Older Entries »

Why aren’t groups open to everyone?

By jenett, on April 15th, 2011

The somewhat flippant answer to this – while still very accurate – is that living rooms hold only so many people.

See, most Pagan groups – and especially most religious witchcraft groups – are intentionally fairly small, because much of the way they work works best with a small number of people who can build up trust and connection with each other.

(There are larger open ritual groups, but these are generally focused either on a pretty specific goal, with some filtering, or they’re open to anyone, but focused on general celebrations and community.)

But most religious witchcraft groups do run smaller for a variety of  reasons:

1) Only so many people fit in the room.

I come back to this one first because really, it’s very practical. When a small group is meeting in personal space, you only get so far before it starts getting unwieldy. (And, of course, with a small group, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to either maintain a larger separate building, or sometimes even to rent one.)

For group work, the people hosting are going to want:

  • Enough parking for people who drive without annoying the neighbors.
  • Enough seating for everyone (chances are, most groups will have a couple of people who really need chairs, for various reasons, maybe a few people who prefer sitting on the floor, and some people who can do either.)
  • Enough clear space for ritual – it’s a lot easier to clear a space the size of a smallish dining room than it is to clear a space that will hold 20 comfortably. Moving furniture back to the walls of the living room only gets you so far.

For all sorts of reasons, this means that 10-15 people is about the upward size limit for working in someone’s home.

2) The personal connections are important.
Religious witchcraft work, in particular, tends to rely heavily on personal connections between participants in a group.

You probably know that the traditional size for a coven is 13 – but it turns out there’s a good psychological reason for this: that’s about the upper limit of how many individual connections we can maintain in the same social context. More than that, and groups tend to start fragmenting into smaller subgroups.

3) A clear, focused, group mind is part of the point.
One of the things behind the theory of coven work is that a group of people with a shared intention and focus can be exponentially more effective than individuals working on their own. However, you’ve got keep people focused in the same direction – which has some size limits due to the practical and psychological factors noted above.

4) In a given group, some people will be a good fit right now, and others won’t.
It doesn’t mean that the people who aren’t aren’t good people – or competent witches, or whatever else you want to talk about. They’re just not a good fit for that particular group right now.

This is something we really should be used to. Good managers at jobs look to hire people who will make a well-rounded set of skills. Coaches of sports teams look for people who complement each other’s skills. Covens and small religious groups work the same way: you want people who have enough in common that working together makes sense, but who bring enough different things that there’s variety and flexibility and different options available.

5) Adding new people to a group is especially time-consuming.
First, you have to spend a fair bit of time getting to know each other, to even figure out if you’ve got a possible good fit. In my group, this takes 3-6 meetings, and usually about 15 hours of time (including the initial email stages) on both sides.

But after that, there’s still the time and energy to get someone up to speed in the group. Most religious witchcraft traditions cover a chunk of material to get someone to a point where they’re solid in the basics of their particular practice – usually something that takes 5-8 hours a month (at least) of dedicated teaching time in some form. Obviously, groups are sometimes going to be better able to do that at some points than at others.

6) Groups also go through internal cycles.
A given group might be up for taking in several prospective new members one year. The next year, they might hit their practical limit for numbers. Or maybe the people who normally teach have some health challenges, or some high demands at work, or something else that means they don’t have quite as much time or energy to spare to teach a new member of the group or see how they fit in. Since we’re talking small groups, lead by volunteers who host and teach because they think it’s important, these things can cause some significant pauses for good reason.

The good news is that often those things shift again in a year or two. More advanced students of the tradition may get to a point where they can form a new group. Health or job issues can shift back and allow more time for the group. They may figure out some way to spread out the workload that’s more sustainable.

What does it all mean?
Most simply, it means that lots of people – no matter how nice or great or wonderful they are – won’t be a great fit with every group. But it also means that the groups they might be a fit with might go through periods when, for whatever reason, they’re not taking in new students or new members.

If eventual group work is important to you, patience helps a lot, as well as finding ways to continue to learn and grow that make group work more accessible later.

[last updated October 28, 2011]

Leave a comment     , , , ,  

Removing old energetic ties

By jenett, on April 10th, 2011

One question that comes up from time is how to remove old energetic ties and energetic entanglements that no longer serve us. My own approach to it is pretty pragmatic: clean all the things, see what’s left, and figure out how to untangle that. Cutting is a last resort, because it has some ongoing consequences.

The methods I describe below are designed to clear out anything that isn’t serving you anymore, rather than focusing on cutting ties with a specific person (I generally think it’s more useful: sometimes we’re being limited by energetic ties we don’t know are there.)

However, you should be aware that doing this kind of work can change relationships in ways you didn’t anticipate. You may find that some relationships in your life become closer, others become unexpectedly distant. Because this method is relatively gentle (except for the one place where I note otherwise), if you don’t want that outcome with that person, you can generally fix it with some attention and time.

The practices below mostly assume that you have some solid skills: If you don’t have these yet, you should learn them first and get some practice.

Theory:

My basic theory on energetic connections goes like this:

1) We are all connected, in a very loose way, because we are all part of the larger world and environment.

2) However, some of us are more tightly connected than others, because of choices we’ve made. Some choices create closer ties than others.

Going to the same high school as someone creates some ties, but for most people most of them are relatively weak. Being married to someone is a much tighter tie. Having sex (or fooling around) with someone is somewhere in the middle. Working with someone for six months is a fairly light tie, but working together for five years is a much stronger tie.

Magical and esoteric groups, or any setting where there are strong emotions, major life-changing experiences, very new situations, or anything similar can create a very deep relationship tie very quickly. (Think summer camp, too.)

3) As we grow and change, some of those ties fall away easily. Others don’t. That doesn’t mean that those ties are bad or wrong – just that if they’re no longer serving us, we might not want to continue adding energy to maintaining them.

4) Very occasionally, someone will get a tie into us that’s really hard to shift. A family member who knows just how to push all our buttons. A boss whose actions take a sharp swipe at our confidence and self-assurance. Anyone who shifts our view of ourselves, or ability to stand tall in our own identity. In these cases, we may want and need to detatch in order to do the stuff we care about – but we may need a bit more effort to do it than getting rid of outgrown ties.

When you might consider this kind of work?

  • You’ve had a major change in a relationship that means someone who meant a lot to you has either left your life, or the relationship is so different they might as well have.
  • You are tidying up loose ends as you transition into a new stage of your life (as part of a physical move, a new dedication to a particular path or a next step on a path).
  • You feel that there are specific old entanglements that are keeping you in patterns that don’t serve you, and you want to release them so you can move on.

I generally review my life at major transitions (physical moves, new jobs, other noticeable changes in my life), but also do a quick review at least every year (usually around my birthday) or six months (if I’m going through a range of smaller changes.)

What do you need?

Useful tools vary depending on your preferences, but I’m fond of:

  • a handful or two of sea salt (table salt will do)
  • a soap you consider particularly refreshing and ‘new’.
  • incense you consider purifying and cleansing (sage is classic, but there are lots of other choices. If incense is a problem for you, you don’t need this.)
  • music that reflects the kind of changes the new openness might bring me.
  • comfortable clothing that helps you enter into a ritual mindset. (For the approaches below, flowing sleeves and long skirts are less practical, but see the notes below.)

You should also include at least one tool that helps you reflect on yourself and what you want. For some people, this is a journal. For others, it’s a divination tool (Tarot, runes, something else). For some people it’s a pad of art paper and markers/paints/whatever.

You also want whatever other things you’d normally use for ritual or magical work. For some people that’s altar clothes, candles, incense, statues, and more. For some people that’s their favorite tree outside. (You will want a bit of privacy for this.)

Starting clean:

A good place to start is from as energetically clean a place as you can. Generally, I suggest:

Center and ground.
Focus on balancing your energy: letting out anything that is no longer serving you, taking in things that allow you to grow and heal.

Wash your various selves.
Have a bath or a shower, focusing on washing away any energy or energetic ties that no longer serve you. Take it seriously – scrub yourself the way you would if you’d been camping for a weekend, or out playing in the mud. Get between your toes, behind your ears, and everywhere else you can think of.

As you scrub, focus on the unwanted energy washing away from you and (when you open the drain, if you’re in the bath) flowing out through the drain, flowing far far away and dissipating. If you’re in the shower, this is even easier.

I generally prefer to throw a handful or two of sea salt in the bathtub (it’s a great psychic cleanser) along with a couple of drops (3-5) of an essential oil that helps with cleansing and purifying (both lavender and rosemary are cheap and have lots of uses. Right now, I’m using a blend of juniper, fennel, and grapefruit a lot. There’s a folk tradition of putting a bottle of beer in the bath, and I’ve found that pretty effective, too. Shower users can use a salt scrub, or hang a small muslin or felt bag of dried cleansing herbs (hyssop, lavender, rosemary are good choices) under the shower spray.

Get dressed in a way that helps you be your best possible self.

Best possible self in the sense of what you want to continue to become. If you’re making a transition from ‘stay at home mom’ to ‘back to the workforce’, dress in clothing that at least somewhat reinforces that. If you’re leaving behind a relationship that’s no longer working, consider wearing something that ex really didn’t like – but that you love on you. That kind of thing.

Spend time reflecting:

What stuff in your life do you want to let go of? Do you feel any resistence to doing that? Why? Why not? What would help you feel like you could move on?

For example: if we’re moving on from a romantic relationship that had – like most of them – some really good stuff, and some really hard stuff, we might want to hang onto the good memories, but recognise that we need to move on, and let go of what might have been. We might spend time looking at photos or listening to songs that remind us of the good times, or writing a list of the things we’ll miss. But then we might go and continue, and write a list of why we’re done now with that relationship, what we’re *not* going to miss, and what we’re looking forward to as we move on.

The exact questions you’re going to need to ask yourself depend a whole lot on your situation. In some cases, like the example above, it’s pretty straightforward: there’s a clear ending to work with. In other cases, it’s going to be a lot fuzzier: you may know you need to do *something*, but not really what you’re trying to change.

Journalling can help here, using prompts like “I wish I could….” or “I miss…..” or “I remember when …. made me happy.” Start with things like that, and free write for 10-15 minutes. Look at what you come up with, and see if there are any patterns, or things that keep coming up.

Divination, if you have a divination method you feel at least somewhat competent with, can also help. (Or get help from a friend with more experience. Some online forums also do a reading exchange.)

Look at what keeps coming up. Any time I plan to do a major clearing out of old ties, I pay extra attention to what things I keep circling around in my life. Often (because I’m a big reader), I start seeing a similar theme in a range of books, the things I’m drawn to reading. Some people find that their playlist is out to get them: certain songs show up all the time. If you do regular divination, you might find the same cards showing up a lot. You may hear the same word or phrase coming up in unexpected places. Things like that.

These shouldn’t be the only thing you use to make decisions, but they’re often worth exploring in more detail. What is that thing, what does it mean to you? Why?

Taking inventory:

Here we get to the meat of the practice.

First, take inventory. Working your way slowly over your body in your mind, examine your aura and energy by whatever sense works best for you (or more than one sense.)

Take your time and slowly identify any spots that seem dirty, sound fuzzy or off-key, feel mucky or sticky, or that feel tense, tied up, or tangled. Don’t feel like you need to do anything about them the first pass: just identify where they are.

You may find that a specific sensation, emotion, or even person comes up as you look at a particular spot – if it does, make a note of it, and go back to your scan. Good notes can help you decide what to do later.

Make sure to cover your whole body: it’s usually easiest to start at one end (the top of your head), work your way down your back, under your feet, and back up the front (making sure to get the sides of your legs, the underside of your arms, etc.)

Spots of particular interest include:

  • Chakra points (you may want to do more research, if so.)
  • Spots on your shoulder blades or on your back.
  • Areas of old injuries or pains that are strongly associated with someone specific in your past for some reason.
  • Anywhere that just doesn’t feel right.

I’ll note: it’s possible that this scan will turn up spots that aren’t quite right, but that aren’t related to energetic ties. (It could be a physical injury, illness, or something else to pay attention to.) If you’re a heavy computer user, your neck and shoulders aching could be feeling the burden of lots of connections – but chances are, it’s probably that you’re spending a lot of time looking at a screen. Physical stretches, varied exercise, etc. might be all you need.

You may want to take a break here. As you build a baseline over months and years, it’ll be a lot easier to figure out what’s normal for you, and what’s something to pay extra attention to. When you’re starting out, taking a break between doing this inventory and making any changes can help you get clarity about which things are actually a problem, and which things are parts of other things in your life.

You may come to feel (with some time for reflection) that specific spots feel directly connected to specific people or events, while others don’t.

Cutting away:

This is the other core part of the practice. I generally suggest a light but firm intention here, of removing those things that no longer serve you, while leaving those things that do. Don’t get too specific: you may not know yet which things those are.

Go slowly, and if something starts feeling like it’s the wrong choice, back off. You can always come back to that spot later. It’s much easier to do multiple passes (doing a little bit, taking a break, seeing how you feel, coming back a day or two later) than to rebuild connections once you’ve broken the energetic tie directly.

The one-person method is a bit harder to do, but can work if you have sufficient focus and direction of energy. Basically, go back over your body, bit by bit, and as you hit a tangle, muddy spot, or fuzzy spot, you slowly focus on the energy clearing and becoming clear, light, and freely moving. In some cases it may feel like releasing a kink in a hose, so that water can run easily again. In other cases, you may find that releasing that thing is like cutting a piece of string connecting you to something outside of you.

Before you release something like that, take a moment to take a deep breath or two, and let your mind roam a little. Does this feel connected to someone in specific? Is releasing that energy what you really want to do (releasing the tie entirely can change your relationship with that person quite a bit). Or do you want to take the information, and use it to sit down with that person and work out any problems in your interactions face to face?

You may well find that some spots are a lot easier than others. I generally find it’s harder to reach places I can’t reach physically (middle of my back, for example).  You may need to repeat the whole process a couple of times over the course of a week or two.

You may also find spots that make you feel happy – that are connections to people you love, value, and want to keep in your life. You can renew these areas by directing a little energy to help make them sparkle and flow easily – buffing off a piece of metal with a soft cloth, rather than scrubbing.

The two person method requires someone else who’s good at directing energy. It’s traditionally done with an athame in a number of trads, but you can also do it with your hand. Either way, the person doing it runs their hand or blade at a 90 degree angle to your body. (So, if they’re working on your back, the flat of the blade or flat of their hand is parallel to the floor, and perpendicular to your body as you’re standing up.)

While they’re working, they’re focusing on scraping off or flicking away (depending on whether they’re using a blade or their hand) any bits of aura and energy that are stuck, grungy, or too tangled to be of use. (So you need to trust them quite a bit – both to recognise the good stuff from the bad stuff, and to act in your own best interest.)

This method is often a good bit quicker in my experience than doing it all myself, and there are spots other people find much more accurately. Starhawk and Hilary Valentine describe a general version of this in their book Twelve Wild Swans.

If you’re focusing on a specific person (for example, removing ties with an ex, or someone else you’re removing from your life for good reason), you can focus on that person, and you may feel a very strong physical sensation in a particular spot on your body. (You may not, too, and that’s okay.)

Focus on removing the connection to that person without malice or hatred – you’re pruning a rosebush or weeding your garden. It’s not personal, it’s not emotional, you’re just clearing the way for something new. (Strong emotion will help feed the connection, anyway, which is not what you want right now.)

When you remove a strong connection like this, it can be easy for the connection to try and re-attach. To help prevent this, once you’ve removed it, smooth over the spot where it was until there’s no rough energy for it to reattach to.

Rest. Reflect. Repeat as needed.

Connection with the world, with other people, is complicated. Chances are, you’ll want and need to repeat this regularly. If you haven’t ever done it, you might want to check back in with yourself in a week, a month, three months, and see how you feel. As you get more experience, you’ll get a better sense of when you might want to do it again.

You might also be interested in two posts on my blog (this will take you away from the Seeking area of my website):

Both use some of the techniques described above as part of a larger ritual work.

Leave a comment     , , ,  

Am I ready?

By jenett, on April 10th, 2011

One question that comes up a lot is “How do I know when I’m ready to start doing X?” Here’s my answer.

It depends.

Specific paths and traditions and other groupings within those paths have their own limits. Sometimes these are practical: you can’t do certain rituals in my tradition, for example, until you’ve got the appropriate preparation *and* introductions to the relevant entities involved. And some are common practice, or good precautions to keep people getting in over their heads in ways that are hard to recover from – just like learning some basic food safety is important for people learning how to cook.

What’s your reason?

Does it have a purpose beyond “This is cool and I want to play with it?” Play can do a lot of good, but it’s also a really easy way to get in over your head without realising it. Having a very clear reason for doing something, and taking a lot of time to plan through it tends to help avoid that problem.

(Don’t just ask “what do I want to do?” but also “How am I going to make that happen” and “Why is this the right time for this thing”. In detail, step by step, and looking carefully at anything you couldn’t explain in simple words to a friendly person who had no idea what you were doing. Being able to explain it helps us understand stuff better.)

As you do more of it, the planning gets easier.

Do you have the right skills and tools?

I’m grouping them together because, like cooking, there’s a lot of mixing things up here. You can often substitute some skills for less ideal tools – or use better tools to prop up your skills.

(For example, I still haven’t mastered poaching an egg without using a little floating poaching cup. That’s ok: the tool substitutes for my lack of skill. There are times this doesn’t work, however: if you don’t know how to tell chicken is cooked safely, you’re going to be stuck if you cook it no matter how good your tools are.)

However, you still need to have enough of both to actually accomplish what you want. A ritual to welcome the new season is an entirely different sort of task than a complex ritual to address several specific needs with the help and assistance of other entities: there’s a lot more pieces involved in the latter.

(To go back to our cooking metaphor: the first one is like making a pleasant simple meal for yourself and the latter is like making a formal dinner for some people you want to impress who have very clear opinions about what they like and don’t like. You have a lot more choices and options for what ‘success’ looks like in the first one, usually, even though the second one may have a bunch of possible ways to go about it too.)

What skills do you need, anyway?

There are a number of ways to approach this, but here are some core skills that are widely applicable.

Care of yourself:
Can you start from and return to a healthy state for yourself, without unduly draining yourself of energy, will, or other useful things? Centering, grounding, and self-awareness are common skills here.

Definition of space:
In Wiccan-based practice, this is casting a circle, but that’s not the only possible means of defining a ritual space. This obviously has a bunch of smaller steps and it may take time to learn and practice the basics of each one before you can put them together. Again, like cooking a meal, you may need to learn how to chop things, cook them appropriately, season them, etc. before you combine them into one meal.

A good space (and method of stepping into ritual) will not only help you step into the ritual’s center – but it’ll help you step out and return to your daily life, too.

Whatever it is you want to do.
Candle magic is not precisely the same as knot magic is not the same as creating a magical artwork is not the same as using chanting or dancing or breath or meditation or whatever to focus your intention. Do you have appropriate skills, tools, and necessary knowledge and safety precautions for what you’re doing?

(The latter is especially important for anything you’re planning on eating, drinking, burning as incense, or applying to your skin. Check any substance you’re using these ways in multiple recent sources.)

A reasonable plan in case something goes wrong.
This is where reading and asking can help a lot. There are the practical things (a candle or glass getting knocked over, for example). There are the magical things (feeling jittery or drained after you’re done, for example, but there can be many more) There are some general things (figuring out how much time and preparation you need, finding a suitable space).

Some of these, you can plan ahead for, at least somewhat, based on reading and listening to others. Some will probably be things you learn about yourself as you go along.

(Good things to plan for include anything possible to get knocked over, for candles to blow in unpredictable directions and possibly go out.)

You might want to check out my page on safety for more ideas.

Can you get specific?

Specific makes for better and more effective ritual. So, for example, you say cleansing – do you want to cleanse yourself of a particular influence? The space you’re living in? Make good on something you’ve handled badly so you can move ahead?

All of those will have some similarities, but also some differences in how you approach them in spell and ritual work, and the more you’re clear about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, the easier it’ll be to come up with something effective but within your likely capabilities.

[last edited October 28, 2011]

One comment     , ,  

Divination

By jenett, on January 2nd, 2011

People write books about divination. This is not that. This is a very very small introduction.

What is divination?

Many people think that divination is about what will happen. I don’t think that’s true.

I think divination is about our choices. It’s about telling us what is likely, if we keep doing what we’ve been doing. But as soon as we get information about a situation, we start changing it. Divination can help us decide where to focus our energy and attention, or let us know if we’re missing something.

But it’s not in control of what happens, or why. We are. At least the bits that have to do with our actions and choices.

Continue reading Divination

Leave a comment     , ,  

Finding time and space

By jenett, on January 2nd, 2011

One challenge that many people (especially in and just out of college, with small children, or dealing with major changes in their general life) face are real limits on available space and time to do work. If this is true for you, keep a couple of things in mind:

  • It’s probably not permanent. Your life will change, your circumstances will change.
  • Re-evaluate what you want and would like to do regularly (say, every six months). New options might be open for you at that point.
  • If nothing else, focus on practices that you can build into your daily life, or that can be done without needing much extra space and time. The daily practices page has a wide range of ideas.

Continue reading Finding time and space

Leave a comment     ,  

Correspondences

By jenett, on January 2nd, 2011

As you read various books and websites, you’ll start seeing (if you haven’t already) long lists of how this plant is associated with this planet, or that deity, or that day of the week, or that concept (love, prosperity, healing, whatever.) These are called ‘correspondences’.

One magical theory is that it is easier to reach out and affect (change) the world if we use something that is connected to what we’re trying to do. We can’t reach out directly and touch everyone who might give us money, for example – but if there’s a herb, or  stone, or whatever that’s closely associated with that thing, we can go and do something with that, instead.

Continue reading Correspondences

Leave a comment     , , ,  

First year of practice

By jenett, on January 1st, 2011

Before we get started, I want to clear up one fairly common misconception. People have gotten the idea that in order to be a witch (or a religious witch, or a Pagan, or whatever), you simply need to study for a year and a day. And that that time frame is really fixed – you can’t take longer. The reality is a bit more complicated, but basically – that’s not true. You can read more over here on the essay “a year and a day – why?”

Continue reading First year of practice

Leave a comment     , ,  

Home, sacred home…

By jenett, on December 29th, 2010

I’ve talked elsewhere on this site about taking care of your own energy, but what about your space? Just as you do, the space you live in picks up energy and emotions. Often, we bring these things in ourselves, with the stress we bring home from work (or school), from news stories, or from things we actually do at home.

The good news is that just as you can cleanse your own energy and smooth things out, you can do the same thing with your home. A little regular attention goes a long way toward making your home welcoming, peaceful, and enjoyable.

Continue reading Home, sacred home…

Leave a comment     , , , ,  

Example: Casting a circle

By jenett, on December 29th, 2010

Another example of something we might learn to do is casting a circle or getting started with ritual. For this page (unlike the candle page), I’m not going to give you all the information – but I am going to suggest some places to start, and an order to try learning about things in.

Continue reading Example: Casting a circle

Leave a comment     , , , ,  

What’s a circle for?

By jenett, on December 25th, 2010

One question that often comes up is why we cast a circle in the first place. There are a number of possible answers to this, and which ones apply to what you’re doing depend a lot on you, what you’re doing, and some other things I’ll talk about below.

What’s a circle?

Good question. For the purposes of this page (and this site), let’s define it as a temporary space with clearly defined energetic boundaries that provides a known space for ritual, magic, or similar controlled change.

Continue reading What’s a circle for?

Leave a comment     , , , ,  
 
  Older Entries »