Magick
Workshop Spotlight: Witching Wellness
Witching Wellness with Kirk White
The witch walks
the line between the worlds, weaving the forces of the plants, the
stars, the elements, the spirits, magic and medicine, mind and body, to
bring healing (or harm when necessary) to themselves and their
communities. Placed into the magical worldview of medieval European folk
medicine and magic, yet also drawing on Chinese, Ayurvedic, and Greek
humoral medicine, we will begin to explore how these forces are woven
together and can be used for health, happiness, growth, and balance. We
will cover basic theory, learn and practice assessment/diagnostic
methods, and learn how to choose or create the right treatment strategy
based on those findings. Beginners will leave with a firm foundation on
which to begin growing while more advanced healers will gain strategies
and skills to better define, refine, and deepen their current skill set.
(90 min)
Do we know what we need?
When the movie Aladdin came out my kids came up with a game they played at recess with their friends. One person would be the “genie”, all the other kids were the “wishers”. The goal for the wishers was to come up with a wish that the genie couldn’t mess up (without getting too longwinded), and the goal for the genie was to come up with a way of giving them exactly what they asked for- in such a way that it would make them miserable.
Once I heard about it, I have been telling all the magick users I know that this is a great training practice, because magick has a tendency (like computers) to do what you asked for, rather than what you THOUGHT you asked. You have to look at all the possibilities, and figure out all the ways a working might go wrong before you actually set the energy working.
I cannot stress too strongly how we need to be both imaginative and precise when we are dealing with “changing the universe through our will”. This is also a big part of divination- learning to ask the right question to get the response, the information you need to get. We need to know what we need before we can ask for it.
Another way some of us deal with this issue is to place it into the control of a “higher power”: angels, gods, one’s higher self, some entity who is supposed to have both more information, and our best interests in heart. This is usually done by those who feel that it is the higher powers who are the source of energy for what we are doing. When you have turned control over to the Divine, you may not need to know what what you need: “This or something better, for the greatest good for all” is a frequent ending when we are requesting divine help so that we don’t accidentally hurt someone because we didn’t anticipate that result.
We hope that those who we are asking for help don’t feel put-upon, like Genie in the Disney movie. I will point out that while it makes sense to ask help from someone who has the ability to do whatever it is, that it’s not a good idea to simply look up which ever god, angel, saint, loa, or whatever and ask them to power our working. Do you ask for help from strangers walking past your house to carry your boxes when you’re moving? No, you ask your friends- good friends. So create your relationship with divine beings strong first, before you ask them for help (feel free to give them “pizza and beer” after, or whatever they prefer). It depends on your relationship- if if the one helping you is far more powerful, show appreciation in the way you’d show it to a parent or patron. You’ve created a relationship, which implies an exchange, perhaps not equal, but mutually acceptable. I don’t know any supernatural helpers that like are someone you look up on Craig’s list you can pay to “do a job” for you.
Bottom line: while we may or may not “need to know what we need” (depending upon whether we are getting help or not), I think it’s clear that we frequently don’t know what we need. But we can figure it out- with a lot of work, and a little divination.
Hidden Potential
The element of fire is known for changing things. At its most basic, it takes the potential energy of the fuel (for example wood, where the tree collected solar energy) and releases it, creating light and heat.
Sometimes we don’t realize how a crisis can result in our finding inner potential of which we were unaware. Like the proverbial parent lifting a car to free a trapped child, many factors combine to allow us to do more in a crisis than we would otherwise expect of ourselves.
How many stories of telepathy are “my loved one was in trouble far away and I felt their fear… or sadness… or heard their voice… at the moment (I found out later) that they were in trouble”? Why at those moments? Strong emotions can fuel psychic talents any time, but often we do not even attempt something we “know is impossible” until there is no other option.
When we feel we have no other options, we sometimes find that “fire within”: the talent, the strength, the ability, we did not know we had; we tap it to get through the crisis. Most people never attempt to use those resources again, returning to the comfortable assumption that such things are impossible. But humans are made of stardust as well as earth, of energy as well as matter, and we have a core of fire, of totally natural psychic abilities, that we can use… if we only think of it.
I may say this too often, but it is the prayer not voiced that is not answered, the spell not cast that never works. By and large I would rather avoid crisis, but when thrust upon me, I try to look for the silver lining. That is so often the moment that forces us to discover how magickal we are.
Book for Youth Recommendations Panel
Friday Panel Spotlight: Book Panel
This year panelists will share what books they think would be good to share with kids and teens who are interested in developing their psychic or magickal potential including both fiction and non-fiction. When a young person comes to you, the book must be both engaging, and give them insight into some aspects of what we do, and really needs not to feed them stuff they are going to have to unlearn later! Come to listen or share suggestions of your own- or explain why you don’t agree with panelists choices!
Create the Change
You may have wondered about the rather unwieldy name for our conference. When we were designing the conference, we were trying to figure out what we wanted to accomplish. What we hope to do is to change our parent culture in which the reality of many energy fields, many beings and many effective practices that can enhance our lives are rejected out of hand. We were thinking how great it would be if our children’s generation lived in a world where it was accepted that people are psychic and you wouldn’t have to hint about it, talk around it, or pretend that it wasn’t real so that you wouldn’t be considered foolish. That’s backwards! How foolish is it to deny evidence‽
We feel that if we can get the world to accept these realities and both benign and useful (yes, some people still feel that anything “occult” must be dangerous!) that they will be available to enhance daily life. How much better off we are when we know the benefits of using herbs for medicinal as well as culinary purposes. Yet there are still people out there who figure that if a remedy doesn’t come in a box, it “can’t work”.
There are people who scoff at “water witching”, yet many people quietly have a dowser locate their well. The American Dowsing Society has groups that provide this service in third world countries, and their experiences show how well it works.
I know that I use dowsing nearly daily to find lost objects around the house. Our family uses crystals for healing, as well as homeopathy, acupressure and aromatherapy. All of these things are said by critics to be useless, and even harmful if they prevent people from going to “established” practitioners. If they weren’t working, of course we’d go to someone who could help.
But we need to change the story- the dialogue- how people talk about the unknown. At this point anything paranormal in film is still lumped into the Horror genre. As you may have noticed in the last paragraph, much of what I use these ‘supernatural’ techniques for is practical, finding lost objects or healing faster. The world would simply be easier to navigate if we didn’t deny an entire section of available human abilities. So when thinking about the future, think about a world where there is no resistance, no denial, no pretense that magick isn’t real. The world is changing, we just want to make it better.
