WINTERSPELLS: Life on the Magical Path

Psychic: My Life in Two Worlds

by Sylvia Browne

Review by Aline deWinter

I have happily lived without a television for over twenty years, nor have I much interest in celebrities and celebrity biographies. Up until a year ago, I had no idea who Sylvia Browne was until someone on Facebook posted a video of her on Montel William’s Show striking out during a psychic reading. There are many of these videos on Youtube suggesting that Sylvia is not all that accurate and may even be a fraud. When I was asked to review her new book, Psychic: My Life in Two Worlds,  I was reluctant to take it on, but as always, I thought I might learn something so agreed to do it.

I was pleasantly surprised. Sylivia does have extraordinary abilities. My own paranormal experiences have given me the insight to know that her many stories are genuine. She has a good sense of humor and lot of wisdom to share. There is also great comfort here for those who have painful questions about the nature of reality and its impact on them.

Sylvia’s  overall philosophy  is summed up in the first paragraph:

“I believe that before we came here from the Other Side to start a new incarnation, we write very detailed charts for out lifetimes to help guarantee that we accomplish the goals that we set for ourselves. We choose our parents, our siblings, our friends, our enemies, our spouses, our children, our careers, our assets, our challenges, our health issues, our best and worst qualities, the best and worst qualities in those who are closest to us, and certainly the timing of it all.

As I look back on this long strange, complicated life I’ve lived, I just have one question about the chart I wrote:

What the hell was I thinking?”

I can ditto that last remark.

Dark Entities

Sylvia begins with a discussion of Dark Entities, a theme that resurfaces throughout the book. Her mother was a terribly abusive person and cast a shadow over Sylvia’s childhood.  There is a truth that says most people are born psychic and most lose their psychic abilities in adolescence. People who grow up in violent and dysfunctional families tend to retain these abilities because of the need to constantly monitor the safety of the environment, to avoid danger. Children of these families also learn to read people quickly—-decipher facial expressions and body language, even temperature in a state of constant hyper-vigilance.

This is a tangent here, but if that is the case. Safe, secure, loving families do not tend to make psychics.  Because of the abilities retained to deal with childhood terrors, most psychics will always feel like outsiders, especially from mainstream society, and will often continue to be attacked by those who have abusive agendas that they try to hide.
We can see how our primal ancestors needed these heightened abilities in order to survive in the wilderness. The rise of walled cities must have rendered those talents obsolete to a degree and our modern way of life, so tragically cut off form nature, has made them seem fantastical, illusory. Out of this reductionist “sticking to facts” comes the tendency of some to want to “stone the witch” by plastering her failures all over the internet while ignoring the huge body of successes she has had. No psychic is 100%. Reading for people is a huge responsibility because everyone who comes to a psychic wants to believe and is often looking for comfort and reassurance. Doing this work on the public stage is very risky business and the damage cannot be undone. On the other hand, it is foolish to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Mistakes have less to do with the validity of psychic ability, and everything to do with the current expectation that psychic;s perform circus tricks on cue.

Thanks to people like Sylvia Browne, we have records of the capabilities of the human mind and spirit, and a track record of someone who has worked magic with millions of people. Whether she is telling the truth or not, I have no idea, but many of her insights are useful.

Real Life as a Psychic

By being candid about the peaks and valleys in her life, Sylvia  also  strips away a lot of the false glamor that makes psychic abilities seem enviable. Most genuine psychics know the dark side of their “gift”. It is not the  life of an Elf in  “The Lord of the Rings” or a wizard in “Harry Potter”. We are often the target of much more mundane and ignorant forces and are subject to the same societal challenges as everyone else.

I particularly enjoy Sylvia’s many ghost stories and her discussion of their value as an indication of life beyond the physical—-the spiritual life that we experience when we go out of body, as Sylvia has done many times. her discussions of Past Lives was also very interesting. She does hypnotic regressions and tapes every session. She then takes the information, names, dates, places, and often finds out that they are extremely accurate. This is a valuable confirmation that we do indeed move between lifetimes as specific personalities.

Mediumship

Sylvia is a medium, in other words, she communicates with the dead. She is also a trance channel—-allowing herself to be the mouthpiece for her guide Francine, who does psychic readings sometimes in front of large crowds.  Sylvia claims to have inherited this talent from her Grandmother Ada Coil who guided her in her psychic development since her early childhood. Her formal training in Spiritualism is obvious in the formulaic way she works—-grasping for names and initials of names in the way they all do it. This manner of working began with the Fox Sisters in the 1800’s and it possible Sylvia’s grandma Ada also studied these techniques and passed them on to Sylvia. Has her family been psychic for 300 years?

Not all psychics are the same. Sylvia Browne’s way has been to work with external spirits. This fascinates me as I am a completely different type of psychic. Sylvia’s spirit guides have done some amazing things through her. I highly recommend this book as an interesting and honest exploration of a famous psychic’s life, the lessons she has learned, and how she walks between the worlds.

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In folk believe system of Serbian people exist very interesting myths who tell us how some people gained their unusual powers, intelligence, strength etc. Actually, by people believes almost every Serbian hero through history was dragon man. That is how people have explained their heroic acts, wisdom and powers, if they had some.

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The problem is that by witches’ myths, witches explain origin of their powers and their blood lines in same manner. All people know that but no one wants to say that loudly because that is heresy. Witches can not be in same line with cult heroes. This problem could be even bigger because common name for male witches aka warlocks in Serbia is dragon men.
In Serbian mythology we can clearly see that there are at least three different kinds of Dragons. First kind would be dragons who are identified as meteors on night sky and they are considered to be a personifications of fire. Second kind are reptile dragons or serpent dragons who are very similar to those who we can find in Western Europe. By people believes they can be very dangerous. In most cases they are winged serpents but they have intelligence and they behave similar as dragon-people. Actually they share same capabilities. Third kinds are dragon people and they are kinds who interested us here. One old epic song tells us follow:

As many Serbian heroes there is,
All have been brought up by faeries,
And many have the dragons for fathers…

So by myths some of those heroes were Mislos Obilic, Zmaj Ognjeni Vuk, Relja Bosnjanin, Banovic Sekula, Banovic Strahinja, Ljutica Bogdan, Kraljevic Marko…

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The question is how those people had becomes dragon people? That could happen in three ways. First would be that ones mother could sleep with dragon. Second is that ones father could sleep with fairy and third is that fairy has nursed (give her breast milk) one when he was a baby.

Titania—Cowper

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If someone becomes dragon-man because his mother was fairy or fairy has nursed him, we can clearly see that faeries are female dragons! Actually, in Serbian traditions there are several kinds of faeries. We have, lets say “little ones”, fairies from nature, protectors of some springs, lakes, trees and Great Ones about whom we are talking here. By old myths those Great Ones are daughters of Adam and Eve whom God has cursed and they became something like semi women very similar to fallen angels from Book of Enoch. By some stories they even have animal legs which are hidden by their dresses. They have their Queen and her name is Jerisavlja. Very often people consider that queen of faeries is Forest Mother and her nick name is Forest Witch or Great Witch. We can find that in many old incantation by whom people had try to contact her. We must emphasize that those faeries are not some gentle creatures from pagan fairytales but very dangerous ones who have extreme power, magic knowledge, bad temper etc. In many stories we can see how they punish some character just because he has better voice or he has seen them. Beside that they are sexually lustful and they have manner to sleep with young boys, shepherds or warriors. However, they do not like to be in marriage and they do not like family life. Actually, by myths the only Serbian King who was in marriage with fairy was Vukasin so all of his children were dragon people.

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Dragons are sexually lustful too. Even today at the east Serbia people believe that dragons had manner that at night visit beautiful girls. Very often, by people believes, those girls gave birth and their baby was to be dragon man. What nobody tells out loud is that if baby is a boy, people will call him dragon man and if baby is a girl, everybody will call her witch. What those girls and boys have in common is that both will have magic powers, knowledge and what is the most important capability to, by their own will, induct trance. Why? Because they are dragons’ and faeries’ children, so they are just a half human. Maybe they look like humans, but their souls and true beings are totally different. Usually people say that only persons with some capabilities can see how they really look like, until they are in their bodies, but everyone can see that as they leave their bodies. In most cases their souls were described as in animal shape or mythic animal shape. For instance in one old epic song Serbian duke Banovic Sekula lives his body in the shape of dragon with six wings.

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From historic data we can clearly see that dragons do not chose girls perchance. Those girls are witches or they are from witch families. For instance, professor Stevan Dordjevic have founded in city archive of town Zajecar that society accused one young girl that she was sleeping with dragon in village Osljan in 1935. She was a witch and she was famous by fortune telling. Later in year 1946 there was another accusation and then people accused young daughter of famous male witch Krsta that she was sleeping with dragon. We must say that people usually had nothing against dragons and their children but they believed that it was too dangerous if dragon stayed to long in their neighborhood because he could provoke drought. The only reason why dragons stay in one region to long are girls.

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The question is who those dragons are and what is their origin? With regret we must say that Serbian ethnology has failed to give us straight answer to that question. Mainly there are two theories. By first dragons are some animals, usually serpents, fishes or sheep that became dragons because they have lived too long. For instance, if some serpent lives hundred years it will become dragon in one moment, by people believes. Second theory speaks more about mysterious dragons that sleep with women. By it those dragons represents mythical ancestor or ancestors. Reason why scientists consider that those dragons could be ancestors is that because they are in too many blood lines, especially in those with “blue blood”. That tells us about why they are so important in people’s belief system. However, it doesn’t say who those ancestors are.

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We have had the opportunity to speak with several authentic witches in rural regions of the country about that subject and found out what their traditions tell us about those dragons. So from several similar stories we have compiled one which we will tell here.

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By witches’ myths, dragons have fallen all over the Balkan many centuries ago. They have fallen with something which looked like meteors shower. Because of that, even today witches and peasants connect dragons with meteors and that is noted in Serbian ethnology as we already see. Some of those dragons have fallen in rivers Danube, Timok and Pek and other in forests and mountains. Those who had fallen in rivers have continued to live in them under the water. They look like male mermaids, they have their middle long, big circle eyes, wide nose and long canine toots. Those who had fallen in forests inhabited big trees, mainly old beeches with holes. How they look like is hard to say because some witches claim that they are just big lights and other that they are anthropomorphic serpents with wings and that they become big light only when they start to fly. Those who have fallen in mountains inhabited caves and they look like previous dragons. As we can conclude, all of them are same dragons but after they fall in matter they take different shapes depending of their new habitation.

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It is very difficult to explain how witches percept them. Most of them claim that those dragons are material but that they are more like material spirits. They are not “dough” and “firmly” like us. Let’s say that they are more etheric. Because of that only some people can see them. Most often those people are witches, shamans or some similar groups which have extraordinary capabilities. However, dragons can hide themselves even to those groups if they want to, because they are very powerful. As some of my informants have told me dragons reviled themselves only to the woman with whom they wanted to sleep, people with whom they wanted some other kind of contact or people could see them accidentally. One of my informant explained me that very plasticly and described me that if I perchance cought the woman in the moment when she is sleeping with dragon I could see only her and her legs in the air.

Fuseli

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As we can see, after their fall dragons have started to seduce women and sleep with them. That was not hard task for them because they are shape shifters too. So when they want to seduce a woman they take appearance of a handsome man and seduce them. That was how it all stared. Children from these relationships become half human half dragons. What is the most important thing, is that by that process those children have inherited some powers and capabilities of their fathers. That means that they have some basic powers, and those powers were different from person to person but all of them would have one ultimate power, and that power was “different” souls, because of which they would have capabilities to leave their bodies when ever they wanted.
Because of that “power” all of them are capable to be in contact with hidden world and hidden forces which could be visible to them only when they leave their bodies. That contact provides them additional magic knowledge. During their night flyes they can be in contact with faeries, dragons, ancestors etc.

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By witches’ myths that dragon blood line has managed to preserve itself through centuries. It is not necessary that every family has a woman who is in relationship with dragon at present; it is enough that family has a long departed dragon man or witch and that family would have dragon blood in their veins even today. Some members of that family could revile themselves as witches or dragons men but not everyone although they all do have dragon blood. Usually that happens when they are young and when they start spontaneously to fall in trance. That is the time when they get their initiations and when they discover hidden world of faeries, dragons and ancestors.

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As we can see dragons could be mythic ancestor as ethnologists have sad. However, as we can see, those dragons are mythic ancestor only to some people not all. Those people who have dragons as their ancestors will have unusual powers and capabilities. They would be people with witch blood.

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Moreover, it is not unusual that dragons are subject of witch cults. About one of these cults we have already talked in one my previous article (The Cauldron No128, Serbian Witchcraft, p32-33). Shortly told, in east Serbia exists a big tree in witch “Morning Star”(Lucifer) or Danica is Serbian, lives after his fall. That tree is object of cult. All local witches respect that tree or better said what is in that tree. They work with Danica, it is their source of knowledge and power but they do not worship it! What is interesting here is that Lucifer is connected with dragons because he is Star that had fallen and he lives in tree as others dragons do. Other name for meteors in Serbia is falling stars and all dragons are connected with stars. It is very clear that he is a subject of cult because he is more important then the other. So we can see some hierarchy here among dragons.

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When I ask my informants where those dragons have came from, I only got one answer-sky. Because they are connected with stars we can conclude that they have come from space. It is important to say that people don’t see them as aliens but as very old creatures from ancient times. So who are they? It is very hard to say. However, all what we can conclude from all of this is that this stories are very similar to those from Book of Enoch I. We know for sure that the Book of Enoch I(it talk about watchers, fallen angels and how they slept with women and their half angelic offspring) was very important among Balkan Gnostic Bogumils and even more that the Book of Enoch II was found in Serbia in Belgrade. Stories about dragons and witch blood which we have found among Serbian witches are very similar to those from Book of Enoch although they do not talk about fallen angels but dragons.

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The questions is if angels and dragons are the same? It hard to tell but we think that even if these stories are not the same they must have mutual origin. We know that stories about dragons in this region are older then Book of Enoch so our personal opinion is that angels have taken places of dragons after arrival of Christianity and Gnosticism. At the bottom line appearance of fallen angels is very similar to appearance of fallen dragons in the way they behave. It is clear that both of them represent same creatures which have fallen from the sky but that they have different names through different moments in history and through different cultures. What is more important is that those stories explain origin of blood lines of those people who have some powers. In Serbian witch stories we can find out why those people have these powers and what these powers are.

Radomir Ristic

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Excerpt from The Roses of the Moon and Hungarian Mythology

I haven’t been writing the blog as much as I should because I have had to focus on getting my novel The Roses of the Moon ready for publication in September 2010. I have deadlines….

Writing a novel is journey on so many levels that trading a lifetime of travel for writing has not been too difficult. It gets to be time to start using life experiences,  gleaning the lessons, and sharing the wonder of adventure while taking a much needed rest. My feet are getting itchy again, so next chance I get away I go!

The Roses of the Moon was begun in Autumn of 2007 and was written in one month clocking in at 50,000 words. It was originally called The Golden Stairs and was based on the Grimm’s Fairy Tale, Rapunzel, told  from the point of view of the witch. I had done illustrations for Rapunzel while living in London in a rose covered haunted house. At the time I was meeting many people from the Balkans and Turkey and got the idea that, though we think Grimm’s Fairy Tales are German, some may actually be from central Europe as many of them they have that kind of dark quality associated with vampires and werewolves. This notion inspired me  to set  The Golden Stairs in Royal Hungary during the Ottoman Wars. In Grimm’s Rapunzel, the young mother-to-be desires the rampion growing in the witch’s garden. The witch desires the child and uses the mother’s desires against her to take the baby when it is born.  With this in mind, I made my witch the creator of irresistible enchanted gardens full  of magical plants similar to those in Nathaniel Hawthorn’s Rappucini’s Daughter.

The Golden Stairs begins with the childhood of the witch, Marcsa Virag, growing up in a Ghormanghast-like castle in the mountains of northern Hungary where her evil mother figure, the Countess Orzsebet, practices Black Magic in the manner of the famous Blood countess,  Erzebet Bathory. The first half of the book is about Marcsa Virag’s confrontation with the legacy of her mother, the Ottoman Turks sack the castle in the middle of the book, and after that Marcsa Virag lives alone in the ruins building her gardens. That is where the Rapunzel story begins.

The novel grew to over 100,000 words. My editor suggested that I change the title,  cut the book in half and make the two stories into separate books and go on in the manner of a family saga.  She also suggested that I flesh out the background mythology.

Hotoke Sama

Writing as Magical Practice

Magic has been defined as the “Art of changing consciousness at will.” When a writer wants to create a fictitious world, he or she taps into the subconscious mind and calls it up from the deep mind. You never really know where the images and ideas come from, and its quiet astonishing that these visions arrive at all when you think about it. There were glimpses of the background myth in the original version, but I hadn’t focused on it but on the outer layer of Marcsa Virag’s story. When I did go deeper into the mythology of my alternate world, I was surprised to find how deep it went and that the story was very close to the actual ancient creation myth of Hungary.This is not the first time intuition and imagination tapped into the truth, but it is a very strong example of how an open, attuned mind can work.

A few people have asked me to share this with them so I thought I would.

In this post, I will give the very start of the creation myth I made up for the novel. in the second blog post, I will re-print an article by Radomir Ristic  about the Central European Dragon people.

Creation Myth of Castle Szeppasszony in The Roses of the Moon

Marcsa Virag has found a book called The Book of the Red Queen and the White Queen. The story of those two Queens hold a key to who she is, and why she has had to endure the things she has. This is the opening of that ancient book found in the library of a monastery carved into the mountain in the time before time began.

Book of the Red Queen and the White Queen

Here is Recorded the Creation of the World

Before Death was Born

In the time before time, Earth gave birth to the Moon. And in the very place where the Moon first entered the darkness of the night sky, a terrible upheaval was wrought in Heaven whose ruler, the Sun, now had a rival.

Fearing that his sole rulership of the stars and planets was to be undermined by this usurper Moon, Sun and the Angels held a great council where they gave birth to War. The Moon must be killed before its wan, silvery rays weakened the cosmos by stealing the light of the Sun.

Some Angels argued that the Moon might offer some benefit to the Sun by keeping watch over the darkness. It would merely reflect the light of the Sun to Earth and relieve the blackness of the night with its much dimmer light. The Angels who did not trust the Moon shouted the others down, saying the Sun’s ancestors, the Stars, gave light to the darkness and nothing more was needed.

Gradually these arguments broke the Angles into opposing camps;, the ones who sided with the one and only Sun, and those who had fallen in love with the Moon.

The new child, War, grasped Heaven in its talons. The Angels who sided with the Moon became rebels and used the light of the Moon to secretly attack the Angels of the Sun. But alas!  The Angels of the Sun called upon their ruler to blast the Moon with a light so bright that the Moon lit up like a beacon and was made to reveal the hiding places of the her Angels. The Angels of the Sun renewed their attack on the Angels of the Moon and cast them out of Heaven. They fell down into the hole in the Earth left open by the birth of the Moon. Sun proclaimed the Angels of the Moon to be Devils, and their new home in the Earth he called Hell.

The Angels of the Moon felt betrayed by she whom they had loved and ever after called her fickle. The Moon wept because of this, all through the nights, watering the earth with her tears. She watched over her champions,  bound by love and desire for redemption.

His sole rulership of the universe besmirched, the Sun fled higher up into the sky, leaving the Moon to oversee the Fallen Ones in the center of the earth. Because of her love and desire, Moon gazed upon the earth and pulled it to her, and in sorrow for her betrayal, she hid her face and pulled away. And because of this, all unwittingly, the Moon gave birth to Time. With the passage of Time, the power of the Moon increased. Her light fluctuated as she observed the affects of her love and tears upon the earth with great emotion. The Angels of the Sun tried constantly to imprison the Moon in the low hills, blackening the night but for the undying Stars.  But soon, the Angels of the Moon released their Mistress from the hills to shine in Heaven once again.

All that lived on the Earth grew strong under the Moon. Her protection in the night gave birth to Sleep. The Moon married Sleep and they gave birth to Dreams, Dreams brought forth things; the tears of the Moon became the waters that gave life to the things of Dreams such as Trees and Flowers, metals and jewels. Out of the Birthplace of the Moon, the great hole in the Earth, there grew the First Tree and it wept.

The Birthplace of the Moon is the darkest place on Earth.

The first upheaval began deep within the earth. Shelves of rock shifted, caves opened, waters gushed forth, and the land was shoved and levered towards the sky forming ridges and deep valleys. A wave of mountains rose and undulated like a serpent finally solidifying in the crescent shape of an old moon. Curled in the topmost horn of that moon was a ring of high mountains. The fallen Angels of Moon climbed out of the womb of the Earth and gathered along the tops of those mountains like thunderclouds and desired to possess the land. The Angels who stayed in the underground built majestic palaces of out of the jewels and precious metals of the Earth and practiced great magic.

Soon, waters sprang up through the ground, filling crannies and gorges and spilling over the land. Two wellheads spurted up into that O of mountains from which two streams ran, one to the east and the other to the west. Many new and wondrous creatures came out of the streams that began to walk upon the land. As the waters of the streams grew deeper and their currents thrummed over the rocks, two identical Queens were deposited on the shore and they were Giants.

A grove of trees grew up the hill away from the streams. Pure white they were and under their leafy branches, the Queens made their dwelling.

To be continued….

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If you have couple of hours, this video is so worth it.

I am a late comer to paying attention to 2012, mostly because of my Aquarian dislike of jumping on bandwagons. But the Entrance of the Pluto into Capricorn is having a profound effect on me and in ways I never experienced changes before.

In a strange way my life just feels different.I’ve been through this before– its like I am still in the same building but looking out a different window at a different view that is nonetheless part of the same landscape.

In this video Michale Tsarion talks about the changes involved with Pluto being at galactic center of the universe in 2007 — in the late degrees of Sagittarius, the spirit of rebellion and the power of personal sovereignty in a time when the most evil people in the world are attempting to throw the world into chaos and install their one world government.

If the conspiracy theories are true — and I am beginning to believe that they are — and these people, these self proclaimed Gods, the so-called Illuminati, are indeed invoking low vibrational powers and entities of destruction, than the best defense is to vibrate at frequencies that are so high and fast as to be out of their reach. This is done by igniting the divine light in the heart which comes from being in harmony with nature.  Enough people with strong  heart-centered lightbodies that cannot be penetrated will raise the vibration of the planet and protect the natural world the evil ones are so intent in destroying We will lift the creation up by its roots and thereby thwart the bloodthirsty spirits these illuminati want to install.

Michael makes a profound point when he says that some people actually delight in visions of destruction, death and the wasteland. For anyone who is sensitive, artistic and a lover of beauty this has been the great pain of life in this century—the steamroller of ugly commercialism killing everything in its wake as dropping bombs on the land. They feed their deities with the blood of children—the children whose parents send them off to war without a second thought and will fight for their right to do so. There are so many levels to this.

I agree with Michael that 2012 could go either way. They one world government will be ushered in, or we can wake up, reclaim our own divine rights and raise the frequency of our thoughts and relationship to the creation. I hope its the second.

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Legacy of the Witchblood and Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches

“Lasher, for the wind that you send that lashes the grasslands, for the wind that lashes the leaves from the trees.”

In her classic first volume of the  Chronicles of the Mayfair Witches, The Witching Hour, Anne Rice bases the witchy status of her characters on their relationship to a discarnate spirit called Lasher. Conjured through the veil in the 17th century by Scottish Merry Begot,  Suzanne of the Mayfair, Lasher’s presence is  heralded by the branches of the trees and bushes lashing the wind.

Suzanne’s unwise choice to dabble in magic got her burned in Donnelaith, but not before Lasher fell in love with Suzanne’s beautiful daughter, Deborah. He gave her a bottomless purse of gold and  a large emerald pendant with his name inscribed on the back to be passed down to all the Mayfair witches. For all his gifts, Lasher’s witches suffer tragic untimely deaths and madness. Deborah was burned at the stake for witchcraft in France.

Symbolism of the Emerald

The emerald is the classic stone of Faery and has many occult associations, not the least being the color of the green earth and the favored eye color of Faery beings.The Holy Grail is associated with the emerald that fell from Lucifer’s crown when he fell to earth after the Battle of the Rebel Angels in Heaven. It signifies the Emerald Tablet of Thrice Great Hermes and the philosophers stone.

In each each succeeding generation of Mayfairs, the spirit, Lasher, would attach himself to a female child gifted with the “sight”, granting her the emerald and a bottomless purse in exchange for the energy he needs to gradually acquire a physical body. Sometimes Lasher is referred to as the Devil—-the traditional King of all witches—- Lucifer.

The Question of Witchblood

Though The Witching Hour is a work of fiction, thought by most people to be a fantasy, Anne Rice got me thinking about my own inheritance of the Witchblood.

*In modern witchcraft, Witchblood is usually thought of as bloodline stemming from ancestors who practiced the Craft. It is a formal initiation that is passed down from parent to child. My abilities did not come to down through a line of practicing witches, at least not consciously.

*In Celtic Faery Tradition, Witchblood can be the result of mediating Faery—-the archetypal Realm of the Ancestors. If done long enough, your ancestors “wake up in your blood”. Since the ancestors  of most, if not all peoples of earth, were  pagans, then any cunning craft or magical abilities  they had will come back to life in the Faery Seer’s blood.

*One thing that Anne Rice suggests is that the mark of a witch is the possession of psychic powers and the ability to see spirits. I agree that those abilities are all of a piece. What is it about these abilities that make one a witch? What is a witch anyway?

I think a witch is someone walks on the earth in a sacred manner and all of nature responds. Especially spirits. Like animals, they know who comes from the heart and who doesn’t. But if a spirit is summoned for selfish purposes—well this a realm where indeed you get what you give.

How Do You See Spirits?

I have been seeing spirits for as long as I can remember. I grew up in the woods and most of the spirits I saw were spirits of those woods. I saw the past life of the land roll out like film reels. I saw ghosts. I never feared these beings, rather I thought they were marvelous and they intrigued me. I never questioned why I could see them, I just did. I also knew by instinct that very few other people had these visions.

In The Mayfair Witches, Lasher reveals his agenda to Rowan Mayfair. She is the thirteenth witch in the family line and thus the one who is strong enough to help him to gain what he wants most profoundly, a human form.

This notion of the witch having the strength to assist a spirit to manifest got me re-thinking about how we see spirits.

The spirits exist independently of us, whether we see them or not. Since our age of gross Materialism, very few people see them any more. Some people call the ability to the view the Unseen, a “gift”, or a special dispensation from God or the Devil depending on your view. Most people who think this don’t have it.

(I think Anne Rice has it…)
I always thought this clairvoyance was just part of a package  with a sensitive, nervous temperament and was kind of enhanced power of  creative imagination.
Then I thought it had to do with innate spirituality. Some us are born seers, people who in ancient cultures would have been members of a priest class.
Karma was another explanation, previous lifetimes of spiritual practice that opened the Third Eye.

These were the ideas I played while reading The Witching Hour..

I also thought it might have been a genetic inheritance from my French, Irish and Iroquois ancestors—–natural mediumistic races  all. I also thought of trance mediums oozing ectoplasm and causing spirits to materialize and bump the table up and down.

Now that might have at the back of Anne Rice’s mind when she was writing her book, among other things.

After reading The Mayfair Witches, I have another idea.

Spiritual Frequency as Materializing Force

Anne Rice suggests that Lasher’s ability to materialize is strengthened as each succeeding Mayfair witch grows stronger. The tide of passed-on experience and Lasher’s interference in the gene pool of the Mayfairs by pairing the most psychic family members to conceive the next child, increases the power of the new witch to bring him through.

What this means to me is that my ability to “see” spirits may not be a “sight” based thing at all. Rather,  I emit the right energetic frequency that allows discarnate spirits to densify in my presence.

When the Tuatha deDanaan came through my house back in 1997-98, they came as holograms —-complete and life-sized  3-dimensional light bodies dressed in the clothing of 12th century France. By that time, I had been working as a full time  energy healer in the long wake of a full blown kundalini awakening in 1989. My frequencies were sky rockets.

This level of frequency can only be attained when one is aligned to the vibration of Divine Love and the Soul of the World. It comes from the heart where no malice can be exist because it is instantly neutralized at that vibrational level. This is why I know the Faeries are not evil.

So—-did I simply lend the necessary vibrations to these Faeries that allowed them to take on material substance?
Would they have been coming through my house even if I couldn’t have seen them?
Or were they attracted to my space because of the frequencies, and knew I would be able to lend them form—and see them?

When they ordered me to start painting the Grail Keepers Tarot, I asked them why they chose me. I had lapsed as far as art was concerned and wasn’t good enough for such a project. They told me I was the only one who could do it, because I could see them and they could see me.

Children and the Sight

That still doesn’t explain how I, or anyone, could help them appear when I was a child.
The time of early childhood is a more likely time for these experiences. Is that because the purity of the child’s heart and thus vibration is so much stronger than an adults? Are many more of us born with the Witchblood than we realize?

Part of the lore of Faery is that they love to materialize. They seek to share with us this creation of life on earth. Anne Rice’s Lasher is a trickster figure, not really evil so much as corrupted by desire and ambition learned from his contact with human beings. This is also an interesting idea. The pure spirit is innocent. Physicality exerts it own influences. In Faery Tradition we say that the Faery being takes on the form we project upon it. We have the ability, in creating the conditions that allow them to materialize, to also influence their natures.

It has been my observation that many people who are raised, even today, in cultures where magic is practiced and the spirits are corrupted, flock into Christian churches for protection. They’ve been burned! The trouble with doing spells for worldly things has to do with all the desires and guilts and unclear emotions that human beings bring to the spirits. If the spirits  screw it up and your magic backfires, it is because that is the energy you were exchanging with them. Love begets love, malice begets malice, and even trickier, lust begets lust and all the Seven Deadlies.

Just like Lasher…

My Faeries were never evil, but then I didn’t expect anything of them except that they show me what they wanted all of us to know.

There was a time, I believe, when many many more people, if not all people could bring spirits through. The advent of the Industrial revolution and its rampant destruction and disregard for the natural world have not only closed our inner eyes, our minds, and darkened our knowledge of our origins on planet earth, but has closed the portals to Faery. I think witchblood flows through all of us. I think it is the life force of the earth. The sad part about losing it is that we are out of harmony and taking everything else with us.

For a really great blog post about The Witching Hour by Anne Rice check out Caroline Tully’s blog Necropolis

necropolisnow.blogspot.com

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The Hunt of the Unicorn Tapestries

The Hunt of the Unicorn Tapestries comprise an allegory of the fate of the pure soul in the world. The Unicorn has often been referred to as a Christ figure, but its meaning is much older than Christianity, for the image of a Beast, no matter how mythical, would not be used to symbolize the Son of God unless that God existed at the most primal, pre-conscious level, deep in the Soul of the World. When one meditates on the sequence of images in the Hunt of the Unicorn Tapestries, it looks more like an ancient Fertility Rite enacting the sexual awakening of the World. This has more to do with the Medieval Courts of Love than the Passion of Christ.

The innocence of the Unicorn is signified, not only by its clean, white coat, but by its single, uncloven, horn. One horn suggests unity,  it  cannot be entered, it wards off intrusion. Dual horns, in this context, suggest that that which was whole is now split. The possessor of two horns lives in the world of opposites, of two sexes, and therefore is concerned with procreation. That which is split then seeks reunion through the birth of the third, mirror image of itself, and so the regenerative cycle goes on.

That is why the Unicorn can only be tamed by a virgin, for the Virgin is undefiled, unitary, and protected. The Men of the World cannot open the Unicorn’s body unless he lies in the lap of the Virgin who comes forward voluntarily with an aura of sacrifice. The symbolism of the single fertilizing horn in a Virgin’s lap is clear. In the case of the Unicorn, there is a divine fertilization. Only when the Soul, (the Virgin) is torn away from her union with the Divine, can she be joined with man. Therefore the men, who seek to re-discover lost innocence, and because they are of the World, cannot value purity as inner possession only, and kill the Virgin’s Divine connection so she will be available for them in the world of duality.

This interpretation suggests that there is an alternate allegory to that of the passion of Christ possible here, something to do with the Virgin as World Soul in union with the Divine, and the Unicorn as the mystic seeking return to the source.It is also a Creation myth that shows the Fall into duality without which earthly life would not be possible.

For me, the quest for the Unicorn, and these beautiful tapestries, evoke great Mystery, so they are part of my Mysterious Domain…which is of course, in my imagination…

A Mystery is Sought

The Hunters represent primal man, crude, blind, and driven by base desires without the light of consciousness. They  enter the forest to hunt, but find themselves on the path of a great Mystery that will  instill a sense of belonging to something larger than themselves. Only a powerful encounter with the Otherworld will be shocking enough to awaken them.

They come upon a Unicorn dipping his horn in a fountain.

The  Hunters  break out of the woods and find a garden where all the animals, both hunter and hunted, live in peace and harmony together. It is the Garden of Paradise before the Fall,  before the intrusion of Man.

A beautiful, pure white Unicorn dips his horn into the Waters of Life, both to purify them, and fertilize the Earth with his divine power.

The Waters springing up from the Underworld  let us know we are in the Realm of Faery…

The Unicorn leaps over a stream

The Unicorn sees the Hunters and leaps over the stream that runs from the fountain. In the old traditions, bodies of water, especially rivers and streams, are crossing points between the mortal world and the Otherworld of Faery. It is interesting to note that while the Unicorn was at the fountain, he was safe in Paradise where the Hunters were not able to act against him. By leaping over the stream, is he not, therefore, running toward danger,  straight into the spears and arrows? If that is the case, it would seem his  sacrifice is voluntary, as all true sacrifices must be.
But why?

The Unicorn defends himself

The Unicorn defends himself by attacking the dogs. Is this not a representation of how the most pure, Divine power must seek protection from the defilement of the basest instincts of Man symbolized by the dogs?  In the old fairy stories, animals often stood for the gross sexual appetites, unrefined and undisciplined  by the consciousness of the higher mind. The idea of the tail wagging the dog comes to mind when you think of people who chase after sexual pleasure, or release, irregardless of the consequences.

Rather than defending himself, could the Unicorn be protecting the Virgin? Could he be trying to prevent the primitive Hunters despoiling her with rude weapons and coarse sexuality? For the Unicorn is the Virgin’s lover is he not?

The Ladies know what it means to capture the Unicorn

The Ladies of the Palace know what the mystery is and how it must climax. For they too have been virgins in love with the Unicorn.

A Virgin Tames the Unicorn

This is event is always referred to as the Virgin taming the Unicorn, but it not be seen another way?  It is really an image of the Unicorn laying hos head in the Virgin’s lap. While lying there between her legs, he is killed by the Hunters. Perhaps the Unicorn lays down its life to protect the Virgin from the instinctual, untamed, and unenlightened desires of the Hunters. He is her purity, and her inviolability. Once the unity is cleft, there can be no return to Paradise. Innocence is lost forever.
Interestingly, this piece of the tapestry is damaged and the figure of the virgin torn away. The red gowned  Lady coyly looking on is merely her handmaiden. We see the dog drawing the Unicorn’s blood.

So much for the pure, innocent Soul of the World in our times…

The Hunters slay the Unicorn

The Unicorn is pierced through the heart , both his spiritual heart located below the throat and his physical heart in his breast. The Palace of civilization stands on the other side of a lake. The refined Lords and Ladies stream down from the palace to receive the Hunters who seem changed by their encounter with the Unicorn.They approach the Ladies who appear to instruct them, perhaps on the proper attitude of respect to maintain regarding the Procreative Mysteries.

Indeed, the Lord and Ladies seem to ignore the Unicorn as he is impaled  above them, at the edge of the palace garden.  They seem much more intent on sharing the gifts of civilization with the Hunters. The palace is thus the realm between the higher and lower levels of being.

The Unicorn is restored to life

Often called ‘The Unicorn in Captivity’.

This is an apt title, although it leaves out the impression that the Unicorn has come back to life. Perhaps this is because he never was a mortal creature, but a symbol all along, a representation of innocence and purity too good for the World. Now he is captured, fenced in, and controlled by the forces of civilization that would use him as an example of perfection. Yet he is set apart, no longer part of the whole, rendered, in a sense, useless. He is emptied of the numinous wholeness he once wielded in the lost Paradise. In the  World, duality is all, for without duality, the cloven horn and hoof, the Creation as we know it, would cease to exist.

The Unicorn knows this. That is the nature of his sacrifice. He is at peace.

Go to my Videos for a beautiful Medieval song that goes well with these tapestries

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Those Sneaky Psychic Attacks

This is a core story that is not in my Free Report “Psychic Self Defense”  offer on the box to the right — Sign up and get it while I still have it available as this blog is going through changes –

It took me eight years to figure this out.

In the Free Report I discuss my first experience with psychic attack — this story can be found  on the front page at Occult View.com. My second experience was very different and is related in the report.  I had moved into a haunted house in London. This can be kinda hard to avoid really…

Was the attack in the London house caused by spirit activity attached to the house, or was is the result of an attack from another quarter altogether? I am still not sure of that, but I have since received some answers.

Life in London…at First…

In March 1998, I was compelled to move to London. I don’t really know the real reason, but I could not prevent myself selling everything I owned and going. In 1997 I had taken my King Arthur Holy Grail tour to research art  for my channeled Tarot deck: Grail Keepers Tarot, and fell in love with the U.K. It seems 1998 was a big  year for major life changes. The Hale Bop comet had flown over — I saw it in Tintagel, Cornwall just floating above the sea. Perhaps that was the cause.

I needed to make money and stay below the radar, so I got a pitch in Camden Lock Market and began reading Tarot cards there two days a week. I made just enough to keep the roof of the haunted house over my head and travel and eat.

Shortly after I had set myself up on the traditional Tarot pitch that I shared with the resident psychic, Patricia,  I was visited by an  old Irish woman who announced to me that she was Queen of all the psychics in London and it was her job to oversee them all. I think we swapped readings or discussed it — I honestly cannot remember how we dealt with our relationship. All I ever found out about her was that she worked at the top of the Stables Market behind Camden Lock and charged very little for her work. We didn’t speak when we saw each other — I felt as if I couldn’t, and I didn’t make anything of it.

Over the time I was there, I was told the history of the area. The stables had been  built for horses used in the city for fire brigades and taxis and  things like that. The lock was part of a canal that ran through Saint Johns Wood and  through Little Venice, its picturesque aspects and gypsy house boats marred by the tendency of dead bodies to surface at least once a year — victims of some of the most horrific murders in town. Camden had also been the location for mass graves during the 1667 plague epidemic that swept London after the Great Fire in 1666. Breugel’s Triumpth of Death is like a portrait of Camden Town during the Plague. Camden Tube Station had also been built on the spot where the cottage of  the infamous witch, Mother Damnable, once stood. It was alleged that the cottage was full of demons that floated through the air in all sorts of weird shapes.
Camden Town was also to home to young Charles Dickens before his father went to debtors prison.

Another thing about that place was that the whole length, from Camden Stables down to the Lock was said to be on a ley line. Knowing about this ley line obscured many things from me because the Tarot pitch was right on it and it was thought to be a very active and polluted current.

When I worked In Camden Lock for two days  a week everything was fine and I soon had lots of clients. Two days was just enough.Suddenly, Patricia had to cut back, so the market manager offered me an extra day on the stall. This was fine too — until she wanted to return. I had customers who expected me to be there by this time and I had come to rely on the extra money. To cut a long story short, certain people may not have been too pleased with these complications, but they didn’t say anything to me about it.

Around Samhain, I began to experience the horrific attacks in the night that I describe in the Free Report and have mentioned in earlier blog posts. I thought they were caused by someone else…

I began having a terrible time in the market. For one thing the energy coming down under the Tarot pitch was so violent sometimes that with my super-sensitivity I was thrown off balance and stressed out something fierce. My mind would get fixated on people and things and I couldn’t shift out of it. I started having conflicts with other traders out of the blue — misunderstandings cropping up — all kinds of volatility.

I moved at one point to a shop under the stables  that is no longer there — just to try to get out of the bad energy. But business wasn’t as good because it didn’t have the visibility. It was a bit more peaceful though.

Then that situation deteriorated because business was too slow and the owner got stressed out. I went back up to Camden Lock Market. It was good for a while and then got really horrible again. I never had so much stress and conflict and bad luck in my life before. I couldn’t leave though because of my situation and business was really good and the money was good. I was really stuck.

My cards would come up all black!

Ever since the night attacks between Samhain and  Christmas, I had been seeing a Carribean Priestess/ Healer, Mother Bridget. She helped me all the time — mostly clearing my energy field. I became known for never being able to keep bad energy off. I was always suffering from over-stress and  entity invasion. I had ideas about what was behind this stuff — partly the rat-race of London — partly these people who would turn on me and start making trouble in the market. I am also the type that needs lots of seclusion to balance myself and I was living in group housing. Never being alone could have contributed to stress and unhappiness for me. I never thought it was an occult attack!

“There are two women crossing you. A blond one and darker one. These are clairvoyant mediums.”
“But who? I have no idea who these people are. Why?”
“Jealousy.”
“But why?”
I could not for the life of me figure out who they were because nobody I knew fit the description.
“There’s a coven working against you. Clairvoyant mediums. They are trying to bury you.”
“Who?”
“They set it up like clockwork with the moon. They brought in another medium.”
I was lost for trying to figure it out so I decided she must be wrong.
After my first horrible year being back in the States and moving to Seattle, I finally got a studio apartment in which I could be 100% alone. This was  the only condition in which I could begin to heal from the mountains of stress  and wounds form all of that conflict. I had never thought of myself who has enemies — so I always in shock about these things. About six months after this absolute solitude it hit me who those Clairvoyant Mediums were.  The other tarot readers in the market. Since I had never had words with them, very little to no contact – I could not even think of them. But I am sure it was them now — very clever, very subtle, very evil.

What is also really strange is that I went to the British Isles initially to research my Grail Keepers Tarot. In the Celtic Faery tradition I had been working in that is woven into the tarot deck I painted, I was very connected to the goddess Brighid: triple moon goddess of poetry, healing, and smithcraft. I had been working with the bright Brighid when I went to London. When the attacks happened, the lady who saved me was a black Bridget — Mother Bridget. But there  was a third Bridget in the mix — the Queen of the tarot readers — that Irish crone in the Stables Market. She was using the ley-line to send her curses straight at me.

I am still unsure of the motive for wanting to use such low-down, evil means  to get rid of me. I do know, as an American, I was never taught to kiss anybody’s butt and suppose I must have offended her.

The take-away here is that attacks of this nature can be very hard to understand and pin down. Best install good defense mechanisms so you bounce them off immediately.

For an excerpt from my Free Report Psychic Self Defense go to:

http://www.occultview.com

For The Grail Keepers’ Tarot:

http://www.whiteswan-tarot.com

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As a child, Fairy Tales gave me a taste for questing. We were surrounded by woods full of dense trees, little streams and clearings with evidence of  long gone buildings and stone walls. The wonderful thing about the stone walls was that they provided guidance in the woods, for they always came out someplace close to home. We never had to fear getting lost.

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There were many wonderful places in the woods. I loved the little swamps with their wild irises and tiger lilies, frogs leaping in the murky dark pools with fringes of ferns and mossy rocks. Like the stone walls, narrow rivulets of water beckoned me to explore deeper than I would dare to go without them to mark my path.

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One autumn, I found a large mound of earth in the woods. I had followed the little stream into a swamp as it wound like a snake across a carpet of brown pine needles deep into the woods. There was a ruined stone wall to climb over that bounded a broad sloping clearing inside a ring of trees. In the middle of the clearing was a high, smooth mound of earth covered in the same dead pine leaves that lay in layers over the ground.

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Most adults would say it was an old pile left over from the when the land had been clear pasture, but for me it was a mystery, imbued of course with my childish creative imaginings. But then, the way to that place was initially across the cemetery, and years later I was taught that the Fairies lived under mounds of earth, and much later was taught that those mounds of earth were the burial chambers of Kings and Queens and all their retinue. Within the mound, they held court with masques and dancing and lavish feasts, and on  certain nights of the year, they emerged on their shining horses, to chase the hare into the depths of winter and out again into the spring.

But these Faery mounds are not in America! We don’t have Kings and Queens.

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But in Massachusetts we did. For two centuries we were colonies of Queen Elizabeth and then several Kings thereafter. And who is to say that some royal person was not buried in a mound near an ancient cemetery in my home town.

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For me the mystery is not whether there was a mound of earth in the woods, or whether a King was buried there, or even if it was a Faery mound. It is in how the mind brings certain images together in a certain way so that the intuition grasps knowledge it didn’t have any way of knowing before hand.

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The Color of Christmas is Black

Christmas is a celebration of the dawning of the light.

In the Western World we have combined elements of Pagan rituals with the Christian Mystery of the nativity for a joyous recognition that new Light comes out of Darkness, that the resurrection of life after death is part of the cycle of nature.

Red, green, gold, tinsel, these are the colors associated with Christmas. But the old color of Christmas is black. The black of the long night filled with stars, the black of life still quickening under the soil, The darkness of the evergreen forest with glints of sun shining through,  the darkness of snow banked  houses inwardly lit by candles and hearth fires.

And then there is the old tradition of Saturnalia.

Ancient Romans told tales of a Gold Age ruled over by King Saturn, God of sowing and husbandry. Old King Cole was a Merry Old Soul could have been written about him. The earth brought forth abundantly  as King Saturn brought people together from far and wide to teach them how to plant an harvest and till the ground, how to live lawful lives under his generous and peaceful rule. All property was held in common, greed and war were not even thought of.

After King Saturn vanished, or died, his reign continued to be commemorated by the Romans with shrines and festivals in his honor. And every winter from the 17th to the 23rd of December, great revels took place led by the Spirit of Misrule. Slaves were freed and allowed to act the part of Masters. Masters waited upon slaves. Class barriers were further razed as everyone indulged in feasting, drinking, dancing and orgies. The high point of this carnival was the coronation of the Mock King. Usually chosen by lot, the slave who was mad King, ordered the people around, often requesting the drunken revelers to perform ridiculous antics, like silly dances, mimicking animals, or carrying musicians on their backs.

But as was the case in most ancient agricultural societies known for an abundantly fertile and yielding earth. there was another side to these festivities. For the Mock King, who for a few days enjoyed every indulgence, for whom was his command, ended his reign with his head on the block, burned in the fire, or hung on the gallows tree.

It was believed that the Sun actually died on Winter Solstice, and that the only way to bring it back to life, was to exchange one life for another — a human life for the life of the sun.  The Mock King of the Saturnalia, chosen by chance — and therefore by the Gods — drunken and in a state of high excitement, was a slave for whom these few days may have been worth the price of his short and miserable life.

The Battle of the Summer and Winter Kings

What is this connection of Christmas time and death? For Christians it would be a pre-configuration of Easter, when the Son would die as a human being and be resurrected as God, and bright solar God at that.  In December, the Mock King, a Christmas Fool dies to bring back the Sun.

The Celts had a tradition of the Oak King and the Holly King meeting on the field of battle at Winter Solstice. The Oak King o Summer must give way to the Holly King of winter, but will not do so without a fight. That it was a fight to the death is a given in the books I have read on the subject. Was this another way to insuring the sun coming back in exchange for a human life? Or was this battle enacted in the Dreamtime — the Otherworld realm where European  shamans battled witches to protect the fertility of the land?

It is the brightness over the darkness that gives Christmas its special character. Gold over black. The warm glow of fire, the colored lights, the shining evening clothes and jewels shining in the long dark night of winter is the glamor of Christmas. But under the reassuring images of Santa Clause, and  abundant gift giving in honor of King Saturn’s Golden Age, and the Peace on Earth that also characterized his mythical reign, is the deeper complication of our mortality and our place in the scheme of things. We call on angels, wise Kings and a Great Mother Goddess to bring forth the Light now.  The Mystery still remains — the birth of the Divine Child, the one and only God, entering the darkness of the flesh to awaken the Light within us all.

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Winter Comes

I have news for you,
Stag bellows. winter snows,
Summer has gone,
Winds high and cold,
Sun low, short its course.

The streams running high,
Deep red, the branches
Their shape is lost,
Wild goose flies,
Cold has seized her wings,
Season of ice,
This is my news.

–Anonymous, Celtic poem

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