Silver Chalice Wicca 'Zine #36

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Table of Contents

What's New on the Site	-- YOU Can Write for Wicca-Spirituality.com
Events & Announcements	-- From Psychic Readings to Energy Healings
Website Highlights	-- Preparing for Divination
Bonus Article	-- The Game of Life (Goddess Style)
Sabbats & Esbats & Other Wiccan Rituals	-- Beltaine: The Fiery Fountain of Life
Ask The Priestess	-- How to "Retire" an Old Tarot Deck
Fave Quotes	-- Regarding Magick...
Energy Field Barometer	-- Mars Rx, Taking Command of Your Mind, and 11:11 Shift
Word on the Street
Silver Chalice Details

What's New On The Site

Something really exciting!!!

Now you can be a contributor for Wicca-Spirituality.com!

Thanks to a handy little programme, you can now comment on articles and share your own stories and experiences and even photos with the millions of Wicca-Spirituality.com readers.

The very first page to be set up for this is the bonus article from this issue: Seeking the Resonance — A New Way to Play the Game Of Life. At the end of the article is a form that allows you to contribute your own stories.

This is going to be a trial run... we'll get to see how it works and whether we should spread it to other pages as well. Check it out, and let me know what you think of it!

Events & Announcements

Is it just me, or is a psychic reading just not enough anymore?

Way back when, I trained as a counsellor. I didn't work as one professionally for long, because there was this huge gap between what people NEEDED counselling to do, and what little it could accomplish. People want to be free of pain and failure, but counselling, by itself, rarely does the trick.

I'm finding the same sort of thing with the Psychic Soul Readings I do. It's not enough to just TELL people stuff. What we really need to do is CHANGE stuff.

That's the direction the Psychic Soul Readings are going now, and people are getting a lot more out of them.

I'm thinking of starting a whole new service, where we'll focus primarily on the energy healing — releasing and rewriting the underlying patterns that are getting in our way.

I've spent decades learning how to really create transformation in the problem areas of people's lives and honing my innate healing ability to assist that. Now, at last, this is coming together with my psychic readings in a really exciting way.

So keep your eyes open for a new way to work with me and to improve your life!

If you'd like a psychic soul reading with some energy clearing on the side, you can still schedule one here.

Website Highlights

Divination

Divination is a very common practice among Wiccans, Witches, and other Pagans.

Cleansing & Preparing Your Ritual Tools

Now you've got your ritual tools, what do you do next? You certainly don't want to just put them on your altar or on your person, without clearing them of any energies they've collected! Preparing your Wiccan tools doesn't need to be long or complicated. But it does need to be done...  Continue...

Reviews of Best Tarot Card Decks

Looking for a good Tarot card deck?

Bonus Article

The Game of Life (Goddess Style)

(Sorry; for some absolutely inexplicable reason, I can't get a link to work here!)

Sabbats & Esbats & Other Wiccan Rituals

Beltaine: The Fiery Fountain of Life

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

Ask The Priestess

How to "Retire" an Old Tarot Deck

Dear Priestess,

Is there a proper way to "retire" or dispose of an un- usable deck of tarot cards? I found today that I have a deck that unfortunately through the years has lost a few cards. In my years of reading I've seen many thing about charging cards etc. but I have never seen anything about disposal. Throwing them in the trash seems incredibly disrespectful. Any suggestions?

B.C., USA

Dear B.C.,

You're so right! Not to mention, the Cards (or Runes or whatever) become so infused with our energy after years of working with them, tied to us by energy ribbons, that you really wouldn't want to just toss them out! So this is a really good question.

Here's another option. What I've done with an old Tarot deck of mine is to use it in a different way.

Since you don't have to worry about their condition or safety anymore, you have much more leeway in what you can do with them. For instance...

• You can take one right out of the deck, then charge it with magickal energy, and put it on your altar or on your desk to keep bringing your awareness to something you're working on.
• If the Tarot cards are small, you can even put one in your wallet or pocket to carry with you through the day... like an affirmation or a spell, in the form of a Tarot card.
• You could also seal your favourites in plastic film (to protect them) and punch a hole to string a necklace through, wearing a Tarot card under your shirt, holding that energy close to your heart to welcome it.

You can pull one of these cards out at random (you know, as "random" as any Tarot card reading ). Or when you do a reading with your new Tarot deck and want to emphasise some part of it, you can flip through the old deck and look for one of the cards from your reading, and bring it out.

I can't actually think of a better thing to do with a retired deck. : )

Although, as with all ritual supplies, you could ritually bury them or offer them to the living waters. I wouldn't burn them — the fumes would be unhealthy.

First, though, you should do a thank-you ritual, blessing them for all the gifts they've given you over the years. And then a thorough energetic cleansing, to clear the link between you and remove your energy from them (in case someone else comes across them and to prevent energy leakage in their direction).

Thanks for asking. Bright Blessings to you!

*   *   *  

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

Women are lit up by moonlight. The more of the moon you can see in the sky, the more creative, nurturing energy we have.

~ Carrie Klassen

You need power only when you want to do something harmful. Otherwise Love is enough to get everything done.

~ Charlie Chaplin

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

~ Socrates

We must not only cut asunder the snare of the mind and the senses, but flee also from the snare of the thinker, the snare of the theologian and the church-builder, the meshes of the Word and the bondage of the Idea.

All of these are within us waiting to wall in the spirit with forms; but we must always go beyond, always renounce the lesser for the greater, the finite for the Infinite; we must be prepared to proceed from illumination to illumination, from experience to experience, from soul-state to soul-state.

~ Sri Aurobindo

Nothing is impossible: the word itself says, “I’m possible!”

~ Audrey Hepburn

Energy-Field Barometer

There's still a lot of Mars Retrograde stuff going on, calling up the patterns that we've been most stuck in — the bits and bobs of stuff we thought we'd cleared before, or the wholesale face-slap of stuff we kept denying was our stuff to begin with. .

And most of it seems to be coming up in relationships — not just lovers, but work relationships and anything else that has you interacting with other people. Of course, the love relationships are probably the most frustrating.

They also generally hold the most potential for transformative healing.

The trick is to keep digging, keep clearing ... keep doing your personal self-improvement work!

And to stay focused on where you want to be, rather than stuck in seeing what you don't want. In other words, look for what's good, not what's a problem.

We tend to want to look at problems... it's a very "ego" thing. The ego says we need to look for problems so we can fix them. On the surface of life, this is a valid strategy. But what the ego doesn’t get, is that What We Give Attention To, Increases! Keep focusing on the problems, and you’ll get more problems... and miss all the good stuff happening in the meantime.

This is a time when we are called very strongly to take command of our minds. We need to choose what we're paying attention to, what we're Calling into being.

It's particularly challenging during Mars Retrograde, but it's also particularly vital.

11:11 Shift

You've probably heard me say that seeing the time (or numbers) 11:11 is a signal that it's time to plug into the Earth energy. The planet is experiencing ongoing energy upgrades, and when you ground into it you can allow that vibration to upgrade you as well, just as a tuning fork will pick up the vibration of anything you touch it to.

Well, this is still going on, though (at least for me) there was a gap for a while.

But what I'm noticing now is very exciting! Now when I'm seeing the 11:11 sign and plugging into the Earth, I'm finding that it's a Call for me to share my own vibrational upgrades with Her, rather than vice versa!

This could be because I've been doing a LOT of energy work lately — EFT Meridian Tapping, MAP Coning, reprogramming, stretching and exercising (yes, that's a form of energy work! ), using the Power Strips, some other techniques I'll divulge over the coming months, and even getting some amazing energy clearing done by a professional.

It's crystal clear that when we do deep work in ourselves, we become powerful forces for healing the whole planet!

I'm sure I'm not the only one, since this year is really Calling us to Do The Great Work. So if you've been doing a lot of this, and you're starting to see the 11:11 sign again, maybe the rôles have reversed, and you're not so much being Called to tap into an upgrade, as to help create the upgrade.

I don't know about you, but it feels like an awe-some privilege to me to be part of the team in the harness, rather than one needing a lift on the sleigh!

*   *   *  

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