Merry Yule!

A shortie on Dream Interpretation

Dream Interpretation is something that believe it or not I get a lot of requests for. The only issue with that is the fact that the interpretation of the symbolism of ones dream will always have more meaning to the person that dreams it, than the person interpreting it. What I mean is that the process of Dream interpretation is about taking the symbols and events of the dream and finding out what they mean. The problem exists in the interpretation itself. For example, when a person dreams about something specific like a suitcase we would go about interpreting what the suitcase means. Now to me personally when I think of a suitcase I think of travel, business possibly. Maybe even keeping a secret. All of that is well and good but the dream wasn't mine. My interpretations carry no weight because I am not the dreamer. The person that actually has the dream has to be responsible for picking through the symbols and interpreting them with their own explanations. It's sort of a kick to the gut when I have to tell these people that they are going to have to do the grunt work, but there is an easier way.

After I have to break the news to people that they are going to have to interpret their own dreams, the next thing I tell them is to get Dream Dictionary. An easy process one may assume, but not as simple as going to the bookstore and picking the first one off the shelf, or the thickest, or the one with the prettiest cover even. The best way to choose a Dream Dictionary is to be sure that the interpretations within are going to match your own. Think of a few symbols, take the time to think about what they may mean to you and then look them up in the Dream Dictionary. If the interpretation there seems similar to your personal one, then you are off to a good start! I usually tell people to try at least three symbols, if all match up well enough with your own ideas then it will most likely be a good book to get you started off with. If not, pickup another and try again!

Now there are a few keys to Dream Interpretation that not many people are aware of. The first is pretty obvious, its about recording your dreams. Whether its electronically, or on paper be sure to record as much of the dream as you can remember. The faster that you do this after having the dream the better, as many times the longer you wait the more you forget. In addition to the dream itself, be sure to log the date, time, and your feelings upon waking. This can tell you a lot when you look back on your journal after a while. You can start to see patterns in your dreaming, like if you tend to remember dreams daily, weekly, monthly etc. The feelings are important as well and will always help with interpretation. No matter the emotion happiness, fear, sadness, write it down as it has a lot to do with the symbolism of the dream as well.

When interpreting your dream, use another paper and begin to re-read your logged dream. On this new paper write down key symbols that you feel are important. Maybe it's the place, the people, the items. Whatever you choose write them down, these are going to be the key factors in interpreting your dream. After you have it all down on paper go through each one by one and look them up in your Dream Dictionary. If there is something that you have written that isn't in your book, take the time to think about that symbol and what it means to you. How does it make you feel, what do you think of when you think about that symbol etc. When you are done with that its a matter of reading through everything together and figuring out what it is that the dream is saying to you!

Not as easy, and not as hard as you may have thought right? Following this guide will get you interpreting all your dreams in no time. Don't be afraid to ask for help if you need it either, though a symbol has importance to the dreamer it may take a little nudge from a friend to get the mind going!

Yule and the Winter Solstice

In the spirit of Yule and the Winter Solstice, let us focus on our new beginnings for the year to come. Here is a simple, fun and easy New Beginnings spell that you can do for the Solstice:

Materials Needed
- Plant Pot with soil
- Seed
- Milk
- 8 white, or blue candles

Take the cup of milk, seed, and pot with soil and place them on the center of your table or Altar. Surround it with the candles. Light the candles in a clockwise pattern. Take the seed in your hand and dip it in the milk, then bring it up to your lips and give it a gentle blow, breathing your energy onto the seed. Hold the seed outward and say. "As I plant this seed, so do I plant my new beginnings for the year to come. As this seed grows and matures, so shall I grow. The path may be hard and long, like the seed becoming plant, but in the end we shall both experience a new growth and new start." Plant the seed in the pot. Take the excess milk and pour it into the Earth as an offering. Take care of the plant through the year and as the plant begins to show life your new beginnings will as well. After be sure to snuff out the candles counterclockwise and pack them away for use next year.

How to Dispose of the Ouija Board

After publishing the article on the Ouija Board, I was approached with many different questions, one of the most commonly asked is how to safely get rid of a Ouija Board without harm to anyone. Now there are plenty of us that have used this board before, and even more that have used it without exploring the safer ways of doing so. I have heard many stories of the experiences that people have had, and even more that detail how hard people tried to unsuccessfully get rid of it. Now here's a kicker, if you have used the board before and are experiencing something strange, but the board is not yours it may prove a bit more difficult of course to be rid of it. On that same line of thought, it may not be the board at all that is causing your experiences, but that will have to be saved for a later article. What I want to focus on here are ways you can dispose of the board safely and without having anyone else pick it up and have to deal with the same issues that you have as the previous user. Between those stories and some good old fashioned searching, there have been many ways that people have attempted to get rid of their boards. First lets take a look at these and why, in an energy and spiritual sense they aren't the best ways of disposal.

1: Breaking the Board

One of the most common is to take the board and literally break it in half, or as I had heard from one story “nearly a million pieces”. The idea is that if the board is broken the connections that it has made are lost and therefore cannot affect the user any longer. It's a pretty common, and mostly fear based reaction. I've heard plenty of stories as well that talk about how they found the board in the house intact even after they were positive that they had broken it. Now validity of these of course is up to the interpreter, personally I can't make any assumptions as I wasn't present but true or not I listen. So the idea here is a good one, in theory at least. If the connection is broken, so are the consequences brought forth by the board. The only bad part here is how it's being done. By breaking the board you are basically allowing all the energy that has collected in the board itself by its use to be released. It's like letting out a bird from its cage without tagging it, the energy or spirit that was attached to the board is set free. You certainly don't want a chaotic energy darting about your home, especially after having other issues from using the board, so this idea isn't a good one.

2: Burning the Board

Another common one, and still another bad idea. In the same line of thought as breaking it, burning the board will destroy it completely breaking the connections made. I've heard people recount how after the board was burned and disposed of it was found intact again. I have also heard people say that no matter how hard they tried the board simply wouldn't catch fire. There were also a few that said the board caught fire well enough but didn't burn, or leave any trace at all that it had been set ablaze. So the idea behind this is twofold. One part of it has to do with destroying the board and breaking the connection. The use of fire has to do with cleansing the board as the connection is broken. A valiant idea and along the right lines, but what you are still doing here is allowing the energy to escape and giving it free reign. You may as well just keep the board if all you're going to do is allow the energy or attached spirit to roam around.

3: Throwing away or selling the Board

Sounds quick and easy right? Toss the board in the trash, or maybe on the side of the road or even at the dump. Maybe sell it at a garage sale and make a quick buck, or like some I've seen on Ebay, claiming the board is cursed or haunted and try to make a few hundred off of it from some gullible victim. So you've managed to get rid of it, and if it had something attached to it you've allowed some unsuspecting soul to now have to deal with what you had to. Not the best Karma there now is it? Needless to say this isn't the way to go about getting rid of your board, if you need it gone why allow it to cause any trouble for anyone else. Selling it causes an entirely different rant from me of course. Taking advantage of people is wrong no matter how you look at it. Whether or not the board is actually troublesome isn't the issue, fact is that you are trying to make a quick buck and may be harming someone in the process.

4: Burying the Board or tossing it in a body of water

Another idea that seems good at the time. Of course what no one thinks about is the fact that buried things become uncovered at some time, I mean just recently there was a time capsule unearthed from the 70's. There's no telling either if the items that are used to create the board are bio degradable enough to be safely buried anyway, but that's another subject. As for dumping the board into a body of water, river, stream, lake, ocean....all I have to say is don't you think there is enough dumped in the water as it is. Besides that you may be getting rid of the board physically by using this method but that doesn't mean that the spiritual parts of it are removed at all.

The list here does go on, and on, and on. There are many interesting ways that I have heard people try to rid themselves of the Ouija. These however are the most common that I have heard which is why I chose to use them here. Now that we know some of the ways not to dispose of your board, lets discuss the method used to do it safely. What you need to keep in mind is that not only do you want to break any connections to the board physically but you want to do so on a spiritual level as well. Let me explain a bit more. When using the board you are making a spiritual connection to it each time that it is used. That connection needs to be broken as well in order to be sure that anything brought in, or attached by or to the board is severed. The issues that many experience aren't caused by the board, but by the spiritual connections that are made when one uses the board. Energy, spirits etc. attach themselves to the item in order to continue to draw energy from the user each time the board is brought out. Every user that touches or plays with the board is making a spiritual connection with it. Now that doesn't mean that everyone will experience some sort of supernatural phenomena. In fact many stories that I have heard are one or two people out of the many that used the board that actually have any sort of experiences at all. When you look at this from a perspective of energy it could be that those one or two people had the strongest and most susceptible energies and that is why they are chosen.

Now what we are going to discuss here is not the end all do all by any means. I'm sure that there are other ways and opinions that are just as good what I can give you is the way that I would do it, and maybe from there give you an outline to work with if you go looking for other ways as well. We are keeping with the pattern here of focusing on breaking the spiritual connection to the board, rather than the board itself. You see the board itself is simply the tool, it's the item that is used in order to help facilitate the connection between you and the spirit world. The tool has nothing without the energy that you put into in in order to make those connections. When you use the board and make that call, your energy is then connected to the board that is, in turn reaching out to connect to a spirit or energy. Think of it like a psychic circuit, the board is simply an extra battery and not needed to actually make the connection at all, but there to give it a small boost. This doesn't mean that the board doesn't absorb some residual energy and retain it, just that the major connection that is happening in between you and the spirit world not you and the board. Now to reiterate from the previous article regarding the Ouija Board, if you were to use the board in a safe, psychically protected manner, you wouldn't have to worry about severing connections and getting rid of the Ouija Board. When using a protected space, only positive spirits and energies are allowed to communicate with you, and those that wish to induce any sort of fear, harm, or chaos are not capable of coming into the space. So where do we go from here? Well there are a few ways that you can sever that connection if needed. They are quite different depending on the severity of course of what has been occurring. In order to make it a bit easier, I'm going to list some ways here from least severe, to most severe.

1: Salt bath and Sage after use

After using the Ouija, if you feel that you may have made a connection that is not positive in any way, the easiest way to sever those connections is to cleanse yourself and space with some sage, and/or take a slat bath with kosher or sea salt. By immediately cleansing yourself and the space you are removing any negative energies that remain after use of the Board. Doing it so quickly leaves no time for the energies to find themselves a space to hang around and wait for another time. It's important to note here as well that when you are cleansing the space you should leave the board out and where it was when it was being used, this way the board gets a nice cleaning as well. Afterward you can put the board away, and I would suggest to use a protection next time you decide to have a little conversation. It would be a good idea as well to suggest it to any people that may have been with you during the session to, no need to allow others to have to deal with anything negative either.

2: Full Cleansing

If you have gone a while after using the board and maybe are just starting to experience things it would be a good idea to do a full cleansing of your home. Top to bottom, in to out be sure to sage and bless the entire home all the way through. Sometimes negative energies that are brought in through the connections that are made are not always as noticeable. Traditionally I tell my students and those that ask to do a full home cleanse at least once a month. This way you are continuing to add to the protection and cleansing space and are helping to add another barrier to allowing negative energy in the first place. If you are cleansing once a month, even if the negative energy is invited in there is little chance that it would be able to hang around because of being brought in to a clean space. If you aren't doing a cleanse on a regular basis, then the moment that you start to notice anything possibly paranormal it would be a good idea to do it right away. If you need a way to do it, see my previous article If a problem comes along...you must smudge it.

3: Cleanse, Protect, Bind

This is a three step process. The first step is going to be to do a full cleanse on the home inside and out. Be sure to get into all corners and spaces and leave no stone unturned. The next step is to preform some sort of prayer, or protection ritual. Once the space has been cleansed and negativity being pushed out, bringing in protection and positivity along with white light of the Goddess/God, Source, Universe etc. will keep that energy away while the next step is preformed. As for the prayer or protection, you can use anything that you are comfortable with. Suggestions could include the Prayer of Archangel Michael, The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, or any other prayer or protective chant that you are familiar with. After that the next step is to bind the board itself. In more serious cases its not just the attachment of energy that you make with the spirit world, but the energy that has accumulated in the board as well. Taking the board and pouring Kosher or Sea Salt over it in the box will start to form a protective and cleansing barrier. Sage the board as well if you like. At that point, you can either wrap the board in something white, like a sheet or pillow case or tie it up with ribbon. You can even add some Frankincense and Myyrh to the mix if you want. The focus you should be keeping in mind is binding the energy that is with the board. You can say another chant or simply focus on the goal if you wish. The final step is to then put the board away in a place where it will not be found. Don't bury it, toss it out or anything like that. Simply put it away, out of sight and mind and energetically bound.

4: Call a Professional

For the most serious cases, I suggest that you call in a professional. It can be a Priest, Rabbi, or Spiritual Adviser that you know and trust. Explain the situation to them and they can lead you in a cleansing of the house and possible remove the board as well.

After all of this, it should give you a safe idea on how to rid yourself of the board, should you be unfortunate enough to have suffered some paranormal experiences because of its use. The final way though would be to either not use the board at all, or use it in a safe and protected manner.