Feathers; Crow and Raven

This image popped up on my Facebook page:

I was reminded of a dream I had the night before last. So much going on in that dream! Including my smudging my home with sage. But part of that dream involved Crow and Raven:

I'm standing in front of our house, which is on a little hill. Lots of grass and small plants all around. The city is below us. Twinkling lights. Very peaceful, yet very energized at the same time . Looking up at the active, beautiful sky. No UFOs, but a sort of UFO vibe. The stars are alive. So energizing and beautiful!  I was telling the person I was with about the differences between crows and ravens, and how, in this area, ravens aren't usually seen. A crow appears; with a beautiful violet streak of color on some of its feathers. Now, a raven appears! The raven has the most glorious peacock kind of blue color streak on its feathers. The birds are glowing. I have the distinct impression the raven came because it knew I was talking about it. As with the crow. The two are aware of each other. Not enemies, not at all, but they keep their distance from each other. The raven seems to be telling me to delve deeper, closer. To what, I'm not sure. I awake with such an energized, positive feeling. 

Newfound 'Gospel of the Lots of Mary' discovered in ancient text | Fox News

(cross posted at my blog UFO-Mary)



Professor of religion Anne Marie Luijendijk, author of Forbidden Oracles? The Gospel of the Lots of Mary,  on the find:

Newfound 'Gospel of the Lots of Mary' discovered in ancient text | Fox News: The text would have been used for divination, Luijendijk said. A person seeking an answer to a question could have sought out the owner of this book, asked a question, and gone through a process that would randomly select one of the 37 oracles to help find a solution to the person's problem. The owner of the book could have acted as a diviner, helping to interpret the written oracles, she said.

Book thieves target the occult - East Oregonian

News from eastern Oregon, where apparently book thieves have been stealing books on metaphysical topics for a long time. What's slightly irritating is that the article leads off with "…books about black magic, Satanism, the occult and other related subjects…" then goes into books on tarot.



Moot point, true. Fact is, focused intent on ridding the public library of such books. Have to protect the citizens from evil don't you know.



I'm surprised they aren't able to trace who the thieves are. Seems easy enough to figure out. By the way, books on mushrooms also go missing.

Book thieves target the occult - East Oregonian: A cursory search for books about tarot cards reveals there’s only one that can be checked out at the Pendleton library, while the other can only be viewed inside the facility.

Of the 36 tarot card books in the Sage Library System, which covers 77 libraries in fifteen counties in Eastern and Central Oregon, 28 percent are considered lost or missing.

While the Sage system does have a small collection of nonfiction books about Satanism, including the Satanic Bible at the Milton-Freewater Public Library, the Pendleton library has no books directly about Satanism.

From Tarotize - Holistic Tarot: The Totem Tarot Spread

I found this recent blog post from Lisa Frideborg at Tarotize on totems inspiring and timely. I've posted several dreams and waking life moments involving Dog, and have been working with this recurring imagery. Without much insight, so far. I can't wait to try Lisa's spread.

Tarotize - Holistic Tarot: The Totem Tarot Spread: These days, it is quite easy to just Google the meaning of totem animals. However, no matter what they mean in general, you may still not find the exact message they have for you at this point in time... There are a couple of ways of resolving this: you can either keep trying to connect with the spirit animal in your dreams or in meditation until the message becomes clear... OR you can do a Tarot reading on it with the Tarot spread I created specifically for this: (Lisa Frideborg, Tarotize blog)

5 Minute Crystal Protection

A nice little ritual that uses a few specific stones and crystals from 7 Witches Coven: 5 Minute Crystal Protection

The Full Moons of 2015

With chart. The Full Moons of 2015

New pouch!

A surprise from my friend Diana who made this lovely pouch for me. The picture doesn't show the pretty green in the design.

Now, which deck to place inside this lovely case? Or, maybe an occasion to purchase new deck. Cosmic tarot, maybe?

Cosmic Tarot

Lucid Dreaming: Dog Again, Two Jacque Vallees

Lucid dreaming: awareness of the self or that you're dreaming within a dream. Here's one definition of lucid dreaming from The Lucidity Institute:

"Lucid dreaming means dreaming while knowing that you are dreaming. The term was coined by Frederik van Eeden  who used the word "lucid" in the sense of mental clarity. Lucidity usually begins in the midst of a dream when the dreamer realizes that the experience is not occurring in physical reality, but is a dream. Often this realization is triggered by the dreamer noticing some impossible or unlikely occurrence in the dream, such as flying or meeting the deceased. Sometimes people become lucid without noticing any particular clue in the dream; they just suddenly realize they are in a dream. A minority of lucid dreams (according to the research of LaBerge and colleagues, about 10 percent) are the result of returning to REM (dreaming) sleep directly from an awakening with unbroken reflective consciousness."

Dog: Spike Returns

Dog visited again the other night: repeating dreamscape of a dilapidated house, somehow ours. Lots more: I don't want to go into the house while Jim is away, the place is in a semi-rural area, lots of open lots with patchy grass, no trees, pretty ugly and bare. Front of the garage half gone, 2/3 seem to have been sliced in half so now it's a sort of lean to. I prefer to stay in there until Jim gets back.  Jim goes off for the entire day to return with a dog. Now our dog. 

Portrait eines Dobermanns, C. Reichert 1916 public domain

The thing about this dog is, the dog (Doberman) is from our waking life. Thirty years ago we lived in a place with this dog, who was great. Just a great, smart, sweet dog. In the dream, I say to Jim "This is very weird; Spike here would be over thirty years old, and dogs don't live that long." I was happy to see Spike again, but couldn't get past the strangeness of how it could be that he would still be alive, and healthy and young and happy at that.

(Dog, as dream guide and recurring image has been a recurring symbol in my dreams for awhile now. I've been working with Dog in my dreams; one, obviously the persistence of the image is important and two, I'm not a dog person. I love animals, and once I get to know a dog, I will often end up loving it. Oftentimes I wish I had a dog, but the timing and living situation is not right. At the same time, I've several extremely unpleasant and dangerous episodes involving dogs.)

UFO Researcher: The Two Jacque Vallees

A night or two after that, I had a dream about a golden UFO which I posted about on my UFO blog the Orange Orb. The UFO researcher Jacque Vallee appeared in the dream, but the man "playing" him was completely different in appearance. I comment to others in that dream that "This is very strange, in reality -- not here in this dream --  Vallee looks nothing like this. Vallee is tall, thin, has gray hair, this man is short, bald, not thin."

Dreaming is deeply intriguing. What lives in our subconscious, the levels and layers of dreaming (such as lucid dreaming), the recurring "dreamscapes" and symbols -- in my case, Dog -- and the frustrating and elusive nature of remembering dreams. It is fascinating to know that we had dreamt that night when we wake up in the morning, but just can't remember the dream. Or, we might have a few vague memories of that dream.  But those memories, that dream history, is still alive somewhere. Where? What part of the mind do these dream memories live? What part of the astral -- outside of us -- do they live?

What message are my guides sending via these lucid moments? What are the triggers that have caused these lucid moments to pop up in my dreams recently? No doubt meditation has been the cause; something I've just started doing again with intent, focus and consistency. (That last part … not easy for some of us.)

All this calls for a reading using the Angel Dreams oracle, which I will post here tomorrow.

Doreen Virtue and Melissa Virtue: Angel Dreams oracle

Sixteen Things Mentally Ill Pagans Have To Put Up With

Oh yeah. From Patheos.com -- How many times have some of us been at events and heard these, often from our fearless "leaders" who are supposed to be oh-so-damn-fucking-spiritual-more-than-you-that's-for-sure? Among my favorites are the following:

Sixteen Things Mentally Ill Pagans Have To Put Up With: 6. People acting like you somehow fail devotion to the gods if you have a mental health issue, especially if you are having a hard time and you are scaling back from your spiritual activities a bit for self-care, with bonus points if they say something along the lines of “I have a (minor) disability and I make myself get out of bed and do this and that and there’s no excuse for you!”

And this:

8. People saying “but you don’t look mentally ill!” or “you seem so high-functioning!”

Then this, which is something those pesky little debunker skeptoids like to say:

9. People treating you like any mystical experiences you have are invalid if you have a diagnosed mental illness, with the implication that your mental illness is creating hallucinations and delusions.

I admit I sometimes tell someone I'm praying for them without asking -- my intention is good, I just forget about the common courtesy of asking first. So when someone does that to me, I don't much mind.



However, it is interesting that the same holds true with readings. I would never do a reading on someone or their situation without their permission. I do not mean a reading for my own personal insight into the situation in the context of how I fit in; I mean a sort of "psychic spying" or intrusion. And in that setting, just how accurate could a reading be?


Read more: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/paganswithdisabilities/2015/01/16-things-mentally-ill-pagans-have-to-put-up-with/#ixzz3PW8B7bh9

Apples and Orangutans: Traditional Witchcraft vs. Wicca

From Sable Aradia at Patheos.com. On comparing Wicca, or wicca, and witchcraft. Wiccan vs. witch. Witchery. Wiccery. All right, that last  is not a term.



But the diverseness and arguments continue with downright vehemence. Those of us doing our thing are accused by others, told we're doing it wrong, or don't get to, or …. you know.



I like what this author has to say about it all:

Apples and Orangutans: Traditional Witchcraft vs. Wicca: Traditional witchcraft is a folkloric magical practice (never magick with a K, that’s pretentious and would admit some kind of association with Aleister Crowley, who is icky like Gardner) based in European folk traditions and honouring European agricultural and seasonal cycles. It involves a certain degree of animism and respect for nature, but traditional witches can be of many different faiths. Often they regard themselves as shamans, animists, pantheists, panentheists, polytheists, and occasionally Christians or even Satanists, as the Horned God is equated frequently with the Devil in folklore. Those who descend from the work of the Clan of Tubal Cain often incorporate elements of The White Goddess into spiritual practice, as Robert Cochrane did. Some claim to be (and some are) witches as part of a family tradition. Its practices are similar to those of folk magic practitioners of other cultures, with a strong grounding in sympathetic magic.

And then there's this, which mirrors my own experience:

A valid argument of traditional witches that I do support is in saying that going to Sabbat circles eight times a year does not make you a witch; practicing magic does.  “Witch” is a calling and a job description.  Yes, I agree.  But practicing magic does not require you to have any faith in particular; or even to have a faith at all.
I was doing witchcraft before I even knew that it had a name.  I know some people claim they were taught in a hereditary tradition that goes back to the dawn of ancient history; I’m not claiming that, but I was changing the weather, seeing the future, and burning candles to influence Fate when I was ten.  I was doing kitchen witchery at twelve.  When I was fourteen, I was dealing with ghosts, spirits and the Otherworld in a manner that others would now recognize as hedgewitchery.  So I guess I’ve always been a “traditional witch.”

 I like her conclusion at the end of the article. You can be both, or one or the other. Solitary, or not.

Read more: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/betweentheshadows/2015/01/apples-and-orangutans-traditional-witchcraft-vs-wicca/#ixzz3P3ioHMTg