QUESTION - What things can I use to change headspace without using illegal drugs or alcohol? I'm 15 and my parents would freak if I started taking stuff or using flying potions but I've read you can get much the same effect legally?

ANSWER - An eminently sensible question which shows wisdom beyond your years. Sometimes even experienced witches need the reminder that quick and instant gratification in the form of mind altering chemicals or herbs can be too simplistic a refuge for the mind. That isn't to say that such lotions and potions don't have their place in the craft - they do - but for the serious magical practitioner flying ointments are as much about building up a relationship with the entheogenic elements as they are about flipping a switch to alter the state of mind. 

So if we discard all chemical drugs, baneful herbs, anything that might not be legal to take/grow in the region where you live and anything that may cause harm (nutmeg for example) what are we left with? Well I have three suggestions - all of which would be considered perfectly legal.

Possibly even more powerful than anything you could ingest are the chemicals your own body is capable of producing. The "fight or flight response" in humans, triggered by a situation in which the person feels fear produces endorphins which (and I'm quoting the wiki) produces a "morphine-like substance originating from within the body."  This is a similar effect to that produced by opiates but much more natural. The science behind this explains to some extent the popularity of rollercoaster rides which stimulate the fear response and consequently the endorphin release. This is something that can be achieved quite easily within your own home - even something as simple as watching a horror film could promote this affect.

Endorphins are released with exercise which also helps to achieve a "feel good state" (long term exercise can have a beneficial effect on mood in general with some studies suggesting it can be as effective as anti depressants in combating depression). Again this is something you can make work for you in your own home. Run up your stairs a few times to get your heart rate accelerated and then take the headspace into your magical/meditative work.

As many religions will tell you, fasting can be instrumental in altering a mental state. This works on two levels -  the psychological in terms of the fact that you are taking a break from focusing on worldly mundane matters like fuelling your body and also on a more spiritual level where by depriving the body of nutrition (in particular blood sugars) you are opening up your mind to an altered state of consciousness. There is an additional school of thought that fasting can also be a sacrifice offered to the Gods in exchange for enlightenment and another view that fasting is a say to cleanse the body and purge it from the effects of food and alcohol (similar to a spiritual detox). Whatever purpose fasting is used for it is undeniable that fasting for a period of 24 hours will have a distinct effect on the mind of the person undertaking the fast.

My final suggestion is something I work with personally, it is using triggers to store and retrieve different states of mind. I think most people do this on a sub conscious level - for example who hasn't heard a song and been transported into the past on occasion? However this can be extended to deliberately seeking out triggers that will bring back favourable and productive states of mind. Two of my own most personal uses of the memory trigger are Vicks vapour rub and Murray mints, both of which take me back to a time in my childhood when everything was possible and I had a child's natural grasp of magic. The smell of these very personal memory triggers brings me to a headspace where I can access the mind state of myself as a child and this can either be a peaceful refuge from the stress of adult life or a useful alternative mental state to use when working magic.

Experiment with the different ideas and please do stick to your belief that there are many ways to manipulate your own mind. Some of the things I have suggested here do take some effort and may not have the quick fix of popping a pill but they have the advantage of being safe and consistent - which is something that can't always be said about herbs and chemicals.

Image http://www.deviantart.com/art/Headspace-129652673

QUESTION - Blessed Be, I was wondering what the best books were to learn about smudging, candles, stones and crystals were. I am very new to any of this and don't have anyone around to teach me. And are there any books on blessings? Thank you And Happy Yule!!

ANSWER - Generally in my experience I have found that locating information on pretty much anything to do with Wicca/Witchcraft is extremely easy. What is not so easy is making sure that your source knows what they are talking about and is giving you sensible and relevant information! Even a published book is no guarantee of any level of accuracy and of course when you factor in the fact that many magical practitioners have very different ways of doing things and often bring a lot of subjectivity into what they do, finding anything resembling a 101 guide can be very challenging indeed. I have recommended a few beginner books on the craft here and you may find these a positive starting point.

You seem very interested in crystals and one of the best books on this subject is still The Crystal Bible and its various sequels. It's a good introduction as to how to identify crystals and what the use the individual stones can be put to.

In terms of looking at smudging and blessing you could try The Smudging and Blessings book - it is very much an introduction rather than a comprehensive study but it should point you in the right direction.

One of the best ways to engage with other people, especially if you are a beginner to the craft and therefore building up your own knowledge is to join a forum. There are a good many forums around but for the sort of thing you are looking for I'd try Lucky Mojo which tends to provide a lot of hands on basics information that you will find useful.

Hope this helps!

Image http://www.deviantart.com/art/Blessings-372870453

QUESTION - Hello.. I would like to ask a question to you.. if you please.. I have had a pull towards the craft since a small child.. always.. ever since I can remember.. age four and up.. I have dreamt many times.. of flying on a broom.. through the night air.. feeling even the wind and drops of water on my face. so vividly I swore when I awoke I was actually there.. tell me.. please. meaning to this. I struggle with the belief of God.. as taught and hammered into me as a child.. and magik and the universe bringing my destiny home. help please. 

ANSWER - Dreams can be pretty powerful things and I'd be foolish to even suggest that just because a dream feels extraordinarily real it cannot simply be a product of the unconscious mind. Having said that though a vivid dream can on occasion be more than a dream. A dream can be a  a memory stored in the subconscious that cannot be accessed by the conscious mind but which comes out when the conscious mind is at rest.

For those who subscribe to the idea of reincarnation a dream can be a memory that relates not to this life but to a life previously lived. The difficulty lies in determining whether a dream is a dormant memory of a previous life or a result of stimuli picked up by the sub conscious (you know the sort of thing - you walk past a shop selling wellington boots and spend the night dreaming you're in a rainstorm). A lot of what we dream about doesn't register with our conscious minds - we can't trace it back to an actual experience or trigger point - and so it is quite natural to wonder if the source of the dream lies in a memory from a previous life. 

Both the frequency and the intensity of your dream would support the idea that you may be remembering a previous life. The one thing that doesn't is the nature of your dream. Although witches have used broomsticks for diverse purposes over the years, the one thing they have never used them for is the actual physical act of flying. So it is impossible that you could be reliving a memory of flying on a broom as that quite simply could never have happened.

You could I suppose be blending a regressed memory and a stereotype from your current life (the link between witch and broom) and in doing so recalling a past life using modern imagery. I'd certainly say that is possible. However it is equally possible that your sleeping mind is just playing with the stimuli picked up from the (no doubt) hundreds of books and films that you have seen during your life. With something like witchcraft which is both a) common in popular culture and b) to a certain extent aspirational it is hard to draw the line between where recollection ends and subconscious fantasy begins. 

I'll also add a further note of complexity - dreams can not only be memories of the past they can also be a foretelling of the future. Your dream could be an indication not that you have been a witch in a previous life but that you will be in this one (or even the next). Again it is unlikely the broomstick is an indication of actual flight (although with technology progressing the way it is I wouldn't rule it out) but it could be a powerful symbol representing the path you are going to take.


Image http://www.deviantart.com/art/Bwaaah-My-broomstick-490666692

QUESTION - Hi lovelies. I was wondering if you know anything about auras? Because I'm trying to learn how to see them and I learned that there are multiple layers I guess, one of which is the physical, the one closest to the physical body. And I don't know if its "normal" to see what looks like an extra see through layer of skin on your actual skin or if that's the first layer of aura...sorry if that sounds confusing. I might be able to explain that a bit less confusing, possibly if need be. But I'm confused whether or not I'm seeing the first layer. Much appreciation c: (Facebook)

ANSWER - Interesting things - auras though I find a lot of what is written about them to be a bit New Agey for my tastes. I subscribe to the basic premise that everything is surrounded by an energy field and that this field can be influenced by changes and disturbances in the energy. The fact that this energy can be perceived as a visual colouration makes sense and the fact that the colour changes depending on the nature of the energy is a logical progression of this.

Where I would differ from some of the New Age aura readers is that I don't adhere to the idea that each colour of the aura has a specific correspondence. I also don't give too much credence to the idea of each layer of the aura corresponding to energy chakras. I find these explanations of the aura to be unnecessarily formulaic and I think a person wanting to get into observing and interpreting auras would do better to focus on the intuitive "perceiving" of the aura rather than trying to link a brief visual glimpse to a manual.

That isn't to say that an aura is not a complex thing. It can be - an aura is an energy field which reflects the energy state of the object/person. Just as people are not simple, nor is their aura.
It is rare for a person to experience one mood/state at any time and their aura will reflect this. So yes, there will be different colours and intensities in any single aura. But in a case of the whole being greater than its parts I don't believe you can neatly split and label each part of the aura. An aura is a blend, a mix, a fusion... it isn't something that can be divided into sections and then subjected to scientific analysis.

There is a school of thought that you can divide the aura into distinct layers and the link here to the Psychic Library describes this in some depth. This may be more the sort of thing you are looking for...

To answer your question specifically - yes it does sound like you are seeing 

Image http://www.deviantart.com/art/Aura-2-255804606

Question I have always considered myself ok with being alone in terms of a relationship with a man. However recently I've met a man and things fell apart. I felt lonely, my emotions have been all over the board with extreme highs and then the lows, I've put up with drug usage in my home. The worst part is I exposed my son to all of this craziness. A few days ago I put him on a bus back to his family and got told to move on with my life. I can't get this man out of my head, it feels like an addiction and right now I have not heard from him in a few days and it hurts physically. My woman's group got together the other day and we performed the Lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram followed up by putting his name in the elements and freezing my blood in water to bind. I will say things got a little better yet my magick is still scattered, I can't meditate and when I try to call on the elements and my Goddesses they seem so far away. I've never felt this powerless and out of control and isolated from my soul. Any help is appreciated on all levels from practical (what were you thinking...) to how to get my connections back and how to release the loneliness I'm feeling. 

ANSWER – I think you need to focus on taking one step at a time. It is very easy to underestimate how long it takes to get over the pain of a relationship breakup and I think you would find very few people indeed who would say that the pain will ease in only a matter of days. Trying to rush through the grieving process with a view to being well and whole enough to practise magic is too big an ask of yourself. Before you can heal you need to take time to work through the hurt. Meditating and magic will come back eventually but your first step is working through the grief of your parting.

The hard thing about a relationship break up is that no matter how wrong that relationship was for you or how much it hurt you and everybody else involved, the rationalisation that ending it is the best thing doesn’t make it hurt any less. Yes if a relationship yields nothing but mood swings, painful emotion and discord in your home it is obvious that relationship has run its course. But you can’t expect your mind to come to this conclusion and then to blithely forget this man with no pain. I almost get the impression that you are denying yourself the right to feel pain because you feel guilty for having the relationship in the first place but the human mind doesn’t work like that. You won’t stop the pain just because you believe it shouldn’t be there. What you need to do is develop realistic expectations of the progress you want to make. Allow for the fact that you will hurt for a while and make allowances for yourself while you do.

It is good that you have the support of your group and I think there is a lot of value in using spell work to formalise the end of the relationship and a beginning of your life without this man. I might suggest that you use something other than a binding - do you own any of this man’s possessions perhaps? Could you use a burning to dissolve the remnants of the relationship using an item belonging to him as a symbol? Or use something as simple as his shoelace to make a symbol of the link between you and cut it to release yourself from the power his memory has over you. The spell work you have undertaken seems largely focused on you but I’d be more inclined to concentrate on casting to break the link between you and then as you start to heal you can direct your group toward workings that will shore up your strength and allow your abilities to start coming back to you.

I can’t offer you a magical quick fix either to stop hurting or to cure the loneliness as the only thing powerful enough to heal you is your own mind. Only you can make the decision to confront the loneliness head on. It will be your own strength that prevents you from picking up the phone and begging him to come back to you. I can tell you that everything in your question suggests that you know what the right thing to do is and the fact that you have both taken the positive action to end your relationship and sought help to strengthen yourself to live without him is a clear indication that you know what is best for you and your son.

So simply put my advice is – don’t miss out the grieving process, allow yourself to hurt and don’t expect the healing process to be instantaneous. Value the progress you make as every day you don’t contact him is another success leading to you living an independent life again. Don’t expect too much of yourself, understand that your abilities will gradually reawaken as you become stronger. Rely on the love from your group and your son and let them comfort you in the dark times.

Image http://www.deviantart.com/art/Loneliness-327105250

QUESTION - I keep on having dreams/visions about the same male celebrity. They're very vivid and sometimes I'm in them, sometimes not. I've been having the same recurring dreams/visions since 2008, the same theme is always there though, he and I are in love, then something bad happens whatever it may be, cheating lies etc. and the whole cycle starts again. The strange thing is I have never met him, I only got to know him in 2008 through his music, that I liked. Which is when the dreams started. His mates have heard of me though, as they follow me on social media, which I find a bit coincidental. Also sometimes the dreams show me in the past, with him and I in a relationship, but in my waking life this has never happened. What should I do about it? Is it possible he (the celebrity I like) knows about it? What is happening to me?

Dreaming of a specific person on a regular basis can of course be as simple as the fact that they are in your conscious thoughts but it can also have a deeper meaning. Sometimes our dreams can offer us practical suggestions – you might dream of misfortune happening to somebody you haven’t seen for a while for example. This doesn’t mean something bad is going to happen to them but your sub conscious is reminding you of their importance in your life and bringing to the forefront of your mind the suggestion that it is time to get back in touch. The repetition of a dream can suggest there is a block in your mind that is stopping you from moving forward. Think carefully about any lessons this dream is trying to teach you about moving onward. Are you fixing on a certain part of your life (perhaps a part of your life when you listened to the music of this man and experienced great happiness). Is your dream a suggestion that your past is holding you back from your future?

Precognition through dreams (although rare) is also possible and there are times when a dream can be a warning of a possible future. As with most methods of divination, a dream can only ever show a possible future. Dreaming of a negative event isn’t confirmation that event will come about but it can be a heads up to look at the direction in which things are headed and a warning that the power is in the hands of the individual to prevent the negativity reflected in the dream.

You are right to believe contact can be established through the dream world though usually I would expect it to happen between people who know each other. This can be contact between the living and the living or the dead and the living but rarely have I read cases of it being between people who do not know each other. (Although I suppose one could argue that it would be hard to prove it if this was the case). I wouldn’t personally rule out the possibility of contact between people you have known at other times in other lives but I would definitely urge a strong caution to anybody trying to use such a tenuous link as proof to confirm a soul mate. Turning up on somebody’s door, explaining you dream about them a lot and insisting they have an obligation to get to know you because you are soul mates is likely to get you certified. It doesn’t mean that there isn’t a link between you but it does mean the time isn’t right to affirm it at least not in this lifetime.

Celebrities are very tricky things in dreams. The reason for this is the fact that they bridge the gap between people we know and people we do not know. We know celebrities not well enough to have an understanding of their actual personalities but well enough to use them as a hook to project onto them all the things we want them to be. This can make them far more powerful romantic figures than anybody we meet in the real world. In real life we have to put up with what people genuinely are, warts and all. With celebrities we can manipulate them in our minds into what we want them to be. This makes them perfect vessels to fill with the imagination of our dream selves.

So if you are dreaming of a celebrity whom you do not know personally I would take a good look at the attributes he possesses in your dreams. You don’t know him well enough to be dreaming about the real man but what you can take from his status in your dreams is an understanding of what it is you want from a man. Whatever his personality is in your dreams it is a creation of the inner workings of your mind. An excellent guide to finding the right partner in real life and a level of understanding about yourself that you would be well advised not to overlook.

I don’t think it is likely if I’m honest that he knows you are dreaming about him. You might find some witches who place a greater emphasis on the magical nature of the dream world but I’m actually quite scientific in my own approach to dreams and I do believe that in the main they are a tool to be used for illuminating the thought processes of your own mind rather than forming a link to somebody else’s.  As I’ve said, I think the value in these dreams lies in you developing a greater knowledge of yourself with a view to forming worthwhile relationships in the future using this knowledge.


Image http://www.deviantart.com/art/Dreaming-Light-490399950