Godd-ess of the Wiccans

One reason that Wicca became so popular in the late 20th century was that it did not insist on the worship of a male deity. Instead, many Wiccans favored a female deity. Some thought of Diana as the supreme being. There are two ways in which we think of and use a Goddess, firstly as an anthropomorpic representation of the unknowable and secondly as a means of storing Psychic energy for which we use the German term Vril. First things first, once you have understood that the First Cause or the Supreme Being is beyond the thoughts of our finite minds, you might wonder why people personify that deity in an anthropomorphic fashion. Wiccans fully realize that their god-ess' personification is only a metaphor for the Ultimate unknowable Deity. It isn't really possible to worship that great unknown Something that may not exist. Yet human beings have a need for something to think of when they think of God. Anthromorphic images are helful in trying to grasp an unimaginable reality, remember always that they are manifestations of the unknowable. We can trace the idea of goddess images and worship back to the very earliest time in the Vedas and we find that they are early peoples' created images that were beyond just a representation of a living male or female. We find images of the Great Mother, for instance, with rows of breasts resembling, as Lethbridge says, gun turrets. In the Hindu iconography we see multiple images that are beyond human: goddesses with multiple heads and multiple arms and sometimes god-esses with animal parts. Thus in Wicca (as contrasted to the Abrahamic religions) we do not worship something that is at best human. We worship (or more literally grow toward) something beyond our finite comprehension. Turning to the idea of using a goddess as a store for Psychic energy, anything exposed to strong emotions stores vril and if you have had an emotional connection to something you can name or visualize then the saying that name or thinking of the image automatically lets you use the energy stored therein. In the cave paintings of Lascaux there is the famous Sorcerer: a male figure with a stag's head. This could be either a priest/shaman dressing up as a totem animal or a hunter putting on a deerskin so that he could get a deer herd within spear range--or a god showing that these people recognized that the Ultimate Deity beyond simple anthropomorphic description, or perhaps the image stored vril that would help the hunter in his quest. To summarize, then: A Wiccan may tell you, "I worship Diana" or "Lugh" or "whomever" but what they might mean will only become apparent with a close questioning of the motive in their act of "worship"

Sageing

More on Cleansing Amulets A couple of people have commented that they prefer to use the smoke of sage to cleanse amulets: to smudge them instead of administering a thermal shock. In our experience (though it's admittedly finite), if the article is not of animal origin, then saging has little or no effect on the vibes of psychic energy imbedded in it. It is obvious that you can't put a person into an oven and then freeze them to cleanse them, and in the case of individuals saging seems to work--though we are not sure that this is what really happens. Whether the worker is looking visually, sensing through psychic impressions, hearing the aura, or whatever is the method du jour, "reading" the auras of human subjects (a) before and (b) after saging, scant difference if any is perceptible. We two have come to think that perhaps people who are exposed to a saged individual or object expect a change and then duly perceive it. Some Wiccans follow the old practice of bathing in salt water before they attend a ritual. There does seem to be a perceptible difference in the aura of people who have had such baths. Experimentally we have seen that if you start with a very hot bath to which lavender essence has been added, and if you finish by salting the water, you will effect a change in your aura. Inerestingly, Gavin's grandfather used to add a quarter-cup of hydrochloric acid to the final rinse of his bath. There is a good medical reason for such a practice: Soap is alkaline--whereas the body likes to keep the skin acidic. Thus the small amount of acid added to the rinsewater is very helpful in reducing the body's alkalinity. You can try this little experiment in the interest of research: 1. Get some small pebbles. When you are very angry (perhaps having just read about Congress' output of the day) put that anger-energy into three or four of them. Then ask someone to psychometrize the whole collection, one at a time. A sensitive will easily identify the pebbles that have been exposed to anger. 2. Next sage all the pebbles and take them back to the psychic for identification. In every case we have tried, the psychic still identified the "angry" pebbles. Alternatively, you can try washing the pebbles in salt water. Again, in our experiments the angry pebbles could still be identified. Clearly this area needs some investigation. If you have a group, why don't you try various methods of psychic cleansing and publish the results? The world could use some non-gasping, objective work such as this would be: free of blue balls of fire and free of heavy hoodoos. Keep your head in gear. Blessed be. Gavin and Yvonne

visions and envisioning

Many years ago we visited our book publisher's office. One of the staff typesetters came in to meet us. He had been very impressed by our remarks about receiving psychic impressions, commonly called visions. He hesitantly said he had always heard sounds emanating from people, but had never thought of them as visions or psychic impressions. He was pleased that we had opened up a whole new way of thinking for him. He said that Yvonne sounded like little bells ringing tunes; whereas Gavin was more dark random drumming. Many people don't realize that "visions" come through all our senses, and that each one of us has a dominant mode of reception. Tests show that about 90 percent of people receive psychic information in the form of pictures. The largest other percentage of people, something like 6 percent, feel things. There are a small percentage of individuals who taste, smell, or hear psychic impressions. Recently re-reading Dion Fortune's Psychic Self-Defence, I realized that she had made the same point back in the 1950s. Now Dion Fortune was a psychologist, and it was her belief that the reason for the variance in receptive modes stemmed from the development of the brain over endless eons and that for survival the most important receptive method would be seeing: optical. She also made the point that nobody in her experience (or for that matter in our own experience) saw written information. To learn what your own major receptive sense is, think of a baseball park on a hot afternoon, when a player has just hit a tie-breaking home run. Do you see, hear, taste, smell, or feel the scene? Do you see the batter at the plate? Do you hear the cheers of the crowd? Do you smell the hot dogs? Do you taste anything? Or feel the sense of thrill of the hit? Now we move on to sending psychic information, as for instance in the case of trying to heal someone. To get to their subconscious, you must use the same methods that work for reception. In other words, yelling "Heal Aunt Martha!" or writing it down is not as effective as looking at a picture of Aunt Martha in good health or as imagining her--envisioning her, if you will--in good health. Since you do not know what the patient's prime receptive sense is, when you do a ritual for healing, you must try to key your work so that every sense of the target person is addressed. In the past we have fallen into the trap of writing requests; but we now think that this is the approach least likely to be successful.

your amulet

Amulets are objects that usually are made by human hands, intended to ward off negative influences. With wearing, they tend to lose their energy, and also occasionally to pick up any negativity that has been directed at the wearer. The good news is this: They can be cleansed and re-charged. The cleansing process extensively tested by psychic Peter Hurkos is this: Place the amulet in a freezer for 24 hours, and then place it in a hot environment: either boiling water or an oven set to 300 F: 15 minutes in either case. Repeat the process three times. After this the amulet should be effectively cleansed both of the energy (whether positive or negative) that has been imbued into it by the wearer and/or by the person who charged it. Obviously you have to be careful that the amulet is not made of a material that will be destroyed by such environments The most simple process of re-charging is to place it in direct sunlight at high noon for an hour three days in succession; or in moonlight at full moon for an hour three nights in succession. If you do not have the option of using direct sun- or moonlight (for instance, if you are an inmate), here is an alternative procedure. Stand in Star Position (feet shoulder-width apart, arms outstretched at shoulder height, left palm up, right palm down [for right-handers], head tilted slightly back) for five minutes at the time you know the sun will be overhead, and recharge yourself. Then bring your hands down. Hold the amulet between the palms and concentrate on putting your energy into it. Your dominant hand is your charging hand; your secondary hand is your receiving hand (left hand for right-handers, right hand for left-handers). If you are right-handed, this means the energy normally travels from the right palm ito the left palm. You can check the effectiveness of your charging by psychometrizing the amulet afterward, remembering to place it in your receiving/secondary hand This process is easy and straightforward, and accessible to everyone. It should be done at least once every six months to every amulet you employ.

Halloween

Thoughts for Hallowe'en This is to kick off a facebook weekly diary or some such. Get us being trendy! Woo hoo We have just witnessed the Hunter's Moon or Samhain: the full moon nearest November 1, which occurred this year on October 18. When Christianity swept across the face of Europe, Samhain is the observance that got rescheduled, repurposed, and renamed Hallowe'en. Indeed, it is the sacred night, the Hunter's Moon, when the Lady of Seedtime and Harvest steps down from Her highest place to make room so that the Lord of Hunting and the Forest can have His half-year of supremacy. At the time of the first new moon of the new Celtic year, then, we Frosts propose to begin a new phase in communicating with other Wiccans. Each of us has within us a spirit. We Frosts simplistically think of the two parts of the being as "I", the ongoing spiritual part, and "Me", the mundane part. At times the spirit's agenda may seem to be at odds with what the body wants in the mundane world. Through meditation we try to reconcile the two parts in a happy or rational way so that we are not pulled in two directions at once: such pulling leads to stress. People too often assume that the two parts conflict with each other. No. They complement each other in what we call progressive reincarnation, each playing a role that the other cannot play. Let us meditate first on the sort of things that Me really wants. Let's see whether we can separate the wants from the needs. Often we can do that by investigating (a) whether the want is real and (b) what it would cost to fulfill any pseudo-need. As an example: The other day our cherished friend Ronn came by driving a newly acquired RAV 4 sporting all the bells and whistles imaginable. Gavin immediately felt that he too would like to replace his antiquated Subaru (a whole year old) with a shiny new RAV 4. It obviously wasn't a need: The Subaru meets all the Frosts' needs more than adequately. Anyhow, one day we had a little time in the local market town, Beckley, so we looked into the real-world effects a trade would have. Very quickly it became obvious that the price equation wouldn't work: Even with the high trade-in value of the Subaru so meticulously maintained, the payments on the new vehicle would break the bank. This little story illustrates the difference between a want and a need and Me's influence which had weighted the spiritual side in this purely mundane-level fantasy of Gavin's. We spent an hour of our life getting a firm real-world answer to a question that would have been available to us in ten minutes of deep meditation. We're (shall we say?) old-line meditators, yet the want for a new toy overruled the need and the obvious answer. We encourage you, then, not to waste the time, even though in wasting the time it set Gavin's want in perspective. Remember: In the real world there are many places where you can put far fewer dollars than are required to get a new car into something that will be infinitely more rewarding--places such as the garden.

spirit

Spirit Very little in the ancient Celtic mythos is truly about Spirit, so we have to go back into Hindu writings to find some ideas that the Celts might have shared. The Isha Upanishad describes Spirit this way: Although not moving, the self is swifter than the mind; The gods cannot catch It as It speeds on in front. Standing, It outpaces others who run; within It Sages place the waters. It moves--yet It does not move. It's far away--yet It is near at hand! It is within this whole world--yet It's also outside this whole world. Recall that the Hindus thought of Spirit or Life as being equated to breath, so that the Ultimate Deity is sometimes defined as the Living God that does not breathe, or the Breathless One. A more modern way of looking at it is defined by philosopher Georg Hegel: The nature of spirit may be understood by a glance at its direct opposite--Matter. As the essence of matter is gravity, so, on the other hand, we may affirm that the substance, the essence, of spirit is freedom. If indeed it is true that every living thing has a spirit, then each cell of your body has a spirit. Is your spirit then the sum of all these minute spirits working in comjunction? Or is your spirit kind of a dictator-spirit that organizes and runs all the smaller entities?