Category: Spirituality/Paganism & Magick

Everything we do has a purpose. How many things do we do out of habit? We wake up, go to work, go home, eat dinner, and wake up and do the whole process again over again day after day. It is as if our world is on cruise control 24/7. We push ourselves to the limits beyond belief. We carry all our burdens on our shoulders. But where is the Goddess or God in this? Where is the faith that we have? Where is the spiritual life?

Paganism With Spirituality by Lesley Gary

Who are the pagans? To know the answer to this question, one must know what a pagan is. Pagan once meant “of the land.” Webster says that a pagan is “a person who does not acknowledge God in any religion, a heathen,” but we know that we do follow a God, Goddess and, for some, a Great Spirit.

Water as a Spiritual Element by Annie B. Bond Excerpt from the book Home Enlightenment: Practical, Earth-Friendly Advice for Creating a Nurturing, Healthy, and Toxin-Free Home and Lifestyle.

Water is the central source of our beings. It is part of every cell and fiber in us; it is our very essence. Could water be the common denominator that weaves us all (earth, animal, human, and plant) together as one? Is it the ultimate connector? It's awesome and humbling that water carries so many entrained messages, especially when we consider that there has been the same water, and the same amount of water, on the earth for millions of years. What messages are we receiving from our ancestors when we drink? And it is overwhelming to think that in the past 60 years alone, the human hand has imprinted so much pollution on the water, bringing it out of healthy balance. It is our spiritual obligation to be water's caretaker and cause it no further harm.

The Secrets of Judas by James Robinson Excerpt from the book The Secrets of Judas: The Story of the Misunderstood Disciple and His Lost Gospel.

Judas Iscariot is, if not the most famous, then surely the most infamous, of the inner circle of Jesus' disciples. He was one of the Twelve Apostles who stuck with Jesus through thick and thin to the bitter end, until the night of the Last Supper when he led the authorities to arrest Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Was Judas just fulfilling prophecy, implementing the plan of God for Jesus to die for our sins, doing what Jesus told him to do? Why else would he identify him with a kiss, all for a measly sum of thirty pieces of silver? What do the Gospels inside the New Testament -- and then what does The Gospel of Judas outside the New Testament -- tell us about all this? ...

For some time the world has eagerly awaited the premier of the film version of Dan Brown’s best-selling novel, The Da Vinci Code. For the few not familiar with the story, a Harvard symbologist is swept up in a mysterious web of intrigue over an unsolved murder revolving around a secret society. Clues to the society’s most preciously guarded secret abound in the paintings of Leonardo Da Vinci – a former member of this society. The secret reveals what the Holy Grail really symbolizes – the sacred bloodline that culminated in the marriage between Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ whose descendants live among us today. While most critics agree that the book is a thrilling confluence of fact and fiction, many argue over which part is fact and which is fiction. Regardless, the book and the movie neglect to mention the true origin of this sacred bloodline and why it was considered royal to begin with. That brings in the connection with aliens and vampires. Those not privy to this knowledge (because knowledge is power) might think it even more bizarre than the initial controversy, but historical evidence for this story also exists.

The researchers from the School of Archaeology and Ancient History sought to explain how people from across Greece came to consult with the Oracle – a hotline to the god Apollo- on a particular day of the year even though there was no common calendar.

Time magazine’s cover story that week was “The Turning Point in Vietnam,” by which the establishment press meant winning the war, not increasing the level of protest. Out in Berkeley, across the bay from San Francisco, a proposal from the local chapter of the Vietnam Day Committee had grown into a worldwide event, the first large-scale antiwar protest of a new era. Somehow, someone from the Committee asked Kesey to speak in a prime time slot, just before the protest march into Oakland. This turned out to be a disastrous choice, as Kesey had his own opinions about the protest movement.

To the Pranksters it was all a matter of synchronicity. Signs and portents emerged from the great mystic morass of the collective unconscious and took shape as events and metaphors capable of shaping reality. Pay attention, keep the cosmic mind tuned in, be “on the bus” in Prankster terms, and you could actually surf that mother wave of change. The year before, 1964, the Pranksters took their metaphor out for a road trip to the New York World’s Fair in a Day-Glo splashed 1939 International Harvester school bus named Further. Being the Pranksters, they pranked everyone they met along the way and filmed and taped the entire experience, including a visit to Dr Leary’s Millbrook retreat.

While the great west-east LSD summit meeting the Pranksters imagined failed to happen - Dr. Tim was off on a three-day trip and couldn’t be disturbed by a group of west coast costumed crazies - something was gained from the experience. Kesey and the group were off on a different kind of trip, were in fact sailing into the uncharted, dragon-infested waters of the collective unconscious where even the famous LSD gurus feared to go. On the return trip, the Unspoken Thing, the un-reference the Pranksters used for synchronicity, grew deeper and more powerful. By the time the group returned to La Honda in the fall of 1964, something new and truly unique was emerging: the Pranksters were developing a group mind, an egregore to use an archaic term.

In the early 1960s, before heading up into the mountains to La Honda, Ken Kesey lived near a quiet valley south of Stanford University. Back then it was known for its fruit orchards and was called the Valley of Heart’s Delight. It wouldn’t become Silicon Valley until 1971, and by then the radical evolution of the future was under way. But it all started, the future was truly groked and teased into manifestation, right there, amid the peaches and the apricots of Heart’s Delight. That somehow is comforting to contemplate…

Traditionally, the twentieth Tarot trump has been called Judgment. Then Aleister Crowley came along and renamed the card The Aeon. This should come as a surprise to no one. After all, Uncle Al renamed half the pack. But while some of his changes were easy to understand, and others not so much changes as refinements, substituting The Aeon for Judgment might seem downright confounding.