Here is the third and almost final part of a truly magical tale. Because it's been a while since we started this journey let me share a bit of context. Alternatively, feel free to skip the next paragraphs and jump right into it...
Read More(...) During his long walks on the land Bearson found three friends. In the woods he found the Treeman. The Treeman was busy most of the day and sometimes even busy during the night. He walked the woods and made the curved trunks straight and the straight ones curved. He levelled out the growth of the oaks, raising the small ones and lowering the tall ones.
Read MoreThis post is part of a project to rediscover the Myth in Ritual Magic. Should you wonder what the Tale of the Bear's Son has to do with ritual or visionary magic you might want to read this introduction first. Otherwise go ahead and jump right in... But be careful - you might just fall in love with Bear's Son like I did.
Read MoreFor a blog dedicated to ritual and visionary magic the project we are about to embark on might seem pretty crazy. Or just plain off-topic. Well, I suggest it isn't - but quite the opposite: I claim there is treasure chest, half-buried in the ground, that magicians have walked by not noticing it for centuries. Yet, this treasure chest might prove as rich and rewarding to our magical practice as the Grimoires did over recent years. In order to stop, kneel, unbury and open it, I need you to follow me for a while - and trust if I you can.
Read MoreWriting about the Myth in Ritual Magic I often had to think of two stories I heard during my time at university. Back then I studied Intercultural Communication and discovered a lot about what each culture teaches its members and how this process works. I also learned a lot about the often highly specialized skills acquired and passed on during socialization. Many of these cultural skills are taken for granted or even assumed to be universal by its members - whereas in reality they aren't. In fact it is these skills that often shape and limit the worldview of any culture's members.
Read MoreToday the boundaries between myth, legend and folktale often are blurred. Often what we are left with is a palimpsest touched by many voices and pens, overwritten, cut short and expanded again in multiple layers and times. That is why going into the mythical structures ourselves in vision and ritual and bringing them back to life again is essential. Only by embarking on the mythical journeys ourselves can we explore and ultimately judge if they are true patterns of spirit power - and what type of beings lie waiting at their sources.
Read MoreLately I have been asking myself: What’s the role that the myth played in ritual magic in ancient times? There is a stark contrast between the colorful myth of the Egyptians, the Greeks or even Chaldeans and our more recent tradition of Western Magic since the time of the late Gnostics. While the former is full of stories about relationships between humans and gods, between divine offsprings, their battle for freedom, their protection of the land as well as direct encounters of pleasures and threats of the spiritual world, we are faced with a strange silence and absence of such stories when surveying the latter.
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