Category Archives: WITCHCRAFTING

April 3, 2018

By the Numbers & In the Cards

By JL
Numerology Path 8

Visit http://www.buildingbeautifulsouls.com for more numerology

For a good long time in my life, I have been fascinated by the mystical—blame it on my Catholic immersion, nine years of elementary education in a Catholic school attached to a diocese cathedral. Throw in a smattering of attendance at my father’s Christian Orthodox church and you’d be hard pressed to find a more acceptable and mainstream model of ritual and magic.

Yes, magic. All of the elements of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Mass, the candles, the incense, the regalia and adornment, the chanting and repetition—all of it correspond to magical ceremony. And the high holy grail of it all?  The changing of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ through intention, played out in a very precise ritual? That’s alchemical high magic, baby.

Still, I am a skeptic of things spiritual; whether you call it miracle or magic, afterlife or ghost realm, as much as I want to believe it all exists, I can’t quite get there. I want solid proof.

The funny thing is, I’ve had more than a fair share of personal experiences that strongly support the mystical and paranormal, too many in fact, to list them here. But like Thomas who would not believe in the risen Christ until he could poke his finger in the wounds, I want indisputable proof. I want to see my brother or my parents materialize before me and hear at least one of them tell me something nobody on this earth knows.

My doubt doesn’t stop me from being intrigued and entertained with it all. I’ve developed a sort of take on things that fits into my rigid box. Magic happens when we access parts of our deep, reptilian brain, our rooted animal instinct. I beieve the observance, connection and logical predictions occur on a level so deep we aren’t even aware of them.

But there is an uncanny accuracy to these metaphysical means of receiving information that twangs my radar for magic afoot. I’ve had my share of hours on a therapist’s couch and as far as knowing how I tick, what my motivations and my needs are, I have to say my astrological birth chart gave me all the same information at far less the time and expense. Although, I think it’s obvious, therapy serves other purposes beyond just understanding how you tick.

I don’t read my daily horoscope, instead I prefer using a tarot deck. Even though I lean way over in the direction of tarot for entertainment, it seems more than coincidence that out of 78 cards, through the years and years of drawing from the deck, I’ll see the same ones coming up over and over again. There are cards in my deck I have never drawn for myself, but they will turn up when I’m reading for somebody else. How does that happen?

Today I found myself in a conversation about using numerology to find one’s personality and soul path cards in the tarot deck. Numerology is fun, I long ago found my birth number is 8, arrived at by adding the numbers of my birth date sequentially and then adding the two digit result to arrive at a single digit.

Screen Shot 2018-04-03 at 11.14.18 AM

Star card as depicted in Rider Waite tarot deck.

There is a twist, though, when applying it to the tarot deck. Since there are 21 major arcana, only numbers above that are combined down to one digit. So my 17 corresponds to the Star in the tarot deck. One card short of the Moon, which I would have preferred. But then, my mother planned my birth date (and those of all my siblings, there’s a whole other story in this) to fall on her mother’s birthday, a day later than I actually arrived. A number that would link me with the moon. Those who know me well, know the significance in that.

In tarot, the major arcana cards lay out a journey of sorts, beginning with the Fool, who is all about youth, energy and adventure, jumping in with both feet, never testing the water first. Innocent and unscarred, the Fool is childlike, joyful and ebullient. The Star comes along after the Tower. The Tower is a total shake-up of everything, a reversal of what’s been, the representation of it all coming down—or tearing it all down.

The Star is a transition into the next leg of the journey, the first step in a more spiritual path toward enlightenment after traversing some of the harder knocks (lessons) in life. It’s often interpreted as having faith, believing that everything has meaning and happens for a purpose. The Star is a card of hope.

My soul path reverts to the added digits, or 8. This is the Strength card, something that surprised me at first. The first time this card ever turned up for me in a reading was just recently. I don’t think of myself as strong, but in honesty I have to say that I rarely let anything defeat me if I can help it, a trait that causes others to label me stubborn. I am an Aries (the ram), fiery and determined.

What’s even weirder though, is that some decks put the Justice card at this position, the only two cards that can vary from deck to deck. My father wanted to send me to law school. Turns out I should have listened—I realized too late that I would have made a great lawyer, and would have loved it. Instead, I write murder mysteries, which is way cool too.

According to this Star and Strength combination, I am the epitome of eternal hope. Strength is a fire card fanned by the air of the Star. If that translates to never giving up, never letting anything or anybody keep me down, if it means lighting fires under myself and others, then yeah, it’s pretty much me in a nutshell.

But, I don’t believe this stuff really works . . . it’s all just coincidence, right?

 

 

8 Comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in CRONE WISDOM, Magic, MUSINGS, RITUALS & PASSAGES

February 2, 2018

Blessed Imbolc – Gently The Light Returns

By JL

Sunrise - Gently the light returns

The wheel of the year turns in its own time. Sometimes it seems not fast enough for us, and others it seems to speed along at breakneck pace. By our human nature, we’d all like the season we most enjoy to last the longest. For me, living in northern woods bordering Canada, that season is summer. I want it to arrive sooner, stay longer and take slow leave.

When I want to understand the wheel of the year, I think of the ancient peoples who followed it.

Based on the seasons, it marked the times of darkest winter, when survival depended on warm shelter and stocks of food, on trapping or hunting—or perhaps migrating to warmer climates for nomadic tribes. It followed the cycle of growth in the return of vegetation, foraging and gathering. Later it marked the times of cultivating and planting, then harvesting, of tending stocks and the timing of breeding.

Spring and fall are what I think of as in-between seasons. We watch the signs, consumed with anticipation of longer daylight and warmer weather, or filled with urgency to prepare for the dark and cold half of the year.

Imbolc marks an in-between time. The sap begins slowly rising up from the roots into the tree trunk, making it’s way to branch tips. We cannot see it, nor hear it, but we know it’s happening and that it will soon be time to tap the trees. This is the time of the earth’s quickening. Any woman who has borne children knows that time, when the child growing in the womb first begins to stir, as gentle a touch as a fly lighting on your arm.

Spring is stirring in the womb of mother earth and soon, like a woman whose belly swells round with life, the signs of the new season will burst forth around us.For now we wait, we anticipate, like zealous detectives we scrutinize the earth form for visible signs of spring’s impending arrival. When it seems there are none (or none we can yet see), we create celebrations to honor them, perhaps to coax them along.

Imbolc is more widely known as the secular holidays of Candlemas Day and Groundhog Day. A folk rhyme told, “If Candlemas Day be sunny and bright, winter shall have another flight.” Of course we know if the groundhog sees his shadow on February 2, we are in for six more weeks of winter.

Even during my lifetime these predictors once seemed reliable, but in recent years, the weather patterns seem to fluctuate wildly within all the seasons. Those of us connected to the planet and nature in our spirituality, see this subtle and have no doubt the climate is in upheaval—a transition phase marking a change.

This Imbolc, spend time in nature wherever you are living. Connect with the Earth Spirit through the souls of your feet walking her surface, through the scent of the air in your nostrils and the feel of it on your skin, through the vision of the landscape beyond your doorstep. Look for the signs she is giving you. Listen to what she has to say. Honor her as Mother and thank her for the life she gives.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , | posted in MUSINGS, RITUALS & PASSAGES, Sabats, SIMPLE WITCHERY, WITCHCRAFTING

January 27, 2018

The Lie in The Power of Attraction & Positive Thought

By JL

revelation-2937691_640There is an entire industry built around the (false) premise that if your life is in the crapper, you have nobody to blame but yourself. You just aren’t trying hard enough, you don’t have the willpower it takes. You simply aren’t attracting positive energy into your life.

Books on the power of attraction and manifesting your dreams fill the personal development/self-help isle at bookstores and libraries. Self-help gurus have made fortunes telling you how to erase your tapes, design your dreams, and create your destiny.

In a second level iteration, the positive thought programming has filtered into the world of multi-level marketing, an industry weighted toward attracting women (mostly) with the patronizing promise that they can make six figures or more if they just put their mind to it and stay positive.

I once bought into that multi-level, positive power, attract your dream, and live the life pitch, in what seems like another lifetime. It lasted about three months for me, until I heard the motto T.D.T.D, too dumb to doubt. Just do everything your upline associate tells you without question and you too can be driving a new car, wearing a mink coat, and earning six figures a year.

The lie at the core of manifesting your success/dream from nothing but willpower and grit, is that if you fail, you simply didn’t try hard enough. It’s all your fault.

If the single mother, going to school, burning the midnight oil to pass her tests and taking care of her children every day, fails in a multi-level business that requires her to be a sole entrepreneur and keep a team of downline associates motivated in order to increase her income, she just wasn’t trying hard enough.

Or the woman who lives in an urban neighborhood where the median income is below poverty level and she doesn’t know a single soul who can spend one dollar on miracle make-up, miracle diets, magical healing oils or overpriced clothing that WOPs (women of privilege) wear to run errands, she wasn’t aspiring high enough.

Or the woman trapped in an abusive relationship, whose neanderthal husband does everything in his power to see her fail (details not necessary) wan’t owning her own power.

The truth is life is a crap fest, shit happens and chaos abounds. And just because really bad shit happens to you once, doesn’t mean it won’t happen again—and it sure as sugar doesn’t mean you somehow attracted it. I know. I lost a step son and a future son-in-law in two separate car accidents six months apart. Having received that 3 a.m. call every parent dreads once, and then again, that I’m somehow immune to the tragedy repeating itself.

The truth is, we don’t have control over everything. We can direct our lives, we can conduct our behavior, we can work really hard and we can succeed, but if we don’t it’s not necessarily because we weren’t trying hard enough—or that we’re unwittingly asking for it.

The trick in success, I think, is to know what you want, to take action that moves you towards your goal, and avoid behaviors and actions that don’t support your outcome whenever you can. Then hope you catch the right breaks.

There are certainly self-development tools and techniques that help, and accentuating the positive can’t hurt. Changing the way you perceive a challenge can change the way you approach it and improve your chance of success. Self-fulfilled prophesy really does work to an extent, because it seems that the brain doesn’t distinguish between reality and imagination or visualization.

Tell yourself something is true often enough, and you’ll begin acting as though it is. Act as though it is, and chances are it will become true. Of course all this success manifestation is limited by the laws of nature, physics and odds. If you are 5’6″ and well beyond the age of growing, you cannot think yourself into being 6’2″, and odds are a miraculous medical procedure isn’t going to do it either.

But, what about magic? What about witchcraft and spell casting? Is it all a hoax, or maybe a lot of coincidence we just want to believe is magic? Well, think about this: everything that exists in this world outside of nature began as nothing more than a thought.  From the wheel, to the device your are reading this on that allows me to type words and you to read them 100, or 1,000 or 10,000 miles alway in a matter of seconds was once just a thought. And would have once, most definitely, been thought of as magic.

Creating something from nothing more than a thought must mean our thoughts are, or at least can be, incredibly powerful when backed up by intention and action. So think positive, work toward your goals and dreams, recognize any limitations, ask for help when you need it and can get it, and don’t blame yourself for setbacks beyond your control.

In other words, go out and give it your best shot—make magic happen.

1 Comment   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in MUSINGS, WITCHCRAFTING