Life String^© and Powerful Wishes

by Jeanne Rose

from Ritual • Works and the
RITUAL is A Magical Experience. A Solstice Seminar

Part of a powerful and effective ceremony/ritual is to incorporate a Life String^© into your ceremony.
It takes time to tie or twist a Life String^©. And this time gives you the interval between the thought and the ceremony to really work out your wishes and true desires. At the Institute of Aromatic Studies we teach Ritual Classes once or twice a year – at either a Solstice or an Equinox. Call us for the schedule.
415-564-6785 or look online at the Calendar schedule.

The string represents whatever you wish but normally it represents the year coming, the knots represent the days, the months, the moons and any particular special event. This exercise is done to take the time to truly think about your life and what you are wishing /wanting out of your life. Organizing and tying The Life String^© takes time – about 12 hours of tying and meditating on your desires while tying.

First, you need to write out the wish, written about earlier in the Ritual • Works book, and then the work on your string, then putting together the tools for your ceremony and figure out your timing. This string that represents your life or a particular time has also been called:
   The Sacred Thread
   The Sacred String
   The Life String^©

The thread of life or The Life String^© represents fate and your life. It symbolizes the connection of the body and the spirit, the joining or connection between heaven and earth. It can represent the connection of the spirit with the soul – the astral cord that invisibly connects us to our life and choices, health and well being, the joining and connecting of this life and the one after. The thread is a symbol of the path that guides and connects learning and knowledge. I make a long continuous thread and call it the Life String^©. This I make and use in ritual or ceremony or just as a way to have a mind/body connection.

Make the Life String^© for yourself as part of a ritual. Make it in a ceremonial way — with intent and be mindful. Start making it at a Solstice or Equinox or any time that you choose. Use it at the appropriate festival that you have chosen. Work on it with thought and care.

I rather like the idea of gathering my tools and thread for ceremony at Summer solstice, then tying my string beginning on Autumn Equinox and then using it for the Winter Solstice festival. That gives me plenty of time to really consider all aspects of the ritual I wish to complete.

Tying and Choosing the Life String^©
Take an unbroken cotton or linen string 12 feet (to represent 12 months) or 365 inches (to represent 365 days) long, and tie onto it with other colored thread 365 knots. 12 sections with 28 ties per section + 5 that is separate, representing 12 months in the year, or 12 foot long into 28 day sections showing the 13 moons of the year and the moons 28 day rotation around the earth and an extra knot at the end. The extra knot can be a different color like black to show where to start and end.

If you choose the 12-foot string, make sure that it will be unbroken and strong and long enough with about 8 inches at each end to tie the ends together. Get embroidery thread in four main colors to match the four seasons and each of these four main colors to be in three shades of that color. Or choose your colors according the chart “Colors of the Four Directions According to Various Cultures” (see the Chart at the end of the ‘Ritual Works’ book.

As an example, yellow is a good color to represent the East and the season of Spring. Get yellow embroidery thread in palest yellow for early spring (April), pure yellow for mid spring (May) and very dark yellow to represent late spring (June).

Green is a good color to represent the South and the season of Summer. Get green embroidery thread in pale green for early summer (July), pure green for mid summer (August) and very dark green to represent late summer (September).

Do the same for autumn. As an example, red is a good color to represent the West and the season of Autumn. Get red embroidery thread in palest red for early autumn (October), pure red for mid spring (November) and very dark red to represent late Autumn (December).

Do the same for winter. As an example, blue is a good color to represent the North and the season of Winter. Get blue embroidery thread in palest blue for early winter (January), pure blue for mid winter (February) and very dark blue to represent late Winter (March).

Cut through the loops at the two ends of the skein to make the ties for the thread.

100% pure cotton thread & Linen thread 100% Hemp yarn   … Winter Color ….… Spring color …. Summer color …Autumn color

I prefer to tie the Life String^© into sections representing the four seasons and the 12 months and then go back later and add 13 knots of a totally different color to represent the 13 moons of the year. Sometimes, I use beads or puka* shells to represent the moons. I also prefer to use three types of string to braid or tie together to represent the three Fates. I have used Bamboo thread + Hemp thread + Cotton thread and at every foot of the combined thread tied a foot long length of the same combination to delineate each month. See the thread picture.
 

LifeString© 3-Fates thread of Bamboo, Hemp and Cotton The thread is tied every foot with another 3-strand piece of thread. At Solstice and Equinox another in appropriate color is braided in. Moons are represented with puka* shells or puka* stones. LifeString© 3-Fates thread of Bamboo, Hemp and Cotton – the 1st month (January) tied with blue and showing puka* stones to represent the full moon of December 07 and of January 2008. The tri-color strand in the upper right represents Winter Solstice.

With care and thought and with your wish or desire clearly written out or thought out ahead of time; tie the days of the year onto the ‘Life String^©’. It will take time. It should take time.

Be mindful of what you are doing. Remember that a powerful ceremony is only as powerful
as the energy you put into it. Think of what you re doing and do it with thought.

Make your Ritual circle with the Life String^©
Mark a Circle, and within set up a square using a compass to mark the directions. Set up four candles in the 4 corners to the 4 directions. Light the candles in the 4 corners and make the pot ready to be lit. With the correctly chosen scent for incense and/or burners - finally complete the circle with the Life String^© making sure the Seasons and the four directions are lined up correctly. Use Blue/winter at North, yellow/Spring for East, green/Summer for South and red/Autumn for West.

Background of the String or Thread — Life String^©
A thread generally symbolizes connecting one thing with another. In some cultures it suggests the connection of this world and the next. Time and life itself is a thread. By means of a thread you can find your way from one place to another. Ariadne gave a ball of red fleece thread to Theseus so that he could find his way out of the labyrinth of the Minotaur.

The Fates
There are 3 Fates and they choose how long a person lives. They have awesome power and symbolism. They are destiny.

Clotho, the spinner is a goddess from Greek mythology. She is the spinner who spins the thread of human life. She is the youngest of the Three Fates (Clotho, Lachesis is the measurer, who chooses one’s destiny and measures off how long life is to be, and Atropos “she who can not be turned away” the cutter who determines the length of life by cutting the thread to the correct length with her shears. Atropos also determines the manner of death. Clotho is one of the oldest goddesses in Greek mythology but the youngest of the Fates while Atropos is the oldest.

Clotho is a daughter of Zeus and Themis. Each Fate has a certain job, to spin it on a spindle to measure thread, or to cut the thread at the right length.

…“Clotho is the spinner, and she spins the thread of human life with her distaff. The length of the string will determine how long a certain person's life will be. She is also known to be the daughter of Night, to indicate the darkness and obscurity of human destiny. No one knows for sure how much power Clotho and her sisters have, however; they often disobey the ruler, Zeus, and other gods. For some reason, the gods seem to obey them, whether because the fates do possess greater power, or as some sources suggest, their existence is part of the order of the Universe, and this the gods cannot disturb.”…

Their father was Zeus and their mother was Themis, the goddess of Order and the Divine Right and represents the order of things as sanctioned by custom and law. The Romans call her Justice and she is represented as a stern looking woman, blindfolded and holding a pair of scales and a cornucopia. Some say that the mother of the Fates is Night or Nyx (by no one).

Symbols and Unknown Words
*Puka means a hole

Sources: “Ritual Works!” has bath salts, massage oils, essential oil blends, - all in each color of the spectrum for your works. Special order form is at the end of the Ritual book. Books are listed on the website, the Calendar shows the classes and the home-study courses are available in both Aromatherapy and Herbal Studies. www.JeanneRose.net

Bibliography:
Rose, Jeanne, Ritual • Works a Magical Experience. Institute of Aromatic Studies.
http://www.Jeanne Rose.net/
http://.pantheon.org/articles
www.vroma.org/ ~araia/lachesis.html
The Herder Symbol Dictionary by Chiron Publications. 1988
The Dictionary of Symbols by Carl G. Liungman. Norton & Company. 1991
Rose, Jeanne. The Aromatherapy Book, Application & Inhalations

The Fates of Life: Spinning, Counting/Measures, Cutting

Magic is just science not yet known, not yet studied, not yet analyzed!
… Jeanne Rose, 2008

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