Shaking a Creative Leg

Our third class was spent looking at the creative, improvised, making-it-up-as-you-go part of ritual and magic. We had a few exercises that allowed the students to express themselves physically, trying to communicate their ideas without words. Then we had exercises that allowed them to free-form write their inspirations down based on unfamiliar music.

What's the point of all that and what does it have to do with magic?

Communicating your ideas, desires, and needs to the universe does involve a certain amount of creative thought and expressiveness. Ritual is all about theatrics, especially in group situations. You need to be comfortable with yourself and your instincts so that you are not be bogged down by fear, second-guessing, and debilitating frustration when things don't go as planned.

So being confident in your abilities, being able to think on the spot, to go with the flow, and being able to improvise will allow your energy to flow more naturally.

Being able to improvise your way through a flubbed dance step is the difference between creating art and stumbling until you fall into the orchestra pit.

Second Class

Last night's class was even closer to complete, but now I've met all of my students for this term. I must say that I'm impressed with the folks that have come out for this class. They all have varying degrees of prior experience with pagan spirituality, philosophy, or magic-use, but they are very quick, knowledgable, and ask some tough questions. This is going to be fun and challenging.

One of my new students says that there are people in St. Leonard giving a similar set of courses, but the are definitely focussed on Wicca specifically and the teachers gave her an odd feeling. I wonder who these people are 'cause I've not heard about these classes. While we do cover Wicca in our set of classes, we also try to offer a balanced look at many belief systems.

We also had an interesting discussion on the Ethics of using Magic, so I'm looking forward to future questions, discussions, and their journal entries on this subject. The example I provided was as follows:

"My mother is in the hospital and is very sick. I want to do a healing spell to help her get well, but she wants nothing to do with my magical work. She believes it to be the Devil's work and wants no part of it. Of couse, I know my magical work is not Devil worship, so I still want to do the healing spell. What are the ethics involved here?"

Any thoughts on this (use the Comments feature to let me know)?

Also, Scarlet used a simple grounding exercise to show the students how energy can be used to tie a person down. This was the same exercise she asked me to participate in a couple of years ago that completely freaked me out. I couldn't believe how difficult it was to lift her off the ground after she grounded.

It was cool to watch the other students react to this demonstration. I'm looking forward to exposing them to energy using their Third Eye.

First Day, First Post

I taught my first class last night: Level One students at the Crescent Moon School. Overall, the class went well, although it ended late (we started late). There's also a huge load of material we need to cover in each class, so I really need to keep a better eye on the clock.

The students are very bright and very different and they can ask very tough questions! I'm glad Scarlet was there to provide the academic side of things. I'm handling the personal experience and opinions side of things.

And speaking of opinions, I had the opportunity to rant about two things I was looking forward to, namely:

• Black/White/Fuscia Magic: magic is a tool and it doesn't have morality about it. It's like a hammer. You can use a hammer to build a chair or you can use a hammer to crush someon's skull. It doesn't change the nature of the hammer: it's the intention of the person wielding the tool that matters. Black or White witchcraft is like Black or White carpentry.
  
  
• The Necessity of Magical Tools: using candles, incense, knives, wands, etc. can add lots of theatrics to your spiritual practice and can be useful to focussing the mind, body, and spirit, but they are definitely optional.
  
  It's your energy and your connection to the energy of the universe that matters. With practice, you can focus your mind, body, and spirit to a point where you won't need the tools anymore. They can be fun, but definitely not necessary.
  

Scarlet only had to pull me back a few times, but I need to focus on that for the next class. Still... it's loads of fun! I hope the students find the classes fun and informative.