From Damien Echols (“Mr. Signpost”) (whose tweets are so encouraging: “The universe is going to take you to a level you have never seen before. Amazing things will find you,” and OMG, I believe him completely!) described the full moons which lit up the sky over the last several nights: “Tonight's full moon is called the Blood Moon or the Hunter's Moon. The only one I love more is the full moon of December. In November it's called the Dark Moon. In December, it's the Cold Moon.”
And he’s right, today was the Blood Moon, which I wasn’t able to see until I was driving to the commuter rail lot in the morning. What a greeting! Initially, I could see only the reflected light behind a long line of clouds, when suddenly the moon burst forward from behind those clouds, and it felt so like a happy greeting! I could only think how lovely it will be when I can free myself from the basement apartment and actually see the beauty of the moon from my windows ... or from my backyard! Or front yard! What an incentive to continue packing with anticipation. Moon water! Cleansing things! Moon tonics! Spells! Possibilities are endless.
Speaking of Damien, he offered tarot sessions for people near Salem; I responded, “Sure, I’m near Salem”, before it hit me that maybe he meant I should COME to Salem. Said, “D’oh!” because you all know how desperately I don’t WANT to go to Salem. (The Massachusetts one. New Hampshire one is fine.) I was right in the midst of hoping he (or his rep) would say, “Ooops, changed my mind!” so I wouldn’t need to show up for the session crying hysterically. Instead, the response was that his next appointment was a workday – yay! I’d forgotten that I was probably one of the few witches who worked first shift and couldn’t sync up with anybody, even if I had no problem meandering up the road to Salem.
Personally – given how thoroughly and near magically he whipped all the pain out of my back with just a hand clasp – I think his tarot reading would be awesome. I just can’t bring myself to go back to Salem, Mass since my brother died.
They say (regarding affirmations) that they should be positively charged (“I have a beautiful, flawless body!”), as opposed to the negatively charged (“I hate these ugly warts on my toes and want to banish them.”) And no, I do not have any warts, ugly or otherwise, on my toes, I’m just sayin’. I flip through our current textbook (Christopher Penczak’s, The Inner Temple of Witchcraft, now dog-eared, stained and completely un-re-sellable, as if I would anyway) using his affirmations as templates for mine.
As he said, you must know what you want before you can make it happen. The first affirmation you know as well as I do, because this blog started out as a Search for a Soul mate up until April of 2010 when I was riding a bus that was broadsided by a jeep, and nothing was ever afterward the same. The Search for a Soul mate came to a screeching halt as I went through all of the agony, the surgery, the side-effects and the aftermath, followed by the deaths of everyone I loved. And I still haven’t recovered (see entries on screaming leg cramps). So I went from trying to envision the love from a human soul mate coming right around the corner to realizing I still wanted a soul mate, desperately, but I needed to re-envision him in a big way.
I needed a lover that could do everything a human lover could do without the pain. Inadvertent pain, obviously, but just hitting the apex of that roller coaster and momentarily freezing in place while I enjoyed the ride was enough to disable me for a week. All of the muscles and tendons of my upper legs, lower legs and feet muscles cramped and twisted so violently and for so long I would leave teeth marks in pillows, trying not to scream so horribly the neighbors would dial 9-1-1 and I would have to explain myself to the friendly neighborhood gendarmes. (That would be the armed and dangerous North Andover police swat team, to those of us who don’t live in France. Which I don’t. And I’m not even French, so I have no idea why I said that.)
The second affirmation? No, not releasing my sudden strange affinity for faux French affectations, like, you know, “gendarmes” and “faux” instead of “fake”, but ridding myself of an emotion I seem to have in abundance. You might have guessed that one, too, just reading this blog. Releasing the anger.
No doubt you’ve seen the anger I hold for really stupid, narcissistic and obnoxious women and really evil corporations (not to mention dumb twinkie witches who can’t spell), but you may not have seen the self-directed anger, which I also seem to have in excess.
Now to think of a third affirmation. while my mala beads wind their way through the post. A WCI classmate wisely suggested tying knots in a string (there will be a pause while I try to figure out how long it would take me to tie 108 knots after losing track of the number after every third knot).
Okay, maybe I do need a memory retention affirmation. I had actually purchased a skein of yarn to make a witch’s girdle (not the same thing as a Playtex girdle, sorry) and still haven’t managed to find the time to do it, so I’m guessing having someone else count up and connect the mala beads is probably a better idea.
Later: noshing on a BLT (with yummy sweet Vidalia onion and kosher dill slices in there) on a sandwich-sized toasted (as Americans would say) English muffin, and as the British would say, crumpet, and the last of the Vina Temprana 2012.
I’m contemplating, as I nosh, on the origins of the “Witch’s Pyramid”, which seems odd, as I’m wondering why witches don’t more respectfully refer to it as an “Egyptian pyramid”, as that seems to be where the concept originated.
Some theorize that the theory goes back to the hieroglyphics on the Sphinx – I have yet to find a citation for that – others from 1896; still others think it originated far more recently, in 1981.
As I said, the Sphinx hieroglyphics source has a big question mark after it. In Transcendental Magick, Its Doctrine and Ritual, written in 1896 (Arthur E. Waite, trans), Eliphas Lévi wrote: "To attain the Sanctum Regnum, in other words, the knowledge and power of the Magi, there are four indispensable conditions - an intelligence illuminated by study, an intrepidity [dauntlessness: resolute courageousness, fearlessness] which nothing can check, a will which cannot be broken, and a prudence [the ability to govern and discipline oneself by the use of reason; sagacity or shrewdness in the management of affairs; skill and good judgment in the use of resources; caution or circumspection as to danger or risk] which nothing can corrupt and nothing intoxicate. . .” [Definitions added by me].
Source: http://hermetic.com/osiris/onthepowersofthesphinx1.htm
I suspect the four conditions began with Levi in 1896 and were then given the “concept or model of the Pyramid” in 1981 by Clifford Bias, Spiritualist minister and founder of Universal Spiritualist Association and Ancient and Mystical Order of Seekers (A.M.O.S.).
In his publication, The Ritual Book of Magic, Bias writes:
"The Magus, the Theurgist, the True Witch stand on a pyramid of power whose foundation is a profound knowledge of the occult, whose four sides are creative imagination, a will of steel, a living faith and the ability to keep silent." Already the four “sides” have changed in significant ways: we now have “creative imagination”, “a living faith” and “the ability to keep silent” – all of which in no way resemble the first list. Supposedly, the four indispensable foundations of magic weren’t attached to the physical diagram of the pyramid until 1981. Christopher Penczak has a terrific diagram of the concept in The Inner Temple of Witchcraft, but here’s another one. The advantage to this one is the Latin (Italian), although the Italian is a little different (i.e., volere instead of ‘velle’) and the accompanying symbols.
Penczak’s version of this has the elements: To Dare=Air, To Keep Silent=Water, To Know=Earth and To Will=Fire. At the apex: Wiccan Rede=Spirit.
This is probably one of the few times I haven’t gone ballistic at “Wiccan Rede”, which I believe to be wholly invented by Gerald Gardner and the furthest thing possible from “traditional” unless you follow Gardner’s beliefs religiously. As I said, I have no problem with Gardnerians; I do have problems with people presenting Gerald Gardner’s invented stuff as “traditional” when it isn’t.
The TOW is far more Celtic than I am; so .... let’s just say my affirmation to stop going ballistic at everything is working even before I started using it. Woo-hoo!!
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