One of the most basic and fundamental skills in magick or any spiritual practice for that matter is meditation. Yet somehow meditation is the most overlooked and perhaps misunderstood topic and practice. I get emails daily about how to start meditation or how to improve a mediation practice.
One of the first things I tell clients is practice makes better there is no perfect. I personally recommend meditating twice a day for 5 to 10 mins at least each day. Know I know for a beginner this is asking a lot but set this as a goal to work up to. In the video below we cover a few mediations for a beginner new to the practice to get started right away. We also offer a Full Beginner to advance online meditation class. that will teach you everything you need to know to have strong working knowledge and skill in the core foundations of meditation. This will allow you to easily learn other forms of meditation practices and uses them in your personal path easily.
With Yule on the way, I got an email asking if I could show an easy beef dish a Couple could use to serve their parents and grandparents. The said my Chicken recipe turned out so well for them they thought I might be able to help here as well. After email back and forth some I came up with the idea of a simple Yule Roast in the Crockpot. In the following video, we talk about the magickal properties and uses of beef in Culinary magick and show how to make that very roast recipe.
Magickal Properties of Beef bliss, excitement, grounding, prosperity, protection, strength
Holiday Spice
1 tbsp ground ginger
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tbsp ground cloves
1/ tbsp ground black pepper
YULE ROAST
NEEDED Holiday Spices, 6 Quart Crockpot, 3-4 pound chuck roast, Rosemary, Salt, Pepper, Sweet Red Wine Blend, Lemon juice, Mayo, Mixing bowl, and a small whisk
Put your chuck roast into the crockpot and add 2 Tablespoons HOLIDAY spice and 2 Tablespoons Salt and 1 cup of the sweet red wine blend set the crockpot on low and cook for 10 hours.
When the Roast is done ladle out about a cup of the broth in the crockpot into a mixing bowl and add 2 large tablespoons of mayo 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, 1 tablespoon of black pepper and 1 tablespoon of salt and mix the ingredients well and chill for one hour if you want a thicker sauce you can add a little more mayo but be careful and taste as you do as you may need to add more seasoning.
Serve the beef on a plate with the white sauce on the side for dipping or your guest to add to the beef with sides or a nice salad.
With Yule on the way, I thought I would share a recipe that we love in my family for wassail. You might be wondering just what is wassail. Wassail is a strong alcoholic punch like drink that is commonly made with ale and apples. It was once a very common and important part of the Yule season. The holiday carol ‘A Wassailing We Come’ is in fact about this drink. In the past friends and neighbors would go wassailing what we might call caroling today. if you lessen to the modern carol you can hear the tradition of them going around singing in exchange for an offering of strong drink(wassail) and some coins for their purse. Honestly, I might have enjoyed caroling more if they were handing out alcohol lol. The idea was to bring good health and joy to all those you shared the wassail with. So enjoy the video below to learn more and make a batch of wassail for you and your family and be in good health and cheer. From our family to yours have a wonderful holiday and a very blessed Yule.
Holiday Spice
1 tbsp ground ginger
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tbsp ground cloves
1/2 tbsp ground black pepper
Wassail Ingredients
1 cup Brown sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon (can be removed)
3 bottles of ale
3 bottles of hard cider
1/2 cup brandy
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 tbsp holiday spice
2 sticks cinnamon
whipped cream
Add to a crockpot and heat on low till warm serve warm with whipped cream on top.
Yule or the Winter solstice is a wonderful time of year. often associated with family, friends, joy, love, and prosperity as well as the coming of the new year. I often find many people seek to stick so strictly to one tradition or other for this holiday that they end up stress and not have much fun.
I to was guilty of this lucky for me my loving wife set me straight. She was the one who pointed out we could celebrate the meaning of the season our way with our family traditions. That is what we did and just like that, I started to enjoy the holidays again. I go into more detail in the video below on how you can begin celebrating Yule. I cover some of the basic meanings of the season and give a few ideas to try and talk about how and why you should also seek to find your own traditions to honor the meaning of the season.
I also want to wish everyone a wonderful holiday season no matter what path or tradition you follow or what holiday or religion you are. May you and your families always be blessed.
When we think of the classical image of a mage we often think of magickal beings or servants aiding and helping the wizard or magician. When thinking of this many thinks of Evocation and summoning up a being. However for me Servitor magick the practice of creating a being. A being that is created to serve a specific purpose and or jobs like protection or an energy cleaning maid in your home. Servitor magick is not only a simple process but it is as versatile as it comes limited only by your imagination. In the video below I give a quick intro to how to begin using servitor magick in your practice today.
For more information check out the affiliate link below for a wonderful book on this topic.
Magickal Servitors: Create Your Own Spirits to Attract Pleasure, Power, and Prosperity https://amzn.to/2PfhMPF
What do you think of when someone says the word vampire? What if someone says the word, psychic vampire? Most of us tend to think of movies we love and are fascinated by. Yet, what if they told you there are real vampires in the world but have very little to do with the movies after all, for most, if not all legends, have some bit of fact in them.
I know when I first heard this some fifteen years ago I thought the person telling me was crazy. Lucky for me I live with a scientific mind because over time I have seen the proof of what a real vampire is.
In this article, I am going to be focusing on what are known as Psychic Vampires. So just what is a psychic vampire? Well for starters, they are not immortal undead beings. What they are, however, are humans who, for whatever reason, do not produce all the normal energy that other humans do. As a result of this, they have to get energy from an outside source. A Source that most will say has to be human in order for their bodies to be able to use it.
So what happens if they do not get this energy? Well, many things can happen, the first is normally they feel very drained and tired regardless of how much sleep they have had. Soon after they will find themselves thirsty all the time and then their health starts to fail. They become sick very easily and wounds will take forever to heal no matter how minor it is. If left too long, depression can set in and in some cases that depression can lead to far worse things. They will also feel extreme psychical pain all over with no way to relieve it. Imagine a 24 hour 7 days a week leg cramp all over your body.
You may be wondering, now how is it they get the energy they need to prevent these symptoms. They do this by, what in the vampire community is known as, feeding. However, unlike the movies and most books would have us believe, they do not do so in a way that is harmful or unethical. The community takes this kind of thing very seriously and has come up with a set of rules known as the Black Veil (written by Michelle Belanger and Father Sebastiaan) to address these issues.
To feed, most psychic vampires feed on what is known as ambient energy. This is energy that detaches itself from a person and their aura and floats free from a person in the environment. Although this energy is from a human source, it is no longer attached to any one person. This not only allows the vampire to feed but helps keep the energy in the area clean since they are removing all the human emotional energy in the process. This is a big help in public places since I am sure we have all felt the effects of emotional energy in public places or at work.
Now there are people, who may be a good friend or lover, who will allow a vampire to feed directly from them. In the community, these people are often known as donors or in some cases swans. Each vampire and the donor have a very close relationship and safety is always the first concern. Great care is taken to make sure they never take too much energy or harm anyone in any way. In fact, vampires can be great healers since they can remove bad or negative energy from someone, process it and feed on it, which heals the person and also helps the vampire. Due to this need for energy, vampires are naturally fantastic energy workers.
Now the Black Veil what is it? It is a list of seven common-sense rules the community uses to stay safe and ethical these rules are as follows:
The Black Veil (currently in use)
DISCRETION
Respect yourself and present yourself so that others also respect you. Take care in revealing your nature. Explain what you are, not to shock, but to teach and to inform. Do not flaunt what you are, and know that whether you want them to or not, your actions will reflect upon the rest of the community.
Share your nature only with those with the wisdom to understand and accept it, and learn to recognize these people.
DIVERSITY
Among us, there are many different practices and many points of view. No single one of us has all the answers to who and what we are. Respect each person’s individual choices and beliefs. Learn about them and share what you know. Our diversity is our strength, and we should not allow misunderstanding to weaken our community.
Find the path that is right for you and uphold this freedom for others.
CONTROL
Do not allow your darkness to consume you. You are more than just your hunger, and you can exercise conscious control. Do not be reckless. Always act with a mind toward safety. Never feed because you think this makes you powerful; feed because this is what you must do.
Be true to your nature, but never use it as an excuse to endanger those around you.
ELDERS
Give respect to those who have earned it. Anyone can claim a title, but a true leader will prove him or herself through dedication, hard work, and great deeds. Even so, leaders should be guides and not dictators. Look to them as examples, but always decide for yourself what you must do.
Respect the person, not the position, and understand that your choices are always your own.
BEHAVIOR
Know that there are repercussions to every action and that you alone are responsible for your decisions. Educate yourself about risky behaviors, then always act with wisdom and common sense. Do not allow others to abuse you, but also, do not selfishly abuse.
Respect the rights of others and treat them as you would be treated.
DONORS
Feeding should occur between consenting adults. Allow donors to make an informed decision before they give of themselves to you. Do not take rapaciously from others, but seek to have an exchange that is pleasant and beneficial for all.
Respect the life that you feed upon and do not abuse those who provide for you.
COMMUNITY
Reach out to others in your community. Exchange ideas, information, and support. Be hospitable to others, and appreciate hospitality when it is extended to you. Do not engage in illegal activity, for this can endanger us all.
Seek to nurture our community and support all those who do the same.
written by Father Todd circa 1998 and revised by Michelle Belanger in 2000 & 2002a copy of the most current Black Veil (BV v 2.0) appears in the back of The Psychic Vampire Codex: A Manual of Magick and Energy Work by Michelle Belanger as well as in the 2007 release, “Vampires: In Thier Own Words.”
So why do I bother telling you all this? Well, it is simple. There are a lot of people out there who think that psychic vampires are just unethical parasites. This is not true, I now have many friends in the vampire community and have seen the effects of not feeding. It is a hard life and not one they choose for themselves. So my hopes are to help people to understand that vampires are just like the rest of us. I for one have epilepsy and no one thinks ill of me for it. so why should we think ill of them just because they have a condition they could not choose to avoid.
That being said, humans will be humans, not all vampires or those who claim to be vampires truly have this need, some just think it is cool. Sadly, some of these people give a bad name to the community. If you hear words like Sire or Childer walk away this person is a joke at best. Those who truly know what a vampire is tend to not use such words since a vampire is born that way not created. In fact, consider these red flags in the community “for, well, predators”. There may be exceptions to this, but very few, if any, in my 15 years studying the community.
I also want to clear up the fact that a psychic vampire is not an energy vampire. A psychic vampire has a true need for this energy. Whereas an energy vampire/energy taker is someone who acquires a high from taking it. We have all met someone like this, they tend to always stir up drama somehow and be at the center of it. If you are ever worried about someone like this or even the very rare unethical psychic vampire, a basic energy shielding technique will be enough to keep you safe. I have covered Basic shielding in a video and will link to it below.
I want to again say I am not writing this to put anyone down or make excuses for anyone. I am only hoping that by writing this we can perhaps see another side of the story and have a little more tolerance. I have seen so many come to this topic from a place of fear and hate. This breaks my heart no one should fear or hate good people for what they are.
I also want to make sure everyone has the knowledge to protect themselves form Energy takers just seeking a high or trying to boost there magick through stealing energy. I do also recognize that in this day and age there are indeed some very non-ethical groups on the rise. Let us just remember this is all walks of life, not just the vampire community. So let’s arm ourselves with knowledge so we can be protected and need not fear them.
So we can also make friends and allies of those wonderfully good people who I truly believe outnumber that bad. Let us not allow our views or differences fo practice or tradition divide us.
Coffee is one of my favorite drinks and a very useful and commonly used part of my magickal practice. In this video, we cover some great ways to start using coffee in your practice.
