Cassandra Eason

This is a fun little book. It’s basically what I would call vanilla Wicca: no specific Goddess/God names, etc—and it’s an intro book. It’s a good basic reference/guide, though. The best chapter for me is Chapter 10–Magickal Correspondences; that alone is a nice little mini-reference book. The chapter that made me feel insecure, lol, was Chapter 1–The Wiccan Altar and Magickal Tools: although yeah, everything makes me insecure. One time I went into a virtual dizzy trying to get through the bibliography of, I think it was The Sixth Extinction, that relatively famous science book, because I’m like, “I want to get all the digital free samples or whatever of all these books that are in print or whatever, in case I want to read one some day, and I’m afraid it’s taking too much of my time to do that!” 😰 My Enneagram Number is Six—everything makes me afraid. I guess that’s my karmic lesson for this lifetime—don’t be so fucking afraid, right. I feel like in many of my past lives I was neurotically risk-averse….

Chapter Two—Creating the Magic Circle in Wicca, basically just impressed upon me the realization that I won’t be able to cast the circle in my room/house, which is small and shared (and kinda “unormal”—as they call it in Danish—phobic~yes my new thing is stupid, random languages, not practical languages that people will insult you for learning imperfectly, like French: that Gypsy word-book I read was written very poorly, but it was a good idea…. After my Danish book, I think I’ll try Navajo), I’ll have be alone in a park or something to do proper magic….

Chapter Three—Wicca and the Magical Elements, I’ve already forgotten reading, although it is kinda a reference-y book, really. Although I have done some thinking about the elements. I suppose that “water is in the west” not only in England or whatever, but because the west is where the sun dies and water is associated with things like death and changes in consciousness, right…. But personally I live in New Jersey, and I can’t picture water being in the west; I made my own associations, lol. Water in the east; fire in the south—equator; earth in the west—North America; air in the north—air just kinda sounds “cold” to me, I don’t know….

And yeah, Chapter Four—Creating and Casting Your Own Spells was like about basic, practical, get-results magic; and Chapter Five—Creating Rituals was basically about complicated/medieval/angel/meaning of life magic—went right over my head.

Chapter Six—The Goddess in Wicca, Chapter Seven—The God in Wicca, Chapter Eight—The Wheel of the Year in Wicca, and Chapter Nine—Forming or Joining a Coven or Working Solo, all seemed like pretty familiar theory, although some details were useful and sometimes even 101 books remind me that I don’t know as much about this stuff as sometimes I think I do. (There was a long period of my life when I was a witchy person who didn’t know the first thing about anything, really, but I guess I was familiar with a LITTLE basic ~theory, right.)

But yeah, I didn’t think I was going to say anything about this book: what I decided to say initially was this. I’ve written about this before, but basically sometimes reading about Wicca is how much of a mis-match it is for the great majority of the population. It’s not like general new age/meditation things, which sometimes paint themselves as society’s future, the next or emerging orthodoxy or societal paradigm—and obviously the ‘emerging church’ paints itself that way, too. Although ironically that’s what scares many normal people, as well as scientists/historians/rationalists— people who are almost normal, but not quite, who are going to burst into their living room and levitate their dog Spot with their mind and freak him out. To be honest, that has a lot to do with their dissatisfaction with ~normal~ society as well—thus the need of many people to paint everything anyone does, normal or not, as a money scam…. So I mean, fear is practiced, right. “You have to be happy to dream happy dreams.” Victoria Holt. It’s also not terribly fair to the average new ager, but it’s Even Less true of Wiccans, you know. Wiccans are further from what the average scientist is interested in or what the average normie doesn’t freak out about than Buddhism, and it’s hard not be aware of that, right….

The fact that it wouldn’t be satisfactory to the average person is very obvious. It’s more detail-oriented, and full of things to remember or decide or interpret and figure out—pretty much all of which you’re doing by yourself, without, probs in the majority of cases, at the very least, IN PERSON, individual feedback—right; and just the average person goes online and complains aimlessly about their job or goes online and complains about the internet…. These witchcraft things with all their details to think about, you know. And really especially the patience needed for effective witchcraft, IMO, is lacking in the average person, who has a lot of bad habits, although this obvs interferes with mundane skill sets, too. (The average person is also very dissatisfied with the mundane world.) And of course, there’s the superstitious Christian and the gullible movie-watcher who thinks that Wiccans, aliens, demons, and the Dalleks are all either not real or bad, or both, right…. The less said about that, right.

And obviously the average rationalist isn’t very flexible or secure in their beliefs; the last thing they want or, yes, even need, is witchcraft. For most rationalists chess or philology or whatever is the truth of life, and they are deeply insecure about how unpopular that sort of thing is. For them, Wicca would seem at best, just childish, right: if not downright irritating, at the very least, by its sheer emotive core. (The fact that you do have to regulate your emotive core to SOME extent at least to get good results in Wicca wouldn’t mean much to them.) So yeah, that kinda impressed itself on me flipping through this: how childish it would seem to a robot. Coming from a cool Christian background in my personal history, sometimes it’s easy to expect people online (people in real life, Must Not Know, naturally; I mean, NATURALLY, fucking prudence, right—the survival instinct), to not just wantonly insult and rub shit on the face of All Religion, “because all religion is Christianity”, right—and I just feel like I’ve done a lot of work, not to be associated with the very worst Christians, just because someone else in intellectually lazy, right….

(shrugs) But yeah—too much expecting people not to be raving loonies, that. People ARE raving loonies…. And if they knew something about what I believe, they’d think I was childish at best; psychotic in the middle scenario; and a TV villain at worst. And even the “cool kids” aren’t lining us up as the Next Stage, you know; and anyway, Wicca isn’t “all one thing”, and never will be, no matter how big it gets, a thousand years from now. (shrugs) But yeah, it’s important to keep in mind: This is who I am; it’s not how the world is, you know. 😛… (mais)

'Chakras are the psychic energy centres through which your life force is channelled' Cassandra Eason
Harness your energy centres and empower your life.

Chakra energy is one of the most natural sources of empowerment. Managing it also propvides one of the simplest ways of integrating mind, body and spirit.

You have the ability to form you chakra energy to enhance your life. This book tells you how to achieve this spiritual and physical sense of well-being. You will learn how to recognise when your chakra energy centres are blocked. And how to balance and heal these energies when they need attention.

Best-selling author, Cassandra Eason, has the rare gift of presenting concepts in everyday terms and does so most successfully here.

Contents

Introduction
One The rainbow body
Two Working with the individual chakras
Three The root chakra or muladhara
Four The sacral chakra or svadisthana
Five The solar plexus chakra or manipura
Six The heart chakra or anahata
Seven The throat chakra or vishuddha
Eight The brow chakra or ajna
Nine The crown chakra or sahasrara
Ten Healing, cleansing and empowering the chakras
Eleven Chakras and relationships
Twelve Chakras, love and sexuality
Thirteen Chakras and your life
Useful addresses
Further reading (bibliography)
Index… (mais)

Eason's book will appeal to new agers and Wiccan practitioners. However, it will fall just short for those who are interested more in the mythology. Stories from literature are few and far between; an addition here and there would add to the title and make it more widely appealing. That being said, the title is "working with the spirits of nature," and it succeeds in showing readers how to do just that. Each element is well represented, with exercises that clearly connect to each. All are described excellently and one can feel the connection even in simply reading about them. Some of the exercises are a little weak and too out there to seem plausible, but for the most part, this is an excellent and useful tool to those wanting to connect with nature.… (mais)