Using Astrology in Daily Life

Even if you know absolutely nothing about astrology, you've probably been influenced by it-whether you're reading your horoscope in the supermarket checkout line or listening to people talk about Mercury retrograde. While astrology can seem like a complex subject, the good news is that you can get a lot of wonderful guidance from astrology just by studying your daily transits.

Daily transits are the parts of astrology that show us opportunities for growth and change in our everyday lives based on the patterns in our birth charts. If we study the transits that are coming up in our lives, we stand a much better chance of learning valuable life lessons without all the pain.

Years ago I ran a number of experiments concerning the nature of these transits and how they operate in our lives. I discovered that every transit has a lesson to help us with our interrelation with other people and our goals in life. When I studied these lessons and took appropriate action ahead of time, the transit passed without pain or chaos and I was "off the hook." If I didn't study the transit ahead of time, my life became quite chaotic and I had to learn the lesson the hard way.

There are many good books that can teach you the significance of the different transits in your chart. For instance, a square aspect (90 degree angle) represents difficulty or challenge. If you know that such a situation is coming up soon, you can review the different areas of your life and see what might be affected. You can then take appropriate steps and save yourself a lot of heartache.

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The Manifestation Delay

One of the crucial points that people often overlook is the delay between thoughts/feelings and actual manifestation. There is a period of delay between what you are thinking and feeling, and what is manifesting. The life you are living today is actually the result of thoughts and feelings that you had yesterday, last week, last month, last year or even last lifetime. Your physical reality is always one step behind your mental and emotional processes.

So what implications does this have for your manifestation? It means that if you're working on manifesting something in your life, you shouldn't look to your current physical reality as an accurate gauge of how well you are doing. Your current reality can only show you how well you have done in the past.

If you look at your current reality and find it displeasing, don't try to do anything to change it. It's just the end result of your earlier manifestation efforts. When you take steps to physically change your reality, you're not really affecting your future – only your past.

While traditional wisdom says that we should "be responsible" and take steps to change our reality, ancient esoteric wisdom says that putting our attention only on what we want (not on what already is) is our true responsibility. It's much more responsible to take control of your thoughts and feelings in the moment than it is to try to change what has already manifested.

If you truly want to learn to manifest in a consistent fashion, from today forth, when you look at the messes and disasters in your life, don't try to change it all. Instead, ask yourself what you want, and then focus all of your attention there. This will produce a better tomorrow, which, in turn, will produce a better next day. Always, always ask yourself, "What do I want?" Putting your attention on what you want, rather than focusing on the disasters that you don't want, will create a better reality than you could ever imagine.

Ready to start living a magical life? Our Witchcraft Spell Books series can help you get started.

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The Four Elements of Magickal Powers

Each week we receive many emails from people wanting to know about magickal powers such as clairvoyance, levitation, telekinesis and telepathy. They want to know whether this kind of magick is real and, more importantly, how to do it!

Since it's become such a popular topic, inspired by movies like Harry Potter and shows like Charmed, we thought it might be time to shed some light on this topic. To answer the first question, are such magickal powers and abilities real? In other words, is it possible to do these types of things in this world at this time? The answer is yes! Absolutely. In fact, you'll find that the masters of many different traditions, such as Aikido or Buddhism, can and do levitate. There are also many popular clairvoyants and telepaths, such as the well-known medical intuitive Louise Hay. And, many Tai Chi masters have telekinetic abilities (meaning they can move objects without touching them).

The second question, of course, is how you can develop these abilities for yourself. There are, of course, many paths to mastering these abilities. At the foundation of all these paths, though, is an understanding of the four elements of magick: air, fire, water and earth. One of the basic tenets of magickal studies is that everything in this Universe is made up of some combination of these four elements, and if you understand and know how to work with these elements, you can understand (and create) anything you desire.

That's why four element magick is the first area of study for our students – it is at the heart of everything in the Universe, including magickal powers and abilities. For instance, you can develop clairvoyance and telepathy, which is access to knowledge not available to the five senses, by developing and working with your water element. Water, being the language of Spirit, allows you to access almost any information (or emotions) at a Spiritual level. Another ability, levitation, is the result of increasing your air element and decreasing your earth element. And telekinesis is the ability to channel your fire energy toward a specific object. For instance, we teach our students to begin using their telekinetic ability by throwing firebolts at a candle flame. They know they have begun to develop that ability when they can make the flame jump and split by pointing their finger at it.

Beyond the development of these psychic or magickal abilities, however, the four elements help us develop and follow our birth visions, listen to our Spirit guidance, and generally live more creative and peaceful lives. By understanding the basic "makeup" and laws that drive our Universe, we can learn to go with the flow rather than swim upstream. This is the true benefit of four element magick. Is the development of magickal abilities great fun? Absolutely! It's useful, too, for self-defense, personal power and more. But it's also the beginning of a deep understanding of the driving forces of life. It's a strong first step onto the path of direct knowledge and spiritual scientism. When the shamans were kicked out of the tribe centuries ago, the world lost access to such direct knowledge. Now we need the shamans more than ever, and we invite you to step on this path by studying the four elements of magick with our online classes. We have a free offer that will give you access to the first 10 classes of our Basic Magic Course which covers each of the 4 elements in depth. If you are interested, just email us at info@shamanschool.com and ask about the Free Offer for Basic Magic classes.

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Waiting For Synchronicity

Do you remember the scene in the movie "The Minority Report" where Tom Cruise is escaping with the psychic or "precognitive" and they are being pursued in the mall? In that scene, the psychic keeps telling Tom Cruise to "Wait! Wait...wait...wait." She's telling him to wait for the moment of perfect synchrony, when a man with a huge bunch of balloons will stand in just the right place and hide them from their pursuers. The whole time she's telling him to wait, though, Tom Cruise is anxious and ready to run.

Now doesn't that sound like scenes from our own lives? At least, that's how the Universe would see us as we go about our daily activities. Here's what it sees: we ask the Universe to bring us something and the Universe immediately leaps into action to bring it to us. But rather than simply waiting for that moment of synchrony, when all the factors come together in perfect order, we leap into action and try to "make everything work." If we would just wait for the moment of perfect synchrony, as Tom Cruise did in the movie, we would find that it would come to us – easily, peacefully and without fuss.

In this society, we have an extreme bias for action, productivity and achievement. We believe that we must "do" everything in our lives, so we're always in motion. In fact, it's worse than that. Not only are we in motion almost every waking moment of every day, but we've also planned out our active motion for the coming days, weeks and months. Whether it's work, PTA meetings, hobby-type activities or sports, we are completely booked. Or even if we aren't physically booked at every moment, we're so mentally busy trying to "figure it out" that we might as well be doing something physical!

The result of all of this scheduling and mental gyration is that we don't have any room in our lives for synchronicity. We have literally left not even the smallest crack through which the Universe can squeeze through that which we've asked for – and we wonder why the Universe doesn't deliver!!

Manifestation, contrary to popular belief, is neither a totally active sort of thing nor a totally passive waiting. It is an active anticipation of what's to come, a joyful expectation accompanied by inspired activity. In manifestation, you get a boost of anticipation followed by inspired ideas, followed by joyful activity, followed by yet more anticipation.

It's like walking a winding, hilly trail. When you're at the bottom of a hill, all you can see is the top of the next hill or curve – and you anticipate what you might see at the top. You're so excited by what you might see, that you take action and walk up there. Once there, you see a magnificent view, and also the next phase of the trail. This leads to more anticipation drawing you forward, more action and more pleasure. You see, it is an active participation in life of all your senses – physical, emotional, mental and spiritual – with appreciation and pause regularly interspersed.

If it seems like the Universe isn't delivering what you've asked for, you might not be leaving enough room in your life to let it in. To create some room, take one day a week, if possible, and schedule nothing. Let that day be a blank canvas on which the Universe can paint its perfect synchrony. If you can't take a full day, take at least a few hours for yourself every week and see what magic unfolds! You can learn other magical ways to work with the Universe to co-create and draw your manifestations to you in our Daily Rituals for Attracting What You Want in Life ebook.

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Using Water to Increase Your Psychic Gifts

There are lots of ways to enhance and increase your psychic abilities, and one of the easiest ways is to increase the quantity and quality of water energy in your life. In magical terms, the element water is associated with Spirit, emotions, and feelings--and emotions are known as the "language of Spirit." So increasing the element water in your life will also increase and enhance your Spirit or psychic abilities.

Increasing Your Water Element
How do you increase the water in your life? Any way you can. Here's a few suggestions to get you started:

• Drink more water
• Take long and luxurious baths
• Wear water blue clothes
• Paint your walls water blue

You can also buy a fountain for your room, walk by running water, or walk in the rain. Physical water is the lower octave of psychic water, and when you immerse yourself regularly in physical water, you'll begin to awaken your psychic water. You can also burn water-element incenses, such as rose, lotus, or hibiscus, while you meditate.

On another level, the best way to increase your psychic water is to live in the feeling of the water element. Since water is the element of feeling and not thinking, the more time you spend in feeling the more psychic you will become. As a society, we tend to over think. We start our sentences with, "I think," and answer questions with, "I'll think about it." Magically, thinking precludes psychic powers. The more you think, the less psychic you'll be. So, practice feeling more and thinking less. Meditate, hum, sing, feel, or move your body-all these things help you think less and feel more.

If you are interested in more ways to open your psychic abilities, take a look at our Psychic Development ebook.

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