http://shop.history.com/detail.php?p=71780&v=All

James was this the one you watched? Was it 1692 Salem specific?

No, I watched both and the one you listed wasn't as hard to watch.

He watched this one: http://www.oldies.com/product-view/12122M.html

Cool. Thanks Ruth. Im getting it! Score! Did you see that sale price!

Actually, I did and I think I might get it too.

I just ordered it. Its on clearance. There are a few interesting ones on clearance.

Being physically healthy is important but it is not the most important thing. Your state of mind and how you feel is more important.

Feelings of depression, hopelessness, hatred, anger, oppression, helplessness will not be conducive to any magic.

You need energy to do magic and that energy comes from within you. It is cut off from you if you are in the wrong state of consciousness. In simple terms it is an energy of love.

Divine love and joy. Gratitude for your life.

I have seen movies and read depressing stories about the truth of the atrocities people do unto each other in this world and I have felt sorrow to the depth of my soul about these things.

So the power of your will is for the purpose of placing your attention on the things that bring you out of that state of depression and anger. Feel good things. Watching and viewing and reading feel good things, comedy etc. will elevate your mood and increase your energy for magic.

There are dark places in this reality. Choose not to dwell there. I am not telling people to stick their heads in the sand and pretend everything is peachy keen and wonderful. We understand that this is a world of great opposites. Great love and great sorrow.

Dwell in the love. Lift yourself up and you will lift up others around you. Your state of mind and state of consciousness and feeling will effect and infect others.

Change yourself and you will begin to change the world.

That's the first time I have ever heard anyone say that it's okay to work magick when ill, but I think I might agree. Perhaps it's not so much about the low energy when I don't feel good as it is my mental state when I don't feel good. they sort of go hand in hand.

What you mention Jeannie I do on a regular bases. Always finding ways to bring in a good laugh. The only thing I don't do is the magic, but admire those who can harness such abilities.

People often attempt to separate physical health as if it is some elusive entity on its own. My understanding of health as it has related to practicing herbal remedies on myself and others is that health is a combination of physical, emotional and spiritual happiness.

If you are not feeling good on an emotional level, eventually this will have a trickle down effect on the rest of your body and will begin to manifest itself in poor health though the conditions and symptoms will vary depending on the individual. Stress is a culprit to creating a poor state of mind and when your body is in this weakened condition, you are hardly in a position to conduct effective spell work. Some people meditate to help them relieve stress. I find what works for me personally is simply a change of location. If I only swirtch my surroundings, this will often interupt my damaging patterns of thought and allow me to focus on a spell and visualize more freely.

There will always be something new to worry about so its most important that we find a way to combat stress and undue worry. I find that people worry about things in their lives that they have no power to control. This is ineffective and requires a tremendous amount of energy to constantly be supplied to the nervous system. That alone will deplete any reserves you have and cause your spellwork to fall flat.

Life will pose one challenge after another so it is important that we each find a successful way to cope with daily stress effectively .Once this is achieved, spell and ritual will become much more effective.

you're right Krimsa. It's all connected. I need to find better ways of dealing with my stress so it does not affect my health so much. I mean, I know what to do, I just need to do it.

Yeah I used to have a lot of problems with stress. Im sure you did also as a cop. Thats REAL stress.

Yep that's my problem.. I know what to do, I just need to do it. I'm a great procrastinator.

Here is it December 19th already and I have a portrait to paint. I just now (last night) got the computer thumbnail sketch done, now I have to get it on the canvas and finish it before Christmas.

This is not the painting, it is my thumbnail design for the canvas. The painting will be 20 X 24"

Well, this is really bad timing for me.

I had been planning on having a wonderful positive Yule celebration and circle casting on the 21st. That's just two days away.

But right now I feel at an all-time low. All of a sudden my desire to bless musicial instruments and ask the gods and spirits to guide my creative energies and my spiritual journey seems so petty in light of the atrocities of innocent people that no gods seem to be there for.

Of the hundreds of thousands of women who were murdered as witches I'm sure that many of the pleaded with god for help with the utmost intent and emotion.

If no gods came to their aid why should I be so arrogant to think that any gods would do anything for me?

Atheism is just looking so starkly true for me right now.

I mean, I've always been aware of atrocities in human history. I know that people often bring up the Holocaust of the Jews in Nazi Germany. But in some sense I don't feel as much compassion for them. Somehow I see it as something that they could have avoided. In fact many of them did flee. Others chose to stay. They made that choice. So in some sense a person could argue that they had a choice.

However, after watching this video it's perfectly clear that totally innocent loving well-meaning women were accused of being witches out of the blue with absolutely no warning whatsoever.

They cite one historic case of a woman who had been a very successful midwife helping an entire town have their babies and heal their sick for over 30 years!

Then one day someone accused her of being a 'witch', and the whole town turned against her to testify against her at her trial. Historians are baffled at how this could have happened. They figure that it was some kind of frenzy (almost like a fad). The people wanted to play "Kill the witch" so they were prepared to join in any frenzied mob who had an accused witch to kill.

I think that this is what is truly heartwrenching for me. To think that decent loving women were just accused out of the blue by totally insane mobs. And no one would speak out for them.

It's just hard to deal with two days before a Yule Celebration. I feel like just canceling the whole thing due to emotional trauma. My believe in spirituality and gods that might lead their support is just at an all-time low right now.

Bad timing to watch that video on my part I guess.

In a way I can feel your pain, James, but there is no use dwelling in the past. It's long over. We should not forget their suffering of course, but getting depressed over it doesn't help either them nor you. All we can do now is preventing it from happening again, and for that we have to stay positive, and use as much spiritual strength as we can muster.

Perhaps you have a cleansing ritual that you can use to get rid of these negative thoughts. Where ever these women are now, they are very happy there, I'm sure. Because I believe that between lives we get to know a peace not known in this world.

I'm sorry for your trauma Abra, ... but snap out of it.

You are choosing to feel depressed about something that happened in the past that you can do nothing to change.

Are you sure it's not just that Christmas is coming?

A lot of people do get depressed over the holidays especially if they are alone and have lost a loved one. I could make a suggestion, but I don't want to seem like I'm butting into your life or "preaching my gospel." All I can say is that whatever thoughts are making you feel depressed, they are under your control. Where you choose to place your attention is under your control. That is your free will.

Have a good holiday and feel the joy and gratitude that is natural to your true spirit.

Abra, the Witch trials were quite awful but the reality is that they occurred. What you are experiencing happens to people routinely when they are focused on studying historical events. I have dealt with it quite a bit myself. The feelings of lost hope in humanity and that there can be nothing right in the world if humans are capable of perpetrating such atrocities against one another.

I believe the root cause of this anguish is helplessness. The only way to alleviate a sense of helplessness is through self empowerment. You have to find something to counter this melancholy (which is temporary) through establishing a sense of control. There are many ways to do this. What I did was volunteer for Amnesty International. That helped me quite a bit. For you it might be something else altogether. Look around online. Animals shelters? Anything that takes your interest. You could offer some assistance to an organization perhaps. Just an idea. Happy holidays. I wont tell you to cheer up because you will do that in your own time and in your own way.

Ba humbug!

Yes I'm sure it has nothing at all to with the holiday season. I have never become melancholy over a holiday in my life.

In fact, it's not truly even melancholy or depression so much that's hitting me. It's the utter absurdity that I should believe in spirits that can guide and help people when so many people were so clearly abandoned by any spiritual forces.

It's not depression that is bothering me. It's the vivid reality that any believe in any kind of spirituality is absurd.

Why bother appealing to Gods and spirits when they clearly don't even help innocent people in the most desperate of situations?

It's not a matter of feeling depressed or melancholy.

It's a matter of the sudden realization of how utterly stupid it is to believe in any kind of spiritual power whatsoever.

It was a belief in the utterly stupid religion of Christianity that caused those horrid events to take place in the first place. That totally wipes out any possibility of the Christian God being real. For a God who supposedly could intervene in a myriad of ways to just stand by and let such horrors unfold in his very name would be even more heinous than the mere mortals who were performing the atrocities.

But even for other gods and spirits to stand by and do nothing would be impossible to accept.

I mean, I recognize that even from a pure atheistic view many of the traditions of witchcraft and shamanism have practical value. There is value in being emotionally positive whether any gods or spirits exist or not. You don't need to believe in fairies to benefit from meditation and conscious positive intent.

I'm well aware of that. There are benefits to the practice of witchcraft and shamanism, even without any supernatural elements. And to be perfectly honest about it, that was what originally drew me in in the first place. I guess I started getting caught up in the spiritual aspect of it. I was starting to believe that some real spirits would show up for my Yule circle casting.

Now I think it's going to be hard for me to believe that there will be anyone here but me.

James, how long have you been a spiritual seeker? There is something called the Dark Night of the Soul that every spiritual seeker eventually goes through. You might google it.

I understand this point. I came to that point once and that is when I called myself agnostic. Of course my definition of agnostic was... I just don't care anymore.

I decided that this was it. One life, no heaven, no hell, make the best of it here now.

That was a very freeing thought at the time. I became focused on life and myself and what I wanted to do, and my health and my body. Nothing else.

I think we are here to live and live is what we should do. The only "spirit" I talk to is myself... my spiritual self. Other than that I talk to other people. I don't call on disembodied spirits other than my own connection to the universe (God) for help.

No more procrastination. I'm working on the portrait. Here is a link to my studio web cam.


http://www.springfieldcolorado.com/live-art/