Use magic to create your reality. Define your life goals and develop magic treatments which assist in achieving these goals. Record your work in your Book of Shadows.

Basic Magic: Grounding

My Life Goals

1. Right Work
   A goal I worked hard on in the early days of Cycle III. I focused my intent on a publications job (I was ready to leave behind administrative work, though in Wisconsin it actually pays women quite well). Two months into Cycle III I was offered a job -- Publications Editor -- in a state legislative agency. Three years later, I was on medical leave and eventually on disability retirement. Now I have a home-based publications business -- web design -- and my heart-work, the journal MatriFocus. I love my work.
   
2. Structural Health & Prosperity
   This continues to be a focus of my work, magical and otherwise. As I said, I became physically disabled in Cycle III. When I set this goal, I was not yet disabled, but I knew some trouble was brewing. I have fibromyalgia and osteoarthritis as a result of the fibro. These are incredible challenges to my structural health. I named this piece of magic with intention, to include more than just my body's structure. I now live in a beautiful, accessible, generous lake house that allows me to be out in the natural world right outside my front door, with a thicket, forest remnant, and natural lake right around my house. These define structural prosperity for me, and having government and private disability insurance to support me while not working have allowed me to focus on maintaining and improving, where possible, my skeletomuscular health.
   
3. Philanthropic Abundance and Work
   My disability insurance policies provide a very modest income for me, yet I am still able to give some frequent financial help to those who have less than me. Recently, I was able to respond to Vicki Noble's request for financial assistance so that she could pay a healing visit to Monica Sjoo, who has cancer. My philanthropy expresses itself in nonfinancial ways also: in the amount of time and energy I have available to give to Goddess and Goddess Community. Two examples of my gifts: volunteer web work for Traveling Light and that plus so much more for MatriFocus. I've also had the time and energy to create and facilitate public and private rituals for friends and community, to minister to a circle sister during a family crisis, and to provide counseling and support to many who need it.
   
4. A Sense of Belonging, of Feeling Loved and Welcomed
   I have developed this in my women's choir, in my local circle of RCG (Matrilocal Circle), in the Temple of Diana community, and in informal circles of friends and priestesses. I put this goal into my Cycle III magical work when I was feeling unwelcome in the RCGI community, which is the community I moved to Madison to become a part of. She Changes Everything She Touches...and Magic Happens!
   
5. A Loving, Supportive Community of Friends
   This is a tough thing to accomplish in women's community/communities, when we're still so actively supporting the patriarchy through girl-group dynamics that keep us divided and conquered. Even so, I've been in two covens during my 11 years in Cycle III, with priestesses of several traditions in both groups. I've also developed a lot of love and affection for women in Womonsong, Madison's Feminist Choir. Additionally, I meet monthly with an eclectic group of women (some pagan, some not) who have in common knowledge and experience about conflict transformation and a desire to support each other in this important work. My partner and I also have an eclectic collection of friends with whom we socialize, play cards, eat together, hang out around bonfires, watch movies, do crafts and all the usual stuff.
   
6. Spiritual Practice
   In Cycle III, I finally learned to become a regular meditator. This was a major goal, and is a major accomplishment. It has helped with my Personal Growth work, with my Goddess work, with my emotional and physical well-being, and with my spiritual development. A current focus of my spiritual practice is gratitude in the form of gratitude meditations.
   
7. Creative Self-Expression

   Photo © 2003, Katy Heyning

   Farrell (left), Barb (center) and I performed the Libana arrangement of Con El Viento at the 25th anniversary concert of Womonsong, Madison's feminist choir, in June 2003. We were on! Our performance was one of the highlights of the evening, and it was a peak musical experience for me. Singing together is one of several "something(s) quick" between Farrell and me (see #10).

   
   This has been another challenging area. Challenging because I know myself to be a creative person but had not been able to manifest that creativity in any personally satisfying, arty ways. In Cycle III, I have developed my writer self (four + articles published), developed graphic art skills (various media) and found expression for them, joined a women's chorus and developed my voice, become a successful ritualist and web designer, and remodeled and decorated a house to suit the (fortunately congruent) tastes of my partner and me.
   
8. Psychic Skills Development
   See my Psychic Skills report.
   
9. Emotional Well-Being
   As indicated elsewhere in this Cella report, my early experiences in Wisconsin recapitulated all my "therapy" issues and had me wade through them one more time. Fortunately, the previous therapy work I had done has been a great ally, as have friendships with wise, loving, listeners. Dealing with these things, and with physical disability and chronic pain, has challenged my emotional well-being. Even so, I am happy, in a stable, functional and ecstatic relationship, doing interesting, worthy heart work and money work, and living the life of a Goddess Woman and Priestess.
   
10. Life Partner
    My friend, Farrell, and I became lovers in 1997 and partners in 1998. We are planning a hand-fasting ceremony for our seventh anniversary, in the summer of 2004. Early in Cycle III I worked out two important pieces that allowed me to find a life partner:
    • Four essential components to a successful relationship: deep love, lots of laughter and good sex, something quick between us, and fair fighting (productive processing). With Farrell, I have all of these.
    • Discovering the root of what I want/need -- not just a lover, not just a girlfriend, but a partner. It was this shift to "partner" that actually moved me from relationships where I had 2 or 3 of the four essential components, to a relationship where I have them all.
      
11. Healthy, Happy Family
    This area primarily concerns the well-being of my sister and nephew. In the time that I've been focusing energy on their well-being, they've been through a lot, individually and together. My sister quit a dead-end career path; took some time for personal healing, recovery from alcoholism, and wisdom searching about an energizing life path; went back to school to get her teaching certificate and has a deeply fulfilling work life as a band teacher working with children. My nephew has some incredible challenges that he's grappling with in his late teens; I pray every day that he makes it alive into adulthood; he has had some fortunate social and educational experiences that have helped his self-esteem and that will help him navigate his adulthood, and he's finding his way to a 9-month certificate program after he graduates from high school that will give him a well-paying, respectable career in autocad design. He has to find his way through his own addictions and bipolar disorder. I believe that he can, but watching him go through these is a terrible agony. If you're reading this and want to send him some energy: he's Cobi in Houston, Texas. Thank you.
    
12. Spiritual Leadership
    Friends say mine is the best kind of leadership: leadership by example, by walking my talk. Creating this website is an act of spiritual leadership. Not only does it document some parts of my priestess path experience and studies, but it also serves as a model and encouragement (I hope) to other priestesses to make their work available. I have occasional feedback from site visitors that indicates this work is of service to Goddess and her women. A recent email:
    "I just wanted to drop you a note to tell you how much I love your web site. I guess I've been checking it out for almost a year, and love worming my way through it. I always find something I hadn't noticed before! I also enjoy the Matrifocus webzine -- it's honestly one of the top 5 on the web." ~Amelia
    "I'm up in the middle of the night researching The Goddess because I guess you could say I've had a personal call from Her recently about becoming Me. Your site has been very helpful to me tonight and provided a lot of information and clarification that I was unable to find in sites more well placed in the web chain. Thank you for your help in pointing me in the right direction and all the best in your continued studies." ~A Site Visitor
    
13. Viable Ecosystems
    On my road trip to Madison, in September 1993, I noticed how much dead wildlife was on the roadsides as I neared the state. Wisconsin is a state with huge numbers of wildlife, and therefore large numbers of roadkill: deer, squirrels, birds, raccoons, turtles, and more. My magical workings to protect these animals and their habitats have had one incontrovertible result: my work disability keeps me from being one of millions driving a car to and from work every day. I have a blessing I say whenever I see a dead animal, and several friends have adopted the practice: a way of honoring the life of wild animals killed by human movement and a way of acknowledging their deaths, and sometimes helping them move on:
    As I draw the sign of Venus (the pentagram), I say "Blessed Be, Thou Sweet Creature of the Goddess. Go with Her to Patricia's Perfect Place, if it be your will, and have a really good time in your life on the other side." I finish by blowing a kiss and saluting my own animal familiars.
    Canadian efforts to reduce roadkill are an indication that my prayers and magic have possibly energized work by others to solve this tragic problem.
    Another instance of this is the work I've been privileged to do as a result of living by a lake, in what remains of a hardwood forest (see my Environment section for more info).
    
14. Intellectual Productivity
    My work on this website, as editor of MatriFocus web magazine, as a published writer, and once-and-future Goddess crossword puzzle maker (my puzzles will be online soon) are evidence of my work in this area.
    
15. Joy, Pleasure and Play
    I have joy in my life on a daily basis: in my partnership, my home, my work, my play, my environment, and my animal companions. Despite chronic pain, I experience pleasure regularly. Play? Most of what I do is play, including regular online bridge games. I love my life!

Develop Magic Treatments

I started working on these tasks by developing Words of Power for each goal, based on Marion Weinstein's Positive Magic. I've also used a variety of other magical techniques: candle magic, protection magic, altar magic, art-making magic, wild magic, visualization, etc. to achieve these goals.