Archive for the ‘Meditation and Visualization’ Category

  Somebody happened to call me a “mythic creature” on Friday; and it has stuck with me all weekend.

  In context, it was a rather mundane and flippant figure of speech. One of the engineers in the digital archaeology lab I’ve just started at was merely elaborating on how rare it was to have one of the researchers in the lab for the full creative process. As a user of the technology verses a creator of it, he was basically saying that it was a novel concept to have my input at this stage of development. Really, it was a compliment of sorts (I hope). But it was more his turn of phrase that caught my attention. And rapidly pulled me from my everyday work, into the magickal realm I share here with all of you at Sacred Mists. Down the rabbit hole, as it were.

  My initial visualization of my possession of the label ‘mythic creature’ had much to do with the addition of faerie wings trying to fit round my desk chair and a unicorn’s horn sprouting from my forehead. Eventually, however, my meandering daydreams wandered away from the specific image of me as a mythic creature in the engineering lab; and more to do with just the idea of the mythic creature in the lab or office: Pegasus flying past the window, sprites floating in the water cooler, satyrs bounding off the elevator, and the like. The magick seeping through the mundane.

  Really, however, if one has been paying close attention to the faerie tales of childhood and, indeed, of world mythology: that is exactly how these mythic creatures present themselves. Out of the corner of your eye, there is a little something extra that you can spot for an instant and then is gone. In faerie tales: it may be a meeting with an elderly woman in the woods who you politely shared your bread with (thus earning the power to spit up jewels) or the spider you carried outside instead of smashing (and who later helped you succeed at a seemingly futile task). In faerie tales, and indeed perhaps in real life, the true encounters with mythic creatures are not ones you really pay that much attention to as a special encounter of any kind. The effects of the meeting may be felt; blessings given or mischief enacted (depending on the type of mythic creature), and one is left pondering the encounter, identifying what one can about what you saw, and extemporizing the rest to make sense of it ~ often fitting it into the known order of things in order to make it fit into one’s view of the world. More often than not, one might not realize that they’ve had such an encounter because they were not aware of what they were looking for and even if they saw something had no subconscious archetype against which to compare it. The Platonic archetypes extolled by the likes of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung can often seem like vague generalizations, but they are worth knowing as reference points. It is, after all, easier to put together the jigsaw puzzle if one knows what the general picture is meant to be of. The meeting of the mythic with the mundane is where magick translates outside of anthropology and becomes a part of one’s life experience.

  I admit, that when not working on a project for the Sacred Mists, I often forget to look around me and see the magick in the world: the beauty and power that vibrates through everything; the wonder that I know I experienced as a child looking out at the world and knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that magickal things could happen. The seemingly innocuous phrase ‘mythic creature’ woke me up. It made me LOOK. It made me SEE. It made me aware and appreciative. For this past weekend, at least.

  And while no, I have not spotted any landvaettir around my apartment, fey lurking in the shrubbery, or trolls under the freeway bridge: the part of me that steadfastly believes in the anthropological power of faerie tales maintains that they are there. They have just gotten very, very good at blending in. So much so, that when we see them or meet them, we probably don’t even realize what they really might be.

  The power of seeing the mythic creature in the modern world can lead to marvelous things. Ever heard of a little place called Narnia? Narnia is a magickal realm full of myth and wonder that has provided children and adults alike with a refuge, despite its ultimately fictional nature. Its author C. S. Lewis reputedly first began creating the back-story for Narnia whilst riding on a train one snowy evening. Looking out at the town, a man carrying his shopping and an umbrella appeared to have the legs of a faun instead of those of a human. And thus Mr. Tumnus, the first Narnian was born. If you take nothing else away from C.S. Lewis’s masterpiece series the Chronicles of Narnia, take away the idea that great things come from using your imagination and seeing the magick in the mundane. From seeing the mythic creature in the modern world.

  Have you had any recent encounters you’ve realized were less than mundane? Are your bumblebees secretly faeries or your pool overrun with lorelei? Or did you open the door for a stranger or give a lost tourist directions and feel inexplicably blessed the rest of the day? Mythic creatures come in all shapes and forms. Let us know about your recent run-ins!

  And if you haven’t had any recent encounters with mythic creatures: go seek them out. Attempt an anthropological cum psychological experiment into your own awareness and find them in unlikely places. Find them at your office, in your home, or in the pages of a fairy tale you’ve long since given up~ those archetyes still speak to you, if you’re willing to listen, so give them another chance. And then report back here and share your experience with everyone else!

Image Credit: At the top is Mary Gow’s Fairy Tales.

I decided to create an exercise that was a bit of a mundane-to-magickal wordplay. I began by considering the word reflect as well as it’s other iterations. I began by looking initially what their meaning was from the viewpoint of everyday usage in our spoken or written expression.

Reflect: to consider, to look back
Reflection: mirror, a result (ie: “this is a reflection of her work as a…”)
Reflecting: to turn or look back, remembering, impacting

Next I considered the words and then began to shape them into power words that hold meaning for me magickally and could aid me in impacting the world around me through my intention.

In my mind the word “reflect” in magickal terms is one of mirroring.

From that perspective, “reflect” also brings up the word “deflect” in my mind. When we deflect, we are placing a guard up that deflects all manner of responsibility, fault, or blame away from us. This can be both self-defeating as well as harmful to those around us. It could also be considered a powerful tool for protective shielding, however for me I find it a less empowered way for me to control exactly what I want and what I don’t want to come inside.

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Let’s take a look at today’s tarot card-The Tower. I am using the Rider-Waite/Smith deck today. There is a tower that is being struck by lightning from above. Flames are shooting out from the top of the tower as well as coming out from it’s windows. There are two people falling down from the tower with a look of fright on their faces. At the very top of this card, there is a crown that looks as if the lightning bolt knocked it off the tower and is in the process of falling down.

How does this card apply to me today? What can I learn from it’s messages?

I look at the bolt of lightning, and I think “ego”. Sometimes ones ego needs to be knocked down a notch or two. Lets look at the fire that is so prevalent in this card. Fire is about transformation and cleansing. When a forest burns down, the growth is cleared away for new growth! What needs to cleared out of your life? What changes do you need to make now, not later?

Maybe your in a relationship that really needs to end now. Is it really fulfilling to you?  Do you find that you or your partner tend to be volatile?  Do you tend to argue all the time?

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What is intuition? How can I develop my own intuition and how can it help me with reading the tarot?

I wanted to start this article on something that might surprise you! YOU can learn to read the tarot, both for yourself and for others! If you learn to open up your 3rd eye/Brow chakra and learn to trust your own intuition, then YOU will be a good tarot reader! It’s a matter of learning how to pay attention to your feelings and how to interpret the symbols that are in the cards!
 

Let’s take a look at this particular card.  It’s the Temperance card from the Rider-Waite Tarot deck. This might be the most known tarot deck that there is out there.  The imagery is clean and easy to interpret.  Here we see and Angel pouring water from one cup to the other.  Both the cups and water represent emotions.  Think of this, when we are emotional, we tend to cry, whether or not we are happy or sad.

Temperance is almost invariably depicted as a person pouring liquid from one receptacle into another. Historically, this was a standard symbol of the virtue temperance, one of the cardinal virtues, representing the dilution of wine with water. In many decks, the person is a winged person/angel, usually female or androgynous, and stands with one foot on water and one foot on land.

I look at this card and the advice that I see that is this:  Everything in moderation.  The angel that is depicted here is pouring wine into a cup or chalice of water, thereby diluting it.  Learn to temper your emotions.  Maybe you have a tendency to overdue things.  If there is an emotional issue here, learn to cool it!  Take a step back and think before you react.  Notice that the angel has one foot on land and the other foot on the water.  This indicates a need for balance.  Maybe there is a need for you to ground yourself. Take notice of other aspects of this card.  There are a lot of “opposites” to be seen here.  We already mentioned that there is one foot on the water and the other on land, but look deeper and you will see more.  There is a Sun in the background which represents life, but there are also lilies which represent death.  The symbol of an Angel is of a being/deity that can transcend death, rise above death.

Take a peek at the colors of this card.  Do the colors excite you or do they seem to calm you down?  What about the imagery?  Does the angel seem to comfort you or does the angel seem intimidating to you?   This where intuition comes in. One way to describe intuition is “the knowing without a particular reason why.”  Every like or dislike someone right away?   Trust any feelings that you get when you look at this card.  Jot everything down in a journal that you have set aside for just your tarot readings.  Do not second guess anything!  When you have done this, come up with your own description of this card.  There are NO wrong answers for this exercise!

I would LOVE to see what you have come up with!  Contact me here at Sacred Mists and let me know what your results are!

Staring straight into the face of opportunity seems like it would be an exciting thing, right? Not always! For some, the unknown can be frightening. Many of us are filled with the ever-present “what if?” that seems to come from all directions, making us wonder if we will be doing the right thing by moving out of our comfort zone. For some people, the fear of making a mistake or doing something wrong can be paralyzing, and it is here that we must learn to make sound decisions for ourselves by trusting our instincts and our inner voice.

We all have an inner voice, deep within that guides us. How many times have you said, “If only I had listened to my gut….”? When faced with a decision, we feel the answer within the very core of our being. We hear the voice that tells us whether we are moving in the right or the wrong direction. Just listen to that voice and all will be well, right? Sadly, it’s not that easy. That voice, that feeling, is often in direct opposition with our minds and hearts. Our minds can think of a myriad of reasons why we should or shouldn’t do something, rationalizing away our inner voice and silencing it. Our hearts can override both in an intense wave of emotion-driven reaction, pushing aside everything to achieve fulfillment. How can we possibly know what is the right or wrong way to go with such conflict going on within us? The answer is simple: Self-empowerment and self-trust.

Self-empowerment provides us the strength to move forward in our lives with the ability to know, deep within, that we are able to accomplish what we set out to do because we are capable of doing so. We provide ourselves the tools to be accomplished, and take every opportunity presented to us and achieve success each and every step of the way. When we misstep, we pick ourselves up and look deep within to see where we made the mistake, and, most importantly, did we listen to the inner voice that will guide us like a homing beacon toward the best outcome. Each time we do this, we build our feeling of self-empowerment and soon we will start truly believing in and trusting ourselves to be able to make sound decisions and step forward in our lives with great success.

Self-trust is a learned ability that comes to us over time. Each opportunity we are given provides us a moment to listen to our inner guiding voice and to make sound decisions. Each time we are successful in our endeavors, we prove to ourselves that we are trustworthy and can guide ourselves in the best way possible. When we make mistakes and then look within to determine how better to achieve our goals in the future, we prove to ourselves that we will do whatever is necessary to take care of ourselves.

Self-empowerment and self-trust are two of the most important keys in magickal work as they remove the presence of doubt. Ultimately our doubt is the very thing that can hinder success in our practice. Have you heard the old adage, “We are our own worst enemy”? Doubting ourselves, thus hindering our own empowerment and trust, is a perfect example.

Listen to your inner voice. Develop a relationship with it. Learn to know it intimately and to be able to discern between your true core voice and the conflicting messages coming from your mind and heart. Trust it to guide you in the right direction. Looking back at choices we have made in the past, almost every action we have taken in life that we consider to be a mistake can be directly correlated to not listening to that voice.

Know this… your inner voice will never steer you wrong and will guide you toward manifesting the successful outcome of every opportunity you are ever presented with!

The integration of movement and dance into spiritual practices and religious rituals is not a new concept. Since before recorded time, man has been using gestures and movements and dance, both choreographed and improvised, to raise energy, heal the sick, connect with Deity, and foster a sense of community connection. One useful purpose for sacred movement is as a tool to facilitate and enhance the achievement of the altered state known as “trance.” Once again, modern man is not inventing this concept, but rather reviving it, for the “trance dance,” like all other sacred movement, has its roots in antiquity. Many trance dance traditional rituals have survived intact and are still being used in religious ceremonies and healings to this day.

Sufis perform a trance dance called “whirling” (mostly associated with Dervishes of Turkey) as a part of a formal religious ceremony known as the Sema, which is performed in order to reach religious ecstasy and a connection to Deity.

The Anastenaria is a traditional celebration found in Northern Greece and Southern Bulgaria, in honor of Saint Constantine and Saint Helen. At the end of the celebration, participants carry icons of the Saints and dance around a large fire for hours, until they enter a trance and are called by the Saints to walk barefoot over the glowing-red coals, unharmed by the fire.

Zar Cults of the Middle East are groups with specific members who perform their healing trance dance in order to contact and communicate with the spirit(s) causing particular illnesses or afflictions, not to exorcise them, but rather to work out a mutually agreeable symbiotic accommodation or “living arrangement.”

The Guedra, part of the culture of Morocco’s Tuareg Berbers, or Blue People (the dye from their deep blue robes impregnates their skin), is a moving meditation performed as a ritual of blessing and celebration of life, usually performed by one or a few dancers, supported by a drummer, hand clappers, and chanters; all come together to build powerful energy and bring blessings, spiritual ecstasy and connection to Deity.

The pizzica is a folk dance from Italy that comes in three highly symbolic variations. In the first, the pizzica de core, a man and woman circle each other suggestively but are never allowed to actually touch. The second, the danza della scherma, is a mock sword battle performed by two men. The third dance, the pizzica tarantata, is a strange ritual with an almost primitive history, dating from a time in which women suffering from a variety of mental or emotional disorders of the sort that used to be labeled “hysteria” were believed to have been bitten by a poisonous spider. The Tarantella Dance music is probably the most recognized song of all the Italian folklore music.

Liturgical dance is a modern form of religious trance dance that is made a part of worship services, usually as an expression of prayer or worship through movement of the body. Liturgical dancing can be spontaneous or can be choreographed in advance in order to fit into the lyrics of a particular hymn or song, or the focus of a religious service. It is relatively new in the West, but its roots go back to accounts of religious dance in the Bible’s Old Testament.

But not all trance dancing is related to healing or banishing or exorcism. Anyone who has spent some time on a dance floor at a modern night club can attest to the power of dancing and the “group consciousness” that can be created through rhythm, music, lights and movement. Electronic trance dance and all of its alternate forms (such as Rave, Euro, Techno and House) are characterized by music with rhythms that fall within the 130 to 155 beats per minute range, a tempo that, combined with a dancing style of repetitive movement, is perfect for inducing a trance or altered state of consciousness.

Modern trance dancing uses rhythmic sounds, sights such as pulsing lights, and repetitive movements as activators to influence the brain and bring brain wave vibrations into alignment with the rhythm, and thus to the trance level. This use of outside influences such as rhythm and repetitive body movements to help achieve a trance state is known as “entrainment.” The more senses that are involved in this process, the easier it is to attain and maintain a trance state. Transformative breathing, pulsing lights or flames, and incense, when combined with music and rhythms and repetitive body movements, can allow the dancer to slip into a powerful trance.

Want to give it a try?

The wonderful thing about trance dancing is that anyone can do it. You don’t need to be a certain age, you don’t need any dance training or ability, and you can even do it from a chair if you are unable to stand. What you look like when you dance is not even an issue; the most important part is what you feel while you are dancing. Actually, too much worry about your outer form will distract you from the trance.

Trance dance is essentially a meditation, with movement as the tool used to bring your awareness to a place where meditation, trance and communion with Deity can happen. By allowing your body to freely express the rhythms and movements created by the catalyst of sound, you are brought to a meditative state and enter into a deeper mythic reality.

Repetitive movements can act as a focus for your mind similar to that of a mantra or chant; when repeated long enough the movement will fade from your awareness and shift your attention from your physical surroundings to a state of dreaming. While any repeated motion can be used to attain and maintain a trance; the ideal movement would be one that is strenuous enough to get the endorphin effect of exercise, but simple enough to be easily repeated without the worry of getting it wrong.

To set up a trance dance session, you will need to find a block of time when you won’t be disturbed, at least 45 minutes. You will need to arrange your furniture so you won’t injure yourself, and you will need some music, any kind of music as long as it truly inspires you. You might want to also dim the lights or burn some pleasing incense, but be careful of any open flames.

Begin by following the rhythm with your breathing; then consciously relax and invite the music into your body. Begin swaying back and forth with the rhythm. As you put your body into motion, be aware of what feels good in a sensual or physical way; don’t worry about what you look like, for no one is watching. Allow your mind’s chattering and preoccupation with your physical world to fade, along with awareness of conscious movement.

Your aim is to reach a purity of experience that is just the rhythm and the motion and you and the sound; this is the moment of your entry into a trance state. Try not to stop dancing; continue moving without conscious choice until you feel the trance is completed. Slowly begin to decrease your movements and lessen their intensity until you are once again back to swaying to the music. Then bring even that to an end and stand still; experience the absence of motion with as much sensual awareness as you experienced motion.

Through trance dance our physical bodies and our physical world “disappear,” and we become more like spirit, and less attached to life’s ordinary difficulties, making it possible at these moments to let these problems go, and sometimes to become aware of viable solutions to these problems. Trance dancing is also a wonderful way to cleanse the cobwebs from your mind and rejuvenate your body.

Sources:

Wikipedia – Trance
Sacred Mists Sacred Movement Extension Class