Beyond the Surface

Every day, I get an email in my mailbox from google alerts. It includes all blog entries and news stories from that 24 hour period with the word ‘witchcraft’ in it. Aside from the blog posts with the occasional spell, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in the news. All over the world, innocent people are being stoned, burned and otherwise murdered for witchcraft.

All over the continents of Africa and Asia, in Saudi Arabia, India and in Papua New Guinea, people are still persecuted with a death sentence for practicing witchcraft and the terror and craze that comes over people at the mention of witchcraft still causes innocents to be murdered.

Only this month, a child was accused of witchcraft in the Central African Republic because she had nightmares and walked in her sleep, something that is known as a sleep disorder.

This WEEK alone, A story appeared of two children…

excerpted form a larger piece

The benefit of being able to tell this story in retrospect is that everything unfolds reasonably, in order and foreshadowing can occur. If only there had been a narrator present at the moment I decided to go to the beach. He would have leaned in in his movie traitor voice and said something like “A girl, The Gods, A beach. A life at the brink of destruction. Who knew that five simple minutes and a scream to the goddess of destruction and recreation could destroy everything.”

But nay. At the time, I had no idea and it wasn’t until a few days later, sitting on a bench at the courthouse that I would comment on how horribly serendipitously everything unfolded and realize that truly there was a divine hand involved.

So it was entirely obliviously and unthinking that one fateful Monday evening, I went to the…

I must say that after relating the experience to several Feri family members and hearing that it was uncharacteristic, I was a bit confused about the whole thing and didn’t post the entry that was written almost two years ago.

However, I finally posted my experience with luckymojo.com, the hoodoo store, after receiving an email that my student status was going to become ‘inactive’, well over a year after the fact.

Although I did have a negative experience with luckymojo.com, I am glad to have a positive update. The emails that I received over the past few days from Cat’s (the owner) partner, as a result of the ‘phantom’ student status, have been nothing but kind and accommodating and have made the experience much more pleasant.

Turns out, after emailing back and forth with Cat’s partner, who takes an active role in the business, that the experience that I had doesn’t…

I had a peculiar, bizzare and otherwise absurd experience with luckymojo.com. luckymojo.com is a website based upon an in person shop which specializes in hoodoo related merchandise. They sell powders, candles etc and the site has a wealth of hoodoo information on it.

However, although the information on hoodoo on the site is great, the shop really isn’t that great, it turns out. The following is my personal experience. Take it or leave it. Your mileage may vary.

When I was doing resale, I decided to place a wholesale order for them because I wanted their stuff in the shop. The entire ordering experience was a nightmare. Even worse was the particularly unpleasant demeanor of the employee, Ernie and the owner, Cat.

None of the order process is automated. I had to email to get a copy of the wholesale catalog, which is a text list. You read the text list and…

Contrary to popular belief, by themselves, crystals don’t really have magickal attributes. But they are natural amplifiers of everything in their surroundings so this natural amplification can be mistaken for having those attributes. Using crystals in and around altars or working spaces is a great way to naturally amplify the energy of the work.

1. Get a few finger crystals or points that you like. You can find them at rock and mineral shops or new age shops for between a quarter and a dollar each.
2. Make a shallow, flat bottom cup out of aluminum foil.
3. Burn a non-dripless candle in said aluminum foil cup with appropriate candle magick activity for what you’re amplifying… ie: use a candle of the appropriate color for the essence that you want to amplify, add appropriate herbs or essential oils to the melting wax, howl at the moon, etc. etc. Alternately, if you are using this in…

There need not be an argument. You, Misses Frou Frou Pagan Witchypants are FAR more witchy than I am. Where you probably drink directly from the springs of the mountains, I get plain old city water out of a faucet. You probably live in a tipi of animal skins on the bare earth - while I live in the comparative lowliness of a home in the suburbs. You - probably shoot your dinner with bows and arrows and cook it over the element of FIRE in a pot of the element of WATER and give thanks to the EARTH for the bounty of the seasons… whereas I ordered pizza tonight.

Yes, you, Misses Frou Frou Pagan Witchypants are FAR more witchy than I - as well as, apparently, everyone in my Feri family too. Because We? We do not prance upon the earth in barest of feet being witchy often…

So much has happened in the last week that’s made me question my sanity. If there weren’t witnesses, I might have. I got clandestine emails that turned out to be a cruel trick by the last person I expected. Before I knew for sure, a deceased loved one of someone else tipped a table to tell me. I found the Star of David on a flower petal.. and then the fairies took it. I found an old friend, only to find a demon masquerading.

It’s only in the life of me, lately, that this sort of thing happens. I told a friend who witnessed part of it that I don’t think I could have made shit up that was that good. I could try. But it would sound like a really horrible fantasy fiction novel. Or like a really nutso blog entry.

“One of the most important things I do for people, I think, is to reassure them that they aren’t ‘crazy’ when they are hearing spirits or getting intuitive or psychic input. In fact, I’ve done my fair share of reassuring myself of the same thing… that I’m not totally nuts for believing that I really am talking to my spirit guide or that this person really DOES give me bad vibes. Here are a few ways to combat that” …. Full article at Indigo Paths

You could chip away at it, groan in frustration and figure it will just have to do… OR you could :

1. Put your oven on warm (or it’s lowest setting)
2. line a 9×9 or 9×13 baking dish with heavy duty aluminum foil - or 2 layers of regular foil
3. put your candle holders in the pan face down
4. leave it in the oven till all the wax melts off into the pan
5. pull each one out and rinse it in hot water to get the melted wax off (before it hardens again!)
6. let the melted wax in the pan cool and harden and then pull all the foil out and trash it, melt it into candles or whatever

I went to the ocean last night. I sat on a rock. It was drizzling around me but it didn’t seem to really touch me. It must have. I was wet when I left. But I don’t remember feeling it. The waves would rush in with white frothiness and beyond them was just black. It was like I was sitting at the edge of the world and beyond the waves there was nothing. In moments like those, life seems to be so much bigger than the mundane everyday things we go through. And then we step back into the real world and there are bills to pay, conversations to have, deadlines to meet and there are real consequences for not doing them that will affect us for our entire mortal lives - and those are the lives we have in which to ponder what’s outside them.

So I walk this line…