Year and a Day: Day 7

A Week into studies and going strong!

Witches and Sacred Symbols

Symbolism is an important topic in Wicca as much of our beliefs, practices, spellwork, and ritual relies heavily on symbols.

A Symbol is a form that represents something else. They are usually used to understand and explain abstract ideas, philosophical points, and religious concepts.
Pretty simple, yes?

Symbols change from culture to culture, from place to place and can even change from coven or group to group. However, underneath all these symbol changes, there is a similar or same basic idea defining them.

The problem with using symbols is that all too often the symbol is taken for the thing or concept itself. An example is a brass horn symbolizing might, triumph, victory, masculine power, etc. Now, the problem arises when someone says "he blew down the walls with his brass horn" and people take it literally that the horn blew down the walls rather than the might and power the horn symbolized.

When symbols are taken literally, spirituality becomes dogmatic.

In Wicca we use symbols for so many things.
In your studies you will see symbols used to represent, sympathize and connect to broader ideas and beings. You will use a Chalice of water to symbolize the Mother Goddess and Her womb and the Athame to symbolize the Heroic God and his phallus and a step further, their mating by dipping the tip of the blade into the cup.
You will also learn how symbols in your daily life can be considered Omens and how to read them as messages from your subconscious, your Higher Self, and/or from the Divine.

Homework!
Pick a symbol, it can be anything, but pick one you are accustomed to and have seen and dealt with regularly.
In your Book of Shadows, contemplate the meaning of this symbol. Are there multiple meanings? What does it mean for you personally?

An Example:
An Apple
An Apple a Day keeps the Doctor away! Making it a symbol of nutrition and health.
Eve ate the Apple in the Garden of Eden and lost Paradise. The Apple is a symbol of the Knowledge of Good and Evil as well as of Sin.
The Apple, cut in half on its side reveals a star in the middle surrounded by a circle made by the peel - A Pentagram, the symbol of Wicca.

Year and a Day: Day 6

Wicca and Shamanism

For many, Wicca is a Shamanic Path. As a religion that draws on ancient Goddess-based spirituality, it will naturally pick up the ancient spiritual practices that go along with these.

A Shaman is a spiritual leader, teacher and healer within an ancient tribal society. He or she presides over all the rites of passage from birth to death, heals the sick, divines the fates of his or her people, counsels, and is the tribes connection with the Divine.
A person usually becomes a shaman after a traumatic childhood incident or sickness. He or she demonstrates some sort of psychic or supernatural ability such as a 6th sense or visionary dreams. The elder or shaman will then take him or her under their wing and teach the student the secrets of magic and power passed down from shaman to shaman as a sort of apprenticeship.
The shaman's power comes from secret magical practices and ecstatic rites where they visit other planes of existence and speak with spirits. By doing this, they heal members of the tribe through soul retrieval from the other worlds or by exorcising the negative energy in them. This, combined with training in herbalism, crystal healing, totemic worship and prayer allows them to aid others around them.

Wicca is similar to Shamanism in its spiritual work, its emphasis on community aid, and in its training through apprenticeship and study.
However, Wicca differs because, unlike Shamanism, Wiccans usually work in groups and have ritual practices that include other witches. Also, much of Wiccan practice comes from ceremonial traditions with emphasis on philosophies such as Alchemy, Hermeticism, and more (which we will cover later on).

In the Correllian Wiccan Tradition, Shamanism is taught separately from the traditional path and 3 Degree systems. It is a 1 year study, much like a year and a day study for an initiate. The studies with this school focus on divination, psychopomp, soul retrieval and shamanic history rather than the traditional teachings of Wiccan ceremony, ritual, and methods. In this way Wicca is more like High Magic when compared to Shamanism though both can go hand in hand.

Damon and I incorporate some Shamanic activities in our ritual practice such as ecstatic music with changing, drumming, singing bowls, rattles, bells and even dancing. We also use drumming in meditation, to go within, much like a spirit journey to other planes to receive information as a Shaman would.

Bibliography
The Way of the Shaman by Michael Harner
Wicca: A Year and a Day by Timothy Roderick
Circle of the Sacred Drum School http://sacreddrumcircle.org/school-of-shamanism.html

Year and a Day: Day 4

"While we choose a Path, our feet mold the soil beneath us. As you walk, that Path shifts a bit with your movement in each step you take. As much as it changes you, you change it! And there may come a day when you outgrow that road and have to find one that does to a slightly different place in spirit and life to become fulfilled and whole." ~ Patricia Telesco

Questioning Your Path

Choosing your own Spiritual or Religious Path is part of the ability to make honest, powerful life choices. These choices should be made with a clear perspective and with honesty to yourself.

Open up your Book of Shadows and write down the following questions with your answers.
You can make this a meditation or a a spiritual exercise by clearing and releasing before hand, lighting a candle and/or incense. Relax and do this in a space that is comforting and where you feel secure to think and turn inward without disruption.

• Why am I exploring the Wiccan Path?
• Where am I coming from? What are my previous spiritual and religious practices?
• How did my past practices lead me to investigate Wicca?
• What do I hope to gain from exploring Wicca?
• What am I afraid of as I look at the path before me?
• How will I handle others who might not approve of my new practices? How will I handle friends who don't approve? Family? Strangers?

Aside from this spiritual transition, is there anything else going on in my life that is effecting me at this time? (Deaths, births, marriages, divorce, job change?)
How is this transition effecting my decision to explore Wicca?
If there are major life events going on, is this a good time to explore a new path? Why/why not?

Then, Evaluate Your Personal Belief System and Religion. The following questions from An Enchanted Life by Patricia Telesco are very helpful in this matter. Some of the following you may not be sure of how to answer yet. Write the question down and come back to it as you learn more along your path. Do not be surprised if your answers change along the way.

• Which Ethical guidelines does your faith or personal vows require of you? 
• If you agree with the guidelines of your faith, but do not find yourself following them, what do you believe is holding you back?
• Which emotional, physical, and mental guidelines or challenges does your faith offer? (remember that you are body, mind and spirit and all three must be served to become adept at anything)
• What are the basic strictures of your beliefs and how flexible are they to meet the moment and a changing world?
• How do you see god? (active, passive; as one or as many?)
• What is your view on other spiritual paths, even those with which you might not always agree? (This question may be uncomfortable but be honest with yourself and remember that no one else need ever read your BOS unless you allow them and even then, you do not have to be and open book on everything)
• How do you see your beliefs changing as time goes on, and will that effect by what name you call yourself (Wiccan, Christian, Shaman, etc)?
• How do you see others in your faith changing as time goes on, and how will this affect the stability of the whole?
• Which role(s) do you see yourself accepting in your faith and why? (we will be covering many roles in these lessons and this answer can change as time goes on and as you learn other positions and archetypes in the Craft)
• What attracted you to your current belief system and does that factor still hold appeal?
• Has your faith grown and changed with you, or is it stagnating and potentially holding you back?
• Are you as happy now with your choice of Path as you were in the beginning? Why? 
• What will continue to make you happy or improve things?
• Does your belief system uplift and motivate the individual's potential or undermine it? How?
• Does your belief system honor the Earth or view it as something over which to have dominion?

After finishing, take a moment to read your answers, aloud if you like, and contemplate them. Write more if you need to. Do any other questions come up? Write them down with your answers.

Year and a Day: Day 3

Melting Beliefs Spell

Tools
A sheet with the answers from yesterdays questions copied on them.
A small white candle (a tea light or white taper will do)
A pin or something to etch the candle with
A candle holder
A lighter or matches

After you set everything up, begin by taking a few deep breaths and cleansing your energy and grounding as mentioned in Day 1 Exercise.
Take a look at your answers, read them aloud if you're comfortable doing so and consider them and why you answered that way. Examine the tone of your answers.
Is there fear? Anger? Sadness? Ask yourself why.
Write that them down on the paper with your answers, try and keep it simple, one word.

Etch the word you chose into the candle - if the word is too big, a symbol or letter will do - a frowny face or smiley face will do if necessary.
Close your eyes and think of that word. Let that feeling emerge in you and feel it fully.
Now think about the reason why you feel this way. It may be because of a moment in your life, if so, take yourself back to that scene. Once you have the reason or image of that scene in your life clear in your mind, open your eyes.
Light the candle.
As the candle burns, melting that word away, your concept formed from the past is melted away as well.
When the candle is spent, take the wax left over and your paper and bury it somewhere away from your home.

Write this spell and your experience of it in your Book of Shadows.
Include the image, emotions, and memories your meditation brought up.
Do you feel you have let go of that emotion? If no, do you believe doing the spell again at a later date will help?
Write it all down.

*This spell is from Wicca Year and a Day by Timothy Roderick

Year and a Day: Day 2

The Power of Words

Wicca is a practice filled with terms that can enchant, amuse, and bewilder.
Wiccans accept accept words are only valuable as signposts and guides that point toward mystic experience.
However, the language of Wicca often goes against the social norm. The following terms are ones that can trigger strong emotions in most people:

Wicca
Witchcraft
Ritual
Magic(k)
Occult
Pagan
Spell
Earth-Religion
Power

Homework!

Take the words from the list above and define them in your own words in your Book of Shadows.
Include in your definition how you understand each word and answer the following questions:

What is your comfort level using these words?
How do you imagine these words impact other people who are not involved in Wicca?
How does your relationship with Wicca effect your definition with these words?

Year and a Day: Day 1

I am beginning these Year and a Day lessons and exercises on November 1st, the day after Samhain also called The Witches' New Year.

Today is All Saints Day or Hallowmas, a day to celebrate the Ancestors and those who have carved the path of the Craft before us.

Connecting to the Earth

Timothy Roderick in his book on a Year and a Day study writes, " Spirituality has its birthplace right here - in the dirt, in the soil, in the struggles and triumphs of everyday life. It emerged from human laughter and fear. It was something that pervaded one's eating, sleeping, eliminating, and reproducing. It governed family and community life, the coming of age, marriages, births, and deaths. Spirituality had little to do with lofty philosophical notions - the things that emerge from thinking - it centered on hard facts of life. the soft facts of life must have played their part too. Love, tenderness, and compassion are universal human emotions that have long quickened the heart and informed the spirit."

Sally Griffin writes in Wiccan Wisdomkeepers, "At the dawn of the new millennium, many spiritual traditions think that the twenty-first century will be a Golden Age, with tremendous shifts of consciousness on a universal scale. The spiritual knowledge of older religions is being sought as an answer to the overwhelming pace of modern life...Although Wicca is the modern branch of a mucholder nature religion, Wide Craft or Witchcraft, it offers some ancient insights from Western sources...The resurgence in interest in the land as teacher has moved into focus for those interested in British Pagan history."

Wicca and Witchcraft is about connecting to the Earth, to Nature, to our own Spirit, to the Divine in whatever name or form we give Them.
It is not the path of the faint of heart nor for those who disdain or fear nature.
It is the path of harmony with all that is around us and in us.
You will have to ask yourself, can you handle rain and sleet, boiling heat or high winds? Can you dance in a rainstorm and give praise to thunder and lightning? Can you go barefoot in fields of grass, meditate under a tree, appreciate the beauty of insects?
If not...there are of course ways around this, but it would make bringing yourself into harmony with nature harder.

(You should of course not expose yourself to certain climates or do certain activities if your health will be at risk. This will not make you any less of a Witch, instead, it will build on your ability to compromise and find new ways of doing things.)

Exercise 1

These exercises will aid in both bringing yourself into harmony and balance but also in building your psychic and spiritual development.
Magical ability is like a muscle that must first be developed then grows stronger with use.
It is best to practice these exercises every day or as often as your schedule allows.
Some witches will practice on an empty stomach, much as you would exercise on an empty stomach. It is also good to drink plenty of water.
Wear loose, comfortable clothes, unless you feel better practicing in no clothes at all - when appropriate.

If the weather permits, go outside. Sit somewhere in a natural setting such as under a tree, in a quiet park, down at the beach. Even your own back yard or a patch of grass near your work place will do.
If you can bear the chill, take off your shoes so that your feet have connection with the earth.

Find a comfortable position sitting or lying down. As you sit, breath deeply into your stomach. Relax and let your body become connected with the earth beneath you.
Now Visualize or Imagine you have roots extending from the base of your spine into the earth. These roots run deep, as deep as you can, connecting you to the earth. Breath and feel your connection.
Now, bring your awareness up from the roots to your head and visualize a bright white light pouring down from above. The light passes through your whole body slowly, down from your head to your the base of your spine to your feet then down the roots you created.
Release all tension as the light passes through. Release all anxieties and stress. Release all these things with the white light and let it flow out of you. When the last of it is gone, let the light stop coming into your and let the last of it flow out of you into the earth.

This exercise is one you can do to release excess or non-beneficial energy any time and is one you should use (indoors or outside) before and after you do any magical working so that you do not bring outside energies into your circle or work and so that you do not carry excess energy out from your work.

By creating those roots into the earth, and also by sitting or standing barefoot on the earth, you become Grounded. Grounding is especially good in times of jittery nerves, when you cannot focus, or even when you are not feeling well.

Bibliography
Llewellyn's Magical Almanac
Wicca: A Year and a Day by Timothy Roderick
Witch School First Degree by Rev. Don Lewis-Highcorrell

Happy Witch's New Year

Now is a great time to start anew, make magical and academic resolutions, and the like. Many witches start their Year and a Day studies during this time.
Take a moment to look within, see the path of your True Will. Access what it is that you believe and where you want to go.
Ask your Ancestors and Deities and Guides to assist your journey and open yourself to their advice.

Blessings be to all of you.