Magick, Miracles & Mysticism

Many years ago I struggled to find the overlap & connections between the may thought systems & spiritual practices in my life. As long as I looked purely from the physical & intellectual eyes, it confounded me.

Then one day, after a particularly deep meditation, I was shown that there are 3 Levels of Power in all things archetypally. After some research into the work of Caroline Myss, I had one of those coveted Ah-Ha moments & saw that my life & all that I teach can be categorized into Magick. Miracles & Mysticism.

In fact, it showed me there is a teachable bridge from one end to another, mapping the energetics of creativity & healing. So, I began to teach this 13 week series as inspired & have been doing so once or twice a year ever since.

Here is the series outline that I teach. Please comment with any questions you might have:

Magick, Miracles & Mysticism
with Rev. Mark A. Lyons
Admission $30. Reservation Required

Magick, Miracles & Mysticism is a 13 class series exploring a more in-depth look at metaphysics & spirituality.

Class One: 3 Levels of Power - The Basics

Class Two: The Chakras Part 1 – Sanskrit & Sacraments

Class Three: The Chakras Part 2 The Tree of Life & Sabbats

Class Four: Archetypes Part 1 - The Basics & The Survival Family

Class Five: Archetypes Part II - The Feminine & Masculine Families

Class Six:Archetypes Part III - The Divine & Wisdom Families

Class Seven: Archetypes Part IV - The Healer & Creative Families

Class Eight: Archetypes Part V - The Action &The Wild Card Families

Class Nine: Gods & Archetypes

Class Ten: Healing

Class Eleven: Alchemy & Incarnating

Class Twelve: Divine Purpose,The Shamanic Descent & the Dark Night of the Soul

Class Thirteen: Wrap up & Application

Rev. Mark A. Lyons, President
Drawing the Circle Productions INC.
DrawingtheCircle@aol.com
631-968-8307 @ProfWitch on Twitter

Taking Ostara Personally

 

Ostara, at the time I am writing this, is a few days away. But as usual, I’m getting its download early. 

Ostara / Vernal – Spring Equinox is a very powerful sabbat in the Witch’s Wheel of the Year. Not only can we take another step magickally in the spells / intentions we started at Yule / Winter Solstice:We shift from the 2^nd Chakra / Sacrum 1 on 1 relationship dynamic to the 3^rd Chakra / Solar Plexus our relationship with ourselves. In other words, we enter the terrain of Personal Power.

 

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz

I have always been a proponent of The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. As a Witch, it’s just a very wise thought system based on ancient Toltec wisdom.

Personal power issues & wisdom lessons are year round if not daily. Following our gut is the simplest way to start practicing & refining our own self empowerment. The Solar plexus is the seat of Survival Intuition, the turn left, turn right guidance we are constantly offered. Whether we feel & act upon it accordingly is squarely in the center of personal empowerment.

When your Solar Plexus says NO & you say YES, you are sabotaging yourself. Period! Sure, small choices may seem small, but that’s the paradox of wisdom isn’t it: small things are big & big things are small very often on the spiritual path.

But there’s a more subtle & challenging aspect to all of this. Hence my above reference to The Four Agreements. They follow as such:

 This blog is about #2

Don Miguel Ruiz goes into each one in the book heavy duty. The whole book is life changing as is his follow up, The Mastery of Love, where he applies the agreements to personal relationships. There is of course a steady focus on the relationship with your Self/self.

But what draws my attention the most is the 2^nd Agreement of the four, “Don’t take anything personally.”

What could be more important at Ostara than a claiming of personal responsibility by making an agreement to practice, at least till Beltane / May 1^st to not take anything personally? It sets up a boundary to contain your own focus as well as protect yourself from emotional hell rides that delay you manifesting what you really want in your life.

To me it’s right up there with forgiveness, kindness & spiritual practice. Not taking things personally is a spiritual practice because you have to understand what’s really going on, which leads us to the Shadow & Grace of Ostara & the Solar Plexus Chakra, Entitlement & Understanding.

 The Solar Plexus is the Yellow One

When you take things personally & you get that knot in your stomach, look & see if there is an aspect of Entitlement at work. Entitlement is a tricky shadow, well they all are tricky, but this one particularly so because it is so very easy to spot in others, but not so much in ourselves.

What is Entitlement as a Shadow Passion? We can identify it easily on TV, especially reality TV. It is a sense of being owed something we didn’t earn or attract via our own life process of growth. We liken it to Princess Syndrome or The Brat Child Archetype. It’s toxic & nauseating, because it hits right in the stomach. 

I discuss this more in last year’s Ostara Blog: Understanding Ostara.

What the Four Agreements give us is a framework in which we can understand what’s happening to us & others when we are possessed by the Shadow of Entitlement. That Understanding is the only Grace I have ever found to untie that knot in myself whether it is my own shadow or another wresting with Entitlement.

  Classic case of Entitlement vs Understanding

So we can quite literally go with our guts through Ostara, keeping in mind that if we take things personally, we will derail & delay our own process, growth & the manifestations of what is wanted.

It behooves us to re-estimate day to day on how we feel in this chakra. One of the powers it manage is Self Esteem, the basic verb of self empowerment. When it twists, it’s an indication that we are thinking something without the Understanding that our soul has on the subject. So we can hear that alarm in our stomachs, pull back, reevaluate & re-estimate where we are in the moment.

Does this really have anything to do with me? Am I taking this personally? Does this trigger my own unfinished business inside? Am I playing Victim? Did I not keep my personal boundaries & Honor code in tact?

It’s a lot to look at & I am sure from personal experience that taking ‘personal time’ is essential to my own process. Without it, the alchemy from Entitlement to Understanding or lead to gold takes longer. But if I listen to the wakeup call, pull back & claim personal space, I can begin the alchemy by entering into the sacrament associated with the Solar Plexus – Confession.

 

Hades & Persephone in Passing

The good news is, I just need to confess my issues to myself & the Divine. If confessing to another person is required, I know who to turn to. But if I confess it to everyone & in a toxic way, it turns into gossip. So yes, even Gossip into Confession is alchemical lead into gold. 

It’s just really easy to alchemize it from gold to lead again. Personal power, boundaries, self esteem, intuition, self empowerment, it’s a lot, but we have a whole season to refine our personal power.

So I wish you a very blessed Ostara. It’s a Witchcraft week for me. I won’t have a day off till Sunday & even then, there’s stuff going on. But I will be traveling & teaching in New Jersey at Jean’s Place: TheSacred Hearth. We’ll be making Ostara Eggs & sitting round a bonfire.

Personally, that feels empowering to me.

Blessed Ostara,

Rev. Mark A. Lyons, President
Drawing the Circle Productions INC.
DrawingtheCircle@aol.com
631-968-8307 @ProfWitch on Twitter

A Leo Moon Spell for your Heart’s Desire

 

  

On this night & in this hour

I draw down Leo Moon Power

Focus on my heart’s desire

clears a path with Leo’s Fire.

Joyful & Easy, Warm & Fun

As I will it so let it be done.

So Mote it be!

  ~~~~~

This year the Leo Full Moon falls on a Friday that just happens to also be Valentine's Day. That is a powerful symbolic & planetary alignment. I suggest candle magick of any kind. 

The trick is to focus your mind (Sun in Aquarius) upon your heart's desire (Moon in Leo) without any contradicting thought or resistance. 

Hold the uncontradicted desire while you light a candle & chant the words, feeling as joyful, easy, warm & fun as you can.

Then just chill, let it go. Go have fun any way you can, small or large. Enjoy yourself & let things unfold. When you notice the candle, just bask for as long as 68 seconds & you allow the magick to flow even more.

Blessed Full Moon

Rev. Mark A. Lyons, President
Drawing the Circle Productions INC.
DrawingtheCircle@aol.com
631-968-8307 @ProfWitch on Twitter

Pre-Samhain 2013: Not Looking for a New Love, Baby

I haven’t blogged since Lughnasadh (August 1^st).

My life has changed really quickly since Litha (Summer Solstice) & I wasn’t ready to write about it yet. I’m still integrating it all. How funny that I would start writing it down during a Mercury Retrograde. Well, when the muse calls, I follow.

I didn’t mention it in my last blog at Lughnasadh , but I met someone in July that changed my life, my new boyfriend. I broke up with the guy I had been dating for 6 months, took some time to…well… slut around a bit & was really enjoying myself. I like being single. I have a field day of it most of the time.

So you can imagine that I wasn’t expecting to be in a relationship so quickly. We had dated 5 years ago in May 2008, right after Beltane. 1 date, which was OK, but we weren’t a match. We said we’d be friends & keep in touch. We didn’t. But you know, the Gods have a sense of humor & are really good at playing Human Chess with our lives. 

In 2008 I joined Facebook & I did one of those things where it sends out invites to the people in your email contacts. I just clickety clicked a bunch of names, he was one of them & the bulk invite was sent. He accepted it & for 5 years we had no contact via Facebook or otherwise. (Not that I didn't poke him. I did, but he wouldn't poke back :(  )

Except once, when he miscalled a number on his cell phone & got me (He told me recently that he was calling another guy named Mark.) I remember I was at my bank in the parking lot. I was a little shocked to see his name on the caller ID, but I took the call. Once we figured out it was a ‘wrong number’ we laughed, said we would keep in touch, again as friends. Aaaaaaaand again, we didn’t.

Now jump to June 2013. I break up with the guy I was dating on Gay Pride Weekend & as I said, I went afield to seek my pleasure. I had at it because, “My Momma told me, you better shop around.” I dated the hottest guy: really tall, smart, darkly funny & so charming. He drove me around in a BMW convertible on 4^th of July weekend. I met his friends, saw an amazing fireworks show across the lake from where they were shooting them off . Did I mention he was REALLY tall? I like TALL, always have. Anyway, he was great. I could have continued dating him indefinitely. He was a Capricorn, they’re like that. They can go the long haul if they want to. I do well with Caps, being a Virgo myself. It’s an earth sign thing.

2 days later I posted a Facebook comment about a spider bite on my finger & the possibility of spider-like powers as a result. (July 9^th. I looked it up.) Well, the aforementioned Mr. May 2008 finally made a move & commented on the post about me spinning my web on him. WHAT? Hi!

I Looked at his profile & FROZE. He’s a Virgo. I had avoided dating other Virgos for most of my life. Well, there were those guys that I never asked their sign, or name... My 30’s were a lot of fun. I had forgotten that we shared the same sign.  In that moment that stretched out for a while I heard, “Just say Hi.” So… I did. 

3 days later he laid True Loves Kiss (TLK) on me & we have been together ever since. So here I am, in a relationship, an open relationship, because it’s only been a little over 3 months. But we really do love each other. He’s on a spiritual path. I didn’t see that one coming, though I had asked for it for years. He is tall, dark, handsome, charming & best of all, funny. You need a real sense of humor to deal with, not just me which takes a lot granted, but also the whole Witch thing, coven, career & oh yeah, that whole clairvoyant empath thing makes it reeeeal interesting.

So we laugh; 2 Virgo smartasses. He cooks, he cleans, he makes me coffee & actually enjoys it. Who knew such men existed? But he’s here as I write this, asleep at 4am like most Muggles are. He stayed here tonight  while I was with my friend Eila on another Fashion World adventure. He fed my cat Sabastian while I was clicking away pictures at a party at Bergdorf Goodman. I chatted with Martha Stewart by the way. Not bad for a Wednesday night. Don’t believe me?

Martha & MAL

But here’s the thing & prepare yourself. Cliché alert! It was nice to come home to him; the house warm, the TV on & him bundled up on the couch in like 20 blankets. (He doesn’t like the cold.) Did I mention he has a Cancer Moon? No, I didn’t because with the amount of Cancerian women that I have in all of my life, I am totally screwed on this one. I’ll try not to mention it again.

So, all of this is to catch you up & catch me up for Samhain, which I will be writing about soon. There’s just no way I could write about Samhain without getting that whole story out. It’ll make more sense later.

But for now, I’m gonna go climb in bed with him. He’s out like a light, so I’m gonna meditate myself to sleep, probably spooned, & thank the Gods for my life. Oh yeah, Spiritual Thanksgiving. Like the Mabon 2013 blog I didn’t write. But I’ll pick up at Mabon next time & soon. But now, I’m gonna go home & sleep with my boyfriend. (Nod to Mr. Green.)

Blessed Be,

Rev. Mark A. Lyons, President
Drawing the Circle Productions, INC
Drawingthecircle@aol.com
www.drawingthecircle.com

P.S. I swear this all totally has to do with the Wheel of the Year & the magick I did starting at Yule of last year.