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be guided as to what you need to know.
Here are just a few books:
Janet and Stewart Farrar, Life and Times of a Modern Witch (Hale)
Dion Fortune, The Sea Priestess and Moon Magic (both novels) (Aquarian)
Marian Green, Practical Techniques of Modern Magic (Thoth)
Michael Howard, Earth Magic (Hale)
Doreen Valiente, The Rebirth of Witchcraft (Hale)
11 - Recovering the Ancient Wisdom
Having reached the state where you are able to imagine yourself without body, thoughts or
imagination, to activate those databanks you should then strive to sense the process by which you
gain experience Imagine yourself building up a personality and sending it forth into incarnation As
you do so, you will find certain images associated with the incarnation begin to arise they are
pointers to far memories which are worth checking.
(J.H. Brennan The Reincarnation Workbook)
In times past, those who followed the work of the village witch or Cunning Man started gaining their
knowledge from their cradles, learning by watching, questioning and taking part in all those tasks
.
wherein the psychic skills are developed and brought into controlled use. Today we gain our
knowledge away from home, at school, from books, TV programmes, and videos and, I suppose these
days, from computers.
Little of this knowledge involves the dimension of experience, so vital to the practical arts of magic.
You can learn how from a book, where, even when, but you cannot turn that information into real
understanding without doing it. Most practical knowledge is remembered because of what we did,
rather than what we saw or heard. Children left to play naturally will mimic the actions of their elders.
They may not understand the principles of architecture, but given bricks or sand they will build houses
or castles. Others will make mud pies, or imaginary food out of leaves and water. They may act out
the cooking process without the adult knowledge about the production of heat by gas or electricity.
That is exactly how the children of the Wise Ones gained their knowledge. Acting out herb brewing,
scrying in a pool or puddle, talking to trees and birds and animals, and realising they got answers was
how they gained experience. We don't even talk to each other half the time, let alone question a tree
about the weather prospects -we watch the TV weather forecast!
We have lost the simple, playful interaction with Nature or with several generations of our ancestors.
We may scarcely have known our grandparents, perhaps because of family rifts or because by the time
we were mature enough to value the words of the aged, they were far away or in a home, or dead.
It may have been cramped when families with six or more children, parents and several grandparents
crammed into one house but without the distraction of modern entertainment systems, they had to talk,
sing and share tales as a form of relaxation. The oral and folk song tradition survived in many places
until the First World War.
Then, not only were many young men killed but the dances and songs, the traditions they would have
found in the country, were killed also. For example, much of the Morris dancing tradition only
survived because the stay-at-home sisters, wives and mothers of the young men dancers had watched
the steps and learned the music, so it fell to them to remember and teach the post-war generation.
Many of the best dancers, quite old men now, were taught this mens' Mystery by the womenfolk.
A Collection of Sacred Magick | The Esoteric Library | www.sacred-magick.com
Much of our vast folk tradition had already been wiped out, not only by religious fervour but by
political change. Under the austere years of the Commonwealth singing and dancing and the
celebration of festivals was stamped upon. Many of the ancient, beautiful glass windows, the pagan
images, the statues of saints, the wall decorations and holy trees were destroyed, and the gatherings
about maypoles and wells were prohibited.
For about sixty years all these folk customs were repressed, just long enough for many of them to be
forgotten or not revived. Luckily, many have been over the years; others are being recalled and
brought back into annual calendars of many villages and towns. They may start off as ways of
attracting visitors to the area, but those involved often recapture the essence of the event, and its
magical spirit turns a village fete into a really powerful and unifying event.
Folklorists, researchers, historians and genealogists are delving deeper every day into the written,
painted, sculpted and embroidered records of our history. They are tracing the meanings of village
names, the roots of calendar customs, the meaning of superstitions and the lines of families back for
many hundreds of years.
All this information could well be of use to the trainee witch or student shaman; the hours spent in the
local reference library can make up for the years of childhood tied up with sports teams or school
work, or watching TV, whereas our ancestors would have been following their parents and
grandparents through their daily grind, learning on the job.
Look through parish records, for there you may find details of your own forebears, their homes and
trades, and who knows, some of them may have been herbalists, gardeners, horsecopers, farmers or
specialists at any of the trades which had their inherent magic and secrets. If you don't look you will
never know for sure what mystic blood may be flowing in your veins!
Another line of enquiry is pursued much more secretly by magicians, occultists and people interested
in self-analysis. This is the research into past lives, or far memory as it was called by Joan Grant,
whose 'reincarnationary novels' tell of her previous lives in ancient Egypt, Greece and among the Red
Indians in North America.
She was one of the first people seriously to study her own past and her books Winged Pharoah and
Scarlet Feather have given many ordinary people an insight into the idea that each of us has an
immortal spirit which not only returns to earth in a different body, but has actually retained the
memory of that continuous existence.
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