Wednesday, April 30, 2014

The May New Moon Is Out--Check Your Inbox!

For those of you who currently subscribe to our email newsletter for booksellers, The Moon, you may have noticed a few changes.

We've streamlined the look, included new features, and christened it with a new moniker: The New Moon. As with this blog, our goal is to really connect with you, our selling partners, each month and offer support, guidance, and resources with the aim of helping you grow and thrive in this ever-changing market.

Our May 2014 issue of the New Moon was mailed this morning. This issue includes:
-Connecting With the Four Elements for Prosperity
-Shelftalkers (Practical Prosperity Magick; Taming the Drunken Monkey; The Yoga of Food; and Intuition and Your Sun Sign)
-A Stuffer (A Prosperity Spell with Lakshmi)
-June New Releases
-Llewellyn's 2014 Fall Catalog
-Indie Stores' Top Five Picks
-And Much More!

If you did not receive a copy in your email inbox, you can also view it here: The New Moon, May 2014 Issue.

You can also visit our website to subscribe to The New Moon, ensuring that it reaches you each month (please note that you will need to log in/register to be able to join our mailing list).

Monday, April 28, 2014

Connecting with the Four Elements for Prosperity


When you dream of prosperity, what do you see? Do you see ever-present, long lines in your store? Perhaps you see abundance by way of a full house of family and friends. Perhaps prosperity to you is the ability to decorate your store or home as you like, regardless of cost. Prosperity, and it's companion abundance, mean so many different things to each of us, and can even mean different things to us at different times of our lives. Fortunately, we can work with the four elements (Earth, Fire, Water, and Air) to invite prosperity and abundance—however we visualize it—into our lives.

1. Water: Practical Prosperity Magick, the new release from perennial favorite Ellen Dugan, contains (as the name states) a plethora of easy and effective ways to draw prosperity, success, and abundance into your life. She separates her prosperity work into sections based on each element, Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. To work with the Water element, which invites abundance and prosperity to continue its liquid flow, try her "Nine of Cups Tarot Spell."
Timing:
Work this spell in a waxing moon phase. As the moon grows, so will your dreams. The most opportune time to work this spell would be on a Friday—a Venus day. This is a happy day filled with loving emotions and is just the ticket for this particular work.

Supplies: For this simple elemental spell, you will only need a few items: a blue floating candle, a lighter, a glass bowl filled with clean water, the Nine of Cups card from your tarot deck, and a safe, flat surface.

Directions: Place the water-filled bowl and the tarot card upon the altar. Light the floating candle and focus on that tarot card. Visualize the goals that you have for yourself. See yourself as happy and prosperous—your dreams and wishes are coming true. Then repeat the spell verse three times:
The Nine of Cups card will now be for me
A lovely symbol for prosperity.
My dreams and wishes will be granted, this much is true
This magick begins with a floating candle of blue.
 
Close up the spell with these lines:
For the good of all, with harm to none
By tarot’s magick, this spell is done!

Allow the floating candle to burn out in a safe place. When it is finished, pour the water from the bowl out on the earth and clean up. Place the Nine of Cups card under your pillow. More information about the spellwork may be revealed in your dreams. You may also choose to keep the Nine of Cups card out for a few days to look at and remind you of your magick, or you may return it to the tarot deck. The choice is yours.
2. Earth: The new Plant and Fungus Totems contains a number of ways to incorporate plants and fungus into your spirituality, connecting with these energies as totems and in your daily life. To connect with the energy of the White Matsutake mushroom for prosperity, for example, you can try the following:
Create devotional art using the relevant sticks, leaves, stems, spore prints, etc. These may be purely decorative, or they might have specific meanings to you. For example, let’s say you were fortunate enough to find a few white matsutake mushrooms, an unusual prize in the Pacific Northwest. Before preparing them for a special meal, you decide to take a spore print of one of the caps. You then use this print in a collage centered on bringing good luck and prosperity into your life, asking the totem White Matsutake to add its energy to your creation and your intent. Other options include making incense out of fragrant leaves and flower petals, adding dried fungus and plant parts to the wax when making candles or to the pulp when making paper, a necklace of seeds, and so forth.
3. Fire: Many of us have long neglected the archetype of the solar feminine, traditionally attributing masculine qualities to the sun instead of feminine qualities. Stephanie Woodfield, in her new book Drawing Down the Sun, presents fourteen different solar goddesses from different pantheons with whom you can work. As you begin, create some Prosperity Sun Tea:
Creating Sun Water and Sun Tea
Sun water and sun tea can be used in healing and during rituals and spells. To create sun water, fill a glass bowl with filtered water and place it in a sunny spot where the light of the sun can shine on it. If it is winter, you can place the bowl near a sunny window. Hold your hands over the water and visualize the light and energy of the sun filling the water until it shines with a golden light. Allow the water to remain in the light of the sun until you feel it is fully charged with the sun’s energy. You can use this water to sprinkle around an area to cleanse it, to wash ritual items, or to make healing teas and infusions. Creating sun tea is very similar to making sun water, with the addition of soaking herbs in the water. Like sun water, you can use sun tea to bless a particular area or for spell and ritual work.

You could also follow the same process to bless and steep a cup of tea with the sun’s healing energy. Choose herbs connected to the work you are planning on doing. Place the herbs in a large bowl, then pour in six cups of water (you may choose to add more or less water as needed). Place the bowl in a sunny window or outside in direct sunlight and allow it to steep for thirty minutes to an hour. If you choose to make your tea outside, place plastic wrap over it so nothing blows into the bowl.

Prosperity Sun Tea
2 parts ginseng
1 part orange peel
½ part cinnamon

4. Air: Enjoy this simple spell from Silver's Spells for Abundance by Silver RavenWolf. Using nothing more than a bell and the power of the air, draw abundance in all its forms into your business, home, and daily life.

Abundance from the Air
From the strong winds of change, to the gentle breezes of movement, to the use of holy breath, air magick can clean out those dusty cobwebs of procrastination, reverse a negative aspect or influence, or push along a project in the right direction. Like a small breeze that can coalesce into a mighty front, we are going to use an ancient technique called the cumulative spell that employs repetition, a basic characteristic of many folk enchantments. In the cumulative spell, a new element is added to the original simple statement, and the growing list is recited after each addition (much like the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas”). Done preferably at the new moon, you are free to choose which day or planetary hour you desire. The only supply you will need is a bell.

The bell has served various religious functions all over the world, including Assyrian practices in 600 b.c.e., Chinese temple bells, Babylonian worship, Egyptian feasts, aboriginal invocations, Hindu rites, and invocations by Haitian vou- duns. To date, no one can pinpoint exactly when the bell entered human culture. Bells have been used for a variety of purposes, including amulets, fertility charms, a summons to deity, prophecy, curative agents, and, of course, as a musical instrument. Europeans rang bells to thwart the power of a thunderstorm and break the oncoming storm front.

In this spell we use the bell to summon Divinity and the elements as well as to ward off negativity.

Instructions: Hold your hands over the bell and ask Divinity for prosperity and protection. You can choose a favorite deity if you like. I simply used the word “Divinity” to keep the spell simple. This spell is to be done facing east (the position of air) at dawn (or when you arise from a night’s sleep—I realize we’ve got second and third shifters these days). Begin by saying: “I call forth Divinity.” Ring the bell, and say:

“I call forth the prosperity and protection of the element of earth. I magnetize the positive things I need and want to come to me. Now!” Ring the bell. Now say:

This is the spell
that works so well
that starts with a bell (
ring the bell)
that brings a smile
that breaks the trial
that sweeps the room
and clears out doom.
That creates abundance
powered by redundancy
that brings prosperity.
 
Note: At the end of the spell you can say specifically what it is that you want, then ring the bell.

To enhance this spell:
• Perform at dawn.
• Perform when the moon is in Gemini if you desire dramatic change.
• Perform on Friday in the hour of Venus.
• Perform on a cliff, bluff, or other high place where the wind is always present.
• Perform at Ostara (Spring Equinox).

Friday, April 25, 2014

Llewellyn's Fall 2014 Catalog Is Here!

Llewellyn's Fall 2014 Catalog

It’s here—Llewellyn’s Fall 2014 catalog featuring September through December 2014 new releases!
 Download the PDF here.

Headlining our Fall 2014 catalog is a wide array of books and decks, including:





Perfect for browsing, this full-color catalog features a complete listing of our new releases for September through December, 2014.