A simple, everyday spell

From time to time the subject of 'spells' comes up and gets discussed on the social media sites I am part of.

There is a meme going round facebook that says " WORDS cast spells, that's why it is called SPELLING. WORDS are energy, USE wisely"
It is also widely known that it has been recorded that the bards of old were able to write satires so powerful that they could bring kings to ruin, or could make their subject come out in boils.
This, to me, is a use of spells. And there are many different kinds of spells .

In books, I have often read the following, that a prayer is a kind of spell. A good wish, or something as simple as baking a cake, and as you are mixing the cake mix, imagining the end product being the best cake ever and sharing it with people who are going to eat it and enjoy it. Putting your words/thought/wishes into an action.

I also believe that the best form of spell is one that you just 'know' how to do, the simpler the better. And that the best form of defense can often be simply to return what comes your way back to its sender, so that the intent of it is either good or bad depending on the originator. And it is ALWAYS good practice to seek a mundane approach to the problem first.

A spell does not have to be something done in the dead of night with bats wings  and a cauldron  It can be a much more every-day affair.

So here is an example of something that you may or may not consider to be a spell, depending on the level of magic you see in the everyday world.

_________________________________

At work, we have a noticeboard  that is used to inform us of just about anything. Any work related events that are going on, theatre trips, charity sports events etc are put up there for people to add their name to the list to say that they are going, and then the organiser knows what he or she is doing and can book the proper number of tickets etc if relevant.
Now, for a long time, and I suspect ever since there was a charity football match being organised, playing in tutus, my name gets added to every list that is put up asking for people to sign up. In the past I have crossed my name out, only to find it added again the next day, and the next.... so now I dont bother, and I just ignore it.

This time, there was an advert calling for a darts team to play in a charity darts match, and as usual, my name was added, and I ignored it.

Until today.

When I started work, one of the guys came over laughing, asking if my name had been put on the list as a piss-take on my sexuality.

"What?"

So he asked me again, and I told him gay people can play darts, so I didnt get what he was on about.

So he had to explain it to me, that "playing darts" also means anal sex.

"What?"

The explanation, he tole me, along with gestures, is that a dart is a penis, and you have to try and aim it into the bullseye.

"What?"

...and so it went on, with me thinking this gets more pathetic every time he explains it.

Now this whole thing is just childish, and adding my name constantly to lists of event-goers does me no harm, but it must at some point piss off the people organising the event, who probably think I am wasting their time.

So, if I look at this magically, for want of another word, the power of their intent depends on me being quiet and embarrased or shown up, and them being able to snigger about me and anal sex behind my back. In reality all they have done is say that I want to play on a darts team.

So.. the best way to avoid this back-biting is to step out of that target zone they are relying on me staying in, and to send their energy back to them.

I do not accept this as a homophobic incident. If I do, then I am taking on 'gay shame'. Simply calling me gay is not an insult or a title of shame that I have to run away from.

So, I choose a different path to send their energy back. Quite calmly, I write out a notice, and I pin it on the noticeboard, in front of the clocking-in machine, at eye level, so that everyone can see it. And I make sure it stays there, at least until I have left the building.

Within 10 minutes I am approached by someone in authority, asking if I knew who was adding my name, and if he ever finds out, they will face disciplinary charges as far as they can go. People stop their work and approach me to cheer me on and say well done.

Words can be powerful things. Whoever has been adding my name to lists has been faced with this ..

Now, I have accused nobody of anything other than writing my name. Whatever the original intent of that was, will be known by the perpetrators and their reaction will be in accordance. If it was 'just a laugh' then my response can be taken as 'just a laugh'. if it was more serious, then they know they've been rumbled.
Lots of people have seen this, and gossip will spread it further for me,  so in future if my name is added to anything else, it will be assumed to be some kind of homophobic gesture. In theory I need do nothing more.

And I have completely removed myself from any spotlight of "gay shame" and thus removing an assumption that it can be exploited.

Sewing with the Ancestors

Its been a while since I blogged anything, its been quite a hectic year for me one way or another and so much has happened that I've though "I should write about this" but I just haven't had the time to do it, so I'm doing a little bit now just to catch up a little.

So, going back to November/December 2012, my creative output got steered into making things with fabric. As a Christmas present to my daughter and her fiance I decided to make a huge, lined fake fur throw/blanket. Now, I'm not a sewer by any means, so just taking this on was a big thing. I borrowed my daughters sewing machine and asked my ancestors for help.

I knew that on my fathers side of the family there was a line of dressmakers/tailors so it made perfect sense to make a shamanic journey into the underworld and ask if one of my ancestors could help me out. And that's what I did - I entered the underworld as I normally do, and explained what I wanted to make, and who it was for, and asked if there was a member of my family who would be willing to help me do this.

A young woman came forward, she wore a simple plain black dress with a white pinny type thing on top of it, with laced edges, she said her name was 'Liza and that she would help me. In return, she said that she had always liked shortbread and asked me to make some for her. Thats what I did, I had to look up a recipe, and it was pretty easy, so I made a batch, and I ate some, shared some, and I put some under the tree in the cul-de-sac outside.

Now the sewing. First with the machine... all went well to start off with. I kept contact with 'Liza while I was sewing and was going at a great speed until it all started to go wrong. The thread started snapping. The needle snapped.. then another. The fabric got too thick for the machine and jammed. More needles snapped. 'Liza, still keeping contact during this, was busy talking inside my head, telling me she wasn't used to using a machine, she always sewed by hand, she was trying to pick it up but it wasn't right. After a while she kind of sheepishly admitted that she wasnt a dressmaker, she was a general household help - she could sew, she could cook, she could mend things, lots of general things, but she wasnt a dressmaker or tailor.

I decided that the machine wasn't the way to finish this, so I opted out and decided to finish by hand. And you know what? It went like a dream. Me! Sewing up this huge lined throw by hand! At the end I thanked 'Liza for her help and packed the throw away.

Now, I knew that my father had researched his side of the family tree several years earlier, thats how I knew about the dressmakers and tailors in the family. And, since he had died some six months previous to this, I had the folder containing the family tree upstairs, under the ancestors altar. At the time of the original journey,  I had toyed with the idea of looking up to see if there was an Elizabeth in there, but I had complete faith in the journeying, and in 'Liza, so I never did do that, it wasn't important.

NOW HERE IS THE COMPLETELY MIND BLOWING THING.

Its now January 2013 and this morning I thought I'd write this up, a short account of using my shamanism in everyday life. I thought... you know what, I will look up the family tree, and see where this Elizabeth is - and if she is or isn't there I will be honest about it - even if I didn't have her in my records, I still had faith in her, all it would prove was that she want in the records that I had.

So... 8.15am this morning, sitting on the bed in the temple room, I'm sat there with the family tree in front of me.

"Oh my god....OH. MY. GOD! OH MY GOD!!!!"

There on the papers in front of me, I find my (and I'm working this out now...) Great-Grandmothers sister - so that would make her my Great Aunt? ELIZA NEWPORT born in 1848 in Weston, Cheshire.

Eliza Newport!  I had assumed that 'Liza was short for Elizabeth, and I had opened the tree looking for an Elizabeth. Her name actually was 'Liza!

Eliza Newport, from Weston, Cheshire. I had to google this to find out where it was - 50 minutes drive away. And, since my daughter had gone to university, 3 years ago, I have been driving through this village on my way to the motorway quite regularly in order to pick her up, visit or bring her home, with or without her  in the car. No wonder it was Eliza who came forward to make the throw.

Eliza Newport From Weston. Born in 1848. I dont have a record of her occupation, but her parents were recorded as Agricultural Labourers, and her sister, my Great Grandmother, was a servant in a house in the nearby large village, Tattenhall, so it is at least likely that Eliza had been in service as well.

Oh My God! Not only Eliza  , but there is also a geographical connection. The tailors and dressmakers are all from Dorset, and I've never been there!

I just want to run round and tell everyone about Eliza! :-)

So now, I'll end with a snap of my daughter's fiance, snuggled up under the throw that I made, with the help of Eliza Newport, my Great-Aunt. Its been great, sewing with the ancestors.

Surfers on the bore

I did a bit of research into tides and equinoctials and new moons and everything last night, and it all very quickly got complicated. Basically, my understanding is that the full moon creates the highest tides. The equinoctial tides are on the full/new moons nearest the equinoxes. This spring, its the new moon thats on the equinox, so it wont be so big as if it were the full moon. This year we have a full moon 2 weeks either side of the equinox, so they are going to be about the same in March and April.
The Dee bore is created by the difference between the low tide and the high tide... its not just a high tide, you need a very low tide before it, so the water has to rush to catch up with itself... and they are about middayish.

So....... I figured  that there would be a smaller bore today, as a piece of leftover energy from yesterdays tide, the waves are bigger near the mouth of the estuary than at the end , so I went further out to see if this would equal itself out.

There were loads of people there! On the footbridge over the estuary. All waiting for the wave... there were surfers!

 It was a really good spot, although the wave was smaller than it would have been yesterday, being on the straight channel meant I could see it coming from way off, and build the tension.

The surfers were knocked off their boards.

And the good thing about being on a footbridge meant that I could see the wave passing under me and watch the river being conquered from the seaward side as well. Again, the transition from river to sea was simply seconds.

Everyone went home at that point, I hadnt intended to stay long but I had the dogs with me, so i crossed the bridge and walked upstream on the welsh side through the fields, rather than on the cycleway on the english side. I realised that the field was actually part of the flood plain, there was a hight tide mark along it, and seaweeed was dotted here and there in the grass.I walked for a while and turned back, and went to stand by the edge of the rising sea-water. And again, i felt the energy of it, it was like being plugged in to a source of static electricity, and it was greater if i faced into chester, into the direction that the water was being pulled. Feeling full of nwyfre... feeling the energy from the full moon flowing and pulling through my body.

Energised, I headed home :-)

Chasing the Dee Bore

A couple of days after the full moon comes the high tides, and the Dee estuary gives the second largest tidal bore, after the River Severn. I'd never previously known this or looked into the tides, but this month - and it just happened to be co-incidence that it is the last full moon before the equinox - I decided to have a look at this and go to the estuary to watch the tide turn.

I didn't plan anything, I thought at most that I'd sit on the banks and watch the tide turn and then sit for a while and see the estuary rise. It didn't turn out like that.

I worked out approximately what time the incoming tide would reach Chester, and went to the estuary, there were already several other people there waiting for it, so i walked further along and found a space on the bank where I could sit and wait. Silly me, I even threw a stick in at one point to see which way it was flowing in case I had missed it.

Then I heard the roaring.... the gulls downstream all flew up at once, and then I saw the wave come crashing along the banks... not a huge, surf-able wave, but a violent noisy wall of water - further out towards the sea it is higher, at this point it was a couple of feet maybe, and it rushed past me, and within a matter of seconds the lazy river had turned into proper sea, a good few feet higher already

WOW! I said, to myself, and I was caught up in the energy of the event, really excited and immediately decided to chase the bore upstream, so i jumped into my car and drove into town, to the weir - the weir had held the tide back, at the bottom it was all collecting and rising, soon it would break over the top - and within minutes the weir was defeated and submerged beneath the incoming tide.

I jumped back into the car and drove a few miles further upstream, I had no idea how far up it would go but I wanted to do this, caught up as i was. Parked up and across the fields i went, there didn't seem to be much happening, so I threw a stick in to test the current, it just stayed in the one place neither going upstream or down, so i hung on for a bit , and then - it was off! slowly at first going inland, but picking up speed, so I followed the river inland, on foot, being overtaken by ducks and canoeists, none of whom were paddling but being carried upstream faster than I was walking.

The further inland i went, the more diffused the energy got, the head of the energy being the crest of the tide, and as I walked i though about all that energy being diffused into the land, bringing Spring with it. After reaching Ecclestone I decided I'd gone far enough and reluctantly headed back... the river was still flowing fast in reverse, and part of me wanted to carry on with it, and another part of me wanted to return back to the places i had stopped before and photograph the changes in water level. Anyway, I turned back and walked back to where the car was parked, but I stopped at a favourite spot of mine near there and sat at the waters edge for a while.

I actually felt it.
Watching the river flowing upstream... something changed... there was nothing visual that I could reference to or check with, but i felt as if it had passed, that the tide had turned... nothing in the flow of the river or the water levels could prove this to me, but I figured it was time to go, so i went back to the car and drove back to the weir, took some more photos and them went back to the estuary where i had started... and it actually had started to go out. The water was flowing out to sea again, at some point on my way back it had caught up and reversed itself, and here I was watching it on its way out again.

It was half past two in the afternoon, I'd been out 3 and a half hours, I got home and I was really tired, really suddenly. Drained. But really pleased to have been part of this and shared in the energy of the occasion, feeling its ebb and flow.

I'd managed to take some before/during/after photos -

Starting at the estuary just outside Chester -

BEFORE-

DURING-

AFTER -

And the weir....

 DURING -

AND AFTER -

What came through the hole in the sky

So here are my thoughts after the solstice, and a bit of rambling. I feel that there is some kind of energetic connection between the cave and the mound. I don't really understand it, but together they act as a 'system' ore than the sum of their physical parts. Or rather, they used to, and still can, though the components are a bit rusty from lack of use and maintenance

The 'hole in the sky' was a portal from the Upper World, a place of bright light and energy, a place of knowledge and wisdom.

The evening after the solstice, the hole in the sky kept coming back into my mind and with it was a lot of anger  -a frustrated anger which came with a message.

The way things used to be, was that there were fewer people. People took from the land, and it was generally acknowledged that something had to be given back. Balance was kept.
Now, things have changed. We've changed ourselves and the ways we live. We have changed the system. That in itself is not the problem. Times change, people change, systems change. But we've changed the system to a damaged or incomplete one that does not work, and on the whole we are too blind or self centred to see or care.

People used to take from the land , and they gave back. Some are always able to give back more than others, but the 'debt' was manageable, and it worked because everyone chipped in.

Now it seems everyone takes. And they take on a huge scale, and they are so many... There are people out there who have given themselves in service of the land, in one way or another, but the debt is so great that they cannot cope with it all. They are doing what they can, but they carry a debt from thousands or millions of people who keep on taking, and their work is exhausting them, depleting them so much that they cannot do enough.

If this is the system that we have chosen to work with, we are missing a cog in the working. If it has to be down to one set of people to pay back everyone's debt, there needs to be another set of people about simply to support them in their work. But quite often there isn't, and sometimes the work they do drains them completely to the point of exhaustion, and they have to stop until they have recuperated.And this in itself is damaging on a physical level.

Our way of life is Damaged, it needs fixing. And the people upstairs are really pissed off that we have got it like this.

Winter Solstice 2011

A lot happened for my solstice celebrations this year. I had the ceremony planned with my druid grove, for the solstices I dont quite feel that this is enough, I also have to see the sun rise on that day , so in addition to this, I felt that I should be at the cave and mound.

It started on the 21st, I and my companion went to the cave for sunset, which meant an early start, leaving home at 2pm. Luckily, it is en-route to where our grove was holding their ceremony.

We arrived at the site in time for the sunset, although it was a mostly cloudy afternoon, when we stood on the mound, we could see the valley to the south-west shining with a golden light, and as the sun slowly dipped down towards the horizon, the golden light spread along that valley to the coast and then started to crrep up our own valley, and we hastily legged it down to the cave before the light faded.

We didn't get the shaft of light on this occasion because of the thin cloud cover over the sun, but the inside of the cave was certainly very bright and we went inside, I went into the chamber and stood in the darkness for a while, listening to the creaking and groaning of the earth and the water seeping though it, and felt totally calm and relaxed and at peace with everything.

I came out after a while and spoke to my companion, she had had her own experience while I had been gone,  had sensed 2 other people with us that was quite consistent with how I had seen them before, and she had done some visualisation and given healing to the cave.

The altar/mandala that I had left previously was still in place, a little disturbed, and I'm not sure if it was because of human movement or natural movement with the cold and draughts etc, but it was almost exactly as I had left it.  I had been thinking about whether it was actually a good idea to leave it here or not, I didn't want to attract the wrong attention to the place, so i made a decision to move it all. Together we chose a small nook in the side of the walls where it would be out of site, and I made the affair quite minimal  - a beeswax candle which would burn away to nothing, and incense that would just turn to ash, apart from that the only signs visible to anyone if the found it would be a feather and a shell to hold water. There is a small depression to hold a few offerings , so I picked up some of the beans and snail shells and put them in there, taking the rest outside to be eaten by any passing wildlife.
And so that's how we spent our sunset, sitting mostly in silence in the cave, the air thick with incense and lit by the candle. We rattled a little, and I sprinkled some blessed water that had been given to me earlier in the year, it was produced during a full weekend shamanic embodiment course that a friend had been to, and the water had been blessed by the embodied spirits of many deities, and was meant for blessing the land.

Again, whilst this was going on, my friend had experienced another small detail that was the same as i had had on a previous visit - which was fantastic, and its also for this reason that I decided to leave out various personal details, so that I am not influencing people on their own experiences.

Now, what I feel should happen is that this altar should be maintained from time to time. It's hidden location should be passed on person to person as they are taken to the cave, so that if and when they are passing, they are able to go in and spend a few minutes there, the altar id simply a focus, to tidy up, refresh the water, burn a candle and some incense and to mark the place as somewhere that people were buried and loved and cared for, and a place they lived. Like a shrine. Our scared places are everywhere but are largely ignored or not known about. Having a number of people knowing about this and maintaining it as and when they feel they want to , and clearing away any rubbish that has been left there is a step towards maintaining the sacredness of our land. 


Just imagine that we all lie in a ritual landscape, and as you ravelled from A to B, you knew that there was such-and-such a shrine in the woods over there, another in a cave up there, and a few miles further on, so that you had an internal  map of the spirit of the land, passed on by oral tradition and being shown where they were.

So... there we were, with darkness creeping up, we set off back through the woods to the car and set off to our grove for the ceremony.

And wow, what an amazing yuletide evening it was. The ceremony itself was done in darkness outside and was very powerful for us. As well as that there was sharing of food and drink, songs and games, laughter and friendship before we all set off for home again. It was gone 1am by the time I got back to the house.

But it's not over yet.... I barely slept and was up again at 5 to go back, this time, to the mound. Now I'd figured that with the cave catching the dying sun, a possible purpose for the mound was simply as a platform, when you stand on the top of it, you are raised above the tree-tops so the rising sun clearing the distant hills is clearly visible over the woodland. So that's what I intended to do...

The path through the woods was pitch black, and as i went along it a tawny owl flew across, really close, not expecting me to be there, I remember the pale flash of its under-wing as it banked to one side to avoid me, before gliding off into the trees and calling to its mate.

It was cold and dark on the mound, and windy, so I did my coat and hood up, and waited. though several times I took my hood off to look around because I was convinced that other people were there with me, had arrived unseen. there was nobody physically there with me, so i settled in with it, and closed my eyes and waited for the sun to rise.

Eventually, I felt a change, a shifting of something, I don't know what, but I opened my eyes and the sky had turned golden. There was an hour to go. Soon, a pair of ravens woke up and started circling and tumbling in circles above the woods.I sat still and waited, and waited. I drummed a little, and then walked round the perimeter if the mound, drumming, before settling again. A little later a fox trotted past the mound, seemingly oblivious to me, with a rabbit in his mouth. Still the sun hadnt risen and the tension was building within me.

Then I saw that bright red line on the horizon where the tip of the sun had broken through, and I stared, watching it rise, drumming away to welcome his return. As he rose higher he seemed to get stuck on a couple of points and i found myself standing on the mound, drumming away, shouting  "PUSH, PUSH"  to get him to rise clear of the Earth. And so, he did :-)
I stood watching for a short while, I could see that the sky was clear  and beautiful, but there was a narrow band of cloud that would obscure him after a while, so i stood and stayed in that moment, staring into his fiery redness, and then - after he was well clear of the Earth, the sun changed... changed from red into pure white, and it didn't look like the sun any longer, I felt like I was staring into a circular hole in the sky, like a tunnel through to the heavens and upper worlds beyond, and that felt really strange. It was as if I could have reached through with my hand and pulled myself through into somewhere else.

He was approaching the clouds now, a flock of seagulls came overhead from the coast and circled above me, checking if I was having a picnic or not, but I wasn't, so I legged it down to the cave again, and lit a candle and took the light into the cave, spreading it around to show the re-birth before setting it down on the altar, then I grabbed by drum and BANG BANG BANGED away...

WAKE UP!

 View from the cave to the east

View from the cave to the west

And that was it... the journey through the woods and back home was amazing in the golden sunlight, I got home, and danced, then went out with my partner and had a huge cooked breakfast, and came home and slept....

Full Moon, December 2011

The cave ...

The basic idea was that my daughter was home for the weekend, so we should do something together. The Saturday was also the only day that her boyfriend was off, so that 'something' would be best as a shared 'something'. It was also the night of the full moon, so I came up with a basic idea of going out for a bbq at a location where I can do my thing, they can do their thing and then I can take them home afterwards and everyones happy.

So.. I packed everything up and we set off for the cave. I had decided to make a mandala at the back of the cave where the chamber is, where the shaft of sunlight hits, so I took beans, shells and natural stuff that I could leave there as a creative offering. After some exploring and settling in, I explained the principle of it to my companions and sent them off hunting in the woods for things I could use. Partly to give them time together, partly to give me time to make the mandala, to meditate in the chamber and rattle for the spirits, and partly because 'hunting' was part of the bigger plan.

The bigger plan was that the cave is a place of burial, a place of spirit, and ritual and I would do something to acknowledge that. It was also a place of living and family, and they would do that part.

I had just finished the mandala  when they came back with a few bits to add to it, so it was completed, I had incorporated a feather, a shell for water, some charcoal for the incense and a beeswax candle, I lit the candle and charcoal, put some incense on, and pulled out a bottle of beer that i had bought previously especially to use as an offering to the ancestors. I poured this round the mandala, then we all shared the beer and I sprinkled it round the cave in general, I hadn't actually planned this bit but it worked, I kind of expected that my daughter and her bf would go off and do something else, but they sat with the altar , shared the beer and  well, just sat there for a minute or so sharing the atmosphere and being silent. It felt quite special.

Then we did the living.. we'd brought wood, a kelly kettle and a bbq and a firesteel
 :-)
 I showed them how to start a fire without using matches, and set the bbq going and we put food on, and closed the lid so it would cook. To keep us warm they then had to start their own fire which was quite fun, as well as moving the rocks and stones around so that we had a place to sit round the fire itself... the rest of the night was... sat round the fire, cooked and ate the food we had brought  (that was why I got them to symbolically hunt in the woods for the mandala), told stories, sang a song or 2, played a party game, stayed out much longer than we had intended.... I did notice that, even though we were sat in the mouth of a cave, round a fire, Liam still went 'outside' to have a cigarette, which , amusing as it is was also touching that the cave really kept itself as a homely place, and that he respected that.

When the tealights had burnt themselves out, I collected them back up, picked up the rubbish that other people had left, the fire died down to a few embers and it was time to go home, through the woods in the darkness of the night, leaving the mandala behind.