Image via WikipediaIf you read any beginner's book on Tarot cards, you'll quickly run into three concepts. One, that cards can foretell the future. Two, that the future they foretell is only the most likely one at the time, can be influenced by the people involved, and is not written in stone. Three, that cards are good decision making tools much like thought-ballooning, brainstorming, and similar concepts.

I have to admit, right out, I don't think there is any reliable way of foretelling the future. Period. At best, I believe that our subconscious mind can extrapolate data better than we think it can and projects that onto whatever fortune-telling method we've chosen for ourselves which makes any method of divination just a quirkier way of getting in touch with that part of us that observes and sees more than our conscious everyday minds.

That said, I think Tarot is a great decision making tool. There's alot of Jungian symboloism involved in them, things that speak to our subconscious in language it can understand and interpret. What's even more important about them, and other methods, is that it opens a relatively painless way for our subconscious to speak back. There are alot of ways one can open the door to the subconscious mind, whole books have been written on the subject, but I find Tarot readings by far the fastest, easiest, most reliable method.

So no, when my local pastor or Elder says they're occult and evil, I'm not giving them up. Instead I tend to look at them like they've suddenly grown two heads and ask, "Where do you get this stuff??" Reacting to that point of view as if it were fringe science is unfair to them (I know very well where this attitude comes from after all, and it's really a method of lying) but it makes them pause and think. And, sadly, they wouldn't if I just reasonably explained my own point of view. It would go in one ear and out the other with no impact made and no brick laid in my bridge of thought between different religions.

All of that said, I have two decks. One is laughably enough one of the most occult of the decks available, the Crowley Thoth deck. This deck can be outright scary and intimidating to a beginner and it's certainly confusing even to me, who's used it for eight years now. My second deck is more humorous and a gift from a friend, the Silicon Valley Tarot from Steve Jackson Games. I love this Tarot deck, it's hilarious and fun and a great stress reliever. I use it when I need reminding on a gut level that life is just not that serious and I should relax and have a little fun.

Hmmmmm.... guess I need to break it out pretty soon... :P

So, I've decided what kind of wand I want. I'm going to find a piece of wood as long as my arm from elbow to longest fingertip, remove the bark and sand it down smooth. Next, I will carve a bit of a hollow into one end for the crystal. Then I'm going to take a piece of blue silk as long as the wand and 6 inches wide and wrap it around the wood, tucking the ends in on each end of the wand and taking it down somehow into the ends.

I will next take a crystal I already own and glue it into the hollow over the silk. Hrm, perhaps I should glue it in first and tuck the silk in around it... I'll have to wait until I have the wood and the silk and see how it works before fastening anything down. Lastly, I will take two lengths of copper wire (dimensions unknown) and twine them around the wand from end to end like a double helix, ending in woven circles at each end of the wand. So, I need to buy blue silk and copper wire. I have everything else and the wood will be free, when found.

In the meantime, a chuckle. Zemanta, a service I use to enhance content in these posts, recommends this link for more information related to my content. The internet is a great thing but sometimes it baffles me!

Image from WikipediaWhile Full Moon Esbats are fairly common, I don't see much talk about New Moon celebrations. It's a time of newness, the pause before the growth spurt, the death of the old moon, so many things. I used it this month to look at myself and make sort of a mini-resolution, something small but self-improving to work on for the next two weeks while the moon and magick both grow in power and strength.

I lit two candles, white for the goddess and red for the god. I'd have preferred black for the god but it wasn't available and red is a nice god-color. I didn't call any gods by name, just sat and thought about what I wanted to work on while the candles burned a bit and the incense filled the room. I did chat with Phil for a bit about the day, what I was doing, what it all meant to me and afterwards made some pine sawdust for an incense base while I listened to Clannad.

It was a good night, peaceful, relaxing. The last week has been pretty emotionally hectic and this was a good time to pause, let the sadness go for a bit and this morning I feel far more stable than I have this last seven days even though I know the worst is yet to come as I suffer from something similar to seasonal depression and that has a week or two left to cycle through my life. And yet, I feel like I want to accomplish something again, even though my energy reserves are low and I'm still not sleeping more than four to five hours at time.

I think the experience would have been even nicer if I owned a piece of furniture with a moonscape painted on it with glow-in-the-dark paint. Thinking about it, though, I don't think I'd actually want the furniture piece but rather a moon painted on my wall or ceiling or part of it on both. The room would've glowed beautifully with that and the candlelight.

My horoscope says to trust my intuition this week but I have to admit, depression is good at shaking a person's self-confidence and while I usually do trust my judgment, I know I've already made several pretty bad calls in recent days. (I'm not a big believer in horoscopes anyhow but sometimes they help remind me of things I've forgotten to pay attention to.) On the other hand, something told me that I needed to do this ritual last night, even though I was tired, groggy, feeling out-of-sorts so perhaps it's not so bad after all.

Tonalli (much paraphrased from this site)

The important element in relation to human sacrifice, very briefly, is that the universe was thought to run on an energy called tonalli, "animating spirit". This word comes from tona, "to make heat or sun". It nourished the gods, and kept the sun moving. Throughout Aztec religion there is a great emphasis on motion, and motion is driven by tonalli. In humans it is located in the blood stream. When a man is frightened, it concentrates in the heart. The gods' thirst for it is perpetual. It drives the universe. Without it, everything stops.

As well, religious motivation is inadequate to explain the degree to which human sacrifice was practiced. Quetzalcoatl didn't think it was necessary at all. Religious necessity can be served symbolically, or else a single human sacrifice can be imbued with very great significance, as in the case of Roman Catholicism. Even one sacrifice to the bloodiest goddess in the Hindu pantheon, Kali, would keep the goddess happy for a thousand years (Kalika Purana, in Campbell, 1962; pg. 6). This would not prevent her worshippers from attempting to make her very happy, but even at their most enthusiastic, Kali looked like a tea granny compared to Huitzilopochtli.

There's very compelling evidence that the religious sacrifices, and the attendant ritual cannibalism, were actually economically motivated. Tenochtitlan was not self sufficient. Its population could not be supported by even the most copious yields of its technologically advanced intensive agriculture. Tribute from neighbouring states was required to make up the difference. When Aztec demands for tribute were greatest, there is evidence that reconquest was necessary for states that had had enough.

For my own practices involving Tonalli, I certainly wouldn't be involved with human sacrifice or even that of animals. However, the concept of an animating force that drives the world and requires nourishment is very central to Aztec religious thought but there are many ways this could be accomplished including menstrual blood, flower buds, seeds, and others. My thanks to the Pagan Forum for several of these ideas.

Since I can’t find a coven, “Living Wicca” by Scott Cunningham seems to be a good choice. In this book is a whole section on creating your own tradition. I could probably do this without the book but it never hurts to use it and cover all the bases.

One thing that has drawn me for years is Dragons. I’ve been involved with them by owning figurines, being an active member of an online fan group, editing and publishing a newsletter for that same group. So it makes sense that dragons and dragon magick should be a huge part of anything I do ritually. And it’s definitely going to be the western variety of dragon. Celtic dragons just don’t do it for me. I’ll probably work Chinese dragons in somewhere, but as Elder advisors perhaps, not real totems of power. Their wisdom is undeniable but they don’t thrum many of my subconscious mental strings.

I already use dragons as elemental guardians when circle casting. Water, earth, air and fire dragons all guard my watchtowers every ritual now. It’s not that large a step to include them more and seek doing more work with them in other ways as well.

For God/Goddess archtypes… I don’t know. I’ve followed Anubis so long, had him looking over my shoulder, challenging me to grow, that I don’t know if I’ll change that at all.

Note to self: this is a great site for dragon art. Print it out, color it, paint it, do something with it.

Why do we correspond the elements to these directions? Who set the elements in these correspondences? What experiments did they use? … I say it is time we as a magical community start questioning tradition. I say it is time we go back and revisit the ancients and rerun their experiments with more modern techniques and equipment to see if what they found still holds water or if we need to adjust our thinking to new evidence.

I have to disagree. Most of us are doing well to find time to work a ritual these days in what seem to be increasingly busy lives. Now, yes, maybe it’s time we slowed down - but I have to tell you, this isn’t what I’d choose to spend time on if I did have a few extra minutes each day. Could Shadow Knight do it for me? Sure, he could do that. I might even be interested in what he found but I doubt it. He also says,

Elemental correspondences work on different levels and have varying degrees of efficiency. Basically if it works for you then go with it.

And the reason I don’t think his findings would work for me is my subconscious mind isn’t going to accept him as an “authority”. When I’m writing a ritual, I have a variety of things I do but one of the most important is the use of my library. In it are bound, printed books by authors like Regardie, Crowley, Starhawk and more. I look up what I need, slot it in, save myself time and energy. Shadow Knight just isn’t going to stand up to that kind of competition in my head.

One of the huge tenets in magick is, what you BELIEVE will work is how it will work. So could I use his work? Sure, except I know myself well enough to know it won’t work for me. And that is the real lesson here, know thyself.