The Silver Chalice Wicca 'Zine's Grand Reopening!

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Table of Contents

What's New on the Site	-- Wiccan Goddesses, Book of Shadows & Book of Mirrors, and the Gift Economy
Events & Announcement	-- Wow! A New Website! : D
Special Offers	-- Discount on Wicca School
Bonus Article	-- MAP Coning
Sabbats & Esbats & Other Wiccan Rituals	-- Spring Sabbats: Brighid/Imbolc & Eostara
Ask The Priestess	-- Taming the Ego
Fave Quotes	-- Changing Ourselves; Changing the World
Energy Field Barometer	-- Oh So Many Things! Including Mercury and Venus Retrogrades
Word on the Street
Silver Chalice Details

What's New On The Site

Considering the computer situation, there's actually quite a bit of exciting new stuff on the website since the last edition of the Silver Chalice came out!

There's a LOT of new Wiccan Goddess articles, focused on 2 primary Wiccan Goddesses: Brighid and Hecate. Starting from these pages, you will find links to several other articles on each of these wonderful Wiccan Goddesses.

There's also a free preview of the entire Wicca Course lesson on Book of Shadows & Book of Mirrors. There are several pages of it, all linked from this starting page, so be sure you don't miss any!

Another page, more on the topic of the New Paradigm than Wicca, is The New Gift Economy: 
Healing and Sanctifying Money.

As we launch into the new way of being in the world, the way we use money has to change — more than any other single thing, it's killing our planet. Different people are reinventing our relationship with money, and one of the versions that's coming into being is the Gift Economy.

Check out this article — there's even a video!

I may have missed some other new articles... who can remember from so long ago? ; ) But that's enough to keep you busy til the next edition, I'm sure!

Events & Announcements

My big announcement for this edition is that I've started a new website! (I'm VERY excited about it!! ) Gonna Be Pain-Free, Naturally (www.gonnabepainfree.com)

Finally, an outlet for another passion of mine: health and healing!

It's focused on natural pain relief remedies and techniques, and over time will expand to include all kinds of natural health tips. For example, my vast collection of posture and stretching information, AND my special Cold & Flu Buster technique (so many people ask me for this; it's easier just to have it online for everyone to use.)

That's still to come.

First and most important is helping people with pain or fatigue start to feel better! That's what's on the site at this point.

Please come and check it out! (And please forgive me if some of the links are broken... I haven't finished putting up all the pages in the first section yet.)

There's also new Facebook & Twitter pages for this topic, too, if you'd like to join me there.

I'd love to have you as part of my new online community! <3

Special Offers

Every now and then, I get an email from someone who wants to know if they can still get the special price on the upcoming Wicca School course, A Year & A Day: 53 Weeks to Becoming a Wiccan.

I'm happy to be able to say, yes!

Even though the Indiegogo campaign is over, you can get the same perks through the website — and that includes the discount on enrollment.

How it works is: you make a donation, and then send me an email letting me know which eligible gifts you wish to claim. (You need to email me, because I can't always tell who to credit or which email to send the gifts to.)

Check out the Thank-You Gifts page for details, and a donation link.

Click Here to Find Out How To Pre-Register for Wicca Spirituality's A Year & A Day: 53 Weeks to Becoming a Wiccan online course!

And THANK YOU for supporting Wicca-Spirituality.com, the Silver Chalice 'Zine, and the upcoming Wicca School!

Bonus Article

MAP Coning
— Psychic Healing & Transformation

I've got a great technique to share with you! It's called MAP Coning and it's a very powerful way to enlist Divine Aid for any issue, problem, or goal you have. If...

• you're in need of healing of any kind,
• you feel stuck or have something in your life that's not working,
• you want to shift negative thoughts or feelings,
• you want help upgrading to higher frequency vibrations (levels of consciousness)...

Try a MAP Coning!

  Continue to learn how ...

Sabbats & Esbats & Other Wiccan Rituals

Spring Sabbats:
Brighid / Imbolc & Eostara

Excerpt from Wicca Course In Progress (Please Note:
This material is protected by legal copyright)

The Energy of Springtime: Creation

The Spring Sabbats have this in common:

• The initiation of new life
• Inspiration
• Creation
• Renewal
• Increasing optimism and enthusiasm
• Bursts of creative energy

Ask The Priestess

Taming The Ego

Dear Priestess,

I have a question about Ego.

I have a horribly negative ego. It tells me I will never be good enough, tells me that I don't have the abilities that I know I have, that it is all in my head, and a coincidence, or maybe I am schizophrenic.

My question is, can you change how the ego thinks...how it talks to you, or do you learn to sort of mute and ignore it, and eventually it will just shut up.

I am having an amazing spiritual journey, yet I still find that EGO and my inability to not listen to it completely is hindering my ability to hear what the angels have to say.

Also, do you believe that we all have the psychic abilities to do anything that we want to do, or that they are special gifts?

There is an angel class and a mediumship class in my area and I would like to take them both. I in fact feel a pull to take them both, but I am not sure that I have the capabilities of being a medium....and you have to give a message at the end of the class....

— R. in USA

Dear R.,

I love your questions! So much fun to ponder! : )

Where to start…?

It's not that your ego is particularly negative… they're ALL like that! It's their trademark! : )

It's great that you already realise that these ego-statements are not true. That's half the battle won, right there!

The ego's strongest power is that it speaks within your own mind... and pretends to be your own voice, pretends to be what you think is true. After all, who do we believe more than ourselves?

If you realise that that voice is not "you," you've already gained a measure of freedom.

A big secret to ego-taming is NOT to demonise it, though. FIGHTING is what the ego is best at! If you fight it, it gets all sneaky. It'll go underground and make you think that you're being all spiritual and evolving and enlightened, while laughing behind your back at the crazy stunts it's still getting you to do.

(The MAP Coning Technique, introduced above, is very helpful with reducing the ego's control over you, too.)

Luckily, there's a simple test to help you discern the difference.

You can tell if it's the ego talking by asking yourself ...

• Does thinking this way make me feel better or worse?
• Happier or not?
• More optimistic and more empowered, or not?
• More energised and enthused, or more tired and despairing?
• Do I feel softer, more loving and compassionate, or harder, more self-oriented, and more remote?
• Does this path lead me toward the Divine, or away from higher consciousness?
• And most important of all: does following its guidance lead you to experiences that do?

Your Devoted Servant

One of the best ways I've found to tame the ego is to treat the ego like a faithful dog. It has limited intelligence but a lot of instinct. It wants to serve you, but is confused about what that means for a human of this era. And mostly it wants to be in control because it thinks that's how it's keeping you ALIVE.

Talk to it, reassure it, calm it like a child or beloved pet. But don't let it talk you into getting behind the wheel! ; )

Simply learning to notice when your ego is doing the talking (pretending to be the real you), is 95% of the work.

Deprogramming / Reprogramming

Ignoring the ego sorta works... if you can notice that it's the ego, before dismissing it.

Better than simply ignoring is to reprogramme it. And yes, you can reprogramme your ego! It just takes time. Granted, it takes more time than most people want to invest, but it's really worth the effort!

After all, the vast majority of the time, the ego is doing its own thing. Then people wonder why a few affirmations a day aren't making a difference! LOL Try shifting your thoughts and self-talk every single time you notice the ego saying negative things, and reprogramming DOES happen.

Ego Blocks Psychic Power

Regarding psychic abilities, they are innate in humans, though in different degrees — just as some people are better at math or art or carpentry than others.

As you say, it's generally the ego blocking that ability.

I've found that learning to quiet the ego, and especially to RECOGNISE the sneaky tricky little devil, really liberated my psychic ability big time! As did intensive spiritual development.

Personally, I doubt that a weekend course could have helped me become psychic, poof, abracadabra, like that. But I can see that if people have the basic readiness and just need guidance in how it works, that would be really useful.

If you feel pulled, why not go? What matter if you get a message clearly at the end or not? Only the ego cares about such things. ; )

With Bright Blessings,

erin

*   *   *  

Do you have a question you'd like answered? Email the Priestess and your question could be answered in a future issue.

(Note: questions may be edited for brevity or clarity. No real names will be disclosed. For reasons of legality, all questions become the property of Wicca-Spirituality.com.)

Fave Quotes

The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old but on building the new.

~ Socrates

It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

~ Carl Sagan

It is not the things that we have yet to discover that will change our lives, but the things we have "learnt" and ignored.

~ Unknown

Humanity is going to require a substantially new way of thinking if it is going to survive.

~ Albert Einstein

Strive to close the eyes of the body and open those of the soul and look into your own heart.

~ Teresa of Avila

Love is the water of life, jump into the water. Every drop from this ocean brings new life.

~ Rumi

Energy-Field Barometer

SO MUCH I WISH I COULD'VE SHARED WITH YOU BEFORE! There's been so much going on.

The biggest change was at Dec 21, 2012 — what a wonderful experience, to feel that shift! Though the weeks leading up to it were extraordinarily painful. I plan to write up about the whole process, if I can find a few days to spare.

For now, I just want to assure you that the Transformation happened, and we're well on our way into the New Paradigm reality now!

Which is what all the rest of the Energy Fields are tied up with...

Mercury Retrograde

As for current Energy Field happenings, you might want to know that Mercury is going Retrograde again from Feb 6 — 28, plus of course the wind-up and cool-down "shadow" of about 3 weeks on either side of this.

People talk about problems of Mercury Rx, and with good reason. But there's also benefits that it offers. In a nutshell, Mercury Retrograde is a bad time to start anything forward-looking (like contracts, new jobs or relationships, big decisions), and it also tends to be hard on any kind of communication, technology, travel, and business.

On the plus side, it offers you a fabulous opportunity to clear up things from the past: changing old patterns, getting closure, self-exploration, releasing worries and fears, finishing up old projects, and meditation.

It's also a good time to explore possibilities — while you won't want to set any plans or goals in concrete, it's an excellent time to do some deep research.

Stepping Into Higher Vibration

You may have noticed a startling improvement in consciousness. This is expressing itself as, for example, people who've been completely resistant to things suddenly opening up. Self-awareness increases. Willingness to listen to other with less defensiveness. Rusty old unhelpful patterns are loosening up and starting to change.

(This is, as always, more noticeable in other people, but it's surely happening within you too.

This improvement is alternating with periods of reversion back into the ugly old ways, however, always temporary.

What's going on is that the whole planet is stepping into the New Paradigm, but it's a process rather than a one-time deal. Two steps forward, one step back... we dance into the future we've been Dreaming and Calling to us!

Venus Retrograde In Capricorn

• uncover the Shadow within ourselves as well as within our relationships and society,
• question our underlying assumptions and beliefs,
• act more from conscious choice than from habitual emotional patterns,
• and basically to dismantle our lives from within, rebuilding them to reflect deeper truths and values.

Long-Term Trends

The general energy movement is to grow in consciousness and compassion... and to welcome the return of the Divine Feminine! (Yes, She's back!!!)

We are being pushed to challenge our own assumptions — laziness of mind and emotion is no longer possible, no more than laziness of action for those who wish to continue with the wastefulness of past centuries.

We are discovering what it truly means to have the Divine Feminine within us, and in our Earth. We are remaking masculinity to reflect the true Divine Masculine rather than the shadow-God we've been given for the last few millennia.

We are required to own our Shadow sides, take responsibility, and free ourselves from self-created limitations.

This very much involves looking at how we deal with power — the ways we try to take power, the way we feel about sharing power, how we deal with power-struggles, where we resist and refuse to let go, etc.

We're being called into leadership and action, into brave and faith-filled beginnings, and into creating our vision for the world in physical form.

Avoidance Is No Longer An Option

This is the work of healing the world. And we avoid it at our peril.

I don't mean only that we need to do this if we want to save the planet; I mean the more you avoid this Divine Task, the more suffering and pain you are going to be feeling daily.

So if you find your life not going well, your emotions in a knot, your mind stuck in confusion or negativity, now you know why: You're not fulfilling your Mission of the Times!

If you think you've been doing this Task but your life is still in some sort of turmoil, you are being shown very bluntly that you've actually been skipping around on the surface of spiritual or personal growth AS A MEANS OF AVOIDING ACTUAL GROWTH.

This is called spiritual materialism — trying out a hundred exciting new things, while avoiding the parts you don't want to do (but are the most necessary):

• self-exploration,
• taking responsibility for your experiences and your actions,
• being truthful and transparent and deeply authentic.

I wish I could tell you lighter, funner news. But we've all got to pull up our socks now or the Earth has had it. She's counting on YOU, and She will no longer take no for an answer.

The upside is two-fold. You're not doing it alone — millions of us are doing this along with you. And the changes it will make in your own life are nothing short of miraculous! It'll all be worth it! : )

*   *   *  

Notice or suspect an energy field going around? Can you confirm this reading, or shed more light on it?

I'd love to hear what's happening for you! Please let me know.

What to do about being caught in an unpleasant energy field? Click here for tips.

Word on the Street

What People Are Saying About Wicca-Spirituality.com:

So happy that I found your website! I was baptized catholic, but knew it wasn't my path. I've been intrigued by wicca, angels, spirit guides, etc. since I can remember. Every site that I have visited (until now!) just tries to sell you stuff on magick. I can't imagine practicing magick without knowing what I am doing - or whom/what I may be harming. I've just ordered your recommended book, "The Spiritual Dance". My intention is to learn if this is right for me. And your website is the beginning. Thank you, and Bright blessings — KD, USA X. in USA

~~~

Merry Meet! )O( Please let me say that your site was the first site I found on my search online on this subject. It has been the most helpful, thoughtful, and interesting website I have found. I was immediately drawn to this site and its contents. I have taken information from many places and have compiled a personal notebook for myself. Most of what has inspired me has been from your site. — AMJ, USAX. in USA

Thanks for writing!! I appreciate hearing from you! : )

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© erin Dragonsong 2014. All rights reserved worldwide. Reprinting any of this is forbidden unless you obtain my written permission: karma and the law agree on this one. And Copyscape is keeping an eye on these things.