Category Archives: Esoterica

A Wyrd Fate

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Those that know me will know that I was brought up as a Christian, mainly due to my paternal grandmothers influence, and that my journey from where I was to where I am now has taken a number of turns, not all of them expected. Part of the problem I had with Christianity was that I simply couldn’t reconcile the idea of an all-powerful God with the concept of free will

You see for me the concept of an all-powerful God has a couple of implications. One possibility is that God, being all powerful has built the universe and pre designed in all of our choices. We have no real free will at all; we are just following the grand plan. This simply isn’t something I am prepared to accept. I can not just roll over and hand over control of my life and destiny to somebody else, not even to a god!

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Posted in Esoterica, Theology

The Spiral

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The spiral has fascinated and intrigued people for centuries. It is common in both Christian and pre Christian art and has been taken up by the modern Neo-pagan community. But its earliest expression is that found on Neolithic passage tombs, such as New Grange or on rock cut inscriptions all dating from the stone age.

What exactly the spiral, in all its many forms, meant to the pre-Christian peoples is however, like so much, unknown. Primarily, the spiral is typical of funerary symbolism common in Irish tombs as well as those of other megalithic cultures. Historically, spirals in both Megalithic and Neolithic art were closely akin with spiritual issues of the cycle of death and rebirth.

The serpent, important iconographically.to both manifestations of Brigid, is often used as a metaphor for infinity, in a sense, by the sloughing off of it’s skin it is continually dying and being reborn (Purce, 101) and it is this interpretation of the spiral, being a symbolic representation of a symbol, the snake or serpent, that I find rather interesting. We have, if this interpretation is correct, a double abstraction of a fundamental principle, birth and death, the never ending cycle.
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Posted in Esoterica, Theology

Pantheism

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One of the problems that some ‘normal’ people have with the idea of paganism is that they really don’t understand what it is. This isn’t surprising after all as the term covers such a broad range of beliefs, practices and ideas that even the Pagan federation has had to ‘throw in the towel’ and accept that a Pagan Is somebody who says that they are a Pagan. The so called self identify test.
In a way this is a good thing of course, Pagans tend to feel at home with a wide range of different faiths and belief structures. It can cause a problem however as somebody searching for a name for their own beliefs can be faced with a vast range paths all with their own underlying beliefs and rituals. Some have a vast range of gods and goddesses; some believe that their gods are literal individuals others see them as aspects of a greater divine.

Some are based one faiths that existed many years ago, some being well documented while others little more than a folk memory, while others are ‘new’ faiths born in the recent past.
Some of these faiths are well known, others hidden and secret while others are growing in popularity. All in all a bewildering array of faiths and paths to chose from.
So in the spirit of making things even more complex I would like to present a path that formalises some thoughts about the deity that many people have. This path isn’t as well known perhaps as some of the others and is called Pantheism.
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Posted in Esoterica, Theology

The Quantum Cat’s Grin – Pathworking for the modern age.

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One area of Magickal practice that sometimes seems to get lost, perhaps because it demands self-control and focus is that of path working.

For those not familiar with the technique it could be thought of as a combination of structured visualization and meditation where the practitioner journeys through the otherland, sometimes a familiar comforting landscape at others much more demanding. Perhaps the greatest practitioners of this being Charles Seymour and Christine Hartley.
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Posted in Esoterica, Theology

Sympathetic Magic

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The practice of magic is a rich and evolving area, ranging from simple visualization work through more elaborate practices involving cords or candles up to high ritual working where a group works together to raise power for some purpose.

One area of magic that has almost certainly been around and practiced as long as humans have been around is Sympathetic magic. Sympathetic magic has two main branches. These were described by Sir James George Frazer (1854-1941) in the book The Golden Bough as Law of Similarity and the Law of Contact or Contagion. The law of contagion suggests that two objects once in contact will in some manner retain a link even after they have been separated.

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Posted in Esoterica, Science, Theology
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