All research about the history of the earliest images of Gods shows clearly that the first godly image was personified as a woman – the Great Mother. Archeologists and myth researchers agree at that. She was the obvious image to give birth to life, to create life. Let’s go back in time to the ancient civilization called Uruk, 4000 – 3000 B.C. the oldest civilization preserved in cuneiform writing. The knowing of the world in Mesopotamia was fundamentally different from what we experience in our modern time.
The Sumerian religion was polyteistic, that is, the people believed in many gods and goddesses. The worlds of the god/desses and the world of the humans were closely connected with each-other.

The Great Spirit speaks: Look around, my daughters and sons. See the insects, the animal, and the plants. See the trees in the forests, the fish in the waters, the birds in the air, and know, that they don’t need you to survive; it’s you who need them! Therefore you should treat all living carefully, with love and empathy. Respect them as if they were another you. Only then can you be free, because, in truth, you are all my children.

The energy of spirit flows through all things. A practitioner of magic is able to translate that energy into healing purposes and to transformation for him/her-self and others. Power is strength and ability to see oneself through one’s own eyes and not through anyone else’s eyes. Power is to be able to place a circle of power at one’s own feet and not to take power from anyone else’s circle. True power is love. Envy and the need to control others give birth to black magic.  

In reality no one is powerless. Many look at the bow of authority as an object outside of them and are fearful even to pick it up. As a witch one must learn how to draw that bow, learn how to use ones authority. If one talks to a person standing in a powerless position and tells that person to take his/her power, she/he gets frightened because what one is saying implies change. She/he must take the step into the mystery, the unknown, to find his/her power.    

The witch must have the courage to challenge her/his own fears, open all the closed closets and find all skeletons in her/his psyche, spend the night in the forest, howl like her/his sister/brother wolf to the moon, and feel the fire within her/his belly as a tremendous creative power resource.

Our ancestors in Scandinavia, the Vanes, believed, like the North American Natives, in the immortality of the soul as well as in reincarnation.
To die was for them to return to the Great Mother, Hel, who lived deep within the earth itself. In between the incarnations our ancestors spend a resting period in her land. It was a blessed existence filled with light and happiness. One also met with ones dead relatives. Besides, one didn’t have to worry about things like food, shelter, sleep and warmth, since one didn’t have a physical body.
Every new baby that was born was greeted by the Vanes as a beloved ancestor being reborn.  

The bottom line is that if there weren’t any abandoned and hungry children, no public authority and no pharmaceuticals to cure anxiety or other stress-related disorders of the mind or body would be needed.

A grand task for women everywhere is to reconnect to the so called womb-brain. To re-learn how to follow the knowing from the womb up through the heart and transform that knowledge to action. The brain is the place of judgment, of separation. The womb-brain knows everything. We mustn’t be afraid of the dark. Every human must sooner or later confront their shadowy side. All humans must go through the dark to get to the light.

There are plenty of archetypical movies, like Starwars, Braveheart, yes, one could say that most movies are mirrors of the archetypes that together creates the collective subconscious. My sons and I have a movie-club, that is, once in a while we go to a cinema together, and it is almost always the same theme, the hero that fights to save the world, and the princess, or the other way around. Most books also tell in an archetypical way about the individual way to achieve psychological maturity.  

The pictorial language of the archetypes can also be found in the runes and in the tarot cards, I Ching, and so forth. The image as such is like an icon on the computer screen of the brain, When you click on it/draw a rune/tarot-card, it leads to files situated in the hard-disk/subconscious, that contains more advanced and detailed information the deeper one dig.

As Candle-mass represents the dawn of the one year long day of the Wheel of the Year, Lammas represents the dusk. Both symbolize the crack between the worlds, between the world of winter to the world of spring, between summer and autumn. Lammas is the time of year when people celebrate the abundance of nature. Traditional Lammas food and drink are berries, fruit, grains, bread, crabapples, cake, cider, apple juice and schnapps and wine. It is also the proper time to reflect on the happenings of the past year, to go through ones experiences, winnings, losses, and to make an evaluation. And then to express gratitude for one’s own individual learning process and for all the rich gifts of nature.  

 
The four elements are the building blocks of our reality, so every amulet should contain something from the mineral kingdom/earth element, something from the plant kingdom/water element, something from the animal kingdom/air element, and something from the human kingdom/fire element, to balance the four elements. Thus the amulet itself is well balanced. And on top of those basic ingredients one adds ones personal symbols/ ingredients, depending on the intent with the amulet.

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Rituals are medicine for the emotional and the spiritual body, and aid us in understanding our totality. One gets the tools one need to cure destructive emotions like jealousy, greed, bitterness, hatred, sorrow, envy, that otherwise steels a lot of life-force and makes lots of damage both physically and psychologically. The emotions one otherwise repress and that sooner or later will explode and create these damages one did everything to avoid.

Let’s presume that you yourself wrote your script of life, also called the book of karma, while you were still in the spirit-world. It is based on what your soul needs for its next stage of development. You created the environmental context, chose the cast and crew, and planned the action that would best enable this development. This script is based on three key sacred images: life itself, you yourself and you within life. Hence the purpose of life is spiritual alchemy.

It is the child's unrestrained expression of bliss and delight that is what Beltane is all about. It is the sheer joy of running through fields, picking flowers, rapturing in the sunlight, delighting in the fragrance of spring, dancing in the fresh dew covered grass. Our children guide us through the natural abandonment of our adult sensibilities and show us how to take grand pleasure, warmth and bliss from the gift of Beltane.

The dew on an early May morning is believed to have a magical potency – if one washes ones face and body in it one will remain fair all year, and guarantee ones youth and beauty to continue.

Origins of the name "Easter": Eostre was the Great Mother Goddess of the Saxon people in Northern Europe and the Saxon version of the Germanic lunar goddess Ostara. She gave her name to the Christian Easter and to the female hormone estrogen. Her feast day was held on the full moon following the vernal equinox -- almost the identical calculation as for the Christian Easter in the west.

 
Similar Goddesses were known by other names in ancient cultures around the Mediterranean, and were celebrated in the springtime: Aphrodite from ancient Cyprus, Ashtoreth from ancient Israel, Astarte from ancient Greece and the Nordic countries, Demeter from Mycenae, Hathor from ancient Egypt, Ishtar from Assyria, Kali from India, the Scandinavian sun Goddess Sunna, and Ostara, a Norse Goddess of fertility.

Artistic freedom, free media, free research, free religious beliefs, freedom of speech, and freedom to come together as a group is favored by most people, and from left to right the importance of equality and a functioning democracy is emphasized. And who doesn’t want to have a free market for products and services fulfilling all our needs? The high ideals we know from the French revolution is still vivid, even if they were never realized. More and more people are beginning to see a connection between the social problems modern society is facing and the destructive way the economy is being handled, but not so many realize how the terms of emission influence the economy and also our disposition regarding it.

Upon the safe birth of the child, it was blessed by the midwife, with three drops of water on the child’s forehead, dedicating the child in the name of the holy Trinity. Compassion, generosity, hospitality, spinning and weaving, smith work, healing and agriculture ran throughout Brigit's various lives and evolution. Brigit was also associated with holy wells. She had three sons that collectively raised a son, her grandchild, named Ecne, which means knowledge.

Brigit’s stories retain remnants of other Goddesses from the ancient worlds. Some of her symbols are identical to the Egyptian Goddess, Isis.
Her embroidery tools, which are also Minerva’s symbols, were preserved at the chapel at Glastonbury, along with her bag and her bell, symbolic of healing. Her colors - white, black and red - are those of Kali and show an ancient connection there.

Karma and reincarnation are two sides of the same coin.
Karma means that what we saw we will reap, in the sense of our thoughts, feelings, attitudes, words and deeds in this and/or in an upcoming incarnation. It is important to understand that the law of Karma always wants the best for us. It constantly offers new possibilities of growth, insight and maturity. It’s a mistake to believe that Karma is all about retaliation and punishment for previous sins. The opposite that we are to enjoy the consequences of elevated thoughts and unselfish behavior is as true.

In Japan during the age of the Emperors, a third of Japans government officials at the ministry of religion, Jingikan, were from the department of prophesy. Their job was to read the patterns of coincidences and from their conclusions thereof give the Emperor advice. They had many methods to collect divine signs from the world, amongst which heating a shell from a turtle and read the possible outcome from the cracks that was formed. The Japanese word for scrying is Ura or uranai, which means coming into contact with ‘that which is behind’. The basic thought is that one takes a peak behind the veil that separates the visible world from that which exists on a deeper level.


Great leaders of state all over the world, kings, queens, and presidents, have historically had the custom of visiting oracles, clairvoyant men and woman, at certain points in their carriers, to ask for advice.

In pagan Scandinavia the winter festival was called the yule (or juul). Much celebration was to be had as the ancestors awaited the rebirth of the Oak King, the Sun King, the Giver of Life, who warmed the frozen Earth Mother and made her to bear forth from seeds protected through the fall and winter in her womb. Bonfires were lit in the fields, and crops and trees were "wassailed" with toasts of spiced cider.

Other plants associated with Yule: Bayberry - good fortune and wealth. Holly - winter magic, everlasting life, protects against negativity. Ivy represents immortality. Mistletoe - fertility, healing, protection. Pine Cones symbolizes endurance, longevity. Ginger represents love, wealth, success, power. Myrrh - protection, purification. Nutmeg – clairvoyance. Rosemary - love, purification, protection, intellectualism. Saffron - healing, clairvoyance and purification. Wintergreen - healing, breaking hexes and protection.

As a witch/shaman it’s very important to be aware of what one is giving out. A medicine-person is always in the beginning of the circle. Everything she/he gives out should preferably be according to the sacred law that nothing shall be done to harm the children. And the children are all the children of Mother Earth, the plants, the minerals, the water, the air, the animals and the humans. All of us are children of the Great Mother.

All around the world people are honoring their dead:
In Hong Kong Halloween is known as "Yue Lan", or the Festival of the Hungry Ghosts. Some people burn pictures of fruit or money at this time, believing these images would reach the spirit world and bring comfort to the ghosts. In Mexico, Halloween is known as ‘El Dia de los Muertos’, and is a three-day celebration that begins on the evening of October 31 until November 2. Many families construct an altar in their home and decorate it with candy, flowers, photographs, fresh water and samples of the deceased's favorite foods and drinks. Candles and incense are burned to help the departed find his or her way home. As in Sweden, relatives tidy the gravesites of deceased family members, including snipping weeds, making repairs and painting. The grave is then adorned with flowers, wreaths or paper streamers. In China, the Halloween festival is known as Teng Chieh. Food and water are placed in front of photographs of family members who have departed while bonfires and lanterns are lit in order to light the paths of the spirits as they travel the earth on Halloween night. In Scotland, a child born at Samhain was said to be gifted with shealladh, commonly known as “second sight,” or clairvoyance. 

Snake-power is the actual power of creation. It embodies sexuality, psychic powers, alchemy, reproduction, resurrection and immortality. The drama of resurrection is enacted every time the snake changes its skin. The old has to be cast of in order to make room for the new. The energy of the snake is the energy of wholeness, cosmic awareness, and the ability to willingly try new roads and shapes without resistance. It is the knowledge that everything created has the same value, and that everything one might experience can like poison be eaten, melted, integrated, and transformed into healing energy, if one has got the right attitude.
When the energy of the snake reaches the spiritual plane it becomes wisdom, understanding, wholeness, and the feeling of being safe in the family of the Great Spirit.
As Prodigy say’s it in one of their lyrics: ‘I got the poison, I got the remedy.’

In ancient Britain both the solstices and equinoxes were the highly sophisticated preoccupation of the mysterious Megalithic peoples who pre-dated Celt, Roman and Saxon on Europe's Atlantic fringe by thousands of years. Stonehenge and other stone structures were aligned so that the solstices and equinoxes could be determined.

In Ireland there is a cluster of megalithic cairns that are scattered through the hills at Loughcrew, about 55 miles North West of Dublin. Longhcrew Carin T is called a passage tomb. It was designed so that the light from the rising sun on the spring and summer equinoxes penetrates a long corridor and illuminates a backstone, which is decorated with astronomical symbols.

America's Stonehenge is a 4,000 year old megalithic site located on Mystery Hill in Salem NH. Researchers have concluded that the site was erected either by Native Americans or an unknown migrant European population. The site contains five standing stones and one fallen stone in a linear alignment which point to both the sunrise and sunset at the fall and spring equinoxes. 

The Christian Church replaced earlier Pagan solstices and equinox celebrations during Medieval times. Replacing the fall equinox is Michaelmas, the feast of the Archangel Michael, on sept.29. By Michaelmas the harvest had to be completed and the new cycle of farming would begin. It was a time for beginning new leases, rendering accounts and paying the annual dues.

Totem animals
According to tradition every human being has got 9 different totem animals. The animals  represents our inner abilities but also our challenges and fears. Each animal possesses specific strengths and abilities.
It’s interesting but not surprising that shamans of different cultures and parts of the world but who shared similar arts of animals, came up with similar interpretations of these animals. The shamans connected to the ’manitou’ of the animal, the original spirit-energy of the animal, via dreams and visions, -pumaness, bearness, or deerness, etc. These ‘manitou’s’ could help the shaman in various ways, and taught her/him special lessons.

The midsummer celebration in Sweden is what most people know nowadays, a pagan tradition. The May Pole symbolizes the sacred sexual embrace between the man, symbolized by the pole, and the woman, symbolized by the chaplet. The very act of rising the pole and the attachment of the chaplet makes words unnecessary.

The balance between light and dark have always existed on this planet. Grandmother Earth is the planet of duality and paradox, and so it will remain. Many humans believe that the war between evil and good will lead to elimination of the one or the other.
This is a misunderstanding. The action necessary is to attain balance between light and dark. Without evil there can be no good, and vice versa. Energy once created cannot be destroyed, but it can be transformed, transmuted or transcended.

Extract from Carlos Castanedas book the gift of the Eagle:
Controlled folly is the art of controlled deception or the art to pretending to be thoroughly immersed in the action at hand - pretending so well no one could tell it from the real thing. Controlled folly is not an outright deception, but a sophisticated, artistic way of being separated from everything while remaining an integral part of everything. Controlled folly is an art which takes a lot of energy to exercise. By the time we come to sorcery, our personality is already formed, and all we can do is practice controlled folly, and laugh at ourselves.
Be impeccable and you will have the energy to reach to the place of silent knowledge.

The priestesses and healers of the old religion became terribly dangerous witches. It was imposed with capital punishment to celebrate the moon- goddess.

In the old religion, sex was holy, spiritual and healing.
All life emanated from the meeting of the female and the male.