Uses promptos facit

Stonehenge by Simon Wakefield - it's funny because this picture was actually taken on the 27th of December 2008.

Practice makes perfect

On the eve of the summer solstice (yesterday), I started thinking about the importance of regular practice in magical workings.  Magic, like writing or music or any other skill, is learned.  You may have an aptitude for it, but if you don't nurture that talent you won't get very far with it.  The benefits of creating and sticking with a regular schedule of ritual and workings are subtle yet manifold.  The more you work at something the easier it becomes for you, you know?

I know that when I stick to regular practice I feel calmer, more grounded, and yet more open and in touch with the various gods and spirits with whom I work.  Unfortunately, I'm terrible at keeping with a regular schedule at anything in my life.  Life, it seems, likes to get in my way, and I can always find an excuse to not do something even if it's something that I really want to do.  I'm working on breaking that habit, but, like with anything, it takes time and practice.  And I frustrate so easily.

See, I have a tendency to work manically—in fits and starts.  I'll spend days fretting over one or another: researching a god, or learning the magical, medicinal, and culinary uses of an herb, or finding, copying, and/or writing poems and prayers.  Then, I'll lose focus, and spend weeks doing nothing but vegging out with Netflix until I feel so guilty for doing so that I jump back into a manic state of work.  And everything is done so randomly and in such a slipshod fashion that I get no benefit from it.  I learn nothing.  I lose focus because I never really had it to begin with.

I decided a while back—though those who know have been saying this for years (I just didn't listen)—to look at my magical and religious practices like I did school.  I was brilliant at school.  Ruthlessly organized, relentless in my studies, and (once I figured out my major) frighteningly focused.  Since I finished my Master's degree, I've been all at ends.  For a while it was like I lost my purpose.  The sad fact that people with my degree now have an average wait of 10 years before landing a full time job in our field just made it worse.  In fact, even now the thing I most regret about my life is that I got a Master's: I don't believe that I will ever work full time in my field, and will leave it (and my crappy part time/no benefits job) as soon as I am able.  That's not the point, though.  That's not the lesson.*

The point is: what I need, what I believe everyone needs–especially magic workers–is that focus I learned in my years at university.

Regular practice.  Regular studies.  Regular worship.  It helps.  Really and truly, it does.  When I work on a schedule and not at my own whim, I am much calmer and everything in my life benefits.  The slow and incremental learning of anything, helps not only to build a foundation for more advanced skills, but also in retention.  To continue with my college analogy, it's much easier and mor effective to study all semester than to desperately cram before the final.  My magical practice has, in past years, been that desperate cram session resulting in wonky spells that may or may not work.  To fix this I've slowly been adding routine into my practice, and cutting out the mania.

Lately I've been needing more help with that.  Last October I quit one of my two part time jobs** and now I have way more time on my hands.  Which, for me, means more time to pursue my own interests/studies, and more time to dick around and forget about those interests/studies.  To remedy this, I recently bought a weekly planner–just like I had in uni–to help me plan out (and stick to) a more complicated schedule than I was expecting.  Oh, and this planner is a magical thing!  Room for notes and so much more.  And it's much harder to ignore a book than my phone.  It'll help me find and maintain a workable schedule for everything I want to do: magic, language, work, search for work, write, worship, and more!

As I am now, I've been able to maintain (for the most part) weekly offerings to my gods, ancestors, and spirits as per my arrangement with them.  I haven't kept up with my language studies, but expect that to change with focus.  As will my magical studies, since I plan to treat them like actual classes rather than the ad libitum episodes that they are now.  All this will help me to deepen my spiritual and magical practices, and help me gain a greater proficiency and knowledge of the things.  I encourage everyone looking to deepen and enrich their own practices to do so as well.

Happy solstice everyone!  And how cool is it that the full moon and the solstice fall on the same day this year?

*That's a minor rant about my utter disappointment and the waste of about $30K that I couldn't and still can't afford.

**In the hopes that I would soon find a full time position somewhere.  Besides that it was a SUPER crappy job.  Management treated the part time employees poorly, and the HR person constantly talked to me like I was a mentally handicapped child rather than a full grown woman in her 30s.  Sorry, another rant.

The Essentials

L'Envoûteuse (The Sorceress)
Georges Merle Georges Merle, France, 1851 - 1886
[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

When you look up spells online, or read a book of introductory magic—or even beyond that, you're generally inundated with a need for things: this wand, that candle, that herb or stone or incense.  Trappings, that's all they are, and I've found that you don't really need them.  What you do need are: a safe space, a quiet head, and an open mind.  These are what I believe to be the three essentials to a successful magical practice.  Eventually, I'd like to write more in-depth essays on each of them, but, for now, I think a brief introduction will do.

A safe space

A safe space can be anywhere that you won't be disturbed and that you feel, well, safe.  It can be anyplace.  I currently use my bedroom and sometimes my kitchen, but I have used parks, woods, the shores of both lake and sea.  Magic can happen anywhere, but I find that I work best in a space where I'll not be interrupted.  I also think that it's best if whatever space you're using is clean, uncluttered, and relatively peaceful.  You need a place where you can concentrate, let yourself go, and just be.  If you're constantly worried about being stumbled over, interrupted, or, gods forbid, attacked, you just can't get into the correct mindset.

A quiet head

A quiet head is one that is at peace, where your mind's not jabbering at you constantly.  It's a mind that's cleared of all thoughts but that of the task before you.  This is difficult, but can be cultivated with meditation.  The trick is finding a meditation that works for you, and that in itself can be a struggle.  One of the reasons, I think, is that we have this idea of meditation as being the emptying out of all thought, so we sit and we struggle because our minds won't stop working.  Thoughts keep coming in, we get annoyed with ourselves, and eventually we just give up, usually with a disgusted feeling of "I just can't do this."  I don't believe that to be true.

First off, there are several different ways to meditate.  You can use a form of moving meditation: dancing, Tai Chi, running, yoga.  Moving meditation is just a form of moving where you have to concentrate on the movements your making rather than how you're going to pay your phone bill, or what's going on on your favorite TV show, or whatever.  Those thoughts may enter your head, but they don't stay because you have to be all in your body.  You have to check your timing, your breathing, where you're hands and feet are.  You have to concentrate on what you're doing, rather than what you're thinking.  It helps to center you, right?  Getting lost in movement.

There's also visualization.  You focus on a picture or scene in your mind.  You plant a seed and watch that seed grow behind your eyelids.  See the roots seeking water and deeper earth, the sprout pushing up towards the sun, see it quiver, see it breathe.  Or you can focus on a memory, preferably not an unpleasant one, but something agreeable.  The first time you flew a kite, or rode a roller coaster.  What did it feel like?  What did the wind feel like?  The tug on your arms?  What color was the sky?  Remember the way your heart beat on the way up, and down.  Remember the twists and turns, the feel of almost falling.  Picture it in the most minute details, the sounds, the smells, the flow of blood through your veins.

Or you can just focus on something something so much that it fills your head.  Use a flame, watch it dance, breath with it, stare into the heart of it.  Pay attention.  Watch that stream stream flow and bubble.  See the most minute detail of that tree, try to capture it in you mind.  Calm down and just look, choose one thing, and look.

You can do the same with almost anything.  The more you practice it, the easier it will be, and the clearer you're brain will feel.  You can start slow, five minutes a day, working up to fifteen, twenty, an hour, whatever.  Meditation helps to clarify your mind, clean your head out, and can help to minimize the damage negative or obsessive thoughts cause.  I'll not claim that it's a cure for depression, because I'm proof that it's not, but, for me, it helps to put things in perspective and kind of break that cycle of "my gods, you're a worthless human being" that I tend to get stuck in.  I really can't do anything when I'm in one of those cycles, let alone magic.  A quiet head is one that doesn't have those thoughts screaming on repeat constantly, or one that can disregard those thoughts as unimportant and shush whatever unhappy voices that want to take up all the space.

An open mind

What do I mean by an open mind?  Imagination, intelligence, the willingness to believe in magic.  You need the ability to change the way you look at the world, and the wits to recognize the change.  You also need to be able to experiment, to find out what works and what doesn't.  You need to learn and continue learning.  I find it's helpful to be good with words—some of my most successful spells have been little more than rhyming quatrains.  Life is a constant evolution of the mind, and it's my firm belief that if you aren't learning, you aren't living, and living is important.  You need to read, write, dance, play, pray.  Learn how to raise energy, and to ground it.  Find out what's works for you, tweak it, revise it, try again.  Find a new way that also works, or doesn't, and tweak that until it feels right.  Do it again.  Do it again.  Find another and do that.  Rinse and repeat.  Keep learning.  Be willing to keep learning.  Keep changing.  Believe.  Know.  Know down to your bones.  That in itself is a magic.

Be willing to put in the work.  Be willing to see the results.  That's how you do magic.

Cleansing and Purification

Elakala Falls. Forest Wanderer.

I think it's important to regularly cleanse and purify not only your sacred and mundane spaces, but your mind, body, and spirit as well.  Imbolc, which occurs on roughly the second of February marks the start of spring cleaning for me, and though I didn't write or perform an Imbolc ritual this year (which I totally meant to do) what follows is at least part of the purification process involved in my usual Imbolc rituals.

Cleansing and purification is important way to renew and rejuvenate.  By removing the negative energies that bog down your spirit, and cleaning your home of clutter and filth that exhaust your mind and body, you open yourself to the possibility of new beginnings and positive change.

Salt, Water, & Fire

These are the base of all of my cleansing and purification rituals/spells

Dead Sea Salt. Hassan Bushnaq.

Salt

Salt has been used for thousands of years by cultures all over the world for purification purposes.  According to folklore salt purifies and repels evil beings and negative energies, which makes it perfect for our purposes.  

Water

Water is the universal cleansing element.  It is what we use to wash ourselves, our homes, our world.  Water is connected to the moon and the divine feminine.

Fire

Fire is a purifying element.  Both destructive and creative, without which we could not be.  Our world would not be here, not as it is.  Fire is connected to the divine masculine and the sun.

Herbal Sea Salt Scrub for Self-Cleansing Ritual

Ingredients:

• 1 cup sea salt 
• 1/2 cup of jojoba oil 
• 1 tablespoon of dried rosemary 
• ~15 drops of rosemary essential oil 

Mix the salt and oil, stir well.  Add the rosemary, stir again.  Add the essential oil, stir again.  Put it in a wide mouth container for easy use.  Use.  

Fire from a brazier. Erin Silversmith.

[Notes: (1) The dried herbs and scent are totally optional.  (2) The coarseness of the salt will affect different people differently, so experiment.  I find that a coarse sea salt is great for my body, and the finer dead sea salt is wonderful on my face.  (3) Instead of jojoba oil you can you can use grapeseed, almond, coconut, or whatever type of oil you prefer.  (4) You can replace the rosemary and rosemary essential oil with any of the other cleansing herbs (i.e. lavender, sage, chamomile, hyssop, lemon balm, peppermint, etc) or you can remove it entirely!]

To use in a shower:

Light some candles to add the element of fire to the room while you bathe.  Burn incense if you wish.  PrepareWash yourself with soap and rinse off.  Turn off the water in the shower, if you use the scrub with the water running it'll rinse off before you're full scrubbed down.  Scrub you body head to toe with the salt scrub until you can no longer feel the salt.  Be gentle with yourself.  If you have a partner let them scrub your hard to reach places.  Turn the water back on and rinse off. 

To use in a bath:

Basically the same.  Only I'd drain the tub between washing and the scrub, and use a pitcher or hand shower to make sure I'm fully rinsed.

Visualization for the cleansing:

Focus on the warmth of the water, the coarseness of the scrub.  Picture all the negativity, all your troubles and worries being washed away, swept down the drain and out towards the sea.  See your mind, body, and spirit being purified.  Find that glow from within and strengthen it.  

To Purify a Space

Clean the room.  Pick up the clutter.  Dust, take down the drapes, beat the pillows, change the sheets or slipcovers, sweep or vacuum.  Move in a deosil or clockwise direction while cleaning, at least as much as possible.  When the room is clean in the more mundane sense, set small bowls of salt or salt water in the corners of the room.  Allow the bowls to stand for 24 hours before removing from the room and discarding the contents.  Additionally, you can mix water, salt, and cleansing herbs to asperge the room:  walk around deosil around the room and sprinkle the mixture while you walk.  You can also smudge the room with burning herbs or incense.  I usually use a mix of all three.