by Leila Morgan ([email protected])

It was two years ago this month of October that I began volunteering for the Temple of Witchcraft Prison Ministry Program with the Capricorn Ministry. When I first started, I went almost immediately from pen-pal to sending cards out for each Sabbat. Looking back now, I have to laugh and smile in amazement.

Our first mailing for cards was just a mere 47 and since has grown to 166, with additions weekly. We have inmates that write from as far away as Florida, California, and Arizona but also nearby in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Vermont. Most have the same complaint about how the prison system does not help them practice our religion, denying many opportunities for group rituals without an outside volunteer, and falling short on supplying books and items to practice individually or further their knowledge.

Last year, we welcomed Rick LaPorte as our new Capricorn Lead Minister. Shortly after the beginning of 2013, he and I started outlining a vision of where the Prison Ministry should go. In July, I was honored to be asked to become the Capricorn Deputy Minister for Prison Correspondence and, in August, we rolled out the Prison Correspondence Course, accepting 26 out of the 88 applicants. We also went to the Berlin Prison in New Hampshire for a Mabon Celebration and training so we may continue future in-person visits. Temple founder Christopher Penczak has also been scoping out the Concord State Prison and visited once this past September. We now have a Temple of Witchcraft Capricorn Prison Ministry Facebook Page, and a new Post Office Box in Pittsfield, MA, making it easier and quicker to respond to letters and requests, and are hosting a book drive for books that we can donate to prisons all around the states.

I am very excited to be a part of the continuing growth for this Ministry and the Temple. It has been one of the most rewarding things that I have ever done in my life and, with one final note, I would like to thank the Temple of Witchcraft for giving me this opportunity for community service. Thank you!

To find out more about the Temple of Witchcraft’s Prison Ministry program, email Leila at [email protected] or visit the ministry’s Facebook page (linked above). 

Dear Friends and Members of The Temple of Witchcraft,

We’re looking for your articles/poems/musings/short fiction/artwork/photos that celebrate the Samhain season for the Temple’s website!

Some suggested themes includes: Ancestor reverence, theologies of death and dying, dumb supper traditions, spirit contact, late fall/winter activities (pumpkin carving, feasting), the meat harvest, the Horned God, Scorpio, regeneration, and divination.

Send your pieces to The Temple Bell at [email protected]. And thanks to everyone who has already contributed — look for your work up soon at The Temple’s website.

Blessings of the season to you,

Tina Whittle, co-editor of The Temple Bell

by Shea Morgan

Heat-filled days carrying the hint of cooler days to come

Summer begins its slow wind down into Fall

We can feel the crisp Fall air whispering in our ear

Beckoning us to follow the path below

As the sultry summer days continue, sunflowers in bloom

Flowers bend heavy heads circled by dancing butterflies and bees

Golden finches searching out seeds

Birds greeting each other in the welcome water of the bath

Yet Fall’s deep embrace is calling.

We feel the chill near.

As footsteps fall on fallen leaves.

Crisp.

Crinkling with each step.

We hear the whisper of nature’s call for the Winter’s sleep.

But it is not yet time.

Sunlight still warms the Earth,

Green leaves blow in the trees on the Summer’s air

challenging the stillness to dare make its approach.

Shea Morgan is a graduate of Witchcraft IV with a 20+ year career in gov’t/public affairs. She is a founder of Spirit’s Edge: A Seeker’s Salon, Priestess of the Morrighan, ordained minister (ULC), teaches Witchcraft classes and has been on the path of a Witch since 2001. She lives in St. Louis, MO with her cat, and enjoys gardening, coven, friends, family and the family farm.

We’re making some changes to The Temple Bell!  And we’re excited about the opportunity to broaden our audience to include both Temple members and new readers while still providing the quality writing you’ve come to expect.

Here’s the FYI:

1. We are moving from a quarterly newsletter structure to a website-based one. This means we won’t have a separate publication called The Temple Bell — instead The Temple Bell will post content directly to the Temple’s website — https://templeofwitchcraft.org — and it will be tagged and categorized as such on the website.
2. We’ll still be sharing Founders’ Corner, Ministry News, and the Treasurer’s Report on a quarterly basis. Raye, Deb, and I will continue providing essays and artwork for the Sabbats (only now eight times a year instead four) and there will still be reviews and articles, columns and essays, poems and stories and news updates offered on a regular basis. Many thanks to those who have shared your words and work with us in the past — please continue to do so!
3. We’ve updated the Submission Guidelines at the Temple Bell Yahoo Group (accessible in the Files section). Visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/templebell to find this information. If you’re not yet a member of the group, you can do so at this same address – that way you’ll be assured of receiving future updates in a timely manner.
4. We’ll still be having themes for each Sabbat, which will be shared through the Temple Bell Yahoo Group and through the Temple website. We’ll send out messages with this information to group members, and make it accessible in the Files section as well.
5. Have ideas? Questions? Send them on! Our e-mail address is [email protected]. You can address your message to either Raye Snover or Tina Whittle, the Bell’s co-editors.

Thanks once again for your support of The Temple Bell. It couldn’t happen without you.

Blessed be!

Raye, Tina, and Deb

by Jacki Richardson

Right before Templefest , my partner, who participates in a Christian denomination, told me about a sermon she heard regarding “Types of Seekers of Light.”  One of the “types” is the puppy — new to the experience, they are energetic and rush headlong into everything with joyful abandon.

When my partner was describing this, I said, “Hey, I think I’m a little like the puppy-seeker about Magick.” She looked at me sideways with a grin like, “You think?!”

I very much had my puppy-seeker energy at Templefest, and it was so much FUN!  In various spiritual practices I have engaged in the past, I have felt a sense of intimidation — new people are better off seen and not heard.  Before I left to go to Templefest, when I was worrying myself into anxiety about the trip, I got the word “WELCOME!” during meditation and that stuck with me throughout.

Now, as a puppy-seeker, there were a lot of things that went over my head, and I’m okay with that.  Some things made sense to me, and I know they will make a different sense to me in the future as I continue to learn.

There was a great deal of joy at Templefest. It felt good to go beyond my “comfort zone” of staying back and doing my best to blend in with the grass.

I met a 5th year student while my partner and I were talking about sessions.  I said, “I’d like to take the New Moon Master Workshop, but it says it’s for advanced students only.”  The 5th year student spoke up and said, “Why don’t you ask if you can sit in?”  While I was doing my blending-with-the-grass imitation, she went and asked for me, and next thing I knew, I was sitting in on the session! I got a lesson that has me captivated ever since.

I told a friend of mine before we left for Templefest that I was going to attend a sex magick class (woo hoo!).  And yes, I did!  I knew before the class in my intuition/soul that it would be perfectly safe and probably fun and that there was no way we would be pressured to do anything we were not comfortable with.  That turned out to be 100% true.  The teacher was a very sweet and joyful spirit. The whole group was delightful. I am glad I went.

I also learned how to build a home for my totem animal, got introduced to a Hindu god I had not previously been very conscious of, learned what the “Nine Waves of Creation” means in the Lorica, had a stone reading, and learned to be respectful of dragons. (Thank you to all the teachers, formal and informal, for answering my rather clumsy questions with grace and enthusiasm for your work.)

If you knew me in my regular life, you would not necessarily see the puppy-magick part of me. This path has brought that out, and I have to say that I got to play, have fun and learn beyond my imagined expectations at Templefest.  I decided to put this in writing so that if there are any other puppies out there in the future that are feeling a little cautious and uncertain about coming to Templefest, come!  It is enjoyable, safe, and welcoming, and you will have a great time even if you’ve only been on this path a very short time.

Jacki Richardson joined Witchcraft I after reluctantly attending the 12 Gates workshop with a friend in St. Louis, Missouri. She has been involved with Witchcraft for less than one year, but knew right from the first hour that this is what she has been working towards on her spiritual journey. Blessed Be!

by Adam Sartwell

My first book on witchcraft was given to me at my birthday party thrown by my high school friends. At fifteen I had exhausted all the school library’s reference books on witchcraft,  and I was happy to take the next steps. This is how my education in witchcraft started. I had friends who were interested in the subject too, and when the will came upon us we would act together. From there I got more books on witchcraft, but it was through meditation, magick and dream work that I started to really learn.  My first “coven” was dysfunctional as only teenagers can be. We did a plethora of things I wouldn’t do again. But that was how I started to learn.

Years later in college I started another “coven” and tried to impart what I had learned. Those were great times. As I look back on those days, I see that I was pretty full of myself. Telling my friends how they should live and practice because I had gotten pretty good at this magick thing. The “coven” exploded a couple of times. From the fire, I learned that though I wished for community, I wasn’t ready for the infighting and personality conflicts. I started to take all this as a reflection of myself and my teachings. I started to think I must be a rotten teacher.  Perhaps it would be better if I went it alone. I made some more attempts, but none of them bore fruit, and so I started a journey of self-reflection.

I traveled and lived in different places and met people who educated me on new ways, but I stayed with solitary witchcraft. Always studying, meditating, and scribbling notes in a lot of blank books. This solitary craft was a journey to know myself. I never stopped striving to better myself. This is partly why I started to take the Temple Mystery School classes, even while working as a founder and lead minister. From the classes I got a linear progression of exercises and the benefit of a teacher and mentor. The process added the observations of others to the search for inner truth. I gained a community of the order known as the Temple of Witchcraft. I learned more about myself and what to change from interactions with the radiant people of the Temple. Together we have created something I see lasting beyond me.

This October I will be thirty-five, meaning I have been a witch for twenty years. I continue to learn and experiment. I have made mistakes, but I regret nothing because I knew I was doing the best I could with what I had at the time. I know that I still have much to learn and much to teach. I hope that you will take this story to heart and never stop learning and growing.

Adam Sartwell is a Founder and Virgo lead minister of the Temple of Witchcraft. Adam’s psychic and intuitive gifts led him to study Witchcraft in his teens and he is a teacher, healer, and professional Tarot reader. He spends time hand-crafting products for the Temple store (which he manages) and was recently published in The Green Lovers anthology from Copper Cauldron Publishing. He can be reached at [email protected].

by Tina Whittle

It’s time to bake the bread again, to turn the Wheel of the Year and celebrate Lammas. Time to gather the ingredients — the flour of the field, the salt of the earth, the yeast, the water, the honey — and let the miracle happen anew, the ancient chemical (and alchemical) process. It is time to be mindful of the cycle — creation, sustenance, destruction — that begins and ends and begins again.

Lammas is the celebration of the first harvest, when the ripened grains are ready to be gathered. Some are eaten — hence the baking and breaking of bread — but some must be stored for the lean times ahead. For even though we are in the hottest and brightest part of the solar year, when Leo the Sun-Maned Lion shines in the sky and Sirius the hot-red Dog Star rules the night, the Sun is already waning. The shadows of the dark to come are already growing stronger.

This is the time of sacrifice. The God of Light, having been defeated at Litha, now willingly assumes the role of the sacrificed king, knowing that he will be reborn at Yule. The community puts aside a portion of the harvest for the winter and the time of the fallow field, but also in preparation for the spring and the time of planting. To do so is to understand that true sacrifice is an act of faith, a conscious participation in the cycles that nurture and sustain us. Always, the Wheel turns.

In a ritual sense, sacrifice has many varied expressions. Sometimes it is characterized as a gift or homage to a deity. Sometimes it is performed in a reciprocal manner, as in Santeria, where an animal is often sacrificed and then eaten as a way of offering and receiving sustenance from the guiding spirits. Sometimes sacrifice is an act of atonement or reparation, often on behalf of another.

As a Witch, I view sacrifice with an eye toward the process more than the product. It’s not a simple give-get equation any more than the Rule of Three is an actual mathematical formula. For me, sacrifice asks us to honor all the ways that we exchange energy in our existence, to be mindful of the ancient cycles of death and rebirth, from the grand cosmic flaming out of a star to the culling of an unnecessary memory from our neuronal circuits. Nature doesn’t abhor a vacuum — Nature loves a vacuum so much that it rushes to realize the potential there. This is the respiration of the Universe — in and out, emptiness and fulfillment and emptiness again. Sacrifice asks us to bring attention — and intention — to this ongoing process.

This Lammas, ask yourself what you are being called to sacrifice. Perhaps some of your time is being wasted in a nonproductive activity, or on a project that no longer serves your highest good. Perhaps you have material objects cluttering your life — a junk drawer or stuffed attic — that could be donated to a thrift store so that they can have new life with someone else. Or perhaps your sacrifice will go deeper, releasing an idea or perspective that may be keeping you spiritually stagnant, even if the space you open by doing so feels like a death.

Whatever it is that you contribute to the web of the Universe, may your sacrifice —and you — be blessed.

Tina Whittle is a mystery novelist/freelance writer living in the Low Country of Southeast Georgia. She is a Witchcraft V student in the Temple’s Mystery School and co-editor of The Temple Bell. You can learn more about her at her website: http://www.tinawhittle.com.

I wasn’t sure I’d go to Templefest this year. After caring for him in my home for years, my father had just passed away six weeks earlier and Templefest was being held on Father’s Day weekend. I was torn; as much as I love my TOW family, I wasn’t sure I’d be up for happy crowds of people. Then a beloved Wichcraft classmate called from NYC. She was coming for the weekend and, for the first time, I could offer her a place to stay. It was just a comfy sofa, but she said yes and I knew the Universe was guiding me to go to “the Fest” that weekend and be with the Community that so enriches my life.

Raye and I arrived early enough on Saturday morning to be part of opening ceremonies. We were excited to go to Stevie’s sand painting class, and we had a wonderful time! What fun this project was, and the beautiful pieces I saw were pretty amazing. When we were told to mess up our paintings so that the magick could be released to the universe, we sadly did (after taking plenty of pictures first!) and then collected and released all the sand into the breeze.

The Beltane 2013 issue of our official newsletter, The Temple Bell, is available for download and viewing online. Just click on the link to access the PDF file.