Thursday, September 27, 2018

Ritual Magic: Magically Make Hard Decisions Easy

I’m sure we’ve all faced times when we need to make a big life decision and find ourselves unsure, wavering and just not able to make a choice. Typically we resort to asking friends or family or making a pro/con list, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if the right answer would just magically come to us? Guess what, it can! Try out this little ritual magic technique the next time you have a big decision to make. We call it the 3 Day Question.

Using the 3 Day Question brings you guidance from your spirit or your spirit guides. Here’s how to do it:

1. Describe your decision in very precise, concise terms. For example, “Do I take this trip or not?”, “Do I take this job or not?”. Don’t add in a lot of extra information, just state the question you are struggling with.

2. Take around 3-5 minutes to sit in a quiet place and hold the question in your mind.

3. Now ask your question out loud.

4. Forget about the question, the decision and anything to do with the whole issue for the next 3 days. I know that is easier said than done, but strive to switch your attention to something else any time you find yourself starting to think about it.

5. At the end of the 3rd day, ask your question again. Whatever the first answer you hear is the answer for you to accept.

You may hear the answer come from within you as a “voice in your head” or a picture. You may instead hear the answer from outside yourself. This could come in the form of a conversation you overhear, a song, a sign in a window or dozens of other ways. Look for the sign that gives your answer. For example, let’s say your question was, “Do I move to New York or not?”. At the end of the 3 days, you ask your question and maybe you hear the song New York, New York on the radio or maybe you hear someone in a conversation next to you saying they love New York cheesecake. Or you may just very clearly inside yourself hear, “Yes”.

In order for this ritual magic to work, you must not obsess or think about your question during the 3 days period. This interferes with the process and will not give you the desired results. Magic is a precision science and therefore the more precise your question is worded, the more precise your answer will be. Make sure you ask a question that will yield you the exact answer and only that answer which you seek. With this simple, little bit of ritual magic, you can access your own spirit wisdom and that of your spirit guides to turn making big difficult decisions into a much easier and less stressful process.

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Tuesday, September 25, 2018

Life Going Too Fast? 3 Ways to Slow it Down

Is life going too fast and you need to slow it down? In this year of Magic 2012, many people are experiencing this. On top of regular quick paced routines and daily life responsibilities, many are finding time speeding by this year. If you are finding life going too fast, there are ways to magically slow it down.

3 Ways to Slow it Down
1. Cortothalamic Pause
The Cortothalamic Pause is a way to stretch time by creating a bridge between the thalamus (part of the forebrain) and the cortex allowing us to move from reaction to reason. At the thalamic level you can check your reaction to see how you feel about a situation or interaction, then take that information to the cortex level to reason out the best response.

It takes some practice to become proficient at using the Cortothalamic Pause. You will know you have it down when you feel an actual separation from physical time. Here are the steps to practice:
  • To start, pick a small thing that is not something you have a passion for. Don't start with something you know is a pet peeve or "touchy" subject for you.
     
  • When someone asks you a question or asks you to do something – STOP. Do not respond right away. Shut your mouth and calm everything inside you as much as you can. This part obviously takes practice too.
     
  • Wait 2-3 seconds and don't let your mind race ahead thinking of all the things you could say in response. Just absorb the question and stay quiet.
     
  • Take a deep breath and now respond to the question.
Practice these steps several times a day. The more you practice, the better you will get at using this technique to slow it down when life is going too fast.

2. Do An Act of Power
Any intentional act is a magical act as well as an act of power. Any act of power restores personal power and grounds you in your life. Being grounded in life puts you in control and feels less chaotic. When we are in control of our lives, grounded and putting aside chaos, our lives are less hectic. Doing an act of power allows us to slow it down. Here are the steps to performing an act of power.

  • Choose a simple act and decide when you will do this act.
    It does need to be a simple act and you do need to specify the time you will do it because a complicated act could be interrupted and a non-specific time nullifies the act of power. An example is to decide you will get up from your desk at noon, go to the kitchen and drink a glass of water. An even simpler one would be that at noon you are going to draw an X on a piece of paper. It doesn't matter what the act is as long as it would be easily accomplished without interruption. 
  • When the time you specified comes to do your act of power, do it.
    Let nothing interrupt you before you complete your act. That is why it is important to pick something in the first step that you know you will be able to accomplish in your individual circumstance.
  • When your act of power is complete, take a moment to review the act and the fact that you have completed the act. This moment of "appreciation" will help you gain all the power you can from your magic ritual.
You can do this several times a day to increase the anchoring in your life and thus slow it down.

3. Start Your Day Over With the Day Greetings
You can re-start your day at any time and as many times as you need by doing the Day Greeting ritual to the 4 directions, Sky Father and Earth Mother. If you are not familiar with how to do Day Greetings, you can find the directions HERE.

If your life is really going too fast you can use all three of these techniques to help slow it down. After a little practice you will find they are easy to do and will really pay off for you.


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Thursday, September 20, 2018

Yoga and Meditation for the Rest of Us

Yoga, meditation, chanting ... mmmm, all great things for your body, mind and spirit. But sometimes, in the hectic rush of everyday life, thinking of bending your body into a pretzel, or even breathing slowly, can be a huge challenge. How can you possibly relax when you have bills to pay, work to do, and life to attend to?

Don't worry. Relaxing is easy. Healing yourself and your life is not as hard as you think. You don't need to read 20 books on self-help or sit at the feet of the guru. Remember, magic, healing, and enjoyment of life are all your natural birthrights as a human being. You just have to remember how!

In fact, did you know that you've already done all 84 poses of yoga before? Fetuses go through all 84 yoga poses before they are born, so we've all done yoga! The real yoga starts, though, when we take our first breath. Breathing is the very first step in yoga.

Just Breathe, Really!
So if you really want to give yourself a huge gift of healing and relaxation during the day, breathe. Set aside three minutes to give yourself this gift. Turn off the phone, close the door, dim the lights, and just breathe. You can either breathe deeply and deliberately, holding inhales and exhales for several counts, or you can relax by just following your breath but exerting no effort.

Breathing not only increases circulation and oxygen in your body, but it nourishes your lungs, which according to Chinese medicine guards your chi or life force. Talk about the "breath of life"-breathing really can bring new energy, vitality, and zest into your life. You'll feel better, think more clearly, and act from greater inspiration.

Adding More to Your Meditation
If you've got more than three minutes to spare, you can add even more layers to this quick "meditation" with some colored candles. Burn a sun yellow candle for more joy, bright red for more energy, light blue for more understanding, grass green for grounding and physical healing or water blue for calming and connection with your Spirit. Candles actually "push" the colors at you, so you absorb those energies without effort.

If you take a few minutes each day to breathe, be present in your body, and be connected to Life, you can say that you do yoga and meditation every day. Quantity isn't all that counts, quality counts too. When you're deeply present, even for a few moments every day, you can take great strides in both your physical and spiritual life!

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Thursday, September 13, 2018

Magical Element Water: Working On the Emotional Level

When first beginning to study magic, you learn that almost everything in this Universe is made up of some combination of the four magical elements: Air, Fire, Water and Earth. If you can understand the four elements directly, then you can understand anything in the Universe. In this article, we explore the magical element Water.

About the Magical Element Water
The magical element Water basically deals with emotions and "gut feelings". In many traditions, "gut feelings" are considered to be tools of spirit or communications of spirit. The magical element Water also involves feelings, intuition, compassion, empathy, sympathy, knowing, devotion, quest, aspiration, intention, appreciation, integrity, harmony, beauty, balance, serenity, fluidity, grief, apathy, joy, and love. So anytime you are looking at any of these type aspects you will be working with the magical element Water. An example of this might be if you are feeling depressed. Depression can be a sign that you are out of balance in your energetic Water. It may be dark and/or it may be stuck. If you recognize this as a symptom of your energetic Water being out of balance, then you will know that getting your Water moving can help raise your emotional tone and help you snap out of a funk or depression.

Correspondences for the Magical Element Water
Direction: West

Tool: Chalice or Cup

Elemental Spirit: Ondine or Undine

Colors:
  • Physical – Water Blue
  • Emotional – Deep Blue
  • Spiritual – Blue Black

More about Undines
Undines can be seen in ponds of clear water with seaweed and moss on the bottom. They sometimes move through the seaweed swimming in a zigzag pattern, smoothly or forming a "V" of ripples across a pond. You can also see them in a wide river with mud or sand at the bottom. If you see a whirlpool develop, look for a place in it with no rock or sticks, and you can find an undine in the water above that spot. You may sometimes feel them brush up against you in water.

Shortages and Excesses of the Magical Element Water
Here are a few symptoms that will give you a clue as to whether you have an imbalance in your Water energy. It may be that you have too much of a particular type of Water energy or it could be that you do not have enough of a certain type of Water energy.

Water Shortages:
Water Blue –
-Body feels dry or hot
-Dry wit or humor
-Shy
-Dry skin
-Dry cough
-Nervous or restless

Deep Blue –
-Self-centered
-Narrow minded
-Anti-social
-Experience lack of feelings

Blue Black –
-Lacking empathy
-Not trusting intuition
-Poor self-worth
-Suspicious of others

Water Excesses –
Water Blue –
-Puffiness or swelling
-Watery eyes
-Slow to respond
-Chronic fatigue

Deep Blue –
-Over emotional
-Depression
-Guilt
-Lacking boundaries

Blue Black –
-Obsessive behaviors
-Not being in present time
-Abuse of others
-Self abuse

There are of course many more symptoms for each of these categories, more than can be addressed in this article, but these can give you an idea of what types of things to look for when considering whether your energetic Water needs balancing. We also have included the Blue Black color of spiritual correspondences to see the types of symptoms it can induce, but do not recommend working with this color (for safety reasons) unless you are a very experienced magical practitioner or shaman. If you are interested in learning more about using the magical element Water for healing, divination, psychic communications, balancing emotions and more, then our Magical Element Water Homestudy Short Course may be just what you are looking for.

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Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Doing Ritual Magic With Your Eyes Closed

We've all heard the saying, I could do it with my eyes closed and when it comes to doing ritual magic, the meaning is a little different, but is a useful way to do some techniques. In the case of some ritual magic, closing your eyes helps sharpen your other senses, specifically the spirit senses.
Have you ever been to a retreat or workshop where they did the exercise of blindfolding you while your partner leads you around? This exercise promotes teamwork and trust. This can work in doing ritual magic too where trusting in the Universe, your guides or the magical process itself can affect the outcome. Closing your eyes also helps sharpen your spirit perceptics or spirit senses. By closing off one of your physical 5 senses, you open the door for these spirit senses to kick in.

Ritual Magic to Practice with Your Eyes Closed
There are many magic rituals where we deliberately close our eyes or use blindfolds, but it is best to start out with a very simple magical exercise. This one can be done anytime you talk on the phone with another person, assuming you are sitting down rather than driving down the road chatting on your cell phone.

As you speak to the person on the other end of the phone, close your eyes. Now visualize what the other person is doing. Are they sitting down? If so, what is their posture? Are they walking around their house? Extend your perceptions. Can you tell what they are thinking or if you can predict what they will say next?

If you have difficulty with visualization, imagine yourself extending your senses through the phone line until they reach the other person. This often helps people get in touch with their spirit senses, which are crucial for most magic rituals.

Jot down any insights, visions, or information that comes to you through your spirit senses. If you like, you can ask the other person a question or two to verify whether your spirit senses are correct. It really doesn't matter whether you are correct in the beginning. The goal is to locate, use, and develop your spirit senses.

Do this exercise for at least 10 phone conversations. You will notice a definite increase in the amount of psychic or spirit-sense information that you receive. If, after doing this exercise 10 times, you don't feel that you have located or used your spirit senses, have 10 more phone conversations with your eyes open. You might be surprised at how much physical sight interferes with your spirit senses. Most people receive far less spirit-sense data when they have their eyes open.

Learn more ways to develop your spirit senses and psychic abilities in our Psychic Development ebook.

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Thursday, September 6, 2018

When to Use Magic: Should I Use Magic or Fight on the World Plane?

When a nasty situation crops up in your life, do you fight it or do you use magic? That's a question that many magicians face on a regular basis. On the world plane, taking action to resolve an "unfair" or "bad" situation seems like the right thing to do, but does getting entangled in a negative situation drag the rest of your life downhill?

On the other hand, if you use magic to attempt to resolve a situation without taking physical action, what kind of result will you get? Will the magic be strong enough to stop or change a negative situation that has already manifested physically? What's a magician to do?

When to Use Magic
Well, as a Native American elder once told me when I asked him the same question, "Do all the magic that you can ... and buy insurance." I got a laugh out of that, and I hope you do, too! And the message is clear:

1. Do all the magic that is appropriate to the situation
2. Take any and all physical steps to remedy the situation that do not cause you to feel negative or interfere with your magical work

That's pretty simple, right?

A Few Examples to Illustrate the Use of Magic
Of course, most magical principles sound pretty simple until you actually have to apply them to everyday situations. Reality is never as tidy as we would like it to be. So here are a few parallel examples that might illustrate what I mean.

We live in a farming community in Colorado, and out here in the high desert water is of immense importance: no water, no crops, no farming. People have been killed in Colorado over water issues and water rights. It's a big deal. Here are three examples centered around water rights and the use (or non-use) of magic to illustrate my point.

John's Case
John doesn't practice magic at all because he doesn't know anything about it. He got into a tussle with other members of his homeowner's association over how water was being distributed. Not having any magical means at his disposal, he (along with half of the homeowners) went to court against the other half of the homeowners. Ten thousand dollars and a year later, when the judge finally passed its decision, John wasn't satisfied with the result, and neither were ANY of the other homeowners on either side. Plus, he had a seriously bad taste in his mouth about the whole situation.

Harriet's Case
Harriet is a magical practitioner. Faced with a neighbor on the same ditch who kept taking her water, Harriet first response was to tell off the neighbor. She confronted him three times, to no avail. In fact, on the third go-round, the neighbor pointed out that Harriet's fence line was actually on his property, and that he could force her to move her fence if she kept harassing him about the water. That left Harriet, who has no love of pounding fence posts into the ground, in a bit of a quandary.

But she did have options--magical options. So she did some basic spell work to bring water to her pasture, which was drying up fast. She also did some weather work. The results were fairly neat, if not totally karmic. It rained and it rained. Harriet simply puts her horses on her pasture and doesn't cut hay from it, so the rain was perfect. Her field got watered and the grass grew. The neighbor, on the other hand, had just cut hay so his hay got rained on, which is never a good thing. It was all fairly karmic. The rain also delayed the neighbor's hay-cutting schedule, so there was plenty of water in the ditch for Harriet to use during the ensuing weeks. Pretty neat magical trick.

Our Case
Then there's our case. This year we have three new people on our ditch who are water hogs. We've tried talking to them, but they told us to take a long walk off a short cliff. Having figured out from past experience that no amount of "talking" would create much effect (and any talking immediately made us negative), we turned immediately to magic. In a very nifty turn of events, unexpected money and people showed up. The money came in the form of a check in the mail, literally. The people came in the form of electricians who could and would wire a pump on the back of our property so we could water our fields without bothering the people up the ditch from us. Perfection!

I hope these examples make clear the two principles I outlined above about when to use magic. In our case, we are taking physical action in the form of having a new pump installed ... but only after we had done our magic. In addition, these actions make us feel very positive rather than negative, which means that we won't get in our own way karmically or magically about the water situation. Make sense? Good, then go make some magic!

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