Copper Moon E-zine

Imbolc for Two

By Steel Witch

At Imbolc we celebrate the coming of spring and the end of winter. Most pagans celebrate the goddess Brighid during this holiday, while others prefer Punxsutawney Phil. While not the longest night of the year, it is generally the coldest. I went camping on Imbolc once and I'm pretty much never going to do that again. Try to feel the cold a bit before this ritual so you can better appreciate the spring you are summoning in.

 This ritual is designed for two participants but will work perfectly well for one. If you are solo you will have to read both parts. You'll need a candle to represent the god, a candle to represent the goddess, and a large candle to represent the holiday in either white or red. You'll also want several smaller candles―this is a fire festival, after all! Tealights will work nicely. If you would like to decorate your altar/temple/house/pet, the colors of the holiday are red and white. Okay, so, the colors vary depending on which source you consult, so feel free to change them if you feel they should be different.

Self analysis: What do I want? Where am I? How far have I come?

by Steel Witch

I've been getting pissed off at myself recently. I like to be good at the things I do. I mean, that's only natural. Everyone is that way! Who starts learning something new with the stated goal of being mediocre at it? “Yeah man, I'm learning guitar. Just you wait! I'm gonna be the freakng averegest guitar player you'll ever see!” You'll never hear anyone say that. (As I type this, some guy in Massachusetts is saying that exact thing: “Yeah man, twice as average as that other dude.”)

So what does this have to do with anything, and why am I typing it up for you to read? I've started to feel recently that I'm just not being Wiccan hard enough. Sure, I work on an ezine on Wicca and am getting published in a book about Witchcraft and wear my pentacle like it's going out of style... but it's the mundane stuff that's starting to throw me for a loop. I've been practicing for short of two years now and things just aren't moving quite as well as I expected—I'm having problems with even the basics of energy work and meditation. Shouldn't I be commanding phenomenal cosmic power, journeying to the spirit world, and chatting with the gods over tea in the morning by now? Jeez, all those books make it sound so easy. Just relax, feel all your problems melting away. Done? Great, now you don't have any more problems. Maybe it is all of the grimoires I've been looking at recently. I've got books that tell me how to reach gnosis through meditation, dancing, sex, sex-dancing, meditation-sex, illegal drugs, 4/4 breathing, or mudras. I can find numerous ways to banish a spirit or create a spirit or become a spirit or turn a part of you into a spirit so you can banish it or invoke or evoke or... you get the picture. Looking at all these cool things I can't do sometimes make me feel crappy, like I can't do anything. My most recent slump inspired me to write this article.

Gwinevere Rain & Steel Witch's Handfasting

by Gwinevere Rain

It was with much pleasure and excitement that on October 24, 2009 myself and Steel Witch partook in a handfasting ceremony. A handfasting is a Wiccan ritual that unites two people together in a spiritual bond. For some this bond can be set to a pre-determined time frame (most commonly a year and a day) for others it functions as a legal marriage ceremony. Our handfasting was a celebration recognizing our unity in a committed & loving relationship.  It was overseen by our good friend Michelle and performed under a large pavilion at a wilderness park with live Irish instrumental music.

This event took many weeks to plan and was truly magical. With any event bumps can be encountered along the way and ours was no exception: the invitations were a challenge, a dress snafu, long food platter discussions and a couple other incidents along the way. However, what mattered most was our willingness and firm desire to continue beyond any complications.

Jack-o-lantern Protection Spell

by Steel Witch

"Look on my Angry Face, ye Mighty, and despair!" 

Samhain is right around the corner and pumpkins are starting to show up in supermarkets.  It is a Halloween tradition in the US to hollow out pumpkins and make them into angry-faced lanterns by carving faces in them and placing candles in their innards.

With Samhain approaching it is a good idea to add a little more protection to the household as the veil starts to thin and spirits come out to play.  I've created a spell  using this popular craft as a base—a simple ward to keep away what spirits might wander by during the Samhain season.  

The Spell: Dead Gourd Ward; or, Mr. Angry Face

This spell creates a frightening ward to scare off meandering harmful spirits during the Samhain season.

The Tarot – A Pilgrimage to the Self (Part One)

By Gede Parma

The Tarot, by its very nature, permeates the great expanse of both the human psyche and the human experience; both of which influence the other. It is a refined divinatory system which comprises 78 cards; 56 of which make up the minor arcana (the lesser/'mundane' mysteries) and 22 comprise the major arcana (the greater/'esoteric' mysteries). It is the major arcana which will inform the remainder of this article.

Various systems exist which connect and co-relate the 22 cards of the major arcana with specific occult and esoteric traditions. For instance the Qabalistic Tree of Life bears a striking resemblance to the major arcana in both archetypal force and dynamic understanding. This is so, despite the stark difference in relative origin of the two systems, because esoteric tradition aims to connect and commune with the Life-Force most often identified as ‘God’ or the Divine, which unites all things. The Tarot embodies a psychic journey towards spiritual truth and wholeness for the human being and as such can be harnessed as a psychological tool of reflection and insight. 

Creating a Tarot Layout: Personalizing Your Own Magickal Meta-Tool

by SteelWitch

The Tarot is a powerful divination tool.  It combines established meanings with a metric buttload of symbols crammed into each card to allow a huge range of interpretation within set guidelines.  Each card has numerous nuances that can appear based on arrangement, position, relationship to other cards, or where your eye happens to land first when you flip it.  And, even if you are a novice at divination, theres' always a handy little book for you to read which will guide you along the way to interpreting a reading.

We're often advised to perform a divination before working a spell or making an important meditative journey just to see if it's a good idea.  Coin flips or yes/no rocks will tell you in no uncertain terms whether or not a spell should be performed, but if you're anything like me you want to know a heck of a lot more about the situation than that, or may even become more determined to cast the spell if a coin tells you “no”.  Tarot is a great tool to learn details about a situation and is one that I've seen suggested numerous times.  It sounds great in theory, but the standard layouts don't really cover everything you'd want to ask about very well.  Sure, you could probably finagle the Celtic Cross into telling you why your money spells are backfiring and what you should do about it, but it's not really designed for that.  Why not use a layout specifically designed for your question?

I decided to come up with a standard method for creating custom layouts after a frustrating experience while meditating.  I needed to learn more about the situation and the players in it as well as what to do about it as I wasn't particularly interested in assaulting my subconscious without guidance. So, I figured out what I needed to know, broke that down to a set of questions, assigned those questions to cards, built a layout, charged the layout, and did a reading. Then I wrote an article about doing all that to further charge my layout.  I'll explain a little more about my situation as we go through the steps below, going light on the actual details of the situation where they do not relate to the spread.  A witch has to have some secrets.

Teen Earth Magic—June 2009

By Abel R. Gomez

There is something so magical, so profoundly beautiful about a group of people coming together to sing, connect with one another, and celebrate the cycles of the Earth. Unless you live in an area with a large Pagan community, teens and young adults often miss out on such experiences. In an effort to bridge this gap and to offer teens a space for deep magic and personal transformation, teachers and organizers from the San Francisco Bay Reclaiming community created Teen Earth Magic, an annual five-day retreat for teens in the magical arts.

Group Photo ©2009 Jayda Faye/Reclaiming Quarterly

Teen Earth Magic was held near Nevada City, California at a family owned campsite. Our over two-dozen campers came from all over the US, as did our eight person teaching time. This year’s mythic theme was the Salmon lifecycle.  Together we explored the journey of the salmon through ritual and magic; from birth to their mysterious transformation, their journey through the ocean depths, to their primordial call to return to source. We called upon the spirits of the land, the Salmon, the nearby Yuba river, Mother Earth, and the elements of life as allies and guides in our workings.

Covencraft

By Gede Parma, Eilan

“When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning or in rain?” -  The First Witch, Macbeth (Act 1, Scene 1), Shakespeare

I am both a coven Witch and a solitary Witch. I practise in both contexts and I find that they are complementary and create a beautiful synthesis. I find my wild-way illumined by celebrating with my coveners in our group several times a week whilst simultaneously maintaining a dedicated discipline of observation, reflection, meditation and ritual – and Life – on my own. A Witch’s work is never done and this is because our ‘work’ does not tire or exert us, but enhances and revitalises our innate connections with the world around us. Our ‘work’ is also of the Great Mystery – which by its very nature is unborn, undying and very much alive.

If you find yourself at the crossroads and you are yearning for like-spirited peers to share your spirituality with please refer to the Covencraft chapter (pg 201 – chapter 10) in my book Spirited: Taking Paganism Beyond the Circle (Llewellyn, 2009). In this chapter I provide a series of Question & Answer sections which may help to guide you in your choices. However this article isn’t necessarily about deciding to join a coven, but what I feel the advantages are of belonging to an intimate, magickal family. I also believe (it is true for me) that maintaining a Craft of solitude is equally as important After all we are all highly individualistic (and this is amplified in the magickal community). Ultimately however humans depend on one another for quality in survival. Thrive and flourish in perfect love and perfect trust.

Earth Activist Training 2009—Cazedero, CA

A short blog blurb
By Abel R. Gomez

By the grace of the Universe and by the generous hearts of the Bay Area Reclaiming and SHARANYA communities, I was able to attend Earth Activist Training, a two week permaculture design course rooted in regenerative activism and earth-based spirituality. The course was taught by bestselling author and Witch Starhawk and permaculture designer and activist Erik Ohlsen.

Permaculture is an emerging form of sustainability and ecological design based on observation of Nature, creating systems the way Nature creates. Earth Activist Training was an intense course covering such diverse subjects as grey water systems, composting, healing soil, and alternative energy. We even spent a day on Starhawk’s land creating a small storage building out of cob, a natural building material made of clay, mud, and hay.

A Witch’s Ethics: On Being a Good Witch

By Gede Parma, Eilan

Traditionally, a Witch has never been considered as having a defined set of ethical principles. Witchcraft has long been described as wilful malevolence through magickal means by society at large. A Witch, therefore, is innately evil, or has freely chosen to embark on such a journey; drawn in by the illusion of power. However, Witches know this to be a misinformed falsity which has no bearing on the true Craft. We know and work with the power of Magick, and with that knowledge we wield power. In wielding power we are directly and acutely affected by it, and as such are intrinsically aware of the delicate balance of things. In having power, we are reverent. This can be expressed through the following affirmation, Knowledge is Power and Power is Reverence.

The Wiccan traditions, the most popular forms of NeoPagan religious Witchcraft, are guided ethically by the ‘Harm None’ rede – “An ye harm none, do what ye will”. Depending on the person the rede will be interpreted slightly differently, however the most common understanding is that we must ever strive to harm nothing and no one, and in doing so we may do as we will. The rede is a powerful statement of freedom guided by wisdom. Witches are keenly intuitive and attuned with the natural cycles and tides. We are also aware that it is highly improbable, if not impossible, to live without harming something along the way. Life feeds off life, and thus both plants and animals must die so that we may survive. However, the rede is an ideal to which we should aspire. A Witch is bound by no morality except her own inner moral compass. Need often triumphs over whether another is harmed or not, and therefore life can continue. Gerald Gardner said it himself when he stated that in failing to adhere to the rede in certain circumstances, a Witch should do as much as possible to abate the harm which has occurred – to balance and heal harm with compassion and reverence for the continuum of Life.