CandlesCandles
Color and capacity are relevent in candle burning. Warning: Never leave a candle unsupervised.
Thin and Thick:
For ceremonies where your need is brief, where the ceremony will be for a short duration, use the thinner candles. They burn bright and quickly. Thick candles are for longer cermonies, or ones you come back to again and again.
Color: Traditional
White...for protection, peace, capturing truth and purity. Burn this time tested colored candle when a celebration calls for displaying happiness and a sense of accomplishment. It will keep harm at bay.
Black.. .Absorption of negative energy. When you feel powers of darkness closing about you, black will destroy that darkness and dispell it as the wax melts. Be sure to dispose of the wax after it has totally burned.
Yellow...Concentration and perception. This candle can enhance sensitivity to all the powers around you. Burn it when you have a lot of information coming in and wish to absord all without losing the concepts involved. Color also allows for clear communication.
Red...A passionate color, burn this when your strength is at its peak to create a stay of energy, enthusiasm and courage. Brave this light when you must convey a spell for love that is strong.
Color: Untraditional
Blue...A healing color, used in meditation to create tranquility, display forgiveness.
Green...Although blue will help with meditation, green has a calming affect more used for healing. Also used in fertitily ceremonies, it can bring luck and prosperity as well.
Pink...friendship, this color can bring emotional love, affection and harmony with those you wish to make contact.
Purple...the dignity pagans wish to accomplish with their ceremonies can be displayed with this coilor. psychic power is enhanced and a spiritual shield is raised for protection against the negative energy sometimes brought forth by incantations.
Orange...Success, always a wish, this color is used for authority and attraction of superiority. Not a common color, it feed the ego to accomplish it's goal.
Books
Everyone has their favorites. The hardcovered friends or the simple paper back we all shove into a purse or pocket and bring out when we're waiting in line at the bank or DMV.. The books we have beside our bed to read at night or the one in the car to consider when we're waiting for the kids to get out of school .
Here is
an update on books by my bedside...or on the coffee table. The
many books I have going at the same time:
"Evolutionary Witchcraft" by T. Thorn Coyle The exercises in this book are a daily routine that has helped me clear my head and walk the path. Coyle
"God Against the Gods" by Jonathan Kirsch (The History of the War between Monotheism and Polytheism) This is an intriguing book that gives all the history and information about what really happened between the Pagans and the Christians. Kirsch
"The Pagan Book of Living and Dying" by Starhawk Normally I don't go for a lot of ritualistic books, but this one has great sentiment in the passages. (Practical Rituals, Prayers, Blessings, and Meditations of Crossing-Over)Starhawk
"The River of God" by Gregory J. Riley A friend recommended this book, and he swears by it. He says he has to read it a couple of time per year to keep him sane. Some recommendation! I found it tough to get through, but then I'm not a Yale graduate. It is a book about the '...modes for interpretation: that of a great geneology, that of a great river system, and that of a relatively new and brilliantly logical view of evolution known as 'punctuated equilibrium'. Whew! The geneology of Chrisitanity. Heavy, but worth struggling through. Riley
"The Oestara Anthology of Pagan Poetry", WOW!! What a find! A sensitive gathering of lovely poetry for the pagan who enjoys poetry. "Fire Walk with me And my companion be. My babtism, my ordeal Proof that I am real." That one was by Julia Swiggum. I found out about this book through a book club I joined (Pagan, of course)Pagan Book Club
"A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn. I came about this book when my daughter had to read it for her 12th grade history class. I t is definately a view, perspective of historical event that was not taught in school. "One can lie outright about the past. Or one can omit facts which might lead to unacceptable conculsions. To state facts, however, and then to bury in a mass ofother informatio is to say to the reader with a certain infectious calm: yes, mass murder took place, but it is not that important-" A genuine and honest perspetive. Zinn
" Angels and Demons" by Dan Brown. Not as exciting or informative as "The DaVinci Papers" but this one was written earlier. DaVinci 'Lord Foul's Bane' by Stephen Donaldson. A series I found enjoyable. The story of Thomas Covenant...a man with leprosy is periodically and without provication, thrown into another world. There he is considered...'The White Gold Wielder".
A fantasy in another land, like Middle Earth, reminisant of Lord of the Rings. Donaldson
"How to Live with a Neurotic Cat', by Steven Baker. This was a Birthday gift this year, from my daughter. Stories, lots of pictures, like the cats weekly schedule...sleeping...eating...sleeping....eating, repeat. Baker
'Children of Dune', by Frank Hurbert, the sequal and soon to be on tv. I look forward to it.
'The Hobbit' by J.R.R. Tolkien. I've been trying to read this book for years and still can't get past the third chapter. But I'll keep on trying.
Tom Clancy's, 'Red Rabbit'. Yes this is on my bed side table, but it's not really up to Clancy's standards. Can't compare this to others like the 'Bear and the Dragon', which I really enjoyed.
'Magical Hearth' by Janet Thompson. This is an excellent book of the modern Pagan. Simple ideas, recipes, incantations and other useful advice.
'P' in the series of Alphabet
Murders by the retro-Sue Grafton. From 'A' is for Alibi' to the
newest, 'P is for Peril', Ms. Grafton never ceases to comfort
me with her intimate, detailed narative of the famous but humble
Kinsey Millhone most ireverant nad intetrseting private detective
in all of ficticious Santa Teresa, California. I love the easy
way Grafton writes, However, somtime I wish she would pull her
character out of 1987. On several occasions I found myself wishing
she had a cell phone so she wouldn't have to make that long, and
anxious trip to the 7-11 phone booths. Sue Grafton
'The Books of Magic' Here is also a series of comic-type books that my daughter recommended to me. These I find harder to get thtrough because it speaks in a language that can sometimes be foreign to my 'let's make sense of everything' ears. Plus the fact that these are adult-type comics by the team... 'John Nev Rieber, Peter Gross, and Peter Snejbjerg. Beautifully laid out, colored with subtle care, I do enjoy following a complicated and very 'come to life' story. On book5, 'Girl in the Box'. My daughter tried to get me started on the next series, 'The books of Fairies' but hey, I'm only human...of a type.
Reading 'The Shelters of Stone', the fourth in the 'Clan of the Cave Bear series by Jean M. Auel. Guess it would take a lot to get me add to the few series I follow. But I do enjoy, appreciate and very much look forward to each installment. The 'Clan' books are a plus for those who like vaguley historical drama. I do. Auel does a lot of research and manages to give detail....sometimes where you don't ask. But since I am currentlty writing a script on a historical person not too long after where this book is set. Well, it's entertainment.Auel
Also big on my, have handy
in your purse to peruse when you have a spare 5 minutes....'White
Spells' by Ileana Abrev.... Great quotes keep up my spirits during
the day. It's especially helpful for me, a Santeria. "A spell
is the use of natural products to help us manifest our immediate
needs....A white spell helps us manifest our needs in a positive,
unselfish manner and with a clean conscience. ..a white spell
never harms or manipulates others to do our will outof jealousy,
spite, or anger." Ileana
Heavy. And inspiring. In low doses it can be uplifting when things aren't going right.
A few more favorites, in no particular order. Maybe they'll become yours as well:
"Writing Down the Bones". by Natalie Goldberg
When I'm in a slump and can't quite pull out the right word, I'll go back on this book. I will read it out of order, a chapter here and there and soon the juices will start flowing again. Always inspiring, Goldberg reminds me of a teacher I had in high school; alwayas trying to open our minds and make us actually read and write.
.Becoming Light", by Erica Jong
Passages in this book can really bring out the woman in me. Peotry with a twist...I first read Jong after I had my first child and realized I could mark myself among adults. "Because my grandmother's hours were apple cakes baking, & dust motes gathering, & seams and hems inevitably unraveling- I almost never keep house- though really I like houses & wish I had a clean one..." "Woman Enough" This next one is from "Summoning the muse to a new house". "Woodsprites & deer arrive; racoons hitch a night ride in the still car & eat all the Life Savers from the glove compartment; woodchucks feast on the vegetable seedlings; a swarm of honeybees breaks loose from a neighboring hive & storms my third floor study window in search of honey;" Well, it goes on. The she likes to write for her daughter and this is where the prose really starts to get to me. (I'm such an old softy anyway.) "Baby-witch, my daughter, my worshiip of the Goddess alone condems you to the fire... I blow upon your least fingernail & it flares cyclamen & rose...": "Baby-Witch" There's som many more,;plus the books and stories and reveries. Sometimes I 'll read it when I question my own femininity. This doesn't happen often but we all need a boost of our female side. "Oh for a candle I could light to draw you close...Oh, for a poppet made like you, with your own lovely body sewn again of cloth, with your own pale unseeing eyes,.." From "Love Magick"
"It Takes a Village", by Hillary Rodham Clinton
Hillery's book is one you have to be at total calm to read. A bit anxious, don't start this book cause it will take time to soak in. I read this only if I'm completely sober and know I should be some input, even if it is ocassionally maudlin. "Young kids love repetition and the comfort of recurring patterns. I can't count the number of times that I read "Goodnight Moon" to Chelsea or watched "The Sound of Music with her, in a nearly catatonic state." There are other passages like this and sometimes it's great to be able to read along of what is sometimes in my mind. I like the recuring ritual as well.
The Demon-Haunted World", by Carl SaganThis is a book I stummbled onto literaly which recouperating from a severe burn. The subjects are so interesting and well put together that I could read this over and over again. Wait., I have. In this one I have passages underlines and lighlighted. Chapter 24 on "Sciene and Witchcraft " is especially enlightening, "If we focus on what was considered acceptable evidence and a fair trial by the relgious and secular authorities in the fifteenth-to-seventeenth-century witch hunts, many of the novel and peculiar features of the eighteenth-century US Constitution and Bill of Rights become clear: including trial by jury, prohibitions against self-incrimination and against cruel and unusual punishment, freedom of speech and the press, due process, the balance of powes and the separatio of church and state." Whew! "If we're absolutely sure that our beliefs are right, and those of others are wrong,; that we are motivated by good, and others by evil; that the King of the Universe speaks to us and not to adherents of very different faiths; that it is wicked to challenge the conventional doctrines or to ask searching questions; that our main job is to believe and obey- then the witch mania will recur in its infinite variations down to the time of the last man," Wow! ANd there's more of this and better.
"The Nightmare Years, 1930-1940", by William Shirer
I confess, I love to read biographies and historical books. This man (Shirer) went through some heavy stuff during the second-world-war. It really personalized the war for me. He was a news man, enjoying his life, when the war came. How he reported, lived and loved during a time of ultimate turmoil is a fasinating read. And I learned a lot as well. facts. you know, sinking into my brain like so much trivia on a sticky pan
"The Witching Hour", by Anne Rice
Purely fitional and entertaining, however this one does tend to touch me in a ver primal way. Parts of this book is like pulling out sections of my dreams and putting them into a black and white flick. However, like other Anne Rice tnovels that have been made into movies, I would not want to see this one translated. It is complex and detailed in my mind and puting it on the screen would only dampen it's affect.
"Memoirs of the Second World War", by Winston S. Churchill
More of a dry read, this book reminds me that other people wrote books about subjects on a very detailed level and still managed to live through chaos. Interesting ideas pop up as well..." It is not within my scope to describe the inconceivable brutality and villainy by which this apparatus of hatred and tyranny had been fashioned and was now to be perfected. It is necessary. for the purpose of this account, only to present to the reader the new and fearful fact which has broken upon the still unwitting world: Germany under hitler, and Germany arming" I find how we got here and what shaped out thinking very fasinating, That this man can write from notes and essays and sometimes memory of the accounts of the war, is so detailed manner. I love to read his interpretation of what happened, but he alao write so flatly historical that I have to stop myself and realize he's seeing it from a vey English point of view. However, this is the most comprehensive interpretation of WW 2 that can be found any where.
"The Bear and the Dragon", by Tom Clancy
Again, a novel, totally fictionalized but with some basis is history thrown in.
"The Stand", by Stephen King
The ultimate Fear Factor, this novel always fastinated with it's progression from a normal state to incomprehensibel chaos then to aosmewhat simplistic form of normalicy once more.
"Earth Abides", by George R. Stewart
Again this books hits the appocolypse with out all the intricate trappings like Stephen King. Simple and stright forward, this book is a great story.
"Battlefield Earth", by L. Ron Hubbard (the book, not the movie)
I pick up this book when I know I will have a long strech of time to fill; when I can afford to be sick in bed, or on a trip as I try to sleep in the hotel room. Not that it puts me to sleep, it just captures my imagination and hope for a more interesting future.
Bells
Collecting bells for their sound is a different business than collecting for the way they look.
Silver bells, glass bells, crystal bells or wooden bells. Each have a distinct sound. Echoing, clanging, tinny or reverberating, a bell will move through you with it's sound, bounce off you or make your ears ache.
Like any other from of collecting, they are seldom thought of as useful. With a little practice, however, a bell can be a welcome treat to any ceremony.
Quotes
I found some great quotes while doing research on my Spiritual Foundation Workbook.
"Magic is finding your connection to the Earth and all that is Natural, Alive and Moving in the Universe." We are moving in the universe just as the Universe moves all around us. Being one with the Universe is a lifetime journey, and far from easy. The pit falls are cavernous at times and smoothe sailing at athers. But we take the peaks and valleys as they come and hope we can cross to the other side with out getting too trashed.
"Magic is within you. With it you can create your dreams, heal your world, love your life and find the peace that lives in every human heart." Wow!. Pretty long winded, but once you understand the premise, the rest is simple. If magic is within us, then why are so many eyes blank, why do somany people just walk through life in a shadow, eyes empty?
I can't give a complete answer. Most of the time people with no one home or the child that doesn't seem like they are wholy there, and I don't mean the physically incompacitated. The magic never entered them, they have no concept of self realization, or are following many generations of 'hard-working, going through the motion' type of being that i find hard to understand.
They are ususally the ones that serve you food without a smile, the ones who sit for hours watching people pass at the mall. They are the people who thing poetry is rubbish, that sushi is yucky raw fish, or that pop music ended with the Rolling Stones.
Finally, I love
the poem by Edger Allen Poe...The
Bells.
"In Loving Memory"Spooky