I wanted to share a picture of the ancestor altar we set up at Sanctuary 7 for Samhain. On it, we placed pictures & personal effects of our loved ones who have passed through the veil. We honored them with offerings of foods they loved in Life & sat around telling stories about them & remembering. It was a beautiful, simple way to be close to them again. This is a tradition in our home. We do it every year, but I think that this year’s altar was my favorite ever.
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When I was a young kid, probably 6 or 7 years old, my parents (and thus my sisters & I) started attending an Assemblies of God church. Coming from a large extended family that was predominantly Baptist, the services in the church were starkly different from what I had ever known before. They had loud, upbeat music. The people in attendance played tambourines & clapped along, smiling & singing loudly. Some would dance & run in the aisles. People shouted & waved their arms in the air. They cried & laid hands on each other in prayer. It was a world away from the hushed services I was used to. Not even ‘Have a Little Talk with Jesus’ could compete with the new church’s praise & worship songs. They even had a drummer. I loved it. During my very first Element Walk, which was about 13 years ago now, I was taught that each Element also had a Lesson to teach us in Magic (or Magick, if you would prefer). The Lesson of Air is ‘To Know’. The Lesson of Fire is ‘To Dare’. The Lesson of Water is ‘To Will’. The Lesson of Earth is ‘To Keep Silent’. In the beginning, the application of those Lessons seemed simple & quite literal, but throughout my practice, and the subsequent Element Walks I have gone through, each of those Lessons have taken on deeper levels of meaning. To Know became more than a textbook knowledge of stones, herbs, oils & chants. It has evolved to the understanding that I must know myself and understand my own Divine nature. That I must know & understand the energies with which all things resonate, the very pulse of Magic. To Dare became more than just having the chutzpah to walk the Path & do the Work. It has become the understanding that I must dare to face down my own fears & insecurities. To do the Work within. Often that is the hardest. To Will became more than just desire. It has become one with focus & intent, determination & stamina. To Be Silent became more than shutting your mouth. It has been an ongoing work to cultivate silence within, learning to listen not only with my physical ears, but with my Spirit. These have been important Lessons for me and, although I parted ways with my Teacher & my Grove years ago, I have carried them with me. They have served as cornerstones for my Practice. I’ve been reading a lot lately. Blogs mostly, and little known self-published e-books gleaned from the dusty recesses of the internet. What I’ve read about Chaos magic has titillated me more than anything has in a long time. That and I still harbor a long held fascination with voodoo and pow-wow, but I digress. In all the reading & following of the proverbial bread crumbs through tweets & blogs & links, today I stumbled across a term I’d never heard before, The Powers of the Spinx. Funny enough, it is the name for the very Lessons I have carried with me all these years. Funny, huh? I love coming full circle…. Anyway, a clever blogger wrote his understanding of the levels of these Lessons here if you would like to read his take on it. Also, here is an essay on Eliphas Levi’s writings on them that is quite interesting. He attributed the Elements a little differently that I have been, but it is still the same information. Give it a name, right? Apparently it’s a good month for it. So far, July has had me busy in my sleep. Vivid dreams always make me stop & pay attention. Particularly when I remember colors & sensations.
Last night, I learned that there are levels, or stages, of magick. The initial, lower level is yellow. The next is blue. (At least, this is what my Dreaming showed.) We ran this series for a while on a previous website & it was very well received, so we decided to start running it again here. Always entertaining, oddly insightful, we are proud to present to you X’s Tarotscope. It’s summertime again, and that means all those music festivals are back in gear. Three or four different stages with different bands playing, vendor tents charging eight dollars for a hot dog, undercover cops trying desperately to blend in with the young crowd to bust kids with weed… and, at every festival, a guy like this. Here he comes, amazing his way through the crowd with his devil sticks, click-clacking in your face. Maybe he’ll distract you with your two-foot tall rainbow shag carpet hat and then come at you juggling foot-sacks or spitting fire. Or you maybe you get accosted by this guy, with a shrimp dick on his head, rolling two pentacles over and around each other on a Moebius strip he made from a garden hose. They’ll kick you out of the Ren Faire for shit like that, so you have no choice but to work the music festival circuit and you spend all day playing an African drum and pissing patchouli oil. So what’s the meaning of this card? Something, an actual product type thing is headed your way, perhaps from the sea. Did you order another vaguely animal shaped vibration device from Hong Kong? It’s almost here! And while that is cause for celebration, try to remain balanced. Don’t go overboard, but don’t be a fun martyr, either. Do a little dance. Breathe a little fire. Then watch the news, go to bed and dream about Randy, the Tickle Giraffe**, lovingly hand made in China. **Batteries not included YOUR HOROSCOPE 6/25/2012: This is not a day to spend much time outdoors. However, it is not advised to stay indoors much, either. Spend most of the day in your car, rolling the windows down once every half hour. Y’all, this Spring flew by me in a whirlwind of paint, plaster, ideas and new directions. I LOVE it. Now the pool is open. It’s 80+ degrees every day here in East Tennessee. You know what that means for Cootie & X. Boat drinks. Ooooh, sweet, fruity, cold, alcoholic boat drinks. We do love them so.
It also means energy shift. Fire is Passion. It is Change in motion. This is where the Fire of our hearts/heads/Spirits/pants/whatever is fueled. This is where, if we do it right, we build up a strong core flame, you know the one… the blue one… to carry us through the rest of the year. What fuels your Fire? Hey, Witchy Woman Shell, email me or come over or something. Time to transition to the next leg of your Walk. <3 Namaste, y’all. ~Cootie Recently I had an old friend ask me to guide her through an Element Walk. The timing was dead spot on given that the Spring Equinox is so close, and so, I accepted.
I love this time of Year. I love working with this Element. It’s so exciting for me. I feel inspired & antsy to begin Work. I wanted to share with you part of our conversation today about Air & it’s energy. I just wrote a post over at our blog about New Year’s Eve. You should read it, it’s great. But, if you’re feeling lazy & don’t wanna, let’s recap & the concept here.
To approach the event horizon of a new year/month/state/county/notebook is to look into the face of Infinite Potential. In that moment we believe in the Clean Slate. We believe that the troubles & heartache of the Past can not hold sway on the beauty & excitement of the Future that is before us. We believe we can do better. We believe the World can be better. We see Hope. We anticipate Good Things. Infinite Potential. We like to have fun and, for us, holidays are fun. Winter is hard on us. We love warmer weather, fun in the sun, beaches & boat drinks, yo. So, we tend to get depressed this time of year. Especially with the sheer gimme-gimme-gimme madness that consumes the society that we live in. We loathe it. But, being Cancers, we do love the home & hearth & family vibe that underlies the season and try to emphasize that in our own observance. Decorating our tree is at the center of that.
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CootieHi y’all, my name is Cootie. I like to paint plaster skulls. I also make jewelry & sew. I’m really crafty in general. Categories
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