Unidentified Flower Object

But this little lady looked nothing like a lilac. First off, it was a pale yellow, and secondly, it was a single flower. The center puff of this bloom somewhat resembles a dandylion, and it is surrounded by daisy-like petals, which in turn rest on a fan of green spikes.

The leaves on the stem are long and pencil-thin, but hidden by the lilac leaves in this picture. We’re hoping someone out there might be able to identify just who this volunteer is.

It’s apparently an early bloomer, because by noon, it had closed up. Please comment if you have any idea just who this is.

Flesh is beautiful enough, especially by the mystical glow of candlelight or the full moon and in shared ritual, as it is a symbol in and of itself of our will to be born into this world.  When we then further choose to wear jewelry or tokens, they are donned knowingly and specifically to be meaningful of our lives in the Craft, in a particular coven, or where we are along our own personal path.  We wear them for the signs they are, as reminders of promises, of hopes and aspirations, and of any understandings that we’ve reached along the way.

Naked Freedom

The key here is that all we put on in ritual is done by choice then, and with knowledge that they are symbolic of greater thoughts, ideas, and mystery.  In this regard, they are as much expressions of freedom as going naked in the first place, so long as we don’t fall into the trap of attaching ourselves too much to the specific thing or to what has no true connection to our innermost selves, to our truest natures.

For that is a huge part of what being a witch is about, shining with your own particular light, being a unique thread in the grand tapestry of the ultimate divine.  In fact, we are charged to be and to do just that—to strive towards letting who we are light the world through the window of our physical forms, and to always remember that we are free beings, free to choose and free to act.  Because to forget that is the first step towards giving it away.

Forgetfulness of freedom is forgetfulness of self.  It is sad neglect of our own personal star, our personal thread in the tapestry of life, and one that allows others to use our own energies to line their pockets or further their agendas, some of which hurt us, those around us, or even the Earth Herself.  Except that every time that we strip off our clothing and step naked into ritual we are in-acting our right of choice, we are becoming living symbols of freedom, and of the very qualities that the Goddess most delights in us to have.  Qualities that the rest of the world sometimes forgets are there and that we have to keep reminding them of to the best of our ability—the taste and touch and pleasure of freedom, of hope, of life, and joy, and, most of all, of love.

Copyright © 2009, Veronica Cummer, All Rights Reserved.

Veronica Cummer is the Author of Sorgitzak: Old Forest Craft and Masks of the Muse

Beneath the Below CD:

Here’s how it begins . . . a movie soundtrack and two musicians reaching for deep and ethereal, an otherworldly fantasy about a Moth Boy; a film which lent itself to dark and dreamy audio visions. Beneath the Below is a River began life as a collaborative soundtrack to the short film ‘Hugo’, directed by Nicholas Verso. Wendy and collaborator Craig Patterson were so pleased with the outcome of the soundtrack that they expanded it into a full length album.

This is not the first time Wendy has created ambient music. Although all of her CDs have some of that soundtrack quality, she worked to create almost theatrically faerie atmosphere in Deep Within the Faerie Forest–a collaboration with Gary Stadler. But that does not make these CDs twins, like so many of the ambient titles out there. Where the Faerie Forest is light and uplifting, Beneath the Below resonates like a waking dream and draws you back down into the underworld to explore further.

In fact, any artist or writer would find this music makes a great background for the creative process. It would probably also be amazing to have in the background of a Tarot Reading.  Imagine a room with dark velvet drapery, red wine and frankincense and add Beneath the Below is a River, and you have a modern, sophisticatedly Goth Salon…  Listen to mp3 samples

Wind Chimes

When we heard about his dedication to reproducing the tones of both ancient and modern devotional music from many cultures, we knew the chimes, bells and tones would be a good fit for a store dedicated to myth and centered living. We now offer over a dozen (18 to be exact) Woodstock Chimes in our Minneapolis Store. We have also added the chimes, along with zoom images and mp3 sound samples of each one, to our Home & Garden section of our online store, and we will be expanding the line.

Woodstock Chimes are Wind-powered just like Eye of Horus!

Wind powered

We also noticed that Woodstock is celebrating 30 years of offering a wind-powered product. This gave us an opportunity to let everyone know that Eye of Horus Metaphysical in Minneapolis has been powered by the wind since August of 2008, when we opted for 100% Windsourced energy from our provider.

All of our energy is provided by Minnesota Windfarms. It’s just one of the ways we consciously try to walk lightly on the Earth.  (Click to read about all of our environmental programs.) So it was a natural fit to add Woodstock Chimes to our list of environmental products.

Wind chimes

When Woodstock Chimes first began producing windchimes in 1979, most windchimes were made by artists who created visually beautiful chimes with little consideration for the sound. Woodstock Chimes elevated the windchime into an item that combines beauty with musical relevance, using a technique that precision tunes the company’s windchimes to musical scales.

For reasons of musical purity, Woodstock uses an ancient tuning system known as just intonation.  Therefore, many of the notes used on Woodstock Chimes fall between the notes of the piano which is tuned to a modern system called equal temperament.  This makes the chimes not only authentic when tuned to ancient scales, but also gives the sound a beautiful and unique quality.

Each and every tube or rod used in Woodstock Chimes is individually tuned to exacting frequencies to assure the best possible result.  This means that tubes tuned to the same note found on other Woodstock Chimes will be in tune with each other but might be slightly different in length.  Other wind-chime makers often cut to exacting lengths but the sound will vary due to the slight inconsistencies of the tubes (wall thickness, diameter, temperament of metal).

Turquoise Chime Tuned to the Golden Ratio

While Woodstock products are mostly enjoyed in homes and gardens, many musicians use them as well.  Since the intervals don’t always match the modern system of tuning of the piano exactly, trained ears can appreciate the difference and adapt to the ancient system. Woodstock Percussion Wind Chimes are tuned using a computerized tuning process in order to achieve incomparably beautiful sound. The frequencies at which the different tubes vibrate are integrally related, thus producing the purest musical intervals.

One example of this is the Golden Ratio Turquoise Chime.  This chime is tuned using the Golden Ratio, a ratio discovered by the ancient Greeks and found throughout nature.  This is one of the building-blocks of the universe, and now the sound can add harmony to your deck, patio, or garden. Click Here to Listen to an mp3 of the Golden Ratio Turquoise Chime

In addition to the beautiful sound, this chime combines modern square tubes with faux turquoise accents for an elegant southwestern style.

Eye of Horus now carries the Woodstock Emperor Gong, Temple Bells and, of course, its Classical  Chimes, such as the Pachelbel Canon Chime and the Chimes of Mozart, and many more. View and listen to all of the woodstock chimes we carry!

I’ve thought a lot about what makes a community, let alone a pagan one.  After attending many Pagan Prides where this topic always seemed to come up, whether there was a panel scheduled on it or not, it seems something that we pagans long for…but aren’t quite sure how to acquire and don’t understand why it is we don’t have one already.

Yes, pagans believe in many things and practice in many ways and there are countless traditions here in the Twin Cities (and, probably, more showing up all the time).  Yet…a community must be built around SOMETHING.  If we can’t agree on hardly anything, that makes it hard to have a community. At a Pagan Pride two years ago, I recall that a single room of assembled pagans, heathens, and witches could barely come to an agreement that we all considered Mother Earth to be sacred. It’s a long way from that to sharing something that can tie a community together with bonds that can withstand very tough times.

Still, when someone respected dies then it often happens that people pull together across traditions, especially when that person had a powerful effect on the local pagan scene over the years. A community forms around that passing, in a way, at least so long as its support is needed by those left behind. Also, perhaps,to express a common grief and recognition.

So…what builds a community?  The shorthand is the need for one…

But what is that that pagans need?  Well, we all need what others need, such as food, shelter, etc, but we also need religious freedom to believe what we believe and practice what we believe, either in our homes or in public. That’s pretty obvious. But that could be said about many communities, so what brings together pagans, heathens, and witches in particular?

Well, looking to the past, people used to gather together to work (physically and spiritually) for the prosperity of their home, their village, their land.  Magical people were at the forefront of those workings. If the magic failed…well, people would die.  What sort of prosperity do modern day pagans need to gather together to promote?  A lot of pagans don’t really know much about farming, and most farmers would look funny at you (or worse) if you went to their land and did rites for the crops to grow.  But there are other kinds of prosperity.

I don’t have a pat answer, but I feel that these are some of the questions.  WHAT kind of prosperity does the Twin Cities need and is lacking?  Or what does it currently have that needs further promoting or protecting?  First and foremost, pagans and witches are tied to the land…so what does the land need?  What do the people who live there need?  What can we do to help?  THAT’s what is needed to build a community—common goals and common purpose, even if we tend to try to get there slightly differently and believe half a dozen different things from each other before breakfast.

Copyright © 2009, Veronica Cummer, All Rights Reserved.

I was wandering through a bookstore, when the title caught my eye—“Dancing in the Streets:  A History of Collective Joy” by Barbara Ehrenreich.  I had never heard of this author before, but a quick look through the book told me that I just had to have it.  The basic premise of the book is that by participating in festivities which inspire collective joy—i.e., experiences that take you out of ordinary, everyday consciousness and into the realm of divine contact and ecstasy—that you not only feel more secure as an individual and within your community at large, but that it may have a lot to do with relieving symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Dancing in the Streets

One of her theories involves drawing a close correlation between the rise of what was called melancholy in the 16^th and 17^th centuries and what psychiatry today diagnoses as anxiety disorders and clinical depression.  She states that when societies cut down on having numerous and varied group celebrations, holidays, and dances during the year, religious or otherwise, that not only did it shut down the ability for people to just let loose on occasion, but that it actually contributed to an increasing lapse in mental health.  She isn’t sure if this loss of ecstatic group celebration directly caused the incidents of melancholy or if it only helped relieved an already existing condition, but it certainly is cause for thought.

We all know that the Puritans and various other morally restrictive Christian religious groups who helped found America frowned mightily upon people having fun or dancing, among other things (like actually enjoying sex, for example).  We are also told that pleasure and dancing and playing games and so on are an intrinsic and natural and even possibly a necessary part of being a witch.  As is attending rituals in the buff, another thing that the Puritans would have absolutely had fits about.

We also know that achieving an ecstatic state is something we’re supposed to feel while in ritual.  It certainly seems then that not only did witches keep as a matter of course the celebrations that allowed them to break free from the grind of day-to-day life, but also the secrets of achieving and maintaining a healthier and more joyful frame of mind and direct contact with the divine.  While this Mardi Gras of the soul also helps stir and quicken the blood of each witch and waken them to their own innate inner powers.

Essentially then, can regular contact with the divine and achieving a state of divine ecstasy actually contribute towards keeping you sane?  Can it work towards gaining magickal power and abilities?  Does it also contribute towards building a strong community?  Simply put, does attending joyful celebrations of our Art make us happier as individuals, more capable of powerful acts of magick, as well as serving to forge us into a close-knit group both as a coven and as a community?  Should we be pursuing this ecstasy more in our rites for all of those reasons?  Learning how to just let go a little more…I think so.

Reach to the Sky

Earth Energy Tree Meditation

Go to a quiet place where you will not be disturbed and can sit comfortably in a chair with your feet touching the ground. Have a glass or bottle of water nearby. Begin by closing your eyes and breathing slowly and deeply, expanding your rib-cage and your belly for six breaths. Notice how this feels by focusing on the expansion and contraction of your ribs.

Relax and breath normally. Now bring your focus up between and behind your eyebrows, this is your Ajna Chakra or Third Eye and will help you with visualizing the rest of the meditation. Keep your eyes closed and picture a ball of white light in the center of your body, imagine it growing and expanding filling your body and creating a glow to about two feet from your body all around. At the outer edge imagine that a light blue electric light starts to form, like a forcefield it is protecting you and your space from any distractions.

Now feel the weight of your body where you are sitting, and imagine your chair as a tree stump, with roots reaching deep into the earth. Focus on your contact to the stump, and imagine that the white light flows freely from you to the stump and back again. Notice any sensations you may feel as you connect and ground yourself to Mother Earth.

Move your feet back and forth, and wiggle your toes while touching the floor. Imagine your feet have sent shoots down deep into the heart of Mother Earth as energy begins to flow effortlessly like water into your Energy Body. Picture the energy as a warm, golden-green color or loving pink color, whichever you are more comfortable with. Still your feet as they continue to drink and focus on the rising warmth as earth energy fills your legs, knees, hips, torso, arms, hands, neck and finally your head where it flows out the top, down your body, and back to the earth through the trunk of your tree-chair to the center of the Earth to be transformed into clear clean energy again. Allow it to flow at it’s own pace, and imagine as it does so it’s cleaning away all your doubts & fears, anger & frustration, and any negative speck or blocked idea that keeps you from pure love and joy.

As Earth Energy cleans out a space, it fills it with love, peace, and contentment. Focus on how this makes you feel.

When you are ready, open your eyes and drink your glass of water. Know that the water came from the earth and is nourishing your Energy Body which just had a good workout! As you continue your day, you can renew your connection to the earth by imagining a vine reaching from the base of your spine to the center of the earth.

Like an anchor it keeps you connected to Mother Earth and you can make it as large or small in your imagination as you think it should be. Use it any time you need to eliminate any negative or unpleasant emotions or energies throughout the day.

I also got a selection of seeds to sow directly in the ground after danger of frost.  So I found a source for frost dates in MN.  For Minneapolis the dates are:

April 28th – 10% chance or less of low temp below 28 degrees
May 12th – 10% chance or less of low temp below 32 degrees
May 24th – 10% chance or less of low temp below 36 degrees

So we’ll be planting Morning Glories and Ornamental Grass–Blue Fescue (a perennial) in the labyrinth garden.  We’ll have Alyssum  out in front of the store, and if there is any extra, somewhere in the labyrinth garden proper, or in pots. I’m even planning for next year with some foxglove seeds.  They are biennials.  So they flower in the second year.  I’ll plant some out front and some back in the Fairy Corner.

If you don’t see what you are looking for online, give us a call. We may already have what you are looking for on-hand. Click here for online crystal selection.

Egyptian Faceted Crystal Ball

If not, it only takes a few days to get in a variety of shapes and colors of hanging crystals to use as sun-catchers, pendulums, or, of course for Feng Shui Cures to enhance your environment as described in this article.

We can also offer bulk pricing for Feng Shui practitioners, designers and others who need them by the dozen.

There are other online shops which carry leaded glass crystal, but few will specifically say where their crystals are sourced.  At Eye of Horus, we primarily carry Swarovski because the quality is without question. Of course, since the Eye of Horus logo and much of what we carry is Egyptian, we do carry Egyptian Crystals, as well.  Although the shapes and tone are slightly different, they have their own unique warm fire, and are very economical, as well.

Swarovski Faceted Crystal Ball

About Swarovski Crystals

Swarovski (Austrian) Leaded Glass Crystals are famous worldwide for their precision cuts, clarity, and sparkle. The characteristics of Swarovski crystals are unparalleled in both style and substance. Not only are their cuts distinct, but the assorted colors and shapes cover a broad spectrum. The brilliant sparkle of each crystal is actually resulted from a glass composition containing 32 percent lead. Besides this refraction maximizing strategy, special metallic coatings are used on some of the crystals to ensure that light refracts from the surface in a rainbow spectrum, such as the Aurora Borealis coating. The crystal balls shown here are clear crystal without any enhancement. Their brilliance is strictly a result of light and the quality and cut of the crystal.

Crystal Composition and Energetic Use

Faceted leaded glass crystals contain glass and lead, but may also include carbon, boron and germanium. The exact composition can change the color of the crystal. The immediate, striking aspect of the crystals is their prismatic effect.  They break light up into the colors of the rainbow, or prisms, which they cast upon the walls, floors and ceiling of a room. These crystals literally combine the elements of Earth and Fire (or Light) to unite heaven and earth.

In Feng Shui this prismatic effect created by light passing through faceted crystal is considered to be not only auspicious, but to actually change the energy or vibration of surrounding space. By directing this new, heavenly energy in spaces which have slow, abrasive, or bad energy (known as shar chi), the rainbows filter out all the bad energy and smooth chaotic flows of too much energy.

Simply put, faceted crystal balls can be used as a Feng Shui Cure for negative energies to slow down rushing chi or diffuse shar chi. They can also be used as an amplifier for good energy, to boost the effect of a bagua mirror, or paired with plants to really bring forth good chi in the environment. So, at the most basic, they are good luck charms. Click to view selection

Hanging Crystals for Feng Shui:

1. Hang a crystal at chi (energy) entry points where you sense “poison arrows” from sharp edges directed at you from corners of buildings, polls, lamp-posts or signs which are cut through your view from a window, door, or even room to room.
2. Use as a remedy if you live near a busy street, highway, railway track or looming structures
3. Hang a Crystal  between doors which face one another in a straight line to slow and diffuse the flow of energy, allowing the chi of each room to be harmonious and not take over another.
4. Hang your Faceted  Crystal Ball between your main door and drains or toilets to prevent wealth and good fortune from running down the drain.
5. Use anywhere to clear your space and invite good luck.
6. Hang a faceted crystal anywhere you want to encourage clear thought and aid visualization.

Feng Shui Tips for Hanging Faceted Crystal Balls:

1. Hanging the crystal from a red cord helps activate the Feng Shui Cure. Red is the color for attraction, warmth and strength. Although too much red can make tempers flare, a touch of it will set energies in motion. (Our Swarovski Crystal Balls come pre-strung on red cord).
2. Clear up any clutter before hanging the crystal.  Clutter has the opposite effect on the energy of the room, and having two energy sources battling constantly is counterproductive.
3. Hang odd numbers (yang) rather than even numbers (yin) of faceted crystal balls.

Get your pre-strung crystal today