How to Become a Witch, Amber K. [new books to read .txt] 📗

begin to feel more than acquainted. Describe it in elemental terms in your Book of Shadows, and tell how it has changed your view of the world. For example, Ardantane is a place of earth (rocky mesas and canyons) and fire (bright sun). Yet occasionally air appears in the form of fierce winds driving a thunderstorm before them, water comes roaring down Cañon Cercado, and the dry arroyo is suddenly a turbulent river!

Visit places where each element reigns almost supreme: a windy mountain peak or windswept grassy plain; a desert, volcano, or hot spring; a stream, river, lake, or seashore; and mountains, rocks, or a forest. Take time to just be there.

Do meditations in which you seek out the spirits of a favorite animal, tree, and herb or flower. Give them energy and blessings, and record their messages in your Book of Shadows.

Go on a meditation quest in nature for several hours up to a couple of days. (Make sure you are properly equipped for the terrain and weather, and tell someone exactly where you are going.) During this time, ask Gaia/Mother Earth what is the best way that you can help her. Work against air and water pollution? Lobby for laws to preserve wilderness? Replace your vehicle with something more eco-friendly? Put solar panels on your roof? Give time and money to save an endangered species? Make a commitment, and fulfill your promise.

[1] James Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (Oxford University Press, 1979, 2000).

[2] Oberon Zell (Otter G’Zell), “Theagenesis: The Birth of the Goddess,” Green Egg vol. V, no. 40 (July 1, 1971). The entire text can be found at http://original.caw.org/articles/theagenesis.html.

[3] Ibid.

[4] The Challenges of a Changing Earth: Global Change Open Science Conference was held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, July 10–13, 2001.

[5] The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005.

[6] Lester R. Brown in “Learning from Past Civilizations,” Plan B, 3.0 Book Byte (Earth Policy Institute, July 29, 2009, http://www.earth-policy.org/books/pb3).

Chapter 10

Worlds Beyond This One

Divination, Dreams, and More

Soar upon the astral planes,

Touching magick, wielding power,

Visit woodland faery fanes,

I am a Witch at every hour.

We create our personal realities out of the infinite possibilities of the universe around us.

Consensual reality—what our society generally agrees is real—is a subset of All That Is. Our society says that toasters are real and trolls are not. We behave as if that is true; we put bread into shiny boxes, but we don’t hire guards to watch for trolls. For most of us, that is just—reality.

Our personal realities are also a subset of All That Is and are made of those beliefs, perceptions, and experiences that we allow into our consciousness. Every individual’s reality is unique. Maybe you believe in ghosts, but your neighbor doesn’t. He believes in the Christian hell, but you don’t. You both base your actions, your whole lives, on what you believe to be real. And from the infinite resources of the vast universe around us, you can each find some evidence to support your reality—or believe you can, which amounts to the same thing.

No one understands the totality, the mega-reality, except the Creator/Supreme Being/Great Spirit. We have models of reality, ways to organize our ideas about it. The Norse have Yggdrasil, the enormous ash tree with the halls of the gods high in its branches, our world of Midgard at its base, and great roots twining through the realms of the dead. The ancient Greeks had the Underworld, where Hades and Persephone reigned, and our world, and the gods’ home on Mount Olympus, and the Elysian Fields for the more fortunate souls. Jewish mysticism has the Kabbalah and the Tree of Life, with the ten sephiroth, or spheres, representing the different levels of reality, the emanations of the Divine.

Many philosophies have the idea of planes of existence, which range from the Underworld, through the dense, material, embodied physical plane, up through finer states of energy and consciousness, all the way to God. All these subtle worlds interpenetrate the physical universe; they exist here but are so ethereal that they cannot usually be seen or felt by us dense, gross critters. The Rosicrucians have seven Cosmic Planes, from the World of God down to the Physical World. Sufis, Buddhists, Muslims—everyone has a model or cosmology.

Modern secular civilization generally ignores such esoteric stuff and focuses on the physical universe: we have the earth, our solar system, the Milky Way, and a hundred million galaxies beyond that.

The Witches’ Universe

Witches don’t argue with the scientific view of the cosmos, we just think it’s a bit limited. Witches believe that there are more realities—“planes of existence”—than most muggles understand or experience. Science has not discovered most of these realms, mostly because they aren’t looking for them (consensual reality: they aren’t there, why look?). Here’s one Wiccan model:

The physical universe, as described above.

The Summerland, where human souls go between lives to rest, reflect, and prepare for the next incarnation.

The shamanic Lower World, a “spirit world” where we can meet animal spirits and other discarnate beings, and do inner work and healing.

The Astral Plane, a “higher” realm where thought is reality and even more discarnate species live. We create stuff by putting a thought or concept on the astral, then pouring energy into it until it becomes denser and manifests in the physical universe. We can, however, create special places there and leave them on that plane.

The realms of the gods, the divine creative energy.

Many Witches have a slightly different model or work with additional planes of existence, and that’s fine. There’s room for everybody. Use the model that works for you.

The Witches’ cosmology is not just an airy-fairy idea. Witches can not only perceive the planes, but go there. Astral travel gets us to the more subtle planes, shamanic journeys let us travel to the Lower World, and aspecting the gods gives us a glimpse of the divine plane. All these are advanced skills that should be learned face to face from