Tag: Spiritual practice

Blessing Cord

Vision

Adam Sartwell

The sixteenth bead of the blessing cord is the blessing of vision. This is the blessing of fire in Tipereth. A vision gives us guidance along our path. It can give us the ability to choose, to embrace a new way, to let things go that no longer serve, and can give us new awareness. Visions have been sought out since ancient times. People with the “sight,” like the oracles of Delphi, were consulted for their gift of vision. Native Americans and other tribal cultures used the vision quest to find spirit guides, healing, and the knowledge and experience needed to attain adulthood, with adult responsibilities and wisdom.

Our modern culture seeks its answers in the human experience. We turn to books, to the internet, to our teachers, and all other places in the material world. We have forgotten that there is only so much a book, class, or online collection of information can teach us about ourselves and how we think the world is. We find ourselves searching and searching for something to guide us, in book after book, on site after site, until we give up hope. What we seek is vision. We seek out sacred knowledge from the All. We can only find reflected visions of our personal vision in others. We have to go out and experience the vision and be guided by our own knowledge of the truth. As the Charge of the Goddess says, “that if that which thou seekest thou findest not within thee, thou wilt never find it without thee.”

There is an element of trust and confidence inherent in this leap to find our own vision. We must trust our own abilities and knowledge. Our confidence must be high enough to know we can seek our own vision and find it. We must trust in the universe, divinity, and the spirit world that we will be able to find our vision. This is what the books of techniques, internet sites, teachers, and all other reflections of the vision prepare us to do, seek out our own vision of what we are and what we are here to do.

This meditation is a vision quest. You can use it to gain guidance on anything, but you must have a clear intention of what you are seeking. The intention can be something as broad as “show me what I most need to know” or as defined as “show me the animal guide that is working with me right now”. It can be anything where you seek guidance.

Meditation for Vision

Hold the sixteenth bead, the bead of the blessing of vision, The blessing of fire 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

The golden light begins to loose its opaque nature and you can see that you are in a field of golden wheat. The sun is bright and you see a large tree not far from where you stand. Sunlight plays through its branches. This tree is the world tree, greatest of all guides, for it is a part of all, touching upon all worlds. Walk toward the tree. See the light play through the branches. Feel the bark of the tree. Feel this ancient being’s pulse of life. Tell the world tree your intention to gain vision. Tell it all about what you are looking for. The tree may respond by opening a gateway in its roots or you will become aware of a path, it may even call an animal or spirit to guide you. Follow the path of your awareness. Be aware of the surroundings as you pass through: Are there any plants or animals that stick out to you as you walk the path? These details can be as guiding as they are in dreams, because they may be symbols of your vision.

Follow the path until you come to the place where your vision awaits you. Let the landscape and the beings within it guide you. Anything is possible in the spirit world. If you don’t understand a part of the vision, begin to talk to it and ask what it represents. Even the inanimate has consciousness and can respond in the spirit worlds. Observe the details of your vision.

When you have gained all the vision you feel you are going to receive, give thanks to the spirits and the world around you for their guidance. Return by the path you took back to the world tree. Thank the world tree for its aid. Walk back to where you began the vision quest.

Golden light again begins to fill the area around you, making the world go opaque with the intensity of its light. As the light fades you feel a feeling of gentle descent. The screen of your mind begins to return to its normal size.

Count yourself up into waking consciousness.

Ground and center yourself. Begin to write down all that you remember, without editing or worrying about structuring it too much. Visions, like dreams, can evaporate like dew on a sunny morning. You will want to have as much information as you can.

Contemplation

Where have you gained vision in the past? Use dream interpretation books, free association, and your own knowledge of your symbols to interpret your vision. What do you need to do to enact this vision?

Blessing Cord

Change

Adam Sartwell

The fifteenth bead in the blessing cord is the blessing of change. This is the fire of Gebruah. Change is a constant in the universe. Nothing stays the same forever. Some things come back around, but eventually they change again. We can’t escape being changed by the circumstances of our lives. We are constantly growing, building, deteriorating or decaying.

One of the teachings we can draw from the images of Baphomet by Elphias Levi are the words written on Baphomet’s arms: SOLVE and COAGULA are the Latin words for to sepperate and to join together, respectively. Since Baphomet is a microcosmic view of the universe, neither male nor female, human or animal, it represents this power of change in the universe in these two concepts. These are the two sides of change. To seperate or divide into its component parts or to bring things together in a new shape or configuration. These processes are the two methods the alchemist uses to create a pure essence of the substance they are working with. This is why nature is considered the greatest of alchemists.

Change often has a rhythm and a cycle to it. These cycles of change are the small cycles that reflect the greater cycles of life. Take for example the life of a tree. Spring is birth and renewal, summer is the prime of life and growth, Fall is the decay and waning, preparing for sleep or death, Winter is dormancy and death—each has its place and is a reflection of the whole life of the tree. None is good or bad, it just is. No part of the cycle could happen without the other parts of the cycle. In this meditation, we go through the life of a tree to feel the changes and rhythms in change and that an end is not just an end, but also a new beginning.

Meditation of Change

Hold the fifteenth bead, the bead of the blessing of change, The blessing of fire in Geburah.

Count yourself down into a meditative state.

Allow the screen of your mind to expand to create a sphere around you. Feel a rising sensation as the sphere fills with a red light. Vibrate the god name of Geburah: El-oh-heem Gi-boor

The red light around you begins to become like a red mist of dawn in a grove of oak trees. Look around you at your feet and find an acorn. Take that acorn and dig a hole in the earth for it. Once it has been buried, let your body dissolve and become like liquid light. You pour yourself into the buried acorn. All your essence is within this acorn. Merge with this small life.

At your will, project yourself and your acorn through time so you can move through its life cycle. Feel the resistance as acorn-you grows roots, displacing the soil. Feel the resistance as you grow to break through the soil to the surface. Feel the growth as you become a young sapling. Sprout leaves to soak in the summer sun. As summer wanes you drop these leaves to prepare for the sleep of winter. What does it feel like to give up this part of yourself, returning it to the earth? Sleep well under the snow, until spring rises again and you bud and begin to grow again to feel the summer sun.

Your branches grow, only to have one branch break and fall off because of the wind. You persevere, knowing that the loss of this branch has opened up that space to let your other branches grow into to get even more sun. As fall and winter come again. Time marches forward at an even more rapid pace. You feel what it is like to grow up above the other trees. Grow and grow, season by season. Until you are a gigantic oak sheltering smaller oaks of your own. What is it like to have come into fertility?

Time marches forward to when your vitality begins to wane. The processes you have gone through become harder and harder until your tree begins to die and decompose. Feel the separation of spirit from the body of the tree. How it spreads and expands, feeding the spirit around it. Know that this is not the end only a new beginning for this tree soul.

The liquid light of you begins to separate from the tree spirit and reform into your spirit body. Take time to ground yourself into the shape that is you. Thank the tree spirit for teaching you the ways of change and its cycles.

The red light begins to fill your sphere again blotting out the grove. You feel a gentle decent as the red light fades. Your sphere returns to the shape and size of the screen of the mind.

Count your self up into waking consciousness and ground and center yourself.

Contemplation

What changes have you gone through in your life? How has this effected your journey? What changes do you need to make to create a better life for yourself and others?

Blessing Cord

Authority

Adam Sartwell

The fourteenth bead in the blessing cord is the blessing of Authority. It is the fire of Chesed. Authority is the power of sovereignty and inner mastery. We have the ability to be sovereign in our lives or we can give our power away to others and to circumstance. The more authority we exert in our lives, the more we can make changes in our lives and be better examples of how life can be to others.

Oftentimes, we don’t want to be the deciding factor in our lives. We let others choose what to have for dinner, where we go on vacation, how our governments are run, and a million other decisions. It feels easier to just release the responsibility for our lives to our partners, our families, our teachers, and to our government. We can then blame them instead of taking responsibility for our choices. Even the surrendering of choice is a choice, however, and we are still responsible for how it turns out when we give our decision-making power to another.

An enlightening view-point I learned from the Silva Mind Control method is that we can always talk ourselves into or out of doing anything. We often come up with reasons and excuses for why we are not doing something or why we want to do something. The only reason we truly need is that we want or don’t want to do something. We add to our mental to-do list things that we think we “should” or “ought” to do; what we think others want us to do or what would be the “right” thing to do. My friend Matooka says, “Don’t should on yourself”.

We also need to have the authority and mastery of our lives to be able to give ourselves permission to take a break. With my own busy partners, I have had to ask them why they can’t give themselves permission to relax. Sometimes I jokingly say “I give you permission to relax today and just enjoy” like I was the king in the situation. It does bring me to the idea of how we are inner sovereign of ourselves and the way we manifest by giving permission.

In this meditation I use some words of power. Words of power is a method of using a declaration or a grouping of affirmations to manifest change. I learned about it from the books of Marion Weinstein. The concept is that you begin by invoking spirit, stating within that the spirit is or contains a manifestation of what you want to become, that you are either in alignment with that greater spirit or an embodiment of that spirit. Then you speak your affirmations of what you want to be. A statement of release and transformation follows for the energies you have released in the past that are not in alignment with your goal, to turn them into what your goal actually needs. Caveats for the work to harm none and be for the highest good. Lastly a declaration of it is so like “so mote it be” “so be it” or “amen”.

These words of power can be used to manifest anything. They are even more powerful when spoken in meditation for they are delivered to the deepest parts of the self faster that way.  Within the following meditation, you are given some words of power to speak in a sacred inner temple. Read them over and make sure you have the gist of them before you do the meditation. Give yourself the authority to change them to suit your aesthetic.

Meditation of Authority

Hold the thirteenth bead of your blessing cord, the bead of Authority, the bead of the blessing of Fire in Chesed.

Count your self down into a meditative state.

Allow the screen of your mind to expand to create a sphere around you. Feel a rising sensation as sky or electric blue light begins to fill the sphere. Resonate the god name of Chesed: El

Around you a temple begins to come into shape. This is the temple of your inner authority. You are sovereign and master within this temple. It may resemble your inner temple or a place in your life where you feel in control and commanding. Look around and observe this place. Are any of your guides or spirits present here to witness? Here is the place to invoke the words of power to proclaim mastery over your life. You can use the words of power that follow or you can make up some of your own.

“I call upon the Goddess, God, and Great Spirit
who contain within them true authority, mastery, and sovereignty
of which I, (name) am an embodiment,
to hear this declaration:
I am the sovereign of my life
I grow into greater self-mastery every day
I take responsibility for my choices and make corrections when needed.
I am the greatest authority when it comes to me.
In humility, I ask to be crowned in wisdom, power, and compassion.
I release and transform all that does not serve to become greater self mastery.
All aspects and parts of me work in harmony toward self-mastery
for the highest good with free will to all, harming none
So mote it be!”

After your proclaimed words of power, you may hear an astral bell or just the words moving outwards and echoing in the temple like the whole universe is listening. There may be shifts within the temple or things that are suddenly changed about it. Observe these changes to interpret them—like dream messages or omens about your own path to mastery. Thank any spirits or guides who have joined you in this place.

The blue light begins to fill the temple until the temple fades to blue. Then the blue light begins to fade as you feel a slight decent. The screen of your mind begins to go back to its normal size and color.

Count yourself up into waking consciousness.

Give yourself clearance and balance. Ground if necessary. Write down your experience.

Contemplation

Where do you need to take more responsibility for your life? What is it you have been putting off? Are you taking care of yourself as well as others? Do you feel like a sovereign in your life?

 

Blessing Cord

Passion

Adam Sartwell

Passion is the blessing of the third of the fire set of beads and the thirteenth in the blessing cord. The blessing of passion is the fire of Binah. In this blessing the holy desire sparks will and when it goes into the forming power of Binah it becomes passion. Passion brings creativity, fertility, and builds in power to overcome resistance. Passion for our holy desire, powered by our will brings us into alignment with our own divine essence.

Passion for art, music, learning, or anything else rewards us with enjoyment and the peace of knowing we are fulfilling something within us. Passion can be creative or receptive. You could be passionate about doing theater or going to see theater productions. Do not limit how your passion can manifest.

Many times we move away from our passions because of the needs of our daily lives. We get wrapped up in making money, seeing to the needs of our partners, parents, and children. We begin to stop focusing on the passions that lead us to our end goals and get mired into our means goals. Our means goals are the things that help us survive, like getting and keeping a job. We soon forget that our means goals are just things that are a means to the end goal of what you truly value and are passionate to do with your life.

With every passion there is resistance. There are reasons we just can’t do what we are passionate about and setbacks. Every incubating chick in an egg has to muster enough passion for life to break free of its shell. The shell protected it while it grew, but once it grew enough to be uncomfortable with its limitations it begins to push against the egg and break free into experiencing its passion. Resistance can be something that holds you in your egg or the challenge to embrace your passion and build your strength to escape into greater passion and fulfillment. We need to stop fearing our resistance and see it as a sign that we must build the strength of our passion to break through it.

In this meditation you will connect or reconnect to your passions and be able to recognize the places where you feel resistance to them being fulfilled. In it we will train the mind to build passion until it overcomes resistance.

Meditation of Passion

Hold the thirteenth bead of the cord, the bead of the fire of Binah, the bead of passion.

Count yourself down into a meditative state.

Allow the screen of your mind to expand to create a sphere around you. Feel a rising sensation as the sphere begins to loose all illumination until you are surrounded with a black endless void. Resonate the god name of Binah: Yod Heh Vauv Heh El-oh-heem.

In the inky blackness you see a shape forming before you. It looks like a pod forming before you. It grows out of the darkness and seems to be a indigo blue. It looks like a giant rose bud that has not yet opened. This pod holds your passions. Touch the pod and call out to your own passions to manifest within it. The pod seems to light from within. The sides of the pod become clearer and brighter.

The sides of the pod become translucent and within you can see yourself engaging in your passions. Those things that feed your soul. The images of your passions are filled with color and intensity. Even from the outside of the pod you can feel the intensity of the passion contained inside. Imagine that the contained passion is growing in strength until the light of the images is so strong you can hardly see it.

Reach forth again and step into the pod and feel the intensity of your passion. Give yourself time to feel it fully. Experience the passions that feed your soul and allow you enjoy your life. Let the passion integrate with your being until you feel that you are being contained and need to break free.

Bring your attention to the sides of the pod around you. Reflected on the sides of the pod are the reasons and excuses why you have not been fulfilling your passions. Observe these reasons as flittering images. Know that these are just the resistance that is helping your passion grow in strength and not obstacles in your way. After you feel you have observed them say to these images, “You are the resistance that builds the strength of my passion. I will blossom into who I am meant to be.”

Return your attention to the passion building in you. Feel it like an energy growing in intensity until it suddenly causes the edges of the pod begin to curl away from you at the apex of the pod. As the energy builds the pod blooms out into a flower below you and your passion seems to radiate out of you like you are a star-bright jewel within this flower. Feel what it is like to be this radiant being of pure passion and delight. Look around, you may see other pods opening and awakening to passion seemingly in response to your opening. They may look like stars within the inky void.

When you are ready to return, let the images fade, knowing you can call up this passion at anytime. You will know that when you feel resistance it is just building your passion.

As the lights fade and the void fades, you feel a gentle decent. Your screen returns to its normal shape and size.

Count yourself back up to waking consciousness.

Give yourself clearance and balance. Ground if necessary. Write down your experience.

Contemplation

In what way does your passion manifest: art, poetry, herbalism, writing, reading, learning? Do you express this passion in your life? What is the resistance that is helping you build your passion so you can overcome it and express it even more strongly?

Blessing Cord

Desire

Adam Sartwell

Desire is the first bead of the fire quarter of the blessing cord. Desire is the blessing of the Fire of Kether. While doing my course of study with the Temple of Witchcraft, I had a profound vision when we were meditating on Chokmah of what I call the Holy Desire. It was a version of why everything in the universe was created.

In the beginning there was nothing but Kether and because the Great Spirit is everywhere without limits it could experience nothing. So it separated with a spoken word. One part of it speaking and one part listening. This yearning for experience is the Holy Desire. From this one Desire all was created and continues to be created, preserved, and destroyed. This desire also made a multitude of expressions and experiences all had by the Great Spirit in Kether because the separation is always followed by return and reintegration and the Great Spirit still has no limits but can experience them through us and everything that is.

I wrote This poem about it:

Holy Desire

From nothing and all

the holy desire

of self on to self

the speaker to the 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 on to self

our holy desire

for nothing and all.

Meditation of Desire

Hold the eleventh bead of the blessing cord. The bead of Desire, the fire of Kether.

Count your self down into a meditative state.

Visualize the screen of your mind expanding into a sphere around you. Resonate the God name of Kether: “eh-heh-e-yeh”

You feel a rising sensation. Your sphere begins to fill with radiant opalescent light that seems to hold all colors inside it. As the light begins to wash over you, feel your own limits beginning to dissolve into the oneness of the Great Spirit. Express your desire to experience the Holy Desire that created the universe and the more personal and particular Holy Desire that your life fulfills.

You may feel a shifting expansion as you move through time and then a concentration until everything seems to be in one point, one “place,” one “time”. Feel the limitless oneness of this time before time. Connect to as much as you can and feel the Holy Desire of the great spirit. Know that we as beings of space and time may experience it in the way our subconscious mind can explain it, through our own symbols and experiences.

Now move forward in time to when the Holy Desire builds to a crescendo and the word is uttered and heard. You may experience a rush of expansion and a separation as one part speaks and the other parts of you listen. Continue down the new flow of time, seeing some of the Holy Desires as they create, become destroyed, and reintegrate into the one. This is the alchemy of creation and destruction.

Now focus your mind to the time just before your birth. Feel again the oneness of the Great Spirit and sense the Holy Desire creation wanted to fulfill in you. This may come to you in symbolic form. If you don’t perceive anything, know that you may see it in a dream later as the vision filters into your conciousness. Know that this Holy Desire that brought you into being changes all the time and is more complex then our human minds can comprehend at times. We fulfill these Holy Desires just by being our true selves.

Once you feel like you have gotten a sense of the Holy Desire that created you. Move forward in time until you are in the here and now. Experience again the radiant opalescent light of Kether filing the space around you. It begins to recede, leaving your sphere of the mind as you feel a gentle descent. Allow your screen to return to its normal size.

Count yourself up to a waking consciousness.

Give yourself clearance and balance. Ground if necessary.

Contemplation

What is the Holy Desire you express? Why did spirit choose to form into the being that is You? Can you ever truly fulfill this desire? Does this experience of the Holy Desire change your own concept of self and your purpose?

Uncategorized

out of love

Adam Sartwell

This morning I took it into my head to walk to the gym again. Since the gym is right next to the park I thought I would go there and meditate before going home. I had some inspiration about how we should make choices out of love for ourselves. One of the choices I made years ago was that I was going to go to the gym, eat healthy and meditate regularly. I made all these choices out of love for me and everyday I choose them again. I made up some declarations in meditation.
it goes something like this:

I am surrounded in the love of the Goddess and God
I love all parts of myself as I am.
Out of love, I choose to improve myself.
out of love, I drink more water.
Out of love, I eat small portions of food.
Out of love, I get enough rest.
Out of love, I meditate regularly.
Out of love, I challenge myself to be the best in each moment.
out of love, I forgive myself and all others.
From love of self blossoms love for all others.
In gratitude I bless all others.

What do you do out of love for yourself? Lauri Cabot once said that all acts of magic are acts of love.