Welcome to Gaia! ::

Do you believe in/work with/have questions about entities which could be called Spirits? By 'Spirits' I am speaking of those who inhabit places, of ghosts and ancestors, of guardians and guides: these all fall into this topic. Also included are certain beings from various bodies of mythology: Land Spirits, Dryads, fairies and such.
This is the first area inspired by one of our Guildmates and, hopefully, we will all learn together. For this topic I will be posting passages from books in my library, references off the Web, and relating my own experiences.

I believe in spirit guardians and that spirit guardians live in the 4 elements, is this what your talking about? I believe i have about 6 spirit guides. but 2 are disappearing. I think they were temp guides, stupid as it sounds. They are horses. I had 4 dragon spirit guides when i was a little girl, but my family stomped them out of me. But they are coming back to me because my boyfriend also has a guardian dragon.


sorry if this is the wrong place to put this, just been wanting to talk about it.

awesome ^-^
Do you know anything about dragon magic?

I have no experience with dragons or dragon magic except, perhaps, in the metaphorical and in the tarot (there are several dragon decks out there). I love the four dragons in the Druid Animal Oracle - Aeclectic did not have those specific cards posted, unfortunately.

I typed 'dragon magic' into google and came up with an online coven site. No idea if it is any good; the writing is spotty in quality.
Searching Amazon gave me Dungeons and Dragons items, the book series by Andre Norton (fantasy fiction) and several books by D.J.Conway (who has written a number of books on various magics and is often poorly reviewed by pagan people). There are a couple of other items on Amazon that get, at least, mixed reviews. I get some time I'll float around some lesser book sites for self-published books but those get difficult to buy.

First, I think there is distrust of authors who write books for a more general public.
Second, some reviewers take issue with specific assertions she makes or nomenclature she uses, especially in her descriptions of Wiccan practices.
Third, she has been accused of writing the same basic book several times, just changing the names of deities to invoke.

The first two are normal pagan arguments - it doesn't take long to notice that there are a lot different viewpoints among pagans. The third problem, well, D.J. Conway has a Candle Magic book, a Celtic magic book, a Norse magic book, a Dragon magic book, and so on. I would wonder how anyone could know all of these well enough to do a very good job with them.
But, in her defense, her books might be a starting point for a spell, a ritual, inspiration, taking what is useful and leaving the rest. Note that many of her books do have positive Amazon reviews.

And....neither do I. We are definitely up against a lack of alternatives other than to extrapolate from a general work on magic to working with your spirits.
You know what, and this is just my opinion.... Let me ask: You can go to the bookstore and look at the choices in Conway's books before buying? If you can, find one that seems like a starting point and get just that. We can start a thread just for Dragon Magic and work through it together.

Here's hoping it is nothing serious!
Get well soon!

Well, returning to Spirits....There are so many different ways we can talk about, work with, study Spirits. Before we split off any specific types of work I wanted to touch on some different things...

From Ted Andrew's "Nature-speak:"

"Animism - sometimes called spiritism - is complex. At its core is the recognition that everything in the phenomenal world is truly alive and has spirit. This includes not only humnas, animals, and plants, but also non-biological expressions of the natural world as well, such as stones, rivers and cultural artifacts. we do not have to believe that everything in the world has a creative intelligence, but we should be able at least to recognize that there is some spiritual force associated with and/or connected to everything.

"Spiritism is the belief that not only is the nonhuman world alive, but it also possesses articulate and at times intelligible spirits, which can perceive, communicate and interact with us. It is the belief that everything has a spirit associated with it. It is the belief that the Divine manifests through all things of the natural world in unique ways. It does not just manifest only to and through humans or only in church buildings for an hour every Sunday. The Divine lives, manifest and communicates perpetually throughout the world of Nature.

"When we understand this, then the elements of Nature take on greater spiritual significance than we may hae ever imagined - whether those elements are plant or animal. when learning, guidance and even divine messages are not limited only through those of "our kind", our world is no longer the same. It fills with a myriad of new possibilities. And the most mundane elements and experiences of life take on meaning.

"On an intuitive level, we always know there is significance to our experiences in Nature, even if we don't understand them...."


What I draw from this is that Spirit is all around us if only we would open ourselves to it and let it speak to us. Deity is with us, no matter what we call it/him/her. We are Nature, also. And this last....well, there are mysteries and meaning we may never know, no matter how long we walk the path.
Animism is about experience.

The very first 'exercise' I would give all of us, from Andrew's book, is to think of a signpost in our life, large or small, that Nature put by our path: something that sparked us to make a choice, a decision, an action, through intuition rather than by reasoning, something that brought us here.