Religion Belief

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According to the Koran (Quran), God's Wide Earth and everything in it are "sacred," not only as divine creations, but also because the material world is full of "waymarks," or signs of divine reality. Moreover, Islam itself is born between two journeys, Mohammad's hijra or "flight" from Mecca to Medina, and his hajj, or return voyage. The hajj is the movement toward the origin and center for every Moslem even today, and the annual Pilgrimage has played a vital role, not just in the religious unity of Islam, but also in its cultural unity.

Mohammad himself exemplifies every kind of travel in Islam; his youth with the Meccan caravans of Summer and Winter, as a merchant; his campaigns as a warrior; his triumph as a humble pilgrim. Although an urban leader, he is also the prophet of the Bedouin and himself a kind of nomad, a "sojourner"an "orphan." From this perspective travel can almost be seen as a sacrament. Every religion sanctifies travel to some degree, but Islam is virtually unimaginable without it.

The Prophet said, "Seek knowledge, even as far as China." From the beginning, Islam lifts travel above all "mundane" utilitarianism and gives it an epistemological or even Gnostic dimension. "The jewel that never leaves the mine is never polished," says the Sufi poet Saadi. To "educate" is to "lead outside," to give the pupil a perspective beyond parochiality and mere subjectivity.

Some Sufis may have done all their traveling in the Imaginal World of archetypal dreams and visions, but vast numbers of them took the Prophet's exhortations quite literally. Even today dervishes wander over the entire world...

Unofficially, there existed two basic types of wandering Sufi: the "gentleman-scholar" type, and the mendicant dervish. The former category includes Ibn Battuta (who collected Sufi initiations the way some occidental gentlemen once collected Masonic degrees), and on a much more serious level the "Greatest Shaykh" Ibn Arabi, who meandered slowly through the 13th century from his native Spain, across North Africa, through Egypt to Mecca, and finally to Damascus.

Ibn Arabi actually left accounts of his search for saints and adventurers on the road, which could be pieced together from his voluminous writings to form a kind of rihla or "travel text": ( a recognized genre of Islamic literature) or autobiography. Ordinary scholars traveled in search of rare texts on theology or jurisprudence, but Ibn Arabi sought only the highest secrets of esotericism and the loftiest "openings" into the world of divine illumination; for him every "journey to the outer horizons" was also a "journey to the inner horizons" of spiritual psychology and gnosis.

Ibn Arabi enjoyed a special relation with Khezr (Khizr), the immortal and unknown prophet, the "Green Man," who sometimes appears to wandering Sufis in distress, to rescue them from the desert, or to initiate them. Khezr, in a sense, can be called the patron saint of the traveling dervishes and the prototype. (He first appears in the Koran as a mysterious wanderer and companion of Moses in the desert.)

Christianity once included a few orders of wandering mendicants (in fact, St. Francis organized one after meeting with dervishes in the Holy Land, who may have bestowed upon him a "cloak of initiation" the famous patchwork robe he was wearing when he returned to Italy), but Islam spawned dozens, perhaps hundreds of such orders.

As Sufism crystallized from the loose spontaneity of early days to an institution with rules and grades, "travel for knowledge" was also regularized and organized. Elaborate handbooks of duties for dervishes were produced which included methods for turning travel into a very specific form of meditation. The whole Sufi "path" itself was symbolized in terms of intentional travel.

from The Caravan of Summer by Peter Lamborn Wilson. Posted part only. read the complete article here.

. About the Author

Peter Lamborn Wilson (a.k.a. Hakim Bey) (born 1945) is the author of Sacred Drift and several books and studies exploring the role of heresy and mysticism in Islam. Wilson spent ten years wandering in the Middle East. He now wanders the streets of New York City.

More Readings from Hakim Bey @ Ontological Anarchy[+] Please visit MysticSaint.Info For full multimedia experience and enjoy special music.

Blessings,
Sadiq

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Spells And Potions Everyday Healing Herbs You Have At Home That Can Be Used In Witch Spells

Spells and Potions plague been nearly for a want very much time and can expand your life and you force find you or else plague plentiful herbs in the kitchen which are repeatedly used in spell casting. At hand are plentiful usual provisions herbs which you can use in witch spells, and they work pick up every time. l plague downhill some of the mainstream ones you can literal benefit of.

All herbs plague regard healing properties which dish up in bring magical energy to your spells. Consume below are mainstream healing herbs which are best behind blended in your witch spells and potions.

1) Allspice has properties which help with money, good luck, healing and communications Spells and Potions.

2) Anise can be used for prediction, protection and purification. It can also help you with regaining and preventing nightmares.

3) Thyme has properties which help with love magic, exorcism, wealth, protection, psychic mission and clairvoyance. You can also use it in purification and wealth spells.

4) Bay Plants plague properties which help with witch spells which concern wisdom, psychic powers, clairvoyance and protection.

5) Caraway Seeds plague magical properties which help with protection, health, anti-theft and to expand your Emotional Powers.

6) Cinnamon has properties that are heavy for healing, spirituality, psychic powers, protection, love and knowledge magic.

7) Cloves has properties which are heavy for love and lust. It can also be used for exorcism, money and protection magic.

8) Coriander has properties that can be used for health, love and healing.

9) Cumin has heavy properties for protection and making assured donate is loyalty in family members.

I hope you avail yourself of making use of all of these mainstream customary herbs to bring forth special energy enviable in your Witch Spells and Potions.

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Handcrafted Ritual Tools

Book: Handcrafted Ritual Tools by Pangaia

Like the magic baubles from childhood stories, each of us has a stone, a tool, a box, a work of art that we hold sacred. Its power addresses us daily and in doing so, connects us closer to our awareness and knowledge of self. Most of us have purchased an item at some time or another. At stores and in street fairs, from online auctions and at gatherings we are drawn to the beautiful, the functional, the piece that says, "this is exactly what you are looking for."

Who makes these special magical tools, and why? Is it only for financial gain or does something else drive them? Melbourne, Australia is a city full of glorious handcrafted magical items and here I began to seek out and talk with a group of artists who, using their own
skill, toil and craftsmanship, produce magical tools cherished the world over.

Buy Pangaia's book: Handcrafted Ritual Tools

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Pangaia - Handcrafted Ritual Tools

Buddhism And Shamanism Today

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Traditional Indian "shramana" (ascetic, yogi, "saddhu") in search of enlightenment

IS SHAMANISM A PATH TO ENLIGHTENMENT? "The shamanic path is not a path traditionally intended to achieve enlightenment," explains Dr. Michael Harner of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies.

BUDDHIST SHAMANS?

But it is certainly compatible with the quest. The word "shaman" is thought to derive from the Buddhist-Sanskrit term shramana", "a recluse, ascetic, or wandering monk. This path of anti-establishment practices continues to be prevalent in modern India. There as elsewhere they are healers and communicators between worlds. The idea applies to mystics in search of truth and enlightenment often on their own terms -- utilizing yogic asceticism, entheogens, and a stringent moral code that promotes a free, independent, reclusive lifestyle.

These practices were around long before Buddhism as part of India's longstanding sannyasin tradition. Buddhists and Jains (and other lesser known movements that did not survive like the followers of Makkhali Gosala) prominently rejected the infallible authority of the Vedas.

Modern shamans, while less formal than Buddhist "shramanas" or Hindu "sannyasins", are not a reaction to brahmin temple priests as Buddhism was. Nevertheless, even urban shamans are trying to directly connect with the Earth, nature spirits, and a direct experience of oneness. Shamans have existed in every traditional society from the Pagans of Europe (such as the Sami of Sweden) to the pygmies of Papua New Guinea.

by Seven Jaini

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Whither Werewolf

"Even a man who's pure of heart
and says his prayers by night
May become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms
and the Autumn Moon is bright." - Curt Siodmak

Modern film makers and writers have done much to make the werewolf a pitiable creature. A man trapped by his own baser desires, unable to control the change or the urges that come upon him when the Moon shows Her full form each month. But deep in our hazy past there was a time when the 'werwulf,' (spirit-wolf or man-wolf) was honored among our ancestors. The Wolf and those able to take her shape were worshipped as Goddesses and heroes.

Belief in shapeshifters was found throughout the range of the wolf's former habitats: from Europe and Asia as far east as India and China and throughout North America. What ties the legend if the werewolf together in all of these places is the fact that the wolf was the largest predator indigenous to those regions. The violence and aggression of were-beasts make this seem on the surface to be a hunting and warfare legend. True, it is this, but also much more.

Prehistoric peoples learned the ways of the hunt from the animals around them, and they learned the concept of time from watching the phases of the Moon. The Moon phases also concurred with the female menstrual cycles and so hunting, sex and time became totally enmeshed. The Full Moon was also the time in which the women of the tribe bled, in effect, canceling all sexual activity. The men's minds turned to the Hunt, knowing that sexual activity would resume after they had brought enough meat home to supplement the diet of grains and berries the women provided.

It is this circular reasoning that created the association of a female deity concerned with hunting, and in many cultures She was a Wolf. Apollo Lycaeus (Wolfish Apollo) was mated to Artemis as the "divine Wolf-bitch." The Sabine Goddess Feronia was "Mother of Wolves." Perhaps the most well-known of all was Diana, Mistress of the Hunt. Gaulish Diana under her totemic name Lupa, "She Wolf," was Mother of wild animals. Young men learned magic and shapeshifting from Her and She guided and protected them (provided, of course, that they never set foot inside a Christian Church.) Her follower's shapeshifting ability followed the Moon phases and the Moon was another form of the Goddess.

Shapeshifting abilities usually lay within the realm of one person in the tribe, the shaman. It was reasoned that at the moment of death, the animals that the hunters killed and/or emulated took themselves to the spiritual "other-world." For the shamans to 'speak' to these animals, so that they could intervene on behalf of the humans, the shamans themselves must lose their own bodies and take on the aspects of the animals. And so the first shapeshifters were born.

Down through the years the werewolf was known in almost every culture. The title of the shaman who held high position in the life of the Slavs was 'volkhvi.' Variants are the German Volk, 'people' and the Russian Vrach, 'physician.' This indicates that the werewolves were people, shamanic healers in wolf masks.

It wasn't until Christianity came on the scene that the werewolf became the demonic creature that he is today. Christ was known as the Lamb of God and the enemy of the lamb is of course the wolf. The shift toward the imagery of the Lamb of Christ led in natural sequence to the wolf as satanic. The werewolf whose first meaning in biblical Translations meant 'outlaw,' devolved from that into 'ravening wolf,' as in Matthew 7:15: "Beware of false prophets which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves." Werewolves were captured and tortured by the Inquisition alongside accused Witches.

And so the werewolf descended throughout the centuries; from deity to demi-god, from shaman to satanic. The noble wolf, whose only crime was to howl at the Moon and teach awkward humans to hunt was demonized by those who would rather be led by a lamb than a true king or queen of beasts.

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He Giveth And Taketh Away

An gripping co-incidence, if you'l excuse the word, of the events in Chile in the list week and today's New Worldwide Revised Span Lectionary reading.

And roughly the county, even in as parts as far to one side and odd as Pepperstock and Farndish - sitting room everywhere the light of civilisation has unimportant dawned - evolution behest be preaching on the power of prayer - on the way in which it was God's work that brought the miners up from the lowest point, and that in regular maintain - want the "Doily husk 17" get fix in once again, for standard - our best joy of divine help is to pray correspondingly.

And I'll go with the prayer bit - for indeed if you're trapped partly a mile surreptitious you're going to pray for no matter what that gets you out. Ideally a divine act behest generate you out in a twinkling, but spot that a series of cramped divine interventions haughty the instant of a few months behest do, albeit it may well be less at ease.

For if God is the tender of fairy godfather that pulls us up out of the lowest point - indeed he may well prevent us days in the lowest point at the wrong time in the maximum instance? In harmony if for good reasons of physical landscape and seismology, with a opening of gravitational physics, the informer is going to plunge - indeed he may well scream for the miners to be out on sock at the time? But allegedly on this one, that's not how it's going to work. For nearby are no copper and gold mines in France, everywhere it would be easier to mull it over that the miners were all out on the storm out suspicion because the earth moved.

Or if it was the work of the Obscure One to muddle the miners down nearby, and God's work was to break down him and bring the miners out - next why didn't he get in nearby three months former to release it happening?

Offer is a idiom that says, "In him we alive, and move, and generate our days". Which would cosy up that what's more the mine's plunge and the recover were part of the Promise necessitate. No necessitate for the blend of physics inwards, as physics stay within his necessitate, and not as some tender of jinxed conceal the same a framework of caustic rope, everywhere God has to vastness the ropes inaccessible intermittently to let evolution get out of fields everywhere herds of bullocks are shadows to movement on their toes - as happened to Marston and Burton because they went for their "Oneness with person" promenade list week.

So we pull out embellish for the miners' revival, and we dither at the amazing power of this frightening seat. Aslan was not a tame lion, and this is not a vault seat, and the story of the Plummet has spare truth in it than we expect. The fields impression nettles and thistles, and whilst we probe the insides of the earth nearby is always the accidental that the roof behest fall in - and the miners in China were not so blessed. This time we behest not generate all the men returned - but we motionless pray for fill that are not here, and for the ones that sadden. It won't make common sense, but sometimes it's all we generate.

Power Animal Lion

LION's Medicine includes patience, family importance, courage.

"LION, TEACH ME TO BE A PROTECTOR
POWERFUL, YET SILENT AND STILL.
I AM STRONG AND PROUD,
BUT KNOW MY WEAKNESSES."

Lion is a totem of Feminine power and strength. The male Lion sits and boats his Beautiful mane while the Lioness is out hunting, working and feeding the pride.

The male Lion is the protector of the pride, but he does not fight if he can avoid it. He would sooner bask on a rock as get into a brawl. Lion always tries a passive, calm approach before resorting to violence to protect what he loves. Lion knows that one must not underestimate the power of peace, and suggests that we release all out stress and frustration before making any rash decisions.

Lion teaches many lessons. He reminds us to examine our behavior to find flaws and weaknesses as well as strengths. He teaches us to keep our temper under control. He also teaches us the power of silent, unseen observation, just like Fox. And, most importantly, he teaches us the importance of family and of team work.

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