Walking outside in the sunshine on this beautiful autumn day, I saw a toadstool patch had sprung up right in the middle of the yard. The faeries are smiling with me. It's time to designate my ninth shaman stone.

A simple grey river stone I found near a lake in the woods recently, it's a rather plain and ugly rock to the common senses. Yet, it elegantly represents the beautiful within the homely, simple truth within a maze of illusion, and the extraordinary within the ordinary.

The ninth shaman stone, represented by the Toad spirit, a Guardian of the Land it inhabits, is called a toadstone and calls us to see beyond the obvious.

The Old Ways, Transforming Curse Into Blessing

The eighth shaman stone in my Temple Collection is a tektite. Among the driest rocks on earth, "with an average water content of 0.005%", yet thought to have been formed in underwater craters through meteor impact, it shamanically represents the Ancestral Well of Knowledge and Transforming Curse into Blessing.

 Oddly, all week I have been planning to write of my eighth stone today, and yesterday evening, my mother obtained a DVD to watch over the weekend. That video was The Ring. In the video is a well exactly like the one pictured for the chapter on this shaman stone in my book.

At the end of the film, the main female character who ultimately survives her viewing of the film's "video curse", in trying to figure out how to save her son from the curse when others have perished, she asks herself the question with respect to another viewer of the video who failed to survive - "what did I do that he didn't do?" She realizes that she had made a copy of the video.

She had made a copy. Interesting. Kabbalistically, making a copy is a function of Atik Yomin:

The term Atik Yomin, "the Ancient of Days," implies absolute transcendence in relation to "the days of the world," the normative consciousness of created reality. The word Atik in addition to "ancient" means "to copy." It is the Divine power "to copy" a higher reality or world onto a lower. Thus, the Atik of a world serves as a totally superconscious DNA-like code to copy higher reality onto lower.

Catrin James (Doorways to the Otherworld) writes of Ancestral Knowledge of the Old Ways which is borne in the blood:

(He) was born with knowledge of the old highways and byways, the mountain routes, that these were in his blood too. He did not need to learn them, he had inherited them, he already knew them. I remember in my own childhood too, old women with herbal knowledge. They said that they too did not need to learn, they had been born with it. "In the Blood."

We inherit much more than just the colour of our eyes, or whether we are tall or short, and so on and so forth. We inherit the dreams and memories of which I speak, we inherit gifts, which may go far beyond mundane gifts or even creative gifts, they may be gifts of the soul, like how to calm a storm or still the seas.

The synchronicity of the DVD showing up with its well symbolism just as I prepared to write of the Ancestral Well of Knowledge shaman stone clearly informs me that I and my stone have surely tapped into this magical-mystical reservoir, from where the power to make a copy of the higher reality and to project it onto the lower reality dwells. Knowledge of the Old Ways lives in my Blood and has surely been resurrected in my life. What an absolute treasure for me me as I near the holy day of Simchat Torah and the sabbat of Samhain!

 With ancestral knowledge a theme of this entry, using a design based upon those from medieval Celtic tradition, shown (one closed atop one open) is the handmade grey leather pouch in which my shaman stones are kept. It's 17" wide when open, 8" wide when closed, and has matching drawstring soutache cording. In Celtic tradition, this is called a Crane bag, and appears in a Welsh myth of Ceridwen, one of my primary magical Patronesses. Crane bags are similar to Native American medicine bags and an Irish version of the Holy Grail - both of these traditions are also among my ancestral inheritances as is the Jewish tradition of transforming curse into blessing. All come together with perfect peace in my practice.

Spirit Of Blodeuwedd

The fourth shaman stone in my Temple Collection is represented by the Celtic dark goddess Blodeuwedd (pronounced blode-ae-wehd), the flower woman. Blodeuwedd "was made out of 9 flowers by two male magicians, Gwydion and Math, to be the bride of Llew, " yet once made, she had her own ideas regarding the path her life would take. And forge her own path she did.

In the minds of most men, Blodeuwedd is considered the epitome of the faithless woman. Faithless Blodeuwedd is not. On the contrary, Blodeuwedd epitomizes relentless Faith in her own inner vision of the Divine and the courage to follow one's own inner Truth.

Catrin James (Doorways To The Otherworld) writes of Blodeuwedd:

She calls to you to take courage, not to listen to the calumny or slander of others, to do what is right for you. Out of bondage. To see through the darkness of other people's opinions and the shadows of the everyday world into the heart of the matter. You came to earth for a purpose but it is not the purpose imposed upon you by others. Listen to your heart, listen to that still inner voice. It will not betray you.

Blodeuwedd, Blodeuwedd, Blodeuwedd ... oh, how I am made like you! My truest patroness, my own path I forge too!

I've chosen witches' amber (jet, a black fossilized wood), linked with the earth element, for the shaman stone corresponding to Blodeuwedd, the flower woman.

Faith (אמונה) and truth (אמת) in Hebrew will mark the shaman stone, as will Welsh faithful (ffyddlon) and true (gwir) in Ogham letters, Gaelic faithful (dílis pronounced DEE-lish) and true (fior) in Bardic runes, and Potawatomi truth (de'bwe'wIn) in English letters.

Flidhais, Deer Spirit

In perfect follow-up to my previous two entries, Dance Of The Divine Feminine (describing the concept of birefringence as it pertains to the second of my shaman stones) and Witch's Shofar (which rests between the two entries describing my first and second shaman stones, and tells of my encounter with a deer Erev Rosh Hashanah) comes my entry regarding my third shaman stone. It is a Deer Creek fire agate (example shown below).

Usually the eleventh shaman stone in Celtic magic, according to my experience, in the system unique to my particularity, the spirit of Deer (Flidhais) numbers third. A such, my Deer spirit fire agate corresponds to Da'at (Knowledge), the external manifestation of Keter (Crown).

Catrin James writes (Doorways To The Otherworld) of the Spirit of Deer in Celtic magic:

She is associated with Gwenhwyfar, whom in ancient Celtic is described as sacred love. "Gwenhwyfar of the deer glance" [see my entry Witch's Shofar]. In Native American tradition, she comes forth to tell you that you are loved. To remember that when life presses hard upon you and you feel no love, that somewhere in time you have been loved before. And so too you shall be loved again, someone shall look upon you with eyes of total and enduring devotion, union of soul and spirit, Divine love yes, but human love too [here's the birefringence concept again] in its highest form.

The Deer spirit and her contact with you is that you may know of this sacred love, a love from which you may feel you have been exiled, and she comes to tell you that love endures forever, that which you have known somewhere, in some other time, in some other realm, so surely you shall find again.

The Deer spirit stone also represents an Ancestor or Ancestress who loves you completely, and comes to let you know that he or she is with you.

I am not alone.

My Deer Creek fire agate will be marked in Hebrew letters with the word ahavah (אהבה), which is love associated with the unity of Echad. Echad will be marked in Bardic Runes. The Malchut (of Echad) will be marked in Ogham letters.


Deer Creek Fire Agate

Raven Dance
Extraordinary Ordinary Light Of Dark

The second of thirty-six shaman stones I am gathering in the manner of my Celtic ancestors was collected on Sunday afternoon, from beneath the lilac bush which grows right outside the bedroom window of the room I occupied as a child. It was from the closet connected to this room of my childhood that I experienced the epiphany. The rock is a whitish limestone with metamorphic calcite crystals. In the crevices remain streaks of earth and chlorophyll-containing vegetation material.

The second shaman stone in Celtic magic corresponds to the spirit of Raven, the spirit of the Dark Moon, to Crone consciousness, and represents contact with the Ancestral spirit of transformation. Flowing from the hidden depths of the Dark Goddess, Raven symbolizes the Divine Feminine, Ancestral Wisdom, Silence, Stillness, Creativity, Link between Heaven and Earth, Connection to one's Source, Prophecy, Renewal and Manifestation.

Limestone is a rock of biogenic origin (בנן). One of the most important building (בנה) materials used by humankind for construction over history (including temples and pathways), limestone is also gives us caves and caverns (בין) in which much has been revealed about the origins of humanity.

Calcite is a stable polymorph of calcium carbonate whose single crystals "display an optical property called birefringence" which is "double refraction or the decomposition of a ray of light into two rays (the ordinary ray and the extraordinary ray) when it passes through certain types of material, such as calcite crystals."

Given the historical uses of limestone and the optical property distinguishing its calcite crystals, representing the spirit of Raven and the Dark Divine Feminine, the second shaman stone flowing from Ancestral Wisdom also corresponds to the "second conscious power of the intellect in Creation", that is Binah, the emanant "power to grasp, develop and integrate an idea."

The soil of the earth and green chlorophyll-containing material dwelling within the stone's crevices represent manifest living life, and thereby, represent the soul powers of devekut and actualization of Creative force (stone-ohr-light, earth-chayut-lifeforce and life-koach-energy).

My second shaman stone will be marked with the three Hebrew shorashim (roots) as written above, as well as with the Welsh prefix aber (denoting the mouth of a river) and the Gaelic word tuig (meaning to understand) in Ogham letters. The Welsh word dawnsio (pronounced "down-see-oh", a verb meaning "to dance") will be written in Bardic Runes.