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There has always been confusion over the meaning and interpretation of the pentagram, some people automatically assume that it relates to Satanism or devil worship, forgetting the fact that this ancient symbol has been around for millenia. This simple five-pointed star has quite a complex history where religion is concerned, but it is believed the origins of its use come from Babylonia where ancient astronomers drew the shape based upon the way that the planet Venus travels across the sky.
Believed to embody magickal powers this symbol has since been adopted for use by Pagans, Wiccans, Ritual magicians and Freemasons. It has also been used on municipal seals as a magickal binding symbol.
The pentagram can be, and has been interpreted to mean whole host of things, from the placement of Christ’s wounds when on the cross to the proportions of the human body. Though these days it is generally considered a symbol of magickal protection, a sacred and binding knot.
Alchemy uses the symbol to represent the elements, Earth, Air, Fire and Water, overseen by divine light, which is practically the same as the Wiccan view of the symbol although the position occupied by ‘Divine Light’ in alchemical lore, becomes ‘Spirit’ in Wicca. Wiccans adopt the pentagram with its single point upwards to signify the triumph of spirit over all matter, (Although some initiationary practices involve an inverted pentagram) whereas those who follow a darker belief use the symbol with the single point facing downwards, symbolising earthly pleasures and hedonistic traits taking priority.
Once a pentagram is enclosed within a circle it becomes a pentacle. Which can be viewed as further symbolising protection be reinforcing the energies contained inside.
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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.
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.
