Living Tarot – the Major Arcana 

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Living Tarot – the Major Arcana 
An Eight-Week Class

Strength, tarot card, Francesca De Grandis, 12-03

Strength, tarot card, Francesca De Grandis, 12-03. Click on the painting to see it large and without blurring that occurs when WordPress shrinks a pic to fit the page.

A traditional tarot deck consists of major arcana Cards and minor arcana cards. This class focuses on the Major Arcana’s metaphysical teachings – esoteric wisdom that empowers on the mundane and otherworldly planes – and divinatory meanings.

Methods to draw on these powers will be taught in an organized and experiential program of inner change and magical spellwork.

No background in Tarot is needed.

Students are required to have a deck of Rider Waite cards with them during all classes.

We meet in a group phone call. No computer or special equipment needed. Just dial your phone.

To those of you who saw previous announcements of this class, there  are now two different groups meeting:

* One group starts Wednesday, November 14, at 6 PM EST. There will be eight meetings, which will be consecutive except we’ll skip Nov 21 and Dec 26 to accommodate the holidays. Meetings are one-hour long. RESERVE Jan 23, same time, for a makeup class in case I’m unavailable for one of the planned sessions.

* The other group starts Sunday, November 18, at 4 PM EST. There will be eight meetings, which will be consecutive except we’ll skip Nov 25 and Dec 30 to accommodate the holidays. Meetings are one-hour long. RESERVE Jan 27, same time, for a makeup class in case I’m unavailable for one of the planned sessions.

TUITION is $250. TO REGISTER, sign up for “Special Event” at http://www.well.com/user/zthirdrd/specialevent.html  You might pay long-distance charges, depending on your long-distance plan. If so, they appear on your phone bill. The event’s area code is a U.S. #.

Upon receipt of payment, your place is reserved, and event details emailed to you. No refunds.

If you need more info, can’t use PayPal, or want to discuss scholarship or trade, call me: 814-337-2490. Don’t email me; disabilities = I can’t discuss events by email.

Fool, tarot card, Francesca De Grandis, 12-03

Fool, tarot card, Francesca De Grandis, 12-03

My qualifications: I have been a tarot reader since the 70s, professional since the 80s. Most folks do not know that Third Road started as Tarot classes! I continued to teach tarot as tools for divination, personal growth, and magic for many years. I still do occasionally. My shamanic techniques are so innovative that they have been integrated world wide into many systems of inner change, so often that a lot of these techniques are now considered traditional anonymous material.

This group can be used as one of the electives required to participate in Third Road Advanced Shamanic Training. Register here.

If You Have Been Attacked…

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Painting and maxim, Francesca De Grandis

Painting and maxim, Francesca De Grandis

If you have been attacked for your spiritual beliefs, or because you were otherwise different, or because you stood up for people less fortunate than you, celebrate your uniqueness, with this affirmation: 

I am a reflection of the entire cosmos. My many aspects, evershifting, honor and sustain the evershifting universe. I embrace my whole me, and thus discover each moment’s unique gift.  

A tiny bit more about the above affirmation is in my third-to-last paragraph here: http://www.well.com/user/zthirdrd/othersite.htm . I was inspired (compelled?) to create three versions of the above digital art, specifically to be used together for that page, but a computer glitch will only allow one variation there. That variation is called “My Gods Are Artists.” For a first edition print of it, go to http://www.etsy.com/listing/98851753/my-gods-are-artists-limited-first . I will eventually post the third on this site. Sigh, I just realized, duh, I still have not used the three together on one page, which was the original intent, LOL!

A River of Beauty and Joy

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Digital art, Francesca De Grandis

World Tree Takes Care of Me, Francesca De Grandis.

Surrender means moment by moment trying to discern and live according to God’s will. Always asking. Doing what we think God wants of us right this minute, then the next. Okay, that is an ideal, impossible to achieve. But it is possible to strive for. (If you need to make substitutions where I have written ‘God,” I hope you do. For example: Goddess, or the Divine. I’ll also randomly rotate such words and phrase, as well as Divine genders.)

Will is a fancy word for desire. God’s desire is the current of events that She creates. (She is God, after all.) This current is a river of love and grace that carries me safely along. I am held in safety, beauty, and joy. I am transported toward yet more safety, beauty, and joy.

Detail, World Tree Takes Care of Me, Francesca De Grandis My God is kind. Trying to live according to the will of the Divine does not require suppressing the self. It means creating full self—including a healthy ego—while aligning that fullness of being with action after action based on surrender to His often gorgeous—and other times infuriating—desires. 

Walking any spiritual path—including that of an ecstatic—without surrender leads to spiritual addiction. There are many forms of spiritual addiction. (One is fundamentalism, and both pagan and New Age fundamentalism do exist.) Here, I want to focus on addiction to a false ego that masks tremendous fear. It is a spiritual epidemic. I have observed it in people in all walks of life, including major spiritual leaders whose lives it destroyed. 

One reason for this fear is that, no matter how competent one is on the mundane and mystical levels, and no matter how important it is to do everything one can to protect oneself amidst life’s myriad dangers, one’s efforts are a drop in the bucket. The world offers endless treasures, but it also holds constant threats, some of them terrifying.

However, the Divine can keep us safe, above all other protections. And, again, surrender to the Divine allows It to shelter us. Surrender puts us in the aforementioned flow of safety. As I said when kicking off these musings, attempting surrender moment by moment—living step by step as I walk along a path Divinity paves—makes life fuller, easier, and protected. 

Otherwise, the aforementioned false ego—and its underlying fear—gets stronger and stronger, compensating for a sense of helplessness in our huge, scary cosmos.

The false ego insists you must cheat and perpetrate other wrongs to survive in such a dangerous world, that you have no choice. The false ego prompts unnecessary attacks on people, insisting this is needed to stay safe. Those are only a few problems the false ego causes. But the net result is the same of all addictions. Life feels scarier and scarier as you become more and more contracted with fear. So you lose trust even in those most loyal to you, and you make worse and worse attacks until you are alone, terrified, and deluded.

I’ve oversimplified matters. For example, how does one know God’s will? (Answer: I can’t! I do my absolute best, but it is still a human endeavor, thus light years from perfect.) And how does one avoid becoming a pompous fool who thinks he knows better than everyone else? (Answer: The Divine might instruct us through friends who love us enough to tell us we’re being arrogant.) Does the idea that spiritual surrender creates protection imply that, if I get mugged, it is because I’m spiritually lacking? (Answer: No way would I blame anyone for tragedies that befall them. Life is constant paradox.) Even these three answers are oversimplifications. But I’ve touched on issues herein in hopes of nurturing dialog. Please discuss your thoughts with friends.

And, equally important, what does the Divine ask of you now, what is asked of you right this minute, now that you are done reading?

*******

Francesca De Grandis AKA Outlaw Bunny is middle management for Chaos Gods. A one-woman interfaith community, Francesca is a student of Taoism, hangs out with Goddesses, visits Christ, and has been told she’s Buddhist. She struggles spiritually because she’s a brat, but does her best. Her latest book, Share My Insanity: It Improves Everything, is trickster spirituality and divine madness.

Hiding, Healing, Power. Pt 3

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Dear site visitor, I want you to see the Faerie tale illustrations at their best. When WordPress shrinks a pic to fit the page, it blurs. Please click on a painting to see it unblurred; it makes a real difference.

 

 

 

Hiding, Healing, Power. Part Three
Written and painted in March and/or early April, 2012.

Part one: https://stardrenched.com/2012/06/13/hiding-healing-power/
Part two: https://stardrenched.com/2012/06/27/hiding-healing-power-pt-2/ 

Part Three
When she grew up, something else wonderful happened. That little girl grew up to be Goddess Diana—Great Mother, Light-Bearer.

Faerie art, Francesca De Grandis

Diana, Great Mother Goddess. Available as a limited first edition print. For more info, click on the picture.

A child became a deity, yes. Yes, she did. Let yourself hide.

Hiding is not always about shame or fear. It might be a time of preparation or privacy, a time of beauty or empowerment, a time of nurturance or growth.
 
Faerie art, Francesca De GrandisHiding can be motivated by discretion.

A hiding child became a deity, a bearer of light, a light held high. The woman no longer hiding.
 
That little girl was always god. But she needed discretion to find it.

Diana lived with her cat who was secretly a Faerie. (See Aradia, Gospel of the Witches, for lore about Diana and her Fey Cat.)

The woman, the Goddess, hung a welcome sign on her front door. People came to see her. (Mind you, she still hid a lot of the time, and we will get to that in a moment.) She healed people with her light. Or tickled them with it. She used her light to guide others to their own shiny brilliance and to that of the Gods.

Here is the welcome sign she hung up. Faerie art, Francesca De Grandis
Faerie art, Francesca De GrandisDiana is Goddess of Witches. This warm, protective deity has given me tremendous solace and healing many times over the years.

Often, her visitors hid with her. That was fun.

And sometimes—often, in fact—she still hid all by herself. Well, her cat was with her. As were other gods. They are always nearby.

Tucked in her home, she traveled to wonderful places.

Faerie art, Francesca De GrandisHer visitors went on great adventures with her, traveling between the stars.

Faerie art, Francesca De Grandis

Where You and Diana Go if You Visit Her. Available as a limited first edition print. For more info, click on the picture.

 When someone is hiding, I look twice to find the god. The end.

Faerie art, Francesca De Grandis

Storyteller (the author, self-portrait). Available as a limited first edition print. For more info, click on the picture

 Please use the nifty Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ buttons, right below, to share my Faerie tale. Thank you for your support, it’s the only way many folks will know about my new story and refurbished site (the site you are on has been updated lately with a new look and all sorts of other new stuff). I cannot do it without you! If you do not see the buttons, you’re viewing this blog entry on my site’s home page. Just click this: https://stardrenched.com/2012/07/11/hiding-healing-power-pt-3/

Hiding, Healing, Power. Pt 2

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If you missed part one, here it is: https://stardrenched.com/2012/06/13/hiding-healing-power/

Faerie art, Francesca De Grandis

Hiding - Fey Strega in Training

Hiding, Healing, Power. Part two
Written and painted in March and/or early April, 2012.

This little Italian girl is another example of someone hiding. Why do you think she is hiding?

Dear site visitor, I want you to see the Faerie tale illustrations at their best. When WordPress shrinks a pic to fit the page, it blurs. Please click on a painting to see it unblurred; it makes a real difference.

Everyone who hides has a story. What is yours? It is okay if you hide some of it.

Here is part of hers (she wants to hide the rest): When she first hid, she had a pretty place in her mind. She started building it. First, she made the window frame you see her peeking out of.

She lived behind it with her Faerie cat. She giggled there a lot. The cat dozed in brilliant shafts of sun light that came through the window. As she slept, she dreamt up schemes for the little girl. They had many adventures, and no one saw. Except other Faeries. So many giggles!

It took a long time, a lot of work, and a lot of hiding to build more. (Sometimes you hide to find quiet magic, so that you can even imagine secret places in your mind.)

For years, all she had was that window frame to hide behind. But it kept her safe. I mean, look at all the detail she put into it!

Little Bunny in a Tea Cup. Available as a limited first edition print. For more info, click on the picture

And by the time she had grown up, her home was finished.

Faerie art, Francesca De Grandis

Want to know what adventures she had as a grown up? I’ll post part 3 in two weeks here. I blog once a week, and am alternating between this blog and the blog at my other site. Two blogs with two separate RRS feeds.

Please use the nifty Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ buttons, right below, to share my Faerie tale. Thank you for your support, it’s the only way many folks will know about my new story and refurbished site (the site you are on has been updated lately with a new look and all sorts of other new stuff).  I cannot do it without you! If you do not see the buttons, you’re viewing this blog entry on my site’s home page. Just click this https://stardrenched.com/2012/06/27/hiding-healing-power-pt-2/

Wisdom Adventures

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Wisdom Adventures

Updated 2021-5-2

What Is a Wisdom Adventure?

It is a shamanic quest tailored to you. Ritual tools and ancient wisdoms are individualized, shaped according to your blocks, strengths, spirit, current circumstances, and past experiences, to move you toward your truest material and spiritual goals.

During six, private, shamanic sessions, I channel a personalized shamanic journey for you, as well as the shamanic tools and wisdoms you need for that journey. I also work on developing your program between our meetings.

We meet by phone or, if you prefer, Zoom.

Since the ’80s, shamans, artists, healers, political leaders, and others who want to live fully have gone on Wisdom Adventures with me. Also called “Wisdom Coaching,” these six private visits help you create your own destiny and fulfill it.

I offer single shamanic counseling sessions, but sometimes a person wants ongoing attention. Perhaps you’re working toward big breakthroughs in your life and need help removing inner blocks to success, layer by layer. Or maybe you need the courage to follow your star and want the strength that builds over several meetings. Or confusion and doubt require ongoing exploration to find a way to personal power.

Wholeness, prosperity, spiritual fulfillment, greatness, better sex, artistic achievements? Something else? Whatever you want, let’s go! Don’t know what you want? I’ll help you figure it out. Whatever you need materially and spiritually can be on the table. Wisdom Coaching is tailored to you.

What Do We Do during Wisdom Adventure meetings?

First, we decide: should your journey last six weeks, three months. or six months (shall we meet every week, every two weeks, or once a month, respectively)? Then we discuss your primary goal(s)—or help you discover it. Building block by building block, I offer tools, inspiration, and power when you’re following a dream, facing a challenge, embracing a rare opportunity, or doing all three. Each session builds on the ones before it, making the sum greater than its parts. On the road of life, I’m by your side, a guide and cheerleader every step of the way.

Even in our initial session, we travel deeply journey into the shamanic world of transformation. If you’ve ever worked with me, you know I can facilitate a process whereby you quickly reach great depths and stunning changes.

What do I actually do for you during our our meetings? Whatever is needed! You are unique, with unique needs. I have an extensive otherworldly toolkit from my years of training and experience, providing me with many options to draw on so you get what you need to transform your life.

Guided by Deity and the moment, we go where the sacred road leads. Each moment of a visit, I intuit what is needed and how to address that need. You might receive answers to mundane questions, then the next minute be led into a mystical experience that increases your trust of your own wisdom. A few minutes later, we could do a ritual in which you find spiritual healing or a dynamite marketing plan for your new business. I helped a gymnast choose the best set of moves for his Olympic performance.

I often combine the practical and the mystical.

In every session, you also receive direct spiritual transmissions. Spiritual transmissions are an ancient Faery Faith method that increases the serenity, power, and safety of your shamanic journey, fosters personal growth, deepens the experiential nature of the journey’s lessons, and adds good luck to your life overall.

You’re the Star of Your Wisdom Adventure

You choose the course a session takes, as little or as much as you want. If a method or topic I feel divinely directed toward doesn’t feel right to you, you’re the star. This is your adventure. You and I are both conduits for the divine. If you want to take a tack other than one I suggest in a session, I am your servant.

Extensive, Lasting Change

I don’t put rhetorical Band-Aids on deep soul-wounds. Participants of Wisdom Adventures report lasting change. Seemingly immoveable obstacles to happiness leave. For example, maybe you can’t find your life’s purpose. Or you can’t find a way to escape ruinous circumstances. Or past problems still haunt you. Client after client has called my work miraculous in changing their circumstances. Trauma survivors and members of the recovery community have found crucial growth. Happy, successful folks report an increase in self-fulfillment and passion.

Did one of my counseling sessions, books, blogs, or classes provide strength, spiritual succor, answers to important questions, or freedom from inner bondage? We’ve been a great match. Now get everything you want. Love yourself up with one-on-one, ongoing coaching that a book or class can’t provide. We’ll discover all the unique gold within you and polish away what keeps you from shining.

How to Go On Your Personalized Shamanic Adventure:

1. Use my online booking calendar to make and pay for your first appointment. Important: when using the calendar, type “Wisdom Adventure” in the Comments/Questions field. Each appointment lasts an hour and costs $200. To go to the calendar, click here: http://stardrenched.com/archetypal-power-appointment/

2. If our appointment is, let’s say, Friday, April 3 at 2 pm est, then you phone me Friday, April 3, at 2 pm est.

3. At the end of each meeting, we schedule the next.

4. After our first meeting, I set up an automatically recurring payment for you, to make payment for the rest of the sessions easy. They’re paced with your appointments: every week, every two weeks, or every month.

5. If our first session is not all you hoped, no further obligation. You only pay for the one meeting.

If you have questions about whether a Wisdom Adventure is right for you, phone me. I’m happy to talk with you for as long as it takes to address your concerns. My number is below.

Who is Francesca De Grandis?

De Grandis is the best-selling author of “Be a Goddess!” She’s a full-time community shaman, as a teacher, guide, healer, and artist. Her work couples Goddess mysticism with practical magic and a down-to-earth philosophy.

Raised in a traditional Strega family tradition that has Celtic shamanism in its heritage—the family is originally from France—she practices an ancient European witchcraft that is a form of Faerie shamanism.

She founded The Third Road—an internationally practiced shamanic tradition–and guides individuals of all faiths and those perfectly happy without one.

A spiritual counselor since 1982. Francesca has been featured in The New York Times, USA Today, and Cosmopolitan, as well as on National Public Radio and national television.

Her nickname is Outlaw Bunny.

Reviews

Matt O’Brien: “I’d been working on a problem for years, and Francesca unlocked and released it in just five minutes. It was exactly what I needed. Wow!”

Kathy Crabbe, Soul Reader, Artist, Astrologer: “Francesca is a beacon for me in every kind of weather. I love and adore her with all my heart and I recommend her classes, books, readings and other offerings 100%.”

Adrienne Amundsen, Ph.D., and clinical psychologist says Francesca, “has the trustworthy ethics of a Buddhist priest, psychologically sound respect for the complexity of human process, and a wicked sense of humor that keeps serious material in healthy perspective.”

Lynn Andrews, author of “Medicine Woman,” writes, “Francesca De Grandis has given us an inspirational bridge between ancient wisdom and our current life.”

If you’re ready to move forward in your life, or you want help getting ready to move forward, start your Wisdom Adventure here: http://stardrenched.com/archetypal-power-appointment/

Hiding, Healing, Power

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Faerie art, Francesca De GrandisHiding, Healing, Power
Written and painted in March and/or early April, 2012.

I call the following piece a Faerie tale. That is accurate but not by most standards. The piece is part my thoughts, part my paintings, part my methods for empowerment (perhaps in less overt forms, such as asking you a question), mixed with little magical stories told through word and visuals. By my definition of shamanism, that is a faerie tale: The sum total helps you live in myth—live in myth generally speaking, and in the particular myths I’m creating here, and in your own unique myths that this piece can help you find and/or better dwell in.

I painted the illustrations brush stroke by stroke—digitally. I just paint on a computer screen instead of a canvas. And with that:

Hiding Fey Warrior In Training. Click on the painting to see it large and without blurring that occurs when WordPress shrinks a pic to fit the page.

Part One

This is a Faerie tale about healing and power. And about hiding. This story is for grown ups.

Sometimes we need to hide. There are many reasons. We might have to hide because we hurt. We find a safe, secret place to heal, or at least to be away from whatever might hurt us.

Do you ever hide? Do you need to tell someone why? Or is it better that no one knows you are hiding?

Sometimes we hide because it is fun.

Sometimes we hide to be alone with our thoughts.

Or with our “imaginary” friends.

Hiding, Faerie Healer in Training. Available as a limited first edition print. For more info, click on the picture.

When children have to repeatedly hide to protect themselves, it can injure their spirit in ways that haunt them into adulthood. But they’re doing the best they know how to keep themselves safe, and that is an act of power.
 
Hiding can also be an act of power when motivated instead by happy events and sweet wishes. We don’t always stay out of sight because of fear and pain; for example, you might simply tuck yourself away in a special place for a while, in order to flourish undisturbed. 

Some people hide to gain powers that only come where no one—without those powers—can see them. They work hard and often joyfully, secretly doing what the Cosmos asks of them. That is what this little Fey fellow is doing—he is a Faerie healer in training.

And perhaps he is also making himself safe from trouble; if you ask him sincerely, he might tell you. Or maybe he’ll just keep peeking out at you from his hiding place.

I’ll post part 2 in two weeks, here. I blog once a week, and am going to try alternating between this and the blog at my other site. Two blogs with two separate RRS feeds.

Please share the URL to my above story; here it is to copy and paste for Facebook or an email or whatever: https://stardrenched.com/2012/06/13/hiding-healing-power/    I want folks to know about my new Faerie tale and my refurbished site (the site you are on has been updated lately with a new look and all sorts of other new stuff). Thank you for your support. I cannot do without it, truly! Oh, wait…I am so 20th century! Unless you’re viewing this blog entry on my site’s home page, you can like my Faerie tale with the nifty Facebook button, right below, next to the Twitter button and the like. Duh!

Ethical (and Unethical) Fey Teachers

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Info about December 2020 update is at bottom of post.

Eagle with Iris in Great Darkness, OutlawBunny.

Ethical (and Unethical) Fey Teachers

Overview: Fey Folk can help us find freedom and joy. But there are evil Fairies, too—the Unseelie. They want to hurt humans. Some witch teachers work with the Unseelie. Honor your wild heart, but stay safe.

Fey Folk Can Help Us Find Freedom, Joy, and Magic

For hundreds of years, fairy glimmers in the woods have beckoned, reflecting our secret longings and illuminating our honest needs. Puritanical moralists insist the Fey are undeniably evil. However, we know better: the Good Folk can help free us from repressive religions and absurd social strictures. (Good Folk is another name for Fairies.) In addition, when we are barraged by a logic that denies magic and miracles, that fairy glimmer reassures us, telling us that mysticism is real and that the wondrous is possible.

But not all dwellers of the fairy realms are beneficent.

The Seelie Queen, Unseelie Queen, and Evil Magicians

For our purposes, this oversimplified definition of Seelie and Unseelie works well:

The Faery Queen (Fairy Queen, Faerie Queen…) is also known as the Seelie Queen and Her court known as the Seelie court. She and Her Seelie want to help us. They devote Themselves to that … when they are not off having a great time dancing, singing, and otherwise carrying on. … And even their joyful activities ring through the cosmos blessing us. However, there is an Unseelie Court–Fairies who are evil. The Unseelie Queen and her followers malevolently perpetuate great tragedy for humans.

And not all fey-touched magicians can be trusted, whether they call themselves Fey, Fay, Fae, Faerie, Feri, Fairy, or Faery.

Fulfill Your Longing and Stay Safe

Sate your hunger for luminous mystery and faerie mysticism, and for the fellowship thereof. However, it’s easy for that ferocious appetite, authentic and important though it is, to blind a person to the following: some individuals with immense glamour and fey power are pawns of the Unseelie Court. Perhaps this happens because power has made them so haughty that they are unwitting dupes for the forces of evil. Or perhaps they themselves become outright evil. Whatever the reason, it does happen.

Silence allows it to continue. I will not tolerate Fey practitioners who molest children, sexually harass students, disregard magical safety, and offer flashy curriculums that lack a moral compass strong enough to withstand the rigors of daily life. That lack of compass leaves many students frustrated and miserable for years because they’re working hard to grow without sufficient measures to guide them toward real spiritual progress. I’m available by phone if you’re concerned about yourself or a friend. I want to support newbies to the community—because they might be especially vulnerable—or anyone else who needs support.

Honor Your Wild Heart and Protect It

Francesca De Grandis, May 2012

While many cautions against the fey realms can be rightly interpreted as disguised attempts to suppress us, and to make us milquetoast, there are valid cautions. Dark mysteries needn’t be an excuse for a teacher to dominate. Wild hearts don’t mean that a teacher can ignore your sexual boundaries. Powerful magic needn’t lack caution. The quest for utter fulfillment needn’t lead to hollow longings or addiction.

There are dark mysteries that are wholesome, wildness that is authentic, satiation that is both attainable and ethical. Powerful magic can be safe. Fey fellowship, wild lovers, and powerful teachers can be both otherworldly and good. I hope you find them all.

If your Faerie heart resonates with what you read on this site, I invite you to my events. My newsletter will let you know about upcoming events, including free monthly Fey rituals via teleseminar or Zoom. Click the banner below to subscribe.

Click this banner to subscribe to my Faerie newsletter. Upcoming events, freebies, and stardust.

Update: December 2020 I expanded on my above essay for clarity. I posted it on this site in 2012 and, before that, in 2008, to friends in a now defunct Yahoo forum. Sadly, the problems addressed by the post continue and happen to both newbies and longtime time witches. However, we can stop this. So mote it be!

Paper Cutting and Candle Magic

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Papercutting, Horned God, FDG, 1994

I find folk art intrinsically magical. And I find the art of papercutting wondrous in and of itself: I am amazed that something as humble as an old piece of paper can be recycled—using nothing more than a pair of scissors—into an object of beauty. I just can’t get enough of it.

I may not always be good at it, but I love doing it. I’ve filled my home—and that of my friends’—with paper cuttings since the 70s, if not earlier.

I also came up with a way paper cutting can augment the power of candle magic. Here it is:

1) Choose a magical goal—e.g. love, money, confidence.

2) Choose a simple symbol or symbols of your magical goal. E.g. a heart for a love spell. I often like to do more than one spell on a candle at a time. The house blessing candle below is also in remembrance of my mom; she read playing cards; so, in addition to symbols that represent houseblessing for me, I also chose the shapes of the suits in her honor.

A House Blessing

Optional: Also add symbols you find powerful, just to add more “juice” to the spell. For example, in the cutting to the left, I added a seven pointed star.

3) Cut the symbol(s) into a piece of paper that will wrap around the glass container of a seven-day candle. Use fancy paper, plain paper, newspaper, a pretty page from a mag, whatever.

When doing this kind of papercutting, I usually am not concerned about making it fancy or artistically “right.” I might make a quick rough cutting, instead of the more laborious precise efforts I made for the above Horned God cutting. I can be a perfectionist when making that sort of cutting but, when cutting for candle magic, I usually prefer ease—to just have fun, keep it simple, unless I feel like taking time on making it ornate and “just so” visually.

4) Wrap your glass container, fastening the ends of the paper together with a bit of tape.

Be safe: Do not let the paper wrapping extend even to the lip of the glass container; do not wrap paper directly around a candle itself; do not leave a candle burning unattended.

4) Light your candle as you make a wish for your goal. That’s it! Simple, fun, powerful, and a chance to be creative.

Another example: For a money spell, I cut the word “cash” into paper. Here is the paper cutting before I wrapped it around the candle.

Below is the paper cutting for my above house blessing, laid out flat. (It is the reverse side so, being a magazine page, has entirely different print on it.)

********

I hope you like my idea! If you do, please share a link to it—that would be lovely and needed support. Do not lift my idea wholesale onto your site without my permission. Play fair. Power to the people means the right to choose what is done with the fruits of your labor. And the contents of this site are under copyright. Thank you so much!

The Ecstatic Path, Serving Community, & False Ego

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The Ecstatic Path, Community Service, and Arrogance

A few thoughts, May Day, 2012
Updated May, 2022

Detail from Root Woman, painting by Francesca De Grandis

Detail, Root Woman, Digital Art, Francesca De Grandis .

The occult shop I worked in during the 80s had lockers out back, behind the building. Our customers would buy candles, which we would dress (for example, anoint with magical oils), bless, and then burn in the lockers. Some customers requested candles for prosperity blessings. Some asked for healing candles. The variety of magical candles covered every imaginable situation from justice to romance.

By some standards, it was such an odd priesthood, if not utterly dismissed and invalidated. The bunch of grungy lockers with wax dripping all over them was part of something many would consider hokey, outright ridiculous. But it was the real deal—powerful magic that was of service to community.

Priesthood (ministry, service, call it what you will) takes many sincere forms. Some have more prestige than others. But whether one receives a lot of acclaim or none at all, the Gods know when the heart is filled with juicy desire to serve. This desire fuels our joy constantly. And the Gods bless such a heart with peace and happiness.

The ecstatic path I walk includes a commitment to serve.

The Gods also know when the heart is heavily burdened, made sad by a self-deceiving ego-drive to be at the top of the heap. And the Gods bless this heart, too. This compassion is sorely needed for individuals who don’t understand that service fueled by the desire for prestige and ego-feed will only get them snared by false ego, which twists their magic in knots so it works against them. Goddess help them. They can end up on a hard road! I know this because I had to learn it through personal experience.

Decades back, I went into media to serve my Gods. I’m a shy and reclusive person who did not want to be in media, I just wanted to remain in oral tradition, but my Gods insisted I also enter the media. And sometimes, working in the media, my thoughts dwelt on fame or ego. When they did, it hurt me, what a mess! Luckily, my overall reason for being in media was service, so I was able to spot my arrogance and move past it. … Well, I still am arrogant to some degree, but I imagine all humans are. As long as I remain aware of when my false ego is leading the way, and I make ongoing attempts to stop that, I think I am OK.

I am amazed at the amount of serenity to which I have become accustomed. I have noted that, when my arrogance comes alive, my serenity does not remain at the level that’s become typical of me. When serving my Gods in sincerity, Their peace flows through me to empower my work. I can have a reasonable degree of serenity and, therefore, my health is good, my abundance continues, and from my peace emerges ecstasy. So mote it be.

As to the aforementioned ego drive to be at the top of the heap, ha! There is no heap. There is only the joyous dance of life and the chance to serve within it. May all we humans learn at deeper and deeper levels to dive into life fully, not mistaking titles and pomp for ecstasy and caring. And may we always know that ecstasy and caring go hand in hand, like lovers.

Root Woman, painting by Francesca De Grandis

Root Woman, painting by Francesca De Grandis. If you’d like a limited first edition-print of this art, email me at outlawbunny at outlawbunny.com

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With its relaunch in 2012, this site was split between three servers. (I know there are other options, it’s a long and grassroots story.)

http://www.stardrenched.com is mostly for the site’s blog, events announcements, and new additions to the site’s Grimoire.

The site’s original domain remains https://people.well.com/user/zthirdrd/. Among other things, it has online Grimoire entries prior to 2012.

Way back, there wasn’t space for everything I wanted on the well.com site (my site there is ancient, started back when they were very few women on the web, and site storage space was minuscule), so some side pages got put on feri.com.

This old blog explains it a bit more.

I continue to blog at my other site, www.outlawbunny.com. Two separate blogs.