This is a book of handouts about the Feri Tradition.  It's in its third revision.  I read most of the second revision back a while and it was improved and contains a lot more information.  It had some parts that I couldn't relate to, especially the parts about Hestia, but over all, it's a useful book for anyone interested in Feri.

http://www.lulu.com/content/hardcover-book/the-dustbunnies-big-damn-handout-book/3023755

FFF
~Muninn's Kiss

I just finished reading Etheric Anatomy: the Three Selves and Astral Travel by Victor and Cora Anderson.  Victor and Cora were the founders of Feri Witchcraft.  It's a very good book, if a little strange.  I'm glad I read it.

The first section is Victor's description of the three souls.  The second section is Cora's description of the three souls, the Ha Prayer and Kala, and of out-of-body experiences.  The final section is Victor's description of Astral sex.  That is the strange part.

The book gives the most detailed description of the three souls that I've ever read, whether in Feri or in Kabbalah.  It's a great description and one everyone should read.

FFF
~Muninn's Kiss

Dark Heathenry - Book:

Svartesol just came out with a new book entitled American Wights for those who are interested. I haven't read it yet but my copy is on the way, and I think it would be nice to have something like this around when so many of us are struggling with the issue of how to honor the wights over in the Americas when most of us go by European style traditions.

Check it out!

Edit: I forgot to copy the link:

http://www.lulu.com/content/5981234

Hypomnema - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Hypomnema (Greek. υπομνημα, plural υπομνηματα, hypomnemata), also spelled hupomnema, is a Greek word with several translations into English: a reminder, a note, a public record, a commentary, a draft, a copy, and other variations on those terms.

Michael Foucault uses the word in the sense of "note", but his translators use the word "notebook", which is anachronistic (see codex and wax tablet). Concerning Seneca's discipline of self-knowledge, Foucault writes: "In this period there was a culture of what could be called personal writing: taking notes on the reading, conversations, and reflections that one hears or engages in oneself; keeping kinds of notebooks on important subjects (what the Greeks call 'hupomenmata'), which must be reread from time to time so as to reactualize their contents."[2] In an excerpt from an Interview with Michel Foucault in The Foucault Reader, he says: "As personal as they were, the hypomnemata must nevertheless not be taken for intimate diaries or for those accounts of spiritual experience (temptations, struggles, falls, and victories) which can be found in later Christian literature. [...] [T]heir objective is not to bring the arcana conscientiae to light, the confession of which—be it oral or written—has a purifying value."

Plato's theory of anamnesis recognized the new status of writing as a device of artificial memory, and he developed the hypomnesic principles for his students to follow in the Academy. The hypomnemata constituted a material memory of things read, heard, or thought, thus offering these as an accumulated treasure for rereading and later meditation. They also formed a raw material for the writing of more systematic treatises in which were given arguments and means by which to struggle against some defect (such as anger, envy, gossip, flattery) or to overcome some difficult circumstance (a mourning, an exile, downfall, disgrace).

I think this is what this journal of mine is...

Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle (Page 4):

The equivalent of external noise is the inner noise of thinking.   The equivalent of external silence is inner stillness.

Whenever there is some silence around you -- listen to it.  That means just notice it.  Pay attention to it.  Listening to silence awakens the dimension of stillness within yourself, because it is only through stillness that you can be aware of silence.

See that in the moment of noticing the silence around you, you are not thinking.  You are aware, but not thinking.

When I started looking as Shiflut and Kavanah, Hacah and Damam, I thought of Kavanah and Damam as external, leading to external actions, and Shiflut and Hacah as internal, leading to internal words.  When I first read this entry, I wasn't sure what to think.  Digging deeper, I realized I had it backwards.  Lowliness and Silence, along with words, are external, because they relate to things external.  Intention and Stillness, along with actions, are internal, because they relate to things internal.

Awareness is Kavanah.  Awareness of Silence, Kavanah of Hacah, brings us to Damam.  Kavanah of Hacah is not Damam, but it leads us to Damam.

Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle (Page 6):

Silence is helpful, but you don't need it in order to find stillness.  Even when there is noise, you can be aware of the stillness underneath the noise, of the space in which the noise arises.  That is the inner space of pure awareness, consciousness itself.

You can be aware of awareness as the background to all your sense perceptions, all your thinking.  Becoming aware of awareness is the arising of inner stillness.

Awareness of Awareness is Kavanah of Kavanah.  Kavanah of Kavanah is Stillness, Damam.  As we become Intentional, we become aware that we are Intentional.  This brings us to Damam, Stillness.

Kavanah of Shiflut, Awareness of Lowliness, is Hacah, Silence, for when we are Aware of and Intentional in remembering we are Lowly, we know our own words will never be enough, so we step into Hacah, and are Silent, waiting for words that are not our own.  This is the essence of Prophecy.

~Muninn's Kiss

Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle (Page 3):

When you lose touch with inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself.  When you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world.

Your innermost sense of self, of who you are, is inseparable from stillness. This is the I Am that is deeper than name and form.

I got a new book!

This expresses Damam well.  Stillness starts at the centre of you, and works its way outward.

~Muninn's Kiss

I Asked for Wonder, A Spiritual Anthology from Abraham Joshua Heschel's writings (Page 96):

Defiance of Despair

A religious man
is a person who hold God and man
in one thought at one time,
at all times,
who suffers in himself harms done to others,
whose greatest passion is compassion,
whose greatest strength is love
and defiance of despair.

Second Letter:

Some groups seek fulfillment in mystic experience - this is correct if one does not forget the duty of 'involvement' - the prime duty of the wise. It is not enough to see The Lady, it is better to serve Her and Her will by being involved in humanity, and the process of Fate (The single name of all God's is 'Fate'). In fate, and the overcoming of fate is the true Graal, for from this inspiration comes, and death is defeated. There is no fate so terrible that it cannot be overcome - whether by a literal victory gained by action and in time, or the deeper victory of spirit in the lonely battle of the self, Fate is the trial, the Castle Perilous in which we all meet to win or to die - Therefore, the People are concerned with Fate --for humanity is greater than the Gods', although not as great as the Goddess. When Man triumphs, fate stops and the Gods are defeated - so you understand the meaning of magic now. Magic and religion are aids to overcome Fate, and Fate is a cradle that rocks the infant spirit.

What good is a religious experience if you aren't changed by it.  What good is a religious experience if you don't take action.  Both Heschel's and Cochrane's writings confirm the need to do something with the experience, to change the world.

The biggest obstacles to action are pride and apathy.  Pride makes us think we're too good to do something.  Either it's beneath our dignity, or we think we're better than the people we could serve, so we ignore the calling.  Or we have apathy, and have stopped caring about the plights of others, or don't think it's worth it.  We justify our lack of actions by saying it won't make a difference.  But Heschel was out marching with Martin Luther King, Jr. and knocking on the doors of congress.  Neither pride nor apathy stopped him.  Why?  Because of Shiflut and Kavanah.  Shiflut is the opposite of Pride, and hence its cure.  Kavanah is the opposite of apathy, and its cure.

If we embrace Shiflut and Kavanah, there's nothing to keep us from action, nothing to keep us from involvement.  We can go out and make a difference.  Despair is the opposite of Hope, which is also Kavanah.  With Kavanah, Hope chases Despair away.  Let us chase despair away from those around us.

~Muninn's Kiss

I Asked for Wonder, A Spiritual Anthology from Abraham Joshua Heschel's writings (Page 94):

The Pious Man

Whatever the pious man does is linked to the divine; each smallest trifle is tangential to His course. In breathing he uses His force; in thinking he wields His power. He moves always always under the unseen weight of the name of God rests steadily on his mind. The word of God is as vital to him as air or food. He is never alone, never companionless, for God is within reach of his heart. . . . The pious man needs no miraculous communication to make him aware of God's presence; nor is a crisis necessary to awaken him to the meaning and appeal of that presence. His awareness may be overlaid momentarily or concealed by some violent shift in consciousness, but it never fades away. It is this awareness of ever living under the watchful eye of God that leads the pious man to see hints of God in the varied things he encounters in his daily walk; so that many a simple event can be accepted by him both for what it is and also as a gentle hint or kindly reminder of things divine. In this mindfulness he eats and drinks, works and plays, talks and thinks; for piety is a life compatible with God's presence.

This mindfulness is Kavanah.

~Muninn's Kiss

I Asked for Wonder, A Spiritual Anthology from Abraham Joshua Heschel's writings (Page 61):

Something Asked

The beginning of faith is not a feeling for the mystery of living or a sense of awe, wonder, and amazement. The root of religion is the question what to do with the feeling for the mystery of living, what to do with awe, wonder, and amazement.

Religion begins with a consciousness that something is asked of us.

It is, in that tense, eternal asking in which the soul is caught and in which man's answer is elicited.

Isaiah 6 / Hebrew - English Bible / Mechon-Mamre:

.ח וָאֶשְׁמַע אֶת-קוֹל אֲדֹנָי, אֹמֵר, אֶת-מִי אֶשְׁלַח, וּמִי יֵלֶךְ-לָנוּ; וָאֹמַר, הִנְנִ שְׁלָחֵנִי

8. And I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then I said: 'Here am I; send me.'

The irony of the first quote above it that many people avoid the word "religion" because of the connotation of religion being the ritual without anything else. People think of religious people as those who talk the talk, but don't walk the walk, those who are hypocritical. People see religion as a synonym for not having the awe, wonder, or amazement, and not doing anything in response to any they do have. Heschel, on the other hand, sees religion as the response. Isaiah has a vision, sees G-d, realizes how far he truly is from the Divine, being unclean in the presence of Holiness. He is cleansed, and his response to this experience is to volunteer to go. He needed the experience first, but he wasn't content to do nothing. Like Heschel, his response to the mystery, the awe, the wonder, the amazement, is to do something. Are we content to experience the Mystery, or will we respond to it and do something to change our world? Will we step out of Fate and Mazal, and embrace Destiny and Change?

~Muninn's Kiss

He simply did what had to be done ... It would be easy, he told himself, to throw everything overboard and disclaim any responsibility.  All he had to do was saddle up and ride out of the country.  It sounded easy, but it was not that easy, even if a man could leave behind his sense of guilt at having deserted a cause.  To be a man was to be responsible.  It was as simple as that.  To be a man was to build something, to try to make the world about him a bit easier to live in for himself and those who followed.  You could sneer at that, you could scoff, you could refuse to acknowledge it, but when it came down to it, he decided it was the man who planted a tree, dug a well, or graded a road who mattered.

~ Louis L'Amour, Conagher

Sixth Letter (witch 'Law'):

Do not do what you desire - do what is necessary.

Jeremiah 1 / Hebrew - English Bible / Mechon-Mamre:

ה בְּטֶרֶם אצורך (אֶצָּרְךָ) בַבֶּטֶן יְדַעְתִּיךָ, וּבְטֶרֶם תֵּצֵא מֵרֶחֶם הִקְדַּשְׁתִּיךָ: נָבִיא לַגּוֹיִם, נְתַתִּיךָ.
ו וָאֹמַר, אֲהָהּ אֲדֹנָי יְהוִה, הִנֵּה לֹא-יָדַעְתִּי, דַּבֵּר: כִּי-נַעַר, אָנֹכִי.    ס
ז וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה אֵלַי, אַל-תֹּאמַר נַעַר אָנֹכִי: כִּי עַל-כָּל-אֲשֶׁר אֶשְׁלָחֲךָ, תֵּלֵךְ, וְאֵת כָּל-אֲשֶׁר אֲצַוְּךָ, תְּדַבֵּר.
ח אַל-תִּירָא, מִפְּנֵיהֶם: כִּי-אִתְּךָ אֲנִי לְהַצִּלֶךָ, נְאֻם-יְהוָה.
ט וַיִּשְׁלַח יְהוָה אֶת-יָדוֹ, וַיַּגַּע עַל-פִּי; וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה אֵלַי, הִנֵּה נָתַתִּי דְבָרַי בְּפִיךָ.
י רְאֵה הִפְקַדְתִּיךָ הַיּוֹם הַזֶּה, עַל-הַגּוֹיִם וְעַל-הַמַּמְלָכוֹת, לִנְתוֹשׁ וְלִנְתוֹץ, וּלְהַאֲבִיד וְלַהֲרוֹס--לִבְנוֹת, וְלִנְטוֹעַ.    פ

5. Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee, and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee; I have appointed thee a prophet unto the nations.
6. Then said I: 'Ah, Lord GOD! behold, I cannot speak; for I am a child.'
7. But the LORD said unto me: say not: I am a child; for to whomsoever I shall send thee thou shalt go, and whatsoever I shall command thee thou shalt speak.
8. Be not afraid of them; for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the LORD.
9. Then the LORD put forth His hand, and touched my mouth; and the LORD said unto me: Behold, I have put My words in thy mouth;
10. See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out and to pull down, and to destroy and to overthrow; to build, and to plant.

Sometimes what we want to do and what needs to be done aren't the same thing.  Are we willing to sacrifice our wants to do what needs to be done?  Are we willing to sacrifice our wants to move from Fate to Destiny?

~Muninn's Kiss

It's a bit based the summer solstice now, but I wanted to write concerning it.  I bought a book back a bit called The Jewish Book of Days, by Rabbi Jill Hammer.  In the entry for Tammuz 10 (which modern calendars place on July 13th this year, but appears to once have been placed at the solstice), contains the following:

No Shadows

In Genesis Rabbah, the summer solstice is the moment when the sun stands still, shining equally on everything, so that nothing has a shadow. Everything is clear in the light of the sun. The sun warms all things, yet also takes the shadows where we hide. It is as if the eye of heaven peered at us without blinking.

In Sefer Yetzirah (5:8), Tammuz is the month of sight, the month when vision is greatest. Tammuz teaches us to look at ourselves without distortion, arrogance, or self-hatred. Leaving behind our shadows means leaving behind our attempts to be someone we are not. Only then can we blossom. The light of summer draws us out of our hiding places and into a clearer vision of ourselves.

The summer solstice illustrates an important concept:  standing still.  We are constantly in movement, always going here, or coming from there.  When do we stand still?  In that one moment when the sun stops, we can see what happens if we stand still.  That is an eternal moment, a moment of balance.  In that moment, there is no past and no future, only the present, only the Now.  It is in the Now that we come to know G-d, because only when we stand still, only when we stop worrying about the past and future, and stop chasing them, can we see the Divine clearly without distortion.  All other times, we see the Divine through our own shadows, but in that moment, G-d looks down and we look up and there are no shadows.

Those are the moments of perfect peace and perfect Beauty.  This is Tipherah, in perfect balance.  This is Silence in Kether aligning with Stillness in Malkuth, balanced in Tipherah.  Be still.

~Muninn's Kiss

I Asked for Wonder, A Spiritual Anthology from Abraham Joshua Heschel's writings (Page 21):

The Horizon of Knowledge

We are rarely aware of the tangent of the beyond at the whirling wheel of experience.  In our passion for knowledge, our minds prey upon the wealth of an unresisting world and, seizing our limited spoils, we quickly leave the ground to lose ourselves in the whirlwind of our own knowledge.

The horizon of knowledge is lost in the mist produced by fads and phrases.  We refuse to take notice of what is beyond our sight, content with converting realities into opinions, mysteries into dogmas, and ideas into a multitude of words.  What is extraordinary appears to us as habit, the dawn a daily routine of nature.

But time and again we awake.  In the midst of walking in the never-ending procession of days and nights, we are suddenly filled with a solemn terror, with a feeling of our wisdom being inferior to dust.  We cannot endure the heartbreaking splendor of sunsets.  Of what avail, then, are opinions, words, dogmas?

In the confinement of our study rooms our knowledge seems to us a pillar of light.  But when we stand at the door which opens out to the infinite, we realize that all concepts are but glittering motes that populate a sunbeam.

This weekend, I bought a book called "The Jewish Book of Days" by Jill Hammer.  It sets up a wheel of the year based on how she sees the Jewish year and uses the metaphor of a growing tree, giving evidence and explanations on why, and provides a Midrash for each day.  I think I like it.

~Muninn's Kiss

Flags, Flax, and Fodder:

The White Goddess by Robert Graves
The Golden Bough by Sir James George Frazier
The Witch Cult in Western Europe by Margaret Murray
The Magic Arts in Celtic Britain by Lewis Spence+
Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling by Charles Godfrey Leland
Etruscan Magic and Occult Remedies by Charles Godfrey Leland
Amulets and Talismans by Wallis Budge
A Treasurey of Witchcraft by Harry E Wedeck
The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses
The Eight Ninth and Tenth Books of Moses
Albertus Magnus' Egyptian Secrets
Legends of Incense, Herbs & Oil Magic by Lewis de Claremont
The 7 Keys to Power by Lewis de Claremont
7 Steps to Power by Lewis de Claremont
The Magic of Herbs by Henri Gamache
The Master Book of Candle Burning by Henri Gamache
Pow-Wows or The Long Lost Friend by John George Hohman

Saturday was Summer Solstice (Litha).  We were down in Colorado Springs and went up to the cliff dwellings above there.  In them, is the kiva, where the men worshipped.  It is a round room which had benches around a central pit, where a fire was built.  There were cubbies around the edge where religious items were probably kept.  In the bottom was a hole that represented the connection with the other world, where the ancestors came from and where people return when they die.

I stood in the kiva for a few minutes, closed my eyes, and "felt" the spiritual around me.  In Robert Cochrane's letters, he talked about ancient crossroads and religious sites being places where the wall between worlds (the Firmament or Veil) was thinnest.  I've read this other places as well.  Sure enough, it felt thinner there than normal.  I didn't have much time, so that was as far as I got, but it was neat.

We also stopped at a place called Celebration! which is a pagan/new age store in Old Colorado City.  I bought a raven pendant there, because I have an affinity with ravens.  I'll probably do some raven-related posts here soon.

Also, at another book store in Colorado Springs, I bought the book the White Goddess by Robert Graves.  Joe Wilson and Robert Cochrane mentioned it often, and both recommended reading it.  I'm in Chapter 9 already, and really enjoying it, both from a historical view and from the insights it gives.  I'll need to reread parts of Cochrane's letters that reference it or relate to things in it, and see what more I understand based on it.

~Muninn's Kiss