Learning the Craft: Astral Projection

So the latest skill that I am learning from my Feri teacher is astral projection (or traveling out of body). To prepare me, she had me read a book called Out of Body Adventures, which, while a tad dated, has some great practical how to information on overcoming fears and obstacles and the mechanics of making it happen. It's an easy read and makes a seemingly daunting subject accessible.

I have travelled out of body before, but the outings were never planned. Sometimes I would start while sleeping and realize that I was not actually dreaming. I've met people and been places this way that I could recount in full detail. Another time I was being led in a guided meditation in a high school class and just took off! I recouted my adventures to my teacher, who was stupefied but attentive as I recounted my journey. But traveling intentionally with a purpose is a new activity to me, and I hope to get good at it.

In Feri, we believe that your Fetch is the entity that travels out of body (and the very name we use for this part of the soul indicates one of its traditional witchcraft purposes), and so I am in essence learning to send one third of my soul out into the worlds to do my bidding. Fetch has its root in this word.



Astral projection is something that most religions agree upon (although not all scientists!), from the ancient Egyptians to the present day. Even Christians acknowledge its existence, even if they do not work with the tool religiously: "before the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be shattered at the fountain, or the wheel be broken at the cistern" refers to this practice and is from the book of Ecclesiastes. Paul also talks of astral projection in his second letter to the Corinthians as well. Surprised? So was I!

Many traditional witches use a "flying ointment" or (shamans also use plant allies for this practice) to help with the journey. I am not against such a method, but am learning unassisted this time around- so that I can learn what it is like without aids before I add those into a repertoire. I personally think a witch should be able to do both.

Have any of y'all had out of body experiences? I'd love to hear about them! Feel free to post them in the comments, or email them to me!

Reflections from My Book of Shadows: Putting Belief into Action

Looking through my first Feri Book of Shadows, I came across an exercise that we did as a class with our teacher, T. Thorn Coyle. It is something I wanted to revisit, as it seems helpful to me right now. I often get caught up in my everyday life and its myriad projects and forget the bigger picture of being an alive, present, spiritual person. This exercise serves to remind us of the bigger picture and how we create the world we live in.

Take a piece of paper (or write this in your journal) and write across the top,

"If I believe ________________, then I will __________________."

Then create two columns under that statement.
One for beliefs and one for actions to back up those beliefs.

Here is one of the things I wrote back in my BOS then:

"If I believe that all people deserve and warrant love, then I will work to give love everyday to the people in my life (even when they piss me off)."
(Can you tell that I was working on my curmudgeon tendency? I still am!)

I can see how this exercise would help so many, not just parents (after all, I first did it and got something out of it before Rowan was born). But I see this as especially helpful exercise for parents to do as a way not to lose themselves while they raise their children:

"If I believe that painting makes me a happier more well-rounded person, then I will set aside 3 hours a week to paint." (Then go about hiring a babysitter, or whatever you need to do to make this happen.)


And I see it as helpful for parents to remember the whole picture in relation to their children:

"If I believe that my child deserves to grow up to be a free thinker, then I will allow her/him to make simple age-appropriate choices for him/herself each day." (And then set about to find places in their day to allow for choice (food, clothing, etc.)

If you find this tool helpful, I would love to read your set intentions in the comments below!

Teaching Children the Craft: Growing Up With A Magic(k)al Worldview (Part Two)

In the last installment of this blog, I talked in detail about how psychologists and atheists both think that "magical thinking" is a problem and how I do not.

I am raising my son with a magic(k)al worldview and to think magic(k)ally. I see nothing wrong with this- in fact, I believe it gives him an advantage, much like growing up multi-lingual. Just as learning more than one language helps a child navigate in more than one culture, holding a magic(k)al worldview helps a child navigate this world better (and communicate with all its inhabitants) and navigate in the other worlds as well. Not content to teach him only our religion (with its magic(k)al worldview), he will learn about what other people think and believe and when the time comes, he will choose what he thinks and believes*.

I may add to this definition later (and I will be expanding on these concepts in future blog posts), but as I think about what encompasses a magic(k)al worldview, I can think of several major lessons to transmit:

1. Magical cause and effect.
2. All living things have a consciousness and specific energetic properties.
3. There are many ways to communicate- human language is but one.
4. "The Invisibles" are real.
5. The borders between this world and the next are not very solid.
6. There is plenty of Mystery- and not everything can be explained or needs to be.
7. We are responsible for what happens as a result of our words and deeds, even if/when we cannot predict what the outcome will be.
8. History, myth, and story are Truth. There is no objective reality or truth.

Let's start in this post about item #1: Magical Cause and Effect:

I see magical thinking as a natural extension of thinking logically (what some people call "scientifically"). If we can demonstrate physical cause and effect to a child (When I knock over the glass, the milk spills.), we can also demonstrate magical cause and effect. The child should probably be at least 5 to do so, since attention span and memory need to be at levels where the child can recollect spellwork (with help, of course) done a week or two prior. Personally, I would start with spells/ experiments that only have a two week or so lapse in cause and effect, as spells with outcomes that are further out may confuse the child.

For example, here is a simple spell/experiment in magick for a child to do:
Grow two identical plants in identical pots, but treat them differently. Treat one as an inanimate object, giving it what it needs to survive, but no more. The other, treat the plant like a valued living thing with a consciousness and go beyond physical needs to emotional/spiritual ones. On one pot, you can help the child draw the Uruz rune (shown at left) which you can explain means strength, speed, potential, energy, health and tenacity. You can explain how these concepts will help a plant in this pot grow stronger and faster than the plant in the pot that does not have it. Then you can tell the child to blow the wish into the pot of a strong plant that grows fast.

Leave the other pot blank, but use the same soil and seeds in both pots. Put them in the same area so that they get the same amount of sun. Water them both every day at the same time, but with the Uruz rune plant, have your child chant or sing, "Uruz, Uruz, Uruz" (you may need to explain what the rune means each time to remind them) at the plant while the plant is being watered. Wanna bet which one grows faster? Scientists are finally coming to a shamanistic worldview about the plant kingdoms. Took them long enough!

I'm sure others can think of other exercises along these lines. Feel free to share in the comments.

I believe it is the ultimate of human hubris to think that we have to be able to "see everything" in order for it to exist, and physics has shown us that that narrow old school scientific worldview isn't really true, anyway! 

Stay tuned for posts on the other aspects of a magical worldview!

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*Raising a child in our religion, Faery Witchcraft, does not automatically make him/her a Faery witch. One has to openly choose this path, study, and be initiated into this tradition. It remains to be seen whether Rowan chooses initiation (and it chooses him).

Book Review: Parenting With Spirit by Jane Bartlett

This is a lovely book, written from a non-demoninational perspective (while the author uses the term "God", she also interchanges it with "Spirit" and "sacred"). She truly has managed to write a book about sharing the sacred with children that embraces so many faiths- regardless of whether they are part of an organized religion or not. She talks of how religion as an organized force is in decline in most western countries, although more and more people are identifying loosely as "spiritual":

We live in changing times, but so far this spiritual renaissance has largely failed to nurture families. It concerns itself only with the needs of grown-ups; it's individualistic and self-orientated. You will find a wealth of personal development opportunities for adults to discover their "inner child", but few where they can be with their outer child, too!

This gentle book has great practical tips on creating rituals and traditions in your family to anchor a shared spirituality with your children. There is plenty here for people of all faiths to latch onto, including pagans and polytheists. Prayers, rituals, mealtimes, family meetings, story time, playtime, animal care and more- all can reflect a deeper understanding of the sacred to share with children.

For example, on the section for storytime, she shares that she has created a specific weekly ritual on Friday evenings called "Hot Chocolate Night". She makes hot chocolate with her kids, then they all gather around with plenty of shawls, blankets, and pillows to get snuggly. She has picked out stories in advance that she wants to read- sacred stories that teach things she values to her kids. They don't have to be from religious texts- heck, The Lorax is a sacred text to me!

She has some other tips on making plain old story time sacred time:

• Light a large candle to mark the beginning and blow it out to mark the end of story time. 
• Similarly, you could instead use a chime or musical instrument to do the same.
• Use puppets
• Create a basket of props specific to the story, pulling them out one by one in sequence
• Don't relegate story time to a "lull the child to sleep" time. Make it a ritual each week or around seasonal holidays

I particularly enjoyed the chapter on "Creating Sacred Space In Your Home" In it, this Christian author talks about building a family altar and suggests honoring the family's beloved dead (as well as nature) there!

If you are looking for some practical tips on ritualizing your family life and creating traditions, this book is quite handy!

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Formal Rating:

Title: Parenting With Spirit
Author: Jane Bartlett
Publisher: Marlow and Company
Price: $14.95 USD 
ISBN: 1-56924-405-7

Topics Covered: Parenting, Religion, Spirituality, Ritual, Prayer

Target Audience: Families seeking to add a spiritual aspect into their daily family lives.
 
Witch Mom Rating: Two and a Half Hats

Great primer for people starting to create family rituals and traditions and looking for some tips.
Advanced ritualists may find this too basic for their needs.

Introducing Elements to Children: Earth

In this new series, I hope to unearth (pun intended) insights and exercises that help parents to witchlets everywhere explore the elements and their world in an age-appropriate manner. Religious traditions originating from other continents often have similar systems, but are different in their execution- for example: many polytheistic religions from Asia or indigenous religions from the Americas use Wind instead of Air and do not use Spirit as an element.)

Elements, working in conjunction with a witch's will, can create magick (as well as put the practitioner in touch with nature and create balance.) Thus, teaching the elements is foundational to a pagan education.

 I hope to share with all of you things that I think are excellent ways of exploring pagan belief with small children, element by element, concept by concept. And I hope that you will share with me things that you did with your small children, to start them on the Path. And today, we start with the element of Earth.

For my son, who can sit up unattended only for short periods and is starting to crawl but not quite adept at it yet - Earth seems like an appropriate place to start. He is "grounded" so to speak! So getting him out off of the living room rug and into the out-of-doors where he can experience soil, rocks, grass, trees, and plants is important for his early concepts of Earth.

Now that the weather is so gorgeous, it's easy to do. I try and remember when we are hustling about from place to place to literally stop and smell the flowers (and feel the leaves!). I point them out to the baby. Rowan loves flowers and is fascinated by their colors and shapes. He wants to eat them, and who can blame him, really?

While I have been tempted to spread a blanket down wherever I placed him outside in the past, I am going to stop that because of this great article I read. Dirt, quite literally is GOOD for babies. Makes sense to me! I am going to start placing him in the grass and letting him feel those blades and explore that micro-terrain.

I remember, as a small child, spending countless hours on my belly, with my hands propping up my head,  watching with great fascination the plants and insects that are so easy for bigger humans to ignore. There are vast civilizations at our feet that most of us hardly notice- except as children. I spent an entire recess once communing with a praying mantis. I found her fascinating, and perhaps she thought the same of me- a child who could lower her energy and sit still for so long, observing the small world with wonder.

As he gets a little older and can sit up for longer (pretty soon now!), I will be taking him to the beach to show him a different kind of earth, where it meets water. And he can learn by making castles and digging trenches and burying his mommy and toys. And on Labor Day weekend, he is going up to Sacred Land to join mommy and daddy at a magick camp, and will see forested land and land set aside for altars and magick-making and feel how energetically different it is from the everyday land feeling of Oakland which is used by so many for so much.

Once he is even older still, I will talk to him of the properties of Earth (like manifestation and silence) and where we, as Feri Witches, acknowledge the earth in our rites and temples and altars (north). We will do simple spells for him to understand these concepts. We will bake bread and learn where all the ingredients come from and why Earth sustains us all. We will incorporate biological sciences into our lessons- showing how in our tradition, science and religion overlap and do not conflict. (We've got quite a few scientists in our trad, we do!)

I will revisit each element as he grows older in this blog and will share our introductions and lessons and activities each step of the way.

So... what have you done with children to introduce them to Earth- the element, the physical manifestation of it, and its correspondences?