Tag: Religion and Spirituality

Blessing Cord

Breath

Adam Sartwell

The tenth bead on the blessing cord is breath. This is the manifestation of air in Malkuth. Malkuth is the physical world, where the inspiration that started out in Kether comes into manifestation. Our breath is a powerful blessing from the gods. Not only does it allow us to survive it can be used to regulate our emotions, change our consciousness, and gather energies for change.

There are many different breathing techniques to master, but in this meditation I have chosen one of my favorites, which is Pranic pore breathing. Prana is a Sanskrit term from India which means the energy that is in all things. It is associated with the breath and the power of air. Pranayama is the practice of different breathing exercises that raise the Prana in your system.

The exercise that follows for this bead in the blessing cord can be used in multiple ways. Just on its own with no intention it can fill you with the vital energy of prana. It can also be focused by intention to gather a frequency of prana that matches your intention. So you can breathe in the prana of love, peace, joy, harmony, or some other ideal. You can also use it to breathe in energies of cabala spheres, planets or elements by using their corresponding colors or visualizations of their energies. When I set an intention for it I like to say something to evoke that energy around me so that I can breath it in. An example would be:

“By the infinite divine manifestations of the two who move as one. I surround myself in the energies of (planet, intention, element etc). May they fill this space so I might breathe them in.”

You could also tailor this meditation to your intention using incense corresponding to your goal. I like to do this exercise outside because I feel like the Prana is clearer and more energized by nature. It will work inside too, but it really rocks outside!

Pore breathing concentrates on your skin and pores to breathe in the energy that is all around you. This meditation can be enhanced by wearing light clothing or going sky clad but works perfectly great clothed. I have done this one in the middle of a snow storm in January in northern New England with all my winter layers on and it worked perfectly, so don’t get too worried about what clothes to wear (or not wear).

One of the dangers of this exercise is that you can overload your body with prana. Using the grounding and centering techniques at the beginning of this blog will help make sure you don’t blow your circuits. If you are working with one of the elements or one of the planetary energies it is recommended that you don’t work with one energy too much because you can unbalance your self and your relationship to the other planets and elements. This exercise can also be used to gather energy to fulfill a spell or creative visualization. To do this at the end of the meditation, imagine the energy you have gathered being sent from your hands, third eye or heart too your visualization of your end goal until it glows with the energy of the prana you sent.

Meditation of Breath

Hold the Tenth bead on the blessing cord. The blessing of breath, the bead of air in Malkuth.

Count yourself down in to a meditative state.

Allow the screen of your mind to expand out around you forming a sphere. Feel the slight shift as a garden begins to grow up around you on the sphere of your mind. Resonate the god name of Malcuth: Ah-do-nai Ha-ah-retz

Bring your focus to your skin. Imagine the pores of your skin are becoming more open and porous. You may feel a slight tingle all over your skin as it begins to open a bit more.

You can evoke the energy or intention you are working on now with this short evocation while visualizing the energy filling the room.

“By the infinite divine manifestations of the two who move as one. I surround myself in the energies of Vitalizing Prana (or you can enter intention here). May they fill this space so I might breathe them in. So Mote it be”

Begin to breathe in the energy around you from your newly opened pores. Imagine the energy filling you as you breathe in. Hold your breath for the count of three to let your body absorb it. As you release your breath you are breathing out the opposite of the energy you just breathed in. As it leaves your body, it is dissolved and flows away from you. Breathe in again of the energy of your goal and repeat the process until you feel “full” of the energy of your goal.

You can send this energy out toward a goal or just absorb it into your body.

When you are done, focus on grounding any excess energy into the earth to be recycled. When you feel more grounded. Imagine that your pores are returning to a normal amount of openness.

Become aware of the garden around you in your sphere. Allow it to fade as you feel a slight shift. Your screen of your mind returns to its normal size.

Count yourself up into waking consciousness.

Give yourself clearance and balance and ground some more if necessary.

Contemplation

In all types of situation bring attention to your breath. Is it relaxed? Is it hectic? Is it appropriate for the situation you are in? Does changing the breath change your experience of this situation?

Blessing Cord

Awareness

Adam Sartwell

Awareness is the ninth bead on the blessing cord. This is the blessing of air in Yesod. Yesod is the sphere of the moon and associated with the astral foundation of the world of form that we live in. It is also the storehouse of every image and thought that has ever been. It can be an overwhelming place on the tree because not all that is thought of or visualized is necessarily true. This is the place within the tree of life that most associated with psychic awareness. This is why I bring up the blessing of awareness in this bead.

Here in the physical world we use only a small fraction of the awareness we have. We are constantly bombarded in our physical bodies by all the five senses and information is always flowing toward us. We learn to tune out that which doesn’t need to be in our conscious focus. We learn to focus our awareness to the thing we are thinking about. This ability to tune out things helps us focus in the physical world but it doesn’t have to be a hard line of just physical awareness.

Our body is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to awareness because we are more then just our body. We are a soul, a spiritual being that just happens to be incarnated in a body. Our spirit transcends the physical body and is part of and connected to the great spirit. The awareness our spirit can give us is the mass of the iceberg under the surface of the water. With the blended awareness of our spirit we can become aware of anything in the universe or on a different frequency from our own. It gives us a different view of what we are because we can blend our awareness with anything in the universe.

I first learned about how to do this from a great book on the psychic senses called You Are Psychic: The Free Soul Method by Pete A. Sanders. The book has an interesting premise: that we have areas of our bodies more sensitive to psychic information and by focusing our awareness and relaxed attention on these psychic areas we can experience clearer psychic information. Close to the end of the book the author talks about using your soul to expand your awareness beyond your physical self.

The area of soul-shifting is at the back of the head around where it meets with the neck. This area is associated with the visions of holy people who seem to have illumination or spiritual energy around the head. It is also the place associated with the doorway to spirits to overshadow, be channeled through, and possess a person. In my healing work it is always a strong spot for those who do trance mediumship. It is a place where parasitic spirits sometimes attach. It is a powerful part of the body where spirit can be channeled, but it is also a strong spot for the spirit to expand from. I use a slightly different method in this meditation because I want us to feel what it is like to be in body first, then what it is like to expand beyond.

Meditation of Awareness

Hold the ninth bead of the blessing cord. The bead of awareness, the blessing of air in Yesod.

Count yourself down into a meditative state.

Allow the screen of your mind to expand until it is a sphere around you. Feel a sensation of rising as your sphere begins to fill with a purple misty light. Resonate the God name of Yesod: Sha-dai El-chai.

Now that you have set the space, begin to feel where your awareness is centered in your body. Allow it to contract to this spot. Gently move your awareness down into your pelvic bowl. Feel what it is like to be in this rooted place within just your body. Feel your energies. Relax your focus and allow it to start to flow up your spine. Up your back into your neck and to the back of the head where it seems to spread out like a spoon or the hood of a cobra behind the head. Relax your focus even more, allowing it to expand. The key is relaxed awareness. From this place of relaxed awareness, feel your body and your aura. Allow your awareness to expand to be within the chair in which you are sitting. What is it feel like to be the chair resting on the floor?

Let your awareness expand to encompass the room. What does it feel like to be your room?

Allow your awareness to expand gently again to the entire house or building. What does it feel like? What images do you see? Are there any parts where you feel tension in the building? Allow your awareness to gently unfold more, encompassing your neighborhood and town. Gently be aware of any information coming to you. Relax and expand your awareness to your country and then even more to the world. What do you sense about the world?

Allow yourself to expand out into the solar system. What do you sense?

Expand to the very limits of the stars. Do you feel the peace in the whirling of the galaxies? In oneness with the all?

When you feel ready begin to contract your awareness. From the stars, to the solar system, to the planet, to the country, to the town, to the neighborhood, to the building, to the room, to the chair, and finally to the body.

Become aware again of your screen sphere. Feel a gentle decent as the purple light begins to fade.

Count your self up to waking consciousness.

Make sure to give yourself clearance and balance and definitely ground.

This meditation method of expansion can be used to get remote viewing information, to astral travel, to commune with the Great Spirit and to broadcast a thought out into the universe. When you get good at it you can even have a bilocated awareness of body and spirit.

Contemplation

If you can blend your consciousness with all that surrounds you, where is the limit of what is “you”? Is there even a limit? Why do we limit who we “are”?

Blessing Cord

Intellect

Adam Sartwell

Intellect is the eighth bead on the blessing cord. Intellect is the air of Hod. This sephira has a great deal to do with the mind, communication, and thought. In Hermetic thought we are all part of the great divine mind. Since the divine mind is in everything, everything therefore has a level of consciousness to it. We need to see ourselves and the way that we think separate from the universe because without the illusion of limits to the mind we can’t function as individual entities. Nevertheless, we remain connected to the divine mind at all times. The divine mind makes up many different kinds of cells, like our brain cells, to make up its own divine “brain”. Every part of the divine mind has a function and can be talked to and communicated with. To take it further everything is alive and responsive. One of the methods of this communication is to go into meditation and speak with it’s intelligence.

When I use the word “intelligence” in this case it is to say that there is always a spirit that overlooks any type of manifestation. When it is plants, the New Agers like to call the intelligence of a plant species the Deva of the plant. This spirit looks after and directs the spiritual medicines and energies of a species of plant. You could think of it as the higher self of the plant or its over soul. Many believe there is an oversoul or group consciousness that looks after spiritual “families” and that would be the intelligence of that group.

So when I use the word intelligence of (fill in the blank) I am talking about its overarching spirit. For this blessing cord meditation I spoke to the intelligence of my garden to talk about what plans I should make for the garden for this summer. I got advice about what plants to add, which ones to move, and what to do to fertilize so what I wanted to grow would come back.

You don’t have to limit it to plants. You could talk to the intelligence of your place of work, a corporation, your town, your coven, or anything that can be grouped or identified as an individual entity. They all have an overarching intelligence.

Another way Intelligence can be used is with the planetary energies in the grimoire traditions. These angelic beings are said to direct and mediate the energies of the seven wanders of the ancient world. The seven wanderers were the planets and luminaries the first astrologers could track moving through the sky. Each one has an angelic spirit that watches over its energy, just like a deva would for the energies of the plant species. These are the planetary intelligences listed in Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy.

  • Nakhiel: Planetary intelligence of the Sun. Good for purposes aligned with the sun traditionally such as Health, wealth, personality, success, aligning with true will,  or friendship. He is listed with helping to gain success and elevation. Heals can speed up journeys and bring people to you quickly. Which is an attribute I would associate more with mercury.
  • Malka: Planetary intelligence of the Moon. Good with the purposes aligned with the moon such as Emotion, the home, psychic awareness, dreams and clairvoyance. Plus Malka’s own personal talents of helping people be happy and affable, improving a bodies health, increasing wealth and driving away enemies.
  • Graphiel: Planetary intelligence of Mars. Good for martian qualities like hunting, military success, surgery, war, physical strength, courage, lust, athletics and competition. Graphiel’s own personal influences can help one win conflicts and bring forward anyone who has a conflict with you. He can teach you how to stop the flow of blood in a wound.
  • Tiriel: Planetary intelligence of Mercury. Mercury influences business, learning, communicating, writing, medicine, teaching, and any exchange of money or information. Tiriel’s personal gifts are to help p in improving learning, obtaining knowledge, giving eloquent speeches and presentations, he can help you be more sociable and easy to get along with. He can give answers in dreams and helps you avoid poverty.
  • Jophiel: Planetary intelligence of Jupiter. Jupitarian blessings include wealth, prosperity, mercy, generosity, health, luck, money and expansion. Jophiel’s personal abilities can help with gaining favor of those in authority, and appeasing enemies, dealing with difficult situations, and can reveal lies and illusions.
  • Hagiel: Planetary intelligence of Venus. Purposes aligned with venus are beauty, friendship, attraction art, music, luxury, love and pleasure. Hagiel is personally good at ending strife and hardship, can help you gain love, aid conception, and can help create or dissolve enchantment.
  • Agiel: Planetary intelligence of Saturn. Saturn influences the elderly, aging, bones, structures, destruction, death, Inheritance, taxes, discipline, and limitation. Agiel can help with safe births, prevent miscarriage, he also can help with influential people like bosses, judges or anyone in authority.

You can connect to the intelligence of any group of beings with this meditation or connect to the intelligence of a planetary force. It is up to you.

Meditation of Intelligence

Hold the eighth bead of the blessing cord. The bead of intelligence, the blessing of air in Hod.

Count yourself down into a meditative state.

Allow the screen of your mind to expand until it is a sphere around you. Feel a sensation of rising as your sphere begins to fill with a orange light. Resonate the God name El-oh-heem Tza-ba-oth.

Feel the mercurial orange light around you like mist. Think of the intelligence you would like to speak with. If you know its name resonate it, if you don’t just keep thinking about it’s title. The mist will begin to clear and you find you are in the home of the intelligence you want to speak with. What do your surroundings look like? Do any details stand out to you?

You will see the intelligence you called upon by thought an name. They may come from the misty orange light or may be there waiting for you.

Say hello. Ask the questions you want to ask. Be polite as if you were a guest in someones home. Ask if there is a name that the intelligence wants to be called if you don’t know its name. Ask if there is anything you can do to help it. You might ask if there is a particular symbol you can use to call it in the future.

when you feel like you are done communing with this intelligence. Thank it for its time with you. step back and allow the orange misty light to envelop the intelligence and its home, obscuring it from your sight.

Feel a gentle decent as the light begins to fade from your sphere. It returns to normal coloring and then shrinks back to normal size.

Count yourself up to waking consciousness.

Give yourself clearance and balance. Ground if necessary.

Contemplation

Everything has a level of consciousness and intelligence within the divine mind. How is your communication with these intelligences setting you up for success or failure? How can you open up to cooperation with the intelligences around you?

Blessing Cord

Appreciation

Adam Sartwell

Appreciation is the seventh bead of the the blessing cord. It is the air of Netzach. In this sphere comes the vision of beauty triumphant. Appreciating the beauty with in our selves and our surroundings can bring on spiritual insight. People take for granted the beauty and pleasure in their lives. If they are not putting attention on the things that they want to have in their lives in a positive way they begin to attract only that which they don’t want. By turning our attention to appreciating something, we change our vibration. Taking time to smell the roses, enjoy a good cup of tea, or just telling ourselves how much we love ourselves in the mirror is a practice that can change our relationships to the world and our selves.

Some Hawaiian traditions use a technique to gain the attention of the higher self and be able to commune with it. To do this they think of a beautiful scene or observe some thing beautiful. They believe that when you are appreciating something beautiful you begin to raise your vibration to align with your higher self. They use this method before they do a working or prayer. It also raises the vibration of their mana, or energy as we would say it.

When we appreciate the beauty or value of something we begin to come into a better relationship with it. One of the principles of Huna is to love is to be happy with. This principle states that if you can love something just the way it is then you can be happy with it. For me love is too broad a term and I use appreciate. If you can appreciate something, you can be happy with it. All things have a level of consciousness; when we are appreciating something we are sending high vibrational energy too it. Since everything has a level of consciousness the thing you are sending appreciation to responds. It is through this principle that they find the power of blessing.

When you bless something with the energy of your appreciation, you change it to be in right relationship with you. Take rain, for example. Here in the Northeastern U.S. we have a lot of rain. People cuss out the rain when it comes and the rain starts to move away from right relationship by coming too often or by not coming at all. Instead if you bless and appreciate the rain by thinking about its good points, you come into right relationship with it and it is more accommodating to come just enough. Next time you are at the supermarket and it suddenly starts to downpour, start appreciating all that the rain is doing for the earth, your town, how it feels and how beautiful it is. Then when you have established the right relationship with it by blessing it, ask it to let up a bit so you can get to your car. You will be amazed by the result.  By loving something as it is, you can come into right relationship with it and it can change more easily for you.

Meditation of appreciation:

Hold the seventh bead of your blessing cord. The bead of appreciation, the bead of air in Netzach.

Count yourself down in to a meditative state.

Allow the screen of your mind to expand until it is sphere around you. Feel the sensation of rising as a green light begins to fill the sphere around you. Resonate the god name of Netzach: Yod-heh-vau-Heh Tza-ba-oth

Become aware of your perception of how your energy level feels. Feel the energies of the green light around you. Ask to be transported to a place of beauty. The light seems to recede around you and you find yourself in a place of beauty. Observe what is around you. Appreciate the surroundings and the beauty within them. See not only the superficial physical beauty, but the marvels of the scene and its place in the grand design of spirit. Spend a little longer then you normally would appreciating the beauty.  When you are done the green light returns to fill the space around you. Once again become aware of your energy level. Has it changed?

Call up the mirror of Venus before you. This mirror can be any kind, as long as it is large enough  that you can see yourself and the space around you. Look into the mirror and observe yourself. What do you like best about yourself? Concentrate on that and appreciate it. Send your attention to every amazing thing about you that you can think of. This could be as simple as  appreciating the way your hands work. When you feel done making lists of what you appreciate about yourself check in with your energy level. How does it feel now that you have appreciated the beauty within you?

Behind you reflected in the mirror are some of your friends. They come forward and as they stand next to you you can feel a connection to their consciousness. In this space it is easy for you to switch points of view to get an outside opinion of what is appreciated about you. Use this connection to switch your point of view to theirs. See what it is they appreciate about you. When you feel like you have gotten what you need switch the your point of view back to yourself. You may have multiple friends appear in the mirror of Venus. Change points of view easily between them until you are done. Once again check in with your energy level? Has it changed?

Begin to feel a gentle descent as the green light begins to fade from your sphere. Your sphere returns to the screen of your mind’s natural size and shape.

Count yourself up into waking consciousness.

Give yourself clearance and balance. Ground if necessary.

Contemplation:

When you appreciate something just as it is do you have the same relationship with it as when you didn’t? Can you find the beauty in any given situation? Does finding the beauty change your emotions and your outlook?

Blessing Cord

Insight

Adam Sartwell

The sixth bead is the blessing of insight. It resonates with the air of Tipereth. Tipereth is said to be the place on the tree where we have the vision of the Holy Guardian Angel. The Holy Guardian Angel is an intermediary between us and our divine self. The radiant divine self has issues communicating directly to us because it sees time, space, and matter as illusions. Since we live in space, time, and matter to have this earthly experience it makes it easier to commune through an intermediary shape such as the Holy Guardian Angel. This being is part of us and part of the divine. It descended from spirit so we could be formed and to guide this life toward our great work.

The Holy Guardian Angel can sometimes be confused with the general concept of guardian angels. Guardian angels are supposed to be beings that watch over us throughout our lives. Guide us when we seem lost. Protect us from harm and aid us only if we ask for it. They are believed to be separate entities. There is supposed to be one for everyone in the world. They can act as intermediary between us and other angels. The difference is that Holy Guardian Angels are more like our concept of the Higher Self. The part of us that never left the divine and remains connected to it. They are an integral part of our being that can’t be separated from us until we die and are dissolved back into spirit to be reborn.

This all seems like semantics to me because I think spirit by nature is paradoxically experiencing all times, places, and beings in a spiraling, eternal now. The guardian angel and Holy Guardian Angel are not completely separate because spirit doesn’t see boundaries. I do believe that we can contact both and by inviting their presence and aid we can do more then we could on our own. They are companions in our magic. They can give us the blessing of insight because they have been with us from the beginning and will lead us back into spirit at the end of our lives.

In our meditation for this bead I ask you to invite your Holy Guardian Angel to be present with you and give you insight into your life. To give you guidance along your path of the great work. Don’t get stuck in what you think your Holy Guardian Angel will or should look like; they can appear as anything because they aren’t fixed in any one form. It is also possible for your Holy Guardian Angel to send you a guide instead of showing up itself.

Meditation to the blessing of insight. 

Hold the sixth bead on your blessing cord, the blessing of Insight, the bead of Air in Tipereth.

Count yourself down into a meditative state.

Allow the screen of your mind to expand into a sphere around you. Feel a rising sensation as your sphere begins to fill with radiant golden yellow light. Vibrate the God name of Tipereth: Yod-heh-vauv-heh el-oh-ah Vah-dah-ath

Feel how the golden light fills you with a feeling of joy and promise. Call out to your holy guardian angel. Ask for insight into your life and ask for guidance. You see a brilliant light coming out of the distance in the golden light. As it moves toward you, it looks as if it is a being walking toward you. As it grows closer the brilliant light tones down until you can see your Holy Guardian Angel or its messenger guide.

Great them. Ask again for insight into your life and purpose. Listen to them. They may show you visions and memories. Give you insight into solving problems. They may call attention to areas you need to focus on.

When they seem to be done, thank them. Ask if they have a name you can use to call upon them. Thank them again. They begin to depart into the golden light. As they leave they seem to glow brighter until they are too brilliant to look at. Then the light seems to blend into the golden light of Tipereth.

Begin to feel a gentle descent as the golden yellow light begins to fade from your sphere. Your sphere returns to the screen of your mind’s natural size and shape.

Count yourself up into waking consciousness.

Give yourself clearance and balance. Ground if necessary.

Know that if your insight didn’t come in this meditation you should be watching your dreams and for omens in your life from your Holy Guardian Angel.

Contemplation:

Think about the insights given to you about your life by your Holy Guardian Angel. Do they resonate with you and how you live your life? Knowing the messages are filtered through your subconscious did the messages surprise you or were they things you subconsciously want your HGA to say? What changes can you make to be more inline with your insight?

The Real Magick of Charmed

Pilot: “Something Wicca This Way Comes” – Part 2

Adam Sartwell

images

After the credits the three sisters come back together in their ancestral home, the Mabon night stormy with a full moon.  The sisters play with their mother’s spirit board. The spirit board gives them the message “attic” and the lights go out. Pheobe goes to the attic and finds the Book of Shadows and begins to read the spell to unleash their powers. After this initiation the witches find their powers in normal everyday circumstances. Phoebe, having read the book, informs her sisters that evil will now be attracted to them so that they can use there powers to fight evil. They fight the warlock Jeremy by casting a spell on him, only to have an altercation with him in the manor.

This episode has some vocabulary for us to talk about.  The Spirit Board or Ouija board is a board with letters, salutations, and answers, that is used to comunicate with the spirits using a pointer or plachette.

A Book of Shadows is a witch’s journal and notebook where they record their spells and rituals and anything that they feel is necessary to pass on or remember. In the Charmed universe the book of shadows seems like a living connection to their ancestors.

The sisters have unleashed their powers in this episode. In the real world, not many witches come from an unbroken witchcraft line that goes back as far as in this show. The Charmed Ones come from a Family Tradition, which is when a family practises witchcraft and passes on what they know to their decendants. This is rare, because most magickal traditions are shunned in our world. Hopefully as time goes on and magickal traditions are more accepted this kind of family tradition will become less rare. 

Most witches don’t have a tradition handed to them. We have to forge our own way by learning from books, teachers, and our own experience. Though some of the lucky ones have family members that do pass on interesting magickal facts and talents. Like in my own family, my grandmother uses my grandfather’s ring to dowse for answers from the spirit world. My father and grandfather used dowsing to find electrical lines, wells’ and water under the ground. These are just a few of the things they passed to me. I have used my own dowsing skill to find my keys in the bottom of a lake.

What happens when Phoebe reads from the Book of Shadows would be what we call an initiation in the real world. An Initiation is a ritual to induct someone into witchcraft. It can also pass along a current of the tradition and connect you to all the energies of that tradition. Initiations can be done as a solitary witch on your own. Much like an attunement in Reiki, they can open up powers and skills the witch may have not had before, or enhance the ones they already have.

There is a saying in the Craft that “witches are born not made.” This saying is a way to say that witchcraft is in the blood of the witch and is hereditary. Psychic powers are reported to travel in families and sometimes skip generations; this is true with witch powers as well. It is not the only way a witch gains their power and abilities, however. Witches can get abilities from past lives, teachers, and their own work.  In the Charmed universe the witches enherit their powers by blood, in real life we have to work to gain reliable abilities. The initiation is sometimes believed to make you a witch, but it is really doing the work of the witch that makes you a witch.  Initiations can help to help us be reborn as a witch thus making us a witch through symbolic and ritual rebirth. Initiations can happen through life experiences as well and our ritual initiations are designed to give us that experiance.

Whether you’re born, apprenticed, or self-made anyone can be a witch, it takes talent, work, and experience to get good at it.

shamanic temple

Seasonal Journeying

Adam Sartwell

Journeying to meet with the spirits of a sacred time or season makes us more attuned to the energies of time. My journeying was a little late in the cycle of classes and I went to work on the journey not in spring, but summer. I tried doing a combined journey to the spirits of midsummer and then to the spirit of summer. In retrospect, I feel like having more then one intention for the meditation through me off a bit.

The part to journey to the spirits of midsummer brought me to the eternal fire circle. That is my way of saying the eternal sabbat or where one might see the Hidden Company. In many of my sabbat meditations it seems like the journey really isn’t about me and is more about the energy of the sacred time. The lesson of the journey is usually so universal it seems beyond my “little pond”.  This one echoed one of my journeys in the past, where it starts as the bonfire and expands to be the solar system and then the galaxy,  all circulating around a central focus. The lesson for me is “as above, so below”. We find so much comfort in dancing around the central fire because it attunes us to the great cosmic dance around its central point. The turning of the wheel.

The summer season part of my journey took me to the beach. There on the surf with the gulls calling in the background, I began to feel a presence all around me. The heat became too strong and the sand burned my feet. It is hard to explain, but the whole environment of this summer beach scene began to speak with me. I would have to say it was telepathic, but more from every direction instead of having one point of origin. The spirit of summer seemed to be this place and I was inside it.

The spirit of summer showed me images of my past summers. Showing me how at peace I was with the sumer season when I was younger. How I would go out on bike rides, go to the beach, go camping, or just play outside. The images as I got older seemed more out of balance with summer. The boys joke that I am “not a hot house flower” meaning I wilt and get cranky when I have had too much heat.

Summer advised me to find a way to become at peace with the energies of the season. Others seem to love summer where I think of it more as a bother: It is hot and my day job pays less, making any fun we have a financial trial. The spirit didn’t really give me a clue on how to make peace with summer. Perhaps my future journeys will enlighten me further.

shamanic temple

Rite of discipline

Adam Sartwell

I have been thinking about discipline a great deal lately. One of the insights that I gleamed from one of my meditations on the effects of a spagyric tincture I am making to work with saturn, told me that disciplined practice without purpose was futile. This all was in reference to the part of my self that craves disciplined practice and usually spurs me with guilt when I am not doing anything. The practices that I was doing diligently were bringing results but not bringing me closer to the goal of this year which was to embrace more of the shamanic craft and obtain a better grasp on spirit work. I had done two different Mantra practices in the last six months both lasting forty days. Though the results from this practice was amazing I didn’t feel it brought me closer to the goal stated above. Something else I realized was all my spiritual practice was happening in my car. Mantra is a simple practice for me to do while driving to work, and when I finished that I would send light or reiki to people who I knew needed it.

So looking at my goal of embracing shamanic witchcraft and obtaining a better grasp on spirit work I thought that my next rite of discipline would be forty days of meditation. You might ask “why forty days?” my answer is that it is an alchemical month. It is also the prescribed amount of time to use a mantra to manifest something. I find it interesting that it also is the same as the  forty days of lent in the christian faith where they give something they love up for the forty days to honor christ. I will be adding something to my life for forty just in honor of my self and my spiritual evolution. I think that is a more appropriate practice for a witch.  I started on Ostara  and will continue until I have done a consecutive forty days. That means if I skip a day I will just start over until it is done. These are the “rules” of the mantra magick I was doing only applied to meditation. The mantra magick had you choose an intention to work for a mantra aligned with that purpose and then do a mala of 108 repetitions every day until you reached forty. Usually on the 38th day something to screw you up will appear but if you work through it and do the practice It works. I think the same applies to the rite of discipline.

To any one who reads this who feels like they need to kick there practice up a couple of notches I suggest revisiting the Rite of discipline for themselves finding something that will bring you to your goal or intention and do it for a cycle of time. You may pick a more witchy number like 28 days of a moon cycle or  the time between two Sabbats . It doesn’t have to be long to get you going it could just be a week of practice.  Just make sure your not doing the practice without a purpose in mind.

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.