New Moon Old Magick

My dears,

There are those of you to whom the following subject is familiar, perhaps painfully so.  As for me, I find it as painful as fingernails upon a blackboard, and freely admit that I reserve the right to ignore anything said by, or promoted by, the like of extremists like Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh.  However, when it comes into your world and speaks to you personally, it becomes difficult to ignore.

I was working in my local food bank today.  I got to stuff sacks with groceries.  We worked hard, and couldn’t help commenting on the fact that the shelves had gaping empty spaces, were unusually empty, and we were serving more families than usual.  There were three of us volunteers from Trinity Episcopal, and I couldn’t help but think, ‘What nice people.  They are working so hard!’.  And I was right, of course.  They were nice, and we were all working very hard.  In the fullness of time, our conversation turned to life in these United States.

We talked about the increasing shortage of good food, the rise of prices, the fact that we were now only allowed to give peanut butter out to families with kids because of the recent doubling of the price, and the scarcity of our supply.

I noted that the ‘breads’ in our donate section were primarily sugary specialty treat breads, and that there was a distinct shortage of good solid complex carb bread, or for that matter, no whole grains of any kind.  No produce at all.  Lots of cans, though.  AND some good dried beans, a poor folks’ (remarkably healthy) staple.

We were just a gathering of country folk, talking about the hard times, the importance of being prepared for more hard times, about our pantries and medical supplies.  One of my companions was a retired nurse who had volunteered for deployment in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.  She had qualified opinions on what it took to keep body and soul together.  I contributed a bit of info about canning and food preservation.  We talked about clean water and how important that was for any community.  We spoke about community, and the need for people to help one another.

Good people, doing useful work.

Suddenly, one of the ‘good people’ began to talk about a book he’d just read.  It was called A Patriot’s History of the United States.  Now I’ve heard of this work.  It has the reputation of being a work of pseudo-history cum fantasy, written as a neo-conservative response to Howard Zinn’s award winning and critically acclaimed People’s History of the US, and was thus eminently ignorable.  Until Glenn Beck recommended it to his disciples and put it on the NYT bestsellers list.  At some point it has become required reading for neocon Christian Reconstructionists, the fascist arm of the Protestant party.

My new friend talked about reading this work in conjunction with the Bible, and how he’d come to understand that the US was a Christian nation, founded upon Christian principles, and that the Bible was historically real and a contract for all people.  I blinked.  He began to talk about how the US has a duty to lead the rest of the world to a God driven form of government, all inspired by Biblical truth.  I blinked twice.  All this while continuing to fill and distribute food to clients.

Since the conversation, as it often does down here in the American South, then drifted over to the usual hatred of the feds and especially of the president, and I felt that my head was about to explode, I broke my cardinal rule.  You know, the keep your mouth shut and your eyes open rule.

Surely you know that the Bible is a collection of myths and cultural stories, and not a recording of history?   I said, not so innocently.  It’s a book of mystical revelation, not facts!  Smile and blink.  That worked.  The silence was as thick as the fog on a humid summer at dawn.  Blessed, echoing silence.

After about a half hour of this blessed silence, my friend smiled and agreed to disagree, “The Great thing about this country is…”, and we continued our ‘good work’.

But my hair continued to stand up, and the feeling of tension stayed with me thru the afternoon, and all the way home.  When had my little cypress Episcopalian church, my bastion of Anglican tolerance in a sea of Baptist this and Presbyterian that and born-again tents popping up like mushrooms…  When had Trinity been infiltrated by this fascist belief system that no amount of logic could dislodge, that covered poisonous hatred so deeply that even truly good people were brainwashed into embracing it, even as they went about their day doing good works?

(For those of you who don’t know me, or who haven’t read my bio – I am a witch in the Western tradition.  My heritage holds traditional witchcraft, Western Mystery Lodge tradition, and Episcopalian Christianity.  I embrace them all, having also practiced Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism.  There is a place for all faiths upon the Tree of Life, and ‘each to their own’, to me, creates a beautiful kaleidoscope within the Purple Ray of mysticism.  Christ sits firmly upon the throne of Tiphareth, the Sephirah of the Heart.  And there are a plethora of Pagan Gods all over the place, up and down the Tree.)

To be sure, I am in no way bashing Christianity.  I’m bashing Fascism.  There is a rise in these groups that join fascism together with religion.  In Islam, they are Al-Qaeda and its knockoffs.  In Paganism, they are white supremacists.  A belief in divine purpose, combined with a nationalist jingoistic fervor, the belief that YOUR belief is the only truth and should govern how others behave.  How much scarier does it get than that?

The path of the Mage, or the Witch, is a path of tolerance.  We are attempting to understand, by listening and observing, rather than reacting.  We are human, surely, in our reactions to things that make us distressed or uncomfortable.  And it goes without saying that if you see evil in action, such as a child or animal being abused, you must act – lest by your inaction you become part of that evil.  And it is also true, and very difficult, that a Mage must judge their actions to know if by acting they will make the evil worse.

But how can you listen to the unseen, how can you walk between the worlds when your mind has locked closed on itself.  Your attention totally on your own thoughts.  Your doorways of perception shuttered down so that they no longer can see anything except the propaganda posters you’ve plastered all over the inside of your own head.  Somehow, I had to be able to get to a place where I could acknowledge that inside this little country church that I love, where I sing in the choir every week, there are forces of reactionary rage and blindness at work.  That within the hearts of these ‘good people’ exist both paradigms, tolerance and love combined with chaos and hate.

Similarly, I had to acknowledge that my local coven was circling not to celebrate the lights and the seasons, but working out their anger and hatred of everyone who had ever hurt them, a High Priestess acting out her fear and pain magickally, rather than experiencing the Joy of oneness with nature and the flow of Life.  I had to walk away from my participation in coven, something I’d done in 5 states over 35 years, and be willing to walk as a solitary once again.

As a witch, you must to be able to hold the dichotomy, the concept that one thing can have completely contradictory realities, the ‘real’ and the ‘astral’ for example.  The good and the bad in other people and their beliefs, in governments, in corporations, in life.  When you can see past the surface differences in things, people, events, places and times, then you can begin to notice the connections between them.  The similarities that reveal that we are all part of the net of the stars.  When you can see this net, these connections, then you will know when your magick has merit, when you are acting in concert with the flow of Universal Life Force, and not simply acting out.  You will be able to discern a Path between the Points of Light, and be able to avoid the pitfalls of Chaos.

As a witch, you will practice Silence, Observation and Discernment.  You will try to understand.  These practices will help open your mind to the Unseen, and make you fit to truly Serve others.

My loves, next time we will look at some magickal languages and symbols that you might wish to use to decorate your wand, in greater depth.  If you wish to read ahead, look at Freya Aswinn’s Leaves of Yggsdrasil, and anything you can find on the Ogham.  You might want to also get ahold of a good dictionary of symbols.

AND, for those of you who would like to participate in the eBook questionnaire, please read THIS ARTICLE, and let me know your opinions!  I thank you for your help.

Until then,
Blessed Be!
Marie Angeli

In the last post, I spoke about some of the connections between the different belief systems and the cross of manifestation, or the Rose Cross.  Today, I’d like to look at the circle.  Symbols and geometrics being fascinating things for ritual magicians, artists, and pagans.  So I ask your indulgence as we look at the question of “Circle…. what’s the point?”

There has been quite a lot written on the circle, on casting a circle, or gathering for ceremony.  Some of it was written on this blog!

Traditionally, ritualists see the circle as a symbol of a protected or defined space.  I say ‘defined’ because one needs to define one’s boundaries before one can hold them.  A circle is space in containment.  The point of that circle is the place within it that is equally distant from the edge all the way around.  OR, the circumference of a perfect circle is equally distant from the center point all the way round.

Why is this important?  Well, look at your experience.  In many pagan circles the altar is at the center.  In many hermetic temples, there is the double cube altar in the center. In medieval cathedrals, the high altar is at the point of the intersection of the central pillar and the extended arms.  In many native american ceremonies, the fire is in the center of the circle, at the intersection of the four directions.  There is some correlation in all these examples to real or practical life in the arrangements of dwelling spaces.  The tipi with the fire at the center and the smoke hole above, the circular thatched hut of stone age Britain with the same type of floor plan.  This correlation with real life example does not minimize the symbolic importance of the circle and the center point, but rather reminds us that it is our minds and ideas that create the mythology of our spiritual aspirations.

In Kandinsky’s Point and Line to Plane (a kabbalistic equation), the point is the place of the awakening of the creative force.  Paul Klee describes a line as a point ‘taking a walk’, so to him the point is the creative force.  On the Tree of Life, the Point is the symbol for Kether, the Crown, the I AM.  This is the Point of Creation, the Awakening of the Life force.  The ‘Point’ of Origin.

In ceremony, the point is surrounded by the circle.  On the Tree, as we move down the central pillar, the point is surrounded by the circle in Tiphareth.  The circle with the point in the center is the symbol for the Sun, the planet that rules the sphere of Tiphareth.  Tiphareth is the Heart center, as I wrote last time, and the Sun (son, Christos) has come to symbolize the Heart.  This sphere or sephirah or level of consciousness is considered to be the place at which we as humans know ‘God’ (goddess, Spirit, the Cosmic Mushroom, the Holy Guardian Angel).  It is interesting to think of the Point of Cosmic Awakening being surrounded by the circle of our human consciousness, the place where we and our Gods meet face to face.  Our own heart.  AND our sacred circles.

When we as pagans or magicians cast a circle, we are intending to meet our god/godesses, either by direct invocation, or by inference during ceremony.  If we are engaged in practical magick, the meeting of spirit with Spirit is a necessary part of raising the Power for the work, even when a formal circle may not literally be cast.

The next formation is the circle with the four directions stretching out.  The cross of the four directions.  This is often used as the astrological glyph for Earth, and is a symbol of Malkuth, the root sphere of the Tree of Life.  It is the formation of the sacred circle of many native american traditions, and is also the formation of most high magick temples and pagan circles.  Obviously in this symbol we have come to our point of spiritual awakening fully bound by consciousness (the circle) and rooted in earth (the four directions).

Why is it important to know this, or look at the symbolism of our ritual?  Knowledge is Power.  A knowledgeable ritual has more chance to be authentically powerful, than one driven by habit and superstition.  When we cast a circle, and the door between the worlds opens and we fully feel our connection with ‘Other’, it is because in our casting we ourselves have built this temple wherein the Connection may dwell.  And it is this Connection that is symbolized by the Point within the Circle.  It is this connection that informs our ceremony, and opens the Gate for our magick.

That’s all for now, dearies!  When next we meet, we’ll do some follow up for divination training, and then next week I’d like to begin to look at the Tarot.  There is also lots more coming for ceremony and ritual, so get out your grimoires!

Blessed be,

Marie Angeli

all text and images ©2011 Marie Angeli