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The Ancient Call or The Use of Barbarous Words
by L. Sophia Kyraphia with deep gratitude to L. Fattah Kyraphia

Working with the Book of Shadows within a tradition's structure has been one of the mainstays of British Traditional Wicca since its inception.  Similar to several of the Abrahamic faiths, we are not without our own controversies as to who wrote the BOS, how it was assembled, how authentic the writings are and methods to measure this.  Our tradition has always been a blend of ceremonial magic, traditional hedgewitchery and cunning craft.   Our specific blend was created by our spiritual ancestor, Gerald Gardner and his work has left a benevolent legacy of magic and myth that has served as a trusted and knowledgeable device to explore the mysteries of our purpose of embodiment in this life. 

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The Old Wisdom by Jane Goodall


When the night wind makes the pine trees creak
And the pale clouds glide across the dark sky,
Go out, my child, go out and seek
Your soul: the eternal I.

For all the grasses rustling at your feet
And every flaming star that glitters high
Above you, close up and meet
In you: the Eternal I.

Yes, my child, go out into the world; walk slow
And silent, comprehending all, and by and by
Your soul, the Universe, will know
Itself: the Eternal I.
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NEWS RELEASE

For Immediate Release: January 7, 2009

Contact: Holli S. Emore, 888.503.4131, <mailto:chs@cherryhillseminary.org>
CHS@cherryhillseminary.org

Cherry Hill Seminary To Grant Master’s Degrees

COLUMBIA, SC — Cherry Hill Seminary is pleased to announce that the South
Carolina Commission on Higher Education has notified the school of the
religious exemption which allows the Seminary to grant master’s degrees.
Beginning in September 2009 Cherry Hill Seminary will offer the following
Master’s degrees.

* Master of Divinity (72 hours). Basic professional ministry degree,
balancing Pagan academics, personal spiritual development, and Pagan
ministerial practice. Most professional religious positions, such as
chaplaincy, certain types of counseling, and other ministerial activities
require a Master of Divinity degree.

* Master of Pagan Pastoral Care and Counseling (60 hours). Specialty
degree, (pastoral care, religion and psychotherapy, or Pagan marriage and
family) offers reflection, study and supervised practice which prepare the
graduate to pursue various aspects of Pastoral Care and Counseling.

* Master of Pagan Ministry (48 hours). Preparation for specialized
ministry in such areas as education, media, the arts or other practices,
combines Pagan academics with practical and/or pastoral experience with
diverse Pagan populations.

* Master of Pagan Studies (48 hours) Pagan academics degree, focusing
on study and research in any one curriculum concentration major.

"As Paganism becomes an increasingly recognized and influential religion, we
are delighted to be able to offer higher education for those who would serve
as clergy professionals, whether as scholars, mentors, counselors, teachers,
artists, organizers, leaders, chaplains and/or advocates in local, regional,
national and international settings," said the Academic Dean, Cynthia Jane
Collins, M.Div., M.S. "A challenge we face is to integrate academic
excellence, practical supervised training, individual responsibility and
personal and community spiritual development from a Pagan perspective. We
seek to enhance and expand our depth and breadth while finding ways to serve
others, Pagans and non-Pagans alike. "

Originally founded in Vermont in 1997, and now based in South Carolina,
Cherry Hill Seminary provides the only graduate program of Pagan seminary
studies in the world. The distance education program holds twice-yearly
intensive retreats, with all regular classes being held online. Faculty
include such notables as Michael York, Ph.D., founder of the first Pagan
graduate studies program in the world (at Bath Spa University, England),
Grove Harris, M.Div., former managing director of the Harvard Religious
Pluralism Project, now program director for the Parliament of the World’s
Religions, and Dr. David Oringderff, founder of Sacred Well Congregation,
sponsor of the well-known Wiccan circle at Fort Hood, Texas.

"We now enter a crucial period in our development," said Kirk Thomas, Cherry
Hill Seminary Board of Directors President. "Our next hurdle is to meet the
requirements for accreditation, a process which normally takes several
years." Thomas, current Vice-Archdruid for Ár nDraíocht Féin: A Druid
Fellowship (ADF), noted that Cherry Hill students tend to be mature adults
with considerable life experience, who often already possess graduate
degrees and professional credentials in such fields as social work,
counseling, or psychology.

By spring, Cherry Hill Seminary will announce an invitation to apply for
admission to the master’s programs, including transition information for
existing certificate program students who wish to pursue a master’s degree.
The rollout will include information about a new Department of Pagan
Community Education for Lifelong Learning (PCELL), an enhanced replacement
of the current certificate program.

"Recent studies such as the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey by the Pew Forum
on Religion & Public Life clearly indicate the rapid growth of Pagan
practice throughout the country and beyond," said Holli Emore, Executive
Director for Cherry Hill Seminary. "With that growth comes the acute need
for individuals who are adequately prepared to provide Pagan ministerial
services, counseling, chaplaincy, and community leadership. As the modern
Pagan movement comes of age, it is important to set standards of excellence
for ministry. Cherry Hill Seminary is at the forefront of setting those
standards."

Cherry Hill Seminary is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, incorporated in
the state of South Carolina, providing education in Pagan ministry and
studies to students throughout the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and other
English-speaking areas. For more information, visit www.cherryhillseminary,
or contact Holli Emore at 888.503.4131, CHS@cherryhillseminary.org.
garden_pixie: (dancer)
It's Sunday and we are off removing the fall decorations from my house and putting up wintertide / yule decorations. We are moving the TV into another spot which is giving us a lot more window space to enjoy the outdoors. This is where the christmas tree will go for the season and then the space is all mine!

This year I opted not to fight christmas coming and embrace it as best as I can. Usually I am frustrated with how early it came. This year, it is what it is and I plan to bloom where I am planted.

The changes inside for me are wicked this year. First, I have formally left Wicca as a religion. This time has been very good for me, Wicca helped me connect with my power in a way that Christianity wasn't able to do for me. I don't think that I will ever go back into Christianity, but I am standing in a place closer to monasticism. I feel more universally inclined and want to engage that dynamic more fully. If I believe universally, I want to support that rather than one sect.

I have been very loyal to my craft and to my covens and now I feel like I have to be loyal to me and where my conscience really is. I plan to continue with my SOL studies because they are not faith based and I believe in that work. I am going to continue with my Sufi studies because they are in the same vein as my personal faith even though I don't see myself as relating to Islam directly or Muhammad as a prophet. However, the idea of God being just that, neither male nor female, The Yes / No aspect of the universe. This makes sense. My practice is towards opening up more and hopefully this will widen my awareness and increase my compassion and openness to God and to humanity.

I am working on the healing space upstairs to make it into a functional space for me to meditate.

Anyway, I have to run to help Jason and Shon move the TV! Blessed Winter to you all!
garden_pixie: (HIndu Bride)
The topic of conversation last night moved, as it sometimes does, to a girl we met at a pagan gathering last year. She was a young, probably early twenties hippie chick, who didn't wash, didn't hold a job and was self professed "from the stars." Now, I could go on about what I think about such people, and I do have opinions, believe me, but really where my brain goes to is the way that people cobble together bits of traditions and leave out the hard parts of theirs. Traditions, I believe, are used to create a necessary tension inside to help catapult us forward. They work, not because they are right (my hope is that if we are in a tradition at all, it is right for us), but because they are facilitating a creative tension in us that activates the inner life. It creates a reminder for us about where we are going and why. This is what is said when we speak of discipline.

Many traditions have ways of disciplining. Eastern traditions have archery, yoga, meditation work, silence and mindfulness practices. Some Christian traditions have rules about alcohol or drug use, swearing, sexuality or fasting. Our tradition of Wicca and others like us, have disciplines towards the upkeep of hearth and home, fasting, prayer work, daily meditations, no drug use/ no heavy alcohol use during certain stages of training. Other Wiccan trads require you to become vegetarian, hold vigils at certain times, not practice other traditions at the same time, and so forth. While the action does limit the initiate, the point of these is not aimed at the limitation, in truth, but to act as a reminder and help the initiate develop some sort of self knowledge and awareness.

As a Wiccan priestess, I am always telling my initiates that it is easy to be an initiate by yourself. The work starts to get hard when you move into community. We are all saints alone. It's easy to be fluid when there are no requirements. Our craft is perfect when no one is looking or when I can cobble together any practice that makes me feel comfortable. Craft isn't about being comfortable, its about embracing our power, being grounded in our truest self, and living fully and in right relationship with nature, humanity and the Gods. (among other things) Priestess Miriam of the voodoo tradition in NOLA once told me that my job as a priestess wasn't to make people comfortable. It was to make them uncomfortable. Because if they get comfortable, they will pull up a chair, put their feet up and stay where they were. The job of the tradition is not to make us comfortable, it's to make us stronger. It is supposed to push us off the ledge (proverbially speaking). Boot camp isn't comfortable. University work isn't comfortable. Child rearing or holding a job isn't comfortable. We get comfortable as we become stronger.

One of the most common pitfalls today that I see in craft is lack of discipline. As soon as things get tough, the first thing that gets chucked is our meditation practice, our spiritual communities and our regular magical work. We remove the tension to make ourselves comfortable in order to go back to what we were doing before. There is a sense that because we were comfortable before and it felt good, it must have been right, and what we are doing now must not be because we feel anxious, stressed, angry or hurt. We freak out and remove the tensions as quickly as possible. I also have noticed that the reason most often stated of why people come to paganism initially is because they can do what they want when they want and how they want to do it. They are "tired of the monotheistic right and wrong system." What this sounds to me is like a child's perfect world of "I don't want to eat my veggies, go to sleep ever, or clean my room". What it creates is a high chair tyrant who has serious problems with authority, who has no grounding in reality, who has no ability to function in the real world, and has a entertaining level of self delusion of what their abilities actually are. People are using their spirituality as a justification for their lack of discipline and aimlessness.

Any true faith system, magical system or religious system worth its weight is going to require its initiates to hold to a discipline. It is going to make its initiates work, act with intention and they are going to feel limited. Paganism isn't about not being limited, its about freedom. People get confused about this. They think that freedom means doing anything that you want. However, this is a misnomer. Freedom as a state of being is freeing yourself from impulses that whip you around and run your life. Disciplines remove you from the fear tradition and instill a tradition of intentional living.

To go from whim to whim to whim isn't freedom. It's slavery.
garden_pixie: (Default)
I am one of those people that has to be away for a while to appreciate things that I need. Often times, particularly in the matter of spirituality, we hit the plateau and then wonder what we are doing wrong. I have heard it said that every mystic knows that those times are part of the process and we just prepare for them. It is like a desert journey with a camel and I am literally letting the camel go where I know it knows there is water. I experience lengthy dry spells that are so hard so times to figure out how to cross.
Sometimes in the midst of this I also lose hope or question my intuition that I should trust the camel and ask it to change directions. It feels panicky to me because I can be so far out in the desert I wonder if I can get back to the oasis where I was before before I die.

Right now, I struggle with my spirituality in the form that it takes. I am an experiential person who loves deep ideas... but it feels like our world is one that values the ideas first and the experiential is something you should leave after you graduate kindergarten. I realize this is my own bias and a judgement on myself and how I work my spirituality. It is also a judgement on my larger faith community (aka the pagans in general) that is generally unfair and unkind. I know that you can go into depth in an experiential model but it requires quiet meditation too. For me, I need both like water and food. If I work in a system that only does one, I just feel like I start dying.

As a person, I need to dance and to pray. Not just any dancing, I need fire dancing, bonfire dancing, tribal chanting and drumming. And then, I need my Rumi poetry to remind me about this great wine that we have become drunk on, and the burnt kabob that I have become as I studied fire over the last few years. I need to sit in silence and be.

My path in Wicca has changed me. I was fearful that I would change on this path in a way that would lead me away from divinity, secretly fearful until a few years ago that we are in fact practicing some sort of self centered spiritual practice. So I was vigilant in order to maintain some sort of control just in case. But I have looked into the mirror, deep in my eyes and seen the soul, and it is the soul of God. The heretical I AM lives within me, not as an addition, but as the drop of water that contains the ocean.

And so, I am on a journey again, deeper into my mysticism. Deeper into Wicca, deeper in my dance. I will anoint myself with wine and become the divine lover once again...

...and I can hear Him saying, "shut up and dance" .

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