One day, long ago, the Sun was rising. There was nothing particularly different or special about this day, except perhaps that the clouds were a bit whiter than usual, the waters a little bit more blue. Certainly the Sun was feeling stronger, brighter, returning as he was from the slumbering winter. Who can say was else was different? Perhaps the Sea had made herself a little bit wider, a bit deeper. Perhaps the water in Her wide womb was just a little bit brighter, too? Who can tell?

The Sun is a notorious trickster and the Sea loves to keep her secrets, so they will certainly not be telling. Whatever the reason, that morning of all mornings the Sun looked on the Sea with a different light. He saw in her a beauty and depth He had not before noticed. She saw in Him a spark of Divinity so great and lovely that She just had to feel, to bring into herself. So She did.

When the Sun rose over the horizon, over the ample and fertile flesh of the Sea, they joined in a way they never had before. His burning rays moved into her so quickly, and her white-crested breakers rose higher than ever to greet him. There was a flash in the world when the Sun rose that day, the Sea washed in golden light. The brightness passed as soon as it had come, and all was as it was before, save for the small spot of light still playing on one of the Sea’s crests. The light did not fade, but formed, and in just moments there was a squalling babe cradled in the waves, with a brightness and a spark still shining from his open eyes.

Both the Sun and the Sea were quite certain that this Boy was the most beautiful of His kind ever born, with His shining eyes and high brow. They named Him then in their own tongues. It is not something that we can voice, of course, being made of neither light nor roaring water. But so it goes.

The Youth’s Divine parents loved Him more than anything and tried to keep Him close. The Sea nursed Him; He suckled on Her loamy waves and drank of the brine as if it were ewe’s milk mixed with honey. The Sun caressed his face and kept him warm. They kept hold of the Boy for six days and six nights. On the seventh morning the Sun looked down and said to the Sea, “We cannot keep our darling Son here with us. He has feet – not wings or fins – and must be taken to land. Eventually He will eat more than loam and brine and then where will we be?”

The Sea did not cry – what tears could the Lady produce, though she be already made with all the salted waters of the world? She did cry out, however, from her very depths. Every creature of the world knew her pain. She also know the truth of it and asked the Sun, “But where would we send Him? What out in the world could match His beauty, His brilliance?”

Said the Boy’s father, “I have another son, after a fashion. He is as bright as I and our child can live in his nest. Gold it is – gold straw and gold leaf, piled high and as soft as anything. He will be safe there, and they can take care of eachother as Brothers aught.”

The Boy’s mother agreed haltingly. The Sun called a Rainbow to him, and the Sea kissed her Boy with foamy white lips. With one final, warm touch to the sweet cheek of his son, the father sent him away to be reared by the boy’s brother, the Phoenix. The great bird cawed in delight at the sight of the wondrous babe. His love in that moment was as great as anything, and so excited was he that he grew brighter in that moment than even his golden nest. The boy, carried by rainbow and laid down gently on the golden thatch, looked at the fire-bird with shining eyes. The Phoenix, bursting with delight at the new life in His nest, tucked a wing about the boy, and together they slept.

Anne began training in the Western mysteries with Althea Northage-Orr under a hybrid Golden Dawn/Gardnerian lineage in 2003. In this vein, she focuses on comparative mythology, magickal herbalism, Qabalistic study, and the development of ceremonial rites of passage and seasonal celebrations.

OK, fellow mages, pop quiz:

1. Cut an apple in half. Count the seeds that fall out. If you have an even number, you will be lucky in love. If you have an odd number, your love will be starcrossed.
2. An amulet containing nutmeg will bring luck and money.
3. Five cardamom pods placed above the door will ward off evil.
4. Meadowsweet, carried by an expectant mother, will help prevent miscarriage.

As a serious student of herbalism for almost a decade, and a seeker in the mysteries for longer, I’ve spent no small amount of time plumbing the depths of the traditional magickal uses of plants. The result? Confusion, early on, and frustration, a bit later. It seemed like almost any herb fit into one of four categories:

1. banishing evil spirits/bad luck
2. attracting/divining love
3. attracting wealth
4. bringing visions

And then there were a few odd specific categories, like growing hair or preventing drunkenness or shining up your codpiece or some such.

Fourth category above aside (we do know for sure that some plants do indeed produce visions and dreams), the others seemed practically interchangeable and often somewhat arbitrary (eep!). In other words, the more I studied about what herbs actually do in the body, the less inclined I was to believe in these categories which seemed to reduce herbs to mere superstitious trinkets, harvested and carried to bring about simple wishes.

Yeah, I know, it’s all about “intention.” I remember the first time I went to a medicine-making class in California and tried to explain to my instructors the alchemical approach to making herbal medicines, spagyrics in particular, and being told in an unnecessarily slowed down cadence, “OK, so that’s a good example of ‘intention.’” But one man’s rose is another man’s asafoetida. And if you look at enough books on herb/magick correspondences, you’ll find that on very few herbs do they really agree.

I certainly advocate living with, meditating upon, and sensually experiencing as much as is safe, a particular plant to discover its magickal powers.

But another approach, one a little bit different from the common fare in plant magick guides, is to examine plants from an elemental perspective — that is, to identify their elemental signature (Air, Fire, Water, and Earth), and to wed this to what they do in the body. In the West, herbalists have been gathering and sharing information about common herbs and, thanks to empirical evidence and scientific research, they have been agreeing (more rather than less) upon herbs’ mechanisms of healing. The action of an herb in the body should give us a very important clue as to its elemental correspondence, and thereby its magical and elemental power. As above, so below.

Traditional Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine have always assigned to herbs specific “energies” — that is, hot, cold, wet, dry, etc. Beginning with Dioscorides, Greco-Roman medicine in the West relied upon a similar system. These systems were based on the four traditional elements, the essential building blocks of all matter. Use one element to control or augment another. It is an elegant and effective way of using herbs to heal that is still very much in use today.

As the caduceus, symbol of healing, is carried by Hermes, so too is magick within his purview. Healing can certainly seem like magick. Let’s face it, on some level healing IS magick — it is the willful manipulation of elements to bring about balance and well-being. When we know what an herb can do to bring our vital physical systems into balance, we can rather deftly arrive at its actions on the more subtle bodies, and on the subtle energies affecting the day to day world in which we live.

Want to find out more about common herbs and how you can use them as allies to bring about harmony in your life and magickal practice? Come to my class at the Brotherhood’s Spirit Faire and learn to orient yourself to the basic elemental nature of plants!

(Answer above: C)

Michael Coorlim is a freelance author, poet, artist, web developer, and online journal editor. A postmodern mystic and Taoscordian monk, he reads the Tarot, throws the I-Ching, is a lucid dreamer, and does modern shamanistic journeywork.

We’re bombarded, throughout the day, with a massive amount of sensory input – far more than our conscious minds can cope with. We have filters in place to sift through the data that our senses deliver to us, and these filters are shaped by our cognitive bias. We’re delivered the information that correlates most closely to what we already believe to be true; it’s those neural pathways that run the most efficiently. A lot slips through, but much of this is gathered by the subconscious mind, and while the ego goes about its day the subconscious mind is always active, always correlating, always turning things over. It passes us the conclusions it reaches about what we’ve missed in subtle ways – dreams, insights, and hunches.

Divination lets us provide the subconscious with a more direct medium to communicate to us. The tools we use – runes, cards, dream journeywork, shamanistic trance – give it a personal symbology to use as a means of communication. All of the divinatory methods are abstract enough that we can let the subconscious mind drift us to the correct interpretations based on a thousand small cues not significant enough to pick up on consciously, if we keep an open mind about it and let it lead us to where we need to go.

I’ve relied on divinatory messages to have conversations with myself for years. It’s one way that the eternal self, the soul self, has to pass along its wisdom and insights, and there’s much to be gained from open ears and an open mind. When we read for another our ‘inner detective’ is working overtime, picking up on infinite details that we miss, both physical and spiritual, material and energy. The skill of divination is the skill of interpreting these messages that our inner self is sending to us.

My first magickal teacher in the mid-1990s taught me that when dealing with the spirit world it was important to realize that there was nothing out there that I couldn’t handle. She said that if a person approached traveling the astral or faring forth to Otherworlds with fear, they would be far more likely to have an unpleasant experience. This advice has served me very well over the years and is good as far as it goes, but what my teacher neglected to tell me was that there were a variety of entities out there that could and would cause me a great deal of grief if given the opportunity. Admittedly, if you don’t go looking for trouble, if you approach all you meet (on this plane and others) with respect, and you believe that you can handle what comes your way you will tend to do better than if you are constantly skulking through life filled with fear, but it doesn’t mean that you won’t encounter difficult people or entities. Moreover, assuming that you can handle whatever comes your way, especially if you have no real training in working with difficult, fearsome, or even gruesome enemies, can be a detriment.

My Ecstasis workshop is intended for those who, through no fault of their own, end up in awkward, frightening, or even dangerous magickal and psychical situations. The first part is a literature review of what’s out there on the subject and will hopefully give the participants an awareness of what’s good, bad, and mediocre. The second part is a discussion of some of the entities frequently encountered on this plane of existence – most of the time when we encounter something it is because they have either stumbled onto us or we have stumbled onto them. This part of the workshop will help give you some sense of who has shown up unexpectedly in your bedroom at night after following you back from the Dreamtime. The third part gives some practical suggestions for warding your home and making protective (and inconspicuous) amulets. Participants are encouraged to bring a pen and some paper so that they can take notes; nothing else is required to attend the class.