Ogham: The Mysterious Language of Trees: Blackthorn

 

Blackthorn ushers in the dark half of the year. Its pale-as-death white flowers, its winter ripening, and black branches, thick with thorns, make it the quintessential life in death tree of Samhain. Once the black door of the Celtic New Year closes, there is no turning back to the light. The hedgerow looms behind us allowing no return. As part of the natural cycle of life-death and rebirth, we must keep faith and travel  through the labyrinth of night one more time until dawn rises, and the Hawthorn way of Beltane opens again.

Blackthorn and Hawthorn are sister trees, one representing  the dark half and the other, the light half of the year. Where Blackthorn grows near its sister plant, Hawthorn, the site is especially magical, for they are doorways to Faery.

It is Scorpio time. Once the blackthorn closes around us, the harvest of grain is over, the harvest of nuts has ended, the culling of cattle has begun. The dark, windy sky brings the Wild Hunt, and the harvest of souls.

Witches Wheel

Blackthorn, wintry blackthorn

A sign on the doorstep

Your sloe fruits sweeten only in frost

Usher us through the lanes we must must cross

When the gold of October

Turns to white splinters.

For a really nice Ogham book by Sharlyn Hidalgo, go here:

The Healing Power of Trees: Spiritual Journeys Through the Celtic Tree Calendar

Straif ( Strife)

The Blackthorn tree is esoterically known as both the Mother of the Woods and the Dark Crone of the Woods. She who gives life also deals death.  Woe to any who encounter her in the dark forest!

The tree is linked to the Irish Morrigan who stalks the battlefield in the shape of a raven. In Scotland, it is the Cailleach who strikes the ground with her Blackthorn staff, summoning the frost and snow. Its sacred number is 13.

 

The ghostly white flowers of the Blackthorn are like drifts of snow in the autumn twilight.

Fairy tales tell us the Blackthorn is a tree of ill omen. The English word ‘strife’ derives from its Ogham name: Straif.  A long hard winter is referred to as a Blackthorn Winter. In tales, such as Sleeping Beauty, it is blackthorn that grows the thick, impenetrable thorn hedge around the enchantress’s castle. Like the beautiful flower of romance, the blackthorn is a member of the rose family, thus leading us to imagine a rose-covered tower..  In traditional stories, Blackthorn often indicates a warrior’s death in service to the High King.

 

Dark witches love the Blackthorn.  A Blackthorn wand, with thorns fixed on the end, is used for binding and blasting. These sharp thorns were called the pins of slumber and reputedly used by English witches to pierce poppets. Witches burned on Blackthorn pyres, for the Devil was said to prick his follower’s fingers with the thorn of a Blackthorn tree to draw the blood used to sign the Contract.

Blackthorn can be used in spells of protection as well. In Irish tales, heroes were aided by the Blackthorn tree. If they threw a twig of Blackthorn after them, it would take root and form an impenetrable hedge or woods, thwarting the pursuing giant. The Norse rune thorn carved on a Blackthorn stave provides  protection.

Blackthorn is said to bloom on Christmas Eve. It is one of the trees reputed to form the thorny crown of Christ at His crucifixion. At New Year, celebrants wore Blackthorn crowns which they burned in the New Year’s fire. The ashes were used to fertilize the fields. Blackthorn was sometimes woven into wreaths with Mistletoe to bring luck in the coming year, and the garlands used to wassail the Apple trees.

Blackthorn is an arrow’s mist and smoke drifting up from the fire. These are both harbingers of death.

Of all the trees that grow so fair,
Old England to adorn,
Greater are none beneath the Sun
Than Oak and Ash and Thorn.

(Puck of Pook’s Hill, by Rudyard Kipling, 1906)

Daring to travel with the darker deities of the Celtic pantheon is a spiritual adventure at the deepest level. Blackthorn opens the pathway to Underworld initiation. Meditating under a Blackthorn bush during the Samhain season can put you in touch with powerful Underworld deities, such as the Morrigan. Wear a protective amulet with the Blackthorn ogham, sloe berries, or a blackthorn wand, if you choose to go there. These deities are not to be trifled with!

 

Here’s a new Tree Oracle by John Matthews!

The Spirit of Nature Oracle: Ancient Wisdom from the Green Man and the Celtic Ogam Tree Alphabet 

Magical Correspondences

Magic is Everywhere.

The Wishing Tree

Ogham Letter: Straif

Letter: S, Z

Deities:  Morrigan, Dagda, Cailleach, Cerridwen, Morgan le Fay and Gwynn ap Nudd

Animals: Toad, Wolf, Black Cat

Color: Red, Bright Purple

Planets: Mars and Saturn

Gem: Black Opal

Chief attributes: Inevitability of Death, Protection and revenge

Blackthorn Working

Traditionally, Blackthorn is used in protection against evil, creating boundaries, purifying, confronting our own dark side. Blackthorn dispels negativity, toxins, old wounds, and impurities. It can be used in exorcisms. It is associated with chthonic and protective deities.

With Blackthorn staff,
I draw the bound.
All malice and bane,
I thus confound.

The most powerful times of the year to use Blackthorn for purification and banishing are Imbolc (Feb. 1st) and Samhain (October 31st) At Imbolc, Blackthorn is one of the first trees to flower, thus, it aids the ushering in of Spring.

Blackthorn wands can be used for divination and wishing at these auspicious times of year. Incredibly, bridal chambers can be decorated with Hawthorn and Blackthorn flowers for the musky scent of the flowers stimulates desire.

 

A Faery Feast for Samhain

You Are Invited to a Faery Feast for Samhain

Two Halloweens ago, I was prompted to do special dinner for my Faery allies.
I had just arrived back in the States after nine years living in England, and was staying with a couple of old friends, Mark and Corby,  who were also very powerful witches. There had been many magical rituals done in that house over the years on a regular basis, so the atmosphere was perfect for me to re-settle with my Faery co-walker and  other friends who had come over the ocean with me.

I will just say that, contrary to tradition, I have never found bodies of water to be a barrier to magical contacts if they are strong.

As I was saying before I so rudely interrupted myself, I had been back in Seattle for about a month when I was seized with the desire to have a feast for the Siddhe on Samhain. What came to me first was the traditional color scheme: black, white, and red.
Then I had a shopping list given to me along with instructions on how I should prepare the feast.

The results were astonishing!

Sharing the Magic!

This year, the Faeries have encouraged me to share this ritual with the community in the hopes that this Samhain we may all participate in a Faery Feast together. They literally PROVED to me that they loved this feast and want more magical people to discover how easy it is to connect with Faery in a real way. This empowers them to bond with us more strongly so that we can help Mother Earth in her struggle with human error.

This year is great because Samhain is on Monday and the Full Moon is on Sunday, November 1st.

A Table for a Feast:

Do this in a mindful way to charge your feast with magical power.

* A table laid with a black cloth
* Red dishes or paper plates for any odd number between 3 and 13.
* Wine goblets for that many
* Forks and red napkins for that many
* Three to nine black candles
* Amber and benzoin incense
* A white cake baked from scratch

(I actually took the day off from work to make this cake. It takes quite a while and you need to concentrate your desires into it as you make it. I got my recipe from Joy of Cooking)

* Candles for the cake
* A bottle of good red wine
* Something with blackberries. I used blackberry brandy.
* Birch Twigs for purification placed decoratively on the table
* A bouquet of red roses. White will work as well if you prefer. It’s a different feel.

Maia
Maia

Plan to stay up until dawn. A good Hostess or Host does not abandon their guests.

On All Hallows Eve make the cake. You will not eat any of it. It is for them.
Set the table
You will have to anoint the black candles with rose or lily oil, or any oil that associated with Samhain, or transitioning to the Otherworld, better known as Death.

Candle Anointing Technique:

* Pour oil into dominant hand, getting your fingers wet
* Hold tapered candle in the other hand
* Beginning at the bottom of the candle smooth the oil, going in a spiral, along the length to the top. Do this for each candle.

At Midnight:

The order isn’t important. These are just what you need to do:

* Put the cake in the center of the table and light the candles
* Light the black tapers.
* Burn the incense
* Pour wine into each goblet
* Cut the cake and put a slice on each plate
* If you have a bowl of blackberries, put them on the table. If its brandy, put a bowl of brandy o the table.
* Pour a glass of wine for yourself

Read a poem aloud, something by Taliensin, Yeats, or Fiona Macleod is good. A story, a witchy song or chant, play some Celtic music especially tunes by O’Carolan. Choose according to your relationship with the Siddhe.

I like Thomas the Rhymer. You can find the text to that ballad here:

Thomas Rhymer: An Exploration of A Faery Ballad

Now just be with them. Be open, receptive.
My two friends were supposed to keep watch with me, but in the end one of them begged off, so there were two of us. Mark and I sat quietly until about 3AM, when an incredibly lovely, healing energy came down over the table. We both felt it. We basked in this energy until the first light of dawn and then went to bed.

The Flowers of Annwn

The next day, I cleared the table.
There is a tree in the back garden at that house where Mark and Corby left offerings, so I put all the cake under there and poured the wine and the bowl of blackberry brandy.
(You can have any left over wine or brandy for yourself, just not the cake.)

Two weeks later, the most amazing thing happened. Corby had been the first to look outside and whet did he see, but three big, red amanita muscaria mushrooms growing just outside the branches of the tree where I had left my offerings.

“It’s the Flowers of Annwn!” he shouted. “The Lords of the Underworld have answered!”

Here are pictures of all of us with the  mushrooms.

Do you have any idea how awesome that is? I am not a mushroom eater so I still have some dried pieces of it to use talismanically.I would probably take too much a get sick or some

thing. But amanita muscaria’s connection to Faery is legendary. These mushrooms are also sacred to the ancient goddess, Elen of the Ways, the antlered Goddess of the woods.

When I did this spell I was deep into writing  magical fiction and concentrated heavily on receiving artistic inspiration as I made the feast. The five full outlines and three first drafts of some great novels, one novella and full first draft in one month is a testament to the power of this ritual.

Since, as in everything, you get what you give, make this the same feast you would give to your favorite people, because that is what the Faeries can be to you.

August Eclipse and How to Let Go of What No Longer Works

August 5, 2009:

An eclipse of the moon at 13 degrees Aquarius.

This was the day I lost my J.O.B. This was also the day my dream of being a full time writer began in earnest.

Eclipses are about endings, especially the series of eclipses we have had this summer.  Once Pluto goes direct in Capricorn on September 11, 2009, we will be at the start of a new cycle. It is time to leave behind the things that don’t serve us and start to create the life we want to live for the next 16 years.

From Anne Ortelee:

Anne Ortelee is my favorite online Astrologer. This is what she has to say, in her over the top way, about this eclipse period:

I’ve heard a quite few “never agains” from the person sitting across the table or speaking over the phone line during the past six weeks. Watch that NEVER AGAIN energy quite carefully. Eclipses bring things to light so we SEE it in a way we never had before. Don’t say Never Again to deny YOURSELF something you deeply want. Do say Never Again to old behaviors that came to light which don‘t serve you any more. There is a difference. Notice it.

What is the Never Again you’ve been saying to yourself? Ok, now detach it from the person you’ve attached it to. I will NEVER AGAIN xyz with that person. That person was an energy in your chart, designed to be a fabulous experience, teacher and teachable moment in a great manner, by you and the desire of your soul to grow and experience things. Do you have the NEVER AGAIN detached from them? I don’t care how much you think they are the cause. It is YOUR chart ~ they are an actor in YOUR life. Detach it.

Next detach the NEVER AGAIN from you. You didn’t do anything wrong. You aren’t a bad person. You don’t deserve to be treated like this. However, you are an actor in THEIR story too. You are part of THEIR chart to help them get clear on what they are supposed to do and experience in this life time. Whether they get the lesson and learn from it is not your job. You’ve done your job by being in their life. You don’t need to stay here. Don’t give up on the idea of the lesson you were for them. Make sure you remember the point of saying NEVER AGAIN. It’ll keep you on your path.

Check her out: www.anneortelee.com

Your Future and Your True Will

WE OFTEN KNOW WHAT WE DON’T WANT IN OUR LIVES, BUT SOMETIMES WE ARE NOT SURE ABOUT WHAT WE REALLY DO WANT.

A simple ritual to clear something out of your life, is to do what I did with the J.O.B. Get rid of it!

I had to agitate to make my boss fire me. She didn’t want to. For some bizarre reason she wanted to give me the benefit of doubt. Maybe she knew how badly I wanted I out. Some people will do their damndest to hold you back.

You might be afraid to let go of the undesirable situation, or person, or thing. As for the job, I made sure I would be able to collect unemployment at a high enough amount and for a long enough time to cover the basics so I could get my projects off the ground. Then I chose the eclipse day for the bust up. People warned me against it. I wa,s and still am, a tad worried about making ends meet. But I did it anyway because the J.O.B. was making me sick, drained, and frustrated and I knew I did NOT want to identify with wage slave employee in the next cycle.  I did not want this reality!

I had long ago established who I Am as an artist and entrepreneur, a healer, clairvoyant, and teacher. I was not going to allow myself to slip into a pattern that was not in line with my True Will, didn’t suit me at all, was ruining my health, and was meant to be temporary anyway.

I hope you have the courage to walk away from your old patterns before they become fixed or  destructive to you. See the new reality opening out before you! Go for that.

HOW TO DISCOVER YOUR TRUE WILL, OR WHO YOU REALLY ARE!

Having always been a  passionate person and knowing since childhood that I wanted to be an artist,  I have never been able to understand people who have no idea what they want out of life. Sometimes a person would come to me for a Tarot reading and ask me “What am I here for? What should I be doing with my life?”

I would ask” What is your passion?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, what do you like to do? What gets you up in the morning? What makes you happy?”

“Being with my friends down at the pub.”

“What else?”

Blank stare.

I pondered this for a long time. Nobody is a blank slate. Inside every person is a burning desire, even if its just for the usual things like having a family and decent job.

What I think is really going on with these people is that their desires were squashed in childhood; they were shamed out of them, made to feel unworthy, told they would never be able to have that. So they gave up on their True Will — The very reason they are incarnated on this planet was abandoned,  and in giving up on their innermost desire, all fire and passion was doused as if a bucket of water was emptied over it. They gave up on themselves.

I know this because my parents, relatives, schoolmates,  tried to do that to me too. Trouble with me was that I am a very determined person. I am also an Aquarius, so I rebel. I was also on fire with images and dreams feelings that had to be made visible and tangible through creative expression. I held onto my True Will through Hell and high water.

So what if you haven’t been able to that? What if you lost all traces of your passion and your life’s purpose? Now this cycle is ending and a new one beginning — a fresh start — how do you choose what you want to create, to BE,  for the next 16 years?

Being in the Flow

I decided over the last 8 years to forge myself into a novelist. I had published and won prizes for my poetry, but that Muse wasn’t with me any more. I had poured myself into my healing practice branching out to teaching and leading public rituals before I went to London in 1998. After I completed my Grail Bearers Tarot, I began to write a novel for my own entertainment and got so immersed in it that I began to take my desire to write more seriously. I was reassured in this decision because my first Astrologer, Jeff Green, had told me that I was born to be  a writer and film maker. Since his predictions from that 1983 reading had been so accurate, I decide to follow that path.

When I write fiction I forget the time. Ideas surface and dramas play out like magic in my mind’s eye that I simply record. It is total ecstasy for me. All writers experience this. Its why they write! My decision to lose my job was coupled with the determination to BE a full time writer. Whether with novels, blogging, podcasts, videos — my next 16 years will be spent creating art from my imagination and putting it out there to share.

So I ask you: when are you in that flow state? If you know what that is, trust it. Go with where it takes you.

I believe, because I have experienced it, that if you do work that seizes you, that you can’t wait to get to, that you love, you can find a way to make a living at it. If its a relationship you want, make sure you ask that only the people who are the best for you come into your life. Choose to be happy.

If you have never been in the flow state — or don’t think you have  been– pay attention. Ask to be shown.

Say: “I am determined to know what my True Will is. I will experience what turns me on. I will live from my center, from my heart. I create the life I want NOW!”

I swear that if you ask, you will begin to notice when the flow is happening. You will have a glimpse at least of what fires you up.

You may have to go back to early childhood. Try to remember your happiest times. What absorbed your attention as a child?

You may have to spend some quiet time on the weekend tuning in to yourself and reflecting on what you can truly lose yourself in.

You may have a learning curve. Look at me! I have learned all this computer stuff from scratch, over the course of 7 months. Hard work? You bet! Worth it? Absolutely.

You may have to develop a new skill or talent. As I said I spent 8 years forging myself into a novelist. I still don’t have a novel published but I am determined, and now I have cut the time to focus on it as never before.

You may think what you love to do isn’t practical. I have a client who has always loved nature and animals. She is very spiritual and did Energy Healing with me for years, even over the phone while I was living in England. That stopped after a while. When I came back to Seattle, I got in touch with her.

In the years that I was gone, her Live-in Nanny position had ended ( the kids were grown) and she went on to work in a veterinarian’s office where she found herself soothing the animals who were going in for treatment. She had bonded so quickly with the pets that she was asked to  Pet Sit and this evolved into a full time business. ( She’s still Nannying in a way). Still at the vet’s part time, she is now being asked to do Energy Healing on the pets because the owners see how their animals respond to her. In fact one of the first things we did together when I came back, was to get her to a place where she could trust her ability to heal animals with her energy. Her passion for nature and animals has given her a life of joy and celebration every day — and a living as well.

Make A Treasure Map

Today I decided to make a Treasure Map. I think these days they are called Vision Boards.

This is the perfect time: between now and September 11.

I am designing my future. How I want it to be. I did this in the past many times. It works. Weirdly and amazingly. I highly recommend it.

Put in images of  your most far fetched dreams. I say that because before I became a healer I had NO IDEA that I would ever be that. I had no background, no credentials — nothing. But I had an Enlightenment experience that was so mind boggling that word got out. Next thing I knew I was doing healing for a living.

????????

Take the chance — do it NOW. Now is the time to make changes that will last.

Creating Sacred Space

Waterhouse, Magic Circle
Waterhouse, Magic Circle

If we wish to travel between the worlds, the first step is to create Sacred Space. Magic is based on pattern making, and one of the primal patterns of magic has to do with the four directions North, East, South, and West.
The first thing we do when we plan to enter the Otherworld is to draw a Circle around ourselves. This is done for protection (to keep undesirable spirits and energies out), and to create a container for our energies so that they do not scatter. Building the Circle helps with focus and defines intention. Dancing around the Circle is a traditional way to raise the Cone of Power by which a magical working is energized and enchantments are cast.

Creating the Magical Circle

The Circle is built in various ways, depending on one’s style. For a Ceremonial Magician, or Wiccan the circumference of the Circle is inscribed in the air with a Sword or Athalme (dagger) respectively. For Faery Witches, who don’t like metals, it is enough to use the index finger to direct a blue flame in a sunwise ring around oneself, and then envision the ring igniting in a circle of blue flames. There are other ‘styles’ of Circle visualization, such as the Druid, Irish Faery, and Medicine Wheel that will be discussed in future articles.

It is wise for beginners to perform Magical Workings at night because it is easier to see spirits in the dark. Because of the ethereal transparency of spiritual beings, sunlight makes them harder to see.  Think of how faint the light of a candle flame is in a sunny window.

Once the Witch has placed herself in the center of her Faery Ring, she can charge each direction by invoking its traditional Correspondences. These are qualities found in Nature, for all Magical People know that Nature is the veil behind which the Magical Powers dwell. By calling forth the Powers of the Directions, the Witch creates a Portal or Doorway into the Unseen.

Upon the doorway in each direction an Invoking Pentagram  is drawn in blue flame. This  five-pointed star is traced in the air starting at the topmost point and working in a clockwise direction. This sign protects and seals the space so that no undesirable entities can interfere with the work.

Sylphs
Sylphs

Watchtower of the East

Standing with her face towards the East and pointing her Magical Weapon, the Witch traces an Invoking Pentagram in the air and calls:
Guardians of the Watchtowers of the East, I beseech you to grant me your presence at my Circle tonight. Spirits of the sky and air, send fresh breezes to charge my Circle. Fill them with birdsong, and the rays of the sun, as it moves above the horizon at dawn, to brighten the wild flowers that cover the low hills sparkling with dew. I called the Winged Ones: birds, butterflies, bees; Angels, Sylphs, the Grey-Eyed Beings of Wind and Wildness, the Magical Child with the Morning Star on his brow, The Keepers of the Sacred Sword that rises from the ground in the circle of tall stones. Bring me the gift of refreshment, aspiration, inspiration, rebirth, and the power of eloquent speech. I invoke you, oh Guardians of the Watchtowers of the East to attend my working this night!

Richard Dadd
Richard Dadd, Magical Child

If you take this speech apart, you will see the elements that correspond to the Magical Direction East. Dissected, as with the Sword of Reason, these are:

Elemental Air : breezes, wind, speech, music, the sense or hearing, ideas and thoughts that fly on the air. Even dreams, with their tendency to slip away on waking have a quality of air.Air ranges everywhere. It is difficult to contain. It brings all other Elements together through communication.

Sylphs: Personifications of Air. One could think of them as fairies, ethereal, transparent, young, winged.

Dawn: Birth and rebirth, newness, infancy and early childhood.
As the air goes everywhere and unites all things, so the child wants to explore its new environment.

Spring: wildflowers, birdsong, bees, birds returning from their wintering grounds,

Sword: The sword is like thought. It is bright and keen but can cut, like words, either way. It has a point. It expresses clarity. Once it is thrust for destructive reasons, it inflicts wounds that cannot be taken back. If used consciously, it brings focus, discernment, depth; it cuts to the chase.

The colors  for the East are: yellow, blue-grey, violet, or clear.

Further meditation will reveal more of the brilliance of the correspondences. For instance, the word Inspiration speaks to a function of air which is breath, inhaled, exhaled, inspired.

Watchtower of the South

Salamander

We turn facing South, raising the Wand, and call out:

Guardians of the Watchtowers of the South, I beseech you to grant me your presence at my Circle tonight.  Spirits of fire, ignite my working with your brilliant Light, spark my Magic with your flames of strong desire, illuminate my powers of vision so that I might see into your Sacred Realm.  Salamanders, dance with me in the rose garden of summer under the bright sun. Fill me with strong sexual energy so that I might make my magic come alive. Grant me the strength of my bloodline, the heroism of my ancestry in the prime of their youth. Roses, thorns, fire, and blood, great cats, snakes, lizards, those with claws, those that adore the hot sun, enter my circle tonight. Keeper of the Bright Staff, the Sacred Lance, grant me the gifts of Clairvoyance, creativity, youth, energy, and love.
Charge me with Right Action so that my Magic may come to pass.
This is the meaning of the Sun at Midnight. Oh Guardians of the Watchtowers of the South, appear! Motivate and empower my working tonight.

The Correspondences for the South may now be seen to include:
Elemental Fire and heat
Salamanders
The sense of Sight
Roses, summer flowers
Green trees and grass
The Sacred Staff
Youth
Sexuality and Romance
Blood and bloodlines
Clawed animals and cold blooded reptiles that love the sun
Action, energy
Light
Its colors are red, orange, white, or green

See how it works?

Watchtower of the West

Grail Maiden
Grail Maiden

We move on to the West and raising the cup, call out:
Guardians of the Watchtowers of the West, I beseech you to grant me your presence at my Circle tonight. Spirits of the oceans, rivers, waterfalls, and rain, wash into my Circle tonight with your cleansing power. In the gathering twilight, as the sun sinks below the sea, the dying light reflects in the red-gold leaves of the trees. Undines, sing your siren songs from the rocks as the waves crash around you. The cauldron of the ocean bubbles with froth and phosphorescence. The Goddess of Love and Healing walks upon the tide with the evening star on her brow and the horns of the rising moon at her back. Come quietly along the path strewn with fallen leaves, sit around the Sacred Well and gaze into the waters of memory, for the Path that has been trodden is longer than that which comes before.
Swan, Pelican, heron, sea tortoise, dolphin, whale, all those who live between earth and sea and sky, enter my Circle with your shape shifting powers of transition and transformation. Fill me with the longing of poets, make me one with the rhythms of the tides of nature, give me the taste of salt and the smell of decay among the roses and the trees, so that I may know the fleetingness of life. Send me away on a ship with a purple sail to Avalon, where the deeper Mysteries are found. Come, Guardians of the Watchtowers of the West, and charge my Circle with Enchantment.

Sirens, Burne-Jones
Sirens, Burne-Jones


Again, the Correspondences for the West and Spiritual Water are:
Elemental water and tides
This resonates with the Moon as Mistress of the Sea and Tides
Undines, sirens, mermaids
Autumn
Sunset, twilight
Cauldron of Death and Rebirth, Holy Grail
Sea creatures and water birds, amphibians
Ships and boats
Poetry, dreams, imagination, memory
Middle Age, experience, reflection, nostalgia
Shape Shifting, transformation, transition
Healing, cleansing, letting go
Music
Senses of taste and smell
Colors: blue, aqua, silver, rose pink, gold

Watchtower of the North

Now we come to the North, direction of Magic, Mystery, and Manifestation.
Raise your Pentacle, dish or mirror and call out:

Guardians of the Watchtowers of the North, I beseech you to grant me your presence at my Circle tonight. As the snow falls upon the forest,  the North wind howls down form the mountains,  and the Road of Stars stretches across the moonless sky, bring me your Divine presence tonight. The lake has frozen so that it shines like a mirror and in that mirror we gaze and see our death.  In the darkness we hear the cry of the wolf, the bear sleeps and dreams in his cave, the white stag runs through the dark forest to harvest the souls of the Wyze. Welcome, gnomes and dwarves! Teach me the ways of the Underworld, lead me to the Underground Halls of Faery so that I might dance the cold winter away.  Show me where to find treasure that will last in the Upper World as my wishes are intensified and shaped into matter.
The Goddess of Death comes out from behind the tall stones. Carrying a mirror incised with a pentagram, she points the way down the winding path that goes beside the White Trees, and leads into the Labyrinth. There the long Dance of Death begins, the dark banquet among the ancestors. We sleep, we dream, we rest beside the flickering fire, we tell the tales of old, and turn about to gestate another life. Come Guardians of the Watchtowers of the North, enter my Circle with your power to shape unseen forces into tangible forms. Let me feel the cold, the wind, the mountain, the tree, the softness of white fur, the solidity of my body in time and space. Empower manifestation now!

Correspondences for the North:
Earth
Winter
Night
Dark Moon
Horned and Hoofed animals, white animals, animals that hibernate
Goddess. of Death and Rebirth
The Mirror
Ice and Fire
Forest, mountain, rocks, caves, crystals
Sense of touch
Gravity, solidity. differentiation
Labyrinth
Gnomes and Dwarves
Hidden treasure
Pentagram

Learning to Invoke the Spirits of the Directions

These invocations are but a guide; it is not necessary to memorize them. Rather, once the Correspondences are learned by heart, and their imagery internalized, you will be able to make your invocations up as you go along.

Once the Four Directions are invoked, your Circle is protected and charged.

***

There are three more directions to consider. Whereas the Four Directions create a horizontal space, flat in the Earth, the addition of the Center, Above and Below establishes a sphere.
With these Seven Directions around you, anchoring you in space and timelessness, you will already have shifted your consciousness into the Magical Realms.

The remaining Three Directions will be the subject of the next article on Magical Pattern Making.

Fairies Circle
Fairies Circle

To be updated on my Magical methods, subscribe to my email list right away!

Post from: WINTERSPELLS: Life on the Magical Path, Legacy of the Witchblood