Product Description

In the days when doctors surgeries, pharmacies and Hospitals didn't exist. People relied on Witches' knowledge of health and healing. Sally Morningstar traces the roots of this natural approach to healing and describes its potential as a powerful contemporary method of achieving wellness. This book explores: The variety of Wiccan healing tools; Ceremonies and rituals to achieve wholeness; How to tap into the healing power of the Sun, Moon, Stars and Earth; Connecting to the healing energies of Gods, Goddesses and other deities; Witchcraft cures for all kinds of physical, and psychological ailments; How to access the healing that comes from the animal, plant and mineral world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #633695 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-24
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 228 pages

About the Author
Sally Morningstar has studied Shamanism with Native American men from various Tribal Cultures, has been a Wiccan representative and workshop facilitator at the annual Goddess conference in Glastonbury and an Invited speaker on 'Healing Mother Earth' in 2002. She has written seven books.

Excerpt
What Is Wiccan Healing?
Part of Wiccan philosophy is to work for the highest good. Translated, this means that genuine Wiccans will, as far as possible, make themselves available in service to all life, and this would include healing. All spiritual raditions have their particular healing beliefs and practices that are reflected in the various types of healing offered. In Wicca there is always magic, nature and spirituality involved at some level.
Wicca has no centralized doctrine or scriptures and celebrates personal freedom. The drawback to this for someone who writes about Wicca is that there are as many different opinions about it as there are Wiccans; however, there are certain things that apply more or less universally.
Types of Wiccan
There are basically only two kinds of Wiccan: those who prefer to work as part of a group (coven) and those who prefer to work alone, normally referred to as ‘solitary witches’. There are many different varieties of witchcraft today, but this coven/solitary option runs through all of them. In general, anything a coven does, a solitary witch can also do, and vice versa. (Some may argue that a coven is able What is Wiccan Healing? to raise more energy, but this is only a difference in energy levels, not in
techniques.) A witch is a witch, regardless of how they practise, and so there is nothing that precludes a solitary witch from working in a coven now and then,
nor a coven-based witch choosing to also work alone.
Somewhere in between these two basic preferences is the hereditary witch, who may be either solitary or a member of a coven. This is someone who is a witch because it ‘runs in the family’ and the knowledge has been passed down from generation to generation.
There is also the hedgewitch, who is normally expert in the healing properties of herbs, plants and natural remedies and is also closely aligned to the spirit
world, someone akin to the ‘village shaman’.

The Wiccan Tools
The whole ideology of Wicca is based on simplicity. This does not mean that ritual equipment is not used by witches, but that they are able to work by just
using the powers of the Craft within their own being. An evolved witch should be able to work magic anywhere, at any time, without any elaborate preparations or equipment. However, we could say that the same applies to a medical doctor. If someone has a heart attack in the street, a doctor will know exactly what to do to help them, but at the same time he would prefer to get them as quickly
as possible to a hospital, where all the equipment is waiting. In a similar way, if there is no urgency, witches will generally prefer to work magic with the assistance
of their magical equipment and in a properly cast Circle. (Because it is a sacred place to Wiccans, the word ‘Circle’, when used to denote a witches’
meeting-place, is conventionally spelled with a capital letter.)
A typical coven will usually set aside a period of time at its meetings for healing. First, the meeting-place is prepared and the altar made ready, and it is upon this that the Wiccan tools are placed and made ready for use. These tools are often referred to as the ‘Wiccan Elemental working tools’.
The Elemental Working Tools
One of the basic factors of Wicca, and most other magical traditions, is the use
of the four Elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water. In the next chapter we will
go into the Elements and their applications in magic more thoroughly; here we
are concerned with their relevance to the witches’ working tools.
The belief in four Elements goes back a great many centuries and was first defined by the ancient Greeks, although a fourfold division of the universal energy is a common theme in many religions and can be dated back even further than that. For example, at the root of Judaism, God’s name was formed out of four Hebrew letters, YHWH (hviv), which it was forbidden to speak out loud.
In occult belief, each of these four letters represents a primordial cosmic vibration that became one of the four Elements. In Christianity there are the four gospels, in nature four seasons, and so on. In the magical tradition, all of the possibilities for change and evolution are governed by one of the four Elements. (As a convention, in magic the word ‘Element’ is often spelt with a capital ‘E’ in order to distinguish it from the many chemical elements.)
In magical practice the four Elements are associated with the four points of the compass. For example when Wiccans open their working Circle, they place Earth in the North, Air in the East, Fire in the South and Water in the West,
creating four quarters within their sacred space that represent the four Elemental qualities. These correspondences date back to an age before the world had been explored and when it was still thought to be flat. The reasoning was that the further North you travelled, the colder, damper and darker the world became, and what is Earth but cold, dark and damp? The further South you went, the hotter the sun grew, so South was obviously the domain of Fire. To the East, before Marco Polo travelled to India and China and taught Europeans of these
countries, the endless Russian steppes reached up to the edge of the world under a huge sky where the winds constantly blew – a suitable abode for the spirits of
the Air. And before Columbus it was thought that the ocean went West until a ship would plunge over a huge waterfall at the rim into the home of the Water gods.

Customer Reviews

ok. But...
I find it a bit confusing that a writer can claim to be both wiccan healer..as in this book..and hedgewitch within the pages of another. These two paths are not the same, and i would not wish to be guided by the writings of someone who seems to follow several different spiritual paths at once. That said, it is imformative as a book on healing goes.