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September 2 through September 8, 2024

Monday's Virgo new Moon sets the stage for progress over the next two weeks, spurring us on to dive head first into new projects and dreams. With the Moon in Virgo on Monday and Tuesday, these are the best days of the week to get things done, as a productive vibe hangs in the air. Mars will enter Cancer on Wednesday and travel through this emotional sign for the next two months. Because Mars is the planet of outer action and Cancer is a sign of internal processing, we may find it difficult to move in any tangible direction during this time. The good news is that Mars will find a way to transform us from within, which is sure to manifest outer growth and progress in the process. The Moon will dance through balancing Libra Wednesday through Friday, allowing us to restore order to anything in our world that is out of sync. It's also ideal for nurturing our closest relationships. The Moon will spend the weekend in Scorpio, encouraging soulful and spiritual activities as the main theme on Saturday and Sunday.

Sacred Fire, by Ellen Evert Hopman

(Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal.)

The Goddess in the Sun
Modern Paganism is heavily influenced by Greek and Roman mythology, and as a result certain assumptions are made, such as the idea that the Sun is male and the Moon female. A careful study of indigenous traditions will reveal that this wasn't true for many—or possibly most—cultures on planet Earth. In Egypt, the Sun was within the eye of the great lion Goddess Sekhmet or within the cow Goddess Hathor at night and reborn from the womb of Hathor each morning. The Egyptians also associated the Sun with Bastet or Bast—Lady of Flame, Eye of Ra, divine protectress of the pharaoh, whose sacred animal was the house cat.

Germanic cultures had Sunna and Frau Sunne while the Norwegian Goddess Sól traversed the heavens in a chariot drawn by the horses Arvak and Alsvid.

The Lithuanians and Lativans had Saule, the Finns Paivatar or Beiwe. The Hungarians had Xatel-Ekwa and the Slavs had Solntse. For the Arabs she was Al-Lat. In Australia she was Bila or Walo. In India she was Bisal-Mariamna or Bomong and in Sri Lanka, Pattini.

The ancient Hittites had Wurusemu, the Babylonians had Shapash. Among Native American cultures she was Unelanuhi to the Cherokee, Wal Sil to the Natchez, Malina to the Inuit and Herkoolas to the Miwok.

In Japan the Sun Goddess Amaterasu is still regarded as the Goddess of the Universe, from whom the emperor is descended.

In Ireland she was Grian (the Moon was her sister) and her path through the heavens was a central tenet of Celtic cosmology. To move "deiseil" or "sunwise" around a place or an object brought the greatest luck. When one engaged in ritual or processed around a sacred object, such as a holy well or a standing stone, it was important to move around it deiseil, in order to go with the flow of the universe.

A sunwise procession around a place or thing in Ireland was called "cor deiseil." In the Hindu tradition a sunwise procession is called "pradaksina" and is said to bring luck and prosperity. Moving with the Sun was a common facet of Indo-European culture.

Moving anti-clockwise, widdershins or "tuathamail" (Gaelic) was considered very unlucky because it meant you were deliberately going "against the flow" of nature. In fact, invading armies would approach a fort tuathamail and the inhabitants would know that they were under attack.

Fire Deities of the Celts
The two most popular deities of the ancient Celts were Brighid/Bride/Brigantia and Lugh/Lugus/Llew. Both were deities of brightness and fire. Lugh was not a Sun God as is popularly supposed; he represented brilliance in craft and in thinking and was called "master of every art." Similarly, Brighid was a Fire Goddess, mistress or patroness of arts. She was a Goddess of Healing, Smith Craft (a magical art in ancient times), and Poetry, and also a patroness of mothers (because to be a mother was to be a mistress of every art to at least a small extent).

Brighid was the Goddess invoked at Imbolc, the great Fire Festival of February 1 that celebrated the lactation of the ewes. Lugh gave his name to the festival of Lughnasad, the Fire Festival of the first fruits of the harvest, originally funeral games in honor of Lugh's foster mother.

In Irish tradition the Sun was also known as "Áine Clair," or Áine the Bright. She could appear to mortals as an old woman, a young princess, a mother, or a mermaid. "Áine Chliach" lived in a hill (Cnoc Áine). At Summer Solstice bundles of straw, or "cliars" were tied to poles, lit on fire, and carried around her hill. The cliars were then carried through the fields, around the cattle herd, and along boundaries to bless the land with Áine's fire.

Making Offerings to Sacred Fire
In Celtic religious practice it was essential to make offerings to fire, water, and land. Offerings placed into an earthen pit or into water went down to the Sidhe Realm (Fairy Realm) of the ancestors. Offerings placed at the base of a rock or tree fed the Land Spirits, and offerings placed into a ritual fire went up to the Sky Realm of the Gods. Each of these methods had a powerful magic of its own, but I will focus on Fire offerings here.

The High Holy Days of the Celts (Imbolc, Beltaine, Lughnasad, and Samhain) were all called Fire Festivals. A large bonfire (or in the case of Imbolc, candles) was featured at each of these celebrations. Offerings were made to the fires, such as butter, sacred woods, aromatic herbs, whiskey, and oils, as prayers were spoken and petitions made to the Gods.

Beltaine offered a unique opportunity for purification by fire. At this Fire Festival the cows were led between two sacred bonfires, so close that when a white cow passed through them her hair would be singed brown. This ritual was done to purify the cows as they left the farm and made their way to their summer pastures in the hills.

At Beltaine and Samhain hearth fires were put out as everyone waited for sacred flames to arrive, brought by torch-bearers. In Ireland the Beltaine fires were lit from the great Fire Altar at Uisneach, home of the Arch-Druid, at Samhain from a fire near Tara.

Hearth Fire
Sacred fire was also honored on a daily basis in the home. Hearth fires were often made with peat, because wood was too expensive and hard to obtain. Every housewife acted as a Priestess when she "smoored" the fire each night, carefully covering the embers to keep until dawn. As she did so she would utter a prayer such as this one from the Hebrides of Scotland:

Baby Blessings
Burning peat embers were used bless newborn babies and calves, carried in a shovel around the mother and child three times, asking the fire to protect them.

A Scottish Fire Blessing for a newborn child was done by filling a basket with bread and cheese and wrapping it in clean linen. The baby was laid on top of the bread and cheese; the oldest female present would carry the basket around a fire three times sunwise, and then suspend the basket briefly over the fire. Then the "bairnie" (baby) was put into its cradle as the bread and cheese were distributed to everyone who had helped with the birth.

Communal Fires
One of the most powerful of fire rituals was the "Tein-eigin," or Need-fire. Such a sacred fire would be constructed by the entire community when the whole area was threatened, for example by a cattle disease. The fire was started by friction and had to be made by nine times by nine married men, who would remove all metal from their persons before starting (such as coins, watches, and jewelry). Sacred woods (such as willow, hazel, alder, birch, ash, yew, elm, apple, pine, and oak) were used, or the fire could be made from only oak.

Every home in the area would put out their own hearth fire and then re-kindle a new fire from the flames of the Need-fire. Then they would put to boil water from a holy well or sacred spring. Once the water had boiled it was taken from the flames, cooled, and sprinkled on people and animals to heal them.

Fire Temples and Fire Altars
I have written a novel, the third in a trilogy of Druid novels, called Priestess of the Fire Temple: A Druid's Tale. In the novel I explore the idea of a Fire Temple. We know that such temples once existed in every province of Ireland and that Saint Brighid based her famous temple in Kildare on an earlier Pagan model. These temples were sacred precincts where a perpetual fire was kept by Druids. Petitioners with needs would come to the temples to have their questions answered.

I explore the idea of the Fire Altar in the first two novels, Priestess of the Forest: A Druid Journey and The Druid Isle.

References and further reading:
Carmichael, Alexander. Carmina Gadelica: Hymns and Incantations, Lindisfarne Press, New York, 1992
Hopman, Ellen Evert. Priestess of the Fire Temple: A Druid's Tale, Llewellyn, Minnesota, March 2012
Hopman, Ellen Evert. Priestess of the Forest: A Druid Journey, Llewellyn, Minnesota, February 2008
Hopman, Ellen Evert. The Druid Isle, April 2010
Hopman, Ellen Evert. Scottish Herbs and Fairy Lore, Pendraig Publishing, Los Angeles, California, 2010
Ó’Duinn, Sean. The Rites of Brighid Goddess and Saint, The Columba Press, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, 2005
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_deity. Accessed January 9, 2012.

Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal. Copyright Llewellyn Worldwide, 2012. All rights reserved.

I am wondering if you could help me figure some things out. I have been reading tarot cards, palms and crystal balls for many years. I started when I was in sixth grade and I am now in college. I have become quite skilled at it, but over the years, I have many times heard people say that these things are evil. Are there ways that divination can be evil, and others ways it can be good? If it's not evil, why do so many people think it is? Thanks!

Jess (birthday: January 19)

Dreamchaser:

Jessica, of course there are ways that divination tools can be used for evil. ANYTHING can be used for good or evil. I can use a knife to cut meat to feed my family, or I can use a knife to kill someone, in which case the knife is not "bad," my actions are. It is like that with anything.

Tarot was originally created as a way to pass along knowledge of the Old Ways; it was sort of a pictorial history. The Catholic Church considered that to be very dangerous, as it was trying to impose its own belief system on the population. The Church realized the power of the Old Ways, and since it wanted supreme power, it proclaimed tarot "evil" along with lots of other Pagan symbols and tools.

A good example is the God of the Hunt. A man would put antlers on his head and creep closer to the herd so that the animals could be hunted more easily for food. This eventually led to a Pagan God named the God of the Hunt, who was depicted as having horns on his head and hooves. Can you guess what the Christian Church turned THAT image into? Yes - the Devil.

Also, Christianity was not spreading fast enough, so during the Crusades, the term Pagan was mistranslated from the original meaning of "country dweller" to "unbeliever" by the Church. Anyone who was an "unbeliever" is to this day considered evil and hell bound by the Christian church. As a result, the term Pagan and anything associated it with it now carries negative connotations for most people. I do not want to digress into a lesson on the origins of Paganism, however - that is for another day.

If your intentions while using a divination tool are positive and you mean to harm none, then your tools can NEVER be evil. Bless them when you first receive them and be sure to cleanse them properly. Whenever I am burning sage, I always let the sage smoke encircle my tarot decks. I feel that it helps. You can do whatever you want to keep your tools "clean." The only other thing I do is put them away in a box when I am not using them. I have mentioned before that I just buy inexpensive kids' plastic pencils boxes. They are the perfect size and stack up easily.

I wish you knowledge of all that is GOOD.

*****

Astrea:

Many unenlightened/ ignorant people believe in devils and demons because of their superstitious upbringings. People have been burned as heretics for as long as the Christian Church has been in business, and before Christians, Pagans slaughtered one another over differences in belief. All of this happened because what people can't see and don't know about they fear, which leads to beliefs that certain people and objects are "EVIL."

Nowadays a good bit of the Church's objection to psychic readers is actually financial. The Church doesn't want people giving money to readers and psychics and witches, because they feel that should be money the CHURCH could use better, so they label those things evil.

I'm not saying that ALL Christians think divination tools are evil. The most open-minded people I know are often the real Christians - those who don't judge other people for what they think, see or use. There are plenty of faux Christians who will say that divination tools and related items don't come from God, and that God is the ONLY ONE who can plan or predict the future. Personally, I believe that we're divinely given the gift of FREE WILL to make choices and experience the consequences of those choices, and that nothing IS unless we do the work to MAKE IT SO. It's a little simple-minded to pin all our troubles on demonic forces!

Tools are tools, whether they're used for plumbing or for divining. If the plumber using the tools doesn't know what he is doing, then chances are the plumbing won't be fixed, and things could actually get worse. If a psychic READER doesn't know what SHE is doing, things can go wrong there, too. You've been reading as long as I have, so chances are the EXPERIENCES you've had doing it have taught you to believe in what is RIGHT for you.

People who don't understand what you're doing may be afraid of it, and so it becomes very easy for them to label it all as "EVIL" or "SATANIC" or "WRONG." What you do is wrong if YOU feel that it's wrong, and no one else should judge you for anything that you believe, say or use. As long as you feel "right" with the Divine Force in your life, everyone else can go jump in a lake!

Astrea:

Many times in life we hear, "You will always have what you NEED, but not necessarily what you WANT." Your spirit must have needed to experience the feeling of leaving your human body, and the suggestion in the next chapter of Sylvia Brown's book was all it took to get you there.

Even though you hadn't read it yet, your SOUL recognized the title of that chapter as something it had been seeking, and your soul, knowing that you had that reference to read after your experience, got with it and out you went!

While I don't usually recommend her books, Sylvia Brown has a wide reaching and powerful effect on lots of people. A Gemini like you would be able to relate easily to her writing and put it to good use. Synchronicity - you gotta love it!

I like your description of "getting caught." That's exactly what it feels like, isn't it? One minute you're free and hovering above the room, and the next minute, ZAP! back down into your corporeal form you go!

As a little kid, I loved that "feeling of return." With practice, most of the time we can control that event, but sometimes, when our physical ears hear a distracting noise or something else occurs to knock us back into reality, back we go. With practice you will be able to control your return better.

I find it interesting that you were visiting your mother-in-law and not someone in your own genetic family. Evidently, you and your husband got married for reasons that are even deeper than love. His family's interest in "psychic stuff" will nurture your children in such matters and help them to grow into their own abilities.

You'll never have to be concerned that when your daughter visits them, she'll be discouraged from exploring her own psychic life and power. My parents encouraged me to develop my psychic senses in a time when it wasn't nice to even discuss such things in public. Heck, it's STILL not considered a great topic at the dinner table in some families!

Your kids will get to talk about it ALL and ask questions and read and study. This is going to give them such an edge in life! Talk with your husband about how you want to present this to your kiddos, so that you are united in your approach and ready to tell them their experiences are all natural and okay.

A word or two of warning: Geminis often have difficulty staying grounded in REAL LIFE. Don't get so strung out on your ASTRAL life that you neglect what you're doing here on Earth.

You are at the beginning of a long journey to learn where your power really lies. Try to be patient with this process and take your time.