New ventures

Hi everyone,

It's been a while since I've written a blog.  It's not that I haven't been inspired to say something (Gods know!).  It's that I've been very, very busy.

For the past several months, Mike and I have been working to get a new retail website up and running.  The focus of the site is/will be Witchcraft derived from the Mediterranean cultures and religious traditions.  Our new venture is called Strega Crafts and we'll be going live in October.  Our goal is a full site publish for the Monday, October 3, 2011.

We'll be offering handmade items and accessories and we'll be starting with my own incense, anointing oils, and potions.  We are in the works to get hand crafted chalices, jewelry and statuary, and strega-rosaries. 

Any other items that you would like to see us offer?

Benedizioni,

---Vinnie

So, what happens when we die?

I was recently asked the question, "So, what really happens when we die?" .

What a great question.  For me, I see it as a very complicated subject that we can only use metaphors to describe.  I don’t think that there is any one right or correct interpretation as to what happens after death or before birth or between incarnation, etc.  Like the Gods, I think it is a Mystery that is so vast and profound that we can’t truly comprehend it while we are here in manifest form.  We can only commune with our Gods and seek the poetic metaphors that help us explain it both in a spiritual way as well as a mundane way.

I believe that we all have an immortal soul as well as a mortal spirit.  The mortal spirit is that non-physical aspect of us as manifest individuals.  Our consciousness, if you will.  The soul is the eternal essence that all of our incarnations have their roots in and is the part of us that is closest to the Gods.  Through each incarnation, the Spirit works towards communion with the Soul and the Gods.  I don’t believe that heaven, hell, underworld, Olympus, etc. are actually physical places.  I do believe that in the human psyche they have physical associations or equivalents though.  The Underworld is just that – under world, below the ground.  It is chthonic as are the earthly gods and Gods of the Dead.  Think of all the myths that place the entrance to the Underworld in Sicily (near Mt. Etna).  I also see the Underworld as having many different layers, each with their own purpose (rest for the beloved dead, etc.).

This is going to be hard to explain in writing but I’ll give it a shot.

• When the Soul manifests a Spirit in the world, in a way, it becomes tied to the world.  Once the individual body dies, then the particular manifestation is over. 
• The personality or spirit (that part of us that is US),  is withdrawn into the Soul. 
• Loosed from the ties to the material, the Soul/ retreats (to the Underworld) to integrates the lessons learned.  Depending on how the life was lived and if the individual really learned or experienced anything, this process can be “like heaven” or “like hell”.  I think that this is why so many cultures have different levels of the Underworld, each assigned to a particular theme.
• When the Soul has integrated the experiences and lessons of the particular incarnation, it returns to the realm of the Gods *by crossing back over the River of Forgetfulness*.
• At that point, the Spirit (the individual personality) remains behind in the Underworld – perhaps as beloved dead. 
• Then Soul, from within the realm of the Gods, ties itself to the world and manifests another Spirit in the world. 

The Soul evolves through each successive incarnation by integrating the lessons from each before being born again as a new incarnation.  The reason that the new incarnation won’t normally remember the past one is that bringing baggage from the past into the present/future is a self-defeating process.  The Soul already integrated the lessons of the previous incarnation and can guide the new incarnation with that knowledge but without the baggage.  

I believe that each incarnation (Spirit) is always tied to the Soul.  This explains how someone can train to remember past lives.  It also explains how we can contact individuals who have crossed over while still having the soul reincarnate.  It’s the Soul that reincarnates, not the Spirit.

When Vinnie dies, then Vinnie will go to the Underworld and (hopefully!) become one of the beloved dead.  The Soul that Vinnie was a part of then re-incarnates as a new Spirit after integrating Vinnie’s experiences and lessons.

Anyway, that’s my view.  Hope it was interesting.  :-)

Benedizioni,

---Vincenzo

Nature of the Gods

Happy Solstice everyone!

Below is a repose of a response that I sent to one of the mailing lists that I am on.  It is a list about traditional Stregheria.  One of the members raised two questions and this was my (long winded) response.  I hope you enjoy!

Benedizioni,

Vincenzo

Repost:

The question asked in the forums:
1) Do you percieve our Deities as monogomous? I mean I have a feeling the Greeks weren't much in monogamy... the Romans then absorbed much of their mythology.... 

And 2) “what would you call the major God and Goddess in Stregheria”

Vinnie's response:

Mind you, I can only offer my own perspective – and that hinges on your description of hard polytheism versus soft polytheism.  I believe that you and I may view hard and soft polytheism very differently and that colors how each of us perceives and interacts with the gods.

I believe that it was Dion Fortune in her novel Sea Priestess who said, “all goddesses are one goddess, and all gods are one god and there is one initiator”.  I don’t believe that she meant that to be taken literally, especially after reading her novel dozens of times.  I take that phrase to be true “metaphorically” but not literally.  The best way to explain that might be to describe how I see the gods. 

Hard Polytheism – Hard Polytheists believe that gods are distinct, separate real divine beings not psychological archetypes or personifications of natural forces. Hard polytheists reject the idea that "all gods are one God". (From Wikipedia)

Soft Polytheism – Soft Polytheism is prevalent in New Age and syncretic currents of Neopaganism, as are psychological interpretations of deities as archetypes of the human psyche. English occultist Dion Fortune was a major populizer of soft polytheism. In her novel, The Sea Priestess, she wrote, "All gods are one god, and all goddesses are one goddess, and there is one initiator. This phrase is very popular among some Neopagans (notably, Wiccans) and incorrectly often believed to be just a recent work of fiction. However, Fortune indeed quoted from an ancient source, the Latin novel The Golden Ass of Apuleius. Fortune's soft polytheist compromise between monotheism and polytheism has been described as "pantheism" (Greek: πάν pan 'all' and θεός theos 'god'). However, "Pantheism" has a longer history of usage to refer to a view of an all-encompassing immanent divine. (From Wikipedia)

On the whole, I find myself somewhere in the middle of the two.  I believe that the gods are individual entities or consciousnesses albeit far removed from how we normally think of human consciousness – they are individual consciousnesses of a different order than human consciousnesses.  Many gods or goddesses may share traits and be similar but they are NOT the same.  For instance, Mary (mother of Jesus) is NOT Hera (mother of the Greek Gods) even though they are both “divine mothers”.  They are distinct and separate entities even though they may share certain qualities and characteristics. 

However, I think that the “gods of myths” aren’t the actual gods.  The “gods of myths” are characters in the teaching stories of particular cultures, the purpose of which was/is to help the average person make sense of the universe and their place in it.  The myths (ancient and modern!) are teaching stories at best and soap operas of the ancient world at worst.  They were the stories of the gods for the common people, not the Initiates or the people in direct communion with the divine forces as Priests and Priestesses.  For the average person, the myths were there to help the common person understand the world and their place in it and they were by necessity tied to the culture in which they were told.  For the Initiates (the Priests and Priestesses of the goddesses), the myths were/are signposts (not to be taken literally) to the Mysteries and helped people connect to the divine.

Gods and Goddesses such as Aphrodite or Venus may both be Goddesses of Love but I see them as separate individual entities each with their own rites, rituals, personalities, etc.  Although separate and distinct, they “share a job description” if you will.  They are individuals but are both individual divine emanations of “LOVE,” yet as individuals they are not indiscriminately interchangeable.

This might help – think of all women as emanations of the divine concept of “WOMAN” and of all men as emanations of the divine concept of “MAN”.  Yet each woman and each man are distinct individuals and are not interchangeable.  Refer that back to the Dion Fortune phrase and you get the concept that all Goddesses are manifestation of the divine “GODDESS” and all Gods and manifestations of the divine “GOD”.  The phrase “one initiator” then means that GODDESS and GOD are the first individual manifest separations of the ineffable – that level of the divine which, as manifest beings, humans can’t comprehend without putting a face, name, attribute, or ritual to.

So, this is my personal cosmology.  The totality of ALL THINGS (knowable and unknown) is the ineffable divine and by its nature (and the limitation of ours), can’t be easily grasped in words, deeds, and concepts by the human, manifest mind.  GOD and GODDESS are the first conscious manifestations of the inedible that we can easily grasp and interact with.  Individual Gods and Goddesses are the specific *individual* divine entities that are often culturally specific – each with their own rites and rituals associated with them.  Witches deal with paradoxes all the time and the nature of the Gods is a paradox but it works.  So, for me, the gods are BOTH individual entities as well as manifestations of the unknowable.

Now, on to your questions –

1) the monogamy of the gods, specifically as expressed in Greco-Roman mythology.  Remember that these are myths – teaching stories that are culturally driven – not recorded factual activities of the entities known as Zeus, Hera, Apollo, etc.  They are the signposts to help someone find Zeus, Hera, Apollo, etc.  The specifics matter less than the underlying message (or mystery) of the myths.

And 2) “what would you call the major God and Goddess in Stregheria”.  That will vary depending on the specific tradition.   Once again, this is just my opinion and what I teach and isn’t what either Leo Martello or Lori Bruno taught me.  We (the Sheaves of Demeter) call on Great Apollo and Great Diana as the “celestial divinities” – Sun & Moon, Mother & Father, Light & Illumination.  The individual God named Apollo and the individual Goddess named Diana and their respective myths point us toward knowledge and communion with Great Apollo and Great Diana (Father & Mother, Lord & Lady).  We also have Demeter as our patron and through the individual Goddess Demeter, we seek contact with the living growing life of the world.  Hades and Persephone are the individual Gods that are the guardians of our beloved dead and through them and their interactions (Demeter, Persephone, and Hades), we seek the mysteries of life, death, and rebirth.  Additionally, we have specific secret names for “the Lord” and “the Lady” as well as an oathbound name for “the mother of the Craft” which we do not use outside of the Family.

In a way, for us, the individual divine entities of the Greco-Roman pantheon becomes a touchstone to interact with the ineffable via familiar names, faces, and rites so that we can understand and connect with them in order to explore the Mysteries.

I hope that answered your questions and I didn’t stray too far off topic.  Perhaps I should repost this response as a blog entry!

Benedizioni,

---Vinnie

May musings

I've sat down to write a new blog dozens of times since the last time I posted.  So, why haven't I posted anything since March 29th?  It's certainly not because things have been boring!  Oddly enough, it's because I felt that everything that I could blog about was negative and I didn't want to put that out in the world.

I would start to write and realized that I was complaining.  Topics were about how someone wasn't acting honorably, being fed up with gossip, or simply "I can't believe that XXX did YYY".

So, tell me.  When you want to post something, how do you keep it positive? 

I'm going to try something new.  As you might be aware, I'm often on Facebook and frequently post things that I find amusing, articles that I find of interest, or just good wishes for folks.  Although I haven't yet figured out how to get my Twitter feed and FaceBook statuses to post here as "mini-blogs", I'm going to take the time and cross-post some things here.

Light and life to you all!

Benedizioni,

---Vincenzo

The little things like standing up straight...

Back in February, I had a little accident involving a large patch of ice and a fall.  Ouch!  I really did a number on my back and it laid me up for a while.  Eventually, I realized that the pain meant that I had done more to my back than simply bruising it so I made an appointment to see the Chiropractor that Mike has been going to for a number of years.

One of the reasons that we chose the practice that Mike had been going to was that they are wonderful and profession and professional people.  What had impressed me was how they look at their clients and their treatments in a "life encompassing way" (i.e. holistically).  They even have an optional program for consciously living a healthy life called Bonfire Health.

So rather than making an appointment to be adjusted to take care of the problem/symptoms from my slip&fall, I decided to see them and set up a "correction plan" so I could work on the symptoms AND learn what I should be doing to be healthier.

I've been going for about 6 weeks now and it's been pretty amazing.  My posture is better, no more neck aches, I grind my teeth a lot less, and the most amazing thing - no more insomnia!  Apparently my back had been so out of whack for years that it interfered with my sleeping and relaxation.  Honestly, that never occurred to me as a reason for my insomnia.  Afterall, my posture wasn't great but it wasn't THAT bad either.

The health update?
Just a little bit of adjustment in how I sit, some conscious awareness of what I do with my neck and head when driving, and some simple exercises to strengthen my core.  Amazing.  Just from those little changes, I notice that I sleep better, I ache less, and I have more energy.  In short, I feel fantastic!

It's the little things in life...

Benedizioni,

---Vinnie