Following the Sun-Wheel
The Shape of
My Practice
by Ian
Elliott 7-24-16
Dedicated to
my High Priestess, Wendy Morris
I am a third degree Celtic witchcraft elder. I live in Norway, a country with covens few
and far between. I helped found a coven
still thriving in Colorado Springs, with my high priestess, Wendy Morris. I moved to Norway eight years ago to be with
my family, but I maintain contact with the coven in Colorado and my close
friend Wendy. I have been solitary for
some years now, and have developed a style of solitary witchcraft which I would
like to share with all who are interested.
My practice follows the paradigm of the Sun Wheel, which many will
recognize in its calendar form, the Wheel of the Year. However, it is not necessary to practice it
on the calendar dates, though that is beneficial, especially if you are in a
coven. I will begin and end my
description in the North, the Place of Power.
*
Witches chart their sacred occasions around the year on ‘the
Wheel of the Year’. The wheel resembles
a compass, with the eight sabbats marked out on the eight cardinal and
intermediate points. Thus, Yule
corresponds to the northern point, Ostara to the eastern, Litha to the southern
point, and Mabon to the western, with Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh (or Lammas)
and Samhain mapped to the northeastern, southeastern, southwestern and
northwestern points, respectively.
The Wheel of the Year can also be used to map the lunar
month and the twenty-four hour day. The
winter solstice (Yule), the dark moon and midnight correspond to the northern
point at the top of the wheel. By
following the Wheel, witches and other Pagans can align themselves with the
energies of those times.
In addition, the four quarters, marked out on the wheel by
the lines connecting the intermediate points (northeast to southwest and
southeast to northwest) correspond to
the four classic elements [1]
of earth (northern quarter), air (eastern), fire (southern) and water (western
quarter). These elements contain inner
elemental powers, the four powers of the Magus: to keep silent or be still
(north), to know (east), to will (south), and to dare (west). The ongoing purpose of witchcraft is to
cultivate the four elemental powers in one’s life in a balanced fashion.
Once she is dedicated to learning the Craft for a lunar year
and a day, the apprentice witch’s natal horoscope is charted, if birth
information is available. The planets’
positions in the various signs are noted with respect to the elements of those
signs, and in this way the tasks chosen for the present incarnation are
indicated, in order to achieve a better balance among the four elements. As the balance between the elemental powers
improves, the fifth power of the Magus gradually becomes available to the
witch, the power to go, meaning to go on astral journeys up and down the inner
pillar, exploring the various worlds or dimensions encountered along the way.
In my own case, I have most planets in air signs, then in
water, then a few in earth and none in fire.
This is presumably because I have already done fire work in past lives
and now I am meant to emphasize the other elements in that order. Thus, I began by cultivating knowledge (air),
then daring (water; daring to explore the unknown), then stillness, both mental
and physical (earth), and, as a final touch, will (fire). I am beginning to make astral journeys, first
from a state of lucid waking, [2]
and subsequently from lucid dreaming, dreaming while being aware I am in a
dream. Both are springboards to traveling
up and down the inner pillar, cognate with the World Pillar or the trunk of the
World Tree.
The Sunward Path
In witchcraft we say that words will have power if we do not
tell lies. We are not constrained to
tell the truth on every occasion, but have the option to remain silent
instead. This is following the sunward
path with our speech, and if we do this, the Sun will empower our words. In the
same way, if we promise to do something, we should expend every effort to keep
that promise. Not to do so is another
form of lying. If circumstances prevent
us from keeping our commitment, we should explain this to whomever we made our
promise, and offer an alternative.
Otherwise, our word will be doubted, and we shall have to pull the
weight of a broken commitment behind us. That will inhibit and diminish our
magical power.
The sunward path is the path of optimum use of energy. It is not an ethically prescriptive
path. It does not say, unconditionally,
do not lie. It says, “If you want to
make the best use of your energy, either tell the truth or remain silent.” It is similar to the Rede, which means
advice. “If you want to be free to do as
you will, harm none.”
The Hindu teaching about this states that if we take our
journey through life facing the Sun (and therefore following the Sun), the
shadow of pleasure will follow us. If we turn our backs on the Sun, the shadow
of pleasure will ever recede before us.
The shadow takes the shape of our own outline, but omits our
substance. Thus we will never succeed in
catching our shadow.
This does not mean that the witch abstains from
pleasure. She is not running from her
shadow, and accepts pleasure as it comes to her, but looks toward the Sun, the
light of truth and Self-knowledge. As
the Sun lightens the world, it both symbolizes and embodies truth.
Cultivating the Elemental Powers
In order to cultivate the four elemental powers of
knowledge, will, daring and silence, a certain amount of free energy is
necessary. This energy is usually in
short supply, because it has been appropriated by habits conditioned by society
and largely squandered. The key to
accessing and cultivating elemental powers, then, lies in saving what little
free energy we possess.
In each quarter, the business of cultivating elemental power
goes through four phases, corresponding to the three lunar phases of
purification, consecration and charging, and culminating in the ‘earthing’
phase of the dark moon. This last phase
lies on the transition point to the next quarter. Thus, the earthing phase of the northern
quarter lies on the Imbolc northeastern point, overlapping a little with the
quarters of Earth and Air.
Purification is governed by the Maiden and the waxing phase
of the moon, and consists in freeing up a portion of our everyday energy, thus
creating space for the influx of elemental power. Before we can receive something new, we must
let go of the old. Once space has been
created, the accumulated power can be put to some focused use. This is consecration, governed by the Mother
and the full moon phase. As power
continues to accumulate and be channeled into the consecrated purpose, it
becomes magnetic, as it were, capable of creating real change in the witch’s
habits and perceptions. This is
charging, the harvest of power governed by the Crone and the waning moon. These phases need not occur during the actual
lunar phases, for ‘she is old or young as she pleases,’ but timing to the lunar
month invokes the Lady’s special assistance.
Finally, the cultivated power sinks into the witch and becomes second
nature, part of her emerging magical personality.
The work of cultivation takes two forms, which may be called
practice and praxis. Practice involves
performing or inhibiting certain actions at set times and, when possible, set
places, preferably on a daily basis.
Praxis, a word I am adapting, consists of small actions taken randomly
throughout the day or night when we think of them. Both practice and praxis are necessary to
cultivation, and should support each other.
The linchpin of praxis is to bear in mind the words “my
energy.” At any given moment, you have
the freedom to observe what is capturing your energy, and to decide to withdraw
your energy from it if you so choose.
“My energy, my choice” is the motto of praxis. This is especially important in moments of
negative expression, such as voicing irritation, which can whittle away our
energy, or outbursts of anger, which can consume all the magical energy freed
over the course of a day.
North
In the quarter of the north, praxis involves restraining
certain habits of nervous motions when they start up: twitchings, scratchings,
tapping the foot, and other small nervous movements which, taken collectively,
consume a large amount of our energy each day and promote mental unrest. When some energy has been saved and
accumulated through praxis, the witch can try sitting still at certain times of
the day, further quietening down the body through regular practice.
As the body begins to be still, the restlessness of the mind
comes to the fore. The witch now
realizes the point of cultivating stillness, and the full moon phase at the
northern point begins, through meditation.
Since the witch is left
free at this point to choose how he or she will meditate, I can only describe
my own experience. As I close my eyes, I
notice my phosphenes [3]
briefly, then my current thought patterns emerge. [4]
I note them as they recede, and presently I am able mentally to slip between them,
falling a little down my inner pillar to quieter thoughts and feelings. This feels like a sudden mild jerk, as in an
elevator which has slipped its cable a few inches, or as we sometimes feel
while falling asleep.
My mind is still talking
to itself a little, but increasingly it is more like whisperings. The usual feelings and images which accompany
me in everyday life recede, and presently older nuances of feeling from earlier
times in my life float by. These are
accompanied with earlier feelings of my own existence, and I seem to become
more flexibly myself, like a deck of cards that has been shuffled and
re-dealt. I am still myself – it is
still the same deck – but there is a new deal.
I may hit some hot spots
at times, old obsessions or enthusiasms, and I try to work around these and
continue descending into the quieter depths of memory. I am going down into what witchcraft calls my
‘Deep’. How far I go will depend upon
how completely I have cultivated my four elemental powers in balance together. Thus, the power ‘to go’, the power of aether
or spirit, is approached gradually through many descents. When I reach the Summerland or Tir-na n’og,
and come into contact with my root-soul, I may experience aspects of myself
from previous lives. One Vedantin monk
who went this far presently got up, quit the monastic order, and went into the
desert to study wildflowers. He had
never desired to do so in living memory, but apparently he had been a botanist
in a previous life.
This means to me that when
I reincarnate, my root-soul begins growing a new shoot up into Middle-Earth,
and as I live my life here, my shoot or inner pillar keeps growing. The way back down to my root-soul, then, lies
through my past memories and feelings.
On the way back up the inner pillar to my body resting in
Middle-Earth, many feelings from my ‘Deep’ accompany me. These include the way it felt to be me and
alive many years ago, along with insights from those times. As I awake into my everyday attention, these
feelings and insights from long ago have at first an uncanny, fermenting effect
on my everyday personality, like yeast added to bread dough. At the same time, energy flows more freely
through my mind, as some of my usual obsessions have been swept aside by the
force of my descent and the arrival of past nuances of feeling. I feel more childlike, for I have more free
energy not harnessed by mental foci.
Children are playful because much of their energy is not directed by a
mental agenda. Perhaps this is a foretaste of that joy reported by witches who
have reached the ‘true Sabbat’.
As these nuances begin integrating with the concerns of my
everyday life, the flow of free energy in me stirs within, and feelings of
inspiration and intuition arise. I have
reached the boundary between stillness and knowledge, governed by the Dark
Moon; I have arrived at the northeastern
point.
East
The northeastern point
is celebrated at Imbolc, February 2nd, or, more authentically,
February 1st. [5] This
is the time when ewes begin to feel the stirrings of unborn lambs in their
wombs. Likewise, the witch, having
reascended his or her inner pillar, feels the stirrings within of feelings and
images recovered from the long past, along with the creativity enjoyed then
before it was covered over and forgotten in later years.
This is a joyful phase,
recalling the enticements of the elf-maid of Brittany, as she lured young men
to the plain of Tir-na n’og, the plain of youth:
“Deuit
ganin-me da gompezenn al Levenez
O!
Mar goufec’h e teufec’h’vit atao!”
“Come
with me to the plain of Joy.
Oh!
If you knew, you would come there forever!” [6]
Energy must continue to
flow freely in order for the ideas it contains to emerge at the eastern
point. The praxis for ensuring this is
to catch the mind at the point of continuing past conversations, or
anticipating future ones. One simply
acknowledges them, thinking ‘that is the rehash,’ or ‘that is the rehearsal,’
and the mind will tend to relax into the present sensuous moment. This prepares it for the encounter with
unique energy in the form of music, artistic images, or ideas. The Maiden works with this in the phase of
purification when she gradually winnows the free flow of feelings and images
from the ‘Deep,’ shaping them towards the eastern point of consecration, when
the Mother articulates them as ideas.
This is the time to surrender to the new, taking it in as for the first
time, as we did in childhood. Too much
critical analysis at this point, saying “that sounds (or looks) like x,” will
assimilate it to past habit, missing its unique quality. A hallmark of such new ideas is that they are
taken in lightly, without strong feelings of partisanship. As children we felt free to learn a large
variety of things and enjoyed playing at ideas, strong preferences being formed
only later in adolescence.
South
According to my natal chart, I have no planets in Fire, and
I have interpreted this as meaning I worked with that element in a past life,
so that I need to catch up with the other elements. That being so, I should have an overview of
the quarter, and in fact I have. The
Sun-Wheel is often depicted in ancient cultures as a swastika, but note it is a
sunwise-turning swastika, with the bent arms trailing back to the left, the
opposite of the Nazi symbol. To me the
swastika resembles a fire-drill, as seen from above. The bent arms are twirled sunwise, with the
drill making friction in the flints below, in ‘the Deep,’ thus igniting the
fuel at its base.
At the southeastern or
Beltane point, it becomes clear how one’s everyday life needs to make room for
new knowledge. Old habits must be set
aside or redirected. This is the
purification phase of Fire, and here the fire-drill comes into play, creating
friction between old and new habits, and building that magical heat the Hindus
call ‘tapas,’ the fruit of spiritual discipline and austerity, which will rush
up from the ‘Deep’ when it has accumulated sufficiently.
The practice of purification can involve something I call
the ‘Inventory’. A spell, music or other
creative act is a projection of energy, and it requires a conduit to carry the
energy involved. Most of our conduits
are blocked by past projects we have neither brought to completion nor
canceled. By making an inventory of the
physical clutter in the home, or of an overcommitted schedule, a witch can
discern which projects are worth completing and which should be dropped and
forgotten. In the case of the latter,
the documents and other debris left over from the unfinished project need to be
discarded or put to a different use. In
the course of doing this, the witch will acquire practice in putting a project
out of mind, a process that is of paramount importance in spellcraft, after the
spell is cast.
Every project or task that extends over time requires a
groove or conduit to convey the energy from one day to the next. By canceling past projects that are no longer
needed or desired, and by completing others, the witch opens up a number of
conduits which can serve to convey the energy used in spells. At the same time, beginning new projects
makes use of the magic of the beginning, which becomes available increasingly
as we get free of ever-pending tasks.
The witch moves out of the dead calm of in medias res, always being in the middle of affairs, to the
creative space of beginning afresh. New
projects are then monitored and dropped if they become bogged down and no
longer progress towards their goal.
When home and schedule have been sufficiently freed from
clutter, and the work needed to optimize conditions for the new project has
been done, the witch has reached the southern point of Litha or Midsummer. The Mother at the full moon phase now
consecrates it to action. In case of a
spell, the witch may now resort to a book of methods. [7] As the witch practices the mechanics of the
spell, or the musician masters the new music, it becomes familiar and second
nature. The Crone’s phase of charging
lends it a personal style, called ‘the knack’ at Lammas (or Lughnasadh),
as symbolized by the sacred loaf baked
on that occasion and eaten at midnight.
West
Let us review our journey thus far. In the North, the journey back up the inner
pillar brings with it liberated magical energy and psychic materials from ‘the
Deep’. At the northeastern point these
are integrated with portions of the everyday psyche covertly, in the Dark Moon
phase of Imbolc. Every time this point
is reached, the magical personality grows and partially replaces the old
conditioned everyday personality.
At the eastern point, new knowledge emerges, and is
articulated, through ideas, music, art, or the sense of a magical goal.
At the southeastern point, habits and conditions in everyday
life are identified which must be changed in order to realize the knowledge
physically. This identification is
intuitive at first, in keeping with the character of the Dark Moon.
In the south quarter, space is cleared for the spell or
other creative work by suppressing or redirecting habits incompatible with its
construction. This is followed by the
construction of the spell (music, art, etc.) in physical terms. The Crone
charges the work accomplished by uniting it with the will, so that at the
southwestern point the spell or other work becomes the knack, the personal
skill of the practitioner. As in
previous Dark Moons, this is accomplished covertly, as symbolized by the oven
baking the sacred loaf on Lammas Eve.
The western quarter is the quarter of daring, that is,
daring to penetrate the unknown. Its
element is Water, which seeks the lowest point and goes around obstacles by
taking their shape. The work of Fire
replaces many comfortable habits with the new construction of the spell or
other creative endeavor. These habits
are missed because they provided a sense of orientation; they were shields
against the onslaught of the unknown.
In the west the witch goes fearlessly into the unknown, in
anything from taking a new route to work to undergoing some form of
initiation. The portals of the unknown
lie in altered perception or attention.
The witch spreads his/her visual attention from where the eyes are
pointing to the side, top or bottom of the visual field, and the aural
attention to background sounds. As much
as can be seen of the head without looking in mirrors or some other reflecting
surface is held in the attention. This
naturally places the attention on the periphery of the visual field. Background sounds are reproduced mentally as
a way of increasing focus on the aural environment.
These practices, or praxes, sound exhausting but are
actually relaxing because they switch off our usual sensory filters. The witch becomes one with his/her perceptual
environment. Every day is like a day at
the beach.
Continual practice or praxis of redirection opens up the
body at certain points, such as the muscles at the outer corners of the eyes,
to an inflow of energy carrying feelings similar to those encountered in the
north, during the journey down the inner pillar. The difference is that now these feelings come
up by themselves into the everyday world.
At the western point of Mabon one’s dead ancestors and friends may begin
showing up in dreams. When they do, they
may be invited to attend ‘dumb’ suppers through the month of October,
culminating in the great Sabbat of Samhain at the end of the month. In the Craft we say that the human dead are
released for visits at Mabon, and the nonhuman dead are added to their number
at Samhain, in the emergence of the Wild Hunt.
It is at or around Mabon, the autumn equinox, that the
‘fast’ spell is cast, though a ‘slow’ spell can be cast at Samhain, earthed
when finally released. [8]
This can be timed to follow the actual wheel of the year, or sequenced with
previous work following the Sun-Wheel.
The Sabbats celebrate these points around the Sun-Wheel and often
witches in a coven will time their private work to draw on the solar energies
abundant at those times, but shorter sequences can occur outside the
calendrical dates.
The spell, then, may be cast in Circle by raising the Cone
of Power, working together with other witches, or some more private method,
such as the spell of nine knots, may be used.
The important point is that the witch should be open to the spirit world
through practices of daring, as described in the examples given above. Note that these are my practices, but other
witches may employ visualization, mantra, or a number of other methods.
At the northwestern point of Samhain, the ‘slow’ spell is
released into ‘the Height’ and (with the Wheel of the Year), added to the Wild
Hunt and earthed with it when it returns to the Underworlds. Thence it will rebound into our world of
Middle-Earth and accomplish its magical purpose.
It is now forgotten, as though it had never been, as the
witch enters the quarter of silence and stillness once more.
*
Bibliography
Farrar,
Janet and Stewart, Spells and How They Work, Custer, WA, Phoenix
Publishing,
1990.
[1]
In modern terms, these four elements correspond to the solid, liquid and
gaseous states of matter, and to observable energy or fire. The fifth point of aether corresponds to more
subtle states such as plasma.
[2]
In lucid dreaming, we are aware of being in a dream while dreaming; in lucid
waking, we are aware of being awake while waking. Neither state is taken for
granted.
[3]
Impressions of lights and squiggles produced by the pressure of the eyelids on
the retina.
[4] In
dreams these appear as synopses, defining in advance the current
dream-situation.
[5]
Changed to February 2nd by the Church.
[7]
Such as Janet and Stewart Farrar’s Spells and How They Work. See Bibliography.
[8] A
fast spell is released suddenly, as with the Cone of Power. A slow spell is released gradually, as with
candle spells, which are cast gradually as a candle burns down.
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