Creating Circles and Ceremonies: Rituals for All ... - reading...

Book I: T he Magick Circle 75
a ritual (background for guided meditation, chants, dance, etc.) is to burn a custom CD. A
remote control on the altar can be used to play and stop each piece of music unobtrusively.
I’ve also seen a remote used in this manner and hidden in the sleeves of the HP(s).”
Centering & Meditation
After raising and releasing so much energy, it is important to bring your own energy
back to your center with a simple meditation. Come back up to a seated position, legs crossed,
with your hands open in your lap. Gaze into the flame of the center candle on the altar, or into
the fire if you are doing this outdoors and have a bonfire. Let your mind cut loose of all thoughts,
especially of the working you’ve just done, and just become one with the flame. After a few
moments of this, when you feel completely calm and relaxed, you might softly begin to hum
“omm,” letting your voice merge with everyone else’s into a harmonic chant: “Auu-ommmm…,”
fading away when it has completed its work. Whether a formal time of meditation or a quiet
moment of reflection, this centering process finalizes and seals the power raised in the ritual.
Energy and Magick
By Starhawk
The primary principle of magick is connection. The universe is a fluid, ever-changing,
and ever-connected energy pattern, not a collection of fixed and separate things. What
affects one thing affects, in some way, all things. All is interwoven into the continuous fabric
of being. Its warp and weft are energy, which is the essence of magic. Energy is ecstasy.
When we drop the barriers and let power pour through, it floods the body, pulsing through
every nerve, arousing every artery, coursing like a river that cleanses as it moves. In the eye
of the storm, we rise on the winds that roar through mind and body, throbbing a liquid note as
the voice pours out shimmering honey in waves of golden light that leave peace as they pass.
No drug can take us so high, no thrill pierce us so deep, because we have felt the essence of
all delight, the heart of joy, the end of desire. Energy is love, and love is magick.
Of all the disciplines of magick, the art of moving energy is the simplest and most natural. It
comes as easily as breathing, as making sound. Picture the power in motion, and it moves. Feel
it flowing, and it flows, cleansing, healing, renewing, and revitalizing as it passes. To a trained
awareness, the subtle energies are felt as tangible, visible, and malleable. They are, as Dion
Fortune says, “more tangible than emotion; less tangible than protoplasm.” We can learn to
sense them and mold them into form.
The laws of energy are also the laws of ecology. Everything is interconnected, and every
action, every movement of forces, changes the universe. You must not change one thing, one
pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good or evil will follow on that act. The world is
in balance, in equilibrium, and a Wizard’s power of changing and summoning can shake the
balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power. It is most perilous. It must follow knowledge
and serve need. To light a candle is to cast a shadow.
Yet the equilibrium of the universe is not static, but dynamic. Energy is constantly in motion.
It cannot be stopped. Again, using water as our metaphor, when we block its flow it
becomes stagnant and foul. When it flows freely, it cleanses and purifies. The rituals, spells, and
meditations of the Craft center on aiding energy to flow.
Energy flows in spirals. Its motion is always circular, cyclical, wavelike. The spiral motion is
revealed in the shape of galaxies, shells, whirlpools, and DNA. Sound, light, and radiation travel
in waves, which themselves are spirals viewed in a flat plane. The moon waxes and wanes, as do
the tides, the economy, and our own vitality. The implications of the spiral model are many.
Essentially, however, it means that no form of energy can be exerted indefinitely in one direction
only. Always, it will reach a peak, a point of climax, and then fall back or turn.