Post No. 690 - More on Magickal Elements

My apologies: I had the order of properties wrong in the first version of this post. I have corrected the table, and, now, the pentagram. 

When I started studying Wicca, I was taught the Wiccan idea of (magickal) elements. I understood that fairly readily, as I had come across it before, and used it in many of my magickal workings – in fact, the concept probably dates back to ancient Greek philosophers (or further), and came to us via Hermeticism (there is some good information on this, if I recall correctly, in Brendan Myers’ book “The Earth, The Gods and the Souls”). However, the concept of associating an element with a particular direction was new to me – before then, when I had invoked a pentagram in a quarter, I had invoked all four mundane elements and æther in each quarter, like this:

Now, associating an element with each quarter was the way things were done in Wicca, and much of Paganism, and the explanations made sense (although, mostly, if you were in Scotland – or perhaps England), and I just adapted the correspondences to the Southern Hemisphere (and I know people who, for instance, if they are working on the west side of Port Phillip, invoke water in the east [and I see this is now mentioned on Wikipedia] – and I know others who insist on no change for the Southern Hemisphere, to the extent of insisting that people here celebrate Litha in the middle of winter!), and then, more recently, started to explore properly adapting this by using true, local seasons. However, going back to the association of elements with the points of a pentagram, other people seem to have had an association along the lines of this (from Wikipedia, author “Jakub Jankiewicz (Jcubic)”): 

(Incidentally, it is great to see a diagram with the Wiccan symbols for the elements added in as well: one of the many annoyances of life is that people tend to scatter information across multiple places, instead of summarising it into one. I find that particularly in my day job, where I consider much of the information on Process & Information Drawings [PIDs] can be combined usefully, easily and clearly with the information on Process Flow Diagrams – but I digress from this aside, and all for the sake of a good ol' grumpy whinge :) )

I’ve pretty much done nothing about the order of elements around the pentagram, other than cringe, as nails were metaphorically scraped over the magickal blackboard of my soul :) , but now I think I have found why I like the elements in the order that I do. (I think I had associated the “heavier” elements of earth and water with the lower legs of the pentagram, and the “lighter” elements of air and fire with the arms.)

I found the answer – or the missing part of the puzzle, I should say - in Agrippa’s Philosophy of Natural Magic: Complete Work on Natural Magic, White & Black Magic, published in 1559 and being the first volume of his De occulta philosophia libri tres. (Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa lived 14^th September 1486 – 18^th February 1535, and was a German magician, occult writer, theologian, astrologer, and alchemist; I got my copy from the Ordo Aurum Solis’ on-line public library, but modern versions have been published as well.)

In that, Mr. Agrippa states that each element has two properties, which are various combinations of heat-cold and dry-moist. One property is referred to as “proper”, and the other as “mean”. I haven’t explored that description far enough as yet, but I suspect it means “higher octave/frequency expression” and “lower octave/frequency octave expression”, in the sense of levels - or frequencies - of reality.

Probably the clearest way for me to present that is in a (corrected) table:

Agrippa’s explanation is that the elements are in a sequence, where the “mean” property of one becomes the “proper” property of the next.

Furthermore, the order that he has the elements listed in is the order I use, if I travel around the outside of the pentagram in a clockwise direction. This brought to mind what I had been taught about elements when studying “Touch for Health” back in the 80s, which was arranging the (Eastern) elements into a pentagram, and viewing the interactions between them in two ways:

• generative, and
• control.

The generative cycle goes around the outside of the pentagram, in a clockwise direction. 

The control cycle is internal, and uses the sequence I use when drawing a pentagram to invoke (top to lower right, lower right to upper left, etc – and I am aware that some do that in a different order, but I don’t consider this related to the direction of the sun: more on that some other time). For an illustration of that, see here, which is from here.

So, in this system (and, strictly speaking, if I use Mr Agrippa’s system ӕther should perhaps be drawn either in the centre, or encompassing all on the outside, rather than using a pentagram - but when I have ever just stuck to using what I’ve been told? :) ), the “dryness” of fire generates the “dryness” of earth, the “coldness” of earth generates the “coldness” of water, etc, which could also be viewed as a category of what I term the Magickal Principle of Harmony, or what others term “like unto like”.

Also, if one had, say, an excess of stolidity (i.e., earth), one would use ӕther to control it. If one was being distracted (an excess of air), use earth to control it, and so on.

Now, in Touch For Health, when strengthening, one finishes by using the control cycle to stop the effect continuing until it becomes unbalanced. So, continuing with this exercise, possible uses of this way of viewing the elements (and this no doubt has parallels with the old idea of humours, which has – in the sense of physical medicine – been well and truly superceded) could include:

• emotionally:
  earth could steady (control) the mental flightiness of an excess of air, and possibly the passion of fire could control some emotions, such as some forms of depression, which may be an excess of water (depression has many forms and causes, and ALWAYS should be treated under competent medical supervision),
  whereas
  if one had a lack of emotion, one may need to use earth to stimulate that (e.g., if feeling numb and overwhelmed from modern life, get out into nature);
• physically (these examples are dreadful, I admit, but I’m tiring, now, after several hours of this):
  if a runny nose is due to an excess of water, it would be controlled by fire – dry heat (and a visit to the chemist),
  whereas
  if one’s temperature is high due to an excess of fire, and application of air would control it – so stand in front of a fan, in a sense;
• magickally:
  an excess of water manifesting as flitting from one thing to another could be controlled by a dose of fire – perhaps as passion for something,
  whereas
  being too passionate about something could be controlled by the inspired thought of air.

I am going to have a go at adding this to my weekly psychic weather reports, although many of those situations – as with all life – are more a case of the blend of elements. So a situation may be, for instance, 50% earth, 20% air, 15% water, 10% fire and 5% ӕther, whereas it should, perhaps be 30% earth, 20% air, 15% water, 10% fire and 25% ӕther. I'll be nominating an element to increase or to control an influence, and another to finish to stop things becoming unbalanced.

To summarise this, I’m going to present a revised diagram (and corrected, for the initial error of properties) which summarises what I have been talking about above, and includes a speculation that ӕther includes all four “properties”. This also shows my association of sigils with the elements – includes those of the (in the Hermetic sense) kings of each element, which is something that must be used with great caution (and is something I started exploring after reading Katherine  Kerr's Deverry series).

I am also missing the sigil for ӕther. I don’t know what it should be … so I will keep searching, and trying to earn the right to know. 

I’m going to finish on another note: the combination of a couple of ideas I had some time ago: tetrahedrons – specifically, protective tetrahedrons, and protective sheets (see here). My partner had the idea of using rolled up, miniaturised versions of protective sheets as a way of having portable protection – put them in your handbag, for instance, or perhaps you could make them a pagan version of the mezuzah (which I mentioned previously, but haven't got around to making yet ... ).

[1] BPLF = Balanced Positive (spiritual) Light Forces. See here and here for more on this.

[2] Please see here, here and my post "The Death of Wikipedia" for the reasons I now recommend caution when using Wikipedia. I'm also exploring use of h2g2, although that doesn't appear to be as extensive (h2g2 is intended - rather engagingly - to be the Earth edition of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy").

[3] I apologise for the formatting: it seems Blogger is no longer as WYSIWYG as it used to be, and there are a lot of unwanted changes to layout made upon publishing, so I often have to edit it immediately after publishing to get the format as close to what I want as possible.

Tags: about me, correspondences, elements, Hermeticism, magick, Paganism, pentagram, sigils, Wicca,

First published: Fryrsdagr, 24^th April, 2015

Last edited (excluding fixing typo's and other minor matters): Friday, 24^th April, 2015

   

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Post No. 065 - Three faces of the Goddess and four seasons

I was recently sent a link to an interesting discussion on an LJ account regarding the number of aspects of the Goddess (that's a simplification: you'll have to follow the original link [which I will seek permission to post] if you to find out more). One comment in that debate took my attention: it was that there are three aspects of the Goddess commonly acknowledged, but four quarters are commonly invoked in circle, so how does three go into four (more or less - I'm rephrasing from memory)?

Well, let's start.

First off, the quarters.

When I began working with magic, I didn't know you were supposed to call one element per quarter, so I drew a pentagram and invoked all five elements (the fifth being spirit; the other four being earth, air, water and fire) from every quarter, and sometimes from above and below as well. Since then, I've been taught to call one element from each quarter, but:
(1) as my teacher has said, does it matter where a radio antenna is placed in a space, so long as it is tuned correctly? In fact, I hve invoked the four energies without moving - and consider that a basic, fundamental aspect of training.
(2) I have seen (and sometimes participated in) debates, not only about the swapping of fire and earth from northern to southern hemisphere (northern correspondences generally having fire where the sun is [in the south], and southern correspondences having the fire where the sun is [in the north]*), but also about swapping water and air (e.g. invoking water in the east if one is working on the west side of Port Phillip Bay).
(3) When I started working magic, I was living in the tropics, so I had the sun both north and south of me in the same year: how do develop an association between elements an quarter under those circumstances? Perhaps change depending on where the sun is?
(4) There are sometimes seasonal associations built into the elements/quarters (earth winter, air spring, fire summer and water autumn). Those don't necessarily fit the places the magic is being worked - for instance, here in Melbourne, a better seasonal association would be to use the local indigenous seasons described here. Of course, one could also consider just calling the energies by name (e.g., inspiration, manifestation, emotion/flow and strength.
(5) With respect to associations with aspects of the Goddess:
- I normally call maiden from east (spring), mother from north (summer) and crone from west (autumn), and from the south I either call Lilith or the God in his aspect as Lord of Time (which governs the flow of the seasons). I feel absolutely no need to have some sort of equality of number of aspects of the Goddess and God: I consider balance to be a long term (as in "many lifetimes") issue anyway.
- the maiden-mother-crone aspects of the Goddess could be reportrayed as: (i) maiden - interacting with the world in a self absorbed way (stereotypically [which means this does not apply to everyone] a child wants to have it all , and have it now); (ii) mother - interacting with the world through focus on nurturing one's family and loved ones; (iii) crone - interacting with the world in a more dispassionate way, with the broader idea of family (clan, tribe, society, Gaia, etc). Taking this a step further, there is a fourth aspect, which is interacting with oneself - perhaps this is the darker face of the Goddess, akin to the self-reflection and learning between lives. This would certainly fit winter, which has associations for many people of being indoors, perhaps slightly isolated, and a bit cut off in that one is less willing (or able, in extreme winters) to go out and spend time with friends and family.
- our histories generally (this is much debated and argued) tell us that Wicca evolved as a fertility religion. In that context, it would tend to have a focus on having children, as that is what the tribe would have needed, along with those who were no longer raising children sharing their wisdom. We are no longer in a struggle to survive in the same way. In fact, population growth is one of the pressures that is directly harming this planet. We have moved on and changed as a world; it is time, in my opinion, for us to embrace the changing circumstances and let go of arguments about whether we are truly pagan or are neopagan: I consider we should embrace making paganism relevant to this world, which needs an earth based awareness (including awareness of how the seasons are passing) to prevent a focus on materialism destroying this world. Part of that is making the faces of the Goddess more relevant to our society - including options other than just mother. Maybe we should start talking about mother / warrior / priestess / ... for the "middle" aspect? Maybe we should acknowledge the introspective face(s) of the Goddess? Of course, this probably ends the debates about pagan vs. neopagan (except, maybe, for the various reconstructionists), but then, I've said (and written) "Christians" should stop calling themselves that and start dealing with the fact that they are - by the means of every argument used to say we are neopagans, neoChristians. At least some of them have discussions about changing to be more relevant in a changing world.

Now, with regard to "fitting" three aspects of the Goddess into four elements, how about we stop thinking in a flat earth viewpoint? There are four elements, which are commonly called from one direction each: how about above and below? Perhaps we could call the four elements from various quarters, then maiden from above, mother from this level of reality, and crone from the underworld?

This is an issue which crops up in other faiths as well, and I currently contemplating how the Norse pagan system (which I am NOT an expert or even skilled in) works:
- all aspects comes from earth
- there are three aspects: yeast (birth), salt (life) and venom (death)
- there are also four elements (fire, ice, earth, water)
- all of which combines to create iron

I've been visualising this a little bit like an hierarchy: above a disk of earth is a disk split into three wedges (yeast, salt and venom - I'll call them humours), above which is a disk split into the four elements (incidentally, a friend who is well versed in rune lore has said it is possible to create all the runes from fire and ice: the two primordial polarities of the cold Nordic world), and above that is a disk of iron.

So ... how do I line up the four elements and the three humours? Well, perhaps I've got that wrong. Perhaps the disk with the three humours should actually be below earth (or the four elements disk)? Perhaps the three humours disk should be at right angles to the elements disk?

We live in a three dimensional world (in the sense that most of us do not have much control over the fourth dimension of time). Let's think that way, instead of just two dimensionally. (Thinking two dimensionally is particularly bad if you are setting up wards or other psychic defences: for those to be effective, you MUST cover above and below also.)

Perhaps we should be thinking more about, say, things two interlocking trigrams, or hexagrams (which fits both the Melbourne seasons, a concept of maiden-mother-crone where each aspect has both an involutionary [self reflective, or internal growth] and evolutionary aspect [interact with the outer world, and an oblique view of the sides a cube).

I like the volknut because it allows three interlocking aspects of three - which is why I use it on the base on my talismanic tetrahedrons (which are talismans created three dimensionally: I'll post about them in due course, probably next year).

The point here is that combinations of three can create more than three things:
- for instance, if we have three energies, A, B and C, we can create A+B, A+C, B+C and A+B+C, r four. Hmmmmm. Could the three aspects of the Goddess be mixed in a way that creates four elements? When I pose this, I am very much aware that the primary colours create many colours. Maybe air is, say, 80% maiden, 10% mother and 10% crone (as a rough, just invented and not based on anything example!)?

In this sense, I can see three going "into" four. I could also three times four creating twelve, so if, say, maiden-mother-crone corresponded to cardinal-mutable-fixed, then combining that with the four elements leads to the twelve signs of the zodiac.

The original debate was interesting. I look forward to more debates in the pagan / neopagan / Wiccan worlds, and hope to be around long enough to see what our belief system evolves into.

I'll leave it at that.

* One comment was to the effect that people in the southern hemisphere should simply follow the northern hemisphere - to the extent of celebrating Yule in the middle of our winter and Litha in the middle of our winter!

Love, light, hugs and blessings

Gnwmythr

This post's photo is yet to be posted.

Tags: invocation, correspondences, cross-fertilisation (ideas), rituals, deities, elements, frequencies,

First published: Saturday 12th September, 2009

Last edited: Sunday 13th September, 2009

Post No. 051 - Superstitions

OK, most cultures, and some people, have a range of superstitions – for instance, throwing salt over your shoulder to “ward off evil/devil/bad luck”, not walking under ladders, not crossing the path of a black cat (anyone ever bother to check what happens to the black cat when someone crosses its path?), wearing lucky socks/bling/underwear. Ask most reasonable people what’s behind superstitions, and they’ll often give an explanation about how superstitions have a core of some truth, and some might even talk about examples like one from Africa (which I think I first read about in one of Lyall Watson’s excellent books) where a long, complicated procedure involving virgins, certain types of food, certain exposure conditions, etc for the purpose of fixing certain types of illness just happened to also create the right conditions for growing a particular type of penicillin. Hmmm – willow bark tea and aspirin all over again, eh? And I can hear the scientific/”rational”/Vulcan minded amongst you lot, my readers (both of you – I know who you are! Ahhhh ... must stop eating certain types of food prepared by virgins in another type of way ...) talking about the value of using objective testing to find out what is essential about procedures so you don’t confuse the waffle with what is of real value.

Well, you know what? I agree with you.
So there.

I actually do think there is too much blind faith and desire for things to work in too many metaphysically/spiritually inclined people – which, given the sad, unduly sceptical, materialistic state of our world, is understandable (though actually counter productive, as it leads to what does work being swamped in a sea of shoddy details which feed the sceptics). We would be better off maintaining some objectivity, and lots of true scientific enquiry. But that “true scientific enquiry” does not assume things either work or they don’t: there are rules, contraindications, circumstances/people for whom things will work and others for whom it won’t work.

I always tell people, in my crystal workshops, this won’t work for all people. When we cover dowsing with a crystal pendulum, I then talk about theories that this will not work for a couple of hours each day, and that you have to be very precise in your questions (e.g., don’t ask “can you tell me if ...?”, as the crystal may well answer “yes”, meaning it can tell you, which may be WRONGLY interpreted by you to mean the answer to your 2^nd question was yes), and check how each combination of you + crystal will indicate yes, no or maybe. The rules for communication can change for each combination.

And that, dear readers (both of you :) ), brings me back to superstitions.

MAYBE the reason there seems to be a kernel of truth in these for some people is that they are true for SOME people. MAYBE those people’s guides know they are inclined towards certain types of beliefs, and so they USE those beliefs to frame their communications. For instance, someone close to me has a superstition that seeing magpies has meanings: one for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl and four for a boy, five for silvery, six for gold, seven for a story never to be told. That works for her – infallibly (well, the one and two do anyway), but doesn’t for me. However, the superstition that owls are a harbinger of death does work for me (as far as physically seing owls is concerned – that doesn’t apply to psychic visions for me, which is fortunate considering owl is one of my power animals).

Well all is said and done, superstitions are superstitions. They don’t necessarily have a rational basis that can be used universally (but neither do, say, all medicines), but, in this irrational, imperfect world, they may be being used a valid means of communication from those who are busting their guts to try and help us as best they can. Love, light, hugs and blessings

Gnwmythr

This post's photo is yet to posted :)

Tags: communication, correspondences, cross-fertilisation (ideas), daily life, divination, interpersonal interactions, inventiveness, judging others,

First published: Sunday 28th September, 2008
Last edited: Sunday 28th September, 2008

Post No. 047 - A new symbology for invocation

I like to try doing things differently from time to time, and something I tried recently, and quite like, is a set of hand gestures for the various quarters to invoke the Goddess. Basically, I use my two hands to draw a crescent Moon in the east for the Maiden, and the west for the Crone, a full Moon in the north for the Mother, and simply point to the south (for invocation of either the God, or more frequently now, Lilith). To invoke, I commence drawing at the top; to devoke I commence the drawing from the bottom (and use an open palm to the south).

(By the way, the issue of balance is something to be viewed, in my opinion, in a broad context: if, for instance, a woman has lots of recent past lives expressing masculine energy [which doesn’t mean “was male”], she may need to focus on the female to get the balance at a soul level right. Or, if she is living in a male dominated society, she may need to invoke more female energy to get the balance of energy in her life correct. Or, a male may feel the need to invoke more male energy in ritual because his personal circumstances result in an excess of feminine energy. Now reread that swapping the gender of the person I have referred to, but not the energy.)

I have got into a habit of drawing the crescents “facing” into the full moon (I’ll post some diagrams in the near future), whereas they should, to be accurate, be “facing” away from the full moon. I have tried both ways, and feel more comfortable as I have been doing it: if you try it, try both (or other variations: I’m in the southern hemisphere, so those in the northern may want to swap my associations for north and south).

Love, light, hugs and blessings

Gnwmythr

This post's photo will be a diagram, when it gets posted :)

Tags: correspondences, inventiveness, invocation, symbology,

First published: Thursday 7th August, 2008

Last edited: Saturday 26th June, 2010