By Land, Sky & Sea (10 page)

I am a writer, and I happen to be a Witch (and vice versa), so I find myself writing about my Craft and spirituality. In book formats it is sometimes difficult to avoid the “step” syndrome, though I seem to be able to divert around it most of the time. For now, I will simply submit and allow a series of steps to unfold on the page. Following these steps wholeheartedly and with passion should lead to a truly beautiful relationship with magick.

Step 1: Acknowledge Magick as Sacred Principle

Do it. It is quite simply done. Make sure, however, that you do not base this perception solely on what you have read in books.

Step 2: Live and Experience Magick as Sacred Principle

Live it. When you wake up in the morning, you may feel a little like I do—always okay, but sometimes a little irate at the curse of early morning shifts at work. From the moment you shower, brush your teeth, pull on your clothes for the day, and step out the door, things change. You have prepared yourself for the day ahead (whether that is work or leisure). Be eager and embrace life!

Lately I’ve caught some brilliant sunrises. The eastern horizon is streaked with the rosy-fingered expressions of dawn, and the morning birds are singing with zest. I am always honoured and humbled to be a part of that experience, considering most of the people whose streets I walk through are sleeping through it.

Always see the blessings; receive and live them. This is all magick! Light a candle, have a break for a moment, and breathe it all in. Let the power of it soak through every pore and saturate your being. This is the true meaning of relaxation: letting yourself be in the moment with everything else going on; it always will be. Recently, while meditating at the bus stop, I realised that I am peace moving through chaos (and chaos flows through me), and that chaos and peace live together, on top of each other all the time, and that’s the way it’s meant to be.

Step 3: Cultivate Magick as Sacred Principle

When you live through the cycle of flourishing, waning, dying, resting, returning, burgeoning—new life over and over—you become distinctly aware that you can cultivate life rather consciously in your own sphere of the cosmos. When you help to create fertile ground for seeds to be nourished and sustained and to eventually grow into splendour, you become an active participant within the cycles of nature—the sacred foundation. From that foundation is born magick, and thus you cultivate magick as sacred principle simply by participating in life over and over and never ceasing to change.

Step 4: Affirm Magick as Sacred Principle

Repeat steps 1–3 endlessly.

Magick is as magick is. Like the Wyrd, it is very difficult to define in any rational/logos sense, and because of this it is best left to be. We should all take a leaf from the magick book and acknowledge, live, experience, and cultivate with each breath we take. Remember to always release each cycle naturally, and then inspire a new one all over again. This is life, and life is pure magick.

8

Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

—Douglas Adams

One of the most commonly perpetuated iconic myths regarding Witches is that we can physically fly. I will not doubt the possibility of physical flight in this book (or in my mind); however, I have never personally experienced it.
[1]
My experience of magickal flight lies in what is now called astral travel.

The term astral travel refers to the transportation of consciousness through the agency of the astral plane/energy to a desired location, time period, or realm. Astral travel, or astral projection, is a conscious experience of spiritual journeying that enables the individual to explore possibilities unimagined in mundane awareness. It can also happen involuntarily when one is exhausted, ill, frightened, or unfocussed in any way. There are portals through which the astral body can simply slip out. I recall a few instances while I was in high school in which I would physically fall back onto my bed or the lounge, and then instead of feeling the sensation of the physical mattress or cushion I would be hovering a metre or two above my physical self.

Astral travel was a magickal talent that I had to work hard at to become proficient in. Nowadays I am very confident in my spirit flight, as astral travel is also known, and I have found myself teaching the skill to others at various times, especially within my coven. What follows in this section is an outline of several processes through which you may achieve astral travel successfully, and also some much-needed, personalised advice on the matter.

Successful astral travel consists of these steps:

1. Discovering your astral key
   
2. Opening, balancing, and cleansing your chakras
   
3. Loosening the astral body
   
4. Creating an astral projection (the chariot)
   
5. Transporting the astral self to the astral projection
   
6. Being in and becoming the chariot
   
7. Flying!
   

Discovering Your
Astral Key

The plethora of how-to guides on astral travel all seem to utilise similar methods of journeying. However, looking back, I realise now that there was something missing that would have helped me with my spirit flight much earlier on. Perhaps the journey of discovering my own personal key to success was worth that time and patience.

Many of us have had flying dreams; in fact, they are quite common when we are younger and developing identity and “place.” The usual interpretation of a flying dream is that the dreamer is experiencing a great sense of freedom, either in their waking life or through the medium of dreaming. On reflection, I realised that in most of my flying dreams, I was pulled into the air by a kite. In most cases, I would be standing in my front yard on a windy day, and a kite string would either materialise in front of me or fall from the sky. I’d grab hold tightly, and the next gust of wind would send me up high into the atmosphere. They were exhilarating dreams! I recalled these dreams in the period in which astral travel was high on my “learn to do” list in my senior years of high school.

The next time I attempted an astral journey, I wove the kite imagery and the sensation of the pull upwards into the methods I was using. In a manner of days, I began to experience short journeys in which I would float around my room and house. Concurrently to this, I had been doing a lot of trance journey work
[2]
with my goddess Persephone. Often I would travel to Mount Olympos or the underworld. My goddess had gifted me with a personal tool/symbol for empowerment and to help bring healing, wholeness, and purity to others in my life—a sword of light.

I was having a devotional circle in my garden temple at my mother’s old house in Toowoomba, and I had reached the point of near-exit from the physical body when I intuitively began to visualise my sword hanging (floating horizontally outwards) in front of me. I raised as much power as I could, and in a cataclysmic burst, my astral self leapt forth and raced down the blade of the sword, and I was propelled energetically from the garden into my mother’s room. It was the most successful and potent astral experience I had ever had up until that point. In the same token, a few months later, when I had just recently moved to Brisbane, my goddess Aphrodite revealed a sigil to me that I deduced instinctively was a power symbol to aid in my spirit flight. It works wonders!

I encourage anyone seeking success in spirit flight to take some time to reflect on flight dreams and also to talk with any deities/allies/totems/guides who may have wisdom to dispense. Shamanic deities like Persephone, Dionysos, Hermes, Freya, Odin, Rhiannon, and the like will offer inspiration in this area. Another idea is to incorporate any personal symbols or magickal tools/items into your visualisation of an astral key. For instance, during an all-day workshop I was running for a coven on the Gold Coast, one of the Witches present enquired whether an astral key could be something like a feather, as for her they were symbols of flight and she used them quite frequently in her magickal work. “Of course,” was my answer. “Personalisation with any magickal talent will always create effective pathways to success. This is your personal key, and I suggest you seize it and fly!”

Opening, Balancing, and
Cleansing Your Chakras

When I first started researching the art of astral travel, I read a few books that suggested chakra work before the actual astral projection was to be embarked on. It made sense to me, metaphysically speaking, and so I began to really work with my chakras—opening, balancing, and cleansing them. Once I started to incorporate this focus on my chakras in my preparation for astral journeys, I began to experience much more success with the loosening of my astral body, which is absolutely necessary in achieving projection. Below is an excerpt from an unpublished article I wrote in 2006 entitled “Wheels of Life: Understanding & Working with the Chakras.” The exercise below will help to open, balance, and cleanse your chakras.

Working with the Chakras:
An Exercise in “Bringing Forth”

The purpose of aligning and balancing the chakras is, in effect, to allow for the transmission of the cosmic energy between the above and the below (the heavens and the manifest, material realm that is our earth). We have made and consecrated the rod of power, and the spear of light is brought forth, searing division between all things and uniting them simultaneously. As the Kundalini rises, it brings with it a current that is initially receptive and then projective and transformed with creative love in between, and as the chakras work their way into the centre that is the heart, each respectively receives or directs the flow of energy accordingly. In doing so, a polarity and dynamism occurs in which the receptive and projective qualities are harmonised—the Masculine and the Feminine united—and arouse gnosis, which glows brightly aflame at the crown, bringing divine insight, vision, power, and peace. The chakras can also be equated to the planetary spheres of the Hermetic journey-work, which aims at stripping away each layer that coats our being to reach the inner core that is the sanctum of our own divinity.

The chakras form a ladder of ascension into higher states of consciousness through which we achieve union with the Divine, though they are all inherently equal and significant pieces of the puzzle. This is the world tree, the axis mundi, the
poto mitan
of the Voudoun tradition. It is phallic but activated and brought into being by the dynamic, wise serpent herself. If we balance, align, and channel through our chakras, we are purposefully creating a life of happiness, health, and wisdom.

• Ground and centre through rhythmic breathing while standing upright or lying down on your back.
  
• Focus on your being and visualise yourself as the world tree, a megalithic standing stone, or another meaningful and vivid power image that relates to the purpose at hand.
  
• Centre your attention at the base of your spine. Visualise a sphere of red light pulsing and spinning, unfolding to become a beautiful flower. Feel and see the link that is now forged between your base chakra and the earth. Visualise this as a glowing red cord of energy spiralling
  up to meet you.
  
• Now allow the energy to continue upward, as the sacral chakra, in its vivid orange, spins and unfolds to become a flower.
  
• Continue on with the appropriate colours and chakras
  [3]
  until you reach the heart chakra, where you will imbue this current of energy with unconditional, eternal love. Now direct the current with added willpower, but still allow for the natural flow.
  
• The light continues to grow in intensity and clarity as it passes through and is charged by each chakra (don’t forget colours), finally reaching the crown and spilling forth in incandescent rays of pure white light. Allow yourself to receive the light of the heavens and let it pass through your body, joining with the earth’s energy, creating a dynamic cycle of supreme polarity.
  

It is done.

Don’t forget to ground the energy and work your way back down through the chakras, closing them off as you go and keeping them aligned. You can do this easily by reversing the order of the way in which you opened the chakras and physically tapping with your index finger each chakra three times while visualising it becoming smaller and smaller, until it is but a pinpoint of coloured light. The reverse order would be from crown to root.

In this case, however, you won’t close the chakras off until you return from your astral journey, as they are helping to prepare and ignite the astral body for the flight. The sealing of the chakras occurs upon returning to the physical self.

Loosening the Astral Body

Before you project the astral self, you need to loosen it. The self that you are is composed of layer upon layer of various substances and energies that coexist simultaneously and affect each other to create the synthesis, or vibration, which is the unique you. For instance, Raven Grimassi paints this picture of the seven realms of being (and thus the makeup of the body):

1. Ultimate
   
2. Divine
   
3. Spiritual
   
4. Mental
   
5. Astral
   
6. Elemental
   
7. Physical
   

When astral projecting, it is important to understand that it is your conscious awareness that is leaping from your physical self to the astral body you have created to be your chariot. Of course, it is theorised that the actual substance that is energetically transporting is astral. In the end, occult theories don’t really matter, as long as you can do the job effectively and be better for it!

To loosen the seat of awareness from being squarely within the body to going beyond, one must raise the power that exists within the self to heighten the vibrations, which ideally creates a portal through which the leap can happen. The chakra exercise and the aura flush given above can help you in this area. Another option would be to take the chakra exercise further and weave the energy channeling of the aura flush in with it. For example, after each chakra has been opened, balanced, and cleansed, begin to spin them all faster and faster until you feel as if you yourself are spinning around and around. You will begin to feel waves of magnetic pulsations ride across you as you continue spinning the chakras. It’s all just a matter of exciting the energy that lies latent within you to the point of frenzy. When the power has been raised to this point of frenzy, many people find that suddenly the energy jars and won’t go any further. Great disappointment can be felt—I know, I have felt it. Don’t let this get you down; simply learn from it! Many people fear the intensity of such a potent energetic experience. However, go with the flow and ride it out. The next time you begin to raise the power to loosen the astral self, trust in the experience and know that you are safe and protected. Affirm this in your mind by calling on the guardianship of your deities and spiritual allies. If you succeed in projecting, they will oversee the journey for you, and they will also add their own divine inspiration and encouragement as you engage with these methods.