WINTERSPELLS: Life on the Magical Path

Witchcraft: A True Anti-Aging Formula!

Hehehheheehhe…

There was a time when any woman who looked much younger than her years was suspected of witchcraft, and of trafficking with the Faeries.

It should also come as not surprise that in times past when the average life span was 27-40 years old that anyone who had attained to great old age would be suspected of having contracted with the Devil.

I was talking with a friend yesterday about why we mature witches are much more youthful than many people who are far younger than us. She had noticed a trend that pagans and witches and magical people on the Facebook and Twitter are so much more alive than those who are not. We have more fun and seem so much more creative and youthful than our counterparts who allow themselves to be limited by the mundane reality.

One thing led to another as we discussed that many of the posts on this blog reminded her of childhood connections she had lost track of. Other readers have said the same thing to me. I realized that I discuss my own childhood a lot, sometimes in a nostalgic way, and sometimes to give the continuing story behind my choice to live a Magical Life.

An Ongoing Sense of Wonder

I know for me that my most closely guarded treasure has been my sense of wonder. As an artist, my inner life, the availability of all of my senses, and the openness of my mind and imagination are sacrosanct.  I have held onto these in the face of tremendous resistance by the society, have lost jobs, relationships, and have jeopardized my security to hold onto a mindset that is necessary to keep my creative fires burning, to maintain interest an curiosity about life so I do not stop learning, and help me cope with a World I often find overwhelming and threatening.

If things get to be too much, I go into nature, to my power spots, to recharge and to find solace in the beauty that surrounds me.  The trees and flowers and sky, the birds and small creatures that live in the trees,  aren’t trying to compete with me by going faster and faster, They don’t bombard me with stuff, but endure and move in with the rhythms of timelessness. Nature allows me a glimpse of forces greater than frantic human society. The magic, in particular Faery Magic, lives in the natural world. Even the seemingly cruel, predatory aspect of nature exists within currents and inner contracts between creatures that are in harmony with the “Gods”.

My friend feels the same way so the discussion deepened.

We began to uncover a secret link: Those of us who pursue the  path of magic, belief in the supernatural or paranormal,  love of poetry and the arts, divination systems, fairy tales, myths, folklore, who are Romanticists at heart, are usually perceived by mainstream as childish and even ridiculous. BUT it is that very link with the child within that gives us the reserves of youth to draw on. We did not split off from our inner child in order to become adults –we kept the continuity going and include the amazing freshness, immediacy, and openness to change and experience of the child. Our childhood is like battery that we continue to draw upon because we never severed our ties to it in order to be cool or conform to the opinions of those who consider themselves in possession of all the “right” answers to life.

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I personally think the, especially in America, if your sole interest in life isn’t  making tons of money and buying expensive toys that you are seen as a failure in life as a whole. But many of the people who buy into this level of materialism get old before their time. They may have the money to buy fancy anti-aging surgeries, treatments, and potions, but these only  look convincing on people who also open to the life forces that linking back to childhood passions and dreams provides.

Perhaps the reason is, when we reach the age of 27 or so,  many people feel they should have arrived. Since for our generations, so many movies stars and musicians have died at the age of 27, we think it might be over for us too. Maybe the vibrations of the coming attractions of the Saturn Return are being felt, and Saturn make you feel old. I think this particular Rite of Passage — the Saturn Return that takes place between the ages of 28-30 — is a make or break time for all of us. I have noticed that if people don’t get it together in that window of time, they often go floundering for the until the next Saturn Return.

During this time a common adjustment is: I’m old now and have to knuckle down and play the game. I hate to put it this way, but I hear men say this the most. On comes the suit and tie and out goes all the flair and personality of youth, disposed of to conform to the standards of the corporate world where they believe they will find security, wealth, and position. There are women like this to, so I’m not being general, I just observe it this way.

Those graced with the energy to lead in the the mundane world, may not be witches, or magicians, but I’ll bet they are still connected to the child within and are carrying forth a passion that is very close to their soul’s purpose. And often these people use their gifts to help others.

So what am I saying here?

Being in touch with the child within is part of the equation if you want to stay young. Being spiritual, magical, creative, and able to laugh, a sense of irony about life, the ability to take lemons and make lemonade are also a big part of the equation.

As a lifetime meditator and energy healer, I have basked in prana, bathed in the light of spirit, circulated divine light, hooked up to the star grids, forcibly removed blocks, changed my DNA and cleared my meridians and layers of my aura over and over again. Call it practicing spiritual hygiene.

Entering and leaving Faery is totally rejuvenating, because keeping the soul alive and connected is one of the keys to immortality. Entering Faery gives you endless places to explore, curiosity ignited excites a thirst for knowledge. Excitement about going beyond the known keeps you young because your mind and imagination are engaged and that part of us never grows old. The need to explore more and more, and to share those explorations, helps one  envision a very long life ahead. On some level, agelessness is occurring even when the body weakens. You can feel it, sense it. Once you have left your body to fly, you know you are so much more.

What is a child but someone for whom everything is new and mysterious and full of wonder? Stay in touch with that and you will not grow old except in experience and wisdom — the gifts of the true elder.

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OR: How Count Dracula was Born in a Trunk

And Has Tread the Boards Ever Since…

This article  was originally published on the wonderful paranormal blog Occult View by David Dolgacious last March. Since we are moving into the spooky time of year, I thought it would be fun to re-print it on Winterspells. So, tipping my hat to David, here it is.

And please check his blog at www.occultview.com.

I was tempted to say “My name is Victoria Winter…” but instead I said this with Victoria Winter’s voice in my head:

My name is Arlene deWinter. As the resurrection of Springtime is upon us, the Vampire  sleeps a little longer.  Now I feel it is safe to tell you a story of Vampires little considered on our side of the pond.

Then Dracula Became a Movie Star

Few people realize that Bela Lugosi originated his character of Count Dracula on the New York stage. And had to learn his lines phonetically…

Dracula was Born in a Trunk

Vlad Tepes may have been a warlord from ancient Wallachia, infamous for his cruelty,
but Vlad Dracule was a man of the theater!
Though not the first Vampire to tread the boards of the London stage, he is certainly its star. It was he who brought his nefarious race under the spotlight, and his lustre remains undimmed for over a century.

ASIDE:

The first literary Vampire was invented by the physician, John Polidori in 1818, during the famous snowbound ghost story contest in Swiss Alps where Mary Shelley created Dracula’s erstwhile rival, Frankenstein. Polidori’s novella was called The Vampyre; A Tale.   It’s menacing antagonist, Lord Ruthven, was based on Polidori’s character assessment of the infamous poet, Lord Byron, legendary womanizer, and destroyer of souls…Not long after his book was published, to scandalous success, Polidori killed himself at the age of 26.

The Stage

The Vampyre was staged many times in the 1800’s, with multiple spinoffs, much like the film versions since Bela Lugosi brought Dracula chillingly to the screen. These plays were particularly popular in Paris where they merged with the horrific Grande Guignol, and even inspired the German Opera, Der Vampyr, first presented in Leipzig in 1828.

John Polidori was uncle to the Pre-Raphaelite artist, Dante Gabriel Rossetti whose beautiful, red haired wife, Elizabeth Siddall, was his model and muse. Ten years after her tragic death from an overdose of luadanum,  Rossetti had Elizabeth’s  body exhumed to retrieve a volume of poetry that he had buried with her in Highgate Cemetery. The men who dug her up claimed her shining red hair filled the coffin, and that her body was still as young and lovely as the day she died. Haunted by grief, and remorse for the horrible deed he had done, Rossetti succumbed to chloral addiction and went mad.

Lizzy Siddall

Enough of that!

Vlad Dracule and Henry Irving

Bram Stoker himself was man of the theatre. Manager to the famous Victorian actor, Henry Irving, Stoker was the driving force behind the commercial success of the Lyceum Theatre in Covent Garden. Henry Irving was considered its resident genius and, like many geniuses, was a moody tyrant. Bram Stoker was completely under his spell.

Shakespeare was Irving’s specialty, and Stoker was immersed in the blood soaked tragedies, and rich poetry of the Bard of Avon on a nightly basis. His discovery of a portrait of Vlad Tepes caused an explosion in his imagination! It is not too far fetched to see in Tepes’s aquiline features, a reflection of the face of Henry Irving.  Irving was known to excel at dark, brooding, villainous characters, his tall, thin frame often clothed in black as he lurked menacingly about the stage.

Vlad Tepes

Dracula was published in 1897 in London. Stoker dispensed with the charming, aristocratic Byronesque Vampyre. Rather, his Dracula was creepy and repulsive in the extreme, based as he was on Stoker’s research into the Balkan folklore about Undead corpses preserved in their graves by feeding on blood of the living.

Significantly, the book, Dracula, was first reviewed in the theatre magazine, The Stage, on June 17, 1897 where it was referred to as a tour de force. Many of the classic qualities we associate with Vampires were invented by Stoker such as his fear of crucifixes (strange aversion for an impaler…) the Host, the need to sleep in his country’s soil, even sleeping all day to only come out at night, changing into a bat — all were inventions of Bram Stoker’s fertile imagination. The association of Vampires with wolves, though, is a deep part of tradition in the wolf haunted forests and mountains of Central Europe.

Henry Irving

On its 1897 release, a staged reading of Dracula, or The UnDead, was held at the Lyceum Theatre to secure its copyright. Behind the actors loomed the set of Irving’s current production of MacBeth. Dracula was already being prepared for dramatic performance, but Irving refused to play the part. When the play was produced, it was not according to Stoker’s vision, but rather in cheap, pirated, slipshod productions in London’s theatre dives that were an embarrassment to the disappointed Stoker.

Dracula Becomes a Movie Star

Though he failed on the stage due to theatrical politics and B level productions, Dracula would be raised from impending obscurity by the new art of Cinema. The 1922 German Expressionist film, Nosferatu, would seal his future as a movie star. Despite a few alterations and name changes, the script of Nosferatu sticks very closely to the spirit of the novel, so close in fact that Stoker’s widow, Florence, was outraged at what she consider a violation of copyright, and sued the film’s producers, the Prana Film Company, and director, Friedrich Wilhelm Murneau. After a three year battle, the tenacious widow Stoker won and demanded all prints of the film be destroyed. Woe to the future of Dracula, and his fans, had her wishes been carried out to the letter!
Count Dracula refused to bow out gracefully.

After the success of Nosferatu, many more productions of Dracula were staged in London and Dublin with varying success. But, by then, Dracula had found a more responsive audience in the movies.  In the 1930’s Bela Lugosi, an actor from the same part of the world as Vlad Tepes, would make him a Film Superstar. Perhaps it is Lugosi’s portrayal, a blend of the Byronic, sexy, cultured aristocrat, with the supernatural powers bequeathed to him by Stoker, that made Count Dracula truly immortal.

Bela Lugosi

Good Evening…

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