A Child’s Eye View of Magick
By Alan and
Bekki Leddon
Spero Publishing
Madison, WI
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012 Spero Publishing
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
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Discover other A Child’s Eye View titles from Spero Publishing at Smashwords.com:
A Child's Eye View of Heathenry An in-depth look at the modern practice of Heathenry intended for young readers and their parents.
A Child's Eye View of Vodou Designed to make the practice of Haitian Vodou understandable and non-threatening to children and parents.
A Child’s Eye View of Wicca An excellent introductory course for the children of Wiccan parents as well as those adults (like teachers and babysitters) who will have contact with them.
A Child’s Eye View of Astrology Western Tropical Astrology, broken down into easy to understand pieces.
Coming Soon:
A Child’s Eye View of Tarot
A Child’s Eye View of Fair Folk
A Child’s Eye View of Divination
A Child’s Eye View of Totems and Tutelary Spirits
A Child’s Eye View of Chakras
And much more…
Parental Advisory
The practice of Magic(k), as a religious or spiritual practice, as opposed to sleight of hand, is steeped in misconception and out right falsehoods. Conservative religious leaders rail against magic, denounce it, or claim fear of it. Hollywood, with very few exceptions, furthers these ideas, frequently portraying users of magic as eccentric, greedy, or just plain evil. Some sovereign nations still have laws against the practice of Witchcraft even into the 21st Century. Parents may have their own ideas, frequently derived from these sources, which disagree with material to be found in this work.
It is possible, though inadvisable, to use magic such as that presented here to cause harm to other people. As in all actions, the choice to do such a thing lies with the individual – and so too the consequences. Magic itself is neither good nor evil. Like electricity, it can be put to many uses, and the character of those uses is often consistent with the character of the user.
No harmful spells or practices are outlined in this work.
Acknowledgements
To the all of the Elder Kin and all of the People who have placed obstacles in my path…thank you. Without all of you, I would not have been strong enough.
Table of Contents
Chapter Three: What you’re supposed to do
Appendix One: The Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram
Appendix Two: More Correspondences
Appendix Three: Types of Divination Magick
Chapter One: The Basics
First things first.
There are lots of types of Magick. People who worship the Loas of Voudoun and Santeria have one type of Magick. Wiccans have another, and so do Qabalists. There are several systems called Witchcraft. The Catholics and Christians and other Abrahamic religions perform magick, but they usually call it “prayer.” All of these systems work, even though they have many differences. Some even directly contradict each other.
So, don’t believe anything we tell you in this book. Try it out for yourself. When it works, keep using it. When you find something that works better for you, and feels better for you, use that instead. Think of this book as a place to start learning how to live a Magickal life.
What is Magick?
For the purposes of this book, magic will mean the practices of clowns, stage magicians, and other performers; it means sleight of hand, trickery, illusion, all done with the intent to deceive, defraud, or to entertain. That’s not what we’re talking about in this book.
Magick will be used to refer to the spiritual/religious practice of creating changes through means not yet understood by science. We sometimes call this working of Magick “performing a spell.”
Take a moment and think about what that means. Have you ever made a paper airplane? Long ago, our ancestors did not understand the Bernoulli Principle…but they could have still folded a piece of paper to make it fly! Later, when a scientist named Bernoulli discovered that a wing, curved on the top and flat on the bottom, would produce lift when air flowed past it quickly, the paper airplane (and real airplanes) ceased to be Magick and became science instead. That is only one example. The plant foxglove was used by “wise women” and “hedge witches” to help sick hearts for a long time, and now modern companies use the same plant to make many different medications for heart problems!
Look at it another way. Look closely – really look – at the letters on this page. If you didn’t know what these letters were, would their shapes suggest sounds or noises? Nope. Of course not. Yet these letters on this page make words and share ideas in a way that others can understand and interpret. If you simply spoke these words here, those who can hear you, would, but then the words would be lost until spoken again. However, written, those words remain; people separated by tens or even hundreds of years can read from the same page and get the same words. This must have seemed to be Magick to those who saw it for the first time, right? Watch a younger child as you read a story to him and her, how the child puzzles over the letters on the page. Yet school takes the mystery, the Magick, from the words by teaching you to put together the sounds represented by letters into words that make sense. Pretty soon, the mystery is gone and all that remains is the fun, but understandable, activity of reading. Magick is again reduced to science.
A Short History of Magick
No one really knows who performed the first Magick, or why they used Magick. The first magician and the first spell are lost to us in the mists of time.
We can guess that early Magicians were involved in healing and protection spells. People have always gotten hurt, and in the time before there were doctors, nurses and other healthcare providers, it was the Magicians who would be called on when someone got hurt or sick. Healing is still a Magickal practice today! Ancient people would want to be protected from parasites like fleas and lice, from injuries from dangerous animals and from other people, and from sickness caused by unsafe food – they didn’t have refrigerators! People who were sick would want Magicians to heal their sickness and cast out the evil spirits (we call them germs today, but it is the same idea); people who were hurt would want their bones to knit and wounds to heal quickly. Honey placed in a wound prevents infection by killing bacteria, but before anyone knew what bacteria were, the Magician placed honey in the wound because it worked…and it worked by Magick!
Some people think that early Magicians also worked Magick to promote the growth of crops and to ensure that the herds of animals that they hunted (and later herded) would have an adequate number of young animals each year. The first is certainly possible; when people started planting crops, they would hope those crops would be healthy and abundant. The second may be possible, but is less likely. Would early people really have known if the herds were dwindling? It would be hard for them to realize it. It might even have been hard for them to care – look at the fate of the dodo, the passenger pigeon, and so many other animals lost forever because people didn’t realize, didn’t believe, or didn’t care that the world could run out of animals of one type or another. In any case, Magick to make crops grow and to make animals (and people) have babies is called Fertility Magick. This kind of Magick is also used to help people be creative, come up with new ideas and to be able to get things done better.
Shamanism seems to be the earliest system of Magick. The word itself comes from Siberia, but scientists who study the ways that people live have decided to use the word for the particular “practice” or “profession” no matter where it is found. Modern shamans are believed to speak with spirits and to have a divine duty to help people in need. Being a Shaman is a job - and the Gods are the Shaman’s bosses! They feel like they have to help when they can, although the way they help isn’t always the way people expect. They use a combination of plant medicines and magickal practices to carry out their divine duties. These duties are pretty much the same everywhere from Australia to South America to Siberia…or anywhere else… and the means of accomplishing them are largely the same. Shamans often use Magick to help people figure things out and think for themselves, fight evil sorcerers, to send away evil spirits, to predict future events, to cast off sickness, and to do other tasks. Although there are differences in how Shamans in different places do things, they use very similar techniques (trance, drumming, singing, etc) in order to perform this Magick. Unfortunately, we don’t have any written records of long ago shamans and how they did their job, but we do have stories that have been passed down that sometimes give us hints.
The earliest civilization that we have records of Magick for are the Egyptians. They had a special type of writing reserved for sacred subjects (hiero- sacred, -glyph carving), as well as another form of writing for less interesting things. Fond of writing, Egyptians of this time made Magickal Amulets for many purposes. An Amulet is a physical item, a thing, into which a Magick spell is bound, storing the spell for later use. Later in the book, you will learn how to make your own. The Egyptians used hieroglyphs on theirs.
One of the next earliest types of Magick that we do have records for is that of the Chaldeans. These were the people of ancient Akkad, Assyria, Babylon, and Sumer, people who had writing more than 3000 years ago! The long ago Greek writer Cicero claimed that the Chaldean Magicians were among the oldest of Magicians. We know that their Magicians looked for magical properties in animals, minerals, and plants, just like we do today.
At about the same time as the Chaldeans, and probably after them, the people of Greece and Rome used crystals and other items to try to predict the future. They looked for messages in the flight of birds, in the shapes melted metals made when dropped into cold water, in the shapes of the intestines of animals, in fires, and more. “Tea Leaf Reading” is a modern survival of this type of practice; after you drink your tea, you look for a “picture” in the leaves at the bottom of the cup; that picture holds the answer to your question.
Somewhat later, we have records of Suomi (Finnish, from Finland) Magick in the Kalevala, a sort of record of Finnish Mythology. One hero, Vainomoimen, is sent to battle a bear that an evil sorceress has been using to kill livestock. Prior to fighting the bear, Vainomomen recites a Magick spell to prevent the bear from hurting him:
“Beast, apple of the forest, chucky honey paw, when you hear me coming, a real man stepping, tie your claws up in your fur, so that they never touch me when you lunge! My beastie, my matchless one, honey-paw, my handsome one, slump down upon a hummock, upon a fair rock…”
(this story is found in Tales of the Kalevala by Elias Lonnrott, Helsinki, 1835). He identifies the target of the Magick (bear, apple of the forest, chucky honey paw) three times, and tells the Magick what he wants (the bear’s claws tied up in its fur, so the bear can’t kick his butt). Reading the myth, we find that the Magick worked, and he kills the bear in its den…then he uses more Magick to invite the ghost of the bear to come home with him!
We also have the Norse (Viking) stories about Odin to show Magick was known in Norse lands at about the same time. In the saga called the Hávamál, Odin put Himself through an ordeal (like a quest) to learn “The Runes,” which appear to be spells as well. The third Rune is, like Vainomomen’s spell above, useful for stopping an enemy.
(150. For the third I know, if I have great need to restrain my foes, the weapons’ edge I deaden: of my adversaries nor arms nor wiles harm aught)
The other Runes have many different uses.
We know that during the Middle Ages (500 AD to 1500 AD), most Western people believed in Magick, and many were taught that performing Magick was sinful and often evil. They were taught that people who performed Magick would ruin their crops, consort with demons, and do things that were so rude as to be shocking (not to mention, icky). We know now that if sorcerers were ruining crops, they would go hungry, just like everyone else. We are also pretty sure that they wouldn’t want to hang out with demons; do you like hanging out with people who are nasty and want to hurt you? They were taught these things because the people in charge didn’t want everyone feeling comfortable having power and control; they wanted to have all the power for themselves.
From the 1500s to the 1700s, educated people still believed in Magick. Some famous people still studied and practiced Magick during this time. Dr. John Dee (1527 to 1609) worked as a consultant for Queen Elizabeth the First, while studying alchemy, astrology, divination, Hermetic philosophy, occultism, and many more Magickal sciences. During the same time, Sir Isaac Newton practiced alchemy. Unfortunately, during this time, scientists and religious leaders alike were claiming Magick wasn’t real, and people were starting to believe them. It was also illegal to perform Magick in many places, with torture and death often mandatory punishments. Elizabeth I passed a law in England in 1562 that required the death penalty for Magick only if someone was killed by the Magick. Scotland’s law in 1563 made it punishable by death to be a witch, or to ask for advice or Magick from a witch.
Throughout the 1800s and 1900s, and even into the 2000s, many places had laws against practicing some or all kinds of Magick. Some of these are downright lousy laws; the one in North Carolina makes it illegal to perform divination Magick unless you do it in a Church or school, as part of a Church or school function (violating all three provisions of the First Amendment: http://www.religioustolerance.org/divi_law.htm). These laws are not toothless; in 1944, Helen Duncan was jailed for claiming to have summoned spirits. In Israel, someone can go to prison for two years for practicing Witchcraft. On Monday, December 12th, 2011, Saudi Arabia executed a woman in her 60s for allegedly practicing Magick and sorcery.
Chapter Two: Here’s How
Properly performing Magick is hard work. You need to research your spell, and use the right tools. If your spell needs a grown up’s help for any reason (like lighting candles or incense), you need to ask before you start doing your spell. A grown up who uses Magick is probably your best resource for what colors, tools and materials to use. Don’t be afraid to tell this grown up what you want to do with your spell, they might have ideas you haven’t thought of yet. You need to cast your circle properly. You need something active like a chant or a dance to tell the Magick what you want it to do, and you have to tell it over and over. You want to do your spell several times to make sure it will work. You need to clean up after yourself when you are done with your spell, putting the things you used where they belong. You need to let go of the spell and try not to think too much about it once it’s done and put away. You also have to be patient.
The Witches’ Pyramid
This is probably the best time to discuss how to make Magick work – using “The Witches’ Pyramid.” Looking at the picture of the Witches’ Pyramid, you see that the four base corners are “To Dare,” “To Will,” “To Know,” and “To Keep Silent.” There is more that isn’t shown. The pyramid is built on a sturdy foundation – your clear conscience! It is made of sturdy bricks – love. By building this strong structure on a sturdy foundation, you can reach the top – “To Do”…also called “Success.” The Witches’ Pyramid has been offered by other authors in slightly different forms; the idea is not original here. If you use The Witches’ Pyramid, your spells will be more successful and it will be harder for things to go wrong with them.
So what does all this mean? Let’s start with the foundation, your clear conscience. You will not be able to perform Magick effectively if you are troubled by things that you have done to others. Don’t hurt your siblings, don’t hurt pets. Don’t lie or steal. Don’t be a bully. Don’t cheat. IF you have done these things, tell someone, say that you are sorry, promise to never do them again and mean it. This will help you clear your conscience.