T Thorn Coyle Evolutionary Witchcraft (pdf)

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  serve? Do you say yes to too much? Or do you rifuse the gifts of the universe too often? Are

  you doing too much or too little? Are you using your talents and taking care of your physical and emotional health? If you listen deeply and look toward the route that feels most right, it will open in front of you. You will feed and be jed.

  ABUNDANT EARTH

  Another facet of earth and North is money. I would hazard to guess that

  most of us have trouble with money in one way or another. As we may

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  have skewed attitudes toward our bodies, our culture also teaches us

  skewed attitudes toward money and many of us have reacted to that in

  ways that end up not serving us. I have worked at extremes of the economic spectrum, but I have lived most of my life below the poverty leve�.

  This partially stems from my working-class background, but is more

  deeply rooted in a strong sense that if I had more than I needed, it harmed

  another, taking away what they might need. This was coupled with my

  growing awareness of social injustice and inequality and a need to right the

  wrongs of the world. I hated money because I hated what I saw as a mechanism of control and oppression. Poverty itself became a status symbol to show my friends.

  These days, I am attempting to live more in balance, having pushed my

  edges and boundaries around money in many different ways, probing the

  wound and trying to understand it. I worked full time on the Pacific Stock

  Exchange for four years, trying to learn something about our economic

  system and to challenge my prejudices and thinking. I worked for four

  years as a peep-show dancer to learn more about that way of relating to the

  confluence of money, sex, and power. I worked for four years full time in

  a soup kitchen, living on room and board and a small stipend, spending

  most of my time with the poor and disenfranchised. I learned different

  things about myself in each of these places, yet they all showed me a common human response: greed and need are everywhere, no matter who holds the economic advantage.

  I have tried to change this response of greed and its siblings, scarcity and

  fear, into a response of generosity. I write on my money as a spell: "Share

  Wealth"; "Be Kind"; "Generosity Helps Us All:' I want to give back. I

  want to smile at passersby and enjoy the sun on my face. I leave huge tips.

  There is one cafe where I often eat breakfast on weekends. The staff likes

  me and my friends and has taken to reducing our check. We, of course,

  have increased their tips. The checks have gotten so low that we are most

  often leaving a one hundred percent gratuity. This feels like good magic.

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  Get out some paper and pen. Set a timer or clock alarm for six minutes. Begin to write

  down everything you think or feel about monry and your relationship to it, how it affects the

  world, how it works (or doesn'O in your life. Start with the phrase "Monry is . . .

  " and

  move into answering the question: "How do I feel about monry?" Probably some things you

  already know will arise, but underneath that may be suppositions you were not conscious of.

  If you can observe something, you have the opportunity to change it.

  OPENING TO GENEROSITY

  Just as energy follows breath, abundance and happiness follow generosity.

  This is the occult face of the adage "You have to spend money to make

  money:' Magically, this phrase is not about investment, but generosity.

  Would that multinational corporations could learn this lesson. Whether

  they learn it or not, we can. We can try. We can spread a smile, a dollar, and

  lend a listening ear.

  I like to also remember that multinational corporations, despite being

  legally treated as singular entities, are actually full of individual human beings, some of whom are probably reading this now. If I recall all of the people sitting at desks or toiling in factories, I know that change is possible. If I am open to one person touching me and changing my life today, others can be, too. How can I live to create abundance for all? Sometimes

  this means generous flow and sometimes more careful, less wasteful, resource management.

  For one month, leave a bigger tip than you are used to at the local cafe. Write spells 1

  joy and generosity on your monry. Try smiling at five people a day and see what happens.

  Encourage the creative impulse 1 another. Set out a plate 1 food in gratitude for your ancestors. When the thought enters your head, "I don't have enough," or "I can't do that," try to turn that thought around. Just for that moment,jocus on what you do have and what you

  can do. Then pass it on. What is true, right now?

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  Look at how you use natural resources such as water, time, gasoline,

  trees, and electricity. Look especially closely at their subsets-things like

  packaging, air conditioning, new paper usage as opposed to high postconsumer waste content, bus or bicycle travel as opposed to car travelmake your own list. Have you already worked on changing your habits around natural resource usage to come in line with a more sustainable,

  healthier earth relationship? Let every interaction, with human, animal, or

  vegetable, be an interaction that fosters connection. Connection follows

  generosity of spirit and action.

  EMBRACING DEATH

  Another important aspect of the North and the powers of earth is the

  strength of death in the cycle of life. Again, this is the juxtaposition of the

  stable cube with the moving pentacle: death is final and death is simply

  change. As a reminder of this, I wear two silver bracelets, one of small

  linked skulls and one of linked infinity symbols-finality and flow, the

  paradox of death and life. I am learning to embrace it all.

  There are many ways to see these cycles, for life and death are all

  around us. You can look at the fly caught in a web; it is dead, but it is also

  food for the spider, so it is life. See the bird fallen beneath the tree or the

  shriveled leaf on the otherwise green plant. Once the leaf is plucked, the

  green parts will grow stronger. The bird will decompose and eventually

  feed the tree. Our lives mirror these spirals in microcosm.

  Years ago, I decided that since I was not a gardener, and was not going

  to have a child, I needed to explore life's cycles in a different way. I began

  by doing hospice work, caring for the dying. I learned a lot about the powers of North: about death and the body. There is a lot of strength in death: as the body fights the toxins that consume it, the spark of life strives

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  to reach the surface. The body's functions continue in an increasingly erratic fashion, no longer trustworthy, but still quite present. A person calling for help, tangled in sheets, or needing to be cleaned up after a bout of diarrhea often awakened me in the middle of the night.

  Through this, I began to see the struggle of aspects within myself that

  were dying to change yet still clinging to life. I also saw that when things

  are dying, they aren't necessarily graceful or pretty. I resist change, awkwardly fighting and complaining against it, feeling out of my element and exposed, just as if someone was seeing my metaphysical diarrhea. Yet I always end up running toward change, full tilt, near the end. And so new phases in my life are born, and I learn how to walk in my new wo
rld.

  What have you learned from your cycles? What is your pattern? Take a breath and ask

  yourself, right now, "What needs to give way so that something new can grow? Now reexamine your attitudes. Are you ready to unbind those that do not serve you, and to release the energy they've tied up?

  When situations have run their course, they often cause frustration or

  inertia. You can choose to use outdated situations as a challenge to aid

  your new sense of practice, or you can choose to walk away from them,

  truly letting them go. Earth has the power to compost, to rest, and to leave

  space and food for something new to grow over time.

  Are there people who were once friends, lovers, or colleagues who don't help your life and

  practice? Can those relationships change or be culled?

  Learning about the importance of death and change doesn't always

  have to be about asking the big questions. Some things just fall away and

  new things enter in. What in your life can you cull? Are there drawers in

  your bureau packed with papers you no longer read or clothes you no

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  longer wear? Are there projects that don't excite you but that still sap your

  energy because you have not taken leave of them? Is there an attitude you

  still carry that does not serve who you have become?

  Take a breath. Open those drawers and begin to sort what is usiful and what can be

  given away. Clean out your closet. Snip the dying leaves from your plants. Pull some weeds.

  What are you willing to let rest, or to cull and let die, to bring in the

  possibility of eventual new life? Winter calls. Death calls. No fear, only

  the cycle. Feel the skull resting beneath your face. Your bones support

  your life.

  The Tomb of Bifth

  Die before you die. -A SuFI TEACHING

  Availability is in the moment, and openness occurs when we let go of the unnecessary. Skill is holding onto the necessary. -RoBERT FRIPP3

  Throughout this book we have been asked to look at our stories, at our

  bodies, at our sexuality, at our thoughts and perceptions. HopefUlly,

  through this work, we have come to recognize the many parts of ourselves

  that bump around inside of us. It is these parts, often called our personalities, which the Sufis speak of when they say you must die to yourself in order to live. In this way, the cycles of earth and North exist in our emotional states as well as in our bodies.

  When we worked on the self point of the Iron Pentacle, we saw that

  there were many masks to strip away, leaving only our core essence behind.

  You may have put a few layers back on since then, so as to function better

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  in your everyday life. Other layers and masks of "self" may have crept

  back in over time. Take another look. What part are you identifying with

  today? Who do you say you are?

  Often, I will find that I am identifying emotions as sel£ I am letting

  the emotional drama of a given situation take over as though it directly relates to who I am. We see this often, when friends or associates want to relate the terrible injustice done to them at the hands of the person who

  made their latte in the morning or at the long line they had to wait in at

  the airport. They have begun to identify with the emotions brought up

  by those situations and taken them in, coating their personalities with indignation, and giving innocuous situations that could have been dealt with in ten minutes the weight of their day, and sometimes the weight of

  many years.

  Can you catch these emotions as they rise, before they harden into a

  crust around your soul? I like to practice feeling my impatience or indignation, then take a breath, and remind myself of what the actual situation in front of me is. Is the airport full of people conspiring to ruin my day?

  No. Is the delay in service a personal affront designed to make me miss my

  appointments? Likely not. I am not the center of the multiverse, rather,

  that is only the story I tell mysel£ I can feel my emotions and then put the

  stories to rest, to sleep in the tomb of birth. What is born from that tomb?

  Many things, including the possibility of being present in the situation

  and an abundance of energy not tied up in self-justification. Often greater

  patience and compassion are born as added bonuses.

  The seed is in the ground, waiting. The bear sleeps in the cave. You sit,

  still as a mountain. Something gestates in the darkness.

  When you find yourself harboring grievances, give them a cave to sleep in instead. Srr

  what happens when you take a breath,Jeel your feet beneath you, and really look at the peoplr

  around you. Send a breath through your heart. Engage your belly muscles, reminding yourself that you have a will and are not simply at the mercy if every stray action and mrotio11.

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  Let the situations that frustrate you in the moment enter the Tomb of Birth. Feel the cool,

  cavelike quality surrounding you. Be still. Be still inside, for just one moment. One long

  breath. Remember that you have an essence deep inside that is not this emotion, not this situation. Die to this piece. Let it rest. It may not need to live, but you do. You cannot live fully if all of your life's energy is taken up by random situations and injuries of little consequence. Do you have to be right? No, but you have to be present in order to live.

  From the tomb, something new and fine has a chance to be born now. Cultivate that

  which is soul strengthening. As those other parts sleep, your essence can awaken.

  THE ANCESTORS

  The ancestors are those who came before us, those who taught us, who live

  in our blood, bones, and intellect. You may wish to begin honoring them

  when you cast the sacred sphere. After I call upon the Guardians and

  Gods, and honor the Faery beings, I honor the ancestors, calling especially

  upon my magical grandfather, Victor, to be welcome at my rite. Set out a

  plate of favorite foods or recite a poem. We are the present, yet we honor

  and bless the memories that anchor us to the past, and allow us to move

  toward the future.

  F LOWING AND SPANNING: THE PENTACLES

  Carved into the green cube, the pentacle glows, holding the energy of

  shifting change. Within the structure of your soul and body, the Iron and

  Pearl Pentacles meet, expanding your ability to grow into yourself and

  connect out with the world. These pentacles also connect to the elements

  swirling in your body. Iron and Pearl sing together within you, just as you

  sing, placed between earth and sky. You are child of earth and starry

  heaven, whole and complete unto yourself.

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  Breathe deeply. Connect once again to the fiery star in the earth, calling it up your

  grounding cord, and into your body. Begin to run the Iron Pentacle: sex, pride, self, power,

  passion. Sex. Run this over and over, until the energy flows fast and clear, and you begin to

  tingle with it. Then draw the circle around yourself: sex, self, passion, pride, power, sex. Feel

  yourself glowing in the Pentacle of Iron. Take a deep breath. Let the energy lighten, beginning to vibrate up one octave, until it shifts into the energy of Pearl. Begin to run the Pearl Pentacle through your body: love, law, knowledge, liberty, wisdom, love. Run this over and


  over, until the energy sparkles, radiating and luminous. Then draw the circle around yourself. Love, knowledge, wisdom, law, liberty. Love. Feel it. Feel yourself full and glowing. Iron and Pearl. Call the Iron energy into your mind, your body, feel it like a bass note beneath

  the Pearl, supporting it, and the Pearl answering back, in harmony. Feel the energies sink

  into your body and rise outward. Iron and Pearl. Let them vibrate together.

  You can take the meditation below point by point, feeling the interplay

  of the octave and the way the Iron energy makes room for Pearl to appear.

  You can also use the Devotional Dance movements to feel the energies

  more fully and to sense the dance between the points.

  Focusing on sex, let yourself fill with sex energy, then let it begin to shift, vibrating with

  love. Feel how love and sex interact, supporting one another, life force feeding into the powers of creation. Feel pride. Fill with the energy of pride. Let pride lay the foundation for law.

  Feel them working together, vibrating within you, the confidence of pride not coddling weakness, and thus leading to the balance of law based on worth and connection with life� flow.

  Fill with self. Feel the "I am" within you, quiet or loud. Listen, let self be answered by

  knowledge. All that you know, all you are growing to know, comes from the strength of

  knowing yourself. Let self and knowledge dance together within your skin.

  Now fill with power. Feel the strength flowing into your body, feel how power shifts

  within you, vibrating with liberty. Liberty is only attained through the basis of power, true

  power, power within, power with. This brings liberty, and liberty reinforces power. The more

  liberation, the truer the power. Now fill with passion. Feel the desire that is keyed to your

  creation, what you want to bring into the world, and what draws you. This is the passion

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  that flows now into wisdom: the overflowing cup of desire and intuition. Passion is jed by

  wisdom and wisdom is cultivated through the exercise of passion. Feel that dance.

  Feel yourself, red and silvery white, glowing cool and hot. Combusting yet not burning

  away. Feel the power in your hands, in your genitals, flowing through your feet. You are connected to the Star Goddess and the first acts of creation. All things begin with fire, and the pearl is born in the cauldron of the poet� heart. From the grit of your life comes burning