Tag Archives: spirits

Spells For Travelers- A half finished system

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I get the sense that with my writing on here, I am tending to come across as having much more of an idea what I am talking about than I really do.
My actual practice is really quite a wild mush of trying things out. Picking up new activities, dropping old ones.

Early next year I am setting off to explore Europe and possibly the rest of the world. As such I am in the process of putting together a system of protective travel sorcery that I can carry with me/perform on the road.
So to give you good folks a more rounded view of my practice I am going to post now what I have come up with so far in my research.

And will post again a more polished version of the system in a few months when I have put everything into practice.
I personally find the exploring new ideas, and trying new techniques to be at least half the fun of the whole magical operation!

Carrying the Gods with me
So my first line of defense is simply that of holy protection. I have the benefit of practically all the gods I work with having travel connotations!
I will be making offerings and saying prayers before I leave and at various times during my travels, as well as carrying tiny statues, or representations of Them.

Archangles
As far as I have found so far Raphael seems to be the Archangel to go to with matters of travel.
BUT I quite like the idea of invoking a bunch of them and asking each to protect from their given direction.
Will have to mull over which way to go, or if I do both perhaps?

Psalm  121
A prayer from the good book.
This psalm apparently has a long history of use in the tradition of using psalms as spells.

Commit to memory and use as a spoken spell when feeling threatened? Or perhaps write down and carry as a written spell.

Swallow’s Blood
Swallow’s blood (a magical recipe, no bird killing) is said to comfort and protect travelers.

Dragon’s Blood
Red sandalwood
Rose petals
Jasmine
Orrisroot

Dry and powder the above botanicals and use to fumigate travel clothes, bag, self, and any travel charms.
My main issue with this one is that red sandalwood is endangered- I am thinking of using paprika as a substitute as it has similar colour and properties.

Garlic and Mirror
There is a spell where you simply rub a garlic clove onto a small mirror and place it under your bed.
This one I am a bit on the fence about. Maybe if I take a small travel mirror, I could use this technique to charge it up every now and then.

Compass Rune

Compass Rune

I don’t know why this wasn’t the first thing I thought of when I started coming up with ideas for charms.
I’m aware enough of its historical ambiguity to not get it as a tat. But as a small “doodle”, somewhere on my bag, for instance. Gold!

Condition Oils
I will probably have to make simple versions of these when I get over there, as I can’t see customs being too please with bottles of oil and botanicals!

But I think a money oil, a protection oil, and a luck oil (van van?) would be the way to go. Could even mix them them all together into one little bottle after making the to save space and for ease of application.

Then simply anoint self daily or as needed. Could also be used on belongings and surroundings.

Working with the Spirits of Place
Here I am talking about invoking… the places you are traveling through? to be your guides and protectors.

So start big. I will begin with invoking europe as a whole. Then making offerings and asking  the blessings and aid of europe.
Then get smaller, invoke the country, then the region, then the city or town, then the specific building/park/whatever.

If the very land beneath your feet is on your side, then you are at a big advantage!

I would suggest visiting power sites as a way to deepen the connection with the land. Also make offerings to the nature/land spirits, spirits of the roads and crossroads, and any wandering spirits in the land.
Basically get everyone on side!

Eyes
Eyes are great, paint them on your bag, hang them off it as charms, doodle them on your skin.

Eyes everywhere. Eyes to watch, Eyes to guard, Eyes to alert, Eyes to find.

Blessed Padlocks
I will be blessing my padlocks by the God of Thieves himself. A little engraving and a short prayer that all thieves be kept away, and all my belongings stay with me.

 

So that is my layered system of travel charms/spells/deals as far my research as gone so far. I will likely change a lot of things. Add in, take out, rethink.
I will also be creating a mundane protection system to compliment this sorcerous protection system. Cover as many bases as possible for ultimate safety!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kick Starting Your Daily Practice!

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I think this is a topic that most occult blogs cover at some point, but very few of my pagan friends in the real world seem to actually have anything like a regular practice.
So hopefully by writing this I can give people a few ideas for what to actually *DO*. I know that in the past I have really struggled to find ideas of what exercises to actually do. Meditation is the obvious one. Then maybe some prayer, but quickly the ideas start to run out.

There are also a few tricks for helping stick to the daily practice, and incorporate it into your life- rather than it being just one more chore you have to do.

 

How to Stick to your Daily Practice

I have found that the biggest thing for me is to start small. Pick one small, tiny thing, that you can easily do every day.

Make it something small that can easily fit into your day, and it could even be something you do while doing other things. For me this was a few prayers that
I could say at various set times during the day.

Then add something a little extra. Nothing to big yet, but something a little more involved. Maybe a blessing, or some simple energy work. Have you grounded today?

 And then start adding and building a practice at your actual altar. Again starting small with just a few minutes at your altar each day to start with. Doing a quick divination reading perhaps? Or just a quick chat to the spirits before starting the day. And eventually you can move onto the longer things like meditation.

Another thing I have found useful myself, and which seems to be common, is that you need to do your “formal practice” in the morning. If I leave mine till later in the day, or plan to do it after work- it tends to not happen.

So if you can fit in even fifteen minutes before you start your day- that time is pure gold!

And of course having a practice that excites, calms, and uplifts you is going to be much easier to keep up with than something dusty and boring. Experiment and have a bit of fun with the process!

 

Ideas for Daily Practice

One of the easiest things to start with is finding a pair of prayers. One to say upon starting the day, and one for ending the day before bed. You don’t even have to change anything in your schedule to do this!
The prayers I use are, for the morning:

I farewell the night and welcome the day,
It will be a good day if I let it.*
May I remain awake and aware, fully present in the world,
May I remain grateful,
May I remember my connection to all things,
May the spirits and gods walk with me,
May I experience beauty, joy, and wonder.
It will be a good day if I let it!

 *The first two lines are a modified version of a prayer I picked up from B. T. Newberg over at Humanistic Paganism, Here.

 

For the evening I simply start with “I am truly thankful for my many blessings. I am thankful for…”, I then go on to list at least five things I am grateful for. The more things you can list the better.
It doesn’t matter if they are trivial. As long as you are grateful for them, then it counts!

If you catch a bus or train to work or school, then you have an extra chance to sneak in some “on the fly” practice. This can be a great place for a little energy work. Practice grounding by connecting to the earth and cosmos, or work on your chakras/energy centers, and just generally play around with energy work however you like.

Another place to slip in a littler extra energy work is in the shower/bath, where you can do a simple cleansing of your energy, while cleaning your physical body.

Meditation is a no brainer, though also often the most difficult to find the time for. If all you can fit in is five minutes before racing out the door in the morning then it beats doing nothing! (Or get up five minutes earlier and make it ten minutes!)

However, you really want to be aiming for getting up to twenty minutes a day at least, if possible.

I like to add in a few invocations, or just talk casually to the gods and spirits a bit before meditating, as a way to touch in with my “peeps on the other side” every day or so.

Making small offerings of energy, incense, candles, cups of tea, poetry, or anything you like really. The idea is to make small offerings regularly. This can have two uses. The first is most obvious- it keeps your gods and spirits happy, and you in their good books.
The second use is a little more obscure- but by giving away a little of what you have, you acknowledge your gratitude for the things you have.

A prayer at meal times wouldn’t go amiss either. Now don’t get put off by the Christian idea of Grace.
As pagans we can thank the sun or the earth for their gifts of life giving food.
Or thank the Green Man, for it is his flesh and body that we are consuming.

The one I have been using lately has been going:
I give thanks for this meal,
I give thanks for the lives that were sacrificed to create it,
I give thanks to Dionysos*, the Green Man for it is his flesh we eat,
And I give thanks to Sun, Soil, Seed, and Beast.**

*I am a follower of Dionysos, Feel free to leave him out of your prayer, and just mention the Green Man.

**This line is an adaptation of a phrase I picked up Here, at Witchvox

 

Going Deeper

As just a little something extra, I find it quite a good idea to have a longer session once a week, if possible. In this time you can do slightly longer things that you don’t have time for during the week.

Longer meditation, More elaborate offerings, Full invocation rituals to your gods, More in-depth energy work, making/blessing/enchanting of materia, Any other things that are important to your spiritual life, but that you can’t do every day.

Also going away to a beach, or camping, or some wild place can be a great idea.

Another great way to really sink into the skin of your life and live spiritually is to start learning and practicing mindfulness! Go google it! It is like mediation for busy people that you can do ALL THE TIME!
What ever you decided is personally important to include in your own daily practice, the most important thing I want to reemphasise is to Start Small!

 

All Hallow’s Eve Eve

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Down in the southern hemisphere today is Samhain. However, since I am the only one that does not work mondays, my witchgroup came around yesterday for a bit of All Hallows’s Eve Eve madness!

Altar to the spirits; to the dead; to the season.

We made up our altar and covered it with pumpkins, kumaras, apples, and candles. We  wrote a circle casting that we will use as a group in the future to try and get a bit more structure into our workings, and did a small ritual for the sabbat.

We spent most of the day cackling away at all sorts of rather idiotic things!
One of the highlights being when I had no symbol of earth with which to cast the circle. Therefore, not wanting to disrupt the flow of the ritual too much, our circle was cast by wand, blade, cup, and kumara. You know… as did the witches of old…

Offerings to the spirits.

I left offerings to my gods, and to the spirits.

It was quite the feast day. We had pumpkin muffins, and feijoa and raspberry pikelets. We ate pumpkin and kumara soup, drank cider, pomegranate juice, and grape juice.

And THEN it was time to carve the lanterns!

Jack o lanterns- Pumpkins, Kumaras, Apples.

It all started quite innocently with carving a few pumpkins for a remembrance-of-the-dead Halloween gathering.
It soon spiraled into the inspired madness of apple and kumara jack o lanterns.

We then headed out to where the gathering with candles and jack o lanterns was being held.

It was rather pretty with all the twinkling candles, and our “creative” creations were well accepted!

The atmosphere was a little sad, but also a little joyful and light. It was lovely to see all the candles shinning in memory of the beloved dead.

 

 

 

 

 

In which the silly sorcerers say silly sentences-
Quote A:
Liv- Is that vodka and pomegranate juice in those offering cups?
Me- Yes…
Liv- You’re making cocktails for the gods?
Me- Yes, They also have a little chocolate. I’m trying to seduce them.

 

Quote B (while carving various vegetables and fruit:
Me- I am so jealous of us right now! How are we so cool? It just isn’t fair on other people!

 

 

Black spirits and white, red spirits and gray- Talking With The Spirits

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The other night during a much needed uncrossing ritual my mind strayed to a spirit that I used to work with, and in a flash the three main ones I have worked with all were back around me.

A little sad and annoyed at my ignoring them since my agnostic thinking started, but happy enough to work with me again it seemed.

And so I have been talking with my familiar spirits again the past few days. Am I talking to other worldly beings, deep parts of my psyche, or do I just have an “over active imagination”?

I am generally only aware of them when I think about them. They do not bother me unexpectedly as many other spirit workers claim. And they are nearly always there when I think of or call them.

This leads me to three likely possibilities:
1) They are always around me, but being not too sensitive, I need to think of and focus on them to “tune in”.
2) Thinking about them acts as a gentle summons, which they are happy to answer.
3) That I am making them up, and being imaginary don’t talk or interact with me when I am not thinking about them.

 

 

View of spirits as a Pagan Humanist
By Pagan Humanism I mean the view that spirits, gods, and magic are not literal, objectively real things, but concepts, archetypes, psychological phenomenon, and living poetry.

At first I was a bit unsure how the spirits, and working with them could fit into an agnostic humanist worldview. But with a few spirits coming back, and talking with them- I had to start thinking.

And I hit upon the thought that personal spirits are something akin to small gods; If gods can have a place in paganistic humanism, then why not small gods too?

I imagine there are a goodly number of reasons a humanist might find talking with spirits, that they view as likely not real, to be a useful practice.
The main few that I can think of are:
1) The things they say to you might give some insight to the inner workings of your own mind.
2) It may provide a useful way of communicating with the subconscious.
3) When lonely “imaginary” friends may be of comfort.
4) The inner voices might be able to help in making decisions when you feel stuck.
5) It can be a lot of fun if you let it.

 

 

View of spirits as a Pagan literalist
By Pagan Literalism I mean the view that spirits, gods, and magic are literal people and things that can have an objective effect on the outer universe.

After the uncrossing ritual I have been talking with my spirits a little and it doesn’t feel like just my own voice.

I also feel my tarot readings are more accurate now that I am asking one of my spirits to guide the cards (though I gave them a little uncrossing juju in the ritual so that probably helped also!)

I don’t feel the need to say much about the reasons having spirit friends would be useful from a literalist view as they are probably quite obvious and I would just be re-saying what many have said before me.

Suffice to say that having a friend that knows the spirit world better than you and can interact with it more easily and effectively can only be good! 

 

 

Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?
The above Harry Potter quote raises another interesting point. Namely, something may not need to be objectively real to be real to you and your view of the universe.

The inner world of the mind can be just as real as an outer reality. It is simply more subtle, changeable, and is only your own.

 

I have no clue if spirits are objectively real, and if they are then I don’t know if what I think I’m talking to are actually spirits, but I am having a fantastically interesting time interacting with these things, be they spirits or imaginary friends.

Small strange happenings in my life keep me curious I must say.