Workday Ideas

Inasmuch as the Coven is meeting only once per month, I think it may be a good idea to have a continuing series of workdays on various topics. Also perhaps once per month. Optional, of course.

A WORKING MAGIC CIRCLE: For creating a strong, but easily built, magical circle without resorting to the Grand Magical Circle, which we usually cast for coven meetings. I cast a working Magic Circle almost every night. It is quick and efficient. The formula is from ancient Egypt, but it would be recognizable to most western occultists and witches.

We are having a practical Herbalism day on 24 June, but I think it would be worth having a day of theory:
HERBALISM THEORY IN THE WAY OF THE WISE

DREAM INTERPRETATION: A Conversation with the Goddess. An easy method. I was astounding myself after working on only four dreams. I would dream something, record it, and then analyze it later on. During the analysis, I would have an AHA! moment when I realized what the dream really meant, as opposed to its surface symbols.

FUTHARK RUNES: I was tired of reading nothing but Runes 101 books, so I followed a ritual given by my teacher to contact the Spirits of the Grandfathers of the North to teach me what I was unable to learn anywhere else. It worked. They came to me, and I learned. I've also studied all of the hidden rune codes. When my mind was aflame in an oracular sense, I could also write out the divinations in skaldic verse.

TAROT READING: Get rid of the Rider Waite-type decks. They are just images substituting for crystal-gazing. Learn to read the world by Planet, Sign, Number, Element, as the Wise have done for centuries. The older I get, the more I realize how easy Tarot reading really is.

TRADITIONAL SPELLS and ANCIENT WITCH CUSTOMS AND CULTURE would be two other good topics. The "Eight Sabbats" is a relatively modern thing for the Craft, maybe only in the last 200 years or so. Older forms and lineages mainly did the four Fire Festivals. The use of such terms as Litha, Ostara, Mabon, in the Craft is as recent as the 1970's. They are not found in Witches' writings or books of shadows before that time.

Within WITCH CUSTOMS, I would include many things that I learned from my old Witch Mother: creating one's own WITCH CARDS, the making and use of POPPETS, and a method of spellcasting she called PATHWORKING (not the guided meditation stuff you are thinking of). I have never seen these topics addressed ANYWHERE in print in the way she explained them. THE RED THREAD, THE STANG, SITTING OUT, MAGIC IN THE WOODS, and READING THE BONES are also all good Workday topics.

*** Blessed be to those who serve the Great Mother and the Horned Father.

* Copyright to Coven Rochester