same flowers that appear in the garden of the Magician.
(2) The general meaning of the Hierophant is summed up in the word Intuition.
(a) Intuition is the Voice of the True Self.
(b) Genuine intuition is not a substitute for reason. It is a logical consequence of good reasoning.
(c) The inner Teacher wastes no time in fruitless endeavors to instruct the incompetent who will not take the trouble to observe, to remember, to imagine, or to reason.
(3) The Voice never speaks loudly and many fail to hear it over the clamor of their own thoughts.
(a) Practicing the listening attitude of mind leads to eventually hearing it.
(b) The fundamental practice is to be still when you wish the counsel of the Voice.
(c) Stop racking your brains when a seemingly insoluble problem confronts you. The harder you try the less likely you are to hear the answer.
G. Patterns appear when we have contrasting elements in what we are examining.
1. The Tables of Correspondence (Spiral Dance) are based on the recognition that everything exists in relation to other things, and we use the process of discrimination to find the correspondences.
a. The Archtype of the Lovers represents the process of discrimination.
(1) The tarot card of the Lovers shows an angel bestowing blessings upon a naked man and woman.
(a) The message here is that the self- consciousness and subconsciousness are equal and receive the blessings of the True Self.
(b) When there are no secrets between the two (nudity) they work in harmony under the guidance of the Self and can see the connections between seemingly unrelated facts.
H. The final ingredient needed in the development of the magical personality is the development of the magical will.
1. Development of the Magical Will comes about as the result of synthesizing all the aspects we have been talking about so far.
a. The Chariot is the Archtype of the Will
(1) The Chariot depicts a person standing in a chariot pulled by two sphinxes of opposite polarity, before a city surrounded by a wall. At the foot of the wall runs a river.
(a) The Charioteer is the Inner Self.
(b) The sphinxes represent the senses and the reins (which are invisible) by which he guides them represent the mind.
(c) The chariot itself is the physical body and it is drawn by the sphinxes.
(2) The starry canopy represents the celestial forces whose descent into matter is the cause of all manifestation.
(a) On the shield is the Hindu Lingam-Yoni symbolizing the union of opposites.
(3) The charioteer is a victor.
(a) This card represents the conquest of illusion which comes about when the Self guides the personality.
2. The Magical Will is very much akin to what Victorian schoolmasters called character: honesty, self-discipline, commitment and conviction.
a. Anyone who wishes to practice magic must be scrupulously honest in their personal lives.
(1) A bag of herbs acquires the power to heal because I say it does. For my word to take on such force, I must be deeply and completely convinced that it is identified with truth as I know it.
(a) In this sense, magic works on the principle that "It is so because I say it is so."
b. Unless I have enough personal power to keep my commitments in daily life, I will be unable to wield magical power.
(1) To a person who practices honesty and keeps commitments, "As I will, so mote it be." is not just a pretty phrase; it is a statement of fact.
III. THE ART OF CASTING SPELLS
A. Definition
1. "A spell is a symbolic act done in an altered state of consciousness in order to cause a desired change."
a. To cast a spell is to project energy through a symbol.
(1) Too often, the symbols are mistaken for the agent that casts the spell.
(a) Props are useful at times, but it is the mind that works the magic.
b. Correspondences between colors, planets, metals, numbers, plants and minerals, and musical notes make up a great deal of magical lore.
(1) Particular objects, shapes, colors, scents, and images do work better than others to embody certain ideas.
(a) But the most powerful spells are often improvised from materials that feel right or that simply happen to come to hand.
B. Theory of Spellcasting
1. Spells are an important aspect of magical training.
a. They require the use of the combined faculties of relaxation, visualization, concentration and projection.
(1) The casting of spells provides practice in coordinating these skills and developing them further.
2. Spells are extremely sophisticated psychological tools that have subtle, but important, effects on a person's inner growth.
a. Spells may highlight otherwise hidden complexes of the person casting the spell.
(1) A person who has conflicts about success will find great difficulty in concentrating on a money spell.
(a) Many times the practical results of a spell are far less important than the psychological insights that arise during the magical work.
(b) Discovering our inner blocks and fears is the first step in overcoming them.
b. Spells also go one step further than most forms of psychotherapy.
(1) They allow us not only to listen to and interpret the unconscious, but also to speak to it in the language it understands.
(a) Symbols, images, and objects used in spells communicate directly with Younger Self, who is the guardian of our emotions and who is barely affected by the intellect.
(b) We often understand our feelings and behavior but find ourselves unable to change them.
(c) Through spells, we can attain the most important power - the power to change our lives.
3. Spellcasting also forces us to come to terms with the material world.
a. Many people attracted to the spiritual path of the Craft find themselves uneasy with using magic for practical or material goals.
(1) Somehow it seems wrong to work magic for oneself, to want things and to get things.
(a) This is an attitude which is a holdover of the Judaeo- Christian world view that sees spirit and matter as separate and that identifies matter with evil and corruption.
(2) In the Craft, flesh, the material world, none of what is commonly thought of as matter is separate from spirit.
(a) The universe is made up of the Goddess who is manifest in all things.
(b) Union with the Goddess comes through embracing the material world and all the gifts that She has placed in it for us.
(3) Our major task on this plane of existence is to become masters of this realm of manifestation.
(a) We do not fight self-interest; we follow it, but with an awareness that transmutes it into something sacred.
C. Mechanics of Spellcasting
1. Spellcasting is the lesser, not the greater magic; but the greater magic builds on the lesser.
a. The paradox is that in spellcasting we may start out working with the personal self, but in order to work the magic we are forced to expand and recognize the Self that moves through all beings.
(1) Magic involves the deliberate self- identification with other objects and people.
(a) To do a healing, we must become the healer, the one who is healed, and the energy that is to do the healing.
(b) To attract love, we must be able to love ourselves and to become love its self.
2. Spells work in two basic ways.
a. The first is through suggestion
(1) Symbols and images implant certain ideas in Younger Self, or the subconscious mind.
(a) We are then influenced to actualize those ideas.
b. Spells can also influence the external world.
(1) The theoretical model that witches use to explain the workings of magic is a clear one and coincides in many ways with the "new" physics.
(a) It is simply an elaborate but extremely useful metaphor.
(b) The metaphor is based on a world view that sees things not as fixed objects, but as vortexes of energy.
(c) The physical world is formed by the vortexes of energy, and if we cause a change in the energy patterns they, in turn, cause a change in the physical world.
(2) When our own energy is concentrated and channeled, it can move the broader energy currents.
(a) The images and objects used in spells are the channels. They are the vessels through which our power is poured, and by which it is shaped.
3. As energy is directed into the images we visualize, it gradually manifests physical form and takes shape in the material world.
a. Directing energy is not a matter of simply emoting.
(1) Emotion can be likened to a strobe light which provides a very inconstant light.
(2) Directed energy is more like a laser beam.
(a) Even concentrated power is a small stream compared with the vast surges of energy that surround us.
(b) The most adept witch cannot be successful in all her spells. The opposing currents are often too strong.
4. The craft teaches to first identify the flow of energy and then to decide whether or not it is going where we want it to go.
a. If not, then we can try to deflect it.
b. Or, we may have to change our own course.
(1) Sensing the energy climate is a matter of intuition and experience.
(a) Some witches make a study of Astrology in an effort to plan their magical workings at the optimal times.
(b) Others prefer to work when they feel the time is right.
(2) Of all the planets, the Moon's influence on subtle energies is the strongest.
(a) Subtle power increases as the Moon waxes, so the time of the waxing Moon is best for spells involving growth or increase, such as money spells.
(b) The power peaks when the Moon is full and that is the best time for workings of culmination and love.
(c) During the waning Moon, power subsides and turns inward. The waning Moon's period is used for banishings, bindings, and discovering hidden secrets.
(3) The practical witch soon learns to adjust her spells to fit the time of the Moon. If, for example, she needs to do a money spell during the waning Moon, she would put a little 'english' on it and make it a poverty banishing spell.
5. Energy pursues the path of least resistance.
a. Material results are more easily achieved on this plane of existence through physical actions that through magical workings.
(1) Example - it is simpler to lock your door than suffer the constant drain from maintaining psychic seals on your doors and windows while you are away from home.
(a) Of course once you have locked your door, you might feel more reassured by placing seals on it.
6. No magic spell is going to bring results unless channels are opened into the material world.
a. A job spell is useless if you are not willing to go out and interview for jobs or at least let potential employers know that you are in the market for one.
b. In the same vein, a healing spell is no substitute for medical care.
(1) Most medicine today can be broken down into two broad categories, emergency medicine and that which is not needed for immediate life-threatening situations.
(a) Emergency medicine has excelled at stabilizing the body's condition so that it can repair itself at it's own pace.
(b) Most other forms of medicine consist of treatment through surgery or chemotherapy or a combination of both.
(c) The procedures noted above work on the physical body and do not take the other levels into consideration.
(d) Psychic healing works at healing the higher levels of the person so that the physical heals itself or allows the person to let go of their physical body if it cannot be repaired. In either case the choice rests with the person who is being healed and not the healer.
7. Visualization used in creating a spell should focus on the desired result not the individual steps leading up to the result.
a. We give the spell free rein in how it goes about achieving the results with the understanding that it is not to bring harm to anyone or any being.
(1) For this reason, spells have a habit of working in very unexpected ways.
8. To assure that the power we have unleashed does not inadvertantly cause harm, we bind the spell.
a. This serves to 'set' the form we have created so that the energy becomes fixed in the pattern we desire.
(1) The energy we project to others affects us even more strongly than the other person. This is because we have generated the energy, and thus we have become the object at which the energy is directed.
(2) If healing energy is sent out, then the health of the person casting the spell is enhanced.
(a) By the same token, any hex or curse that is sent out ALWAYS effects the person who sends it no matter whether it affected the person it was sent at or not.
9. MAGIC IS NOT TO BE USED TO GAIN POWER OVER OTHERS.
a. Magic is a technique used in developing your own 'power from within'. Spells that are directed at gaining power over others weakens the 'power from within'.
(1) Aside form the damage done to oneself, it is important for another reason.
(a) Many people who do not understand the laws of magic are afraid of being attacked magically and are given to paranoia.
(b) The witch's main stock-in-trade used to be removing a competitor's hexes and preparing charms to protect their clients.
(c) While true psychic attacks are EXTREMELY RARE a persons guilt makes up for any lack and after using 'forbidden' help, their paranoia leads them to seek protection from the same person they just turned to in desperation. Do your self a favor, and resist the temptation to 'help' these types.
(2) Most magical formularies consist of formulae gathered and tested by witches as well as many charms to protect the common man from those same witches who sold them their charms.
D. Times and Correspondences
1. I mentioned earlier that timing and the right props are considered important in spellcasting.
a. For your convenience there is a Table of Hours included at the end of this lesson.
(1) Keep in mind that all times are Pacific Standard Time.
(a) You will need to adjust for different time zones and those periods of Daylight Savings Time as may be in effect in your area.
b. Over the years, systems of Correspondences were developed which assigned certain attributes and aspects to the seven ancient planets of Astrology.
(1) Each planet was assigned a God or Goddess, who embodies the attributes the ancients wished to invoke.
(a) Each of the Gods and Goddesses were assigned an hour of the day, color, incense, metal, number, signature, plant, mineral, musical note, and animal or bird.
(b) There is a Table of Correspondences in the back of The Spiral Dance.
E. General Guidelines for Casting Spells
1. Set aside a room for your magical work.
a. Decorate it with things that put you in a magical mood.
(1) Remember to use things that stimulate all five of your physical senses.
(a) Some obvious things would be the use of appropriate colors for sight, incense for scent music for hearing, wines for taste, and textures for feel.
2. If you do not have a room you can set aside exclusively for your magical work then choose a room that can be locked while you do your work.
a. This will allow you to work undisturbed.
(1) In any case you should clean your work area periodically with a purifying powder/floorwash to keep away negative vibrations.
3. Set up an altar to be used as your worktable.
a. It's size and shape should be those that appeal to you.
(1) Placing candles and other items that assist you to concentrate on the work at hand is a good practice.
(a) Some people like to cover their altar with a white cloth and place fresh cut flowers on it every day.
4. Always use the best candles, oils, and incenses that you can afford, or make your own.
a. Scrimping on materials has a negative effect on the subconscious.
(1) Don't forget that the subconscious is very good at making do with raw materials that it can shape to it's own use.
5. Never cast a spell until you have a clear and concise picture of what it is you wish to accomplish.
a. This ties in with the saying "Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it."
6. Always ground out any extra energy you raise for the spell, and bind the spell so that it expires within the pre- determined amount of time.
7. Once you have cast the spell do not discuss it with any one until after it has worked.
a. Most spells peter out because the person who casts it boasts about it to so many people, that the spell is robbed of power before it has a chance to work.
(1) The ancient bond placed on the magician was to dare, to know and to keep silent.
IV. A BASIC FORMULARY
A. Preparation of candles
1. Types of candles
a. Votives
(1) Short and stubby. Usually burned in a small cup or container.
(a) Used to provide a light for several hours.
(b) Less space consuming so more candles can be placed on the altar at the same time.
b. Taper
(1) Long and slender. May be burned in a candle holder.
(a) Very elegant and can be allowed to drip into a pie pan so that the drippings can be read in a manner similar to tea leaf reading.
(2) Come in many different lengths and thicknesses.
c. Candle-in-a-jar
(1) Large, long-lasting candle, which is formed by pouring either colored wax into a clear glass container, or clear wax into a colored glass container.
(a) When annointing the candle, only the top of the candle is annointed.
(2) This is probably the safest candle to leave burning unattended, provided the maker of the candle took care to ensure that the wick runs in the center of the candle.
(a) Although leaving any candle or open flame burning with on one around is considered dangerous and foolish.
d. Specialty Candles
(1) Candle-in-a-jar
(a) Candles dedicated to a christian Saint or to a Voodoo Loa. The designs, signatures and instructions on how to use the candle are printed on the glass container.
(2) Cross Candles
(a) Candles formed into the shape of a cross. Comes in black, white, green and red. Used as altar pieces for christian oriented work tables.
(3) Male and Female Figurine Candles
(a) Comes in black, white, green and red. Used to bind two people together or to separate them.
(b) Burned face to face & they melt into each other to bind.
(c) Burned back to back so that no wax mixes to bring about a banishment.
(4) Seven Day Knob Candles
(a) A candle which is cast so that its length is made of seven knobs. One knob is burned each day for the duration of the spell.
2. Colors
a. The color of the candle should reflect the planetary aspect that is assigned to the incense you are going to use.
3. Annointing the Candle
a. There are two general methods which are used to anoint the candle.
(1) The first consists of starting at the middle of the candle and annointing it to the top, and then going back to the middle you would anoint down toward the bottom.
(a) The principle behind this is that you are the center of the candle, sending your energy both upward into the spiritual planes and downward into the physical.
(2) The second method is to start at the top of the candle and draw an unbroken line down the side, under its base, and back up the other side.
(a) When you reach the top of the candle, you turn it 1/4 turn and trace another unbroken line in the previous manner so that the candle is 'tied' to your purpose
b. When you are using a candle-in-a-jar you would anoint it by placing your moistened finger inside and rubbing clockwise, or counterclockwise as needed, three times in a circle in three sets to make up nine.
(1) Here is one of the more popular rhymes used to focus your attention on what you are doing. Perhaps you have heard it before.
"The wyrd sisters, hand in hand
Posters of the Sea and Land
Do go about and about
Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine
And thrice again to make up nine.
Peace! The charm's wound up!"
4. Casting your own candles
a. Most of todays candles are made from paraffin wax.
(1) Paraffin wax is sold in blocks in grocery stores for sealing the tops of homemade preserves.
b. Coloring for the candles can be bought at an arts and crafts store or if you are not going to make a lot at one time, you can melt a colored crayon in the hot paraffin.
c. Molds for your candles should have smooth sides and should not break your heart if they have to be broken or cut off your candle with tin snips.
d. Lengths of wick can be bought or you can make your own by soaking cotton thread or string (not nylon) in a boric solution (the crystals may be obtained at your pharmacy) and then leaving it to dry.
e. When you are ready to make your candles, knock a small hole in the bottom of your mold and run your wick through it. Tie a knot in the wick at the outside bottom of the mold and apply some patching plaster to the inside of the mold to close the hole.
(1) Tie the other end of the wick to a nail or stick which is long enough to rest across the sides of the mold.
(a) Make sure the wick is taut so it is not wasted.
f. To safely melt the paraffin, place cut up lumps of it into the top of a cheap double boiler which is sitting in a water bath and heat the water bath slowly until the clumps of wax melt thoroughly.
(1) DO NOT place the wax into a pan which is resting directly on the heat source.
(a) Wax is flammable and very hard to extinguish if you start a fire in the pan with it.
(2) Once the paraffin is melted, add your coloring.
(a) If you wish to scent your candle, this is the time to add your essential oils.
(b) Herb oils and essences may be purchased in most pharmacies, herb stores, arts and crafts stores or occult supply stores.
(c) REMEMBER--the oils should be used with restraint or else your candle will stink like a cheap bar of soap.
g. The wax is poured into the mold a little at a time, say one fourth, and then allowed to cool and form a depression, then another fourth, and so on until the candle is entirely formed.
(1) Once the candle is poured, place it in a jug of cold water so that the candle may cool, but no water may enter the mold.
(a) When thoroughly cold, tip out the candle, trim the wick, and burnish the candles with a piece of cotton dipped in vegetable oil.
5. It is customary not to blow out magic candles.
a. Candle snuffers are preferred to the use of wet fingertips or a plate smashed down on the wick.
(1) IT IS NOT A SAFE PRACTICE to leave a candle burning unattended in a closed up house.
(a) Even the seemingly safest candle can be knocked over by a stray animal or a gust of wind and start a fire in your home.
B. Preparation of Incense and Charcoal
1. Types of Incense
a. Oils
(1) Sprinkled on a fire or a glowing coal.
b. Powdered
(1) Warmed in tiny braziers
(a) Require a glowing coal to ignite
c. Small cones
(1) Also burned in a brazier
(a) Does not need to sit on a charcoal.
d. Joss Sticks
(1) Burned by placing sand in a bowl and lodging the stick in the sand in an upright position.
e. Ribbons
(1) Made of inch-wide woven cotton ribbons.
(a) Burned in an ashtray.
f. Papers
(1) Specially treated papers which when lit are gently blown out and allowed to smolder in ashtrays.
2. Colors of Incenses
a. The color is provided by the base and corresponds to the color assigned to the planets in the Table of Correspondences.
(1) Of course, it is up to you, after experimentation, to determine if the assigned colors work for you.
3. Bases and Recipes for each type of incense
a. Most bases are made from the sawdust, or raspings, of wood.
(1) Ground cascarilla bark is used in most of the finer incenses because it gives off a weak musk smell when burned.
(a) It would not be unusual to find that the wood base of an incense was made from raspings of the tree that is sacred to the Intelligence of the planet for which the incense is prepared.
b. The basic recipe for a wood base is as follows.
(1) 50% of the total volume of the incense in the form of raspings.
(a) Normally one ounce mixed with 2 ounces of powdered Benzoin and one ounce of Storax.
(2) 50% of the total volume of the incense in the form of finely ground spices, herbs, or coarsely ground resins.
(a) Normally about one ounce.
c. Before mixing the base you would want to dye the raspings in a pot of clothing dye and allow them to dry fully in the sun.
(1) As the raspings start to dry you should spread them out on a drying board to ensure that they do not dry in clumps.
(a) Being careful to wear rubber gloves when you are handling the raspings during the dying process, and afterwards when you are spreading them out to dry, this will keep you from dying your hands as well.
d. The base for making cones is as follows.
6 oz finely powdered charcoal 1 oz powdered Benzoin 1/2 oz Saltpeter 1/4 oz Tolu 1/4 oz of raspings.
Enough mucilage of tragacanth or gum arabic to make a stiff paste.
(1) The solid ingredients are ground to a fine powder and mixed into the tragacanth.
(a) Gum tragacanth and gum arabic or acacia gum are the two principle glues used to hold powdered ingredients together.
(b) Mucilage of tragacanth is prepared by placing a tablespoon of powdered tragacanth into a container with 10 oz of water. If necessary, correct the consistency - you want a heavy paste that can be molded with your hands.
(c) Keep the mucilage well covered, so that it will remain soft.
(d) If the tragacanth or gum of arabic pastes become hard before you have a change to mold them they can be softened in a double boiler with gentle heat and constant stirring.
(2) When the oils and other powdered ingredients are added the mixture should form a manageable dough.
(a) After the addition of the scented oils, the mixture is divided and rolled into small cones.
(3) A cone shaped mold is handy to use as it is hard to get the exact shape just with your fingers - but not impossible.
(a) You have to work quite fast and keep the unused portion in a bowl covered with a damp cloth.
(b) Set these little shapes aside to dry - which takes a day - and they are ready to ignite.
e. Joss sticks are difficult to make without a special press.
(1) You can usually obtain one in areas where there is a large oriental population.
(2) The idea is to make coils from the paste mixture prepared in the recipe for cones.
(a) You might roll slim snakes of the paste, place them on waxed paper and stick tiny twigs into one end so they will stand in an incense holder.
(b) You might also try rolling paste around a thick broom straw.
f. Sweet Ribbons are made with inch wide woven cotton ribbons like the ones used in upholstery repair.
(1) To ensure an even and slow burn in the ribbons, you should prepare a solution of 12 ozs of boiling water and 1 oz of saltpeter.
(a) Pull the ribbons through the solution until they are thoroughly saturated and set them aside in the sun to dry.
(b) Saltpeter (sodium nitrate) is obtainable from your druggist.
(2) After the ribbon is dried, it is pulled through a shallow tray of the perfume or oil you are using and dried again.
(a) To use, you cut off a length of ribbon and light one end.
(b) Blow out the fire and set the smoldering ribbon in an ashtray.
g. Armenian Incense Papers are prepared by cutting a large sheet of white blotting paper into about eight pieces.
(1) Pull each paper through the saltpeter solution prepared for the Sweet Ribbons, until each piece is thoroughly saturated. Hang the strips to dry.
(a) Macerate or soak a crushed vanilla bean in 8 ozs of vodka for a week, filter the solids. out.
(b) Add a few drops, to preference, of your favorite essence oils to the alcohol and mix this with 1 1/2 ozs of powdered benzoin and 1 oz of crushed sandalwood.
(c) Again, draw the papers through the resulting liquid and hang them to dry.
(2) When dry, cut them into inch wide strips and store them in waxed paper or foil.
(a) To perfume a room light the corner of one of the papers and immediately blow it out.
(b) It should smolder and give off it's scent.
(c) Leave the smoldering paper in an ashtray, until it has burned itself out.
4. Most incenses will burn by themselves, but oils and resinous incenses, like Frankincense and Myrrh, as well as most powdered incenses, require a glowing charcoal to provide heat for ignition.
a. Most religious supply stores sell self-igniting charcoal in little round cakes which can be used whole or broken into smaller pieces.
(1) If you have a mind to, you can make your own charcoal and then treat it so that it will catch fire easily.
(2) To make your own charcoal, build a small fire, in a container which is airtight when it is closed, using wood chips purchased at the supermarket or pieces of bark from a nursery.
(a) Once the wood is glowing red-hot, close the lid, and let the fire smother.
(b) After the coals have cooled, from several hours to a few days, remove them and grind them up into a fine powder using the grating side of a kitchen grater.
(3) To treat your charcoal for easy lighting and shaping into usable shapes you will need to prepare a solution of 30 ozs of water in which 1/2 oz of saltpeter has been dissolved.
(a) Add 30 ozs of the ground up charcoal to the previou solution and add just enough gum tragacanth or gum arabic to make a heavy paste.
(b) Form the paste into small squares or circles and make an indentation in the top of them with your thumb. This will form a cup to hold a pinch of incense.
(4) To light your charcoal, hold a flame to the corner or edge of your square or circle.
(a) Lay the charcoal in an incense burner, which is filled at least 1/3 full with sand or ashes to prevent burning the table that it sits on.
(b) Wait until all the charcoal is glowing and then place a pinch of powdered incense or a small piece of resin on the coal.
(c) Be careful not to smother it with too much incense.
C. Formularies for the Planetary Incenses
1. Moon Incense
a. Wood base is made of Willow raspings, colored white or silver for use on the new moon, red or green on the full moon and black on the dark or waning moon.
(1) Mix equal parts of wormwood and camphor raspings to the wood base.
(a) Form into whichever form of incense you prefer. Don't forget you can shape it into the symbols that hold special meaning to you. Example: making small crescent moons using the recipe for cones would be appropriate.
2. Sun Incense
a. Wood base is made of acacia, bay laurel, ash, birch or broom raspings and colored gold or yellow.
(1) Mix equal parts of coarsely ground Frankincense and Myrrh.
(a) It is best to form these into cones so that they burn more evenly.
3. Mercury Incense
a. Wood base is made of hazel, ash, or almond raspings and colored violet.
(1) Mix equal parts of gum mastic and cinnamon.
(a) Powder or cones will work just as well.
4. Venus Incense
a. Wood base is made of apple or quince raspings and colored green, indigo, or rose red.
(1) Mixing equal parts of finely ground lavender, chamomile, cinnamon, orris root, and rose petals. add musk and patchouli oil to your liking. Best prepared as a powdered incense.
5. Mars Incense
a. Wood base is made of holly or kerm-oak raspings and colored blood red.
(1) Mix 4 parts coarse ground Dragons Blood resin with 4 parts ground Rue, 1 part Ginger, 1 part coarse ground peppercorns, and a pinch of sulfur.
(a) Best prepared as a powdered incense.
6. Jupiter Incense
a. Wood base is made of oak, olive, or terebinth raspings and colored a deep, or royal blue.
(1) Mix equal parts of finely ground anise, mint, hyssop, chervil, liverwort, and juniper.
(a) Makes an excellent powdered incense.
7. Saturn Incense
a. Wood base is made of alder or pomegranite raspings and colored black or blue.
(1) Mix 4 parts of coarse ground myrrh, 1 part elderberry, 1 part cypress, 1 part yew, and 1 part patchouli raspings.
(a) Burns best as a powder, if it is finely mixed. Cones are better if you cannot mix them well enough.
D. Using Spices as Incense
1. Once it was very common to use spices to perfume a room or house.
a. Popular spices such as cinnamon, allspice, ginger, cloves, or rosemary leave a room smelling very pleasant.
(1) Heat up about 1/4 of a teaspoonful of a good vegetable cooking oil and stir in your spices.
(a) As soon as the mixture starts to smoke, remove it from the heat and walk about the room with the pan of hot spices.
E. Preparation of Essence Oils
1. Methods of Extraction
a. The three most used methods of extracting essence oils from plants are: distillation, enfleurage and maceration.
b. Distillation is the most common method of extraction and works well on leaves, bark, roots, seeds, and tough flowers such as roses and lavender. This method is not, however, suitable for the more delicate flowers.
(1) The basic apparatus for distillation consists of a still or retort, in which the materials are heated over a boiling liquid, a condenser to cool and condense the resulting vapor carrying the oils, and a receiver to collect the distilled liquid.
(a) Gather and cut up about 60-80 grams of plant material as best you can and place it in the retort, where the contents are steamed by boiling water.
(b) As the steam passes over the plant material it causes the moisture in the plants to escape, carrying the essential oils along with it.
(c) The vapor enters into the condenser where it cools and condenses into tiny droplets which slide down the collector into a vial.
(d) Generally, the first ounce is pure oil and the rest is suitable for toilet water.
c. Enfluerage is an extraction which uses no heat and is best applied to the removal of essence oils from delicate flowers like violets, lily of the valley, and mignonette.
(1) Enfluerage is based on the principle that essential oils are absorbed by other fats and oils.
(a) Shallow trays are greased on both sides with purifies fat and fresh blossoms are spread thickly between them.
(b) Every few days the spent flowers are removed and replaced with fresh ones until, in about 4 weeks, the fat is saturated with the flower oil. You now have Pomade.
(2) The oil is then extracted from the fat by mixing it with unscented vodka, surgical alcohol or brandy.
(a) The oil will dissolve in the alcohol and can be removed by placing the container of fat, essence oil and alcohol in a cold water bath.
(b) This is prepared by taking a container full of ice water, which is larger than you oil container, and placing the oil container in it.
(c) The fat will congeal and the alcohol, with the essence oil, can be poured into a suitable container.
(3) Sometimes cloths soaked in olive oil are used instead of trays, the blossoms being replaced as necessary until the olive oil is fully charged with the perfume.
(a) Then the oil is squeezed from the cloths and the essential oils separated with alcohol as in the earlier procedure.
d. Maceration is a similar and quicker method of extraction used for less fragile flowers.
(1) Successive batches of fresh flowers are left to soak in warm fat for several days, until the fat is strongly impregnated.
(a) As before, the oils are washed out of the fat by the alcohol.
2. Mixing Essence Oils
a. When mixing essence oils for use as scents on the body, you will want to dilute the pure essence oil with 50% olive oil or light mineral oil.
(1) This extends your essence oils and prevents the body oil from being too overpowering.
(a) When applying body oils you should place a small drop over those places where the blood vessels run close to the surface of the skin so that as your blood runs hot the scent radiates from you.
b. In working specific spells, it might be necessary to use five or more oils to cover all the bases.
F. Formula for an Annointing Oil
1. This oil is generally utilized to bless candles before they are used in a ceremony, and is said to magnetize the candles or to give them more occult strength.
b. This oil can also be used to wipe down an altar or a worship room.
(1) Determine the total volume of oil you wish to make, mix 50% of the total in a good quality olive oil or light mineral oil with a 50% blend of the following oils:
(a) Patchouli Oil
(b) Cinnamon oil
(c) Verbena oil
(2) Try to obtain as pure an oil as possible for each ingredient.
(a) Mix the patchouli, cinnamon, and verbena in equal amounts, so that the total is 50% of the total volume.
G. A Word of Caution
1. Some people have allergic reactions to essence oils.
a. Never use oils or blends of oils in large amounts until you have tried a small amount on your skin to be sure you are not allergic to them.
END OF LESSON 7 ON JOINING A COVEN
A. Reasons for joining a Coven
1. To experience a sense of community.
a. As Crafters, we seem to stand slightly to one side of mainstream society.
(1) This setting apart makes us feel as though we are alone and surrounded by people who do not understand us.
(a) A coven brings together like minded people who can form a surrogate clan or tribe, which then serves as a support group.
(b) Most newcomers to the Craft express their feelings at Covenmeets as a 'coming home' or finding 'their people.'
2. To find religious freedom
a. Most Crafters have had a lifetime of religious bigotry with which to contend.
b. Consequently they are more willing to tolerate other peoples beliefs.
(1) And, because of their emphasis on direct experience with the Goddess, they are not so quick to condemn your experiences as the result of psychosis or delusion.
(a) In most cases, they have had the same or similar experiences.
3. To receive training in psychic development.
a. A Coven serves as the training ground in which each member develops her/his personal power.
(1) The support and security of the group reinforces each member's belief in themselves.
(a) Psychic training opens new awareness and abilities.
(b) And feedback from the group becomes the ever present mirror in which we 'see ourselves as others see us.'
4. To gain power over others
a. Many times this is the strongest motivation for becoming a witch and joining a Coven.
b. The perceived need to gain power over others is a desperate cry for help which indicates an insecure and frightened individual.
(1) Patriarchal systems teach that there are a privileged few who manipulate the masses and we are led to believe that our own self worth is direct proportion to the power we hold over other people.
(a) This mindset leads to the view of fellow humans as being both competitors that must be 'beaten' and as potential slaves.
c. One of the major objectives of the first degree training of a witch is to get the potential witch to face the Self truthfully.
(1) During this process the witch examines her/his own motivations and internal programming.
(a) This is in keeping with the Hermetic maxim to "know thyself".
(2) As the witch comes to realize that the need to have power over others stems from a lack of power over one's own self, s/he is taught techniques which lead to gaining control over their own lives and that build personal power.
(a) With personal power, the need to dominate others subsides along with feelings of powerlessness.
II. TYPICAL STRUCTURE AND ORGANIZATION OF A COVEN.
A. Structure
1. The structure of the craft is cellular, based on small circles whose members share a deep commitment to each other and the craft.
a. The craft tends to attract people who, by nature, do not like to join groups.
(1) The coven structure makes it possible for rabid individualists to experience a deep sense of community without losing their independence of spirit.
(a) Even so, because the coven becomes a family, that makes demands upon its members, just as any family does, there are crafters who cannot function within the strictures of a coven.
(b) These crafters usually work their rites alone except for those rare occasions when they can join their brothers and sisters in the celebration of the Mysteries.
(c) These people are rightly called Solitaries or Solos, and their dedication to the craft requires them to forego the camaraderie of a support group such as a coven.
2. A coven, by tradition, never (?) contains more than thirteen members.
a. In such a small group, each person's presence or absence affects the rest.
(1) The group is colored by every individual's likes, dislikes, beliefs and tastes.
b. Some, less traditional, covens consist of any number of members from 3 - 20.
(1) Many times this comes about because of the many people who wish to work in the craft and the shortage of qualified leaders to accommodate everyone.
(a) Other factors that may affect the size of a coven are the group's philosophy, the size of the working circle, and the available members.
3. Originally, the members of a coven were the teachers and priestesses/priests of a large pagan population of non- initiates.
a. They formed the Council of Elders in each clan, the wisewomen and wisemen who delved beneath the surface of their rites and sought the deeper meanings.
(1) At the Sabbats, they led the rituals, organized the gatherings, and expounded upon the meanings of the ceremonies.
4. Each coven had its own territory, which by tradition extended for a league in all directions (about 3 miles).
a. When a new coven hived off from an established one, they were expected to honor the league rule and move off away from the established territory.
(1) This allowed the new and old covens some elbow room and discouraged the new coven members from running to the old coven leaders whenever things did not go smoothly.
(a) It is impractical in a modern urban setting to observe the league rule, but new coven members should at least try to keep their distance from their old coven except during community gatherings.
(2) As mentioned above, neighboring covens might join together for the Great Sabbats in order to share knowledge, herbs, spells and (of course) gossip.
5. Every coven is autonomous
a. Each coven functions as its own authority in matters of ritual, thealogy, and training.
(1) Groups of covens who follow the same rites may consider themselves part of the same tradition.
(a) Some traditions make provisions for the leaders of parent covens that have other covens hive off to receive recognition for their work.
b. The reputation of a coven in the community is many times all that other covens have to go on when determining whether it invite them to gatherings or not.
(1) This means that the integrity of the coven leaders coupled with the reputation of its members as being sincere followers of the Path is what a coven is judged by.
(a) The craft is a religion that is lived, and if the lives of this members do not reflect the teaching of the craft, then the reputation of the coven suffers.
B. Organization
1. Officers
a. Every group which hopes to accomplish anything must have people who provide leadership and organization and the craft is no exception.
(1) Most covens are led primarily by a High Priestess, who has gone through a lengthy training program in magic, psychic development, ritual and leadership as well as thealogy.
(a) During ritual the Goddess is invoked into the High Priestess and she is treated accordingly.
(b) Outside of ritual the High Priestess acts as the final authority when deciding coven policy, but to disagree with her is not an offense against the Goddess as some have espoused.
(2) In those covens that recognize the God as separate from the Goddess, the High Priestess shares her authority and responsibilities with her High Priest.
(a) As with the Goddess, the God is invoked into the High Priest during some rituals.
(b) In covens that do not recognize the God as separate from the Goddess, the High Priest is subservient and below the High Priestess is authority.
(c) It is extremely rare to find a High Priestess that is below or subservient to the High Priest in this day and age.
(3) Traditionally, the High Priestess is aided by the Maiden.
(a) The Maiden is usually a Priestess-in-training or a visiting High Priestess.
(b) Some traditions call for the Maiden to be the daughter of the High Priestess and in some cases this is satisfied by having the High Priestess 'adopt' the Maiden when she accepts her as a Priestess-in-training.
(c) It is the Maidens duty to assist the High Priestess during ritual by handing her equipment, keeping the candles and incense going, etc.
(4) Some Traditions make allowances for a Summoner.
(a) The Summoner, also called Puck, is responsible for acting as the private messenger of the High Priestess.
(b) He may be a Priest-in-training or simply someone who is capable of being seen anywhere without arousing suspicion.
(c) Along with the High Priestess, he is usually the only one who knows all the other witches in the area with the possible exception of the High Priest.
(d) He is responsible for the mundane matters of the coven such as contacting coven members when a coven-meet is called, overseeing coven finances, buying ritual supplies, coordinating gatherings and providing light for the High Priestess or the High Priest as needed during circle.
2. Finances
a. The craft is not for sale. There are no fees for initiation and it is considered a breech of ethics to charge money for coven training.
(1) Covens might charge dues to cover expenses for candles, incense, and other necessities but no one profits from commercializing the craft for long.
(a) One of the tasks normally assigned to someone who is about to undergo initiation is to bring a bottle of wine or to provide some homemade Sabbat cakes for the ceremony.
(b) This is to impress upon the new initiate that everyone is responsible for providing for the circle according to their ability.
(c) More often than not, the coven members provide more than expected. Not to show off or gain favor, but because they want to contribute and have the ability. After the gathering the remains are offered to the feathered friends or sent home with other members who may have a need.
(d) There is no shame in admitting a need and taking home any leftover food or supplies, because it was all given in the spirit of providing according to one's ability and you do the provider the honor of seeing that the gifts do not go wasted.
3. Degrees of Training
a. Most traditions possess a system of degrees to denote the amount of training that the members of the coven have undergone.
b. Some traditions, such as the Welsh Celtic tradition taught in Georgia, go from the sublime to the ridiculous.
(1) This tradition claims to have nine levels of enlightenment.
(a) Most of which their leader believes even he may never reach.
c. Happily for the rest of us mortals, most other traditions only recognize three degrees when they recognize any at all.
(1) The 1st degree is the degree of the Initiate.
(a) Training for this degree consists mainly of learning the mythology and cosmology of the tradition, psychic and personal development, Low Magic or spellcasting, divination, and healing.
(2) Once you attain the 2nd degree, you become an Elder in the Coven.
(a) Training involves learning the laws of the tradition, ritual magic, folklore, Spirit contact and trance mediumship.
(3) The 3rd degree escorts you into the wonderful(?) world of being a Priest or Priestess.
(a) Training focuses on rituals of life such as Wiccanings, blessings, handfastings, and funereal ceremonies as well as training in leadership and group dynamics.
(b) Inner teachings are presented during this training and the Priest/ess is offered the option of leaving the group to start a coven of their own or remaining to serve on the Council of Elders as a representative of the Ancient Ones.
d. Some traditions have pre-initiation degrees that apply to what is called 'outer-court' teachings.
(1) Many times these teaching will consist of courses very similar to the ones associated with this series of lessons.
(a) No matter what the degree structure is, the important thing to remember is that the material you are supposed to learn on your way up is the foundation on which you build your future understanding.
(b) All too many people rush through the basics to collect as many degrees as possible only to find that they have wasted their time pursuing the illusion of prestige that goes along with the degrees and never gained the knowledge and experience the degrees are supposed to represent.
III. THE COVEN PERSONA
A. Group Mind
1. Just as a mob of individuals can be galvanized into acting like a senseless animal, a coven can develop a group mind with its own goals and orientation.
a. The orientation that a coven developes can be quite varied.
(1) Some covens concentrate on healing or teaching.
(2) Others may lean towards psychic work, trance states, social action or creativity and inspiration.
(3) While others seem to throw great parties.
B. Group Power
1. In the craft, power is another word for that energy which is the subtle current of forces that shapes reality.
a. A powerful person is seen as someone who draws power into the group, not out of it.
(1) The sources of inner power are limited.
(a) One person's power does not diminish anothers; instead, as each covener comes into his or her power, the power of the group grows stronger.
C. Group Consciousness
1. One of the laws of magic is that as thoughtforms are fed regularly they grow into self-sufficiency.
a. This is why religious sites that have been abandoned for ages still affect sensitive people who visit them.
(1) And why rituals performed the same way over and over again become more powerful with each repetition.
2. Once the thoughtform is fully formed it is brought into manifestation through repeatedly re-forming it.
a. Again, this is why rituals are performed over and over the same way.
(1) You are following a blueprint for a thoughtform and deviation produces a distorted thoughtform.
b. Once a coven has found its own orientation, it begins work on forming a thoughtform of the work it wishes to do.
(1) Eventually, the coven actualizes its thoughtforms and the group consciousness becomes a source of healing for the members of the coven and a reservoir of power that any member can draw on in need.
IV. FINDING A COVEN TO JOIN
A. The Craft grows slowly.
1. Witchcraft will never be a mass-market religion, because it requires a great deal from its followers in the way of learning and practicing.
a. For this reason witches never proselytize.
(1) Prospective members are expected to seek out covens and demonstrate a deep level of interest.
(a) The strength of the craft is in the QUALITY of its members not the quantity.
B. Finding a Coven can be Difficult
1. Crafters are not usually listed in the Yellow Pages and rarely place classified ads.
a. However, they often give classes through Open Universities or metaphysical bookstores.
(1) And some Universities are beginning to offer courses about the craft in their religious studies programs.
2. The Circle Guide to Wicca and Pagan Resources
a. Guide published by Circle Publications in Wisconsin
(1) Serves as a resource guide to books, periodicals, arts, music, supplies and contacts in the Wiccan community in the United States, Canada, and Britain.
3. Occult Shops
a. Occult shops are usually listed in the yellow pages of the phone book if there are any in your area.
(1) If you make a good first impression, or are willing to establish yourself as a good customer, you might be able to get some leads from the manager.
(a) Many times a group leader will leave a phone number to be given out to a prospective member that the manager feels is sincere.
(b) Getting that number does not guarantee that you will get into a group but you will be closer than you were before.
(2) Most occult stores have community bulletin boards that advertise festivals open to the public.
(a) Chances are you will meet Crafters who are already in a coven or are about to form one at these festivals.
(b) If not, at least you will have the opportunity to celebrate the season with like minded people.
(c) It would not hurt your chances to learn as much as you can about the 8 sabbats so you will know when to look for the festival notices.
(d) Once you are at the festival, you should show off any skill you might have. Music, juggling, or a good sense of humor breaks down barriers faster than calling cards and black robes.
4. The best route is through personal contacts
a. Most Crafters feel that when a person is internally ready to join the craft, s/he will be drawn to the right people.
5. As a last resort, you can form your own group.
a. You do not have to be an hereditary, or even an initiated witch to form your own group.
(1) Stewart and Janet Farrar have provided the necessary framework for the Gardnerian tradition in their books.
(a) And Ray Buckland has provided instructions on how to form groups around the Seax Tradition that he created.
b. The school of trial and error is also a very fine one, although training by an established group helps a lot more and with a lot fewer surprises.
(1) A Witch I respect very much once replied to the charge that only an initiation can make someone a witch with the question "Who initiated the first witch?"
V. GUIDELINES FOR EVALUATING PROSPECTIVE COVENS.
A. Do Your Homework
1. Before you join a coven you should try to learn as much about the craft as you can from books and other readily available material.
a. This will prevent you from looking foolish to whoever you contact and provides you with basic information to found your judgement on.
B. Trust Yourself.
1. Always listen to the guidance of your inner voice.
a. Pay attention to your inner feelings in sensing whether or not to pursue study, magical work, or other aspects of relationships with those you encounter.
(1) If you get good feelings, gradually allow a relationship to unfold.
(a) If you get bad feelings, do not get involved.
(2) If you get mixed feelings, feel somewhat uncomfortable, or feel unsure about some group or individual, hold off on getting more deeply involved until you can identify where your feelings are coming from and what they are trying to tell you.
(a) It might mean that those you have contacted are involved in negative magic of some sort.
(b) Or it might mean that you are shy about meeting new people.
(c) It could mean that the people, while not working negative magic, are just not right for you.
(3) Meditate on your feelings
(a) Remember that the High Self can only speak to us through the Younger Self who then speaks to us through feelings and emotions.
(b) Seek out your inner voice and follow its direction always.
C. Beware of others who try to convince you that theirs is the only proper way of development.
1. There are many traditions and many paths of the craft and THERE IS NO ONE WAY THAT IS RIGHT FOR EVERYONE.
a. Groups and individuals vary in size, structure, methods of working, cultural roots, and other factors.
(1) You should try to connect with the path or paths that seem to harmonize most with your own vibrations, needs, and interests.
D. Beware of others who are overly quick to initiate you and make you part of their system of magic.
1. This is often a sign that they want to use you, your money, and your energy to feed their own ego trips and power games.
E. Beware of those who flatter you and nourish your Ego more than your Spirit.
1. They are probably trying to control you for their own devices and care little, if anything, for your spiritual needs.
a. On the other hand, beware of those who try to control you with intimidation, guilt and/or fear.
(1) Watch out for teachers who constantly point out to you how wise and powerful they are and how ignorant and weak you are.
(a) One who is truly wise does not have to call your attention to it.
(b) Actions speak louder than words.
VI. WHAT TO DO IF YOU HAVE JOINED THE WRONG GROUP
A. Recognize WHY you joined this particular group.
1. People first contacting the craft rarely enter a specific tradition out of deliberate choice.
a. Usually they are seeking 'The Craft' and they join the first group that lets them in.
(1) This group gives them a plan of study, often lasting a solar year.
(a) Then, if they seem to mesh with the other people of the group, they are initiated into it.
(b) Usually that coven has a specific orientation and tradition that it follows.
B. Making Plans to Leave
1. If you find that you are impatient or that you are not advancing as quickly as you think you should be, you may want to start making plans to leave the group.
a. This should be done as graciously as you can possibly manage.
(1) As a newcomer to the craft community you will not have much of an established reputation.
(a) And it is human nature to place more value on the story told by the leader of a group as to why you left, than your story, especially if it was a bad break.
(b) Unless the group and/or its leaders already have a bad reputation, in which case you should not have gotten mixed up with them in the first place.
(2) If you can get out of the group without causing conflicts or confrontations, do it, as it will then be much easier to build a good reputation in the community.
(a) And you will find it easier to get into a new group if they do not have to risk facing bad blood with another coven because they took you in.
(3) For your own sake, do not bad mouth your old group or its leaders.
(a) This only hurts you, as it tends to lower you in the eyes of the other crafters and it will eventually get back to the ones you are bad mouthing.
VII. WARDING OFF PSYCHIC ATTACKS
A. Get to Know Your Enemy
1. TRUE psychic attacks are VERY RARE.
a. There are few people with the knowledge and/or training who can launch an effective psychic attack.
(1) Most people who suspect that they are being attacked psychically are paranoid.
(a) The paranoia usually has its roots in guilt felt by the person who believes he is under attack.
(b) The guilt is normally related to some action or other, that the paranoid person has committed against someone else and the fear of the wrath or supposed power of the person he believes is attacking.
(c) This guilt and fear is what works on their subconsciousness until they start to manifest real symptoms or outward appearances of being under attack.
2. Look for a link between yourself and your enemy
a. If in fact, there really is someone trying to attack you psychically, they will need a link to you.
(1) Be very careful to dispose of all nail-clippings and hair, so that they do not fall into the hands of your enemies and practice restraint in giving out your picture.
(2) Wash all clothes that you are giving away and remove any personalized initials or tags that connect them with you.
(a) All of these items are connected to you through the Law of Contagion, and can serve as a link through which your enemy can reach you.
b. Check to see if any of these items may be in the possession of the person you suspect is attacking you.
(1) You should be able to remember if you have given anyone a lock of your hair, a photograph, or an article of clothing.
3. Seek out stories of failure on the part of the person you suspect is doing the attacking.
a. A large part of the success of the attack will depend on the faith of the victim that the enemy is truly as powerful as the victim believes the attacker to be.
(1) This faith not only reinforces the psychological effects of being attacked but the fear it creates opens a channel between the victim and attacker.
(a) Asking around should soon turn up stories of failure on the part of the attacker and this plants doubts in the victims mind as to whether they are truly at risk from this bumbler.
4. GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER
a. If you are under attack, it is at least partly your own fault, and you need to get your life in order.
(1) Take control of your life by cleaning your living quarters from top to bottom.
(a) This will reassure you that there are no hidden charms or fettishes hidden inside your space.
(b) If you discover any, then you can break the link by bathing them in the running water of a stream, canal or the waves of an ocean to wash away their power and then burn them in a fire to break any connection between you and them.
(c) Do not forget to check outside of your house for recent signs of digging which would indicate that someone has buried something there recently.
(d) One favorite place is under your doorstep so that you must cross it each time you leave or enter the house and outside your bedroom window.
(2) If you have been raised in any particular religion that you still feel an affinity for or have truly converted to, you might try praying to your deity for protection and forgiveness for whatever you have done to bring attack unto you.
(a) A good way to renew your faith is to sit down and read the entire book, scroll, etc, that constitute your holy doctrines which guide you through your life.
(3) Change your lifestyle if you feel that it has contributed to opening you up to the attack.
(a) Unfortunately we are judged by others according to the people we associate with and nobody needs friends who will turn on you.
B. Purify and Protect Your Home.
1. In addition to the physical cleansing of your home mentioned above it is a good practice to spiritually cleanse your home on a regular basis.
a. Natural cleansing agents such as sunshine and wind and also prepared solutions such as floor washes and powders that can be sprinkled into carpets or across doorways, etc.
(1) The sun has a disinfecting quality that is excellent for bedding and rugs.
(a) Remove all cloth covered furniture, bedding and clothing after it has been washed, and cloth floor and wall coverings and hang or place them in the full sun for a minimum of 6 hours.
(2) Open all the windows of your home and allow the wind to blow through your house.
(a) If there is no wind, then make some with a box fan, bought or borrowed from a local source.
(b) Every house has a natural inlet and outlet for air built into it. Light a stick of sweet incense and walk around your home with it. Notice whether the air coming from each window or door pulls the smoke of the incense out of the room or pushes it into the room. Also notice which windows or doors produce the strongest push and pull.
(c) Place the fan at the window which has the strongest pull of air inward, so that it pulls the air into the room. Another fan should be placed at the window with the strongest push out, so that the fan blows the air out the window.
(3) Choose an incense that appeals to you and fill the house with smoke from the incense while it is being aired out.
(a) An instant incense burner can be made from a pie plate with a can of playdough set in the middle of it.
(b) Shove the ends of stick incense into the playdough at an angle, so that the ashes fall out into the pie plate. Light the sticks and you are in business.
(c) An alternative is to use self-igniting charcoal with a powdered or resinous incense. Take a 2 quart saucepan and fill it half full with fine dirt or sand and set the charcoal in the center of the sand. Light the charcoal and place a few pinches of powdered incense or a few pieces of resin on the glowing coal.
(d) Do not place the incense burner too close to any walls, as the smoke will stain the walls. Turn off any negative-ion generators that you may have in the house as they will grab the smoke out of the air and bond it to the walls and fixtures in your home.
(4) Scrub the floors and walls with a cleansing solution containing soap, water, sea salt and fragrances which you associate with cleanliness.
(a) Some people prefer the hospital smell that comes from using Lysol, others the pungent smell of pine oil, and still others the lighter fragrances of lemon oil or lavender.
(b) I would suggest staying away from cleansers that leave the smell of ammonia since that particular smell is often associated with stale urine.
(c) Any decent formulary should give several recipes for concocting your own floor washes, cleansing powders, etc.
2. Once the psychic atmosphere of your home has been cleansed, you will want to take measures to prevent any unwanted intrusions.
a. Setting wards at all the windows and doors will prevent any unwelcome entities from crossing your threshold.
(1) This is done after all locks and bars, if any, are in place and secured.
(a) Remember, on the physical plane it is best to use physical means backed up by psychic means, rather than to rely solely on psychic means, unless you like to live dangerously.
b. A ward is set by drawing, or tracing a protective sign such as the cross for christians, a banishing pentagram for witches, etc., at each of the windows and doors.
(1) Appropriate visualizations depicting what the protective sign is supposed to accomplish, will program it as you are drawing it.
(a) You can leave instructions for it to let you know if anything tries to get past it or, if you are afraid you might not be able to control your fear, tell it to stand its ground as long as it can.
(b) Personally, I prefer to visualize it as a local manifestation of the Goddess and thereby set up a magical link that allows the ward to draw on the natural protective urges of a mother for her young.
<1> It's true that, in this case, that is playing a bit of hardball, but I see no reason why I shouldn't feel as safe anywhere I am as I do resting in the bosom of my Mother.
c. As a last line of defense, you might want to borrow a page out of the ceremonial magicians book and cast a protective circle about your bed before you go to sleep.
(1) If you are planning to go out and do some work on the Astral Planes, it is almost mandatory that you do this to insure that you are not messed with while you are "oot and aboot."
C. Learn how to handle yourself when confronted by your attacker.
1. Sit or stand with your arms crossed over your solar plexus.
a. The chakra through which energy enters and leaves your body is located at the solar plexus.
(1) By blocking this chakra, you are denying the attacker any of your energy and preventing him from sending any of his into your system.
(a) The effect is heightened if you stand or sit in such a way as to be facing slightly to one side or the other of the attacker, in other words, do not face him front on.
2. Become aware of how you are controlling your eyes.
a. The key here is relaxation.
(1) If you find yourself staring, or transfixed, blink your eyes until they feel comfortable.
(a) Many forms of hypnosis depend on catching the eye and holding it until the subject tires enough to allow an opening.
b. Notice which eye of your attacker you are staring into and deliberately change your gaze to the other one.
(1) The eye which you find yourself staring into is your attackers 'strong' eye by which he 'fascinates' his victims.
(a) Changing your gaze to his 'weak eye' breaks his control over you.
(2) It takes a lot of concentration to keep your gaze on his 'weak' eye.
(a) But exerting this effort will distract you from his voice which he will try to use to 'charm' you.
3. Become aware of your personal zones and posture.
a. Get a book on, and study, body language.
(1) Body language is the non-verbal way your subconscious communicates how it is feeling to yourself and others around you.
(a) Without an understanding of how body posture can be controlled, other people can gain the upper hand by placing you in subservient postures.
b. Learn how to recognize the positions and practice turning the tables on aggressors by trading position while you subtly invade their personal safety zone with a mildly aggressive move or two.
(1) This will remove you from being the one who is dominated, while it throws your attacker off balance.
(a) For the most part, people who will threaten you with psychic attack will not attempt to force their own will upon you physically.
<1> But in the off chance they might try, stay away from deserted or less than public places when confronting your attacker.
4. Do not overlook the obvious ridiculousness of the situation in your search for a solution.
a. People who attack or try to attack, others psychically take themselves much too seriously.
(1) The quickest way to counter an attack is to invoke your innate sense of humor.
(a) Smiling, with an occasional giggle or snicker, while your attacker is putting his curse on you, will send him into a fit of ranting and raving.
(b) Pretending to be looking forward to the curse will make him 'foam at the mouth".
(c) Asking if there is anything you can do to help will send him over the edge.
5. Whatever you do, DO NOT try to counter-attack your attacker.
a. This will lower your psychic energies to his level and open a channel between you and him through which he may successfully attack you.
b. This will play hell with your Karma and you will both be required to work things out before either of you can proceed along the Path of Return.
(1) Nor should you invoke the Crone aspect of the Goddess to punish him.
(a) The Goddess is not concerned about such matters in Her Maiden aspect, very forgiving of everybody in Her Mother aspect, and only interested in Justice in Her Crone aspect.
<1> This means that as Maiden, she doesn't care and as Mother, she will forgive and not punish, but as Crone she will kick everybody's backside that is involved.
There is a maxim of justice that - if there is a dispute - everybody is at least somewhat at fault.
Therefore to serve justice - everyone must be punished.
<2> It is better to ask for mercy and let the laws of Karma even things out.
END OF LESSON EIGHT
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