Advanced Witchcraft: Go Deeper, Reach Further, Fly Higher - Softcover

Mccoy, Edain

 
9780738705132: Advanced Witchcraft: Go Deeper, Reach Further, Fly Higher
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0738705136 ISBN 13: 9780738705132
Verlag: LLEWELLYN PUB, 2004

Inhaltsangabe

In the beginning everything is fresh and new. Learning how to cast a circle, work magick, compile a Book of Shadows, and honor the God and Goddess on esbats and sabbats can be exhilarating. But once you've mastered the basics of Witchcraft comes the real challenge of living your faith every moment of every day. Living as a Witch is knowing that you are the magick.

Advanced Witchcraft doesn't contain any "Wicca 101" information—it assumes that you're already familiar with the nuts and bolts of the Craft. Instead, this book challenges you to think critically about your beliefs and practices, what they mean to you, how they've changed, and where you're going. Along the way you'll also learn many techniques for intermediate and advanced Witches, including:

  • Meeting your shadow
  • Advanced warding and psychic self-defense
  • Power animals, familiars, and shapeshifters
  • Working the labyrinth and the maze
  • Advanced tree spirituality
  • Advanced augury and divination
  • Magick and ritual using the fine arts of storytelling, dance, music, art, and drama
  • The art of Wishcraft
  • Spirits and lost souls
  • Banishing and closing portals
  • The healing arts

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Edain McCoy was a well-known teacher and author on metaphysical topics. Over the course of her decades-long career, she published dozens of articles and more than fifteen books, including Celtic Myth & Magick and A Witch's Guide to Faery Folk.

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The Advanced Witch
and the Craft

In the beginning of your journey into the many worlds of Witchcraft, you
probably looked upon the Witches who were teaching you with some measure of awe.

You were just embarking on a journey they had enjoyed time and again, and everything they said or did fascinated you. Like a sponge in the Sahara, you just couldn't soak up enough water from the well of knowledge they had to offer. You may even have embarrassed a few of your teachers with your adoration because their vast experience made them seem so competent, so knowledgeable, and so holy that you almost confused them with your own spiritual goals.

Then, to your ultimate confusion, you discovered that even the most elder among them still considered himself to be a humble student of the Craft, a servant of his patron deities, and a friend to the elements rather than their master. He might have had more experience than you, but he never claimed to be better. If he was the right kind of teacher, he refused to be idolized and he never talked down to you. No question you wanted to ask was too silly or so simple that he wouldn't give it serious thought and an
honest reply-even if that reply was "I don't know."

He may have surprised you even more by referring to you as his teacher.What a head rush! It was as if the world had just turned inside out and everyone was now upside down. There was so much information to be filed in your mind, so many myths to hear, so many related areas to explore, so many exciting ideas to dissect, and you wanted to do them all at once. Yet your teacher took you one step at a time, not only sharing and
teaching but also listening and learning from you as well.

Chances are about 99.999 percent that not all your first efforts succeeded, at least not at the lightning-fast pace you would have liked. Like the title of one well-known metaphysical book, you may have categorized your initial studies as an experiment in Rick Field's Carry Water, Chop Wood (J. P. Tarcher Publishing, 1985). You wanted to know when the "real" magick would begin, still ignorant of the fact that it was already in motion around you and within you. You were learning the essential lessons of patience
and self-discipline, enjoying and appreciating the process of the Craft rather than valuing only the end results.

This was maddening to you at first, but if you stuck it out-and you apparently did if you're reading this-you discovered Witchcraft was a religion that required self-discipline and hard work from the individual, a coordination of body, mind, and spirit that can't be taught or learned overnight. Before any lessons would stick in your head, your wise teachers knew two things had to happen. Number one, the swelling of said head
had to be brought under your control, and number two, you had to learn the hard lesson that Witchcraft is a process, a verb rather than a noun. It might have had a markable beginning, but it has no end. Those who can't learn to carry water, chop wood, cast circles, call quarters, evoke deities, etc., with patience and a love for the process itself would never become or remain a Witch.

In some cases, even that first year and a day was not enough to learn all the basic tenets, concepts, and practices at the journeyman's level, and definitely not long enough to master more than one or-if you were really gifted in a special area-two.You also discovered that, unlike the religion into which you were probably born, no single leader was going to step forward and do all the ritual and magickal work for you, or even explain to you after showing him your ten blistered fingers from wood chopping,
and your thirty-third trip to the well, what all the water and wood were for. If you still didn't get it, you might even have been asked to move the water and wood back where you found them, either literally or metaphorically.
Screwy religion, eh?

At this point you might have questioned your commitment to the Craft.Whether you were aware of it or not, it was expected that you would question just what you were getting yourself into. You were the only one who knew the answers to the questions your teachers were trying to provoke you to probe:Would you have the courage to stick out
your entire initial training, or would you decide you knew more than your teachers and the deities and strike out on your own? Or would you realize that you wouldn't be doing all this for no purpose and stick with it even if everything didn't make sense yet? Were you sensing anything spiritual happening in your life, or were all you could see those ten blistered fingers? You might have begun to feel like a lackey, not a student, and suddenly
your teachers didn't seem so idyllic anymore.

Things may be starting to seem a little less screwy now. The aforementioned frustrations were signs that you were learning, testing, thinking, feeling, and growing, whether you knew it or not. You were starting to catch on, but there was still much work to be done.

You might also have been frustrated to madness that lessons in magick were not as forthcoming as you'd like. You were anxious to cast spells, light candles, chant, drum until dawn, call out the elementals, and evoke deities. All manner of witchy things were itching to pop like flames from your anxious fingertips (blistered or not). Yet your teachers held this knowledge back until much later in your studies
.
Even though you were starting to catch on, there was one important semantic distinction you had to understand: the difference between wisdom and knowledge. They are not, never have been, nor ever will be the same animal, even though they can appear asidentical twins. They are the beginning of our transformation from form into spirit, governed by the cerebral element of air.Within air we learn to connect all parts of our
minds to expand our thinking, helping us transfer our thoughts into magickal actions.

Just like Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz had to figure out the answer to her own problem, you also had to gain the wisdom, not just the knowledge, that your answers were within you all the time. Finding and recognizing it is the hard part, but the process you take to get there is as important as any end result. You had to attain the wisdom that your commitment to learn was ongoing, the eternal learning curve of an ancient mystery faith.

Knowing is easy, wisdom is hard.

So you kept carrying water and chopping wood as, one by one, bright rays of enlightenment began illuminating your mind and soul.

Baby Steps to the Next Level
As an intermediate student of Witchcraft, you began to appreciate all the
hard work your teachers insisted on having you do; well, maybe not the ten blistered fingers, but the other stuff was okay. All your efforts-not theirs, but yours-disciplined not only your body but also your mind and spirit, and your hours of meditation and visualization practice was now paying off. Your broader view of how all these pieces fit together as a whole was making you a stronger Witch, both spiritually and in your magick
and ritual practices.

As Nin-Si-Ana, a longtime priestess friend of mine, is fond of saying, "Well, whop me upside the head with the great frying pan of enlightenment."
Boing!

"And, by the way, bring me another bucket of water."

As you continued upon your chosen path, wisdom was replacing knowledge. You began to progress more rapidly. You could see the results of much of your training and so you read, and listened, and spent lots of time contemplating cosmology and eschatology to form your own theories from the thousands of others already hypothesized. You did the same...

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Verlag
LLEWELLYN PUB
Erscheinungsdatum
2004
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0738705136
ISBN 13 
9780738705132
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
336
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Verantwortliche Person
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