Category Archives: magic

Techniques of Empowerment

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Visualization
Using Visualization as means of empowering yourself, here are two simple methods to break restrictions and limitations and empower yourself with mastery and authority.

Visualization #1 – To break restrictions and limitation

See yourself bound by ropes and chains. These restraints are expressions of things, internal and external, that are holding you back.
Begin to breath deeply and relax and see this spark of energy building up in your stomach. With each breath it becomes stronger and brighter, until it begins to rise up and flow into your heart. With each breath the spark pulses and grows at your heart, building up pressure, like a pressure cooker. Keep breathing deeply and relaxing, letting that pressure build and build. If you spend 2-5 minutes doing it.
When you feel this pressure reach a peak, let it explode out from your heart area, like an exploding bomb. It shreds the ropes and breaks the chains into pieces. The piece fly away from you, out into an empty void. You are liberated and free.

Visualization #2 – To empower with sovereignty and authority and protection

this energy that just exploded out of you now also flows through your body. It fills every fiber of your being, flowing down to your toes, and up to the crown of your head, and flowing into your arms all the way into your fingertips, and circulating back before it is pumped out again, like blood through your circulatory system.
However, this energy also starts to flow out from the pores of your skin, and as it does so, it begins to shape itself into clothing around you. This clothing inspires respect, and signifies power and authority.

It could be a three piece business suit in a color that you love. It recalls to mind capable and influential business people who can manage difficult situations and resolve problems with easy. It could be a military uniform of a general or an admiral or captain. You are the top of the hierarchy. The buck stops with you. What you say is a command and people are expected to follow your orders and directives, and be attentive to your every whim and even your presence. Maybe its the robes of a King or Queen, either from history or present day, or from fantasy media, or something you envisioned and drew on a character of your own creation. It looks regal, the indication of sovereignty which commands respect, causes people to recognize your authority, and submit to your commands. Whatever the outfit, it communicates to everyone saying “I’m the boss, I’m in charge, you will respect me”. Around that outfit is a slight shimmer of a golden radiance surrounds you, as though you are touched by the divine, having divine grace or favor.
You are on a dais, raised up slightly from the crowds around you. Almost spotlighting you but it also lifts you up, putting you beyond the reach of low opinions and attitudes. People also just naturally look up to you, seeing you as a leader, a guide, an inspiration.
This energy continues to flow out from you and taking shape around you as a clear wall of force. You can see through it easily, seeing what you want to achieve, the resources you desire, the road ahead that you want to walk. You can clearly see your allies, and good things that can help you. However this wall blocks out evil influences, the gazes of the jealous and envious, the evil eye, hatred of your enemies, and malign influences that restricted and limited you before. Those ropes and chains are blocked by the this wall, unable to make you small and restrain you again. You are strong, capable, powerful, and protected.

If you have problems with visualization as an image, I recommend just writing this down, or reading it out loud when you want to do it.
For the first visualization, if you want to tie in things and make them more physical, you can loosely tie yourself with ropes and chain in order to feel those bindings on your body and breaking yourself free from them.
For the second one, see if you can find a picture of the desired outfit. If you can draw it yourself, great, but you can also write out a detailed description of it to help yourself in connecting with it more strongly. If you can create it or buy it, you might also try that. When you wear it, just practice feeling powerful and awe inspiring in it.
You can also use visualization #1 with uncrossing work. I have found it to be very effective for that. Afterwards when you are blessing yourself or working to bring luck or power, using visualization #2.

Spells for Influence or Domination

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Influence Spell

You will need:

Crown of Success Oil
Influence oil
A glass jar with a metal lid
Sweetener of choice
A picture and/or name paper of the target
Yellow candle

Anoint yourself with Crown of Success oil, especially on the temples and brow.

Take the picture/name paper of the target and place it into the jar. Cover it with a sweetener of your choice. Taste the sweetener and say “As this honey is sweet to me, so “Sally Johns” will be sweet to me and favor my requests. Close the jar.

Take the yellow candle and dress it with Influence oil. As you dress it, express what your desire is for the target to do for you and to follow your request and to favor you. Set the candle onto the jar and light it. While the candle burns, for at least 15 minutes, see hooked lights rising up from you and reaching out to the target of the spell. They flow into the target’s eyes, mouth, ears, nostrils etc,  and enter into the target and fill their mind and heart with images of you and that they are granting your request. They are happy with doing so, and feel happy from being able to help you and grant your request. When you are finished, let the candle continue to burn until it goes out. 

It is best to do this spell a day ahead of any meeting that you may have with the target regarding your request. When you go to meet the person, you should anoint yourself again with Crown of Success oil.
This spell can be slightly altered to serve different purposes. If you want to use it for love, use Bewitching oil or Look me Over instead of Crown of Success. If you want to influence troublesome people to go away peacefully, use Cast off Evil or Crucible of Courage. 

Domination Spell

You will need

Master Oil
Domination oil
A purple candle
A personal curio (hair from the head of the target, or their personal handwritten signature, or a drop of their blood)
A sharp implement to scribe into the candle

WARNING – The personal concern is absolutely necessary for the success of this spell. If you cannot acquire an intimate personal concern appropriate to the target, don’t do this spell. If you want to dominate a family member or loved one that you live with, you should go to acquire their hair or blood. If you want to dominate a co-worker or boss, then you should acquire their signature in their own hand.

Once you have the concern, anoint yourself with Master oil. Take the purple candle and with a scribing tool, write your request in a spiral around the candle, including the target’s name, like the stripe on a candy cane. For example “I dominate you Johnny Jackson, so you will listen to me and do your part in maintaining our home and raising our children. Or “I dominate you Sarah Sampson, to stop standing around by the water cooler and do your damn job.” Once you have finished writing your request, anoint the candle with Domination oil, repeating your request as you do so. Take the personal concern and place it under the candle. Light the candle and for 15 minutes see your request as a glowing chain flowing into the target. As it flows in, the chain wraps around their heart and their brain, wrapping around them tighter and tighter until both are essentially gone and replaced by your glowing chain, filling their entire being until only your will and desire remains inside them and all they can do is act upon and think of what you want them to do. The target is now just a subservient machine that will carry out what you desire. Once you have finished the 15 minutes, let the candle finish burning.  

spices

Pumpkin Spice Magic

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WHAT IS PUMPKIN SPICE?

Pumpkin Spice is a blend of sweet and hot spices, typically used to season pumpkin pie. Pumpkins themselves have a rather bland flavor that easily allows it to become an easy background to any flavoring you want to add to it. The spices usually included in this mixture are cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger and allspice. Some old recipes may not use all of these, as in the past, possessing any one of these spices was worth a potential fortune, and it really wasn’t until much more recently (relatively speaking) that there were rather inexpensive to acquire, and commonly available in the USA and other Western countries. If it were ever possible to travel back in time, take with you a single whole nutmeg, and you could potentially have a good sized piece of land and it’s serfs at your beck and call.
Personally I have included other spices in my own blends from time to time, to achieve an interesting touch. Black pepper gives it a touch more kick, cardamom adds and blends nicely with the other spices, and for something different (and not altogether desirable to a lot of people) adding star anise to it also gives a unique flavor that I enjoy. But the basics that are commonly used are listed above.


THE MAGIC OF PUMPKIN SPICE

Interestingly, the spices using in a pumpkin spice blend have a long history of being used for various spells and rituals, most of them to bring good fortune, wealth, luck with gambling, and also love.

Cinnamon and Nutmeg are probably the best-known spices for money. Cinnamon, the bark of certain trees native to Asia, as well as their essential oil, are used in numerous spells meant to attract wealth, bring love, bring luck, cleansing, and also, protection. This must be because of how popular cinnamon is as a spice. It appears in recipes around the world, and is still popular in many foods, sweets, and beverages. Depending upon cultural context, that will shape how cinnamon is used by people, but in this modern world, where the spiritual works of all cultures are available with a few clicks on a smartphone or computer, people are working with cinnamon more than ever.  While some insist on using true cinnamon (cinnamomum zeylanicum or C. verum) the most common cinnamon in the USA is actually cassia or Chinese cinnamon (cinnamomum cassia). Most powdered cinnamon in the supermarket, and whole cinnamon sticks are this type of cinnamon.  Its bark is thicker, and sturdier, and the flavor is strong compared to Ceylon Cinnamon, whose bark is more thing and paper like, and the flavor is lighter. Both are used for similar purposes, and you can work the same magics with either one.
Nutmeg (myristica fragans) is the seed of a fruit, specifically the inner part of the seed. The seed coat is also used as a spice known as Mace. They have similar flavors, but nutmeg is thought to be stronger and sweeter, while mace is milder. The most famous and infamous use of nutmeg is in a gambling charm where a hole is bored out and a drop of quicksilver (liquid mercury, a very toxic and dangerous metal) and sealed in with some beeswax that is said to be a powerful charm for gambling luck. Thus, in various forms, nutmeg is usually used for gambling luck, luck with gaining money in all it’s ways, and luck in life in general. If you consume enough raw nutmeg, it can have psychoactive effects, but in large quantities, allergic effects and skin irritation can result. Do be careful if you’re trying to use large amounts of nutmeg.  Honestly, my favorite use is to add a tiny pinch of nutmeg (either fresh ground or in a jar) and adding it to cooking green vegetables, like spinach, swiss chard, collards, etc… That small pinch offsets the natural bitterness of vegetables and allows their more pleasant subtle flavors to become more pronounced. If you can taste the nutmeg, you have added too much.

Clove buds (syzygium aromanticum) are the dried flower buds of an evergreen tree native to Indonesia. Clove is a spice you either love or hate. I don’t think I have ever met people more divided over a spice. At one time, people would use clove powder to numb their gums when attempting to pull teeth before modern dentistry.  If you consume too much clove spice, it does cause a numb feeling on the tongue, but not enough to cause any significant issues, although over consumption can have toxic effects, but you would seriously need to consume large amounts of clove buds, or a few drops of essential oil. Their odor is quite strong though, and they are very popular for their spicy scent, especially in creating pomanders, a apple or orange studded with cloves, wrapped in netting and ribbon and then placed in clothing drawers or chests. Over time, the cloves and fruit odor will permeate where it is stored, imparting the spicy scent to it.

Clove buds are also one of those incredibly popular spices which also feature into numerous spiritual workings for love, money, protection, gambling luck, general good luck, but interestingly enough is to protect and stop gossip and slander. I think this attribution comes from the claims of causing numbness in a person’s mouth, which of course correlates to shutting them up. It is also said to encourage friendship, which could also be possible reason for stopping gossip.

Allspice (pimenta dioica) is the unripe and dried fruit of a tree native to the New World. It is named allspice by English traders as they believed it combined the flavors of cinnamon, nutmeg and clove, thus it was a substitute of “all spices”. Interesting, it’s the only new world spice, whereas the others are all natives of Asia, and were known from the spice trade and Silk Road between Europe, Asia and the Middle East. If you are ever out of cinnamon, nutmeg or clove, just use allspice, and it will work quite well and be pleasant to most people.
Allspice for spiritual works is used mostly for luck and money. While the other spices may have uses associated with love, allspice seems to be the more specific.  In quite a few Money Drawing oils, it is not unusual to see whole small allspice fruits floating in the fragrant oil.

Ginger (zingiber officinale) is the root of a plant used as a sweet and hot spice in deserts. While my favorite form of ginger is as slices of candied ginger root, cookies, cakes, a sweet known as gingerbread are the most common forms in Western cuisine. Ginger is used in savory dishes in various Asian cuisines, and the fusion of the cuisines has created some interesting additions of ginger in various dishes. Ginger is related to galangal, a root also used in the spice trade and in food, but also cardamom, turmeric, and the guinea pepper/grains of paradise.
Ginger root is primarily used for its heat. The experience of heat has various identified spiritual uses, mainly to get things moving. The difference between the heat of ginger and say, the heat of a chili pepper, is that more people like ginger then they like chili pepper. Ginger is commonly used in general luck spells, but that heat is added to numerous other recipes, to help with gambling, to heat up love and lust, or to add that heat for protection.

This makes the combination of pumpkin spice a kind of magical luck generating powerhouse, which is also protective, and brings in love and money. I mean, can you blame people now for liking their pumpkin spice drinks and sweets now? Isn’t that the kind of boost almost everyone could use on their side?

HOW YOU CAN USE PUMPKIN SPICE!

You can pretty much use a pumpkin spice blend for any kind of good works. Since it also smells great, using it for a bath, tea, incense will add some of that spicy odor to your home. You can either buy blends in a store, or search the internet for any of the innumerable recipes for making the spice blend yourself.

  • If you’re a worker on a budget, a simple way to make a spiritual oil would be to buy some pumpkin spice blend, add a teaspoon to a small bottle, and cover it with oil. Pray over it, and let it sit.  It may not take on the fragrance, (although it could over time, and expose to some heat to help infuse the odors), it could work as an all purpose good works oil to help attract luck, money, love, etc… into your life.
  • Boil a teaspoon of the mix in a medium pot of water or steep some and use it to take a spiritual bath. You can use it for cleansing, but also to attract love, luck, and money.
  • One simple recipe I have seen for a while is that mixture of powdered sugar and cinnamon can be used to make a simple sachet powder for drawing good things. Why not step it up and use pumpkin spice blend instead to kick it up a notch?
  • Enchanting spices to use in food to offer to people is an easy way to work magic on others. Make pumpkin spice gingerbread men and feed them to co-workers or family to promote friendship and good fortune.
  • Using any oil for money, love, luck, or protection, dressing a candle with the oil and dust it with pumpkin spice powdered mix in order to add further spiritual herbal power to your spell.
  • Make a ring of pumpkin spice powder around any spell for love, money, luck, or protection in order to help the spiritual influence.
    There are numerous and endless uses to using Pumpkin Spice blends for spiritual work, so feel free to get creative with it.

The Sixth Pentacle of the Sun

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6th Pentacle of the Sun

The Sixth Pentacle of the Sun – It serveth excellently for the operation of invisibility, when correctly made.

To render yourself “invisible” less noticeable, indistinct, indistinguishable or to hide yourself when doing spiritual work that you don’t want detected.

Made during the Sun being Exalted in Aries. A favorable election.

for Sale – $25

5 reasons not work with local spirits

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Recently I came across this post

My post is not a rebuttal, but an ad joiner to the possible undesired experience that come from seeking connection with local spirits.

5) Just because a spirit is there, doesn’t mean it wants to “work” with you.

For one thing, let me clarify a term. In conversations I have had with other spiritualist minded folks and people who get into trying to chat up spirits, there is a difference between veneration and “working”. Veneration can be very simple, is pretty much devotional, and doesn’t expect much between the two parties except for a simple exchange of “pleasantries” and expressions of good will. Of course, if you get a negative feedback, it maybe because you have offended said local spirit, but we’ll get to that later. Generally veneration is just a way to say “hi” and “thanks for all that you do” and “lets be friendly and polite with each other”. Venerating ancestors, venerating local spirits, venerating Gods, and heroes and every thing else. It’s all just a way of making nice. This niceness can lead to “working” and help build relationships that can be quite beneficial in the future, and possibly even buy you a Free pass when you make a mistake, but don’t always count on it.

“Working” indicates that there is a request being made of a specific variety and purpose to a specific end for your benefit. Whether it is protection, wealth, love, knowledge etc…, what makes it different is the specificness and that you are making a specific request for something you want accomplished. Often it will entail behavior on your part that reciprocates to the spirit that you are willing to work for them. A number of spiritual beings are known to be workers, who are quite open to requests for things. Gods, Saints, Angels, Demons etc… and there are books quite busting at the seems with them. But local spirits, you’ll notice, don’t seem to function that way universally, for everyone in the same way that say, St. Expedite can for so many people. One person can have a great relationship with a local spirit, and another person may get bubkis. That’s just the way it seems to go. Just because you are aware of spirit that is tied to a certain local, doesn’t mean it wants to work with you, and it will often make that perfectly clear as soon as you attempt to connect with it.

4) Just because a spirit is there, doesn’t mean it’s going to know a lot of about anything in the area.

Or for that matter, be able to communicate it in a useful or intelligible way. A spirit of the tree is mostly going to know about Tree things, and if it notices if someone stole your bike or not, will have more to do with if that bike thief happened to interact with the tree shortly before or after. If you happened to have your bike chained to the tree, it’s only thought maybe “heavy earth thing was leaning against me and now it’s not” and that’s about it. Of course a larger local spirit (say of the park) might notice, but unless your bike was important to it for some reason, why should it even care. Unless you interact with a local spirit that has vested interest in human affairs and a reasonably intelligible way to understand and communicate it, you’re really not going to get much. It is for this reason that you’ll notice a lot of cultures often have a greater spirit of a particular thing (plants, animals minerals etc…) that is often more understanding of humanity and better able to connect with it. Most people, in my experience, are usually connecting with the larger overarching spirit then the much more limited spirit of the specific object, plant, mineral, animal or place and those spirits are not “local” per se.

3) Most local spirits could give about two cents to you and your issues

this of course, ties in nicely with my last point. While the various local spirits might be quite appreciate of offerings, veneration and devotions done to them, and thus you might get them to be more favorable inclined to you, which could generally make your going about in the locale easier over all, when it comes to specifics (theft, health, wealth, love, etc..) you know, all those things that humans value in interacting with other humans, local spirits quite literally don’t understand, or for some of the larger ones, don’t care. If there is some kind of human pandemic experience going around, it might peak some of the larger more understandings ones interests (like high murder or suicide rate, or a larger number of clinically depressed) because being that we are part of their environment that they govern that might be somewhat invested in it being harmonious for everyone, but the local tree spirit, rock spirit, spirit in the park, is going to be completely uncaring to your issues, if they understand them at all. If they are even open to working with you, they might still not understand something, unless you explain it in as naturalistic terms as possible (literally think birds and bees and pollen and trees people) otherwise, you’re going to get a kind of shoulder shrug, if anything at all.

2) They have needs that you can never provide for.

Do you know how to pollinate a flower? Probably not. Even if you do know, do you have the time and patience to do it for every flower during a 3 month period? I’m guessing not. What about trees? Or, the local watering hole? Maybe you could organize a community event to help clean it up if it was dirty or only barely polluted with trash, but if the spirit is telling you it wants to flow over there, and not there, I think you’re going to have a problem convincing those people in their nice homes to make way for the creek you feel ought to build. Generally, if you’re getting a quite possibly impossible request from a local spirit, it’s politely telling you to Go away! Because it doesn’t have time for your nonsense, human.

1) Just because a spirit is tied to specific locale doesn’t mean it’s smaller.

There is such a thing as Local Gods. These being are Gods, Divine beings in their own right, who don’t need to be worshiped or venerated because their divinity comes from their locale. Perhaps a shrine might exist to them (like in Japan, or China or places that have long standing animistic spiritualist traditions) but generally there won’t be one, and they don’t really need it. You might be able to identify it with some dowsing, but it could very well be very hard to reach, and the local god may not want you to reach it in the first place. So, they being a local God can really make things miserable for you if you offend them, much like any god, and more then likely, they will be much more easier to offend and will stay offended longer then a more transcendent Divine being that is not tied to specific location. The Spirit of the The City you live in, the spirit of your neighborhood, even the spirit of your building (which in very large apartment buildings can be quite powerful) and of course, there could be more natural spirits of ecosystems and environments that are quite mighty and powerful. If you ever notice that when you enter into some areas that you get lost easier, seem to have ongoing problems with minor nuisances (insects, muddy puddles, bumps in the road, tripping over roots) is probably because the local spirits find something about you vaguely offensive. You could try to clear it up, make an offering and appease them, and can work, but some people just don’t like some people no matter what. You just plain smell bad to them, and they will never like you and they have no compunctions about making their dislike and displeasure known. You may not experience this if you only visit, especially to a major city or tourist area, but if you try to stay and settle in, is when the problems start to occur.

Of course, there are other smaller beings, but they are often in league with the larger beings of the area, and will tend to take directions from the “top” on down. They might be willing to work with at first, but after some time, will be less friendly and sociable if your general essence is just not compatible with the local area. If that is the case, you’re probably better off moving, then trying to make a go at it. Good luck explaining that to your friends and family who moved with you, or the cost of the move in the first place.

It is also my experience that smaller spirits are far more dramatic and showy then the non-time space fixed transcendent beings. Most hauntings are caused by smaller spirits, not by gods and actual major demons (despite the name they toss around). To make a ready and known comparison, think of a Midsummer’s night dream. Oberon doesn’t do the dirty work himself, he sends Puck, a servant, to do it for him. A similar situation will apply in naturalistic settings. Most major local spirits won’t do something directly if they can avoid it. They will send a representative to do it for them. Of course, if you enter into an actual working relationship with one, you may very well end up being that representative from time to time as part of your deal in desire fulfillment.

Finally, for some people, in some situations, none of this, both helpful or harmful will hold true. Some people are, as I like to call it, Unicorns. Gifted mediums who are favorably received by all spirits. People gifted with spiritual authority, that allows them to work better with spirits, and perhaps from time to time, command them when needed. Others are favored by the land, or the Gods, or a God and in certain situations that favor will manifest things for that that others will never receive within the Land, or Gods, or God. Your mileage may vary.

I is for Runes

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Isa

Isa is the rune of Ice and cold. Ice, perfectly frozen with very very air bubbles can look like precious stones, so much so that people once believed that clear quartz was in fact a kind of ice that could not be melted.
Ice, the power of cold, to freeze things and lock them into a state where they are well preserved for as long as they stay frozen. That is part of the power of Isa. Whether it is to cool a situation down or you want to put someone “on ice” Isa is the rune to turn to. While heat is a very popular and widely used tool, from “hot footing” to melting wax dolls in order to soften someone’s heart, or even in the form of candle burning (which bring heat and light to the spiritual and magical work) cold can play a useful role, one that is often overlooked. As soon as methods of cooling things became available with items like iceboxes and then later freezer and refrigerators, people started using them to work cooling freezing magic.
Another useful parallel is language found in African diaspora groups of spirits that are “hot” and “cool” The cool spirits are often the main ones that people have allegiance to, like the Orishas, although they can turn hot when needed (or offended) but often the desire is to cool them down and to keep your spiritual essence cool. The practice of rogacion is about cooling the head and the spirit of the head to help bring clarity, insight and wisdom. A cool intellect often literally sees things much better then a raging hot head, something that is actually scientifically true.

Inguz
Inguz/Ing/Yngvi is name that Sweden and seems to be a later addition to the Futhorc. The Anglo-Saxon rune poem refers it to the the leader of Ynglings, but it also seems connected to Freyr, usually in the form Ingvifreyr, which suggests that while Freyr was his title, Ingvi may actually be his real name. But the truth of that is lost to time. However connection to the god Freyr remains, and this rune seems to resonate with some of the powers of Freyr, the shining brother of Freya. He is the lord of seasons, and by some he is the compared to the Horned God of Wicca, believing that the rituals of which Wicca was seeking to revive was the older rituals of Vanir, the tribe and gods who predated the arrival of the Aesir and the establishment of Asgard. So, like the Horned God, he is through to rise anew each year, only to be sacrificed again with each harvest, that his sacrifice may give renewal to the ground in gratitude for the gifts of food that it has given. The Vanir might have even been the Gaelic people who inhabited Europe for a much longer time until the arrival of the nomadic and conquering Aesir.
The magic and mystery of Inguz is the masculine birth/death/rebirth cycle expressed by seasons. It is the masculine complement to the Beorc. It’s various shapes always remind me of a seed, which one might compare to the seed of sperm, the tiny activator that starts the process of pregnancy once it reaches and fertilizes the egg, but in doing so, it is gone, as the egg begins a new process, catalyzed by the sperm to start cell division and create a new life.
To some ancient cultures that saw this present in nature as well. Noticing that areas of land struck by lightning would produce more abundant crops (as the lightning would fix the nitrogen in the soil) they equated lightning with fertilizing force of the gods. The same with rain as well, as it brings growth to plants and food crops, which without it, they would lay fallow in the ground until sufficient water is brought to help the plants to grow.
A similar metaphor can be found internally. Sometime the formative idea or concept is there, working on itself until a catalyst, the lightning flash of insight, inseminates it and it starts to grow and form itself into the new work that you are creating.

Ior
Ior is the rune of the World Serpent, that beast born of Loki and Angrboda, a giantess who gave Loki three children, one of which was the Midgard Serpent, Jormungandr. As it is one of the much later Anglo-Saxon runes, and it’s rune poem is odd, describing a river fish that lives in both land and water. To older cultures, they readily identified anything that lived in water as being a fish, whether it is actually a fish or not by today’s scientific classification. The “river fish” that they indentified may have been an otter or a beaver, or some other kind of amphibious mammal that lives in and surrounded by water.
Part of the mystery of Ior is the dual natured, or polymorphous nature of this river fish. Something that inhabits both land and water, but is not tied to both. Some have seen this as a fitting description for Jormungandr, the world serpent, as it was born on land, and lives in the sea, mainly because it is so huge that is the only place with room for it. But the coils of Jormungandr are seem to identify what is within Midgard and what is outside of it, the serpentine “hedge” of in-lying and out-lying on a cosmic scale. Being able to cross those boundaries is usually part of the tool kit of the spiritual practitioner, being able to leave the physical world behind and enter in the other worlds, but also being able to think outside the limits of place, time and culture to see things differently and recognize beneficial change but also harmful change. Working with Ior can cause you to experience that boundary, and being able to cross it, but also to affirm it, and somehow to become it. Making yourself polymorphous and no longer locked into one state of being, thinking or doing. No longer a person who is something or is not something, but simple a person.

H is for Herbs and spices

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Spices_22078028

I love herbs. My mom is a gardener and growing up with a garden with plants growing and herbs all around has always been interesting to me, although spading and working the soil was not my favorite thing as a kid. When I discovered the magic of herbs, I jumped at it, and one of my first entries in my magical workbook was several pages about herb lore. Although it would be a while before I really started doing a lot with herbs, when I started cooking regularly, they also become a favorite way to give flavor, depth and interest to dishes.

Herbs (which for me cover everything like seeds, barks, roots, petals, flowers, stamens and leaves) have a multitude of means of putting them to work in practical sorcery While I don’t always think about magical relationships with herbs while cooking, sometimes the symbolism I find can be quite potent. An apple pie with cinnamon or clove can be clever and tasty way to deliver a love spell. A good marinara sauce seasoned with basil, rosemary and sage can help to promote peace and blessings among the inhabitants of a home. Make a protection soup with white mustard, black pepper and that ubiquitous pinch of salt, which can both be magical and flavorful. A cup of chamomile tea can be soothing and relaxing, but also help bring luck, especially with money.

Of course, there are more ritualized methods of working with herbs as well, that are not so subtle. Making a herbal blend which you then boil or steep in hot water to make a magical bath. For cleansing I have a preference for sage (the garden variety) hyssop and eucalyptus leaves. For love, Rose petals, lavender buds, and some rosemary make for a gentle love drawing bath that smells quite green and floral. For something a bit more spicy, cinnamon, cloves and cardamom made into a strong tea and then bathed in can also bring a bit for physical enjoyment. You can also just simmer the above spices, or a pumpkin spice blend in a pot of water to get the scent to fill the home before an amour comes over to visit. Similarly a bath in cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice can help to draw wealth and good fortune. You can also bath in chamomile tea, which creates a bath of golden water, a very striking image of as you are bathing in gold.

While not as commonly used by many people, powders are a good way to apply magic. A practice that comes mainly from African American folk traditions, it is often overlooked by people outside of tha tradition, except for well known powders like Hotfoot Powder or Goofer Dust, two powders used to curse people, either to drive them away, or to potentially kill them. You can also use simple powdered herbs for their effects. Putting a pinch of ground black pepper and then a pinch of salt in your shoes can help to protect you from harm, shielding you from curses that have been laid down where you walk. The first time I did this, I almost jumped when I put my shoes on, because I immediately felt this surge of power go through, as though some residual negative energy have been cast out from me. Of course, there are other powdered herbs. You should take a pink of powdered cinnamon and lay it down underneath your door mat, to bring wealth to your home, a good practice if you also have a home business. Laying powdered herbs down that relate to your intention in the 4 corners of your home or property is a good way to reinforce magic performed on that area to help establish protection, blessings, or good fortune in the home or property. You can also use powdered herbs in rituals, using them to lay down symbols that connect to the herbs powers, which are serve to further reinforce your intention and focus. The most recognized one would be a circle of protective herbs, perhaps mixed together, which then marks a boundary for a ring of candles that surround a single candle, used in a spell for protection. When the candles have all burned out, collect the powder again, and carry it with you for protection, or sprinkle it around your home or the place to be protected.

There is a multitude of ways of using herbs, and I hope I have laid out some less commented upon methods here to inspire your imagination when working with herbs in magic.

H is for Hagalaz

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Hagalaz
Hagalaz is the rune that marks the beginning of the second aettir of Elder and Anglo-Saxon Futharks. It’s name is usually translated as Hail. That frozen precipitation that falls from the sky in some parts of the world. I have been in a few hail storms, and usually very small pellets of hail, about the size of BB gun pellets. Mostly I have been inside, where it does make quite the din, but apparently being caught outside in such a storm is unpleasant, although only mildly as the tine stones beat against your face, head and exposed skin, as their descent from the sky causes them to be moving at very high rate of speed as they accelerate towards the earth.
There is the other hail storms, where hail stones can be as big as baseballs or softballs, and these hail storm can do significant damage to property, people and animals, as they are also moving quite fast, and being larger, can pack particularly more destructive power when they do so. If you have been fortunate enough to not live through one, here is a google image search link to help you.

For me at least, that is the lesson of Hagalaz. Destruction. Destruction that leaves only things that can barely be salvaged in it’s wake. What is left after the Hagalaz storm? Well, apparently ice that melts down into water, which can be beneficial to any crops that survive of the beating, and not much else. It is after the storm passes that is the important time to rebuild though, because what is left, is strong. It is durable. It has withstood the storm and can continue forward. The weakness has been cast away and it leaves only room for the strong to grow, prosper and move forward. If you were to use Hagalaz against a foe, and that foe manages to walk away at the end, you better hope is lesson in survival taught him to think better then messing with you ever again, and perhaps to follow a new path. Otherwise, he won’t be so easy to eliminate if there is a next time.

Black Salt

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Black_Salt
Black salt is a mixed preparation of salt and a few choice items that turn that salt from its usual white color to a black color. You can Google recipes for it, and there are also people who manufacture it, usually by somehow adding a pigment to the salt that turns it black. Some other names for Black salt is also Sal Negro (Spanish for Black salt) and Witches’ Salt. In this case the witches being referred to are not the contemporary followers of a neopagan religion, but rather the historical and folkloric “witch” a figure, sometimes supernatural in nature, who use supernatural powers to do harm to people and places in various ways.

As the names suggest, the primary use and purpose of black salt is to curse or perform harmful magic. A common secondary purpose is used to drive away people from your home. This is also a form of a curse, although a curse done to protect oneself and property from the person who is already causing harm. It is similar to hot foot powder in that sense, as hot footing someone is also a type of curse meant to drive someone away, whether that person is vexing neighbor, a bothersome coworker, or a conniving love rival. Ultimately both are curses, are not in anyway beneficial, benevolent, or really kind acts to be engaging in, however necessary they may be for one’s personal health, wealth and well being. Remember that the color most often used for cursing is Black. And the historical and folkloric image of witch (whose salt this is) is a supernatural agent of harm and evil. Black salt is used to curse, and sometimes that curse is used to drive away other evil beings, but the essence behind it is cursing and doing harm.

There seems to be a new fad of promoting black salt as something not as bad. I have read online various indications of use black salt for protection, by laying a circle of black salt around your home. This is a technique one might do with regular salt, as salt is protective, and purifying. Black salt, however, is the opposite of that. Laying a circle of black salt around your home would probably only curse you and start ruining any peace or prosperity in your home, instead of protecting you from harm.

Elsewhere I have read suggestions to use black salt with the dead and with ancestors. That concept is also ignorant usage of black salt. For one, a great number of methods and styles of venerating ones ancestors and conjuring up the dead indicate not to use salt. This applies to any kind of salt, not just regular salt. While the various metaphysical explanations behind this are multitude, it still comes down to one thing. Don’t do it. The ancestors and the dead don’t like salt. For the few methods that do use salt, one should keep in mind that it is unique to that culture and tradition, and the salt they use is going to be regular salt, not black salt.

I have also read suggestions of using black salt with gods, usually gods of war, death, the underworld. Again, I find this to be incorrect, although there could be an exception. The exception would be calling upon that specific god to bless the black salt, before you go out and use it to drive away evil or to curse. That is not the same as using blacks salt in devotion and veneration of the god or gods in mind

It is possible that in your personal work, you might find a spirit that wants to have black salt in it’s presence. If that is the case, then do so, but remember that it is unique to you, and unique to your practice, and in no way reflects traditional uses and folklore behind black salt and if you do write about it, you should make that clear to your readers.

I have even read people suggesting to bathe in black salt, although I suspect this might be a recommendation for a special kind of salt that is mined from the ground, which has a dark gray to black color to it. That would function as normal salt, not as the special mixture known as “black salt” which is salt mixed with things

G is for Geomancy

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Geomancy is the word which I use to refer to a method of divination. It was a method that seems to have originated from Arabic lands, where it goes by the name khat al raml and many others. From this name it was translated into Greek as Geomancy meaning “earth divination” It reached it’s heyday in Europe during the middle ages and the renaissance, and like many other occult arts, dwindled with the flowering of the Age of Reason. During it’s hey day, it was widely practiced and a number of authors wrote treatises about it, even more so then most other methods of divination. It was mainly very easy to use, unlike astrology which required complex calculations and instruments to view the sky, or other methods of sortilege, like card reading, which means you needed to have cards on hand (which not everyone did). At it’s simplest all you needed was some kind of blank field that you could use to make dots which could be used to count and create the figures that build a geomantic reading.

There are sixteen figures used in geomancy. During the middle ages and Renaissance in Europe, these figures were identified with astrological forces, with each classical planet being given two figures, and two more figures attributed to the North and South nodes of the Moon. Each of the figures are composed for 4 lines, which will have either one or two marks. One mark is an indication of active energy in that line and the presence of that force. Two marks are the indication of passive energy of that line, and the absence of inactivity of that force. From top to bottom the lines are named Head, neck, body, feet. They are also identified with the four classical elements from top to bottom of Fire, air, water, earth. These lines and their elemental values, combined with the planetary symbolism, help to give depth to a reading, but also in understanding the symbolism of each sign and it’s interaction with the world and with other signs.

The two methods of using the figures were in generating charts. The oldest and most traditional method is known as a shield chart, which requires one to generate 4 figures, however you wish to do that. These four figures are identified as “mothers” and from them the rest of the figures of the chart are created, about 11 or 12 figures, depending upon the inclusion or exclusion of a final figure. From the mothers one generates 4 daughters and from the mothers and daughters are generated the Nieces, which are then used to generate two witnesses, which are combined to form the Judge. The Judge is considered the answer to the question, sometimes with an additional figure formed by combining the judge and first mother to form the Reconciler, which makes a total of 16 figures used in the chart. Additional methods of shield chart interpretation help to give more precise and particular answers through the relationship of the judge to other elements in the chart.

From the shield chart, a second chart can be generated, known as the house chart. This chart is based upon the 12 house system of astrology, where each sign is placed into a house. The most basic ordering is taking the 1st mother which is given to the first house, 2nd mother to the second house, 3rd mother to the third house etc… There are other methods of assigning figures, depending upon whose treatise you read, or your own insight from gaining proficiency and skill with it. From the house chart it is also possible to answer questions, which can further influence the indications given in the shield chart and also given more depth and precision to a reading.

I came into geomancy a few years ago when I discovered a newly published book by John Michael Greer. It talked about Earth magic and divination, and as I was very much feeling the earth magic vibe, I was very intrigued by the book title. That introduced me to this method and I quickly took to practicing it and using it as often as I could, in order to become proficient with casting charts and understanding the signs. I also was very taken to how simple the signs were, which can be easily used in making talismans for magic, calling upon the forces symbolized by the geomantic signs.

There does seem to be a rebirth for geomancy occurring right now. While this practice did disappear in the West (although it did survive in some interesting ways and get small revivals during other blossoming of interest in the occult) there are a good number of sources available. Quite a few books have been written, as well as academic research into it as a item of historical interest. It also seems that in Arabic countries, the practice of geomancy has never fulled disappeared. It also bears some resemblance to I Ching, but also methods if Ifa divination. Whether they are related, or only bear passing resemblance is not fully decided or clear yet to researchers. There are some geomancy groups in existence right now, which can be found in Yahoo and also on facebook, where people can share techniques, and get assistance with their interpretations of charts they have cast. Another great resource and modern intrepid explorer is Polyphanes over at Digital Ambler. His work with geomancy is quite fantastic and he does contemplate it in order to advance this once forgotten divinatory art.