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

Thursday heralds the power of materialistic Jupiter, father of the gods, in his royal-blue limo with Cedarwood trimmings! He is the jolly ruler of wealth and growth of financial situations. His number is four and his power is the foursquare function of monetary stability and success at hard work. He cannot be bribed and will not gamble but he will repay all debts in due course, and can be requested to help with increasing your material position so long as you are willing to work for what you require.

He helps with plans and designs and, being a very large planet, does not move swiftly but keeps his word in the end.

Green Lady Venus rules Fridays, partnerships and love affairs and looks after children and the growing things of Nature, rather than money. She brings about long-term healing, especially where there is a growth in understanding brought about by coming to terms with the illness or problem affecting our lives. Her number is seven, and she shows her power in often uncontrolled passions, of love, joy, ecstasy and even as the green-faced goddess of envy.

She will not call an unwilling partner to your bed, nor change anyone’s mind against her will, but she can teach everyone to become worthy of love, and gently guide each to find an ideal partner, for work, companionship or sexual enjoyment. She too demands that we work at our relationships and will not let us find quick solutions to affinities or love affairs until we have earned such a reward by working in her gardens, making beautiful her realm.

Saturdays come under the dark thrall of black Saturn, old man of the gods, keeper of boundaries, lord of time, ruler of old age and death and the Otherworld, for he also keeps the keys to the portals between this world and the other. Unless we come with patience and speak with respect, he will not listen to our hasty pleas for help or guidance.

Like an ancient grandfather of all living he is steeped in ageless wisdom but can be crotchety and, like the dark Moon Goddess who is his magical counterpart, he can be sharp with his answers. His number is three, his metal lead, his incense myrrh. He is the generous giver of stability, the comforter of the aged, for he shows their inherited wisdom, distilled through a long life, in its bright glory.

Every planet teaches us valuable lessons, as it taught those who watched these coloured planets move through the sky aeons ago. We have to re-learn their varied wisdoms, reopen the doors they hold closed, ask as children of the universe the eternal questions, the need for help or information or specific powers to deal with individual needs. Each can be summoned with the right colours, numbers (there are variations between systems, but all work!), metals or shapes and incenses, which you will learn by book research, direct inspiration or pure guesswork.

Build up tables of correspondences so that you can make small charms with appropriate tree leaves or flowers, or complex talismans, inscribed traditionally on virgin parchment with the quill of the relevant bird, if you so wish (although new felt-tip pens of the right colour are a lot easier, especially when applied to tinted paper with a smooth finish!). Learn to combine the energies of two planets for each spell, write simple chants or elegant poetry to make your request clear, precise and reasonable.

For healing, perhaps the Sun and Venus, gold writing on green paper cut into a circle (a one-sided figure for the sun), made on a Friday and blessed and put to work on Sunday by the light of one gold (or seven green) candles. Burn frankincense for the Sun and rose-petals for Venus, so that your plea is carried aloft to the other planes where the seeds of healing may be planted.

Then forget about it, so that like a seed sown in the garden it may safely develop in secret and darkness, until it is ready to reach out into the light of our day.

Exercises

By now you should have seen many of the changing phases of the sun and moon, spending mornings and evenings watching the sky, feeling their powers. You will have seen the seasons change and perhaps, in simple ways, celebrated the old feasts.

In your Book of Illumination make a list of thirteen moons, giving each one a name, like Snowdrop Moon or Oak Tree Moon, of your own choosing. Describe tasks to fit into each one, some which you have accomplished already, others which you hope to do later this year or next, when you repeat the cycle on a higher arc.

Read something about basic astrology, and draw up a diagram of the twelve signs of the Zodiac, their ruling planets, the colours, numbers and ideas you associate with them. Add incenses, flowers growing in their month, trees, animals, symbols, elements, and as many attributes as you can find.

Meditate on each sign for three sessions, if you can, asking the actual stars to teach you their significance, and add that knowledge to your chart.

Make a lantern which will hold a small candle, set in plaster perhaps, or a nightlight inside a jar so

that it won’t blow out at outdoor meditations or rites. Find four candlesticks or make these for the four quarters. You can even try making some candles too.

Compare your dreams from the waxing half of the moon to those in the waning half. Compare the results of your meditations, looking back at the early entries in your Book.

How can you use the power of the moon through a whole month to heal one person? How would you use her light to improve your divinations?

Try making moon-blessed water, and write a short poem or prayer to the moon in all three phases to ask for her help. What is the fourth phase? What would it be good for, in magical workings?

Try moon scrying in a homemade black mirror.

Find a moon bowl of clear glass which you can paint black outside, for scrying or using moon water to bless things.

Write a short ritual to use on the night of the new moon, and one for the full moon, asking for help with the kinds of magic you would work in each fortnight. Begin it with ‘Calling the Light’ and practise that until you can do it from memory. Use it six times in this moon for inner journeys, imagining that you are following the sun over the horizon into the Underworld, and then the moon up into the night sky. Record the results of these very powerful journeys.

Imagine yourself going back through time to a full moon gathering of old-fashioned country folk. Seek out their ‘Man in Black’ or ‘Maiden of the Revels’ and see what happens.

Draw up a chart of the seven planets, their days and all the symbols, colours, numbers, incenses and other information you can find. Try out some simple two-planet talismans, using coloured paper and new pens. There are lots of ways you can experiment with the material here, because you will surely be guided as to what you need to know.

Here are just a few books:

Janet and Stewart Farrar, Life and Times of a Modern Witch (Hale)

Dion Fortune, The Sea Priestess and Moon Magic (both novels) (Aquarian) Marian Green, Practical Techniques of Modern Magic (Thoth)

Michael Howard, Earth Magic (Hale)

Doreen Valiente, The Rebirth of Witchcraft (Hale)

11 - Recovering the Ancient Wisdom

Having reached the state where you are able to imagine yourself without body, thoughts or imagination, to activate those databanks you should then strive to sense the process by which you gain experience Imagine yourself building up a personality and sending it forth into incarnation As you do so, you will find certain images associated with the incarnation begin to arise they are pointers to far memories which are worth checking.

(J.H. Brennan The Reincarnation Workbook)

In times past, those who followed the work of the village witch or Cunning Man started gaining their knowledge from their cradles, learning by watching, questioning and taking part in all those tasks wherein the psychic skills are developed and brought into controlled use. Today we gain our knowledge away from home, at school, from books, TV programmes, and videos and, I suppose these days, from computers.