Yule Ritual 2014

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Fellow elves, unicorns, goddesses, gods, and other wondrous beings,

Join me in a winter Solstice ritual, Thursday December 18, 2014, from 6 to 7:00 PM EST.

Let’s celebrate the winter Solstice together—operative word “celebrate.” We are magic. We’ll transform our lives and ourselves through pure fun.

The event is a group phone call. Free and open to all. (Your usual long-distance charges apply, and appear on your phone bill). No experience needed.

To participate, call 1-712-775-7000. When prompted, enter 1095248#. Dial a few minutes before 6:00; it can take a bit to connect, and latecomers are not allowed.

Celebrate your Pagan heart!

Love, Francesca De Grandis
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Seen the Faerie Ritual Set? For Spells, Divination, Soul Journeying, and More. Check it out here: http://www.outlawbunny.com/2014/06/11/frs/

Pagan Santa’s Elf

Being a Yule elf is part of my personal mythology. Do you have a personal myth this time of year? Please share it. When we share our imaginative lives, we make an even larger mythology spontaneously emerge, to enlarge all our joy, power, and creativity.

Besides, being one of Santa’s elves makes me so happy that I’m bursting at the seams! I have to share about it, or I’ll pop, like a balloon. Here goes:

Santa put me in a managerial position this year. I wasn’t sure what to think about that, at first. I mean, I was honored, but it’s not what I expected, and I did not like totally the idea.

But I’ve learned that, when Santa wants me to do something, there’s no point in resisting, because he always knows what I want, better than I might know it myself. So I knew the job would be good for me, in the long run.
HappySanta1Besides, I’ve worked as middle-management for chaos gods for years. I have the perfect skill set for managing wild elves and the crazy goings-on at the North Pole. Plus, I am not the only manager, the jobs are divvied up.

My particular job involves a lot of organization. I’ve been organizing the elf games (but not the reindeer games). This requires coming up with fun activities.

My elf friend Kathi Somers helped out. Her Yule gift to me this year was the Ravensberger game Funny Bunny. Yeah, it’s for ages four and up, but I’m not too proud to enjoy a silly preschoolers’ game. As the song says, “It’s a gift to be simple.” Simple things in life can be the best. And foolishness wakes up life’s magic.

My work is not just managerial, but also creative. I like that. Part of organizing the festivities has been coming up with holiday menus. Last year, I created a chocolate recipe I really liked. So I used it again this year. My personal formula for keeping spirits up during the Yule season: Chocolate lumps, not lumps of coal. Gluten and sugar-free.

I’ve also been responsible for decorating the Elfin communal spaces, to ensure the areas are cheerful, peaceful, and conducive to a happy winter. For example, the photo below:ByDoor1

And I painted one of my brother elves, then made the painting into a Yule ornament:Tomte

Oh, another thing: I get to be in charge of the Make-A-Wish-to-Pagan-Santa page again this year! I experience such joy doing it, because the wishes people make to Santa are beautiful! I am so lucky to convey them to Santa! Click here to make your wishes.

Share your imaginary life. Quite honestly, imaginary doesn’t mean that it’s not true. Happy holidays!CorsgWSntaButn

Divine Embrace

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Divine Embrace

Worship. It’s become a “bad” word. Years of oppression have turned the sweetness of worship into bitter chains. Centuries of censure replaced the ecstasy of divine embrace with a dogma of sadness. But I worship you, who reads this now.

I worship the trees. I worship snow as it falls on my face. I lift my face to the sky to worship it.

And I will not relinquish the joy of lifting my face and heart to worship my Gods.

I rededicate the word “worship.” I free it for anyone who should want it. No one gets to exclusively own it. I free it to be whatever each individual wants it to be. I free it for anyone who wants to give and receive the love and power that can occur in worship.

So mote it be.
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Extraordinary people need extraordinary spiritual guides. Extraordinary people do not hesitate when they find a guide. http://www.outlawbunny.com/pastoral-counseling

Ostara Ritual 2014

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Ostara Ritual 2014

Fellow Star-dusted Traveler,

Please join me for a Spring Equinox celebration, Thursday, March 20, from noon to 1:00 EST.

I can feel Equinox magic coming. It’ll be a great ritual.

The event is a group phone call. Free and open to all. (Your usual long-distance charges apply, and appear on your phone bill). No experience needed.

To participate, call 1-712-775-7000. When prompted, enter 1095248#. Dial three to five minutes before noon; it can take a bit to connect, and latecomers are not allowed.

I look forward to our shared ritual renewal and joy with Spring’s beginning. The Cosmic Egg is about to explode!

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Sign up for my free newsletter—ideas, events, and other offerings: https://outlawbunny.com/newsletter/

Phoenix Ritual

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Phoenix Ritual

Fellow Star-dusted Traveler,

Please join me for a ritual on Tuesday February 25, 2014, from 6 P.M. to 7:00 EST.

The theme will be renewal—like the Phoenix rising from the ashes.

The event is a group phone call. Free and open to all. (Your usual long-distance charges apply, and appear on your phone bill). No experience needed.

To participate, call 1-712-775-7000. When prompted, enter 1095248#. Dial three to five minutes before 6:00; it can take a bit to connect, and latecomers are not allowed.

Please come: Let us all experience and celebrate our innate ability to be renewed each year with the coming Spring.
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Sign up for my free newsletter—ideas, events, and other offerings: https://outlawbunny.com/newsletter/

Phoenix Resurrection

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Phoenix Resurrection

I celebrate—here with community—my triumph over a long initiatory ordeal.

Hear my confident victory cry: 10+ years, flames tempered my steel and burned away dross. Til nothing remained except power, abundance, and beauty. Now, my story is victory and joy. I’m happier and more abundant than ever.

Humans are resilient. I overcame a 10+ year nightmare, one tragedy after another. Now, my story is victory and joy. On all fronts: Health, finances, delight, and more. For one thing—just one!—I should’ve died, but now have many good years ahead.

Here—hear—my victory cry: I did more than survive, I thrive again.

It has been quite some time, now, that I thrive again.

I thank my Gods, my community, and my stubbornness.

Victory: I was an excellent shamanic guide, but I used my extreme trials to become an even better guide, so that I can do the next works my Gods require. The foundation beneath my flight was firm, but now it is beyond strength—it is the Universe card, the Tao, the moment, the always.

A 10+ year initiatory bonfire, on which Gods stacked my old ways, til painful blaze reached sky, allowed Phoenix rebirth.

For a good long while now, that fire—transmuted—has been a nourishing Dragon fire within me, fueling my joy and Eagle flight. Some days, it quiets to a banked ember in my heart, warming my soul and loin.

Now my story is victory and joy. Doubt you can rise? You can fly! We humans can wrongly think we’ve lost ourselves. But Scorpio me was always Dragon, even when I couldn’t sense my fire.

I am Phoenix reborn. Flames laid waste the past, birthing warmth-driven foliage. Now, Phoenix relaxes—an easy flight in sacred meadow and passionate forest born from the Phoenix’s own rebirth.

I am Eagle soaring free, no longer pierced by arrow. I am Dragon holding up the sky.

Now, my story is victory and joy. I celebrate through gratefulness. Thank you.

Winter Solstice Ritual 2013

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Fellow Star-dusted Traveler,

Please join me for a Yule ritual on Thursday December 19, from noon to 1:00 EST.

We will celebrate the birth of the Sun King and our own rebirth with Him. We will celebrate the Winter Goddess’ rich and immense mother-love for us. Heck, we will just celebrate!

The event is a group phone call. Free and open to all. (Your usual long-distance charges apply, and appear on your phone bill). No experience needed.

To participate, call 1-712-775-7000. When prompted, enter 1095248#. Dial three to five minutes before noon; it can take a bit to connect, and latecomers are not allowed.

I hope you come, truly! We have a great time.

Francesca De Grandis

I can’t always post announcements for my free monthly rituals here. There is no one place I announce all my events bc I do a lot of projects and do not want to bombard anyone. But I announce a good many of my goings-on in my newsletter. I hope you sign up for it because I am all about sharing the journey with fellow star-dusted travelers. Yes!

Blessed Year Wheel

imageimageFellow Seeker,

It is easy to be overwhelmed by holiday responsibilities and anxiety. Ritual and simple plans, followed by self awareness, can help make the dark time of year peaceful, joyful, and blessed by camaraderie.

I am leading a ritual on the above theme. Please join me in ceremony, Friday Nov 22, from 3 to 4:00 PM EST.

No experience needed.

The event is a group phone call. Free and open to all. (You might pay long-distance charges, depending on your long-distance plan. They appear on your phone bill.)

To participate, call 1-712-775-7000. When prompted, enter 1095248#. Dial a few minutes before 3:00; it can take a bit to connect, and latecomers are not allowed.

The two long vertical visuals on the side are details from a painting I just finished. The painting is about the fecundity of darkness, so I wanted it to adorn this particular ritual’s announcement.

The ritual includes a guided, meditative planning for your dark time of year. If possible, bring something with which you can jot down any thoughts inspired by the meditation.

I hope you come. We’ll create a great fall and winter for ourselves.

I can’t always post announcements for my free monthly rituals here. There is no one place I announce all my events bc I do a lot of projects and do not want to bombard anyone. But I announce a good many of my goings-on in my newsletter. I hope you sign up for it because I am all about sharing the journey with fellow travelers.

Serving with the Fullness of Your Being

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Dear Star-dusted Traveler,

Please join me in ritual, Friday Sept 6, 2013, from noon to 1:00 EST. The themes of the ritual will be: serving both humankind and the rest of the world tree; serving with the fullness of your being; as you are guided by Faerie wisdom, step-by-step.

The event is a group phone call. Free and open to all. (Your usual long-distance charges apply, and appear on your phone bill.) No experience needed.

To participate, call 1-712-775-7000. When prompted, enter 1095248#. Dial a few minutes before noon; it can take a bit to connect, and latecomers are not allowed.

Please attend. I want to support your giving your best over and over.

Mysticism and Non-Academic Scholarship

A mystic needn’t be an academic to be a scholar. Why is this idea important? Some people create a magical, fulfilling life based in a non-academically-shaped worldview. We also might want to teach from such an orientation. Our cosmology can be as carefully constructed and extensively developed as any scientific understanding, but many would crush our power by insisting there is only one intelligent way to see, to learn, to study.

Trust your observances made through mystical states, e.g., trance. Trust your non-ordinary modes of perception, like intuition.

I’m not suggesting you blindly believe and act on everything you think you’ve observed. For example, when you have an intuition or receive guidance from spirits, run it by a down-to-earth person who exists on the mundane plane. Non-academic perspectives are as subject to fault as academic insights.

But, luckily, I did not wait until a university validated each step of the many I needed to travel along my shamanic path. I’d have taken fewer steps, losing great joy and fulfillment, not only in my personal life but also because I would have taught less.

Academic validation does happen to me lots, and it feels nice. But relying on it as a way to tell myself or anyone else, “See, I know what I am doing” would undermine my belief in my style of scholarship. An example: Pics of subatomic particle tracks validated what I’d seen in trance for decades. But I’d validated it for myself already. Hence the painting below:ShamanicPhysics 2012-03

Training can be crucial. Just as a scientist studies his “craft,” so have I. I also spent years in trance, 24-7, researching as diligently as any scientist in a lab.

I’m not suggesting you trust yourself only if you do the full-time training or research I did. Mine was needed because of goals I had as a teacher and mystic. Otherworldly reality is innate in us all. Just as many linear-minded non-scientists trust their personal worldview, so should many mystics observe and assess their environments, drawing our own conclusions, instead of docilely following “experts.” I mention my full time commitment only to reinforce the extensive possibilities of mystical wisdom.

Insights I gain through altered states are building blocks of trainings I create. But I don’t carelessly throw something together in the name of Divine inspiration. I spend years developing a curriculum before teaching it.

My fastidiousness does not naysay the observations of someone without training. The psychic realm is as much a part of human heritage as ordinary daylight; we all have insights about it; and they are important contributions to community dialog. In fact, one of my goals as a teacher is to create tools that help people trust their insights and recover their innate mystical awareness, which has often been squelched.

Being a mystic does not deny your intellect. (And too many beautiful, astute, linear minds are used to invalidate somebody’s heartfelt, lyrical worldview.) I know amazingly left-right-brain integrated mystics.

It’s like being a musician. In my last year of college, I supposedly needed more units of logic-based classes to get my degree. But the college president felt that my thirty hours of music theory, which is mathematically based, obviated the need for further logic classes.

When I write a song, channel liturgy, or travel faerie realms for info, my intellect needn’t suppress my efforts. It can weave in and out of my emotive fanciful state, improving my effort. I also might go over what I have created to rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, until I’m satisfied.

In various mystical states, there’s a dance between the two sides of the brain and the heart and soul. Each aspect of you comes forward, adding what it can. All of you weaves constantly, in such rapid-fire succession of ever-changing intertwinings that you might be totally unaware of this complex inner interaction.

At such times, we learn truths that others may deny. We plug into immense powers to control our own destiny. We become part of miracle. Even other pagans may try to invalidate these gains, Goddess bless them, instead of realizing that their approaches and ours can be different without either of us being wrong.

But the things we learn in such states set us free.

This has been a limited view on mystical scholarship. But the crux is: Let yourself be free.