Earth Power

“The real mysteries of magic are those of nature. In practicing these spells one touches nature, and in this work anyone can discover the secrets. Nature, the Earth, the Universe, are the great initiators. It is to these that we must look for help in opening our eyes to see what has been there all along.”

If the title “Earth Power” seems familiar, it’s because this is not a new book – Llewellyn have reissued this popular Scott Cunningham book, which was first published in 1983.

The good thing about this new version is that it has an updated biography of the author inside the cover, but I was disappointed to find that the stunning artwork by Robin Wood (that featured so heavily in past editions) has not been included in this one.

For many years, this book has been a trusted guide to those who are interested in the principles of magic – especially that of folk magic! For this is a book that focuses on enchantments from simpler times, from those days of old when religion, magic, and the elements were an integral part of people’s daily lives. It’s a book of spells that uses rivers and sea, sun and moon, storms and rain!

As Cunningham says, “...the ways of magic are revealed to those who work with the forces of nature. The secrets are written in meandering streams and drifting clouds; they are whispered by the roaring ocean and cooling breeze; they echo in caves and rocks and forests.”

Any book with a chapter on tree magic soon becomes a firm favourite of mine, and this one has a section on tree spells, tree divination, their healing energies and magical properties too.

As with all Cunningham books, the author encourages the reader to experiment with invocations, spell workings and divination - he doesn’t proclaim that you have to do things a certain way or else you will be struck by 9 bolts of lightning and then laughed at by the gods!

Making magic in harmony with nature, is the message of this book, and the true essence of magic is contained within its pages. Like any of the other Scott Cunningham titles, this one is especially recommended for newcomers, but those with plenty of experience behind them may also enjoy looking at Earth Power again, as they’ll rediscover some fundamental concepts that are sometimes overlooked.

Publisher: Llewellyn
ISBN: 0-87542-121-0

Divining Earth Spirit

Australian author Alanna Moore’s revised and updated edition of Divining Earth Spirit is crammed full of interesting chapters on Geomancy (earth energies) and environmental awareness. It is the most comprehensive reference book of its kind. The author has been involved in dowsing for more than twenty years, and she is an acknowledged expert in this specialised field of research.

The book begins with earth studies from eastern and western cultural views: Feng Shui, stone circles, labyrinths, and scientific studies on crop circles are all explained from the Geomancer’s perspective.

Following this are chapters on Australian geomancy, and not surprisingly, the earth centred spirituality of the indigenous inhabitants is a major focal point of this section. The Dreaming stories of the Flinders Ranges are discussed, and the Hindmarsh Island bridge controversy gets a mention. Also included is a chapter on the earth energies in Yankalilla, SA. It turns out that the Anglican church in that town (yes, the one with the salt damp that looks like some well known religious figures) was built over a desecrated aboriginal sacred site!

Geopathic stress is the main concern of another section. This is about underground streams and their effect on health and mental alertness. The paragraphs on the dowsing of ‘black spots’ on roads was particularly interesting, with dowsers installing neutralisation devices in problem areas and finding that accident rates were cut ‘from 32 over two years, to just one accident in one year.’

Other chapters in this book help you to discover the Devic dimensions (nature spirits). There’s a great chapter on the Green Man, a symbol that is featured on many medieval churches, representing our connection with nature. The Greek god Pan also has a chapter devoted to him, and Alanna spends some time describing dowsing for Pan in various locations all over the world, and she relates the ‘electrifying experience’ of meeting him during meditations.

Many famous geomancers were interviewed for Divining Earth Spirit, and they told of their specific fields of interest and gave interesting case histories. They explained their methods of interaction with the environment, ranging from sites at Glastonbury Tor to Alice Springs.

My only gripe about the book is the amount of space given to the ‘visions’ received by various clairvoyants in and around sacred sites. Most are unsubstantiated by experiences from anybody else. Does anybody really want to know about the lady who camped in a stone circle and saw a ten foot high elf called Asulan, who promised to help her look for her lost dog? I certainly don’t!

With a healthy respect for pagan traditions, and an awareness of deity and sacred space, Alanna Moore’s Divining Earth Spirit is an insight to a different method of reverence and appreciation for the Earth Mother. Alanna says that the reason she wrote this book is to ‘take you on a journey through doors of perception which are both ancient and new to many. I want you to hear the voices of many in relation to Earth energy awareness and healing. And I’d like you to consider that we all have the potential to be able to divine Earth spirit, and that it is high time that its significance be acknowledged and nurtured.’ Her book fulfils all of this and more!

This is a valuable reference book for anyone with an interest in sacred sites and the world’s subtle energy fields. And it has opened my eyes to the variety of earth energies that one can explore through geomancy – thank you Alanna!

Author: Alanna Moore
Published by: Python Press
RRP: $38
Available from: Geomantica, PO Box 929, Castlemaine, Victoria, 3450
Website: www.geomantica.com

Celebrating the Pagan Soul

Pagans are a diverse lot. Our magical and spiritual experiences have been the result of training, experimentation, luck, and perhaps the will of the gods. The way that we have found our path has also come about through varied means, and yet we have all sensed the ‘rightness’ of it in our hearts when we finally acknowledged who and what we are. The essence of this voyage of personal discovery is the basis of the book ‘Celebrating the Pagan Soul’. Actually, it’s not a book in the normal sense, it’s a collection of 66 essays from many writers, with themes that include community, magic, divinity and the cycles of life.

As the title suggests, it’s a book that celebrates Paganism, giving us a voyeuristic glimpse into the private thoughts and lives of Pagans across the world. The editor also saw this volume as an opportunity to record memories of those teachers who helped shape the beginning of the Neo-Pagan movement, and to record the prejudice and intolerance that Pagans have sometimes faced as we strived for acceptance.

‘Celebrating the Pagan Soul’ is a book that everyone can learn from, no matter how new or advanced they are along the Pagan path. It’s an anthology of thoughts from the elders of our communities. Gardnerian High Priestess Laura Wildman has brought together a wonderful assortment of writers from the USA, the UK, and Australia too. Some of the big names involved in this project include: Starhawk, Margot Adler, Macha NightMare, Francesca De Grandis, Fredric Lamond, Patricia Monaghan, Barbara Ardinger, and Oberon Zell-RavenHeart. Prominent Australian writers Caroline Tully and Douglas Ezzy contributed quite moving stories, and although I might be biased, I’d say that their essays were amongst the best in the book.

Caroline’s name will be familiar to readers of Witchcraft Magazine and Pagan Times. Her story is a very personal account of the Goddess visions that she received during a dangerous and difficult birthing process, and the omens that she saw during her next ill-fated pregnancy. It’s a sad, but thought provoking article to remind us that ‘deities can take as well as give.’

Douglas Ezzy, a senior lecturer in Sociology, has written about his local patch of Tasmanian landscape... ‘the rhythm of the waves echoing to the cliff tops; the depth of the ocean along her borders; the temperamentality of the weather’s moods; the harsh cruelty of death by fire and drought; the dark quietness of her valley; the warm embrace of her folds; and the sweet fecund scent of rotting plant matter. She is an intimate friend to me...’ It’s a beautifully crafted essay about reverence for nature and the land - a contemplative meandering along the body of the goddess.

This book also shows that we Pagans don’t mind seeing the humorous side of our spirituality – this is evident from chapter titles such as: What to Do with a Dead Husband; How I Ignored Common Sense and Backed into the Morrigan; and the story of a ‘City Pagan’, who never managed to develop ‘a healthy appreciation for being outdoors.’

‘Celebrating the Pagan Soul’ is often inspirational, sometimes funny, but it also contains many touching personal stories as well. As the editor mentions in her introduction, ‘The wheel of life contains moments of tragedy and loss as well as joy.’

I was surprised at the level of honesty and openness of the writers who contributed to this book. Their musings were often filled with the sense of wonder and discovery that echoed my own journey. At times the authors delved into the same fears that have dragged me into the depths of the Underworld, but at other times they joyfully described the bliss that I too have found along the way. This book helps us to realise that we are not alone in our initial doubts of whether we will fit in; that we all mistakes; and that we’re not the only ones to have been dazzled by the effectiveness of magic that has come thundering back to us when we’ve stood between the worlds, invoking changes into our lives.

This is not the sort of book that will be lost at the back of your bookshelves. You will want to keep it nearby, so that you can read it again and again. Its short chapters are perfect for those moments when you only have a few moments of reading time available, but I bet you’ll find that you won’t be able to put it down!

Celebrating the Pagan Soul: Our Own Stories of Inspiration and Community
Edited and compiled by Laura Wildman
Published by Citadel Press, New York, 2005.
Paperback. 254 pages.
Australian RRP: $25
ISBN: 0-8065-2624-6
Available in Australia from Caroline Tully, PO Box 1206, Windsor, Victoria, 3181
Email Caroline: heliade@bigpond.com

Animism

“...there is an everyday, taken-for-granted obviousness about animism. How could this not be the case when that which is alive is the rock you are holding or standing on, the animal you are hunting, the cloud that waters the corn you are tending, or the tree you are sheltering beneath?”

Graham Harvey’s interest in animism arose while researching his previous book, Listening People, Speaking Earth. In this one, he delves into the nature of animism (excuse the pun); historical examples; and the ethical dilemmas of being an animist in today’s world.

The first part of this book is spent attempting to define ‘animism’. The previously used term of ‘a belief in spirits’ was thrown aside, and new definitions were introduced. According to Graham Harvey, “Animists are people who recognise that the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in relationship with others.” He also states “...not all animists agree that everything that exists is alive or personal.” But there does seem to be a consensus that Animism is directly linked with indigenous and environmental spiritualities, and is about “how to be a good person in respectful relationships with other persons.”

After explaining his reasons for writing the book, the remaining part of this first section is an academic treatise that compares ‘primitive’ animism with anthropomorphism, panpsychism and epistemology. The rest of the book looks at interesting case studies - the seasonal stories of the Ojibwe tribes of North America; Maori pendants; expressions of The Dreaming in Alice Springs; Eco-Paganism and activism - and then he explores the implications and ramifications of animism.

In these 248 pages (of fairly small print) Harvey also manages to explore the role of shamans, deities, totems and cannibals in animist cultures and communities. Even though Animism is fairly heavy reading, with most of it being textbook style, humour is slipped in occasionally to keep you turning the pages. There’s many quirky headings such as “Gods, Fairies and Hedgehogs” and “Animals Are People Too”. It’s also a philosophical book, and it makes you think about the broad range of topics that can be covered under the term ‘Paganism’, and the way in which today’s Paganism is far removed from its roots.

Along with Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough, this is essential reading for those who are interested in anthropology and the source of Pagan principles and practices. In this book, we get to see animism as a vitally present way of life – a way of being that is life-affirming and respectful, and in Harvey’s own words, animism does this “with grace and beauty.”


Author: Graham Harvey
Published by: Wakefield Press, 2005
ISBN: 1-86254-678-9

21 Ways to Read a Tarot Card

If you are not a good tarot reader by the time that you’ve finished this book, then you should have chosen to learn a different form of divination. Because if you had followed the steps involved in Mary K Greer’s hefty book (over 300 pages) and you still can’t tell a fool from a Fool, then you must have cheated yourself and the author by simply reading through “21 Ways to Read a Tarot Card”, instead of treating it as a workbook.

Within each of the 21 specified ways to read the tarot, there are (on average) about four activities that must be worked through, in order to gain the best understanding of each card. If my maths is any good, that means that there are 84 exercises to do, and if you did these with each of the 78 tarot cards, you would have undertaken about 6,552 activities by the time that you had worked your way through the tarot deck. If that didn’t make you an expert on tarot, then you should give up straight away and take up the reading of animal entrails instead!

Mary calls her 21 methods a “bag of tricks for evoking deep awareness and personal wisdom,” and after 40 years in the tarot business, I’m sure that she knows a thing or two about the right techniques for eliciting the significance of a card’s meaning. And as Mary explains in the preface, “By approaching a single card from many different perspectives, you learn things about both the card and yourself that you could not learn in any other way.” From this approach and from your personal interaction with each card, you’ll discover your personal card reading style, and you will learn so much more about tarot than from simply reading someone else’s interpretations of the cards.

Even experienced tarot readers can sometimes find themselves using only the traditional meanings for certain cards, so the big advantage that this book offers is that it stretches your awareness and unlocks new possibilities within a reading. The exercises in this book can help the tarot cards to ‘come alive’ in your mind, and the characters in the images become multidimensional beings. Some of the learning techniques that are suggested involve: sketching the cards to find all the details that are sometimes overlooked; storytelling; and having dialogues with the characters in the cards.

The author has a very grounded approach to tarot, as shown in the following statement, “It’s often assumed that the answers are in the cards and that we, as readers, should point them out. But whose answers? And what if there are no answers in the cards, only questions? My philosophy is that there are usually multiple responses to any question and that all the answers lie within the person seeking them.” I was also impressed with the section on Traps and Solutions, where Mary Greer has identified and overcome the ways in which tarot readers can get stuck within a reading.

I found the book to be worthwhile and I’d highly recommend this method of learning. This is the book that I wish had been available when I bought my first pack of tarot cards, as I would have a much better understanding of them if I’d used these 21 steps to learn each card. Perhaps it’s not too late though.... perhaps it’s time to dust off my tarot deck and have another look at them!

Published by: Llewellyn, 2006