a love letter to Paranormal ROMANCE
In
keeping with the season, I'm including an excerpt from the book at the end of
this post that described a witchcraft event. (Not to be confused with Wicca.
All Wiccans are witches, but not all witches are Wiccans, just as all
Christians are not Catholic.)
Litha Brandywine is a witch who is employed by The Order of the
Black Swan and, when it comes to events of a paranormal nature, she's the best
tracker alive. In the scene cited here, she is performing a rite to locate a
missing person.
Though
the book has been out for less than a week, several people have commented about
the details of the working described. Let me take the opportunity to say that
this is a work of fiction. The magick described in the book is based on actual
practice, but, according to the very wise policy originally established by the
Egyptian Mystery Schools, I would never accurately recreate the details of a
spell or method that could hold a potential of harm in the wrong hands; either
to the would-be practitioner or others. Enough things are depicted to convey
the feeling, but enough details are always scrambled, disguised, and withheld
to prevent misuse as a result of the description.
READING THE SERIES IN ORDER HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
MyFamiliar
Stranger, BOOK ONE. This series is a
true serial in the sense that every book begins where the last ended. BOOK TWO,
The Witch's Dream is a PURE romance and might be seen as the second act in a
three act play.
DESCRIPTION: From New York to Ireland to Edinburgh to Siena to the Texas Hill
Country to Napa Valley, a secret society, a witch, a demon, a psychic, a
berserker, an ex-vampire, modern day knights, heroes, werewolves, elves and fae
come together where emotions intersect. The story maps a trail from rages to
epiphanies, but, in the end, proves that true love can find you in the
strangest places, when you're least expecting it, even when you're far, far
from home.
He was left behind when Elora Laiken made her choice. Now he’s had it with love, but a transplanted witch who happens to be the world’s best tracker hopes she can change his mind.
The Witch’s Dream begins with B Team on temporary assignment to Black Swan headquarters in Edinburgh where they are supposed to fill in for stretched-thin resources and assist with a werewolf issue. They’ve been given permission to stop in Ireland for a few days and help celebrate a handfasting at the palace in Derry.
When they reach Edinburgh, the afterglow of an elftale wedding quickly turns all business. A missing person report turns into a demon abduction. A simple werewolf sanction becomes a diplomatic issue requiring the one thing Elora is no longer willing to give - finesse.
INCLUDES: The first chapter of the third book, The Summoner's Tale.
Erotic content: 18+ A few steamy scenes. No menage. No BDSM.
He was left behind when Elora Laiken made her choice. Now he’s had it with love, but a transplanted witch who happens to be the world’s best tracker hopes she can change his mind.
The Witch’s Dream begins with B Team on temporary assignment to Black Swan headquarters in Edinburgh where they are supposed to fill in for stretched-thin resources and assist with a werewolf issue. They’ve been given permission to stop in Ireland for a few days and help celebrate a handfasting at the palace in Derry.
When they reach Edinburgh, the afterglow of an elftale wedding quickly turns all business. A missing person report turns into a demon abduction. A simple werewolf sanction becomes a diplomatic issue requiring the one thing Elora is no longer willing to give - finesse.
INCLUDES: The first chapter of the third book, The Summoner's Tale.
Erotic content: 18+ A few steamy scenes. No menage. No BDSM.
EXCERPT.
It was Litha's great honor to have the dragon
temporarily in her keeping as he had been recognized as a potent object of
power and in service to magick for millennia. The proud Teuton dragon currently
served as The Order's own version of Prometheus, silently holding the world on
its shoulders while also protecting its treasure: a precious crystal ball held
lovingly in its curved claws. The multifaceted crystal ball picked up every
color in the room and reflected it back onto walls and ceiling as rainbow
prisms. The effect was a space that was magical as well as magickal. Litha’s
dragon, and she thought of him that way as she was his temporary caretaker, was
charged with several tasks and he performed each admirably.
The globe, rendered in shades of green and
brown, was perhaps a foot and a half in diameter and hinged very much like one
of those liquor cabinet parlor tricks. It would separate at the equator and
become two parts of a sphere, one half stationary, one half lid. When opened,
it revealed one of Litha's two most prized treasures, a concave, black glass,
scrying plate the same diameter as the globe's equator. The dragon stand had
been built so that, when standing barefoot, the scrying plate was at exactly
the same height as Litha's navel.
She reached out and lovingly ran her hand over
the dragon's head as if he was a living pet. Sometime during the past two
thousand years, his eyes had been replaced with black glass. The candle flames
and rainbow prism danced together in his eyes making them seem so intelligent
and lifelike that it was easy to imagine him as a familiar.
Litha pulled her red robe closer as she paid
homage to the Spirits of the Four Winds whom she would be summoning to assist
with Locating Magicks. Real witches are risk takers, comes with the territory.
Even so, few witches would dare wear red when practicing the magickal arts
because the color red possesses powerful attraction properties. That means red
can be a shortcut in summoning, but also attracts the bad as well the good.
Litha came from a rich history of witch ancestors who tended to act according to
a philosophy of "great gambles bring great rewards" and, at some
point, it had become part of the family's genetic legacy. It was partly natural
to her and partly logical since Litha knew she was powerful, or practiced,
enough to hold a sufficient protection barrier while admitting friendlier
Powers of Assistance and accepting their help.
The witch took up a large purple candle and
began circling the globe in the center of the room in a clockwise direction.
She carefully counted nine revolutions as she sang an old medieval melody with
lyrics written and substituted by the witch, herself. Her singing voice was
quite pleasant although the quality of performance would have no bearing on
outcome. The melody was not more magickal because it was medieval. It was
simply a useful hook on which to hang the quatrains she had quickly, but
specifically composed for chanting which would be crucial to outcome. She wrote
the four-line rhymes in her head while she was bathing and now repeated them in
magickal form while she raised energy by stirring the atmosphere into the
equivalent of a small whirlwind.
After completing nine circles and chants, Litha
used the flame of the purple candle to light a large white candle with three
wicks. She then sprinkled a mixture of Dragon's Blood resin, Solomon's Seal,
white sage, and crystalline salt directly onto the candle's flames. When the
herbs caught fire, she invited into the circle those who could be of service
whether spirits, guides, or elementals with the caveat that they were welcome
so long as they wished her well and would not prove to be a lot of trouble
later on.
When she was satisfied that conditions were
optimum, she opened the globe. She always felt a rush of satisfaction upon
viewing the gleaming surface with alphabetical, numerical, alchemical, and
Theban script symbols etched on its surface in circular patterns. Taking hold
of the pendant necklace that she always wore, she pulled downward to remove the
outer cover which was a crystal with planed edges forming a heptagon. No one
would guess that the crystal was a cover disguising a pendulum of black opal,
perfectly weighted for scrying, encased in a Celtic knot filigree of white gold
matching the necklace chain.
The pointed stone was the rarest black opal,
alive with deep red flecks called "fire" by jewelers. Litha's
pendulum had been hand crafted for her by the monks of Cairdeas Deo and given
to her on her sixteenth birthday. Or, rather, the day that had been arbitrarily
established as the day they would celebrate her birth.
That birthday was a milestone because it was the
day she had been given the freedom to legally drive by herself. In the process
of celebrating by doing exactly that she came across a scene that would forever
be etched in her heart: a pink Italianate villa sitting high above the Sonoma
Coast with vineyards terracing toward the sea, neighboring hills covered with
flowering yellow mustard so that it looked like something from a fantasy. She
had pulled the car over, taken a mental snapshot, and knew that someday she
would drive through the gate and it would be hers.
She ran her finger over the pointed end just to
reestablish the connection - which was never really broken.
When she held the pendulum over the glass, it
immediately dropped into place and stilled, awaiting instructions from its
mistress. She began to trace Katrina's name, one letter at a time, while
picturing Katrina - replaying the snapshot moments of their brief time together
- and "hearing" the sound of her voice. Then she began to add details
about Katrina's current situation and state of mind that were gained from
Aelsong's visions.
By the time she reached the "i", the
pendulum was moving on its own to complete the specification ritual. Out of the
corner of her eye, she could see candle flames dance and flicker as if a draft
had blown through the room. For Litha spontaneous movement of air was a more or
less commonplace occurrence, at least when she was scrying. If others preferred
to think of the phenomenon as invisible, or discarnate entities, it made no
difference to her.
She closed the globe and moved so that she was
facing Scotia, then held the pendulum above it simply saying,
"Where?"
The pendulum did not move. Which was a first.
Frowning, Litha repeated her command a little more firmly, "Where?"
No response.
She lowered the pendulum, took it in her hand,
and rolled it around in her palm a few times while deliberately focusing on an
image of Katrina.
Again, she held the pendulum above the globe.
"Where?"
No response.
Remembering that Aelsong said Katrina was no
longer in the same reality, she decided to alter the question. She held the
pendulum above the globe and asked, "Near where?"
Almost instantly it began to pull toward the
east like it was magnetized. Allowing enough slack so that it could go where it
wanted, Litha allowed the point to slide over the map of Europe. Across France.
Past Genoa. It came to rest just south of Florence. Siena.
"Got it."
Hope you enjoy this
book and have a wonderful ...
Halloween or All Hallow’s Eve, Hallowstide, Hallowmas, the
Great Sabbat, the Feast of the Dead, or Witches' New Year. For Witches who
practice one of the branches of magick based in Celtic heritage, it is called
Samhain. Pronounced like sau'-wan. Visit 7th-House.com to see my non-fiction
work.
My Best,
Victoria Danann
WEBSITE: http://www.VictoriaDanann.com
BLOG: http://VictoriaDanann.me
FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/vdanann
TWITTER: @vdanann
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