Flowing into the streams, rivers and oceans.

Avalonia recently published Kim Huggens’ anthology From a Drop of Water which contains 17 essays by a wonderful combination of modern esoteric writiers, pagan scholars and magical practitioners.  All the essays, though written from diverse backgrounds and perspectives, touch on the concept of “water” in religious, magical, spiritual and religious symbolism.  The contributors explore some of the rich mythologies, folklore, legends and uses attributed to this important element of human life (and indeed all life!) here on Earth.

My own contribution to From a Drop of Water, my essay “To Dare” looks at the Element of Water in the Western Esoteric Traditions.  In my essay I explore some of the early origins of the concept of the “Four Elements” which first emerged in the writings of the ancient Greek philosopher Empedocles in his work Tetrasomia (The Doctrine of the Four Elements).   Empedocles’ work was to filter through many people and magical systems, eventually giving us the system of attributions we have today.  David and I previously researched the origins of the Doctrine of the Four Elements, for our books Practical Elemental Magick and Wicca Magickal Beginnings.   In the latter we explored in great detail the practice of the invocation of the Guardians of the Four Elements, or Four Directions – sometimes referred to as “Watchtowers” as found in modern initiatory traditions of Wicca, as well as the many Neo-Pagan traditions who derived their practices from Wicca, showing clearly that the origins of this practice can be traced back many hundreds of years prior to Gerald Gardner, going back to Ancient Egypt, Greece and so much more.  For those lovers of sigils and symbols, I included a huge collection of symbols used for the element of water, in a wide range of traditions in history, in From a Drop of Water which should be very useful for making talismans and amulets!

Of course my own is only one of many contributions in this unique anthology, here is a full list of the contributions and contributors:

Foreword By Kim Huggens
Anahita (Lady Of Persia) By Payam Nabarz
Dancing With Water By Nina Falaise
The Mirror Of The Soul (Assessing The Function Of Watery Rituals And Folk Beliefs) By Yvonne Aburrow
Married To The Sea (Eroticism In Ocean Lore) By Chrissy Derbyshire
The Admiral, The Siren And Whale (Water Spirits In The Vodou Tradition) By Kim Huggens
To Dare (The Element Of Water In The Western Esoteric Traditions) By Sorita D’este
The Well Spring Of Wisdom (Sacred Wells In Faith Through The Ages) By Katherine Sutherland
A Flow Of Water Through The Grimoire World
Exploring Holy Water, (Cleansing Baths As Well As Magical Operations Like The Water Of Life And Turning Water In To Blood) By Maestro Nestor
Nimue (The Archetypal Priestess) By Emily Carding
Quenching The Thirst, Drinking The Spirit (Water And Water Guardians In English Root Magick) By John Canard
The Queen Of The Oceans (The Afro-Brazilian Goddess Yemanyá And Sea Magic) By Andrea Salgado Reyes
Mayans, Maize And Much-Needed Rain By Rachel Donaldson
A Feast For Water (Baptism In The Thelemic Tradition) By Rodney Orpheus & Cathryn Orchard
Strung Like Pearls (Dion Fortune’s Sea Priestess And Its Relationship To The Elemental Contacts Of Water) By Diane M. Champigny
Rituals Of Water By Magin
Water: A Key To Healing By Harry Barron
The Moon (The Door Of Dreams, And The Tides Within) By Melissa Harrington

The cover artwork is by the artist, and fellow contributor, Nina Falaise.

Monday’s Musings on Reincarnation

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature’s priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

[William Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood]

Reincarnation is often thought of as being something which is exclusive to Eastern religious thoughts, having been imported from there into fuzzy New Age thinking, however we don’t have to search far in order to see that it can be found in spiritual philosophies from around the world and from all the many ages of mankind.  We find references to reincarnation in the writings of intelligent men and women, whose work often influenced generations of people, some of whom may not even have been aware of their writings at all.  In fact when you start looking carefully there is a surprising number of distinguished thinkers of probably every period of history who promoted, or at the very least gave credence to the possibility of reincarnation.  Of course just because these people thought reincarnation existed, doesn’t make it a fact, but it does give food for thought when you consider that even nations who were seperated by distance and the great oceans share this idea.  It certainly supports the idea that there is more to it than wishful New Age thinking.  Reincarnation, which admittedly has been hijacked (like so many other things!) by wishy washy new age fluffiness, is most certainly not a new age idea at all.

“As to ourselves, our soul, partaking of the divine nature, remains immortal and eternal in the precincts which are the limit of our world.  Attached to a mortal envelop, it is sent by the gods now into one body, now into another, in view of the universal harmony, in order that the union of the moral and immortal elements in human nature may contribute to the unity of the Whole”

[Gemistus Pletho, 1355-1450]

Reincarnation is also strongly present in the philosophies of Qabalah, where it is better known as the transmigration of souls “gilgul” which means ‘revolving’ or ‘swirling’.  This idea was first published in the Bahir  in the late 13th century.  It teaches that on death the parts of the soul all go to their appointed places, and is a subject David and I explore the concept within the context of qabalah in Appendix 2 of our Practical Qabalah Magick (Avalonia 2009), as well as in our forthcoming book Coming out of Exile (Llewellyn 2010/11).  There are so many variants of this belief, often dependent on the conduct of the soul during life – with the soul which have fulfilled its spiritual destiny no longer requiring reincarnating.  It is said that such a soul, will be stored in the holiness of God until the end of time, when according to qabalistic ideologies, it will be rejoined with its body.  It is said that when this happens God will cause dew, the divine light, to exude from his head that will flow through the Sephiroth on the Tree of Life until it reaches Earth.  This is the very dew which would have caused Adam and Eve to become immortal.

 So, what if anything, can be given as “proof” of reincarnation?  Does it matter?

The Dutch philosopher, Spinoza (1632-1677) wrote that: “It is impossible for us to remember that we had existence prior to the body, since the body can have no vestige of it, and eternity cannot be defined in terms of time or have any relation to time.  but, nevertheless, we have in our experience a perception that we are eternal…”  [Ethics, Book V]

So what is up with all the wonderful accounts of “previous lives” which we hear about?  If you have friends in the magical, new age or pagan communities you will undoubtably have encountered someone who claims to be the current incarnation of “Cleopatra” or “a Priestess of Ancient Atlantis” or an “Ancient Egyptian Priest” or … well any other famous, mystically endowed or spiritually superior person.  In more recent years, it has also become exceedingly trendy to claim to be the reincarnation of a “peasant” or some such, as a balanced response to the tiresome glances and raised eyebrows at “yet another Cleopatra!” …

In the Bhagavad-Gita, a well known text from Hinduism, Krisha speaks saying: “I myself never was not, nor thou, nor all the princes of the earth; nor shall we ever hereafter cease to be.  As the Lord of this mortal frame experienceth therein infancy, youth, and old age, so in future incarnations will it meet the same.  One who is confirmed in this belief is not disturbed by anything that may come to pass.. . As a man throweth away old garments and putteth on new, even so the dweller in the body, having quitted its old mortal frames, entereth into others which are new.”.

Does it matter if we do remember a previous incarnation, or several incarnations – or whether maybe we don’t at all?   What lessons can we learn from our past other than what it has already taught us?   Is it not more important to focus on this life, today and tomorrow so that we may integrate ourselves fully in order to learn and progress as souls on the journey of life?

“I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell;
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore,
You have been mine before – ,
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at the swallow’s soar
Your neck turned so,
Some veil did fall, – I knew it all of yore.

[Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) - Sudden Light]

The Sun & Moon & Equilibrium

Last night, the lovely Karagan from BlogTalk Radio’s “WitchTalk” program once again interviewed me. We had endless technical glitches at the start of the show which meant that we had to abort the show and start again, but due to the way things were set up we had to start two and a half hours later, which meant that we only started at 11:30pm UK time! So Karagan got a very tired Sorita this time! Thank you to those of you who stayed logged in through it all and I hope that those of you who subsequently listen to the show, which can be downloaded, or listened to at “Sorita D’Este & The Sun The Moon and Magic of Equilibrium” - will enjoy and find at least some of it of interest.

At the start of the show, I mentioned the Emerald Tablet of Hermes the Thrice-Greatest, and Karagan asked me to read it out, and so I read out the first part of the translation as it appears in “The Alchemy Reader” by Stanton J. Linden.  For those of you who haven’t got a copy of this classic work, you will find many translations of it online at Sacred Texts – See Emerald Tablet Translations for details.  The Emerald Tablet provides us with the axiom “As Above, So Below” which is frequently used in many magical traditions today.  If you have heard that phrase, or even used it – you certainly would want to know the original context of it if you don’t already, so do read through it. 

I also started to speak of the Three Pillars on the Tree of Life, as another example of balance which is in my opinion a very important concept  in magical and spiritual development.  The pillars represent the constant balancing between the two opposing forces being the left pillar of Severity and the right pillar of Mercy, with the central or “middle” pillar being that of Harmony.   The left pillar is black, the right is white, and the central pillar is grey - again emphasising that magic and spirituality, when in harmony with itself is neither “white” or “black” – but rather something inbetween.  The interplay between matter and energy produces spirit when its in harmony, much like the concept of the four elements being brought into balance also producing spirit, the fifth “element” according to some.

The Sun, Moon & Equilibrium – Interview with Sorita

Karagan of WitchTalk Radio (on BlogTalkRadio, an internet radio service) will be talking to me again this evening.  The topic this time is The Moon, The Sun and the Magic of Equilibrium.  We will be talking about the heavenly bodies in magic, especially the magic I am passionate about and about the importance of having a balanced approach to magical and spiritual practices.

Details can be found at:  WITCHTALK RADIO & Sorita d’Este

Or if you are reading this after the fact, you should be able to select the interview with me from the list on the gadget below – as well as my previous chat with Karagan “Dancing at the Crossroads!” and a number of other interesting interviews he has been having with interesting magical folk recently!