A Confession of Faith the Shaman Way
When I was a little girl attending school in Sweden in the 1960’s we had Christianity, not religion, as a subject on our schedule. So we children didn’t get any education about any other way of belief of faith but the one about the one and only God Father Lord Yahweh. We started each day in school reading in unison a confession of faith to the Lord. It wasn’t until I started 7th grade, 1969, that religion was introduced as a subject in Swedish schools. Time would pass all the way to the 1990’s before I found out the name of the Nordic pre-Christian Great Mother Goddess, Hel.
Ever since I was a child I have had a strong need for spirituality, but a male god only was never enough to feed my appetite. I believe it has to do with me being born in a female body, that I so strongly need a spiritual female role model. A sacred woman made of flesh and blood, priestess, and mistress. A wise, mature, loving, firm but just, mother, daughter, grandmother, sister, goddess.

Today, in 2012, this is how my confession of faith would sound:  

Chronicles of Magic: Magical Shields

- ‘You’ve got the Force, Luke!’
The following story takes place in the middle of the 80’ies. My sons were 7 and 5 years of age. The first Star Wars movie came. I and my sons Oscar and August were equally mesmerized by the intriguing movie. We purchased the video, and then we lived with Luke Skywalker and the others in our living room.

The video was played over and over. Every time the scene where Luke flies his little plane into the Death Star and Obi Wan Kenobi in spirit form says: -‘You’ve got the Force, Luke!’ was played, I inevitably started to cry. It was something in that line that touched me deeply. I could also see the resemblance between the Jedi education that Luke underwent, and the shaman school.

One afternoon when I came home Oscar, his small gang of friends, and little brother August expectantly sat in the sofa in front of the TV. As soon as I entered the living room Oscar started the movie about 10 minutes before my crying scene. – ’Sit down mother’ Oscar said with such a firmness that I automatically sat down.

The movie was playing, and I was watching. When it closed in to ‘my’ scene I noted that the five little boys were watching me more than the movie. Their focus on me was so unusual and mysterious in some way, and made me very self conscious. Yet I still succeeded to be touched by the line when it was delivered, and cried as usual a little. As my tears started to roll Oscar jumped up from the couch, triumphantly shouted: – ’Ha, ha’, and pointed at my tear covered cheeks. – ‘What did I tell you? She’s crying!’

Then I got the explanation for their mysterious behavior. Oscar had made his little friends pay a humble amount of money to see me cry! Aha, that was the explanation why they’d been watching me with such intensity. Because I was the entertainment of the afternoon! And not only had I given the boys good value for their money, I also discovered what a business minded little kid I had birthed into this world!    

Chronicles of Magic: The Great Spirit

Impeccability
Extract from Carlos Castaneda’s book: The second Ring of Power
Here is an account for the significance don Juan had taught me to include in the word impeccability. He and I once wandered in a very steep ravine when a big lump of stone came loose from the mountain wall and with a tremendous power rolled downwards to crash and land in the bottom of the ravine, fifteen or twenty yards away from where we were standing. It was a big rock and its fall impressive. Don Juan seized the moment to give me a dramatic lesson.

He said that the power that governs our destinies lies without us and that it has nothing to do with our acts of power. Sometimes this power makes us stop in the middle of the road, bend down and tie our shoelaces, which I had just done. And through stopping us, this power lets us have a precious moment. Had we continued our walk without interruption, the stone would without a doubt have crushed down on us.

But another day, in another ravine, the same from without coming power would force us to stop once again, bend down and tie our shoelaces and then another stone would have loosened right above us. Through stopping us, the power would then have us loose one precious moment. That time we would have saved ourselves if we had kept on going.

Don Juan said that considered I totally lacked control over the powers that governed my destiny my sole possibility to experience freedom was to tie my shoelaces in that ravine impeccably.

Chronicles of Magic: Tyrants

StarWorker
This story took place many years ago. My youngest son was four years old and had just started attending a new kindergarten. One afternoon when I was to pick him up to take him home the staff told me that Ulf had suffered a violent attack from another little boy that day. The attack had happened so fast that no one had had the time to prevent or interfere until Ulf already had received several vicious hits and kicks. The little one was in a state of complete decomposition, sobbing, snoring, and feverish.

When we got out to the car, I just couldn’t put him in his chair and drive home without doing something healing first. At that time I somehow was stuck with a fix idea that one couldn’t function as a healer to help your closest relations, for some odd reason. – ’The hell with that idea’ I thought, ’it’s after all what all shaman and magic schools teaches, that as long as one sticks to the law to do no harm, one sets one’s own rules and laws’. Instead of remaining in a feeling of despair and powerlessness regarding my baby’s hurt condition I took him in my arms and started to gently rock while humming a calming tune. This happened in November so the night sky above us were already covered with stars.  

Meanwhile I was humming and rocking I visualized that I pulled down the dark-blue star-filled night-sky and laid it as a mantel around the two of us. The small body relaxed in my arms and the boy fell in a deep sleep. After a short while spent in this deep dreaming state, Ulf opened his eyes, looked deeply into my eyes, and said: - ’Mama, you work with the stars, yes?’

Chronicles of Magic: The Art of Suffering

The Doctor’s Hat
When I was halfway into the writing of my previous book, Jolanda’s book of Tarot and Magic, I realized that I was actually writing a thesis for a doctorate on the nature of being human. The immense extent of creating a tarot-card-deck and write a book about it dawned on me and the mere thought of the nearly impossible project that I so naively had given myself into made me sway. Had it not been for the illustrator Hans Arnold’s discipline I’d never have had the energy to finish the huge project.

But with Hans routine and experience of working as an illustrator in many book-projects we managed to get through with it. During the four years it took Hans and me to finish all 78 images in the tarot-card deck we became very close friends.
Every card we were working on we got to experience in a personal way. When we were working with 3 of swords, sorrow, for instance, we both experienced sorrow that week. When we were working with 3 of coins, to nurture, we felt that energy that week. So when we had finished the whole thing we had lived through each and every one of the 78 different energies/cards on a personal level. That way we got very close and our friendship has continued since.

Shortly after the book had been released I had a vision that since the book was my thesis for a doctorate in Magic, or, the Art of Dreaming, I also aspired on the title Doctor. The vision went on with me meeting an imaginary group of witches and shamans and by them I was handed a Doctors Hat. And it wasn’t an ordinary hat. No, as a Doctor in the Art of Dreaming of course it was a nightcap, in old fashioned Sandman style, with a gold tassel!

When I retreated from the vision I went to action and manufactured such a nightcap. I was lucky enough to find a cloth in white jersey with stars printed all over it in gold, black and red, really the perfect cloth.  And as the final touch I sew a fine golden tassel at the end of the nightcap.

Since then, if people say: - ‘Now you’re talking in your nightcap, Rosie’, I can without any tremble in my voice answer:
-‘Yes, that is exactly what I am doing!’

Chronicles of Magic: Magic - Science of Energy

Dr Hurru Guru from the Star Nation People
In the world of magic, only the imagination puts up borders. Everything one can imagine also exists, in one or another dimension. This story begins with me watching the movie Stargate a couple of years ago. In the movie there is a scene when the Egyptian looking alien is hurt. To heal he crept into a magic healing sarcophagus decorated with hieroglyphs. A lid closed above him, and the healing immediately started.  After just a short while he climbed out again, completely healed. That scene gave nourishment to my imagination, so each time I after that felt hurt or harmed in any way, I conjured the image of myself creeping into such a sarcophagus, and being healed.

The other year, when I mentally stepped into a strong worry that my body was actively producing hostile organisms, and I just couldn’t pull myself out of it, I got the sense that I needed stronger medicine. An idea fell into my head that I could conjure a doctor from the Star Nation People, anyone who could hear me and my desperate cry for help. So I did.
–‘Hey, Sacred Star Nation People, is there a doctor out there that can handle my case?’
Before I even had the time to blink my eyes, with the speed of lightning, an odd figure turned up in my bedroom. It was a tiny chubby man dressed in an outfit suitable for a game of golf. He introduced himself as Dr. Hurru Guru.
–‘At my hospital, there are no diseases that can’t be cured,’ he said brightly, and waved his hand.  
–’ What can I do for you, milady?’.
I explained my worry, and showed him the area on my body where I experienced symptoms. Immediately he snapped his fingers, and down from the sky came an endless mass of microscopic small frogs dressed in nurse uniforms sewn in light-blue and white starched linen, complete with little classical nurse hats. All thousands of them streamed into me where they started to sing an alien beautiful song that echoed around inside every cell of my body. A whole lot of other stuff happened next that I at this point can’t describe really, but everything felt very wonderful. And it felt incredibly strengthening that there was nothing dr. Hurru Guru couldn’t cure. What happened next was that the strong worry that had locked me down vanished anyway, and with it all bodily symptoms of disease I’d thought I was developing.

Nowadays I more or less regularly meditate that I visit his hospital, or that he comes home to me, firsthandly to receive preemptive care, on all levels, spiritual, physical, mental and emotional.  Hurru has introduced me to another doctor as well, Oro d’Oro, who’s an expert in handling and curing worry, which fits me perfectly, since worrying is my greatest problem, really. So now I have my own house doctors! Free choice of health-care in its fullest sense! And gratis!
(Only the future can tell if I also will need assistance from the common health care. To be on the safe side I don’t want to exclude any alternative coming scenarios.)

Chronicles of Magic: To become one’s own best healer

Ghost Employment Office
'Am I dreaming the Tower or is it the Tower that's dreaming me?'
An afternoon around all hallows eve a couple of years ago, I took one of my regular walks on the graveyard that was bordering the house I was living in at the time. It was a huge graveyard. To walk from one end to the other took little more than one hour.
It was, and is, considered to be one of Stockholm’s lungs, with gigantic trees from all over the world, a true botanic garden.
This particular day I strolled further than I used to, and just when dusk was setting I entered an area that I had not visited before. A wooden house built approximately 200 years before appeared in front of me.
On top of the crudely axed wooden door hang a sign, and on the sign was written: Employment office.
‘Ghosts naturally need an employment office too’, I thought with a kind of witch logic.

With the same kind of logic I thought that it was as well that I entered into the office, since I found it. Inside was a big desk with two chairs, standing on either side of the desk. The rest of the room was empty. A middle-aged ghost was sitting on the chair behind the desk, dressed as an old fashioned clerk. With a movement of his hand he showed me that I was to sit down on the other chair. A large old style paper lay on the table between us, with a text on it written with a beautiful old-fashioned style of letters. He studied me with intense, pushed the paper across the table towards me and said: -‘the job as a janitor in the Tower on Blue-hill is available, if you want it.’

‘The Tower’. I knew what tower he was referring to. The old water tower in the Hagalund Park. Local people living in the area called Hagalund for Bluehill. I had passed the tower not so long ago, and thought that it looked empty, and I had wondered if there might be some possibility to get in there, to see what it looked like inside. The thought that I might move in hadn’t crossed my mind. And now this ghost was telling me that the job as a janitor in the tower was available! It sounded too good to be true. I quickly grabbed the old feather pen that lay on the table next to the contract, dipped the tip in the ghost ink well, and drew my crowfoot on the employment agreement. (Let me explain the crowfoot. It was as a magic worker I took the job, and my magical name is Rose Caw Crow.)
-’I’ll take the job’, I said out loud.

The next day I made a couple of phone-calls, and found out who was in charge of the tower. And as it turned out the tower was available for a new tenant!

When I met with the person in charge he laughed long and hard when I told him I represented a community of witches and shamans and that we wanted to have our headquarters in the tower on Bluehill.
(The joke is that in Swedish folklore all witches travel to Bluehill to meet for ceremonial work.)

And so, the official rental contract became valid on the first of April -99. Not only was it the fool’s day, it was also Maundy Thursday, which happens to be the official date in folklore stories when witches go to Bluehill, and a full moon. I celebrated the historical occasion by inviting all shamans and witches I knew at that time to the tower to have a big feast. All the ghosts from the graveyard that felt like they wanted to attend the party were also welcome, of course. The holy fire was burning again on Bluehill for the first time in almost 900 years! A new era had begun!

Chronicles of Magic: Ghosts & Spirits

'Are you using us as some kind of hexperiment, or what ….. ?’
When I began my apprenticeship in the Deer Tribe Metis Shaman School in the end of the -80-ies, my three sons were in the ages 2, 8 and 9 years. As soon as I heard that one of the main things one should focus on as a shaman apprentice was to remove all shame, blame and guilt behavior from ones every-day life, I started to integrate that axiom into the performance of my motherhood duties. Which of course, surprise, surprise!, led to numerous deepened and rather complicated talks with my sons.

I was always trying to get to the source of whatever had been happening that otherwise would lead to finding a scapegoat as well as executing some kind of punishment. If big brother for instance kicked little brother, the kicking, the ‘crime’, had to be traced back to its origin. What was the reason for big brother feeling so frustrated that he had to rid himself of that energy in such a negative way with such a negative effect on his little brother? In the above example big brother had kicked his little brother because he felt frustrated because he had had a conflict with his English teacher in school earlier that day, and had had to spend some gruesome lone time in the corridor …..

Usually, when we through a lot of reasoning had found the true reason for their battles, the brothers were able, if not to become best friends immediately, but to rest in a feeling of mutual understanding.

When my sons entered puberty they were heartily tired on my methods, as big brother Oscar at one point in an annoyed way snubbed: – ‘ Do you have to psychologize everything all the time, mammy?, when I was trying to talk about what reason he might have had for his actions.

And little brother August, 14 years, clearly showed his frustration when Oscar had done something I don’t remember what it was right now. With his fists clenched he demanded that I’d punish Oscar.
– ‘But you know that we in our family don’t use punishment or bribes’, I said, in an attempt to level his anger. With a voice trembling from the agitation he felt, he then said: - ’Are you using us kids as some kind of hexperiment, or what?’.....

Comment from August, 30 years of age by now:
To blame an event on a single person, to separate an action from it's context, is narrow minded and misleading. When we punish an individual for what they do, with the motivation that they themselves are responsible for their actions, we don't take into consideration the interdependent wholeness which constitutes our reality. Our legal system is just like my mother implies a system of control that supports the current balance of power and rarely, if ever, goes to the root of the problem.

The incorrect assumption that the individual is separated from the environment is ingrained in our legal system and is reflected in the way most children are brought up. We are taught to obey our current authority and take responsibility for our desires, even though they are based on circumstances which are outside of our control. This inevitably leads to a fragmented inner condition where we easily turn into our own worst enemy and where empathy, mutual respect and cooperation takes a backseat to egoism, lust for power and compulsive culturally conditioned control patterns.

To personally have had the opportunity to grow up in an environment that doesn't reflect society in general can be confusing and challenging in its own way, but it has given me a solid sense of self and a strong faith in the life forces which run the world we live in. //August

Chronicles of Magic: Crime and Punishment

Very Important Mission
Once upon a time, as a matter of fact 14 years ago, I was attending a workshop called the Art of Dreaming with Batty Thunderbear as teacher. We were going to perform a very thorough ceremony that took days to prepare, namely a sand-painting-ceremony. The theory was extensive as was the practical work to make the two 1 X 1 meter big sand-paintings. No one can understand how it is to paint tiny intricate details with sand until one has tried. It is craving immense patience to have the images painted properly according to the blueprint the teacher handed out.

Besides, every wrongly disposed out-breath created big negative consequences, not to mention if somebody happened to sneeze….. Hours of strenuous work could then be blown away in the tenth of a second. When that happened, which it did on more than one occasion, it was mildly put extremely difficult to keep one’s emotional balance…..

Amongst many adventures we would experience while doing the ceremony, was to meet with four Star-goddesses, where each of us would be presented with one personal very important mission! If we were to succeed in going through with the ceremony that is, which wasn´t a simple task. One had to put in all one’s ability to concentrate and focus to be able to enter into the sand-paintings, to meet the figures we so painstakingly had painted, namely North American Native Katchinas, that is, sacred Dream-teachers.

During the days it took to get the paintings done intense speculations were taking place inside my head regarding how my personal sacred mission would be like. It had to be something glamorous at least, I thought, such as saving the Brazilian rainforest, or to save the crocodiles in a river in northern Australia that are threatened to be extinct. I felt pretty sure that the mission included saving something.

So arrived the day when we were going to perform the ceremony. I woke up that morning, with a firm will to succeed, I really wanted to meet the star-goddesses and get my mission. When I came into the big classroom Thunderbear was sitting on a chair on the podium and showed me his support by giving me a thumb up.

To enter into the magic world of the sand-paintings one was supposed to push one’s navel-fibers out and put them on a little black dot that was placed in the lower part of the first painting. It portrayed a subterranean cave, and then one was supposed to get sucked into that cave via one’s navel. Once one was in there one would meet with one’s night-warrior. And then the trick was to stay focused and stay in the painting to let oneself be guided around within it, and in the next sand-painting, by diverse ethereal beings.

One by one we went forward and sat down in front of the sand-paintings holding our theory-papers in a sweaty grip. It had been impossible to memorize every single step in the complicated ceremony. So came my turn. My whole body was shaking as I went up and sat down on the starting place, pushed my fibers out towards the tiny black dot as if life itself depended on it, and …..

…. I could hardly believe it myself, but I entered the cave! On legs that by some mysterious reason felt as solid as ever, I walked around in the first sand-painting and had the most fantastic encounters. As I experienced it, Batty was in there with me all the time and gave me his silent support. One day I’m going to write a whole, and long, chapter of everything I experienced, but here and now I’m going to focus on the fact that I really succeeded in taking me to the place where I was to meet with the four Star-goddesses!  

When I eventually got to the room where they were, I experienced that they were so big that I hardly reached the knees of the goddess who was to give me my sacred mission. And the room they were in, by the way, was an enormously big room filled with space, and it had no walls and no roof, and yet it had walls and roof, somehow. The entire velvet-soft dark-blue night seemed to fit in that room. Filled with reverence, there is no better suited word, everything was so indescribably beautiful and harmonic, I managed to ask the goddess what my mission was. Her voice echoed in the wall-free space-room, deep and powerful:
’ Don’t  ….be …… in … a … hurry! ’
Excuse me?
Again:
’ Don’t … be … in …a … hurry! ‘
What?
What kind of mission was that? My first reaction was disappointment. Too not be in a hurry didn’t feel the least glamorous. But the next second the voice of the Star-goddess sang in my heart and I understood with all my body the impact my mission would have on my future.

During the fourteen years that has passed since then I practically every day remind myself of this mission. Too not be in a hurry. To instead try, as calmly and methodically as possible, to do that which needs to be done, and can be done, that particular day. And that is not the easiest of doings, I’ll say! Because no matter what is and isn’t, I said this before, and I'll say it again:
Stress is the nr. 1 enemy of Magic!

And before I end this story I would like to send a big thanks to all the magical wonderful beautiful entities that inhabits this and other universes. Thank you Thunderbear. Thank you Star-goddesses. Thanks!

Chronicles of Magic: Everything is born of Woman

Länk: http://www.grandmotherscouncil.org/

The Inner Jury
Nowadays TV is overflowing with various contests, talent-contests, cooking-contests, model-contests and so on. A common factor for all these contests is a jury panel mostly consistent of four people.

The other week, while watching an episode of Top-Model, it crossed my mind just how I myself stand in front of my inner jury several times per day. And the expectations I put on myself are not humble in any way.I expect from myself to be Top Mom, Top Family-provider, Top Mistress, Top Everything, as a matter of fact, no more, no less. Therefore, my inner jury reflects this in being ruthless, incredibly judgmental and devastatingly critical. Rarely, if ever, do I get approval for my daily achievements.

There and then I made the decision to do an inner search to identify each member of my current inner jury. That my mother was one of them was obvious. The rest of the identification I’ll leave untold right now, but I can guarantee that it was both interesting and enlightening. Then I got the idea that the personas now constituting my inner jury could be replaced. There was no law in existence that they were to remain members of my inner jury for life!

Monday night in the Tower. Three participants in the Moon-lodge, perfect, four women me included. After the break, when we always do some practice, I suggested that the four of us together would swop the members of our inner jury to more creative and loving ones. We’d do it as a group-project, where each of us was to suggest a new jury member. That way we created the opportunity to return to this practice on a later occasion, and be able to compare our experiences.

But before we started to invite our new members, we all had to do a personal inventory. Firstly, we’d had to take some time to find and talk to our present inner jury-members, and tell them that their services were no longer needed, that they were sacked, frankly spoken.

With this done, the time had come to introduce our new jury-members. The Talking Stick was passed around the circle. I got it first. The one I wanted in our inner jury was the Cat-Goddess Bast, in the form of a black, middle-aged Egyptian woman, to provide pleasure, intuitiveness and ancient wisdom. Then the Talking Stick was passed to Lina, who invited Sigurd, an elderly man, white-haired, wise, loving, and with a great sense of humor.
So Carina, who invited Pushing Polly, a real power-hag, who tolerated no excuses what so ever why not to get on with whatever one wanted to get on with. And last but not least, Linda, who invited Pippi Long-Stockings, to provide the jury with playfulness and anarchy.

Since then I’ve taken some time each day when I consciously make an inner journey to visit my new inner jury. To find out how I have performed my different tasks and challenges that day according to their judgements? It’s not an understatement to say that the way I’m received now is a completely new experience. It is fascinating how differently and much more lovingly and wisely designed the judgments and verdicts are, compared to the way they used to be before I made conscious this particular ongoing inner process.

And I must admit it is Pippi’s presence that has made the greatest impact. During our jury-sessions, she yawns, wriggles and writhes, showing everybody in a completely obvious way that she thinks that most subjects being discussed are really boring. It makes me giggle every time. Am I really that boring? Oh, blast! I got to stop to take everything so seriously. Get out and play, Rose! The time when I’m thru with this karma-adventure will most inevitably come sooner or later…..

Chronicles of Magic: Architect of the Psyche/Archetypes

The Butterfly Tree
I found this story in Lynn Andrews book the Jaguar Woman:
There are many trees and many myths and legends concerning them. Almost all peoples know of some kind of world tree. The tree is a way into life.

The Sisterhood of the Shields tells us of the first tree, also called Sky Tree of Man, or simply, the butterfly tree. This is the tree of all the ancestors. It is where first man and first woman came from. Tree Mother suckled them. The sisters say that upon the branches of this tree are billions and billions of leaves. Written upon these leaves is the destiny of each new person. So when a person is born, a leaf falls from the butterfly tree. The spirit light descends from one of these leaves and surrounds the egg at conception. It is a person’s destiny to realize that we are one with the sacred tree.

We are not just a leaf. We are light. And we are the light of Butterfly Tree. Everything is of Butterfly Tree, and all will return to it. All suffering is a result of a loss of knowledge of our origins. When we realize that we are the great tree, our state is happiness. All our illusions come about because of loss of remembering the central tree. But then it is not a tree at all. It is a way of explaining truth.

When we enter the void, it’s like no place we have ever been before. That’s a problem. Our language is inadequate to express the higher truths that we come back with. Some people see angels; some see warriors. Some call these beings gods and goddesses. Some call them spirits.

The human mind is unable to grasp these experiences. That doesn’t mean it is delusion. As a matter of fact, we are escaping our delusions. There are other ways of seeing. All of life is a trail that leads to the Great Tree or the Great Spirit. Everyone is on this path. Some are, for the moment, lost. Some are resting. Some realize the truth but can go no further.

Every once in a while a great teacher comes. Great teachers are the realized ones. They have climbed the Tree and have achieved freedom. They have solved the riddle of paradox and duality. They can speak only truth. But even they have difficulty in trying to explain things in a way others can understand. Some of them get mad and use supernatural powers all over the place, thinking that this may help. Others martyr themselves to show their great love and tolerance. Some of them don’t do anything at all and let everything go on as it is. They may be hidden in a cave or sacred mountain, or they may be your next-door neighbor.

The life of the caterpillar transforms into another life – the beautiful butterfly. It teaches us that all of life is transitory. The butterfly is enlightened! Butterflies are the ancestor spirits, and they have returned to the Butterfly Tree.

Where the butterflies cluster on a tree, this was one of the ancient sites where rituals and ceremonies were performed, places of celebration. Yes, the butterfly migrations are ancient spirits returning to the sites of once great cultures that have now vanished from the earth.

The Great Spirit gave the world a butterfly tree so that the people could learn from it and find joy in its beauty. The tree was filled with colors, and those colors formed rainbows that arched from one camp to another and from one universe o another. The people were united, because they saw the same colors. From this rainbow hung the stars, the moon, the sun, the seven sisters, and the movement of all the heavenly bodies. Remember to be happy the next time you see a butterfly.

Chronicles of Magic: Lammas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCnWZncHH2Y&feature=related

Dreampillow   
Workshop in the Art of Dreaming, Bråviken, Sweden, 14/8 – 18/8 -97 with Batty Thunder-Bear, his wife Rose Dragonfly Queen, Lil, Margareta, Michael H. and 16 other people.The third day is all about the making of a dream-pillow according to the rules and laws of an ancient shaman school.
Here I share the theoretical part of the ceremony that I wrote down in my diary:

The making of a Dream Pillow.
Plant a seed in the fifth dimension and it will come back in the third dimension. You need a good deal of energy to be able to remember your dream. And you’ll need a witness.

The dream-pillow consists of 3 bundles put together.
The ingredients in the first bundle: 1 bear-fetish, 1 owl-fetish, both carved out of wood. Those we will manufacture during the afternoon. Then there is: 1 turquoise, 1 coral, 1 crystal, 1 owl-feather. The bag is sewn in turquoise cloth, size 14 X 14 cm.
Second bundle: Protection bundle. 7 X 7 cm. Red cloth. Ingredients: 1 pinch of cedar, salvia, sweet-grass, lavender, banishing and cut away medicine, corn flour, pollen, black lightning.
The third bundle is the herb bundle. 17 X 17 cm. Rainbow-cloth.
The 6 herbs that shall fill the small pillow and make it fluffy are:  hops, lemongrass, peppermint, catnip, rosehip, and alder buckthorn. The herbs in the dream-pillow need to be changed every three years. (The other two bundles shall be sewn into this bundle. We will manufacture the 3 bags right after lunch.)

In the afternoon we are going to travel to the under-world and find the owl and the bear. We will do that by going to the meadow with the corn-flour. Ask the powers to assist me while holding the intent to find a piece of wood that carries the spirit of the bear and a piece of wood that carries the spirit of the owl. Spin thirteen rounds counter-clockwise. Walk towards the direction where I stopped spinning. Let the fibers lead. When one invokes the owl, one becomes the owl. When I have found my pieces of wood, I will sit down and firstly carve out the image of the owl from the owl piece. I will ask for guidance from the owl. Ask for a name. Then go through the same process with the bear. When done, give some corn-flour as thanks.

Go back to the circle now prepared by the teachers, Batty and Rose.  Sit down on my seat. I start with the herbs.
Take the rainbow bundle and go to the baskets filled with herbs that will be placed in the center of the circle. There will also be a fire burning there. Talk to the different herbs, one at the time. Talk to the herb and listen to it thru the fibers. Put a tiny bit of the herb into the fire. Ask the herb to release its spirit through the fire so it can come in its spirit-form into my heart. Now all 6 herbs are in the bag. Go back to my sitting place. Leave the bag open, since the other two bundles are going to be put within it as well, before it is sealed.

Go to the south basket with the small red bag for protection. Shoot my fibers into the fire. Pull the fire into my stomach. Take the ingredients one by one, put them in the bag, and seal it.
Then it’s time for the fetish-bundle. Take the turquoise bag, the wooden owl and the wooden bear, the turquoise, the coral, the crystal, and the owl-feather with me into the center of the circle. Connect to the fire. Talk to the different ingredients. Eat a tiny bit of the owl-feather. Seal the bag. Put all bags in the rainbow-bag. Talk to the different powers. Mumble Jumble. Now seal it. It is done!
When I get home, put the dream-pillow under my real pillow in my bed, and dream…zzzzz.
(The following night I dreamt I gave birth to the Hindu Elephant-God Ganesh.)

Chronicles of Magic: Amulets

Yoda look-a-like
The other night before I went to sleep I performed a simple dream-ceremony. I called in one of my dream-teachers to come into my dream. _ ‘Come and show me something about myself that can help me in my everyday life!’ And then I commanded myself to remember the dream when I woke up.
That night I dreamt that I was in a big forest. In an opening in the middle of the forest a small figure that reminded a lot about Yoda from Star Wars sat by a similarly small fire. Like Yoda it was small, round, and green. But unlike Yoda, the little one also had a beard. When he saw me, he nodded at me to come and sit down. It felt very familiar to sit there. After a good while the little one leaned closer to me, and said: - ’ You don’t have to take everything so seriously all the time, you know. Some things are meant to be taken seriously, but not everything all the time.’ He gave me a big smile and leaned back again. The silence and the fire gave warmth. Then I woke up. With the intent to be more relaxed to be able to see the lingering humor in most of what’s going on around me. Thank you, dream teacher!

Chronicles of Magic: Ceremonies and Rituals

The Dragons Tongue
A friend, Night has Life, and I set out one evening to visit one of our favorite places in a forest where we would perform a
fullmoon-ceremony. When we reached our destination it started to rain so we had to seek shelter. We found a big enough space under an out-hanging cliff to make our fire and put our blankets out. Outside our little cave the rain kept pouring down.
For a while we were sitting there, rooting ourselves, fire quietly burning, talking about this and that, drinking our coffee,
eating a bit of chocolate. Then we started to talk about dragons.
In the story of King Arthur, the peace-keeper, the old Celtic religion was symbolized by the dragon and the new religion Christianity was symbolized by the cross. Back in Arthur’s days, the two were living peacefully side by side. The Dragon symbolized the great Mother Earth Goddess herself, and the Dragons Tongue symbolized the voice of the Grandmothers.
We allowed the ancient feeling of peace to fill us up from inside and out.

It was time to make our full moon wishes.
–‘I wish I could speak and write in the old language, the language of the Great Mother’, I exclaimed with a voice loud and clear. ‘I wish for the tongue of the Dragon!’
The low bushes surrounding us seemed to move closer, or was it just the shadows created by the playful flames?
The wind settled down and the rain stopped. The night fell silent. Night has Life and I stared into each other’s eyes.
Something was going on. Something probably magic! A chill went down my spine and the hair stood up on my arms.

A third being was now present in our circle! A big tree stump had somehow managed to move very close to the fire without making any noise, and it had the exact look of a dragons head. Eyes, ears, horns, chin, cheeks, forehead, and even a mouth was clearly distinguishable.  And sticking out from the mouth was, believe it or not, a huge tongue. Obviously the dragon’s tongue I’d asked for. But never in my wildest imagination could I have thought that it would show up in this very physical shape. I had envisioned something far more abstract. Night has Life and I entered into a bewildered and feverish conversation:
–‘Did you see this stump before?’ ‘Was it here when we built the fire?’ It wasn't long before we could settle as a fact that it hadn’t been standing there just moments ago.

Silently we observed the tree stump. The dragon tree stump silently observed us. A heavy smell of dark, damp earth lingered in the air. The presence of magic was strong. Without even reflecting upon it, much less being able to stop the movement, my arm stretched out and loosened the wooden tongue. It slipped into my hand with ease. Gently I put the piece of wood in a napkin and then in my bag. I decided to make a power amulet around it when I returned home. We stayed for a while to relax and indulge ourselves in the dark and healing vibrations emanating from the deep and dense forest surrounding us.

Before we left we gave thanks to the Great Everything, and in particular to the Dragon family. I promised to carry the gift of being a Keeper of the Dragons Tongue always close to my heart.
The journey home went smoothly without incidents. And my new amulet helped me through an intense writing process following shortly in time.

This story happened just before I wrote my first book back in 1996

Cronicles of Magic: Symbols

The Fairy Queen
In the shaman school we are taught that the little people, fairies, elves, gnomes, a.s.f. are the ancestors of the human family. They inhabited planet Earth long before the humans arrived here. This story is recycled from my book Jolanda’s book of Tarot and Magic, chapter 21, the Universe:
One evening in early may I was driving my car on my way to a four day workshop with my shaman teacher Batty ThunderBear. Midnight was approaching, and I was closing in on the place where the workshop was to be held. Then suddenly a bell started ringing in my chest, and a voice started to talk inside my head.
– ‘The fairies are having a party tonight, and you are invited. Soon you will come to the place where the party is held. ’
I consideratly slowed down my pace. As a coincidence I was wearing my fairy dress, made from exquisite white chiffon, woven as thinly as spiders web, the fine cloth all covered with purple and black roses. Coincidence, by the way, it was like the part of me that had decided what to wear that same morning had known what would happen in the evening…..
And now I wasn’t driving a car anymore, no, the car had transformed into a big silver horse, slowly trotting along.
After ashort while the car/horse stopped all together, so I climbed out and looked around. There were fields stretched out in all directions, all covered with a fine but heavy mist.  As I was standing there and deeply breathing in the fresh early summer air, the Fairy Queen herself materialized out of the mist, and came gliding towards me. Closely following behind her, fairy after fairy materialized, all dressed in the most fantastic colorful dresses one could ever imagine. The queen had now closed in on me, and I knew that somehow I had met her before. We serenely bowed to each other. -´Come,’ she said, ‘dance with us’. My heart somersaulted out of pure joy, yes, yes, I would love to dance with the fairies. And danced I did, I danced and danced with the fairies over the meadows until I was completely softened up and almost turned to mist myself.
Then I stopped, thanked the fairies, said goodbye to the queen, and went back to my silver horse. Soundlessly and gently in a still pace we glided the few remaining couple of hundred yards to the study center.
But how odd, it was all dark and quite, the whole place seemed abandoned. How peculiar, the workshop was supposed to begin in just a few hours, it should be crowded with people. Where was everybody?
Cautiously I stepped out of the car, and listened. Yes, I could hear a faint sound of voices, sounding like they came from the back of the house. For some unexplained reason I tiptoed as quietly as possible over the courtyard, and continued to nestle close to the wall of the house. The strong energy I felt made me stop just before the wall ended, and with utter care I peaked around the corner of the house. There I saw a veranda that was built on the backside of the house with a view over a small lake. There were 8 people sitting on the veranda around a table, amongst them was the teacher, the shaman Batty ThunderBear. He was sitting furthest away from me, on the short side of the table, facing me.
A wild idea flew into my mind, and made my heart pound wildly. Here I was presented with a superb opportunity to sneak up on my shaman teacher. I had the chance to surprise him, to put him out of balance, by materialize from nowhere. That would definitely be a performance worthy of a true witch. That exact moment two swans came flying, they were flying low, and the sound from their heavy wings flapping were filling the air, swosch, swosch. I immediately grasped the opportunity and the help they offered, and moved swiftly the remaining yards to the veranda. Every step I took was covered in a mighty swoshing from the wing flaps of the swans, swosch, I jumped, and swosch again, and the last powerful swosching landed me right behind Batty. No one present had as yet spotted me.
‘ Taadaa’, I shouted into Battys ear, and made a triumphant pirouette.  Batty jumped high up in the air, and sank back down on his chair heavily panting. He studied me for a while, regaining his breath, and then he said, to the other people present:
-‘look who’s here, the Fairy Queen herself! ‘
Words sweet as honey to me, and such a great confirmation that my experience dancing with the fairies had been as real as any other experience one can have. And, I had managed to sneak in on one of the most skilled sneakers…. I felt so proud of myself!
( The reason why the house had seemed so empty and abandoned was because I had arrived a day early, the workshop wouldn’t start until the day after! Sometimes one has to be confused to be able to keep one’s appointments with fairies.
From the confusion of the mind and the chaos of the heart magic is born….)

Chronicles of Magic: Beltane

Healing my inner Child Ceremony
One of the ground rules in the school of magic is that one should never recommend anyone else to do a ceremony that one haven’t tested oneself. And since I haven’t done the ceremony to heal my inner child, the time has come to do it now, before I share it via internet. I‘ve had the instructions for this ceremony for a long time in a desk drawer. Since my belief is that almost nothing is coincidental, this ceremony must have great meaning for me right now.
From theory to practice:
After pondering what tree to choose for my ceremony the idea came up in my mind that the most perfect place would be the park next to the Tower on Blue-hill, the park is called the Birch-park. There I would be able to find a nice and big birch. Not only that my name is Birch, an extra bonus to why I should pick that place is that the hospital where I was born 53½ years ago is situated just a stone-throw away. 
I had a couple of days to prepare for the ceremony until the most appropriate time, the new-moon, would appear.
              
Saturday morning was misty and moist. It had been raining the night before.
On my way to the tower I thought that at least it wasn't raining. Before I knew it, I found a beautiful, big and friendly birch. Walked around the tree 3 times. Hugged the tree. Sat down and relaxed.
Remember the intent: To heal the wounds that was created through the absence of ceremonies to celebrate important changes during life, such as the transit from childhood to adulthood, and to create a new beginning.
Talk to the tree. Ask the tree for help to heal my inner child.
What negativity am I ready to give up?
I give away my suspiciousness, my fear of being conned, mocked, cheated on, ridiculed. That’s a big burden I’ve been carrying around that I don’t want to drag with me into my future. I release it here and now. I also let go of my conception of never being able to carry whatever all the way to perfection. That however thoroughly I do the dishes, clean, cook, are there for the children, try to take care of my relationships with lover, friends and family, and earn money, there’s always this critical voice in my head telling me I could have done a little bit more, a little bit better. Therefore I release my conception of never being good enough here and now.
The birch dropped a few big heavy drops of water, like it was crying. I took the opportunity to release all the tears I cried from sorrow into the earth beneath me. And while I was at it, I also released all the tears I’d been crying out of joy. What now? Could I release anything else? Maybe this was enough for one sitting.
To dig a hole in the ground by the roots of the birch was easy, easier than I had anticipated.  I took the photo of myself as a baby in my mother’s arms and put it into the deep hole. Meanwhile I asked the tree to fill me with its strength and wisdom, to protect me and support me.
I remained sitting in the arms of the tree for a while, and visualized the presence of my inner child. Images from my childhood flashed by, like the stories people tell when they have had near death experiences. Then images from my adult life came fast forwarding like a movie on the screen of my inner eye.

An insight hit me. I realized that I was in another transit than that from childhood to adulthood. Now the transit was the one from mother to grandmother. As I was now 53½ years old, I’d soon stop menstruating. The knowledge that this would bring a huge release from the inner drama every month with PMS, blood, tiredness, and hormone ups and downs flooded my mind.
As a grandmother all one had to do was to synchronize with the outer moon. A deep sense of inner calm opened up within me and I could see the opportunities I’d have in my future to increase my abilities to be relaxed and to enjoy life in all its aspects. Mission accomplished! Then all left to do was to say thanks to the tree and to all other powers that had assisted me in this ceremony. Sprinkle some tobacco. On my way home rain started pouring down. It felt like a cleansing, a blessing.

The following night I dreamt that I was in a house so big it had more rooms than one could count. I was in the nursery, a big room containing 7 beds, alas, 7 children must be living there. 3 of them came up to me where I lay in a big bed that was placed right in the centre of the room. Two of the children were no more than 3 years old, led by a 7-year old boy. The boy was very curious to know why I was in the nursery, when all other grown-ups were downstairs having a good time. I answered that I liked to be where there were children. The boy studied me like I was some strange being he’d never before encountered. It was obvious that the children in this nursery wasn’t used to having visits by grownups.
– ’But I care about children, I enjoy being with children,’ I tried to explain with a big lump of mixed emotions in my throat.
The boy remained very skeptical. – ‘There’s a special room for you further down the hall,’ he said. – ‘ I was there and I’ve seen it. The grownups have prepared a very nice space for you.’ His words was so unexpected, I didn’t know what to say. We stared in each other’s eyes to find some clue to where we were at. And then I woke up, with one sentence spinning around in my head: ‘I am surrounded by helpful energies, and I am very well protected.’
What an excellent affirmation! I’ll use it daily for now.
And one day really soon, maybe today already, I’m going to go back into that dream in meditation, to explore the room prepared for me by friendly and considerate grownups.

Chronicles of Magic: The abandoned Child Syndrome

The power of resurrection
A decade and a half ago I was contacted by the Scandinavian Tourist Board. They were about to launch a campaign in Japan to get more Japanese tourists to visit Scandinavia, and they called the campaign Scandinavian healing.
Another important aspect that they wanted to promote was the Scandinavian equality between men and women.
I was flown to Tokyo by SAS, landed there in early April, just in time for the cherry-tree-festival, all the cherry-trees were clad with beautiful pink flowers, and it felt like a saga. For some unknown reason the Japanese thought that there had always been witches in Sweden, and that no witch burnings had ever occurred. In Japan they once had had the same kind of witch as in Sweden, with pointed hat, cat and broomstick, but they had all been persecuted, sadly enough. Everyone I met was deeply impressed and utterly respectful by the fact that I was an original witch. I was treated with the status of a rock star.
The female journalists wanted to know how the Japanese women could heal the fact that they were only worth something when they were young, just like the flowers of the cherry-tree, when they got older they were more or less treated like garbage. I did my best answering their questions.
The big night arrived when I was to perform in a Danish restaurant just a stone-throw away from the Imperial Palace, a very posh address. Earlier that day I had built a crystal circle around the big dining room. We were three Scandinavian women to speak. The woman from Denmark was the chief editor of a Danish weekly magazine for women, she talked about how the Danish women had taught their men to share with the household duties, like cooking, tending the children and doing the cleaning up. The woman from Norway who was the minister of culture talked about how it was possible for a young woman to be a minister in the Norwegian government. And then there was me, the witch from Sweden, and I talked about spiritual equality, about the existence of a goddess as well as a god.
The woman from Denmark wore shoes made from snakeskin, the woman from Norway had a handbag made from snakeskin, and I had a beautiful blue snake painted on my forehead, (painted there by a Japanese woman who had confided in me that not all Japanese witches had been extinct, there were still some that was working under cover, her being one of them.)
I started out by saying hello to the Japanese Sun Goddess Amaterasu from the Nordic Star Goddess Astarte. And then I introduced my travelling companions, a toy lion and a toy sheep, and said that the day will come when the lion and the sheep once more will rest together in peace. And as a final touch, I got all 200 people present, mostly journalists, to meditate in silence for two minutes on the crystal, which had never happened before, and it turned out to be a great success.
After the performance we were all invited to the house of the Danish ambassador, where we were served abundant amounts of wine and different dried snacks, like dried octopus arms.
Later that night back in my hotel-room I got terribly sick in my stomach and was forced to spend the entire night in the bathroom. When the morning came and my Japanese guide called on the phone to tell me to come down to the lobby for yet another interview with a journalist I tried in a very polite way to tell him that I was too weak to leave my bed. For some reason he wouldn’t understand what I so diplomatic was trying to say, he just kept on asking me what? Since I couldn’t tell him upfront that I had been vomiting all night I just laid out my fragile condition as simple as possible:
‘ Iwahashi-san, listen, today I am DEAD. Tomorrow, I’ll be REBORN. Call me then.’ And finally he understood and said: ‘okey, okey, I call you tomorrow. Have a nice day! And please feel free to use room-service.’

(If anyone wonders why my carrier in Japan didn’t continue, it was because the Norwegian staff threatened to quit their cooperation with the Scandinavian Tourist Board if Sweden insisted having a witch on their team. They didn’t regard my participation as serious enough, in spite of the success, so unfortunately, I got sacked. That’s how the lovely and enchanting dream of being completely accepted and respected abruptly and sadly came to its end. But before that happened I had the opportunity to visit Tokyo a second time, which I am very grateful for.)

Chronicles of Magic: Spring equinox

Bank of the Sun
Once an experiment with zero interest was executed on the small island Guernsey situated in the English canal.
It was in the times of the post Napoleon war and all inhabitants on the island were bankrupt, so they had nothing to lose. Money issued by the local bank was given out as wages to support a variety of society nourishing activities. The remaining bills were then destroyed when a project was finished, and new bills were issued to provide for the next project. The method got the economy on the small island to miraculously flowering during 15 years. This method still exists on Guernsey, but only available for the public sector.

To finance the American Civil War Abraham Lincoln used the right of the congress to issue money. 1862 – 64 a total of 450 million interest-free ‘greenbacks’ was set in motion among the public. The time preceding the election 1884 Lincoln promised to take the battle with the private owned banks once the war was over. A couple of months later Lord Goschen, a representative for the world of finance, wrote in an article in the London Times: If this policy initiated by Mr. Lincoln is going to prevail, it makes it possible for the government to achieve the necessary money supply without any further costs. It will have enough money to pay its debt and remain debt-free. It will have enough money to trade. It will be more prosperous than any other government before in history. If we don’t take this government down, it will take us down.’
That same year Lincoln was murdered and a large-scale restricted credit followed, organized by the private bankers.

In this very time and age it is possible for us humans to start to dream up a future where money once again is working for the people, not against them. Imagine if we all together created a world where the bank was like the sun, the Bank of the Sun. Just like the sun unconditionally gives it’s warmth to everything on planet earth that can grow and blossom, without wanting anything back but the pleasure of admiring everything that’s growing and blossoming in beauty and harmony, the Sun bank would unconditionally give out it’s money to all people living and existing in the world, so all the people could pursue their dreams of creating beauty and harmony for everyone. If we as the human family would adapt to such a monetary system, we would have a flowering world in just 10 years, that’s sacred law.
Obviously, all people that benefit from the current system are going to try to keep their privileged position with all the force available to them. Why should they let go of their material advantages without resistance? The people currently in power will react with negativism and hold the idea of an interest-free economy up to ridicule, they will talk about utopian idealism and zero realism. But after a while they will be forced to adapt to this new trance-modern global vision. A major people rights movement has been created that can’t be stopped…….

Chronicles of Magic: At gunpoint: your money or your life?

The Dictator’s speech from the film the Dictator by Charlie Chaplin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IvPIWzQcUY&feature=player_embedded

In the name of the Mother
 A couple of years ago one of my best shaman friends asked me to read something on her upcoming wedding ceremony that was to be held in one of the oldest churches situated on Värmdö, an island in the archipelago a couple of miles east of Stockholm. The big day arrived and the ceremony was in full swing. It was time for my recital. In full regalia, long sweeping skirt, crow-feathers, silver-pentagram necklace, I stepped up to the altar where the bride and groom stood, and took my place next to the female priest. –’In the name of the Mother, the Father and the holy Child,’ I said with a voice that seemed to originate deep down in my belly, a sonorous vibrating alt voice that gave a strong echo not just inside the church, the echo seemed to multiply far out into the surrounding landscape and even further into the great eternity.

In that precise moment something odd happened. A previously unknown door opened up inside my mind, and I could see myself in a previous life as being a fanatic nun in the 1200-century, one of those who was active in reinforcing Christianity, and in converting the Pagans. Simultaneously I got a profound understanding that for me in that lifetime Christianity had really seemed like the answer to all the problems of humankind. I had been totally convinced that if only every human being were Christians we would have peace on Earth. Then as now, the same life theme, but in two opposite corners of the ring: to try to cure evil and to create world-peace. A disturbing question: was I as blind to the whole picture in this life as I had obviously been as the nun back then?

Then I could see how I was born into this life, and that my mother, who was a dedicated catholic, had been tormented by worry and anxiety because of the dogma that a woman’s place was in the household, and that she was to not speak in the congregation. My mother had had lots to say, and could have become a skill-full lawyer working with human rights, for instance, if she’d allowed herself to be independent. Instead she became an unhappy and frustrated housewife, who’s only mission was to tend for the children, and be beautiful and obedient to her husband, no matter how badly he treated her.
The dogma that the woman’s place was at her mans feet fitted my mother so badly that it must have been at least one of the reasons why she made the choice to leave this earthly existence by ending her own life shortly after her 51th birthday.

All of this took only about 1/10th of a second to see, believe it or not. None of the attending crowd seemed to have noticed my little time-warp, they hadn’t even had the time to blink their eyes actually, so I managed to read through the rest of my script without further drama, surfing on the remnant vibrations from my magic alt voice. Then the couple was pronounced husband and wife, and strawberries and champagne was served. Mmmmmmm…..

Chronicles of Magic: Candlemas/Imbolc

Evil Reptiles has taken the human race as hostages…..
One night last year I dreamt I was an E-T like figure. I had the physical body, with the big hanging stomach, the long neck, and the long arms and fingers. When the dream started I was standing among the clouds just on my way to enter a kind of video-store. Inside there were thousands of films/games to choose from. Visitors could read the different plots on the back of the dvd’s, just like in a human video-store. One of the movies I/E-T found interesting had the following plot: ‘ Evil reptiles has taken the human family living on planet Earth as hostages, using them as slaves for their evil purposes. But there are a few human rebels that are trying to free the human family from these evil perpetrators …..
Then something really odd happened. The E-T like figure that was me made a quick decision to experience that particular movie, to take on playing the role of one of the rebels. Without hesitation he/she/me took the record out of its case, lifted its big hanging stomach, and there under was a notch, where the figure/I put the record, as if the belly was a dvd-player. Slurp, said my belly, and I woke up with the idea that maybe my life is but an incredible advanced videogame played in this very now by an alien out there somewhere in space……
 (The dream might have been influenced by my visit last week to Gothenburg where I attended a lecture held by David Icke, who speaks a lot about both reptiles and aliens.)

Chronicles of Magic: Ancient Aliens

Rose Croak Crow
Snake-woman workshop with Donna Talking Leaves, autumn -90, day 3.
The evenings practice involved a swim to a star. Donna was busy giving us the instructions. Here it goes: We participants were once more to be sent out into the dark forest, on our own, to find a private spot. When we had found a proper place we felt had power we liked, we were to visualize that we were standing inside a big sack, reaching 30 inches above our heads. Then we were supposed to grab the upper edges of the sack and carefully pull it down all the way to the ground, and step out from it. After stepping out from the cocoon, which the sac symbolized, we were to look up to the starry night sky and find one star that were shining extra bright or in some other way drew our attention. Then the swim would begin. With powerful breaststrokes we were to swim up towards our special star, where eventually our energy would blend with the energy of the star. We could even experience a feeling of being sucked in by the star. Then stay for a while in the feeling of being immersed with the star, which would create an extraordinary healing effect.
We were also to grab the opportunity to ask for our personal star-name.
–’Every human has got a magic name,’ said Donna. ’If one is serious in ones ambition to work with magic it’s important to have a special name to use for magic purposes.’
The trick was to listen within. Any name that popped up in our head, the name of a flower, a rock, a goddess, a butterfly, any animal, a cloud, yes, there were no limits, could be our magic name.
When we found a name we liked we should let it roll around in our heads, let the vibrations from it create healing changes deep within, thus providing power and energy.
With that done, there was more to do. When we had properly arrived back in our physical bodies, it was time to write down the name we had received on a piece of paper cut like a star, about as big as a hand, then put the star-paper under our pillow, to further work with our magic identity in our dream. Donna filled in the last piece of information: - ’And just before going to sleep, take the star-paper, hold it in your hand, and ask out loud your magical self to guide you in the dream world. Then put it back under the pillow, and sacred dream come to me…..
Time to do! See you again in the morning, for breakfast.’

The evening was chilly and the velvety blue night sky was absolutely packed with stars. Alright, here we go, out into the dark and damp forest to find a good spot. I did my best to follow the instructions, stepped out of my cocoon, and started swimming towards a star that looked friendly. But I was really tired and just couldn’t find the energy necessary to perform the ceremony properly. A tiny dormouse showed up and curiously checked me out for a little while before it vanished back into the bushes, and that was about all that happened, really. So I had no name to write on my paper star.  It was with a slight feeling of disappointment that I crawled into my tent, but soon my tiredness took its toll and I fell asleep on top of my sleeping-bag with my clothes still on, and the paper-star still in my pocket.

That night I dreamt I was living in a big forest in a small hut, built with three doors, because that’s how my best friend, a tiny brown dormouse wanted it. Filled with friendliness, contentment and love the little dormouse was running around in the hut, playing with the three doorways, in and out and in again. Once in a while it sniffed on some magic power-objects lying in the middle of the room, obviously belonging to me. Among the objects I could distinguish a wooden staff, carved as a snake. A crow was sitting in the tree outside the hut, loudly croaking……

Chronicles of Magic: Reincarnation

Listen to David Icke: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjkuLiyPIhQ

And the wind whispered: Ruussskiiiii……
 In November -08 my phone rang, it was a journalist from the sport-section of an evening paper.
He wanted me to predict which country would win the upcoming World Championship in ice hockey.
I had just finished reading Angels and Demons by Dan Brown, and in the book the female leading lady explains that the easiest and most effective method to get the answer to any question is to voice the question straight out into the universe, and the answer will arrive shortly.  Then she backs up her statement by doing just that, she asks the question out loud, and sure enough, they get the answer they need, to keep going.
This request to predict the outcome of a sport-event gave me the opportunity to try this method. Instead of using my tarot cards, as I usually would have done, I went outdoors and sat down next to a tree. Firstly I did the traditional rooting exercise, that is, I visualized roots deep down into Mother Earth, then meditated I was one with the tree.
With this done, I gave voice to my question: ‘Who will win the World games in ice hockey?’ Swish! A subtle wind played with my hair. ‘Well’, I said, a bit more commanding, ‘who will win?’ And clearly as one can hear one’s own heartbeat, I heard the wind rustling about in the dry leaves hanging over my head, whispering: ’Ruuussskiii…..’
‘Aha’, I thought, ’easy enough. Russia will win.’
The next time the journalist called, I told him my prediction that Russia would win.
December came and went, and January began, and so it was time for the games to start. Never before have I bothered very much about ice hockey, and certainly hadn’t had any interest in a world championship, but this time I did follow the tournament. With great suspense I might add. A nerve-racking drama was going on inside of me. It felt like my honor was at stake, my entire future as a seer depended on the outcome. I couldn’t understand why I let myself go through such an intense nerve press. Why had I agreed to predict something so stupid? From where came my will to be publicly executed, in case I was wrong?
Meanwhile I was going through all this gruesome agony, Russia did well. They were still there for the quarterfinals, and then the semifinals, and finally, the final. After the first half of the game, Germany had taken the lead, with 3 goals to 0. My nerves had been stretched to their limits and I simply couldn’t take it anymore. I had to turn the TV off.

With this story goes, that I had told my prediction exclusive to Henrihexa.
She was the only one besides the journalist that knew I had predicted that Russia would win, because of one superstitious reason: I thought the energy in my prediction would thin out if I spoke about it carelessly!? (Obviously I didn’t consider all the readers of the sport-section.)  
Anyhow, this dark February evening my friend was sitting at her place, watching the finals.
So I called her and said that I couldn’t take it another second, that I’d turned my TV off. ‘It’s all hopeless anyways, since Russia has to make at least 4 goals to win.’ ‘I’ll keep on watching’, she said, ‘I call you later’.
About an hour later my phone rang. ‘Congratulations’, Henrihexa shouted. ’Russia won! Put on your TV, they are just about to play the Russian National Anthem.’
The following moments the Russian National Anthem seemed to be the most beautiful song I ever heard. I could taste the very taste of victory, sweet victory, the feeling even made my mouth water.
But I tell you this much: I’ll never agree to predict sports again!

Chronicles of Magic: Soothsayers and predictions

Welcome Dear Sun Ceremony
I got my own key to the tower on Blue-hill on December 22 1998, so three days later, in the morning the 25’th of December, I packed my drum and a thermos filled with steaming hot coffee, and took a brisk walk to the tower to do a ceremony to welcome the sun back to the northern hemisphere, my first ceremony in the tower ever! It was obviously not decorated at all, and dirty, no one had been in the tower for a long time, 10 years at least. And since it was in the middle of the winter and the tower has no heating facilities, it was dreadfully cold and raw.
I laid out a blanket and some cushions on the dusty floor, sat down, and started to drum. After some time of drumming, when the rhythmical beating on the drum had calmed down my pulse and heart rhythm, I was transferred, if not in time, so in space. Suddenly I found myself on the border that separates the north and south Korea, and don’t ask me how I knew that it was there I was. We were outdoors on a large field. Stars in the thousands shone on the night sky. Bonfires and torches were lit everywhere, and many women in the most fantastic outfits were gathered. By the same mysterious reason that I knew I was in Korea, I knew that all these women were shamans and witches. A huge gong, two maybe three meters in diameter made of some gold-shimmering metal hanging on a scaffold made of two gigantic lions sculptured in the same metal as the gong, maybe bronze, stood on a platform specially built for it. Two women were standing on each side of the gong with matching drumsticks. They were dressed in ceremonial ancient costumes made out of bronze and leather that just about covered the essentials on their muscular bodies. On a given signal, just as the sun was about to show itself on the horizon, one of the women hit the gong with her full force, the powerful yet muffled sound seemed to spread wide across land and ocean.  Then the other woman hit the gong with all her force and her strike seemed to echo the first, and sort of pushed the sound to spread even wider out into the universe. The two women continued taking turns to strike the gong, and all of us present witnessed the sun rise this sacred Christmas morning. I felt greatly honored to not only experience but also celebrate this ancient ceremony together with all these powerful medicine-women.
Filled with a feeling of awe and wonder that this old tradition was so well preserved in a country so exotic to me as Korea, and the fact that there were so many strong witches there, I returned to my ordinary reality, at the moment the old water tower in the Hagalunds-park, Solna, Sweden. I drank the still hot coffee and ate the saffron bun I had brought, and gave thanks to all the powers assisting me on my dream ceremony journey. I also gave thanks for the beautiful visual experience I had had, and then I strolled home through a glistering snowy landscape. The winter sun followed me all the way, kissing my cheeks abundantly with its pale yellow beams.

Chronicles of Magic: Wintersolstice/Yule

July 1993 Five years later
Continuing Herstoria 20
During the five years passing since my first workshop in shamanism with the DeerTribe 1988, I attended at least two workshops per year, and gathered passionately all the knowledge they had to offer. I made advancements with discipline and goal-orientation, and graduated through the strict initiation-program with speed and a certain sense of haste. All teachings were arranged around the wheel and the TwentyCount, north, east, south and west, northeast, northwest, southeast, southwest. And the center of course, that’s the aim, to step into ones center. The teachers say that the intent is to learn how to dance around the sacred circle, to be able to move into each and every one of the directions/powers, and above all, to find ones way to, and to stay in touch with, one’s own inner center.
So that’s exactly what I did. I danced around the wheel, and did research on my own conditioning, to be able to free myself of emotional and mental blockings, fears, and all kinds of inhibiting hang-ups. What one can’t change in the outer reality, one can change in one’s inner reality, where every-one of us have all the power to make major life-changing healing decisions.
With all my heart I dived into the ceremonies accompanying the teachings. I called in my friends and helpers from the three other kingdoms on mother earth, the mineral, the plant and the animal kingdom. I made power amulets and other empowering ceremonies like my life depended upon it. For a while I had as many power-animals as Noah, I could start my own animal farm any moment, in the spirit realm, that is.
Well, to make a long story short. The following takes place after I had had five years of intense apprenticeship with the Deer-Clan, and especially with great respect for my teacher Batty ThunderBear.
One week in July 1993 I found myself participating in yet another work-shop that was an exact replica of a workshop I’d already attended the year before. There is really no explanation, but I became bored to my bones, and got stuck in a room in my psyche that was really winy, complaining, and full of self-pity. Unable to break free of this negativity filling my head, I took the whole thing to climax when I told the woman who was arranging the workshop that I didn’t want to stay another minute, and I even wanted my money back. Batty, who (naturally) overheard the conversation, lost his temper completely, he was really pissed off with me this time.
– ‘If you leave now, you don’t have to bother ever coming back’, he said. ‘Leave now, and I never want to see you again!’
His aggressive outburst chocked me deeply.
– ‘But, but,’ I stammered, ’but I learnt the TwentyCount’!
Batty ThunderBear looked at me with all the despite in the universe mirrored in his eyes, and snipped me of with an ice-cold finality: ‘I wish you hadn’t.’ His words felt like razor-sharp knifes cutting through my psyche, splitting it in two halves.
At that very moment I had a sensational experience of being in two worlds at the same time.  In one of the worlds the ground under my feet seemed to open up, and I was slipping away with no hope to ever return, vanishing into a dark abyss, lonely, isolated, unloved, refused. All I’d been fighting for all this time was over!
And simultaneously, in the other world, there was a gigantic and wonderful feeling of release, of liberation. I was freed!
Somehow it was crystal clear that Batty did me the ultimate favor when he threw me out of the Tribe. It could only mean that now was the time to leave school and go out into the real world, to work with the knowledge they’d passed on to me. 
I felt like a baby bird that gets thrown out of the nest to try its new wings, to learn how to provide for itself.
So half of me experienced a jubilant feeling of blessing and grace, and the other half was completely emerged in a traumatizing and painful separation-experience. The only thing left for me to do was to accept the fact that Batty had just ‘ broken up’ with me, that is, he had ended our time together, and then retire to my room, pack my stuff, and go home. Or, more correctly, I didn’t exactly go home, I had yet another couple of days off my real life duties, so I went to a very nice and sacred place in nature to get the two worlds together, find my inner center, where-after I was ready to go back to my every day life.

(In the summer of 1997 Batty and I made peace, and since then I have been able to refill my thirst for shaman ways and practices through participation in yet another couple of workshops over the years. Batty has visited the Tower on Blue-hill twice, where I work with the basic teachings and the Twenty-Count according to Deer-Tribe.)

Chronicles of Magic: the TwentyCount

July 1988
’All you have to do is to learn to count to twenty’, Batty said with a mischievous twinkle in his eye.
We seventeen people participating a Beginners Workshop in Shamanism located in a red schoolhouse in the middle of the deep forest of Småland, shivered uncomfortably, and didn’t know what to make out of such a statement. At first, it sounded very easy, like, this is something I already master, and at the same time, the way Batty said it had an extremely complicated sound to it. What did he actually mean? As if he could sense our confusion he said:
– ’ Let me demonstrate!, ‘
and then he started to make a stone-circle around the place we were sitting, on the lawn of the back of the house, with twenty stones. As he picked the stones up, one at the time, he told us its number and symbolic meaning, and then he put them in their physical spot. Slowly a circle of stones was created around us. One of the participants had her two dogs with her, one white and one black sheep-dog. When Batty lifted up the stone to be put in the North direction, with the number four attached to it, he called in the powers/energies from the north, amongst which: all animals on earth, the creepy crawlers, the ones running on four legs, the swimmers, the flyers, the insects, and all the mythological animals as well.
When he said the ones running on four legs, he looked at the dogs lying with their owner. Then, when Batty said that the color was white, the white dog rose from her place, took a walk to the north stone that Batty had just put there, and laid down. The dog stayed close to the north stone for the rest of the demonstration.
All in all a very successful introduction of the Twenty-Count, even if no one of us first timers felt any more wise, rather more confused, in our conscious part of our consciousness, that is.
But on a deep unconscious level the mere foundation of ourselves was changed forever……

Chronicles of Magic: Introduction of the Twenty Count

Everything you give out, will come back to you!
A couple of years ago, when I was shopping at a supermarket, a little devil flew into my head, and gave me the idea to steal mascara, even though I was completely aware that it probably would have bad consequences. Somehow, in a strange way, I did it as a scientific experiment, what would happen? What would the universe do with my shoplifting experiment?
A week later we arranged a big party in the tower, and collected money from the guests that would pay the upcoming rent for the tower. And what happened? Early in the morning someone totally scrupulous stole all the cash! Well, what can you say? Deep down inside of me, I knew that it proved in a very unpleasant way the thesis that all you give out, you’re bound to get back, sooner or later, and the more training you have as a shaman, the sooner it will come back to you. Did I regret my shoplifting? Oh, yes, I did. Not only did I regret it, I was completely devastated, and was seriously considering too quit the whole tower operation. But instead, I decided to be even more meticulous with my actions from there on, to be very mindful with whatever I actually gave out. So the whole experience was in the end educational, even if it was in a tough and uncomfortable way.

Chronicles of Magic: The Boomerang Effect

Grandmother Greta
My grandmother Greta never made it a secret that she could see ghosts. The last couple of years she was alive, she said that she never felt alone. Her dead husband was a frequent guest, as was her beloved mother and father.
One of my favorite stories of all the stories she told me was this one:
young Greta and her aunt Momma was very close. One night Momma had called and asked her niece to come over for some grooming, which they occasionally spent time together doing. My grandmother swiftly went over to Mommas house and helped Momma to shave her moustache, cut and file her nails, comb and braid her hair, and finally putting on her most stylish nightgown. Next morning the housemaid found Momma dead in her bed. She had peacefully left this earth in her sleep. My grandmother said she’d probably known that that would happen, that she would die that night, and therefore had seen to look as clean, pretty and neat as possible.
That’s the way I myself would like to pass over, and still to this day it’s my wish.
As a dead person my grandmother is still a fantastic friend. She is a happy and friendly ghost to be in contact with, playful and always very calm and loving.
Just before she died, I asked her what she regretted the most with her life. She answered without hesitation that it was that she had worried so much. All her worries had turned out to be a total waste of time and energy. She had worried about becoming blind, and when she did become blind it wasn’t as dreadful as she had imagined. She saw other things instead, and above all she could see into the world of spirits. She had worried that she couldn’t remain in her home to the very end, but she had been able to stay in her flat until just two month before she passed away, 84 years old. And a lot of other stuff she’d been worrying about, all totally unnecessary, as it had turned out.
The other year, when I was desperately worried over money that never seemed to come in at the same rate as it was going out, my grandmother paid me a visit in a dream and told me that I didn’t have to worry so much, it would be taken care of!
That dream was, and still is, very helpful, so I will grasp this opportunity to say an official:
‘Thank you grandmother Greta, for all the help and healing you continuously provide, even from the other side!
Thank you!

Chronicles of Magic: Halloween/Samhain

The Witches want Blood!
For many years my seer colleague Madame Oili and I have been a yearly feature on the Swedish school of advanced management for business leaders, AMP. The school included five weeks of internship spread across the year.
The participants, groups of 20 – 30 chief executives were interned one week at the time at a small but fashionable castle about one hour drive from Stockholm. We were normally brought in during the third or fourth week, when the participants had had the time to get to know each other more in depths, and had gained a feeling of safety in the group.
Oili and I contributed with an original practical excursion of a subject called Mind Expansion.
During the evening all participants had the opportunity to have a 30 minutes session with either Oili or me.
Oili sat in one end of the room and had red clothing and a red tablecloth, and I sat in the other end of the room and wore blue clothing and a blue tablecloth. And all evening we worked like crazy, handed out prophecy after prophecy.
Even though the activity was voluntary, everybody wanted a sitting with either of us.
Around midnight our work was done and then we were treated with a posh three course dinner and with the food a bottle of exclusive red wine. Through the years we also got to know the staff, and every time we arrived to the castle the staff gave us a royal treatment.

I think it was our ninth or tenth year of participation that Oili and I arrived early afternoon in Oilis car at the castle.
We practically stormed into the reception area, loaded with adrenalin for our upcoming marathon.  The staff were standing in the reception, three of them familiar to us, but the fourth was not, she must be a new recruit.
Oili, full of energy as she was, wanted to play around a little, so she flipped her arms out and exclaimed on the top of her lungs:
-‘ the witches want blood!’
Everyone started laughing, knowing that Oili meant red wine, except for the new one, who stiffened up and turned all pale.
Her face showed all kinds of emotions and thoughts running through her.
Oili became instantly aware of the woman’s precarious reaction,  gave her a friendly push in the chest and said: ‘I was just kidding!’ The woman breathed out hard, and started to laugh.
–‘What were you thinking so intensely?’ I couldn't help but ask. ‘Well,’ she said, and then she told us, that she and her husband actually bread dogs for hunting purposes, and so they actually kept blood from different animals, deer, hare, fox, badger, in a big freezer in the cellar. The blood was of course used to train the dogs. Therefore she had seen herself rushing home to get some blood for the witches, meanwhile she had been thinking of which of the blood-types we would prefer……
Talk about being service-minded!

Chronicles of Magic: Moon Blood

The Stronger the Resistance…
From a snake-woman workshop with Donna Talking Leaves autumn -89:
‘Donna said that the stronger the resistance you feel before you perform a ceremony, the stronger the magic will be.
And the stronger the medicine-woman/seer is, the stronger the resistance will be. As an example, Donna told us about one of the mightiest sorceresses she’d met, who was completely paralyzed, confined to a wheelchair, that’s how strong her resistance was.’
It’s sacred law’, Donna continued, ‘that the good always conquers the bad, with the addition that the good have to be mobilized. That is, the sorceress has to invoke her helpers to come to her aid, and when she does that, all the help she needs will be provided, in that particular situation.’

These words have been echoing in my head many times since then.
Numerous times when I have been heading out for some ceremony or another, I’ve felt this tremendous inner resistance. Inside my head I’ve been hearing all the mental ideas on why I can skip going out, and stay home instead, where it’s warm and comfortable. And each time of these times the thought: ’the stronger the resistance, the stronger the magic’, has popped up in my head, and from that I’ve been able to pull myself together, pack the picnic-basket with coffee and sandwich, and drag myself down to the car. Meanwhile all of this dragging there has been a part of me deep inside that has been convinced that the ceremony ahead of me would have to be super magic because of the resistance.
And indeed, so it has been each time, worth the extra effort. Always so healing to come out into the woods lit up by the moon and the stars, lighting a fire, squatting down so close to the earth. That’s what I call medicine for the soul, right there!

This inner resistance also comes into play when I’m writing. It’s been so severe that even when I was to write the very last chapter of my book I had to drag myself to my computer, astounded at how strongly I still felt the same gigantic resistance, even though surely I had to know by now that no matter how great the resistance, I would still write. Yes, as a matter of fact, even on this very day, I’ve been struggling to write this humble text. Gosh, how strong I must be then, if it’s true that strength is calculated upon how strong the resistance is!

Donna Talking Leaves brought the afternoon to a close by asking the following question: ‘could you imagine waking up tomorrow morning and it was peace in the world? By the time when you wholeheartedly can go to bed with that feeling, you’re going to wake up the next morning, and it’s going to be world peace. Does it sound simple? Believe me, it’s not. We so called civilized people have so much negative bullshit programmed into our thought-processes, that it will take us a long time to clean it all out. It’s an environmental destruction/disaster going on inside our heads. The sooner each and every individual takes his/her responsibility to clean up his/her own act, the sooner we’ll reach the goal, which is now and forever, world peace.  

Star Goddess Astarte speaks:
I – am the beauty of the green Earth, the white moon amongst the Stars, the mystery of the Water.
I – call your soul to arise and come to me. I – am the soul of Nature who gives life to the Universe.
From me all things are Born, to me they must Return.
Adore me from a heart filled with Joy. Everything you do that comes from Love and Pleasure are Rituals to my Honor.
Allow such virtues as Beauty and Power, Strength and Compassion, Respect and Reverence, Laughter and Humbleness,
to reside within you. And you who wants to get to know me should know, that your searching and your longing is futile,
unless you understand this: if you don’t find what you are looking for inside yourself, you will never find it outside yourself.
For behold: I have been with you in All Times, and I will be with you when you reach the Goal of your Dreams.

Chronicles of Magic: Power of Ecstasy

SnakeWoman Initiation
A night some time ago I dreamt I was in a snake women temple, and two of my closest women friends were there with me. Somehow I knew that I was preparing to go through an initiation ritual which consisted of being bitten by a snake and live through the poisoning, to come out the other end , as a snake priestess, immune to the poison from the temple-snakes. One of my friends had the assignment to guide me through the poisoning, and keep me alive by serving me different herb cocktails based on ancient recipes that had the knowledge to keep me safe at different critical moments in my ongoing journey between life and death.
My other friend gave her silent and discreet support.
It was very obvious that I was far from the first person embarking on this deadly journey, and not the last either. The precision of the very long and enduring ritual, and how skilled my friend was at knowing every little single detail of the complicated procedure, impressed me greatly. The snake poison was despite everything else also very hallucinogenic. In my dream I managed to take myself through high fever, cramps, shivers, I travelled to thousands of worlds, including the kingdom of death, and both my friends were there with me every step of the way.  And before I left the dream I had the time to recover, and to experience how my newly achieved immunity to the snake poison gave me a new and intimate relationship with the snakes living in the temple.
I woke up with a deep and serene feeling of partaking of ancient and sublime mysteries.
Gaia, Gaia! Fill me, devour me!
Gaia, Gaia! I am filled, I am devoured!
I am One with You Now, Gaia!

Chronicles of Magic: Autumnal Equinox

The Most Precious Gift
What I'm now about to tell you happened back in the days during my yearlong stay in London when I was about 26 – 27 years old. One day I decided to visit a seer to get some answers to questions I had regarding my future. She laid out the tarot-cards, and for a while we talked lightly about this and that. Suddenly she looked into my eyes with a firm gaze and asked without warning:
- ‘When you have sex, do you orgasm?’ Bam, it felt like a hand-grenade exploded in my head, all blood rose to my cheeks and I got burning hot.– ‘Ehh, ehh, no,’ I stuttered.
And it was true. My English boyfriend J. and I had lots of sex, but none of our lovemaking led me to having an orgasm. The truth was that I was too afraid to open up to real intimacy. I was too shut down.
– ‘You should,’ she said. ‘It’s the most precious gift you can give your boyfriend, and yourself, for that matter. It’s the most sacred gift!’
That same night, when J. and I had sex, I did everything in my power to make myself orgasm, (to J.s pleasant surprise, I might add,) and when I finally climbed the fence surrounding my pleasure it was no less than complete ecstasy we both fell into together. As we were locked in a tight, sweaty embrace swimming in an ocean of love, we both cried like children from the great happiness we felt. In between the snuffling J. confided in me that he had never before experienced that any of his girlfriend had gotten an orgasm, and that now, he felt so grateful. So right on the spot the seer lady had hit.
Those words of hers actually made such a great impact in my life that they a couple of years later got me  into the North-American Natives shaman-school, who also consider the female orgasm to be the most healing energy available to mankind.

Chronicles of Magic: the Sacred Orgasm

Time is playing a game with you, Mother
A dark and cold winter morning my four year old son Ulf and I were standing in the hallway. I was desperately trying to get the little one to understand that we had to hurry up, because otherwise he would be late for his kindergarten. And we wouldn’t want that because then the people working there would be angry with us. But I didn’t tell Ulf about them being angry. I hope. We’d already received several reprimands for coming late, so therefore I felt extra stress. And the desperation stemmed from Ulf’s total lack of will to cooperate by refusing to put on his winter overall and boots. The little one didn’t feel like leaving home at all.
I fell down on my knees and showed him my wristwatch.
– ‘Here time is now’, I explained, ‘and when this have moved to here,’ I pointed at the number nine, ’we must be at the kindergarten.’ Two big clear child eyes studied the watch with great interest.
– ‘Can you please put on your overall now?’ I pleaded.
It was then the four year old child said, with eyes glistening from wonder and wisdom:
- ‘Time is playing a game with you, Mama!’

Chronicles of Magic: The Moon Calendar

All the very rich people
In the name of the sacred law that the earth mother has got resources enough to feed all her children, as long as no one takes more than he or she needs, and always gives something back.
Once upon a time when I was sitting on a bus on my way to Old Town in Stockholm, I slipped into a state of trance. The radio in the bus was on and suddenly it sort of crackled, first once, and then again. A man cleared his voice, then he spoke and this is what he said: -’ we interrupt the normal show here, for an important announcement.‘
The crackling sound made me sit strait in my seat to be able to hear clearly. It sounded both very important and really strange.
I got an odd feeling that I was listening an old recording from the time of the Second World War.
The man continued:
-‘I am very proud to announce that it’s now going to be World Peace. All the very rich people have had secret meetings for several years, and they have decided the time has come to share their wealth with every human being living on planet Earth. They have already started to build schools and food stores that will supply free food on different places around the globe, and lot’s more is going to be done now and in the future. This way there will be no crime, violence or greed amongst the humans anymore. From now on all children and their families will have all they need to be healthy and happy. Thanks for listening.’

Then came the crackling sound again, a couple of times, and so the ordinary radio-voice was back, and it was 104, 3 all over again…......I shook my shoulders and hands a couple of times. What a fantastic experience!
Imagine if it was true, what the man had said! World Peace! The very rich people deciding to share their wealth with everybody! The most beautiful thought!
About then it was time for me to get off the bus, I’d reached my destination.
Somehow it felt like the world had changed around me. All the people I met that day seemed so friendly and happy. The entire day sensed like Christmas.

By nightfall I came to the conclusion that in spite of the good feeling I’d had all day, the magical announcement hadn’t actually been for real. But I’m going to keep this announcement in my heart, as a future possibility. And somehow I’m certain it still happened even if the happening took place in a parallel dimension. And I look forward to that day when all the very rich people get the urge to share their wealth with everybody. Imagine what a beautiful world we all will live in when that happens…….

Cronicles of Magic: Vision Quest

Sun Bear’s Vision
I saw in a vision long ago, that for the sake of the Earth Mother and all of our evolution as human beings, we must return to a better and truer understanding of the earth and of all of our relations with her.

I saw that we would have to put aside the petty fears that divides us and learn to live as true brothers and sisters in a loving way. We would have to find others who shared our heart’s direction, whatever their racial background, and join with them into groups that always remembered that our purpose was to be instruments of the Great Spirit’s will an helpers to our Earth Mother.
Such groups will greatly affect the cleansing of the earth that is now occurring.

Ours lives have to blend with all the things around and within us.
We have come to a point where we truly feel the oneness, the unity, that connects us to all of  the universe,
and that we have to reflect that unity in all aspects of our lives.

We all share the same Earth Mother, regardless of race or country of origin, so let us learn the ways of love, peace and harmony, and seek the good paths in live.

It is good to have spoken. Sun Bear

Cronicles of Magic: Clans and Totems

The Magic Carpet
The Cinderella Syndrome is when people are expecting a prince/princess to come and save them with a magic kiss, and then live happily for ever after. It is like a deadly virus, according to the grandmothers of the Seneca Tribe, because it keeps people passive, waiting for someone else to make them whole, to ‘save’ them. The Grandmother’s say, that the only person that can actually save you is you. The wholeness we expect to find outside ourselves can only be found inside ourselves.

When I was a young girl, I didn’t know any of this. I was as corrupted as anyone else with the Cinderella Syndrome and dreamed of a fairytale marriage, and a love that would stay forever. My honeymoon would be celebrated on the magical Island of Bali, of that I was certain. For several reasons I never got to marry, and hence I’d never got around to the honeymoon-journey either.
Years and years passed, and the more shaman knowledge I gained, the lesser the possibility to promise anyone but myself eternal partnership.
 
Then, one year, not so long ago, on a full moon-celebration in the Tower, an idea flew into my mind.
How about making a magic trip to Bali in our ‘dream-bodies’, or astral-selves, or, in plain language, in our fantasies?
Every one of the six attending women thought it was an excellent idea. Since all of us would share in the fantasy, it would be a kind of dream-charter trip. As means of transportation we decided to fly on the magic carpet.

So we lay down on the big beautifully woven carpet that covers the floor in the main ceremony-room in the Tower, made ourselves comfortable, relaxed our bodies, closed our eyes, and started the group visualization. Each of us visualized ourselves stepping out from our physical bodies, taking a seat on the carpet in our light-bodies, then taking off, flying away across the night sky, heading for Bali.
The journey itself took no longer than a couple of minutes, yet we had the time to enjoy ourselves travelling amongst the stars and the absolutely brilliant full moon shining so bright it could have been the sun itself. For a little while we flew so high we could see planet earth as a tiny shining blue - green pearl beneath us.

Suddenly we started to descend. Smoothly the big carpet flew in over a bay, where we could spot a beach covered with soft white sand which seemed like the perfect landing place.
As we were still in the air, hovering over the beach, I could see a skinny old man coming out on the beach from a forest of palm trees. And you know what happened? He saw us. He actually saw us. So he started to wave his arms, pointing at us, screaming, running around. When we landed on the beach, he came forward to greet us.
I told him we were seven witches from Sweden, coming in our dream-bodies for a short visit to his wonderful country. More people came, and now it seemed like all of them could see us as clearly as we could see them.
It was an absolutely amazing experience. We all had some good time, and talked and laughed for a while.

Then it was time for us seven sisters to go back. Once again we climbed on to the carpet and headed for home, waving goodbye to our new friends. Again we enjoyed the ride through the starry night, and landed safe back in the Tower.

The entire journey had taken us about fifteen minutes in human time.  And yet, at the same time, in dreamtime, it seemed like we had been away for a couple of hours. When we were properly settled back in our physical bodies we shared our experiences with each other.
And the absolutely most extraordinary about this whole outing was that all women shared the experience of having been seen by the locals. So the conclusion is that the people of Bali are for the most part very spiritual, and that they are able to see astral beings. How exciting!
Now I can’t wait to go to Bali in my physical body, to celebrate a very special marriage, the marriage between myself and my self, the joy in promising myself eternal support, comfort, and love.

Finally I’m going to grab the opportunity given right here, right now, and say to the powers of the Universe:
Hey Grandmothers and Grandfathers, listen to this little one, your daughters daughter, who have a wish.
Please grant me a physical trip to Bali within the next couple of years! Accompanied by my beautiful Sapphire-man!
Aloha! It is done!

Chronicles of Magic: Summer Solstice

A story from the Navajo people
An old Navajo-man travelled far to get to the food-store.
Since there wasn’t much traffic at the station, the owner liked to chat when he got a customer. So they were talking while the Navajo-man carried his merchandise to the counter and they were talking while the trader put the items in paper-bags.
When the Navajo-man paid, the owner were still packing stuff in bags, and talking, packing and talking.
Eventually the Navajo-man did the long journey home and when he unpacked the bags he found the money he’d given the owner in one of the bags.
Early next morning when the owner were about to open the store, he found that the Navajo-man was waiting outside.
When he handed over the money, the shop-owner said:
-’Thank you Chief. I really do appreciate this. But I’m curious. Why did you come back with the money?’
The Navajo pointed at his chest, and said:
- ’In here, I’ve got two little men. One is good, but the other is really bad. He is an evil little man.
The bad one said: he won’t miss them. The good one said: they don’t belong to you. They discussed all night.
Tonight I want to get some sleep.’

Chronicles of Magic: Dark energy - Light energy

Help, I think I’m going mad!
In the middle of the -80’ties I felt an obsessive need to paint and sculpt. Nothing else really mattered.
My roommate realized the intensity when I put out big white sheets of paper all over the floor in my studio.
When I started to dip my feet in buckets of white and black paint he promptly covered the nice wooden floor with a big tarpaulin. And so the floor was safe when I started to skate around….
Then I discovered that when I rubbed oil crayons against the paper the crayons became round and started to jump around by themselves, creating endless fascinating stories. I couldn’t stop painting until I was completely exhausted and the painting I’d been working on had become a total mess.

As time went by I started to worry about my obsession. It seemed like my home was crowding up
with uncontrolled spirit presence. The paintings had actually gotten life of their own, and it wasn’t positive energy, on the contrary, they became more and more spooky and sinister. I couldn´t help but wonder if it was me loosing it, or was it actually something supernatural going on?

At that same time, as a weird coincidence, I was a citizen contact for a man looked up in one of Sweden’s toughest mental hospitals, where I had been going on regular visits. And somehow it felt natural to ask for his advice on my next visit.
( I didn’t see the irony in asking a person for help who was diagnosed mad already. And the even bigger irony is that I actually got the help I was asking for!)

Next time I was sitting in the orange visiting room I stated my concern:
-‘Help me, Kim,’ I said. ‘I think I’m going mad!’
His reaction was unexpectedly passionate. With eyes on fire he exclaimed: 
-’ Don’t use the word mad as they use it!’
And with they he referred to the entire psychiatric industry.

And then he gave me Aleister Crowleys book Magick in Theory and Practice.

When I got home and sat down with the book in my lap, it fell open on page 71.
There I could read that if one was bothered by the presence of unwanted spirits one could make a circle of light, and banish the unwanted presence from the circle. And by the way, fire purifies all evil.

I instantly went from theory to practice.
Firstly I burned the creepiest of my paintings in the convenient fireplace that was already in my studio, since fire purifies. Then I put out lamps of all sorts in every corner of the room to create a circle of light, while banishing all energy from the circle that didn’t love me. And voila! Like magic, all negative energy was gone! Both I and my home were at peace.

And so, there and then, just like that, my destiny as an apprentice of magic was sealed!

Chronicles of magic: Controlled Folly

The Thunder God Thor
One day last summer a good friend, Jens, called, and told me he sold his motorbike and bought a boat instead. He invited me for a boat-ride in the archipelago. One week later I, my oldest son Oscar and his friend the workingman Klas, a rapper who puts love in front of violence, headed for a day’s outing on the sea.
It was a real nice summer day. Without any hassle we arrived to the meeting place a couple of miles north of Stockholm. The boat was a fine motorboat, with indoor place to sleep for two people and a kitchenette.
We took straight of right out into the infinity of the ocean.
After some appropriate time, and distance from land, Jens, who were in his right element, grown up as he was close to the sea and with boats, offered coffee and beer, and I had brought homemade sandwiches and sweet cakes. As we were sitting there munching, bobbing softly on the caressing waves, the sun beaming on the sky, we started to talk about our fears. Oscar was the cockiest and claimed to be scared of absolutely nothing in the entire universe. On second thought, he changed his mind. If anything, he feared the power of thunder. And if he could think of any god or goddess he’d believe in, it would be the thunder god, Thor.
–‘Thor,’ he suddenly shouted out on the top of his lungs, ‘Thor.’ We all laughed hard at his outburst, and then continued talking about this and that.
Maybe five minutes passed, maybe a couple of more minutes, before we saw the first strike of lightning flash the horizon.
And just like that, the previously blue sky was not blue any more. Big grey rainclouds had gathered without us noticing it.
We hardly had time to put on the rooftop before the storm came bursting, rain furiously showering down.
Thunder and lightning was striking all around the small boat as if it was the apocalypse. Could one feel any tinier, sitting in a nutshell of a boat completely exposed to the powers of  mother nature in the middle of a wild and hostile ocean?
It sure seemed like Thor had heard Oscar, and now had come to challenge us.
We were all quite taken by the seriousness of the situation, to say the least.

-‘If I’m about to die right now, I might as well die like a warrior’, I thought. So I straightened my back, and proposed to the guys that we’d do a ‘Phoebe’. (From the TV-show Friends. ) That meant holding each other’s hands, looking into each other’s eyes, and telling each other how much we appreciated each other’s presence in our lives, which in this particular now might sooner than we’d imagined come to the end.
‘And maybe it's not so bad to die from being struck by lightning, at least it would be a quick death, hopefully. Besides, the four of us would die together, and therefore we could be of assistance to each other as ghosts,' I said.
 –’ Ooh, mother, don’t talk like that’, Oscar said. ‘Instead, let’s not think about death at all.’
Since both Jens and Klas agreed with him, in the spirit of democracy, we changed the subject and started to talk about the future instead, about life and dreams. As sudden as the storm clouds had appeared, as sudden they disappeared. The sky was once again clear-blue, the sun was shining like nothing had happened, and the sea was as calm and friendly as ever.
Slowly we navigated homewards, dazed but happy.
This little outing was sure to be remembered forever by us who participated in it!
Thank you, Thor, for the experience of facing death as a warrior!

The six commandments of the Thunder-God extracted from the novel:
’The Son of the Thunder God’ by Arto Paasilinna:
1. Remember to fear the power of thunder.
2. Protect all life.
3. Be kind to the little ones.
4. Respect the elderly.
5. Be human.
6. Don’t give up!

Chronicles of Magic: Bipolarity

The GrandMothers and I
One night just before I was going to sleep, I spoke to the grandmothers and invited them into my dream.
-‘ Hey, sacred grandmothers, come and dance with me in my dream tonight. And I command myself to remember my dream when I wake up.’
- And you can believe it or not, but that night I dreamed that I was in an old community centre somewhere in the countryside. I could see a flowering garden through the big well cleaned windows surrounding the big light room I was standing in. The room was filled with elderly women in various ages, from something like 70 to around 113 impressive years of age. There were like 25 – 30 women all together. The camera hanging around my neck gave me the understanding that I was in this house as a professional photographer, and my job was to take a group picture of all the assembled ladies. This seemingly simple assignment proved to be easier said than done.

The ‘ ladies ‘ were acting like five year old children, swarming around, playing hide and seek, doing all kinds of pranks. Just as I was ready to take the picture someone made a funny face or just moved out from focus. After a while chasing around trying to get the playful but annoying women in line, my frustration was building up to a state of frenzy. Besides, I started to get steaming hot, and so, just like that, I gave up. –‘Okey, I give up,’ I said, suddenly feeling completely exhausted from trying to be the organizing grown up, and put the camera down on the table next to me.

What happened next was that one of the elderly women soundlessly sneaked up on me. Ancient and fragile like a tiny bird she carefully put her face close to mine, so close I could feel her amazingly soft cheek against my cheek, the impression was accompanied by a strong smell of powder that’s been kept in a box for ages. And then she whispered right into my ear: -’ The three sons of yours are mighty fine boys, you should know!’

And there I woke up with a glowing warm feeling in my heart and the scent of ancient powder hovering around in the air. Grandmothers voice echoed in my head: ’Three mighty fine boys….’
Thank you Grandmothers, for dancing with me in my dream!

Chronicles of Magic: Inner Silence

She who dances with the Devil Easter is the peak season for the witch in media. An exciting time, a bit naughty, someone might be flying her broomstick to participate in orgies with the devil….. A couple of years ago, when I was a relatively new tenant in the tower, a journalist from an evening paper telephoned me, a paper I had had bad experience with before, so I said no thanks to participate in an interview. The journalist asked me why. ‘Because you’re just going to go for the old mumbo jumbo and headline the interview with: She who dances with the devil’, I said. –‘Oh, no’, the journalist assured me. –‘We want to do a serious interview.’ Somehow he talked me into doing the interview in spite of my inner knowing that it was a bad thing to do. And guess what they used as headline? Of course: ‘Rosie dances with the devil’.

What can I say?
Bad things happen when one doesn’t listen to one’s inner knowing……

Chronicles of Magic: Maundy Thursday

British psychic challenge

One afternoon a fellow student from the shaman education and I sat together watching TV.
We were watching a show that was interesting for both of us.
People who claimed to be psychic were put in different challenges to prove their psychic abilities.
The current challenge was to find a kid hidden somewhere on a huge field. One of the women, rather corpulent, put her big tummy out in front, and started to run. She ran across the field and straight on to the hidden guy.

My friend exclaimed: -‘Look, she’s using her fibers, and she’s not a bit aware of it!’

And then we realized, that what we in the collective human consciousness call using our gut-feeling, is really that human using her /his fibers to read their surroundings, and nobody is aware of it…….

Chronicles of Magic: Avatar and their fibers in their tails

My first encounter with a ghost
A couple of years ago I visited Iceland with my three sons. We travelled all around the country visiting various sacred places, and spent each night in different hostels. And it was in one of those family-hotels I had my first encounter with a ghost.
This particular house was a dark-blue wooden house, and contained four floors. My room was in the third floor.
In the middle of the night a strange impulse woke me up, and when I opened my eyes I saw a man standing at the foot of my bed staring at me. As I stared back, he disappeared, just like that, poof. I went back to sleep. During breakfast I told my hosts about the nightly visit in my room . They wanted me to tell every tiny detail, so I described the man as I remembered him. When I said that he was in his seventies, weather-torn dressed in blue with a sailors hat, my hostess ran off and came back with a framed photo of the grandfather of the family. It was the same man I had seen that very night in my bedroom!
The family told me that it wasn’t the first time their grandfather had been seen as a ghost, so no one was really surprised that I’d seen him.

It took some years until I had my next encounter with a ghost. That meeting led me and my small family to move into a house bordering one of Stockholm’s largest grave-yards. As a strange ‘coincidence’, both my mother’s mother and my father’s mother, portrayed on the photos on the top of this page, are buried in this very cemetery.
And had I not moved to that house, I’d probably never found the Tower! That same cemetery is located in the southeast direction of the Tower, which according to the shaman-school is the direction of the ancestor spirits.
So I say, thank you, spirits, for guiding me to the Tower!

Chronicles of Magic: The Sacred Energybody

The Magic Broom
When one is to make one’s own magic broom, naturally one goes out into a forest to get a shaft. So did I.
But before I left home I meditated upon which tree that would be best suited. I remembered a forest I recently visited in Jylland, Denmark and the image of a beech popped up on the screen of my inner eye.
According to the Celtic tree alphabet beech is concerned with ancient knowledge as it is revealed through old objects, places and writings. The word beech and book have the same origin. Beech tablets were used by the Celts as writing surfaces because of its wood is easy to work with, giving a smooth and even surface.

Since beeches are not so common where I live, it took some effort to trace such a forest, but I managed. I sat down on a big rock covered with soft moss, told the trees surraounding me that my intent was to make a magic broom, and that I asked for a shaft. A rustling sound amongst the leaves on the ground on my right hand side caught my attention, and I saw a stick laying there on the ground, right size and everything. I gave a pinch of tobacco as thanks to the tree spirits.

As brushwood I decided to use branches from the laburnum. Since this happened in early spring and the branches of the laburnum were covered with last year’s seed coats, dry as tinder and dark brown. When I shook the branch it sounded like rattlesnakes. Perfect! I took a couple of branches and gave some tobacco as thanks to the bush/tree.

When I came back home I sprayed the shaft and the branches with gold paint and tied the shaft together with the branches using ribbons of silk and cotton in all the colors of the rainbow. Since the shaft symbolized as above, the male energy, and the brushwood symbolized so below, the female energy, bound together they automatically created the sacred marriage between male and female energy. What great magic! Abracadabra!

And now time to decorate the broom. A feather from a pheasant symbolized the ability to fly close to the ground. A bat made out of dark blue cloth to aid with navigation and GPS. A small piece of my grandmother’s jaguar fur collar from the 1920’s symbolized the cat. A crystal symbolized clarity. Rinse the broom in sunlight and moonlight for balance. And as a final touch, a few drops of my moon-blood, which is very secret and very hard to talk about, but a couple of drops is enough to activate the entire magic. The broom was ready to use!

That same evening I put the broom in my bedroom so it would be the last thing I lay my eyes on before I went to sleep.
The full moon shone brightly on the sky outside my bedroom window, its rays glistered and played in the branches of the golden laburnum.
In the night I dreamt that I was in an absolutely amazing hotel, decorated in the 1920’s style. Everywhere there were big amethysts, crystals, lapis lazuli, and other beautiful rocks used in a variety of decorative ways. The furniture was handmade in heavy oak and mahogany, silk and velvet cushions and draperies, cut glass chandeliers glittered and shone. Candles lit the place up and gave life to all the shadows lingering in every nook and corner.
As I went on an expedition of discovery through winding corridors and passages, I bumped into a woman approximately my age and size that without a doubt was the owner of the hotel. We stopped and looked each other deep into the eyes. In her eyes I saw the entire Milky Way.
– ‘I am dreaming, am I not?’ I said.
– ’Yes, you are’ she said and smiled at me.
– ‘Oh, can we fly on our brooms then?’ I asked eagerly.
– ‘Yes, sure we can.’ She laughed at my passionate expression, took my hand and dragged me towards the exit at the back of the hotel. Outside was a big parking area, and, to my surprise, my car was parked there. Without knowing how I knew, I opened the trunk, and there lay my new broomstick, neatly folded. While I unfolded it, she showed me the start and landing strip that the parking area included.
– ‘The rise is a bit steep’ she said, ‘but I’m certain it will be alright. I was here to practice flying with my youngest son the other day. He could manage, and so will you.’
I looked at the strip and saw that it ended abruptly with a high mountain piled all the way up to the fluffy white clouds. It was indeed steep. A chill went through my body. She jumped on her broom and examined me closely from head to toe.
– ‘Can you do it, you think?’
– ‘I’m dreaming’ I said, ‘therefore I can do it.’ Without further delay I jumped on my broom.
– ‘Hey ho!’ the two of us shouted in unison, and threw ourselves up in the air. Just as I got control of my broom and with my heart in my stomach swished past the mountaintop with only a couple of decimeters marginal, I woke up.
But I could still see my dream friend flying to and fro outside my bedroom window, waving her arm at me.
Oh, don’t go away, I want to fly more, more.' In distress I shouted to her on the top of my lungs with the hope she’d hear me better:
- ‘How do I find my way back to your place?’ I heard her answer as a distant echo:
- ’You won’t. I’ll find you!’
The image of her faded away, and she and the dream was gone……..

Chronicles of Magic: the Flowering Tree

Fire, earth, air, water
My current partner in love and I met a couple of years ago when he came to one of the parties I now and then arrange in the beautiful and magic tower with the witchy address Blue-hill. Since he enjoyed ‘the vibrations’ in the tower, he kept coming to participate in all kinds of my different arrangements there. And since all different kind of arrangements of mine in the tower always includes conversations concerning the sacred medicine-wheel, he got a lot of nagging about the foundations, fire, earth, air and water. Again and again in different contexts he saw me standing in the big eight-cornered tower room, waving my arms, pointing at the different symbols I placed in the east, the west, the north, the south, to illustrate the shaman way of experiencing reality. Over and over he heard me lecturing about emotions, thoughts, body and spirit, about the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, the mineral kingdom and the human kingdom.

When we eventually established our relation as lovers after a couple of months by moving in together, the teachings of the medicine wheel continued to echo around the bedroom walls. One night I woke up to find him wriggling and writhing in the bed, covered in cold sweat. It was obvious he was having a nightmare. Then, under much agony, he started to talk. Before I move on with this story I must add that I never heard him talking in his sleep either before or after this very occasion. But now, as he was throwing his head back and forth he stammered: - ' Earth …. Fire ….. Air …… Water. East ….. North ….. South …. West ….. How was it? Where is what? In the east? In the west? Where is earth? Water? His face crumbled with distress. At the sight of his struggle, a wave of tenderness pulsated through me. How beautiful he was, my love friend. Suddenly my inner eye opened, and I could see that my interest for the medicine wheel could include a dash or two of fanaticism, to put it mildly. It was an insight not all together flattering. I also realized how much I had expected from him in such a short amount of time, the pressure I’d put on him was evident.