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WIDDERSHINS Volume 2, Issue 4 Mabon, 1996

The Northwest Pagan's Choice Widdershins is available over the World Wide Web at http://weber.u.washington.edu/~sfpse/widdershins/ It is also available by e-mail to sfpse@u.washington.edu, or in paper format at one of our distribution points. The issues of Widdershins which one may obtain over the World Wide Web and e-mail are complete, and contain all of the text which is found the printed version of this free newspaper. CONTENTS Widdershins - Mabon, 1996 - Volume 2, Issue 4 * Statement of Purpose and Publishing Information (#01#) * Blessings from the Heart - an interview with Beaver Chief (#02#) * Never Thirst - by Miriam Harline (#03#) * Zen and the Art of Berry Harvesting - by Amanda Silvers (#04#) * Spider Womans Legs - by Asuraya (#05#) * A Summer Walk to Dream - by Jim Sun Weed (#06#) * The Incredible Magick of Massage - by NightOwl (#07#) * My Trip to the Burning Man Festival - by EarthDancer (#08#) * Understanding the Burning Times - by Bestia Mortale (#09#) * Earth-Magick, Culture, and Ritual - by Erik van Lennep (#10#) * The Healing Earth Tarot Deck - by Vivienne Moon (#11#) * The Broomstick: A Travel Guide - by Tiger von Pagel (#12#) * Book Reviews - by Vivienne Moon (#13#) * Blessings of the Corn Mother - by Brighid (#14#) * Calendar of Pagan Days and Events (#15#) * Calendar Details (#16#) * Pagan Resources (#17#) * Community Notices (#18#) * Letters to the Editor (#19#) * Advertisements (#20#) * Widdershins Distribution Points (#21#) Note: You can skip to each article in this document directly by searching for the text in parentheses after each article's listing in the table of contents above. Statement of Purpose and Publishing Information (#01#) Purpose: Widdershins is an inclusive written forum, wherein pagans of all traditions will be heard, recognized and honored. Its intention is to provide an opening for healing, growth and transformation in the pagan community/s, to provide assistance to those wishing to learn about magick and pagan spirituality and to support pagan people in connecting with those of a like mind. Striving to inspire, nurture and empower paganism in the greater Northwest is a primary goal. Other objectives are to foster awareness of and connectedness with Mother/Goddess Earth and Father/God Sky and to perpetuate the theory that the well-being of the human race is predicated on the well-being of the planet. This forum is accessible to all on a pagan spiritual path, regardless of race, color, religious beliefs, sexual preference, gender, political affiliations, political correctness, economic position or any other societally imposed divisional framework. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the publisher, although they might be. We do reserve the right to limit publication to material that we deem in alignment with our purpose. We may refuse to publish anything, at any time, for any reason, or no reason at all. We also may change our minds. All contributors and advertisers each assume responsibility and liability for their own products and the accuracy of their assertions and statements. Readers assume responsibility for their own actions and/or the decisions they may make as a consequence of reading this publication. Published by: Emerald City/Silver Moon Productions 12345 Lake City Way NE, Suite 268 Seattle, WA 98125 (206) 363-7896 World Wide Web page: http://weber.u.washington.edu/~sfpse/widdershins/ Publisher's e-mail address: damiana@aa.net or damiana@28bbl.wa.com Board of editors: Miriam Harline, NightOwl, S. SilverWitch Contributors: Asuraya, Brighid, EarthDancer, Miriam Harline, Vivienne Moon, Bestia Mortale, NightOwl, Amanda Silvers, S. SilverWitch, Eric van Lennep, Jim Sun Weed Copy editors and proofreaders: Bonnie, Felicia, Geo, Jerry, Megan, Miriam, Peter Computer God: Bestia Mortale Distribution: Jared Anderson, Candace, Wulfgar Gregarsson, Bestia Mortale, NightOwl, Amanda Silvers and Dedric on the World Wide Web. Original art: Shevaun, Sylvana SilverWitch, Starshadow, Sam Wood. Webmaster: Dedric Copyright 1996, Emerald City/Silver Moon Productions Feel free to photocopy articles to share with friends. Please write for permission to reprint material in another publication. After publication, copyright reverts to the originator of the piece in question. Publishing information: Look for Widdershins in your favorite shop at the Sabbats: Imbolc (February 2), Oestara (March 20), Beltaine (May 1), Litha (June 21), Lammas (August 2), Mabon (September 23), Samhain (October 31) and Yule (December 22). Calendar and resource guidelines: All free events will be listed in the calendar at no charge, space permitting. Free calendar listings may be available to those who advertise, on a first come, first served basis only. Listings in the resource section are free, as a community service, for nonprofit organizations and groups that serve the Northwest pagan community. Sources for calendar information include the books The Grandmother of Time and The Pagan Book of Days. For submission guidelines, write, e-mail or call. We welcome submissions of articles, artwork, cartoons, interviews, fiction, poetry, reviews, rituals, spells, photos and letters from the pagan community at large. Submissions, except for letters, should be no more than 5000 words in length; letters should be no more than 1000 words in length. Do not send originals! They will not be returned. Send typed, double-spaced text and a computer disk with data in IBM PC format, either in a Word for Windows 6.0 or Pagemaker 5.0 file. Include a self-addressed, stamped envelope with the correct postage for return of your disk. We reserve the right to edit for length, clarity and continuity. To receive a full text version of Widdershins automatically via Internet e-mail, send e-mail to sfpse@u.washington.edu and have the subject or body of your message say "subscribe widdershins." Your e-mail address will remain confidential. The average Widdershins is 200 kilobytes, so be sure you can receive e-mail messages of that size before subscribing. Currently, subscriptions for paper copies of Widdershins are not available. To receive one or more copies of Widdershins, mail us a request for the issue you would like, enclosing a large, self-addressed, manila envelope with correct postage. Thank you and blessed be! - Publisher Beaver Chief (#02#) Blessings from the Heart by Amanda Silvers interview Beaver Chief is a Northwest Native American Indian, of the Lummi, Coast Salish and West Sannish tribes, who is a wise man, teacher, healer, singer, storyteller and all-around funny guy who is very serious about spirit. He is a very powerful teacher and has been my friend for several years, and I always learn, laugh and have a great time with him. Amanda: When we planned this issue, I thought of you, but you were out of the country. I had a hard time getting other Native Americans to talk to me, even those who know me. Why do you think that is? Beaver Chief: A lot of our people do not know how to explain what it is that they are doing because they don't know the jargon yet. That's not what they were brought up to do, to be that bridge. They don't know how to bring it out in words that people can understand without twisting them around. There are certain things that I don't do, and sometimes I don't even explain why I don't do them. Some things I cannot bring out. I can bring out the drumming and the healing of that and other things. Then other times you can't shut me off. It just starts coming out. We call ourselves a family of bucket mouths; we start going and you can't stop us. But the question was - why didn't these people want to communicate? Because they couldn't. If they try to talk about it, to them they're dissecting the spirit. That's what I feel is the truth, the deep-down truth. They could have all kinds of things on top, but when you get down to it, that's what it is. A: Beaver Chief, tell us who you are, where you come from, what you're up to. B: This reality - I am a native American Indian person indigenous to the Seattle area and up and down the West Coast. We're known to a lot of the different tribes because our family were the Indian doctors. We didn't call ourselves shamans or anything like this they're called Indian doctors. What makes it really different is that we also have the Women Warrior Chief Society inside of our tradition. Also I come from the Clown Tradition. That's who I am, and this is the work that my family has done, and people have recognized us. We don't ever recognize ourselves too much, but people recognize us. Then on the other side of reality I come from 5000, 10,000 years ago actually 33,000 years ago, if you want to get really precise. I come from a star system and landed in an area called now Lopez Island. We came here to help this planet when it needed it. We've been helping all along. I always tell people that I know that I'm a spirit "being human" in this time and I make a lot of mistakes, but I realize my mistakes through learning from them. A: Did you find yourself called to be a spiritual teacher? B: I always knew - because I came in through the other life knowing. I came from a place of being really holy to a place of being really spiritual, and what that means is that I get to "do the dance." Before I just enjoyed the dance, and I had to pray a lot like one of those monks or priests that don't do nothing except to pray and do the ceremonies and that's it. You don't get to dance with the beautiful goddess. You don't get to experience them in the hot tub. You don't get to do all those things because you're the priest or you're that holy, and that's where I came from. Now I'm into the place of being spiritual, so I get to do the dance. I get to touch and get to be touched. I get to experience because it's a sign of the times, also. A: Do you consider yourself a shaman? B: We don't actually use that word. They're called Indian doctors - and that's what my family has been called. It's like when somebody comes to us and says "Should we call you an Indian or a Native American, or what do you want to be called?" I say, just call me Beaver Chief, okay? A: So does an Indian doctor do journeying work, taking people along on astral journeys? B: That's a different kind of doctoring. Usually, we're helping the person not to be sick. There's different kinds of Indian doctoring; that's why we all work together with other Indian doctors or other medicine people. But we don't usually call ourselves that (medicine people). In the Northwest, we consider everybody as being medicine people. But there's only a family of Indian doctors and a family of Women Warrior Chiefs and Men Warrior Chiefs. I let the people call me out instead of me calling me out, and the healing actually comes from the spirit. A: A lot of white people are doing sweat lodges, and I find that very interesting. Anybody can build a lodge and build a fire inside it and invite people to come in, but does that make it a sweat lodge? B: No. More and more, people have to look at where a person is coming from who's saying that they're a teacher. I'm not saying that they're not, but look - where did they come from, how did they get here? Because when you go into a person's circle of energy and they're bringing out something, you've given your power to them, so to speak. Especially sweat lodges; people are always doing sweat lodges. Find out where the sweat lodge teacher is in their life, where they've been, where they come from and how they're doing. A: When a white person does a sweat lodge - is he or she doing an Indian ceremony? What do you think about that? B: You have to be guided to know the ceremony, to know it correctly so that you don't hurt somebody. I believe that's what's happening nowadays is that it's available. You can get the things, but you still don't know how to do the ceremony. So you need your teachers, you need your guides, your gurus - you need that. If they're building their sweat lodge in the Northwest, depending on where they are going to build it, they need to talk to somebody that's indigenous to that area and find out how to build the sweat lodge that connects to that part of the area, how to bend the wood that goes on it. There's a certain way everything's set, even the hole where the fire goes. It depends on what area you're coming from, because every area has its strong energy. And if they say that they're doing a sweat lodge from Scotland or Ireland, they need to go there and really learn the teachings of that sweat lodge, because there are sweat lodges back there and old-time things. You can still do it here, but you have to really study it and understand where your power comes from. A: I know the natives in this land have many different creation mythologies. Would you share yours with us? B: There are a lot of stories that I know. Lummi people's creation story is that we came from a distant star, but a lot of the Lummi people don't know their own creation story - they go along with everything else because it's been hidden, and they haven't earned the right to carry it. So what I talk about, a lot of people don't know about, except the real old people, like they have to be at least my mother's age or older. Our family comes from a family of chiefs. There were different chiefs, brothers actually; they were all spread out in different places to be the chiefs of those areas. That's why I have a lot of creation stories in me, but the one that I like to talk about is our "sound." That is the sound of giving thanks to our creator, and that sound came from the creator. The changer was creating everything here on the planet, bringing all the different beings to the planet. The whale people were already on the planet; they walked (upright) on the planet. Scientists found out five years ago that whales used to walk on the planet, but we already had this in our creation story. They would always think that we were telling them some myth, but they're starting to understand that we never talk about anything that we don't know. They're starting to know that we experienced it, and that's how it's passed along in the oral tradition, and it's real. Some people have claimed that it's myth because it helps everybody else to put it inside of a bracket so they can be comfortable with it. Sooooo... the creator was bringing all the beings to the planet, and the great whales were walking on the planet, and they could make a sound that would even make the great cedar trees bend over. Everything worked together, and the changer was bringing all this here to this planet Earth. The whale people made this sound that went around the world (makes whale-like sound). They heard that this new being was coming here, this fragile being that was called the first human being. So the whale people said, "We'll go into the water so we'll not hurt the human beings that are coming, because we want to take care of them, because we all love one another. And the changer's bringing them here for some reason." So they went into the water, and the first human beings came, and they heard this, that the whale people sacrificed being on the land and went into the water so they would not hurt them. So the first human-being people said, "We give thanks to you, and we'll always remember you by creating this sound for us." (He makes the sound "oooOOOOaaaahhhhh," while holding his right hand out, palm out, then bringing his hand to his heart and putting it out again.) They still make that sound that travels all over the world, and Jacques Cousteau recorded it, and it does travel underwater all the way around the world. That's the reason why we make this sound, to break through with the whale sound to the creator's realm so that we can send our prayer there. And the great creator puts a blessing on our hand, and we bring it back to our center, to our heart, because we believe that all of our life is from our heart. I'm Northwest Coast Salish; there's interior Salish too. Our teachings come from the ocean. A: Do you think there's any cross-influence of spiritual practices among the Northwest tribes, the Plains tribes and the Eastern tribes? For instance, the Sioux, the Lakota, do much different things than the Northwest people. B: Yes, it's just like the sun and the moon. The sun gives of this light that the moon reflects and absorbs and reflects to us. So we get the sun energy, but it's actually the moon. It's the same - but it's different. (The interaction between tribes) is the same way. Without the Lakota, we could never be; they saved us with their teachings by being massacred, being exploited and by being first. There's a lot of Indians here that are feeling really hurt by what's been happening, but the thing is that there is a solution to it, and it's working together. Also acknowledging the hurt that our people have had, so we can get on with it, because we're not asking for our lands back. We're asking for acknowledgment of our hurt and to take care of our land, to take care of the trees. These are sacred beings to us; it has always been like that. A: How important is the preservation of your native language and script for your spiritual traditions? B: There are some things that are not used because they are put into a sacred place of being. Only the people that are taught it keep it; they keep it sacred for later on. The teachings that I'm bringing out now, the way of our life has been allowed to be brought out by the Women Warrior Chief Society. At a certain time, we'll bring them all out, but right now they are put away. My mom says for all you people out there who are learning everything: "We still have something for you, if you get out of line." (Laughs.) A: One of the things I have noticed is when white people try to get together in communities, often fights and factions start, and then the community splits. This seems to be human nature for whites. Can white people learn from the indigenous people here how to come together in a tribe or community? B: The only way that we can learn from one another is first to know that we are all brainwashed into thinking that we all need to be individuals, and not with one another as a whole. This is what I have been working on, helping people to realize that we have all been brainwashed and when you tell someone something long enough, they start believing it. This is what's been happening here in the U.S., and that's the reason why (whites) split and they hurt. In order to live together, you have to work on that. It takes a little bit of unraveling, but if the person is there 100 percent in the moment when you are bringing out something like that, they get it, they really know it. You know - to like, respect and love each other and then to live with each other, tell each other what's sacred to one another. It's an ongoing thing; it's not something that you do and you have, you know, and then you're complete and that's it (laughs). That's what everybody tries to do. They go to a workshop - I paid my 10 dollars, now I want it to work. They decide, I still feel unresolved. Well, of course, 'cause it is an ongoing thing in your life, and you have to know that it is ongoing. A: Do you have particular holidays in your tradition? B: We don't call it a holiday; we call it just giving thanks, and that's all of our life. We honor seasons; we honor planting seasons, the fish harvest season. We honor it with ceremony the same as you do, but we don't tell everybody; we just do it. It's an everyday thing. Like we believe that Christmas is every day for an Indian - we're always giving and receiving gifts and enjoying each other, and this has been one of our ways always. Giving thanks is like that every day for our people, so we don't have holidays really. A: How about Full Moons and New Moons? B: A lot of Indian people don't do things on full moons because the energy is so strong. It's a personal time. I was one of the only Indians who made everybody scared, because I was doing Full Moon drumming circles and energy was shooting through, going everywhere, having a great time. I was just having fun and enjoying the energy; everything was happening, and it just was great. Why I liked it so much was because that's harmony, it's really harmony, when everything is happening and you find out where you fit. Some people think that harmony is peace, love, tranquillity. That's part of it. But the other part is like, wooo, ah, eee, uh, oo, uh, ooo, and you find out where you fit in your environment, whatever environment you're in. And that's something that as a native person myself, I've been able to do, fit anywhere. And that's the reason my name is Beaver Chief. My name didn't come from Hustler magazine. It was given to me through a ceremonial way, inside a sacred gathering, and it was because I make home wherever I am for my son and whoever is with me; I just make it my home. I've been called a lot of different names, some I'd rather not talk about, and the only reason I kept Beaver Chief is because one of my great uncles is named "Thukson" (spelled phonetically), and in the Lashutseed language, the name "thuks" means "beaver." And this person who gave me the name didn't know nothing about my great uncle. A: I've heard you talk about your philosophy about money. You don't go to a job every day. How do you live, and how do you get what you need and want? B: I live on donations for what I do. Lately, I have been going through businesses to do drumming circles. Sometimes I suggest a donation, and if the people at the business need to have some kind of money come in, usually I have a suggested donation. But usually it's just on donation. It usually will come. And sometimes people just will feed me, give me dinner or give me something, cars or something like that to get me along. A lot of times, like the telephone situation, you can't send these things that people give you because you don't have no money. What I've been explaining to everybody, money is just energy. It's a current of energy that somebody has already earned. They want you, or what you do, in their presence, so they give you money or something. So it's energy, it's an energy exchange. That's what I know, and that's what I've been bringing out. And I say, you make a house, you give them some energy, some money, and it makes you a house. You're the greatest alchemist here. You make it into a car, wham! There's a car. How did you do that? You just exchanged this funny little paper that you got called money, and you got this car. If you think about how deep that is, we're all so powerful here on this planet right now, but we don't know it. That's what's really strange. This is a gift, and I hope people really understand this, deep. Not just on top, not just "Oh yeah, she's doing this, and that's good." A: I know this is not your particular tribe's mythology, but what do you think about the White Buffalo prophecies? B: I think it's very important, because it's a prophecy that's being confirmed. And this is a confirmation for the whole world. It's like when the whales walked on the planet, then Jacques Cousteau comes along, or some scientist says that yeah, whales did walk on the land with their feet, they had little feet. And it's just telling everybody, get ready, because there's more to come. Also, I would like to add that it confirms something to me, that I know when the world was destroyed by water, as they say, that was a physical sign. And the world, when you talk about it being destroyed by fire (in another prophecy), it's a spiritual plane. It's not the world in the physical sense. It's the world that we've made inside of each one of us. We've created our own worlds that we live in. We have to come out of that. The only way we can come out of that is for a spiritual flame to burn it out of us, so that we can come to what's real - what's real meaning that the circles have to be connected, but they still have to keep their individuality as far as circles. It's so powerful. I feel that the buffalo having changed from white to black to red, all the colors, it's a confirmation of all this. And there's more to come yet. A: What do you think about the current intense interest in native culture, art and spirituality? Do you think it's a good thing, or should the white people do their own thing? B: There's like two questions inside there. I believe that it's a good thing that everybody's aware of it. But I believe also that they should look really where it comes from and again, who's putting that artwork out? If it's put out by people that are just studying for art, and they're doing great artwork, that's good. But if you want something that's created in a spiritual sense from a native, indigenous person, we're talking about a different thing here. I love art. I love great artists. I love them to do anything they can, because it brings back beautiful things. If you want to go authentic, now we're talking about a spirit thing. Not that they can't do it, it's just that they have to do their own spiritual art. There's a difference to me between spiritual art and art. It's not that the art doesn't have a spirit, it does, but it's not brought out in that way, it's brought out in another way. It's not an indigenous kind of a spirit. (Laughs.) Beaver Chief tries his hand at defining art. A: What do you think of people who write books and claim knowledge of native traditions and secrets but are really frauds? B: What I believe is that you have to watch out what you ask for and what you are saying that you are, because something will come to you. People are learning; no matter how it is, they learn something. Whatever that is. Maybe it's to be tricked or something into learning really that they need to be themselves and that they need to do this. I believe that it's terrible that they have to lie, but it's good in another way because it helps other people. There's been many people who have actually really experienced the real thing after setting their frame of mind into wanting to experience it and going to seek it out. I went to Amsterdam just a few weeks ago. When I was there, I met a man who calls himself "Bear," and then he started calling himself "Sunbear" and he was brought out there. When I heard "Sunbear," I had to go see that guy, meet him.... A: I thought Sunbear was dead. B: He is dead. But this man is bringing out that name again. He was brought over there by the Queen of the Netherlands to do his artwork. It was found that he does really great artwork, so he stayed over there. I met him. This man that brought me over there to do a circle always wanted to meet this man, this Indian man. He does airbrushing; he's a good artist. He wanted to meet him for a long time. But he could never get him. When I got there, this man got right on the phone with me, this Bear, this Sunbear. And I talked to him, and I said, Sunbear, yeah I know he's dead. He was my friend. I met him before, and I know that he's dead. That's why I wanted to hear your voice and know who you are. I woke up after the first day I met him, when he came to meet me, I woke up with this on my mind and on my lips: "conquistador." And I said, ah, yeah, okay. I went to dinner at this Sunbear's house a little bit out of Amsterdam, and I was sitting there looking at all his beautiful things, and there were beautiful women, these sophisticated Dutch women. We were there at this very big place that he had as his home, and I told him, you know, I woke up this morning, and I knew I would see you this evening, and I woke up with "conquistador," and I didn't say it with a good taste in my mouth. And it wasn't morning breath either. It was like I didn't feel good. And he said, "Right, my father was Spanish." I said, oh, okay; that's what it is, then. I wondered and kept with that, and we all ate. Then we were meeting and at the table he gave me an eagle feather - that was very honorable, and he gave me a medicine wheel made out of porcupine quill. Beautiful work. It was a very high honor. I took it, and I said thank you. I sang a song for it. That's what we do when we give beautiful gifts. Every gift is beautiful to us. This went on, and the man turned to me, and he said, "How many people came to your Full Moon drumming circle?" I said about 30, 40 people. He said, "You need to have 3000 people there, and you should be in the media. And you need to cut out this sacred stuff. That's like you're on a crusade or something. Just tell the Dutch people anything to get the money. You want a children's art center, you want your home. You have to cut out that sacred stuff and just get with it. Get with it and tell the Dutch people anything they want to hear to get the money." I said, Excuse me, you don't even know who the fuck I am. You don't know what I'm about, you don't know that if I can plant a seed in one Dutch person, since I'm in their land, and it grows, even later on without me, then I've done my work, and that's good, and that's perfect, and they're going to remember it for all their lives, and it's going to touch them. I said, I'm going to have to give you back this eagle feather and this gift until you can understand what this means. Maybe you know the gesture on the outside, but you don't know nothing on the inside. I said, you can have all your money, you can have all that, I wouldn't touch your money. This is not what I'm about. What I'm about is working through the spirit. You don't know who I am. He looked at me, and he said, "Well, if that's want you want. Good luck." I said, I don't need luck. I have blessing, and that I need. A: Do you find the whole "New Age" mentality offensive? If so, why or in what way? B: Personally, I just find it offensive if people don't dig no deeper than that. I find the New Age philosophy actually is old-time teachings brought into a new space. I find it very important to have it there for people to use it as another step to get to their higher self, consciousness, their higher ability, their highest potential in this life. A: Like when people go to channelers? B: I tell people I'm channeling Beaver Chief. How am I doing? This is it. This is as good as it's going to get. People just look at me, "Oh, I never thought of it like that." You're making this being, that you call yourself in this time, real. But are you? We see you, because you've done a good job. We're actually spirits being human. We're actually bringing ourselves more and more in here. If they want to call me their teacher, that's all right, but that I feel their greatest teaching comes from within themselves, and that I'm just pulling off little layers of things blocked. A: If you had to choose one thing as the most important issue right now, what would it be? B: It would be overpopulation on the planet. Understanding how we are very sacred and how we need to treat ourselves as being sacred and that the overpopulation on the planet is creating disharmony for us and is not working for us. And I don't mean not to have children, I mean to be mindful and to have the spirits brought here that need to be here to help this planet, and not just going out creating children without thought or no ceremony. Overpopulation I think is one of the most destructive pollutions on this planet right now. How they used to deal with that is wars, but since we've become a little bit more aware that we don't have to go to war no more, we've been making more babies. Babies are great, I love them, but we have been making them without our minds, our intentions or anything. A lot of spirit beings, they don't belong here; they just came though because they thought it would be fun. I believe in sexual energy being exchanged, but I don't believe in everybody actually having intercourse. But that's another thing that I use, sexual healing. I use it through my hands, though my being. Because I believe that everything's a sexual energy. Flowers, everything. We all have that, but we haven't been able to use it together. We've been taught to not touch each other. You watch people on buses; they do all these things to stay away from each other because they think that's the correct way to do it, because they've been taught and brainwashed, bringing us back to the first question, brainwashed into being this individual without no touch. But as soon as we touch, as soon as we hold hands and become one in a circle, we start feeling this power, and you know that it belongs to everyone and it's one power. It comes like that, and people have to really realize that they can change anything with their thoughts. When you come together in a whole, you can really move things. You can move things in a positive manner. And I mean positive for the whole, like everyone. Sexual energy needs to be coming up inside of each person. Like this food that we have here. We have strawberries, grapes, cheese, crackers, donut holes; we got chips; we got all these things. And everything is very sensuous and very sexual, but people wouldn't admit to that. They'd just say it's food. But to me it's like beautiful, all these flavors are dancing, and they want you to eat them. But it's important to work this energy up and to use it in a good way. A: I know you've been traveling quite a bit; you mentioned you went to Amsterdam. Where have you been, and what are you doing there? B: I'm doing the same thing that I'm doing here, but in a different way. I brought seven flags with me when I first went to Europe. I made up these flags myself, and the flags were of the four colors - one of our creation stories again, of the four races we knew on this side, the red, the black, the yellow and the white. I put together these big flags. Then I had a hand put on there in leather, a open hand, so we come in peace, we have no weapons. The hand was on top of a big cedar tree. Then there was a green ribbon and a blue ribbon hung on the side of this, and the green ribbon was for new personal growth, and the blue ribbon represented the healing that needed to take place amongst all of us. Then I had the white at one end and the red at the other end, and in between the black and yellow, because that's our thinking, that the white and the red are at the other spectrum of light, but it's all together actually. It was all threaded together with a red thread; that was the energy of the Earth, the blood of the earth, bringing us all together. So I brought these seven flags, I had this vision, and I stopped in England first. In London, England, I went there and I planted one there over by the House of Parliament. I was wondering why there was all these bobbies there, these policemen there, kind of acting like they weren't watching us, but I could feel them watching us. And I picked on this little tree that was inside this park, little cute tree, and I put my flag on there. I was planting the flags in the name of all indigenous and aboriginal people on this planet to take back their power, to be responsible for their actions and reactions. This is what I brought out, and I brought that there. I moved back about 15 or 20 feet, and there was this big marker on the ground, and it said, "The Queen herself, on her 30th year of jubilee, planted this tree with her hands." That's why they were watching me. Then I looked, and behind this tree, there was a camera panning it. I didn't even notice all this stuff when I was tying my flag on there. It was on her little tree, Her Majesty's. On the tour, I ended up in Paris, I planted one at Notri Dame. And also inside of Amsterdam, when I was there the first time. A: So you're going back. How do you travel, and why do you go? B: I have a circle there, and I do the work there. Because there the people have been treating me very kind and wanting to know and very respectful to understand. Not all the people, but the people that have been coming to experience the circle. The thing is that people are hungry out there for something other than what they have, because what they have is a lie. They've done their best all their life to work with it, but it's been a lie, and they want the truth or something of that. What I represent when I go there is a part of that truth. They're saying, "I'm sorry what our people did to you and your people" and I'm saying to them, thank you, thank you, but we can get on with it, and we can live together and we can do some drumming together, we can do some healing together. I told them, come to Seattle, everybody looks like you there. I'll introduce you to some of them. We'll have drumming circles together. A: What do you think will happen in the year 2000? Do you see the Christian prophecies of the end of the world or some of Nostradamus' prophecies coming true? B: Well, I personally feel that everyone will be in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing, and if you worry too much, then you're going to be in the wrong place, because you're going to be going where everybody thinks they should go and not feeling where you need to really be. And everything is going to happen, but it's not going to happen exactly how we expect it to happen. And we shouldn't expect anything, and all the stuff that they're talking about - let them talk and live your life. Why the mountain - Mount Tahoma, Mount Rainier - hasn't blown up is because not everybody believes in that, and the key people I guess are the ones who are keeping it from blowing up. If somebody's worried, I always tell them, well, if they own land, or cars, or stuff like that, or houses, I tell them, why don't you give your house to me and your land - you wouldn't want to sell it to me if it was going to be underwater, would you? I tell them, why don't you just leave the area that you think it's going to happen in, and make yourself happy? And if there's no place on this planet to go, then I'll help you leave (laughs). I've got a friend who's got a saber, a dagger, and I can help you with this. If you want to leave, I can do the ceremony (laughs). But that makes people say, "You would?" A: You're such a nice guy! But what can we do? What can people do to better honor the Earth and Sky and all of our relations - and how can we better honor you, Beaver Chief, and your tradition and the traditions of indigenous peoples? B: To be respectful of the land that you're living on. To take care of it, as it is your own, like you take care of yourself, or ever better than you take care of yourself, I don't know. But to respect the place that you're at, wherever you are. To respect the trees, to respect the rocks, to respect the crazy birds (points to Amanda's squawking tame jay), to respect everything that's in your life. Because by doing that, then everything will be brighter, everything will start coming together in a good way, working together for a higher consciousness. By just taking care of your plants, by saying, "Out there, I have the best-tasting blackberries. And then over here, the plums and the figs...." This is giving energy to them, to say, "Yeah, yeah!" They get really into this healing mode of being happy. Then you say, "Over here, I got a hot tub." So you really live here, you really are here. If more people would do that, everything in the whole would come together in their life, because then they would start realizing just what they have here. They have everything. They don't need nothing else; they have everything. And to realize that you're just really happy. You're happy with the ceremonies you can create within and around your own home, because you've already done that, and to keep that up. That's the thing that I feel is really most important, is to realize that wherever you are, that it's safe here. I think that's how we would say it. I think that all of these things are to love and respect where you are, and what you're around, and if something engages you, engage it. Engage it in love and peace and whatever. But if something engages you not in love and peace and harmony, then you look: What is that? What's going on? Like if a group of bees came over here and tapped on your window, and said, "Come on out here, we're going to sting you." What is that? Talk to those bees, treat them as individual beings and find out what the heck you're doing. Maybe there's somewhere here that was their home, and we pulled it down. How do we work with that? Maybe we can give them another home. Then that way, they would always protect your home, their energy. There's a lot of things that we can do. Talk to the little animals that come in and out of the house and around the house, you talk to them. Like, I don't like spiders personally, in my face, I don't like them just hanging like, I'll wake up and they're like, "Hey." No, no, no, no, don't do that to me. I don't like that. I don't like them running around like when I'm watching television, and I'm laying on the floor, and one looks like bigger than my foot and it runs by, and it acts like I can't see it inside the little shadow when it stands still, and it runs again. I tell them, you can do that when I'm gone, you can run all over the place and do whatever you need to do, but hide yourself when I come in. If they keep on doing it, I tell them, if you come back in here, I'm going to kill you. Then you're going to come back as something else, and you might not like what you come back as. They do listen. It's a vibration. A: How can we better honor you? B: Well, I like to look at beautiful women. I love the beautiful passion of this life, and what it has to offer. I think that if everybody would just honor each other with passion, and just be really there with each other - present - I think that would honor me the best. A: Is there any information we have not covered that you would like to share with our readers? B: That if it serves you, keep on. If it doesn't serve you, let it go, don't become attached to it. So many people are attached to certain teachings, and they don't realize that they need to let them go in order to receive other teachings. And not just to let it go, but to give it to somebody, as a teaching, and it turns into wisdom for themselves. Not one person has all the answers, but they have a piece of it, and it's very important to respect and honor all the different pieces so that you can see it in your own life. Not to burn out anything. Not to take it and completely destroy it, just because you're not going to use it no more. No, let it flutter away. If you don't understand something, let it be, and it will come back to you, too, in the time for you to understand. And the only reason why you don't understand it anyway is because you're too headstrong into what you're doing, and so you're not open to that teaching at that moment. But that teaching is always open to you. A: Please tell about events you have coming up, what you're going to be doing and where, how to contact you or where to get more information. B: All you have to do is light a candle. No, I'm just teasing, okay? (Laughs.) I'm checking out the Blue Moon in Federal Way to do drumming circles at; it's a metaphysical espresso bar and book shop. Also Lodestar Center in Redmond, Washington. And then I hope to have something at Beyond the Edge Cafe. Also maybe downtown in Seattle, also inside Fremont. I'm going to do a circle almost every day. What I want to do, what I envision, is doing the circles and setting up these centers of energy, so that other circles can connect with it, not physically but energy-wise, focusing from where I did the circles the last 10 years in Seattle, and setting up these places outside now, so that other people can experience the circle who don't usually get to come into Seattle. That's what I'm looking at. What I want to do is make a place where I can do periodically Full Moon drumming circles, then advertise it well before so that people can make it. But I don't want it to be like, I'm going to do this every, every time. I want it to be special for people. I want it to be as special as it is for me. You can call me at (206) 782-5781. Or you can all of those places, too, the Lodestar Center, the Blue Moon in Federal Way, because I don't know when. The Blue Moon will stay in touch. A: Are your circles going to be on the full moon? B: Yes. I never do it before it. I do it right on it. A: Any parting words of wisdom? B: Yes. It's true: Native American Indians do make better lovers. Never Thirst (#03#) by Miriam Harline meditation/evocation You sit in a meadow of fall flowers: goldenrod, pearly everlasting, fuzzy purple butterfly bush, violet fireweed. Around you, brittle tan grasses wave in the breeze; low to the earth, clover heads nod gently. You fold your arms around yourself; it's chilly. On the horizon, a hill furred with fir-trees, the red-orange drop of the sun balances; it is sunset. As you watch, the sun-drop on the horizon breaks, evaporates; the focus of the light is gone, all that's left is an echo, pale-gold light against which the trees rise black. To your either side, you feel the arms of the forest encircling you. Under their branches, trailing to earth, the firs hold darkness, night coming. The darkness beckons, safe, protective, a little melancholy, like sleep. You stand up, brush yourself off. Ahead is a break in the firs, a dirt path winding downhill. You have time in the twilight to explore a little, before full darkness comes. You come to the head of the path, begin. It starts downward steeply. To either side tangles low blackberry, Oregon grape with spiked leaves green and red, tiny berries blue-black. Dirt and bits of stick and bark roll under your feet as you put weight on them; you tramp downward with a swinging gait, till suddenly the dirt under you loosens and slides. Catching a branch, you manage to keep your balance. You continue onward more slowly. Under the trees, blue shadows hang dense. The trail goes steadily downhill; the air gets slightly warmer, wetter. You see more maple and alder, the alder bark mottled gray-white, trees draped with hanging moss, yellow-green tangled hair. The earth below grows muddier. Suddenly to your right you hear a cracking sound, a branch breaking. Your head whips 'round to look. In a glade close to the path stands a young buck deer, antlers single-pronged. He stares at you with black unblinking eyes, sensitive nostrils twitching. Then with a bound he's gone. You stand a moment staring. It's as if he couldn't have been there, so empty is the spot he stood, and yet he stood there. I'll go just a little farther, you think. Your path comes to a stream, water trickling over dark rocks, their heads rising from the water mossy. On the other side, the path turns uphill again. It looks inviting: drier, winding among bigleaf maples, their fallen leaves brown and big as platters. The forest is more open there, lighter than the way you've come. You leap the stream, misjudging the width a little, splashing; your shoes get wet. You walk uphill. The hill seems steeper than the one you came down. Quickly you begin to sweat. After twining through the grove of maples, the path turns under firs again. Even when your eyes adjust, it's dark, late twilight. Time to turn back, you think. But as you think this, you walk into a glade; it's lighter, open to the sky. At its far edge, where the trees begin again, you see a shadowy form, which resolves itself into a picnic table. It seems to have something laid on it. Curious, you cross over. Coming up, you see lying on the table apples, grapes, tomatoes, gourds, Indian corn, potatoes, zucchini, cut herbs tied with ribbon, wheat in sheaves. At the table's far end are two pewter plates, two matching goblets. Looking up, you see behind the table two figures: a woman with a flowing gown patterned with vines, leaves, harvest spilling from a cornucopia, and a man naked to the waist, wearing buckskin trousers. On their heads twine wreaths of ivy. In the shadows you can hardly see their faces. "You've brought nothing to our table," the woman says. Her low voice is melodious, but not sympathetic. "I didn't know I'd find you here. - I'm sorry." "No matter," the woman says, after a moment. Perhaps she smiles. The man gestures toward the table. "These are fruits of the earth. They come very easily to you. Do you appreciate them?" You think, I just go to the store. What would I do if I had to raise my own food? With a twinge of fear, you say, "I do appreciate them." "Do you?" the woman asks. "Will you drink with us, then?" Your fear whispers to you. You think of people given fairy-food, who never come back, or Persephone fed by Hades. The man and woman smile at each other. "You have drunk with us before," the man's low voice says. "If you ever drink, you drink with us." "Have we not given you all your food and drink? - Here." The woman hands you a pewter cup. It's heavy, and cool with what it carries, moisture beading along its sides. You sniff at it; it smells heady, of grape and spices. Each with a hand on the cup, the God and Goddess together raise the other goblet in a toast. They watch you; their heavy gaze forces you to sip. It's impossible to tell what's in your cup; it could be grape juice; it could be wine or mead. Whatever it is, it tastes like heaven. The Goddess and God smile. "May you never lack for harvest," they say. One then the other, they pledge each other from their cup. Watching, you set your own cup on the table. The wood seems to move under your fingers, and you look down. You see the table is empty, fruit, grain and vegetables all gone, the pewter crockery too, even the cup you just set down. You look up again quickly. The God and Goddess themselves are gone. The grove is empty, but for yourself and the picnic table. Around you lies full darkness, blue-black. On your tongue lingers the taste of nectar. Zen and the Art of Berry Harvesting (#04#) by Amanda Silvers article I am very warm; it is one of those days where your hair clings to your neck and the sweat beads above your lip. I want something sweet, but not too sweet, and juicy. Hmmmmmm, I think, about the blackberry bower by the driveway. I think that the berries might be perfect to quench my hunger. The bush has been very prolific this year, and it is so heavy with ripe berries that they hang down to the ground in places. I think about the berries bowing the branches under their weight, their shiny plump blackness oozing sweetness, and my mouth waters as I walk outside into the sun. I am blinded momentarily by the brightness, and I think about the fact that I left my sunglasses in the house. I am also wearing only shorts and a tank top, not the best attire for blackberry picking! I remember seeing a friend a few days earlier; she was covered with angry red scratches and cuts, from picking blackberries, she said. Oh well, I think to myself, I'll be careful and just take a few of the more accessible berries. I approach the bush and the thorns loom, shining sharply; they are all I can see. The thought of the berries is now eclipsed by the terrible threat of injury from the thick branches rimmed with thorns. Not to mention the fact that the berries, so many I can see dozens as I park my car every day, are nowhere to be found now as I stand there next to the bush squinting into the sun. I stop for a moment as I feel the bush diva pull back its branches and threaten me telepathically with sharp scratches if I so much as try to pick a berry. Then I remember: I have to ask the bush for the berries, and ask it with respect and a small amount of fear for the sharp thorns. I smile to myself and the berry bush diva as I think to the bush, "Hello there, Mama Berry Bush! How are you doing today? Did you get enough water when I watered you last night?" The bush relaxes a bit, but not completely, as I stand before her with a bowl, smiling at her like a lunatic. I again address the bush psychically, "I was wondering, oh great Berry, you have produced much beautiful fruit this year, would you share it with us humble humans? You know we are unlike you, and unable to produce such sweet and luscious fruit, and we would be honored by your gift." The berry bramble is practically beaming at me now, and all of a sudden the branches seem to open up, and there is the fruit! Hundreds of beautiful plump shiny blackberries, hanging in hefty clumps of six or ten, along with gorgeous green fuzzy leaves, all on stalks with little, teeny-tiny thorns. Where did those huge thorns go? I ask the bush as I begin to pick a berry here and one there, and she answers "Oh, those were in your imagination. I just helped you to see the ones I have as several times as big as usual." I laugh to myself and continue picking and telling the bush diva how lovely the fruit is. I pop a berry into my mouth, and it bursts in an explosion of pungent tart sweetness. These are the best blackberries I have ever tasted, I tell the bush. Just then, she reveals even more berries, bigger and more lush that the ones before, and all in easy reach as I stand inside the shelter of the branches and continue to pick. I picked and chatted merrily to the berry diva as I gathered the remarkable fruit. Toward the end, I made sure to thank her for the fine gift. I promised her that I would only prune her lovely branches and not cut her down, as so many people do. She was delighted and promised me more berries whenever I wanted, at least during the next few weeks. I finally picked all of the ripe berries I could find that day, and I only ended up with one tiny scratch on my arm. It was near the end of my harvest; I was getting a bit greedy, and she had to remind me to not take any berries that were not yet ripe. I wound up with a huge bowl of luscious fruit to share, and with no pain. See, all you have to do is ask nicely! Spider Womans Legs (#05#) The Dreamcatcher by Asuraya article Dream catchers are probably one of the most recognized forms of Native American art. Legends describing the dream catchers' origins vary widely, but there are similarities in the descriptions of its use and purpose. One of the legends by the Anishnabe (a people also known as the Ojibwe or Chippewa) says that Spider Woman would go to each baby's cradleboard and spin a silken dream catcher above it. When the Anishnabe nation scattered, Spider Woman had a hard time traveling to all the different cradleboards. To assist her, the women of the tribe took up the weaving of dream catchers using willow and sinew. Another version of the legend says that the People were suffering from bad dreams for which the medicine people had no cure. A council of the People met to discuss the problem. During the council, an elder had a vision of a spider's web within a hoop below which a bead and a feather were attached. The other elders then began creating physical replicas of the object described in his vision, and, when the people used these creations, their nightmares ceased. Traditional dream catchers are made from circular or teardrop-shaped hoops of willow about five inches across. Sinew is used to weave a webbed design in the hoop with a hole left in the center. Beads are sometimes woven into the web. The Anishnabe legend said that the web could be attached to the hoop of the dream catcher at eight points to represent the number of Spider Woman's legs or at seven points to represent the Seven Prophecies that predicted the future of the Anishnabe nation. They said the dream catcher would gather all kinds of dreams, but only those of relevance to the dreamer would know how to make it through the web, travel down the feather and enter the visions of the sleeping person. The bad or irrelevant dreams, they said, would stick to the web and vanish in the rays of the morning sun. These days the style and use of dream catchers varies widely. They are made with metal and plastic and other modern materials. They appear as jewelry and wall hangings and are even used as rearview mirror ornaments (let's hope the occupants aren't making a habit of dreaming and driving). If these new styles and uses of dream catchers originated with non-native people, I believe it is another example, albeit minor, of the misuse of Native American traditions, as well as devaluation of an art form rich in history. Art is seldom static, however, and if these new forms and uses of dream catchers originated with Native Americans, fine. But whether or not their traditions should be changed or adapted over time is a decision that should remain with them. A few years ago, a relative of mine wanted to make and sell reproductions of a Mandala I own (a Mandala is a variation of a Native American dance shield - having one in the home is said to bring good luck). She thought the Mandala was "cute" and was perplexed by my opposition to her idea. I tried to explain that to reproduce Native American art solely for personal profit and without any understanding of what the art represents would be inappropriate at best. One of the important aspects of Native American art is its ability to provide a means of contact with the people producing it, to motivate us to wonder about them, to want to know more about them and to gain respect for their culture and their past. Too much has already been taken from Native Americans through misunderstandings, ignorance and greed. A small act, such as using a dream catcher as it is intended to be used, would perhaps begin to repair some of the damage that has been done to Native American culture. At least such an act would show an appreciation and respect for their history and tradition. A Summer Walk to Dream (#06#) by Jim Sun Weed article I walk out into the sunny day, the morning breeze growing sweeter as the day's heat develops. Over the soft grass, over the concrete sidewalk, striding in my sturdy boots and feeling like good Tom Bombadil, the Master. A small brown bird is on the ground, tugging at a food wrapper. She winks at me and hops out of the way. Another bird swoops over my head. They say hello and bless me; their language is a visceral one which my body understands. The blackberries, ripe and heavy, and the golden grass gone to seed, vibrate their hellos. The Earth is singing, and it's a tune which calls me back time and again to the old ways, when Nature taught us everything, gave us everything. Tall trees are swaying in the breeze, caressing my vision as the wind moves through their leaves, showing the white undersides contrasting with the dark green of summer growth. I pass beneath a great Himalayan Pine, touching the top of my head to its hanging boughs. These trees, these plants and animals, are all players in a rhythm which is of wholeness and rightness. I am open and strong. I forget about work, bus schedules, career plans. I stop arguing with myself. I stop trying to define, and the answer is given as I too enter the sacred rhythm. I visit the old pine trees on Capitol Hill. They were here before white people came to this part of the Earth. I can feel their thoughts telegraphing to one another, preserving the fabric of unity and protection. They are the good old citizens and I am grateful to be walking beneath them. Am I just like a human animal today? I have no creed, only rhythm, aliveness, gratitude and the sustaining oneness-interaction. Just as the trees and animals vibrate in their innate communication, I feel the blood of my body resonate with this vibration. A friendly Douglas Fir beckons me; I run my hand lightly over the rough bark of its trunk. I sit at its base, my head against the trunk, feeling as though we are the center, with the Wholeness choreographed around us. I close my eyes and feel the comings and goings of animals and insects, and the passing of time. My thoughts melt into dreaming as I fall into a sleep. Nature is everywhere alive; the web of Spirit cannot be destroyed. Sometimes I am unaware of it. Often I don't understand the significance of whatever work or play I'm doing. But that doesn't matter. The only judge is me. As I enter more deeply into awareness of Nature around me, I become healed and whole. How have we ignored Nature for so long? What are we learning through our experience of separation? In my sleep a dream washes over me. I am in a dank tavern, wood paneling, a couple of pool tables, just a few patrons talking about regular workaday things as the afternoon light slants in through the tiny window. I notice a tingling sensation in my feet and hands. Looking around the room I see it suffused with the same tingling: a light, a shimmering which seems to grow and envelop everything and everyone in the room. Is it coming from the spaces between atoms, from the freefall that lends grace to the gaps in our understanding? I wake. The breeze plays in my hair. A squirrel is looking at me, head cocked to one side. An airplane flies overhead. The sun is still bright and the air sweet and warm; the afternoon feels as lazy as I do. I get up, dust off my jeans, and stride away to the tavern for a beer. The Incredible Magick of Massage (#07#) by NightOwl article Ahh, massage... touching and being touched... energy focused and released. Each touch, each breath, each stroke sends energy coursing through our own bodies and through that of the person receiving the massage. His or her breath sends the energy back, forming a continuous moving river of wonderful life energy that releases tension, builds health and opens both massage giver and receiver to love and healing. How can we use magick in massage? In both magick and massage, we build, focus and release energy for a multitude of purposes. Both magick and massage share the same foundation. So adding magick to a massage, or including massage in some types of ritual, can be easy and increases the effectiveness of both. Begin your magickal massage by focusing your attention and your intention. Think about and plan what you wish to accomplish. Then set up the space as you would for a ritual. Prepare yourself. Pay attention to your attitude, your intention and your goal. Breathe, stretch, flex, center, ground and breathe some more. Ignore or brush aside distracting thoughts. Stretch the tension out of your own body before you touch another. Do you wish to be a channel for healing love? Do you wish to focus courage, daring, strength or power? You are going to use your energy to assist another person to relax, release tension or enter an altered state and heal themselves. Clear yourself and alter your own consciousness first. Focus your own energy on opening yourself to becoming a channel for your intention. In the beginning, it is a good idea to have a list to assist you in remembering all the details. After practice, you will be able to improvise and follow the flow of your creative energy. It is easier to build a strong foundation of knowledge if you initially pay attention to detail. The room should be clean, with a table or pad for the massage. Have beautiful music playing softly. A tape of Tibetan bells, or the sacred trance music from almost any culture, will give an important energy boost and give you both something to focus your conscious minds on. Other than the minimum communication for guidance in lighter or heavier touch, or for changes in position and other mechanics of the massage, it is a good idea to avoid talking most of the time. Massage was the occupation for the blind in old Japan, and you may find it much easier to focus on your hands, and the energy flow, if you keep your eyes closed. If it is warm enough, leave a window open to let in fresh air. If not, air the room thoroughly before the massage. Some people enjoy candlelight and incense or burning herbs. Have a clean soft sheet or large towel for the person to lie upon, and another to cover up with. A soft cotton blanket is also good as a cover. The receiver will become much cooler as they relax and let go of muscle tension, so it is important to cover them to keep them warm enough. The giver will be doing the physical work so will be more comfortable if the room is on the cool side. Both the giver and receiver can be clothed, nude or anywhere in between according to their own comfort levels. A deep massage is much easier with oil, so any clothing worn and the covers used should be washable. Many oils can used for massage. Each person will need to experiment to discover what she or he likes the most. A mixture of vegetable or nut oil, with little or no scent, will work for most people. There are also many oil and lotion mixtures available commercially, but be sure to smell them and rub some on your hands and arms before you buy a whole bottle. Some of the strongly scented ones will become nauseating when applied to the whole body, and each oil has a slightly different "slip" to it, so feel free to experiment. It is possible to do a completely adequate massage with no oil, but it is more difficult and long hard pressure sweeps are impossible. To do a complete massage takes at least an hour, but brief work on the neck, shoulders, hands or feet can be very relaxing when time is limited. Receiving a massage is less complex than giving one. However, the receiver can increase their stress release and healing by drinking a glass of juice or pure water, and doing some stretching and deep breathing beforehand. Once on the table or pad for the massage, the person receiving can continue to consciously relax, open, breathe and give feedback to the person doing the massage. If the massage is too deep and is more painful than wished, or if it is not deep enough, the person doing the massage needs to hear it. Giving and receiving massage is very intimate. It is important that both people be bathed, have teeth brushed, nails clipped and filed and so on. If the massage giver carefully matches breathing with the receiver, it will increase the depth and power of the connection. Plus, after matching breathing, the giver can begin to breathe more slowly and deeply and the breathing of the receiver will probably match and also slow and deepen. Many different methods are used to prepare the energetics of the space and control the energies during the massage. A common one is to sit for a few minutes in meditation after preparing the space and invite healing spirits to join you and aid you in your work. Healing has always been an important part of the Craft. Most traditions have goddesses and gods known for their healing skill and power. Research to learn which ones are the most compatible with your energy. During your meditation, request that they join you and guide you during the massage. Placing statues, icons, stones, crystals, elements and other sacred objects around the room can invite the energy they represent to be present and to assist. Consider the idea that the part of you that you call your "self" is just one of several consciousnesses within you. Your physical body also has a "mind" or "consciousness" of its own, one that does not have word language. It is possible to relax your conscious mind and allow your "body mind" to take over and work with the body of the person you are massaging. It is difficult to describe how to do this, but by lightly ignoring your thoughts and focusing completely on the nonverbal feedback you receive through your hands, intuition and other senses, you can allow this "body intelligence" to teach you what to do. As you do massage consciously, your skill in stepping aside from your own agenda and just being present will increase. Massage gives as much pleasure and healing to the one giving as to the one receiving. As you practice, your skill and strength will increase, but even a person with no experience can give a good massage by remembering a few things, as follows: Keep breathing. As you pick up tension from the person you are massaging, unless you remain conscious of your own body, you may make several common mistakes that will greatly lessen your own pleasure and that of the receiver. Tension being released by the other person will accumulate in your hands and arms, and you will tighten up your breathing in response unless you remind yourself to consistently breathe down into your belly, ground and send the tension down into the earth. Pace yourself and go slow. If you pick up tension from the other person, you will tend to massage faster and faster. Slow down and breathe. Have juice or herb tea for you both to drink during the massage. Particularly afterwards, the receiver should drink a glass of water and the giver should wash their hands in running water to help balance themselves. Many people prefer to begin a massage with the face, hands or feet, or with the palm of the right hand over the heart of the person being massaged and the palm of the left hand over the massage giver's own heart, so giver and receiver open to each other. Or you can start by making long, light sweeping strokes from the feet to the head to begin to balance the energy flow. The type of massage done on the face, hands and feet uses very small movements of the fingers. Lightly press and probe around the bones and feel the structure of the muscles. Be particularly gentle and careful around the eyes, and avoid uncontrolled movements anywhere. The muscles can roll under the skin if you press hard without having good control. Such pressure can hurt, so don't do it. Constantly watch or feel the energy of the person you are touching. Do not allow yourself to drift off into thinking of something else. Every once in a while, stop and shake out your hands and arms. Massage slowly with long sweeping strokes from the ankle to the hip, from the hand to the shoulder, from the thigh to the top of the shoulder. Always do the pressure strokes toward the heart, as that is the way the valves in the veins work. The long sweeping strokes can be quite hard moving toward the heart, and then light on the return. Knead the muscles as if you were kneading bread dough or softening up clay to sculpt. Squeeze and probe with one hand and then the other, relaxing the hand not in use between each squeeze. Holding your own hands partially contracted between squeezes never allows your own muscles to rest, and you will tire much more quickly. Be conscious of the mechanics of your own body, and do not put it into positions where you will hurt your back, or anything else, while doing a massage. When you learn to manage your consciousness, breathing, grounding, body mechanics and energy, you will feel much stronger and more balanced after giving a massage. Pause every few minutes and check yourself over to assess your own energy. Never hurry. It is better to massage less of an area slowly than to try to cover the whole body in a rush. Remember too that the mechanical squeezing and stroking of the muscles feels wonderful, but it is not an attack. Lightly stroking a person who is completely clothed, while breathing deeply together, can be more helpful than a hurried massage the person tenses against. Allow yourself to experience the wonder of being present with another person, the wonder of one body with another body. You will both be in a state of bliss by the end. Take your time then to breathe together quietly for a time, still touching, and then thank the spirits who have assisted you and separate. Once you have finished, allow the receiver to remain lying down if they wish while you stretch and slowly return to a more ordinary state of consciousness. You might add one last pinch of incense to the burner or ground the remaining energy through touching the earth, stroking a plant, kissing the statue of the goddess or god you follow or any other finale that creates completion. Offer juice or water to the receiver and go wash your hands and face while thanking the Goddess for this opportunity to be of service in such a lovely way. Massage is an incredibly nurturing and sensual experience that can be shared by people in all kinds of relationships. Massage can also greatly increase the intimacy of sexual sharing - particularly if you and your partner have had a difficult day and are not finding it easy to get into an intimate mood. Nothing can beat massage to help you both relax and open to desire. Or, if your partner is under so much stress that he or she seldom has the energy for sex, giving a "no strings attached" massage is likely to bring sexual thoughts to mind. This approach can be tricky, though; it really does need to be done without a sexual agenda, or your partner will end up less willing for your touch next time. We are creatures with high touch needs living in a society with a low touch tolerance. More touch would improve our health, disposition and well-being. A recent study found that premature babies in intensive care given 45 minutes of massage a day were able to leave the hospital days earlier and need thousands of dollars less in medical services. Alien Landing Site Discovered in Desert! (#08#) Or, My Trip to the Burning Man Festival by EarthDancer article Over this past Labor Day weekend, the eleventh Burning Man Festival was held in the Black Rock Desert. I had heard enough interesting things about the happenings there that I had to go. The 16-hour travel time to the desert in northwest Nevada was part of a larger journey for me, a journey that my traveling companion and I managed to stretch over a week, though the trip from Seattle might be made in one day if you needed to. Other than the traveling distance, there are a few other things that one should know about the Burning Man experience: There isn't any water, shade or shelter, and all means of survival are left up to the participant. Emergency medical care was on-site, however, if needed. At the Burning Man, it is occasionally extremely dusty, windy and very hot! Anything that is packed in has to be packed out. If you build a fire, you are responsible for removing all the ashes when you leave. And it is one of the hippest and most exciting festivals I have ever been to. An open mind is a necessity. As we traveled through the hot desert back roads and neared the festival site, certain fears mysteriously began coming on. Why was I willingly placing myself in the middle of a desert for four to five days where surviving the elements is your primary concern? To explain a bit further, the Black Rock Desert is a massive dry alkaline lake bed - the largest flat expanse of earth in North America. It's surrounded by mountains and some of the most magickal hot springs to be found anywhere in the West. An amazing and impressive site for a festival, indeed. For me, the feeling of being in the middle of this flat, cracked and expansive earth brought up an incredible feeling of peace and meditation - having a symbolic impression on me the entire time. At one point, I grabbed up a large piece of white muslin, some water (which is a necessity), disrobed and walked barefoot out into the open expanse with nothing in my field of sight but the level plain and the mountains in the distance. I found a spot and meditated for a few hours, braving the sun, at times letting the hot light wash over my body, meditating with clarity and intensity. This landscape has a strong voice; the more I listened, the stronger it came. This desert would be an incredible site for ritual when there is no one else around. The spatial quality and energy of the place would transport your rite out into the cosmos. The festival itself was a ritual of sorts, too. Many people had gathered, for countless reasons and needs, a rainbow family. The components of the festival were constructed and idealized at the core by numerous artists, inventors, builders and performance artists from many places, with the greatest number coming from San Francisco. In its eleventh year, this festival continues as an open forum for the eccentric, inventive, imaginative and strange. One could expect to see anything here, and weirdness certainly was encouraged. For the week, this was our village in the desert, and it was devoid of any political authority. Anything goes. I was wowed and amazed continually as I wandered around the village and came upon abstract contraptions that seemed to have been hurled up out of the desert floor. They defied reality, and that was the point. People were building structures and theme camps right there on the spot - structures that would seemingly require numerous tools and equipment to construct, yet the artists had considered it all and brought the tools with them. Electricity, engineering and metalworking in the middle of the desert: These people were serious. Some of the things that caught my attention most were the structures to be burnt, to be sacrificed. The festival attracts many professional pyrotechnic and fire-crazed types. They were the facilitators of the festival's main symbology - burning away and cleaning out poison from the body. This symbolism was furthered especially with the extreme heat and the focus on the body in order to not experience injury. At the heart of the burning was the gigantic Burning Man effigy that towered over the village. Lit up at night with blue and yellow neon light - was it an alien or a man effigy? Dunno. There was a fair element of the alien-chasing type of energy there, too. Hmm. But anyhow it was all good. And I had the pleasure of being in the right place at the right time and was part of the ritual of heaving the illuminated Burning Man effigy up onto its perch one evening. As it was erected, it must have been like a beacon, because the droves of festival-goers flocked en masse as it rose into the sky. There were many things to be burnt, with great care and safety of course. In fact, it would be a realistic account to say that just about anything that was built or brought was eventually set on fire. At one point, there was a large procession to the evil corporate, religious conglomerate called Helco Village for the public ritual of burning down Helco! Complete with the tower of Helco were a church, Starfucks Coffee, McSatan's and numerous skeleton effigies dressed in corporate attire. This was the first large public burning, and it went off with a big bang. Everyone was ready for more fire. I moseyed over to my favorite chill spot, the Chai den, and sipped some tea while tripping out to the psychedelic lights, the ambient trance music and the beautiful people, before the opera at the castle began that same night. As my friend and I headed off to the castle, we could hear that it had already begun and the throngs of people had formed a huge circle around the castle. The castle had been sculpted out of the mud right there in the desert, with a wood and mesh frame underneath. Standing at least 30 feet in height, with three towers with gargoyle faces, a circular staircase and a suspended walkway for the performers, it was spectacular. The opera pounded with drums and mysterious voices, and the performers were worked into a hedonistic celebration. This was a pagan opera. At least a hundred ritual performers danced around the castle as they set fire to it toward the end. The castle burnt strong and hot to the ground with the rhythm of the drums and voice urging it on. This was the most powerful pagan ritual I have ever witnessed. Awesome. The next day I returned to the remains and was struck by the pile of charred castle, with a face still visible, set against the vast expanse of the desert. The remnants of a great ritual. Every bit of it was cleaned up afterward. Eventually the Man effigy burnt too, in the largest ritual of the festival, with at least 10,000 people looking on. I chose to stay back away from the mob, as the act of burning the effigy started to take on an extraterrestrial vibe. The energy had culminated into this kind of intensity over the weekend. I chose to stay back by the stupa that was connected by a procession of lantern-lit towers that reached like a runway to the large effigy. The stupa was a small Himalayan-styled structure built of wood, mud and discarded library books. The layers of open-faced books made up a large circular base, with mud as mortar, that held up a wood multitiered structure on top. Truly imaginative and magnificent. I wanted to be close to it as it burnt; the artist had built it as a stupa of hope, and it was powerful as he set it on fire. From there on, the festival was chaos; most things in sight were burnt to the ground (all of which were cleared away), wild music played through the night, and the people were crazed. I opted for going to another of my favorite sites, the alien egg landing circle, out away from the camps. The moonlight lit up the desert playa, the cracks like a mosaic's. The lights flashing through the petroglyph-stenciled eggs created patterns of light out in the vastness that were totally surreal. I needed quiet space after all that excitement. The quality and artistic craftsmanship throughout the festival was remarkable and made for a great visual feast. We were provided with hot showers with water from the springs, at cost. I only took one after taking a mud bath in the Mudhenge with many other naked, beautiful ones. After paying $40 and having to bring all my own food and water, I was a little surprised that they still wanted to charge for things! Which brings up the flip side to this festival. It is getting too big, unfortunately, and size could be the downfall of a great event. This year had a 50 percent increase in attendance from last year. I estimate there were 15,000-plus people on the playa by festival's end. And too many of them were too stoked about driving their dirt bikes and vehicles over the playa, so that they stirred up a huge dust cloud that hung in the air, since there was no wind. I had alkaline dust blocking my nasal passages and in my eyes for the next 24 hours because of that. Too many people, too many cars; no more festival, perhaps. Ultimately, the positive aspects were the most outstanding. I had an amazing experience, had many adventures. And I met up with some great like-minded people whom I would have liked to add to my tribe of people at home. There were too many things to remark on them all, but there are at least a few I would like to mention because they were so damn cool: like the man and his wife who hauled 88 open-faced pianos and bolted and welded them together into a two-layer-high circular structure that, when finished, people could climb upon and bang the strings with drumsticks. When you went inside it, there the builder was, serving up champagne and cocktails while 30 to 40 people banged away at his creation. What a sight. It was strange coming upon it at the village's edge - like a Daliesque mirage. Later, he burnt it to the ground. One group had built a large mouse-trap game, which looked impressive, but I wasn't there for the demonstration. I liked the Irrational Geographic Society camp, where I spent a blissed-out late afternoon at Blanca's Smut Shack dancing under the sun to jungle, dub and trance music and later fooling around on their Moog synthesizers making trippy ambient music and noises and playing a gong. Thanks, guys, that was a fantastic afternoon! All of the wild, futuristic alien landing site structures were a stimulating sight, as were the various movie screens projecting wild and unruly visuals - especially the Porno Camp, which was in a direct line only 30 yards away from our camp. And it wasn't just hetero sex, either. Yeah! There was a multitude of impressive music, performances and interesting sights going all the time - everything from tribal, funk and DJ music, to masquerade processions, puppet shows and anything in between. As well, there was a medical camp and ranger station in case of emergency, and it was hot and brutal out there. The organizers and volunteers did an amazing job putting the festival on; it was truly a cutting-edge technological, artistic event, and they pulled it off with grace. They have had practice, though. This was their eighth year in the Black Rock Desert. Still, it was an incredible feat. Some of them stay for three to four weeks afterwards to painstakingly clean up, making sure that there is nothing left on the desert playa, especially the cigarette butts. This is sacred ground - why would anyone litter it? There should have been an R.J. Reynolds structure burnt in the Helco fire. For anyone interested in attending, here are few more things you should know: Don't go if you're not open to all types of people, or not open to nudity (neither seemed to be a problem this time); remember too that it will be very hot and dusty, and at times not very comfortable, and although it is a great event, it is starting to become overpopulated. Too many people translates to too many of the wrong people. It could be that this was the festival's last year, as a result of this. It might transform into something else, I hope. One of the organizers suggested to a campmate that people start their own festivals, with artists at the core. We can possibly keep these festivals more focused and special. I personally didn't feel comfortable doing transformative work on myself there, because there were so many people I didn't feel safe in that context - not like other festivals I have been to. After all, I thought that was one of the great things about festivals - getting away from the mundane and effecting change. I've heard that a strong element of personal change was formerly present at this festival. It is still there, but it is not as paramount as it was in the past. Eventually, the festival was over. The throngs of people took off for San Francisco. Some of us stayed behind and enjoyed the beauty of the place as long as we could. There was an entire journey that lay ahead of us, our return to Seattle. And we had been truly inspired by the festival and the wonderful people whom we met. The Burning Man rocked! Why the Witch Hunts? (#09#) Understanding the Burning Times by Bestia Mortale article Everyone has it in them to be animalistic, bestial, brutish and beastly. At the same time, we humans also have a far less pleasant side. In the last 100 years, most of the best-known social crimes that exemplify our ability to institutionalize hatred and stupidity have centered around ethnic differences. European anti-Semitism started off the century with bloody pogroms and progressed to the Holocaust. The Turks butchered millions of Armenians. The United States systematically oppressed its black, Hispanic and Native American populations. More recently, the Serbs and Croats have shown us civilization can still be a blood sport. Of course, religious differences also offer excellent excuses for widespread slaughter and destruction. The Christians have their traditional crusades, the Moslems their holy wars, Communists their purges. In recent times, from Sri Lanka to Northern Ireland, plenty of killing and cruelty is still justified on the basis of religion. So perhaps we don't need sophisticated explanations for the witch hunting that horribly tortured and killed hundreds of thousands of people, mostly women, from the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries, what the historian Rossell Hope Robbins called "the foulest crime and deepest shame of Western civilization." After all, women are weak, women are different; if no one owns 'em, why not kill 'em? It's the logic of fox hunting, carrier pigeon eradication, buffalo slaughter. The complexity of real life, however, usually falls somewhere in between simple blame and the tangled skeins of academic analysis. It is true that the witch hunts were typical of all mob-hysteria persecutions, and in this sense, the logic and dynamics of the persecution had little to do with witches. The paranoia, blame-hunger and blood-thirst of the mob were manipulated and exploited by all kinds of different individuals and groups for all kinds of different reasons, most of which were unrelated to witchcraft. By the time that witch hunting became a "craze" in the seventeenth century, it had a completely irrational character. Like twentieth-century anti-Semitism, or the child-abuse hysteria that has recently turned law enforcement in Wenatchee, Washington, into a tragicomedy, it was based on fears and fantasies that seem incredibly far-fetched in retrospect. Yet the roots of such bizarre fears can often be traced back many generations in a culture, where they started out as much more understandable. Take anti-Semitism as an example. I remember sitting on a bus in Kraksw in 1975 beside a relatively well-educated librarian who patiently explained to me that all of Poland's woes stemmed from the Jewish conspiracy controlling the country. When I objected that there were, for all practical purposes, no Jews left in Poland after 1945, he just shook his head at my unbelievable American naiveti. The Jews were always there; the Jews were always responsible for misfortune. I asked him if he personally knew of any Jews in Kraksw. He said not; they were hidden high up in the government. As we discussed this, I realized that we were really talking about a mystical proposition, not a political one. What astonished me was that for him, it was a commonplace, something everyone knows. I didn't mention to him that part of my own ancestry is Jewish. The roots of his convictions go all the way back to 1492, when a great many of the Jews expelled from Spain were welcomed by the tolerant Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. A number of them ended up in the free German towns, where they were ultimately forbidden to own property or engage in trades, and so were forced to become bankers and money-lenders. The Lithuanian nobility hired others as overseers and tax collectors for the vast and distant estates in the Ukraine. Centuries of owing money to Jews in cities and paying taxes to Jews in the Ukraine helped create a deep-seated irrational anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe that was nonetheless understandable. What is interesting is that as the conditions contributing to such anti-Semitism disappeared, the feelings themselves actually intensified. Deprived of any apparent cause or explanation, the long-standing prejudice grew and changed into the kind of mystical scapegoating that I encountered in 1975. These were the feelings that made pogroms possible and that Hitler was able to exploit so horribly. Despite a huge body of new scholarship devoted to witchcraft and witch hunting over the past 20 years, comparable roots for the witch hysteria are still not clear. I think, however, that a fairly straightforward explanation for the initial local hostility to witches among the villagers can be found in the Inquisition's records and is reflected in the absurd accusations routinely leveled at witches. The same sources also suggest several additional reasons why the Catholic and Protestant churches might have wished to attack witches. Before considering these reasons, it is worth mentioning what recent scholarship has taught us did not happen. We can no longer, for example, blame witch hunting on the corruption of the Catholic Inquisition, as did Rossell Hope Robbins. That is not to say that the Inquisition was without blame. In isolated cases, accusations of witchcraft may well have been motivated by a desire to confiscate the property of a well-to-do family. Also, reading the accounts of torture used against the accused, it is hard not to suspect that inquisitors, like their civil colleagues, were too often closet sadists who used the apparatus of witch persecution to indulge denied sexual appetites at the cost of other people's lives. Nonetheless, the vast majority of witches tried were poor, not wealthy, and whatever sadism may have motivated prosecutors, the accusations themselves generally originated in the villages, with strong grass-roots support. In the unusual instance when a witch was acquitted, it was not unusual for a local mob to lynch her anyway. Unpleasant as the Inquisition may have been, it turns out, as historian John Tedeschi and others have shown, to have been a model of restraint compared to the civil courts. While recent research has found no evidence of the widespread underground fertility cults and Goddess worship that Margaret Murray and Anton Meyer postulated in the 1920s as the hidden rationale of the witch hunts, scholars do continue to find evidence that the practice of magick was a commonplace part of village life. Magick alone, however, is not enough to explain church hostility to witches, particularly since village magick generally seems to have had a comfortably Christian context. The churches were usually content to ignore or co-opt harmless local pagan customs. Yet a mounting body of evidence suggests that both Catholic and Protestant churches did actively support witch persecutions at a local and regional level as part of a campaign to Christianize the countryside. The churches' participation only makes sense if witches actually held enough power in the villages to threaten church interests. How could older, unmarried, common women have posed any real threat to the churches? Demographic studies showing that, in most of Western Europe, accusations were frequently leveled at such women have convinced many male historians that these women must merely have been convenient scapegoats for pent-up village frustrations, outsiders who lacked male protection in a patriarchal village structure, powerless targets for man's natural dog-beating propensities. The key piece of the puzzle that historians are missing, to my mind, is medicine. I believe that health care issues go a long way toward explaining why villagers ended up fearing and hating witches, and why the churches regarded them as serious competitors for local power. The churches did not claim to be able to heal physical sickness, but the witches did. Imagine life in the countryside before the advent of modern hygiene and medical care. Imagine how often people suffered and died from illnesses that we now routinely prevent or cure. Think how much we're willing to spend on health care today. Think about your parent, sibling, lover or especially your child lying sick and dying. How important would it be to you to get him or her help? There were no rural "doctors" in the fifteenth century. Doctors were male, often university educated, more dangerous than most diseases and were usually leeches on the wealthy. In the countryside, wise women and midwives were the only recourse against ills of the body. Not coincidentally, they were the ones most often burned as witches. Medicine is and always has been a major business. It placed the women who practiced it at the very core of village life, which explains why the local priests and pastors found their power threatening. At the same time, they bore a terrible responsibility. Armed only with herbal lore and their grandmothers' spells, they were expected to combat every kind of disease and injury. Death was inexorable, yet for them as for any doctor every death seemed a failure, both in their own eyes and in the eyes of the village. As malpractice insurers know, the death of a child is the worst; bereaved parents seem to experience an anguish deeper than normal grief. Yet in those days, infants routinely died of disease in terrible numbers. As a magickal healer and wise woman, how do you explain a child's death to the parents? How do you excuse the failure of your craft? Interestingly enough, many healers handled this situation by attributing a child's inexplicable death to witches, who were somehow able to "eat" children by a magick that expressed itself as wasting illness. Historian Guido Ruggiero, in Binding Passions: Tales of Magic, Marriage, and Power at the End of the Renaissance, discusses this excuse at some length in the context of Inquisition records relating to a group of healers in the village of Latisana in Friuli. In the short run, blaming witches had the compelling advantages of deflecting both the parents' blame and one's own feelings of guilt. In the long run, however, it constantly confirmed a widespread popular belief that women who practiced magick sometimes used that magick to kill children. Ruggiero reports instances where healers directly or indirectly implicated rivals and competitors as the child-eaters in question. This is human nature at work - not pretty, but recognizable. In later times, it was very often the illness or death of a child that sparked a witch persecution. Didn't everyone know that generations of children had died from malicious spells, by healers' own admissions? You might deny one case, or two, but every village probably had dozens of examples to draw from. Historians agree that one of the first signs of witchcraft interrogators always looked for was that the accused ate or otherwise harmed children. While helpless dependence on the healers combined with anger at children's deaths was undoubtedly what most inflamed the villagers against "witches," the Christian churches saw the wise women as powerful proponents of non-Christian values. Another almost universal accusation against them was that they organized and enjoyed sex orgies. Most researchers reject such charges of orgiastic revelry as pure fabrication and dismiss as simple misogyny frequent clerical complaints about women's overbearing carnality. Considering the demographics, though, I suspect these accusations reflect an underlying truth. Women survived both war and plague in far greater numbers than men and often significantly outnumbered them as a result. Which of the sexes is more interested in carnality under conditions of equal access is open to debate, preferably accompanied by lots of experimentation, but I would strongly assert a priori that women who are not getting laid are hornier on average than men who are. In short, it is quite possible that there were a lot of very horny women around. What is more, the churches were not good at throwing parties. You could trust them for a parade, an elaborate saints-day celebration or Easter pageant, but when it came to a wild midnight dance with lots of good music and action in the bushes, you just couldn't count on the local priest or pastor. So who do you turn to but the village healers, particularly since their biggest business aside from health care was selling love magick? Of course, nothing would be more likely to convince the ascetic Christians that these women were agents of the devil than that they helped organize the night-time parts of holiday festivities, at planting and at harvest, at solstice and equinox. Finally, as a minor aside, there are all the reports and accusations of out-of-body night flying on broomsticks, grass-stalks and animals, or with fairies. Several scholars have suggested that the more poisonous herbs used in witch's ointments could have had strong enough psychotropic effects to induce such hallucinations. Combine this with the fact that a fair number of people are able to achieve very nice trance states through suggestion, without any chemical help, and I think it's reasonable to suspect that wise women dabbled in mind-altering experiences. Granted, this is largely speculation, but it would make sense out of a very common and otherwise nonsensical accusation. What I'm suggesting is that popular hatred against witches derived primarily from the responsibility borne by women as the sole providers of health care to the rural population, facing constant onslaughts of disease over which their herbs and magicks had discouragingly capricious power. The excuses that these healers understandably made for their failures, particularly in cases where apparently healthy children sickened and died, reinforced a popular belief that some healers were inexplicably malicious. I'm also suggesting that sex was as lively in the countryside then as it's always been, if somewhat clandestine, and that the large group of unattached women were undoubtedly eager to participate. Such libidinous activity would certainly have excited the hostility of various factions in the Christian churches. With less basis, I also wonder if people were not routinely experimenting with mind-altering effects beyond those of alcohol, arousing similar hostilities. The key point that many male scholars studying witchcraft continue to miss is that witches really were the main players in the witch drama: These otherwise invisible women actually did play a central role in European village life. --- There is a vast wealth of interesting books about the burning times. Among them, I particularly relied for this article on Jeffrey Russell's History of Witchcraft; Sorcerers, Heretics and Pagans (1980) and Early Modern European Witchcraft, Centres and Peripheries, edited by Bengt Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen (1990). The latter contains a number of noteworthy essays, including "Inquisitorial Law and the Witch," by John Tedeschi; an interesting, but to me oversubtle analysis by Carlo Ginsburg of the concept of a witch's Sabbath; and an intriguing article by Gustav Henningsen about parallels between this hypothetical celebration and the activities of an actual Sicilian fairy cult. The best picture of village witchcraft that I've found is provided by Guido Ruggiero's Binding Passions: Tales of Magic, Marriage and Power at the End of the Renaissance (1993). These works will also refer you to earlier studies. Although I have not consulted them, those most mentioned are Margaret Murray's The Witch-cult in Western Europe (1921), Rossell Hope Robbins' The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology (1959) and Alan Macfarlane's Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England: A Regional and Comparative Study (1970). For anthropological perspectives, Lucy Mair's Witchcraft (1969) and Edward Evans-Pritchard's Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande (1950) are frequently cited. Reclaiming Our Birthright (#10#) Earth-Magick, Culture and Ritual by Erik van Lennep article "Time is not a line/Leading ever farther from where we are/But fluid dreams and memories/Where ancestors and someday-children/Take us by the hand." - From "Initiation I," by Erik van Lennep, 1992 On a warm day in late September, I walked through the Vermont woods to arrive where 16-year old Nathan waited beside a beaver pond. "Are you ready?" I asked, and smiling with nervous excitement, he said he was. Turning, I led him back into the woods, until we reached a natural gateway formed by two large paper birch trees flanking the path. At this point, I asked Nathan if he was certain he wanted to continue on, and he replied with a sober yes. "Good," I said, "now take off all of your clothes and hand them to me." As he did so, I said, "You now are nameless and homeless, and naked as you entered life, you shall remain empty. You have nothing but what you carry within you." Having grown up in a rural setting where swimsuits are generally considered superfluous, if not downright annoying, and being a child of the 1970s and '80s, the requirement he disrobe was hardly as shocking for Nathan as it might have been for an urban youth. It did, however, place him immediately into a nonordinary state of awareness, a prerequisite for powerfully transformative experience. I have also discovered that full exposure of the skin heightens a person's sensitivity to the surrounding environment: Each nuance of breeze registers upon the skin, and it becomes necessary to slow down and to pay close attention to the act of walking. Textures underfoot become more noticeable, as well as one's passing through vegetation types, and the movement from sun to shadow. The feel of the surrounding landscape becomes a living presence in a way that simply does not ordinarily register while clothed. The symbolism of being ritually pared down to the basics was not lost upon Nathan either. We hiked the remaining quarter of a mile to a campsite I had prepared for his coming-of-age ritual. Twice more along the way we stopped, and I again asked if he wanted to return home. After the third time, there would be no turning back. Each time, as he responded with increasing confidence that he wished to proceed, the nature of the walk became more demanding, until the last 100 yards where I led him blindfolded through heavy brush to the clearing where we would spend the next three days and nights. Coming of age is marked by confusion, particularly within industrialized cultures such as that of the United States. This confusion is why traditional societies have always marked this major life transition with ceremonies and ritual. Ceremony calls attention to the importance of the event, celebrating it with community recognition and support, while ritual weaves the person and event into a fabric of meaning and tradition. Although our industrialized society has attempted to refocus its members on consumerism as a substitute for spirituality, the need for community, ceremony and ritual remains strong. It was no surprise that Nathan found his sixteenth birthday marked by a sense of profound disappointment. In our society, there are momentous expectations focused around 16-year-olds. They are led to believe that new worlds will open before them, while they themselves feel they have arrived at adulthood. But usually the transition is marked by nothing more than a piece of paper certifying the capability and the right to drive a car, which in many cases the 16-year-old has been driving already. Certainly, a driver's license heralds a new level of freedom and, we hope, responsibility, but it hardly provides the recognition required to celebrate a major life change. Nathan and I discussed this around the time of his birthday, and I mentioned to him that if he wanted to mark the occasion with something more meaningful, he and I could probably devise something appropriate. About two months later, I had a series of dreams characterized by intense imagery, which I later realized were pieces of some sort of ritual. It felt as if they were being shown to me for some purpose beyond my own dream work. Subsequently, the images came with increasing frequency and clarity, until by early summer I was "dreaming" pieces of ritual as I hiked in the hills surrounding my village. When I became aware that these visions and dreams collectively represented a coming-of-age ritual, I knew that the ritual was meant for Nathan. I told him what had been happening and that I wanted to offer a ceremony to him as a gift, and he accepted. In preparation, I showed him a basic breath meditation technique and gave him a series of individualized exercises to combine with the meditation, as well as a list of questions designed to inspire thought about where he fit into his community, his sense of responsibility toward the Earth and his own self-image. For the next 10 weeks, he worked with the exercises and questions he had been given. Vermont is still one of the most rural of the lower 48 states. Populations of animals once thought to be locally extinct or greatly reduced, such as moose, coyotes and cougars, are actually increasing. However, it is primarily a landscape of small farms and biologically impoverished woodlot and forest regrowth. It hardly could be termed wilderness by today's exacting standards. Throughout the reforested hills, one comes across rusted barbed wire, stone walls, old cellar holes and the occasional relic of an old still or plough. A variety of conifers and hardwoods push through the debris of the last three centuries and deposit an ever-deepening carpet of leaves, which softly and slowly shrouds the evidence of abandoned agriculture until iron and steel implements become knit into the forest skeleton of glacial rocks and fallen tree trunks. Despite repeated attempts to reshape the landscape of Vermont to fit some more agriculturally or industrially productive model, the land and weather seem instead to reshape the people who come here. The magick and power of the Earth are very close to the surface. It was through this landscape that we hiked to another beaver pond. The leaves were beginning to turn the flaming shades that make New England famous but had not yet begun to drop to the ground. For me, autumn is a time when the woods begin to hum with energy, peaking in early November, when the air is crackling with magick. The entire forest smells of summer's sweet ripening, overlaid by the aroma of countless fungi. Nathan had selected the site for his ceremony, and a few days earlier as part of his "ordeal" carried in water, canvas tarps, a stack of cordwood and a number of melon-sized rocks for a sweat-lodge firepit. The morning we began, I arranged the camp, built a small sweat lodge and a somewhat larger sleeping lodge and screened the site with brush barriers jumbled into place to resemble natural blow-downs. All of this preparation served to create a site that struck Nathan as new and unfamiliar when I removed his blindfold upon arrival. For the remainder of our stay, despite frosty mornings and one evening of drizzling rain, we were both naked, to continue the sense of being outside ordinary experience. By the end of our stay, we had both become so comfortable that it was equally startling to pull on clothing and cut off much of the contact between inner and outer environments. Although I had initially described the ceremony we were beginning as a coming of age, I had begun to think of it in the terms of "bringing Nathan through" a transition between realities or worlds. It is difficult to say exactly where the pieces of ritual originated, and to a certain extent it does not matter, and I certainly did not question the process at the time. I worked with my own intuition, subconsciously assembling seemingly disparate pieces into a meaningful pattern. In retrospect, the pieces came from the six years I had known Nathan and his family, from a lifetime spent in the Eastern forests, from a long time study of European and other mythologies and folklore, from my own personal spiritual practices, from years of close work with Indigenous colleagues and friends and no doubt from the world of ancestors and the Earth Herself. I experienced the process as flowing and integrated and highly energizing. I opened myself to the inspiration fully and without question. I had a general sense of the order I wanted to follow, but many of the techniques I used to create transitions or to open doors of awareness occurred quite spontaneously and even astounded me at their effectiveness. At times during the ritual, we would work at a particular exercise for a while with little result and then decide to move on to something else, as the approach was not working. During the night, I would then dream of a way to free the blocked energy and try the new method upon awakening to find it worked beautifully. By this point, Nathan and I had established such rapport with one another and the process that I would have been disappointed had the answer not come in the night. The transition from childhood to manhood for Nathan was marked by discussion of responsibility and community, of family and self-image, of sexuality and spirit. The material we used to compose the three-day ritual was based upon universal practices (virtually all peoples on Earth have a sweat tradition somewhere in their history) and upon practices from Nathan's own ethnic background, as far as he knew it. For some of the European Earth-centered ritual, we reached back to Ice Age symbolism and carried it through to its contemporary expression in the form of antler dances, which have been handed through European folk traditions in an unbroken chain. This unbroken chain is critical, because without cultural relevance ritual remains a superficial and rather alien exercise. The first evening, Nathan became the fire keeper, and he began to consciously separate himself from his parents and his childhood. Because his parents were divorced, and because he had been having a great deal of trouble communicating with his father for some time, I "fathered" him that night by wrapping his shoulders in a blanket, holding him in my arms and telling him stories about my own childhood and adolescence. Two days before we entered the woods, Nathan began a fruit and juice fast, and by the day we began, both he and I were on a juice and ginseng tea fast, which we maintained until the last night. The clarity brought about through fasting enabled us both to tune into subtle energies very easily. Working with breath meditation techniques for grounding and centering, I showed Nathan how to consciously pull Earth energy from the bedrock and up through his body and then reground it. Working with the exercises I had given him earlier, he channeled energy directly through his emotions, shifting from emotion to emotion at will. He was able to lean against a large pine and feel the energy coursing up and down beneath the bark, and we played games by passing energy back and forth between our palms. In another part of my work with Nathan, I discussed sexuality. It seems important in these times of acute social and family dysfunction to prepare young people for the bewildering array of information, on-and-off relationships and poor communication surrounding them, and the intentional, subliminal attempts by Madison Avenue to confuse the areas of sexuality, consumerism, power and need. I wanted to address the fact that Nathan would be involved with others who might use sexuality as a manipulative tool. I explained to him that magick, Earth energy and sexual energy were all the same, and that with practice, a person could flow from one to the other at will. We talked about sex as a gift coming from Mother Earth, and a gift which two people bring together from their own places of joy, to share with one another. Although Nathan was inexperienced and my points were all theoretical for him at the time, I hoped that, later in life when he became sexually active, our conversation would come back to him and help him remain centered. We talked also about how all life reflects itself in structure and intricacy throughout the levels of form and energy, from the atomic to the galactic. We used examples from Nathan's upbringing on the land but examined them in the new light of Nature being magick and energy. I pulled back the top layers of leaf mulch to show Nathan the fungal hyphae - the network of white threads that constitute the true body of mushrooms and that serve to knit the forest ecosystem together through mycorhizzal connections between tree roots. We watched the beavers at dusk as they cut saplings down around our camp, and we marked the boundaries of our site by peeing on trees to keep raccoons and their ilk from raiding us. We alternated between energy exercises and imagery, using dance and body painting to enact conscious transitions between points before and after becoming adult. At one point, Nathan was pulling energy directly from the Earth so quickly that his whole frame vibrated like a taut sail. At another time, I had him oil his entire body copiously and then go wait in the darkened sweat while meditating on his worst fears. Meanwhile I filled my hair with white clay and covered my body with black and red clay to become a monster. I shook the frame of the sweat and demanded he come out and face me. He chased me around and around the campsite while I jeered him for his timidity, and though he caught me several times, his oily body allowed me to slip out of his grasp. (Fear can be very elusive.) Finally, he covered his hands and arms with enough pine needles to wrestle me down and then dragged me into the pond, pushed me under and washed off the clay to unmask his fear and render it harmless. At the end of our last day, I returned Nathan's clothing to him and constructed a door-sized hoop of alder and oiled jute cord near the fire. Nathan put back on his clothing, which had been selected to represent portions of his childhood he would be leaving behind, and then stood by the fire. As he took each garment off again, he attached some qualities of his former self which he wished to grow beyond, and then consigned it to the fire. When he felt ready, I lit the hoop and pulled him through the flaming gateway into the adult world. I handed him a new set of clothes, which he decided to lay aside until the hike out, and we broke our fast together as brothers. From the moment that Nathan stepped out of the woods, where his family and friends awaited him with a welcoming ceremony, he seemed different. He was far more self-assured, and his body language was more confident. His family and friends all commented upon the remarkable difference. For months afterward and even today, where previously he and his friends used to hang out in a fairly random arrangement of bodies and postures, his friends now cluster around him, as if oriented toward the warmth of a campfire. He tells me that he received compliments from a female friend in his high school as being one of the few males in their group who was in touch with his feelings. On several occasions since that time, I have been with Nathan when he used the techniques he learned during his initiation to deal with an emotionally trying situation. Once when a mutual friend was slowly dying of cancer and we needed to be there for him in strength, I watched Nathan go outside on a bitter December night, ground himself and form a link between the Earth and stars until he was filled with clear energy. He came back inside and poured that energy into our friend, who visibly responded with renewed vigor for the next few hours. Though for Nathan I was able to create a ritual that worked, there are a few fairly daunting obstacles to creating meaningful wilderness ritual in contemporary America. First, wilderness itself is in short supply, and by strict definition (that is, untouched by obvious human presence or activity) practically nonexistent. Second, for ritual to be meaningful it must not only contain recognizable symbolism that stirs the individual, but also that symbolism must be somehow culturally appropriate in order to have any deep meaning. In addition, truly powerful ritual is not spontaneously created but must grow over time, as it is layered by repetition and cycles through generations. We are at a profound disadvantage in creating or finding such ritual in the industrialized world, particularly those of us in America who are descended from disjointed immigrant cultures. As if these issues were not sufficiently problematic, members of the dominant culture within industrialized society in the United States, primarily Euro-Americans, tend to carry a set of precepts about reality that create still more barriers between the individual and a rewarding expression of spirituality through ritual. A good place to begin the search for meaning and ceremony is an examination of our own cultural attitudes. Here are a few attitudes which I have found necessary to revise in order to make room for spiritually fulfilling and Earth-focused ritual: 1. We assume wilderness does not include people. This attitude is a uniquely Western perspective based in large part upon (male) domination of "virginal" lands. It creates a perpetual separation between humanity and the rest of natural life, a system of law that does not recognize aboriginal tenure of wildlands and a philosophy that "improves" land by destroying it. Conversely, when we can see that the majority of human cultures have coexisted with wildlands, that traditional societies practice sustainable management and that the wilderness experienced by European explorers was simply land where other peoples implemented sophisticated wildlife and land management the Europeans did not understand, we can drop the mystique of the great uninhabited wilderness and begin to develop a more nurturing relationship between ourselves and the Earth, wherever we may live. Don't wait for a trip to the Yukon or the Sierras to get in touch with your spirit. Go out in your yard and sit with the dandelions. 2. We assume that, when creating or recreating Earth-based rituals, it's acceptable to appropriate bits and pieces from other cultures to assemble something new. This is a very touchy subject. Traditional peoples who have had virtually every other aspect of their lives appropriated as "resources" by industrialized society are tired of being mined for their rituals. At the same time, people who are still spiritually in touch with the Earth wish others would get the message and stop plundering the planet. As heirs to the cultural dismemberment that accompanies industrialization, many of us are aching to fill the spiritual void we feel. When we come into contact with traditions or imagery that suggest a stronger and mystical connection to the Earth, we are attracted and want them for ourselves. Many of us are so disenchanted or appalled by the direction our own society has taken we want to jump ship for a way of life that seems more in tune with our values. The problem is that no matter how far we may run, we still carry with us most of our Westernized, urbanized, industrialized attitudes. Many such attitudes are problematic, such as the idea that if we see something we like, we can simply take it or buy it. We have also been conditioned to concentrate on the image or surface of what we encounter while ignoring the content, so when we encounter traditional ritual we feel that if we can somehow possess the trappings of ceremony we have the key to the door of spirituality. But spirit comes from within, and the material symbols that a people evolves to use in ritual are just that: symbols. They signify complex concepts that can only be understood by persons raised within the traditions to which they belong. Further, traditional Indigenous spirituality and ceremony are inseparable from culture and geography, since all have coevolved and are mutually reinforcing. In addition, Earth-based spirituality is by its very nature more visceral than conceptual. It cannot be analyzed; it must be felt. No matter how much we want it, no matter how much we are willing to pay, no matter how loudly we protest or how facile our justifications and denial, if it isn't ours we cannot truly have it. The idea of unequivocal inaccessibility is one that our cultural biases find extremely difficult to accept. It's a mind-wrenching concept. Here is another one: In our lifetimes, we may not ever see the creation of ceremony, rituals and traditions that both belong to us and have a power and relevance equal to those of our Indigenous neighbors. However, if we start now our great-grandchildren may share a spiritual groundedness that approaches what we strive for. The lag comes from the time required to repeat and layer ceremony through many seasonal cycles and human generations before it truly roots itself as traditional ritual. This is not to say that we cannot devise an entire constellation of personally fulfilling and spiritually engaging rituals right now. But which material we choose to work with makes a significant difference between deluding ourselves and disrespecting our neighbors on the one hand, and reconnecting with our own birthrights on the other. In my opinion, when we find ourselves attracted by Indigenous spiritual ways, the healthy attitude is one of inspiration, not emulation. 3. We assume our own, often European, traditions of celebrating the Earth and its cycles are lost in time - in other words, "you can't go back." It may come as a surprise to consider that the Western concept of time as linear and irreversible is only a cultural perspective, but so it is. In fact, for many of the very cultures that have attracted attention lately, time runs in cycles, or flows in many directions, or even allows past, present and future to occupy the same space. Certainly for all of our ancestors, time flowed differently than it does today. When we open ourselves to the possibility of time behaving differently than we have been taught, then the traditions of our own ancestry, our birthrights, become immediately more accessible. Certainly unraveling the tangles of lineage may take some work, but any single line will eventually lead back to a point when the people were Indigenous, in tune with the Earth, and when they celebrated their spirituality with meaningful rituals, rituals rightfully our own. It certainly is no greater stretch to rediscover, reclaim or rebuild meaningful cultural and spiritual ties to an ancestor from Friesland, the Czech Republic, Romania or Scotland, or for that matter Lascaux, than it is for a Euro-American to legitimately lead an Ojibwe or Lakota sweat lodge. The question is really not one of going back in time. It is one of getting back on track. Trust in the Hidden (#11#) The Healing Earth Tarot Card Deck by Vivienne Moon review (The Healing Earth Tarot, Jyoti and David McKie, 106-card deck and 228-page book, Llewellyn Publishers, $34.95) So, is this a Tarot deck or isn't it? The Healing Earth Tarot puts a new twist on a old divination system. The first obvious difference is that this deck contains 106 cards, as opposed to the traditional 78-card deck. The second major difference is the focus of this entire system. It was realized in order to "develop relevant teachings from the traditional tarot to a contemporary global awareness." Structurally, this system is basically the same as a traditional deck. It consists of Major and Minor Arcana. The Major Arcana has been recast to include the concepts of shamanism and multiculturalism. For example, The Hermit has evolved into The Wise Old Woman, still signifying listening to our inner voice of wisdom, but expanded, "beyond the fertility of the Empress to the later years of our lives when male and female merge into a dance of remembering our wholeness. She is the dark womb of grandmother goddess." And we have The Magician transformed into The Shaman: "Aware that to be fully alive means to move with change." Again, this energy is represented by a female figure. Further, the cards in the Major Arcana carry no numbers to place them in a specific order. The Minor Arcana consists of six instead of four suits. The two new additions are that of Pipes and Feathers. Pipes have been added to represent the concept of healing - not just ourselves or others, but our planet as well. Pipes correspond with the "elements" of herbal lore and wood. Feathers, on the other hand, represent the element of ether. They are specifically aligned with all matters of psychism and spirit. Each suit still contains an ace through 10; however, the structure of the court cards has been altered slightly. Kings and queens who sat on thrones in all of their regal glory have evolved into grandmothers and grandfathers. Knights and pages have been recast into the more easily identifiable concept of men and women. Now with the introductions of the newest additions to our cast of characters out of the way, we can - finally! - take a look at the overall deck. The Healing Earth Tarot has some of the most beautiful artwork I have seen on a deck in quite a long time. At first glance, it reminded me of Aboriginal artwork with its shark-tooth, brightly colored border around each card. Upon closer examination, one can clearly see the multicultural elements. What I see, however, is a strong basis in Native American spirituality. My favorite card is The Medicine Wheel which - you guessed it! - takes the place of The Wheel of Fortune. In fact, most of the illustrations are based on a circular motif, sprinkling elements of Native American concepts throughout. Jyoti McKie illustrated all of the cards herself, drawing upon inspiration from her dreams. What she and her subconscious have produced is a deck of vividly colorful, beautifully detailed images. What I love about these cards is that, although there is a great amount of clarity and detail to each image, this deck is also great for those of us who love to scry. There is enough ambiguity present within the structure of the image to allow for some intense meditation and pathworking. Speaking of the artwork, this would be a good time to address the topic of the two new suits in the Minor Arcana: the Feathers and the Pipes. I think a commentary on the artwork for these cards can sum up their presence in the deck. When I look at the illustrations for the cards in these two suits separately from the others in the deck, what I see is still very beautiful and well thought out. But, at the same time, they are somewhat sterile. It is obvious that these "new suits" don't have the inspiration for their images coming from the massive energy of years in the collective unconscious that the traditional four do. I have been reading Tarot for 17 years, and at first I was skeptical about adding any new suits to a Tarot deck. However, after examining the deck and its premise as a whole, I found the additional suits on the balance to be helpful rather than a hindrance. This is largely because the entire mission of this divination system is not to tell fortunes, but to enlighten querents about their own healing as well as the healing of our planet. This deck is accompanied by a 228-page, softcover book suspiciously called The Healing Tarot. As a good companion volume should, it contains black and white illustrations of each card along with the meaning behind the symbolism the artist chose to incorporate into each card and its divinatory meaning. It does not, however, go into lengthy discussions on the care of the cards, proper way to shuffle and so on. Nor does it give any correlation for cards and astrological significance, color, day of the week and so on. This is where we must get down to brass tacks concerning this system. If you are looking for the specific day when Aunt Millicent will finally find Uncle Harry's long lost will, this is not the deck to use. The Healing Earth Tarot forces its querents to look within themselves to see what could possibly be done from the inside in order to influence what is going on outside. The Major Arcana still, very obviously in fact, contains all of the elements of the spiritual side of life. However, the divinatory meanings for the Minor Arcana do not contain phrases such as, "sudden misfortune, ruin of plans, defeat in a war." In contrast, the corresponding card in The Healing Earth Tarot tells us "In a reading, the Ten of Crystals clearly tells us that what we are hanging on to is truly dead. All we need to do is surrender to that insight for something new to be born." The truly creative and intuitive will see that lack of detail in the meanings of the cards as a springboard for all sorts of insights into one's makeup. Included in the companion book are six new spreads especially designed for this new system. I chose to experiment with the Six Suits Spread and the Allies Spread for this review. The Six Suits Spread is based upon the North American Indian Medicine Wheel and is used to clarify any problem or situation needing insight. The six cards are lain in a circle and read according to what each position means: what needs to be done on a material level, guidance from the psychic realm and so on. I found this spread and the cards to be very accurate with what is going on in my life at the present time - and, boy oh boy, is my life ever a test for any deck! Obviously, some cards did come up ill-dignified, but I chose to do this particular test run reading everything dignified. Very, very accurate and insightful. OkayÉ so they told me things that I don't like to admit to myself. There. I said it. The Allies Spread is all about defining your totems at this stage in your development. I decided to read ill-dignified in this spread if the situation presented itself as merely a block in the energy of the card. Six cards are chosen from the Minor Arcana and one from the Major. This spread, too, was very accurate. My last card, which was chosen from the Major Arcana to represent the lesson being integrated at present, was The Star - reversed. In my humble opinion, it couldn't better depict what I should be learning and have the ability to accomplish, but have been fighting and ignoring for months now. Excuse me while I shake off a small chill. Overall, I enjoyed working with this deck. I have to be careful with a recommendation, though. For those who feel that too much talk about "spirit" and "lessons" is just too New Agey, you should pass on this deck. There isn't enough meat to keep you interested. However, if you are intrigued by Native American spirituality and have a yearning to do some heavy introspection, this is the deck for you. It is beautifully presented and well thought out. While it will not provide you with the answers to mundane questions, it just may provide you with the answer to yourself. Finally, for those who hate to get bogged down with too much direction, The Healing Earth Tarot is something you should own. It is an excellent springboard to enhance a creative reader's approach to the art of insightful divination. If you already have previous Tarot experience, picking up this deck won't be hard at all since it corresponds very closely with the traditional Tarot. Actually, seasoned readers will enjoy the challenge of learning "new" suits and figuring out some "new" correspondences for themselves. Upon completing my review, I decided to draw one card. What I drew was the Seven of Pipes. It "means for you to trust in the hidden powers of existence to heal and sustain you." Blessed be! The Broomstick (#12#) A Travel Guide by Tiger von Pagel travel article Are you looking for new travel ideas? How about a trip based on the Wheel of the Year? Here are some ideas for vacation getaways, both far away and in our own Pacific Northwest backyard, that relate to the Sabbats and their celebrations. This article's focus: Mabon. Mabon, or the autumnal equinox, is the time of the harvest, for reaping the bounty of the earth and celebrating the many gifts the gods provide for our sustenance and celebration. It is also traditionally a wine festival, when many vineyards in Europe commemorate the quality and quantity of the grapes harvested and test the character of the year's vintage. One of the best areas of the world to observe the lavishness of the harvest is the French countryside, particularly the provinces of Burgundy, Alsace and Champagne. From Paris, take the A6 roadway southeast into Burgundy, viewing the ancient vineyards throughout the countryside from which the namesake wine is created. Near the intersection of the A6 and the N74 is the picturesque village of Beaune, famous for its wine cellars (or caves as they are called by the locals). North of Beaune is the lively town of Dijon, where the Festival International de Folklore, a week-long celebration of music, art and food, is held in early September. The final day of the festival is the Fjte de la Vigne, a special observance of the vineyards of the region. From this region, travel northeast on the A36 to the province of Alsace. Just west of the German border is the medieval town of Colmar, which hosts a wine festival in August. Follow the Route du Vin, a winding road that tours a myriad of villages and hamlets all primarily focused on the production of wine. Move northwest into the region of Champagne and the vintners' town of Epernay, home to many of the world's best known producers of the bubbly stuff. Many caves in this area offer tours and free samples, and most vintage produced here is done so by the "methode champenoise," an ancient French law that governs the making of champagne. According to this law, any sparkling wines created outside this province cannot legally be called champagne. Remember this on your next trip to the liquor store! We may not have true champagne, but the Northwest is a prominent region for fine wines. The Mount Baker Vineyards in mid-September holds its annual Grapestomp, a festival of food, crafts and squishing grapes in giant vats. Tours are available year round at the Chateau St. Michelle Winery, near Woodinville, which is also a site for outdoor concerts. You can also sample local flavor here at the Columbia Winery, one of the oldest wineries in the state, or at the Snoqualmie Winery, overlooking the mountains near Snoqualmie Falls. If you truly wish to experience the sights, sounds and tastes of the harvest festival, there is no better way than at one of the many country fairs of the Pacific Northwest. There are quite a few throughout Washington and Oregon, some of the more colorful events include the Wild Blackberry Festival in Elma, Washington, the Pendleton Roundup in Pendleton, Oregon, and the Bigfoot at Baker Festival in Maple Falls, Washington. Of course, one of the biggest and best celebrations is the Puyallup Fair, more than two weeks of fruits, vegetables, flowers, livestock, arts, crafts, food, games and fun. Wander among the exhibition stands, take a deep breath and thank the gods for their bounty and beauty. For those who would like to explore the French countryside, but have not the resources for such a journey, I can recommend reading The Travellers Wine Guide to France by Christopher Fielden, a wonderful guide to the wineries throughout France. Or explore from your home computer via numerous web pages devoted to travel. I enjoy the Lonely Planet Web pages at: http://www.lonelyplanet.com.au/dest/eur/fra.htm Even the Puyallup Fair has a Web site! Get into the harvest festival spirit at: http://www.thefair.com Happy traveling! Book Reviews (#13#) Use "Candle Magick" to get an "Astral Lover" or maybe a "Mythical Beast" by Vivienne Moon review Advanced Candle Magick by Raymond Buckland Llewellyn Publishers - 265 pages- small format -$12.95 US Appendix, Bibliography, index I don't care what anyone says, I like Ray. The very first time I ever met him, the very first thing he ever did was tell me an off-color joke. It was instant like. His latest work, Advanced Candle Magick presents the reader with an abundance of information. Literally one half of this book is information about candle magick and ways to enhance its practice. Some other recently published books on the subject are of the fluffy variety in that they simply make suggestions for candle lighting. Ray's volume, however, gives the reader the basics on the workings of candle magick, covering general information regarding the practice of magick: Timing, Bodily Preparation, Stones, Magickal Tool Construction, Poppets, Plackets, etc. Once Ray gets into the subject at hand, he begins with a section on making your own candles. Very informative for anyone who has never done so. Dressing, lighting and extinguishing are also covered, something I have not seen in other recent works on the subject (can you believe it?). Finally, we have the Ritual Section. His rituals are not simple nor are they complex. The structure allows for multiple night's work as well as physical manipulation of the elements on the altar, which is why the term ritual is most appropriate here, rather than the much over-used term "spell." By his own admission, Ray has included rituals concentrating on the most requested subjects from the scads of letters he receives. Some of the more interesting topics for ritual candle magick are: To Protect From Abuse, To Bring About Reconsideration (of a decision already rendered), To Stop a Bad Habit, as well as the standard Wiccan Rites of Passage for Birth, Puberty and Death . Concluding the work is an Appendix with no less than 13 Tables. Subjects covered include Magickal Alphabets, Planetary Hours (yes, the cheat sheet for those of us who are mathematically inept), Planetary Properties and Magickal Properties of Herbs. I loved the Tables. Can never have too many tables! Advanced Candle Magick presents a copious amount of information in 265 pages. As for a comparison to its forerunner, Practical Candleburning Rituals (Llewellyn Publishers, 1970), there are many differences and similarities. The main difference is that the new volume has a decidedly more Wiccan slant. Gone are the two variations on the same ritual, one for the Christians of the group and one for those of the Old Religion. Also, there were many complaints from friends of mine about the Black workings in the first book. However, this latest work includes a section on ethics straight away. While there is a repeat of information regarding preparation for the actual Rituals, I much prefer this newer edition. It is much more readable, more slick in its presentation and overall just more pleasing to work with. It makes candle magick easily accessible to even a first time reader on the subject. This would be an excellent text for a class on the subject and I am considering using it for just that. More experienced practitioners may find this a useful "quick reference" and springboard from which to elaborate. But whatever your particular situation, Advanced Candle Magick deserves a look. Astral Love: Romance, Ecstasy & Higher Consciousness by D.J. Conway 1996 Llewellyn Publishers - Softcover - Small Format - $12.95 178 pgs - Bibliography - Index I should have known. I should have guessed it from the Harlequin Romance-esque title and cheesy cover illustration that I would hate this book. It actually took me only five pages to finally discover the truth. I have to admit right off the bat, the subject matter of this book is not something which particularly intrigues me. I really wanted to like this book - to learn something from it about a subject I am not very well versed in. What I found was a lot of drivel, horribly put together and a growing embarrassment for the author. Granted, there are a lot of experiences one can have on the astral. Some good, lots not so good, and some waters are better left uncharted until one is ready. A serious work on this topic should include a serious look at what can happen to the uninitiated and unprotected who dabble. Instead, we get a chapter called "The Good, The Not-So-Good and the Slimy." Again, one should take into consideration that in the astral, just as on this earthly plane, not everyone you come across is suitable for and/or wants anything more than companionship. In Astral Love, we have the chapter "Friendship vs. Courtship." I realize that Llewellyn is trying to keep their Tantra & Sexual Arts series alive, but volumes such as this just aren't going to do it. I also realize that there are many individuals out there who indulge in this sort of sexual practice. For those new to this practice, this is not the manual to teach you how. The chapter which was the most humorous and the best example of this: "The Benefits of Astral Love." "There are a number of reasons having a true Astral Lover is beneficial," writes Conway. Not contracting STD's (OK), not passing an STD (works for me), fulfilling sex for singles (isn't that called MASTURBATION with a large dose of fantasy thrown in on the mundane level, D.J.?), and my favorite grasping reason: not having to conform to the wishes of family, matchmakers or orthodox religion. Now, correct me if I am wrong, but those who are truly trapped by and care about the tenets of orthodox religion wouldn't even read a book like this in the first place, right? And in the neighborhood where I come from , anyone who spent large amounts of time in the astral, lover or no, was the recipient of an all expenses paid "vacation" in the Bellevue Mental Ward (Bellevue, New York City, is a famous large mental hospital.) After my fifth page, I finally decided what Astral Love reminds me of. That old "How to Pick Up Girls" book every guy in high school was strolling around with, reciting lines from. Except, this is the 90's version. Soda shops be damned! "Meet you in the astral, baby!" When I have a lover, I am sorry, but I want it to be on this earthly plane that I chose to incarnate on. I want to put all of my energy into making this earthly relationship the best it can be - spend my time nurturing and honoring my man in this dimension. So, to have to expend all of the time and the energy in the astral that this book suggests is necessary to acquire your cosmic lover....NO THANKS! Besides, call me kooky, but if Hank ever found out I was doing this, there is a 100% chance he would call it-CHEATING! < Giggle> Once I decided that this was not a book to be taken seriously, I had a bit of fun with the chapter, "The Good, Not-So-Good and the Slimy." < Giggle> Sounds like a trip to the local club back in New Jersey where I grew up. Then, back to the chapter, "Friendship vs. Courtship." Hey! I covered all of this in grades eight through 12! But the most fun I had was with the blurb on the back cover when I first received the book, which proclaims in bold letters, "Boost your self-esteem through the healing effects of a relationship with a higher-level astral being who really cares about you." Sounds like something Niles from the TV show Frasier would say. All this from the woman who gave us the brilliant reference, Falcon Feather & Valkyrie Sword. What I want to know is, D.J.-surely it was your astral lover who put you up to penning this humorous book and not your conscious mind. So, let's all just forget this astral lover book and get a good night's sleep! Magickal Mythical Beasts: How to Invite Them Into Your Life by D.J. Conway 1996 Llewellyn Publishers - Softcover - Small Format - $14.95 - 259 pp. - Bibliography - Index When I opened my latest parcel from Llewellyn, this book was on top. "Oh boy!" I sneered. "Another D.J. Conway extravaganza." After Astral Love, I was sure I never wanted to see another book penned by this author. However, to be fair, I sat down to review this book first and gave it a good, long look. Hey, everybody deserves a chance to redeem themselves! The title is Magickal Mythical Beasts: How to Invite Them Into Your Life. What I was expecting to find was a compendium on how to attract faeries and other nature spirits, the best way to summon, how to be kind to the elementals at circle casting, and so on. What I found was this: MMB contains 245 pages of actual text. The bulk of the volume, 229 pages, is devoted to a light reference of said "magickal mythical beasts." Every variety, from the New Age favorite, the unicorn, to griffins to fabulous lions (yes, she does use the word "fabulous" in the title of the chapter) is presented. The sections on the individual beasts themselves are no more than a blurb, albeit a somewhat informative one. There are creatures covered in this book that even I, a student in Mrs. Scully's 6th grade class (I swear, this woman wanted to marry Beowulf) was unaware of. There is a diversity of cultures represented here which is rather interesting and while the author never states it outright, this is just further proof that every culture basically had the same "thing" going with slight variations. For each "creature" there is said blurb, accompanied with a list of psychological attributes and magickal attributes. At the end of each chapter, she presents us with endnotes. Heh! More on this below. Okay, here it comes! My problems with this book are abundant. While there are many "creatures" listed, the blurbs are scanty at best. For example, take the Kraken. Okay, she's got the Norwegian people thing right, she's got the eyewitness accounts from sailors back in the 18th Century. But, nowhere does she mention anything about the Greeks, the Iliad, the Odyssey, or that really great movie with an almost nude Harry Hamlin. Magickally, she says one should never use the Kraken. "Very dangerous; not recommended." In the section on the Gorgon, however, she gets the history right, but what bothers me is that by assigning them the magickal attributes "Revenge, retribution, protection. Setting up a reflective protection to return dark magick," she is giving her well learned go-ahead for their use. Now, I could sit here and write 10 pages on why the Gorgons are far more dangerous magickally than the Kraken would ever be, but that's another article. By the way, where did she get these magickal attributes anyway? MMB is alarming in that it gives mainly negative attributes to our otherworldly companions. If you're looking for creatures to help you with revenge on Aunt Martha for knitting you that stupid bunny sweater back when you were 7, this is the book to own! But, what was the most unnerving for me was the fact that only in the very last chapter does Ms. Conway explain the virtues of working within a circle. The third part of her book, Working with Magick, has three chapters. The first two gloss over candle magick and talismans to summon your beasts. Then, finally, we have some mention of a circle. When I was doing my training, I cannot tell you how many times it was drummed into my head that absolutely nothing should be done outside of a circle. And, the summoning or conjuring of anything was high magick, very serious business, and should not be undertaken by anyone unless highly trained. I'm sure we all have horror stories about working with potent energies we weren't ready for. MMB seems to be an innocent looking stepping stone along such a path. Magickal Mythical Beasts: How to Invite Them Into Your Life is an easily readable volume with some decent line drawn illustrations. The information covered, however, can be garnered anywhere, and would actually be more thorough. The last two books authored by D.J. Conway have left me to wonder if there really is a D.J. Conway, or if there isn't just some tribe of New Age groupies doing light research in between college classes and turning their notes into Llewellyn. All in all, if you are looking for a quick reference and want to be made aware of some magickal, mythical creatures, it's not a totally bad book. But, you're not going to learn anything about magick, summoning or conjuring either. As for a recommendation, I really can't say it's worth running out and spending $14.95. For the serious magick seeker, there are much better books with more important information out there. Blessings of the Corn Mother (#14#) by Brighid review The path to Summerstar was a beautiful ride. The high cliffs of the Columbia River were majestic along the road, and as we traveled higher, the tall trees cooled the air around us. Curving back and forth, our way climbed the hill into the state park to our Summerstar camp site. This being my first year going to Summerstar, I was a little anxious to get to the site. However, I forgot about the fun labor of putting up the tent; fortunately, I didn't feel entirely inept, for others struggled with theirs also. Once set up, we were able to take a few moments in the shade and observe the quiet nature around us, before heading off to opening circle. I was glad to see old and new faces as we danced asking for the Goddess's blessing. The opening ritual celebrated Lammas, ending in a somewhat chaotic spiral dance. The band, Loping Camel, did an excellent job of portraying the rhythm and beat of the nature around us. Their performance included ecstatic dance and several stories, including a dance of the elements, the story of a Japanese goddess and god and the story of a girl who fell in love with the moon. Much of the rest of Summerstar was filled instead with sun worship, focusing on Lammas and appreciation of the harvest. Its main ritual was very elaborate, with formal callings for the elements; the ritualists danced their circle, inviting the audience to dance with them. Summerstar also featured our own Olympic games - both physical and mental - and many interesting classes, on ecstatic dance, incense making and others. We shared water fights at the fountain, beautiful workmanship in the wares of the craftspeople and long cool nights under the white moon and clear sky. With all these blessings of Her harvest, we were also blessed with one special gift from the Corn Mother, the birth on Sunday night of Beth Samarus, to the proud parents Wendy and Greg Gallacci - a true Lammas blessing. I found Summerstar really relaxing, not the least for getting out in nature. The change of scenery and the pagan company helped me sort out problems that had been bugging me. I'm glad I went. To those who enjoy camping under the stars, getting in touch with Mother Nature, greeting old and new friends, not to mention getting wet once in a while - this was a great celebration of pagan summer fun. (Inexpensive too; the cost was comparable to what I spend to go camping.) Next year, I plan to bring those 50 items I left behind! Hope to see you all then! Calendar of Pagan Days and Events (#15#) For details of events, see notes after this calendar. For organization addresses and background information, see "Pagan Resources." September 21 Mabon; CUUPS harvest celebration ritual, 7 p.m. 22 Autumnal Equinox 23 Yom Kippur 24 CUUPS healing song workshop, 7 p.m. 25 26 Full Moon; CUUPS full moon circle, 7 p.m.; Reiki circle, 7 p.m.; Beaver Chief's drumming circle, 7:30 p.m.; CUUPS affirmation circle, 7:30 p.m. 27 PSTS, 7 p.m.; EOC drum circle, 8:30 p.m. 28 Horn-making workshop, 7 p.m.; women's ritual dance class, 7 p.m. 29 Dragonswood, 10 a.m.: Michaelmas; Gwyn Ap Nud: 30 October 1 CUUPS business meeting, 7:30 p.m. 2 Guardian Angels Day 3 Reiki circle, 7 p.m.; Beaver Chief's drumming circle, 7:30 p.m.; CUUPS affirmation circle, 7:30 p.m.; Dionysus Day: 4 PSTS, 7 p.m.; EOC drum circle, 8:30 p.m.; Egyptian Day 5 Pendragons women's circle, 9:45 a.m.; horn-making workshop, 7 p.m. ; women's ritual dance class, 7 p.m. 6 Norse group, 1 p.m.; Runa Workshop, 7 p.m. 7 Pallas Athena Day 8 9 Felicitas Day 10 Reiki circle, 7 p.m.; Beaver Chief's drumming circle, 7:30 p.m.; CUUPS affirmation circle, 7:30 p.m. 11 Theater of the Goddess, 7 p.m.; STS, 7 p.m.; EOC drum circle, 8:30 p.m.; Vinalia (greek) 12 New Moon; CUUPS new moon circle, 7 p.m.; rn-making workshop, 7 p.m. ; women's ritual dance class, 7 p.m. 13 BOTA, 1 p.m. 14 Winters Day 15 Ides of October 16 "Return of the Matriarchy" lecture, 6:30 p.m. 17 Storytelling by Johnny Moses, 7 p.m.; Reiki circle, 7 p.m.; Beaver Chief's drumming circle, 7:30 p.m.; CUUPS affirmation circle, 7:30 p.m. 18 PSTS, 7 p.m.; EOC drum circle, 8:30 p.m. 19 Witches' Ball, 8 p.m. 20 Norse group, 1 p.m. 21 22 23 24 Reiki circle, 7 p.m.; Beaver Chief's drumming circle, 7:30 p.m.; CUUPS affirmation circle, 7:30 p.m. 25 CUUPS full moon circle, 7 p.m.; PSTS, 7 p.m.; EOC drum circle, 8:30 p.m. 26 Full Moon 27 Dragonswood, 10 a.m. 28 CUUPS "Earth Times" workshop, 7 p.m. 29 Eco-Elements crystal class, 7 p.m.; Wheel of the Year Samhain lecture, 7:30 p.m. 30 31 Samhain Samhain ritual theater, 7 p.m.; Reiki circle, 7 p.m.; Beaver Chief's drumming circle, 7:30 p.m.; CUUPS affirmation circle, 7:30 p.m.; Hallowe'en; Witches' New Year; All Hallows' Eve Calendar Details (#16#) This calendar information is meant as a networking tool for the greater pagan community. If you would like your organization listed, please send your information to the address on Page 2. Information for an event that recurs weekly is listed on the date of the event's first occurrence. All telephone numbers are within the (206) area code unless otherwise noted. Saturday, September 21, 7 p.m.: Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans (CUUPS) harvest celebration ritual; call John P. at 547-8093 for more information. Tuesday, September 24, 7 p.m.: CUUPS healing song workshop: a workshop on connecting with the Earth through music and song. All experience levels welcome! Thursday, September 26, 7 p.m.: CUUPS full moon circle. Gather at 7 to plan ritual; doors close at 7:30. This ritual is planned by the participants; call John P. at 547-8093 for more information. Thursday, September 26, 7 p.m.: Edge of the Circle Books hosts a Reiki circle each Thursday. Suggested donation is $3. Thursday, September 26, 7:30 p.m.: Drumming circle every Thursday night with Beaver Chief at Dandelion Botanical. Donation. Call 545-8892 for more information. Thursday, September 26, 7:30 p.m.: CUUPS weekly affirmation circle: Following a form developed by two Unitarian ministers, these circles emphasize a safe space, confidentiality and respect, and the group will lend strength to the goals of the participants. Contact Mary Z. (789-1560 or mzippel@spl.lib.wa.us). There is a sliding-scale fee of $1 to $5 each week. Friday, September 27, 7 p.m.: Pendragons Scuttlebutt and Trivia Society (PSTS) meets every Friday night as an open forum for speakers, students, musicians and the like. Free! Call 271-9909 for more information. Friday, September 27, 8:30 p.m.: Drum circle, held weekly at Edge of the Circle Books (EOC). Saturday, September 28, 7 p.m.: Horn-making workshop with Yvonne Gordon. Create your own drinking horn for personal and ritual use. This class runs for three consecutive Saturdays; tuition is $48. For more information, contact Pendragons at 271-9909. Saturday, September 28, 7 p.m.: "Dances of the Goddess" begins, a weekly women's ritual dance movement class led by Sonya Robbins at Pendragons. Learn to enhance your rituals with dance; no experience necessary. Preregistration is required; $60 covers the whole class, or pay $15 weekly. A $15 nonrefundable deposit is required. Class is limited to 10 people. Call 271-9909 for more information or to register. Sunday, September 29, 10 a.m.: Dragonswood, an open circle at Pendragons for women and men, last Sunday each month. Bring a snack (not sugar-coated, please) to share afterward. For more information, call 271-9909. Tuesday, October 1, 7:30 p.m.: CUUPS business meeting; all members and friends of CUUPS, the pagan community and the Unitarian Church are welcome. Call John P. at 547-8093 for more information. Saturday, October 5, 9:45-11:30 a.m. Open women's circle at Pendragons, first Saturday of every month. Ceremony, song, drumming, prayer and celebration! Free. Call 271-9909 for more information. Sunday, October 6, 1-3 p.m.: Norse group meets first and third Sundays of the month at Edge of the Circle Books. For more information, call Susan at 228-0986. Sunday, October 6, 7 p.m.: The Runa Workshop with Josh Gordon and Don Joseph. For more information, contact Pendragons, 271-9909. Friday, October 11, 7 p.m.: PSTS presents Theater of the Goddess. Are you a storyteller, comedian or musician? Silly or serious, get your "act" ready for a great night! (Performers, please arrive by 6:15 p.m. to sign up.) Saturday, October 12, 7 p.m.: CUUPS new moon circle. Gather at 7 to plan ritual; doors close at 7:30. This ritual is planned by the participants; call John P. at 547-8093 for more information. Sunday, October 13, 1-3 p.m.: BOTA, a Kabbalistic Rosicrucian group, meets the second Sunday of each month at Edge of the Circle Books. Wednesday, October 16, 6:30 p.m.: Astrologer Anne Hagen lectures on "Return of the Matriarchy" at Queen Anne Public Library, 400 W. Garfield. This lecture is put on by Cromaat Camp, Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), and is not sponsored by Seattle Public Library. Thursday, October 17, 7 p.m.: Storyteller Johnny Moses at Eco-Elements, 1530 First Ave., where First meets Pine. Bring blankets and rattles or drums. Call 467-7745 for reservations. Saturday, October 19, 8 p.m. Covenant of the Goddess (COG) Witches' Ball! Dance with Omen, concert by Wicked Celts, costume contest and more! For more information, contact Setara at 781-8893. Sunday, October 20, 1-3 p.m.: Norse group meets first and third Sundays of the month at Edge of the Circle Books. For more information, call Susan at 228-0986. Friday, October 25, 7 p.m.: CUUPS full moon circle. Gather at 7 to plan ritual; doors close at 7:30. This ritual is planned by the participants; call John P. at 547-8093 for more information. Sunday, October 27, 10 a.m.: Dragonswood, an open circle at Pendragons for women and men, last Sunday each month. Bring a snack (not sugar-coated, please) to share afterward. For more information, call 271-9909. Monday, October 28, 7 p.m.: CUUPS discovery workshop: "Earth Times: Why?" Using drama, art, costumes and storytelling, participants will discover for themselves what this time of the world's year means for them. Suitable for older children. Tuesday, October 29, 7 p.m.: The first in "The Magick of Crystals," a series of classes held at Eco-Elements; call 467-7745 for more information. Tuesday, October 29, 7:30 p.m.: A lecture on Samhain, part of Haragano's "Wheel of the Year" lecture series, at Odyssey Books in Edmonds. For more information and cost, call 672-9064. Thursday, October 31, 7 p.m.: Pendragons presents "Samhain: Night of Spectators," our first ritual theater presentation! Pagan Resources (#17#) For information on specific events from Mabon through Samhain, see the calendar. The resources listed here are meant as networking tools for the greater pagan community. All telephone numbers following are within the (206) area code unless otherwise noted. If you would like your organization listed, please send your information to the address on Page 2. Ambient Temple of Imagination is a mystery school. We are an international, self-initiated, nonhierarchical kaos heathen clan that utilizes all forms of majik, sound, arts, dance and so on. We are Tia-Maatian Thelemic in relation to Master Therion's law. We seek freedom of expression, true will, regeneration of Malkuth from the tortures of civilization; we believe in the true science of majik as essential to our "survival." Contact T.A.Z. at 343-3144; state your desires. Event line (Full Moons and so on): (503) 860-5210; call Pyromania Arts (Germany) at 49-6221-165766. Aquarian Tabernacle Church is Washington's oldest Wiccan church fully accepted by the government and other religions. The church provides open worship, classes, festivals and all religious services. For more information, call (360) 793-1945 (church, line answered 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.) or 527-2426 (LAPAGAN, a recorded listing of events). ATC, P.O. Box 409, Index, WA 98256. Botanica Lucumi features Santerma and Ifa consultations, ritual goods and related items, including books, tapes, CDs, orisha art and candles. The botanica is located at 8016 15th Ave. NE.; for more information, call 729-1000. Church of the Ancient Spirit Alliance (CASA) is an eclectic Wiccan church in Grays Harbor, for pagans of all paths. For more information, write to CASA-ATC, P.O. Box 2184, Aberdeen, WA 98520, or call Justine at (360) 533-3566, or the information line at (360) 268-9205 for a recorded message. Circle of Magick, a nondenominational pagan temple, offers pagan study groups, hand-fastings, weddings, same-sex legal partnerships and a prisoner outreach program. The Circle plans to buy land to provide elderly and homeless shelter and perform rituals. The Circle also provides a nationwide pagan referral service. For information, write P.O. Box 1558, Stanwood, WA 98292, or call (800) 573-3949 or (206) 629-6814. Rev. Judie Legg, high priestess. Circles of Exchange (COE) is an amplified round-robin, sharing packets of information for women on the Goddess-path. It is exclusively for women and includes an online mailing list. Mooncircles is COE's quarterly bulletin. Suggested donation is $10-$15 for yearly membership. Contact Circles of Exchange at 9594 First Ave. NE, Suite 413, Seattle, WA 98115 or through e-mail at arrowatcoe@aol.com. Covenant of the Goddess, Pacific Northwest Local Council (COG) is a national Wiccan organization that has been in existence for 20 years. Its focus is to serve the needs of witches, covens and solitaries. COG is a community builder. For more information, please contact Coven of Web and Scale at (360) 698-6528; ask for Grace, and refer to COG. No calls after 10 p.m., please! Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans (CUUPS) is a gathering of pagans, witches and Unitarian Universalists. CUUPS' annual calendar of events includes the solar and earth holidays, discussion groups and classes. For more information, contact John P. at 547-8093 or write CUUPS c/o University Unitarian Church, 6556 35th Ave. NE, Seattle, WA 98115. Cromaat Camp, Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), sponsors free lectures on various traditions that are open to the public. For more information, please send a self-addressed stamped envelope to: P.O. Box 9075, Seattle, WA 98109 or e-mail: cromaat@scn.org Crossroads Learning Center is a nonprofit learning center providing a safe and inclusive space for people of diverse philosophies to meet, learn and build community through classes, workshops, meetings, events and personal therapy. Free calendar, bulletin boards and parking. Crossroads Learning Center is located at 1412 12th Ave., between Pike and Union/Madison on Capitol Hill; its mailing address is P.O. Box 12184, Seattle, WA 98102. Dandelion Botanical is an herbal apothecary that offers herbs, books, incense, resins and magickal supplies. It's located in Fremont at 708 N. 34th Ave., Seattle, WA, center of the universe. Phone 545-8892 for hours and information on events. Eco-Elements provides offerings from the Earth: books, Tarot, runes, astrological materials, ritual supplies, Native American spirituality resources, music, environmental gifts, candles, jewelry, all-natural body products, incense, oils and more. Eco-Elements also sponsors select events. The store is located at 1530 First Ave., Seattle, WA; call 467-7745 for hours and schedule of events. Edge of the Circle Books, a magickal bookstore, is open seven days a week, Monday through Thursday noon to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday noon to 11 p.m. and Sunday noon to 10 p.m. Call 726-1999 for information, or see the ad in this issue. Edge of the Circle Books, 701 E. Pike, Seattle, WA 98112. Five Corners provides pagan and Craft books, tools, art, jewelry, Tarot cards, candles, herbs, oils, incense, athamis, wands and much more. Five Corners is open Monday through Saturday 11 a.m. through 6 p.m. and is located at 608 Columbia St. SW, Olympia, WA, phone (360) 352-4349. Greenwood Grove is an eclectic Neo-Druid grove that meets eight times a year. Attendance is by sponsorship only. For more information, call 789-3855. The Hermit's Grove, a nonprofit organization, maintains herbal gardens and ritual spaces and offers classes and workshops for the magickal herbalist. Anyone is welcome to hang a bell in the woodland in someone's memory or take joy in time spent among the gardens. For a listing of classes and events, call 828-4124. Magickal Gardaen, in the Everett Mall, provides pagan supplies including books, clothes, jewelry, incense and much more. For pagan treasures in the North End, try the Gardaen. Call 355-8694 for more information. Mamaroots is a modern proactive sisterhood dedicated to Afracentric spirituality, mythology, herstory, culture and politics. We welcome womin of any ethnic background who wish to develop Afracentric spiritual philosophy in themselves. We offer classes, workshops, business opportunities and priestess initiation. Call 248-7988 for more information. Mandala Books specializes in Wiccan and Goddess studies, Celtic myth and Druidism, Norse myth and rune lore, magick, Tarot, Santeria and Voudon and also in Taoism, Hinduism and Buddhism. We carry candles, incense, statuary and jewelry and have an esoteric video rental library. Open Monday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sunday noon to 5 p.m., we're located at 918 NE 64th St., in the Roosevelt district of Seattle. For more information, call 527-2979. Network of Pagan Midwives is a source of referral for pagan midwives and pagan parents-to-be. The network also helps apprentices connect with midwives who share similar spiritual beliefs about birth. Membership is $15 per year and includes the NPM News. Contact Lara at 361-7207, or write NPM, 18025 14th Ave. NE, Seattle, WA 98155. Odyssey Books vends pagan gear ranging from books to rocks, incense, tapes, greeting cards and Tarot decks and presents Haragano's Wheel of the Year lectures, covering lore and wisdom of the eight Sabbats. Find the store at 321 Main St., Edmonds, or call 672-9064. The Order of Dragon Temples, or Urdd Arleisiau'r dDraig, is a Celtic spiritual order and mystery school for pagan men. Contact the order at 1202 E. Pike St., #1084, Seattle, WA 98122-3934, or call 233-1170. Pagan Culture and Spirit Web, a student organization serving the greater Seattle pagan community, leads educational and anti-defamation campaigns on the University of Washington campus and organizes community Sabbat Moons on the Saturday before the full moon in Sabbat months that draw pagans from around Puget Sound. For more information, call Ian at 632-9580, or contact the Web at uw-pagan@farm.net. Pendragons offers art, altars, incense, books, statues, herbs, Goddess gowns, jewelry, ceremonial tools, medieval garb and accessories. Events include circles, classes and workshops; see the calendar for dates and times. The store is open Tuesday through Friday noon to 8 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday noon to 5 p.m. and is located at 310 Wells Ave. S., Renton, WA. For more information, call 271-9909. Queen Anne and Magnolia Branch Libraries invite readers to check out their books on Tarot, palmistry, astrology and more. The branches are adding to their occult collections, and those with special subject knowledge or interests are encouraged to make suggestions. Contact Wally Clark at the Queen Anne Branch, 386-4227. RavenCroft is home to EagleSong and extended family, a working croft, a garden sanctuary, a center for exploration of the Wise Woman tradition. The homeplace is built atop a bubbling spring! Workshops and apprenticeships, stories, songs, dances, dreams and visions continue to nourish this land. Contact RavenCroft Garden at P.O. Box 229, Startup, WA 98293, or call EagleSong at (360) 794-2938. The Red Fern, a center for learning and growth based on spiritual and metaphysical principles, has books, crystals, jewelry and oils. The Red Fern is located in West Seattle at 3043 California Ave. SW, Seattle, WA 98116. Phone 938-4289 for information on events. Rowan Tree Church, dedicated to the tradition of Lothlorikn, as in A Wiccan Bardo, is building a local community in Seattle. It holds lunar and solar rituals and a monthly discussion group, and it provides a library. Discussions and occasional rituals are open to nonmembers. Legally recognized since 1980, the church publishes The Unicorn, a Wiccan newsletter. Call Rev. Paul V. Beyerl at 828-4124, or write to 9724 132nd Ave. NE, Kirkland, WA 98033. Sacred Moon, a silent meditation, is an outdoor open community event held in Lincoln Park in West Seattle. Gather in the grove on the night of the calendar Full Moon. For more information, call Orianna, 938-3828. The Society for Ascension is a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to improving the quality of life by easy, effortless holistic attitude-orientation meditation. For more information, call Sarah at 233-8433. Spiritwheels is an offshoot of Circles of Exchange available to both men and women. It deals with primarily pagan and Wiccan topics, whether they involve both genders or just men. Rotations is its quarterly bulletin. Contact Spiritwheels c/o Circles of Exchange, 9594 First Ave. NE, Suite 413, Seattle, WA 98115, or online at arrowatcoe@aol.com. Sylvan Grove is a coven of witches in the Sylvan tradition, dedicated to the fey, to living a magickal way of life and to healing, transforming and loving in celebration of the earth and the old goddesses and gods. For information, contact Lady Sylvana, Sylvan Grove, 12345 Lake City Way NE, #267, Seattle, WA 98125. Tenzing Momo, your source for herbs in the Pike Place Market, also sells incense gums, Tarot cards, many brands of incense, candles and books. Its herbal supplies include packaged remedies, Chinese herbs and herbal teas. Tarot readings by Thundercloud are a store feature. 93 Pike Street in Seattle; 623-9837. Whidbey Island Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans (WICCUPS), a chapter of the national CUUPS organization, celebrates the eight Sabbats at our sacred circle on south Whidbey Island. Celebrations are usually held on the Sunday nearest the Sabbat; ritual planning and discussion occur the Sunday two weeks before. For more information, call Duke or Kate at (360) 321-7489. Community Notices (#18#) New WLPA Web Site Announced Merry meet, Washington witches: You have a new home in cyberspace. The Witches' League for Public Awareness (WLPA), a national, proactive educational organization founded in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1986 by the Rev. Laurie Cabot, high priestess, has just put up its own World Wide Web site. Our mission is to educate the public about the Wiccan religion and combat negative stereotypes in the public perception and the media. That all may sound pretty serious - even pompous - but on the local level, we're also serious networkers and possessed of the delusion that we can build a one-stop online resource center for the state's Wiccan/pagan community. As time goes on, we hope to list most if not all Wiccan, pagan-oriented and pagan-friendly businesses, services, groups, places, contact people and so on in the state. Ambitious? Yes, but we'd like your help. This site belongs to you, and it will become whatever you make of it. Curious? Please check out the WLPA-WA Web site at http://www.cnw.com/~greenman/wlpa.html for the full story; a link is also provided to the mother site in Salem. The Washington WLPA representatives are, in Renton, Rev. Raevun Shadowstorm (e-mail address siwre@wolfenet.com) and, in Mount Vernon, Winter Owl (e-mail greenman@cnw.com). Bright blessings to all. Mighty Aphrodite Closed We regret to announce that one of our favorite stores, Mighty Aphrodite, has closed its doors. We are sorry to see the store go, and we wish the owners much happiness and prosperity in future ventures. Sylvan Grove Outer Grove Class Sylvan Grove will again be offering its 13-week outer grove class this year. Applications will be taken November 1, 1996, from 3 p.m. till 7 p.m. Call Lady Sylvana at 363-7896 for more information. Creation of a Professional Health Care Referral List by Taliesyne I am a Wiccan clinical psychologist who helps pagans, Wiccans, magicians and Native Americans deal with their respective problems. Perhaps what the community needs is a Wiccan referral network of licensed health care professionals trained to deal with issues pertinent to pagans, Wiccans, magicians and so on. Many well-meaning high priestesses and priests try to help their people, but often the problems involved are beyond their ken. But where to send them? I would be willing to create and promote such a network if there was support from the community at large. If people think this is a good idea, say so. With this type of referral network in place, Wiccan families of lost ones in tragedies (such as the crash of TWA Flight 800 or the Oklahoma City bombing) can turn to those who would be sympathetic to their beliefs and concerns. Also, those who have medical concerns can seek help from physicians, nurse practitioners, chiropractors and so on who are sympathetic to their patients' world view. Those licensed health care professionals interested can e-mail me directly with the following information: mundane name; profession; license/certification; types of clients and issues handled; city, state and country; telephone (optional, though as part of this network, I would like to talk with each clinician personally to obtain the clinician's ideas on how to best serve the community) and Craft name and affiliation (that is, Gardnerian, Alexandrian, Welsh traditional, Covenant of the Goddess, Church of All Worlds or other). All personal information will be regarded as oath-bound under Craft ethics and confidential under professional ethics. For more information, contact me, Taliesyne, at: dr.tms@ix.netcom.com Blessed be! Witches Wed On August 17, 1996, Miriam Harline and Harold S. Henry were married in a beautiful witch handfasting. The ritual was held at their home in Fall City, high on a cliff overlooking the valley and river below. The bride looked stunning in blood-red satin. The rite was officiated by Lady Sylvana and W|lfgar Gregarsson, high priestess and high priest of the Sylvan Grove, Seattle, Washington. The delicious, abundant wedding feast was catered by Beyond the Edge Cafe. Widdershins wishes the newlyweds much love, abundance, passion and laughter. May you never thirst. Correction There was a paragraph inadvertently left out of NightOwl's article "Selling the Spiritual Dream" in the last issue. We wish to apologize for the oversight; sorry, NightOwl! The missing paragraph is printed following. "These people encourage spiritual seekers to be 'tourists' or consumers of flattering fantasies rather than doing the work of having a spiritual practice. Many people find it annoying to hear someone question the authenticity of their favorite source of spiritual teaching. If it is because you do not like to face it when you have fallen for a liar - oh well." Apologies and Thanks We wish to express regret for the lateness of this issue. There were numerous problems during production with our computers (Mercury is retrograde!), not to mention obstacles due to staff changes. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience. We also want to thank some people who provided special assistance on this issue. Extra special thanks go to Julie Albanese, Geo and especially Bonnie Lenk, for performing the arduous task of transcribing the interview with Beaver Chief, and all at the last minute. Goddess bless you all! We want to welcome and thank several other newcomers to the Widdershins staff: Bonnie, Candace, Felicia, Geo, Jared, Jerry, Julie, Megan, Peter and Shevaun. Your contribution of energy and effort is greatly appreciated. Blessings to all of you! Copy Editor Hands Mantle On Widdershins editor Miriam Harline, who has also copyedited the paper since its beginning, has now handed on her job to a collection of eager, hardworking new copy editors, including but not limited to Peter, Jerry, Geo, Megan and Felicia. (Thanks, you guys!) She will continue to help edit the paper and to train copy editors, but she will no longer be involved in the paper's production process. She has been one of the moving forces behind the success of Widdershins, and we will (and do) miss her production support terribly. We love you, Miriam! Ciao bella! Widdershins needs you! Widdershins' distribution is one of the most important jobs we do, and we desperately need help. It doesn't matter if we publish the paper if no one sees it! If you have a few spare hours a couple of times during the six-week period between issues, and a car, you can distribute to our pagan-friendly businesses. Doing distribution is lots of fun; you get to go to stores you might not normally visit and check out the pagan community and what's going on locally. The stores are great, and the people are delighted to see with you each new issue. You also get to hang out in the hot tub with a bunch of cool people and eat chocolate. We would appreciate you tremendously, as would a lot of other people who would be able to see the paper much sooner. It also would be great for your karma! We need help in all areas, especially downtown Seattle, Queen Anne, south Seattle, Renton, Kent, Federal Way, Tacoma, Olympia, Vancouver and Portland, Oregon. Do you live farther north than Everett? We are also looking for distribution points in Monroe, Woodinville, Bellingham, and for Victoria and Vancouver B.C., Canada. If you know of a place that might like to carry Widdershins, or want to deliver, please call Sylvana at 363-7896 to volunteer. Get Famous Fast! You can become a professional newspaperperson in a few easy steps - and become famous (or infamous) worldwide! Widdershins continues to look for desktop publishing experts, artists, writers, typists, office organizers, copy editors and proofreaders - in short, workers for just about every task associated with the paper. We're having so much fun, we've got to share it! Perks include semi-professional training and deep appreciation. Possession of your own personal computer, knowledge of Microsoft Word and/or Pagemaker for Windows are pluses but not requirements. For more information, call 363-7896 and ask for Sylvana. Letters to the Editor (#19#) Can't Find Widdershins greetings & MM, i reside on the eastside of this wonderful city and as i travel about i look for my favorite widders at bookstores and merchants but to no avail. it is very hard to come by. can i assist or help out to get these papers to the Barnes and Noble in issaquah? i wonder if there are other eastside pagans who crave the written word? please sign me up for a subscription. Victoria We Welcome Distributors! Dear Victoria, I am so pleased that you enjoy Widdershins! It is distributed on the Eastside; it goes to Stargazer, the Bellevue Public Library, the Hermit's Grove, Gracious House, the Stone House, the newsstand at Crossroads Mall and a Barnes and Noble bookstore or two. The Barnes and Noble in Issaquah, however, has refused to stock the paper. If you can think of another good place in Issaquah to put Widdershins, by all means let us know. I am sorry you haven't had much luck finding the paper. I wonder if we're running out too soon at our distribution spots (or if the papers are being thrown away by someone?). I would welcome more distribution help. We can always use more distribution! I'll be happy to connect with you, and I'll e-mail you soon to take you up on your offer! Concerning Submissions Greetings, Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be the Whole of the Law, I have to send my warmest compliments concerning Widdershins. I've seen the World Wide Web and printed versions and have been very impressed with your combination of quality and diversity. Thank you for producing a wonderful, accessible publication, and I will be sure to talk it up whenever I can. My question concerns submissions. What are your guidelines, and how should one submit articles? What specific types of articles are you looking for in the future? I am currently working on an extensive discussion of magickal modeling, and I have not figured out where I would like to send it. Would you be at all interested? If so, how should I get it to you when it is finished? Please write back to me here when you get a chance. Thank you. Love is the Law, Love Under Will, Grant Potts, CAW, Ape of Thoth Productions Submit to Us Dear Grant, Thank you. I really appreciate your feedback. Your questions were so important that I wanted to answer you in this forum, so all could have the benefit of the answer. Relative to submissions, all you need to do is send us a hard copy of your submission for consideration. Do not send your original - it won't be returned. If you also send the copy on disk, it makes our lives much easier - yours, too, in the long run. If we decide to print your article, we must have it in an IBM-compatible format, so it makes sense to send it that way to begin with if you can. You may mail it to us as e-mail if you live across the country or the state from us, or we can do a direct modem link transfer if you are local. Either way, what we want is the article on our hard drive, so we can edit, copyedit, proofread and print it. We are always looking for new writers and contributors of all kinds. We are usually interested in most anything that is of interest to the Craft, Wiccan, pagan and magickal communities at large. We also like to work with writers who are interested in taking feedback, are easy to work with, make the deadlines and are not afraid to be edited. As far as specific information on an upcoming issue, you may call us for future themes. If you write things of general interest, they are always appropriate. Also, realize there are situations where we may accept an article for publication only to have it get cut at the last minute for space. If that happens, we will usually use the article in the next issue, or some future issue. I'd love to see some examples of your writing. If you'd like to send me something, I and/or another editor will give it a good look. Anyone reading this paper may submit articles of original work, 5000 words or less, to the address in the publication information on Page 2. Sylvana Advertisements (#20#) PENDRAGONS Explore your own unique spirituality. Magick Mirrors, Athames, Swords, Books, Candles, Celti/Wiccan Jewelry, Celtic Knot Dresses and T's, and Ceremonial Clothing (206) 271-9909 310 Wells Ave. S. Renton, WA 98055 _________________________________________________________________ TECHNIQUES FOR THE AWAKENING SPIRIT Psychic Healing, Meditation, Personal Tranformation. Classes starting soon! Presented by Erika Ginnis. Practitioner, Teacher, Healer for 14 years. For information: (206) 314-2086. http://www.aa.net/~erika/ erika@aa.net _________________________________________________________________ BEN FRANKLIN CRAFTS Your Creative Outlet Season of Crafts sale starts today, ends Tues., Oct. 22 4" Flower Fairy Figurines. Use alone or to enhance any seasonal decoratoin. Reg. $14.99, Sale $7.49 From Samhain to Mabon we have supplies for all your holiday decorations: Candles, Wreaths, Dried Flowers, Grasses, Ribbons, Baskets, Fabric, Framing, Paints, and Supplies Downtown Redmond, near QFC 15756 Redmond Way 883-2050 HOURS: Mon-Fri 9am-9pm, Sat 9am-7pm, Sun 10am-6pm Ready-To-Decorate ABACA Dolls Straw-like fibers form the head, hair, arms, body, and skirt of this basic doll that can be decorated many ways. Lightweight enough to add to wreaths, hang on a door, etc. Plain doll can be used as angel, Goddess, or any other entity. 18" Witch or Plain - Reg. $10.99, Sale $7.96 36" Witch or Plain - Reg. $19.99, Sale $16.96 48" Witch only - Reg. $49.99, Sale $34.96 _________________________________________________________________ MAGICKAL GARDEN Come visit us in our new location! Exotic Clothes, Trade Beads, Jewelry, Incense, Burners, Tarot Cards, Crystals, Oils, Metaphysical Books, Large selection of rare books and treasures from around the world! Everett Mall (206) 355-8694 Blessed Be! _________________________________________________________________ ECO-ELEMENTS * Offerings From the Earth * Books, Tarot, Runes, Goddess, Ritual, Astrology, Statues, Meditation, Music, Environmental Gifts, Native American Spiritual Resources, Candles, Jewelry, All Natural Body Products, Soaps, Incense, Oils, Aromatherapy Eco-Elements Mind, Body, Spirit, Earth 1530 First Avenue (206) 467-7745 _________________________________________________________________ BODY VOODOO SKIN ART Mystical, Mythical, Magickal. Tattoos for every body! Fine Line, Black/Gray Work, Neo-Tribal, Full Color. Custom only - no flash! Disposable needles, sterile procedures. Privacy and comfort. Specializing in women's body art. Woman owned. Artist: Sylvana By appointment only (206) 363-7896 or 1-800-575-6004 _________________________________________________________________ EDGE OF THE CIRCLE BOOKS Magickal Books, Gifts, and Supplies - Urbanely Pagan, Overtly Occult Candles, Incense, Jewelry, Statuary, and a wide selection of Books on topics such as Wicca and Neo-Paganism, Vodoun and Santeria, Tantra, Celtic and Nordic Studies, Kabbalah, Ceremonial Magick, and more. Reiki Circle. Thursdays at 7pm. $3.00 donation. AA Alternative Spirituality Recovery Group. Tuesdays at 7:30pm. One dollar requested donation. Call Jon at 860-3740. The seed is planted - help it grow. Tauist Chi Kung. 6:00pm-7:30pm Saturdays. The Tao Tan Pai system of Chi Kung and internal alchemy include internal energy cultivation for self-healing, external energy manipulation for healing others, enhanced spiritual awareness. $3.00 donation. Si-hing Michael Du Wors. 807-5891. 701 E Pike St. Seattle, WA 98122 Corner of Boylston Ave, just two blocks west of Broadway, on Capitol Hill For more information, call (206) PAN-1999 _________________________________________________________________ ODYSSEY BOOKS Embark upon an odyssey of the senses books, cards, art books, posters, tapes, cds, rain sticks, scented candles, incense, aromatherapy, perfume oils, bath products, harmony balls, wind and desk chimes, crystals, tarot cards, rune stones, astrology books, goddess jewelry, native American jewelry, shamanic jewelry, tumbled stones, devotional statuary. 321 Main Street Edmonds, WA 98020 (206) 672-9064 _________________________________________________________________ NWCOG WITCHES' BALL Concert by Wicked Celts. Dance with Omen Costume Contest, Raffle, Refreshments Provided. Ancestor Ceremony by James Gagne 1714 18th Ave, Capitol Hill, Seattle Saturday, October 19, 1996 - 8:00pm to 12:45am $15 per person in advance, $20 after September 30th Phone Setara (206) 781-8893 _________________________________________________________________ BOTANICA LUCUMI Cameron and Jill Howard, Proprietors Ifa/Santeria Consultations, Orisha/Santeria Supplies, Books, Candles, Oils, Orisha Art 8016 15th Avenue NE Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 729-1000 _________________________________________________________________ FIVE CORNERS Ancient European Gifts, Folklore, and Supplies Books and Tools for Witchcraft and Paganism Art, Jewelry, Tarot Cards, Candles, Gifts, Herbs, Oils, Incense, Books, and much, much more! 608 Columbia St. S.W. Olympia, WA 98501 (360) 352-4349 Open Monday thru Saturday, 11am-6pm _________________________________________________________________ SLYVANA Professional Custom Tattooing Realistic, tribal, symbolic, black/gray and full color. All disposable supplies, sterile, hygenic procedures. Body VooDoo Skin Art Seattle - by appointment only: (206) 363-7896 or 1-800-575-6004. _________________________________________________________________ FIREWALKING I will come to your location to lead a firewalk for your: Birthday Party, Special Event, Corporate Training Michael McDermott. (206) 821-9050 _________________________________________________________________ SYLVANA Psychic Tarot, Ceremonies, Hypnotherapy, Counseling, Classes/Workshops Amanda Silvers HPS Sylvan Grove 12345 Lake City Way NE, #267 Seattle, WA 98125 (206) 363-1908 _________________________________________________________________ INSPIRATION IS THE IN-BREATH OF SPIRIT Spiritual Counseling, Meditation Instruction, Energy Work, and Healing Rev. Erika Ginnis: (206) 314-2086 http://www.aa.net/~erika/ erika@aa.net _________________________________________________________________ TENZING MOMO, INC. 93 Pike Seattle, WA 98101 (206) 623-9837 Pike Place Market's Herbal Apothecary & Parfumerie for 7 Years Bulk Herbs, Tinctures, Fluid Extracts, Solid Extracts, Essential Oils, Chinese Medicines, Herbal Sundries, Incense, Special Orders _________________________________________________________________ GODDESS GLOW Specializing in Massage for Larger Women 206-363-9404 Give Your Body and Spirit a Treat Today _________________________________________________________________ MANDALA BOOKS Easter religions and Western magick, incense and jewelry, statuary and music, video rentals. Open 7 days a week. 918 NE 64th St. Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 527-2979 _________________________________________________________________ WORTCUNNING PRESENTS Leon's List The Top Ten Witchcraft Titles Available on the World Wide Web at: http://www.tenzing.com/~wc/leonslist.html A SASE will get you the list by mail: Leon's List / PO Box 9785 / Seattle, WA 98109 _________________________________________________________________ THE RED FERN A Center for Learning and Growth Based on Spiritual and Metaphyiscal Principles NEW AGE STORE: Books, Crystals, Jewelry, Oils, Etc... Heanne D. Macri Phone: (206) 938-4289 Fax: (206) 938-1101 3042 California Ave. S.W. Seattle, WA 98116 _________________________________________________________________ DISCOUNT HERBS Dried herbs, live plants, classes and books The Hermit's Grove by apointment only (206) 828-4124 Paul Beyerl: author The Master Book of Herbalism, Painless Astrology, A Wiccan Bardo, Holy Books of the Devas _________________________________________________________________ Widdershins is printed on recycled paper with soy ink. _________________________________________________________________ Your ad could be here! Call for advertising rates and deadline information: (206) 363-7896 _________________________________________________________________ SUPPORT OUR ADVERTISERS! SAY YOU SAW IT IN WIDDERSHINS! Widdershins Distribution Points (#21#) Seattle Capitol Hill Beyond the Edge Cafe Cafe Septieme The Crypt Edge of the Circle Books Espresso Roma Cafe Paradiso Toys in Babeland Twice Sold Tales Wild Rose Downtown Eco-Elements Tenzing Momo Queen Anne Queen Anne Public Library University District/Wallingford Astrology et Al. Barnes and Noble Bookstore Herbal Alternatives The Herbalist Gargoyles The Last Exit Mandala Books The University of Washington University Unitarian Church Zenith Supplies Fremont Dandelion Botanical West Seattle The Red Fern East Bellevue Barnes and Noble Bookstore Bellevue Public Library Daily Planet News (Crossroads Mall) Stargazer Kirkland The Hermit's Grove Redmond The Stone House Gracious House North Edmonds Odyssey Books Everett Magickal Gardaen (in the Everett Mall) South Renton Pendragons Kent Chrysalis Books Federal Way Blue Moon Espresso and Books Tacoma Magickal Garden Olympia Five Corners Portland Goddess Galley Moon Shadow If you wish to carry the paper, give us a call. Thank you. WIDDERSHINS - The Northwest's Finest Pagan Newspaper E-Mail: sfpse@u.washington.edu WWW Home Page: http://weber.u.washington.edu/~sfpse/widdershins/ Anon FTP Site: ftp.u.washington.edu /pub/user-supported/widdershins Mail: Emerald City/Silver Moon Productions 12345 Lake City Way NE, Suite 268 Seattle, WA 98125 Phone: (206) 363-7896