[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

books such as Witchcraft Today which provide the rules and regulations for being a witch. Some
members of the witch community deplore him, arguing that the rules and regulations for being a witch
existed many centuries before he was born. But Gardner was unconcerned; he went on his I witching
way, propounding many interesting theories, one of which insists that British witches created the
"great cone of power" which stopped Hitler's invasion of the British Isles in the nick of time, just as
their ancestors stopped the Spanish Armada.
Although the "white witches" heatedly deny it, there have always been strong sex overtones to
witchcraft. The very brooms on which the witches were supposed at one time to ride were actually
props for a very graphic fertility rite.
A modern witch ceremony is conducted within a magic circle around a symbol-strewn altar, lit by
candles. Glowing incense burners are swung by the naked participants as they dance around the circle.
Women daub holy water on their male partner, and the men, in turn, token-scourge the women with
grain flails. Ritual copulation is sometimes the climax, although in the more restrained covens it is
performed in token. There is much opportunity for improvisation, giving rise to a prevalent belief that
witchcraft is just an excuse for some kinky sex.
The "white witches" - for whom Sybil Leek is a spokesman - do not indulge is such excesses. They do
not even hold their covens in the nude. They specialize in faith healing, exorcising evil spirits by
nature's own remedies, close to the earth, and by reading wisdom from the stars. They have little use
for love potions. A typical witch, Mrs. Niki Wilson, says, "When anyone asks me for one, I
recommend a dozen oysters...And we don't have sex in our ceremonies either. For one thing, it's not
comfortable."
Mrs. Wilson, now 44, is one of the most prominent witches in the western world. Gardner was so
impressed by Niki's witch powers that when he died in 1964 he left her and her husband the witchcraft
museum as well as the restaurant beneath it, which is called the "Witch's Mill." he also left them his
469-year-old house, where they hold their witch rituals in an upstairs altar room.
"We are a race apart," this witch queen insists. "We come from the stars. We belong up there, not
here. With modern conveniences like planes and telephones, there is no longer need for telepathy and
levitation... But I have gone astral traveling. You leave your body and wander among the stars."
Although in 1951 England repealed the witchcraft law, which carried a sentence of one year in jail
plus quarterly pillorings, the Wilsons still think they have to undergo a certain amount of persecution,
A court has put them on three years' probation to provide "proper care and guardianship for their
twelve-year- old daughter," whom it found to be "exposed to moral danger." Nonetheless, the Wilsons
insist that witchcraft is a happy religion, "far happier than the thou-shalt-not, hellfire-and-damnation
of all other religions, such as Calvinism. In ours, there's nothing that is illegal, immoral or fattening.
Our motto is 'Hurt none; help all.' "
She bids farewell to all visitors with the age-old salutation of witch-hood:
"Blesses be."
44 - Xenoglossis
Xenoglossis - sometimes known as "Glodsolalia" is still more familiarly known as "speaking in
tongues."
It was first heard of in the Bible (where all good psychic things originate), in the confusion that
seemed to proliferate around the Tower of Babel.
The descendents of Noah had started construction on this edifice on the plain of Shinar (Babylon).
The tower was intended to reach all the way to heaven, but Jehovah became angry at this presumption
of a divine power, and caused all the builders to speak in different tongues. In the general confusion,
the work stopped entirely and the tower never reached heaven.
"Speaking in tongues" is a very common manifestation in the various Fundamentalist religions.
Adherents, caught up in the emotion of a revival service, go into a sort of ecstasy during which words
gush forth in incomprehensible babble. The coming of the tongues is a sort of seizure, the words
coming out in an irrestible frenzy.
The manifestation seems to be in the nature of a small epidemic; one starts, and soon the entire
congregation is following, each babbling in a mysterious tongue of his own.
In 1968 in New York City a number of seminarians went to a lecture to hear a report on Xenoglossis.
Before it was over, several of them were in a near trance state, struggling to keep from babbling in
tongues themselves, even splashing cold water over their heads to fight off the impulse.
Although its current use seems to have started in the Fundamentalist faiths of "grass roots" origin, it is
being studied with interest now in the more sophisticated "city religions." The 1968 General
Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church, at the request of 150 of its ministers, authorized a
comprehensive study of Xenoglossis as it is currently practiced throughout the country.
The same term is used out of the religious context to describe the psychic phenomena of mediums
speaking in numerous languages with which they are unfamiliar in their waking state, and of persons
under hypnosis likewise being able to converse in other tongues.
Dr. Neville Whymant, a renowned Oriental scholar, was called in to pass his opinion on the quality of
languages spoken in twelve séances through an unlettered Cockney medium. The strangest of all was
the speech which came to him in fluent classical Chinese: "Greeting, oh son of learning and reader of
strange books." The control, whoever he was, then gave a complete new reading of poems and of the
Analects of Confucius over which learned scholars have differed for centuries.
45 - Yoga
Mystic powers have been recognized for centuries in the depths of Asia. The wise Men of the East
carried the lamps of their wisdom westward, and much of their learning is still venerated in the most
learned circles.
In India, men of infinite wisdom contemplated timelessly, and evolved certain techniques which
prepare the mind and the body to receive the wisdom of the soul.
Yoga has been defined as a "union" between man and the higher planes, a detachment from his own
personality. Our lives, the Yogin believe, are clouded by illusion; they have a name for this illusion: it
is called maya.
To aid mankind to escape the bonds of maya, the masters have evolved, over the centuries, a
complicated ritual, part mental, part physical, called "yogi." Through yogi men have been able to
condition their bodies to be the most perfect receptacles for their souls.
There are various types of yoga, each regarded as a path toward spiritual attainment. Students who [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]