PBP- Week 26: Multiple Gods with the same focus

One of the big debates in the Pagan world is about the nature of Gods. When I was learning, the prevalent explanation for deities was that divinity itself was nameless, formless and pretty much unknowable, however it expressed itself in the form of individual divinities (as well as in the rest of reality). In this view, different deities are like the different masks that divinity would wear, though the unseen face behind all the masks was eternal and unchangeable.

But this view doesn't really work for some people. In a way, it is sort of like saying that all human beings are the same person because underneath our differences we are all humans. Sure, we are all people, but you and I are not the same person at all. I do feel that there is divine nature in all things, but that doesn't make all things one (on more than a philosophical level). Likewise, I don't feel that all Goddesses are the same anymore than I believe all women are the same.

I was thinking a while back, however, about deities that are considered to be influential in the same field. It is pretty common to find lists of deities for various purposes: love, justice, peace, thunder, moon, sun, plants, animals...the list goes on. I have never felt all the deities in a particular list are the same (and it somewhat irks me when people pull deities from very different pantheons and try to treat them as if they are the same when they only share a few characteristics).

I don't work exclusively within a single pantheon. There are deities that I work with that come from very different backgrounds. So when I am thinking of calling upon a deity to work towards a goal, sometimes there are multiple deities that come to mind. There are many moon deities, sometimes even multiple deities strongly associated with the moon from within a single pantheon. So when I work with the moon, should I pick one deity to work with? And if I do, how do I decide which one of the many moon deities I have worked with to work with on any particular occasion.

Sometimes there are distinctions. For example, love deities come in many forms. I would work with a different deity when working towards love with my husband than I would for love with my son. But sometimes I work in a purely honorific way: such as a ritual to show gratitude for the sun for it's presence in my life. In such a case, I would want to include all solar deities. I see this sort of like working with my ancestors: sometimes I may want to work with a single ancestor and sometimes I want to work with all my ancestors. In the same way, I can work with the Sun, and through the symbol (the sun itself), honor and work with all solar deities.

Another thought that came to my mind was if deities would be offended if I worked with one of them over another. Would Thor be upset if I worked with Grandfather Thunder? This is a bit more tricky in my mind, and much more individualized. I think we all have different relationships with deities, and even with different deities. It is up to me, when I work with deities, to figure out what type of relationship I have with them and what allowances they will give me. Some deities might have restrictions that I am not able (or willing) to work with (like requiring exclusivity), and it would be unwise and pretty rude of me to try to cultivate a relationship with that deity while ignoring their restrictions.

Our minds are complex and wonderful things. When multiple things are associated with one purpose, it can be almost impossible not to think at least a little about all of them. We might not even be aware of the direction our thoughts are taking, and yet still we give that mental nod to all things that are connected in our minds. Even when picking just one deity to work with, we still honor the others by connecting them to the work through our mental maps.

PBP: Week 25- Masks

Masks are powerful. There is a lot of work done using masks. From animal masks we don to take on the aspect of the animal to very realistic masks we might use on Halloween to look like a specific person. But wait, that last one isn't a magical practice, is it? I think it is. I think we use masks in way more ways than we think, and that when we recognize all the ways we use (and can use) masks, we open up a whole new arena to work within.

What is a mask? A mask is something worn on the face to disguise or make us look like something else. Masks can either hide, reveal or change the self we project to the world. Most people, when they interact with another person, focus on the face. Our face is the portal through which we shine out for the world to see. When we mask, we alter the image we project, and often this changes the way others deal with us. But masks touch us more than skin deep. They often change the way we act as we adapt to fit the mask we wear.

Masks can hide by covering up features. They can cover imperfections, like when we put on makeup to cover up a scar or blemish. They can cover insecurity, like when keep our mouth closed when we smile because we feel our teeth are unattractive. They can give us a sense of anonymity, covering up our entire being, when we veil or wear Harlequin style mask. We can use this knowledge to chose to keep hidden things we feel are private. It can also be empowering to work on revealing things we normally mask. Some things are easier to leave unmasked with strangers and others with those closest to us. Even spending time alone and completely unmasked and dealing with our bare selves (by spending time meditating with our own reflection, focusing on the parts we normally avoid or mask) can bring a lot of compassion back towards ourselves (which can be the one person in our life we may be the harshest towards).

Masks can also reveal things that may not be obvious. We all have many pieces in side of us. Most of us have different parts that hide or reveal depending on who we are with. I expose different parts of my self when with family versus friends. Learning to call up specific parts of our selves at need is a very powerful tool to have at our disposal. Likewise, learning to set aside masks we have donned for our own protection can help us grow beyond past trauma's and defenses.

Masks can transform us into things we don't feel we are (or things we want to cultivate more of). I believe we have a tiny bit of everything within us, so even when I am working with something I feel I have almost no innate capability for, I am confident that there is the tiniest spark of it somewhere inside me, I just have to find it and call it out. But masking can help us to build up these tiny pieces by creating a bigger place to express them from.

Most of us would not want to walk around wearing a physical mask all the time, and luckily we don't have to. We can build and don energetic masks that will work just as well. When we start it might be helpful to build a physical mask and practice using it. We can use these physical masks in rituals designed to help us take on the traits they represent. If you have people who would be interested in masking rituals, you can get a group together and everyone can build (or bring) a mask, and you can interact with others and get feedback on what they felt from you. The more you work with a mask, the more you learn how to call up those pieces within you. As you get more familiar with them, you may find that you don't need the physical mask anymore to call up the energy within you.

You can also tie the mask into another (less obvious) item while you are learning to work with it. If you do not feel you are confident enough to express yourself in a job interview and are working with a mask to be able to show that you are a good and talented worker, you probably don't want to wear the mask to the interview. However you can tie that energy into a piece of jewelry or an outfit, and use the other items to draw upon the energy of the mask. When you are working with the mask at home, make sure you wear the other item that you will be wearing for your interview so that the two become energetically bound. Make a ritual about putting them on and taking them off (put the mask on last and take it off first). Then, when you dress for the interview, instead of putting the mask on you, place it on your altar or another place of power (in front of a mirror, on the pillow of your bed, hanging from your clothes closet).

PBP- Week 24: Laundry

I wrote this topic down a couple weeks ago (I try to brainstorm ahead of time so I'm not scrambling for an idea the day I sit down to write), and then forgot why I had wanted to write about it. When I popped open my file last week, and looked ahead I was a bit flustered. And yet, as I thought about it throughout the week, I remembered why I wanted to talk about laundry.

Laundry is one of those things that most of us do on a regular basis without much thought (besides possibly how much we dislike doing laundry). It is a chore that we often put off as long as we can (and when we pull that last pair of underwear out of the drawer, we groan knowing we have to do it). There is an old saying about not airing our dirty laundry in front of guests, which speaks about all those things we do in private or between family that aren't that pretty (arguments, bad habits, or whatever), and how we try to keep those things private.

If we look at the things we actually wash in the laundry, it is pretty intimate stuff. We of course wash our clothes, but we also wash towels and sheets: all things that we put against our bodies. These things will not only pick up the physical grime that we collect throughout the day (and night) but also energetic resonance.

When we go out, our clothing is exposed to pretty much everything we are exposed to. I think of clothes in two categories: outer and inner. Outer is pretty much anything everyone else is supposed to see, where inner is the things that are not meant to be seen (underclothes). Both pick up different types of grime.

Our outer clothing picks up contact types of dirt. If we sit on a dirty bench, our pants or skirt gets dirty. Likewise, if we hang out with people who are upset or angry, our outer clothes pick up those energies. Inner clothing gets a stronger hit from things we react to. When it is very hot out, our inner clothes tend to get sweatier than our outer clothes. If we end up in a situation that is personally distressing, that energy will cling to our inner clothes more.

Of course, we wash our clothes after we wear them, but we often don't work on cleansing them energetically. We may end up with clothing that builds up a negative aura and we will shy away from wearing it because we pick up on that without really knowing why we no longer like to wear a particular thing. Or worse, we pick clothes in a rush and don't realize we have picked something that makes us uncomfortable until we are already out and about, and then the rest of the day we feel off.

When we wash, we dry ourselves off with a towel. That might be a hand towel in the bathroom, a bath towel after a shower or a kitchen towel as we cook. The process of washing is naturally cleansing, and many of us also add an energy cleanse component to our washing. But consider that anything you release into the water may still be clinging to the water on your hands, then when you try them, bits of that energy are now absorbed by the towel. Those little lingering bits can add up over time (especially if you are like me, and wash dishes when you are upset).

Bedsheets are something we don't think about that often, but I feel play a really important part in our lives. Sleep is the time our body resets. We know how powerful dreams can be. And yet when we have particularly strong dreams, what do we do about it? Anytime someone in my house is sick, once they start to feel better, my first desire is to wash all the sheets and towels: anything that might be holding any lingering germs. With powerful times of stress, fear or anxiety, we may have troubled sleep. As we work on resolving those inner issues, we should make sure to cleanse any lingering energy from the bed and bedclothes as well. Don't forget to cleanse and bless the bed after you take the sheets off too!

So how do you go about doing all of this? As you load up the washer, think about each piece you put in. If there is a particular issue you are aware of, acknowledge it and then thank it for it's lessons and release it. If there is nothing particular about a piece that you know of, then you can still thank the item for it's work in your life (after all, most of us would be pretty uncomfortable without clothes, towels or sheets!) and ask that it release any energy it might be holding onto. Once the washer is loaded up, you can add a sachet (make sure it doesn't include anything that will damage your washer, and is sealed up nice and tight) to further bless or cleanse your things as you desire. In the drier you can make your add your own scent (like tossing in a drier sheet) by taking a piece of cloth and putting a few drops of essential oils on it (put them on the scrap of cloth, not your clothing to avoid stains and over-scenting). You can embroider symbols or wishes onto the scent-cloth to enhance the effect.

PBP: Week 23- Lore

I might well be a Lore-aholic. It's more than just liking lore, enjoying stories about the things I am interested in, or seeking out tales my ancestors used to explain the world. Lore opens doors that let me really get into the heart of things. It's like the difference between peering in the windows of someone's house and being invited in...somethings are hard to see from the outside.

I think that lore is often undervalued. In many cultures, there is no definitive lore. We humans have been around and been telling stories for so long that things have changed. Considering some of these stories have been around since before writing, it is no surprise that many of them have changed a lot. Play one round of telephone (where everyone sits in a circle and one person whispers something to the next person, and the message gets passed around until the last person says it out loud....it is always turned into something crazy), and you will know how quickly a story can devolve.

These changes are often argued over vehemently. The details of the story are inspected for validity, bias and author influence. Stories from different cultures about the same event or person are determined to be more or less 'accurate' depending on the origin of the subject of the tale.

I think there is some benefit to all this examination and debate...if you are a scholar (or are interested in scholarly validation). But in my daily practice, it doesn't amount to much at all. What lore gives me is substance. If I read about a deity, and get a comprehensive list of the things that deity is associated with, what people have worked with them about, or what they are supposed to do...it's like reading a grocery list of ingredients. I may be able to work out what someone might cook from the ingredients, but it will be nothing like actually sitting down and eating the meal.

Lore fleshes out the facts. Lore makes people more understandable (whether we like them or not). Lore creates connections between things that on the surface might look very different. The story form of lore also helps with retention: it is much easier to remember a good story than it is to remember a list of things.

Nothing in life is simple. All things have many facets, and when you add people into it, then there are a million ways to experience something. Lore from different cultures doesn't need to be the same, because they are flavored by the culture they grew in. Consider a pivotal battle between two peoples. One side wins and becomes ruler of all. Both people write tales about the battle, but the tales will tell very different stories, and yet both will be 'true' from the eyes of the people who wrote them. If you only read one, you will have a one-sided view of what happened. If there was a third culture who was there, observing, but not involved, you would have a third view that many would think to be unbiased, but often that outsider view is just that: an outsider. They may be more objective on the facts (though of course if they have feelings towards either culture that could impact their view), but they would be missing the emotional connection that the participants had.

I don't think there is one way to approach things. We have personal relationships with deities, just as we have personal relationships with the people in our life. I love both my mother and my father, but I relate to them in different ways. My husband has a completely different relationship with my parents than I do, and likewise, my interactions with his parents is different from his own. None of the people involved change, and yet the way we all interact is very different. I see this in the way we interact with deities. My relationship with a particular deity might be very different from someone else's. This doesn't make either of us wrong, nor does it mean we aren't working with the same deity, just that as we are different people, we interact differently.

The same thing could be said for correspondences. I may have different reactions to certain herbs than other people. Many cultures see the very same item in very different ways. Color comes immediately to mind. Black is the color we wear in America at funerals to represent mourning. In Chinese culture, white is worn for the same reason. Depending on how you were brought up, where you lived, and what influences you had, you may have very different associations than I do.

I think that Lore helps us understand those that are different from us. When we read (or listen to) a story about a different culture, we may not agree with the things they believe or do, but often we connect with the characters and we can understand why they do the things they do. A good story teller can help us to empathize with people we might struggle ordinarily to work with.

PBP: Week 22- Keys

I have been fascinated with keys since I was little. When I was in grade school I had one of those little diaries that had a lock and key. I remember the old cans of meat (typically canned ham or sardines) that had little keys you would then wind the metal seal around to open the can. I think I might have had a pair of roller skates with a key at one point as well. Somewhere I had found an old skeleton style key, which I wore for a long time as a necklace. In high school I was fascinated with escapology and got some handcuffs to practice slipping out of (and learning how to pick those locks). I have always collected 'old' keys, or found keys or really any key I can get my hands on.

I frequently see the call for a key as a focus for magical workings. Keys strongly represent opening doors, so are great to use not only for bringing new opportunities into our lives, but also for opening up places inside our selves that we might have locked away. On the flip side, keys are used to lock things up, so are good for security work or for keeping secrets. One of the first keys many of us own is a house key, so keys can represent the home and family. Keys are also used to secure the house when we are away, so they can be associated with travel and returning home safe (and guarding the house while you are away).

One of the great thing about keys is that there are so many of them. Not only more modern keys, but keys for different purposes. Not only are there many different types and looks, but because they are built to hook onto a ring (or be tied to a belt for older keys), they lend themselves well to decoration. Keys can be painted (with regular paint or nail polish), decorated with charms or ribbons, written on, etched or added to another tool as a charm. They can be used as a focus for workings, used to etch symbols on candles, hidden away or used as a worry stone.

As you build a collection of keys for different purposes, consider keeping them all in one place when not in use. I used to have an old key ring, a large ring about 4 inches in diameter that could be pulled open and keys put on it (like you sometimes see in old movies for keeping jail keys on). You could also keep them in a decorative box or bowl.

I am going to talk a bit about different types of keys and ways you might use them:

Key blanks- When you go to a store that makes keys, you can buy key blanks and not get them cut to fit a particular lock. Often they have a large variety of designs. Key blanks are great for general workings, or for one where you don't have the specific key you might need. If you wanted to have a key to remove obstacles in your normal daily life, a blank key would be great for this. If you wanted to work through some past issues you had when you lived in a particular house, but you no longer had a key for that house, you could get a blank key and inscribe or paint the address of the house on it (or some other important naming feature), and that key would then become a key to that house that you could use to work with.

House keys- Most of us have a house key. There is no reason not to bless your regular house key as an extra layer of protection. But many of us not only have a key to our current house, but we may have keys to other people's houses (family or friend), our work place, or places we used to live. Of course you can use other people's keys to bless them and their household, but these keys can also be used to work on the relationship you have with those people or as a touchstone for communication with them. Work keys can be used to open doors for promotion or toward a job you desire. They can also be used to lock away bad feelings between you and coworkers (or bosses or employees). Old house keys to places you no longer live can be used in journey work to step into the time period where you lived at that house, to connect with people you were in contact then that you might have lost touch with (or who passed on) or to connect with the location where the house is (especially useful if you have moved far away).

Car keys- The strongest association we have with car keys is with travel. But cars also represent freedom and independence (trust me, for at least half the year I have no car during the day). When we are young and get our first car, it is often the most dramatic way in which we experience our separation from our parents...it is the first way in which we can really go our own way. More than any other key, a car key represents choices: when we get in the car, we have many choices in where to go and which road to take to get there, so a car key is a great key for working on life path problems. As most of us rely upon our car to get to and from work, it is also a good key to use for job related things (if you don't have a key to your job, or if you want a job that you don't have). The car is also the main way most of us bring things into our house (such as groceries, clothing, or really anything that we have to drive to collect), so it can be used to work on bringing abundance into our lives (or for letting go of the things we no longer need).

Door keys- When we moved into the apartment we are in now, there was a little key on top of every door frame. Really not more than a little twist of metal with a slightly flattened end, they can be stuck into the hole on the interior rooms to unlock them if they are locked from the other side. This might not be a very common key, but I think it is a wonderful key to have around. Having been married for just past 15 years now (with a teenage son just about to enter high school), I can attest that communication between people living together is very important to a smoothly running (and happy) house. Though the doors within the house give us the ability to block each other off, the door key gives us a tool with which to open up to each other.

Skeleton keys- These are the old fashioned keys (technically they are a subset of older keys, but if you say skeleton key, most everyone thinks about an old style key). You know the type, they have a 'tooth' at the tip, and a round loop at the end (for attaching the key to things and to give you something to grip as you turn it). They can be simple or ornate. It has become quite popular lately to make charms or talismans out of this type of key, and when most people think of keys for magical work, this is the type of key they think of. They are not the most secure type of key, in fact, many skeleton keys were a type of master key (or lock pick tool), in that they weren't made to open a particular lock but to be able to bypass the locking mechanism and open it anyways. I think this makes them ideal for overcoming obstacles or blocks in your path, especially if you aren't sure of their exact nature.

Handcuff keys- It is pretty easy to come by these today. Especially around Halloween, many stores sell handcuffs as costume props, and they come with a key. The thing that I think makes a handcuff key unique is that it is designed to hold people and not things. These keys (and the cuffs themselves) can be used to bind people who would seek to harm you. You can also use the key to work towards overcoming any limitations you feel are holding you back.

Box keys- I am kind of lumping together any key here that locks a box: safety deposit keys, locker keys, lock box keys. These keys are the ones that guard our things, especially the things we hold most dear. They are also strongly associated with money, so good for working towards protecting our monetary assets. Most of the time, you use these types of keys to lock things away behind extra protection from thieves, so they are good to use to protect you from thievery.

Diary keys- There are still a lot of diaries that come with tiny keys. I love these keys for protecting thoughts, secrets, wishes or anything else that is personal and private and deals with the mind. It is common to build dreams and hopes in a diary, so they are also good for working towards the desires of the heart (both love and other things we yearn for...emotional desires).

Key cards- These are more of a new thing, and won't always fit with the other keys you may work with. But a lot of hotels are using them now, and because of their temporary nature (I have yet to be asked to return they key card after my stay was finished), they are good for working towards short term goals, especially those involving travel. Some attractions (theme parks or other things you buy admission tickets for) now use plastic cards instead of paper tickets, although either would work as a 'key' to the attraction or event. These can be used like keys to old houses: they can connect us to our memories of the past, or to the essence of the event. They can also be used to bring that energy into our future (if it is a place or experience you would like to revisit).

PBP- Week 21: Killing

I have never really followed a path that subscribed to any form of pacifism. I have considered myself a warrior at heart since I was a kid. The concept of killing, whether it is in the form of a soldier fighting a war or slaughtering an animal for food, has never been a moral issue for me. Life and death are two sides of the same concept in my mind, and where there is one there is the other.

I remember reading about some more extreme forms of Buddhism, where the goal is to never cause death in other living beings, to the point of brushing the path as you walk so that you don't accidentally step on an insect. This level of focused awareness is not something I have ever seen myself as working towards. I am a carnivore, I eat meat, and I know that the meat that I eat was a living thing that was killed for the purpose of becoming my food. If I were in a more rural area, I might participate in hunting or raising food animals, but as I live in a city (as small as it is), I honor the animals I eat in a more passive way, by a sincere acknowledgment of their death that I may receive sustenance.

I also remember reading about some experiments that have been preformed on plants to show that they experience pain and have awareness of the world around them. Being of a path that accepts that plants have spirits and personalities, I always found it strange that even in the Pagan world, such a focus is put on the pain and suffering of animals and yet the eating of plants is not only widely accepted but put on a pedestal. If all things have spirit, why is it okay to eat plants but not animals? Why is the life of the cow worth more than the life of the corn?

I understand that animals are in many ways closer to us than plants, they are easier for us to understand. We bond better with our pets than we do (generally) with our houseplants. It is not that much of a jump to then that we would value more the things we understand better. It is very similar in my mind to the way we (as a species) seem to care more for the cute animals than we do for the ones that creep us out. I rarely find people to be as concerned about the lives of insects as they are about the lives of bunnies.

To take this even a step further, if I, in any way shape or form, recognize the spirits present in the world around me, and see these personalities not just in the animals and plants but in the inanimate as well: stones, earth, fire, water...should I not be concerned with causing their 'deaths' as well? When I drink water, am I bringing about it's death or does it remain alive as it travels through my body and gets released to be water again? If my practice involves the use of stones, am I mindful of their sacrifice?

I don't think there are absolute answers for all these questions, but I definitely think they need to be asked. I believe that it is important to be aware of the world around me, to attempt to try to honor the things that make my life what it is. If there is sacrifice or death involved, I should respect and honor it. For me, this involves not only not wasting food (or resources), but also reflecting on the things that give their energy so that I might continue and to be grateful.

I know I have some pretty severe views when it comes to people killing other people as well. It isn't that I don't find life sacred, rather that I find that there are things that I feel are worth the sacrifice of life. War may be a horrible thing, but why do we go to war? And if I don't agree with a war, does that make the sacrifice of the soldiers any less? If I, as an adult member of a country, take no action to work against the war that my government has engaged in, do I have any right to treat my countries soldiers poorly?

On a more local matter, I do think there are crimes that deserve a death penalty. I have been asked before, after having made my thoughts on the death penalty known, if I would be willing to die for my beliefs. Typically the argument is that some people who are sentenced to death by our courts are actually innocent, and how would I feel if I were sentenced to death for a crime I didn't commit. Of course, I would not want to die, but would I feel that the death penalty was no longer valid? I can not actually say with absolute certainty that my mind might not change if I were in that position, but I would like to think that it wouldn't. I don't think our courts make that many mistakes. And if my death would be the price of making sure that many other lives would be saved, I would like to think that I would be willing to make that sacrifice.

On a very personal level, I definitely feel that if someone were actively trying to kill me that I would fight back. Again, until I actually find myself in that position, I don't know for sure how I would react, but I don't think I would hold back in a true 'kill or be killed' situation. Perhaps fear or inexperience might cripple me, but not morality. I value my own life, and if someone were to try to take it away from me, I don't feel that I am obligated to give their life more weight than my own.

Nature includes death. It includes killing. Animals kill other animals for food, for mating rights, for territory and sometimes for status. Plants compete for sunlight, water and soil, and often the plants that loose that competition wither and die. I think that we feel that a part of civilized life is to draw away from killing, but in fact we are just drawing a curtain over it and denying that it exists. Killing is still a part of life, we just try to avoid looking at it and admitting that it is necessary. And when we are forced to admit that we have killed (or that killing has taken place for our benefit) we struggle to work this into our civilized way of thinking. I don't think killing should be glorified, but neither should it (when necessary) be vilified.

PBP: Week 20 Journeying, Visualization and Making Stuff Up

I do a lot of inner work. I do my share of physical work, but my practice has a lot of work that is done without a lot (or any) outward actions. There have been times in my life where the vast majority of my work was done in the inner worlds. And yet for a long time I was vastly confused by the terms used for a lot of the very practices I was using.

Astral projection was my bane for many years (notice it's not in the title...more on that in a bit). I was fascinated by the thought of projecting astrally. I read everything I could find on it, tried more techniques than I can remember, and never had that profound moment of looking down upon myself. For a long time I thought it was just going to be one of those things that I wasn't going to be able to do. And throughout this time, I was doing inner work.

What do I mean by inner work? I started with visualization. Well technically I started with making stuff up. I have always had a very active imagination. I was an avid reader as a child, and as an only child I often entertained myself, playing with toys or reading. Play is a great tool in my opinion, I love toys as tools! But when I played or read, I exercised my imagination. I created playmates to play with me, or acted out whole stories with my toys. When I read, I saw what was being described in my mind.

As I grew up, I started making up my own stories. I don't remember if it was something that I started doing for school (creative writing exercises) or if it was something I did to avoid boredom (I definitely remember spending a lot of time imagining things while riding in cars). Either way, I spent a lot of time creating stories. Some of these stories got written down, some didn't. Sometimes I imagined alternate events in my own past or future, sometimes I created whole new people to imagine being.

In high school, I started rehearsing things in my mind. Sometimes it was just idle fantasies: imagining what it would be like if the boy I liked asked me to dance. A rifle coach I had at the time introduced me to using imagination as visualization for a purpose (the same coach taught me to use affirmation statements, though strangely he was a pretty hard core ex-marine). I learned to visualize my way through a rifle match, seeing each shot as perfect.

When I began my personal path, I embraced all things visualized. I did a lot of physical work, probably more than at any other time in my life, but I also did a lot of visualized work to augment it. I met another Pagan, who was in the military at the time, and did all his work visualized due to a lack of space and the ability to keep his tools on hand. It was a novel concept to me, that I could visualize the exact same things that I could do physically.

It was only a couple of years ago, when reading about some more shamanic techniques, that I read a definition of journeying that clicked something in my head. Much of what I had read about shamanic journeying involved entering into altered states. But this one focused lesson how to achieve the trance state and more on the things you could do with it.

I realized that a lot of what I did and considered visualization, could also be considered journeying, and even astral projection. I firmly believe there are other realms of existence beyond our physical plane, and that we can experience these planes in different ways. And not just the traditional planes that many mystic traditions accept (astral, spirit world, lands of the dead), but really a true multi-verse, where even imagined worlds can be explored (and I do think that a lot of the more well known fictional places such as Dante's depiction of Hell or the Tolkien's worlds have built up their own substance over the years).

This brings up the question of what is real. When I journey, are my experiences real? I think that 'real' is a poor standard to judge things by. I prefer to look at what value do my experiences bring. Reality is a strange creature, and often my 'reality' can be very different from someone else's, even if we were at the same place at the same time. Just ask two people who were at an event to describe it and you will often get a very different description. Sure, one or the other could be lying, or could just be remembering wrong, and if you had video of the event you could check some of the facts and see who was more accurate...but in their own minds, each person would have a very different 'real' experience.

Value can mean different things. I don't go into every session of inner work seeking the same things, and so what is valuable one day may not be another. Sometimes, I am seeking a mirror, a way to look deeper into my own self and see how I am doing. Sometimes I have a problem and I am seeking an answer or solution. Sometimes I wish to meet new friends. At the end of the day, if I get what I was looking for (or if I get something else that I might not have even known I wanted), that to me makes the practice worth it, even if my 'real' might not mesh up with everyone else's.

The lines between journeying and visualization in my mind are pretty blurry. With visualization, it is much more about the creation for me. Typically, when I visualize, I am seeking to create something in the inner worlds, whether it is a guardian, a spell to send forth, a shield or a sanctuary. When I journey, I am more exploring. I am going forth into a place, whether it is known to me or not, and seeing what is there. I also tend to be more focused on place and surroundings with journeying. If I am visualizing, I may not have a defined sense of place at all.

I've read a lot of visualization guides that use the words visualize and imagine interchangeably. Honesty, I don't have a problem with that except for one thing. I think that the Pagan community has a hard enough time with people who think the things we do and believe are crazy and made up, that I think that imagine is too close to imaginary and just creates a connection that doesn't need to be there. I don't really like that some people explain learning visualization as 'fake it until you make it' or 'use your imagination at first and then eventually visualization will come', for the same reasons. We are imagining because we are (most often) using sight to create an image of something. I think the best visualizations include as many senses as possible, but for many, sight comes first. So in a way, the progression is often from imagination (sight only) to visualization (with many senses).

All of this inner work has been written about so often in such specific terms, that I think more people are good at doing inner work than think they are. I don't get the traditional sensations mentioned in almost every astral projection guide, and I don't use any of the astral projection methods to journey, and yet I get distinct sensations of movement and I can explore the world around me as well as other worlds. I don't always visualize in images. I actually experience sound easier than I do sight. Sometimes I can get a clear experience of a thing without any visual clues at all. But pretty much every beginner visualization exercise starts with 'seeing' colors or shapes, so if you struggle with visual clues, then you might never make it to a sense that you are good at.

Inner work is a powerful tool in my toolbox, and it has the benefit of being invisible! I can do inner work pretty much any where at any time. I do a lot of inner work at night before bed. It is a time I know I will have every day, and will be undisturbed (because I do tend to sleep every night). I can also do inner work when on vacation without having to worry about getting tools through airport security or keeping them private while staying with family. I can do inner work while sitting in a waiting room or when riding in a car...time which otherwise might be wasted.