Spiritual therapy : what do they need?

Merry Meet internet,

Let me fist apologize profusely for my absence over the past few weeks. It’s been a weird couple a weeks, and I’m very excited to get back into writing. I’m gonna take a break from my folk divination to talk about something I’ve observed in the past few weeks.

As a priest, I spend a good deal of my personal time helping people with their personal problems. It’s something I thoroughly enjoy, and I feel it’s something Lord and Lady have asked me to do. I’ve learned from my extensive sessions that people tend to need 3 kinds of things. While they may not say this out right, they tend to need these three things in the end.

They need a shoulder: They just need someone to listen to their woes for awhile. This includes people who need to vent. the best I’ve learned to do for these kinds of people is to just be silent and let them get it off their chest.

They need Answers: these people have something that they want to hear you say. “It’s not your fault, it’s not too late, you did the right thing” all these things are commonplace for these people. The trick is to 1) figure out what these people want you to say and 2) make sure it’s not a lie.

They need to learn: these people are often the hardest people to deal with, as they usually think that they are the kinds of people who want answers. These people really need to be felt out. It’s these kind of people that bring the “teach a man to fish” principle. If you give them answers, they won’t really do anything with them. But force them to learn the truth, and they’ll carry it with them forever. Sometimes it’s a matter of alerting the person to their needs or making them aware of something they don’t realize…without actually saying it.

Hopefully this will help those of you who are trying to help others with their problems. Till next time, remember thou our god, remember though our goddess, remember when the deities all stutter on your precious name, and may you all blessed be.

Folk Divination- 7′s and 8′s

Welcome Back internet, let us jump right back into our talks of folk divination.

7′s are walkers. Like the other odd number they represent people on related to the even numbers. However, unlike the other odd number this persons feelings are CAUSED by you, positive or negative.

8′s are barriers. it mean you and someone else are separated because of the theme of the card

8 of Hearts-Star crossed lovers- Someone goes to bed at night they’re thinking about you, but something is holding them back from telling you.

8 of Diamonds- Dollars and cents- Someone needs your help to make a lot of money, and is willing to cut you in on the deal

8 of spades -broken hearts- you hurt someone, a lot. They think of you and cry

8 of Clubs- Dark Lovers- Someone hates you, and yet they love you. Nothing more than terrible luck has kept this from the boiling piece.

Were moving up for the numbers, till we get to the face cards and the specialty spread. Till next time, remember thou our god, remember thou our goddess, remember when the deities all stutter on your precious name, and may you all blessed be.

Folk Divination- 5′s and 6′s

Merry Meet Internet,

Continuing on with our study of folk divination. We’ll go on to 5’s and 6’s

 

5’s are Intruderswhich are simple. What Travelers are to trails, Intruders are to yards. The biggest difference is that Intruders tend to be the cause of your environmental focus. Perhaps this person just can’t seem to let things go, or is convincing the people around you that these things are important.

 

6’s Are Highways. These signify that what your actions are leading to something that resonates with the theme of the Highway. .

 

The 6 of hearts is The Road of Rings.  Don’t let the titles fool you this is not about material wealth. These are marriage rings. Romance is what you’re leading to.

 The 6 of diamonds is The Road of Riches. Now this is the road that’s all about the money, the material wealth. Whether it’s through hard work, good contacts, or sheer luck, stuff is about to come your way.

The 6 of clubs is The Road of Skulls. Sadness and pain rules the road. Your actions up to this point, karmic or otherwise, are about to bite you in the butt.

The 6 of clubs is The Broken Road.  At first this road may seem similar to the road of skulls, but it isn’t so. While the Road of Skulls is about pains and loss, this is more about just plain unpleasantness. Minor inconveniences, petty grievances, these are the things that lie along the broken road.

 

Tune in next time when we do 7’s and 8’s. I apologize for the delay in posting this one. Till next time, Remember thou our God, remember thou our Goddess, Remember when the deities all stutter on your precious name, and may you all blessed be.

 

 

3′s & 4′s-Travelers and yards

Merry Meet Internet,

Sorry for no post last week, Peter and I were moving to our more permanent housing.  Let us journey farther into folk divination with 3′s and 4′s.

3′s are easy to describe, they are Travelers. In the simplest terms it’s is someone you know that is traveling the road. It’s really that simple.

4′s are “yards” there are talking about your surrounding area and social circles.

 

4 of Hearts- The Dog Yard

if you’re sitting in The Dog Yard  then Tensions are running high. The people around you are running on passion and emotion, perhaps dangerously so.

 

4 of diamonds- The Diamond yard

Money is what the people around you’s minds.  Wealth and material possessions are a running theme. Keep in mind this doesn’t have to mean greed.

4 of Spade- The yard of heartbreak

Sadness and depression run your current day to day. You’re surrounded by broken hearts and broken souls.

4 of clubs – The yard of Misfortune.

very similar to the 3′ of clubs. Misfortune is all around you.

Standard Deck Divination -Roads and Trails

Merry meet internet,

 

As I mentioned in last week’s post one of the reasons I love folk magic is that it was based on simplicity. The Vodou worshipers of the 1700’s didn’t have access to the things a modern Pagan does. Oils and incense were made from things you could find growing wild around the plantation. Any tools needed to perform witchcraft had to be easy to find and easy to hide.  Modern tools could be used for everything from ritual to spell work like divination . This is the thesis of my first  post serise. Divination with your standard  54-card deck.

We start at the obvious place 2’s

2’s are called “roads” or “trails” they mark that you’ve had a sting of some kind of event or events revolving in a certain theme

2 of Hearts- The broken road

The broken road represents a string of lovers, or romantic affairs.

2 of Diamonds- The road to Riches

The road to riches symbolizes a run of good luck in material things, gaining a bunch of possesions or money.

2 of spades- Trail of tears

This is a chain of heartbreak and sorrow. Life has not been kind on your heart.

2 of clubs- Trail of Misfortune

This represents constant bad luck. Things just never seem to go your way.

Once you understand the whole system you could use any kind of tarot spread with this setup.  At the end of this series I’ll be unvailing my own special spread specifically for this kind of divination.

 

Get excited for the 3’s and 4’s, cause they’re up next. Till next time, remember thou our god, remember thou our goddess, remember when the deities all stutter on your precious name, and may you all blessed be.  

Introduction To Voodou/Folk Divination

Voodou (or Voodoo as it is commonly called)  is one of the most widely “recognized” forms of witchcraft in North America. I put recognized in quotes because the way most people know of Vo0dou is how it is portrayed in the media. When I told even my own coven siblings that I would be looking into voodou for awhile, they cringed in fear. So allow me to shed some light on vo0dou and why it’s not the evil thing it’s been portrayed to be.

The origin of Vodou in America starts in the early 1600′s when slaves were brought into the U.S. Now keep in mind up until this point many of the Slaves have their own Religions, passed down from generation by shamans. Now they are thrust into a new world where there new owners are saying that their god is the one true god and terrible things happen to anyone who says otherwise ( insert Salem witch-trial jokes here.)

So now they have to come together, their religions are all different. So they start mixing and matching, hiding it under the guise of the christian religion. For example, while it would appear to their owners that they are all praying to St. John, they were actually beseeching the gatekeeper of the spirit world, know as Papa Legba .

What has caused this stir of  fear of Voodou in our modern culture really steams from it’s views on morality. Voodou has firmly set in place that it has no problems using magic for Vengeance. However, 1) this view is not held by all practitioner of Voodou and 2) notice I said, “Vengance.”  Like many other forms of paganism, Voodou looks down upon people using witchcraft for aggression.

What really makes Voodou such a fascinating religion is how they managed to still create magical techniques with literally almost nothing . Anything used in a ritual had to be easy to find, and easy to either hide or explain away really quickly.  While I prepare for my next big project concerning this subject I decided I would provide a brief example of  folk/voodou style divination.

1) The coin of Fate

Take a coin ( I find a quarter works best) on one side draw the symbol for Baron Lacroix. He’s the Loa (the Voodou word for god or spirit) of peaceful resolve.

His symbol looks like this

http://www.mysticvoodoo.com/baron.jpg.

On the other side draw the symbol of Baron Samedi . Like Larcoix  is a loa of resolution, but he tends to be more about the unpleasentness of it, which is why he is commonly associated with Death.

His symbol looks like this.

http://www.mysticvoodoo.com/images/800px-VeveBaronSamedi_svg.jpg

I understand these symbols are very complex, and should be simplified for drawing on a coin. Now concentrate on your problem, or your goal. Ask these Loa for guidance in this endeavor. Then flip the coin. Should Lacoix come up then he smiles upon your mission. If Samedi shows up, then he waits for you at the end of the road…steer clear.

Hope this gets people excited for things to come. Till next time, remember thou our god, remember thou our goddess remember when the deities all stutter on your precious name, and may you all blessed be.

Equality Part 2

Merry Meet Internet,

I’m back again, and yes, I’m still up on this Virginia Case from the last post. I decided that I need to look more in depth into the more legal aspect of it. To do that I decided to turn to one the keenest political minds I know, Peter of www.greatplay.net/ fame. This is what he had to say:

 

“Despite being an atheist, I don’t have anything against religious ceremonies — I really want people to be able to get married in the way they choose, as long as they aren’t causing harm in the process. And I think it’s pretty clear that Pagan weddings don’t cause significant harm to anything.

The restriction [Virginia has] put in place (you have to own a building?) is extensively arbitrary, and seems to do nothing but oppress minority religions with insufficient resources and prevent people from marrying the way they want. Not only do I not like this because of the freedom of religion enshrined in First Amendment, but I want people to be able to fully express themselves, especially in something to them as important as their marriage.”

Another individual I consider smarter than myself, Rev. Don Lewis of the online “Witch School” was asked about the something along a similar subject.

 

 

In so many words Rev. Don says all Clergy, regardless of religion, have the same rights. With a little work I could get my University Coven affiliated with an organized pagan group, and then by Ohio Law I could apply to be counted as Clergy.  I understand that states are given leeway  to govern these things as they see fit, but when Ohio state says a Self-Taught 20 year-old can be counted as clergy and Virginia says that A woman who has gone through an extensive initiation process and formal training cannot we have crossed the line into the unreasonable and the ridiculous.

Hopefully this is my last post on this subject. I’m sorry if I’ve gotten a little to political, but next time I’ll be back with something new and exciting. Till next time, remember thou our god, remember thou our goddess, remember when the deities all stutter on your precious name, and may you all blessed be.

Equality

http://worksofliterata.wordpress.com/2012/06/29/virginia-refuses-to-recognize-me-as-clergy/

 

Apparently a Virgina Priestess has been denied Clergy status by the state government. One of the things that I’ve always loved about wiccans is that we’re not very political. While the individual wiccans may be very political, especially on subjects like environmentalism, we are not as active as a religion as a whole. On the few cases we have voiced political opinion, it’s been for equality. This, I feel, is another one of those occasions. We have a right to be ordained by our lord and lady, and our government should recognize that. We only ask for the rights that have been extended to the religions.

Well, I think I’ll get off my soapbox now. Till next time, Remember thou our God, Remember thou our Goddess, Remember when the deities all stutter on your precious name, and may you all blessed be.

 

 

Nasties

Merry meet internet,

Ever since we were children one of the first and most important lessons our parents taught us was that not everyone we met on the street was not to be trusted. They were right, of course. The fact remains that there are people in this world who want to hurt us. The spiritual world is no different. The methods and behavior of these creatures are as varied as their existence
The spiritual plane is an interesting place. It’s never so much seen as much as it is felt. It’s a place where not just plants or animals, but ideas, are given a sort of personification. Now a lot of these spirits are harmless. Your average, bear spirit, doesn’t really care about hurting people. He has more bear-related things to worry about it. Spirits can come to represent ideas, like hope, justice, and charity. However, if we assert that this is true we must also assume that so is the inverse. There are spirits out there who represent things like greed, malice, and depression. These things, whom I’ve come to call “Nasties” can become entangled in your essence and cause some real spiritual damage. If you’ve ever woken up feeling angry, jealous, or sad and you weren’t really sure why, these things are usually involved.
Now I’m sure you’re wondering “ok they exists, but what do we do about them?” The easiest answer is “lots of things.” Driving away evil spirits is something even the earliest shamans concerned themselves with. To list every method would take forever, but I will share my personal method.

It’s one of the first techniques I ever wrote myself. I call it “the burning man” spell. To use this spell imagine you are surrounded by this malleable field of energy, what some might call an “aura.” Now imagine you can set it on fire, and then do so. Imagine you can feel the heat of the flame, see It burning before your eyes. The flame should not hurt, but should protect you from anything that should mean you harm.
I hope this article helps you in your times of need. Until next time, remember thou our god, remember thou our goddess, remember when the deities all stutter on your precious name, and may you all blessed be

Spiritual Therapy: Example Case

Merry Meet internet,

One of the greatest joys I have as a priest is when I get to help people in need. Either through doing spellcraft for them, or by writing something that someone else can use to help a loved one. So here’s an example of a recent case file for me. Recently one of my coven sisters came to me with a problem. One of her close friends was having recurring nightmares, which is a common problem I’m been faced with. However this was a severe case as they had been happening for quite some time. Normally I have dealt with this issue myself with my usual methods (which I’ll probably get to on another post). Since I was writing this for someone else I had to try something a little more general.

The first thing I did was look back through my copy of Scott Cunningham’s Earth Power. Inside Cunningham details some of the ancient spell craft of the pagans of medieval Europe before and during the early years of Christianity in the west. Now I’ve commonly used a ritual that is presented in Earth Power as a cure for Physical ailment, I really liked the methodology, but felt like this method could be adapted into many different forms of ailments. The basic is to wrap a circle around your wrists either using thread or ink from a marker. You use a different color depending on the ailment

Red: Physical Ailments such as illness

Silver: Mental Ailments, like stress

Black: Spiritual like recurring nightmares

The Ailment is suppose to transfer itself into the string or the ink, which can be disposed of after 24 hours, preferably by being tied to a tree, or in running water such a s a shower. So in this case, I instructed my sister to use a black Sharpie to draw two rings, one around each of her friend’s wrist, burn a candle (preferably a black one) and recite this simple incantation I made up on the spot

“Nightmares drain into these rings

and with their washing peace it brings

Resful Sleep will come to thee

this is my will so mote it be.”

After waiting the 24 hours she could then wash off the Rings in running water. The important lesson here for any spiritual therapist is to know what you’re patient wants. If I were doing this for one of my coven siblings, then I would probably use my usual method, using runes and sigils (what some might call “written magick.”) However, you’re average layman isn’t going to understand the significance behind these methods. This method is much simpler for them to understand. If your patient doesn’t understand what you’re doing, they’re going to feel unsure about this effectiveness. While some people may cast doubt on the effectiveness of spell-craft in medicine, if you can make your patient feel better, given them the confidence to get through this, then you’ve done your job.

Hope you’ve enjoyed my return to scholarly blogging. Till next time, Remember thou our God, Remember thou our Goddess, Remember when the deities all stutter on your precious name, and may you all blessed be.