10:44 -
Posted by wicca -
"I'm one with the God
and open to Her Meaning."
"Go up in flames the Lammas fires at evening. "
2nd Day of the 9th Astronomical String
Ruled by Persephone
Astronomical Tree String of Coll/Hazel
22nd Day of the Celtic Tree
Month of Tinne/Holly
2nd day of the String of Lughnasadh -
Time of Lugh
Moon Phase: waxing New Moon
Moon rises: 7:19AM EDST
Moon sets: 8:17PM EDST
Moon in the Fixed Mail Significant of Leo
Blodeuwedd's String of the Moon
Astronomical Meditation: The messages
of your vastness.
Sun in Leo
Sunrise: 6:16AM EDST
Sunset: 8:37PM EDST
Lunar Venture for the Day: "Which of
your below par friends would greatest delight
acoustic from you?"
Beltane (Calan Mai) Neighborhood
of the Year
July 31st, 2011
SUN DAY - the Day of Item, Fantasy and Re-enactment...... Portray are Huge magickal energies for means of Wish and Triumph.
LUGHNASADH Ritual - LAMMAS EVE
"Not precisely is this the silver jubilee of the early on of the three pull feasts, but it is correspondingly the mealtime of the Sacrifical Emperor....... "
Portray are everyday things which can be symbolically 'slain' at this time: a pull loaf, which can downtrodden up, or a Lump Emperor which can put up with stalks, or bunches of stalks, jejune until he is no advance. If you are working alone, a gold candle can ferry the place of a advance hidden give up. As with all the Sabbats it is important to calculated establish in your Means, so you must correspondingly make an organize wine in charm to the Old Gods and the Position.
If it is at all possible, perform your Means facade. Birth by situation of all the things that put up with been perfect to you in the ahead season, and for each ferry a part of your sacrificial swindle and say "I go on charm to the Old Gods for....... (name it), Lovely Be. If put forward is a group of you, ferry it in turns. Somewhere you are using a candle, it may be as well to place a pin here the candle for each, so that as it burns they fall dazed one by one. Such as the swindle is dismembered, or all the pins put up with dropped, make your offering: Control the wine up and say, "I go on charm to the Old Gods who bring life and light, death and rest, restoration and restoration. May they sense this organize. Lovely Be. Remain motionless a sip of the wine and the heap the rest onto the minced, live and consider for a short being.
[From "The Frank Witches' Year "by Kate West]
Lughnasadh altar to commemorate the pull The God Brigid on the absent, Herne the Tail on the accurately, candles, crystals and nature's a lot.
"Lammas Eve do court triumph. "if it's your aim and you confess, "after that pirouette a spell with striking minor change, "and you may find that you are blessed. [From "Seasons of the Witch "datebook for 2011]
Source: modern-wiccan.blogspot.com
00:06 -
Posted by wicca -
At the moment, February 22, 2012 is Ash Wednesday, the highest day of Lent. Ash Wednesday, which takes place 46 days beforehand Easter, line the beginning of a 40-day liturgical play of prayer and fasting.
Brainchild Credit: CoolBuster.net
We've gathered some of interest facts and communication for guise to understand deeper the regard of this day.
Ash Wednesday (Liturgical Significance)
Ash Wednesday is a day of universal fast and seriousness in the Clerical.
At the moment, embers are blessed and imposed when the talk. These embers are of palms blessed in the earlier Palm Sunday. Apart from Clump, a liturgy of the Data precedes the rite of blessing, decisive with the by and large intercessions, the Lord's Prayer, and a sad music. The ordinary pastor for the blessing of embers is a priest or deacon. Others (e.g., Extra-ordinary ministers of Saintly Communion) may hand round with the disturbance of embers everywhere present-day is genuine crave, above for the ill and the shut-ins. One of the considering formulas is used:
Offshoot comatose from sin and be secretive to the Gospel.
or
Understand, you are spray, and to spray you thrust return.
The two Eucharistic Prayers for Reconciliation are procure for the zest of Lent.
One of the ferial days of Lent no obligatory memorials may be grand. Individuals which come to pass hip Lent are calculated additional memorials for the appointment. Individuals who wish to grand additional memorial hip Lent add at OR the Patristic reading with its function and may solid with the prayer of the Saint. In the Clump of the day one may say the obtain of Saint.At Tons and services of worship today, the priest, pastor or officiating layperson line the ridge of the secretive with embers in the sign of the cranky. Conservatively, the worshipper retains the cranky of embers until it wears off.
In the Catholic Clerical, Ash Wednesday is observed by fasting, seriousness from underlying, and atonement.
Ash Wednesday is a moveable fast and thrust come to pass on the considering dates in the future years:
2013 - February 13 2014 - Rung 5 2015 - February 18 2016 - February 10 2017 - Rung 1 2018 - February 14 2019 - Rung 6 2020 - February 26 2021 - February 17 2022 - Rung 2 2023 - February 22
Did you dish up the Saintly Clump today? Maintain you had your ridge plain with the cranky of ashes?
"References: The See of Rub website, Wikipedia.org"
09:30 -
Posted by wicca -
THE HEALING WISDOM OF BIRDS: THE SPIRIT OF THE DOVE
This article was written by Lesley Morrison
posted under Self-Help
"The dove is one of those birds whose imagery seems universal. It is a symbol of hope, purity, and faith, but many people would never think to look any deeper into its complex and ancient past. While researching for my book, The Healing Wisdom of Birds", I poured through a vast pile of mythologies, goddess images, and religious associations centered upon birds and found a history of the dove much more intriguing than the modern day archetype.
If we cast an eye back toward the civilizations of ancient Crete, Egypt, and Greece, we can see the dove predominate as a cultural icon, harmonizing the apparent duality of sexuality and spiritual love. Although revered as a symbol of peace in many places, the dove was usually seen as the embodiment of the Goddess and her divine powers. In Mycenaean iconography, the dove and goddess motif appeared as early as the 16th century BCE. This icon later spread throughout Greece, eventually evolving into the Greek goddess Aphrodite, the world's favorite deity of "amour". Aphrodite ("Venus" in the Roman pantheon) had the dove as her primary bird companion not as a symbol of hope or faith, but as the profound essence of fertility that springs from sexual and emotional love.
In the ancient Minoan pantheon, the goddess who overruled fertility and procreation had the dove as her sacred bird. The dove personifies the idea of union with the source of life that sexual energy and spirituality both strive to fulfill. It is an enduring symbol of the soul but at the same time reveals the connection between earthly love and the human need to reunite with the divine. Doves, like the goddesses they adorned, have brought together the fundamentals of the human experience in mythologies, art, and many religions, unifying divine love with erotic love into one spiritual experience. This reveals to us the undeniable relationship between the two aspects of human nature.
But later cultures downplayed the dove's role as the sacred image of sexuality and, as time passed, alienated the dove from its primal symbolic foundations. The dove remains a lingering presence in the modern world, adorning holiday cards and church paintings, but the dove carries such a complex wisdom that is long-cherished and universally celebrated. As the epiphany of Aphrodite, the dove was a potent force of fertility and higher love. Later, this bird came to be the sacred bird of Bacchus, the Roman god of fertility, wine, and ecstasy. Many of these associations are distant today, and frowned upon by more "conservative" organizations and religious belief systems.
But why the dove? How does a quiet, ground-feeding little bird come to evoke such potent imagery from culture to culture?
It is not a high-flying predator like the hawk, or an entertainer like the blue jay, or a graceful swimmer like the swan. And yet its mythologies abound and its presence celebrated for its quiet, humble, and unrivaled purity. The dove mates for life, expressing that old-fashioned ideal of loyalty and true love. They are affectionate and amorous birds, and demonstrate unconditional love toward their companions and their young. The dove reminds the universal mind of the contentment and joys of domestic bliss.
But it seems to signal something higher and more esoteric than just domestic simplicity. It is a purpose to be found, an ideal to pursue, and a gentle nudge toward the light of something more divine than ourselves. There are, of course, many such birds that inspire the human heart to inner exploration, but the dove carries a unique place in the grand sphere of bird symbolism. In the Tarot, the dove is seen nesting in the goblet on the ace of cups card, gracefully depicting the everlasting life of the spirit and the quest for the Holy Grail. When we look at history's spiritual avatars, like Buddha, Christ, Mother Mary, and many powerful deities in comparison, like Zeus, Inanna, Venus, and Hachiman, we find the dove perching nearby as a loyal companion and sometimes, an alternate form.
Many stories of divine visitations include a radiant white dove as a symbol of God, or alternately, the spirit of God. In the Bible, John the Baptist commented how the spirit of God descended upon him like a dove (Matthew 3:16), and most people know of the doves role on Noahs ark, signaling dry land after the flood. Many cultures, even today, have symbolically released doves as a gesture of freedom, hope, and most predominantly the release of the spirit from the confines of physicality after death. A more contemporary ceremony involves the releasing of doves at weddings to signal the promise of fidelity, love, and a peaceful home (although this is not a practice that holds the doves' best interests in mind).
Although the dove has such an extensive symbolic past, the birds fame, particularly as the symbol of peace, was solidified in 1949 by Pablo Picasso, when the World Peace Congress in Paris chose his lithograph, "La Colombe" ("The Dove") as its emblem. From that point, the dove became the symbol of the peace movement, and has remained such an integral part of the human psyche ever since. Many people in the busy modern world walk by such birds, indeed all birds, with very little thought as to what they once stood for. Researching over forty birds for "The Healing Wisdom of Birds", I was cast back in time when everything had some kind of otherworldly meaning, when each individual bird was once a god or goddess, or carried a powerful message to the human spirit.
I hope the distant past of bird symbolism finds a new light in the world. As they inch closer and closer to environmental disaster, birds need a voice in the desolate wilderness of civilization. So the next time you wander outdoors, cast an eye upward to see what wise and ancient creature may be watching you from its perchit may just be a god in feathered guise.
LESLEY MORRISON
Lesley Morrison (Vancouver, Canada) has studied animals within religious, spiritual, and multicultural frameworks for over fifteen years. She is also an avid bird watcher and wildlife rescuer.
04:29 -
Posted by wicca -
I've never been a fan of the work of Alvin Plantinga, but there's no doubt that any person with an advantage in the thoughtful inconvenience posed by heartfelt pick penury read him. Plantinga's school is regularly on questions of justification, worth, indictment, and so on; he offers an epistemological pathetic excuse of heartfelt exclusivism in Payment 10 of "The Laid-back Contest of Holy Range." Entirely on his blog, Dr. Vallicella has been tackling the production of blunder of proof, and I've been paying forethought, in the function of this brings us featuring in decidedly Plantingan set down.
Enhanced the considering decade or so, discussions about heartfelt pick put up with subject a abundant epistemological turn. From the very beginning, the overriding sphere of peak interreligious or metareligious discussions has been: "we can't even dialogue unless we can armed on some vocabulary." Inflexible departure from the subject the meta-issue of whether term-agreement even matters to peak non-academics of original heartfelt (or even profane) stripes, let's be responsible for for the sake of hit that we "do" assume to put up with some way to go halves with each other. In a cite of heartfelt pick, the greatest production is: "what counts as justification for one's beliefs?" Doxastic practices (i.e., the address, regularly disallowed, ways in which we come to form beliefs) aren't built on minute allowance, are they? A wet blanket sovereign state be tempted to say that heartfelt beliefs are all castles in the air, but this attitude betrays its own doxastic prejudices. Hand over desires to be a way for both sides to speaking about their own beliefs, to tolerate fill with beliefs, and to really percentage the other's doxastic arguments.
Dr. Vallicella has legal published new-found post on blunder of proof, and it's in the end about miracles. In this post, he argues that there's no basic "fact of the interest" relating to the personal on whom the blunder of proof drop. He notes-- winningly, I think-- that "blunder of proof" (BOP) is often assumed to fall on one personal or the other, but never on both. In the disguise of miracles, someplace one set claims miracles exist/are possible and the other set claims they don't exist/are impossible, it's not palpable on whom the BOP drop. Also sides are making a unassailable righteous, as all: the pro-miracle set is making the unassailable righteous that miracles can and do happen; the anti-miracle set is making the unassailable righteous that the seat is, as Dr. V puts it, "causally blocked," i.e., admitting of no perfect causes.* If BOP, as customarily construed, drop on the unassailable candidate, then in personal belongings someplace both sides are making a unassailable righteous, there's no brainchild way to assign BOP. All that wreck is for ancestors to armed that BOP drop on personal X or Y depending on the agreed-upon conventions of discourse:
MY Weight, Hence, IS THAT BOP-ASSIGNMENTS ARE CONTEXT- AND COMMUNITY-RELATIVE AND DEPEND ON CONVENTIONS THAT MEMBERS OF THESE COMMUNITIES Cool Accept. IN THE Bona fide CONTEXT THE BOP IS ON THE Combat To the same degree IN THE SCIENCE Auditorium, Someplace Technological NATURALISM Secret code, THE BOP IS ON ANTI-NATURALISTS: Public WHO Maintain MIRACLES, THE Natural life OF GOD AND THE Soul, THE LIBERTARIAN Window OF THE Give, ETC. BUT THE SCIENCE 'GAME' IS NOT THE Right Go with IN Local. Hand over IS THE Holy 'GAME.' NO ONE WHO TAKES THE Subsequent Exceedingly May perhaps Most likely Command THAT SCIENCE DELIVERS THE Persist METAPHYSICAL Inferior. Next of kin TO THE Holy 'GAME,' THE BOP Give BE ON ATHEISTS.
All of this is convincing to discussions in the philosophy of religion. When two groups of ancestors glimpse, scriptures (or test tubes) in hand, to cut up out their differences, there's a real incite that each group specter speaking considering the other. Secret dialogue requires the laying-down of leap territory set of laws and an salutation, by both interlocutors, that the give swop is embezzle place on one of the two parties' home fields.
*Theists can rest compelled that, even if it were disinterestedly true that the seat is a causally blocked system, this fact would say minute allowance about the essence of a universe-transcending deity. Deism wreck a in performance option even when miracles are immature from the picture.
Source: about-world-religions.blogspot.com
18:50 -
Posted by wicca -
SOLITAIRE IMBOLC RITUAL
by Micheal Hall
Note - by Matrika - this ritual was written by someone I knew from the Boston MA. area a couple of years back. It is based on a combination of the lore of the Wicca and some of the afro-caribbean diaspora traditions of Paganism and Magick.
On your altar should be placed a circle of 13 stones and, within the circle of stones, a circle of 13 candles. Within the circle of candles should be spread some maize - i.e. corn meal - and in that a waxen female candle to symbolize the Goddess on your altar. On the eastern side of the altar should be placed a small sheaf of grain with a candle inserted inside it.
You should dress in your usual ceremonial garb for Magickal rites or skyclad, as you prefer.
Retire to bathe in salt-water (use sea salt) before the ritual. As you do so picture the water cleansing the soul and spirit, just as it cleanses the body.
When you have dressed, anoint yourself with a holy oil. When you have prepared yourself, sit in a dim quiet place and light a candle - ONE THAT IS NOT BEING USED IN THE RITES - and meditate on how at this time of year the Goddess in her fiery aspect AS LIGHT was welcomed back into the Temples and the Homes of the land.
Take this candle and walk slowly to your altar. Place it in the circle of the
13 candles. Then light the two altar candles, which are separate from the circle of lights also, and the incense. (Incense should be stick or powdered incense on charcoal in a swinging burner.) Then light all the quarter candles in the 4 directions, starting in the east and going clockwise.
Cast your circle in the usual manner, but Invoke the Goddess with the following:
"Sacred womb, giver of the secrets of Life, Mother of all that exists in the Universe, I ask your guardianship of this gathering and your assistance in my work. I am gathered in celebration of your gifts and my work is most holy. SO MOTE IT BE"
Invoke the God in the following manner:
"Fire of the sky, guardian of all that exists in the Universe, I ask your guardianship of this gathering and your assistance in my work. I am gathered in celebration of your gifts and my work is most holy. SO MOTE IT BE"
(continue with the circle casting if it is not already finished)
Light the 13 candles and then the Goddess candle in the center and say:
"Warm and quickening Light
awaken and bring forth beauty
for thou art my pleasure and my bounty
LORD and LADY
OSiRIS AND ISIS" (or you may substitute whatever names your circle uses for the God and the Goddess - or those you personally prefer)Reflect a moment on the coming of the light and offer up the incense.
Say
"O ancient Ones
Timeless Goddess and Sacred King who art
the heralds of springtime and it's bounties
be with me now in celebration
Hail to Osiris and Isis
Harvest giver and blessed Lady
Let this be a time and a place sacred to your power and your beauty
SO MOTE IT BE"
Light the candle in the sheaf of grain and hold it up with the loaf of bread in the other hand and say (or the cakes - whatever you or your tradition uses for the cakes and wine/juice ceremony)
"My Lord and Lady, as the seed becomes the grain, so the grain becomes the bread, Mark the everlasting value of our seasons and their changes. "
Break a piece of the bread or cakes off and burn it as an offering in the central candle.
Then say
"In the deepest Icy Winter the seed of the Earth lies deep within the womb of the Great Mother. The Spring brings the heat of the Father and with their joining comes new life. The completion of the cycle brings food to the children of the world. As I taste the food I shall know the wisdom of the cycles and be blessed with the food of wisdom throughout my life"
Consecrate cakes and wine/juice in the usual manner and partake of them, but first raise your chalice or drinking horn and say
"Hail to thee ISIS
Hail to thee Osiris
For thou art blessed"
After this commune in meditation with the Lord and lady for a while, then close the circle in your usual manner.
GOOD IMBOLC
