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New Book Coming Soon!

New Book Coming Soon!

Last updated on: November 24, 2016 at 7:27 am by Yvonne Aburrow

New Book Coming Soon! 2016-11-22T07:47:28-05:00 Yvonne Aburrow

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Dark Mirror – the inner work of witchcraft

And thou who thinkest to seek for me, know that thy seeking and yearning shall avail thee not, unless thou knowest this mystery: that if that which thou seekest, thou findest not within thee, thou wilt never find it without thee.

― Doreen Valiente, The Charge of the Goddess

Inner work is a name commonly given to the inner processes that happen in ritual. However, the best kind of inner work also has an effect outside the individual and outside the circle. When rituals are focused only on self-development, they tend to be a bit too introspective. Ritual is about creating and maintaining relationships and connections – between body, mind, and spirit; with the Earth, Nature, the land, the spirit world, the community, and friends. It is also about creating, maintaining, and restoring balance. It is about making meaning. Telling our stories and reclaiming our history from the oppressors. Weaving a web of symbolism, story, mythology, meaning, community, and love to stand against the ennui and emptiness of relentless consumerism. Creating loosely held but welcoming community, a community that welcomes and celebrates diversity (of body shape, skin colour, physical ability, neurodivergence, sexual orientation, gender expression and identity, biology, cultural background, age, talkativeness or lack of it, and so on). Creating strong and authentic identity to resist the pressures of consumerism and commercialism and capitalism. Weaving relationship with other beings: humans, animals, birds, spirits, deities.

So the inner work of ritual may be intrapersonal, interpersonal, restorative, or community-building. The kinds of relationships that ritual helps to maintain may be of various different kinds – friendships, erotic relationships (including kinky ones), patron/client relationships. Inner work might be meditation, visualisation, prayer, magic, balancing archetypes within the psyche, lucid dreaming, healing, connecting with the body, or attunement to Nature.

Dark pool, Beanley Moss. © Copyright Andrew Curtis and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence. [CC-BY-SA 2.0]

Introduction: the inner work

Coming to the circle

The Pagan worldview
Creating sacred space
Raising energy – synergy, resonance and polarity
Magical names
Archetypes and the inner work
The Mysteries
Evocation and Invocation
Use of symbols in ritual
Spell work
Magical tools

Embodied Spirituality

Relationships and Consent in Wicca
“Ye shall be naked in your rites”
The erotic and spirituality
Inner aspects of the festivals
Grounding and centering
Making an altar
The Hearth
Food in ritual
Labyrinths; Meditative walking; Pilgrimage
Gardening
Spirits of the land
Meditation, Visualisation, Contemplation
Poetry, Storytelling, and Reading
Cultivating the virtues

Between the worlds

Modes and types of ritual
Sound and silence
The Moon
The witch’s journey
Queer Witchcraft
Witchcraft and the land
Witchcraft as resistance
Working with ancestors
The Pact – relational polytheism
Madness, shamanism, witchcraft
The night journey

Bringing it all back home

Inclusive Wicca
Group dynamics
Being a coven leader
Teaching and learning in a coven
Egregore, lineage, upline, downline
Power and authority
Rites of passage
Challenging oppression
Evaluating your Craft
Brimful of Asha

Appendices

Model guidelines for group discussion
Coming-out ritual
Recommended reading

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