Day 5: Natural Sacred Energies

Practice: Experiencing Life’s Energy

You can try this exercise from where you are sitting right now. Close your eyes and take several deep, slow breaths. With each exhaled breath, feel your body relax and release all of the tensions that it might store. Become internally quiet; try not to allow thinking to interfere with simple breathing and sensation.

If thoughts come up, simply observe them with detached curiosity. Perhaps you might notice how thoughts are creating muscle tensions or contractions in your body. Notice, too, how these tensions transform themselves into your emotions. Try not to get involved in the story line of your thoughts and subsequent tension—that is a trap that can keep you from the experience of this exercise.

Day 4: Questioning Your Path

Be honest with yourself now. Explore the following questions listed below and commit your feelings to paper. You might facilitate your writing process by first discussing your responses to these questions with a friend.

Why am I exploring the Wiccan path?

What were my previous spiritual practices?

Did any of these past practices lead me to investigate Wicca? How?

What are my hopes in engaging in this path?

What are my fears in engaging in this path?

How will I handle friends and family members who might not approve of my spiritual search?

Aside from transitioning to a new spiritual path, are there other major events that impact my life at this time (for example, deaths, births, divorce, job loss, etc.)?

If I have major life events happening right now, is this the best time to explore a new spiritual path? Why/why not?

After you have completed your responses on paper, spend time in quiet contemplation of them.

Day 3: Melting Beliefs: Part 3

Light the candle. As it burns, vow to remain aware of your feelings during your learning process over the course of this year and a day. As the candle melts your emotionally charged word away, changing its form into something else, imagine that your concepts formed from the past also melt and transform. When the candle finishes burning, take the wax and bury it someplace far from your home.

Note:  A taper candle is a slender (usually slightly conical) candle, sometimes referred to as a dinner candle. I recommend 5- to 6-inch taper candles simple because you can find them almost anywhere, and they don’t take nearly as long to burn as the average 10-inch taper.

Now think over, discuss, and journal about these questions:

• What was it like to take part in this small ritual?
• What emotions did the ritual bring up in me?
• Did I “let go” of anything with this ritual?

Day 3: Melting Beliefs: Part 2

Continued:
To Do Today:
Your answers from yesterday’s questions

A 5-6 inch white taper candle

A candle holder

Take out the paper on which your thoughts are written. If you haven’t taken the time yet to consider your reactions to these words, look at your answers now, and pay special attention to words that are laden with emotions such as fear, anger, anxiety, hope, hopelessness, sadness, etc. Perhaps you’ve also expressed some positive associations with these words, but if you are like most readers, a common emotional reaction to these words is fear and the entire spectrum of related emotions: anger, anxiety, and sadness.

Take time to review your answers to the questions and try to identity a common emotional theme or “tone” that may thread through your written reactions. Certainly you might encounter fear as a common theme, but what about curiosity, wonder, mistrust? The deeper you plunge into your thematic explorations, the more you may uncover. Once you have identified a common theme, write the theme in a single word. Take out your white taper candle and, using a pin, etch this single word lengthwise into the candle’s shaft.

In this next part of the exercise, you will explore the origins of your feelings and themes. Form where do they arise? Are these feelings based in fact? Are the “inherited” beliefs?

Find a comfortable sitting position and close your eyes. Take a few breaths and allow the dominant feelings, the main theme of your emotional reactions, to emerge in your awareness right now. Whatever the emotional state you’ve noted, try to feel it fully within your body. Allow this feeling to transport you back in time to a scene from your life that can explain your feelings. The scene can be just about anything: a frightening bedtime story about Witches, a film, an illustration. Do not deny whatever scene emerges. Once you have an image that makes some sense, open your eyes.

Day Three: Melting Beliefs: Part 1

Magical Items to Gather for Day 3:

• A 5-6 inch white taper candle
• A candle holder

Day 2: Those Upsetting Words

As a practice today, take a look at the list of words that follows:

• Wicca
• Ritual
• Pagan
• Witchcraft
• Magic
• Spell
• Power
• Occult
• Earth-Religion

Regarding each of these words, explore the following questions:

• What is my comfort level in using each word?
• How do I understand each word?
• How do I imagine that each word impacts other people who are not involved with Wicca?

Day One: Earth-Center of Spirituality

Pulled Information Below: from Wicca: A Year & a Day: 366 Days of Spiritual Practice in the Craft of the Wise by Timothy Roderick. Copyrighted

Are you troubled about traipsing through the chill of the night? Do you get singed in the sun or think an icy downpour is a downer?

Wicca is a spiritual tradition that includes many practicies that bring the practitioner into direct contact with nature. It seeks to harmonize the Witch with Life as it is happening in this very moment. To be a person of magical power, one embraces the entire array of life's experiences. When Withces routninely make space in their life for nature, for life, in the right-here-and-now, it graduatally strips away accumulated layers of social, emotional, and psychological conditioning. it fees up the mind, the heart, and spirit. It places the practitioner into direct accord with life, nature, and the direct current of spiritual power.

Can you face each moment unflinchingly--despite rain, sleet, or hail?

Not everyone can go outside no matter the weather conditions. There are always exceptions and accommodations to be made. If you health will be jeopardized by venturing out of the doors into inclement weather, by all means try the following alertnative exercise: Fill a tray or empty pot with potting soil and rub your hand through it. Bring a handful to your nose and inhale the earth's rich perfume.

Exercise of the day: Connecting to Earth
Sit somehwere in a natural setting: on a beach, in a forest, a field, or even in your own backyard. Breathe deeply and close your eyes.