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Hollow Bones

"In our life there is a time of wonder. Walking with the ancient ones as they share their world. And the dancing voices are carried by the wind. As I walk this sacred ground, I know I'm not alone, and I thank Mother Earth."  ~Alex Davis, Seneca Cayuga

Fire in the Earth

10/26/2017

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Strombili volcano in Italy. Photograph by Martin Reitzel/Gazelian
The hubs and I watched a PBS Nova special this week that intrigued me—and got me started on enthusiastic research for Book 3 in my Ancient Magic series.

The mystery began when archaeologists found a hastily dug mass grave of 4,000 people in London.

So what killed all these people?

At first they assume it’s a plague pit from the Black Death. But when they date the bones, the remains turn out of be one hundred years too old.

The chronicles of that time describe a run of wild weather that devastated crops and spread famine across Europe.

As part of their research, scientists took ice core samples from the North Pole and looked at the section from the same time period, 1285. That year showed a huge spike in sulfuric acid residue in the core sample. Then they took an ice sample from the South Pole and found the same results.

Based on these findings, the Nova research team began to look for the signature of a volcanic eruption big enough to have blasted a huge cloud of ash and sulfuric acid into the atmosphere which chilled the entire planet. From Greenland to Antarctica, the team found telltale “fingerprints” in ice and soil layers until, finally, they narrow down the culprit to a smoldering caldera, a “blown out” volcano, on a remote Indonesian island.

Nearly 750 years ago, this volcano’s colossal explosion shot a million tons of rock and ash every second into the atmosphere. Across the globe, it turned summer into winter. Yes, you read that right. ACROSS THE GLOBE! Turns out, volcanic eruptions along the equator will swirl that debris both north and south through the atmosphere.

So first came the obvious question of, “Could it happen again?” Then my novelist radar went off, screaming, “There is such a paranormal story here!”

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I already know that the third book in my series involves the volcano Goddess Pele. I envisioned it taking place in Hawaii, but, based on my current research, Mexico, Italy and Central America are also possibilities. 
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P0p0cateptl, near Mexico City, has erupted 20 times since 1519, most recently in 2000. Nearly nine million people live nearby.

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Vesuvius in Italy has a history of eruptions every twenty years. This is the volcano that buried Pompeii. And it's overdue--the last major eruption was 1944.

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Galeras is in Columbia near the Ecuador border. A 1993 eruption killed nine people, including scientists who had descended into the volcano's crater to take measurements to predict future eruptions. 

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Kilauea in Hawaii erupts every three years or so. It is one of five shield volcanoes that collectively form the Big Island of Hawaii.

With NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) starting in a week, I may just find myself working on three novels!  I’ll give you the details in next week’s post, and so please drop by here again.

I plan to post book details and updates, character descriptions and pictures of how I imagine them, as well as “behind the scene” factoids about each book on this blog throughout November and early December.
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Have a blessed Samhain and a scary but safe Halloween. See you next weekend!
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Witch's Familiar

10/20/2017

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Since ancient times, witches have worked magic with the aid of familiars, or helpful spirits. These days, we tend to perceive a familiar in much the same way that American Indians view animal guides or power animals. They are messengers to and from the Otherworld.

Familiars can assist the witch in carrying energy for healing, communication or spell-casting. The familiar can also be used for protection of the home and/or personal property. During astral projection or dream work, the familiar can not only safeguard the witch, but also retrieve information for her.
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There are essentially three types of familiar spirit: the physical, the astral/spirit, and the artificial familiar. (I’m not going to get into the artificial familiar in this article, but I’ll give you examples of the physical and the astral.)

The Physical Familiar
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The physical familiar can be a pet or any animal/creature to which you feel drawn. 
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I’ve always thought of my cats (some of them at least) as my familiars. My 20-pound black cat, Shadow Moon, likes to stroll into circle in the middle of a ritual, and stay through path working. He doesn’t stick around me. Instead, at some point he will brush up against someone in trance and startle them awake.

His deceased daddy, Magick, preferred to jump up on the altar during smudging, and stay there the whole time we were outside. That cat was huge. We had to set up the altar around him.
Cats, because of their independent nature, have a reputation for being aloof little bastards who don’t care about us humans, but I don’t think that’s true. Yes, they’re insatiably curious. But I believe they are drawn to the energy of my magical projects, and they invariably add to the working.


Choosing Your Familiar
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If you feel naturally attracted to an animal or creature, then it’s likely you are being called into a relationship. And during your years of practicing the Craft, you will probably acquire more than one familiar.
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They may find you, as was the case with my corvid familiars, the raven and crow.

Or, you can seek out a familiar spirit through guided meditation known as a journey quest.

Raven is the spirit animal of my patron goddess, The Morrigan. I was adopted by the raven familiar before I even knew the name of the goddess they introduced me to, and now I see them everywhere I go. Nesting in the stadium lights at my son’s high school football games. The whoomp whoomp of their wings over our tent when we go camping. A whole murder of crows in the woods behind our forest cabin, who caw good morning to us as soon as we walk out on the deck to drink our coffee.  And the biggest raven I’ve ever seen perched on the roof of an SUV in the parking lot at Grand Canyon.

I love observing their behavior and have learned so much from interacting with them. (If you would like to know more about ravens and crows, see my blog from July 2014 on raven magic.
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Cats and ravens make sense as familiars, because they’re animals I have always loved. 

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​But the second type of familiar, the astral/spirit familiar, took me completely by surprise.

​I encountered it when I took my first shamanic drumming journey. 

The Astral Familiar

An astral/spirit familiar is one that pre-exists as a conscious entity within the elemental realm or the Otherworld, which lies beyond the world of the living. It may look like a known animal (or not), but you can’t reach out and touch it.

My first shamanic journey took place in a community campground during a large fire circle with nearly 50 people. I traveled to what the Native Americans call the “upper world,” the spirit realm, and asked to meet my spirit guide. 

The journey was absolutely breathtaking. 



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I got to witness the aurora borealis and a snowy, white landscape that seemed like the North Pole or something similar. I’ve never visited the tundra, so the whole time I kept asking myself, “Why am I here? Why are you showing me this?”

​You’re not supposed to do that on a spirit journey, by the way, but I was pretty green.

My spirit guide was equally impressive: An immense, shaggy sabre tooth tiger. 

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He—actually, I think it was a ‘she’—didn’t speak, she just stalked around me in a circle. It made me distinctly uneasy. Finally she sat down in the snow near me and we watched the dazzling light show in the sky without speaking. I remember when I looked over at her, I saw the colors of the aurora borealis reflected in her pupils.

I felt so peaceful and protected when our journeying ended that evening. We all bedded down for the night, and that feeling of peace continued until the Santa Anna winds blew in about three that morning. The wind howled so hard around us, it blew my tent away when I finally got up and stepped outside to see how everyone else was faring. (Yes, it was staked down, and it still ended up a football field distance away.) My feeling of peace and protection completely shattered, I retrieved my tent, threw it in the back of my SUV, belongings still in it, and drove home in the dead of night.

That was the weirdest camping trip I’ve ever been on. While my rational mind told me the howling wind and this large gathering or witches and their path working were in no way related, I just didn’t want to get any closer to my sabre toothed spirit guide. So, I put the experience aside and tried again, albeit several years later.
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By the time I tried looking for a spirit guide again, I had done a lot of shamanic journeying. This time, we went to the lower world. I lit my candle and voiced my intentions, lay down on my rug and put my journeying stone over my third eye. 

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I knew to keep my mind clear of preconceived expectations, to observe only, ask for clarification when needed. But my lower world landscape was so surprising, all questions fled my mind.
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It was apocalyptic. Everything was dusty, dry, dull brown. The trees had no leaves and appeared stunted. Crystals hung by strings in the tree beside me, their luster blotted out by dust. There were no buildings still intact, every structure was ruined and obviously abandoned. I looked around for anyone or anything that could be my spirit guide, and spotted an old man with a long, dingy gray beard, dressed in a brown burlap monk’s cloak. He had an animal on his shoulder, but I was too far away to make out what it was. “Are you my spirit guide?” I asked him as I approached. “What has happened here?” 

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As I approached, the man turned away and walked off, but the creature hopped off his shoulder and waited to me in the dust.

It was a spider monkey, and animal I had never seen in my life, I had to look him up. The little guy jumped up on my shoulder and pointed after the old man, urging me to follow him.
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There’s more to this story, but this blog is about familiars, so let me just remind you: no matter how odd the creature, or how unlikely the scene, stay open to all possibilities. Everyone wishes their familiar was a bear, wolf, fox—all the usual suspects—but in reality, what you may need at this time is a little, goofy-acting monkey.

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Here’s hoping you have a wonderful visit with your ancestors at your Samhain celebrations next week.
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Blessed be!

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Season of the Witch

10/13/2017

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Hecate speaks:

"I have been with you from the beginning. Silently, I watched you growing, and I was at all your rites of passage. I was the priestess holding aloft the torches of life in each hand, one pointing up to the heaven and one down to the great below, for it is said, “As above so below.”

Even the Earth herself calls on my services. I am the queen of the crossroads, witch queen, the transformer. I have come again this season to scream my frightening banshee yell and scatter pumpkins on your doorsteps and skeletons in your yard.

The ancient primal season of the witch is here, and you welcome me. Yes, you love to be frightened by me. I force you to laugh at your own death, to dress up your children in ghostly guise. Now comes your first sense of the upcoming cold season, chilling to the bone. I bring the final harvest, and if you haven’t picked your crops, I’ll nip them with frost. After Halloween, all that’s left in the fields is mine!

If you wish to honor me, I will show you my magical ways. I take away your fears of death and remind you to plan for your last days.

I am the keeper of the altars, outdoors and inside. I am speaking to you when you feel the desire to stand alone on a hillside. To look up in a clearing in the woods, and talk to the full moon.

I am the wild part of you, your sixth sense, the one that gives you your hunches, premonitions, dreams. I am the priestess immortal. My face is threefold—young, full bloom and crone.  I see ahead and behind. I am the hinge of reality.

Into your lives I bring these feelings, even now in the artificial forests of your urban concrete world. My witches are flying on their broomsticks, and the ghosts are shimmering in your windows.
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All is well, Halloween is near; souls will come to visit when the living world throws a party to mingle with the dead. I will share in your merriment and warm my cold hands at your hearth."
* * * 

Hecate’s speech above was adapted from the book The Grandmother of Time, by Z. Budapest, although I took a few liberties with the original. It reminds us of an important goal we can all set for the month of October.

October is a good time to tidy up the soul. Make a list of things that have got to go, such as resentment of friends or enemies, anger at yourself, regrets. Just think through your life to see what you no longer need. Go through your soul as if it were a long-forgotten attic, and see where cleaning up is way overdue, then write down what you find.

Note: Negative situations that are not your own doing are a different issue: If you are struggling with depression or other mental illness. If you got ripped off. If you lost your job because you’re a woman, or the wrong color skin, or too old. These oppressions are not your doing, so don’t blame yourself for them. Find groups with which to work through and channel your anger into political activism. It can give your life new meaning!

 
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Spell to Let Go
 
Create an altar with black cloth, the color of the universe, the color of chaos, where everything come from and to which everything must return. Place some fallen leaves on the loth, to represent the natural order of the seasons and the discarded past. The fallen leaves are beautiful, but they are meant to become compost, to compost is where all our bad garbage is going as well.
 
Place your list of psychic garbage on the table. Light two black candles, one on either side, and burn some dispelling incense.
*Frankincense, Dragon’s Blood, Sandalwood – Ease depression and stress.
*Copal, Myrrh, Lavender – Spiritual cleansing
* Myrrh, Pine resin, Peppermint- Healing
* Benzoin, Amber, Rose – Promote love and harmony (external effect)

When you pray to the Goddess, talk normally, as if to your own sweet mama. You can say:
“Dearest Goddess: I have come a long way this year, carrying my burdens, and the burdens of the world, which I have internalized. I would like to take them off my shoulders and give them back to you to recycle, bury, to compost. Here, I offer you my resentments against friends, family, and (fill in your own needs here), and ask you to absorb them into your black cloak of the universe. Relieve me of them and allow me to walk more lightly.”
 
Burn your list in the flames of your candles. Now imagine all these feelings evaporating into smoke, and say something like: “I feel light, happy and cleansed. Dearest Goddess, you are my true strength and guide. I thank you for being accessible and answering your children’s call. I honor you and thank you.”
 
Gather all the things that were part of your meditation and cast them into a living body of water. Just as importantly, let go of your thoughts about the ritual.
 
Samhain Blessings to you!
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    Writer, witch, mother and wife. Order of importance is a continual shuffle.

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