"I'm one with the Goddess
open to Her Wisdom."

25th Day of the First Lunar Cycle
Ruled by Medusa
Lunar Tree Cycle ~ Beth/Birch
Celtic Tree Cycle ~Beth/Birch
Moon Phase: Waning last quarter
Moon rises: 2:50AM EST
Moon sets: 12:37PM EST
Moon in the Fixed Water Sign of Scorpio
Ceridwen's Cycle of the Moon
Lunar Meditation:The life made available
by decay.
Sun in Capricorn
Sunrise: 7:42AM EST
Sunset: 5:10P EST
Solar Question for the Day: "What skills need to
come into play in your life?"
Samhain (Calan Gaeaf) Quarter of the Year
January 9th, 2010

  So here is Saturn's Day - the Day of Manifestation and Structure, Assessment and Responsibility. Sounds like it can a boring day in ths already long boring winter.  There are Major energies today for Shapeshifting spells/rites and Major energies for spells/rites to Banish Negative Forces - during this waning moon time of the lunar cycle these will be rites to be doing.  Here is a little rhyming song to

remember while doing Shapeshifting rites:

 "Bend me, shape me, make me fluid,

As accomplished as a Druid.

While Scorpio holds moon at bay,

I form and reform as I may."

From "Seasons of the Witch" datebook

 

    And yes, the Moon is in the Fixed Water Sign of Scorpio - key words "I desire".  As the moon goes through a transit in this zodiac sign it is a time of death and rebirth (not necessarily physical death, but rather transformation), there is intensity and extremes and heightened sensitivity.  It is good for focusing, being sexual and doing psychic work because of the deep emotions and desires Scorpio brings.  Be aware that emotional resentments from past can surface and block your heightened creative energy, so fight urges to be suspicious, secretive and moody.  Remember there are magickal energies to banish negative forces today.  This transit is a time of regemeration and cleaning out of emotional debris from the previous month - and this Saturn's Day - a cleaning up day anyway.  You find that you have great energy to complete things and focus on certain areas that you found yourself too scattered to deal with in the previous lunar cycle.

  The Winter Hag - Cally Berry in northern Ireland, Cailleach Bheur in Scotland and Caileach Bhera in southern Ireland (these names roughly translate to 'old gloomy woman) rules now in the winter season. Some scholars think that the Highland Cailleach Bheur was the same goddess who is called Black Annis in Britain.  British researcher Katherine Briggs sees her as a primitive Artemis-type figure who guarded the animals from predators and hunters.  And in these lean days of food for birds please consider the following little essay from Kate West of "The Real Witches' Year"

  Feeding the Birds

At this time of year natural foods for birds are in short supply, so it is more important than ever to ensure that we supplement their diet.  While there is a huge variety of commercial feeders and feed available it can be more interesting and usually far cheaper to create your own.
    Fat balls can be hung in the kinds of net bag that fruit, and some vegetables, often come in. The basis for these can be lard or you can collect and save the residues of grilled sausages and the like. Add breadcrumbs and oatmeal, and search your kitchen cabinets for raisins, sultanas, seeds, and shelled nuts. Mix everything together, roll into balls and chill in the refrigerator. Hang in the string or plastic nets in a safe place away from the reach of cats. These nets can also be used to put shelled peanuts (ground nuts in, as the birds will have to peck through the mesh to reach the nuts. It is not a good idea to give them access to whole nuts as, once the breeding season starts, young birds cannot digest them.

    Apples which have passed their best can be impaled on twigs and branches. If you had mistletoe in the house for the Yule period, this can also be put out for the birds, as the berries need to pass through the digestive system of a bird to aid germination. You never know, you might get your own Mistletoe plants in years to come.

"The life of the land is in all things living."

[From: "The Real Witches' Year" by Kate West]

The Magical Mind - The Three Minds

   Making magick means understanding the parts of yourself involved in the process. We need to focus on our consicous mind as the director of our will, but in truth, we have at least three minds. Understanding and accessing the three minds is the key to magick.

   The first is the conscious mind. That is the mind most familiar to us. The conscious mind contains the personality and the ego identity. The part of us that is conscious, awake, and handling the details of day-to-day life is our conscious mind. The tools of the conscious mind are reason and logic, and it qualities are analysis and alertness. It perceives life in a linear, three-dimensional fashion. One event follows another. Events are chained together in a line moving through time. Those behind us are the past, those occurring now are the present, and those to occur are the future. This mind can spend a lot of time relfecting on the past and planning for the future while handling the present. Here is where you formulate your needs and desires for your life and for your magick. The drawback of the conscious mind is its perception. Though a linear perception is necessary in our day-to-day life, it limits our ability to process large amounts of information or energy, the very stuff of magick. The conscious mind is also called the middle self.

  Our second mind, the psychic mind, is both the key and doorway to our magickal talents. This part of you has a greater natural ability to process energy and information. Unlike the conscious mind, the psychic mind is not necessarily bound by the limits of linear perception. Great leaps of intuition can be made, skipping over the logical chain of thoughts to reach a conclusion much faster. Intuition is opening up to the information available in the universe by accessing psychic ability. Psychic ability is not necessarily 'movie magic', using your mind to bend spoons and move objects across the roon, but rather processing information your would not logically have. Knowing who is on the phone before you pick it up is as psychic as acts of mind over matter. We all have intuitive abilities. We are all psychic. Some learn to use their abilities to a greater degree.

   The psychic mind is also called the lower self, but not in the sense of lower as bad, evil, or ever lesser. Many religions that have demonized personal power and psychic ability might believe so, but the concept of the lower self actually comes from what psychologists call the unconscious or subconscious. By relaxing our conscious mind, we can move through the doorways of our personal subconscious and into the great unconscious , a realm of greater awareness and insight. Unfortunately, we are not often aware of it, hence the term unconscious.  After hearing this, many may desire to erase their conscious, ego self to instead live in this world of intuitive knowing, but each balances the other, serving an important need. If we do not have a linear perception, we would not know to eat and sleep and generally take care of our physical self. For this, the conscious self is necessary. Many desire that fuel magick and spells come from the conscious. The psychic self is also called the lower self because it is seen as more primal and instinctual, acting before reasoning things out. Animal instincts and the lessons the natural world brings to us are often said to be connected with our lower psychic and magickal abilities. Other mystical traditions call the lower self the younger self.

  The greatest job of the psychic mind is playing the role of intermediary between the conscious mind and the divine mind, the third mind. The divine mind is the aspect of creative spirit within us, connecting us to the greater whole. You could call this God, Many witches call this Goddess. Penczak calls this the Great Spirit since he comes from a tradition that honors both Goddess and God as part of the greater whole. He sees their love and interaction create all life.  Our personal divine mind is the level of the super consciousness or what is called higher, or older self. It has a greater view from its position, spiritually speaking, than the ego self. The higher self can see where we've been and where we are headed. Like the lower self, it is not bound by linear time. In fact, it is simultaneously aware of all things and times. Because the conscious mind would have difficulty processing so much information, our divine self gives us information in small bursts of insight, epiphanies, and revelations. Or the higher self can use the lower self, the psychic mind, to relay a message which takes shape as a dream, symbol or flash of intuition. However, such messages need to be decoded through our cultural and personal symbol systems in the collective unconscious and personal subconscious.

   In Hawaiian shamanic traditions, the lower self is believed to take the raw material that is given from thoughts, words and actions of the conscious mind. When we sleep, the lower self brings these raw building block to the higher self, which then creates our life. We do this continuously throughout our life. Similarly magick is consciously building a relationship with the lower and higher selves, to form a co-creative partnership. A spell is like giving a very specific request to our higher self, along with the necessary building block to bring change into our lives.  The higher self connected to all higher selves everywhere, to the entire spectrum of life in the universe, can coordinate and help fulfill our spell.