New Moon Old Magick

Hello my dears,

Thank you for reading.  I’d like to start off the New Year with a look at ‘why we would want to carry an altar with us, anyway’, and then we’ll continue with the traveling altar kit.

It’s been truthfully said that we humans are creatures of habit.  Our inner and childlike self thrives on habit, routine, and ritual.  Any discussion about human’s need for ritual need only look at things like rabbit’s feet, your brothers lucky sneakers, your visit to the same coffee vendor at the same time every morning.  These routine behaviors give us a framework of comfort upon which we can pin our more adventurous and unsure journeys, albeit into knowledge of ourselves, or simply through our daily life.

So, when we haul half our stash of crystals across the country, or make sure that when we move to a new place, we remember to take the favored armchair and the good pipe for our contemplations.  When we travel with children we make sure that they have their binkies.  When we go to a particularly tough job interview, we carry our worry stone in our pocket, so that we can handle it as we speak.  We invest these habitual belongings with an unspoken belief that we can create some permanent and safe boundaries.  And it is when we feel that safety and permanence that we can perform to our best abilities, we can process information more effeciently, our thoughts deeper, our mental resources more focused.

In a way, we are always creating a sacred space for ourselves.  We do this in temple, church, grove, circle, or dojo.  We do this in our cars, on the playing field, in the boardroom, and in our hotel cubicle.

So this is what we are looking at with the Mobile Me series of posts.  How is it that we create this sacred, bounded place so that our minds are free to do the work we need them to do, and so that our energy fields and our bodies are relaxed and resilient?  These kits need to be the correct size and contain all the needed tools for the purpose.  No one would argue a man’s need for his dock kit, or a woman’s need for her own shampoo or makeup, for example.  These things are assumed.  Your ritual kit can be just as personal and important to your daily preparations.

It is true.  There is no absolute need for any kind of formal altar or other type of ritual tool to do effective ceremony.  We use these things to focus our minds and our purpose.  And, as we already know, the mind and imagination creates the form of the ritual, and the emotions are the force behind it.  Having a small set of familiar ritual tools when you are in an unfamiliar environment can help you focus your mind and imagination.  But again, the kit is not necessary.  It just helps make things a bit easier.

In the Mobile Me, Part I post, we looked at the container, the altar cloth, the scent, and the altar light.  Today we will go a bit further, and look at a few of the elemental tools:  the wand, and the athame or knife.

The wand in your kit is your tool of air.  It invokes the East in your temple and it is the direction from which the Light rises to enter your working.  Your wand can be a traditional piece of round wood like a pencil (without the lead!), or you can use a fan, a light colored transparent stone, or a wind instrument like a whistle.   Again, we are trying to think of alternatives that can travel easily and be expendable should anything untoward happen (Goddess forbid!)

Think about perhaps placing a small piece of rutilated quartz in your box.  The rutiles in the quartz can be either gold or tormaline, and you would wish to pick the golden rutiles for the East and the element of Air to substitute for your more traditional wand.  None of these things need be big, but pick ones that you can feel familiar and comfortable with.  You can also perhaps use a bird feather that you found, or perhaps a penny whistle, or a bird call whistle that is pleasing to you.  If you are sensitive to sound or particularly attuned to music, then you can use sound and music as ceremonial tools very effectively.  In this day and age, it is pretty common for women to have a whistle attached to their keys as a security measure.  It’s a great idea to find one that you like the sound of, attach it to your keys, or give it a keyring and attach it inside your luggage.  When you use it, please remember that the object is not to have the hotel staff come running to assist you, but to simply and softly blow in the East.  One of my all time favorite musical instrument sites is Lark in the Morning.  You can look at all the whistles, harmonicas, pipes, flutes, ocarinas, kazoos, and other goodies in the wind instrument section.  One of the advantages of a whistle is that it is easily purchased and easily replaced if lost.

You can also (according to the TSA if you are travelling in or into the continental US) travel with tools like screwdrivers in carry on luggage if they are shorter than 7 inches long.  The list is here.  So if you are wedded to the idea of a wooden pointer type wand, it could be very easy to make one of about the dimensions of a pencil.  You can get wooden dowels in any hardware store, although hardwood dowels are tougher to find.  And of course you can conceivably take a small trimmed cutting from the tree of your choice.  Again, we want to make the items in the kit familiar and comfortable, but I would not suggest putting in enormous amounts of work to craft a finely hewn, burned and decorated wand that you may loose if circumstances are not in your favor.  Make your traveling ritual tools important but replaceable.  Then there is the idea that you want to fit your tools into something easily carried.  If you are taking a short wand, you can always slip an extra toothbrush holder into your toiletries.  You can do this any way you want, but it’s also best if your items are as unobtrusive as possible.

The next item in the list would be the tool of the South and Fire: the knife.  Well, you can put your sheathed athame in your checked luggage if you really want to.  The TSA has particulars on how you can travel with knives here (look under ‘sharp objects’).  They will be handled and looked at by baggage checkers.  You can also look at the elemental correspondences and think about what the knife is to do for you in a ceremony.  Red stones like garnet, volcanic stones like lava, or clear quartz crystal are good additions to your box, to act as your knife in the South, if you choose to leave the sharp objects at home.  The type of musical instrument for this element and direction would be the strings, but unless you are a wild child and travel with a ukelele, you might think it would be difficult to find a noisemaker for the South.  Well, think things like doorharps, jaw harps, thumb pianos, all of which are not very easily obtained, but are not impossible to find.  There is one thing, however that may work more easily, and that is a set of small Beoding Balls.  These are the tiny metal hollow balls that you often see in the hands of the executive down the hall, as he paces and twirls the balls around and around in his hand.  These are a sort of Chinese worry stone that have been used since the Ming dynasty.  I place them in the South because they have a tiny stringed sounding board inside, and because they work on the meridians and the physical chi in the body.  The chime sound is magical, and as well, the balls themselves work on the reflexology points on your hands to create better health for your overall.  They are easily found at almost any Import shop or Health food store, and are small and light.  But a bit too big for the box, sadly.  So if size is a serious factor for you, and you think a pair of iron balls is not what you want to add to your carry-on luggage, then you can easily make do with a red stone to invoke the direction, and your index finger, the one you wear your ritual ring upon, can be used for knife functions.

PLEASE NOTE:  If you are planning on being prepared for any eventuality, and plan on doing a bit of string magick, you are also allowed to carry a tiny pair of scissors, as long as the blades are shorter than four inches long, however, any kind of knife must be secured in your checked baggage.  Please look at the TSA list again for confirmation, as the rules and regs are changing often.

I hope this series is giving you some food for thought.  The tools you use in your meditations and ceremonies are so personal, and it is up to you to determine what things you wish to have with you, IF ANY, and what you can safely and easily carry.  Sometimes you need nothing at all.

I’d like to tell you a story about performing a working with nothing, so that you can see how it might be done.

My husband and I were in the market for a used car, our old green truck having finally given up the ghost.  We went to a local dealership and found a likeable one.  It had been used as a rental car, and was well worn but also well maintained.  We drove it, like it, and decided to buy it.  However, I had something in the back of my mind that kept nudging me.  I just had the feeling that there was something about the car we were not being told.  At that time I didn’t know enough to look up the VIN.  So, we asked many questions and then started thru the financing process.  But I couldn’t get away from that insistent nudging.  So I excused myself and walked out the side door of the showroom.  The car lot was 99% asphalt, and the little natural bits were heavily landscaped.  I looked around, and saw that they had used bits of rock to mulch some of the landscaping, and that a few of the groundcover bushes had lost some leaves.  I picked and picked and ended up with two or three tiny rocks, a couple of dry leaves and a twig.  I took a moment and gathered myself and gently dropped the items on the sidewalk in front of me.

At that moment, the car salesman came out the door to ask me if ‘everything was alright’.  ‘Sure, no problem.  I just needed some air.’  I said.  He went back inside and I looked at what was in front of me.

The things I’d dropped had fallen in a pattern that actually looked like a car accident.  It doesn’t often happen that simply, but this time the image came thru clearly.  The larger leaf had fallen with two of the tiny stones at the back corners.  There was a tiny twig across the front right corner of this leaf and the other leaf was completely off to the side.  I appeared to me that the car had been in an accident that caused it to hit or run over something and that there might be an issue with the right front wheel.  HOWEVER, the third stone had beautiful streaks of what looked like gold in it, and it fell clearly directly in front of the leaf/car.  It told me that in spite of the issues, everything would be fine.  I brushed the stones and leaves off the sidewalk and back into the landscaping, and turned to find the salesman standing in the doorway watching me.  He had a strange look on his face.  I smiled at him, and as we walked inside, I asked him if the car had ever been in an accident, or if there was any kind of problem with the right front suspension.  The man’s eyes went big in his face and he did not answer for a few moments.  Then he quickly said that he didn’t know anything about that, and disappeared into a back room.  He didn’t reappear.  We finished dealing with the sales manager and drove our new car home.  We still have this car.  Yes, it has had an iffy front right, but it has only manifested as wearing out the tires in a particular pattern, and a bit more tire noise.  Otherwise the car, a Geo Metro, has been as reliable as can be, and is going to see it’s 200,000th mile pretty soon.  Since, even at it’s advanced age, it gets better gas mileage than almost all the newer cars on the market, we just won’t give it up.

So as you can see, it is possible to do a working, in this case a divination, using nothing more than what you can find in your immediate environment.  Or using nothing at all.  There is no hard and fast rule that says that you need to have a ritual kit with you.  But when I’ve travelled, I ALWAYS try to bring something with me.  It does help me focus and always helps give me a physical and energetic tie back to my own temple.

Next post we will look at the cup and the pentacle and any other odds and ends to finish the flying ritual kit.  Thanks as always for reading my posts, and I hope to hear from you.  Please post a note below and give us your thoughts.

I’ll see you next time.  Blessed be.

Marie Angeli

One Star, watercolor

Blessed Yule everyone.

If you are in the Northern Hemisphere, as I am, you’ll be celebrating Yule, the Winter Solstice, the time of the shortest day and longest night of the year.  You Southerners will celebrate this in June, of course.

What does the solstice mean?  Well, on an basic agricultural level, we are in the heart of winter, in the depths.  Just as the Moon has her cycles, her full and her dark moons, so does the year have it’s cycle of light and darkness.

During the dark Moon, it seems time is suspended and the water under the land has retreated as far as it can, the plants reaching down as far as their roots will stretch towards that life-giving liquid.

During Yule, the darkest night, the Light has retreated to its limits, the plants and some animals are dormant, and the rest of us reach up in hope that the Light will come again, and the birth/growth cycle of green world around us will begin once more.

The dawning of morning after the longest night is the hope returning to us, to tell us that yes, life will go on.  As dark as it gets, life still goes on with or without us.

River Light, watercolor

Traditionally, the solstice is often spent outdoors, with prayers for a clear night and morning.  Often ceremony, or dancing and drumming, or another form of moving meditation (common sense flag – it’s mostly just too d*** cold to sit still) will continue thru the night, with the drumming and singing, mead drinking, and general mayhem climaxing with the rising of the infant sun.  This is often termed ‘drumming up the Sun’.

More gentle, or perhaps older (read sensible) folk, will take this joyful holiday as a time to visit with their groups, their family, their covens, their groves, perform ceremony, and give gifts and make merry in the spirit of Yule, and of Saturnalia and it’s adopted child, Christmas.  Often the solstice ceremony will be a public one which welcomes family members and friends with the performance of the rebirth of the Sun, sometimes as simple as dressing a Crone in a large black or indigo robe or cape and having her draw a lit candle out from underneath at the opportune moment, representing the rebirth of the Sun or the Light from the Dark Womb of the Year.

Some sacred herbs of the season, according to the Paul Beyerl classic, “Master Book of Herbalism” are Blessed Thistle, Chamomile, Pine, Frankincense, Sage and Evergreen.  Many of these he lists as incense both before and during ritual, and some are for the ritual purifying bath prior to that.

I myself think it a very sensible list, as I know some of these herbs are also good preventative and curative medicines for flu and cold, typical of this time of year.  See Dr. Christopher’s information on Chamomile and Blessed Thistle, and Dr. Shook’s info on Sage, for some great ideas on how to use these.

COMMON SENSE FLAG: If you are seriously ill, please see a qualified medical practitioner of your choice for assistance.   Most of us can use these preventative and wholistic remedies to good effect, but before things get out of hand, be prepared to find an expert.

I keep hearing Euell Gibbons, the naturalist, in the back of my head chanting “You know, many parts of the pine tree are edible!”  Someone throw a net over me, please.  But really, white pine twigs and needles make a great tea that is full of vitamin C and wonderful for colds and flu, and it is often used in formulas for rheumatism and arthritis, AND makes an incense that calms the nerves and purifies a room.  The early settlers used pine tea as a tonifying soup to help get thru the winters.  Not bad for a tree.

The return of the Light is our promise that the pine trees will continue to grow, that our needs are provided if we will only look.  That the ground will thaw, eventually, to plant new seed, and that we will continue the cycle, with the trees and the plants and the stars in the heavens; to live and die and be reborn again.

Well, that is all for now, my dears.  I am on my way to dance up the Sun!  I wish all of you a healthy and joyful celebration.

Blessed Be!
Marie Angeli

artwork and text © Marie Angeli, 2009