Eclectic Elementals: The Magic & Spirituality of the Elements

This is not a specifically named, established path like Asatru, Kabbalah, Hermeticism, Kemeticism, Wicca or Santeria. Yet the Elemental Path can be adapted to any practice, traditional or modern, and the Elements are indeed present and utilized in all practices and systems. It can also be, as it is for me, its own completely original, self-contained and self-defined path. It is the path of peeking behind all the named and well-presented curtains; of getting to the heart of All and of connecting to and honoring the mystical, essential building blocks of everything in existence, from the planet to our souls.

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Pisces New Moon Oracle of Water: The Egg Cowrie

 

This new moon’s oracle message doesn’t come from a Tarot or oracle deck. While I, like many modern pagans and magic practitioners, own several different decks, none of them felt right to use to gain an intuitive message from this Piscean new moon.

As much as I appreciate printed decks and cartomancy, I find myself wanting to be more and more immersed simply in nature and in natural messages. Nature is filled with wonderful, magical creatures and objects reflecting all the elements and all the messages to be found therein. More often than not nowadays I’d rather use those natural oracles rather than glossy, man-made decks made with papers and inks that are most likely not sustainably sourced or otherwise good for the environment, not to mention created from and with a stranger’s imagination and intuition.

So, this being an especially watery and mystical new moon, I found myself turning to my sea shell collection. The shell that most immediately and appropriately stood out was a lovely white ovula ovum, commonly known as an egg cowrie.

Its strong resemblance to a chicken’s egg, hence its common name, presented it as the perfect herald of the first new moon of spring, a time of new birth and growth.

While the egg cowrie, and many others like it – the ovulidae – are referred to as cowries, they are in fact false cowries. Genuine cowries are known as cypraea, distinguished by the row or rows of teeth on their apertures. Ovulids do not have these teeth.

As I held the shell and reflected on its qualities and biology, this distinction was one of the first things that struck me as relevant to this new moon, next to its obvious appearance. It speaks of illusion – of something not being as it seems.

Illusion is very much the domain of dreamy Pisces, and it is a tricky thing. Dreams and fantasies can be very useful in creating art and magic, and in receiving intuitive messages. But they can also be misleading or distracting, and there is a fine line between those functions. Particularly if we have illusions about ourselves, perhaps fancying ourselves to be something other than what we are, or pretending to be something or someone different in order to impress others, then we make ourselves vulnerable to all kinds of problems, dangers and pains. When illusions become
outright lies (or shells to hide in or ways to overcompensate) we cease to benefit from the spiritual or creative potential that they can carry.

On a more cheerful note though, it is mostly the shell’s egg-like appearance and the species that resides in it that delivers a hopeful and creative message for the new moon. I was so surprised and delighted the first time I saw a picture of the gastropod that creates and lives in these simple white shells. Its mantle is black and scattered with white or yellow dots, so that it strongly resembles a dark, starry sky. When I first saw it I immediately thought of the concept of the “cosmic egg”, and how perfectly this sea creature represents that concept with its spacey body stretching itself out over its shell.




Contained within every egg is all kinds of potential and life. We, and many creatures like us, contain microcosms and exist as just one part of the whole macrocosm. It looks as though the darkly glittering expanse of the whole universe is contained within this unassuming egg-like shell. We ourselves contain all the elements and all the universe inside of us, for we are made of water and starlight.

It is our sacred, human birthright to know this and to see all of nature and life as sacred. There is no need for religion, for tradition, for initiations beyond simply being born, for dogma or names or deities or anything of the sort. Magic is all around us and it exists
naturally in every cell, in every leaf, raindrop and stone, in every forest, river and mountain. We need only ourselves and our own awareness and intuition to tap into it.

As spring bursts into bloom, as the ice melts and rivers flow home into the sea, the little ovula ovum says “
Simply be. Be yourself and no one else, find your true, authentic self and honor that truth. See yourself as a sacred co-creator of life and a perfect part of nature, which is filled with illusions and mysteries that we can never understand that we may yet learn from and delight in. Life is mystical and powerful, and we have powers of magic and creation if we only let go of that which is false and embrace the natural.”




Originally published on The Oracle of Water 

© 2021 Meredith Everwhite - All Rights Reserved

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I have been studying and practicing the occult to varying degrees for most of my life now. My personal path has led me from being forcefully raised as a reluctant Mormon, to an agnostic wanderer studying all religions, to a witch and heathen (first in groups/covens then as a solitary) to a shamanic practitioner and now to just myself - an unaffiliated, unlabeled, godless worshipper of Nature and the Elements.

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