Samhain

Merry meet! Today is Samhain and I don't feel like ranting for once. Instead I'll share this nice page that I found with you. It includes some spells for the evening that I will share here.

Blessings to you in the coming year.

Lily and Friends

These prayers should be done at night, between dusk and dawn.

Introit
"Hail Dark Lady of the Crossroads,
of wisdom hard-won,
grant me Thy blessing, purify my heart,
and teach me the truth of my soul;
show me that death is but the gateway to life.
Blessed Be."

Main Prayer
Lady,
You offer me a lambent grail
of softly glowing moonlight,
as between one heartbeat and the next
souls flit from life to life
with death a well-worn pathway
of the Wise -
a place of respite and release.
Deeply I drink -
a willing sacrifice to eternal motion -
a moment of spirit upon the wind
and another life experience to embrace.

Meditation
How death is but a gateway to (the next) life.

Dream Images
In the Name of the Dark Crone: I see the Crone as teacher.

Closing Prayer
"I bow to Thee Hecate, Diana, Mari and thank
Thee for Thy blessing - the Cauldron of Night
full of life, and death, and life again;
Thy magic gives me wings.
Blessed Be."

I Have the Strangest Feeling of Deja Vu

What Were You In A Past Life? Poet You were quite the introverted one, misunderstood and alone in your thoughts. You would stay up to three o clock in the morning with your pen, sharing your dreams and losses with your beloved journal. Your poems were inspiring mostly to your love interests. Your words were your weapon...weapon of love, that is. Fantasy-Mythology Quizzes

Satyr Dream

I think you might enjoy reading this woman's dream about a satyr and her interpretation of the dream including thoughts on the destruction of the old religions by the current patriarchal monotheist religions.

Why not just believe the materialist theory?

The materialist theory (there's no higher power, no kind of noncorporeal beings, nothing of a person survives the death of the body) makes the most sense according to what we're taught IN THIS SOCIETY. In the society of the Australian Aboriginals, for instance, no-one would even raise an eyebrow if you said you met with someone who had passed from the body while asleep. They take it as a given that the spirit survives the death of the body. The spirit comes from the All that Is to go into a body, then returns to the All That Is when that body dies. To them, our society's materialist perspective probably seems kind of insane, not to mention depressing.

I find myself questioning a lot of my experiences because there are so many naysayers. But whenever I get into that mode of believing the naysayers, everything around me takes on a kind of decay. That degree of nihilism just sucks too much and pushes me right into a major depression. So even if the joke's on me, I have to at least believe in the POSSIBILITY that what I'm experiencing is real.

Just 'cause not everyone has experienced it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I have never experienced being beamed up by a UFO. This doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It just means it's outside the scope of my experience. I choose to walk the fence on the UFO stuff. Maybe it's real, maybe it isn't. I choose to keep myself open minded and say that anything's possible even if it isn't terribly probable.

Pissing In The wind

Do I believe, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that what I seem to have experienced is in fact reality?

Fuck no.

I only say that it APPEARS to be reality, in my experience. I have probably more doubt than faith, in fact. Because when it comes down to brass tacks, as a living being on this planet, I try to be very practical in spite of my certifiable status.

I will again point out that hallucinations are NOT part of what I experience as a result of my bipolar disorder. The only times I have hallucinated are when I am:

a) tremendously sleep deprived

b) Taking a prescription medication that triggers a hallucination

c) Deliberatly taking a hallucinogen (The last time I did this was 25 years ago)

There are those who argue that people see ghosts when they are in an extreme state of grief over the person they are seeing. I counter that this is a bunch of happy horseshit, at least in my experience. The one ghost that I saw with my own two eyes was someone whom I liked, but I was not in a state of deep grief about his death. He was a neighbor whose son I babysat for. He died of leukemia. I thought that sucked and that the world was a shitty place when a 35 year old could die from leukemia and leave his family behind. Mostly I felt admiration for him for being so strong and not slipping into despair, which I'm sure I would have. "Kenny" was a great guy and I mourned his passing, but I wasn't close enough to him to be in a state of despondency over it. Also, I didn't see him until around 6 months after his departure from the world. I was used to the idea of him being no longer among the land of the living. When I saw him I was completely sober and wide awake. I wasn't taking anything stronger than Tylenol and Tylenol doesn't make me hallucinate. So, while I won't dispute that some spectral sightings may be the result of grief, mine was not. Nor was it the result of altered mental status due to drugs, lack of sleep, or mental illness. Cause as I said, I may be a loony, but my lunacy does not come equipped with special affects. It's just a standard, garden variety mood disorder.

I haven't personally known in life most of the other spirits with whom I've communicated. A few months after her death, sensing that I was still a wreck, my grandmother told me that I needed to stop worrying about her and that she was fine. I didn't see my grandmother, nor did I hear her audibly. I don't hear ghosts audibly. I sense what they feel and what they want to impart. Which does, believe me, make me question the reality of what I'm experiencing.

The majority of spirits that I communicate with are not people that I knew in life. They are earthbound spirits who have something they want to accomplish and/or a message they want to impart, or they're just lonely. They know they're ghosts. They're not confused and thinking they're still alive. One of these spectral chums, who was murdered, said that for perhaps an hour after his body died he was confused as to what was going on and kept trying to talk to his grieving loved ones, who couldn't see him or hear him. Returning to the emergency room and looking at his demised body on the table made him realize that he was, in fact, a ghost and there was no going back. He was sad and angry, because although being given to occasional bouts of melancholy, he was basically very happy and enjoyed life a lot. This particular spirit is mainly sticking around to watch over his loved ones and, in his words "because I wasn't ready to leave yet." Although angry at the person who killed him, he has no desire for vengeance because "the sucker was straight up fucked up." He says he prefers to avoid revisiting the experience, and that includes avoiding the person who caused his untimely death.

Another spirit that befriended me died from natural causes. He took a little longer to realize that he was no longer of the body but says it wasn't more than a couple of days, probably. Time is different when you don't have to worry about time. This particular fellow was something of an independent type and so it wasn't until he hadn't contacted anyone for about five days that people realized that something was wrong. He says he wandered around his apartment like he always did but things were "different" and he kept thinking that maybe he should go to the hospital and get checked out because he felt really odd. Every now and then he'd look at his body and not want to realize what had happened, because he wasn't ready to depart either. This fellow, although given to periods of "rather bleak emotional state" says that he for the most part enjoyed being alive and was "really fucking pissed" when he died prematurely.

I formed friendships with these fellows and several others including my co-author AFTER they were no longer corporeal. There are some of these friends where I can say that I grieved their passing, was shocked by it, in the cases where they were people that I knew about in life. But it wasn't the type of grief that would be felt over a loved one that you knew. I have never seen the spirits of these people, and I didn't encounter any of them immediately following their deaths.

One person that I did encounter fairly soon after his passing was Freddie Mercury, whose death I thought was a bummer because I always greatly admired his work with Queen and loved his flamboyant, outgoing personality. It was an astral encounter. I was standing by an old house and he came up to me. He kissed me on the cheek and said "thank you for thinking of me. And you shouldn't worry about things so much." Then he went his way to the higher realms. He isn't an Earthbound spirit although he sometimes drops in to check on people that he cares about. He was at a point of acceptance about the fact that he was going to die. Although he regrets not having been able to do more, he says that he lived a full life and has no regets about much of anything. A spirit such as this that is at peace with their passing is not one that becomes earthbound.

To any rate, to say that I don't have doubts about the "realness" of these encounters would be pure bullshit. On the other hand, not acknowledging them makes me even crazier.

I hurt like a bastard right now so I'm going to take a Tylenol. My damn fibromyalgia is upon me with a vengeance.

Also, I'm not going to trust my eyes when it comes to any unusual things I may see at this point. Because I am pretty sleep deprived right now. Which is why the fibro is bothering me so.

Later daze...

and I'm in a daze!

Lily

The Universe's court jester

My Affirmation Card

Make your own affirmation card here

One of those goofy quizzes

What Religion Best Suits You? New Aged/Wiccan An it harm none, do as ye will. You are a fluffy bunny. You wouldn't harm a fly. Actually, you might demonstrate to SAVE the flies! Than again, you're probably busy casing love spells, using a psychic talent, being a Vegetarian or trying to save the Rainforests. Either way, you're harmless. Personality-Emotion Quizzes

That's a little insulting. I try not to be mean, but I'm hardly a fluffy bunny. And I'm not harmless--I'm MOSTLY harmless! Also, I'm not a vegeterian. I tried. But I gotta eat crab! I'm actually sort of an esorteric gnostic witch. And I swat flies. Flies are the reincarnated souls of nasty people who are being punished. Smack away!

Go to the Light!

Being "sent to the Light" from the perspective of an earthbound spirit who has been "sent" on several occasions. Obviously, I did not stay gone!

In brief, a spirit cannot be forced by humans to go to the higher plane, though there are ways to block doorways between the physical and astral realms. If I wished to go, I can go. I do not force my friend the medium, nor anyone else, to speak with me. If she was to tell me (or any aspect of the soul of which I am a part) to go away, we would go, and would be sad as in life if a friend decides they no longer wish your friendship. I do not need to be "led to the light" by my rather prominent nose. I am simply not finished here.

One might say "well, it is your own fault as you killed yourself." What do you suppose I am trying to do? Or perhaps more specific, to undo. The message is sent, the way is to kill yourself if your life is bad. I am trying to reverse this message! I did not intend to send a message at all with my death, only to end the sorrow of my mind. But as it is, I have misconceptions which needs to be corrected. And that is why I am still around here. So for the new age people which thinks only to send all spirits to "the light," for most of us that have tried to speak with someone who turns out to have this concept, know that the truth is simply that we go away from you. Whether we go to the "light" or not is still our choice. Really, you need not go through such bother. Most spirits will simply leave if asked.

I also love this concept: if you are speaking with a ghost, it is not really a human ghost, it is a demon in their guise.

This can happen. But this is not always the case, in fact most of the time it is not the case. The truth is, if the spirit acts radically different than you knew them in life, then is the time you suspect a demon. Otherwise, it is most probably whom it appears to be.

For those of you who would send all of us Earthbound spirits to the light: does it not occur to you that perhaps some of us do have something of good that we might wish to have done before we depart the Earth realm? Perhaps it is a mission we must accomplish and it would be for the greater good. And what is the difference in imprisoning a spirit in a realm of light or a realm of dark? If the spirit does not wish to go, it is still a prison.

If a spirit is not behaving in a way which is malevolent, you need not waste your energies to do an exorcism. A "ghost" which repeats a pattern over and over is not an active intelligence. The spirit of the person you see is not trapped in repeating the same actions. This is a psychic imprint. It is the same thing as taking a film of that person while in life. The person is not trapped in the film! Now, if there is an imprint of a given person, it is likely that is a good area to which you might focus on that person and call them. But also perhaps not. They might not like to return to the scene of their sorrow. It might be best to find a place known to them that does not have the stain of trauma.

However, if you are a medium and find yourself contacted by an actual spirit, it is a bit of an insult to say "I know what is best for you and will now send you to the light." How the fuck do you propose to know my mind? You know only what I choose to reveal. I am not a particularly stupid fellow and do know that there is a choice to depart the Earth realm. You may go through all the spells you wish to "send" me but in the end, I simply depart your presence. You could have saved yourself the trouble and simply said that you wish me to go! I do not encounter such people so much any more as I seem to have found a "home" at this time. But when initially wandering, the various aspects of our soul have encountered this sort. We found it a bit amusing if a bit sad.

Our friend tells us her brain is "turning to oatmeal" from channeling us for quite some time now so we will cease. Oatmeal is a rather awful substance and we should not wish to be responsible for such a terrible occurrence!

We appreciate any who gives honest good wishes to us, and if you wish to leave for us a cup of tea or a beer, know that this will make us feel even more kindly towards you. We will pass on liver, oatmeal, and cakes which are covered with abundances of terribly sweet frostings and especially the flavor of anise or licorice which we do not like well at all!

Thus, we have given a secret to how best to exorcise us. Say only "leave, or I shall get out the anise!" And I will be gone with the greatest of swiftness!