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Meri's Blog
 

Dream Magick and Healing

4/17/2014

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Dream Magick and Healing

We all dream, although some cannot remember their dreams when they awake from the hidden land. During dreams everyone astral travels, sees the future, gets messages from spirit and travels to other places in the dreaming. Shamans and Witches learn to remember their dreams and interpret them. They use lucid dreaming as a method of spirit work and healing. They contact their ancestors and guides during dream to help themselves, family and community.

Dream magick takes practice and time, but since we spend eight hours a day sleeping there is plenty of time to work on it! Tonight I light a candle and do a meditation for Sylvana* to ask for healing and guidance from her guides and mine. I finish the meditation and extinguish the flame, falling asleep quickly to the sound of the soft snoring of my little dogs curled up with me under the warm blankets. The room is completely dark and the light from the full moon does not penetrate the thick curtains, although the moon energy affects my dreaming and my sleep.

I dream that I am walking through a field in the country. I’m wearing an old fashioned dress and carrying a basket. At my feet is wild grass and many weeds but I am looking for something. Out of the corner of my eye I catch a movement and turn to see a plant glowing. I carefully take some of the leaves while singing a soft crooning song to the plant that seems to make it sleepy. Suddenly my basket is half full of herbs and I’m at the edge of the field in the shadow of a forest. Out of the forest a darkness is moving towards me and I’m afraid! I am rooted to the spot and I can’t run. The darkness moves closer and I see something writhing in the dim shadow. Awareness comes to me! I’m dreaming! I am asleep! I can wake up now! But I can’t wake up and I can’t run in the dream. The monster is coming!

A ringing noise sounds, like a singing bowl being struck softly. Where is that sound coming from? It is coming from my basket of herbs and looking down I see that the leaves are glowing with green light. Without really thinking I snatch a handful of the herbs and throw them into the darkness. As they fly through the air they seem to catch fire, spinning and dancing like crazy fireflies! I hear a scream and then the shadow is gone and sunlight pours down onto the trees. I wake up from the dream with the feeling of fresh leaves in my hands and between my fingers.

The next morning I sit in the garden listening to the birdsong and wondering about the meaning of Sylvanna’s dream. I was wearing old fashioned clothes and collecting healing herbs so I think that this was a message from the ancestors. I’m trying to think what kind of plant it was that I was gathering. It seems familiar! Sylvanna is dealing with depression so I think that the darkness and the monster were her illness. Has she received a healing from this dream? I woke with the feeling of the herbs in my hands so I think that I have brought them back with me for her.

I finish my tea and go for a walk around the garden. There are wild parts and cultivated parts, hidden plants that come and go. I know it well but it is always changing, like a dream! At the back near the blueberries I see the plant from my dream. It has bright yellow flowers glowing brightly in the morning sun; a St.John’s Wort! This is a plant that is connected to the sun and protection.  It is also the herbal remedy for depression! Now I understand my dream. First of all I fought the illness for Sylvanna using the magick of the herb. Because I brought it back with me, she is meant to connect with the plant in some way for her depression.  I know it is proven to help mild depression or the blues, but not deep suicidal despair.

I call Sylvanna and she says that she woke feeling hope! This is a very good sign. I ask her if she has ever tried St.John’s Wort and she says that she has heard about it but cannot take it with the medication she is already on. I suggest a dream pillow with St.John’s Wort, camomile flowers and lavender to help her sleep well and to connect her sleeping self with the energy and magick of the herb. During the day I create the dream pillow for her and energize it with the healing of the Sacred Earth and the Ancestors.

A few days later she tells me that she is feeling much better and that she has turned a corner. Now she really believes that her terrible depression and darkness is finally lifting. She feels hopeful that soon she will be able to come home to the land of happiness and the land of normal!

                Dream magick can be done by everyone because it is natural to dream. Let us walk in the  dreamtime together and meet the spirits and guides who are ready to help us.

 

(*Name changed and the story is a composite of more than one person.)

 


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The Inner and Secret workings of a Wiccan Coven

4/12/2014

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                We have no churches or large congregations in our spiritual community and the only times large groups of Witches comes together is at a festival or public Sabbat. The real deep spiritual work is done in our Solitary practice and in our small groups, the Covens. The inner and secret workings of a Wiccan Coven are something many people don't understand.

                When we start our Seeker year we make a vow to stay in the Coven for a year and a day. We are exploring the Path of the Witch and learning the basics. After that year we may be ready to dedicate ourselves to the Craft by taking 1st degree Initiation. Some people leave the group at that time and become Solitary Practitioners and others make a commitment to their Coven to continue. These commitments, as a new Seeker and later as an Initiate, are deep magical acts that put down roots into the Way of the Witch and into the hearts of the Coven mates. They create a connection to a spiritual family based on perfect love and perfect trust and a safe place to explore the Mysteries, get support and experience things that you cannot experience in Solitary Practice. This can cause a phenomena we call 'group mind', a telepathic connection within the group. Remember the time we all brought rice to the potluck?

                This does not mean that there will always be harmony in the group! As we go deeper into the magickal process of transformation becoming healed and realizing our own authentic self, as we become aware of the Divine in nature and in ourselves and start to manifest it in the world, we all hit obstacles and shadows. These shadows can be extremely difficult to face and overcome, but they are the places of real change and personal power. Each person in the Coven will be dealing with these shadows but the Coven itself may have collective shadows. So with all these intense issues coming up there are bound to be tensions within the group from time to time.

                Why do you think that the people in the Coven have come together as a spiritual group? Is it a co-incidence or is it a very important synchronicity?  The Coven is not a book club or a self-help group. It is an apprenticeship under the guidance of men and women who have been where you are now, and have graciously agreed to give back what they received from their teachers by helping others. They have faced their own shadows! The techniques in each Tradition may be different but they are all aimed at one goal, to help participants have personal connection with the Divine Immanent, the God and Goddess in the world and in us, but to do that they must first undergo a transformative process. The Coven is like the Cauldron of Cerridwen and sometimes it boils! That may be the only way that the Goddess can transform the contents of the Cauldron (us) and the process may get hot!

This boiling process is very mysterious and can take the form of interpersonal conflict, group experiences that shock us or scare us, energy within the Circle that is so intense we don't understand it and many other things. Whatever is going on in the Coven changes us! We need to have confidence in our selves rooted in our commitment to the group and the process and we need to trust the Goddess.

Some Covens cannot stand the heat and fall apart at this point. They may blame many things on the end of their Coven but the deeper spiritual reason is that the members could not work through the boiling (transformative) process. They don't have a deeper vision of what is really going on. The most insidious manifestation of the disintegration of the Coven is gossip. This is definitely a type of black magick that spreads poison into the Coven and unless it is rooted out and brought into the light of day, the Coven can fall apart. It destroys perfect love and perfect trust which is the very fabric of the group.

A strong High Priestess can feel that something has changed in the Coven because she is connected to the group mind and the pulse of the Coven. But sometimes the Coveners hide things from the HPS because they are afraid to talk to her, thinking that if they criticize the group they may be ostracized. A climate of respect and openness allows the Witches to speak their truth and bring it into the Circle. Everyone in the Coven is encouraged to participate in this open dialogue as each member takes their place in the Circle with equality. 

"We are a circle moving one with each other we are moving together we are one. I am spirit and I move in you. You are spirit and you move in me." chant by Marae Price (copyright 1996) Click here for the music. This blog entry is dedicated to Lady Rhiannon of the


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    Meri Fowler

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