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Séances The word séance is French and literally translates to seat, sitting, or session. When we hear the word séance we think of people sitting around a table in a dimly lit room, while a spirit medium attempts to contact the deceased. Usually these experiences are sought by those in mourning who need closure. One of the first widely documented accounts of a séance was in 1848 with Kate and Margaret Fox. These sisters were frightened by loud knocking and banging sounds in their New York home. One day Kate decided to ask the source of these noises to knock in response when she snapped her fingers. This test was…

What’s the Difference? Dreaming, lucid dreaming, sleep paralysis, and astral traveling. All, in my opinion, are in the same family. The same subconscious cluster that is hard to define, difficult to explain, and even harder to prove. So what is the difference between these four? As a OBE group moderator for the past 9 years and astral travel course teacher I’ve been asked this question many times, and the truth is that I still can’t fully explain how one can tell when they are out of body rather than lucid dreaming other than saying “you’ll know when you’re experiencing it.” This is, of course, the worst possible answer for the…

Shaman idealisms Chapter 2        The Journey Taking the steps to find out if you are meant to live as a Shaman can be daunting at best. You will spend years lost and confused, trying to understand why you don’t follow the idealisms of the people around you. Some times you have problems with anger, energy, and just a knowing of things that you really don’t want to know about. The journey of the Shaman is the hardest part of the hole path, and yet it’s the most rewording. You will find your self wanting to understand everything, and yet being ok with knowing nothing. The paradox of Wisdom +…

Keeping Silence Witches avoid careless talking for several reasons.  During the Burning Times, secrecy was necessary for survival.  Whatever was said in circle had to stay in circle.  Though we are no longer burnt (the last witch burning on record took place in Mexico in the 1940’s), indiscretion of this sort can lead to people losing jobs, child custody battles, and various forms of social persecution, especially in ‘the Bible Belt’. Secondly, although knowledge is air, and like air should be shared freely, esoteric knowledge taught to initiates and candidates for initiation needs to be kept confined within the teacher-student relationship.  It was a rule in the groups being taught…

Weisser Field Guide to the Paranormal Paperback: 224 pages Publisher: Weiser Books (December 1, 2010) Author: Judith Joyce A Paranormal Spectacular [Fail] Last month I got to review an absolutely amazing book, The Clavis or Key to the Magic of Solomon as edited by Joseph Peterson.  While that was an interesting and illuminating experience, its far more fun to take on a popular book where I don’t have to worry about dusting off 18th century references and doing what passes for fact checking in my columns.  Fortunately I’ll have none of those tasks this month as I’m reviewing the Weisser Field Guide to the Paranormal [1]. The short review:  don’t…

The Burning Times The Burning Times, or Witch Craze is a dark time in history. What really got it going were two main things. In 1320 Pope John XXII authorized the Inquisition and then of course the publication of the Witch’s Hammer (Malleus Maleficarum). This book was written by two Dominicans named Jakob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer.  They  were inquisitors of the Catholic Church and worked in the Holy Office of the Inquisition. The purpose of this office was to defend the Catholic and trial other religions. The Holy Office was one of the most feared in Europe. The Burning Times lasted almost four Centuries, but the presence of the…

Lammas~ Abundance in a Time of Lack Once again, the Wheel turns to a time of abundance and celebration! Visions of tables stacked to the rafters with the bounty of the season fill our minds… …but in so many places, the ground is dry and cracked from having been baked alive. The temps have soared into triple digits and remained so for weeks. The gardens, once lush, have browned, withered and died. Monsoons have washed away towns, and storms loom on the immediate horizon for many. In this time of uncertainty and peril, how can we imagine the abundance of the season, the carefree enjoyment of simple pleasures??? As a…

Goddess Hostility & The Threat of Female Spirituality For those of you who may or may not know I grew up in a religiously abusive and patriarchal household. This is one of the main reasons why as an adult I was so drawn to Wicca, Paganism, and Goddess spirituality. I hated growing up in an environment where I was told I could not be a spiritual leader because I was born a woman. An environment where I was told that my deity, angels, demons, devil, prophets, pastors, disciples of Jesus etc. all were male and male only. I did not enjoy being told I was a second class citizen and…

Stop Spell It’s hot out there!  The nation is under a HUGE heat wave. You combine the heat with the humidity and you have a real mess that makes people grumpy, irritable and out-of-sorts.  This is a normal reaction to things we can’t control AND the effect those things can have on us (i.e., hot + sweaty + no relief + no control = Grumpy…. at the very least!) Some people it can even bring out a nastier darker side when their environment seems to be in control and they are not liking it much.  In addition to the environment making some people and things difficult to deal with, there…

The Face in the Window Tatyana Andrevna is not a beautiful woman… she does not have the “face that launched a thousand ships”… in fact, it is safe to say, that on the “traditional” one to ten scale, that is crassly used, worldwide, to rate beauty in women and good looks in men, she would rate about a one. Getting a zero rating is impossible… Tatyans’s looks are legendary in Mamontovka… As a child, she was burned horribly when a kerosene heater in her parent’s flat exploded and showered her with the burning liquid. Ever after, she was undeniably the most recognizable person in the village. Her scars didn’t matter……