Magic in Many Forms: Candle Magic by Lucya Starza

Magic in Many Forms

Lucya Starza wove a fine little grimoire in Pagan Portals Candle Magic: a witch’s guide to spells and rituals published by Moon Books. Candle Magic jumps right in from the first page supplying the reader with hands on teaching about spelling with candles. All my favorite spells are in there: money, love, health, happiness. She encourages the readers to trust their instincts and to use colors and scents that are meaningful to the practitioners. I think that is important.  For example, she typically uses yellow and gold candles to symbolize wealth since the pound coin is gold color. She acknowledges many people use green, perhaps because US money is green.  She’s right, but there is something so fitting about a gold candle and a money spell. I fortify mine with a little vial of gold flakes on the altar. Now I’m going to add citrine and a gold candle with the green.

Starza says she writes for the beginner. In many ways she does. Her style is upbeat and readable. She levels her information and sends it directly to the reader with a clear shot to the soul. Yet even an old experienced witch like me can find a new idea. I was particularly pleased to read about the fondue pot spell. You anoint the warming candle; write your group wishes on it, perhaps for harmony, healing or a decision that needs to be made together. Then you prepare the fondue chocolate, supply the long forks, strawberries, bananas or marshmallows and dip away together. All the while, everyone focuses on the wishes for the spell. When the food is gone and the candle burns down, the spell is done. I’m teaching a Wicca I class this spring, and this feels like a good opening or closing ritual. I think they will love it too.

Candle Magic provides more than spell formulas. The reader learns color correspondence, gemstone significance, herbs and aromatherapy uses. Starza packs a lot of information about magic in a little book. In addition she holds to a responsible ethical standard, directing people to add “an’ it harm none” when formulating spells. She’s not afraid of a hex now and again to bring back stolen goods and take justice to a thief. I general discourage new witches from doing that, but the truth is they do it anyway. All in all there is much to admire in this book. I’m adding it to the reading list for my next class, Wicca II: To Will the Magic coming this autumn.  I recommend Candle Magic that strongly.

Announcing Sacred Sex and Magick

Publication Release date: June 26, 2015

This book is for people who want a spiritual path that involves the physical ecstasy of sex and the dynamics of magick that works.

Pre-order now from your local books store, Barnes & Noble, Amazon or from the publisher, Moon Books.

  Eighteen of us from the Web PATH Center, a pagan church and spiritual community in Lyons, NY, wondered what would happen if we wrote a book about sex.

o The book needed to be spiritual.

o It needed to be sexy.

o It needed to be explicit.

Sacred Sex and Magick is the result.

We describe how ordinary ritual practices like grounding and creating a cone of power involve sensuality and rising kundalini energy.

We explain how to use that power in making magick happen.

Then we share secrets of the Great Rite and how to include the power of the sacred marriage at home.

 

 

Solitaries, pagan partners and spouses, and people with spirit lovers all dance with the ecstasy found in this book.

Working Under the Influence of Spirit: A Review of Drinking the 4 Winds

Working Under the Influence of Spirit

 

A Review by Dorothy L. Abrams of Drinking the Four Winds: A Shamanic Love Story by Ross Heaven

Published by Moon Books July 2013

 

I read through this volume carefully because apart from love and madness which I know enough about, I am inexperienced in the use of hallucinogens. In fact I am generally biased against their use by white people in shamanic practices. Consequently I took my time weighing the book and its story, wondering how strongly to recommend Drinking the Four Winds. In the end, I decided to give it my whole hearted support as a shamanic practitioner, spiritual counselor and book reviewer. Ross Heaven gives us an honest, painful and joyful telling of his life experiences since he walked out of pharmaceutical sales and into the world of spirit. For that reason alone, this book is well worth reading.

In addition, for those not familiar with ayahuasca, San Pedro and salvia, the author offers us an intimate disclosure of their work with him. He is embraced and cared for by these plant spirits. His heart is run through the wringer, but that is how these journeys go. Following his story is an education in human interaction with plant allies. His book is a memoire of courage. That is equally true about his interaction with co-workers and lovers.

Fortunately, Ross Heaven is a good story teller. That may be one of the gifts from the plants, and it may also be in his bag of talents. He carried me along from adventure to misadventure in ways I could appreciate, having been there too working with people who are their own worst enemies, and sometimes less a friend to me than I thought. I found his writing on love addiction particularly clear. It explained behaviors I had not been able to quite define in my own circle. I was truly surprised at some of the outcomes, even sucked into the story. I found myself muttering "Are you kidding me?" more than once.

In the end, I did not change my mind about working shamanically in western society without ingesting plant spirits. I rely on my drums and rattles to carry me through the portals of consciousness. I appreciate the opportunity to hear from someone so experienced about his journeys with the plants. When he says he drinks the 4 Winds, he means it. I could read between the lines. I did decide to go back to my plant allies and ask some more questions. I have not completed my plant spirit work, but then neither has Ross Heaven. I know he agrees from what he wrote. A continued education as a shamanic worker is a realistic life under the influence of the spirits.

One thing though, I was left wondering about in this saga: what happens next?

Waiting for book 2, Ross.

 

If you are ready to buy, the book is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble and of course through Moon Books.

Lyrica Muse, The Cover!

Introducing.......

Today's Cover Reveal for Michelle Cornwell-Jordan

The cover was created by the amazing Joy Stroube

Dreamscape Covers
www.dreamscapecovers.com
dreamscapecovers@aol.com

Lyrical Muse Anthology

Publisher: Michelle Cornwell-Jordan (3CM Media)

Synopsis

Lyrical Muse is a collection of stories that reflects life's rhythms through everyday people. Each story is an example of the best and the worst of the Human soul. Every life lived has its own melody, and within these pages, the reader is taken on a journey to the blackest depths of a daughter's murderous soul to the prickly minefield of a jealous woman's heart and so much more.

So enter of your own free will and allow our whimsical Muse to lead you on an odyssey which just might help redefine your own reality.

 

 

 

 

 

Sounds good doesn't it? I'll post more about the contributors later in the week when the cat can be pried from the computer monitor.  Blessings, on this book!  Dorothy

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Review: Elen of the Ways

The Antlered Goddess: a review of Elen of the Ways

 

Elen of the Ways by Elen Sentier is a valuable addition to my shamanic library. Sentier is an awenydd, that is a spirit keeper and tale weaver in British native shamanism.  What's that? You didn't know the native shamanic tradition still existed in the UK? That's why you need to read this book. It is the one I have been seeking for years.

Elen of the Ways, for whom the author is named no doubt, is the reindeer goddess of the northern forests that circle the world. She is the Antlered Goddess, a reindeer or caribou, predominant at a time when people belonged to the Land, practiced gift economics and worked cooperatively. Her forests have diminished but in the north they still exist. The hunter gatherer societies are fewer and fewer but they still exist.



Critics will say Sentier paints an unrealistic vision of what life in a pre-agricultural society was like. Her women and men shared tasks; both hunted; they worked fewer hours a week; they had fewer diseases.  Certainly what she describes belies the images we have been taught, but she has some facts at hand. In Numibia women track for the men hunting big game. In the Phillipine back country the Aeta women and men hunt the same animals. Could the modern view of our ancestors be skewed by our own egotistic belief we have created a good thing with our farming and technology? About our technical age Sentier says "We have lost our way...we no longer follow the deer trods." (page 9). 

photo by Russel Wills 2009
Georgraph.org.uk

I suspect she is correct. I loved how Sentier brings us around the world in this book with stories, legends and artifacts about the Sacred Deer Goddess. Artemis and the Ceryneain Hind, the flying deer stones in Mongolia, the wild hunt across Europe, the fairy sidhe and their cattle who were deer, sacred apples of the sacred isle which cause alters to grow have a magic link. Sentier weaves these pieces of memory together as a proper awenydd so we can see how the Antlered Goddess connects us all.

In addition to telling the stories, Sentier travels to places in Scotland as she folllows the deer paths. These are wild places the deer know. Sentier chides us: "We are often afraid of the ways of Earth." (page 40) She is not. She shapeshifts and becomes the deer. She is unafraid of death. She embraces the wilderness. She dares the caves as initiation and rebirth.

I resonate with Sentier. I am a deerkin. There is synchronicity in my experience that pulls me into the book. I have heard a doe choose herself for the hunter. I have sung a protection song against trespassers and coyotes for deer who choose to live. I have seen a new born fawn cared for by his aunt as the mother doe births his twin. I have watched male elks perform for their mates and heard them bugle at night. My own mate has spoken to them.  They are our kin. This book is from the heart, from the soul. It will lead you deeper if you have wisdom to know how to find the deer tracks and how to long for them.  

Lives of the Apostates--Studies in Conflict

Lives of the Apostates

by Eric O. Scott

 Studies in Conflict: A Review
by Dorothy Louise Abrams

I liked Lives of the Apostates. I like the title—so blatant, in-your-face bold. I like the academic premise of a philosophy student caught in a hostile course called History of Christian Thought and taught by a preacher. The whole book is edgy. Readers who are first generation pagans may cringe a little, viewing the world through the eyes of their children born and raised with the Goddess. Is that how our kids see us? Well, of course it is. Being pagan is no shield from the distain of the next generation. We were meant to be taken for granted. We are parents. I appreciate the humor of Eric's Scott's wry voice, even when it comes at my expense.

Aside from the ironic edge, the book is about conflict. In this first person narrative, Scott writes convincingly of a young man's quiet desperation caught between dreams and expectation. His character Lou Durham wrestles (I use the term purposefully) with at least 7 different relationship conflicts, most of which are reflected by the people around him. The mother-grown child conflict is shared by his roommate Grimey, Lou's would be girlfriend Lucy, and Jimmy his client on the nightshift. His conflict with Jimmy requires special handling. Conflicts with his roommate and Lucy blow up in his face. Conflict with Mike his coworker is less explosive but present in a niggling sort of way. Conflict with his boss Dana remains an unresolved dread. Conflict with Dr. Eccleston his professor sets off the surprise ending which, if you watch out for the foreshadowing, should not be that much of a surprise, but it is.

The strength of Scott's writing is in how he manages the mirrored layers of his themes without telling us about it. I admire that. Too many novelists explain what they are trying to do instead of simply getting on with it. Scott juggles his prickly characters all in one short plot line balanced on a quarter and a missile. This book is brief when it could have been otherwise. I recommend it.