Practical Witchery! by John Stormm (ebooks children's books free TXT) 📕

In the previous chapter, I wrote a bit on remote viewing. Many would argue that what I was describing was more like “astral projection” instead. I wouldn’t argue that point very much. On the one hand, in the Old Craft many things are not defined by such narrow definitions as people have become accustomed to do today. For most of you: A witch is supposed to be a female hag, who has made a pact with Satan, and a priest is supposed to be the one of the “good guys”. The idea that a witch might be male, and a priest as well, tends to break all those boundaries that you were taught. But this concept is not a strange, new thing. It’s the way of the world, for many thousands of years, before even the advent of Christianity as a world religion. The whole purpose of me, writing this book, was to widen, if not totally break down all of those artificial boundaries for people, and show you a much bigger and wider world than the simple, shallow one that you were shown. In this chapter, I will share the definitions and techniques, of lucid dreaming, and astral projection, that I’ve learned and used for most of my lifetime.

The Reality Check…

As the overwhelming majority of westerners, no longer pay any attention at all to the nature or contents of their dreaming, except in those rare occasions when they are having a nightmare, I need to share a few things about them first. Then with a bit more knowledge and understanding, we’ll build upon those with lucid dreaming, and more besides and how the wise witch can use these as tools for a better, and more informed life.

First, we need to understand the nature and structure of our own brains. They are divided into two hemispheres, or halves. The left half, is the control center for the right side of your body, and vice versa. Your right hemisphere is the part, where all of your creative, imaginative aspects originate, and your dreams as well. The illustration below, will give you a better idea of how your brain is laid out. Give it a good look, because I will be using this information, in how it relates to what and how you dream, and how to take more conscious control over these.

Much (but not ALL) of the time, when you are lost in a dream, the whole of what is happening, is going on in your subconscious, right brain. You cannot tell for yourself that you are dreaming at this point in time. But for different reasons, at odd times, you will become conscious that you are indeed dreaming. Some part of your conscious, or left brain became aware that your body was actually at rest, WITHOUT actually waking up, and that all that you were experiencing presently, was merely a dream. This occurrence is what is commonly known as a “lucid dream”.

For those of us that have connected well to BOTH halves, or hemispheres of our brains: Specialists call this condition “hemi sync”, where the whole person is using BOTH halves equally, rather than being merely “left brained”, as is the sad conditions of MOST of western society. There is a tool or technique that we use in our dreaming called, “the reality check”, to confirm for ourselves that we are actually dreaming, and not awake in some really weird situation. I’m sure many of you have experienced that before, and resorted to pinching yourself in an effort to be certain.

I also need to take a moment here, to point out that either your “mind”, your “awareness”, or even “soul”, are NOT centered in, or are constructs, of your physical brain as such. We can go into chapters upon chapters, of philosophical, religious and esoteric writings here, and still not do this concept the justice that it deserves. I am not writing all of this to give you all of the hoodoo of voodoo, even though I have no small respect for the precepts of that craft and culture in their workings. Our multiverse is one of causality, or “cause and effect”. There are ALWAYS reasons WHY things will work on the principles that they do. So instead, I will paraphrase something I read from an Australian born, Nobel Prize winning scientist named Sir John C. Eccles. His studies were centered upon neurology and how the brain controls functions in the organism. He describes the brain as a machine, that is designed to be operated by a ghost. He understood as I do, that human awareness extends a good deal further, than merely the physical organism that most of us picture us as being. These of course, are people who can ONLY perceive anything via the Five Dogmatic Senses, and know nothing of feeling “eyes on the backs of their heads”, or “gut feelings”.

Understanding a bit about that brain chart, pictured above will give us a more effective and less damaging method for making this determination. You have to learn to fix this information in your mind, and have it available to you, asleep or awake. It’s not really as difficult to do, as it sounds. The “reality check” is accomplished in this way:

When you have cause to think that you are possibly dreaming: Look at an item, like a picture, a window, poster or calendar on the wall or similar thing, and make note of what it is. Then look away for a moment, and look back at it again. If you are dreaming, the picture on the wall will become a window, or something else, often similarly rectangular in shape. This is because that in your dreams, the dreamscapes change when they are no longer in the center of focus.

There is also, another easy method of checking out a dream to be sure. If you are looking at a book, poster or a calendar or such, in a dream, you will NOT be able to read it. It will appear to be gibberish to you. There are times that your dreaming will supply its own interpretation, of what the sign or such should say. But to try and read something that you don’t already know, will be an impossible task. The reason for this, is that the imaginative, creative part of your dreams, are happening in your “right brain”, and as you can see in our diagram above, the language and reading skills are in the “left brain”.

Now, I already know that *some* of you are going to argue and say: “Oh no! I’ve read things in my dreams, many times before!” And this is where we have moved beyond the mere dreams, lucid or not, and into the “astral projecting”. In essence: Your body was sleeping, and at rest in your bed, but your mind and soul has traveled, or projected itself to an actual place, that you did NOT just create in your own mind. This could be in someplace in THIS world plane of existence, or even into yet another world or parallel plane. We’ll get more into this very useful aspect later.

This is the part where you’re saying: “Alright, I’ve figured out that I’m dreaming, and that all this isn’t real. So, now what?” Again, I’m glad you asked. If you haven’t woke yourself up already, you now have some wonderful options, that you can utilize in these lucid dreams:

Have you ever wanted to fly, like some comic book hero? At this point, all you have to do is aim yourself at the sky and go for it. Did you notice that I did NOT say: Jump off a building or a cliff and try to fly? For myself, my dreams can be so vivid, that I hardly notice any difference, and a leap off a tall building can be a hell of a shock to one’s reality. If you can fly: take off from the ground. Oops, is not a word that you want to use to describe that effort. Your conscious part of your brain, can work in concert with the creative part and make anything that you can imagine, happen for you in this state. Was it a nightmare, that caused you to do your reality check? I had quit allowing nightmares to chase me around and torment me since I was five years old. I still remember the dream that I was having back then. I had learned then, that I did not have to be always a victim.

I was running and running, and trying not to be caught by a monstrous kidnapper. He was hard on my heels, when I found a short sword, picked it up, and cut him across his stomach when he came around the corner at me, in the dead end alley that I had chose to hide in. I was only five, so when I opened up this Bela Lugosi wannabe, his stomach opened up like a cauldron, and hot chocolate came boiling out, until he deflated into just a pile of chocolate soaked robes. You could imagine ANY weapon you wish to deal with your own demons. Guns, swords, ray guns, or if you are bound and gagged, you can make laser beams come out of your eyes, if needs be. And the solutions do not always have to be violent ones: You can turn and confront them with your own reasoning, as to why what they are doing is wrong. In the lucid dreams, YOU have control over how they go. You no longer have to be the victim, and can make the conscious decision to become the victor, however you choose to do so. This is a fine, spiritual exercise, that will eventually carry over into your waking life too. “As above, so below.” As you are in one realm, you will become in the others.

Your dreams can take you on a vacation to anyplace that you can imagine going, and it will be virtually real to you. There’s some caveats to this, but the caveats remain the same, even if you are not aware of these options. If you “die” in your dream, it is “highly possible” that you will die in your sleep. It is NOT “mandatory” of course. This is based mostly on the idea, that during these dreams, you fully believe them to be your reality, and that all of your fears in them, and