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Brainstorming and Bringing Things Down to Earth

Adam Sartwell

Do you know that old saying “my eyes were too big for my stomach”? It means your perception of what you want to eat is too much food for you to be able to comfortably digest. I find this happens to me when it comes to projects and goals. I have been looking at September and thinking about all the things I think I will finish in the next month. As my head filled with the marvelous—and totally unrealistic—goals, I found myself getting anxious. 

There are so many projects I want to work on that can’t really be finished in a month. My head became clouded with anxiety over decisions on what to focus on. I reflected on how I can work on all these goals and not burn out. So I asked my intuitive mind: What should I do?

My answer was to write it out. I pulled out my journal and started a brainstorm or, as some people call it, a brain dump. A brainstorm or dump is a method to write out all your thoughts on a page in no particular order to clear your mind. In the center of the page I wrote “ridiculous things I think I can accomplish in September.” Then in random spots I wrote down everything I thought about working on. Everything from finishing a book I am working on, to loosing ten pounds, coming up with a year’s worth of classes for next year, reviving an old podcast, upping my earnings with more promotion, and creating new programs for my hypnosis clients.

When the flow of ridiculous things I thought I could do stopped, I took a breath, took a break, got some tea, and came back to my brainstorm. I looked at all the things on it and started crossing out projects that didn’t ring true for me. Then I took out a different color pen and wrote next to the remaining projects what the next smallest steps were in each project. I made sure these were humble things I could actually do in the next month. For example, I set a weekly goal of three writing sessions for my book instead of trying to write everyday. Turned down my weight reduction goal from 10 pounds to 3 pounds. Suddenly I was not anxious but excited to work to achieve these smaller goals. 

When I was done I had the inspiration to share this with you because I may not be the only one who gets overwhelmed and anxious when it comes to planning and goals. Maybe this is something that can help you get back on track. If you’re interested in working with me in more depth about this kind of planning and other ways to relieve anxiety, you can always book a session with me to talk about it.

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Connecting with the Ancestors to Alleviate Worry

Adam Sartwell

Ancestor work is always popular as the veil goes thin around Samhain. Some magic workers set up an altar or shrine at this time to our ancestors to connect and work with them. Many magic workers leave it up all year long. Our ancestors have lived through troubled times and their line continues through us. They understand what we are going through and can aid us in dissolving our worries and bringing strength and peace. Here is a spell to work with your ancestors to dissolve worries and put peace in their place. 

Gather two candles, one white and one black, some oil you associate with the ancestors, holders for the candles and an offering for the ancestors for doing this work for you. Go to your ancestor shrine or place where you work with your ancestors. Set up your candles with the black on the left and the white on the right as you are facing the ancestor altar.

 Call on your ancestors in your own words to come and work with you. Make your offering. Anoint the black candle and charge it for dissolving your worries. Imagine your ancestors before you, taking on your worries like little blobs of darkness and taking them away to be dissolved. Light the candle and start to confess your worries to your ancestors. Know that they are taking them, neutralizing them, and dissolving them so your energy won’t manifest them. When you are done say something like:

“I know worry is a misuse of my imagination, please take these worries and dissolve, transform, and neutralize them so they can do no harm. “

Then anoint the white candle and charge it with a visualization of peace or some other blessing you desire in place of these worries. Light the candle and connect to your ancestors as you chant:

“Take my worries and leave peace in their place.”

Chant this over and over until you feel like you are ready and change the chant to just repeating the last line. 

“Leave peace in their place”

Chant this until you feel it is done. Thank the ancestors for this work with you, leave offerings of gratitude, and go about your day.

musings, Uncategorized

A fallen leaf

Adam Sartwell

I took time out from my Thanksgiving preparations to go on what I call fairy time. When I had gone outside to attend to one of my turkey day preparations the wind felt like it was calling me. Tugging at my senses and making me feel a call to the wild. In response I went about gathering what I would need for some fairy time. I put my trusty bottle of corn meal for offerings. Corn meal is a good offering to the land and with the wind it puffs from my hand spreading the blessing of it. I pulled my hunter orange hat that I use for hiking during hunting season and went off to the local town forest.

The night before I started Silver Ravenwolf’s new book The Witching Hour. She goes over what she calls a “spirit walk” where you go out to connect to nature and the spirits to gain knowledge and some of the special gifts of nature. I call this faery time. I learned about faery time from my Friend Matooka. Faery time is when someone who is fey in essential nature goes out into nature to rebalance themselves after having too much busy human time. It is a time to reconnect and let go of the mundane.

I started my faery time like I usually do with an offering of corn meal at the beginning of the trail to the spirits of the land and fey of this place. I asked that in return they give me there guidance and protection on my journey. Moving through the woods with the November winds rattling the trees and shaking the leaves instantly calmed me. As I walked I mused about my year reading with Matooka Moonbear last night. How my focus was on connecting to the innocent childlike way I connect to the world. As I walked I tried to catch a leaf falling from a tree. Since I was little I knew that if you could catch one in the fall you would enjoy a illness free winter. Whether this is empirically true I have never investigated fully but it has always been something I try to do in the fall. I leaped and reached but the three times I tried I caught no leaf.

Disappointed I turned my eyes to the beauty of nature around me. I picked up a fallen pine bough bringing it to my nose to smell it’s scent. This brought me to think about Silver’s book since one of the things you would get from a spirit walk was things you could add to your herbal formularies and powders. Thinking of the book I asked spirit what it had to teach me right now. I reached again to smell the pine bough and a small oak leaf fell and stuck to my jacket. I laughed picking it off my jacket and knowing this was my message from spirit. The leaf meant to me that you don’t have to try so hard or push yourself so much, sometimes it is just about connecting, asking and letting yourself receive.

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Mailing List

Adam Sartwell

I have an online mailing list for those interested in getting the latest news and updates on my writing, classes, workshops, personal appearances, readings, and other news. You can subscribe by clicking here and signing up! I promise that the mailing list will not be shared, and updates should be infrequent enough not to overflow anyone’s inbox. Please feel free to spread the word to anyone you think might be interested in my work! Bright blessings — Adam

crochet patterns, Uncategorized

Pussy hat Project Hat.

Adam Sartwell

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Pussy hat project Crochet Version. By Adam Sartwell.

I am going to the woman’s march with a couple of friends in Boston on January 21st 2017. I am a man who supports woman’s rights. I want to show my support  by both marching and making as many hats as I can. If you would like to learn more about the Pussy Hat Project and see other patterns please go to  https://www.pussyhatproject.com. If you would like to know more about the woman’s march on Washington go to https://www.womensmarch.com. For the information on the Boston one go to http://bostonwomensmarchforamerica.org

I made this version of the pussy hat project hat because I hate sewing. I tried to Knit the hat they have as a pattern on their website and it came out really large. I am sure my gage was off or I was using bigger needles then I needed. So I looked at the crochet patterns and I didn’t like the look of them. One required sewing which is a bummer cause I hate sewing. The other one had no ribbing so it fit snug to your head. So this pattern makes the hat from the top down in a method I used to make tarot bags where you use both sides of the chain only going in one side of the loops at a time. Then It incorporates making ribbing sideways around the hat which gives you a stronger ribbing then the alternating BL and FL. I used an H or 5.5mm hook and It took about a skein of medium 4 yarn.

Ch. 37

  1. In the chain one away from hook In back loops only half double crochet until end of chain. Turn and in the other loops of your chain (the front ones) half double crochet to end of chain then slipstitch end making a round.
  2. Ch2 and double crochet in all Hdc all the way around hat. Slip stitch into beginning of hat.
  3. Repeat 2. for 5 rows or until you have the desired length of four to four and a half inches
  4. (now the weird part where the ribbing begins.) chain eleven in chain one away from hook in Back loops single crochet until you reach hat. Single crochet in dc of hat. Sc in next dc above.
  5. Turn. sc ten times in sc of previous row of Brim in the Back loops only.
  6. Chain one turn sc in bl unit you reach hat. Sc in dc, sc in next dc.
  7. Repeat 5+6 until whole hat has ribbing.
  8. When you have gone all the way around the hat turn it inside out and sc through the loops  both beginning of ribbing and end of ribbing to combine. Finish off.

 

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Creation According to Chokmah

Adam Sartwell

From Nothing and All,

the Holy Desire,

of self unto self,

Speaker to listener,

the word divided us.

In it we found,

joy and sorrow,

pleasure and pain,

laughter and tears,

and through them

our love is made pure,

of self unto self

Our Holy Desire

for Nothing and All.

• • •

I came up with this poem as I thought about my experiences in Witchcraft Four during the Chokmah lesson. My vision verged on the mystic. Poetry is really the only way I know to put words to this particular vision.

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An offering of vibration

Adam Sartwell

I bought a singing bowl in Montreal on our vacation. I am horrible at getting them to sing and this was the first one that had ever sang for me. I took it as a sign and bought it at once. It is little and brass and came with a Wooden pestle and a pillow. When I got it home I out it on my desk and for got about it until yesterday. I picked up the bowl last night and began to play it without a particular intention to journey or meditate. As I played I became entranced and mindful. It then came to me to do an offering of sound and vibration to the gods and as I played I thought of the gods and made prayers of gratitude. I felt so good after I repeated the offering of vibration this morning pushing myself to find five things I was grateful for. The whole exercise maybe took five minutes but filled me with a feeling of peace before I had to go to work.

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Awakening to the dream

Adam Sartwell

I woke this morning from a disturbing dream. The interpretation of the dream helped me get past it’s disturbing quality. Knowing that my dream was not literal and was a metaphor for what I am going through I could find it’s meaning. This is the kind of discernment we use for dreams. It got me to thinking about journeying as a shaman and how sometimes our journeys are much like dreams. For when we journey we go out into the planes of dream. Some shamans would say that our physical world is just another dream. To be “awake” to the meaning of a journey or an omen we must interpret it like a dream. Interpreting anything uses intellect and intuition combined. You must know yourself and what your subconscious signs are. You must have the intuition to be able to know if it is true for you. I like to get into a light trance to talk to the aspects of the dream or journey. I flat out ask them what they mean. This can be done with anything in the landscape even inanimate objects.

One of the most helpful things I have found is to talk about a dream with a friend who knows where the metaphorical bodies are buried in your mental landscape. Sometimes getting an outside perspective can help get us get clarity in our blind spots.

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Supporting your shadow work.

Adam Sartwell

One of the things that I think is so important to the process of going on into the third level is to maintain work with the basics. Yes the level three is filled with journeys and work with guides but it is the things we learn in witchcraft one that give us the “witches fire” to take on the shamanic work. It is often hard to find time for all this work and support.

For example I know that one of my own shadow parts that often defeats me is when I get into a mood where I see my long list of things to do and see that it is never ending. I feel depressed about it and then it starts to leak out into other things in my life souring my reactions. This morning was one of those times.

I have been doing a ritual of discipline using a Sanskrit chant for forty days ending on New Years day to remove obstacles, both internally for all my “parts” to become whole and another chant to deal with helping me in my ministry work.  The first chant for removal of obstacles is :” Om Gum Ganapatayei Namaha” Which means “ Om and salutations to the remover of obstacles for which Gum is the seed.” The second is a more well known chant and happens to be one I had a shamanic experience  with on my birthday. I woke up thinking our guest was chanting this chant in the middle of the night only to find him asleep on the couch. It is “Om Madne Padne Hum” which embodies the compassion of the enlightened who turned from there own enlightenment to help raise the consciousness of those who are suffering in the world. So to help me get out of my funk I put on some meditative music in my car for my ride to work. I did my two chants 108 times using  mala beads to keep count. Then I cleared my chakras using my instant magic trigger and sent Reiki to myself. By the time that my commute was done I was not in a mood anymore but was optimistic. At the end of my drive I did my three soul alignment to give any extra energies released to my higher self.

Most people don’t like having a long commute but I really kind of like it in the fact that it gives me a time where I can use my trigger to help both my self as I did up above, or to send light and reiki to people who are in need. It is amazing how such a little practice can change your life and those of others. If your interested in doing a chanting working similar to mine Look at the book Healing mantras By Thomas Ashley-Farrand

shamanic temple, Uncategorized

A walk to find my Tree.

Adam Sartwell

This morning I decided to go to the park to perform the exercise finding your world tree. The Shamans world view is vertical instead of horizontal. They believe there are three (or more) worlds: The upper world, middle world(where we live) and the underworld. The axis that moves through these three worlds is the world tree. Some Shamans have used other images to represent this axis like a mountain, fairy mound, or some modern city shamans use a skyscraper.  The point of this exercise is to form a bond with a physical tree that would represent your world tree and be a sacred spot to be the “center of the world”.

I brought with me some cider to offer to the fey of the park and to my new tree friend. As I walked into the park I crossed my fingers to activate my trigger of instant alpha state and even counted myself down to alpha. In this altered state of consciousness I followed my instinct and intuition on where to walk. On the path down to the river bank I stopped to offer some cider to the spirits of the park and the fey there in to ask them to guide me to my world tree. I looked up and down the path and all around to make sure no one was watching and then I said a prayer to the spirits and poured out my offering at the base of the tree. Immediately after I finished my offering I felt the feeling that I was not alone and that some one was watching me. The feeling of fear and shame flooded my senses, thoughts about how I would explain my actions to a passer by. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a dark silhouette of a man standing to my left on the path watching me. Thinking it was a person I turned putting my cider bottle in my pocket and choosing a path away from the person to avoid any questions. Once down the path I looked back to find no one there.

I was still filled with a unsettled feeling of fear. My mind shot back in time to a sleep over  with my friends and circle mates in my teen years. That night I first experienced my shadow psychically. Thank the gods my friends were used to an amount of psychic experiences  as I faced a spirit only I could see. My friends could only feel me all around them. Where I was looking at what I called the dark man. The same fear flowed through me, the feeling of being watched  and the fight for control was all there as it was in the park in the current day.

To combat the feeling of fear I used the Emotional body Training exercise and immediately it subsided. My mind felt more clear and I could marvel at something I haven’t experienced in years. The night of the sleep over brought on many more contacts with my shadow until we were more integrated and it didn’t appear to me in the physical only in meditation. Why now would it appear again? My only answer is the focus of the year long quest of shamanic witchcraft is to meet with the shadow and partner with it. My shadow seems to hear my intent loud and clear.

I wandered the park some more picking up some white pine needles for a couple of smudging bundles. I wandered the park and ended up where I have done rituals in the past. I could feel the tree calling me. The tree was white pine. I slipped deeper into meditation and conversed with the tree. I offered the rest of the cider. The tree told me of its powers to purify and protect.  It also told me of how its roots grow out more the other trees, and how its Branches spreads out at the top to gather the suns light. It told me of its strong trunk that gets longer and longer. It also reminded me that it is so easy to topple over if you don’t have strong and deep roots.

I took pictures of my tree, both to connect with it from far away and just incase I got turned about in the park and needed help finding it. We said our farewells and I counted myself up to return to normal consciousness. I have a feeling this will be an interesting year.