{"id":13222,"date":"2016-12-01T01:10:34","date_gmt":"2016-12-01T06:10:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paganpages.org\/content\/?p=13887"},"modified":"2016-12-01T16:49:11","modified_gmt":"2016-12-01T21:49:11","slug":"seeing-the-signs-27","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/2016\/12\/01\/seeing-the-signs-27\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeing the Signs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\">Maintaining a Book of Shadows<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\">This is not the article that I was going to write. I was going to write about Runes. I was going to do a review of the book, <\/span><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\"><u>Runes for Beginners<\/u><\/span><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\">, by Alexandra Chauran, and write about the history of runes in general. While researching the subject, I looked through the notebooks that comprise my Book of Shadows, sure that I had <\/span><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\"><i>something <\/i><\/span><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\">about runes. I most certainly did \u2013 coincidentally, it was a print-out of a page that I had on my computer screen at that very moment! I had received it in an email from a Yahoo group I was a member of several years ago and printing left a lot to be desired. The end of every line was cut off. As I thumbed through other pages in that notebook, I noticed that many of the other print-outs were in the same condition, plus there were lots of things in there that I really didn\u2019t need or want. So I decided to look seriously at the three notebooks that comprise my Book of Shadows and weed out, clean out and reorganize.<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\">divination is like any other discipline. You have to practice on a daily basis to be any good at it. That means daily meditation \u2013 at the very least. It means using your tarot cards and your pendulum and your crystal ball. It means getting outdoors and smelling the air and listening to the birds and taking note of the sky. It means being aware of your surroundings at all times, including when you are sleeping.<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\"> Maintaining good notes is part of divination. Knowing what worked \u2013 or didn\u2019t work \u2013 the first time, second time or the last time you tried a particular method of divination \u2013 or a spell \u2013 cannot be overstated. It\u2019s important to note the date, the time of day, the moon phase, even the weather. You often hear \u2013 on Facebook, especially, where everything is reduced to a meme \u2013 that science and spirituality are at odds, but nothing could be further from the truth. A true spiritualist is just like a scientist. You have to go about your spiritual adventures just like a scientist goes about his experiments. Keeping notes helps you remember one \u201cexperiment\u201d from another and adds you in coming up with new theories of divination. Proving these theories is the skill of the diviner. Sometimes it works out <\/span><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\"><i>exactly <\/i><\/span><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\">like you thought it was going to and you congratulate yourself. But sometimes, something totally different happens and you can\u2019t believe your eyes. Those are some fabulous moments!<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\"> My first Book of Shadows was a loose-leaf notebook \u2013 maybe thirty pages or so \u2013 that was a hand-copied version of Starhawk\u2019s <\/span><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\"><u>The Spiral Dance<\/u><\/span><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\">, which a friend had loaned me in 1987 and I loved so much I didn\u2019t want to return it. Eventually I typed up those pages but once I bought my own copy of <\/span><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\"><u>The Spiral Dance <\/u><\/span><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\">in 1990, I discarded all but the poetry. I still have those \u2013 printed out on my old typewriter that I haven\u2019t had since 1992 \u2013 they bring back memories just looking at them. When I first started learning about Wicca and Women\u2019s Spirituality \u2013 as it was called back then \u2013 most of my learning came out of books. I took copious notes and they all went into my \u201cBook of Shadows\u201d. I really knew nothing about a Book of Shadows or anything else. I was doing it all on my own. But I was doing it. <\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\"> When the Internet took off, I joined Yahoo groups &amp; groups on AOL \u2013 remember AOL? \u2013 and started getting all kinds of information about Wicca and Paganism and goddesses and gods. I printed out like a madwoman and my Book of Shadows grew from one notebook to three notebooks \u2013 I have an inch-and-a-half-wide notebook just for the Tarot and Numerology, the largest of the three books. The Tarot notebook was updated recently \u2013 it had always been kept up to date, since I work with the Tarot \u2013 spiritually and creatively \u2013 more than any other medium. But I do admit that the other two notebooks are rather a mess.<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-13888\" src=\"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/BOS1-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"bos1\" width=\"622\" height=\"467\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\">\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\">\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\">\n<style type=\"text\/css\">\n\t<!--\n\t\t@page { margin: 0.79in }\n\t\tP { margin-bottom: 0.08in }\n\t-->\n\t<\/style>\n<\/p>\n<p align=\"JUSTIFY\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\"> There\u2019s a meme on Facebook about intelligent people being \u201cmessy\u201d but I do take umbrage with that \u2013 I think some kid came up with that when his mother told him to clean his room \u2013 \u201cAnd do your homework too!\u201d \u2013 however, the thing about things being messy is that during the process of organizing your mess, you find things that perhaps you forgot about \u2013 like I am during this process of going through my Book of Shadows \u2013 and either you can\u2019t remember why you kept it \u2013 and decide whether or not to keep it \u2013 or you remembering why you kept it, you decide you don\u2019t need it anyway, since it\u2019s such a part of you, you don\u2019t need the reminder. Or \u2013 in the case of the poetry I just found \u2013 you decide to keep it, because it\u2019s an important memento of who you once were and how far you\u2019ve come. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maintaining a Book of Shadows This is not the article that I was going to write. I was going to write about Runes. I was going to do a review of the book, Runes for Beginners, by Alexandra Chauran, and write about the history of runes in general. While researching the subject, I looked through the notebooks that comprise my Book of Shadows, sure that I had something about runes. I most certainly did \u2013 coincidentally, it was a print-out of a page that I had on my computer screen at that very moment! I had received it in an email from a Yahoo group I was a member of several years ago and printing left a lot to be desired. The end of every line was cut off. As I thumbed through other pages in that notebook, I noticed that many of the other print-outs were in the same condition, plus there were lots of things in there that I really didn\u2019t need or want. So I decided to look seriously at the three notebooks that comprise my Book of Shadows and weed out, clean out and reorganize. divination is like any other discipline. You have to practice on a daily basis to be any good at it. That means daily meditation \u2013 at the very least. It means using your tarot cards and your pendulum and your crystal ball. It means getting outdoors and smelling the air and listening to the birds and taking note of the sky. It means being aware of your surroundings at all times, including when you are sleeping. Maintaining good notes is part of divination. Knowing what worked \u2013 or didn\u2019t work \u2013 the first time, second time or the last time you tried a particular method of divination \u2013 or a spell \u2013 cannot be overstated. It\u2019s important to note the date, the time of day, the moon phase, even the weather. You often hear \u2013 on Facebook, especially, where everything is reduced to a meme \u2013 that science and spirituality are at odds, but nothing could be further from the truth. A true spiritualist is just like a scientist. You have to go about your spiritual adventures just like a scientist goes about his experiments. Keeping notes helps you remember one \u201cexperiment\u201d from another and adds you in coming up with new theories of divination. Proving these theories is the skill of the diviner. Sometimes it works out exactly like you thought it was going to and you congratulate yourself. But sometimes, something totally different happens and you can\u2019t believe your eyes. Those are some fabulous moments! My first Book of Shadows was a loose-leaf notebook \u2013 maybe thirty pages or so \u2013 that was a hand-copied version of Starhawk\u2019s The Spiral Dance, which a friend had loaned me in 1987 and I loved so much I didn\u2019t want to return it. Eventually I typed up those pages but once I bought my own copy of The Spiral Dance in 1990, I discarded all but the poetry. I still have those \u2013 printed out on my old typewriter that I haven\u2019t had since 1992 \u2013 they bring back memories just looking at them. When I first started learning about Wicca and Women\u2019s Spirituality \u2013 as it was called back then \u2013 most of my learning came out of books. I took copious notes and they all went into my \u201cBook of Shadows\u201d. I really knew nothing about a Book of Shadows or anything else. I was doing it all on my own. But I was doing it. When the Internet took off, I joined Yahoo groups &amp; groups on AOL \u2013 remember AOL? \u2013 and started getting all kinds of information about Wicca and Paganism and goddesses and gods. I printed out like a madwoman and my Book of Shadows grew from one notebook to three notebooks \u2013 I have an inch-and-a-half-wide notebook just for the Tarot and Numerology, the largest of the three books. The Tarot notebook was updated recently \u2013 it had always been kept up to date, since I work with the Tarot \u2013 spiritually and creatively \u2013 more than any other medium. But I do admit that the other two notebooks are rather a mess. There\u2019s a meme on Facebook about intelligent people being \u201cmessy\u201d but I do take umbrage with that \u2013 I think some kid came up with that when his mother told him to clean his room \u2013 \u201cAnd do your homework too!\u201d \u2013 however, the thing about things being messy is that during the process of organizing your mess, you find things that perhaps you forgot about \u2013 like I am during this process of going through my Book of Shadows \u2013 and either you can\u2019t remember why you kept it \u2013 and decide whether or not to keep it \u2013 or you remembering why you kept it, you decide you don\u2019t need it anyway, since it\u2019s such a part of you, you don\u2019t need the reminder. Or \u2013 in the case of the poetry I just found \u2013 you decide to keep it, because it\u2019s an important memento of who you once were and how far you\u2019ve come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/197"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13222"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12599,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13222\/revisions\/12599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}