The Spring Festivals of Imbolc

This entry is from Jose Prado, thank you Jose for another most interesting entry in the Paranormal Corner. Note even though this entry contains instruction for a spell The Paranormal Corner do not endorse uses of spells and are hear by not responsible for any effects or use of the instructions in this entry.

The ancient Celts (peoples of Scotland, Ireland, and even some parts of England and the Iberian Peninsula) believed the year and seasons (like all things) existed as a Circle. A Cycle of life and death with no end similar to to the Gnostic concept of the Ouroboros, the serpent who devours his own tail. The Celtic wheel of the year is symbolized by the eight armed sun cross, a symbol sacred to many cultures from Native Americans, Norse peoples, to Gypsies. In fact the Gypsy flag is an eight armed carriage wheel representing their caravans from times past when they (as well as other mystic nomads like the Irish Tinkers) used them for travel.

Currently we fall under Imbolc, the Celtic spring festival. Now, the day changes by year based on atmospheric conditions, but many modern Pagans who do not have time (or in my case, lack the skill) to determine the proper conditions for when to celebrate this feast choose the designated St. Brighid's day (February 1st). St. Brighid is the Christian name of the Goddess who's original names some say were Brigantia (the most high) and Briganti, an ancient Goddess worshipped by the Celts and Gauls (ancient French peoples) and eventually adopted by the Romans.

The word Imbolc is old Gaelic for "in the belly" the season when various animals including the Ewes became Pregnant. In our Cosmology, this is because the Horned Lord (the God force, creator of all) and his wife the Radient Lady (The Goddess, Creatrix of all) mate and upon Imbolc gives birth to Spring. Similar to the idea of the New Year being symbolized by a new born baby. This is where it comes from. Many have tried to synchronize the Horned Lord with Kerrunos or Pan, the Radiant One with Persephone or Brighid but in reality we don't know much about them.

Though future advances in Archaeology and Anthropology could yield fruit in the days to come. And if that fails we have no shortage of Re- constructionists who zealously attempt the recreation of the Old Religion. While Imbolc is popular among Celtic oriented Pagans, one can find various Spring holidays dedicated to many Deities other than Brighid.

The Norse Goddess, Idun and the Greco-Roman Goddess Persephone. Not to mention (we must not leave out) the male aspect to the season such as the Kemetan (ancient Egyptian) God Khepri who brings about renewal and rebirth , or Leshi the Slavic God of nature from the Ukraine. The Eastern European version of the Green Man. One needs both the male and female aspects of nature to understand and correctly channel the energies of this day.

This is also the time to say farewell to the dead as Samhain (sow-en) and Yule (the Winter Solstice) are now over and it is time for the dead to rest and return to their own realm for us to move on with our lives. It is because off this, that doing a little spiritual spring cleaning (as well as the physical variety) is in order. Remove all you find that you do not use and has no sentimental value to you. Which includes former ways of thinking and old energies you no longer need.

This is where spring cleaning comes from. So get out a trash bag and be sure to throw out anything that can not be used or recycled or donate it to charity. By doing so you are clearing yourself of old, unwanted energy. Just be sure to ring a bell nine times over it or pass it through incense smoke (if it's cloths, wash it) to loose the old energy up and make it nice and clean before giving it to someone else. You do not want to give someone bad or stale energy.

Once you've done that now is the time to clean your home which includes moping and sweeping the floors. In magical tradition, Pagans would use enchanted besom brooms and use them to clear out negative forces. The fact that they were once made with stalks of Lithe only made them stronger. After sweeping the negativity out of your home it's time to mop the floors with a consecrated liquid. In Hoodoo (the folk magick of Voodoo) we use a variety of different potions or plant extracts. The most used is called Chinese Floor Wash and will cleanse and bless the area. Another option is holy water mixed with sea salt, lavender, and white flower petals.

Then to purify the air one must light either a stick of Uncrossing incense or Frankincense-Myrrh to banish the old energy and bring in good energy. Now you are ready to perform your ritual for Spring. The following ritual can be applied to any religion. Mine (since I am Gnostic) combines Celtic religion with Vodoun religion. I see all faiths as one so I don't need some fanatic coming in to annoy me with their Gospel of what they were raised or taught to believe 'genuine' Celtic or Vodoun practices are. This also contains Witchcraft so you will be practicing magick from both religions.

If you are a male, use only female Deities because as a man one have the energy of Gods inside. But women doing this should only call on Gods since they have Goddess energy in them. You can either call on the Cailleach Bheur (old blue lady) or Maman Brigitte to send away the old energy. The Cailleach is the old Crone Goddess of Europe, Maman Brigette is the Goddess of Healing and Death. Wife of the Cemetery God, Baron Samedi (or Ghede). You can also either call on Brighid or Asherah (the Canaanite nature Goddess, feminine aspect of God) or whoever you like to work with in general.

Ingredients : Mortar & Pestle, Crossroads dirt, a white votive candle, Frankincense-Myrrh for the Cailleach and Rose scented incense for Brighid on a white oil burner.

Instructions : Write down what you want to manifest on a piece of paper and with Brighid's candle burn it and send it to the Universe to manifest. Ask the Cailleach Bheur to remove the old, unneeded things from your life while Brighid brings in the new.

Place Crossroads dirt in a Mortar to banish it. The Mortar will represent the womb of the Goddess and the Pestle laid across it the God, to seal it all away.The Crossroads dirt acts as a gateway to banish the old and seal the door closed (based on intent) so that nothing comes back, while the white candle ushers in the positive energy of that which is new to fill in the void.

An easier, less ceremonial way would be to write a letter to the Universe asking what you want it to manifest and what you want it to get rid of and burn it on midnight before Imbolc or at 1:11 am (111 in numerology carries the power to manifest). Plus the Archangel Metatron rules over Thursday and holds the power to manifest thoughts into reality so you can go ahead and ask him in prayer to help you out with this.

Have fun and although this is solitary ritual, you can easily use it for a larger gathering of Witches or even just to be with friends or make merry.

Enjoy.

Possession

Illustration of Paranoia and Despair

"And many of them said, He hath a devil, and is mad; why ye hear him?" -John 10:20

This entry was sent to the Paranormal Corner by Jose Prado, a reader of our blog and often a contributor. It details the case of an Ohio woman named  Mary, a 40 year old woman who suffered from mental disease and possession by demons. Part of this was described in the earlier entry by Jose titled, "Mary and the Quija Board". The following is his narration of the events which took place three years ago. 

In the modern century, belief in spirits of any kind much less the demonic variety has been systematically wiped out. After all, with all these fanatics around the country engaging in 'spiritual warfare' which is really nothing more than a rally cry to harm non-Christians why would anyone believe in them? Many think God/Gods have abandoned humans. For one woman, a woman old enough to have been my mother, Godforsaken had a special meaning. Mary, who was in her early 40's came from a large family and was subjected to sexual abuse in her childhood. it was around this time she began to perceive a large, dark, man-shaped shadow standing at the foot of her bed. 

Mary chalked it up to her imagination and would ignore it for most of her life.  In her College years, she began to seriously study Wicca and this way try to achieve some level of spiritual calm and peace. But one night some of her college friends and herself decided it would be fun to indulge in a Ouija Board session. This session opened up a spiritual gate and allowed spirits unlimited access to her body. From That time on her mental and emotional trauma sky rocked. Mary believed it was merely her condition worsening and sought professional help. 

Mary was so used to seeing nightmarish images hat she had learned to live with them and her fear. But now what she started seeing in her waking hours and experiencing in her sleep at night was so frightening that it made her earlier psychotic visions seem like pleasant dreams in comparison. She saw strange entities which surrounded her all the time. At first there was just one, her main tormentor who identified himself as Icobad Issac. He constantly mocked her, telling her she "was a crazy bitch whom no one would believe in much less listen to" and many other obscenities that are much to graphic to detail. 

Mary still had some measure of control and fought on for improvement. She married and converted to Catholicism to please her husband. She cut off many ties with her Wiccan friends to please him. She tried her best to adapt to her new religion and to be a good wife. Needless to say, it got worse. 

The demons began messing with her speech, making her speak in Latin, (speaking in tongues is common with demonic cases and is also known as Xenoglossy) and her paranoia grew to such an extent that no one would believe her. The demonic infestation progressed until they could fully control her body. They would make Mary take a knife and carve a cross on her wrist causing massive blood loss and then on another occasion make her carve an inverted cross on her other wrist. 

Sleep was Hell in itself. Sometimes the demons would sit on her chest at night suffocating her using psychic paralysis (phantomania) literally knocking the wind out of her. The doctors gave her stronger doses of medication and when that did not work, he suggested to place Mary in an institution many times. 

Mary's husband was skeptical to her claims of possession and attributed it to her being unbalanced. Then she started doing things that were odd even for a disturbed individual, things that to this day I have no knowledge of. But to convince someone that was sceptical that something was going on, it must have been a dozy. He realized something other than condition was at work here. so he swallowed his skepticism and went tot he Catholic church he belonged to and told them everything.

Listening to all that Mary had endured, the priests suspected she was the victim of Demonic possession. However they covered their basis first by getting in touch with Mary's doctors making sure if there was not a more scientific explanation for the phenomenon. There were still things however the doctors could not account for. I do not know how they began the Exorcisms, but eventually they were organized into tag teams of priests performing the holy rite. In one of these Exorcism, the lead Priest asked the entities in Latin what their names were. She spoke 13 names including Icobad Issac. She became so fluently in Latin that she knew how to read, write and speak it as easily as English. 

The Exorcisms would keep the spirits away for months only to resurface yet again. Mary's behavior would improve during these intervals when they were gone. Then when the demons returned it would start all over again. Making this into a routine repeated every few months. Mary questioned what little sanity she had left and then the spirits started telling her to kill herself. Mary considered this many times. One of the women in the church told Mary that she would go to Hell if she killed herself which only made her feel even worse. 

On Myspace I had a profile that I used for Role Play Games (RPG) but my RP  profile was also a profile I used to talk about and write articles on religion, politics and the occult. I became popular on there for my articles and a fellow role player talked to me about Mary, she sent me her profile link to speak to me directly. At the time I was not yet an Exorcist and it would be months later in the middle of another ghastly situation involving demons that I performed an Exorcism using what I had learned to drive away spirits harming a young girl. 

When Mary came to me I was stumped and spoke to a friend and mentor of mine, he told me of the Ouija Board's origins. That it was a spiritual tool used by Ascended Masters in Asia which worked by opening internal spirit portals in the users. Only the Masters were supposed to use and even then they always had attendants there to help them. I knew I was not prepared to handle this situation, so I gave Mary his number and he performed a Remote Exorcism over the phone, a technique he later passed on to me. (See Remote Exorcism another case with Jose Prado) He pulled the entities out of her body and into himself and then expelled them out and sent them to The Universe. 

My Mentor instructed her to light a white candle but all she had was, Sage, a powerful herb that would work even better. He told her to burn it and visualize a door closing, This was representing the portal. Then once closed he told her to seal it shut by visualizing that she barred it close with a red sword. Mary did as she was told and enjoyed a longer period of time being demon free. The Priests of the church believed she would no longer be afflicted, but the spirits returned, broke their way through the magic seal my mentor had placed there, and took possession of her body once more. 

Now they were even more angry and aggressive than ever before. Because of the distance, my mentor was not able to close the portal door all the way, only place a seal on it. She became worse over night and called me for help. At this point it was almost a year later and I had advanced in my training as a Mage and had since become an Exorcist. The catholic priests had abandoned her and tried to avoid her at every turn. Even the other Church goers abandoned her. My mentor could have tried again but he began to doubt himself and his abilities. I was his last possible resource, and I was not going to accept failure as an option.  

I defied the magical limits given me. Whenever my teachers said it can not be done I asked "Why not?" I experimented with different kinds of magicks and even combined them in mixtures till I achieved the results I wanted. As a Gnostic I am a type of Pagan that believes in all religions from Christianity and Voodoo to the Native American Religions and Wicca. I used the combined powers to get improved results. I especially learned how to cast spells across long distances and was proficient with High Magick (Ceremonial Magick that uses the powers of The Universe).  

I was originally planning to do the Exorcism with two other Witches at the time but the demons prevented them from being available for the Remote Exorcism. They began messing with my phone on a peaceful night with no storms or winds to screw up the signal. I knew I had to act fast or I would not be able to help poor Mary, so I began invoking the most ancient pronunciation of God's name. YHVH pronounced YAH-Hey-VAH-Hey Adonai (Lord in Hebrew) all together the name is Yahweh Lord or Jehovah Lord. From the moment I began to sing out his name. (Hebrew spells and chants are often sung since it believed by Catholics and Jews alike that God loves music so much a prayer will be heard from twice as fast if sung.)  

Mary's voice became deeper and she started growling like a rabid animal on the phone. I had performed a parelization spell to keep the spirits from fully controlling her body and to prevent them from hanging up the phone or hurting Mary, or her husband. I knew I could not turn back now. I said nothing to Mary in order not to alarm her but I got the feeling if I had waited to do this some other night I was going to wake up to a news report of her killing her husband and possibly herself. I called on a Heavenly water fall to flow from the sky and wash over Mary and her home, to cleanse all the darkness away. Within minutes the growling stopped and she said she had felt a calm and soothing energy upon her. When the water stopped flowing I knew it had weakened the Demons enough to render their powers ineffective.

Then I was wondering, how in the Hell was I going to proceed now? Before this, the other Exorcisms I had done were with spirits that were not attached to bodies. So it was easier in the sense that they had nothing to hold on to. But this time they had a prisoner. And Exorcisms that use force can take a toll on a person's body. Then it hit me. I would use a trap. Witches often use sacred symbols such as runes and segils to trap spirits or protect themselves from harm. 

In Western High Magick, spirits are usually bound in Magick Triangles with the Three Names of God in ancient Hebrew written outside the Three Corners (Solomon's Triangle). But instead of drawing physical symbols I drew with energy. I used a powerful visualization combined with the Invocation of Yahweh I used in the beginning, placed a powerful binding seal on her body that would only affect demons. Once this was in place I asked her to leave the spot she was standing in. This  let her move away while the demons were bound to the spot. 

Mary said she felt lighter. I asked her to call on her higher self to see if those were the only demons left. She said no. We repeated it and Four more were bound to another spot. Then we did this for a third time and the last three, including Icobad were finally out. What I saw in my mind was frightening and disgusting at the same time. Disgusting because the thought of these things having been inside of her was sickening. They each looked like huge, muscular, gargoyle-like creatures. Their upper bodies were wider and more muscular than their lower bodies and they had huge pelican like beaks. Red and black with a touch of green scales. 

When they were finally expelled the other witches called on the other line because power at both of their homes were down (one lived in Miami and the other one in a different state.) and both their cell phones were dead and refused to charge. One of them who was also a Seer later told me how she saw the demons in her mind and except for the green of their scales it coincided with what I saw. Icobad in one last act of defiance threatened one of the other Witches saying "he would tear out her tongue and shove it into her P****". We combined our powers and sent them bound in chains to the Goddess Nemesis, the Divine Goddess of wrath (Zeus' Right hand) for punishment. 

Then using a spell of Hecate the crossroads Goddess we ordered the spirit portal to be sealed shut for good. Mary said she could feel it physically close. The portal had been over her stomach. It has now been three years and Mary has never had trouble with demons and possessions ever again.  

I hear from Mary every once in a while and her husband as well. Mary started practicing Wicca again as she now sees Catholics as hypocrites because they gave up on her. I told her all faiths are one and to consider studying Catholicism with Wicca for better spiritual results. Mary still of course has her mental illness, but they now have her on less medication and no longer seek to hospitalize her. She is also looking into natural medicines and working hard to improve herself and her life. 

When I first met her I thought she was crazy. Mary openly told me that she had mental problems but one thing always stood out beyond all the incredulous things she sold me: "I know I'm crazy but I'm telling you something else is going on here too. Just tell me I'm crazy and I'll let them lock me up and throw away the key!" A crazy person who admit they are delusional and actually would rather thing they are crazy than possessed? I have never heard of such a thing. Mary was in her early 40's when this happened and had been possessed since she was 18. This poor woman had almost no one to help her much less believe in her for all those years. Friends and family included. It makes me wonder sometimes. Out of all those unbalanced individuals, how many are really possessed with no one to believe in them? I would rather not think about that. However, maybe that is the problem.  

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Things About Easter Most People Don't Know

 Easter Bunny and Eggs from Wikimedia Commons

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hase_mit_Ostereiern_(2).jpg 

by Jose Prado  


This is a small Summary from a much larger article I wrote called the Pagan Origins of Easter. Here's a small over view on what was discussed there.

While children go on their Easter Egg hunts most people seem not to have forgotten it's original origins. While most people think it is a purely Pagan holiday, it is a season with both Pagan and Jewish roots. The name 'Easter' comes from an Ancient fertility Goddess who seems to exist in various religions and cultures under different names. Known as Ostara, Eostre, Ishtar, and Aster, this Mother Deity was a renewer of Life whose energies came at their peak at the time of the Spring Equinox. 


Today, Wicca and other Pagan groups celebrate this holiday as Ostara. According to Germanic legend, Ostara wandered the forest one day during Spring and found a bird whose wings were frozen. In order to save the poor creature, she enchanted the bird and transformed her into a Hare. But because she had once been a bird, the Hare did not give birth to live young but to children who hatched in Eggs. Then 500 yrs ago when Dutch immigrants settled in Pennsylvania they brought with them the legend of male Hare (presumably a descendant of the female Hare of Ostara) named Osterhas or Oschter Haws (not sure if that is the correct spelling) who visited good children and gave them eggs to eat. Basically, a Spring Santa Klaus. Later he was changed from a Hare to a Rabbit and became the Easter Bunny. 


Pagans had an ancient fertility symbol of three Hares who chased each other in a triangle. The sign of the Tripple Hare is based on the Triquetra, a Trinitarian symbol of the moon that symbolizes the Tripple God and the Tripple Goddess. Pagans believed that all things would die and be reborn around this time mystically. And Sex is a personification of life and death. During intercourse, Millions of sperm die and only one survives so from death comes life. It is a total renewal of all things. 


Pagans knew this and would perform all manner of ritual including sex magic in order to channel the powers that are unleashed around this time for spells and worship. The Hebrews also had their own celebration called the First of Fruits (recorded in the Bible) in which the first and choicest fruits were harvested. They also believed in magical energies that were released around this time.

In fact, it's believed the reason Jesus of Nazareth the Ascended Master and Deity manifested in the flesh died in March and was able to return from the dead was because the energies of the First of Fruits. Pagans also believe that the God dies and is reborn from death around this time like the Phoenix. Ever hear the term 'mad as a march hare'? The reason for that is due to the fact that mating season for the Hares happens in March. 


So whether you celebrate Eostre with Sex, Chocolate Eggs, Eggs in vinegar, or Fruit just remember to pray to all of the Gods and Goddesses and give thanks for this renewal of Earth energy.


Blessed Be and Ache my Brothers and Sisters