My Books; A Self-Review for Buyers

Gifting at the solstice season is an old and honorable custom, stretching back into Pagan time, along with drinking and feasting. For those of us in the northern hemisphere, whatever our religious inclinations, the solstice season is a time for enjoying friends and kin, and sharing the bounty that the year has brought. Here at the always-annoying initial descent of winter I am already looking forward to Yule morning, when the light begins to grow again.

Regular readers will know that I write books and sell them. I’ve done this a long time, though I have yet to have a main-stream publication. (The truth is I’m only a little motivated. The advantages of self-publishing continue to appeal to me. ) As a result I am sometimes asked how to approach my material in an orderly way, or, “what to read first”. In an effort to reduce the retyping of the answer to that question I’ll try to put the important stuff in order here.

If you are looking to read my books, you are hoping to learn about a practical approach to modern Celtic-style religion and magic. I freely refer to what I do as Pagan, though my material is radically different from much of modern Pagan practice. I begin with a reconstructionist’s concern for the original and reliably authentic lore of the Celts, especially the Gaels. To that I add a modern mage’s willingness to reframe, reinvent and experiment. In general I am more concerned with occultism and sorcery than with religion, mainly just as my personal inclination. However all my magical work is framed inside the Pagan religious model in which I work. Blog readers will know my opinion about the intimate connection between religion and magic.

Had I been interested in fame as an occultist, I’d have been an eclectic. Instead I have hitched my wagon to the specific ritual format and cosmology devised within ADF’s Druidry. Fortunately that format has come to be more in tune with trends (and/or contributed to them) in modern magic over the last decades. The modern interest in real work with spirits based on offering, divination and blessing fits very nicely (imhhaa opinion) with the work that I’ve devised. Readers used to working in a post-Wiccan or post-Masonic ritual style will find plenty in the material that can be adapted for their own work.

Prologue:

1: ADF’s Dedicant Path: The 150 page book that comes with one’s first year of ADF membership provides a simple introduction to the symbol system and ritual forms used in the rest of my work. I wrote most of the material, and edited the most recent edition. Even if one is uncertain about ADF as a primary Pagan path the material in our training, and the community of support, is valuable for those interested in non-Wiccan modern Pagan directions.

The Dedicant materials are available only with a one-year ADF membership. Note that all the following are available at my Lulu shop, except for SFHW, which is available at Amazon from ADF Publishing.

  

Top Tier:

2: Sacred Fire, Holy Well, A Druid’s Grimoire. This was the first formal writing I did about

our Druidic system. The core material began as a pamphlet for our local Grove in 1991. By the end of the 90s it had grown into the 300 page item it is now. In truth, all the themes of my later work are present here. If there’s a fault in the book it is that the rites were written to be performed for and by medium to large groups. The seasonal rites are based on our local Grove rites, where we readily have a half-dozen voices available, and the magical rites are written for myself and a partner to work for a fairly large group. The rites have been criticized as unworkable by solitaries, and that may be true.

However I continue to get good reviews from readers who find the book useful for developing a personal practice. It is a multi-category compendium with an introduction, at least, to the whole shootin’ - match.

 3: The Book of Nine Moons. This is a formal system of weekly exercises intended to provide initiation in magical skills and alliances over nine months.  It begins with a program of daily prayer and offering, and works its way into a fully consecrated home shrine and tools, practical magic and spellcraft and the work of gaining familiar spirits. It is specifically written for solitary performance. It includes no seasonal rites, focusing on personal hearth-cult and magical work.

It is, according to students who have attempted it, an intense and challenging program. I based the model on the kind of work that we expected of ourselves back when I was running a training coven. It may be that the pace is too brisk for someone working the system at home alone. I do (still) plan on expanding it into a slower-paced set of trainings, but that has been slow to happen. Those who have completed some basic familiarization with Druidic ritual (say, the Dedicant’s work) will find more of the more advanced material in one place in this book than anywhere else.

Having run a few students through the Nine Moons work I realized that much of the material might be of interest to folks not involved in Our Druidry. I decided that two of the primary teachings of the system ought to be broken out an offered to more general readers, apart from a rigorous general training. Those are the spirit-arte material, and the teachings on trace and vision-work.

 4: The Book of Summoning.  This book presents a systematic approach to gaining the aid and friendship of the spirits (especially non-deific spirits) and beginning to employ them in magic. It begins with a summary explanation of our Druidic ritual form, proceeds with a suite of rites intended to ‘introduce’ the magician to the spirits, and then proceeds to the work of making alliances.

This book contains my final-to-date efforts to apply principles of classic magical spirit work as found in the grimoires to a polytheist, alliance-based model. The rites have been tested by several magicians now to good effect, and I’m confident offering the material. I expect the system to be especially useful for those working to gain primary familiar allies among the Dead and the Landwights.

 5: The Book of Visions. Again using material lifted from the Nine Moons system, this book brings together the exercises for energy-work and vision-trance into a set of progressive exercises. This includes an invention of which I am fairly proud, the Nineteen Working. The working is a sit-down energy, meditation and visualization pattern based in a modern understanding of Celtic Pagan symbols.  It offers both an opportunity for mystical insight, and an important level of understanding and authority for spirit work.

The focus of the book’s vision-work is the construction and use of an Inner Nemeton – a visualized temple and workspace that serves as an arrival and departure point for further vision. This is presented in some detail, in a series of scripted trances. Also provided are exercises intended to allow an approach to the personal Higher Genius, here conceived in a Pagan way.

Let me say this plainly – I don’t recommend buying both the Book of Nine Moons and the two “Books of…”. There is some new material in each of the latter (more in the Book of Summoning) but they mainly reframe material from the full system. The two later books are more modular, easier to adapt to a personal a la carte practice. The Book of Nine Moons is a complete system.

Second Tier

6: The Court of Brigid Grimoire. This is a complete ritual suite for approaching the

goddess Brigid, meeting her primary ‘ministers’ or ‘angels’ or ‘daemons’ and working with the servant spirits of her ‘court’. It is based entirely on the methods presented in the Book of Summoning (and to some degree in Sacred Fire, Holy Well). It could be worked directly from the text by a new student, but some study of the underlying system will certainly reduce confusion.

 7: Draiocht;  A Celtic Sorcery Primer.  As titled, this is a simple introduction to the system, along with a collection of deity invocations, spells and trances. If you want a walk-through of the kind of magic this is, this could be the book for you.

 8: Beginning Practical Magic. This old monograph began life as a transcription of a day-long workshop on spellbinding and practical work. It remains chatty in tone, but it also still sells widely, especially in e-book. The advice and teaching has been rewritten in Sacred Fire, Holy Well.

 9: Spirit Talk; Seedling of Pagan Theologies. Articles on Pagan theologies originally published on this blog.

 10: The Book of the Dragon. What can I say; I wrote this in 1982 or so, in a first attempt

to synthesize my art. It is Wiccan in ritual form, but contains attempts at new work combining shamanistic methods with ritual magic. Very primitive by my current standards, but the art is fairly cool.

Me Having Fun

11: The Fire and Well Spellbook. This was me having fun with typesetting. It is all the ritual material from Sacred Fire, Holy Well arranged in a pretty type-face. Buy the hardback if you want something romantic for your wizard’s library.

12: Blank Books and Journals. (buggy-whips and sealing-wax on the left…). Keep an eye out, I put different ones up. Also see lots of them at my Tabula Rasa shop. 

13: Liber Spirituum. The grimoire tradition of magic includes the idea of a Book of Spirits – a personal book in which one collects the names, sigils and ‘signatures’ of the spirits with whom one has made pacts. This is my typeset of one for myself. The decoration is Celtic, but it would work for any spirit-arte collection.

And…

The Dwale of Afagddu. My small effort at a Cthulhu Mythos tome begins with a weird tale of ancient Wales, telling the secret story behind Cerridwen’s brewing. It then provides a grimoires of mythos rites. It walks a line between actually performable and why bother, but it includes a variety of fake-evil sorcerous Cthulhu art by me.

I write because I like writing, and because I hope that my words and ideas may be of value to other modern Pagans and occultists. I do my own typesetting and art, and enjoy making a book an expression of magic. May my readers be blessed by the work.

Nine Moons Isn't Enough (and other updates)

So, it has been most of a year since I released the alpha version of my training program in Druidic magic and occultism, as the Book of Nine Moons. (It's still available here, though I keep threatening to withdraw it...) My impression from my first year’s work-through of the Nine Moons system is that it is presented in a too-much too-fast way. I’ve watched students, including myself, make it through several months of the work and then stall, often to take the work up again, sometimes not. This matches closely my major concern about the formatting of the program when I put it together, and suggests a new direction for reworking.

I’ve said it before – Americans like having several colors of belt between white and black. Presenting complex material in easy-to-digest steps is just how-you-do-it in this day and age. Thus, I b’lieve I’ll give that route a try.

Here’s how this happened; I wanted to put the system I’d been building into a single outline. It would be a full-strength training program in magic, fully centered in a polytheistic, animistic world-view, with plenty of Gaelic Pagan emphasis. I wanted to create a system as complete and focused as what we used to undertake for our ‘degree’ work in an old-style Wiccan coven. So I put together rites and works I’d been developing, lifted a little from previous publications, wrote almost everything fresh and put it together in a series of weekly lessons covering nine months. After much dithering I published the entire system as the Book of Nine Moons.

I opened a group for students and provided recorded audio support for the first 5 or so months. Results were as described above. Several students have actually finished through the main empowerment rite of the system, and some more might do it. All those I’ve spoken with have reported improvements in their practice and work. The fact is that the intense nine month ‘retreat’ that is presented is still only the basic training for operative sorcery or mystical rites.

The system aims for several goals at once. The first is to deepen and solidify the student’s practice of our sacrifice-based, Fire-and-Well ritual form, develop the consecrated tool-set, and be familiar with solitary ritual work. Basic meditation, trance and energy work are taught, and a basic familiarity with a set of cultural divination symbols or letters is begun. By the end of the first three months students are consecrating a talisman and learning to step out into vision.

The second three months is the formal prep for works of power. In the vision-work the student builds the Inner Grove, and takes first steps into Otherworld locales. This is one of the more labor-intensive bits, requiring three-phase trance-works, etc. I’ll be working on that outline and presentation. Two personal tools of power are consecrated, used freely in the Druid’s hands rather than nailed into the shrine’s world-order, if you will. This phase includes rites of offering to the Not-Gods, beginning the process of calling them near for the alliance works ahead. The three months ends with the first formal practical-magic rite, the student now fully armed and rooted.

In the final three months the central work is the making of formal alliances with allies among the Ancestors and the Sidhe. Certain mystical threads from earlier months are brought together as the central meditation-pattern of the system is completed. Practical magic rites are worked for prosperity, health, and wisdom. Relationships with the newly-made allies are deepened, experimenting with trance-scrying and other methods. Finally all is brought together in a Convocation rite intended to establish the magician’s presence and authority.

So, that’s rather a lot. Where’s my monastery? Oh… yeah, I’m fresh out of dedicated nine-month periods of retreat in a nice forest enclosure, and so are most modern students. So it’s time to rework the material, to present in a more attractive and effective way.

I think that dividing the work into three courses makes sense. That will allow each one to be manageable in a few months, even with less-than-weekly workings. Most important, I think, I will disconnect the lessons from any sense of timetable, or urgency. It simply makes sense to allow folks to work the various exercises and rites at their own pace, while providing a relatively firm outline and order of proceeding. That last is important, I think – one thing that seems to have been valuable is the clear path and obvious next step provided. I think that I need to build more flexibility and breathing-room into the pattern.

So what I think will happen is that I’ll divide the program into three stages. I’m sorry – three is just too Druid-y a number, and the nine months of the existing program divide nicely that way.

The first part will be the basics of beginning a Celtic sorcery practice. Since it won’t be constrained by the desire to teach a whole religious practice I can skip dealing with seasonal rites and the like, and teach the basics of fire sacrifice and mental training. The course will complement but not replace ADF’s Dedicant Program, with a greater emphasis on preparation for practical magic.

The second part feels the most difficult to make into a free-standing program. In the outline the central three months are about key works of personal power and opening up to the spirits. I may have to add some detail to keep it from being plot-less and anticlimactic, like a bad second book of a trilogy.

The third part is the money, and will be able to come across in a pretty straightforward grimoire fashion. Again, there will be some fleshing out.

Now, how to frame and dress the three stages… Watch this space.

Other Stuff:
• I'm going to be doing the Court of Brigid working at the Eight Winds festival in Cali at the end of June. Once that is done, and some more personal efforts with several of the spirits are complete I may issue some sort of publication on it.
• I'm still writing the novel. I'll try to isolate an excerpt soon.
• I've updated by Cafe Press Store with new items, including some talismans and ritual items. Look for more there, and look for some unique items to come from a collaboration with the folks at The Magical Druid.
• Spring is early on the lakeshore this year. I hope that means that L and I will be beginning a round of work intended to draw nearer to the wights and rulers of this patch of land we hold. This should lead to some more new material in the Druidic spirit-arte dept. Spring Equinox directly, Beltaine before ya know it... time for another burst of occult work before festival season kicks in...

The Book of Visions - A Manual of Pagan Meditation & Trance

Done at last! This is the meditation and trance material from the Nine Moons training system arranged in a simple order for general work. (Buy it here.) Please heed my warning: if you bought the Book of Nine Moons, you have all (90+%) of this material. Soonish that book will be withdrawn from general distribution to be made available to ADF Dedicants. However nearly all the material and more is available in this book along with the Book of Summoning.

This completes my long writing project of developing a system of Pagan magical training. The experiments in implementing the system are ongoing, and the Nine Moons may be due for a redesign. But completing this will free me up for the next wave including the The Novel.

Here's the back matter from the Book of Visions:

The Druid’s Peace & the Sorcerer’s Eye

The practice of magical arts requires a mind trained in the ability to produce altered states of awareness at will. Whether we refer to devotional ecstasies, silent meditation, shamanic vision or the second sight, the skills of trance and meditation are central to spiritual practice and practical magic. Magical work is supported by the ability to calm the heart and mind, to work with the energies of the Inner World, and to see and journey among the spirits.

The Book of Visions provides clear lessons in the skills of meditation and vision. It is focused on methods that directly support ritual magic and religion, avoiding theoretical discussion in favor of direct instruction. The methods are presented in a series that can serve as progressive lessons, but the many exercises and scripts can also stand alone. Presented within a Pagan Druidic framework, the methods presented are easily adaptable to other Pagan systems.

The lessons include:

• Meditation – Finding Your Peace; simple instruction in basic meditation.

• The Two Powers; Working magic with the powers of Underworld and Heavens

• The Threshold Realm, & the Vision Journey; opening the Inner Eye, and traveling toward the Otherworld.

• The Inner Grove; creating a personal place of power.

• The Nineteen Working: full instruction in a spiritual practiced based firmly on Gaelic lore.

Ian Corrigan has been learning and teaching in the Pagan community for over 30 years. He is an Archdruid Emeritus and a Senior Priest of Ar nDraiocht Fein (ADF) and worked with Isaac Bonewits in the creation of that Pagan Druidic system. He is the author of Sacred Fire, Holy Well; A Druid’s Grimoire as well as The Book of Summoning, and is currently developing the Nine Moons system of Pagan magical training.

Nine Moons Major Update

OK, things are under way. I’d like to thank folks who bought the early edition of the Book of Nine Moons. Little Ian won’t go to bed without occult books tonight…
I have a small group of students working their way through the program, though it is early days yet. Even so, an examination by students has shown me many ways that the material could be improved. Not just the inevitable typos, but actual structural problems as well.

So, what I’m going to do is to withdraw the public offer of the Book of Nine Moons, as of May 1st. The students working the program will continue, and anyone who bought the book and wants to work the system can join the Yahoo group for support by writing me and asking. ADF members who have completed the DP will also be able to purchase the book and do the work. Once more students have worked the system, I’ll probably reissue it as a public offering, though there’s a chance that it will remain an in-house publication of the ‘hedge school’ of people working the system.

Also by Beltaine I’ll be issuing at least one new publication based on the Nine Moons material. Readers here may recall that I have promised a system of Pagan spirit art. Well, that material got subsumed in the Nine Moons stuff. So I have re-edited it and added additional support material, and will be publishing it as “The Book of Summonings – A Grimoire of Pagan Spirit Arte”. Those who have already purchased the Nine Moons book have 90% of the material in the Summonings book, though there is some unique new stuff.

So this is a promise and a warning. I will be publishing the Book of Summonings and withdrawing the Book of Nine Moons, probably for a year or two. If you bought the Nine Moons, you should think thrice about paying for the Book of Summonings – too much duplication. However if you didn’t think a months-long program was for you, you may be interested in the more direct (though still not ‘easy’) work of Summonings.

As a teaser, here’s the introduction to the Book of Summonings:

Nine Moons Study Group – Second Call

The initial group of students for the Nine Moons Pagan Magical Training system will be beginning the work on New Moon of March (approx 3/4/2011).

Qualified students have completed ADF’s Dedicant Path training, and are interested in a focused intensive training in magical arts based in the symbols and ritual patterns of Pagan Druidry. Interested parties who have not completed the Dedicant’s work should write me directly with a short description of background.

The Book of Nine Moons is the primary text for the course, available at:
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/book-of-nine-moons/14595026?productTrackingContext=author_spotlight_223978_

Members of the list are expected to have purchased the text. It will also be very useful for students to have my previous books, especially Sacred Fire, Holy Well: (http://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Fire-Holy-Well-Grimoire/dp/0976568128/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251725405&sr=1-1 )

This is a second call for students who would like support and mentoring in this system to join the discussion group. The Yahoo group will include support files, additional notes and of course the chance for direct Q&A both with the designer of the system, and with other students.
Eligible students (ADF Dedicants who have purchased the text) can write me at any time to be added to the list. We won’t do this in “classes” – join when you please, and hopefully the list will have students in front of and behind you to chat with.

Put your email in comments, or find me on Facebook (Ian Corrigan) or email me and I’ll send an invite to the private group.

Two weeks until the fire is lit, and the work begins.
Blessings
Ian.

Nine Moons study group

First I want to thank everyone who responded to the Very First edition of the Book of Nine Moons. The response was good, and I hope that readers can get a lot from the material, whether or not it is worked systematically. At very least it's a thick book of magic.

The Yahoo group for students of the Nine Moons program is up, and I've invited both the folks who wrote me and the local students to join. As you get your copies, if you decide that you'd like to work the program with support I hope you'll write me and join the group. For these early stages of the program, I will keep personal control of the list and membership, so that it can stay entirely relevant to the work.

I might suggest a possible start date of New Moon in March (approx 3/5 or 6 - I'll use 'New Moon' to refer to the first visible crescent...). That would take students through Full Moon of November for those who work the work straight through. It seems a good idea to be finishing the big rites of the work at Samhain season...

Soon back to material of general interest here on el bloggo...

Working Magic

Any magician will tell ya, it feels great to get back to doing magic! After some months of inaction over the past summer, L and I have been back at it full steam, working our way through the works of the Nine Moons. I mean, I’ve done all the works of that system over the years, some of them many times, and have been working with spirit allies since my days as a witch. Still, working through these new rites, and doing it in an intensive ‘retreat’-type format, is jazzing me up.

My trance-vision skills are sharpening right up. I’ve done a lot of visionary work over the years, some ‘guided’ but lots just free-form. I’ve been busily recording the scripts I’ve written for the system, and have been working them through. Those are almost all ‘launch-and-free-journey’ works, with plenty of time for free-form vision, though since they’re training exercises the free-form time is a little limited. It just points me at what I’d like to be doing once I have re-established myself at the end of the system.

The ritual magic system fits like a glove. No surprise – it’s firmly based on ADF’s Order of Ritual, which I’ve been working with for some 20 years. However, that has been almost exclusively religious work, using the skills to give to the Powers and get a good blessing in turn - all pretty safe, noon-tide sort of stuff, though really very fulfilling. The Nine Moons work, on the other hand, has been old-fashioned night-time magic, with a nicely occult feel to it. Pushes buttons I like having pushed…

The new shrine is working well. Here are pics – on the right of the set-up for the Two Powers healing rite. There are sets of the proper stones for both L and I, but only one blessing fire, which we both used to charge our wands for the Sky Power portion. On the left is the set-up for the Ancestral Ally rite – lotsa offerings! The firelit pic is the Shrine of the Dead with the offerings of apples, pork and ale before it.

The work has me growing much closer to my spirit allies – my Familiar and my Teacher. I’ve met a couple of additional spirits of the lesser, helper sort, who will now begin receiving direct offerings instead of just being part of the crowd at Kindred offerings. When I have finished this sequence, in two to three more months, itwill be spring and time to get some of this work out-of-doors to the backyard nemeton, rather than being limited to the home shrine. Can’t wait!

The Book of Nine Moons

Lessons in Celtic Sorcery

I’m pleased to make the first copies of the Book of Nine Moons available to members of ADF and to readers of this blog.

The Book is made up of nine monthly lessons in trance, divination, ritual engagement with the spirits and practical magical work. Each lesson consists of works for the First Crescent, Sixth Night and Full of the Moons, with the waning crescent for rest. These lessons are arranged progressively, to teach practical spiritual arts in a Druidic context; that is, Pagan magic. The publication of the book is accompanied by the first disk of audio support, covering the simple trance and meditation exercises of the first three Moons. Audio support for following Moons will be available soon.

While the work of the Nine Moons will be valuable to any intermediate practitioner, it is written for those working the Pagan Druidic ritual system of triadic symbolism and fire-sacrifice. The system is especially intended to provide a formal structure for those who are working ADF’s Initiate’s Path. The lessons will provide somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 – 80% of the required practicum, while providing a solid and organized basis in magic for further work.

The ethnic focus of the work is Gaelic, drawing on authentic Gaelic folk and literary material, though it could easily be adapted to other ethnicities. The work is focused on direct results for modern students, done within a symbol system that I hope might have been recognizable to the ancients.

If worked at the suggested pace, the Nine Moons are an intensive engagement with spiritual arts, that will combine vision, ritual and worship to allow the student to move forward in the work. Articles on ritual work, trance, spirit work, divination and spellbinding provide the theoretical background for a program focused on practice. Even outside of the formal order of the lessons, the book offers many new ritual scripts for spirit-arte and practical magic, set in the Pagan Druidic tradition.

The goals of the program include:
• The experience of the Sacred Cosmos, as a source of spiritual wisdom and strength.
• The creation and consecration of a Shrine and personal tools, beyond common household worship.
• The development of basic skill with a divinatory symbol system.
• Skill in trance-vision, and the development of an Inner Grove from which journeying and other Inner Work are done.
• A progressive approach to the Dead and the Landspirits, leading to effective personal alliance with the spirits.
• Practical magic experience, with the goal of increasing health wealth and wisdom for the student.

I may decide to offer formal instruction in this system within the coming year. Watch this space for any such announcement. In the meantime I will be creating a Yahoo group for those who have purchased the book and might wish to undertake the program in a mutual-support environment – that should be up this week. Just send me your Lulu order # if you like and I'll invite you to that list. Also possibly forthcoming is a publication of this material in a more topical arrangement, without the nine lessons, for a more general Pagan public. However this edition presents the material as it has been written, and as I hope will be valuable to anyone interested in a serious approach to Pagan spiritual arts.

This weekend Lulu.com has a nice sale on, as well – offering 20% off of any order, with the code ‘treasure’ at the bottom of the very last checkout window.

Woohoo! Here it really is!
Ian

Done!

After some two years of development and writing, the Book of Nine Moons is complete, at least in a first edition kind of way! I’ve very pleased with how it has come out, and think that it can truly do the job of helping students become competent and empowered Druidic magicians. For those new to el bloggo, I’ve been writing a system that amounts to a nine month long ‘retreat’ in which daily simple work and weekly exercises and ritual intend to empower and illuminate the student. See here for the goals and more…

So, I’ve finished! Eyes crossed and tees dotted. Typeset and ready to offer. Now… how to offer it?

I’m still all confused about how to offer this material. My interim answer is simply to offer it in a lump, as a new book, called the Book of Nine Moons. I should be announcing availability as soon as I work over a proof, probably a couple of weeks. I’m very pleased with how it has come out, and a small group of students is working through the material with good results.

There’s every possibility that I’m going to offer access to mentored work in the system as well. I have supplemental files, notes and support, which I am considering administering through a private e-list. I still see some conflict between offering the book publically and creating a workable product as a ‘course’ that students take over nine months.

The other stumbling block is the focus of the system on the Pagan Druidic ritual system, with its fairly unique triadic symbolism. When one moves a system entirely out of Neoplatonism, Renaissance Hermetics and the four-quartered circle one limits the ability of many Pagans to relate. While I have no aversion to seeing where I can make a couple of bucks on this, I wrote it as a system that I actually use, based in the symbolism I have come to understand over the past twenty years of Druidic work. So as it stands it is built within a pre-hermetic, Indo-European cosmology, with a ritual system that looks more like an eastern fire-sacrifice than like renaissance magic. Probably anyone from a reconstructionist Pagan system could make sense of it, but it could be fairly opaque to newer students who come out of more standard ‘western tradition’ training.

It’s also plainly intermediate work. There’s no extra fifty pages up front to explain the cosmology and core ritual work. In many ways the Nine Moons is a sequel to my book Sacred Fire, Holy Well, where that whole system is explained. Of course the very best preparation for this new system is the ADF Dedicant’s Path (that article is a bit old), where the symbolism and practice is taught in some detail. However I’d sure like to offer this stuff outside the realm of the couple of hundred Dedicant Druids…

Ah well, blog readers and ADF members will get the first chance to buy the version I’ve just finished. Will it take me another year to figure out what else to do with it? No, sez I!

Spiritual Symbolism in Druidic Rites

This article is an abridgement of one of the very last articles in the Nine Moons system. I'll have an update on that work and some news very soon. This article is framed as advice to those who are completing the program, and hints for possible future work.

The same work that allows the practice of religion and sorcery can lead into a vital spiritual and mystical path. The term ‘mystical’ carries a heavy load of cultural freight. We’ll use it in a fairly specific meaning: “The relationship between the common self and the divine.” In magic we are often acting according to the will of that version of the self which we call ‘me’. We use our personal will to determine what should occur, and our personal power to make it happen. Mysticism is rather the other side of the coin. We open our personal spirit to the influence of the Gods and Spirits, and we seek to join our personal mind and will with the patterns of the cosmos.
These two ways – the sorcerous and the mystical – make fine companions on a personal spiritual journey. Together they bring the Druid’s goals of Wisdom, Love and Power, in proper measure as each person might need them. So we encourage you to attend to both in your ongoing Druid’s path.

Meditation and Ritual
Meditation is core to mystical work. It is the primary means by which we adjust our consciousness toward the goal states of awareness of the work. The basic skills of open meditation and contemplation will be used constantly, and your skills at concentration and visualization should be strong and well-practiced.
Ritual also brings spiritual expression to the personal soul, and helps to link the manifest self with the many expressions of the divine. From simple devotions to rites of offering and blessing to meditative rites of union, ritual can be a central part of a mystical practice. Skill at contemplation allows you to be present in and as the symbols of the rite even as you pursue the intention.
Forgive me for reminding you again. Please do not neglect regular open meditation, with no intention except to relax and refresh your spirit. The sages recommend a minimum of a half-hour of meditation daily, but even half that, perhaps broken into morning and evening sessions, is useful. When you are off-center or confused by your life, choices or circumstances, open meditation will help you arrive at the cool moonlight mind that can best solve problems.

Cosmos Meditation
In Cosmos meditation you create the vision of yourself as present both in and as the sacred pattern of existence. The ‘mandala’ (i.e. symbolic arrangement of icons or images) of the worlds and beings is arrayed around you. Into this mandala you seek to expand your spirit, to widen your awareness beyond the boundaries of your individual self into the greater worlds.
That work can be supported and enhanced with preliminary meditations on the Horizontal and Vertical Axes. Trances to explore the Three Realms and the Three Worlds can naturally follow from the Inner Grove vision work, and all this can be assembled as a single vision.
Of course every full sacrifice worked in our Druidic Order of Ritual contains a cosmos meditation. To begin with the Mother and establish again the Three Realms and the Three Worlds, is to be, yourself, the Creator of Worlds. You can always take those chances to contemplate the Cosmos, to share your own duile – your components – with those of the greater world, bone to stone, breath to wind.

The Da Fein
We have been referring to your Personal Inner Divinity, the God-of-Yourself, as the Da Fein. Of all the work you have done, this is the most intimate and personal, and the least amenable to instruction. Your visions, your intuition, will lead you toward greater communion with the Da Fein as you continue to meditate upon it.
One approach is to set up an active shrine to your Da Fein. It may seem ironic to attempt to make an exterior shrine or to offer I-and-Thou worship to that which is the very center of the self. However, ritual, representation and symbolism satisfy and focus the common conscious mind, and with the mind calmed and focused, you can more clearly hear the voice of the God of You.
The choice of an icon to express the presence of the Da Fein is itself an exercise. Some have chosen an ‘angelic’ style of depiction, and another approach is to choose an entirely non-human, even non-living, representation. From the perspective of Celtic lore, no more proper symbol occurs to me than the Vessel of Wonder. The Cauldron or Dish is one of the complexes that feed the medieval ‘Holy Graal’ stories. The Cauldron was the object of quests and raids often held deep in the Underworld or Otherworld. But, again, you must choose the depiction of the Da Fein, if any, as you are led by your own learning and intuition.

Microcosm and Macrocosm
A constant in Indo-European religions is the principle of reflection and mutual influence between the worlds. This was expressed in late Pagan times in the famous verse: “That which is below is as that which is above, and that which is above is as that which is below, to accomplish the Mysteries of the One.” So we begin with the idea that whatever beings exist in the spiritual worlds – the Gods and Spirits – may each have a reflection in an individual’s soul. When we invite the Kindreds to our Fire their presence is reflected in us in turn.

The Kindreds as Mystery
Most ritual worship workings are intended to announce yourself to the spirits and gain their good will. This presents the chance to seek their power in your own psyche, in the cosmos-in-you. While there are many sorts of exercise to enter that awareness, it can be enough to remember that you stand as a mirror to the spirits, and they to you, even as you work ritual.
• The Dead
Every human being draws life from the lines of blood, of womb and seed. When we mirror the Dead in our spirit we open ourselves to the great line of memory. In the voices of the Ancient Wise we hope to hear the echoes of the work of ancient Paganism.
On a personal level the presence and power of the Dead awakens the very blood and seed of the divine-in-us. In time we, ourselves will join the Ancestors, and receive the offerings of the living, offering our potent blessings in turn.
• The Nobles
As mortal folk we dwell in the Middle Realm, which is also the home of the Other Clans, the Good Neighbors. The blessing of the Sidhe is the core of the luck of the world, and the wise seek to keep their goodwill. When we mirror the Host of the Sidhe in our spirit we may glimpse the stealth of the night-runner, or the vision of the eagle, or the warm deep of borrow or the high perspective of mountain winds and moonlight.
On the personal level work with the Noble Ones can awaken affinities and related powers in the magician. The Wights are often called upon in magical arts, and we can learn secrets that we can turn to our advantage, even as the Nobles learn by dealing more closely with a mortal.
• The Gods
The Shining Beings we call the gods and goddesses are the Eldest and Mightiest, those who in the first days helped to shape cosmos and set life in it, and who still live eternal. The Gods are the very persons of the divine, in its brightest and deepest sense. In the presence of a god, especially, we may be carried out of our common self into a greater perspective
On a personal level, you may find your relationship with the Earth Mother and the Gatekeeper to be sufficient for your work. However it is common for other gods to become a part of your personal spirituality, and you should be aware of their voices when they call to you.

• Sacrifice and Blessing
Druidic spirituality is based in reciprocity – in the proper exchange of good for good between mortals and the spirits. The symbol of sacrifice and blessing, when we seek its deeper meaning, reminds of the eternal link between the individual and the great pattern of existence – between the dancer and the Dance.
In the drinking of the Blessing (or even in the working of a spell, in a practical rite) we become ready to focus directly on the reflection between the invited beings and our own spirit. We have that moment that is called by words meaning ‘audience’ – when the divine beholds us, and we behold the divine. Such are the moments that fill our inner cauldrons, granting us health, wealth and wisdom.

• A Mystical Practice
Even if you feel more drawn to sorcery and practical magic than to the search for spiritual awareness it is worth your while to remember these things. As you work your rites remember these other meanings, these deeper mysteries, behind the symbols of your working shrine. To advance this kind of awareness can only increase your wisdom, and thus your power.
Whatever your inclination, may you walk your path in the Druid’s Peace, with a clear heart and a steady hand, and wisdom in your brow.

Druid's Discipline

Here's an abridgement of one of the final articles for the Nine Moons book. I'm within about 6,000 words of officially done! I'm working to have the whole thing done by the calends of January.
This article is aimed at students who have just completed the big 'Convocation Rite' at the end of month 8 and are starting on the final month, in which they begin to establish what their ongoing practice will look like.

Doing the Work – The Discipline of a Druid.
The culminating ritual of the Nine Moons system is a Convocation Rite in which the allies and skills that have been learned are brought together in one formal ritual. By the time the student has completed this work, if they have done this work diligently they will have experienced things outside of the experience of most mortals. They will have come a little closer to the world of spirits, learned a little more about inner power and opened the psyche to new insights. This remarkable journey is, of course, only the first chapter in a great spiritual adventure.

The Druid's Skill-set
This system is intended to provide a solid introductory foundation in magical and spiritual skills:
• Sacrifice and Ritual. The Druid is able to readily perform full rites of offering and blessing, both from scripts and ex tempore. The rites in the system have been solitary, and the next step is being able to perform magical sacrifices with and for small groups or clients.
• Divination and Seership. The Druid has a basic knowledge of a divinatory symbol-system and has practiced for herself and for others. Some work with scrying and the pendulum has at least been attempted.
• Vision & Spirit-Travel. The Druid has established a Threshold home environment, and has journeyed into mythic environments, and been in the presence of the spirits.
• Spellbinding. The Druid has performed successful acts of practical magic, and is prepared for further experiment.
• Alliance With the Spirits. The Druid has made clear and specific alliances with an Ancestral Teacher ad a Familiar among the Nobles, and has cultivated his relationship with the Gods.

The Path Ahead
These basic skills provide opportunity for further work and growth in several directions. With these skills in hand, custom suggests that you might choose to offer your services to the community. Divination , helping other Pagans manifest their goals in life through practical magic, house-blessings, uncrossings and Opening of Roads, rites to help the folk attune to their local Landspirits or their Ancestors, rites for healing, or prosperity, all are traditional community applications of magical skills.
There are paths of mysticism open to you as well. Your developing relationship with the Allies can bring new understandings of your own nature. Work with the Cosmos Meditation patterns can deepen your awareness of yourself, your place and work in the worlds and your connection with the divine. You can choose a path of meditation, theurgic ritual and vision that will bring high and deep spiritual experiences.
So do what spiritual work you find to do, even when 'life' gets in the way. One of the most reliable ways to maintain your practice is to take up a specific outline of practice – an Order of Discipline, if you like.

Doing the Work
• Keeping the High Days: Each High Day offers the chance to attune your spirit to a particular complex of Gods, spirits and stories. The skills of ritual and trance-vision are central to work of this sort.
• Daily Work: You should keep simple daily work as regularly as you are able. This should include 15 minutes of devotion, purification and meditation, and making simple offerings to the spirits.
• Retreat Days: Twice per month, if possible, you should keep a retreat day of the sort you've kept during this training. While three or four retreats is a fine, intense pace for a specific period, maintanance can be done on much less. The best choice is to work a retreat on each full moon, leaving the entire waxing phase for whatever additional work is desired. The outline of a retreat can continue as you have done:
• Morning Practice: a detailed contemplation meditation, such as the Nineteen Working.
• Non-Gods Cult Work: Formal offerings to the Dead and the Nobles, more detailed than the daily offerings.
• Divination: This should be a real 'reading' for oneself, not just a ritual omen.
• Evening Work: At least monthly some version of the Sorcerer's Sacrifice should be worked, renewing your relationship with your Allies, beneath the Da Fein. This rite will include a detailed divination.
A second retreat evening each month is advised. New Moon might be spent in trance, vision and journeying, working from the Inner Grove. Sixth nights provide opportunity for spellwork and practical sorcery. You have the opportunity to please yourself, pursuing those works that interest you.

A Personal Magic
While this training system has provided scripts, ritual outlines and key symbols, these can only be the beginning of the discovery of power. Every magician that really does the work develops a personal magic.
In a Neopagan system like Druidry we have full authority to create our own work, based on what we learn from teaching and tradition. We bring our core symbols, and our own connections to the spirits, and we study and learn and apply new ideas to established practices. New rites and practices, or evolutions from older ones, can come from the smallest such seeds.
The other vital source of new ideas and personal adjustments will come directly from the spirits. The spirits can be consulted to reveal memories of the Old Ways, which will come to you as vision or inspiration. From these you can build new ways, suited for modern work.

Your spiritual path is in your own hands. Your Nine Moons training has given you a firm
start with the basic skills of arcane spiritual arts. A lifetime of spiritual exploration

The Charm of the Worlds

In the work of trance and contemplation that I call the Nineteen Working, the student is led through a series of visualizations meant to progressively create the Pagan cosmos model in and around the meditating Druid. Inside that vision the Druid then expands awareness and experiences a glimpse (or more) of a sense of oneness with all manifest existence.
This practice has several goals. First it opens and harmonizes the individual mind, providing a sense of scale concerning the individual and the cosmos. Second it allows the human magician to experience a bit of the awareness with which the Gods see the worlds – the non-local oceanic experience of existence. In practical work with spirits, my opinion is that being able to produce this state, and drawing the spirits into it, creates a sense of awe and authority for the magician. When the magician can produce in herself the sort of Unity that defines the awareness of the Gods, she gains status and power among the spirits.
If you have been working the Nineteen Working regularly, you will be growing more and more adept at producing this expanded awareness. As with most spiritual practices, that which has been learned in a ‘long form’ can then be worked in a shorter form, in which the entire work is recapitulated in a convenient, focused exercise.
The target state could be described in a trance such that below. I don’t know whether I’d recite the description aloud – it’s rather redundant with the charm. I prefer to simply establish the state through memory and trance, and then affirm/confirm it with the charm. Here’s the set:

I am seated in the Center of Worlds, and my Da Fein is enshrined in my heart. I am like the World Tree, with my roots in the Underworld and my branches in the Heavens. The Waters and the Light flow through me and shine in me. Around me are arrayed the Three Realms – Land, Sea and Sky, and these, and the heavens and the deeps, and even my own Da Fein are all made of the Nine Elements, the flesh of the Mother of All. Into this all-pattern, I extend my awareness. As I am aware of my face, I am aware of the lights of the sky. As I am aware of my flesh and bone, of the beating of my blood, I am aware of the stone and soil and sea. As I am aware of my breath, I am aware of the wind. My mind stops paying attention to my little shape of flesh, as my spirit opens into the greater Worlds of which I am merely a small part. As my awareness expands, my attention leaves my body, and I say:

The Worlds are in me, and I am in the Worlds
The Spirit in me is the Spirit in the worlds.
I am One with the World Tree, in the Sacred Center.
With the Two Powers in me
With the Three Realms surrounding me,
And the Cauldron of Wonder within me.
I reach into the Four Airts in wisdom and magic, strength and life
And my substance is the very substance of the worlds,
Nine things in one, and one thing in many.
The Worlds are in me, and I am in the Worlds
The Spirit in me is the Spirit in the worlds.

Nine Moons Update 6/10

Writing is hard… Or, more precisely, designing a coherent magical training program that both accomplishes certain objectives and is contained in a specific set of lessons is proving to be rather harder than I had hoped when I hit the ground running with outline 1.

After working the first three months I stalled and began re-examining the system. That re-examination has been through about three rounds now, but I think I am reaching some more solid conclusions. My goals for the program haven’t changed, and those are as follows:

1: To build competence and excellence in solitary or micro-group Druidic ritual. Essentially I expect a graduate to be able to function as their own ritual priest.
2: To build meaningful and useful relationship with the Gods and Spirits. The graduate should finish the work with specific allies among the Dead and the Wights, as well as with the spirits as group-categories. The system focuses on the Land-Mother and Gatekeeper as the divine contacts, though the student may/will develop other personal patronages as well.
3: To develop a personal mystical practiced, structured by the specific Gaelic cosmological meditation in the system. (The Nineteen Working) This includes regular ‘open’ meditation as well as several contemplations. The graduate will be equipped with a well-rehearsed pattern of empowerment and contemplation.
4: To develop skill in vision, specifically by creating a Threshold locale in which Inner operations can be done – an Inner Nemeton. The graduate will have considerable experience at Open Meditation, a developed Inner Temple, and experience in Three Realms journeying.
5: To develop familiarity and basic skill with a specific divinatory symbol-system. The graduate will know a set of symbols, be experienced in ritual omens, and have some experience in reading for themselves and others.
6: To develop familiarity and basic skill at practical magic. The graduate will have experience of talismanic consecration, and of several kinds of spellbinding style.

OK, that’s enough to do, isn’t it? Organizing this into workable lessons is what’s holding the revision up, but I believe that one last step is getting me over the hump.

The Dedicant’s Discipline
Now, we haven’t named this yet, but it seems very likely that in ADF we will be recommending a way of practice for Dedicants – that is, for those who have ‘finished’ our basic training program. In fairly typical cart/horse confusion, ADF has spent plenty of time designing the training and designing the evaluation process, but rather less time providing a goal for students. While we are teaching good skills, we haven’t exactly taught what to do with them when you have got them.

It has been plain to me that the original order of the Nine Moons placed rather a steep step in front of the just-graduated Dedicant student. I’ve been playing with the notion of introducing a “month zero” in which the student gets the basic skills together. Instead I have separated out some of the basic practices that had been in month one, and placed them in a guide to doing a basic Druidic spiritual practice using the skills taught in the Dedicant’s Path. These include simple offerings to the Kindreds, construction and use of the Home Shrine, regular basic meditation and devotion, developing the habit of reading, and keeping a journal. The journal could be a place to begin some of the formal introspection that our work has tended to lack.

So the intro section of some eventual publication (next winter?) will be this ‘Basic Druidic Spiritual Practice’ material. The message will be that when one has been keeping those practices for some little while, then one might consider taking up deeper work. (There’s some chance that this material will be involved in some in-house ADF document as well… no telling yet)

Here’s the outline for that section, as roughly drawn now:
0: Introduction
I: Description of the Three Core Practices
A: Piety – Meditation, Devotion & The Home Shrine
1: Basic Hallows and meditation seat.
2: Daily Shrine practice
3: Regular home offerings to the Kindreds.
B: Study – Continuing Education
1: Regular reading & note-taking
C: Virtue – The Journal
1: Record of practices
2: Introspection exercises
II: Support for the Three Practices
A: Piety
1: Daily Home practices – morning devotions, offerings to Ancestors and Landwights fit into schedule. Doable even without Hallows, on the road, etc.
2: Open Meditation and Daily Shrine Work.
3: Intro to Devotional practice (needs written)
a: Daily Devotion & Meditation rite script.
4: Home Shrine & Hallows
a: Blessing the Home Shrine script
b: Offering Rite script
B: Study
1: Selected booklist – drawn from the preliminary classes, I suppose.
2: (New article on sources, evaluation, academic whatsis?)
3: ?Other article on note-taking, related skills?
C: Virtue
1: Journal exercises
a: Introspection exercises
b: record keeping
c: Essay drafts

The New Outline
This allows me to begin the actual work assuming that students have some forward momentum. I’m keeping the four monthly ‘retreat days’ as the model, while more strongly encouraging daily basic meditation and offering. One student has wondered whether there should be something for formal to do in the waning quarter – my advice would be to use it to work on one of the academic projects required by ADF’s study programs.

Here’s the short outline of primary works for each retreat as it stands:
• First Moon
New Moon – Rite of Introduction to the Kindreds
6th Night – Uncrossing Rite
Full Moon – Rite of Self Blessing
4th Quarter – Study and rest. (I won’t list this for the rest…)
• Second Moon:
NM: Passing the Mist: Entering the Threshold in Vision
6N: Consecration of a Talisman of Protection
FM: Offering to the Earth Mother and Gatekeeper – a rite of introduction
• Third Moon
NM: Finding the locale and beginning the Inner Grove
6N: Hallowing the Cauldron of Blessing
FM: Calling the Mighty Dead
• Fourth Moon
NM: Building the Inner Grove – vision trance work
6N: Hallowing the Druid’s Wand
FM: Calling the Noble Sidhe
• Fifth Moon (New Moon works become three-day sequences from here forward)
NM: The Three Gates – three trances to find the ways from the Inner Grove to the worlds.
6N: A Working for Healing
FM: Calling the Teacher (the Ancestral Ally)
• Sixth Moon
NM: Three Trances to seek the Da Fein.
6N: A Working for Prosperity
FM: Calling the Familiar
• Seventh Moon
NM: Working with the Allies, three works: Pendulum, Scrying & Journeying
6N: A Working for Inspiration
FM: The Convocation Circle – all allies and powers brought together in one Great Trance, using skills from the Nineteen Working.

The observant reader will note that this isn’t nine months. I have two possible solutions to that. First, I could lay out two months of formal familiarization with the Dedicant’s Discipline, with a few more exercises, etc. Otherwise, I could invent two further months of expression of the skills gained in the first 7 – doing magic, doing divination, learning to work with the Allies, etc. I don’t know if it’s just laziness that inclines me to the former; after all I’ll probably end up wanting to write an Initiate’s Discipline or something. Maybe that’s just the next thing…

So, there it stands, and there it will stand, I think. The first five lessons are written, the sixth is 70% written and the seventh about 50%. The good news is that as we move along there are fewer explanatory articles required. The bad news is that festival season is here and the Solstice-through-Lughnassadh eighth just wasn’t made for sitting and writing. So I can confidently predict completion of the project… Samhain? Not unlikely, but Yule surely. No promises though… this has already been harder than I thought.
I’ll try to put up a revised first four moons soon for eager downloaders.

Knowledge & Conversation – Seeing & Hearing the Spirits

A short excerpt from instructions in the Nine Moons work. Progress report on that system to follow shortly...

In the work of the Nine Moons the student is taught how to invoke and meet the Familiar, an ally from among the Nature Spirits, as well as an Ancestral Teacher, and the Gods of the Grove. They have also begun a formal search to meet and know the Da Fein, not just as a general power but as a personal and specific spiritual guide.

These four spiritual contacts comprise a sort of personal pantheon of the Druidic magician. They stand as personal portals or heralds, strengthening the ability to contact and work with the Kindreds. Of course we make our common ‘religious’ offerings throughout our Druidic path. We give to the Kindreds and receive their Blessings in turn. While this serves well for the common good we seek from a public sacrifice, a working Druid can gain much from a more personal relationship with the spirits.

This system uses formal ritual to open the relationship with the Allies, but the development of that relationship requires time and attention. Modern mortal life does not readily lend itself to the mental states that allow spirit contact. The rites, meditations and trances in this program intend to prepare the mind for that contact.

Seeing the Spirits

The spirits display themselves in many ways, each according to the spirit and nature of the human who calls to them. It may be that within their realms and among themselves the spirits have no shape like a material form at all. For the Druid this means that seeing the spirits is more likely to be a gradual process of discernment than a sudden revelation.

The first efforts at meeting an ally should be approached without expectations. Those who hope for a flash of light and a voice of thunder are likely to be disappointed. An approach based on patience and humility is likely to produce results. The experience of a spirit is likely to be different for every individual. The thing to keep in mind is that the spirits have no fixed form, and that your perceptions of them happen in the Threshold, where imagination meets the Otherworld.

Throughout the work, you have been learning to enter visionary trance, entering the vision-environment we refer to as the Threshold. It is in the Threshold state, or environment, that you will first come to speak with and see the forms of the spirits. The techniques of standing out of the body, of Opening the Inner Eyes while standing in the material body, and of Passing the Mist should be practiced until they are easily accomplished. The Dual Sight – the combined vision of the Inner Grove and the material ritual space – is a primary skill of this method.

In early callings do not assume that failing to perceive the spirit means that it has not come. It is not unusual for a spirit to approach the Druid’s Threshold space, but not to appear visibly in any detail at first. Of course it may be equally likely that the Druid’s Inner Eye is simply not yet sharp enough to behold the spirit, even if it has come to the call. The first impressions may only be of personality or vague presence. Even if this is faint the Druid must begin by simply assuming that the spirit is present.

When you sense a clue to the presence of the spirit it is time to apply your imagination, gently composing a form by will or according to tradition. You may find yourself surprised by details, or specifics may escape you still. The process of moving from shadowy general shape to a more detailed and specific form simply takes as long as it takes.

Working with the Familiar offers what may be an easier approach to discerning a spirit form. By asking our ally to appear in animal form we provide a vocabulary of forms well-known to us. It is, perhaps, a simpler matter to envision the detail of a spirit eagle or fox than to perceive all the detail of human form and garb.

Speaking With the Spirits

The approach to hearing the voices of the spirits is similar to that used for seeing their forms. Our minds are often full of a multitude of voices. It is the task of the Druid to learn to hear the correct voices. Of course some students will be more inclined to receive answers as visions, others as voices, but even for the visual person there is something powerful about the way spirit voices resound in the mind.

For many people spirit voices are identified precisely by the sense of resounding presence they often carry. Some say that spirit voices seem to come from above and just behind the head. In many cases a spirit may speak in what seems to be your own mental voice, or that of some living person. The voices of the spirits are no more fixed than their forms. In some cases there may be no impression of a voice at all, but simply an awareness of the content of the message.

Doing the Work

Of course the two primary environments in which you will begin the work of speaking with the Allies are your personal ritual space, Nemeton or Shrine, and your Inner Grove. In both these settings you will become used to entering the Threshold, and there you can most easily commune with the allies, allowing their vision and voice to become clear to you. It is also important to learn to communicate with the Allies at will in non-ritual settings.

In time you will become used to receiving communications from your allies. Gaining this communion is a core part of the process of lifting the Druid’s mind out and away from the common trance of daily life. By gaining reliable knowledge of and conversation with the Allies, the gates can be opened to a variety of other spirit communication.

Stalled, but Good News

Having been All Excited about finishing the third month of the Nine Moons program, I’ve officially stalled the fourth month for one cycle. My mom passed just at Imbolc, which also happened to be just before new moon this month – that was enough to make the more challenging work of month 4 difficult. We had arrived at the end of month three barely prepared, physically, for the Full Moon work of that month, and were behind on prep for month four, so I declared a suspension, and we’ll take up the work again at the coming new moon.
This tells me several things. First, the program begins a serious jump in intensity and preparation for the second three months. There’s a multi-day meditation and trance exercise, and the rituals require more actual thought and personal prep than had been the case in the first third. I’ll need to put advance warnings in the final version of the book, to help students be ready for the increasing pace, or we’ll see more students stall at this point. On the other hand, if a student needs to stall, the message should be that the program hasn’t ended, and can be picked back up. I wouldn’t want more than a one month stall, just to keep momentum.
The good news is that I have been able to keep up and catch up on writing. I should be finishing month six before we get back to it, and I’ve finished the spirit arte piece. I mean to test that material soonish, but since I promised to make it available to readers here, which I’ll post as soon as I can get lulu to work, where it will be downloadable for a very short time (maybe a week, maybe a little longer). It will then end up in a new publication, available for festival season this coming spring and summer.
The new publication marks a change in my self-publishing strategy. I’ve been fiddling around with presenting some druidic info in a concise, grimoire-style format, with plenty of evocative art, etc, essentially various sorts of spellbook. While a few folks have bought them, (bless ‘em) it hasn’t been many. The spirit arte material makes a nice body of mostly-new work, and I have some backlog of items, especially small spells and charms. I’ve been throwing those in, here, and in these b-tier pubs for a year or so.
So all those older-format items will disappear from the Lulu store in favor of this new publication; a nice 200 page spellbook, with mostly new material. I just have to present some Druidic basics for those who buy the book because the cover’s cool. But most of the material is published only in these experimental pubs that have sat still.
So, if you’ve bought stuff with my High Day invocations, or the Virtues Prayers in it, or the Nine Invocations to the Tuatha De, that’s some pages you’d be re-buying… sorry. But the spirit-arte material is fresh, and so are most of the practical spells, a couple even brandy-new (though tested) from the Nine Moons. I’m putting it together in a popular format, but with a romantic or evocative typescript, indulging my enjoyment of fantasy books. There are folks out there doing what they call ‘talismanic publishing’ of occult books. While I won’t be able to offer craft bindings, I do see this as an effort in that direction. Maybe I’ll do a limited-run ‘signed and sigilized’ talismanic hardback. Too silly? Feels a little silly… cool though…