Faith, Hope and Magick

The shower is a good place for me to think deeply. It seems to “wash away” the flotsam & jetsam of the day, clearing my mind… or, at least, focusing it, on whatever I’m trying to work out.

Tonight, for some reason, I while standing under the spray if the warm water, I started thinking about Magick. 

Yeah, okay, I’m a Pagan Witch, so Magick is part of my life on the regular. But, I don’t actually do a lot of spells, at least the way most people think of them.  I shift energy occasionally, putting good, positive energy into things I do, like cooking, or my crafting; even cleaning around the house gets a happy dose of “white light”, to keep the home feeling pleasant & welcoming. 

I use stones for focusing my energy transfers, too, but normally, only for myself. Like for healing, or meditation, or just for centering & focusing myself to regain calm during an anxious period.  I also keep a stone on my desk for focus while at work.

And, I’m good at getting red lights to turn green when I really need to get somewhere…

But, that’s usually the extent of it.

But, that’s not really the point of my post tonight.

My point, short story long…

I recently read some comments on a post in a Pagan group I belong to. Someone was asking for information about stones & their magickal properties, and one commenter got really shirty about saying that “Stones don’t do anything – they’re just rocks. You should use essential oils or herbs instead.”

And a bell went off in my head.

Of course stones don’t work for that person…they don’t have any Faith in it. They have no Hope. Therefore, their Magick will always fail.

One of the first things I learned in NY early training was that you have to believe.

YOU have to have Hope that the Magick will work to attempt a spell, then you have to have Faith that everything will happen the way it’s supposed to. If that means your money spell will see you winning $20 playing the lottery, or getting ok’d for overtime for a larger paycheck, then it works. If your love spell causes a stray cat or dog to follow you home, & you end up with a new pet, or you fall head over heels in love with your soul mate, that works too. And, if you do a spell that doesn’t seem to work, maybe the time wasn’t right for it, or maybe it was going to cause you to fall for someone abusive, so it was blocked by a higher power. Maybe you can’t have pets where you live, so instead of taking in a stray, you take it to the local shelter.

Any who, my point is – to do Magick…real, powerful, life-improving Magick… You MUST have both Hope & Faith. 

You don’t have to be Pagan to work Magick. You don’t have to light incense, or stir potions, or chant, or have “all the right tools”.

You just have to believe you can, you have to direct your will, and you have to accept the consequences, whatever they are.

Without Hope and Faith, Magick cannot exist.

Tuesday Theology – Beltane

May 1st is Beltane.  It’s a joyous celebration of Spring, complete with flowers, ribbons and fire.

And yes, it’s a fertility holiday, too. 

BUT.

It’s not just about that.

Beltane is a fire holiday that celebrates not only the creation of new life, but the creation of prosperity.  In the old days, people would light the Beltane bonfires in celebration of the sun returning in full force to help everything grow.  Couples would hold hands and jump the flames to show their commitment to one another, with those that jumped the flames at their highest, without letting go of each other’s hands, bringing good luck to their relationship for the years to come.  Usually, the eldest couple in the village would wait till the end of the night, when the fire had dimmed to just coals, and holding hands, they’d step over the remaining fire calmly.  This was the culmination of the night, and afterwards, everyone would take some of the leftover coals home to light their hearthfires, knowing that they contained all that hope and love that had been infused into it by the people that leapt the flames.

The villagers would also bring their cattle, and drive them past the bonfires, to bring fertility to their herds, and luck to their farms.

Beltane is about the earth breaking open, to release the magick of the seeds that had lain just under the surface, and growing into the crops, flowers and grass that was necessary for life.

It’s about the breaking open of all sorts of magick, that’s lain fallow over the winter, waiting for its moment to come forth and spill good luck and prosperity over those that wish for it.  It’s about the fulfillment of hopes and dreams, and seeing the beginning of new and wonderful things in your life, after waiting through the darker times, and working for this new start.

And then, there’s the maypole.

Young maidens and young men were typically chosen to dance around the maypole, weaving the ribbons round it in a certain pattern.

It was designed to bring the young people together, allowing them to meet one another in a supervised setting, giving the parents a chance to find “good matches” for their children in the future.  It was also about “weaving the magick” to the earth, through the wooden pole stuck into the ground, making it stay in one place, to “hold” the magick and good luck in one place, ensuring the prosperity of the villagers for the whole year.

This Beltane, some friends and I are finishing a ritual that we began at Ostara.  Eggs were cleaned out, decorated, and a slip of paper containing our hopes and wishes were placed inside of them, and sealed with tissue and wax.  In this way, we were “planting” our dreams, giving the magick time to grow within.  At Beltane, we will crush the eggs in our ritual, releasing the magick into reality, and burning the slips of paper to deliver our dreams to the God and Goddess, in the hopes that they will be received and fulfilled for us.

No one speaks about their wishes that were written, safeguarding the magick with silence.  I know, though, that the magick has already begun.  Speaking with one of the others, as well as my own experiences, tells me that this is so.

And on Sunday….. everything will become the reality that I’ve been wishing for.

So Mote It Be.

Thursday Thoughts 12/30/10

Science vs. Magick?

I’ve had a lot of people ask me over the years, since I became Wiccan, what magick is.  And whether or not I think it’s real.  Not the “pick-a-card, nothing-up-my-sleeve” type of magic, those are illusions, sleight of hand tricks.

Oh, and no “newt spells” either.  Disney has the patent on that, and I don’t have enough karma to take the price that transmogrification of another person would exact on my fate. (You can rest easy now, Mark)

I’m talking about the magick I use when I send out my love bombs to friends and loved ones.  How I believe that people can be helped in their everyday lives by a subtle manipulation of energies.  How we can apply the science of electromagnetic fields by using our bodies as conductors to shift reality.

Yes, I use Science to explain Magick.

Now, like all newbies, when I first started on my path, I wanted to use magick for everything.  It’s a thrill learning how to craft a spell, and how to get all the tools (read – all the toys) for a ritual.  Learning how to make incense, how to mix oils and how to put together a poppet for healing is rather like learning a new game.  At least it was for me.  I wrote up tons of spells – spells I might need if this or that might happen. 

As I got more into the mechanics of spellwork, however, I discovered something.

Magick based on stuff and things doesn’t work very well for me.

Magick based on energy manipulation works extremely well for me.

So I pretty much quit doing stuff magick.  No more herbal tinctures, or incense-making for me.  Most of what I do for spells now has to do with manipulation of energy.  How?

Well, here comes the science, from my point of view.

Everything has an electromagnetic field that vibrates at a certain frequency.  From the human body, to trees, to animals, even to rocks.  You vibrate soundwaves just right, you can shatter glass, crack rocks, cause animals to go crazy, and break up kidney stones and tumors within the human body.  The aura that a lot of people talk about is that electromagnetic field.  It reacts to the world around it, as well as to our own emotions and intent.  You can pull it in close to your skin, or push it out and away from your body to extend quite a ways.

This EM field is what causes the hair to stand up on the back of your neck when someone comes up silently behind you.  It’s the extension of your body’s natural energy.  And it can be manipulated and used to affect change in the world around you.  You can also learn to use and manipulate the EM fields of other things. 

With their consent if it’s a person.  My faith doesn’t believe in overriding someone else’s free will.  If you want to do magick on someone else, you better have their permission, or it will boomerang back on you.  Most often unpleasantly. 

I have a knack for being able to drain, or “ground” energy from a person or thing.  I can pull the excess away from one place, and push it away, either into the air or into the ground, without it harming me.  It’s rather like acting as a lightning rod.  Yeah, the lightning strikes, but it doesn’t hurt the antenna, it just uses it to travel.  I do this on my Eldest all the time, when she’s feeling skitzy or can’t seem to settle for the night.  After a moment or two, she slumps in my arms and almost goes to sleep.

I can also send energy out the same way, in reverse.  I pull it from the ground, or the air, and push it into an object or person.  Most often I place it into a softball size ball of energy, and send it out to its intended receiver, with the instruction to wait till the person needs the energy, and then they will have it available, rather like a blanket that wraps itself around you automatically when you’re cold – or the feeling that someone’s just hugged you, but there’s no one there. 

From my point of view, Science and Magick don’t have to be mutually exclusive.  After all, during the medieval era, can you imagine what the people would have thought of televisions, cell phones, computers?  We’d all have been burned as heretics, or worse, simply for using velcro and zippers.  It would have all been seen as magick – evil magick.  But in the end, it was explainable through Science.  And I truly believe that one day, energy manipulation and other procedures that are now seen as “Magick” will one day be explained, quantified, and accepted as Truth. 

For now, I call on the Goddess and the God to bless my endeavors, and I picture Nikola Tesla in my head, playing with lightning.

The Last truly great Wizard of Science and Magick combined.