Magickal Evolution

Some of you will understand this, others will just scratch their head and dismiss it as insanity. I pity the latter for they will never know true joy and purpose.

I have been studying magick since I was old enough to have some sense of self. The manipulation of the physical and mental worlds is something even a baby that can't talk sensibly due to a soft palette or even walk can understand. Babies are a lot more aware than you think. They are learning. At first they can only see the outline of things and then mysteriously one day, the internal features become visible. You can always tell that day because of the startled look on their little faces and how intently they suddenly look at everything. That is also the day they lose their more radical sense of smell. The visual world becomes more important than the sensory world they lived in.

I have been reading a book by Jim Butcher, “Skin Game”. The main character is a Wizard in modern day Chicago in which a host of supernatural creatures exist along side humans and do so very easily because humans do not want to see them. Sound a little familiar? Jim Butcher has an extensive background in the Martial Arts.

I took up the more esoteric Martial Arts starting with Tai Chi and moving on to energy flow and balance late in life. It was a wonderful feeling that some athletes call being in the zone. It is the point at which your breathing, physical movement and mental focus become one single thing, moving together in a perfect dance and there is nothing else. It is indescribable. It is 100% being in a single moment.

I know this is also a feature of magick. Over 90% of the people who try to take it up will never amount to anything and as I told one person last week, everyone wants the mix with water and microwave for 30 seconds spell and only about 2% are willing to put the time, practice and learning into it to actually succeed at anything. The 8% learn enough to create havoc and eventually get knocked on their mental asses very hard if they survive.

However, Jim Butcher really put it in a way I have not been able to, so I am going to give you a quote from the book to chew on for a long while and if Dresden doesn't describe you but Ascher does, getting out of the study of the metaphysical might be a really good idea.

“Ascher let out a bitter laugh. “You're scared, Dresden. Admit it. I've got access to power that makes me dangerous and you are afraid of what I can do.”

And, right there, she showed me the fundamental difference between us.

I love magic for its own sake. She didn't.

The Art can be a lot of work, and it can sometimes be tedious, and sometimes even painful, but at the end of the day, I love it. I love the focus of it., the discipline, the balance. I love working with the energy and exploring what can be done with it. I love the gathering tension of a spell, and the almost painful clarity of focus required to concentrate that tension into an effect. I love the practice required of it as well as the theory, the research, experimenting with new spells, teaching others about magic. I love laying down spells on my various pieces of magical gear, and most of all, I love it when I can use my talents to make a difference in the world, even when it's only a small one.

Archer...... enjoyed blowing stuff up, and burning things down. She was good at it. But she didn't love her talent for the miracle it was.

She merely loved what she could do with it.”

It only get better from there but I will say, I have known those who might be a lot better with magic than I am but once again, their focus was cursing and bending others to their will be it love spells or cons. They are freaking good at it, until someone like me comes along and takes what they are good at, unravels its elements and asks those elements if this is truly their purpose and then, those elements get really, really angry and it is not me they come for because my elements are happily playing and creating not destroying. Through some defect in the human composition, it is only mankind that enjoys destruction and practices it wholesale.

I have known both counselors and psychics whose focus is being the “best” and having the most scores and making others dependent upon them. I remember one counselor with twice the education she thought I had, being livid I actually 'cured' her patient in a half hour by repeating one sentence as an answer to everything the person said. The psychiatrist I worked for laughed himself silly and that was when he explained to me the goal of this therapist was not to cure but to make the person dependent on her great wisdom each week to fix what the client had messed up.

I saw the same thing when I spent a brief time working in another shop. I was doing my readings and after the first week a woman I read for came in and was just gushing about how I had hit everything on the mark. Since she was so very loud, they had to drag me out of my cube for I guess the applause and advertising value. Over and over again the word validation came out of every “psychic's” mouth. Finally one of them getting frustrated over my lack of jumping up and down and taking a bow made the mistake of asking me if I didn't think validation a wonderful thing to get.

I looked at this pretend puppy and the lady still gushing praise and asked them if when they called a plumber to unstop their commode and he unstopped it, did they think he needed validation of his talent with a plunger. Everyone shut up and looked at me. Hey, I am a psychic. I make predictions. I show you how to navigate through unpleasant things. I am good at it and that is why people pay me money to do it. I don't need validation of what I am. I know what I am. If you constantly have to have people telling you how good, wonderful, marvelous or even just competent you are at something, you, and I do mean YOU, have a big problem.

I love my cards. I love the feel of them in my hands. I love putting them on the table and having them spell out a story. I love the discovery of what each spread and each card is going to mean. I love the smell of a new deck. I love breaking it in by endless shuffling. I love wrapping the deck up after a reading in its personal cloth and putting it away to rest for the next time. I love everything about doing a reading.

I love looking at an astrological chart and weighing the influences, checking the angles and figuring out how to beat the pattern that is there so it works rather than defeats the person. I love seeing all the ways this person could have turned out and the cruxes that pushed them into the person they are. It is one huge mathematical puzzle or formula whose answer is the person sitting in front of me. Yes, I love it!

I love crafting the spells, gathering the ingredients, choosing the time. I love the smell of the herbs being crushed even when they are noxious. I love blending the elements together and talking to the magical element as it guides me. I love when the whole thing starts to glow with the subtle light of magic infusing it. I even love gathering the unused potions and either bottling them or disposing of them. I love the dance and play of the energy. And I really love when someone picks up something hidden in the display case I have bespelled and just has to have it because when they touch it, they feel that sizzle of the spell settling into their energy field to help them and on some level, they know it.

I love Magic! And because of that, it loves me.

No matter how many spirits or elements you bend to your will, remember one thing and I know you will never understand this, those spirits and elements will love those of my kind because we love them and when the rock and hard place appear, it is those of my kind they will help. By the time you manage to blast your way clear, if you haven't destroyed yourself in the process, we will be long gone.

But it doesn't stop here.

This is the difference between Warren Buffet and Donald Trump, between the Pope and Joel what's his face. They have the same talent but the Buffets and the Popes of the world are focused on using that talent to make a difference in the world, to make it a little better place to live in whereas the Trumps and his ilk want followers to worship of them, tell them how wonderful and right they are and the toys their talent can buy them so they can feel superior flaunting those toys. It's too bad peace, respect and love are the things you can't buy but the Trumps and Joels will destroy the entire world and everyone in it trying to buy them.

And what happened to Ascher? She bent the laws of physics and the laws of physics straightened out and she was squished. Read the book. You'll find out how. It's why you can't slide on your talent forever no matter what your talent is and there really is no redemption.

The Universe favors change and growth to better things. The only time things move backward to what might seem a better time is when they are already dead and rotting. Just stop and look around.

Yes, look around. Even in my fermenting groups using ancient culturing techniques, everyone is experimenting with newer and better ways to achieve and improve the process, better containers, different ingredients. In my plant groups people are experimenting with newer containers, newer potting mixes, newer ways of growing and using plants. One woman actually makes living curtains out of bromeliads for your windows. Another person is experimenting with planting air plants on your walls to use their nature transpiration to cool your house. Living, growing, changing is the way of the universe, not moving in reverse. Returning to the past is to embrace death and rot.

4 Festivals, 4 Astronomical events. Not the Same.

Dear friends,

There are four main Wiccan festivals and four Druid festivals. Just because someone put them on a wheel together doesn't mean they belong there or that they were all celebrated by the same religious or philosophical group.

Let's take the four main Druid festivals which are actually the only Druidic festivals. You will notice this because all those honking huge stone monuments are precisely aligned to 4 points of the year not 8.

I did not move those stones around to create that fact so don't blame me.

They mark what is beginning and ends of seasons as are needed for agriculture. You begin with the

Winter Solstice.

What? You thought we were on the Gregorian calendar that wasn't created for thousands of years after these monuments were built? The Gregorian Calendar was introduced in February of 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII. If you plan on being a Druid, you need to use your gray matter.

The Winter Solstice is the turning point of the dark part of the year and the days will now get longer. If you survived that long, you had it made. Next you have the Spring Equinox, the point at which the day and night times are equal. Crops need to be planted by this point or they won't have a long enough growing period and will be killed by frost before they ripen. Summer Solstice marks the longest day of the year and is when the days begin to shorten. It is time to plan for winter. You can figure what crops are doing well and plant some winter root crops. Finally comes the Fall Equinox when day and night are once again equal and you should be preparing the harvests.

Harvests have to be carefully planned or you have part of your food rotting in the field before you can get to it. Hence you have to know exactly how long the plant takes to grow, fruit and ripen. The entire village normally moved from field to field harvesting based on careful planting so nothing rotted. Each farmer grew what they were best at growing. Not only that but you has annual rainfall events and crops had to be out of the fields before the rains came or once again you had a rotted mess.

This is more than seasonally important as most city dwellers do not know. There are long season and short season crops. There are crops that require x amount of light to flower and fruit and day neutral crops. There are summer and winter crops. Knowledge of this allowed the farmer to create a balanced diet for his family and animals. If you plant cauliflower in the late spring, it will bolt or go to seed in summer when it gets hot without producing a food crop. This is why it is a cold season crop. On the other hand, corn requires heat so it grows over the summer. Most greens have to be grown in the spring and fall because summer is too hot for them. It was a balancing act and knowing the exact timing of the seasons was life or death.

What you need to note is none of these holidays are associated with a “god”.

It was only when someone added them to the Wiccan four festivals did they become associated with “gods”.

Your four Wiccan festivals are all celebrations not of seasons but of gods. We start in February with Imbolc which honors Brigit. Beltane shows up in April/May now, though originally it was May 5^th and it celebrates the god and goddess of fertility whose names are oddly never mentioned. August 1^st marks Lughnasadh which honors the God Lugh, the master craftsman. It is not Lammas as Lammas is a Christian creation. And lastly you have Samhain who never was a god. The October 31^st date marks the end of the final harvest and the death of the gods, not the god of death. Wicca is a fertility religion. This is the one Celtic holiday we can actually be certain of and it was adopted by every religion that followed it from becoming on Nov 1^st the Feast of the Dead to a couple of days later becoming the Day of the Dead in Latin America when it was meshed with the Mayan and Aztec religions. It has no astronomical significance and hence is not a Druidic holiday.

Samhain or October 31^st is not the Druid New Year because all Druidic holidays are based on astronomical and seasonal events that occur every year. The Wiccan Holidays are nicely based on the Gregorian Calendar which came thousands of years after the Druids marked out their calendar. Since the Wiccans and pagans previously depended on a lunar calendar with 13 months it is highly unlikely these festivals fell on these same dates every year but were more likely marked by agricultural or lunar events and when villages had time to celebrate.

For example I'll use the most under rated holiday, Imbolc or Brigit's Day. Although the Christians hijacked the holiday and Brigit's cross, it has a pagan basis. The original “cross” which comes out looking more like the Hindu swastika that Hitler inverted and stole. In Sanskrit swastika means well being. Oddly Brigit's Cross has a similar meaning as instead of being woven from rushes as it is in modern day it was woven from grain stalks or hay. The significance was you had some precious food either human or animal left from the winter, a few brave plants were peaking through the snow and it was time to celebrate surviving or well being. When the cross is woven from grain, the grain heads tend to droop at the ends of the cross producing a swastika appearance or a wheel, hence the little known designation of Brigit's Wheel.

Modern Wicca has neatly meshed all of this together and now it has even more neatly lost the meanings of the holidays in some quarters.

In this Druid's logical opinion, our new year or count for years would have begun on the Spring Equinox as that is the start of the growing season. There is no logical reason we would start the year at the end of the growing season or in the middle of the winter or associate it with any harvest as those are variable. Astronomical events are fixed.