Section 1 - Nature: Your Connection to the Source Your Key to the Universe 5 The Language of HedgeWitchery--The Primordial Universe 7 Draining and Irrigating Your Mental Garden-- Release, Accept, Welcome 14 The Fertilizer of the Mind: Belief 18 Spellwork: The Gardening Tools of Belief 4 Your Personal Primal Language 28 Shifting with Nature 31 Primal Language (The Dialect of Mother Nature) Requires Changing the Way You Think 31 The Basics of HedgeWitchery 35 Entering the World of HedgeWitchery 37 Personal Cleansing 41 The Frequency of All Good Things Consider your life as a fertile patch of ground, ready for planting your personal gar­den of potential. Take a few moments, and think of what you''d like to grow there. Success? Good health? Financial gain? Happiness in relationships? All of what I''ve just listed and more? Every moment of your life is that fertile piece of ground, capable of producing exactly what you desire. Now let''s grow it! Your Key to the Universe Whether you are trying to raise a successful business, manifest healing in your life, find a loving partner (or pet), buy a new house, or have a better relationship with a specific person, the starting point of change is always the same: connecting to the source of all things. You need that moment of focused quiet where you acknowledge the pure power of All That Is--and in that connection, anything, I mean anything, becomes possible. Getting there is as simple as shifting your weight from one foot to the other. Defining "it"? That truly depends on what you believe. The interesting thing about this engine of the universe is that you don''t have to understand what makes it tick to use it, nor is it ego-defined.

There''s no such thing as a secret pass for the select few. In the practice of HedgeWitchery, the power just "is"--and everyone has access to it. All you have to do is shift your mind from here to the source, and in one breath you can move right into the heart and soul of the power of manifestation. From there, all things are possible. Believing in "it" isn''t hard. Getting to "it" isn''t difficult. The trick? Remembering to go there in the first place! Once you acknowledge that you must connect to your concept of Spirit to succeed, nothing can stop you. How do you start using the amazing power of All That Is? With a smile.

Many times, we are so busy, frustrated, angry, hurt, depressed, irritated (you name it) we forget that a brief shift into the source will allow us the opportunity to fix our unhappiness, solve a problem, or provide just the right creative idea we need at a particular point in time. We let the outside world and our reactive thoughts so thoroughly inundate the situation that getting what we truly desire seems almost impossible. A simple smile functions as a magick key, because although we may be serious, the source isn''t. The source is pure joy. Your smile shifts your energy vibrations from impotent to empowered! Try it! Close your eyes and take a deep breath, exhaling slowly. Give your mind a little time to settle into the source. Now smile! Doesn''t that feel great? Oh. You don''t feel like smiling? Give it a try, anyway! No, you don''t have to be happy to smile.

Just do it. You want your smile to be genuine? Okay. Think of something wonderful that has happened to you in the past, something good, something marvelous. Is that a smile I see? Is it? Yes, it is! Now, see how wonderful you can feel when you smile? And when we feel wonderful, we increase our ability to reach our desires, find peace, and maintain happiness. Hey, not bad for a simple muscle movement. Time to practice smiling! For the next two weeks, throughout your daily tasks, remem­ber to smile! If you think of a pleasant memory, go ahead and smile. If you see something that amuses you, don''t keep a deadpan expression--smile! If you hear something funny or are enjoying a good conversation, be sure to pepper the moment and smile, smile, smile! Allowing yourself to smile puts you in a much better emotional place. Too many smiles will never hurt you--they''ll only make your life better! To remind yourself to practice smiling, why not carry a special key in your pocket, on your key ring, attached to your purse, or dangle a key charm on your iPod or cell.

Spend some time choosing your special key, or just begin collecting keys as a constant reminder that to accomplish anything, we must unlock the door to our connection with the source. As a HedgeWitch, you''re going to learn to smile a heck of a lot! Now that we have our very own magick key (the smile that connects us to the source), we need to learn how to communi­cate with the source so that we can use this unlimited power to the best of our advantage. The Language of HedgeWitchery--The Primordial Universe Have you ever visited a foreign country where you didn''t understand the language? Every­thing seems so strange, doesn''t it? Billboards in unintelligible, bright symbols. Whispers, screeches, and varied notes of sound emanating from the lips of strangely dressed people. Books and newspapers that look more like decorative art than a vehicle of direct communica­tion. You seem to float in the world--but, at the same time, you can''t quite seem to interact in it. Perhaps you can understand some of what is being said by observing gestures, facial expres­sions, and mannerisms, but the waiter could be telling you the special today is dog poop with a smile on his face, and how would you know? (Hey, it happened to me.) Before we dive deeply into HedgeWitchery, we have to acknowledge a vital and important secret about the magickal universe--its language base isn''t English, Chinese, Russian, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Cherokee, or Swahili, or any of the others as we understand them.

Throw grammar and sentence structure out the window. The universe does not acknowledge big words, flowery prose, or disclaimers. The source operates primordially: noun/verb. It does not understand the words no, don''t, maybe, possibly, might, not, etc. And the universe is not about creating lack, it is all about attracting abundance . of anything. For example, let''s say you visit your mother every Thursday night, and she always makes chicken. You''ve politely mentioned that you love her beef stroganoff, and maybe next time she might make that? Chicken, however, always takes the day.

You''ve even tried bringing dinner or suggesting you''ll make it this time, but somehow or other, Mother always makes chicken. Indeed, you''ve become really focused on how you don''t want chicken--and that''s the problem. The universe processes only chicken. The universe doesn''t understand the contraction don''t. It just hears I blah-blah-blah want chicken, which translates to I want chicken. Except you don''t, do you? The easiest way to begin using primal language is to say I want ________ (and fill in your desire). Examples: I want a new sofa. I want a new mattress.

I want a job that pays more. I want to get well. (And no, you are not being selfish in saying I want. As children we are told you can''t have everything you want and that it is rude to verbalize what you desire by using the word want. Wrong. When you are happy, everyone around you is happy. When you get what you want, you can provide others with what they want. Wanting leads to giving.

Giving leads to happiness. Happiness leads to harmony . you get the picture.) Saying what you want aloud speeds up the process. So! Go someplace right now where you will be alone and no one can hear you, and shout out loud what you want?! Say it three times and really mean it. If you believe you will receive what you desire, you''ll get exactly what you stated. A note of caution here: do not ask for something. The words ask for imply that you need permission from someone or from something somewhere, which becomes a muddy psycho­logical mess.

Simply state I want, and leave it at that. Timing What if what you want doesn''t come right away? As soon as you utter what you desire, the universe goes about filling your order. To help the universe do this, you need to: Believe (see page 18 for more information) Don''t confuse the issue by adding more to it or changing your mind (see the haggling appendix for an example of this) Remove any blocks by releasing old, negative thoughts or habits (review pages 14-18) Accept and welcome your desire (read about this starting on page 14) If you don''t believe, if you don''t release, if you don''t welcome change--your order to the universe goes in the Cancel bin. Further on in this section we''ll talk about belief, release, and acceptance, and how to handle them to make your desires occur faster. Right now, there is only one other block (perhaps) to your success that I''d like to talk about, and that is other people. Circle of Influence No HedgeWitch is an island. We have friends, those we love, perhaps children, significant others, parents, partners, co-workers--people that we allow to exert influence over our lives because we like them, because we love them, or because our environments somehow overlap. All of these people are in some way affected by our behavior, and our behavior is somehow affected by them.

This influence doesn''t automatically disappear just because we want to do magick. Life and magick (for good or ill) are a bit more complicated than that. In magick, we''ve always been taught to know (belief), to will (I want), to dare (open the way and accept change), and to be silent, because if every Jane, Lisa, and Abby in the world heard about what you wan.