Darkness & Light in Witchcraft & Kabbalah

ה׳ בשבט תשע"ב
Imbolgen 7
Rowan 9

Through my Etsy shoppe (WITCHCRAFTS Artisan Alchemy™), I often receive inquiries regarding magic and metaphysical concepts. One I recently received sought an understanding of darkness and evil. I will share my response to that inquiry here with my blog friends as well - In my tradition, darkness does not equal evil. There is good in both darkness and light, just as there is banefulness in both light and darkness. The goal of my tradition is to clarify and raise both the light and the darkness to a higher vibration (so to speak) and to transform both forms together into an evolved energy that is greater than either light or darkness as each exists alone (each at their own untransformed level). Yes, it is dangerous to embrace one's darkness, but it can be equally dangerous to become unbalanced with light in an effort to strangle the darkness. One good writer who explains the good/baneful polarities of both darkness and light is Konstatinos. Here is a link to his book Nocturnal Witchcraft: Magick After Dark (which discusses these ideas about darkness and light in traditional Witchcraft) for more information.

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Alchemy Of The Word

כ"ח בתמוז תש"ע
Faunus 29

Thursday evening I chose a rune according to my usual procedure to discern and draw forth the primary Universal force at work at this particular time, in my particular life, in the particular circumstance driving the divination. I drew the B-rune Berkano, the rune of Goddess, the Divine Feminine force. (This is the first time I've ever drawn Berkano in a divination - and so, at this time it is appropriate to add Berkano as the twenty-first rune to my personal runerow, which includes the Wyrd rune. Through Berkano, Goddess of my Germanic ancestors confirms me as heiress to and Runemistress of the Mysteries of the Folk.)

Berkano carries the mystery of the moment, implies Unity throughout all patterns in the Multiverse, and is the "unit of evolution" through which all that is becoming comes into full being. Berkano rules over transformation, holds power together, and brings to fruition the creative process.

Berkano rules over the creation and implementation of new ideas and enterprises. It calms every troubled mind, protectively wards all within its domain, forth-tells of abundance, manifests security, and nurtures and heals the Land. Without fail, Berkano always leads to blossoming and ripening in some way.

Particularly relevant to my divination, Berkano conceals and evokes the Great Mystery and alchemy of the Word. Importantly, Goddess is Mistress of this powerful magic.

Related entry - The Fearful Lord



Runerow entries:

Runes 1-3: Transmission of a Sacred Secret
Rune 4: The Wholiness Code
Rune 5: Mysteries of the Staircase
Rune 6: The Ship of Safe Passage
Rune 7: The Ætheling
Rune 8: Communication
Rune 9: The Nature Of My Work
Runes 10-11: Wyrd Shema
Rune 12: The View From My Room
Rune 13: Thurisaz On The Falling Man
Rune 14: Power To Do It
Rune 15: Wyrd Preparation
Rune 16: Mother Of Manifest Blessing
Rune 17: By Force Of Destiny
Rune 18: The Othala Force
Rune 19: Secrets Of The Name
Rune 20: Vardlokkur

Tzaraat, The Mystery Under The Skin

כ״ג בסיון תש"ע
Mab 24

Last night I dreamt.

Too normal.

Something like in the television series V, there were aliens among us with a plan to infiltrate and destroy humanity. Though the V aliens and the aliens in my dream were of the same intent - to destroy humanity - there was a critical difference between them, and it had to do with what was under the skin.

Unlike the aliens in V, the aliens in my dream weren't like us only skin deep. The aliens in the tv series are completely alien underneath the human skin they grow and cover themselves with to look like us on the surface. Underneath their skin, the V aliens are completely reptilian.

In my dream, alien intelligences infiltrated and infected human bodies. Once a human body was infected by an alien intelligence, it completely took over that body - the human being once in it was no longer there, but driven out. The human body completely became an avatar of the alien. The avatar body of the alien was completely human - there was no way one human could tell if another humanoid being was human or alien by just looking at it or through any medical, surgical or radiologic procedure. Either a human being or an alien being could inhabit any particular human body. The aliens looked so normal, too normal perhaps. Real human beings are just not normal. None of us are normal really, we are all flawed in some special, distinguishing way. There was nothing biologically to distinguish the aliens from us, either on the surface of their skin, in their DNA, or in their internal structure - for their bodies were human bodies emptied of the human being.

But, sometimes a human being would come to suspect that another person in his or her group might actually be an alien intelligence. There was nothing he or she could put their finger on - the person was obviously normal, but there was also something just under the surface, something not obvious, something just not normal about the person. The person seemed just a bit too normal to be a real human being. Real human beings are not really completely normal. We are all missing at least a few screws somewhere.

The Mystery of Tzaraat

When a human suspected that another might be an alien intelligence, the suspected person was brought into a special room hidden in a special place. The room was a hidden scientific laboratory set up by humanity in which an antidote to the alien infection was sought. There was also a special seeing device in the room through which it could be visualized (like a near-infrared or ultrasound device helps locate veins for vascular access) if the suspected humanoid brought to the attention of the scientific team in the room was an alien or a human being.

The scientific team leader looked at the suspect standing in the special place. If the humanoid was alien, the leader could see just under the skin thin white patches. These thin white patches scattered underneath the skin were visualized by the leader as patches of dense, highly concentrated areas of energy swirling so fast that to anyone else, they were invisible (like electrons in an electron cloud). The white patches were pancaked like a thin flat white electron cloud of vibrating energy underneath the surface of the alien humanoid's skin.

Kehunah

Humans could not be distinguished from the aliens sent to destroy us by the appearance of our skin, genetically or by the internal constitution of the body. It was only by the presence or absence of these thin white patches of vibrating energy just underneath the skin that human beings could be distinguished from the alien intelligences infiltrating to destroy us.

I saw the white patches under the suspect's skin. He was an alien with an intent to destroy us.

I woke up, wondering what we were going to do now that we had that knowledge and had made a clear distinction. Being human beings, what would we do now?

Basketfull Of Beasty Balls

כ"ו בשבט תש"ע
Imbolgen 27

Last night I dreamt. This is the end of the dream.

There were two parallel-like realities. I was pulled from existing in the normative one into a special one hidden from the normative world.

I was able to go back and forth between the existent realities at will because of my unique chemistry. Those in the normative reality from which I had come could not enter into the special one, and weren't even aware of its existence. Only few of those who primarily existed in the special one could enter into normative existence without it killing them or cutting off them from re-entering the hidden reality. There was something very unique about my chemistry (and the chemistry of the few others who, like me, could move without damage through either reality). This ability to move equally well in both worlds made me a highly valued person in the special existence, sort of like a special-operations person might be in the military.

Two other women had been pulled into the special reality at around the same time I had. We each arrived and sat down in theater-like seats. In the seats directly behind us, we were each then pulled back into the lap of a male beast-like creature (each which looked something like the beast in the cartoon film Beauty and the Beast, although I was only able to accurately perceive the one directly behind me). I had to decide whether or not to remain with him. I liked him, so I said okay. He felt comfortable and fitting for me.

The scene changed and we were in a small gym-like auditorium. My beast was a leader and he also had to be judged by the judges to be fit for me (of special-operations potential). I had to help him survive the judging ordeal by gathering up all the balls (like nerf balls but hard like rubber) which had been thrown out onto the gym floor and place them all within a high basketball hoop (closed shut at the bottom) within a short time-limited period of time. There were lots of balls to pick up, and the basket was located at a very high place on the wall - it was a difficult test for me as well - to get all the balls in the basket within the short period of allotted time.

The timer started. I started retrieving balls, putting each one in the basket one after another. My beast was in a closed chamber hooked to the gym-like room undergoing some ordeal at the same time I was retrieving balls. One time, the chamber opened briefly and I saw the my beast was less beast-like, but not yet quite human-looking. As soon as I saw this little bit of transformation, the chamber closed back up with him in it.

One of the persons watching our ordeal, trying to thwart our success, came out onto the gym floor and picked up one of the balls still remaining to be retrieved and threw it out the door of the special world into the normative one. Egads! - I knew innately that I couldn't lose touch-contact with special world all during the ordeal or the whole procedure would be disrupted and a failure! Quickly, I got to the door, and with one of my tiptoes still inside the special world, and gripping onto the door with one hand, I went through with the rest of my body into the normative world and pulled the tossed ball back into the special world. I fully reentered the special world. The ball in my hand was the last ball to be put into the high basket.

As I put the the last ball into the high basket, the chamber opened up and dumped out a naked man onto the gym floor. My beast was now a fully human man.

The end-timer never went off, so we had succeeded.

I woke up.

The Witch-Kabbalist

ז' ברמחשון תש"ע
Phasma Priscus 8

Last night, I dreamt.

At the end of the dream, I and some of the members of my team were inside a deep cave system whose entrance was closed to the general population of the area by thick metal-rock many-layered door with a secret magical lock and key combination. I knew the key-lock combination and where it was located in a hidden formation of the rock's walls. I had taken a few of us inside.

Our diverse group was different than the rest of the general populace in the area - like we were ancient travelers and outcasts who had come together as a group, settled and integrated among the locals, but who had each (clan or family or individual) still retained its unique distinction in some way. We were all unique from one another, but had been brought together by some unique and mutually recognized commonality as well. Once inside the cave system, a whole new secret community was revealed. One family among our group was Arabic. They had a light-haired family dog with them that the locals found annoying and wanted to get rid of, so their dog was brought inside the cave for protection as well.

Hunters from the general population, who had a clue that we were somehow different, too different for them to tolerate, were trying breach our cave. I began preparing my part of our defense.

I began melting quartz crystals with a special high-powered torch I had in my hand. The quartz was melting like clear-white candle wax into my collection pan.

I woke up.

Wiki on melting quartz crystals:

Fused quartz is manufactured by melting naturally occurring quartz crystals of high purity at approximately 2000°C, using either an electrically heated furnace (electrically fused) or a gas/oxygen-fuelled furnace (flame fused). Fused quartz is normally transparent.

Fused quartz can also form naturally. The naturally occurring form is usually referred to as Metaquartzite and is formed under metamorphic conditions. An increase in heat causes the crystals within the quartz to become fused together.

Along with the association of quartz crystal as the 'envelope' through which the long-life high brightness of halogen lamps is made, are its associations with metamorphic conditions, a low extinction rate, high thermal shock resistance, resistance to cracking under conditions of rapid and large thermal change, sheathing electric elements, fiber-optic communications, information storage and transmission, energy amplification and focus, and as a substrate for projection masks for photolithography.

Quartz also has the ability to split light into a spectrum. Through its use as an oscillator or resonator, quartz crystal is clearly associated with Hod (the reverberating sefirah as named by my Jewish ancestors which gives energy form) and sekhel shalem (perfect whole consciousness, original arrangement, sustained growth, balanced knowledge and mind, a magical-mystical adept, a kabbalist). Grian cloch is the Irish term my Irish-Celtic ancestors gave to quartz and means 'stone of the sun'. Meta-language and language wholistically as one is key to the mystery of form given by Hod. In my experience, given to me by my Germanic ancestors, uruz is now known as the rune of the sun. Given to me in the shamanic tradition of my Native American ancestors, quartz crystal is now my shaman stone of the sun.

The Mystery Of Gold

י׳ באלול תשס״ט
Belz 11

The mystery of gold, fehu, is a force which flows like fire. Shown above is my newest ritual acquisition - a handcrafted fire pentacle of gold ritual bowl. I received it just a few days ago.

The Transmutation Task Of Transition

י"ב בתמוז תשס״ט
Faunus 13

In follow-up to Giant Tube Worms Of The Deep Sea, it emerges that these deep sea worms who dwell near hydrothermal vents not only mediate the alchemical transition from novice seeing to high-vibrational seeing, they also mediate the alchemical transmutation of sulfur (גפרית) into nourishment (הזנה).

Thus, the alchemical task which moves one from the status of novice seer into master in training is the task of transmuting hot explosive emotion, a potentially lethal yet necessary component of life, into a vital raw material which sustains life.

Most seers cannot do it. Most are destroyed by the sulfur-rich fire and brimstone environment where the transition occurs. Thank Goddess, I was not!

The giant tube worm who came to me is a totem animal. It came to mark completion of my transition from novice seer to master in training.

Black Gold

י'ח אדר א' תשס"ט
Keolwulf 19

Last night I dreamt.

Many 'scientists-alchemists' had searched for the cure, for the answer, for the 'right formula'. But no one had found it yet, and the few who had been brave enough to try into the final but multifaceted dangerous step had ended up with a disfigurement of the skin and face. Like Moses.

The disfigurement was cancer-like and would slowly eat away at the person's form, eventually making the person crazy-like mad and turning the person into hard stone which would itself then easily crumble into dust. One man had found a treatment that would stave off the disfiguring and cancer-like progression on the skin for a limited time, such that even though he had the condition, his skin had not progressed to apparent disfigurement yet. Time was running out though, and he needed to find the cure before it did.

Then came Black Goddess Underworld Initiation Ritual Concoction. Like a mad scientist myself, I had prepared my own alchemical concoction, my own attempt at the 'right formula'. My final extract poured down from its vessel in the sky, down from the upper horizon of and into the dream as a thin line-like stream of pure-black oil.

I saw the man reach out his hand to catch some of the 'black gold' in his own black mortar. I heard the words 'black gold' as he did it. As he was catching the black gold as it poured down, he slid his hand into the stream until black gold poured over his hand as well - this was a very dangerous, potentially lethal and intimate act of immutable connection to it, and to me, the creator of the black gold. The black gold contained Awesome Divine mystical power. It could easily kill a person to touch it directly. It was dangerous enough to just catch it in one's mortar, but to touch it directly, to take it upon one's skin - well, there was no turning back and no way out of taking it to the end now, whatever that end may be. This one and I are immutably and irrevocably joined now.

There were two 'areas' which pertain to the long-sought cure - the one which has been known by all those who have tried alone in the past, and the other concerns 'balance'. The man's act contributed balance where all others have not. We are on our way, going now where no one has gone before.

In the dream it was clear, no one in the history of humankind had ever gotten this far before.

I woke up. And decided to add a naughty touch of lampblack into the final preparation of Black Goddess Underworld Initiation Ritual Concoction.

Related entry, Thursday night's dream -
Countenance Of Radiant Gold, Robe Of Light

Breath Of Immortal Life

Breath Of Immortal Life

ו' תשרי התשס"ט
Blodlessing 7

The sixth shaman stone in my Temple Collection (the second stone found with the fifth shaman stone as described in Days Of Awe) is represented by the spirit of Butterfly. In ancient Celtic tradition, Butterfly represents the immortal soul in contact with the Ancestors, and alchemically represents transformation of the Dark Shell into the Flight of Light. The spirit of Butterfly in Celtic tradition therefore corresponds to the phenomenon of the Holy Shell in Jewish tradition as taught by Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto (Secrets Of The Redemption).

As Blodeuwedd is linked to Butterfly through my very real experience, so too is Blodeuwedd linked through Butterfly to the reality of redemption as written above. Through the idea of redemption (perfected consciousness), Celtic Blodeuwedd corresponds to Jewish Chayyah, the mother of Immortal Life and the alchemical rectification of the soul of Eve.

Importance Of Natural Archetypes In Mysticism

א' אב התשס"ח
Lughnasadh 2

Related to the metaphysical concept of soul-friends as discussed in previous entries (Anam Chara - Reyah - Soul Friend and The Blessing Of Rejection) is the concept of natural Archetypes and their importance to soul craft, magic and mysticism.

Scottish magician R. J. Stewart (The UnderWorld Initiation) distinguishes Archetypes as they pertain to esoteric traditions from those of modern psychology:

We are not discussing an archetype in the modern psychological sense; an Archetype is a Matrix or key Image which gives shape and direction to energies arising out of the Primal source of all being.

Modern astronomy has shown us the physical expressions of such Matrices in the vast spiral shapes of distant galaxies, while physics reveals patterns upon the most fundamental atomic levels. These material reflections of Archetypal Matrices (long understood by the ancients in the pure shapes of the Platonic solids) offer us exterior clues to our interior consciousness; and in non-scientific cultures an equally perceptive model of both macroscopic and microscopic Nature was found through Inward cognition.

We can understand from this description that Archetypal Matrices also give shape and direction to the structures of consciousness with which we are formed, to construct our inner Nature. Religions and mystery traditions which project alien Archetypes onto the psyche (to the exclusion of one's natural Archetypes) can be harmful and even poisonous to one's inner Nature.

While the danger may be abrogated when working at levels beyond the Archetypes, the danger does exist when working at the Archetypal level. Not only can working with alien Archetypes harm one spiritually, doing so can prevent the individual from accessing his or her true keys to the mysteries. For these reasons, it is usually best to work with the Archetypes of one's known Ancestors and with those to which one has a clear spiritual predilection as opposed to working with Archetypes not clearly native to one's own spiritual construction.

Related entry - Investing In The Craft

Advent Of The Black Crow & The Exodus

י"ב בשבט תשס"ח
Imbolgen 12

I began reading my new book, Underworld Initiation by R. J. Stewart a few days ago. Nearly three weeks ago, I posted my dream, Cleave Land, writing in that post of red birds and of the advent of one black bird:

Off to the side of the road there was a huge field completely full of singing red birds. There were so many singing red birds that the songs and the birds themselves blurred into one sound and sight of indistinct red chaos, yet I concentrated (almost as if pulling myself inward together) to listen for a distinct message to come out from among them.

I focused. Many of the red birds suddenly just disappeared as if lifted off the page of the "place" I was seeing. No longer was there a blur of song and redness. Though the field was still full of birds, now I could see individual birds, whereas before they had all blurred together. Most were still red birds, but I could now see that there were birds of other colors scattered among them as well. Now, there was even a particular black bird whose voice emerged from the group and pulled my attention toward it. The black bird's song rose up as an individual song directly into my ear distinctly, out from the field of many birds.

In Underworld Initiation, R. J. Stewart writes:

This sphere is in fact, Feminine ... acting as a bridge of pure catabolic power between the Dark Mother and the Light or Instructing Mother. In Celtic lore, She is the Morrígan, the Red Bird of Battles, the active power of Death and Breakdown.

Mr. Stewart additionally writes of the Morrígan, whose totem is also a Black Crow, as the Archetype of Female Power as it pertains to further esoteric transformation of consciousness:

The Universal Tree may only be experienced direct, so words are of little value other than as loose instructions upon the way. Let us, like alchemists of old, seek the advent of the Black Crow.

The advent of the Black Crow in alchemy is a further development of the carrion crow who haunted the battlefields of ancient wars. The Crow is the Totem Beast of the Goddess of Death, breaking down the body that the spirit may be released. In our alchemical context, it is often described or shown in pictoral form as one of the stages of Transmutation.

Significantly, emergence of the Black Crow of liberation brings forth from the battlefield a particular path from among the various open paths which will lead one to the castle of the Kingdom.

The Red Sea of Birds of my dream symbolized wrestling with Judgment and the limitations of physicality (the Massa Confusa of Red Birds which lifted). The Red Birds which remained (Pelican stage of alchemical transmutation) in the (green) field of my dream acted as an anchor to physical incarnation. The "greenfield" of the dream correlates to my Jewish ancestral name Grunwald (meaning Greenfield) and to the alchemical stage of the Green Lion. The Birds of Many Colors in my dream refer to the Peacock's Tail stage, "the turning point" and signify that I am on the right path for my particularity. The Black Crow symbolizes liberation of consciousness from the pressing restrictions of the physical and psychic bodies, and an exodus from the dire straits of Mitzrayim. It's flight (as described in Cleave Land) symbolizes the rising of the Phoenix from The Flame:

The difference between my dream symbolism and that of typical alchemical transmutative processes is the absence of the "whitening" and "White Stone" stages. My particular chotimah is not only white, it is both a whitish (white flame and aura) and blackish (dark flame and coal) Flame of the Future World.

The cosmological Morrígan - an archetypal vehicle of deciding who will live and who will die.

Celtic Morrígan and Hebrew Lilith.

Morrígan as the guardian of Sovereignty.

Letter From The Well

כ"ט בתמוז תשס"ז

This motzi shabbat Hebrew letter tarot reading, with the new moon 1% full during the "more" planetary hour of Jupiter (at the time of reading), the letters are let down through chaos, in order:

"the missing letter"-tet-hei-yud טהי

I know of no shoresh containing these explicit letters in this order. A permutation (הטי) of the 3 explicit letters in this reading is found in Bereshit 24:14:

So let it come to pass, that the damsel to whom I shall say: Let down thy pitcher, I pray thee, that I may drink; and she shall say: Drink, and I will give thy camels drink also; let the same be she that Thou hast appointed for Thy servant, even for Isaac; and thereby shall I know that Thou hast shown kindness unto my master.'

Contained within the pitcher let down is "the missing letter" mentioned in kabbalah, giving "more" life to the bridge-building knowledge and words of Torah bat Ayin which readers of Walking On Fire drink.

Technorati tags: Torah Talmud Torah Judaism Kabbalah jewish mysticism mysticism jewish meditation meditation shamanism kabbalah iyunit kabbalah maasit witchcraft jewitchery jewitch witch sacred feminine divine feminine shechinah lilith spiritual development spirituality kosher spirituality alchemy

More Than Fine Gold

כ"ח בתמוז תשס"ז

I've found a Torah source which contains a derivation of the 3 letters which came down through my Hebrew letter tarot reading Erev Shabbat initially as הפז until I transformed the fine gold (הפז) of it into the Divine Nothing (of מאומה) associated with the akeidah. I imagine that makes me an alchemist and witch of some other flavor who desires something more than fine gold.

More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Tehillim 19:11

הנחמדים--מזהב, ומפז רב, ומתוקים מדבש, ונפת צופים.

Technorati tags: Torah Talmud Torah Judaism Kabbalah jewish mysticism mysticism jewish meditation meditation shamanism kabbalah iyunit kabbalah maasit witchcraft jewitchery jewitch witch sacred feminine divine feminine shechinah lilith spiritual development spirituality kosher spirituality alchemy