Silver Chalice Wicca 'Zine #46

Sacred Dawdlers of the World: Unite!
and
Adam & Eve & the Serpent, Revisited with a Pagan Eye

August / September 2015

Editor's Note

Isn't it amazing how the Wheel turns? One month you're scraping the bottom, trying to scratch your way up out of the dirt... and the next month you're riding high and everything seems to be carrying you effortlessly forward.

Or is that, one minute?

Life is churning so fast these days, that the only thing we can hold to is the surety that This Too Shall Pass, and soon!

A lot of the challenge is simply to go with the Flow, I'm finding. When I check in with the Resonance of the day and follow that, everything seems to work. When I let my ego/brain tell me, no no no! you have to do this other thing, even though you're paddling up a waterfall the whole way... well, you can imagine how that goes.

Life is challenging these days, no doubt about that. (See the Energy Field Barometer for insights into the process.)

But we can make it more difficult, or less, depending on how we interact with it, whether we resist it, and what we tell ourselves about the entire business.

If we let our Intentions and Ideals lead us, and use the power of Attention to keep focused on the right things, it's a lot more like coasting down a quiet river on an inner tube. Well, maybe not quite that cozy! But at least it's not an all- out battle against the tide of life.

I wish you the best of this crazy Tilt-a-Whirl we call life! Enjoy whatever parts of it you possibly can... and with Summer really hitting its stride, at least some of it will be easy to enjoy!

Contact Us

If you have any comments, opinions, or content ideas we'd love to hear from you. Please write!

(Be sure to select Get Notifications and Like/Comment/Share often. Otherwise FB hides most of Wicca Spirituality's posts from you.)

Table of Contents

Events & Announcements	Where IS the Southern Hemisphere Anyway??
Wicca Students Speak Out	"A Profound Impact"
Website Highlights	The Power Of The Moon
Feature Article	Confessions of a Sacred Dawdler
Bonus Article	Adam & Eve & the Serpent, Revisited with a Pagan Eye
Ask The Priestess	My Dog Chewed My Wand!
Fave Quotes	Nature Is The Way
Word on the Street	"To Hold My Head High And Be Proud"
Energy Field Barometer	Activation Challenge: Intense Fields Coming Up
Silver Chalice Details

Events & Announcements

This is officially the last chance for Southern Hemisphere Wiccans to take their year-and-a-day training in alignment with the Southern Hemisphere seasons and Sabbats... and to do your Dedication in the traditional season of Imbolc!

There's been some confusion over what exactly is the Southern Hemisphere. It doesn’t mean the south end of any continent or country.

To clarify, the Southern Hemisphere includes anything below the equator:

• Australia, New Zealand, and area
• Most of South America
• Most of Oceania
• The southern third of Africa
• Some of the southern Asian islands

Check out this page now for more info, and to join us for a wondrous, magickal Year & A Day!

Wicca Students Speak Out

Want to hear what our students
are saying about
A Year And A Day:
53 Weeks to Becoming a Wiccan?

*   *   *   *   *  

"I also would like to thank you for establishing this on-line course; it does change/awake me!

"You are a wonderful mentor and I am truly grateful for your dedication for the course and all the valuable information provided on your website."

~ CC, Taiwan

*   *   *   *   *  

"I can only say that the course has had a profound impact on me.

"I am much more easy going and 'at one' with myself and things around me. I don't lose my temper anymore and I let other drivers pull out in front of me at almost every junction...... big change for me :)

"Great course. If you commit to it, it's well worth whatever you can afford to pay for it. I look forward to every Wednesday when the next instalment comes out.

"Thanks again for all the effort you put in to the course. The Divine certainly shines brightly through you.

"Keep up the good work, Erin

"With brightest Blessings"

~ Ian K., Great Britain

*   *   *   *   *  

"I am loving this and I'm also blown away by all the information that is packed into each lesson.

"I sincerely appreciate all the effort that you have put into this course and the website.

"Love, love, love it!!

"Blessed Be"

~ Dee B., USA

Website Highlights

Spotlighting some of the Wicca Spirituality articles you may not have seen yet!

Grandmother Moon: Grandmother of Life

The Moon in Wicca

The Moon is aligned with the element Water. And She is Queen of the Night, sailing through the heavens with Her starry host.

But what makes the Moon become a Wiccan icon? ...

The Full Moon's Effects

When you consider the astonishing power of the Moon on the 5 tides, this influence is understandable.

Even so, it's amazing to realize the power of the Moon on humans and other living beings, that goes almost completely unnoticed!

To remedy this cultural blindness, I have compiled a list of effects of the power of the Full Moon...

Feature Article

Confessions of a Sacred Dawdler

If the key spiritual practice is to be in the moment, awake and aware of What Is, how does that tie in with a cultural value of multitasking, overwork, and rushing at full tilt all the time?

	the glory of a sunlit dandelion
	a friendly dog
	the pattern of cracks in the sidewalk
	a curious-looking bug
	the smell of lilacs in bloom or fresh-cut grass
	the patterns of clouds and leaves on the brilliant blue sky
	the silky flesh feel of iris petals
	and on and on in an endless profusion of wonders!

	Seeing the beauty everywhere is acknowledging Her presence
	Sharing it with others... that's a gift, a duty, and a privilege

Dawdling has become — has always been — a part of my spiritual practice... long before I knew about spiritual practices.

Bonus Article

Adam & Eve & the Serpent,
Revisited with a Pagan Eye

The Biblical story of the Garden of Eden, man's fall from grace, and Eve's "sin" of seeking (and sharing) self-awareness, is one of the most annoying and dangerous of Christian fables — in my humble opinion. Such a perfect misunderstanding of, well, just about everything!

  Neo-Adam

    Surveying land he was
    Visioning shopping malls
    Down in the bells and grass
    Up to his knees;
    Not seeing at his feet
    Berries and plums so sweet,
    Berries and plums to eat
    Under the trees.

Mute as a mouse in a
Corner the Cobra lay,
Curled round the bough of a
Cinnamon tall,
Sleeping the centuries,
Leaving the tense hurries,
Waking as chainsaws loomed
Over it all.

    “Adam!” Each syllable
    Light as a flower fell,
    “Adam!” She whispered the
    Hell-driven man;
    Soft as a bubble sung
    Out of a linnet’s lung,
    Soft and most silvery
    “Adam!” She sang.

Picture that Dapper Dan
Suited with such élan:
Silks and cool linen to
Manicured tips:
Wondering, listening,
Listening, wondering,
With a cigar butt
Half-way to his lips.

    Picture astonishment,
    Adam in brain’s torment,
    Seeing the voice from this
    Animal was!
    Out of the boughs She came,
    Whispering still his name,
    Tumbling in thirty rings
    Into the grass.

Here was the strangest pair
In the world anywhere,
Man in Armani suit
Kneeling, and She
Telling Her story low . . .
Happy birds saw them go
Through the deep woods to
The Forbidden Tree.

    “Now see the wondrous Tree
    Of sweetest Mystery,”
    Thus spake the Goddess
    Prohibited Truth;
    “There was no sinful Fall;
    You are one with the All;
    There is no sin nor death —
    Now taste the truth.”

Adam, reluctant, was
Eating it not, because
He’d heard how dreadful was
God’s awful wrath.
“Adam,” the Wise One mused,
“Can you be so confused?
No true God could forbid
Your soul's own path!

    “There is no harm to see
    What you might truly be.
    ‘Evil’ is good confused;
    Ignorance, wrong.
    Taste the fruit of this Tree,
    Know it’s the flesh of Me,
    Know that the Garden waits
    Here all along.”

Adam fell weeping to
See this sweet glen!

    Picture Divine delight
    Ringing through Heaven's height
    As the Creatrix sang
    Most joyously
    "Blesséd this day will be!
    Blesséd this sacred Tree!
    Finally Adam will
    Wake and be free!"

Tossing aside his suit,
Gaily he ate the fruit,
Sharing it freely with
Women and men:
Adam, a vale of sweet
Berries and plums to eat,
Adam at last in the
Garden again!

Ask The Priestess:

My Dog Chewed My Wand!

Dear Priestess,

I bought a new wand from a holistic shop. When I brought it home I put it on my table I left the room for 5 minutes and my dog chewed on the tip.

Is there anything I can do? Or is it no longer useful?

Thank you

L.K. in USA

Dear L.K.,

Is your dog, by any chance, your Familiar? ;-)

That kind of thing happens all the time, especially with Familiars. They do this to put their Energy stamp on the object, or adjust it in some way (like change the length or shape). Or if they do a lot of destruction, this can indicate their disapproval.

And, let's face it, sometimes they can simply give in to their animal nature and gnaw on this thing which has attracted them by its magickal Energy.

You can tell if your ritual tool is still useful in the standard ways: by asking in divination, dreams, speaking with Guides or your Familiar about it, dialoguing with the Wand itself, and so on.

Or you can test out the Wand, as you would a new ritual object. Does it feel like it still holds and channels energy well? Maybe less well... or maybe better (who knows!).

There's nothing saying that you can never use an item that your dog has chewed or your cat has clawed or whatever, just because they've marked it.

Explore it and find out what the Wand itself shows you.

Bright Blessings to you!

*   *   *  

Do you have a question you'd like answered? Email the Priestess and your question could be answered in a future issue.

(Note: questions may be edited for brevity or clarity. No real names will be disclosed. For reasons of legality, all questions become the property of Wicca-Spirituality.com.)

Fave Quotes

Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.

~ Frank Lloyd Wright, architect

Nothing comes unannounced, but many can miss the announcement.

~ Terence McKenna

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

~ Pablo Picasso

The spiritual journey is individual, highly personal. It can’t be organized or regulated. It isn’t true that everyone should follow one path. Listen to your truth.

~ Ram Dass

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

~ Albert Einstein

Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.... Let Nature be your teacher.

~ William Wordsworth

Arise! Awake! and stop not until the goal is reached.

~ Swami Vivekananda

Word on the Street

What People Are Saying About Wicca-Spirituality.com:

I want to say thank you for all the writings you have in your site.

Much has helped me to be more outspoken of my religious choices and to hold my head high and be proud.

~ A.W. in USA

Hey there. Just thought I'll tell you how awesome this website is!

Nowadays, religion is focused on worshipping and bowing down to idols. Wicca is our playground with our Divine Mother. It's fun and inviting.

Thank you Erin Dragonsong for clarifying WICCA.

If only Mankind can see the benefits of being grateful and giving to our Mother Nature.

She gave us so much yet we believe she will always be alive. Thanks again Erin, for helping us to remember our Mother needs us to love her and ourselves.

~ J.H. in Canada

Energy-Field Barometer

Everything Is Exploding

Feel like your life is exploding? Like everything's going crazy? And you have absolutely no time for anything any more?

That's part of the Energy Field that's going on, and has been for a while. It's very similar to the Energy build-up to 2012, which opened and relaxed into expansiveness for a while (thank goodness!) after popping through that transition point.

But again, everyone's life seems to be exploding these days.

What's going on is that it's part of our collective human journey to learn to walk our talk and stay aligned with our values and intentions, despite what's going on around us.

It's like a challenge... as a species, we've been dodging and running blind, letting mechanical behaviour and patterns and programming run us for millennia as if we were mindless machines.

And the Earth is saying, now we can't do that anymore... not without (often-) immediate consequences.

The pressure is on, at a planet-wide level. As the climate changes, the entire Earth is being forced to shift and adapt at a breakneck speed: plants, insects, animals, and humans.

As humans, though, we're not merely having to adapt where we live and how we feed our families. We're having to alter at a core level: where the ego struggles with the soul; where illusion/delusion struggles with Reality.

So we're learning to do things in a different way:

	We're learning to keep aligned and soft and compassionate, and to stay in service... even when life seems to be demanding us to react and get distracted and harden ourselves.
	We're learning to let our values and Intentions lead us, rather than being pulled off course by the frenzy and lures of the ego-world.

This can be challenging, confusing, even incredibly painful.

On the plus side, though, it's how we as a species are evolving, and for every person who joins this process we're a step closer to healing the planet. :)

Intense Energy Fields Going On and Coming Up

There are currently six (count 'em: 6!) planets in retrograde. Holy handcuffs, Batman! It's like we're tied to the past, all the baggage we're still hauling around and needing to clear up.

If you're feeling particularly tired or sore lately, feeling tense and oversensitive, this mega-retrograde is taking its toll.

But that's not all there is to it.

It seems likely there's a major planetary upgrade on its way in late September. And as you know, before we can move forward we have to let go of the past.

That's the work that all these retrogrades are giving us: virtually every aspect of our lives is being held up to the Light, and everything not yet healed or released is flaring up to give us another chance to clear it now.

It's showing up as pain, stiffness, and fatigue in the body, as our physical selves strive to catch up to the upgrades we're integrating.

And then there's Saturn, who's insisting on down-to-Earth pragmatism and limitations all this year. This can be frustrating, especially for spiritual types, but there's a good side to it: it helps us create solid structures to serve as launching pads for our visions.

In other words, castles in the air are fun to imagine, but they don't do anyone any good. We need to ground those dreams with some solid practicality, before we can live in them.

This is especially going to challenge any "spiritual materialism" tendencies late in the year, when Saturn squares off against Neptune's spiritual tendencies. It's like the Universe is insisting on us really walking our spiritual talk, and going deep into one path rather than dabbling with this and that.

Time to make spiritual practice a solid part of every day, folks, that's what this is saying!

(Making January the perfect time for starting your Year-and-a-Day of Wiccan training, I'd say. )

Right now, the goal is to pay attention to the details and face all the things from your past that are still holding you back.

It seems that September will really be ramping things up. There's a partial solar eclipse on September 13, followed by a total lunar eclipse on September 28! (Which is also a Harvest Moon, which seems ominous, and it's also a Supermoon!)

There's (unsubstantiated) speculation that a very large asteroid will hit the earth on September 24, along with a number of end-of-the-world kinds of prophecies for late September.

What all this points to, in my opinion, is that the Energy is ramping up for another big upgrade.

We're Being "Activated"

What's happening is we're being triggered to start facing things that we've previously been able to ignore (especially within ourselves).

Chaotic things are happening for a purpose: to Call us to higher levels of consciousness and behaviour.

And all the ways that worked for us before don't work anymore.

Unfortunately, this often means that Shadow parts of ourselves start to show up in graphic detail, and the lies/delusion we hold dear suddenly fail and make the truth plain.

One way this is showing up is interpersonal conflict. In other words, people are pissing us off.

Underneath that, though, our own issues are getting triggered, and that's why we get so mad at them. We don't want to have to deal with our stuff! And if the rest of the world (especially our families) would just get on board and quit triggering us, we'd be fine! LOL

Lost & Confused

As awareness starts to shift in the midst of chaos, we might feel very lost and confused, not sure which way to go or what we're supposed to do next.

The solution to that feeling is the Labyrinth practice: taking the step that is before us, being as present and mindful as possible, and knowing that the Way unfolds, one step at a time.

Only one step at all time.

We can't see far ahead, and often all we can see ahead is a wall. But once we reach it, the wall turns out at the last moment to be a corner: changing our direction, leading us to the next phase of our journey.

So we just keep taking the step that's in front of us — always making sure that it's aligned with our values, ideals, and Intentions.

Ego In Defense

One thing that often happens in this kind of situation is that the ego can feel really threatened and it starts coming up with ways to avoid all this: distractions, problems, fears, fatigue, etc.

It's like in meditation, when it really starts to get results, the ego often brings in the heavy guns... and it knows exactly what can distract us most effectively. It starts complaining about being uncomfortable or bored, or saying we don't have time for this and coming up with lists of stuff we have to do right now, or we fall asleep, etc etc.

And it always makes perfect sense and sounds utterly reasonable — after all, why would we argue with ourselves, right?

If you meditate, I bet you know just what I mean.

It's amazing how much it can help, simply to speak to the ego with love and compassion, affirming that everything's okay, that you're safe, that you can take control of things and make it come out right.

Stick To Your Intentions Like Glue!

The upside to this Energy Field is, we're opening up to greater awareness and intention.

The challenge is, it's confusing and there are lots of distractions and the way ahead seems unclear.

And it's difficult to follow the way that's truest, when the ego keeps switching the signs around and putting up banners and red flags to lead you astray.

Boy, do I know what that's like!

I've had to stick with my Intention for Service, even when it's the last thing in the world I wanted or felt capable of doing. I'm constantly struggling with this... and trying not to struggle.

It's something I have to keep reminding myself!

It seems like we're being Called...

	To put aside our self, our desires, over and over
	To face the distractions and the part of us that feels weak and says "I can't" and then blow up those delusions
	To dissect our needs fairly ruthlessly to see what's at the core of them and what we truly need
	And then to assess how that rates in comparison to what the Goddess needs of us
	To let the Goddess work through us, even when we want/"need" to be doing something else

*   *   *  

Notice or suspect an energy field going around? Can you confirm this reading, or shed more light on it?

I'd love to hear what's happening for you! Please let me know.

What to do about being caught in an unpleasant energy field? Click here for tips.

Know somebody who'd like to read this?

If you enjoyed this newsletter, please SHARE with your friends. If you think your friends might be interested in taking a look, please feel free to forward it to them.

Haven't subscribed yet?

Want to get your own copy of the Silver Chalice Wicca 'Zine? Subscribe Here For Free.

Contact Us

If you have any comments, opinions, or content ideas we'd love to hear from you. Please write!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

© erin Dragonsong 2015. All rights reserved worldwide. Reprinting any of this is forbidden unless you obtain my written permission: karma and the law agree on this one. And Copyscape is keeping an eye on these things.