How to Become a Witch (26 page)

Chapter 10

Worlds Beyond This One
Divination, Dreams, and More

S
oar upon the astral planes,

Touching magick, wielding power,

Visit woodland faery fanes,

I am a Witch at every hour.

We create our personal realities out of the infinite possibilities of the universe around us.

Consensual reality—what our society generally agrees is real—is a subset of All That Is. Our society says that toasters are real and trolls are not. We behave as if that is true; we put bread into shiny boxes, but we don’t hire guards to watch for trolls. For most of us, that is just—reality.

Our personal realities are also a subset of All That Is and are made of those beliefs, perceptions, and experiences that we allow into our consciousness. Every individual’s reality is unique. Maybe you believe in ghosts, but your neighbor doesn’t. He believes in the Christian hell, but you don’t. You both base your actions, your whole lives, on what you believe to be real. And from the infinite resources of the vast universe around us, you can each find some evidence to support your reality—or believe you can, which amounts to the same thing.

No one understands the totality, the mega-reality, except the Creator/Supreme Being/Great Spirit. We have models of reality, ways to organize our ideas about it. The Norse have Yggdrasil, the enormous ash tree with the halls of the gods high in its branches, our world of Midgard at its base, and great roots twining through the realms of the dead. The ancient Greeks had the Underworld, where Hades and Persephone reigned, and our world, and the gods’ home on Mount Olympus, and the Elysian Fields for the more fortunate souls. Jewish mysticism has the Kabbalah and the Tree of Life, with the ten sephiroth, or spheres, representing the different levels of reality, the emanations of the Divine.

Many philosophies have the idea of planes of existence, which range from the Underworld, through the dense, material, embodied physical plane, up through finer states of energy and consciousness, all the way to God. All these subtle worlds interpenetrate the physical universe; they exist here but are so ethereal that they cannot usually be seen or felt by us dense, gross critters. The Rosicrucians have seven Cosmic Planes, from the World of God down to the Physical World. Sufis, Buddhists, Muslims—everyone has a model or cosmology.

Modern secular civilization generally ignores such esoteric stuff and focuses on the physical universe: we have the earth, our solar system, the Milky Way, and a hundred million galaxies beyond that.

The Witches’ Universe

Witches don’t argue with the scientific view of the cosmos, we just think it’s a bit limited. Witches believe that there are more realities—“planes of existence”—than most muggles understand or experience. Science has not discovered most of these realms, mostly because they aren’t looking for them (consensual reality: they aren’t there, why look?). Here’s one Wiccan model:

• The physical universe, as described above.
  
• The Summerland, where human souls go between lives to rest, reflect, and prepare for the next incarnation.
  
• The shamanic Lower World, a “spirit world” where we can meet animal spirits and other discarnate beings, and do inner work and healing.
  
• The Astral Plane, a “higher” realm where thought is reality and even more discarnate species live. We create stuff by putting a thought or concept on the astral, then pouring energy into it until it becomes denser and manifests in the physical universe. We can, however, create special places there and leave them on that plane.
  
• The realms of the gods, the divine creative energy.
  

Many Witches have a slightly different model or work with additional planes of existence, and that’s fine. There’s room for everybody. Use the model that works for you.

The Witches’ cosmology is not just an airy-fairy idea. Witches can not only perceive the planes, but go there. Astral travel gets us to the more subtle planes, shamanic journeys let us travel to the Lower World, and aspecting the gods gives us a glimpse of the divine plane. All these are advanced skills that should be learned face to face from someone with experience; we’re not going to explain in detail here. But someday you too can travel to those other mysterious realms—and when you do, you will meet the inhabitants.

The Other Inhabitants

Who dwells in these realms beyond our everyday world? Let’s begin with our ancestors, the mighty dead. Many cultures, including Wicca, believe that our ancestors and deceased kin can watch, protect, and guide us from the afterlife. Each year at Samhain, we contact those who have passed on in the past twelve months, as well as those who have been “gone” longer but are still beloved. Some Witches set up shrines to their departed, either just at Samhain or for year-round remembrance.

And yes, we do believe in ghosts. Besides those special to us, many other discarnate human spirits appear in our world. Some so-called ghosts are mere revenants, images or memories impressed into a place by extreme emotional energy; for example, at the moment of death. These have no consciousness; they are psychic recordings. Real ghosts are conscious entities who either choose to stay on this plane for reasons of their own, are trapped here, or are simply lost and confused, sometimes unaware that they are dead.

The elemental spirits are the essences of the great building blocks of the universe: earth, air, fire, and water. In Pagan lore, they are traditionally visualized as gnomes, sylphs, salamanders, and undines. However, sometimes they are represented as animals (in one tradition, as Black Bear, Golden Eagle, Red Lion, and Silver Dolphin). Among ceremonial magicians, they appear as archangels: Uriel, Raphael, Michael, and Gabriel. The elemental spirits are always invited to be present and lend their power at magickal circles.

The faery folk, also called Good Neighbors, the Sidhe, the Fair Folk, elves, etc., are controversial. Some say they are folk memories of the aboriginal inhabitants of the old countries in Britain and Europe. Others believe they are a race of highly evolved beings who exist on another plane but sometimes materialize and interact with humans. For some, they are more like the quaint, cute “flower fairies” that were popular in Victorian England. Ask one.

The faery folk

Faeries were not always portrayed like Peter Pan’s Tinkerbell, as tiny flying sprites dressed in flower petals. Some say that the real faery folk, or fair folk, were the aboriginal inhabitants of the British Isles. They were smaller than the later invading Celts and Anglo-Saxons. Some lived in turf-covered dugouts, later called “hollow hills,” or the underground Faery realm. They had Stone Age technology but were skilled at woodcraft and plant lore. Scots lore says that they sometimes intermarried with the newer immigrants, so many people living today do have faery blood.

Plant devas are the species spirits, or oversouls, of each type of plant. With courtesy and sensitivity, we can communicate and receive guidance for tending our gardens and crops.

Animal spirits, likewise, are the species overspirits of each kind of animal. We call them, for example, Wolf or Wolf Spirit, as distinct from the soul of an individual wolf. They are highly intelligent and epitomize the chief strengths or virtues of each species, such as memory and wisdom for elephants or healing and playfulness for dolphins. Sometimes they are willing to guide and protect us, or grant insights into a situation. Many Witches work with one or more as allies, guides, or power animals.

We discuss the gods and goddesses in more detail in chapters 1 and 12, but suffice it to say they have their own realm and influence all the planes below them. We often envision their homes as great halls, palaces, or temples—the closest analogy that human minds are comfortable with.

Other entities who fit into none of these categories dwell beyond our world. They have their own lives and needs and desires; some are intelligent, some are not. Some are benevolent toward humankind, many are indifferent, a few seem malevolent. Christians call them angels and demons, but that is a huge simplification. They
could
also be the reality behind alien visits, some “ghost” sightings, and encounters with legendary creatures like yetis, mermaids, and monsters.

The universe is more full of life than we can dream. But much of it is invisible and exists in other planes of reality that barely intersect with ours—or on micro- and macro-levels of reality that we cannot yet perceive. But some of these are realms that Witches know of and, with courage, can even visit.

Astrology

Not all Witches are astrologers, but most understand the basics. Astrology may not be what you think; the daily horoscopes in the newspapers and on the Internet are mostly entertainment, too brief and facile to reflect the true depth and complexity of this art.

Fortunately, there are many books and tools on the subject, so you can use it as a divinatory tool without spending a lifetime learning far beyond the basics. To begin, get your natal horoscope (birth chart) done by a good astrologer, and ask her or him to explain it to you in some detail. Many services online will also provide your chart when you give them your date, time, and place of birth.

With that foundation, you can check tools like
Llewellyn’s Astrological Calendar
,
Pocket Planner
, or
Moon Sign Book
.
The Witches’ Calendar
,
Witches’ Companion
, and
Witches’ Datebook
also contain lots of good astrological information for each day. Check one each morning to know the basic energies you will encounter during the day ahead. This enables you to work with or around those energies, unlike people who are totally unaware of them and often work against the current.

For example, what if your astrological calendar says that Mercury is retrograde (said when Mercury appears to be moving in the opposite direction from its usual one)? Traditionally, this means it’s a difficult time for travel, communication, and commerce, which Mercury rules. If you have something important to communicate, during Mercury retrograde, it might not as clarity as if it weren’t be off the octopus. Right. In other words, be extremely careful how you communicate, or just wait until Mercury goes direct again.

Another example is a moon void-of-course, as discussed in chapter 2; you can save yourself a lot of trouble if you don’t start anything major during those periods of time.

Those are only two examples out of thousands of possible celestial events that mysteriously seem to affect or reflect human events. You can study astrology for a lifetime and still discover new aspects of this ancient art and science, or you can learn the basics and check them each day as part of your practice.

Divination

Along with magick, ritual, and healing, one of the major skills of a Witch is divination. Divination is a method of gaining information and understanding that is not normally available at the conscious level of the mind. Witches practice many, many forms of this art; we’ll discuss some of them shortly.

As with healing or any other art, some Witches are naturally gifted in this area, and others have to work harder. But any Witch can find some divinatory method for which they have a talent.

Just as magick is divided into theurgy and thaumaturgy (high and low magick; spiritual and practical), so divination can be used to learn information about the external world, or to give you understanding and clarity about your inside world.