New Moon Old Magick

Hello dears.

Lately, we’ve focused a great deal on ethics and philosophy.  This is important in a magickal practice, but it isn’t everything!  It’s really important to remember to have fun.

I’ve promised a post on a mobile ritual kit for pagans, and here it is, the first of a series.  And I have to tell you that I’ve had more fun researching this!  For myself, I’d normally take a few items of my own and not worry about the sideways looks from airport security!  However a friend’s loss of a treasured item while traveling recently got me to thinking that a kit set aside for the purpose of observing one’s practice while mobile, might just be the thing.

There are those of you who travel often, work long hours, and don’t want to be hung up at the airport, explaining your personal philosophies to someone who stares at you while fingering their sidearm.  You also don’t have the time to hammer out the designs in your pentacle yourself personally, or can’t figure out how to transport your chalice!

And yet here you are in a strange hotel room filled with the auric effluvia of hundreds or thousands of other people, astral mucus to the max.  How do you set up a cleaner and more sacred space so that you can do yoga, meditate, or, say, sleep?

What to do?  Do you buy a bunch of cheap stuff, risk setting off the smoke alarm in the hotel room with a burning incense stick, breaking hotel rules about bonfires in your room, or offending a ‘no-smoking’ policy that can put a nice extra fee on that pesky bill?

NEVER FEAR!  In the most perfect of perfect worlds, you can set up an altar that no one knows is an altar, packs into a box the size of a breath mint container, and does exactly what you need it to do: it helps to focus your energy and attention so that you can clear and secure your space.  In addition, it will be small enough to use in a tent for those of you who travel far and light.  Actually, as I see it, there are three different types of kits.

* the business and personal kit (also known as the Traveling Salesman): if this is the Marriot, I must be in Atlanta
* the bicycle kit: shoes, 3oz, check; soap, 3 oz, check; food, 3 oz, check; sleeping bag, 3 oz, check; textbook, 7 pounds, check!
* the cross country kit:  yessir, that’s my backpack.  Nosir, that’s not drugs, it’s brown rice.  No officer, that’s not a bomb, it’s a hobo stove…

I think the Biz kit could be a bit bigger and more complete, assuming that the accommodations would be a bit more comfortable and equipped.  The Bike kit would need to be light and pared down, and the Cross Country would be an interesting challenge.  You would need to have a small and efficient kit, but yet be able to be ready for anything.  You’d be out longer, and your ability to get supplies while mobile would be challenged quite a bit more.

So let’s look at all of these in order.

BTW – I’d love to have your input on ideas for these kits, so please email me at info@newmoonoldmagick.com and TELL ME!  I promise to publish the best, the most creative, the most brilliant and also the most bizarre and weirdest ideas and STORIES!!!  No profanity please.

OK, first kit, the Traveling Salesman

Here is the first part of my altar kit list:

THE CONTAINER:  My ideal container is one that is large enough for the stuff, and yet tiny enough so that it can easily slip into a purse or bag, or even fit in with your laptop.
The one that I have used is a small cube shaped box I found in a junk store.  It had originally been used for cosmetics, and was wooden and 3 inches cubed.  I liked the wood because it’s such a good energetic match.  I also have a small commercial tin in the same cubed size – 3 inches each way.  I’ve also see kits like this in Altoids tins.  The size of the container, remember, will be determined by what you need to pack and where you will pack it.  You can find cheap small commercial tins in almost any thrift store for a dime.  Unless it’s Goodwill.  Then it will be $3.

The point is, you want the container to look unobtrusive, like a cosmetics or toiletries box, or like that gift of after dinner mints your auntie just gave you.  You get the idea.

THE ALTAR CLOTH:  I want to stress that natural materials are key in any kind of energetic work.  A plastic plate will do in a pinch as an altar, and a paper napkin the cloth, but you don’t want to make a practice of it! 

I suggest a silk hanky for your altar cloth.  It can wash out in a sink and can hang dry, in case of spills.  It folds into a very tiny roll and best of all, IT IS TRADITIONAL!  (Yay!  sounds of horns and drums and bells….)  Ahem, sorry.  Psycho moment….

An altar cloth can be any color, really, depending on what you are doing.  If you can find it, and depending on your practice, black and white check is a good one.  This is one of the hermetic color schemes for North, and is also used as a floor covering for Masonic temples.  It’s a bit garish, but is good to support your work.  A traditionalist might have a black silk square with a white lace hanky on top.

Or, for you druids who want to keep your nature connection while buried in the Holiday Inn, you might consider a larger silk hanky with a natural leaf and forest flower print.  Or for that matter, just a leaf.

Try to avoid sky scenes because we want your work and your energy to be grounded.  But really this is up to you, whatever makes you feel comforted, at home, familiar.

I do suggest hanky size, but a small silk scarf can do as well, providing you can fold it and fit it into your box.  You do not, as a rule, want to wear your altar cloth unless you are a hedgewitch (more on this later).

To fold the cloth, I lay it flat, fold top to bottom in half and then left to right in quarters.  No, I’m not a control freak, there is a reason for this so bear with me.  Put your finger on the one point on this folded square where there are no loose edges.  This is the center of your cloth.  Now fold the cloth in half, as if you were folding a diamond shape in half point to point, while you keep that one center point on the end.  This will start to make your bundle thinner.  Keep folding in this manner, and when it is folded as thin as you can get it, take that center point at one end and begin to roll it towards the other.  This will make a very small roll to fit into your kit, and, when you unfold it, it will make a series of creases in your cloth that will all radiate out from the center point.  This crease pattern will look like the spokes of a wheel, which will grab your ‘younger self’.  The wheel is the symbol of Karma, of manifest Spirit.  It corresponds to the Qabbalistic Sephira of Chokma, and invokes the cycle of life and death.  It is an excellent symbol upon which to base your working.  And if you don’t like it, wet it in a sink and let it hang dry while you are out at dinner.

THE ALTAR LIGHT:  Traditionally the Light on the altar is to invoke the Light Within, or to remind us that Spirit is here, or to invoke the God Form.  Your choice.  It is not always used, as magick certainly does not always need an altar set up (more on this type of spontaneous magick in future posts).  However, WHEN YOU DO SET UP AN ALTAR, I highly suggest a Light go on it, if only to help you ‘see’ clearly.

You can purchase tiny travel aromatherapy candles almost anywhere.  You will want to be particular about the scent.  I suggest frankincense or sandalwood as either would be very easy to find, and both have been used as a sacred incense for thousands of years.  You can also use rose or another scent that makes you feel strong and clear.  Make sure you research the magickal properties of other scents, tho, before you go with it, just to be sure of your tools.  Or of course if you are planning on using an incense or incense oil, then use a pure white unscented candle.  You can find them very small, about 2″ in diameter or even smaller if you look.  And of course, you can also use an anointing scented oil or aromatherapy oil on your neutral white candle.

THE INCENSE:  While travelling, I prefer not to use traditional smoking incense.  There are just too many other folk who have a bad reaction to the smoke, and as well, if I ask for a smoking room in a hotel so that I CAN burn the incense, I’m usually nauseated within about 1/2 hour of check in by the awful stink in the room.  So that doesn’t help any attempts to clear the energy or calm my mind.

In this instance, aromatherapy or ritual oils are a better choice.  And bow down to the gods and goddesses of modern technology, there is a plug-in diffuser in which you can put a few drops of the oil so that it continues to disperse throughout the room for as long as you need.  These little plug ins are not expensive, and all you need really is a wall socket.  Cautionary note: in some rooms, the wall sockets can be less easy to get to.  Just remember to climb behind the dresser before you leave in the morning, and retrieve your diffuser!

Here’s a link to a likely one, and you can google others, I’m sure:  Plug-in Diffuser

While the diffuser will not fit into your kit, most likely, it is not large and can rest in your overnight bag next to your traveling alarm clock.  The oil, however, CAN and should be in your kit.  There are tiny 1/8th oz vials that you can purchase to hold your oil, and this should be enough for up to a week, depending on what you are contending with.  These can be had from almost any herbal supply, although the tiny vials are not cheap.  It’s definitely worthwhile to purchase them from the metaphysical supply, simply because the craft witch making the oils can get the vials in bulk from the manufacturer, and thus the costs are much much lower, and the price of the oil in the vial should be correspondingly lower.

Alright, so there we have the first post of the Altar Kit Series.  We’ve looked at the Business Class, or Traveling Salesman’s kit, and talked about the container, the altar cloth, the altar light, the scent.  In the next post, I’ll delve deeper into the oils, and move on to the wand, the pentacle, and other tools you will want on your traditional traveling altar.

I hope your Holiday Season is awesome.  Best to all of you, and thank you for reading!

Blessed Be.
Marie Angeli

© Angeli 2009

Sacred Space II

Hello again.

I’d like for a moment to revisit the idea of what should or should not be in your sacred working area.

There are many circles that have extensive decorative and richly symbolic altars at each of the four directions, or even only in the center of the circle.  In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with this IF you can enter the circle and work without distraction, as we spoke about last time.  If you are like me, you’ll look at that really cool handmade doll in the Western quadrant… the one dressed in sea blue and silver hand colored silk embroidered clothing… and you’ll spend the rest of the ritual trying to figure out how it was made so that you can go home and create your own version.  Nothing wrong with that except you just missed the ceremony!!

If you are a master of focus, and do not care what the area you meditate and work in looks like because it doesn’t affect you, power to you, and I hope to be such a one someday, too. 

It is also quite possible to go the other way.  Forget reality.  Build the temple completely in your mind.  This takes a tremendous skill in visualization, and can be aided by a few props.  This is the ‘gotta do ritual and I’m on the metro’ type of working, and it actually can be quite useful if you are trying to time something to the minute because of astrological or astronomical correspondences, and are also trying to maintain a ‘real’ life and do things like, say, WORK!  It is also a lot easier to do if you have some experience of working in a physical temple space so that your energy body knows what this feels like.

Even if you are sitting on a bench as the train barrels down the tube, there are things you can do to convince your ‘child mind’ or your subconscious that you are in a safe and protected space and will thus be able to engage enough of that subconscious so that your ritual is successful.  (more on the role of the child mind later)

The Bower

The subconscious, like a child, responds to colors, sounds, textures, lights.  To key in your own inner self, develop a symbol that will help you use your own high priest/ess in unfamiliar settings.  Again, this takes practice in your personal temple before you can effectively use it in a metro-type situation.  And, oh yes, remember the #1 Rule: Common Sense.  Please don’t be meditating or performing ceremony while driving down the freeway, or operating heavy machinery, etc etc etc.  And make sure you have enough time to do what you are wanting to do, so that you don’t open your eyes a few stops past your destination.

I sometimes use a personal symbol to invoke a safe and sacred space for myself: a white rose.  Over time using this symbol, I have developed a detailed visualization that includes the image of an antique cupped cream-white rose with the strong scent of a Damask.  Yes, I know that many whites do not have strong scent, but you know what, this is MY symbol!!!  Yours can be anything you like, sensible or not.  I can actually feel the thorny stem and the leaves, as well as the cool moisture of the petals.  If you are someone who does not visualize well, you can of course focus on scent and feel, or sound, or any other sensation of the physical that you can bring to mind in the creation of your Sacred Space symbol.

If you cannot mentally call up anything with a sensation, then you can also develop this visualization using physical aids first.  This exercise will be a good aid to you as you develop your inner capacity so that you can do magickal work, as being able to visualize or ‘feel, see, or hear’ a physical sensation of some kind.

For example, park yourself in your garden, and place potted plants that you really like and that make you feel CONTENTED and PEACEFUL at the four directions in a circle around you.  Or, if indoors feels better, you can use whatever elements you wish that bring you that same feeling.  Or, a great place to begin, for all levels, is to simply hold something that makes you feel good and happy, and evokes feelings of security.  This is the grownup version of the Binky.

Practice your meditations for awhile using these things as part of your temple work.  Really examine them, feel them, smell them, listen to them if they are things like chimes or fountains.  Then, when these things are really burned into your brain, you can use your memory of them to bring you to that state of peace and contentment wherever you are.

I do not recommend using that wonderful fountain at your workplace, however, simply because it is rare to have a workplace that brings you to a trancelike state of joy.  Most of the time, the situation is exactly the opposite.  If you have such a job, can you send me the human resources email, please!??!  But if you do use that workplace fountain, even if you love it, you will without a doubt also bring the stressful feelings of your workplace with it.  Do not doubt it, they will most likely be evoked even if only in the back of your mind, not because of WHERE the fountain is, but because of what you have most likely been thinking while sitting in front of it.

HOWEVER, you CAN get a small fountain and put it in your living space,  use it to clear your mind and bring you to a calm place, and then use the image of that fountain to invoke peaceful meditation.  Is this becoming clear?

Another way that you can work in public while undetected is to have a piece of jewelry or another small personal object that you dedicate to this purpose.   Use this only for this purpose, sort of like you would a personal medicine bag.  Carry it with you, and use it as you need it.  A good example of such an item would be a square silver pendant that has a circle on it to key your mind to the idea of the sealed figure, and then you may also want to inscribe sigils in each of the directions to add temporal orientation.  In other words, it is a sacred space that is grounded in earth.  You can wear this around your neck underneath your clothes, or carry it in a small pouch in your purse.  Take it out and use it to focus your gaze as you do what you need to do.  Again, you would begin using this symbol in your own temple space until such time as it becomes invested with the energy of your working temple, and can invoke that peaceful place between the worlds in your outer and inner minds.

Your choice of symbol is up to you, however one suggestion.  Make is as innocuous as possible.  It is difficult to work secretly and peacefully if the bible thumper in the seat next to you is moaning loudly, thrashing, and throwing holy water on you, because you made the tactical error of pulling out your favorite faery pentagram.  This work is not about confrontation, it is about tactics.  We are not here to throw political agenda in the faces of our fellow travellers, (at least not at the moment!) we are simply here to do the work in the most unobtrusive and peaceful way.  If that takes working in a hidden way, as it most often does, then now you know one really good reason for Silence.  There are some very beautiful pentagrams out there, and they have a place in the workings.  I sometimes wear mine beneath my clothes and sometimes on top.  But most often lately I try to have a thoughtful reason for using the symbol, and avoid having it associated with the politics of misunderstanding.

There are many good symbols that you can use, including the grounded circle I described above.  You can use a nice pendant with runes written on it, a personal crystal on a chain, a special ring with a moonstone, or a dragon (dragons are great protectors).  I once had a lovely set of earrings of this silver wire, woven to look like the branches of a tree, upon which hung some very tiny smokey quartz points.  There were special to me, and always brought a sense of the sacred space with them.  If you are a minimalist, place a dedicated small crystal or stone in your pocket, and just hold it in your hand inside your pocket while you work.

Common Sense Caveat: Try not to rub your Sacred Worry Stone too hard as you are thinking heavy thoughts, or you risk setting off that pesky seatmate again.  Actually, it’s not being doused holy water that I mind, it’s being smacked in the forehead with the King James version! OUCH!!

If you really want to go whole hog, put a tiny bit of Copal or Frankincense in a piece of loosely woven cotton and add this to your symbol bag so that when you open the bag to remove the symbol, the holy scent will let your reptilian brain know that it is Time to go to Work!  A few leaves of California White Sage, or Sweetgrass will also work just as well, or a small piece of cotton soaked in Patchouli, wrapped in another piece of cotton cloth…. well you get the idea.

• I am in the process of building a small metaphysical e-shop for those of you who may wish to purchase ritual goods and gear, but do not have easy access to, or are not happy with, the products available in your area, or for that matter simply want to see more stuff.  The shop I hope will help to support this blog, and also provide a nice selection of witchy chachkies for your delectation and delight!  More on this in future postings.

Just please remember.  It is important in your work to be PEACEFUL and SAFE.  Safety means whatever it means to you.  It is essential that your ‘fight or flight’ daily hyper anxiety (you know, that coffee-driven workplace feeling) is set to rest while you are working your ritual so that your focus will be fruitful.  And this will mean making the adjustments that you need to make in your life so that you can do this type of work.  You cannot cover your anxiety with external aids such as drugs, herbs, or even sheer determination.  You cannot lie to yourself at the deepest regions of your mind.  If you are not safe, either at home, or in the metro or the park or in your office at lunch, then either temporarily find another space in which to be safe, like a garden, or wait until such time as you are to do this.  There is a trust which needs to be built up within yourself, and if you sabotage yourself by placing yourself in harms way, it will certainly interfere with your ability to profit by this type of meditation.  Your ‘inner priestess’ needs to know that you have her back.

A good idea for temporary meditation spaces can be art museums, in the restful section (avoiding the body-parts hacked into pieces sections, please); or even a Catholic church, the older kind if you can find one that is open to the public for meditation.  I personally love the Mary Chapel for this type of work, and its also a great space in which to psychically cleanse yourself of unwanted astral mucus.  Nasty meeting with that scumbag sales manager who is trying to put his bubbleheaded girlfriend in your job?  Don’t go to a bar.  That’s just adding injury to insult.  Go to the sculpture garden at the local university to remind yourself that there are more important things in the universe than the overwrought ambitions of a stuck in adolescence manager who makes decisions with his man parts.  Once you are peaceful once more, then use that state of mind to do ritual for a better job, or even HIS job.  But remember, try not to envision him falling into the rattlesnake tank at the local zoo.  Your own auric field will thank you for your consideration.

NOW, for something to look forward to, I will be working on a Basic Solitary Work ebook, that will lay all of this out in easy informative steps so that each of us can work to take a bit more control of our lives!

More on this later, darlings.  Until we meet again, think of some of the elements that you would like to use in either your private space, or in your bag of tricks.  Next time, we will look at a more elaborate mobile meditation kit.

Blessed be,
Marie Angeli