WINTERSPELLS: Life on the Magical Path

My blog mentor, Yaro Starak says we should tell our life story as is relevant to our blog topic. So here it begins. I intend to use  the four seasons and then the Center to organize my Magical Timeline.

Magical Childhood

I think childhood is a magical time for most people. Most lose their sense of wonder early, others later. I never lost mine. So for what its worth here are my beginnings. I intend the progression of my spiritual path to unfold in these posts, much like the Fool’s journey in Tarot.  Much like the Fool, the first magical person I ever met was a Tarot reader in a carnival.

I begin in the North because I always had a sense that my soul came to Earth from the North Pole. later on I was told by a Blackfoot  medicine woman that, unlike most people who are born in the South, I was born in the North. This explains why I spent so much time out of my body went I entered the airy East at adolescence. People born in the North tend to feel that they are living their life backwards.

My Grandparents Ernest and Pearl Hebert

(If I had a scanner that worked I would have a better picture. They came from Quebec after WWI. My grandfather fought in the trenches at Normandy.)

Born in the North

I was born on January 23, 19– (LOL)  in Worcester, Massachusetts. My brother, James, was born on January 22, one year later. We were like twins.
We lived in a tenement on Plantation Street for three years. I have many vivid memories from that time, including a dream.
In trying to escape from my crib, I climbed over the bar and fell down, spraining my arm. I had to go to the doctor’s and get an x-ray. My Grandmother brought me a Bride doll that had waist that turned. This was the first time I had ever seen such a thing. That night I dreamed that the doll was a woman dancing naked in the starry sky and the top of her body went to the right, while the lower half went to the left. It always makes me think of the World card in the Tarot when I remember this dream.

House in the Woods

When I was three, we moved to 4 Lexington Avenue, Leicester, Massachusetts. This house was at the bottom of a hill, one of a string of new houses built into the woods on the former farmlands of Peter Salem, a free black man who had received those acres as payment for his service in the Revolutionary War. All the streets were named after the Revolution. We lived on Lexington Ave that swept around a bend and down a little hill named Bunker Hill. At the bottom of Bunker Hill were our mailboxes as we were and RFD route in those days. Peter Salem Road swept along from Pleasant Street to the Four Corners where Henshaw Street going up to the left. I think it looped back to Pitcairn Ave which joined Bunker Hill at the top. There was a huge chestnut tree around there where we collected horse cobblers and a bridge over a stream where the ‘bad boys’ used to go to sniff glue.
Most beautifully there was a hill that used to be Peter Salem’s blueberry orchard, The bushes were large and, in summer, loaded with huge, juicy berries. On hot summer days the air was fragrant with the smell of ripe blueberries.

Being New Englanders, these little bits of history were important to us, gave us a sense of place.  Behind our houses ran an old sawmill road. It wound through the stands of trees and mountain laurel, opening out to a sand pit and the ruined saw mill long gone to decay. Along with the woods, this was a fantastic playground; our home away from home. There were lots of kids in that neighborhood around the same age. I was an excellent tree climber and could even scale the pine trees with all their needles. Scratches and sappy hands were worth it because the pine smelled so good and the view at the top was superb.

There were clearings off to the side of the sawmill road where logs had been piled  very long ago. They made a pleasant hang out in the summer. The woods always smelled of pine, made more resinous and fragrant by the heat. One day I was there alone wondering about a circle that had been worn into the ground, when suddenly I heard bells coming down the sawmill road, and before I knew it, a tribe of Indians in full regalia including face paint, feathers, moccasins — the whole works, were filing into the clearing. They entered the area with high ceremony, ignoring me completely, and began to dance around the circle. The dance involved throwing out bad spirits. I watched them totally mesmerized and still remember what they did and how they moved. When they finished the dance, they turned and left with the same concentration as when they came. Even though I learned later that were a group of Boy Scouts, that was a strange and magical moment for me.

We were part Indian, Iroquois. My mother used to bring me to what was left of an Indian reservation in the city of Worcester, An old lady lived there alone called Princess White Flower. She dressed in white buckskin and had long white braids. Some days she held barbecues, called Free For Alls that my other took us to.

Iroquois Indians

I will skip a lot now because some of this stuff will be detailed in my blog.

Catholic Mass and Ceremonial Magic

I will mention my Roman Catholic upbringing though as I feel my initiation to ceremonial magic began in church.
My family is predominantly French Canadian and Indian. There is some Irish thrown in for good luck. My father’s side, the Heberts, Roys, LeDoux, Borrassas, etc, are very French to the point of Medievalism. When me and Jim slept over at Meme and Pepe’s house on the weekend, we were up Sunday morning saying rosary beads on our knees before going to church.
Church was Bleeding Heart of Jesus, if I recall, Sacre Couer. The whole Mass was said in Latin and French. I didn’t understand a word of it. It was an incense filled cathedral, lit by candle branches, with a huge Baroque altar from which a life sized crucifix loomed, angled so that Jesus hovered over the congregation like a giant bird. The ceiling was painted with clouds and it seems to me some of them were detached and suspended by chains. The nuns were voluminous black habits and used castanets to direct us when to sit, stand, and kneel. The Priest wore fantastic robes; the choir of monks sang like angels. For a kid like me, it was as if I had entered another dimension full of magic and mystery. I loved not understanding what they said. It increased my sense of having left the mundane world behind.

Avignon Cathedral

(I can’t find a picture of the Sacred Bleeding Heart of Jesus Church, but it felt something like this.)

Civil Rights Movement: We Knew Abby Hoffman

When I was ten, my mother got involved in the Civil Rights Movement. For a whole summer we went to the poor neighborhoods in Worcester so my mother could teach the black ladies how to knit. All my friends that summer were black and our playground was the street. Instead of climbing trees, we climbed stairs and railings and chain link fences. My mother worked very closely with Sheila Hoffman, Abby Hoffman’s first wife. I played with their kids Elia and Andy.  Once I saw a sign in front of a house that said “Dr.Hoffman”. I asked my mother if Mr. Hoffman was a doctor? She said, “No. He’s a kook.”

Folk music was all the rage: Joan Baez, Peter Paul and Mary, The Seekers, The Kingston Trio. I was especially drawn to the English and Scottish folk ballads and the Appalachian ones that stemmed from them. They were like Grimm’s Fairy Tales put to music. It may have these influences that caused me to populate the woods with spirits, but it seemed that there was a difference between and fairies I saw in my head and the figures I saw in the woods — some of whom were Indians that were not in Grimm’s nor from the Child ballads.

It was also in my tenth year that I first read the hugely influential, The Lord of the Rings.

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Vatican II

1966: Vatican II made my father crazy. My parents fought all the time. My sister, Susan was born. My mother went mad, and my world turned upside down.
My mother went on ‘retreat’ to a convent in Lancaster Massachusetts called the Cenacle.
She stayed there for a week or two, and we went to see her one weekend. This was the most beautiful place on earth! Not only was the Convent house a splendid mansion with shiny banisters and stained glass windows, but there wee several large gardens designed in European styles. There was a shady English garden full of green shrubberies, trees, and lush grass surrounded by a high stone wall, and an Italian garden with broad steps, classical urns filled with bright flowers, sculptures, and carved stone benches, bounded by a wall that let in the light. There was a Spanish Garden, a Topiary, and a French formal garden. I explored them all and the memories have stayed with me all this time finding their way into my novel The Golden Stair about a witch and her magical gardens.
Then at night the nuns sang the sun down, and at dawn they sang the sun up, with the most celestial voices, layering over each other like far away bells, and gongs deep under the sea.

Leaving My Sacred Land

A year later we moved “ closer to town”. “Town” was Main Street with its gas station, grocery store, convenience store, Italian restaurant, and the library.  There were woods all around our house, a lake across the street that used to be a beach until the Castle Restaurant was built. A stream ran from the lake, under the road, and came out through our back yard. The stream wound through what was then bushes, and eventually pooled around a ruined mill where a big brick chimney stood on its own like a tower.

I was deeply miserable for a long time. Not just because I was separated from all of my friends, but because I was separated from the land. The trees and swamps, frogs, fireflies, birds, little stone walls running through the woods, the clearings, the sawmill road, were my friends too. I didn’t know if I would find the same magic in the new place.

To be continued…

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Above, Below, and Between

In the preceding article, Creating Sacred Space, I described how to create a Magic Circle based on the Four Directions of the compass. East, South. West, and North. This is the horizontal Place Between the Worlds, but there at three vertical directions needed  to complete the Astral Temple that really takes one safely into the Otherworld.

Magical Circle

Reestablish yourself within the Four Directions of the Magic Circle. I like what my teacher R.J.Stewart always says: “The direction in which you stand comes through you, the direction that face comes to you, the directions to you right and left uphold you.”

Now you stand in the center of the circle and raise your Magical Weapon to the sky and say:

“I call forth the Gods and Goddesses of the Celestial Realm. The Moon, the Sun, and the Stars, the Seven Planets, the Signs of the Ecliptic, are arranged above us tonight.”

Earthlight Ritual

You can perform the Faery Earthlight Ritual while you call the Sky, as taught by R.J.Stewart at this point to bring it into your body:
*Standing straight with your arms at your sides, visualize the color green in your feet and moving up your legs.
*Raising your arms a little, visualize the color blue moving into your pelvis and generative organs.
*Raising your arms so they are even with your shoulders, visualize the color red moving into your chest and heart.
*Raising your arms so above your head, visualize the color yellow around your head.
*Slowly bring your arms down, visualizing the colors as you go.
This is called Raising the Earthlight and is a Faery technique.

Descent to the Underworld

Now see the ground at your feet. Depending on your tradition, see a five-pointed star shining with blue light, or a six pointed star, the door of a well, and stairway or the roots of a great tree whose branches spread down into the Underworld.

Traditions with Judeo-Christian values, may avoid going into the Underworld, known to them as the Infernal Realm, abode of Demons, or Qlippoth. They may believe that the Faery are Demons. Even I know that they are Fallen Angles — but so are we.

If you feel safer to work in a Temple that has no basement, then it it is perfectly fine to work within the SIX. For those of Faery or Infernal leanings, you will want to include the SEVENTH.

Take your seat in one of the Four Directions. Focus on the well, stairway or tree roots in the center of the Circle. There is a different feel to each.

The Well has a watery feel and tends to take you to twilight places. I find dew spangled grass, trees, and it is through the portal of the well that I have met Merlin, Morgan LeFay, Vivienne, and the Priestesses of the wells.
Around the well grow red and white roses. Roses are sacred to the Faery, and in facet have been created by them. Roses belong to Lucifer and the Madonna as well. I also give them to King Solomon, and the Black Madonna.

Stair to Moat

The Stairway that spirals down into the earth has a feel of ancient stone. In my experience, it leads to ancient temple precincts, ruins, and libraries. Also cemeteries, catacombs and the like. Goths will like the spiral stairway, for it seems to lead to the darker mysteries.

The Reversed Tree leads to the Faery Realm, the Green Land and the path to the Palace Under the Hill. This is very potent. There are rules.

I will write another post on the subject of Faery etiquette in the future. If you insist on trying it out before that, use impeccable manners and treat the Lordly Ones with deference, and respect. This isn’t just about being nice — its a warning.

The Sphere Of Light

Now you are within the sphere which is your Astral Temple. You can work within and below as I described, you can journey into one or all of the Four Directions and learn form them. This is never boring as far as I am concerned, because it changes all the time.
This horizontal work can bring amazing experiences. You can wander into the dark forest of the Grimm’s fairy tales, or dive into Undersea Palaces, dally in the Garden of the Rose, or walk among the Standing Stones that shine on the low hill at sunrise..

If you want to move Above, Rising on the Planes, set your intention and you feel yourself shift. Shifting usually brings a sensation of light pressure in your solar plexus and head.
You can visit the Moon, Sun, or Stars. I like to see a golden ladder come down and climb it sometimes. Tower imagery works very well. They have different feels about them. I have often found myself lying in a long golden boat called Millions of Years.

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Mood Enhancers

*Music instantly changes the atmosphere. Ambient music, Tibetan bowls, drumming can help focus the mind.
*Incense acts on ancestral memory. Some incenses are designed to call upon certain spirits or deities. Benzoin and Amber call the Faery.
* Crystals, stones, flowers, leaves, figures, and other images can help one to focus, adding a visual link to the deep, subconscious mind. I used to use a crystal bowl filled with water as the centerpiece of my Moon Circles for years.

Every item in the circle should follow the Correspondences to bring through the energies to want to work with.

I will write more on these topics as we go along. Any requests? have any questions or ideas come up about this work of Creating Sacred Space?

For more Magical Instruction, subscribe to my email list and you will be updated.

You can’t go wrong with these books by R.J.Stewart Faery Magus

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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

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, 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

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

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

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

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The Ship of Fools: Heironymous Bosch

Ship of Fools, by Heironymous Bosch

As a great fan of Heironymous Bosch, I could not help posting a whole boatload of Fools! Note the little head in the tree!

I found an interesting source for the idea of the painting in a book called Dreamtime: Concerning the Boundary Between Wilderness and Civilization by Hans Peter Duerr.

The Fool has a lot of resonance with Dionysus, God of Divine Madness.
Here it is:
“The maenads of Zagreus–Dionysus were closely related to the Couretes, and probably had the same roots. The Meanads were the ‘grasping ones’, the ‘tearers’, even more closely than the Couretes bearing traces of the Wild Hunt. Like the Erinys of Artemis, these ecstatic huntresses were spirits of the dead who raged through the land ‘between the times’, clad in the skins of panthers, deer or foxes, carrying the thyrsus and suckling wolf pups. they were given death offerings usually of milk and honey. The same offerings were later given to  the ‘bonnes dames’ and the ‘naht-frouwen’, the women of the night. On choes, the second day of the of the Anthesteria festival, Dionysus, the ‘great loosener’, the ‘god of blossoms’, rolled through the streets and alleys of Athens, seated on his ship cart. The cart was drawn by two satyrs, and the god was accompanied by the souls of the dead, who on this day arrived from the swamps of Lerna, the door to the underworld, to visit the mortals.
When a ship rolls on land, all matters are turned upside down. the rule of the masters did not prevail on choes, and the slaves were free and could do as they pleased. As late as 1133, a wooden ship on wheels traveled from Cornelimunster to Tongern and Looz via Achen and Maastrischt, where it was fitted out out with sails and mast. Wherever the ship haulted, women were overcome by wild ecstasy. half-naked or clad in short shifts, their hair loose, they danced around the ship and later engaged in behavior about which a monk who reported the event maintained he could only weep or be silent. Regrettably for posterity, he did not write while weeping, so we are left in ignorance as to what might taken place around the ship after nightfall.

Ships float in water, in no-man’s-land, as it were, not subject to the laws of one particular country. it is understandable, therefore, that in the latter part of the Middle Ages, ‘lawless’ fools were often represented on ships. If the ship then traveled over ‘someone’s land’, this was chaos overcoming order.”

The images here are amazing. If you read this paragraph slowly, allowing the images of the Maenads, the ship, the mad Fools to play in your imagination, you will see how one simple image of the Fool resonates, like fine poetry, into the deepest levels of the unconscious and tap into the Ancestral Memory where the Ship of Fools still exists as a ‘reality’.

This is how Tarot works. Images and symbolic keys to deeper meanings, many unseen, not obvious, require meditation to reveal themselves. Images from the Ancient Mysteries transmit core energies from the Soul of the World, fertilizing and ordering the imagination so that it becomes a mediator between times, dimensions, and levels of consciousness beyond the boundaries of the known.

For this to happen, you must do something that has gone out of fashion — you must slow down, savor, brood upon an image until it falls into your bloodstream and becomes part of you. Then, when you read the cards they will come to life and speak in ways no instruction manual can teach.

Next post will give a definition of Tarot with a few ideas on how to consecrate a Tarot deck.

Peter Breugel, Carnival

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The Fool

“...but we will speak only of those things which are difficult, and not to be grasped by the senses, but, indeed, which are almost contrary to the evidence of the senses.”
Paracelsus, Archidoxi Magica

Using my own handpainted Holy Grail Tarot, I will use this blog to teach the definitions of the cards and explore their deeper meaning. Their part in the Grail Legend will also be told, using the literary sources that inspired the outer images. I say outer images, for this Tarot deck is the result of an Initiation, and the real images came to me directly from the UnderWorld of Faery.
When I embarked on my visits to the Kingdom of Faery, I was no more sensible of the dangers and rewards than this Fool you see here blithely walking off a cliff. Heaven and Earth attempt to warn him to watch his step…but the Fool’s way is to venture into the unknown because there is no other way  for him to learn but through experience.
David Ovason, in his book The Zelator: the Secret Journals of Mark Hedsel,Way of the Fool.
“The Way of the Fool is the way of the independent traveler on the Path of Initiation. Such a traveler may study under a variety of Masters, yet will strive always to preserve his or her own identity, and rarely undertakes vows of silence which will bind his or her being to a particular school or teaching. The fact that this traveling Fool is on a Path is meant to reflect that he or she is following the way of experience, which in ancient Greek was termed pathein.”
He goes on to say that the Path of the Fool is about development of the higher Ego, or the Self. This is the Self that Jung talks about, “the droplet of Godhead which has sought experience through involvement in matter.” The  part of us that that knows itself to be divine. The Divine Fool is one whose folly is to surrender  to this Godhead. He is motivated by his desire for life beyond earthly existence. To find it, he steps into the unseen and therefore begins an journey into the unknown. But in his surrender to trust in the divine pattern of his life, he knows perfect freedom.

The meanings of the Fool card in Tarot are more complex than they seem. The symbol of the 0 is rich with meaning. As a newly incarnate soul, the Fool is the baby that has passed through the 0 of the birth canal, coming from the spiritual dimension into the world of matter. His consciousness is raw, full of sensations and visions of a former life of complete security, enclosed in warmth and darkness. He is jolted awake by pain and blood and light, beginning the journey of the Fool from the second the umbilicus is cut. He has no name and knows nothing. In many respects he is an empty 0 waiting to be filled.
In the Middle Ages, the Fool was known as the Lord of Misrule; he was unpredictable, anarchic, arcahic, somehow ‘inferior’ to us in his instictual abandon.  This uncouth manner is symbolized in traditonal Tarot cards by the Fool’s cap and bell, a residue of the old crown of asses ears that resonates so well with the sin-burdened scapegoat. To say it simply, civilized people sometimes long to return to the raw, unconscious, instictual stage of infancy expressd in the madness of the Fool. Because they fear a break down of their inner control, they joy in having someone else act it out for them. In ancient times it is easy to consider that the one who played the Fool too well was cast out or killed so that society could rid itself of these base desires for the rest of the year.

The Lord of Misrule

The little dog barking at the Fool to watch his step  symbolizes the  internalized, positive side of an instictual, natural response to life. Attuned to nature,  this instinct builds in protection when it is needed at the most dangerus junctions of the Path.
In his sack, the Fool carries his unknown Self, or Shadow. He doesn’t think he wants what is in that sack, yet he needs it, and it can never be left behind. It can be seen as a bag of Karma, that which must be paid out by the end of life. In my deck, the Fool, Parzifal, carries a bag of black and white squares, signifying his inability to see the shades of grey. Black and white thinking blocks subtle awareness, depth of perception and openess to the contradictions through which the Mysteries are revealed. It suggests that even as free as the Fool’s mind is, his clinging to easy answers causes him to fail to ask the questions that would bring the Wasteland to life again. In a sense, black and white thinking is the sign of an inner wasteland — an utter lack of imagination. In the legend of his life, Parzifal was raised alone by his mother in the deep forest. All she supplied him with was a set of rules. His story shows that blind reliance on the rules can bring disaster when creative solutions are called for.
It is not hard to see that the sack and staff have phallic conotations. In traditional decks, the sack dangles at the end of the stick which is over the Fool’s shoulder visually severing his head from his body. There is no more apt arrangement of symbols to suggest that much of the Fools’ instinctual bad behavior, and much of his mania, is sexual. On another level, this sexual imagery has less to do with sexual acts than with fertility of ideas, creative energy as yet unformed, direct from a source close to the divine.

” The Way of the Fool is a sort of balancing act on a tightrope. While the Fool has no wish to lose contact with his Higher Self, he or she wishes to gain experience of life…”
Though my Fool, Parzifal wears no Fool’s cap or horns, or asses ears, the trees behind him mimic those shapes. They are part of nature. This Fool is already partly redeemed, for  he wears the royal purple emblazoned with butterflies of transmutation, his bare head shines with gold and is free to recieve the angel’s blessings from above. He is wrapped in the yellow cloak of the mind in harmony with the body it floats around and supports like wings.
Parzifal walks out of the starry night of the forest  toward an abyss of stars in the UnderWorld, for unlike our forebears, we have seen the Earth floating in space; we know the earth is as divine as any other celestial body.  He is drawn to the wider world by a vision of ‘angels’– an encounter with the Knights of the Round Table whose armor shone in the sunshine like gold. Therefore, his motivation is a spiritual search.
The motley magpies represent  and gathering of bright things, also in their constant chattering, the Mystery Language of the Birds.  In the far distance the rising sun shines over the sea of origin, the source of all life.

Tarot meanings: Ignorance, naivete, entering the unknown, higher guidance, Idea, thought, that which endeavors to rise above the material, spiritual aspiration. In a reading about material concerns it shows folly, stupidity, eccentricity and mania unless balanced by very strong cards that stabilize.

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