ready to get up, do so.
12 Take your time and try not to make any sudden or hurried movements for a little while.
13 Make a note of your experiences: how difficult or easy you found it to concentrate, how you felt at different stages of the exercise. While writing up your notes, you will find it helpful to eat and drink something. This will earth you. It will bring you fully into everyday awareness and centre you in your body.
The meadow you have created in your visualization is your own safe space. It is somewhere you can go whenever you feel the need for tranquillity and safety. At this stage, do not try to leave your meadow.
References
1. Gerald B. Gardner, Witchcraft Today, Rider & Co., London, 1954, page 29.
2. Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain, Lewis Thorpe (trans.), Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1966, page 65.
3. Laws of King Cnut, quoted in Margaret A. Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe: A Study in Anthropology, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1921, page 23.
CHAPTER 2
The Wiccan universe is a holistic universe. All of creation is alive. People, animals, plants, trees, rocks, crystals, molecules, even atoms, have their own purposes and spiritual force. They are entities or organisms. This is not just a romantic anthropomorphism created to sustain us through the angst of human life. Material creation is infinitely more mysterious than our everyday awareness tells us. Our sense receptors have evolved to show us that a table is a table – no more and no less.
We do not have to view it as a collection of moving molecules teeming with atoms like a giant ant hill of activity. However, this might be nearer the truth. Many of the ways in which we perceive the universe are an illusion. When we look out into the sky at night we see an emptiness filled with planets and stars, but the dark spaces are not empty. They are full of something which physicists call dark matter. This is the dark remnants of stars, black holes and particles as yet unknown to physics. Dark matter fills more than ninety per cent of the universe. Dark matter is not only out there in space. It is all around us. Scientists can tell of its existence because of the tiny magnetic interactions of its particles and its effect on gravitational fields. Our universe is infinitely mysterious and our understanding of it is only just beginning.
In our holistic universe, it is not only the animal, plant and mineral life of our planet that is alive. It is the planet itself. This idea was developed by Otter (also known as Tim or Oberon) Zell of the Pagan Church of All Worlds, but more famously by distinguished scientist James Lovelock in his ‘Gaia hypothesis’.1 James Lovelock is the inventor of the microwave oven. He was the first person to measure CFC gases and to observe that our ozone layer was becoming depleted. He believes that the Earth is a living being. His idea evolved when he started thinking about ways of detecting life on Mars. If the Earth’s atmosphere consisted of gases in chemical equilibrium, like the atmospheres of Mars and Venus, it would be 99 per cent carbon dioxide. Instead, the Earth has an atmosphere with very little carbon dioxide, 21 per cent oxygen and 78 per cent nitrogen. Oxygen and nitrogen are produced by the living organisms that inhabit the Earth. Bacteria release nitrogen and plants photosynthesize, releasing oxygen. Plankton in the oceans remove carbon from the atmosphere and turn it into their tiny shells. When the plankton die, their shells fall to the sea bed. Here they are converted into the calcium carbonate found in limestone rocks. Together, plants, animals and minerals interact in such a way as to seem part of a living being, a greater whole. This is the biosphere, or Gaia. James Lovelock’s ‘Gaia hypothesis’ is the scientific recognition of what Witches and magicians have always known: that the Earth is alive. It is a balanced, integrated, self-regulating system working in such close harmony that it acts like a single being. This then is how Wicca sees our world – fascinating, interacting, mysterious and alive.
THE ELEMENTS OF THE WISE
Holism is both the leading edge of science and the view of ancient mysticism. In Wicca we often find the symbol of the Spiral Dance: we move on only to return to the point at which we started, but not in exactly the same place. The experience of the journey has given us a new perspective and starting point. Thus it is with science and the magical view of the universe.
Within our interacting holistic universe, there are many different types of energy. There are many ways of categorizing them. All spiritual traditions have different ways of looking at the universe. In a sense all these systems and categories are artificial. In reality, nothing is wholly one thing, wholly another, but is a combination of many things. However, in the magical universe an ancient Greek idea still works well. This is the idea mentioned in Chapter 1 that the material universe consists of energy in four basic states – Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Beyond material creation is a fifth state – Ether or Spirit. Here are some ideas about the elements.
AIR
In magical tradition, Air is the realm of mind, the brain, the intellect and logical linear thought. The Airy side of us is the part that wants to learn, which is curious and tries to understand the true nature of things. It is youthful, light and energetic. Air can be quickness of thought, lightness of being, humour, the joy of life. The tarot card of the Fool springs to mind. This is ruled by Air and represents a stepping out into the unknown with joy; although this can be dangerous.
There is an excitement in Air. It values the new and untried. Air always wants to learn new things whatever the price. Air signs are good at starting anew, and at throwing old things away. Much more so than Earth and Water, though perhaps Fire rivals Air here. Air divides things into categories. It separates one thing from another. It gets to the point and is not ‘woolly-minded’. Computers, library classification systems, indeed all systems, are Air-related. Objectivity is something which can be developed by working with the Air element.
Air is impersonal and detached; for emotion can distort our thinking processes. Air adheres to the letter of the law. Islamic Sharia law is a totally logical system. There is a list of crimes and a fixed set of penalties. Everyone knows exactly where they stand and, theoretically, the same treatment is meted out to all. This may be logical but it does not take account of another aspect of reality – individual circumstances. It is hard-nosed rather than soft in its approach.
One image of the Air-dominated person is that of Doctor Frankenstein. Here we have the mad professor in his laboratory, indulging in experiments that violate all important human values. His rationality has made him blind to other important aspects of reality. He forgets to eat and neglects his family in pursuit of the one goal that matters to him – learning.
The zodiac signs ruled by Air are Aquarius the Water-Bearer, symbol of the New Age, Libra the Scales, and Gemini the Twins.
FIRE
Fire gives warmth, sexuality, and warms the blood. Fire is activity, making things happen, excitement, entertainment, liveliness, the swiftness of the arrow.
Fire is important if we are to act in the world. It is a renewing and purifying element. After forest fires have burned the ground, all sorts of new life forms emerge. Fire transforms, transmutes, changes, destroys, but creates the ground for new growth. Fire is also associated with a hot temper which is part of its martial or war-like aspect. Fire can provoke arguments, but brings us energy and new life and vigour. It is also the hearth Fire and the Sun on a summer’s day after long winter. The discovery of how to make fire was one of the greatest of human achievements and essential for the creation of civilization. It led to cooking, which has enabled us to enrich and broaden our diet. Cooking itself is rather like alchemy – a process of transmutation and change.
Fire is flamboyant