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.

In follow-up to earlier entries on the rescue at Gibraltar and the gates of the seasons, in regard to the paradoxical nature of holiness, paraphrased from the lyrics of Samhain by Inkubus Sukkubus -

comes old Death a-riding on the storm,
with hungry eyes for funeral fires
to burn at the morrow's dawn
but the fire of life still burns
and the wheel of life still turns
and those marked for death
go back home for Samhain
and in the night sky
on the lunar light they fly
as witches await the feast
the Dark Mother takes us in

Have a blessed Samhain! So mote it be, אמן!

In follow-up to my previous two entries (Sanctuary Of Delight and Consummate Life To Enliven), where it is brought forth that even as the Gates of Prayer are closing and the Gates of the Temple are opening, I further note that connected to these Yom Kippur Gates of "closing" and "opening" are two Gates of the Celtic New Year, Beltane (now closing) and Samhain (now opening).

The Gate of the Celtic New Year is opening (as are the Gates of the Temple), becoming fully open at Samhain. Samhain is the Gate to the dark half of the year (corresponding to Essential consciousness). Beltane, the Gate to light half of the year (corresponding to emanated awareness), is closing (as are the Gates of Prayer).

The two Gates of the Year, represent a time of consummate interinclusion among the worlds (of both witchcraft and kabbalah) where worlds unite - symbolized by the Great Rite ritual (the originally "hidden" divination card) - to bring forth that which is greater than anything in the worlds alone - an experience of Essential Being.

Documenting the synchronicity of today's news event with my divination last evening during motzi shabbat:

Shattered Ship Drama
October 12, 2008, Foxnews

The crew of a cargo ship were lifted to safety before their vessel was smashed in half in the Strait of Gibraltar, The U.K.'s Daily Mail newspaper reported Sunday.

The Liberian-registered Fedra was caught in a strong storm Saturday as it passed through the strait, and was pinned against a cliff by devastating waves despite dropping anchor, The Mail reported.

At first, Spanish maritime rescue helicopter was able to airlift several crew members off the doomed ship. But as winds got stronger, rescuers were forced to suspend the mission after a rescue helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing. The storm later subsided just enough to finish the job before the ship was shattered against the cliff, the paper reported.

My divination, described in Sanctuary Of Delight, brought forth 3 Hebrew letters:

עצ ק

which I translated as "focused through the eye of a needle".

The two letters עצ can also be translated as "narrowing, closing"[1], as is the Strait of Gilbraltar narrow, and are the Gates of Prayer associated with the Neilah service (the fifth and unique service) of Yom Kippur closing.

The letter ק which I translated as the eye of the needle (associated with the Temple Gates and the "expropriation of transcendent Divine lifeforce by the material realm" as described in kabbalah) can also be translated as to refer to redemption through the mystical meaning of the letter itself.

So, even while the Gates of Prayer have become closed into a narrow place through which passage is difficult, the Gates to the Temple Sanctuary of perfect delight, are open to provide sanctuary and redemption from the devastating waves and stormy winds of life,



so the physical vessel housing the life which enlivens is not shattered into halves at the narrow place, but remains ever whole and joined together like the Ogham letter of my divination, luis (rowan), a letter of two lines united by one - which is translated through my divination as "a sanctuary of delight with the strength to turn away negativity." None of the ship's crew members perished. All were treated and released from the hospital following rescue.

A card from The Hidden Path not shared in my divination entry last evening was drawn following the Ogham letter. That card was The Great Rite, symbolizing "perfect union, formed to create something greater than the parts can be on their own, a consummation beyond personal matters and limitations."[2] Last evening was the first time I have used this deck. Last evening's divination was its initiation into my practice.

Footnotes:

[1] Etymological Dictionary Of Biblical Hebrew, Matityahu Clark

[2] Seeker's Guide To The Hidden Path, Raven Grimassi and Stephanie Taylor