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Sep 29 2015

Wizard’s Glen — Haunted or Just Eerie?

Wizard’s Glen is located along a part of the Appalachian Trail that runs through the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts.  Nestled in the hills of Dalton, this site sits along Gulf Road which starts at the intersection of High Street and Park Avenue in the Southeastern part of town.  It’s a four-mile unpaved designated scenic road that looks more like a pathway.

As you traverse up the street the air seems to get cooler as you approach a high rocky ravine cut through flint rocks.  The area narrows as huge boulders ascend skyward through the densely treed area.  Other large rocks that have fallen among the boulders look like they’ve been dumped from the sky to fall where they may.  A lot of the rocks are moss covered and the overgrowth of bushes and dense foliage take over the place.  Even though,  crevasses in the rubble are obvious….at least they were when we last visited the place.

There’s a local myth that claims over a 100 years ago a local man had been out hunting and was bringing home a deer he had gotten when a terrible thunderboomer hit the area.  The rain was blowing sideways and the lightening was frequent.  Not wanting to travel further that night, the man hung his quarry from a tree branch and went to find shelter under one of the overhanging monoliths.  All of a sudden the place started lighting up. He watched as an evil spirit and its minions started dancing around, whirling themselves into a frenzy.  Suddenly, an Indian girl was brought forth and heaved onto one of the large flat stones.  All the demons charged at her with knives, killing her.  As she turned her head away she caught the eyes of the hidden onlooker.  He grabbed his Bible, lunged to his feet, and ordered the spirits to leave her alone.  The scene then vanished in the next crash of thunder and everything was again dark.  When the man rose to leave the next morning he believed it all to be a dream, but found someone, (or some things), had stolen his deer  —  and who else could it have been?  Can the screams of the young girl still be heard on some dark, stormy evenings?

Hobomocko, the Algonquin spirit of death, is attributed to being the organizer of the human sacrifice made that terrible night.  And the area already had a reputation for being a power spot for the Native American shamans who performed their invocations and rituals.  Even now, the huge, flat, altar stone can still be seen.  Some claim the red iron ore stains are really the spilled blood of many unfortunate others who became the ritual gift to a higher deity.

–   ashanta

We would like to invite anyone who would like to contact us, share a story, comment on anything, or just keep in  touch to reach us at:

ashantaofthelema@gmail.com                                Thank you!!

Sep 24 2015

Commune with the Universe – Meditate

All meditation can lead to a channel that opens up to inner wisdom, regeneration, and connection to all that exists in the Universe.

What do you think of when you hear the word ‘meditation’?  I think meditation is one of the most misunderstood spirituality practices in use today.  It seems to carry an aura of some sort of superiority in the quest for enlightenment. Those who practice it seem almost apart from many other people.  And, it appears to retain a shell of mystery as to comprehension of its inner connections to all things transcendental.  I wonder if this veneer has been planned and finely honed or if it is inherent in the belief that it is a study of eastern ways as opposed to being introduced by the west.

Meditation can be practiced by anyone,  anywhere, anytime.  It doesn’t have to be done while sitting on a mat in an uncomfortable position.  It can be utilized while taking a walk for a few minutes in the middle of a hectic workday.  It can be done while sitting poolside, ocean side, on a deck, or in your living room.

Meditation is a tool to reunite with the unseen, the unknown, and the incalculable.   It can inspire, teach, and open pathways. The most important thing to do to reach the most desirable state of meditation and produce the best results is to try and quiet your mind.  It’s important to stop your internal dialogue.  And these things are easier to say than to achieve.

Try to not focus your attention on anything specific because when you do that your mind becomes fixed on that thing and stillness escapes.  While you will hear things around you don’t try to figure out where they are coming from or what they are.  That will also draw your mind to fix on something else besides the task at hand.

Let the Universe guide you and open yourself up to the things it has to offer. These results can be just as beneficial and potent as the ones achieved by a practitioner who rests in one position for hours on end….and who knows  –  maybe they are napping.

–   ashanta

We would like to invite anyone who would like to contact us, share a story, comment on anything, or just keep in  touch to reach us at:

ashantaofthelema@gmail.com                                Thank you!!

Sep 17 2015

Magic – Black or White?

What is magick?  To the best of my ability to describe it, it is the practice of trying to change something or make something occur by use of a ritual.  Rituals can use a number of tools such as a wand, bell, chalice, athame, candles, oils, incense, herbs, and other things of the practitioner’s choice.  Some people draw circles around themselves for protection and others forgo that step.  Generally, a rhyming chant is spoken to express the purpose of the work.

Rituals can also use invocation  – the summoning of energies such as gods, goddesses, elementals, entities, etc., in hopes they will help produce the desired results.  And this is where magick seems to get a bit sticky.

Wiccans are famous for their insistence they only perform white magick while Satanist’s are accused of practicing black magick.  So it seems the energy that is called upon determines the type of magick one is performing.  For instance, white magicians may call upon the Great Horned Father while others may call upon Pan or Ammon…..supposedly a darker side. But, no matter what type of magick one professes to practice, the only thing that truly matters to get the job done is will.  Or you can call it intent.  And since everything we do, within this vibrational matrix we all live in, affects everyone else – there is no such thing of not touching the lives of someone else.  These effects of any action on others will be good for some and not so good for others.

The label of the magick performed diminishes when viewed from a broader scale.  There is no such thing as white or black magick.  If you practice magick – you practice magick – and it will work depending on the strength of your intent.

–  ashanta

We would like to invite anyone who would like to contact us, share a story, comment on anything, or just keep in touch to reach us at:

ashantaofthelema@gmail.com                                Thank you!!

Sep 12 2015

Horns & Skulls

What is it that evokes so many different responses to the sight of either horns or skulls?  …and most of them are negative.  Horns and skulls were things to be treasured, appreciated, and sometimes venerated before and until the time that religion decided it could make money from a frightened and controlled population.

Horns were not considered a sign of evil or demonic until the Romans were forcing Pagans to give up their gods such as Hathor, Moloch, Pan, Baal, etc. Around that same time Christian art began portraying Jews as evil and depicted them with horns.  Until then they were a symbol of wisdom and a sign of being a ruler.

In 1505 Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to sculpture Moses to adorn his tomb.  Michelangelo created his work with Moses adorned with horns.  They represented his “glorified” head as he descended Mt. Sinai with the 10 Commandments – –  for the second time.

There are other depictions of Moses with horns, also. There is a fresco in St. Andrews Church in Westhall England, a sculpture in Vilnius, Lithuania, and The Well of Moses in a museum in Dijon.

Skulls were another representation of strength, wisdom, and power.  They were neither demonic nor evil until about the same time that horns fell into discretization.

A few examples of this are the Celts use of skulls to depict the seat of the soul.  Winged skulls such as those on old grave markers were considered a sign of life beyond death. Skulls have historically been used to repel evil and achieve wellness and success.  The skull & crossbones symbol represented spiritual rebirth through transformation of a greater spiritual understanding of how the world works.

Some cultures practiced drinking from skulls.  For them, it represented acquiring the traits of the deceased they respected.  The skulls of their relatives were cleaned and gilded to drink from in a ritual of honor for the dead.  This practice is similar to the Mexican Dia de los Muertos – Day of the Dead – when skulls are decorated for festivities to revere those that have gone on before.  This celebration begins at midnight on 31 October and runs to 02 November.  It coincides with All Saints Day, in Christian lore, and with our much celebrated Halloween.

–   ashanta

We would like to invite anyone who would like to contact us, share a story, comment on anything, or just keep in  touch to reach us at:

ashantaofthelema@gmail.com                                Thank you!!

Sep 8 2015

Tarot as a Great Life Tool

Tarot readings are most often thought about as a prognostication of coming events in one’s life.  They are something you get from a seer or fortune teller to find out what’s in store for you.  But, I don’t think that approach is a practical one.  Nothing is written in stone and if you can change one thing the outcome can be much different.  The question is –   what do you change?  and – how do you know?  That’s the time for a tarot reading.  It’s a tool to help you discover the different energies going on around you so you can know better what to do.

A tarot deck resembles life in its cards –  Wands, Cups, Swords, Discs.   Wands stand for the intellect, ideas, considerations, and anything of a fire nature.  Cups are water related and represent our emotional selves.  Swords are our troubles, tribulations, difficulties, and anything of an air nature.  And, Discs are of the earth and symbolize the material world – stuff and things.

There are many components to a tarot deck that all have meaning in a reading.  They are full of symbols that shed light on the condition or situation at hand.  The suit is important, but so is the imagery, color, number, planetary attributes, element, and the relationship of the cards surrounding one another.  The Major Arcana and Court Cards interplay with the four suits and are also important in determining all the ingredients of the final analysis of the layout.

Another vital aspect of a reading is found by determining what suit or suits are most important to you in the way you see yourself or feel about your present situation.  If you know and understand the suits that mean the most to you,  those suits will give more extra meaning to a reading.  Seeing where your suits are located in a layout and knowing what surrounds you and how it affects you are important tools at your disposal.

Discovering your options and understanding a good course of action to achieve your goals is invaluable in making the decisions that are most beneficial in your life.  By knowing the things that oppose you, you can meet them head-on, challenges are mitigated and success is more readily achieved.  So, as said earlier, a tarot reading is a good life tool to show you how to reach your goals and point out the pitfalls to avoid.  It isn’t something that tells you what you’re stuck with and what has befallen you.  Change one thing and everything else changes with it.

– ashanta

Sep 6 2015

Is Your Sign Ophiuchus?

What Sign are you?  Are you sure?  It seems it depends upon how you view astrology.  The 12 Sun Signs we are all familiar with are named after constellations that travel around the ecliptic.  The ecliptic is a circle in the celestial sphere that appears to be the path the sun travels in a year. The celestial sphere is an imaginary circle in which the person looking at it is in the center.  Therefore, from this perspective, all celestial objects appear to lie along this plane.

There are other constellations, however, that the sun traverses on its annual course.  They are fixed stars, though, and astrologers don’t like to count them because some feel they aren’t relative to the study.  Many astrologers use a system that only deals with the sun’s relationship to the moon within the parameters of solstices and equinoxes.

This is also one of the major controversies between astronomers and astrologers.  Especially those scientists who would like to demean and dismiss astology as a legitimate study.

There are two major zodiacs – although many others as well.  The one used by most western astrologers is the Tropical Zodiac which was explained, in part, above.  The other is the Sidereal Zodiac which studies the sun’s position against a star background.  This is the system used primarily in the East and by astronomers.

Anyway, could our Zodiac possess a 13th Sign?  Yes – and perhaps it should.  The sun spends quite a bit of time transversing the constellation Ophiuchus from 30 November to 17 December.  That’s quite a bit of time to be in a place without having any affects, whatsoever.  So, if you’re born during those dates perhaps some of the traits or aspects of Ophiuchus has meaning for you.

Ophiuchus is situated between the Signs of Scorpio and Sagittarius.  It is called the ‘Serpent Holder’ and it’s sigil is a capital U with a horizontal wavy line through the center that represents the snake.  Ophiuchus  represents the Greek physician Ascelpius who is generally depicted holding a snake, similar to the Caduceus today that symbolizes the medical profession.

Ophiuchians would like to be healers or people who fix things.  They enjoy connectedness and are gregarious, quick-witted, industrious, and can be quite showy.  On the other hand, and there’s always a darker side, they can be moody, greedy, envious, and controlling.  As in any other astrological analysis, the planets in this house and how they are aspected contribute to the personality a person possesses.

This simplistic blurb doesn’t detail the many complexities of astrological chart construction using any of the multi-analytic systems available to astrologers, but the question remains – are you more Ophiuchus than Scorpio or Sagittarius?

–  ashanta

Sep 6 2015

Are You Psychic?

Are you psychic?  You probably don’t think so, but I’ll bet you’re wrong.  In many cases we’ve been taught there is no such thing or that it’s evil.  You know – “Don’t dabble in the occult.” sort of thing.  That certainly stands in the way of using one’s natural ability. Having a capacity for being psychic doesn’t require some special feeling or aptitude.  It is important to realize everyone has this innate gift of psychic sensitivity.  It’s normal and it’s how the rest of nature operates.  Other living things were never taught there was no such thing or that it was wrong.  Thinking like that hampers learning how to access and use our naturally-given senses….which is probably why it was given such a bad rap to begin with.

There are many different names given to the various areas of ‘psychic ability’ that one may possess.  It seems everyone has their own talent they will be more adept in than another.   The most popular at this time seems to be communing with ghosts – or at least trying to find out if they are real or not.

Searching for an entity could involve many different psychic abilities.  If one has mediumistic talents, seeing and talking with a spirit should be quite easy.  But, being sensitive can cover a great many areas.  Being clairaudient would allow you to be able to hear spirits talking while clairvoyance would let you see an apparition.  Both can be present at the same time in the same person.

One could have the knack for automatic writing to allow the deceased to write through a planchette onto sheets of paper while the practitioner , alone or with others, places their hands on the writing tool.  This is similar to an ouija board – which I will argue isn’t evil, but that’s a different story.

Some people could use psychometry to discover something about either someone who is either still alive or has passed.  If given an object belonging to the person in question the psychomotrist can detect information about the person through their residual energy.

–  ashanta

Oct 22 2014

A Haunted Museum – Wistariahurst

Wistariahurst Museum is the magnificent homestead of silk manufacturing mogul William Skinner. It is nestled in the southern Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts and houses a wealth of history. And – it’s haunted.

This 26-room historic mansion has been situated in Holyoke, MA since 1874 after being moved, piece by piece, from it’s original site in Williamsburg, MA. The Skinner’s lived there until 1959 when the youngest of their children, Katherine Skinner Kilbourne, deeded the homestead to the City of Holyoke for philanthropic purposes.

The first incarnation of the Skinner estate, “Wistariahurst” as it came to be known (and spelled in it’s German variation), sat across the street from the Skinner’s first three-storied brick manufacturing plant on the Mill River, which supplied its power. When the Mill River Dam broke in 1874 it brought death and financial ruin to mill workers and owners alike. William Skinner, finding himself in almost complete financial devastation and mill-less, accepted an offer from the Holyoke Water Power Company to move his silk business and family home to Holyoke. A deal too good to refuse, Skinner accepted and the house was moved from “Skinnerville” in Williamsburg to the city block it now occupies in Holyoke.

The house was built large after the fashion of any wealthy manufacturer of its time. It was made larger,and more magnificent by Ruth Isabel “Belle” Skinner, a spinster daughter of the silk industrialist. Money was no object and Belle didn’t mind spending it – especially if it made her look even better in the society to which she had become accustomed.

Many stories have been written about the family, the house, and their history. Nothing, yet, has been mentioned about the peculiar activities that happen on the premises when the visitors leave…and before they arrive.

Formerly, I worked as a volunteer for the museum and was responsible for preparing the house to open for visitors and closing it down when museum hours were over. I’ve been throughout the house on many occasions and have had a number of experiences that weren’t ordinary and cannot be easily explained.

I was on the second floor of the house one late afternoon turning off lights, closing displays, and getting ready to lock doors when there was the sound of a door banging loudly. Could it have been another volunteer or administrator coming in? I called out, “Hello! I’m closing up, up here. (Listening) Hello?.. (Listening. Walking toward the noise.) Hi, where are you?..” No reply. Nobody. No closed doors.

I found the other staff and volunteers downstairs and mentioned the noise. All present said they had heard it, but none knew where it came from.

Other things seen and unseen:

Moving shadows out the corner of one’s eye.

Plugs and extension cords thrown into the middle of hallways.

Footfalls.

Doors closing behind you when you enter a room.

A few of the former servant’s quarters have been closed to the public for one reason or another, but those are the places where a lot of the activity takes place. Perhaps that’s why they aren’t opened that frequently.

On another occasion I was on the second floor locking up one of the servant’s areas. There was always an uneasy feeling in these rooms, like you were never alone. I made sure everything was secure and locked the door. As I was walking down the hallway toward the back staircase when the space between the door and the jamb rattled violently and then slammed shut again. It had been closed when I left it moments before….

Sometimes I had to go to the third floor where the head housekeeper had her bedroom and office. Her name was Hulda and she was like a member of the Skinner family. You never feel alone on the third floor. There are footfalls that follow you and doors will close behind you – even when you don’t want them to.

While the servants quarters seem to be the most active areas of activity, some of the family members also still remain – at least during some parts of the year because you can hear them. And – sometimes see them.

I’ve seen Kittie, the youngest of the Skinner children, at the top of the wrap-around staircase from the main hall. She was elegant in her long, champagne silk gown starting her descent along the suspended stairs. When she got to the landing overlooking the great room she vanished. Her hair was swept up in a loose twist and she wore a string of pearls.

Although Wistariahurst now offers candlelight tours around Halloween time, their actors and effects cannot produce anything like the real thing!!! Seeing and hearing are believing. Artificial presentations don’t produce the same phenomena as the real thing does.

– ashanta

Sep 10 2014

Unanswered Questions

I was doing a tarot reading for an acquaintance of a work friend for the first time. I have read the cards for friends and family for several years now. This reading started out
as usual, but when it was over something new to me occurred.

A thought kept coming to me, “ask her if she knows [this person]”. I ignored it at first, but the voice-thought kept coming back. I eventually asked her and found out it was her
dead brother. She then told me this had happened once before when seeing a psychic. She said that he is always letting her know he is with her by seeing him in her dreams.

She then said she wished she could hear from her dead husband, but never had. Then his name came to me. I told her and she was excited, he proved who he was to her satisfaction
by bringing up things from their life together. She said she had one question that she always wanted-needed to know and that was the one thing that never came through.

I have since been told by an established medium that not getting an answer to a question is sometimes the answer. It could be that the spirit didn’t have an answer, or that the
asker needed to find out for themselves. I, too, believe that there are sometimes lessons to be learned that the asker will have to find out alone.

-Bran.

Jul 22 2014

Ghosts

New England is a region rich with the lore and legend of our ancestors. All it takes is a peek beneath the surface of the thrifty, hardworking, and no-nonsense Yankee to see the superstition and wild imagination that, undoubtedly, has helped make our region so interesting and, occasionally, down right creepy.

 

Spiritualism, put simply, is the belief that the spirit continues to exist after physical death and that it can be scientifically studied through interaction with the spirit via seance, which is made possible through the use of a medium, or person who possesses the ability to contact and channel spirit energies. The purpose of this is to learn about the afterlife and the spirit world. There are still Spiritualist Churches in existence today including On-I-Set-Wigwam Spiritualist Camp in Onset, Massachusetts.(On the Cape near Wareham.) {Spiritualists believe in the Christian God and see the existence of the human soul as proof of passages in the bible}

 

The American Spiritualist Movement came into being in March 1848 in Hydesville, New York. The Fox family; John Fox, his wife, and their daughters Margaret and Katie moved to New York from Canada. They took temporary residence in a house that had been abandoned and was reported to be haunted. John Fox paid no heed to the rumors of strange activity and instead looked for physical answers to the thumps and knocks that their family was hearing. Every night he would go around the house and knock on walls and look for loose floor boards and other things that may be causing the noises. His daughters, however, had no problem believing that there was a spirit in the house and had even given him a nickname (Mr. Splitfoot).

 

One evening as their father was performing his checks Kate noticed that when her father would knock on a wall the knocks would be repeated back in the same number. This led to the invention of a system where a certain number of knocks would be “yes” and a different number would mean “no”. They also had different knocks for the letters in the alphabet. Using this system allowed the Fox sister’s to “communicate” with the spirit. Soon the neighbors of the Fox family were coming to see the girls use their mediumistic powers and question the spirits. By 1849 Margaret and Kate were performing all over New England to crowds of people both eager to see thier talents or to see evidence that the sisters were a sham.

 

Although the sisters did engage in some questionable lines of performance no one was ever able to prove that their abilities were fake despite being bound around the ankles and wrists and even submitting to having their underwear checked. In 1904, years after both the Fox sister’s were dead, some children were playing in the basement of their old Hydesville home when a wall collapsed nearly killing one child. When the structure was investigated it was found to be a poorly constructed false partition and upon it’s excavation the skeletal remains of a man were unearthed.

 

The Fox sisters really launched the American Spiritualist Movement. Soon after they began performing for the public all sorts of other people were discovering that they too had mediumistic powers. The idea that the soul could survive physical death appealed to a great many people. To truly understand the appeal and popularity of the Movement we must consider the social climate of Victorian times.

 

The Victorians held themselves to very strict codes of social conduct and dress. Women were considered to be fare, frail, and submissive to men. Men were the head of the household and expected to maintain their families respectability. Both men and women were expected to be extremely sexually prude. Not even written expressions of emotion or sexuality were considered permissible. To maintain this respectability Victorians even went to the extreme of not using any words with even a miniscule sexual connotation (“indelicate” words) or coming up with euphemisms for them. For example the word “leg” was replaced by “limb” as it was considered less offensive. Women’s and men’s lives were considered to be and expected to be maintained within different spheres.

 

It is during these times that great changes were occurring and competing with traditional Victorian vales. Evangelicalism was very popular as it emphasized moral conduct and humanitarian causes, but it was coexisting with utilitarianism- the belief in reason to solve problems, and empiricism – which aimed to have legislation to help improve men’s talents. It also promoted a series of reforms designed to improve the lives of the lower classes, such as free education, women’s emancipation, and the organization of trade unions. Scientific discovery, especially in geology and biology, was breaking new ground and scientific principals were gaining favoritism. Charles Darwin published his book On the Origin of Species in 1859. The Women’s Right and Suffregate Movements were gaining popularity. All these changes and expectations were churning up the lives of these people and then Spiritualism came along.

 

Spiritualism offered a compromise between religion and science, it offered the hope that familial ties could transcend death, it offered a place where rigid social conduct and expectations could be relaxed for an evening. Spiritualism quickly became popular among all the social classes, although most formal seances were conducted within the Middle and Upper Classes. These seances became social passtimes and a place where men and women could relax and let their separate social spheres mingle. It is also important to note that, although there were male mediums and mesmerists, the Spiritualist Movement was dominated by women.

 

– Moonchild