Help begining with the elements

[Tokie]

Hello to all out there,

I'm completely new at this and I want to aquire some good books about the elements. Is it possible to get any from a special shop or do you have to order from shops like Amazon etc.?

I don't know if Im willing to start at a school yet, so some great books would really help me :)


- Toke
(Denmark)

[ShadowFlame]

Hey Tokie,

In all honesty, there isn't really one Element book out there that gives great information. If you really want to get started perhaps the best book to begin with would be Earth, Air, Fire and Water by Scott Cunningham. However he doesn't talk about the Spirit Element and some of the information in there was a bit inaccurate...at least it was for me.

If you're going to be working with the Elements a good idea would be to find out where your natural affinity lies first then use that Element as a starting point. For example, I have a natural affinity for Fire so I started getting to know that element, the aspects of it, the nature of how that particular element works. To do that you spend time with that element. For Fire you work with candles or a camp fire, even a fire place. Look into the flame(s) and just meditate. Same for all the others. For Water, a bowl of it or a lake, or river. For earth, sitting on the ground, go to the beach perhaps (great if you're working on Water and Earth), even go hiking in the great out doors will do it. For air, same thing, sit outside when it's slightly windy and meditate. One of the most powerful experiences I ever had with the elements came from me meditating in the sun on a windy day on the sidewalk. All four elements brought to me a premonition that woke me up to some harsh realities.

Once you get to know the elements on the basic level then you might be able to go the deeper levels which requires a different skill set.

Good luck and let me know if you have any more questions!

Blessed Be
ShadowFlame

[Phoenix Ayrmed]

There are three books I can think of that aren't about the elements in particular, but that do have exercises and meditations on them. Cunningham's book is probably the best place to start, and as I haven't had a chance to get this book for myself, that's another one to put on the list. :-)

Dorothy Morrison's "The Craft: A Witch's Book of Shadows" has a good, albeit lacking in some aspects, section on the elements, and she provides an exercise for balancing them within yourself. She then goes on to list some short exercises for each element, and then a section on spirit or Akasha.

Phyllis Curott's "Witchcrafting" is also a good exercise book, and is also fairly informational too. As the subtitle calls it, "A spiritual guide to making magic", it includes exercises for the elements, but does not include a section on Akasha. On another note, there are many more good points to this book, as she provides a lot of information in order to do helpful exercises.

The last one is my favorite, Starhawk's "The Spiral Dance". This book will overall be helpful for a lot of Craft information. There are four meditation exercises for the four elements, and one that you could say is geared towards Akasha that follows.

If anyone else can recommend similar books to this, I'd also find it helpful. I'm planning on using the exercises and meditations from these books in my own Book of Shadows. This might be a topic for another thread, but has anyone else read Morrison's book too?

Artemis Silvermoon

[BlaqxAngel]

ShadowFlame, i am deathly curious as to what your premoniton contained. like, did you really see things? was it like a video in your mind? iv always wanted to have a vision of some sort a spirtual one that is. so im curious as to what happend in your premonistion.

[ShadowFlame]

Hey BlaqxAngel,

Well let's see, it was a long time ago so my memory of it is a little sketchy. I was laying on the sidewalk doing some studying and closed my eyes for a few minutes because it was an especially boring subject. Slowly my body and mind relaxed then it was like my vision grew orange, as if the sun had filled my sight and the wind blew over me, chilling me just as the rain started to sprinkle and the ground was really solid beneath me.

In that orange vision I saw an outline of a face, first it was one dimensional then it became three dimensional of a woman that I shared classes with. She seemed to be crystalized for a moment then her face began to move, her eyes closed and she looked to be in the throws of passion. Then my vision pulled back, I still saw her but I also saw that she was with the guy that I had a crush on. I didn't see anything explicit or anything like that, but they were laughing, talking...holding hands.

I woke up and thought it was a dream, you know that whole thinking I'm not good enough for the guy kind of thing, but I was talking to a friend later and she told me how she had seen the pair from my vision together, holding hands, laughing and talking. That's when I realized that the woman, who I had thought was my friend, wasn't really my friend and that I had no chance with the guy.

Found out a few years later that it was a good thing that I had no chance with him because he turned out to be a complete self centered jerk.

That is probably the more powerful premonition I have ever had, but all of them are flashes and glimpses of pictures that usually last for only a few seconds and never really feel like a premonition but more like a dream until it happens and leaves you shock.

I've never had a video of a possible event, but I have had the urge to freewrite, receiving messages from the divine that way.

The thing you'll find is that more often than not, you never expect them. They just happen, but the trick is not to base all your reactions and decisions on them because they are of what might be not of what will be. I tried to change something because of a premonition once when I was younger, ended up worse than what I had seen so write them down and see what happens. Most premonitions come during dream time too by the way. Ever have a feeling of deja vu? That's because you probably dreamed about a small tiny event happening before. That happens to me all the time.

For each of us it's different too.

Hope that helps
ShadowFlame

[Trish2985]

I also have the premonition type dreams and the feeling of de ja vu all the time ... never on a personal level, but more or less premonitions of things in the world that are going to happen.