Showing posts with label Cornerstone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cornerstone. Show all posts

Jan 10, 2010

Serenity Sunday

In earlier times, farmers would often haul stones from ancient circles and build their homes from them, as they held special significance being from those sites. Later, houses were built upon the cornerstone principle in which it was significant because all other stones or bricks were then set in reference to the cornerstone.


Over time, the cornerstone became part of a symbolic celebratory process and placed in  prominent outside corners of  buildings, almost like a cultural representation of the peoples that designed and built them. Some cornerstones included time-capsules that represented the era that a particular building was erected or items specific to the town or city that it was built in, so that future generations can look at these items and ponder on them.


What is the cornerstone that makes up your spirituality...? What is included in the foundation, in which you set all of your beliefs around...? Are there any specific traditions that you include in your beliefs, that you pass on to your children (like a time-capsule for the future)...? Meditating on these things helps to focus ourselves in our daily practices and ground ourselves in the important aspects of our beliefs and why we hold them dear.


My List:


1.) My kids


2.) Laughter


3.) Good friends


4.) Sunny days


5.) Red Rooibos tea


6.) Honey roasted peanuts


7.) Jasmine flowers


8.) Chocolate cake


9.) Mylar balloons


10.) Fried oysters





















Feb 11, 2009

Today In History...



Born in 1884, Gerald Brosseau Gardner was a flamboyant and assertive personality and truly a cornerstone figure in the creation of modern paganism. He had developed an interest in anthropology and the occult ( meaning hidden or secret) while working in Malaya as a tea and rubber planter and a Customs officer, and on retiring to England in 1936 he made this his prime preoccupation. In Hampshire in 1939 he joined a witch coven preserving unbroken medieval traditions, and from 1951 onwards he publicly promoted a fertility religion we now call Wicca. He recruited members into an organized initiatory order of several grades, for which he composed rituals and spells under the title "A Book of Shadows" his system showed similarities to Freemasonry, and to ceremonial magic as practised by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and others in the early 20th century. His Witchcraft Today (1954) is the foundation of Wicca and he also set up a Museum of Witchcraft at Castletown (Isle of Man). He passed away on this day (1964) on the ship "Scottish Prince" while sailing off the North African coast.

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BOOKS BY GERALD B. GARDNER:

* Witchcraft Today

* The Meaning of Witchcraft

* Witchcraft and the Book of Shadows:

The Definitive Record of the Practises of Wicca

* Gardner's Book of Shadows