Talking with them may involve a deep concentration and meditation. The thing with non-human entities is that their method of communication takes other forms other than mere words. Because of this, it is essential to still the mind and allow images or “feelings” to come through. If it feels gentle and almost invisible, you will know it as a contact from an imaginary though dredged up from the subconcious.

Doing a Yule ritual nearby would still require you to cast your circle of protection and calling on the 4 watchtowers. However avoid setting anything on or near any mounds or you may annoy the wee folk.

If you want a more information on contacting faeries, I highly recommend the book Enchantment of the Faerie Realm by Ted Andrews, published by Llewellyn Publications. In the 215 pages of this comprehensive guide, Ted Andrews explains the best ways to invoking faerie contact, and invite the wee ones to join in your magickal ceremonies. Whether you’re interested in working with elemental spirits of earth, air, fire or water, you will find specific guides for each, along with guides for contacting specific flower faeries and tree spirits. Read about the histories, favorites places and the best ritual help offered by each faerie variety. He also cautions the reader on showing love and respect if you wish to gain access to their influence, for just as you wouldn’t want to be forced to do anything against your will, these beings don’t either! This is a great book to read even for those who don’t wish to work with faeries, but just would like to get small glimpse into their world.

Everyone in your dream state is a representation of you, this includes the male and female characters, so in essence you are chasing your own psyche. These type of dreams are not uncommon with folks who are having a stressful time in their lives.

Since this is causing a problem for you, consider trying “lucid” dreaming. This takes some practice, but with training it isn’t impossible. What this entails is literally stopping what you are doing in your dream state and change the events that are happening. What transpires is the conscious and unconscious merge to a small degree to allow you to control the type of dreams you are having.

As stressful as these dreams may be, you may want to keep a dream journal because often things we cannot resolve in our waking state are given the theater of the mind during the nocturnal hours. Sometimes nightmares can often lead to solutions to troubles during our daytime lives.

With the knowledge that all the characters of the dream state are in fact parts of you, it would be helpful to see what it is about the one “character” being chased by the other part of you trying to kill it.

Over time and with a decent amount of recorded dreams, you will find a pattern emerging that sheds light on things you may need solutions for.

Meditation takes time and practice. Sadly, in our hurried society, we often are unable or unwilling to take the time out to relax the body to allow the spirit to wander freely.

It often helps to stay in a sitting position where you are comfortable but not so comfortable that you will fall asleep. Sometimes having background sounds such as waterfalls, ocean surf or other such things helps folks to focus.

One thing that often works is to envision a huge white sphere over your head and focus it going into each part of your body. There are a number of cassette and video tapes available to help you achieve this. I recommend those from The Valley of the Sun, which can be found online.

This company has been around for more than 20 years, and their technique to getting the mind retrained into higher consciousness is simply astounding.

As far as Vegan/Vegetarianism, some helpful articles can be found within this very magazine in the lifestyle section. Recommended outside links include Veggies Unite, Beyond Vegetarianism, and Vegan Action. There is also a multitude of cookbooks available through PETA, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

My all time favorite cookbook is Tofu Cookery by Louise Hagler. There is a non-meat chili recipe in there to literally die for! With this book, you don’t need to be a gourmet chef to figure out how to make anything and you don’t have to buy a lot of expensive herbs and spices that wouldn’t normally be in your cupboard. Sadly, I lent this book out twice and never saw it again and had to replace it for the third time.

Basically “Goth” as a modern phenomenon started back when punk rock was fusing more towards death rock, which was around 1980. It wasn’t called Goth then, and heaven knows there are so many offshoot branches of the genre that even the most devout music lover will have a time and a half just to keep up with the many transitions. During the early days, it received the tag of death rock and doom metal. The most infamous song from that period is Bela Lugosi’s Dead by Bauhaus, which was featured in the film The Hunger starring David Bowie, Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon.

As time moved on, the music became more ornate and less angsty with the punk elements. Offshoots of ethereal work with a more dark and tranquil element became all the rage, causing another phenomenon called darkwave. After a time, artists started combing the two elements to deliver any number of hybrid samples of music, much of which is available for sampling on the internet. Some work can be freely heard or downloaded at Hidden Sanctuary where you will find any number of the more popular underground artists featured there.

The essential thing to note is that “Goth” has been around since the early days of the famed classical composers. Much of the Goth style takes its cues from the literature, art, religion and architecture of that period. You may notice some classical elements of the music in the modern Goth songs as well as many uses of velvet, lace and embroidery in the decadent fabrics that the club folks are wearing. It is also not uncommon to see a any number of religious icons decorating the home of someone in the scene.

Goth deals with darkness, but not evil. Many people tend to lump Goth, vampire, black metal, witches, satanism and Marilyn Manson shock rock into the same scenes. The thing that ties them together is the use of black clothing, but from there, it pretty much unravels into its own territory.

To some, Goth is a music scene, while others choose it as a “lifestyle.” This lifestyle basically means that one’s home and daily style of dress will reflect the beauty in the darkness. Essentially, there is an embracement of death elements as a cleansing and growth prospect as opposed to being merely dark and depressive as a means of quantifying anti-social behavior.

It is important to emphasize though that not all Wiccans are Goth and not all Goths are Wiccan. Sadly, the Hollywood and religious machinery has pretty much damaged the witch’s image. Although the Hollywood version often depicts witches in black clothing, a style favored by Goths, it in no way is a true representation of what a “typical” witch looks and acts like.

Author Mick Mercer has written a couple of excellent books on the goth music scene from the early days through the present time. They are out of print, but you may be able to snag a copy from Amazon as some folks have recently told me that they were able to get a reasonably priced copy. Even Morbid Outlook gets a nice mention in The Hex Files!

Goths by and large tend to be peace loving vegetarians for the most part. The sense of macabre, night time mystery, dark clothing, and sense of poetic introspection seems to lead them in the direction of self actualization. For some, it is merely a stylish way of depicting the morose whereas for others it is a means of reconciling the fact that death is inevitable and one needs to embrace life and the moment for all it is worth.