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January 2017 for Celebrating the Old Ways in New Times   Bright Blessings! By the time you read this, Solstice, all the days of Yule including Twelfth Night, and Xmas, and New Years will be over with. Some of you will be heaving a huge sigh of relief as all responsibilities for the Holidays will be done and over with, and you can start arguing with the kids/significant other as to how soon the decorations should be put away. The obligatory gift exchanges, party going, and family trips and visits will be over with, and many of you (not me) will be feeling fat and guilty for all the holiday snacking…

ACHLYS Achlys (pronounced Akh-Loos) is the name, and personification, of Eternal Night. (Photo: Pinterest) She is also known as Mist of Death, which is another meaning of Her name. It describes the mist that fell before one’s eyes before dying. As such, Her likeness was borne upon the Shield of Hercules. She is a pale, thin Goddess with long sharp fingernails, which she will use as claws, which in turn explains Her bloody cheeks. Her teeth are as fangs. She is covered in dust, as She roams the world. Her incessant crying gives her the name of the Goddess of Misery and Sadness. One of Her myths is that She…

Notes from the Apothecary: Holly   (Image credit: Pere López via Wikimedia)   The holly, dark green, Made a resolute stand, He is armed with many spear points Wounding the hand. (Cad Goddeu, The Book of Taliesin, 14th Century.) Holly immediately conjures up images of snowy woods and midwinter frosts, and it has been a staple of solstice celebrations since at least Roman times. The festival of Saturnalia ran for a week or so around the shortest day, and holly was included in wreaths and garlands, it’s evergreen leaves and red berries a promise of the spring that was to come. Also, as a sacred plant of Saturn, holly was…

(King of Swords Tarot Card from the artist Ciro Marchetti http://www.ciromarchetti.com/)**   For this last essay of the year 2016, let’s go back to the Court Cards of the Tarot by examining a Tarot “royal,” the King of Swords. A good start would be to review some information regarding the royal family of the Tarot. A Tarot deck has 78 cards. There are 22 Major Arcana cards, with numbers from 0 to 21; the Majors usually deal with broader and more far-reaching life experience issues, archetypes that are easy for us to identify with and connect with at some point in our lives. There are 56 Minor Arcana cards that are…

Barbara Meiklejohn-Free: The Highland Seer     Author and shamanic practitioner Barbara Meiklejohn-Free has a variety of hats, including flautist, singer and seer. She was recently in the limelight with her magical partner Flavia Kate Peters, on the TV show Celebrity Haunted Hotel. Barbara took some time out to answer a few questions about her projects past, present and future. Mabh Savage: You describe yourself as a Highland Seer. Can you tell us a bit about what this means? Barbara Meiklejohn-Free: It’s part of a long lineage line, dating back to 15th century, that’s been handed down to me by the previous Highland Seer, Swein Macdonald. He spotted my gifts…

  Calling Kali-Ma (Kali The Awakener from the Daughters of the Moon deck) Merry meet. We are coming into some dark times, and one of the most powerful and the most frightening of the dark goddesses is Kali-Ma. While she represents the Dark Mother, this article is focused on Her as the warrior. In the Hindu tradition, Kali is the Goddess of death, destruction and resurrection. She is fierce. She wears a belt of skulls, there is blood dripping from her mouth as she stands upon the body of her husband, holding up his severed head and, in another hand, the machete she used. Kali was created to destroy the…

Interview with Psychic Brittany Quagan Elfin empath goes from panic attacks to helping others heal. Brittany Quagan knows the exact moment her whole life changed. She was 22 and working for a corporate insurance company. One day, while having a meltdown in her cubical, a woman she would later learn was a psychic medium and who has since become her friend, told her she the problem was not anxiety. Quagan argued her therapist would say otherwise, but the woman told her, “You are feeling the energy from everyone around you.” As strange as it sounded, Quagan knew it was true. “It’s because when I was a little kid I always…

Fluorite Ah Fluorite, a crystalline beauty that is just a downright happy stone. With purple being my favorite color it’s hard not to love a stone that so often showcases varying hues of it. Though Fluorite is known as a mental stone, each color has additional healing properties. The wide range of colors found in these crystals include purple, blue, green, clear, white, yellow, pink, red and black. Nearly encompassing every color in the rainbow, how could you not love this prismatic mineral? As you can see in the photo that I’ve included here, the pieces that I have range in colors from purple, to blue, to green. Most are…

Lunar Magick: Part Three This is the third of a series of articles that explores our connection to the Moon and how to use HER energy for magick and spiritual growth. This month we’ll take a look at ways to create devotional practices with the Lunar energies…..         The Moon rides high in the sky as Her light floods down bathing me in her embrace. I stand in the cold, cloak wrapped around my body With feet planted firmly on Earth. I breathe in deeply taking in the energy of the air Around me and lifting arms, fingers stretching up To hold the orb of milky whiteness.…

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…