Tricksey Faeries

Loch Earn, St Fillans, Pertshire

This, also from the Times really interested me - how good that we are standing up for our heritage and beliefs, eventhough, no doubt, the city slickers think it is a "whole bunch of malarky." I would rather be on the safe side!

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Fairies stop developers' bulldozers in their tracks
By Will Pavia and Chris Windle

VILLAGERS who protested that a new housing estate would “harm the fairies” living in their midst have forced a property company to scrap its building plans and start again.

Marcus Salter, head of Genesis Properties, estimates that the small colony of fairies believed to live beneath a rock in St Fillans, Perthshire, has cost him £15,000. His first notice of the residential sensibilities of the netherworld came as his diggers moved on to a site on the outskirts of the village, which crowns the easterly shore of Loch Earn.

He said: “A neighbour came over shouting, ‘Don’t move that rock. You’ll kill the fairies’.” The rock protruded from the centre of a gently shelving field, edged by the steep slopes of Dundurn mountain, where in the sixth century the Celtic missionary St Fillan set up camp and attempted to convert the Picts from the pagan darkness of superstition.

“Then we got a series of phone calls, saying we were disturbing the fairies. I thought they were joking. It didn’t go down very well,” Mr Salter said.

In fact, even as his firm attempted to work around the rock, they received complaints that the fairies would be “upset”. Mr Salter still believed he was dealing with a vocal minority, but the gears of Perthshire’s planning process were about to be clogged by something that looked suspiciously like fairy dust.

“I went to a meeting of the community council and the concerns cropped up there,” he said. The council was considering lodging a complaint with the planning authority, likely to be the kiss of death for a housing development in a national park. Jeannie Fox, council chairman, said: “I do believe in fairies but I can’t be sure that they live under that rock. I had been told that the rock had historic importance, that kings were crowned upon it.” Her main objection to moving the rock was based on the fact that it had stood on the hillside for so long: a sort of MacFeng Shui that many in the village subscribe to.

“There are a lot of superstitions going about up here and people do believe that things like standing stones and large rocks should never be moved,” she said.

Half a mile into Loch Earn is Neish Island. From there the Neish clan set forth to plunder the surrounding country, retreating each time to their island. Early in the 17th century, the MacNabs retaliated from the next valley, carrying a boat over the mountains, storming the island and slaughtering most of the Neishes.

This summer Betty Neish McInnes, the last of that line in St Fillans, went to her grave — but not before she had imparted the ancient Pict significance of the rock to many of her neighbours.
“A lot of people think the rock had some Pictish meaning,” Mrs Fox said. “It would be extremely unlucky to move it.”

Mr Salter did not just want to move the rock. He wanted to dig it up, cart it to the roadside and brand it with the name of his new neighbourhood.

The Planning Inspectorate has no specific guidelines on fairies but a spokesman said: “Planning guidance states that local customs and beliefs must be taken into account when a developer applies for planning permission.” Mr Salter said: “We had to redesign the entire thing from scratch.”

The new estate will now centre on a small park, in the middle of which stands a curious rock. Work begins next month, if the fairies allow.

Pagan beliefs in Mexico and Guatemala

I saw this article in the T2 Times supplement and thankfully, they had a link online. It appeared on 17th November 2005.
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Times2The pagan beliefs that enrich Mexico and Guatemala
Mary Ann Sieghart
Dateline: Oaxaca

It was supposed to be the Day of the Dead, but it turned out to be the Nearly-All-Week of the Dead. Long before real Hallowe’en, Oaxaca’s balconies were draped with life-size skeletons in crazy poses. Even a bench sported a couple of skeletons in conversation, the white one with a moustache tenderly putting his arm round the pink one.

They do death differently in Mexico.

And what a way to do it! Market stalls are piled high with skulls, some made of sugar with brightly coloured icing for eyebrows, others coated in sesame seeds with misshapen peanuts for teeth.

On October 31, the serious celebrations begin with a Day of the Dead breakfast: hot chocolate, sweet bread, and a banana-leaf-wrapped parcel containing chicken in a spicy chocolate sauce. By 10pm we, along with most of Oaxaca, are at the main cemetery, some four miles out of town. There, stilt-walkers arrive in garish costumes, having tottered all the way from the centre. Outside the cemetery, the atmosphere is redolent of an August bank-holiday fair: packed with crowds, the street contains fairground rides and cheap stalls with tacky plastic prizes.

Inside is weirder still. The walls are honeycombed with tombs, a lighted candle in each recess. The graves are decorated with marigolds, lilies and candles. In the far corner is a stage from which a torch singer, dressed in Morticia Addams make-up and ghostly robe, belts out a cabaret number. Then a troupe of actors dressed as angels performs a slapstick comedy, hitting each other over the head with balloons.

It is as if you can feel the pagan Mexico thrusting its way up through the crust of Catholicism.

You sense this most powerfully in the indigenous Indian communities. We move on to the cemetery in Xoxocotlan, an outlying Indian village. There the ground is bright orange, even in the middle of the night, for the carpet of marigolds, spiked by beer and Coke bottles, is so brightly lit by candles. Around each intricately decorated grave sit the relatives of the dead person, eating, drinking and chatting for all the world as if this were a normal family picnic.

There’s a carnival feel to the way the Mexicans approach death, a sense of delicious expectation that the spirits of your loved ones will return to visit you if you tempt them with an offering of their favourite tipple. The atmosphere is not grave at all. For, if you believe that your ancestors are present in your everyday life, why should you be gloomy in remembrance of them?

The Mayan Indians, who predominate in Mexico’s Chiapas and Guatemala, are highly spiritual and nominally Catholic, for the Spanish conquistadors imposed their religion on the indigenous people just as they imposed everything else. Every cemetery is a thicket of crosses; every village contains a church. The casual eye might mistake this for Catholic piety. But the Maya, who craft colourful masks to sell at market, have turned Catholicism into a mask of its own. From the outside, each church looks like a standard Spanish place of worship. Go inside, though, and you often discover that it is being used instead as a Mayan temple.

In the church of Chamula, up in the mountains of Chiapas, the pews and altar have gone and the floor is carpeted with pine needles. Candles burn all over the floor. Dotted about are families who have paid a shaman to cure them. He feels the ill person’s pulse and then conducts the appropriate ritual: passing eggs in a pattern over their body, sacrificing a chicken and then spitting firewater or Coke over the dead bird, chanting prayers and lighting coloured candles.

The sight is as pagan as it is heartening. After more than 300 years of oppression at the hands of Christians, these people have co-opted the religion and reclaimed it for themselves. The churches have no priests and conduct no services. The Indians don’t read the Bible. The Vatican has sundered relations with them. But they are still deeply religious people. For them, Jesus is the God of the Sun, and Mary of the Moon. The saints represent more minor Mayan gods.

The Mayas’ main worry is that modern evangelism is trying to replicate the conquest that Catholicism attempted in the 17th century. Evangelical missionaries are gaining hold in Mayan villages, and demanding that converts relinquish their traditional beliefs.

It would be a tragedy if they succeeded. These indigenous people have fought so hard for so long not to join the Western world. As we saw on the Day of the Dead, Mexico and Guatemala are enriched, not impoverished, by their pagan beliefs. If the brutal Spanish conquerors failed to extinguish these noble people, surely the modern world should be broadminded enough to allow them their difference. You can’t help thinking: why can’t the Church just leave these people in peace?

Dig this buried treasure...
When I spoke of paganism lying just below the surface in Mexico, I wasn’t aware of how literally this was true — until we took a bus journey to the Guatemalan border. On our right lay a spine of absurdly conical foothills, like the overlapping triangular mountains you see on the horizon in children’s drawings. Closer up were smaller hillocks, also surprisingly symmetrical. One was not even triangular, but trapezoid, with sloping shoulders and a flat top.

The bus driver gestured casually in their direction. “That’s an archeological site,” he told us. The triangular hillocks, it turned out, were actually Mayan Mayan pyramid temples, overgrown with grass and trees. Talk about buried treasure. What a shame the Mexicans can’t afford to excavate it.

Sonnet of the Moon

Sonnet of the Moon
by Charles Best, 1608

Look how the pale Queen of the silent night
doth cause the ocean to attend upon her,
and he, as long as she is in sight,
with his full tide is ready here to honor;

But when the silver waggon of the Moon
is mounted up so high he cannot follow,
the sea calls home his crystal waves to morn,
and with low ebb doth manifest his sorrow.

So you that are sovereign of my heart
have all my joys attending on your will,
when you return, their tide my heart doth fill.
So as you come and as you depart,
joys ebb and flow within my tender heart.

Yet another look!

I felt creative today and created another look for the website, probably more in keeping with its The Old Ways title.

Do let me know if you approve - I have redone the links and the archives work - yippee! - so, all in all it should be fine.

Goddess Power, by Fiona Horne

I have only got one book by Fiona Horne called Pop goes the Witch, but I have heard her talks and seen her perform at the Witchfest festival in Croydon. She is a modern face to witchcraft, sexy, self-assured, very much out of the broom closet, with a string of articles and succesful books behind her name. I have sourced this article from her website (I am setting a link up with the others) and trust she won't mind this posted here. The article is from June 1998 for the magazine New Woman.


Witches sure ain't what they used to be, forget broomsticks and black cats - these days women are using witchcraft for self-development and spiritual growth.Today there is a growing wave of women from all walks of life declaring themselves witches. Witchcraft, or more specifically Wicca, is one of the fastest growing religious trends in Australia. Not surprising when you consider that Witchcraft is a goddess-oriented religion that places emphasis on the sacredness and legitimacy of female power.

Goddess's truth

In the growing popularity of Wicca, women are finding they can explore their spirituality in a welcoming and empowering environment. After a history of having to relate to the Divine as masculine, acknowledging the omnipresent existence of a goddess can have a profound effect on a woman's psyche. It can expand our view of ourselves to include a greater understanding of our potential, our abilities and our purpose. As Lee, a 27-year-old office manager says, "Wicca gives me freedom of belief, freedom of worship and freedom to be myself. It allows me to experience the mystery of being female. In Wicca, women are not treated as second class. There is balance between male and female in that they are complementary and both wonderful".

The magical mystery tour

Doing spells and rituals to effect change and growth in my life has made me feel more alive, the world became an exciting playground of opportunity and potential, much as it had probably appeared to me when I was a young child, before the demands of society started to oppress me.

The emphasis Wicca places on the sacredness of the earth and magical ritual is relevant in a time of global crisis. As 21-year-old student, Sandra says, "The rituals of Wicca make everyday tasks seem meaningful. I feel involved in my life, I feel like I have a say in the way it turns out. I have a responsibility as a human to care for the earth, to work towards healing the damage done by year of patriarchal irresponsibility. It isn't always easy but I know I can made a difference."

Twelve years ago there was plenty of information around about the Craft, but still a lot of misinformation prevalent in the community, chiefly that witches were either "devil worshippers" or kooky eccentrics. I could understand people's confusion in thinking witches were evil and in league with the devil, after so many years of sensational misrepresentation in films and media, but I never felt intimidated by this. It was very clear to me that Satan, being a Christian god, had nothing to do with my religion, and the individuals were far from eccentric. In fact they were mostly very thoughtful and creative people that were going to a lot of effort to re-establish a healthy and vital spiritual tradition.

It's a woman's world

Having been raised a Catholic I was brought up to have an ambivalent attitude towards my sexuality. As much as it was an essential and inseparable part of me, it was also owned by the Church, which declared it sinful and gave as a role model for women the sexless Virgin Mary - not even in conceiving a child did she indulge in the physical act of sex. She had no say in anything - God decided she would bear and raise his child and that was that. She was just a vessel for his demands. This attitude crossed over into all areas of my life. I lived in a society created mostly by men, for men and I was answerable to the demands they placed on me. I was brought up to feel uncomfortable with and ashamed of menstruation and other female bodily functions. I was unhappy with my physical appearance and I spent a lot of my time feeling trapped in my imperfect, "dirty" body.

Wicca encourages women to have a very different view of our bodies and ourselves. The creation myths vary according to different traditions, but all unite in the belief that the world was given birth to by a Mother Goddess and so a woman's ability to conceive and give birth to a child is considered one of the most holy and powerful acts that a human can perform. Far from a woman's body being seen as unclean, it is an expression of the Divine, menstruation is revered as a symbol of life, and sex between female and male is referred to as the Great Rite, symbolic of the union of Goddess and God.

The respect for women in Wicca extends far beyond sex and physical functions. Women are seen as essential in the priesthood and play a pivotal role in decision-making and expounding of Craft principles in spiritual and everyday life.

Witchcraft liberates women from stereotypes by providing the Goddess as a role model. It emphasises that the Goddess does not live outside us by within us and within everything. No matter what a woman's role in society - mother, daughter, sister, wife, lover, colleague, friend - she can be empowered by the knowledge that she is an expression of the Divine.
In the cut throat world of business this profound sense of self can come in hand as Lisa, 29, an advertising executive states. "Wicca empowers me as a woman so I don't feel as threatened by men. When I'm at work I don't buy into men's power games. I know that they have been conditioned to be that way and I don't take it personally. When I am treated in a sexist way I know they are saying more about their inadequacies than mine. I just get on with the job."

Sense of community

Hawthorn, 41, has been a Wiccan high priestess for over 10 years and was drawn to Paganism and Wicca because it seemed "more natural". Her interest ultimately led to her forming her own coven in the western suburbs of Sydney. In this time she became aware of the need for a gathering focusing specifically on women's needs and so created the bi-annual women-only gathering "Wemoon".

"Most of the Wiccan rituals are mixed, but on one particular occasion a group of women broke away to do their own. When it came time to rejoin the group no-one wanted to. They had connected as a community of women and they wanted to keep that feeling. I thought, 'Why not have a weekend where we don't' have the responsibility of children or husbands or work?' And so Wemoon was born from that."

The first Wemoon was held in November 1995, and attracted over 50 participants. Explains Hawthorn, "The women who came were quite a cross-section - young girls, older women, mothers, career women - from every walk of life and every income bracket. Initially, when the women joined as a group of strangers they were wary of each other, but in a very short time they were no longer rivals, they had become 'sisters'.

"Wemoon is growing and that's important to me. It's good to watch beaten, bowed women come in and at the end of the weekend walk out with their shoulders back and heads up - looking the world in the balls."

The Numbers

Professor Gary Bouma of Monash University recently analysed 1996 census data and concluded that "nature-based religions are by far the fastest-growing religious groups in Australia." Of these groups, Wicca, Witchcraft and Paganism form the core. Between the 1991 census and the 1996 census there was a 150 per cent growth rate in these groups. The Church of Wicca is a legally recognised religious institution based in Western Australia and established nationally. Its coordinator Tamara Von Forslun states that, "there has been a phenomenal increase in interest in the last few years. We have over 5,000 registered with us as members, with many of these people going on to initiate and priesthood levels."

Wicca World Witchcraft has many different paths (life there are many types of Christians - Catholics, Anglicans, etc). The most popular path is Wicca.

Wicca is a pagan religion, meaning that Wiccans feel lover for and a connection with nature and see it as sacred. Wiccans worship two early forms of deity, the Great Mother Goddess and her consort the Horned God, but is goddess-centred and welcomes men and women. Wiccans celebrate eight religious festivals a year, called sabbats, and these are based on the passing of the seasons and agricultural cycles, like the sowing and harvesting of crops, and astronomical events, like the solstices and equinoxes. Some Wiccans do not use the word witch to describe themselves, but many do, particularly women. This is seen as an attempt to reclaim the word, as it has become associated with negative stereotypes of women. When a woman called herself a witch she is confronting patriarchal society's prejudice towards independent and empowered women.

One Woman's Wicca

Wendy Rule is a witch who, as a popular singer and performer, lives very much in the public eye. Her third album, Deity, has just been released and she is touring nationally with her band. She is also the mother of a beautiful five-year-old boy.

"In being Wiccan I get a personal sense of the sacredness of being female. I feel we are all a manifestation of the Goddess as much as the earth is and we can tap into our connection with nature for self-healing and growth. To me, music and Wicca are inseparable. In my music I am trying to convey my true sense of soul and being, and because my spiritual beliefs are so central to my life, the two heighten each other.

"It's a lovely faith to be passing on to a child. He is only five and as such I don't involve him in my formal rituals, but I take great joy in loving nature with him - showing him insects and flowers and sitting through sunrises and sunsets together. he know that anything that grows on the earth is sacred - you don't hurt a tree because you would be hurting the Goddess.

"Being a witch I am really into personal growth and it is wonderful to see my son evolving and to have a hand in it. Positive thinking helps both of us and I am very aware of the power of the word. One of the basic principles of spell-working is 'whatever you say you can manifest', so I never put down or criticise my son. I state affirmations with him; they're like little spells in that, if I tell him he's a lovely child, then he acts like one.

"A lot of my son's relatives are Christian. I explain to him that I see Jesus as just one aspect of the God, and Mary as just one aspect of the Goddess. They are both valid but not necessarily the whole picture. I do not tell him he's Wiccan, he is just brought up to believe that the earth and nature are beautiful and sacred; it's important to respect other and the Goddess and God exists in everything. I hope I am teaching him a sense of self that will empower him to ultimately follow his own soul."

Urban Shaman

This is an article which I found whilst looking around on the Llewelyn Publishers's website. It had been written by T Polkinghorne at the beginning of this year. He refers to a book called Urban Primitive in his article which I do not have a copy of but I liked the premise behind this article. I post it as something to wonder about mostly, as I have realised that I too sometimes idealise the countryside and forget that no matter where you are you can sit down and commune with the divine.

There is a tendency among modern Pagans - many of whom live in cities - to revere the wilderness as a source of magical power and dismiss the cities in which they live as spiritually dead places. The city is simply a place where they live and work, while the countryside is a sacred place to travel to and perform rituals. The idea that magic can be performed in the city using tools and ingredients native to that environment are one often ignored by many spiritually inclined Pagans. But spells can still be cast while doing the washing up, and Pagans can still revere their Gods from the city.

Pagans and the City

Pagans are often predisposed to romanticize the countryside, while shunning the city. There is a good example of this in an anecdote from the introduction of Urban Primitive by Raven Kaldera and Tannin Schwartztein. Schwartztein recalls spending time at a camp listening to a fellow Pagan praise the countryside while simultaneously dismissing the city as a dead cold place. I believe that this dismal view of the city is partly a result of the stressful pace of modern life. Life in the city can also feel alienating, which is a problem for Pagans especially. Many Pagans seek to overcome feelings of alienation by joining covens and re-enacting ancient rituals, signalling a desire to return to the communal values of agricultural society. In these practices, the patriarchal values of the city are often attacked and the rejected feminine is exalted.

This, I believe, is where a rose-tinted view of the country comes from - despite the fact that living from the land is not always as idyllic as it is often presented. The natural setting is merely serving as a ritual backdrop - one as symbolic as the items placed upon the altar. To many Pagans, the city represents repressed aspects of human nature; the rejected feminine; repressive patriarchal values; monotheistic religion; and the soul-destroying aspects of modern life. The country is the antithesis of these negative concepts, and is idealized for it.

Few Pagans actually take this reverence for nature a step further and go out to live in the countryside, or even become activists. There are groups who seek to unite their reverence for nature with magical practice. For example, the Dragon Network is an organization of Pagans who practice magic as a form of ecological protest. But the majority of neo-Pagans consist of urban dwellers, so it is not surprising that many Pagans are distant from rural life. While it is commendable to try to get out to the country, protest on behalf of the environment, or live off the land, it does not mean the city should be shunned as a source of magical power.

What some members of the neo-Pagan scene forget is that many of the ancient Pagans from whom they draw inspiration from were city-dwellers. Whole cities in Ancient Egypt and Greece were built around temples dedicated to Gods and Goddesses before the advent of monotheistic religions. The Egyptians built Karnak around the temple of Amun, that city’s patron god. In ancient Greece, legend stated that deities would often compete over the patronage of cities. Athena and Poseidon were said to compete for the patronage of the city of Athens. These and countless other examples show that the practice of Paganism was not restricted to the country by our ancestors. The use of the country as a ritual backdrop is a modern invention, and we do not have to stick to it for fear of breaking tradition. In fact, breaking tradition may be necessary at times for practicality, especially for the urban Pagan.

Urban Primitive encourages a shift in attitude in the neo-Pagan scene by depicting the city as a spiritual being in itself. While Paganism has traditionally personified the Earth as a sacred Mother figure, Kaldera and Schwartztein’s recommend viewing the city in the same way. The city is spoken to as a living entity in itself. Buildings are addressed in the same manner that some Pagans would address or perform rituals around trees or stone circles. Spirits inhabit inner city areas, just as faeries live in woods and forests. The shades of the dead crowd our hospitals. Subways become entrances to the Underworld.

The authors do not go as far as romanticizing the city. Kaldera compares his time living in the city to a prison sentence. Cities are regarded as "boils upon the ass of Gaea," being a major source of pollution. In this way, reverence for nature is not dispensed with. But despite acknowledging the often soul-destroying nature of city life, Urban Primitive shows how a magical life can be led anywhere.

Magic can be used for survival, utilizing whatever tools are available in your environment. This can be seen as a shamanic approach; our ancestors often resorted to using whatever means they had at their disposal to survive. At a time when the science and technology had not yet been developed to make things comfortable for humans, the shamans improvised.

Spells and Divination

Casting spells for mundane purposes is frowned-upon in some circles as "low magic" or even "black magic." Those who practice what is known as "High Magic" regard magic as something that should only be performed for moral or pure purposes - such as spiritual evolution. But in Urban Primitive, spells are cast for everyday objectives such as getting a job. Using magic for the practicalities of modern living is important to the modern Pagan or magician. Our worries differ from those of the ancients; we no longer have to be wary about being mauled by vicious animals, attacked by neighbouring tribes. But modern living provides its own set of difficulties to accompany its comforts. We have employers to appease, livelihoods to maintain, kids to feed. When practical solutions are hard to come by, then what is the harm in casting a spell?

Urban Primitive describes a range of simple spells that can be cast with everything from simple household items to things to you can find in a trashcan. Chapter Eight categorizes certain kinds of trash you find in cities into the four traditional elements of Air, Earth, Fire, and Water. Broken glass can be used as a simple athame. Gum wrappers and bird feathers can be incorporated into spells.

The book also describes various uses for bottles in spells, ranging from protection to getting someone to look favourably upon you to communing with spirits. I have used bottle spells in the past for improving relationships. The suggested technique is simple. It involves taking a piece of paper and drawing a picture or a representative symbol of the person you’re having trouble with. Even their name or initials will do if you are stuck for inspiration. You will also need a sellable bottle filled with water and a handful of sugar (or something just as sweet).

1. Perform your usual ritual opening and focus on that piece of paper as containing your conflict-person's essence. It might help if you have a small photograph, piece of clothing, or a similar link to accompany the paper as an aid to concentration.

2. Once you have finished concentrating on the symbolic representation of your target, place it within the bottle. Then take a handful of sugar (or whatever substitute you are using) and pour it inside the bottle.

3. Seal the bottle and then shake it while chanting your intent, which could be a simplified statement of intent such as: "[insert name of person] loves me." Or you can make a whole song out of it. Do whatever inspires you.

4. Once you feel the spell to have reached its maximum intensity through the shaking and chanting, put down the bottle and end the ritual.

5. Hide the bottle in a dark place, like a cupboard or under your bed.

I have used this simple technique to good effect with certain friends or colleagues. This is just one of many examples of how spells can be cast from the materials that can be found in your home, probably waiting to be thrown in the bin.

Divination is another practice that can be performed with items you can find in the city. Traditional divination techniques provide convenient sets of symbols that can answer questions or make predictions about future events. The Tarot has the major and minor arcana; the I Ching has 64 Hexagrams. Systems such as these divide life experience into segments, and create symbolic images associated with each segment. These images are things that our subconscious minds understand, and divination has its source in these unconscious impulses. Our subconscious communicates to us in the language of symbols.

Once a symbol is firmly entrenched in the unconscious through repeated association with an aspect of our experience, the subconscious can communicate with us through those symbols. This is often the case with dreams. If you associate a person you know with something negative - say anger or depression - then that person may crop up in your dreams as a symbol of a negative aspect of yourself. And if you repeatedly associate the Tarot’s Tower Card with conflict, it might just mean that when the card turns up in a reading.

There is a mention in Urban Primitive of trash divination, which is something I have practiced in my own way. Each time I head for the bus stop every day before work, I treat the journey as an "omen walk." Just as the Druids made predictions from weather conditions, so it is possible to find symbolism in random objects that catch your eye in the road, or in the sky. This can be a natural phenomenon, like an unusual cloud formation or the behavior of local wildlife. Or it can be man-made, like an advertisement on the side of a bus giving you the answer to something you've had on your mind, or a song on the radio that tells if you are going to have a good night out or not. A design on an empty bag of chips that drifts your way may tell you if you're going to get a promotion or get fired at work. It is simply a matter of keeping your mind open to these things.

As soon as you leave the house, simply tell yourself that you will be open to any omens that come your way. Do not look for them - that is something you should be doing on a subconscious level, not a conscious one. The conscious mind is not very good at these things. Keep your mind focused on reaching the bus stop on time, or a problem that has been bothering you. If you can, silence your thoughts completely as you walk. Once you see something that you feel might be an omen, ponder its meaning if you do not know what that meaning is. This method is very freeform - it’s similar to traditional divination techniques such as scrying and dream interpretation. The form it takes may be different from how it was performed in older agricultural societies, but the principles behind it remain.

Magical Living

Another way in which the city can take on a more magical appearance is through seeing the different areas and places as being associated with the elements, or any other system you use to structure your magical universe. Kaldera and Schwartztein conceptualise phone lines, modems, and gas lines as being homes for Air elementals. Power stations house Fire elementals. City trees and parks house Earth elementals. Water elementals live in the plumbing. By making offerings to them, seeking to commune with them and working magic by enlisting their aid, the city can become magical. If you like, you don't have to work with the simple Four/Five element scheme. You can attribute the spheres from the Cabalistic Tree of Life to certain areas of the city. Even the traditional symbolism of the seven planets can be used in this manner. The possibilities are endless. Any environment you live in can take on a magical tinge - it simply depends on how you look at it.

Magic is more than a mere interest or hobby to those who actually practice it, although it may start that way. It is not something do on the weekend - an excuse to drive off to the country to dance around a bonfire, and then forget about it when you return to the office. Even if you do not take a religious attitude to it, magic is something that informs your whole worldview and lifestyle. It is a paradigm in itself, and affects the practitioner's worldview in the same way that the thought-processes of religious fundamentalists and atheists affect theirs. Spells and rituals have an even more important use to the urban practitioner with difficulties on the domestic or career front and can see no practical way to deal with them. Magic should not simply be left to the sacred grove - it has just as much validity in an inner-city studio apartment, or whatever environment you happen to be occupying.

In regards to our environment as sacred and learning to recognize the magical currents that underlie it, we are doing the same things our ancestors did anyway. Although we live in a wilderness of steel and stone rather than plant and tree, the principles behind human need and desire remain more or less the same. The same ideas that motivated ancient Pagans motivate modern Pagans - survival in a potentially hostile place, and the need for something sacred in their lives.

Men A Tol - Cornwall

I was so happy to discover our own pictures of the men-a-tol which we took about three years ago on one of our many visits to the West Country.

On this occasion it was our very first time - we were staying in the perfect Cornish cottage just outside of Tintagel. We set off early the morning towards Penzance, Lands End, Mousehole and St Michael's Mount.

We were out the whole day, utterly blown away (especially at Lands End, as the wind was very strong) by the beauty of the countryside and the sheer majesty of the windswept moors and of the views of the ocean.

Towards the end of the day, as we were leaving Lands End, we decided it would be bright idea to visit the men-a-tol. We had a vague idea where it was. We set off just as the mist came folling in across the sea. We got horribly lost, found ourselves on a farm and I had to jump out of the jeep and go ask directions from a very amused farmer as he was herding his cows into their hold. Armed with directions, we set off down tiny countrylanes with no cars coming past, ahead or behind us. Eventually, through the mist, we spotted a sign that read Men A Tol. We veered off the road and parked on a muddy track. An arrow pointed up a desolate farmtrack so rutted I sank knee-deep into some of the holes.

We smiled nervously at one another and decided to go ahead and do it - how far could it be, afterall? After what felt like an hour's worth of hiking up this farm road, high foliage on either side with the far-off lowing of cattle for even more ambiance with mist coming in even thicker than before, there was another small sign that pointed to a step over a fence on the right. We followed this. The shrubs and plants were almost as tall as I am as we made our way along. There was no one around. It was just M and myself. The silence was a balm and as we walked along the mist dragged its damp fingers catsoft across our faces.

Unexpectedly, the three stones loomed at us. We stopped and stared. It was like something out of a Hollywood special effects department. The setting was one of those truly perfect moments. We moved closer, in awe of this ancient place, knowing that we were in the presence of something other, a sacred place.

Others had been there before us that day. They had left tiny offerings at the base of the hole-stone; tiny flowers picked from the surrounding countryside, bread crumbs and even some small coins. I remember thinking about these previous visitors and wondered what they had asked for as they left their gifts. M and I wandered around and decided that it would only be beneficial to us and we crawled through the stone a few times and walked in a sunwise circle about the stones. A feeling of sheer euphoria and breathlessness came over me and I had to sit down for a bit. It was as if the scene had been set, exclusively for us. It was perfect. I can't remember feeling healthier or happier than I ever did sitting there with the mist rolling in over us.

We left our own offerings after staying our fill and made our way back to the car, a bit quiet but so obviously touched by being there - I know, it sounds kooky and dramatic but it was exactly as I tell it. I can't remember ever feeling so in touch with the raw energy of the world, not even at my first ever visit to Stonehenge.

Our journey back to the car seemed closer and by now not only was the mist quite thick, it had gone quite dark. I pushed thoughts of creatures in the bush out of my mind but was nevertheless relieved to pull the car-door closed behind me.

We left, feeling smug and very content, and after a few minutes drive something loomed at us out of the dark on the left hand side. Set in a small field we found another ancient tomb, this time much larger and even more eerie than you could make up. We parked the car hurriedly and clambered over a fence to go and inspect it. I didn't think that any of the pictures would come out, but they did.

And then, to crown it all, we had a full moon that night. She raced us home. We sat outside in the cottage's paddock and had some fiery whisky and toasted her. I swear she blinked at us.

Ancient Sites - Avebury

Last year, during our very brief summer hubby and I drove out to Avebury where we met up with Viv. It was my first ever visit to Avebury and I was surprised by the sheer size of the area and how pretty the town itself is. We wandered about, touching the stones, marvelling at the scale of the circle. I freely admit to not knowing a lot about it, so I have done a bit of research on the site and found out sufficient knowledge to share with others.

Ninety miles west of London and twenty miles north of Stonehenge stands Avebury, the largest known stone ring in the world. Older than the more famous Stonehenge, and for many visitors far more spectacular, the multiple rings of Avebury are cloaked with mysteries which archaeologists have only begun to unravel.

Similar to Stonehenge and many other megalithic monuments in the British Isles, Avebury is a composite construction that was added to and altered during several periods. As the site currently exists, the great circle consists of a grass-covered, chalk-stone bank that is 1,396 feet in diameter (427 meters) and 20 feet high (6 meters) with a deep inner ditch having four entrances at the cardinal compass points. Just inside the ditch, which was clearly not used for defensive purposes, lies a grand circle of massive and irregular sarsen stones enclosing approximately 28 acres of land. This circle, originally composed of at least 98 stones but now having only 27, itself encloses two smaller stone circles. The two inner circles were probably constructed first, around 2600 BC, while the large outer ring and earthwork dates from 2500 BC. The northern circle is 320 feet in diameter and originally had twenty-seven stones of which only four remain standing today; the southern circle is 340 feet across and once contained twenty-nine stones, of which only five remain standing.

The construction of the Avebury complex must have required enormous efforts on the part of the local inhabitants. The sarsen stones, ranging in height from nine to over twenty feet and weighing as much as 40 tons, were first hewn from bedrock and then dragged or sledded a distance of nearly two miles from their quarry site. These stones were then erected and anchored in the ground to depths between 6 and 24 inches. The excavation of the encircling ditch required an estimated 200,000 tons of rock to be chipped and scraped away with the crudest of stone tools and antler picks (there is some evidence that this ditch was once filled with water, thereby giving the inner stone rings the appearance of being set upon an island). From excavation and soil resistivity studies it is known that the three rings originally contained at least 154 stones of which only 36 remain standing today. There are three reasons for the disappearance of these stones. In the 14th century, and perhaps earlier, the local Christian authorities, in their continuing effort to eradicate any vestiges of 'pagan' religious practices, toppled, broke up and buried many stones. Later, in the 17th and 18th centuries, still more of the remaining stones were removed from their foundations. Crops could then be planted in these areas and the massive stones could be broken into smaller pieces to be used for the construction of houses and other buildings.

In the early years of the 18th century, however, the general outline of the Avebury temple was still visible. Dr. William Stukeley, an antiquarian who frequently visited the site in the 1720's, watched in dismay as the local farmers, unaware of the cultural and archaeological value of the ancient temple, continued with its destruction. For over thirty years Stukeley made careful measurements and numerous drawings of the site, drawings that are today our only record of both the immense size and complexity of the ancient temple. Stukeley was the first observer in historical times to clearly recognize that the original ground plan of Avebury was a representation of the body of a serpent passing through a circle and thus forming a traditional alchemical symbol. The head and tail of the enormous snake were delineated by 50-foot wide avenues of standing stones, each extending 1 and 1/2 miles into the countryside. One of the avenues terminated at another stone ring known as the 'sanctuary'. Continuing his explorations and mapping of the countryside surrounding the stone serpent, Stukeley gathered evidence that the sacred complex of Avebury included many other massive earth and stone monuments.

Only 1500 meters south of the main Avebury rings stands Silbury Hill, the largest, and perhaps the most enigmatic, of all megalithic constructions in Europe. Crisscrossing the surrounding countryside are numerous meandering lines of standing stones and mysterious underground chambers, many positioned according to astronomical alignments. Perhaps the most astonishing revelations of Avebury's ancient grandeur have come through the recent research of John Michell, Paul Broadhurst and Hamish Miller. Drawing upon legends and folklore, archaeological excavations and dowsing, these specialists have determined that the Avebury temple was part of a vast network of neolithic sacred sites arranged along a nearly two-hundred mile line stretching all across southern England. Positioned directly on this line are the great pilgrimage sites of Glastonbury Tor and St.Michael's Mount. (For more information on this line and the sites along it, consult Hamish Miller's book, The Sun and the Serpent.)

The length of time for the main continuity of use of the Avebury complex throughout the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age was, according to present dating studies, around 2300 years. This lengthy span of time and the vast size of the whole complex give testimony to the fact that the Avebury temple was perhaps the most significant sacred site in all of Britain, if not the entire continent of Europe. And what of its use? Various conjectures have been made but it is premature to speak with any certainty. To fathom the mysteries of Avebury will take some years still. Only since the 1980's has there occurred the essential meeting of science and spirit, of archaeology and intuition that may unlock the secrets of this wondrous place.