Practical Witchery!, John Stormm [ap literature book list txt] 📗

they understand it or not, will drop these carcasses quite naturally, and that does not hinder at all, the souls that they are, in continuing their “life”. Most aren’t the least bit prepared for this eventuality. People will take their own lives, over some emotional or spiritual pain, figuring that it will allow them to escape the emotional torment. They truly couldn’t be more wrong about this. Leaving one’s body behind, may escape anymore physical pain, as the nerves and such sensations are left behind, with the corpse. But the soul wrenching pains that most will elect to leave this life with, are precisely the kinds of pains that they will take with them, to the exclusion of all else.

Our ancient Gaelic ancestors, understood that death was very much a part of life, and that our awareness of who we are is immortal. Today, disconnected people think of it, as some unnatural thing that should be avoided, as if anyone was ever really successful with that. You have to wonder what they were thinking, or even IF they were thinking. But knowing this about your own nature, changes a great many things about your personal outlook. I wish you the best of luck in your studies, and efforts to gain this knowledge. There’s going to be a whole lot, that just won’t have so much of a negative impact upon you anymore, after you have gotten a grasp on these things for yourself.

Interpreting Dreams & Visions

 

We’ve discussed a good many interesting traits of dreams in this book already and yet, we have not discussed them all. Growing up from my youth as a proper witch, I’ve explored all sorts of “dream dictionaries”, and not with very much satisfaction. Fortunately, I remember most of my dreams. Even those from many years ago, and I can recall: What I dreamed, and what happened after that. I would approach my next few attempts at what amounts to a “worthless purchase”, by looking up the interpretations of a few dream symbols, to find something that more closely matches my own dreams and experience. My personal favorite was: “10,000 Dreams Interpreted”, by Gustavius Hindman Miller. It was a reprint of an old, and grossly out-of-date compilation of dream symbols. So there were not things about televisions, phones or computers in the list. And some of the stuff, about dreaming about Negroes, was way off base for the times we are in now. But trying it out, over a couple years of dream diaries, I noticed that this was true of a number of facts, and I learned that MUCH needs to be taken in consideration that the dream dictionary definition does NOT become dogmatic.

Cultural definitions of people, races, and things has changed values over time. Some values change or even reverse themselves in only about 20 years or so. There are also the views of the persons who dreamed these things to consider in the interpreting of them. Here’s an excellent example, from Miller‘s book:

“Cats are considered to be a bad omen in a dream, unless you are successfully chasing them away.”

This might be true for someone who hates cats, or is even allergic to cats. But such will never be true of a cat fancier. For them, dreaming about cats carries a whole different emotional attachment. For them, it must be taken as being indicative of something wonderfully pleasant coming in the mix of things in their dream.

“Spiders in a dream, are supposed to be a good omen. The industriousness of these brilliant web spinners, promises a certain degree of prosperity for the dreamer.”

I’m paraphrasing these here, as there are multiple definitions or connotations, depending upon the circumstances in the dreams. But suppose the dreamer is “arachnophobic”, meaning they have a deep set dread of spiders? For them, the kind of symbolism above has no relevance what-so-ever! For a dream coming out of their own subconscious: It is NOT going to apply someone else’s symbolic content for them. If their own subconscious is going to warn them of something to come: It will use the images and identifications that it already has available to use. So we MUST assume that the arachnophobic person dreaming of equating spiders with this future enterprise, is being advised of a most unpleasant outcome in its connection or context in the dream.

In our witch clan, it was a practice from the times we could write, to keep a dream diary on the stand, next to our beds. If we awoke to go to the bathroom at night: We made some brief entry of what we dreamed. When we arose in the morning: We lay for a moment, and gathered our memories of our dreams, and wrote a quick note of what they were. It didn’t have to be in great detail. It just had to be enough to make it easy for us to recall later.

“Sunday, October 20th- Dreamt about the city, as it looked many years ago, and being sad because I didn’t know what bus to take to get home or where my home was.”

Obviously, this dream was more involved than this, and certain people and landmarks were very prominent in it, but the notation was enough that it didn’t just fade away into insignificance in a day or so. I could pull out my dream dictionary, and search all of the individual elements in the dream, and try to put them together, to better define what my intuitive side was trying to tell me in this dream. My next entry in that dream diary, would be my approximation of what this all meant.

“Interpretation: My soul is longing for simpler times, but is aware that I should not be pining away over this, as we can never truly go back. I never got to see my mother and sisters, so it’s likely that I won’t be hearing from any of them, any time soon. In seeing David and Simon on the bus that I was looking to take, I’ll bet I’ll be hearing something from them soon, as they were helpful and questioning me on the bus, about where I wanted to go.P.S. - David called today about going camping next weekend.”

If you are using a dream dictionary at all, you should get used to writing notes in it. There’s going to be crap, that you *wanted* to hear, but never happens. And you should make note of those definitions that seem to be “on the money”, and those that do not apply at all. You should ALWAYS consider them in the context of the dreams, and make some effort to write your own definitions for dream symbols, as they become apparent to you:

“Spiders for the arachnophobic: If you dream of a spider, or swarms of spiders and manage to rid them out of your house in this dream: It connotes that you will face very unpleasant trials in the near future, (depending upon how bad the infestation was) and will be triumphant in overcoming it.”

This is what your personal Book of Shadows, or Grimoire is for. Understand also that many “muggles” will lament the “bad omens” of dreams as a terrible thing. Like the above example: Nobody likes to hear that they are about to see the proverbial “shit hit the fan” in their immediate future. The dreams do not MAKE the future bad. They exist to prepare you for the storms beyond your current line of sight, to prepare the diligent soul to prepare for them, and SURVIVE them, if not even THRIVE through them. This is why many wise witches are so formidable in all of their ways.

If you dream that a plane is going to crash and burn, with all aboard: Make other plans than to be on that plane. Warn who you can, and understand that even if they do not listen to you, that it wasn’t your choice, but theirs. EVERYONE is given “free will” and are responsible ONLY for their own choices, of what to do with good information. Also too: When a specific type of dream is repeated over a period of time, it should be noted as being urgent, or imminent in its nature. Everything is “cause and effect”, even in realms of magick. This doesn’t always mean that it’s going to be bad or good. That is entirely up to what contexts the dream sequence shows you. There also may be a slight variation in how the dream sequence is presented in your mind. This also should be taken into consideration in your interpretation of what this means to you, or the dreamer that you are interpreting for.

Dreams, or Visions

Some metaphors are going to be significant as one thing, to persons of a specific faith. Christians, for instance, may be moved by the hearing of certain Biblical prophesies being preached, and mull these over in their minds in their dreams. You should consider that this does NOT interpret that the “Rapture” is going to happen this week. It may mean that they may see this in their own lifetimes, or perhaps not. Peter, Paul and the Apostle John, thought as much, even as they wrote of such things. And this still does not invalidate it. There are many more cultures, that speak of similar historic events, occurring at some future time, though they will use different words and symbols to define these things. Surely, somebody is aware of a significant historical, evolutionary or cultural change will be taking place, at sometime in our future as a race.

Contrarily, such a dream may only be their sleeping consciousness, mulling over a staggering picture of an idea, and that is only that. Repetition over time, will suggest that it is more than that. Breaking into waking times, it becomes not just a “dream”, but a “vision”, and even more consideration needs be given to such an insistent scenario, playing itself out, over and over again in them. I have a pretty good example of such a cross cultural type of vision, from over 30 years ago, that I may share here for our study. Having 20/20 hind sight, as to how this pans out, will also serve us well here too.

“It was in 1979, the summer when my wife, Jackie was pregnant with Melanie, our first child. I had a very great many things to be thankful for; and I was full hearted in my praise of Mother and Father for gracing me so. I knew that the good cycles, like I was experiencing, usually happened before things got very dark. I understood that was coming too. I had heard this in Summer Court, and I had read it in Scriptures. I knew that I was going to be alive to see it with my own eyes. But not a few visions took me into their grip that summer. This particular vision, has repeated itself to me with slight variations, over a long period of time.

The Vision:

I saw myself: Nearly naked and chained by my wrists, between the State and National flagpoles, in the Rochester Civic Center Plaza. I was standing under my own power, as two men whipped my