Raising the Cone of Power   One way of casting a spell which is suited to covens of from four to twelve (plus a leader) is to form an image of the magical aim and then cast this into the astral, through the Height, after building up power through the Witch’s Mill and the Witch’s Rune. While the visible part of the temple is the magic circle within which coveners work, this is conceived as a plane bisecting a sphere.  The highest point on the sphere is called ‘the Height,’ and the lowest point is ‘the Deep’.  The upper half of the sphere can be visualized by all in common,…

  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…

Introduction   As pagans, we are aware of being children of Mother Earth.  She carries us with her from life to life as she evolves at the slow pace of goddesses; for, as a good Mother, she wants to take all of her children with her in her evolutionary journey. Pagans are therefore in no hurry but, as a courtesy, should wish to develop their awareness to the next level, so as not to be a burden to their Mother but rather help her along.   Life thus is school for the children of Earth, and for those who wish to evolve more swiftly, becoming prefects, as it were, in…

In the Craft we pray to be reincarnated with our loved ones, “that we may meet, and know each other, and love again.”  This refers not just to members of our genetic family, but to those rare friendships we make a few times in any lifetime, when we meet someone with whom we feel an immediate sympathy and a natural trust and openness.  These meetings are very mysterious. They seem to take place between people who have known each other before; there is a déjà vu quality about them.  Sometimes romantic love is involved, and then we seem to have met our soul-mate, the reflection of our inner being right…

Deosil (pronounced jesh’l) or clockwise or sunwise follows the Sun’s path, at least in the northern hemisphere.  Tuathal or widdershins or counter-clockwise pertains to the Earth, as the Hopis teach.  Both directions are sacred but have different meanings and functions. When witches wish to make something, they cast a spell while circling deosil.  If they want to unmake, they circle tuathal.  Deosil is for raising the cone of power; tuathal is for delving the reverse cone of power.  The cone of power raises power from the depths of the Earth, including the depths in each Witch, and sends it through the zenith (or ‘Height’) of the circle out into the…

Conserving Magical Energy   We all contain magical energy, and this energy is unique to each of us.  But due to conditions of modern life, all of our magical energy is deployed in habits, habits of perception, of feeling, of thinking and doing.  Very little is left over every day for exploring our magical heritage.  This is why most spell books on the market are not much help in casting spells.  They take a cookbook approach which assumes that people as they are have sufficient magical energy available to make them work.  They don’t. In order to access our own magical energy, we must begin by saving little amounts of…

In order to cast spells, the witch must first get free of spells which have been cast on her.  Spells are cast on us in childhood and later in adolescence, up through about age 19, when we define our adult personalities.  Thereafter we chiefly react against the spells we carry from an early age, following the contradictory guidance of other spells (for spells often oppose each other).  The witch must come to grips with these spells, one by one, and lay them to rest.  In some cases the spell is so deeply ingrained that it must be accepted as part of the witch’s magical personality; in order to do this,…

The entertainer Garry Moore used to end his weekly television show asking his audience to “be a little kinder to each other this week.”  In the wake of the tragic killings in Connecticut a week ago, it might be worthwhile to consider this old word ‘kind’ and what it means, in a full sense, to be kinder to each other.  For surely, what is needed most of all to change a violent society is not to ban weapons or station guards in schools and other places, but to rediscover the reasons why we should act kindly towards each other.  And since one of the barriers to deeper insight into kindness…

Bumps in My Road   Sometimes turning points in our lives come seemingly by chance, like bumps in the road.  This is about some of the bumps in my road. When I was sixteen I was living with my father, stepmother and stepsister in West Hollywood, not far from Melrose and La Cienega, the vicinity of the famous Bodhi Tree Bookstore.  It had recently opened and its discovery by Shirley MacLaine still lay years in the future.  Nor had I discovered it as yet.  I was in high school, but school was out.  It was the great summer of surfing, 1962, but I wasn’t at the beach.  Just a few…

  The Rede of modern witchcraft, sometimes called the “Wiccan Rede,” is deceptively simple.  As usually stated it goes “An it harm none, do as ye will.”  Every witch knows that ‘an’ is an old word for ‘if’.  The Rede places radical freedom at the very center of the witch’s life – and radical responsibility.  Note that it does not tell the witch what to do with his or her life, merely to refrain from harming anyone.  Let’s look at the “no harm” part first.   Obviously, we cannot live without harming other creatures.  Jainists in western India observe ahimsa, or harmlessness, to such an extent that they watch the…