Marian Green - A Witch Alone - Thirteen Moons To Master Natural Magic

Make a list of all the common poisonous plants which are to be found in gardens and hedgerows, near water or in woods. You may be surprised how many there are.

Dry and press some flowers or leaves to make a collage in honour of the Goddess of Nature or the Green Man.

Go at least to a ‘pick your own’ fruit farm and gather soft fruit or berries, or better still, walk in the country and gather some of the wild plants, flowers and fruits if possible. (Be aware that many plants are protected by law and may not be dug up or harmed.)

Find some pine or other resinous trees and collect the gum to try in incenses.

Go and try the tree meditation several times with different trees, and look for dryads and the aura which surrounds every living tree.

Try the banishing spell, to get rid of a worry into running water. Spend as much time as you can watching the sunshine on gardens, and moonlight on woods. Get to feel at home there; perhaps discover a small totem animal which can bring you messages from the Otherworld.

Look out for these books, and any others about uses of plant materials, the stories of trees and their uses.

Mrs Grieve, A Modern Herbal (Dover or Penguin) (This is a must!) David Hoffman, The Holistic Herbal (Element Books)

Edmund Launert, Edible and Medicinal Plants (Illustrated) (Hamilton Books)

Do go out there and get to know some trees. They have ways of instructing us in the Old Ways, their presence is amazingly calming and energising, and knowledge of them was at the roots of much Old Wisdom.

10 - Moon Magic and Solar Cycles

The Moon holds a special place in magickal lore She is the only astral body which encircles the Earth, the planets proper orbit the Sun, while the Sun itself orbits the Galactic Centre There is thus an especially intimate relationship built up between the Moon and the Earth The occult teaching is that the Moon acts as the transmitter for all the other planetary forces, receiving their several influences and relaying them to our planet.

(Tony Willis Magick And The Tarot)

The power of the sun and the moon have always been considered potent influences on the activities of mankind. Today we have all sorts of scientific explanations as to the effect of sunlight on plants, or of the moon’s position and the state of the tides of the sea, but to our ancestors there was a great deal more to these Lights in the Sky, and the effects they had on the world below.

On one hand, both the sun and the moon were seen as being either gods and goddesses actually flying through the heavens, or, more frequently, as symbols of such luminous deities. The Druids had a concept of the Son behind the Sun, a great power hidden by the sheer brilliance of sunlight. They did not worship the actual star, which we now know forms the central axle of our solar system, but the energy, the force that great light represented.

This is the most important aspect of all magical arts. What every spell, ritual or practical working is doing is manipulating the power which is so often referred to as the Light. Today we understand that light itself is energy, transformed from fuel by heat, as in a candle flame, or by making a thin filament incandescent as in an electric bulb, but there is an inner meaning to the concept of light.

This also turns up in many religions; for example, Jesus is called ‘The Light of the World’ and angels are described as ‘The Shining Ones’. But there is more to it than a philosophical argument about the meaning of words. We may see the Moon Goddess in her guise as the moon in the sky, in one other of her phases; we may comprehend and worship a Sun God, especially at sunrise or midsummer, but beneath that ritual act there should be an awareness of a greater idea. Light is a symbol of growth, it is eternal, for the light of the first spark is still travelling outwards through the universe, at the speed of light. It is a symbol of illumination, of ‘seeing the light’ or receiving a ‘flash of inspiration’. We seek ‘enlightenment’ which means more than simply driving out darkness from our rooms after nightfall.

Lights in the sky, by day or night, have always attracted the attention of the curious and though today we may scoff at the idea of the actual planets having any possible influence on our lives, because they are so far away, we still may consult our horoscopes before making an important decision, or just look at the ‘Stars’ in the newspaper for the day’s predictions. Again scientists, who scoffed harder than most, have begun to discover statistical correlations between the positions of certain planets in a person’s horoscope and his skill as a writer or athlete, for instance. Michel Gauqueline has written several books based on such evidence, and he started out extremely sceptical about the value of astrology.

The earliest calendars, some dating back to the Stone Age carved on the walls of caves, seem to

represent the phases of the moon. There is a fascinating relief carving of a fat, female goddess figure holding up a curved horn or moon-shaped object marked into segments, perhaps indicating the days of change from new moon to full.

Pieces of deer antler have been similarly marked by very ancient and supposedly primitive people. Many of the earliest constructions on a grand scale of human endeavour, the vast earthworks, the rings and ellipses of standing stones, the long avenues, the great mile-long dikes, seem to point to alignments of the rising or setting sun, or moon. Stonehenge, through all the hundreds of years of its construction, through each of its changed layouts and refinements, always seems to have been aligned to the sunrises at the equinoxes and the summer and winter solstices. From the most ancient arrangements of poles of wood to the interlinked flattened circle of trilithons, the elaborate constructions of antiquity have always bound the patterns of sky and earth together.

All round the world the ancient peoples watched the changing specks of light in the night sky, seeing, without any magnifying equipment, patterns, animals, gods and goddesses, heroes and mythological creatures. From the farthest East to the farthest West, there is an understanding about what the stars are trying to tell us. On the most basic level the constellations of the Zodiac, for example, are simply mnemonics by which the passing seasons can be noted, so that when the ancient Egyptians saw the bright green star Sirius rising over the horizon in what is now called July, they knew that the waters of the Nile would begin to rise in the annual flood, which brought the black and fertile soil down from the mountains.

Sirius is part of the constellation of the Great Dog close on the heels of Orion, the mighty hunter with his starry belt and shining sword which, after the Great Bear or Plough, is one of the easiest constellations to recognise in the winter sky.

What those scattered patterns of points of light traversing the dark heavens may have meant to our ancestors, we cannot now be sure. All round the world similar legends exist, where great human heroes or heroines have been taken up and become stars because of their exploits on earth, or where the Great Gods live out their own lives in the starry deeps of the firmament.

We know that there is an ancient tradition of wisdom coming from the stars, that they have things to teach us and powers to impart. Somehow this concept has been corrupted by the mechanically minded seekers of the last few decades, and the idea of aliens from space arriving in flying saucers has taken over from a simpler and purer idea from long ago.

Underneath this myth there is the seed of a great Mystery, concerning the awakening of consciousness on this planet. It is not possible to explain in words what this concept implies, but if you meditate upon the known symbolism of the stars you may uncover your own revelation. The Tarot Star card, for example, usually means ‘Hope’.