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"Stupid" magick, religion and spirituality questions

 
  

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Thistle
09:36 / 02.07.07
The bestest neutral colour would be bee's wax-and it smells nice.
Hey I have a question... The craft is big on secrecy. To what exstent should this be observed?
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
09:46 / 02.07.07
Depends on what craft you are talking about and what sort of secrets you are talking about.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
11:07 / 02.07.07
Equal Opportunity Disaster: The most important magical botanical ingredient you can carry with you into exploring this material is a pinch of salt. Obviously these encounters mean a lot to you in your personal mythology and are tied up with health problems and probably all sorts of emotional stuff. Which is all the more reason NOT to invest in this narrative wholesale - or to fill in the sizeable gaps between your empirical sensory experiences and what may or may not be happening, with wish fulfillment fantasy and over-active imaginings.

The Mysteries tend to be pretty mysterious, and to a fair extent engaging in creative narrative is the process through which we come to an understand anything about them. But these narratives must always be kept supple and malleable enough to be tweaked and revised based on new evidence that may present itself to you. Interactions with deities are constantly in this state of flux, as are all living relationships. All you can ever go on is the evidence of your senses and your gut instinct, and this is a better guide than any grand arching narratives you may fabricate around these experiences and then find yourself strongly invested in.

I don't think you really have enough information to go on about who this mysterious character from your dream may or may not be, whether they are a God or an ancestor or a sub-routine of your physiology given form. You don't know what pantheon they may or may not be from, although without saying it outright your post suggests an affinity or leaning towards the Northern trad in how you are conceptualising this material. Maybe you are right about that. Or maybe its something totally different. I don't think you are really in a position to make a clear call on that at this stage.

I would suggest that all that really needs to be done right now is what you are doing. Honouring the contact, if that's what it is, and recognising it as something meaningful in your life that could potentially lead somewhere in the future. You could formalise it with some simple acknowledging ritual where you light a white candle, pour a glass of wine and break some bread or give some fruit as an offering. Bread, fruit and wine are generally pretty good generic offerings when you don't know much about a deity's tastes or personality. But leave it at that. Don't try to push any further. Don't try to go from step A to step Q in one evening. Baby steps. Suss out the terrain. See what it's all about.

Tune in when you are making this offering and see if anything seems to come through to you, but don't jump to any conclusions. Unless anything particularly interesting or revelatory comes through from your mystic thank you note, that might in itself suggest further methods of enquiry, I would just file the whole thing away in the memory banks for later and not worry about it too much. I have a lot of stuff like that myself. Experiences that come up, and seem pretty important, but aren't directly and obviously a part of anything I'm doing right now. If it's important, it will come up again and you will get to the bottom of it. If its genuinely from Deity, they tend to have a way of making their interests abundantly clear one way or another eventually. So don't get yourself too hung up on this material. Keep on keeping on with whatever it is you were doing before, but be open to the idea of this stuff being the end of a thread that might take you somewhere and suddenly start to make increasing sense as you go on.

The Magician's Sword of Discrimination really is a hugely important tool to be carrying with you in this sort of work. Or else you can end up convincing yourself of all sorts of mad nonsense, and find yourself totally hopeless at getting out of the complex tangle of narratives you have woven around yourself and are unwittingly bound by. Keep it real. Always take it down to brass tacks. Evidence of the sense. Gut instinct.
 
 
Ticker
17:14 / 02.07.07
GL's post above needs to go on the Temple wall methinks... it's all around solid advice.



...anyhow I'm not sure where to stick this so this seems to be a good catchall location.

A Very Successful Moving Out of the Old Space Ritual

1. move all possesions you are taking out of the old space.

2. Physically clean up your residue (like cat hair in the corners and that bit of boot black on the stairs).

3. Dump a pile of sea salt on the floor of the main room and as you sweep it up focus on gathering all of your connections and associations up in the salt. Say 'I take what is mine' as many times as you need as you sweep for it to feel valid for you.
Repeated in other rooms (especially the former bedroom) as you wish.

4. Gather up used salt into bag and take it with you.

5. Find a neutral rubbish bin, usually one on the street corner or in a store. Toss the bag w/used salt with the intent of letting go of what you no longer need.

6. Return to your new abode and invite what influences you'd like to follow you if you haven't already.

I found this particularly useful as after living in the same place for seven years I needed to make sure I'd gathered up all my blood magics and what not. Using tradtional elbow grease cleaning techniques is a center part of this process as much as it is for cleansing a new space. In searching for new updated cleansing techniques I noticed a lack of attention on the departing closure rituals. Maybe most folks are not creating heavy intense magics in their spaces but it still seems like the polite thing to do is pack up all of your belongings and not leave trash lying about for the next inhabitant.

Oh I should add this was a secondary removal/closure to closing and undoing all the wards and what not on the space but it felt comprehensive enough I'd imagine for most practitioners it would work sweetly all on its lonesome.
 
 
Sekhmet
17:37 / 02.07.07
Equal Opportunity Disaster's post resonated very strongly with me in a few ways and I have a sort of tangential question...

Does anyone know of, or have suggestions for, a good technique for removing old spiritual blockages or "locked doors" set up by one's own psyche as defense mechanisms in response to disturbing or traumatic phenomena (like, say, being stalked by a poltergeist, hearing loud scary voices in one's head, that sort of thing)? I know there are plenty of guidelines out there for what to do if someone else has put spiritual "bindings" on you, but undoing your own mind's work seems to be somewhat trickier.

Sorry if that's vague, let me know if I need to unpack more... on a break from work and not much time to elaborate at the mo'.
 
 
Ticker
18:04 / 02.07.07
First step is to feel safe, if you bound yourself to protect an aspect or your whole being is there a new defense mechanism in place? If you unlock the door are you now able to deal with what comes through it?

If so then I would treat it as any unbinding. If not I'd work on preparing the new coping skills and then unbind it.

Opening the door just to unlock it overlooks the impact of what could happen. It would be worse to prematurely open it and reseal it then to wait. You need to honor the intent which propelled you to lock it in the first place.
 
 
Cat Black (The Wizard's Hat)
18:18 / 02.07.07
XK: I just (yesterday) finished moving out of a place that I had lived for about a year and a half. Of course I only just now read your post, so it's a little too late for me to make use of your sea salt suggestion -- nevertheless, I like it. For me, all the physical cleaning was really helpful in clearing out my energy from the place. What really got to me, though, was my own attachment to the place and, I felt, its attachment to me. Throughout the process of getting my stuff (physical and otherwise) out of there, I felt these threads of what felt like longing, and loss. So, after I was finally done cleaning and everything, I left some offerings for the spirits of the place under the back porch, and just sat there for a while and gave them a heartfelt "thank you so much, goodbye, I'll miss you." After that I felt much better about leaving, like I really had some closure. For me, that final offering of thanks and goodies was the most important and meaningful part of my moving process.
 
 
Thistle
00:13 / 03.07.07
Um, Which craft? I'm doing a corrospondance course in western occult.(Suddenly I suspect I should ask them, but have no mail adress to send corrospodance to, and am interested in differnt opinions). They stress secrecey but to what extent should this be observed?... Not telling people what I'm studying I can understand(Though I just did, see it's hard!) Then there are the affirmations I'm working on, do I unimpower them by telling my friends that I hope to get ino a post grad diploma in wildlife documentaries next year? If I make a joke about only being goth on Wednesdays and my friend asks why can I say that it's Iansa's day?
 
 
Equal Opportunity Disaster
03:37 / 03.07.07
The bestest neutral colour would be bee's wax-and it smells nice.

Thanks thistle, I'd love to try it but I'm allergic to honey. All that nice smellingness is caused by honey being in the wax and permeating any area of mine with that smell is bound to cause reaction.

Gypsy Lantern:

That is a very good bunch of advice, I like it. I had packed the memory away because it wasnt of any use to anything relevant in my life. The reason I've begun to dig into this is because it seems that whatever protection was given seems to be... little maintained and showing it. Not like it will break, I have a feeling it will last my lifetime if need be but it doesnt feel as if its ment to. Like how you can live in a house long after it is technically "unfit" to live in. I dont think about it often, thats just the feeling I'm getting when I try to pay attention. Personally I just dont like to leave things like that... so I want to see what can be done about it. I do not want any extra abilities, prehaps some time in the future but the world I'm working with now is more than enough.

I'll leave an offering and I hope to find out what's required of me, if anything. It may not be a deity, whatever or whomever it is is much bigger and powerful than me so I jumped to the easiest word.

Ill do my best to keep real. Shouldnt be too hard, its kinda my M.O. Thank you!
 
 
Ticker
12:47 / 03.07.07
Cat Black (The Wizard's Hat):

yeah it is all about the relationship with the space. when you treat everything and everyone as worthy of respect, magical interaction comes naturally.
 
 
Quantum
13:16 / 03.07.07
I'm doing a corrospondance course in western occult Thistle

Witch School by any chance?
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
14:00 / 03.07.07
They stress secrecey but to what extent should this be observed?

Don't stress over it. You really have to go by your gut instinct and intuition on what should and should not be spoken about publicly and privately. The only way to develop this sort of instinct is over time and by trial and error. A good rule of thumb might be to never talk about something that is still "live" and ongoing. You can talk about it after the fact, but keep your trap shut while you're still in the heat of the magic.

A while back someone posted on here that they had made their first mojo bag, and was about to post specific details about how they made it and what the ingredients were on the internet. This is the sort of thing you want to avoid doing. It does kind of "depower" the magic if you blab about the details to all and sundry. I don't think there's anything especially mystical or supernatural about this process, I think it has much in common with the comparable phenomenon of a would-be novelist talking up his new book-in-progress relentlessly and to anyone who will listen, revealing plot points and key details whilst it is still an embryonic project, and so on. You will find a lot of writers are notoriously secretive about the stuff they are working on, and I really think this stems from the same natural instinct as the whole "to keep silent" aspect of magic. Talking about something tends to break the charge of it. Squanders its time before it's ready. Language is powerful stuff, and not to be thrown around carelessly.
 
 
Katherine
07:51 / 04.07.07
Ive never done too much with candles... is there a good neutral colour?
White is good, as is the natural creamy beige of some candles.
 
 
brother george
08:08 / 04.07.07
I'm at work right now so I can't comment more extensively, but regarding the 'secrecy':

Gypsy is right, you will over time intuitively start to know when its time to shut up and about what things and when its time to speak openly. When this starts to grow, you will tend to notice that when you do talk each time when you shouldn't you will feel that you have somehow 'cracked' some abstract integrity that is related to your work and you won't feel very good about it later on. When this happens for a few times and your subconscious gets the hint (its almost like touching a heated stove but without that much of pain, thats why it takes time) you will keep silent without effort and know when and what to communicate :-).

Overall, try not revealing to people that you practice 'the spooky stuff' as you don't know how this will develop in the future (mostly people bugging you about your practice/etc).

Whats said cannot be unsaid and it really sucks when you say "I wish I hadn't told so and so that I practice this stuff, I wish he knew nothing".
 
 
Thistle
03:43 / 05.07.07
Thanks for your replies. The gut feeling, hand burning thing seemed to explain it. I'm totaly down with not advertising my heathen leanings as trying to discuss them with someone who thinks it equates to being satan spawn would be boring and pointles. Though most of my friends seem to assume I am a witch inspite of my best efforts to not invite discutions about said heathen leanings. (Harmonic resonance be thanked, they know enogh to guess so not need to interogate)... Though I was just given a free snowboard with a pentagram on it.
The mojo, would be a good exsample of using a promise (keeping it a secret) to build power(must youtube old blues songs about seeing mojos. I'm wondering if it could be used the other way, using people's
"what are doing after this?" to boost my affermations- in a if it harms none kinda way.

The candel's have me wondering... Being allergic to honey's probley good being a theoretical vegan. But burning parafin wax candels- a petrochemical product is also dodgy (yes it's all about what you believe) but fire is an interesting offering.
I've come to assosiate fire with the knowlege stolen in the garden of eden. I've found the story of the trickster stealing fire in myths of many places. Maybe fire isn't the same as knowlege... Any thoughts around those stories?
 
 
Quantum
09:15 / 05.07.07
Fire in those myths usually symbolises consciousness rather than knowledge. Or fire of course.
 
 
Cat Black (The Wizard's Hat)
01:51 / 06.07.07
Yup. In some contexts it also represents imagination or will. I don't generally connect fire and knowledge, though.
 
 
This Sunday
02:00 / 06.07.07
Fire as awareness, maybe?

Though the trickster in question usually is doing so to spite those holding fire for themselves, and less for our (antecedents'/ancestors') sake.

Connected to this: I tried and failed recently to convey the difference between a trickster and a clown. Primarily the part about clown figures being the type to do things backwards or incorrectly, whereas it's the over-plotting, conniving part of the trickster that often does them in. I think the person's confusion stemmed from reading books with relatively sound practices but badly researched/relayed historical/cultural/academic information.

Anyone have a good book (preferably from their own culture, so they can confirm the 'goodness') that I could recommend in stead of my flawwed definitions?
 
 
Ticker
13:56 / 06.07.07
Korean Shamans in the news
 
 
Katherine
14:03 / 06.07.07
Interesting article XK.
 
 
Quantum
14:18 / 06.07.07
Which thread featured Crowley's hat? I can't find lolal.
 
 
Thistle
10:58 / 07.07.07
Crowley's hat?

Lucifer=light bringer enlightenment?
 
 
Ticker
19:43 / 09.07.07
did you find lolal in one of the thread Quants? I seem to recall it was either the gender queer pagan thread or...um...
 
 
Ticker
19:45 / 09.07.07
... the meeting with local pagan/occult group thread.
 
 
Thistle
02:29 / 10.07.07
nothing like a god hat to channel power.

That last post of mine probley looks more dodgy than I intened btw. ...

I've noticed clowns make fun of them selves and tricksters of others
 
 
Quantum
10:59 / 10.07.07
Thanks XK!
 
 
Ticker
13:22 / 11.07.07
do we gots a thread on examining your practice and what to do with the bits that you are changing out?

Yesterday I answered a pagan survey and realized just how much my practice has changed and that I'm need of a perspective shift. Er, or maybe just a space to process the shift that has already occured.
 
 
electric monk
14:18 / 11.07.07
Assessing Your Own Practice, perhaps?
 
 
Ticker
15:13 / 11.07.07
thanks emonk!
 
 
Feverfew
19:41 / 11.07.07
Is there a technical term for workings or conjurings (specifically, in this case, protective) that a person can use or carry with them without anybody who is not "into" (or "understanding" or "hostile to") the concept of majic? Sort of hidden in plain sight stuff?

I ask because I'm going on a trip soon where the destination could become problematic due to people already there, and I'd like to prepare some, well, 'wards', I guess. Currently all I have is imagery work, which I use for luck and confidence, but there's not much power behind it, just a vague sort of faith that it should work.

I'm sorry, I'm babbling. In short - are there any protective things one can do without other people giving one the askance glance?
 
 
Ticker
19:50 / 11.07.07
some folks use charged oils for this purpose. You can put the oil in your deodorant or other personal gear like shampoo.

I make small packets that can be carried in a pocket, if asked what the brightly colored ribbon wrapped thing is I'd say it was a keepsake from a sweetheart.
 
 
Ticker
19:51 / 11.07.07
Currently all I have is imagery work, which I use for luck and confidence, but there's not much power behind it, just a vague sort of faith that it should work.

Carry a small pic of it in your wallet?
 
 
Feverfew
19:54 / 11.07.07
It's a lucky charm that I've got a couple of, one of which has been with the person I'm travelling with for around a year or so, so that's something.

I'll follow your suggestions re: concealed oils and packets, though, and I thank you for it.
 
 
---
16:19 / 16.07.07
Didn't we make a tips for newbies type thread anywhere? I've had the odd intuition, feeling or thought that I've wanted to post as a tip a couple of times, but can't seem to find it in the search. Maybe we should make a new one for magical practise-related beginners if we can't find it?
 
 
Saturn's nod
11:31 / 20.07.07
What does 'occult' mean, please?
 
  

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