Anyway, I thought I would share some of the ideas that I took away with me from this first class.
Did you know that Petition Magic is just a witchy word for Prayers? Yup! I know many people who do not like using the word "Pray", instead they will say, "I'll send you healing energy" or "I'll light a candle..." Guess what! That is praying!
Prayers can be formal, such as the famous "Charge of the Goddess" by Starhawk, a feminist Neopagan writer (born Miriam Simos, 1951). I included it in a separate post.
Some other forms of Petition Magic, prayers, that might be familiar to you are:
- writing your prayer (or spell) on paper and then setting it on fire
- writing your prayer in wet sand and let the waves take it out to sea
- writing your wish in bird seed, and let the animals and birds carry it away
I have used the fire ritual many times, but only because that was what "the book" said to do, but they all have one thing in common: Writing down what is in your heart, (bringing your prayer into the physical realm, and allowing them to be carried away, either by the elements such as the first two, fire or water, or by the animals as in the last one.
By doing these things with purity of heart - speaking from the heart - you are developing a relationship with the Divine.
One of my questions was, which Divine do I pray to? Hecate? Isis? Athena? Brigid? or maybe one of the gods? Zeus? Thoth? Thor?
Rev. Edward's answer was Work with the Divine in a way that makes sense to you. It is perfectly acceptable to call upon the "Lord and Lady" or the "God and Goddess". He also said that, because we live in America and it is a melting pot of cultures, we are not limited to cultural Deities. In other words, I do not have to chose Brigid simply because I am part Irish. Nor is my husband limited to Norse gods and goddesses because of his ancestry. We can choose!
A good way to do that is to research the different mythologies, and choose a god or goddess who has the qualities that you wish to have but perhaps are lacking. And write a prayer - preferably with rhyme and rhythm - repeat it over and over. This will usually bring you into an altered state of mind, which is where you want to be for your magical works. Like the chants from monks.
One of the easiest ways to reach this state of mind is with 4/4/4 breathing, It was developed by the Golden Down out of western psychology.
Sit up straight with you feet flat on the floor, and your hands placed just above your knee caps on each leg.
Close your eyes and focus them on the "Third Eye" spot, just above where your eyebrows would meet at your nose. Put your tongue to the roof of your mouth, behind your front teeth, and then slide it back until you feel a flat ridge. Rev. Robert did not name this spot, but I have heard it called The Bagha technique.
Now, practice rhythmic breathing at the count of 4.
- breath in to the count of 4
- hold it to the count of 4
- exhale to the count of 4
- repeat
The exercise that we did for this class was a guided meditation. Rev Edward walked us though a grounding and clearing meditation where we imagined roots growing out from the bottom of our feet, through the floor, and the basement, into the earth, deep into the earth's mantel. Then we envisioned the empowering earth energy being sucked into those roots and up into us, pushing all the negative/toxic/sludge out of us and then we brushed it off of our body and imagined that it was absorbed by the earth and neutralized.
After that clearing exercise, while still 4/4/4 breathing, he asked us to picture our living room in our head making it as "real" as we could, visualizing every detail.
Then he counted us awake from 5.
It was a pretty intense experience. Even for someone like myself, who has done some meditation work before.
Apparently this is the state of mind that we should be in when we do our MAGIC!
I hope you got a little insight out of this post, and I will post more as I attend each class.
Blessed Be.
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