New & Exciting Partnership Project Underway!

My book of Shadows if full of information, some of it goes back years and years, so much so that some of the ingrediants in a few things are no longer available! But while it holds a great deal of information it’s only me that gets to see it, use it and of course benefit from it. However, that is about to change.

Currenly undergoing development, are a range of Magickal Oils, taken from recepies in my own book of shadows, and adapted for use by everyone. I have been working closely with my friend Helen, who is a qualified aromatherapist, to ensure that all of the blends are safe for use by everyone, and the first part of the range is almost ready.

First to hit the shelves in the store will be the ‘Elemental Oils’ namely Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Spirit. How you choose to use these oils is up to you, but they have been blended using pure essential oils that will align you with the element you wish to work with, helping you to harness the power it has and add it to your own. Alternatively, the earth oil could be used as part of a grounding ritual, or indeed you could use any of them in an oil burner or for ritual bathing.

I’m really excited about this, as I have been making salts and such for people using these blends for years and they have always been well received and their benefits more so! So you have had the ‘heads up’ as it were here first! The Elemental Oils will soon be followed by a range of Zodiac Oils, then eventually by request and spell oils etc.. So watch this space, and remember to check in at the store to see what else is new!

Spiritual Awakening 4 - Signs of Contact

I dare say that many of us have been sat at home and felt that ’something’ wasn’t quite right. Had a feeling that there was something different about the place but not quite been able to pin down where that feeling was coming from. Sometimes is can drive us to distraction trying to figure out exactly what it is and what triggered the feeling, unfortunately we can’t always find the source.

I know when I walk into my home whether I have an extra ‘guest’ as it were, as I can feel the shift in the energy. The best way to describe how this feels to me, is for you to imagine walking into a room filled with electricity, almost like a static charge, as if the room contains dozens of TV screens all emitting white noise. Somehow the energy in the room feels more dense, the air seems to change and more often than not I feel the ‘pressure’ of someone near to me, a closeness that make me feel like I could reach out and touch someone stood there. But that’s just how I feel, everybody has different reactions.

So how can spirit let you know when they are around? Well, to be honest, how spirit choose to make contact can often be based upon personal references. For example, a common method used by spirit it to use a smell, this could be a hint of perfume, or a cooking aroma etc. As smell is the strongest of the senses linked to memory, a scent or aroma can transport us back to a place in time when that smell was common place, leading us to link it to the people that were around us at that time. It could be tobacco smoke linked to a grandfather, sweet perfume linked to an aunt, or face cream linked to a grandmother. The smells that are chosen generally have a specific link to a person you are connected to. I won’t say that it is always easy to make the connection, as occasionally the link can be pretty bizarre, and you may have to search way back in your memory to place the smell, but the link will be there.

Electricity is also a useful tool for spirit. Affecting lights, TVs and radios seems to be a common method of signalling their presence. I have good friends who have had music playing through their sound system when it has all been switched off, even after disconnecting the speakers! The kitchen seems to be the centre of activity in my home and amongst other (non electrical activity), I have spirit switching the kettle on in there, playing with the telephone on the bedroom, and draining batteries in mobile phones and MP3 players.

Another method of contact is through sound. Unusual bangs, knocks and clicks, that you know are not naturally occurring - the kitchen is a great resource of sound making devices. The kettle switch, dustbin lid, cupboard doors etc. Instead of disregarding the noises that your house makes, as most of us do. Listen to the sounds, try and decide where they are coming from, investigate what could have made the sound, could it be naturally occurring? If not, who made the sound?

Of course there are the tales of having objects moved around the home, but this takes a lot of energy to perform, so is perhaps not as common as we would be made to believe by television programmes. Although it is common for small items to disappear for a while, only to turn up in the strangest of places! Keys seem to be a popular choice and television remotes, things that we notice being out of place very quickly.

In reality, the most commonly reported sign that of spirit activity is temperature change. Generally referred to as ‘cold spots’ where the temperature of a specific area can be quite dramatically lower than that of the surrounding area. Warm spots also occur, though there are generally regarded as being formed by loving energies as opposed to generic spirit activity. Whether they are warm or cold, make a note of where you encounter them, how long are they there for, and whether they always appear in the same place. At the same time you notice the temperate change, keep you eyes and ears open for any other signs that you have a ‘visitor’ in you home.

Developing your Psychic Skills

If you are looking for a way to focus your newly discovered psychic skills, or simply to put them to some practical use, psychometry is a good skill to begin with. Put into simple terms psychometry is being able to ‘read’ information from an object that belongs to someone else, be it delivered in the form of feelings, impressions or imagery.

It is best to start out with objects provided by friends, preferably something like a piece of jewellery that has been handed down from one generation to another, where you would not have known the previous owners or any stories relating to the piece. If possible, ask if you can hold onto the item for a couple of days so that you can work with it and see what impressions it gives you, all of which you can write down and hand back to your friend, with the piece, to see if they can validate anything for you. If you feel that you are the type of person that would look at an object and make assumptions about it such as its a diamond ring therefore it must have belonged to a woman, therefore its probably my friends grandmothers ring etc.. Ask that the item be given to you in an envelope, or a box, so that your initial assumptions will not cloud your psychic sense. You can always ‘uncover’ the item after your initial session.

So how do you ‘read’ an inanimate object? With time and practice you will of course develop your own method, however, the method details below is a good way to begin.

• Find a quiet place where you are unlikely to be disturbed. Sit comfortably, hold the item in your hands and get a feel for the piece.
• It may be helpful at this point to note down any initial impressions that you get. Whatever pops into your mind. Remember you are learning to trust your intuition.
• Make a mental note of the texture of the piece, whether it feels warm or cold in your hands, is it heavy or light? Does it always feel the same when you handle it?
• If you find it difficult to keep focus on the piece, try entering a meditative state and see what comes to mind. It may be that you need to open up a little more to access the information.
• Remember, this is a new experience for you. Consider it an experiment in trusting your intuition. However bizarre an image is that presents itself, make a note of it, it may have significance later.
• Over the period of time that you have the piece in your possession, follow the process as many times as you feel you can, noting down all of your thoughts, feelings and images or names that come to mind.
• Take all of your notes, and arrange them in a way that they make sense to you. Often you can build on an impression by writing about it. Then hand your notes back to your friend to see if you have hit upon any facts, or sensed anything memorable about the pieces previous owners.
• Don’t expect to receive fact after fact that your friend will be able to easily validate for you, the first time you attempt this. It may that all you sense are emotions to begin with but it is a good start.

One of the best experiences I had with psychometry was with a locket. I can’t remember now who I was reading for, or what their circumstances were, all I can remember clearly are the images that were placed in my mind. It was  a fairly heavy golden locket, with some engraving on one side, no names, just a pattern. I never opened the locket to see if anything was inside, the information I received was just from holding it in my hands. I remember seeing a dance taking place in quite a large room, quite formal, with the ladies wearing beautiful gowns and long white gloves, with their hair pinned high. I remember the room having wood panelled walls and some heavy looking chairs around the outside. Then I was shown the locket being placed upon a nightstand, alongside some other jewellery which I described to the client, and which they recognised as still being in the family. Alongside the imagery were waves of emotion that related to the situations that I was ’seeing’. There were other images and sensations, but the dance and the nightstand are still as clear as day in my memory. Although I never provided names and dates that could be easily validated, I offered details of events and places as well as corresponding articles of jewellery that provided another means of validation.

So remember, no matter how insignificant you may interpret a piece of information, an image or even the hint of a scent, it may of importance to your friend, or indeed to a future client. It could be the one piece of information that leads to a validation for you, so disregard nothing.

Spiritual Awakening 3 - Making Contact

When the tine arrives for you to reach out into the ether and ‘make contact’ just who do you believe that you will find there? This will of course vary from belief to belief, but generally the first spirit you should actively seek out to communicate with will be one of your guides. Yes, we can all ‘talk’ to the spirits of deceased loved ones as if they were in the room with us, whether we believe they are actually there or not. But for the purpose of learning about your gift, and developing your abilities, your first port of call should be with your guides.

So how do you go about reaching out to them? The flippant answer would be ‘just ask them!’ But really, I’m sure that they would appreciate a more respectful and thoughtful approach. This is where your ability to meditate comes in.

Over the years meditation has been something that has been mocked and ridiculed as something performed by ‘hippies’ after entering a drug induced, trance like haze, or something that the wierdo at the end of the street does in his garden at the crack of dawn. Each to their own I say. In reality meditation is a way of calming the mind and pushing all of your mental clutter than has accumulated in there to the side, so that you had actually hear yourself think. When was the last time that you actually switched off? Forgot about all of the lists that we are so fond of making for ourselves, and actually listened to yourself? We are so caught up everyday in the things that we think we need to do, the things that we believe we should be doing or that others expect of us, that we forget about the things that we need to do for the sake of our well being. Ten minutes of quality meditation can refresh your body and mind just as much as a good nights sleep can!

Meditation, like any skill, gets easier and better with practice. Just like your grounding and protection exercises, the more you do it, the more like second nature it will become. Rather than jumping straight in and expecting to connect to your guides the first time you try, I would suggest that you begin with some simple relaxation meditations, so that you get used to the idea of switching off your overactive brain, and learn how to feel at peace. I will provide an example here of a simple relaxation meditation to give you some idea, there are many more listed on my spiritual forum Circle of Light, of which you are welcome to use for yourselves. Don’t worry if you tend to fall asleep the first few times you try, at least it shows that you are learning to relax - and how much you need to learn to meditate!

Simple Relaxation Meditation.

1. Find somewhere comfortable and quiet where you are unlikely to be disturbed, preferably in a seated position with your feet flat on the floor. if you lie on the bed you run the risk of falling asleep as soon as you start!

2. Close your eyes and listen to your breathing. Focus on slowing the rate of the breathing. Inhale through the nose for a count of 7 then exhale through the mouth for a count of 11. Each time you exhale let your muscles relax a little further.

3. Spend a couple of minutes listening to your breath enter your body, focus on the sound it makes. Notice how the air is cool when it enters and warm when it leaves.

4. Now you are going to learn how to visualise. Everybody has a special place in their minds, whether it’s a reproduction of an actual place they have visited, or an imaginary place where everything fits to an ideal. For some its in the heart of a forest, to others it could be a log cabin on the side of a mountain, or on a cliff top looking out to sea. Wherever you feel to be your special place, picture it in your mind, or go with the first image that pops in there.

5. Place yourself inside your visualisation, imagine yourself sitting under a tree, or sitting by a lake or on the beach, whatever fits with your visualisation, remember this place is special to you, a personal place that makes you feel safe and secure, relaxed and happy.

6. Within your visualisation, look at the scene around you. What can you see, do things look real or are the colours more vibrant? What can you hear, is the wind blowing, is water rippling? What can you smell, is the air salty, can you smell flowers?

7. Spend a few minutes exploring your surroundings, deepening your impressions of the place that you are in. Remember to look for other beings that may be there, animals for instance, that may have a special significance to you.

8. Stay there for as long as you feel comfortable before bringing your attention back into the ‘real world’. Sit quietly and focus on your breathing once again. Think about what you saw and what you felt there. More importantly know that you can revisit that special place any time you wish.

This is a lovely meditation to start with, the more you practice it, the more you can build on the depth of the visualisation, learn to interact with any creatures that reside their with you. It may be that you will find another being comes to share that space with you. Take this as a good sign that you are ready to communicate with your guides. If you feel confident and secure enough you can begin to ask questions of this other being, it may be that you will recognise them as someone who once shared your life. Keep your qiestions simple to being with, don’t rush in and ask them to explain the meaning of life!

Ultimately, remember that this is an experience that is unique to you. No two people will have exactly the same experience, though you may find similarities in the sessions progress. If you are finding it difficult to achieve a state of meditational peace on your own, it may be that you would do better following a guided meditation. For example a meditation exercise recorded onto CD, with soft ambient background music, which leads you into relaxation then meditation and brings you back to the ‘real word’ following a set pattern. I could recommend several, but again this is a personal choice. For an idea of what is available in this area please feel free to browse through my collection at The Covenstead. Whichever method that you choose to access a meditative state, I really believe that Its a great way to open yourself up for spiritual contact. Plus, you know that you always have a safe place to escape to when you need to clear you head.

Spiritual Awakening 2 - Protecting Yourself

So now you feel that you are ready to progress your psychic/spiritual gift, so what do you need to do?

You may well have heard ‘horror’ stories about people ‘inviting spirit in’ or ‘dabbling with the occult’, where individuals have ended up with unknown spiritual entities running amok in their home, or even worse, possessing the individual themselves! It is no wonder that anyone approaching spiritual contact feels uneasy, perhaps a little scared about what the are ‘letting themselves in for’. There are so many programmes on TV, and magazines relating tales of supernatural woe that it can be difficult to tell fact from fiction.

If you speak to any experienced psychic or medium they will tell you that one of the most important skills that you need to learn is how to ground and protect yourself. So what exactly does this mean? To put in in simple terms, think of yourself as a cartoon character, you go through life happily without incident, then strange things start happening, and as you open your mind to the idea of spiritual contact a small light appears above your head, almost like a  light bulb. this light shines quite dimly at first, but as you open your mind further and start to ‘test’ your intuition and ask for signs from spirit, the light begins to burn brighter and brighter. So here you are walking around with a huge bright light above your head, in a community where everyone else is dull and their minds closed. Just like moths to a flame your light will start to attract spirit wishing to let you know that they are there, because they see your light as an open communication channel - like an unsecured broadband connection!

The best time for a spirit to make contact with you, is when you are relaxed, when your mind is unoccupied by the everyday things that keep us distracted from one task to another. The time before sleep, when you are comfortable and relaxed, slipping into a dreamlike state is the ideal opportunity for them to make their move. How many times have you been about to fall asleep when you have heard a noise, thought someone was there, or turned bleary eyed and imagined that you have seen a figure at the foot of your bed? You will probably find that as you develop psychically you will have more disturbed nights, more vivid dreams and more unexplained phenomena than you know what do do with! This is where the ‘Grounding and Protection’ come in.

Think of it this way, would you go deep sea diving without a wetsuit and safety equipment? I thought not, its the same with psychic protection, it’s your personal safety equipment. How you choose to protect yourself is up to you, you can find a host of different methods at ‘Circle of Light‘ my spiritual forum. The most often taught method is for you to visualise yourself inside a golden bubble, inside the bubble you are protected from negative influences, both spiritual and physical. You are surrounding yourself in a golden protective light, building a shield between you and everything else. The more you practice the visualisation the stronger your shield will become. It is a great place to start, but then how you choose to visualise your shield is up to you, what works for one person may not necessarily work for another.

By ‘grounding’ yourself, you are quite literally anchoring yourself to the earth plain, this helps to keep your feet firmly on the ground, and stops you from losing touch with reality. It also helps to ground all of that psychic energy that is powering the giant light above your head! One of the simplest and most effective ways of doing this is by visualising roots, like those of a great Oak, extending out from the soles of your feet, deep into the earth below you. As the roots travel downwards they  spread in all directions grasping the earth and helping to keep you steady. As with any grounding or protection exercise, the more that you practice it the stronger it will become and the more noticeable the effects will be.

How many times each day you choose to practice the grounding and protection exercises is up to the individual. Though I would suggest that when first starting out you do it as many times a day that you can remember, especially first thing in the morning and last thing at night. As you get better at doing it the less often you will need to do it, and it will become as automatic as making your morning cuppa. You will find though, that as your skills develop you may need to adjust the levels of protection that you apply, this could be as simple as placing your bubble within another bubble, or visualising a reflective surface on the outside of your bubble, you will know what will work best for you.

There are a good selection of books on psychic development, as well as CD’s etc. at The Covenstead.

Finally, to ensure that you get a good night sleep, without interruptions from visiting spirit, you need to learn the art of ‘closing down’, this is basically how you switch off your ‘lighbulb’ and put up a closed for business sign. Again their are a multitude of methods for doing this (see Circle of Light) and methods vary from person to person. You could visualise yourself inside a giant flower, closing up the petals around you one by one until the flower is completely closed, or you could visualise yourself crawling inside a sack and closing it tight above you head. I have know a few people start to feel claustrophobic when doing this, so if it is something you suffer from, I’d suggest a more suitable method. If you are have an understanding chakras you could visualise a coloured light at each of the chakra points and turn them off one by one by one from base to crown. Or perhaps if you are a biker, visualise yourself putting on protective leathers, followed by your helmet, finally closing your visor. You get the idea? However you chose to close down is up to you, just remember that you are in effect sealing yourself off from spirit. You can always open yourself up again in the morning if you wish by reversing the close down process.

Often when starting out upon psychic development you can feel overwhelmed by the amount of information that just seems to pop into your head day and night, it can make you anxious, sleepless and sometimes can get you down as you feel that you no longer have any peace. By learning to successfully ground, protect and close down, you are learning to take control of your gift manage how and when you use it, which is something that a lot of people forget they can do.

Spiritual Awakening 1 - So you think you’re psychic?

Maybe you have felt connected to the Universe for as long as you can remember, and have never done anything about it. Or perhaps you have had a ‘paranormal’ experience that you can’t explain away as a trick of the light, or an overactive imagination. Either way, you have now reached a turning point in your life, where you feel the need to connect to, and get to know your spiritual side. So how do you go about it?

You could sit in front of your computer screen for hours on end, scouring internet sites for psychic development CD’s and signing up for courses that promise you that you will be able to make a fortune from your skills within the week. A nice idea, but sorry to tell you thats not the way it works.

If you truly believe that you have a gift, a sixth sense, then I believe that the best person to help you to develop it is you. You need to discover for yourself what your gift is, and the best way to achive this is to seek out your spirit guides. Now many people believe many different things about who our guides are, where they come from, and what they do. I will not stand up and say that everyone else is wrong and I am right, everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, all I wish to do here, is to share my beliefs and opinions with you, and perhaps help you on your journey.

Throughout our lifetime, guides will come and go. The guides who kept us safe through childhood will step aside to let other guides take the lead to help us through our adolescence, into adulthood and beyond. How many times as a child did you hear someone call your name when no one was around, or manage to avoid trouble because you ‘had a feeling’ about a situation. As you grew older and had important decisions to make, did you ever feel guided to take a particular direction? Had a thought pop into your head seemingly out of nowhere that answered a question you were wondering about? Whether you choose to accept that this information came from a spiritual source or not, you will at least admit that some flashes of inspiration really do seem to come out of the blue, from nowhere. All of these instances are a result of your guides trying to steer you in the right direction, so that you achive what you were put here to do.

Creating a dialogue with your guides is the best first step that you can take into realising your gifts. It may take days, weeks, months or years to be able to have a ‘real’ conversation with them, but the more you try, the more you practice, and the more you meditate, the better you will become at listening to them, trusting what we call ‘intuition’ and really developing your gift.

So just what could this gift you have be? Clairvoyant, clairaudient, clairsentient, empathic? As a society we appear very eager to assign labels to people, but when you are dealing with unseen forces labelling can become difficult. For instance, I find that I cannot assign myself a label, yes, I occasionally see spirit that takes on physical form, yes, I hear spirit, sometimes in my head, sometimes so loud it makes me turn my head to see who is behind me, more often than not I ‘feel’ that spirit is around me, a shift in the air, a change of atmosphere etc. I feel when others are in pain by experiencing the same pain, I pick up on emotions and fears. So what does that make me? I dare say in times gone by I could have been tried as a witch (they would have been right!) but these days we are called ’sensitive’, which I guess is as good a label as any.

Through contact with your guides you will learn to explore your gifts, examine where your strengths lie and be able to develop at a rate that you guides feel is appropriate. Working with your guides, they will never push you beyond your limits, but will lead you step by step towards your full potential.

If you decide that you really do want to discover where your gift can take you, then you need to learn how to meditate, learn how to ground yourself to the Earth plain, and protect yourself from negativity and what have been labelled ‘psychic vampires’. This will ensure that protect your energy, stop others from draining your energy and learn to live a more balanced existance.

The fact that you have decided to explore a more spiritual path means that you will already be opening up to contact from spirit. Be aware of what happens around you, listen to your intuition, learn to trust it. Ask for guidance and protection from your guides as you walk your path. There is no ‘crash course’ in psychic development, if there were I don’t think I would have faith in it. Nor would I believe anyone who claimed to know all that there is to know, or claimed to be 100% accurate in their psychic work. Working with spirit is all about interpretation and how one person interprets a piece of information can be a world away from the way another person would see it.

Consider this an introduction to what lies ahead, you will need determination, the will to succeed and above all patience and trust in your own abilities. But if you really want to, go out any buy that expensive CD set, try is and see where it takes you. I have a store full of self help and psychic development CD’s, DVD’s and books that will help you, ‘The Covenstead‘,  and they will guide you in the right direction, but they should be used as teaching aids, complimentary to your own development, use them as any student would use a reference library - to add to knowledge, not as the definitive source of all your learning.