Good morning! Since I'm up at 3:30 in the morning it certainly is nice to have some good reading. Thanks, James!

I am wondering about your statement that you need a cauldron for destructive spells. I have never heard that before and wondering what it means.

See? I told you I would learn from you, too.

Forums for witches (I have not checked these out so I can't speak to them, but it looked interesting):

http://www.witcheshotline.com/main/

Thanks Ruth. I will check this out today. I have been considering joining a Witch's forum perhaps to learn a little more about Witchcraft. I've never attempted a spell. At least nothing I would call spell work in the classic sense.

Yahoo groups can be very informative as well.

This conversation of a witch's tools is very timely for me. As I posted on another thread yesterday my sister is visiting from out of town and rearranged my apartment yesterday. So, when I came home everything was moved. Including me altar. I am putting everything back this morning, but the energy has definitely been disrupted and I will need to thoroughly sage everything. Never touch a witch's tools without asking first.

Abra,

I can relate to other people using my tools. When I am teaching someone how to paint, at times I have been too generous and allowed them to use my expensive brushes. Many times I turn to find them crushing my brushes against the grain or using them the wrong way which ruins their fine bristles.

When you pay $20.00 for a small Kolinsky sable pointed round brush and someone starts painting a sky with it crushing its hairs you want to bop them on the head for their ignorance and disrespect.

So I normally make it a policy to have a class on how to use and care for brushes, and then I tell people to buy their own.

With other creative tools charged with certain energy you definitely don't want most people using them or touching them. With my tarot cards the only time someone being read touches them is when they draw their cards in a reading.

That was awfully presumptuous of her. Rude in fact. What was she thinking anyway coming into your home and rearranging things? I would never do that to my sister.

Yes. She is going through a personal crisis and has decided to deal with it by "fixing" my life. We had a long talk last night and she agreed that what she did was wrong.

I am happy to report that one of my paintings called "A new Story" which is our logo for our Tarot deck won a first place award at an Art Show in Lamar last week. The award came with one hundred dollars.

I spent the one hundred dollars on a piece of artwork. It is a sculpture of a spiral going up from a base with inlaid rocks and glass pieces. It represents the path upward and to me had a very spiritual meaning having to do with the ascension of human consciousness. The work of art was only $100.00.

I bought it to place it on my visualization alter.

Often people who are in the business of "fixing" others or "helping" others are people who need fixing and help themselves.

Maybe that is why I am helping my aging aunt and parents because I need to start doing my five rites and get myself into better physical shape. Its a good reminder for me where I do not want to end up.

JB

Congratualations!!! If you can post a pic of it. I'd love to see it.

exctly. I am locking up all my stuff until she gets through this.

It would be nice if this sight had a place for posting pictures other than our profiles. Here is a link to the picture on my Queen of Coins site:

http://www.queenofcoins.com/gallery2.html

Oh I know. I have seen your artwork. I meant a pic of the sculpture you bought. You artwork I have looked at many times. It's very good for meditating on. Very beautiful work.

I have not photographed the scupture yet. I want to get my alter all set up and then I will take a picture of it.

I think it would be fun if everyone would describe their alter or photograph it and post it for us to see.

What do you think?

JB

five rites?

I think that's a great idea. I'll take a pic of mine today and post it. After I get it back the way it belongs.

Here is a good website about the five rites.

http://www.lifeevents.org/5-tibetans-energy-rejuvenation-exercises.htm

They are great. You will feel younger after 10 weeks. They make me feel like I went from feeling 70 to 35 years old in ten weeks. I need to keep them up.

Thank you!

If you have Scotts book "Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practioner" there is an example of a ritual using the cauldron for a destructive spell on pages 23 and 24 of chapter 3.

Of course in this example you could use any firepoof container. This is an example of destroying a symbol of debt that was created during the ritual.

I have since read on the Internet about the use of the cauldron for destructive spells associated with disease, bad habits and negative thought energy.

I'm particularly interested in the destruction of disease via the cauldron. There are actually other non-caludron rituals that I prefer to use for destroying (or transforming) habits and thoughts.

For the most part, if I can choose between a destructive ritual versus a tranformation ritual I will choose the transformation ritual.

See this is a problem for a raw newbie like myself. Inexperience leaves me with limited choices. I may not need a destructive cauldron at all. In fact, Scott gives a ritual for the transfer of disease to the earth in one of his other books that I've read. That might sound a bit strange to some people. But the idea is that the earth will absorb the disease, dissipate it, and ultimately transform it into harmless energy.

However, for some reason, I feel like I'd just be tranferring my disease into the earth with that ritual. I perfer the thought of incinerating the disease energy in a cauldron.

I just feel more comfortable with that. I also envsion the Horned God consuming the disease with his fire.

In fact, I would like to have a fairly large outdoor caudron that I can fill with hot coals for destructive rituals. I might look to scrap yards to find something I can use as a destructive cauldren.

In the meantime there are other rituals I'm performing for the cleansing of disease.

Owl desribe one of them here. This was one that I started prior to my involvement with Wicca. This is based entirely on the "Law of Attraction" and pure visualization techniques.

I do this at night when I go to sleep.

As I lay in bed I envision a ring of spiritual fire encircling my body, kind of like a hulla hoop. I envision this ring of fire (it actually glows more like a hallo than something on fire), as it slowly passes over my body from head to toe and back up again.

As I lay in bed the ring passes over me as though I am jumping through it (or like a magician would pass a large ring over the body of a suspended woman to show that nothing is holding her up from above or below).

It doesn't matter that there is a bed beneath me because this spiritual ring can easily pass through any material objects.

As this ring passes over my body I feel it's energy cleaning my body, from head to toe and back up again several times. In fact, I often just do this until I fall asleep (kind of like counting sheep expect I don't bother counting). I just do it until I fall to sleep.

I does make me feel healither the next day. I think I sleep better too.

Another visualization I use in bed is to simply imagine that I'm like a star. I'm emanating energy outward in all directions. I visualize this in my mind. It's like pure white light radiating outward from my body into space in all direction, I completely ignore the physical world in this vision.

However, there's more to it than this. I want these vibrations that are emananting away from me to be as positive as possible and that come from feeling GOOD.

So I just laying there with this visual imagine of radiating like a star and simultaneously think the most wonderful thoughts I can imagine. And this includes anything that feels good. It might be thoughts of being a child, or making romantic love with a Greek Goddess. It doesn't matter. Nothing is taboo. If it feels good that's all that matters.

But it needs too feel truly "good" just just like physical ecstasy, but like spiritual ecstasy. Thoughts that feel good for the soul. I sometimes imagine pushing my mother in her wheelchair and picking flowers for he and she's very happy to receive them. Things like that. The most innocent child-like thoughts that make me feel like I truly am who I want to be.

The reason I do this is because I've heard that we are constantly putting out vibrations in the universe that constantly come back to us with like vibrations.

So if you just go to bed thinking about bad stuff or even just mundane stuff then this is what you are putting out into the universe.

So anyway, as you can see, I have already been involved with taking charge of spiritual vibrations before I became interested in Wicca. I like Wicca because it has the promise of helping me to ritualize these spiritually vibrational techniques.

And just like working out with weights to improve one's body, or exercising to improve one's metabolism, or studying to improve one's mind, learning how to attune oneself to spiritual energy also requires a routine and persistence.

Wicca provides a large range of rituals and techniques for creating, storing (or building up) spiritual energy. And it also promises to help the practicioner to conduct, transfer, and guide spiritual energy in large concentrated bursts for the purpose of achiving a particular goal (this is specific the act that most people think of when they refer to 'Magick'). The vision of a shaman pointing his finger and shooting out a lightening bolt of spiritual energy to transform a physical object in some "magickal" way.

I don't expect to get to the point where I can shoot lightening bolts from my fingertips, but I can really imagine a large concentration of spiritual energy flowing through me and out of the point of my atheme to direct spiritual energy into the spell I'm casting at the moment.

So, I have no problem with witchcraft at all.

I hestiate to call it Wicca until I do more research. I'm not certain that I want to support an organized 'religion' that was started in 1940, as it might have a tendency to become dogmatic.

I do view it as a 'religion' but I'm not convinced that it needs to be organized within society. It should remain a personal thing. Although I can see the potential power of a coven. A coven of witches who genuinely know how to weild spirital power could indeed be quite effective.

But then the question becomes, "What would be their common goal?"