Of Pentacles And Apples

I came upon an interesting tidbit about Pentagrams and their association with apples ( a Pentacle is the five pointed star and a Pentagram is the same five pointed star enclosed in a circle) and believe it or not had never heard of the Pagan lore attached to it. As follows is a (not so ) brief summary of it's origins in Pagan history


Think of an apple... juicy and red and ripe for the picking. When it is sliced in half, it magically shows us a five pointed star formed by the seeds inside. Each of these five seeds contain a symbolism reflecting the spiritual aspects of this universal symbol: idea; sustenance; life, secret knowledge and the hidden mysteries within the earth.


Remember the story of Adam and Eve...? In Christian lore, the apple represented hidden knowledge which was forbidden to human kind and the apple signified that which we should not attempt to know ... and attempts over the centuries to obtain knowledge of the Universe ...and therefore, ourselves... were suppressed. The Pentagram in its modern guise as the pentacle was also a target of this subjugation.


The Pentagram was originally a symbol of the goddess, Kore, who was worshipped in many countries as widespread as England and Egypt thousands of years ago, but under many different names (i.e. Cara, Ceres, Carnak, Core, Car, Karnak, etc). Kore's sacred fruit was the apple. When cut through its equator, the apple has a near perfect pentagram shape inside, with each point containing a seed. Many Wiccans, Pagans and Roma (Gypsies) still cut apples in this way and the Roma refer to apple cores as Stars of Knowledge


Think of this next time you eat an apple. 

"What Is...?" Wednesday

String Theory

Imagine a wave of particles streaming out across space. Wouldn't that look like a great, long, wiggly string?  Is that string theory? Yes...well, sort of... However, it does demonstrate that particles.. any particles...can form long strings.


 There are long string streams emanating from the Sun right now, washing up against buildings and reflecting colours into your eye holes. There are strings of radiation particles bursting forth from your monitor, crashing up against your face, and running down cracks in your skin... There are streams of strings everywhere.

You may be thinking: "All this talk of streams is making me want to pee. Is that string theory?" No but read on...

Gravity is everywhere in the universe and as such it needs energy to keep it running. As luck would have it there is an awful lot of energy in all those particle strings all over the place. An awful lot. To demonstrate just how much energy is present in strings you can perform a string theory experiment of your own.

To illustrate this simply:

Step one: Decorate a tree with the christmas tree lights.
Step two: Undecorate the tree.
Step three: Put the lights in the bag.
Step four: Put the bag in your loft.
Step five: Wait one year.
Step six: Retrieve the bag
Step seven: Now, attempt to untangle the string of lights.

What you will discover is that a seemingly inoffensive string with plastic bulbs on it somehow stores staggering levels of energy within. Now imagine if you'd put two strings of lights in those bags. Pretty scary, huh? What about an infinite number of strings? A bit harder to imagine, but I'm sure you're getting the picture.


The universe is like that bag in the loft containing more christmas tree lights than you can imagine. Every planet is a bulb; some of the bulbs are broken, some are not. The person trying to unravel all those strings is the Space-Time Vortex Guy, Bob. The energy expelled by Space-Time Vortex Guy Bob, in unravelling the christmas tree lights is what we know as gravity. And that is string theory explained simply.

How, you may be asking, does this affect me...? Well, it shows that if this theory were to be proven...Science would explain how we affect our environment and how it affects us...kind of a pagan notion, eh?

Serenity Sunday

Something very frightening was recently brought to my attention...there is/are pagans out there that are willing to speak publically that global warming is a myth. I cannot begin to express how this hurts my heart...The evidence is all around us yet there are individuals have jumped on the big business bandwagon and have chosen to denounce that Mother Earth could quite likely be in peril. I nearly wanted to hang my head in shame to hear someone "profess" to be pagan and so blatently turn a blind eye to Gaia.

We are all stewards of this big blue planet and we share the responsibility to care for it  because our very lives indeed depend upon it. Hiding our heads in the sand can only prove detrimental.
(there was originally a lot more to this post but I did not want to appear a raving lunatic)

                                             My List:

1.) My kids

2.) Recycling

3.) Great friends

4.) Truth

6.) Organic food

7.) Knowlege

8.) Stewardship

9.) Harmony

10.) Lime Jell-o

Thoughtful Thursday...Pagan Poetry

Ripples

Memories appear as transient as ripples on the seashore.

Flowing out to sea they take their place with the one.

We weave our memories and lives together.

Taking delicate strands we bind them strong.

In the passing of time a single strand may wear and breakaway.

We who remain pick up the strands to weave our web,

Stronger, tighter than before.

Memories always are, just that.

We choose to use them as we may.

The threads we weave, we are weaving now.

We choose to weave them,

Stronger or weaker than before.

They come, they go.

Ebbing and flowing as the tides

And the unceasing ripples on the seashore.

Jan (Darkwillow 2006)

“Witches”

I got this today in my inbox and watched each video on YouTube.  It was such a great series of videos, I just had to share...I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.




The Biography Channel special “Witches” will be re-aired again this Monday and Tuesday. The show features interviews with Llewellyn authors Christopher Penczak and Silver RavenWolf.

Original airdate was 10/08; it is re-airing 4 times this fall.

Biography Channel: “Witches”

Original airdate: 10/30/08

2009 Airdates:
Friday 10/30/09
Saturday 10/31/09
Monday 11/16/09, 8 pm (upcoming)
Tuesday 11/17/09, midnight (upcoming)

You can also watch the Biography Channel’s “Witches” episode on our YouTube channel!

Part 1 includes interviews and early comments from Silver RavenWolf and Christopher Penczak, then discusses the European witch hunts.

Part 2 focuses primarily on the details of the Salem witch hysteria/trials.

Part 3 covers the end of 17th century through modern times, evolution of Halloween, and Hollywood witches; the segment ends with an early biography of Laurie Cabot.

Part 4 begins with Laurie Cabot; Christopher Penczak appears at about 2:20 in this clip.

Part 5 starts with Silver RavenWolf; this segment focuses on Silver and Wicca.

Part 6 features an interview with Roberta Stewart, the Wiccan widow who won the VA Pentacle suit, and more comments from Silver RavenWolf.

Ugly Ducklings

Hans Christian Andersen is fondly remembered worldwide for his fairy tales and one of my favorites has always been "The Ugly Duckling." We are told the moral of this story is that the duckling (who is is persecuted by all in the duck yard)... escapes, perseveres and eventually realizes that he is not ugly at all but a beautiful swan. The tale concludes with the marvellous knowledge that it hardly matters where you are born if you have the right talents.

We are all born into relatively ordinary families....we go to school like all the other children...take family vacations...and do things that everyone does but how many of us fail to be recogized or appreciated by a parent or teacher or even society that we have special qualities that make us creative and free thinking? We grow up, get normal jobs, raise families of our own but somewhere inside we feel like we are somehow apart from the rest of the world.

We continue down this path until one day we meet someone... a witch or pagan or pick up a book about metaphysics or mythology that suddenly opens our eyes to the fact that we were never not ducklings to begin with...we were swans the whole time! We discover our " spiritual home" our niche so to speak and it transforms our lives. We now are where we belong and wonder why it took us so long to get here.

Out Of The Mouths Of Babes...

I had the most unnerving thing happen the other day, my youngest child Meaghan came running home in tears, nearly on the verge of hysteria about something that I feel would be an excellent topic in my blog. After about a half an hour of sobbing and carrying on, I was finally able to piece together the picture of just why she was so upset.

It seems that she and a little friend had been playing quite amicably in the yard when a minor dispute arose and from there took a very ugly turn... it escalated into to this child yelling "You can't ever talk to me again unless you're a christian" My daughter wasn't quite sure what to make of this at first but settled on the conclusion that our beliefs were under attack and somehow just because we didn't attend a "main stream" church that somehow it meant we were less than or bad according to this playmate.

I have to admit I was a bit shocked at first, because I really didn't think that the neighborhood children really paid all that much attention to what goes on in our house but obviously I was mistaken. I calmed her down and patiently tried to explain that unfortunately throughout our lives this might be a misunderstanding we will run into on occasion. It didn't necessarily mean this little girl should be banned from the ranks of "friend" but maybe she did not know very much about our beliefs and therefore Meaghan could maybe use this opportunity to educate her friend on exactly what wicca, and pagan were really all about.

I did, however, go to speak to this child's mother because I wanted to make sure it didn't get blown out of proportion any further. As it turns out, the mother had no idea of what her daughter had said and Meaghan and I (as well as this little girl and her mum) sat down and all had a pow wow about how those things can be very damaging and hurtful.

I'm glad to report that since this occurred, Meaghan's friend has been busy asking many questions of her and they have come to the conclusion that everyone is different and it takes all colors to make up the rainbow of our world and that's okay. I'd like to say that these issues could all be solved in this manner but as we all know that we live in an imperfect world. One of the greatest things we can pass on to our children is that of tolerance and understanding.

When Witchy Wasn't Cool...

I had the coolest thing happen this weekend, I got an invitation to the Black Hat Society Network! I had been quite envious of this site for a long time now as an invitation is needed to join but low and behold the web mistress put an invite in her blog that said just send an email and an invitation would be extended...."Way cool..!" I said and promptly emailed her.

There is a cookbook in the works at The Black Hat Society Network and I'm really excited to be able to submit an entry that has been in my family for many, many years. My grandmother, may the universe bless her lovely soul, was the grounding and driving force in my young life that was less than idealistic due to my father's alcoholism. Without my grandparents, I would not be the person I am today and I wish that I could hug them one more time.

As a child I didn't even realize that my grandparent's were earth based, to me it seemed as everyones family was that way.... looking back, I see that my grandma and grandpa were true pagans at a time when it was unacceptable and thought of as blasphemy at it's finest. Holidays were mixed with little nuances of paganism and there were occasions that they celebrated that other families didn't have and it wasn't until I grew up and the path found me, did I realize the legacy that they had given me.

My grandparents have been gone for many years now, and at times I can acutely feel my loss but other times I can hear my grandmother's words echoing in my head or think that I've caught a whiff of her perfume (she made her own rose water perfume) and realize her energy still surrounds and comforts me in my lonliest times.

It Is My Pleasure To Introduce To You....

Today I thought I'd introduce a few blogs that are very good and also full of information and whimsy. Some have beautiful photography and others are more eclectic such as mine. Drum roll please.....

Full Moons &; Black Cats
A wonderful blog by Celestite that researches various aspects witchcraft and magick and a great arena for questions that you always wanted to ask. I love the fact that you do not need to be pagan or wiccan to enjoy this blog.

A Pagan Tapestry
This Blog, also by Celestite, follows the Wheel of the Year, the changing of the seasons, the cycles of the moon. Great informational blog indeed! I like the fact that she is up front when saying this blog is of her opinions and does not try to represent pagans as a whole. We are all degrees of color in a larger rainbow, and we all contribute something special.

28parkave
I just love this blog by Morag Lloyds, her photographs are simply breathtaking!It is diary of her journey's around the Islands of the west coast of Scotland. She is a painter and designer and her subjects come from both her experiences from the sea and her love of different.

Live From The Red Leather Couch
A wonderful blog by Darkly Fey, that deals with everything pagan. Darkly Fey also has a podcast "The Dark Side Of Fey" which I highly recommend that you listen to. I like the down to earth way she discusses topics we deal with from day to day.

Hibiscus Moon
Hibiscus Moon has a great eclectic blog that includes poems, informative content, educational topics and a little bit of everything that appeals to all. She is new to wicca but has a very unique and highly enjoyable viewpoint! She also includes crafts and examples of her artistic expressions.

Barefoot In The Sand
Gypsy has a wonderful blog that has whimsy and and a wonderfully fresh perspective on the world around her as she shares it with us all. Her insight into life is amazing and well worth the read.

I have many more great blogs to list and I think that I will do just that in one of my other posts. I do encourage you all to check out these blogs, they're a great contribution to everyone, involved with magic or not!