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

demon, a curse, or a psychic attack. The challenge is to find a balance of open mind, reason, observation, and trust in your own senses—including your psychic senses.

This means looking thoughtfully at evidence on both sides of any issue, including psychic phenomena. Often it means withholding judgment or belief. Sometimes the only appropriate response is “I don’t know.” Is telekinesis possible? I tend to think so, but I don’t know. Are there plesiosaurs swimming around in Loch Ness? Maybe, but I don’t know. Is that an astral entity hovering outside my ritual circle? Seems to be, but I don’t know.

On the other hand, if your own senses and experiences confirm the reality of telepathy or past lives, trust yourself and include those things in your reality. Maybe you’re just crazy, but unless there is real evidence for that from people you trust, you can generally discount that possibility.

Once your mind and senses are open, and you’re willing to explore and experiment with psychic skills, you can search for your own special gift. Many Witches have keen and accurate intuition. Azrael is very strong in past-life recall. Amber is a “finder” who can locate just about anything. Some Witches are naturals at energy healing. Clairvoyance, shielding, telempathy—what’s your talent?

Deepening Your Practice

Exercises for Exploring the Worlds Beyond

Witches’ Universe

Draw your own model or diagram of the universe; it can be an existing model or totally original.

Pretend you are a frog in a country pond. In your Book of Shadows, explore: How many “worlds” do you know well? What environments are you only vaguely aware of? How many are completely outside your experience (for example, a mountain peak)? Is this a good analogy for humanity and our awareness of other planes of existence?

Other Inhabitants

Plant devas: Go to a park, garden, or wild area in nature. Shed preconceived ideas. Touch a plant; open your mind. What impressions do you get? Is there communication?

Mindshifting: Imagine being a tree. Now ask a real tree if you may share its mind; if you get a positive response, send your mind into it and just experience its life from the inside. You may have to slow your thinking in order to match its experience. Thank it when you come back out.

Ancestral spirits: Learn about some of your ancestors by asking your parents or elderly relatives for stories. Make a shrine to commemorate one who especially interests you. Meditate on that person. Ground, center, and send out an invitation to communicate; see what you receive back.

Discarnate humans: Have you had any contact with “ghosts”? Write the story in your Book of Shadows. Have any of your family or friends had similar experiences?

Faery folk: Research theories about them on the Internet or at a library. Think about them, discuss them with open-minded friends, and decide what you believe.

Astrology

Find out where and at what time you were born. Find a local astrologer who will draw up your natal horoscope (birth chart) or use the Internet to create your own. What can you learn about you?

Get an astrological calendar or almanac. Study the symbols until you begin to understand them. Now look up today’s date, and find out what is happening astrologically right now. How could that affect what you were planning to do today?

Divination

Buy or make a pendulum. Learn its yes and no responses. Ask questions where you know the answers to verify that they are consistently accurate. Now ask an important question for which you don’t know the answer.

Choose another divination method that interests you: tarot, runes, scrying, whatever. Make or get the basic tools you need; if you buy them, read the literature that comes with the set/deck/tool. Then just experiment, with a friend if possible. Write your experiences in your Book of Shadows.

Psychic Skills

Sensitivity: Go to different places and just sense the energies. Describe them in your mind. Become used to being aware, simply noticing. What does it look, sound, and feel like?

Intuition: Pick up a book at random in the library without even looking at the title, subject, or author’s name. Does it “feel” bright, dull, light, heavy, or what? Write down the impressions you get. Now read it, or at least read enough to know whether your impressions were accurate.

Shielding: Practice putting your shields up, using the breathing technique described on page 193. Do it several times in one day. Then go somewhere that usually makes you feel tense or frazzled. Put up your shields and note how your feelings change.

Auras: Find a willing person, animal, or motionless object. Look for its aura. If necessary, unfocus your eyes a little or use your peripheral vision. If you can get close, hold out your palms and feel it. Then try the mental humming technique from chapter 5; see if the sound changes as you focus on different places in its energy field.

Psychometry: Get an old object, perhaps an antique you don’t know much about. Hold it and relax. Record any sensory impressions you receive, then research the item’s history and see if it matches anything you felt.

Dreamwork: Program yourself to remember a dream, and have paper by your bed so you can write it down the moment you wake up. Record your interpretation of its meaning. Try this for problem solving: focus on a problem or question just before you fall asleep, then let it go, and in the morning see if your dream has provided an answer.

Past lives: Have you experienced déjà vu, the sensation that something is very familiar, even though it should be completely new to you? Or have you had a recurring dream about a place you have never visited in this life? Write about these experiences in your Book of Shadows.

Chapter 11

Circle Near the Old Oak Tree

Solitary, or Three or More

Dance the round with Pagan folk,

Touching magick, wielding power,

’Neath the stars, beside the oak,

I am a Witch at every hour.

“Ye may not be a Witch alone” is an old Craft saying. This is not to say