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    Exploring the Penumbra: First Steps in Sorcery Part 2

    Wordless Knowledge In time I realized that my new experiences came from a sort of energy flowing through my body. This energy was always there, but most of it was engaged with thinking and frontal attention; consequently, I rarely noticed it. I had discovered a way to increase the flow of this energy, so that I became aware of it for the first time as a factor in my environment. I had no name for this energy because we only name the things we notice. In this way shifts in energy awareness lead to wordless knowledge. As energy flowed through my body, feelings flowed through my mind. I couldn’t put…

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    Exploring the Penumbra: First Steps in Sorcery Part 1

    Foreword This is a story about a chance experiment in consciousness I suddenly tried at the age of twenty-two which turned my life in a different direction. Over thirty-two years later, the experiment is still going on. Or was it chance? Accounts of similar experiments were certainly in the air: in 1968, a graduate anthropology student named Carlos Castaneda published The Teachings of don Juan: a Yaqui Way of Knowledge, describing his experiences learning native American sorcery from an alleged Yaqui brujo named don Juan Matus. I picked it up at the Aztec bookstore at San Diego State University. Wisdom from this hemisphere was a novelty to me back then.…

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    House Rituals

    Purification Rituals Purification is important to do on a daily basis, for witches and Pagans alike. Witchcraft is really not different from Pagan religion in general; it is just a special discipline within that religion, like the ancient mysteries. It is, first of all, a more efficient use of energy. Our energy tends to manifest in cycles, and during each cycle we will experience one or more peaks and troughs of available energy. We have different cycles for different types of energy, but their number is fixed by habit and they tend to operate unobserved by us; we just know when we are ‘up’ or ‘feeling down’. Witches observe their…

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    Looking into the Eye of the Dragon

          “Look into the eye of the Dragon and despair.” – Merlin initiating Morgan la Fey in the film “Excalibur.” A Druid of my acquaintance put this short dialogue into my hands. He refused absolutely to comment on it, but said I might do with it what I wished. So I am laying it before all of you: A red-haired lady came to see me the other day. She said she had been having visions of angels, and she told me her visions in great detail. Among other things, she said that they control the weather. She was a nice lady. I said that I did not doubt…

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    Dialoguing with Morning Spirits

        When we awake in the morning, we undergo a change in consciousness, and at first we bring with us vestiges of the dream-state, including the voices and moods associated with dream figures. As these fade, we often experience a temporary state of clear calm, when we say “I haven’t woken up yet.” Then the morning moods begin, and if there is anything troubling us about our current lives, it often makes itself known at that time. Because our culture, which inherits the Medieval injunction against “traffic with spirits,” conditions us to believe that whatever occurs in private experience belongs to us alone, we have a tendency to identify…

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    Supportive Practices of the Craft

          In addition to the practices of witchcraft usually discussed, such as divination and herb lore, there are practices which support a witch’s overall efforts. The following seven sections describe practices I have found useful for tuning up my Craft practice and keeping it properly focused. 1: Cycles Witches follow cycles in everything they do, out of respect for their overall balance of health. They don’t work all year, and then try to relax through a brief vacation; witches take little mini-vacations all the time. They sometimes appear to be laid back and lazy, but they respond well in a crisis, and they somehow get their tasks done.…

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    Process & Spirit

    There is an old Chinese proverb: “When the wrong man uses the right means, the right means work in the wrong way.” This saying reveals the missing element in spiritual disciplines that do not bear fruit. You may read all the manuals of shamanism and witchcraft, and so forth, that you like, and you may try practicing one particular discipline consistently, following the steps laid out for you in the manual, and yet achieve only weak, spotty results at best. These disciplines all seem to require a commitment greater than one is willing to make in order to be effective. We are living in a mechanistic age, a time when…

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    Natomas Craft Notes

    Flags, flax, fodder, Frig ! This old Devonshire witch greeting conveys best wishes for the four goods in life: (1) a house (flagstones), (2) clothes (linen was common), (3) enough food (for you as well as your livestock) and (4) a good sex life. No. (4) is taken from the name of Odin’s wife, the Goddess Frig. Frig was the Goddess of conjugal love, so you are not wishing promiscuity on someone. No true Pagan will use Her name in coarse expressions, by the way ! Light a Candle Whenever a fundie or some other cowan (non-witch) vilifies my religion, I remind myself of the saying “better to light a…

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    Inner Home, Outer Home, Cosmic Home

    Prof. Allan Anderson, of San Diego State University, once advised his students to “begin building a world for yourself from the inside out.” The word ‘world’ is often used to translate the Greek kosmos, and refers to the world as it appears to our senses, with a dome overhead and a horizon around us. Ignorant people unaware of this meaning of the word think that scriptural references to the roundness of the world prove that ancient peoples knew the planet earth to be round. Until classical times, the concept of the earth as a planet was nonexistent. When we use the ancient concept of a cosmos, therefore, we should understand…

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    Following the Sun-Wheel

    The Shape of My Practice   *Dedicated to my High Priestess, Wendy Morris I am a third degree Celtic witchcraft elder. I live in Norway, a country with covens few and far between. I helped found a coven still thriving in Colorado Springs, with my high priestess, Wendy Morris. I moved to Norway eight years ago to be with my family, but I maintain contact with the coven in Colorado and my close friend Wendy. I have been solitary for some years now, and have developed a style of solitary witchcraft which I would like to share with all who are interested. My practice follows the paradigm of the Sun…