Fifth Lunation: Waxing Moon Cycle
Days 1–16
A Word to the Wise: The next lunation offers us another opportunity to practice with the intensity offered by the Moon-Wise retreat schedule (Appendix D). Look at your calendar now to schedule time to engage in this important practice.
Day of Silence
Here is yet another opportunity to observe silence for the day. Silence for a day is a blessing. It may not feel so initially, but as the day goes along, the inner ramblings common to us all start to quiet down somewhat.
Suddenly, like the screech of nails on a chalkboard, the shocking truth of the moment emerges. You can hear birds chirping. You can feel the wind on your skin, the slight discomfort you have in a certain sitting position.
You start to wake up to the life you’re living, right now. This, right here, right now, no matter how it looks or feels, is the Goddess and the God. Silence allows us to pause from attending to the distractions that put a wedge between ourselves and the life we’re living, the Goddess and the God, nature, the divine.
Does your job feel like a distraction? How about your child or spouse? If it feels like they are, then take time to breathe into the life you share with them. Allow the experiences of spouse, children, and work to become real, solid, living, breathing expressions of life itself. There is no other life you can have except the one you’re living right now. There is no ideal husband, wife, child, or job. Ideals are the true distraction that can take you away from the unfolding of the beauty and majesty of what’s right here.
Slow down today. Breathe. Just be with your life in silence.
Fourth Cardinal Axiom
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Direction: |
North |
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Power: |
Silence and resonance |
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Season: |
Winter |
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Festival: |
Winter Solstice |
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Theme: |
Freedom |
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Dates: |
Around December 19–22 |
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Axiom: |
A practitioner of the Old Ways encourages freedom, for all is woven together, an expression of the divine. |
Fourth Cardinal Axiom
The traditional power aligned with the north is “the power to be silent.” You’ve experienced several days of silence over the course of the past several months. But what comes up for you during your days of silence? Boredom? Frustration? Peace? Relaxation? A sense of inner spaciousness?
The experience can be different for each Witch, depending on the depth of practice, the individual’s history, and the activity of the mind (which can change from day to day).
But more important than this is exploring the question “What is this silence?” As a practice, right now, sit where you are and follow your breath for several inhalations and exhalations. Do not follow anything else but this. Hold the question “What is this silence?” in your gut, at the solar plexus chakra, rather than in your mind. Ask the question as you exhale, but do not force an answer. Set a timer (most cell phones have one) and close your eyes for at least ten minutes and actually give yourself away to the question, becoming one with it.
When the timer announces the end of the meditation, open your eyes and consider what arises for you from this experience. What response comes forward? The answer, if you have tuned in mindfully to the experience, is a simple one. “What is this silence?” It is your life. That’s it, plain and simple. And everything else is an addition that you and I have allowed to take the focus away from this unassuming truth.
Life itself is very simple. It consists of eating, sleeping, eliminating, sensing. Your wakeful life is made up of your objective, moment-to-moment sensory experiences. Stop right now and take note of your objective sensory experience of being alive right now. Don’t interpret it, using a lot of words, since words lend themselves to interpretations—and our inner interpretations lend themselves to feelings and emotions. Then those emotions lead toward actions. Actions that arise directly from emoting can lead to some serious karmic results.
Your moment-by-moment sensory experience is simple. The list should consist of things like heat, cold, hardness, softness, light, shadow, breeze, sound, and so on. That is your life.
It is so shockingly simple, so devastating in its directness, that most of us cannot tolerate this as truth. Most people want life to be more, to be “meaningful.” It’s the brain’s job to create meaning where none may have existed at all. It is a survival tactic our brains developed over millennia.11 But this thinking and interpreting process goes into overdrive and feels compelled to “explain” every experience of life. It wants the time you are spending eating, breathing, and existing to have a specific reason. And those of us inclined toward spiritual paths may attribute many “spiritual” explanations to our natural living experiences. But over-analyzing and self-explaining, trying to make sense of everything, takes each of us far from the actual concrete experience of life that we are living. That mental activity of explaining takes us away from nature, which is what you and I are at our essence.
The words we generate to express ideas, to interpret our experiences, are fine, but they are not life itself, nor are they nature. They are symbols that we use to identify the experiences and things of our world. But ideas are a far cry from concrete reality, which is this life, right here, and only this.
Take a moment to look at an object somewhere nearby to where you are sitting. Before you get a chance to register it with a label, allow it to enter in just as an experience. If you do not go into “story” and “label,” you’ll only notice shape, color, form, movement, stillness, and other basics. If you go into story, you’ll start with a label. “Oh that’s a chair.” Once an object has a label, it connects to other interconnected labels and stories that ensnare you like a spider web.
“Oh, that chair is the one I got with my ex-husband” might be the next mental connection. Then maybe, “That man was just terrible,” and you’re off and running. Once that happens, it’s only natural that you develop responses, such as attraction to one experience and aversion to another. That sets in motion your emotions, including fear, joy, anger, happiness, and so on. This “mental framing” together of experiences with emotions and other experiences that may not even be directly related to the first label is a mental process that we perform millions of times a day. Thus it becomes habitual. Unfortunately, the habits of mental framing, if you don’t recognize them and short-circuit them, can take you away from the true nature of who and what you are. They easily drag you into emotional responses that have little to do with the concrete reality of what you are living. They can take you away from soaking in this natural expression of nature, which is the divine source where all Witches find empowerment.
When you take the step to live in the experience of your life (rather than in your thoughts about it), you “vibrate” with it, you “resonate.” It doesn’t take much convincing to see that the closer you are to resonating with life, with nature, the closer you are to experiencing the divine, namely the Goddess and the God. This process of moving toward experiential resonance is critical not only for spiritual development but for spiritual freedom as well.
Silence/Resonance Incense and Oil
Magical Purpose: Making herbal aids to your magic.
Silence/Resonance Incense
What you’ll need:
• ¼ cup powdered pine
• 3 tablespoons dried patchouli
• 1 tablespoon mandrake root (Try to find powdered. If not, grind up some mandrake root bits in a food processer to get them as fine as possible.)
• 5 drops sage essential oil
• 3 drops violet essential oil
• 1 ounce vegetable glycerin or other carrier oil
• An airtight container
Mix the dry ingredients together first. Add the essential oils to the glycerin or carrier oil. Mix everything together until the dry ingredients take on the scents from the essential oils and the mixture looks fluffy. Keep the incense stored in an airtight container until you use it.
Silence/Resonance Oil
What you’ll need:
• 3 drops sage essential oil
• 2 drops violet essential oil
• 2 drops patchouli essential oil
• 2 drops pine essential oil
• Pinch of mandrake root
• 1 ounce vegetable glycerin or other carrier oil
• An amber or dark-colored bottle with a tight lid
Mix the ingredients together and store in an amber or dark-colored bottle that has a tight lid to preserve the magical properties of the essential oils.
Creating Your Own Blend
If you are interested in creating your own magical blend, here is a list of herbs and essential oils that can help evoke silence and resonance:
Earth Herbs, Woods, and Essential Oils:
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Alder |
Aloe |
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Bearsfoot |
Bistort |
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Burdock |
Cypress |
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Deadly nightshade |
Elm |
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Fern |
Fumitory |
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Hazel |
Hellebore |
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Hemlock |
Henbane |
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Honeysuckle |
Horehound |
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Lemon |
Magnolia |
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Mandrake |
Moss |
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Mugwort |
Myrtle |
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Narcissus |
Oakmoss |
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Patchouli |
Pine |
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Poppy |
Primrose |
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Sage |
Shepherd’s purse |
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Starwort |
Vervain |
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Vetivert |
Violet |
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Willow |
Wolfsbane |
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Yarrow |
As I mentioned at the beginning of your year and a day of study, there are herbs that Witches use from this list that are poisonous. The most commonly known ones are deadly nightshade, hellebore, hemlock, henbane, mandrake, and wolfsbane. I list these herbs here only for traditional knowledge. It is never advisable to make an incense or develop a magical oil blend while incorporating these poisonous herbs.
Silence and Resonance Meditation
Magical Purpose: Evoking resonance.
What you’ll need:
• Silence/Resonance Incense
• Silence/Resonance Oil
• Your pentacle
• Your circle-casting tools
• Three pages of blank paper
• A pen
To begin, light a coal in your incense burner and sprinkle on the hot coal some of the Silence/Resonance Incense. Allow it to burn, filling the sacred space you are in with its energy. Take the burner and, walking clockwise, trace a simple circle around the room, making sure that you accommodate the area where you will be sitting to do the exercise.
There are two traditional chakras that we associate with the element of earth: the root and the throat chakras. So you will anoint both areas. First, anoint yourself with Silence/Resonance Oil at the root chakra, which is between your anus and genitals. Just dab some there. Then using the oil and the index finger of your right hand, draw an earth-invoking pentagram at your throat chakra, which is at the hollow of the throat.
Face the north and use your altar pentacle to draw before you an earth-invoking pentagram.
Next, sit either in a chair or on a meditation cushion facing the north. Align your body, breath, and mind by first counting each of your exhalations for a few minutes.
Using your pen, begin writing nonstop, freely associating from one idea to the nest and filling up several blank pages (do more than one). Do not stop the flow of the writing by scrutinizing grammar, style, punctuation, or legibility. In fact, expect that the writing will look very sloppy. The focus here is on speed. Move the pen as quickly as you can across the page, jumping from one idea to the next. You may feel as though you’ve run out of things to say at some point. Don’t allow that to stop you. You can write about not knowing what to write about, if it comes to that. It doesn’t matter what you write. You can use swear words, loving words, creative words, blasphemous words. Use them all. Just keep the pen moving until you have several pages filled up with your ideas and commentary.
Once you’re finished, set the pen down. Do you feel lighter? Do you feel emptier? Relieved? Hopefully you do. If not, take out more paper and keep on going until thoughts and their accompanying feelings subside. Once you are finished with your commentary, it can open you up, by contrast, to “open space.” Note how this feels. Try not to label this experience in any way. Just be in it fully. Allow yourself to steep in this experience for as long as it lasts.
It is likely that you will not be able to sustain this “open space” experience for a lengthy time. But this is an exercise you can come back to regularly, whenever you recognize that thinking about things has become excessive and heavy and has led you into emotional responding.
At the end of this exercise, stand facing the north and use your pentacle to draw an earth-banishing pentagram. Then, using the Silence/Resonance Oil, draw an earth-banishing pentagram at the throat chakra.
Try to approach the rest of the day from the perspective of your grounded, earthy, experiential awareness.
Resonating with the Elements: Air
Magical Purpose: Learning about elemental imbalances and a magical method for restoring equilibrium.
What you’ll need:
• Knowing/Wondering Incense and Oil
• Your wand
• Your circle-casting tools
Elemental imbalances occur when you disengage from one or more of the elemental energies. This disengagement occurs through unconscious habits of thought and behavior. Here is how to know if you are imbalanced in one of the elements:
Air: Feeling spacy, lightheaded, forgetful, difficulty thinking clearly, mental fogginess, too much thinking and inner chatter, over-active mind, jumping thoughts, anxiety, communication problems.
Fire: Lack of or too much physical energy, lethargy, fatigue, hyperactivity, anger, irritability, fighting, aggression, snapping at others, difficulty focusing, restlessness, inability to keep weight on.
Water: Overly emotional, sappy sentimentality, over-sensitivity to what people say or do, depression, sadness, worry, many bad dreams, frequent crying, clinging, yearning for love, feeling lonely, difficulty focusing.
Earth: Feeling heavy, immobile, unable to take action, slow thinking, slow speech, refusing to talk, feeling the weight of the world on one’s shoulders, dark thoughts, weight gain, hoarding, possessive, overly focused on money or gain, selfish, brooding.
The following resonance exercises will help to bring you back into better elemental balance. The first practice is about balancing the element of air.
Light a coal in your incense burner and sprinkle Knowing/Wondering Incense on it. Sit before the smoke and simply observe it for a while. Focus your attention on the movement of the smoke as it wafts upward. Use your hands to cup the curling vapors and bring them to your face. Inhale deeply as you place both hands over your eyes. Repeat this several times, focusing primarily on your breath and the sensations of air entering and leaving your lungs.
After you have done this for a while, stand facing the east with your wand. Draw an air-invoking pentagram.
Then draw an air-banishing pentagram.
Continue to draw invoking and banishing pentagrams in rapid succession until you feel that there is a shift in the energies in your body. If you are tuned in to your body, you’ll know when to stop. It may take a while for your energies to feel as though they have shifted. Just keep drawing the air pentagrams, alternating between invoking and banishing.
When you feel the inner shift, stop and sit before the incense once again. Once again, use your hands to cup the curling vapors to your face. Inhale deeply as you place both hands over your eyes one last time.
Once you have completed this simple ceremony, use your Knowing/Wondering Oil, consecrating yourself with a dab at your third-eye chakra and saying:
I am consecrated with the element of air.
The process, once completed, should help you feel a greater sense of balance and ease.
Resonating with the Elements: Fire
Magical Purpose: Learning about fire imbalances and a magical method for restoring equilibrium.
What you’ll need:
• Willing/Surrendering Incense and Oil
• Your athame
• A fire ring, fire pit, or fireplace (a red candle can serve as a substitute)
• Your circle-casting tools
A quick safety note first: Be very careful around fire in this exercise. Try not to wear long sleeves and don’t sit too close to the flames. Remember, always practice safe Witchery.
Light a fire inside of a fire pit, fire ring, or fireplace, and sit before it. If none of these are an option, then light a red candle and sit before it. Light a coal in your incense burner and sprinkle Willing/Surrendering Incense on it. As you sit before the burning fire, use your hands to “cup” the flames. Be very careful doing this; do not put your hands in the fire, but bring them near enough to feel the heat. This is what you’ll cup with your hands. Bring your hands with the fire energy in them to your face. Inhale deeply as you place both hands over your eyes. Repeat this several times, focusing primarily on the sensations of heat you feel from sitting near the fire.
After you have done this for a while, stand facing the south with your athame. Draw a fire-invoking pentagram.
Then draw a fire-banishing pentagram.
Continue to draw invoking and banishing pentagrams in rapid succession until you feel that there is a shift in the energies in your body. Again, watch for the moment you should stop. It may take a while for your energies to feel as though they have shifted. Just keep drawing fire pentagrams, alternating between invoking and banishing.
When you feel the inner shift, stop and sit before the fire’s flames once again. Use your hands to cup the fire energies to your face. Inhale deeply as you place both hands over your eyes one last time.
Once you have completed this simple ceremony, use your Willing/Surrendering Oil, consecrating yourself with a dab at your solar plexus chakra and saying:
I am consecrated with the element of fire.
Resonating with the Elements: Water
Magical Purpose: Learning about water imbalances and a magical method for restoring equilibrium.
What you’ll need:
• Daring/Accepting Incense and Oil
• Your chalice
• A body of water (a large bowl of water can serve as a substitute)
• A towel
• Your circle-casting tools
For this exercise, you’ll need to locate a place in nature that is near a body of water, such as an ocean, lake, pond, river, or stream. If you are unable to go to a place in nature for this exercise, then fill a large bowl, a basin, or a tub with water and sit near it. If you go out in nature, be sure to bring your chalice, incense burner, incense, oil, and a coal to ignite the incense.
Sit before your body of water and observe it for a while. Sit close enough that you will be able to touch it. Then light a coal in your incense burner and sprinkle Daring/Accepting Incense on it.
Cup your hands into the water and bring it to your face. After the water drips from your face, inhale deeply as you hold both hands over your eyes. Repeat this several times, focusing primarily on the sensations of the water in your hands and on your face.
After you have done this for a while, stand facing the west with your chalice. Use it to draw a water-invoking pentagram.
Then draw a water-banishing pentagram.
Continue to draw invoking and banishing pentagrams in rapid succession until you feel that there is a shift in the energies in your body. Again, watch for the moment you should stop. It may take a while for your energies to feel as though they have shifted. Just keep drawing water pentagrams, alternating between invoking and banishing.
When you feel the inner shift, stop and sit before the body of water once again. Use your hands to cup water to your face. Inhale deeply after the water drains away and you place both hands over your eyes for the final time.
Once you have completed this simple ceremony, use your Daring/Accepting Oil, consecrating yourself with a dab at your heart chakra and saying:
I am consecrated with the element of water.
Resonating with the Elements: Earth
Magical Purpose: Learning about earth imbalances and a magical method for restoring equilibrium.
What you’ll need:
• Silence/Resonance Incense and Oil
• Your altar pentacle
• A mountain or a garden location (a bowl of soil can serve as substitute)
• Your circle-casting tools
For this exercise, you’ll need to locate a place in nature that is aligned with the element of earth. Hidden mountain pathways, deep forests, and gardens are the most common. If you are unable to go to a place in nature for this exercise, then fill a large bowl with soil and sit near it. If you go out in nature, be sure to bring your pentacle, incense burner, incense, oil, and a coal to ignite the incense.
Sit in your natural setting (or before the bowl of earth) and observe it for a while. Feel its deep silence. Sit on the ground so you will be able to touch the soil. If you are using a bowl of soil, then try to sit on the floor with it.
Light a coal in your incense burner and sprinkle Silence/Resonance Incense on it.
Place your hands in the soil and bring your hands to your face. Inhale deeply as you hold both hands over your eyes. Repeat this several times, focusing primarily on the sensations of the soil beneath your hands and then imagining bringing that energy toward your face as you inhale.
After you have done this for a while, stand facing the north with your pentacle. Use it to draw an earth-invoking pentagram.
Then draw an earth-banishing pentagram.
Continue to draw invoking and banishing pentagrams in rapid succession until you feel that there is a shift in the energies in your body. Again, watch for the moment you should stop. It may take a while for your energies to feel as though they have shifted. Just keep drawing earth pentagrams, alternating between invoking and banishing.
When you feel the inner shift, stop and sit on the soil once again. Use your hands to cup earth energies to your face. Inhale deeply and place both hands over your eyes for the final time.
Once you have completed this simple ceremony, use your Silence/Resonance Oil, consecrating yourself with a dab at your root and throat chakras and saying:
I am consecrated with the element of earth.
Full Moon Ceremony
During your full moon ceremony this lunar cycle, be sure to incorporate Drawing Down the Moon and the recitation of the Charge of the Goddess into the practice.
11. See Steven Hayes, PhD, Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life (Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, 2005). Through Relational Frame Theory, Dr. Steven Hayes explains the brain as a “meaning-making machine,” developed over the millennia for survival. Language too plays a role in this meaning making and in human survival. The problem, as Hayes sees it, is that language forms the basis of meaning, and its primary purpose was to solve problems at a social level. The very process of language acquisition is involved in our difficulties with language, which serves as a basis for over-analyzing, making comparisons, contrasting, and judging. These processes are “relational frames” that can harm us by creating inner discomfort and agitation.