That's a very useful tool. I can see making up several different pages of these and reading them off by color ritually to strengthen the right brain usage.

These are the kinds of things we should have been doing in high school instead of learning all the truly useless crap we were taught.

I'm not so sure how well it's going to work starting this stuff at 60 years old.

It's hard to teach an old brain new tricks.

Thanks for posting that.

Note to any newcommer's that might drop by:

We've also been discussing in this thread the importance of using the right-brain for psychic ability. So any contributions in that area are also welcome.

Krimsa had also recommended this art book:

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

Okay, so I did some research today (not much, but I got started) and it would seem that even Buddhists only go so far down the meditation path alone. At some point they advise doing the deeper meditations with another person (a meditation "higher up" person, I guess) so you are not alone.

So, I'm thinking the need for a certain amount of protection may be suggested by all groups who advocate this practice. More research to do on the subject though.

Well, everyone is different that's for sure.

Some people are dangerous to themselves in their normal waking state and shouldn't be meditating at all.

In the Bible there's a phrase that goes something like:

"Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I fear no evil for thou art with me."

I've felt that way since birth.

I've never been alone or felt like I'm alone. Ever.

I can't even imagine the concept. Yet a lot of people seem to feel that way.

We can never know how other people percieve reality in their mind, we can only know how we percieve it to be.

I've never feared evil spirits. At least no more than I would fear a rabid dog or an angry bear. They might be able to maul me, but they can't possess me.

Maybe that kind of fear. But I have no fear of being 'possessed' by an evil spirit. That just ain't gonna happen. I'm too connected to the prime source that nothing else could ever overwhelm it.

I may lack in psyhic ability. But from my point of view that's no different than lacking in drawing abiltiy, or music ability, or whatever. It's just another skill to be learned.

We don't change who or what we are by meditating. All we do is exercise new skills.

I know there are those who would like to believe otherwise, but those are the people who make Hollywood Thrive IMHO.

There is no force greater than the prime source, and I am the prime source. That's my world.

That's where I live.

Religion and psychic powers are skills, just like learning to play Mozart or Bach. It's not necessarily easy and it requires much practice.

If you get caught by the boogieman it's only because you created him.

JMO of course.

That's a great Book! It was one I used when learning to draw. It has great exercises in it to learn to draw.

Drawing is a skill that anyone can learn. People think that it is some magic talent. Its not. It is judging distances, angles, and using a pencil. and lots of practice, just like anything else.

Never too late to learn. Practice counts. Get a drawing tablet, a pencil, and eraser and sketch everything you see. Do a sketch diary.

I think if you read the Robert Monroe Books it will help you prepare for things you may encounter on "the other side" in your meditations.

Meditation is not just resting your eyes. Eventually you are going to pop out of your body or start seeing visions or visit another dimension.

Some of these levels have some strange creatures and some of them are quite frightening if you don't know what to expect.

Its kind of like dropping acid. There are good trips and bad trips.

jb

There's so much to share, and so little time to share it.

I've just about finished reading Penczak's first Temple Book - The Inner Temple. Of course, that's just an overview. The book is really designed as a year-and-a-day course. So now I can go back to the beginning and start actually taking the course in detail. I just wanted to read it though first as an overview.

Last night I just flipped through The Outer Temple Book. This book is more about the actual rituals and beliefs associated with Witchcraft. It's a fantastic book!

But there's so much to it. It almost seem formidable. Yet at the same time I am learning so much in ways that even Penczak himself may not have realized.

He speaks in the second book about the Goddess and the God and of all the various mythological pantheons.

He speaks to the issue of finding or creating a pantheon that works for you. He speaks very openly about this in a very intelligent way. I found it very enlightening even though I was just 'flipping' though the book superficially.

He goes into great depth on the power and associations of the four spiritual elements, Earth, Air, Fire and Water. I can see where it's going to take months to read and research these in more detail.

Then he goes on to address the witch's altar and the various tools of magick.

I like this part because he addresses the issue that Jeanniebean and I often create a holocaust over.

And that is the issue of whether or not the tools are even necessary.

He agrees with those who argue that the real magic is in the mind. However, he also argues that we live in a physical world and we are hoping to manifest change in the physical world, and that much of witchcraft is indeed based on the power of elemental "magick". He therefore argues that using material objects in these manifestation rituals and spells actually plays a vital role in the spiritual alchemy of manifestation.

I agree with Penczak's stance on this.

I love my tools, they are my toys, and I feel that they do contribute to the manifestation process quite profoundly actually.

Finally, about midway thought this second book he gets into the art and ritual of casting circles.

WOW! That would be a year and a half into this program if you took this program one book at a time, and allowed each book to be a year-and-a-day course!

I'm going to cast my first circle on Dec 21 (the Winter Solstice). And begin my spiritual connection with the rebirth of the Sun God.

This is just how I feel drawn to doing this. I'm going to be 'worshiping' both the Sun God and the Moon Goddess equally.

However, I hesitate to use the word "worship". I simple mean it to "love and respect". I don't believe in appeasing Gods of any kind. God is my friend, not my foe.

Penczak also addresses the term 'worship' in his book and expresses a simliar sentiment as mine.

I don't truly view this as two God's, it all one God. It's all mythology. It's all an abstract creation of man as a way to view the divine.

This is true of all religions IMHO. All religions are manmade, and witchcraft is no different.

Does that mean that God's aren't real? Of course not. It simply means that the way we view the eternal spirit is of our own making!

Penczak also covers this very topic in his second book.

This isn't bad for a quick 'flip-through' huh?

The rest of the book then gets into things like year wheel, astrology, runes, tarot, and all the various divinination techniques.

I can see where it will easily take a full year to study the content in this book as well.

However, I'm not necessarily taking things in order. In fact, I'm going to now go back and study the circle casting techniques since I plan on casting a circle on Dec 21.

I might even cast some 'play' circles prior to that. Penczak address the reasons for casting circles, he lists them as follows:

1. Praise of the Gods (Gratitude rituals)
2. Magickal Work (Healing, Charging, etc.)
3. Play (Don't be afraid to play with the Gods!)

I'm very glad to see Penczak include #3. Playing with the Gods is very important. The Gods are our friends. Then would love for us to come and play them like children.

With number #3 in mind Penczak suggesting casting play circles to begin with. The Goddess and God are more than happy to play with someone who is sincere about learning the craft. It's the sincerity that matters.

You're not wasting their time or yours if the reason you are doing this is to gain experience. And it's better to have informal circles casts for the purpose of learning, then to try to get real serious and then make a bunch of mistakes because you don't know what you're doing.

This is especially important for the solitary neophyte witch.

The God's enjoy children, and anyone who is new to anything is like a child in that regard.

Well, that's it for now.

Back to studying.

I think I'm going to flip through the Temple of Shamanic Witchcraft next. Maybe owl give a quick book report on that one too.

I'm really looking forward to a detailed year of study. I think I can go through all three of these books in 2009.

Here's a little graphic I made that lists the full moons for 2009.

I named them using a Neo Pagan system*.



*note: I changed some of the names for my own personal preference.

These are the names I changed:

Rose - Flower

Blood - Auburn

Long Night - Yule

I changed these particular names for my own personal reasons. I've very liberal with mythologies and traditions. I believe in following your intuition on things, yet I like to use traditional foundations.

I will be using this list of moon names as a 'countdown' in honor of the Goddess during my meditations in 2009. So it's importnant to me that these names sit well with me and conjure up feelings and notions that I can personally identify with with respect to these seasonal moons.

I also have a tendency to remove any names or symbols that bring up depressing thoughts. I left the "Death Moon" in because it's the death of winter. And that's one death I can rejoice in.

I changed Blood to Auburn because blood has no meaning to me, but Auburn does (being that it's fall and everything is turning auburn and brown). If I were a hunter blood might make more sense to me. But I'm not. So it just holds no meaning for me in October.

I believe a spiritual system should indeed be tailored to the individual. I think it would be truly sad if an individual tried to tailor themselves to a specific mythology or dogma without consideration for who they are and what is meaningful for them.

The thing I really like about both Scott Cunningham, and Christopher Penczak is that they both present witchcraft as a very open-ended spirituality that is abstract and should be tailored to the individual.

I'm in total agreement with this, and I truly shun dogma in any form.

But the overall mythology makes for a great foundation for spirituality I think.

Thank you!

James, I am not worried about becoming possessed by anything. However, there are beings in the spiritual world that I am not interested in encountering. I know you don't believe in them and I am not trying to convince you that they are real, but think about this:

Everything in life is balance. Good and evil. Day and night. Hot and cold in both extremes. Joy and despair. Light and dark. In every aspect of our lives there is a balance. Emotionally and physically. You cannot have one without the other.

It only seems logical that there is also a "negative" in the spiritual world. The Goddess is not "all loving". She creates and she destroys. She is the Goddess of life but she is also the Goddess of death. Unless you believe in no beings in the spiritual world at all, it would seem impossible to believe that there were only "good" beings there.

JMO.

P.S. I am not trying to make anyone afraid. I am not afraid of this any more than I am of skydiving. I have no fear of it, but I am going to listen to the instructor and make sure I pull my parachute cord at the right time.

My sister Karen is a very high strung and nervous person. I have tried to show her how to meditate for relaxation purposes but the slightest relaxation exercise and she starts to leave her body and she panics.

She has what she calls panic attacks and I think it is related to the spirit world and her natural tendency to leave her body. Her fear of death and the unknown overwhelms her and she goes into panic.

I think if she could overcome that fear, she could be getting out of her body at will. But she is not interested. She is one of our "witch group" members.

I exercise and focus and struggle and I am lucky if I can get out at all and she fights to stay grounded and in her body. She is not interested in getting out of her body. It freaks her out.

Karen's daughter, also a member of our group is psychic and has "second sight" but it kind of freaks her out too.

A third member, Val, is very psychic and she came to Darla and me in hope we could "fix" her problem and make her normal again. Instead, we convinced her to accept it and learn to control it.

I think everyone is psychic and that can be developed in the area you are most interested in, healing, divination, readings, creativity etc.

jb

I agree that everyone has psychic ability. And, these experiences can be scary and nerve wracking. They take time to get used to.

I agree Ruth. Of course I also accept the premise behind Evolutionary Biology and Im not asking that you believe in that theory either way, but I feel that a certain psychic capability or a "sixth sense" that they sometimes refer to it as may have played a vital role in our ability to survive as early hominids. That genetic profile might have been passed on successfully if a person could sense danger or any number of circumstances could have arisen where it might have been beneficial.

When you look at it from that perspective, then maybe we all still possess "some" psychic powers as part of our physiological make up but certain people have simply been more skillful or understanding and this enables them to fully harness its uses.

I guess I'm not expressing myself very well in this regard.

It's not that I don't believe in 'evil spirits'. After all, I believe that every human has a spirit (as well as all animals). In fact, I believe that everything is spirit even seemingly inanimate objects.

Well, I certainly believe in 'evil people'. I've met some. I believe they call themselves Christians.

No, that's was just a joke!

But really, there are clearly evil people, and people have spirits. And we can certainly make contact with those spirits on the psychic plane.

I think where my lack of fear, or unconcern about 'protection' from them, stems from the fact that although I recognize that they are out there, I also recognize that they can't truly harm me spiritually without my permission.

I'm more afraid of an actual physical person who is out to do physical harm than I am an evil spirit.

The reason being that I've come to believe that spirits cannot harm other spirits without their permission.

So if an evil spirit comes around owl just laugh it off. As scary as its presence might be.

I think part of this stems from visions I've had of the spirit world. In natural dreams I've journeyed into the spirit world before. Without intent. They were just uncontrolled visions.

But in those visions it became clear to me that spirits are all egalitarian in every way. There is no such thing as a strong spirit and a weak spirit. All spirits are the same.

In humans, that's not true. We talk about being strong in spirit or weak in spirit in humans, but that's because humans are also physical. Some humans are more aware of their spiritual essence than others.

I suppose it is quite possible for some humans to become possessed by another spirit. Mainly because they recognize the power of their own spirit.

I guess I'm at the stage (and always have been since my birth in this incarnation) that I'm fully aware that no spirit can overtake mine.

But physical creatures can overtake me physically. Things that would scare me far more than evil spirits are evil men, or perhaps a rabid bear that might physically attack me and eat me.

Those are real possiblities. But the idea of being harmed by an evil spirit just doesn't feel threatening to me at all.

However, I can see the value in casting circles of protection if only for the sake of keeping thug spirits from interrupting ceremonies.

None the less, I'm much more interested in the constructive nature of magick circles. The idea of containment and amplification of spirital vibrations until they have been directed toward the manifestation of the work at hand.

So that's my primary interest in magic circles. The other thing too, is to keep 'evil' vibrations out so as not to contaminate the work being done.

I can see that too. It would really such to charge a magick wand with bad vibes.

Then everytime you used it things to turn to crap.

So maybe that's the idea of what people are afraid of. Perhaps, that's a valid concern then.

I guess maybe I do need to think along those lines as well then since thought and intent is everything in witchcraft. So to be too relaxed with respect to protecting against evil energies could allow them to leak in.

So I guess I do need to be more concerned about it than I initially thought.

I just think that some people get too carried away with. Almost to the point of being paranoid about it.

Almost like they are over-dramatizing it in an almost Hollywood fashion.

I believe somewhat like Jeanniebean. Even wrongful thoughts with good intentions can bring wrongful manifestations.

In other words, being too concerned with evil energies will actually draw them to you because you are THINKING about them and paying them much mind.

So I guess my real concern is to look for more balance rather than falling into the idea that protecting against evil spirits is the paramount issue. It's not.

I think witchcraft can actually go downhill if the witch becomes too obscessed with thinking about protecting against evil. That will then become the path of that particular witch's way.

For him or her protecting against evil spirits will become a major chore because they will actually being drawing them in like a magnet simply because they are focusing on them.

I personally believe that psychic abilities are just like any other skill. They can be learned, but not everyone had the ability to learn them equally well.

Just like with everything else. Anyone can learn to play a violin, but everyone is not going to become a great violinist.

Everyone can exercise their body, but everyone isn't going to end up having a body like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Of course, playing a violin and body building both require phsyical abilities.

It is possible that all humans could potentially reach the same psychic level since this is a spiritual realm and not a physical one.

None the less it does seem to require right-brain proficiency, so it seems to be somewhat physically related to the brain.

The other thing too that I've come to realize since I've been reading Penczak's books is that we all do this sort of thing all the time. We just don't have CONTROL over it.

Like I just stated in a previous post, I've had quite lucid dreams and visions of the spiritual world just in natural dream states without any attempt to induce them with intend.

All that psychic power would enable me to do is to create and enter those visions with more purposeful intent at will.

So in a sense I already know that I have the ability (to dream and imagine). Now all I need to do is learn how to master those skills.

I believe also that we can meet each other in our dreams and communicate telepathically that way.

I'm actually suprised that we don't hear more about that aspect of it.

There is only a very brief mention in Penczak's books about this kind of spirit-to-spirit communication, without even using the word "telepathy".

Mastering that ablity with a close friend or partner would indeed be quite profound.

Ok, I don't know how to address this. Its a rather long story, I will make it short for you, seems a former sister of my best freind has caused him to lose the love of his life convincing her he is dangerous and crazy. Also attached to this is the fact that she said I was dangerous and crazy as well. And as you know I have been dealing with some major physical issues due to changes in major medications and also some new physical illnesses I have picked up along the way. At first I myself thought this seemed very strange that my friends on my web paged began to question me everytime I wrote a poem or anything of expression. They had never done that before. Than soon, no one came to my pages but for maybe three people. It seemed very strange concerning the fact that I had had 35,000 hits on my former page. To be honest, I always tried to keep a level point of veiw on the whole situation between her and him and his love among some other not so savory people involved. I do my best to be a good person despite the way that people are sometimes. I am always supportive and very giving. His sister, me and him go way back, I mean waaaay back. She doesn't like to admit I know what I know about her that she secretly coveted him always. It is what it is. But today, I now know the truth of what has been going on. Its rather sad to say the least, at what lengths some people will go to for strange or hurtful reasons. I for one have hope for our people yet, but it scares me to see the world hastening to its doom this way. hugs

Its sounds like a great deal of drama in your life right now. If at all possible I would try stepping away from these people as they sound somewhat meddlesome at the least and potentially toxic at the worst.

Can you get away from them?

At least temporarily Im saying.

That way you can stand back and get your distance from the situation which will also help you to view it objectively and not so emotionally.

Your absence will also serve to send them a message that you dont like this behavior and it needs to stop if they are to continue their friendship with you. In other words, they wont take you for granted.

A former sister of your best friend? How can a person be a former sister? Just curious.

This story sounds like a tangled web to be caught up in. Why don't you just walk away? (Unless you enjoy the drama.)

What are you hoping to learn by posting about this problem in this thread? (I don't see where you asked for any advice.)

Just wondering.

jb

Maybe she's a disowned sister?

I disown my cat at least once a day but he doesn't seem to care. He just comes in and sprawls out on my bed and yawns.

He thinks he owns the place and that I'm just a waiter in a cat food resturant.

That reminds me. When I was reading some of this magick circle stuff Penczak said that most witches (or covens) do not like people or animals to cross the circle during a ritual.

However, many witches feel that cats are exempt to this rule. That's cool because my cat may want in or out of my cottage during a ritual and so I won't need to be cutting a doorway for it.

Aint that the truth. I have 5 cats. 4 females and a male. The girls gang up on the one boy and will swat him for no reason and chase him away. He will just be minding his own business and strolling by and SWAT!! out of the blue.

Its funny. Its like they feel the need to constantly remind him of his place and that he is outnumbered.

One of them Tisha knocked over a ceramic bust I had of Betty Page the other day. I was sad and she couldn't have cared less. Cats!

Well, she is a sorceress who was a teacher of mine, once upon a time. Him and her are not blood brother and sister, more like spiritual. Truth of the matter is, I don't care anymore about her beliefs or ideas. She kept telling me certian things of what I was suppose to do, all the while discrediting me behind my back and him. I don't have anything else to say about it. When I said I don't know how to address it, I wasn't asking for your help persay, I was simply voicing my concerns, maybe you are stronger than me and would keep such a matter to yourself, but I don't really hide from the world certian things I understand. There are many things I do though, but truth be told, I gave the woman more respect than she ever deserved from me and frankly speaking, I don't care anymore. And If I said what I was really feeling, this forum would turn very ugly fast, but of course, I'm not that kind of person. So, there yu go, a rant. I apologize, if you don't like it, but hey, I guess I was just looking for a friendly ear. oh well