Advent begins.

Today is the second day of the Filianic month of Astrea. It is also the second day of Advent. This is a hard time of year for me. I have a great deal of sad and painful things associated with what is, for most people, a time of gaiety and joy. I am, however, determined not to let this cast a shadow over things this year. As such, I am working on coming up with small celebratory things I can do each day of the months.

I am still working on my devotional journal. (I am actually a bit behind because of life complications over the last few months.) I am making a concerted effort to at the very least be grateful in my entries if I can not be joyful. It has been hard, though, because witnessing the atrocious things happening in the world, I have much fear and sorrow in my heart right now. It is my hope, however, that with focused effort, I will find things that will lift me up.

I was not able to locate an advent calendar for the boys that I liked. Most of the ones I found had strong Christian overtones (which is not surprising because that is the primary market for these things). I tried to find secular ones but those that I did find were constructed in such a manner where it was difficult to see the numbers on them. This leaves me in a position where I am seriously considering fashioning something of the sort on my own.

When the kids are at school, I will be making a paper chain marking the days until Yule. I am planning on doing something special with them weekly, at the very least. I have begun the process of getting things out of hiding for decorating for the season. In the past, I left holiday decorating until the last minute. Now, however, I am going to see if I can make arrangements to have a small tree that we can decorate a little bit every day. I don't think we'll be using all the fancy ornaments that we have in storage. No, I have decided that we are going to make our ornaments. I have egg cartons that will be turned into bells and snowmen with a few additional supplies. I have paper to cut into snowflakes and to make paper chains with. I have bags of popcorn to be popped and strung onto thread and hung up.

I'm going to try delving into my memories of what I did as a child to celebrate the holiday and see if I can reacquaint myself with the happiness and excitement I felt for this season when I was a girl. I have cleaned off the entertainment center in preparation to make a place where we might hang stockings. I figure on the day of Nativity, we can put on a youtube video of a crackling fireplace as we open presents. I look forward to taking my few trips for holiday shopping over the next few weeks. I do enjoy watching how the boys light up at the sights of the holiday lights and displays. I also love to watch them pick out presents for each other.

My stockpiling of empty quart sized jars will be soon turned into things like cookie mixes, hot cocoa mixes, and other goods that I will be giving as gifts. If I can, I am probably going to put the boys to work in fashioning these things. They've got some math skills now, I think it is a good time to get them started with how to measure things in the kitchen as a first step towards cooking. I don't know if I am going to get much done in the way of baking this year. As much as I would like to make some traditional foods such as Stollen and shortbread, I recognize that not everyone in my family would be interested in eating it.

My plan for overcoming the anger and grief that this time of year brings out in me is to fake happiness and cheer until I can make it happen. It may be that I tire myself out with this. But, a wise person I knew once said that happiness is a learned trait. I like to think that my late grandmother was right about that one. So, I'm going to try to teach myself how to be happy with this time of year. I will let the anger and such wait until January, if I can.

Video Message! Thank you!

This week's video message is short and sweet. I just want to take the opportunity to thank all of you for supporting my blog with your readership. It would be much harder to make this blog happen with out your presence. I look forward to another full year of adventure into magic and wonder with you. I hope that next Thanksgiving, I will have a longer message describing all the wonderful things that you have helped me accomplish.

So, thank you again! I hope everyone has a wonderful day.

Divination Topic'sTo Be Discussed.

With the holidays approaching, I am working on getting myself a bit more organized. As I write this post, it is at the end of a long and busy day. I fear that the rest of the week will be more of the same because of Thanksgiving. I will attempt to post over the next several days, but I honestly don't know how much success I will have. With the children being off from school, I have very little writing time at the moment.

As I have been doing, I am going to use the Monday posts to discuss divination. I have pretty much hit the end of what I can cover with respect to Cartomancy at the moment. While I'd like to do something about oracle decks, I am still looking for my notes from when I last played with one. I honestly have no idea where they have vanished off to or I would be posting about that right now. At some point in the future, I may do something more about Tarot spreads. I'm undecided at the moment.

Next week, I will be posting about pendulums. I own a few and have used random objects on chains to accomplish the same goals. It is not my strongest suit but I know quite a few people who find that the directness of a pendulum is easiest to work with. It is my hope to lay out the basics of how they work and what you can do with them.

The second week of December, I plan on talking a bit about stichomancy. This is a really accessible method of divination. And I regularly get some pretty interesting results. The fact that my apartment is reaching the status of living in a small library may be part of the reason why. But, the use of books for divination has been in practice for as long as there have been books (even longer if you count scrolls and other forms of text).

The third week of December, I am going to talk a little bit about runes. They really are such a big topic that they need to be handled on their own. That post, I am going to talk about my approach to reading them, which is intuitively based. (And to weigh in on the blank rune controversy, I use it in my readings if it strikes my mood. It generally pops up as a need to pause and reflect on the previous rune's meaning. Sometimes it is... different.)

The final week of December, I am going to share something that could technically be called Cartomancy. I have a few different ways to do readings using note cards. One involves using blank ones. It's a cool party trick once you figure it out. I will get a little into how to develop your own divination deck. I'm trying to decide if I want to jump whole hog into discussing how to develop your own divination system next year or not.

If you have something you'd like to see me post about or any questions, let me know. The comments are a great place for a short note. If you want to do something more detailed, send me an e-mail.

I Recommend This: Internet edition.

There are a great many worthwhile projects and programs that a person can get involved with over the Internet. The ways we can act in accordance with our beliefs has as many manifestations as there are people who have ideas. While there are some really awesome programs that you can do within your local community, there are also things you can do that effect the world wide community.

The World Needs More Love Letters is a really great little project that I personally think is serving a niche that frequently gets over looked. The premise is that you write an anonymous letter expressing good will and love towards individuals who are selected from a pool of people who could use encouragement. The letter is then sent to the program. The program sends it on to the person in question. They receive a package filled with all of these letters which serves to help them through rough times and restore some faith in humanity.

It is in terms of investment of time and energy on the low end of the scale. It is also a really inexpensive thing to participate in. All your costs is a bit of paper, an envelope, and postage. But the benefits of it are really wonderful. Through this program, you help lift up someone who is in need of encouragement. You create a greater sense of community and goodness within that community. Also, you get all the warm fuzzy feelings that go with doing something to help others in need.

I am, personally, going to be participating in this. Having been in a position where I felt like the world had turned against me, I know just how important little things like words of encouragement from people around you are. And sometimes, the fact that those words of encouragement come from people who are completely outside of the situation makes them resonate better. I don't claim to understand it, but sometimes it works like that.

Video Message: On Terrorism.

I don't typically comment on the political things going on in the world. I try to avoid it. Sometimes, however, and issue comes up that crosses political, social, and religious lines. This week's video message addressed one that has been really big: terrorism.

Now, some of you may take exception to the premise that I put forth in this video, namely that terrorism will not be defeated by force of arms. I have a lot of reasons behind that position based in philosophical consideration, stratagem, and observation of what is going on in the world. It is something that I'm not going to get into here because it is tangential to my argument here. If you are curious as to my reasoning, please take some time to view this post on my other blog.

The terrorists want us to be afraid. They want to divide the world and conquer through fear and force of arms. One of their weapons in this is hatred. A lot of people want to defeat the terrorists and make the world a safer place. There is something powerful that you as an individual can do. Create an environment where hatred will not be able to take root.

Love and good will are the antithesis of what people like Daesh are attempting to sow. Make a point to go out and help your neighbors. Actively express our love for the world and each other and we will make hearts that are impervious to hatred. Filianism calls this a heart of water. The heart of water is a pretty complex concept that I'll post more about a bit later. For now, let's consider one of the traits of the heart of water.

The heart of water surrounds that which attempts to penetrate and change it. It does not lose its nature by way of the things that are cast at it. It actively overwhelms the things the world throws into it and is flexible enough to work around most anything. That responsiveness and ability to drowned out that which is not compatible with its nature comes from love and gentleness.

Let's cultivate this within ourselves and the world. This way we may overwhelm the hatred that Daesh and their ilk tries to make take root in the world. Just as a rushing river will cut a path through even the hardest stone, so too shall our love cut through the hatred of Daesh, and diminish them.

Spell craft: To Rhyme or Not?

There is a history of presenting verbal incantations as rhyming verse. Perhaps the most famous example is the witches's curse from Shakespeare's play Macbeth. A quick review of the spells published on the internet and it is apparent that a large portion of them are rhyming. This overwhelming amount of poetic verse in spell craft can lead one to the conclusion that spells must be formulated with rhyming verse for the incantation, but is it necessary?

The short answer to this question is no. As long as your incantation assists you in presenting proper focus and direction for your magical efforts, rhymes are not needed. The tradition of using rhyming verse for spell craft is of an uncertain origin. When we consider the historic evidence of past witchcraft practices, we find that a vast majority of it comes from people of the lower social classes. (Witchcraft has historically been a tool through which the oppressed strike back at their oppressors. As such, it has a very strong association with the lower classes, which will generally include the oppressed population of a culture.) This association with lower socio-economic status often comes with a lower level of formal education.

One may ask what this has to do with the presentation of spell craft in rhyming verse. Generally, complex formulaic verbal incantations come with a higher degree of literacy and education. While rhyming is found in the spell craft of the lower classes, it does not have as great of an emphasis as that of people in higher classes, with allowances made for cultural emphasis of course.

In western magical practices, we find there are two purposes for rhyming. One is that it serves to assist the practitioner in maintaining focus upon their magical efforts and target. The other is that it is a functional component of the spell craft. Incantation and enchantment both have their roots in the Latin term incantare, which translates to: to chant [a magical spell] upon. The native English term that is corresponding to this is galdr which translates to: song or spell. Generally, however, incantation is not a necessary component of witchcraft.

While song/verse based magic does exist, it is its own class of magical exercise. In ancient times, there was a distinction made between song based magical practices and that which is based in other practices. In the native English terms, galdr was the song based magical practices. Other practices were known as seith. It is reasonable to believe that similar distinctions have been made between these two different ritual focuses, though there may not be specialized terms for them.

An additional wrinkle to the practices that could fall under the category of galdr is the fact that not all poetry or music is composed of rhyming verse. It can also include what is known as blank verse or non-rhyming poetry. Thus, incantations can be of a greater variety of forms as long as there is some sort of rhythmic stress pattern through out the charm, though this is not a hard and fast rule.

Cartomancy: Tarot Spreads (IV)

This is a basic seven card spread. It is designed to give information about an existing relationship. While I have frequently used it for romantic relationships, it really is effective for pretty much any type of relationship. This is one that I learned from Facade.com's selection of tarot spreads, therefore I can not take credit for it. It is, however, one that can be built upon for additional detail as you place cards to clarify the details.

Position one shows how the querent feels about their role in the relationship. Position two shows what the querent feels is the standing of the relationship. Position three shows what the querent feels about the other person involved in the relationship.

Positions four through six present the same information but from the perspective of the other person in the relationship. Position seven presents the objective perspective of a third party on the relationship.

Sometimes, I lay an additional six cards out, three to either side of the columns. They present the hidden aspects of the three cards they are beside.