Video Message: Don't give up.

I know that for many of us life is trying right now. Some are struggling with health issues. Others are struggling with financial ones. And yet more people are dealing with complicated things that we can not begin to imagine. As tempting as it may be to compare our suffering to someone else's it really won't help solve the problem. It will only hurt and frustrate us.

Take some time when you are feeling that everything is going against you to pause and reflect on the things that are working in your favor. Find the details that show you are moving in the right direction and focus on them. We're socialized to look at the bad side of the picture and compare ourselves to others. This is a terrible combination of things that causes a lot of hurt in this world.

Don't tell yourself 'At least I don't have it as bad as [group}.' or 'I have no right to complain, so many other people have it worse.'

Pain is pain. It may take on different shapes and everyone has different tolerances for different kinds of pain. Don't invalidate your experience by making comparisons. Treat yourself gently, focus on the positive things, and don't give up.

Call for Questions!

There is no questions in my inbox to answer right now. I invite you all to send me some. You can leave them here in the comments on this post or you can email them to me. I look forward to hearing from you.

Godphone: Lesson One - Inner Silence.

In many ways, the exercises that one uses to develop their 'godphone' and mediumship related ability are the same ones used for meditation. Like meditation, the practitioner needs to learn to observe their thoughts and control them. Prior to engaging in meditation, especially if one is new to this practice, it is important to establish that they are in an environment that promotes the work they are doing. For many people, a quiet location that is free from distractions works well. It is also helpful for the practitioner to limit the distractions that are internal. Thus, before sitting down to engage in these exercises, it is important to be in a comfortable body position and not have things like hunger or thirst distracting you.

Some people may find the classic meditation position of sitting in lotus position is helpful. This, however, is not necessary. One can sit, stand, or kneel for their positioning. (And there are examples through out the history of meditation that demonstrate that one can be in these positions and engage in this type of work.) Yoga positions are also helpful for some people. Laying down, however, is not the best position to use for this type of exercise, at least in the beginning, because many people will fall asleep after they have become relaxed.

Once you have positioned yourself in a comfortable position that allows you to be relaxed yet alert in an environment that promotes focused attention, the next step is to establish your body awareness. This may seem overwhelming. In the beginnings of this practice, body awareness will be the primary focus until it is possible to ignore it (with the exception of remaining aware of indicators of pain or danger). It may require you to try out multiple positions until you find the one that is best suited for this type of mental work.

In the process of becoming aware of your body (counting and focusing on breaths is a good place to start), it is good to acknowledge the various streams of information coming to you. Once you have established awareness of your body and a state of attentive relaxation, begin to note what senses are informing you of what is happening. Categorize the input you receive and steadily compartmentalize that input as it comes to you. Thus, when you hear a noise, note that it is an external auditory input and put it into a mental box. As future noises come up during your session, put them into the same mental box. Do not focus on them beyond acknowledging them and setting them aside.

After a time of observing your sensory experiences, you will find yourself sitting with your thoughts. There will be an internal monologue where you express things like your concern if you paid the heat bill on time and remind yourself to feed the cat. Just as you identified and set aside the sensory input, you proceed to identify and put aside the internal monologue. When emotions rise up, identify them and set them aside. After some practice, you will build familiarity with your internal voice and the feelings associated with your innermost thoughts.

The ultimate goal of this practice, however, is more than just becoming familiar with your inner voice. It is also to filter out the various different stimuli and thoughts until you have reached a place of relative silence within yourself. It takes a great deal of diligent practice to do so. Some people are talented enough to achieve this in a few weeks of effort. Others may need months of effort until they can readily identify their internal voice, not necessarily achieving mental silence.

Achieving mental silence makes it easier to identify the psychic phenomena but it is not an absolute requirement. Indeed, with practice, a person will learn to identify the difference between their internal voice and psychic phenomena while not in a trance state. Next lesson, we will look at the process of working with one's inner voice and discerning it from psychic information.

Weather Magic (Part III): Dispelling Precipitation

In my previous post, I talked about how one could call rain (sleet, snow, whatever precipitation you desire) through simple magic. Sometimes, however, rain is not desired, needed, or even harmful to the situation. The folk practices that I had seen to summon rain had only a few correlating practices for dispersing it. I think this is because the place I grew up in had relatively few problems with flooding. And those problems were generally due to excess snow melt in the early spring. I can remember only a few years where rain was a problem because there was too much of it. Usually, it was a problem because it came too early in the season and the latter portion of the growing season was too dry.

Still, when I look at the news and I see a big snowstorm coming, I usually want to try to encourage the worst of it to go past us. Partly because I hate driving in snow, partly because I dislike shoveling snow, and partly because I want the kids to get the most out of every school day possible. (Education is very important in my family. We're working to instill such an attitude in the kids. It is not going quite as well as we'd like. Any suggestions for how to get kids to enjoy school a bit more would be appreciated! I have a few different spells that I use to move the worst weather around us.

The closest I have to a folk practice to move a storm away is prayer that is focused on seeing the worst of the storm pass us by. This generally works fairly well, to be honest. My spell craft functions upon sympathetic magical principles. When I am attempting to dry out sodden soil, I will take a small fireproof bowl and fill it with a bit of soil and some water, making sure that it matches the consistency of the soil's saturation. I then place my fireproof bowl on my tea light wax warmer (I have one that is ceramic and has the bowl removable.) and proceed to heat the soil and water mixture from below with a tea light. As this is occurring, I make a pronouncement that as the soil in the bowl dries, so shall the soil in the ground. This takes a little while to take full effect. The shortest time frame that I have seen where this one works is a week.

For a more immediate concern, I will take a twig and wave it in the air in the direction the prevailing wind is blowing. As I do so, I will command the storm to follow the wind. I then throw the twig in the direction that I would see the storm go, for a bit of extra emphasis. The larger the twig, the more wind will blow the storm along. Take care, however, in using this spell because it can potentially invoke a windstorm.

I also have a spell where I light a bit of incense and then extinguish it. In this manner, I am connecting with the clouds of the storm through the incense smoke. When I extinguish the incense, I disperse the clouds and their attendant precipitation. I usually say something along the lines of "Storm begone, I scatter you to the four winds."

Question Time: Snood pattern.

I have been asked several times for the pattern to my snoods. There is one that I used which comes from a video on Youtube. This has a mesh to it. My solid snood pattern is essentially a large circle with a few inches of depth made before crocheting on an elastic hairband. For my blue silk snood, I used one ball of Patons Silk-Bamboo yarn. This is really soft and feels nice against my scalp. You can use acrylic but it will be a bit scratchy against the skin unless you have killed the yarn before hand. I used a size H hook.

Starting round: Chain 5, slip stitch final chain to first chain stitch. Ring made.
Round 1: Half double crochet twelve stitches into ring. Slip stitch stitch twelve to stitch one.
Round 2: Half double crochet twice into each stitch. Slip stitch 24 into stitch one.
Round 3: Half double crochet twice into first stitch of each pair of the increases. Stitch one double crochet before doing next increase. Slip stitch stitch 30 to stitch one.
Round 4 - 12: Half double crochet twice into first stitch of each increase. Stitch one double crochet into each stitch until next increase is reached. Slip stitch final stitch to first stitch of the round.
Round 13 - 16: Half double crochet once into each stitch. Slip stitch final stitch to first stitch of the round.
Round 17: Single crochet each stitch over a narrow elastic headband (hold the headband against previous round of stitches. complete single crochet as per usual, which will cover the headband with each stitch). Slip stitch final stitch to first stitch. Bind off and break yarn. Weave end in to single crochet stitches.

Reminder - the first half double crochet in the round will be a chain of two stitches.

Video Message: You CAN do it!

This is the year you do great things! Whatever you have been putting off or telling yourself that you just don't have the ability to do, now is the time to give it a try. Sure, somethings will take clever planning and some resources, but don't let that stop you. Even taking that first step of planning how to tackle the challenges of making your dreams reality counts as working towards that goal.

My scarf is tied in a basic triangle style with the ends twisted into a crown. My friend who gave it to me got it at EzHijab.com. The background music to today's video is from Youtuber Adrian Von Zigler. It is his piano work entitled My Everything. I highly recommend his work.

Weather Magic (Part II) : Invoking precipitation

Much of weather magic can be divided into two major parts. One part is invoking precipitation (rain, snow, sleet, etc.) and one part is driving precipitation away. Growing up on a farm, I have an intimate knowledge just how important precipitation is for the growth cycle of plants and the water cycle. I remember when there was a drought of some significance in my area when I was small. Tensions ran high among the farmers because everyone's crops were at risk the longer the drought continued. Even the farmers with livestock had concerns because the pasturage they were using to feed their animals was suffering from the drought and producing less feed for their cattle, horses, and pigs.

One of my clearest memories of this time was of my grandmother shaking out the dust from her broom in the backyard. It was something that struck me as odd. I asked her why she was doing it and she just smiled. I also remember my aunt storing her broom upside down, with the bristles pointed towards the ceiling (a thing that just wasn't done most of the time). Not long after this business with the brooms happened, we had drought breaking rain. A storm system popped up over the Great Lakes and blew in with soaking rain for the whole region. It was years later, when I was reading about weather magic in my research of folk magic, that I stumbled upon a description of housewives shaking their brooms in the air and storing them upside down to invoke rain during the pre-Industrial era out in the rural places where folk magic was still fairly widely practiced.

There is the practice of hanging out washing that was wrung to nearly dry to invoke rain as well. It is like the comparatively modern one of washing your car on a dry day. Hanging out things to dry or washing your car to summon rain is not as effective as the broom method, from what I have seen. They are, however, less conspicuous than someone waving a broom around in the air. Another practice is reciting a prayer for rain (to the deity of your choice) while shaking a rain stick. This was one that my mother used on a regular basis.

In many ways, the same practices work for summoning snow. I have also found success in tossing a small handful of white ashes up into the air while praying to the gods for snow. Invoking snow is also possible through tossing finely cut pieces of paper in the air while saying a similar prayer. The falling ashes and paper resemble the snowflakes and act to draw the snow to you.

Timing magic to draw precipitation can be tricky. Greater success comes on humid days than dry ones. It is also easier to draw precipitation when the moon is waxing or full.