Book Review: Fighting Malevolent Spirits

So on a lark I picked up the ebook of Fighting Malevolent Spirits: A Demonologist's Darkest Encounters by Samantha Harris. It's a book of one woman's accounts of performing cleansings/banishings of negative entities for others.  I'm always up for seeing how other people do what I do and their feelings on it, and hey for $10 why not? Oy vey.  I wouldn't say I enjoyed this book as much as I enjoyed pulling it apart (which I really did enjoy enough to make it worth the price).

First, my personal bias.  This book is written from a fairly mainstream spiritialist viewpoint with strong Christian tendencies and ideas.  I don't do well with Christian/monotheist terminology and viewpoints.  I'm a Pagan and a dark one at that.  I have dealt with too many close-minded monotheists (and light and love spiritualists) not to have a negative knee jerk reaction.  I had to constantly remind myself that there was nothing wrong with the author's point of view and to translate her terms into ones my brain didn't want to throw things at.  But that's my problem, not the author's.  Also, her tone is also a little overwrought at times, but no everyone can face horror with stoicism and it does make the stories more compelling to read if a little over the top.  So yeah, my review may be a little overly harsh because the author presses some of my buttons.

What this book gets wrong from my point of view

Frequency.  The author's definition of demon is way too liberal.  Just because something is happening that is paranormal and negative doesn't mean it's demonic.  There are plenty of things out there that are strong enough to make people unhappy that aren't demons.  If you've done 80+ cleansings in five-ish years you are just cleansing anything - not that you can perform too many cleansings.  My definition of demon is pretty narrow - malevolent entities that are just pure evil, not just amoral, but evil.  We're talking infernals only in my books and in the last 15+ years of messing about with dark magick I've encountered three, three!  I literally spend my free time mucking about in the darkest psychic landscapes I can find and I've had to deal with three infernals on this plain.  Quit scaring yourself, demons just aren't that common.  (And seriously, doing cleansings does not a demonologist make.)

Who's susceptible.  Ok, this is more of a word choice/tone issue than anything else.  The author repeats multiple times that demons prey on weak or ill.  Yes, people who are weakened emotionally/spiritually/psychically are easier prey for negative entities but that doesn't mean you need to be broken for a demon to mess with you.  This might be an issue of the author's broad definition of demon again - actual infernals are drawn to a lot of different types of people, not just the weak ones.  Lower level negative entities are much more drawn to those who are weakened because they need the easier prey.  Weakness/illness can cause cracks in your aura (your natural psychic barrier), making you more susceptible to psychic attack from anything.  But actual attack, from anything, is extremely rare. 

Causality.  I found a strong implication in this book that people/families who are afflicted by negative circumstances such as ill health, substance abuse, mental illness, and rashes of terrible luck are being plagued by demons and that those demons are the cause of the unfortunate circumstances.  I call bullshit.  People are plenty screwed up without the aid of demons thank-you very much.  Ill health and bad luck create negative energy that can attract negative entities, but most of the time it's just negative energy breeding more negative energy - the basic principle of like attracts like.  Bad luck and your life going to hell in a hand basket doesn't mean a demon is fucking with you.  Seriously, some times life just sucks.  However, whether the circumstances are caused by a negative entity or just pure concentrated energetic crap a seriously cleansing will help so I guess there's no harm done.  It's questionable whether letting people externalize the source of their problems causes more harm than good in the long run, but I'm no psychologist to say one way or the other.

Technique.  Ok, what the author says she does in her cleansings is fine for low level entities and general psychic smut.  Having faith and surrounding yourself with "white light" is all well and good when you're dealing with ghosts and most common fay, but it's not enough to face the truly demonic.  What the author does seems to be the general centering, shielding, and basic energetic cleansings that any magickal practitioner would know - she just doesn't call them that or bother thinking about why/how they work.  Her cleansings consist of the typical going through the house with sage and salt while reciting prayers: essentially using her psychic will to cleans and sanctify the house.  Which, as I said before, is fine for low level negativity but not nearly enough to chase out an infernal permanently. 

Lack of protection.  For the love of all you hold dear, if you're going to piss off negative entities on a regular basis you need a strong personal protection regimen.  The author doesn't say anything about what she does to protect herself from the entities she encounters and then bemoans the fact that entities constantly mess with her at home.  If you're going to much about with demons you need to shield the ever loving fuck out of your own house and cleanse like there's no tomorrow after leaving a client - no matter how well things went.  Maybe she does have a personal regimen that she doesn't describe, but since it's not in the book I assume it doesn't happen.

What the book gets right 

Symptoms. When the author describes what symptoms people experience that make them think a negative entity is around, that is when I believe her.  Sulfurous smells, nightmares, scratches of unknown origins, knocking in the walls (not caused by loose pipes or broken ducts), abrupt mood swings, odd shifts in a person's eye color, etc. are all signs that something very negative is around.  Her descriptions of the events she experiences do have all the hallmarks of negative entities, though not necessarily demons.  I you or someone you know ever experience they kinds of things she describes, it's time for a cleansing or three.

Prayer. Yes, prayer in the faith of the persons being affected can help a lot when dealing with malevolent entities.  Prayer strengthens spiritual will and makes it more difficult for negative entities to get a toe hold in a person.  Enough prayer and faith can act as a fairly effective shield against common negative entities, depending on the strength of belief of the person.  It's not an end all be all, but it helps.  Just don't expect reciting the Lord's Prayer to help an atheist - it's all about belief.

Final thoughts

All that being said, this is a book of personal accounts of what happened as the author perceived it.  There's no right or wrong to your own memories.  And, the stories are interesting and it's good to be reminded of how different people from different backgrounds approach these kinds of problems.  For me it was an interesting set of case studies where I could analyze the situations and think about what I would have done differently (which is pretty much everything, but hey I'm a shadow witch and I do most things a bit differently).  The important thing in scenarios like the ones presented in this book is that the people involved get the help they need to move forward without oppression and, at least as it's presented here, it seems the author has done that. 

Would I recommend this book to someone looking to learn how to do cleansings - absolutely not.  Would I recommend this to an experienced practitioner looking to understand the way other people do things - maybe.  I enjoyed this book in the same way I enjoy watching ghost hunting tv shows and shlocky horror movies - I enjoy entertaining stories and dissecting what people do wrong.  It's the joy of throwing popcorn at the screen and feeling smug.  This isn't a bad book, it's just one that really doesn't mesh with my experiences or my style of dealing with the paranormal.  Take that as you will.

Yule Shadow Magick

It's that time of year again, Yule is fast approaching.  This year the moment of the Winter Solstice will be at 3:12am pst on Friday December 21st.  If I were a slightly more fastidious (or anal) Pagan I'd do my darndest to stay up and do ritual right at the moment of the Solstice.  However, I'm not, and I have to work on Friday.  So, instead I will do a bit of ritual at Sunset on the 20th (4:20pm) and a bit at Sunrise on the 21st (7:55am).

Yule is about rebirth.  It's about surviving and thriving during the darkest night and rekindling the fires of life and ushering in new light.  Given that shadow magick as whole deals with those themes, it is an ideal time to do a major working.  Yule is an excellent time to set major goals for the next year and imbue them with energy and intention.  Of course, to fully embrace the natural shadow of winter it's best to set your goal for a major change of habit or something that will force you to deal with things you've been avoiding.  If you want to succeed at shadow magick you can't be afraid to face unpleasantness.

My big goal for the coming year is to achieve more balance in my life.  I tend to do everything in the extreme.  I'll study a subject 12 hours a day for a month and then drop it forever; I'll go from sitting on my couch to trying to run an hour a day and injure myself; I'll do ritual three times a day for a few weeks and then barely light a candle for months.  I tend to be very "all or nothing" in the things I do, which isn't the healthiest of mindsets.  It just leads me to overdo things, overextend myself, and then end up physically and mentally burned out. 

I used to think this meant I was just a hard worker, but really it's a weird kind of obsession.  It's almost as if I'm hoping that each new obsession will be the magic bullet for my general malaise - that one thing that will make everything else fall into place and give me a lasting sense of purpose and fulfillment.  It's not actually a terribly healthy way to go about things and it's very difficult for me to admit that.  Shadow work is all about giving up false ego and embracing the truth.  It's very, very hard.  If it's not hard you're either doing it wrong or you're a bodhisattva.

At sunset on the 20th I'm going call on the Crone for help and light a black candle for banishment.  I'm going to write down a thorough description of my utter lack of balance and all the harm it does me.  I'm also going to write down the things that I used to think it brought me that it really doesn't.  Then I shall burn the paper and say, "My obsessive tendencies and lack of balance have failed me.  I have failed to be the person I want to be because of them.  As the light dies on this darkest night I release my grip on them.  I let go of attachments that do not serve me and let them fade with the dying sun.  I release my false ideas and open myself to something better.  May I find a better way of coping."

Then, at sunrise the next day I'll take a little "coffee break" at work.  I'll take a small cookie or candy and hold it in my hands and mentally say, "As  the light returns to the world I shall find my balance.  I shall find the path of moderation that will allow me to be whom I want to be and do what I want to do.  As the days lengthen I shall walk this new path of balance.  I shall be my best self, whole and complete, accepting and accepted, shadow and light entwined."  Then I'll eat my little, moderate treat and go about my day.

Ritual for Cutting Ties

A few months ago a very good friend of mine had a really bad break-up.  The relationship had been fairly toxic and she had really cared about the douchebag in question.  It was one of those relationships that creates a really strong bond between the people in it, the kind of bond that isn't easily broken.  Even after a month or two my friend was still in pretty bad shape, to the point where the baggage from the old relationship was affecting any new ones she was trying to cultivate.

She asked for my help in creating a ritual to help her really cut ties with her ex so that she could move on and I was only too happy to help.  The trick, of course, would be doing something strong enough to cut the bond and cauterize the wound without actually harming him.  It's very difficult to do magick regarding someone you're angry with without "accidentally" cursing them.  There are few things more effective at making me angry than hurting my friends, so I was pretty damned pissed at this guy and my friend was pretty irate.  Here's what I came up with:

Ritual for Cutting Ties
A ritual for cutting ties with someone that is no longer a part of your life.  If you really, truly mean to stop giving energy to someone (including in hate form), then this will help you to do so.  Your behavior must support the intent of this spell.  Once you've done it there shall be no more online stalking, driving by the person's house, or musing on what the person is doing right now. You have to mean it!

As with any banishing, this is best done during the waning or new moon.

Ingredients:

• 1 plain poppet, mostly sewn but unstuffed (basically a rag doll, should be colored in a way that reminds you of the person)
• small items representing the relationship (such as ticket stubs, printed emails, etc.  If you don't have much you can write all of your feelings about the relationship on a piece of paper and then rip it into strips)
• slip of paper with the person's name on it
• a photo of the person (if you have it)
• dried herbs for stuffing (rue, nettle, anything thorny and unpleasant - but not toxic when burnt)
• twine/yarn (at least three feet)
• a pair of scissors
• a safe place to burn the poppet and matches

Spend a good week or so gathering the ingredients for this spell.  Think of this phase as bringing all the last scraps of the relationship into one place.

Sew together your poppet and fill it with the items that represent the relationship and the dried herbs, along with the photo and person's name.  If you're into embroiders you can embroider the person's name on the poppet.

On the night of the ritual case a circle, call the elements, and any appropriate dieties.  We called on the crone, as the mistress of all things "cauterizing."

State the purpose of the ritual.  You should do this aloud and in your own words.  You need to state why you want to cut all ties and show that you mean it.  The powers you have called on will judge your sincerity and give or withhold aid based on how they find you.

Now bind yourself with the string to the poppet.  (We looped the yarn several times around the poppet and then several times around my friend, with a little extra back and forth for good measure.)  Then say, "I now cut and cauterize all my ties with [X]," while cutting the yarn with the scissors.

Unravel yourself and the poppet, thank any powers you've called on, and dismiss your circle.

Now, burn the poppet.  If you don't have a good place to do so you can unpick all the stitches of the poppet and then bury the components.

Ghostbusting - How to Banish a Ghost

I’ve had a lot of questions lately on what to do if your house is haunted and you want the ghost to leave.  My first reaction to this is almost always to ask what the ghost is doing that’s so bad.  In most cases ghosts are completely harmless.  They often just want a little acknowledgement of their presence – imagine being lost, confused, and no one being able to see or hear you; you’d be distressed too.  Unfortunately, it’s very easy to see a ghost’s attention grabbing behavior as threatening.  If the people involved are all adults, I like to make sure that a ghost is actually being threatening before I tell anyone how to get rid of them.  (See my previous post on the ethics of banishing.)  It’s extremely rare to find a haunting that really warrants banishing – I’ve seen maybe two cases in the last five years – but if people are really afraid or if people are getting hurt then here’s what you do.

How to banish a ghost

The simplest form of banishing is to simply ask the ghost to leave.  As I said before, most ghosts don’t want to scare anyone, they just want attention.  If you talk to it and explain that it’s frightening you (your child, etc.) and ask it to leave it will usually go if it’s able.  If asking nicely doesn’t work then you need to be a bit more commanding.  Speaking firmly and confidently, you must tell that this is your house and that it is not welcome and must leave.  If you are unsure of yourself or hesitant the ghost will know it and will probably not take you seriously.  If you are nervous, get other people to stand with you as you do this, a united front always gives extra strength to your words.  Take a deep calming breath and say: “You are unwelcome here. You must go now!”

Always trying this simple banishing before performing any stronger banishing.  The only entities that will actually leave as a result of this kind of banishing are going to be relatively friendly, or at least non-malevolent, because they are leaving of their own free will and are therefore unlikely to be nasty enough to cause harm to someone else or to return angry.  Stronger or more malevolent entities will be unmoved and will probably find it funny rather than insulting.

Ghost Banishing Ritual

Here’s a stronger, more involved ritual for ghosts who won’t or can’t leave on their own.  It is appropriate for use in most haunting scenarios, but not those where the ghost has caused any significant harm (it will be most effective against neutral or benign ghosts and could be potentially dangerous if the ghost is malevolent because you will be calling it into the open – if the ghost has not made its nature obvious, by being obviously friendly or harmful, then err on the side of caution and do not perform this banishing).  This ritual will be most effective if all the owners or primary users of the property participate, as long as they firmly want the ghost to go away and are not overly afraid.  Young children or anyone who is particularly afraid of the ghost should go elsewhere for the duration of the ritual.  The same applies to anyone with mixed or friendly feelings towards the ghost; we don’t want it getting mixed signals.

If it's at all possible, try to do this during the waning moon as it will enhance the effects.

You will need: an offering of food (e.g. nuts, an apple, milk, etc.), a small white candle (an electric tea light or even a small flashlight can work in a pinch), your favorite smudge or incense (an oil diffuser or strong sachet can work if you cannot burn incense), and a banishing essential oil such as peppermint, rue, or pine.

Begin with a thorough physical cleaning of the house – it gets the energy moving.

Identify the area where the ghostly phenomena are most common.  Is there a particular room where the ghost is most often seen, heard, or felt?  Does the ghost appear to one person or to many?  Place the offering of food in the area where the phenomena are concentrated, or next to the person on whom activity is centered. 

Have everyone who is participating in the ritual ground and center.  Have them take three deep, slow breaths.  Have them visualize breathing in bright energy and strength, and breathe out negativity and fear.  If you haven't yet, make sure you explain to any other participants what you intend to do and give them a chance to leave or stop the ritual if they don't want to proceed (particularly if it's their house having the banishing).

If the ghostly phenomena are concentrated in a particular area you should smudge the house beginning with the area next to the concentrated area and move counterclockwise throughout the space – not smudging the area of concentration.  If the activity centers around a person, have that person stay in one place while you smudge the outside area, moving counterclockwise until the only space remaining is wherever that person is.  Do not smudge the area where the phenomena are concentrated...Yet.

Get all the participants into the area of concentrated activity.  If necessary (if people seem nervous or frightened), repeat the centering (breathing in strength and breathing out fear). 

Anoint the white candle with the banishing oil, but do not light it yet, and call the spirit forward.  If the activity is focused in that room then you should say the following, if the activity is focused on a person – that person should say the following:

“I/We call forth the spirit that haunts this place/me.  I/We do not mean you any harm and give you this food as an offering and a show of goodwill.  I/We do not believe that you mean us any harm either.  Unfortunately, your presence here has become a problem. 

[Explain the reasons the ghost needs to leave, eg. frightening the owners/children, disrupting sleep, breaking things, etc.  Be thorough, but neutral.  Do not accuse the ghost of stirring up trouble. Just state what it has done and the problems it has caused.  If at all possible, have the people affected make this statement.]

I/We mean you no harm, but your time in this place has come to an end.  It is time for you to move on; you no longer belong here.  Move forward to the next phase of your existence.  Leave this place behind.  Follow the pull of your soul on to the next life and be at peace.  We offer the peace and love in our hearts to aid you, to help you move on.”

Have everyone hold positive thoughts in their minds, thoughts of peace, serenity, and love.  Have everyone tone the syllable “Ah.”  Let the tone shift and harmonize.  Fill the sound with as much positive energy as you can.  Let the tone crescendo, growing louder to fill the room.  Lead the sound to its peak and then let it fade.

Light the white candle.  Smudge the final area and all the participants.

If you think it necessary, re-smudge the whole house with incense and then go around the whole house ringing a bell or beating a drum.  This probably won't be necessary, but it doesn't hurt.

Have all the participants sit down for a hearty snack or small meal afterward.

Ethics of Banishing

I was doing a radio interview this weekend and the host asked me an interesting question: what is something that movies and television get wrong about paranormal entities.  The question threw me for a moment because the list is so long.  What do they get wrong?  Nearly everything.  It would be much easier to list what they get right, like occasional bits of folklore.  I decided to pick something that bothered me about the way media portrays the paranormal and that is ethics.  In a lot of media everything that is paranormal is automatically treated as evil and frightening and that’s just not the case.  Sure, there are plenty of very bad things out there but they’re absurdly rare.  Most of the paranormal creatures people are likely to run into are benign or nothing more than annoying – hardly the picture of terrifying menace that sells so very well.  There are plenty of practitioners that will banish any entity that even startles them – I know I did back before I got comfortable with them – but that’s hardly ideal.

As someone who deals with the paranormal rather more often than the average bear, I think it’s incredibly important to have a clear set of ethics when it comes to banishing paranormal entities.  Sentient beings think and feel; they may not think or feel in a way that is understandable to people, but they do.  Their thoughts and wills should not be simply disregarded because they’re inconvenient for us.

Does this mean we cannot protect ourselves against them?  Of course not.  It just means that we have to think before we act against them.  I try consider three grounds to be necessary before conducting a banishing on a sentient being: standing, failure of more polite methods, and self-defense or the defense of others.

Standing is a legal term meaning that someone has grounds upon which to be heard before a court.  In terms of banishing, to have standing means you have a personal reason to want or need the banishing.  For example, someone whose home was inhabited by an imp has a very immediate and personal reason to want the imp banished – it’s bugging them!  On the contrary, someone who had heard that the house down the street is haunted but doesn’t actually know the people that live there and hasn’t been asked for help does not have a personal or immediate reason to need or want the banishing.

Banishing is serious magick and should not be done lightly.  All acts of magick carry consequences and magick that potentially goes against the will of another can carry very serious consequences.  If you try to banish an entity and fail, the entity can become angry or even dangerous: it might come after you or, if it can’t get to you because of your protections, it might go after those around you.  Also, banishing can be harmful to the entity being banished.  Some banishings can feel very much like an energetic brawl, with the practitioner and the entity battering each other with energy until one of them gives in – hopefully the entity.  Imagine you’d been beat up and thrown out of your house; how would you feel?

The clearest form of standing is to own the property from which the entity would be banished.  You always have standing to eject unwanted entities from your property, particularly your home.  Standing can also be given to a practitioner by the owner of the property in questions asking the practitioner for help.  If your friend asks you for magickal help, then you’ve every right to give it if you so choose.  Such scenarios give very clear standing, less clear are situations where the practitioner does not own the property or when the practitioner chooses to intervene on the behalf of others without their asking.  A practitioner may have standing to banish in places such as their school or place of work if they have been personally affected by the entity or if a friend asking for their help has been affected.  A practitioner may also have standing to intervene when they see someone being physically or mentally harmed by an entity.  These are the grey areas for which each practitioner really needs to make their own choice.

Before doing a banishing it is always best to try more polite methods for getting an entity to move on.  Most entities that you will encounter are not malevolent – but that does not mean that they won’t be intrusive or difficult to live with.  Many entities don’t understand that their behavior is disruptive or unwelcome, or perhaps they are merely mischievous and don’t really mean us any harm.  Like intelligent children, many entities will stop negative behavior once it is pointed out to them. 

The number one justification for evicting an entity from any location is defense against harm.  If you feel that something is an imminent threat to your personal safety, you have the right to act to defend yourself.  That means that if you know an entity is present and you are afraid that if you do not banish it right away, it will harm you physically, emotionally, or spiritually.  You will have to use your judgment to discern whether something that does not currently pose a real danger but might do so in the near future needs to be banished.  If you feel that someone is being physically threatened or severely emotionally/spiritually threatened, then banishing is always appropriate.  In all other cases, you will have to use your judgment to determine if the entity poses a great enough threat to warrant banishing.

We have the right to reject an entity in cases of self-defense and the defense of others, where the person wanting the entity banished has ownership of the area and a genuine need to have the entity removed.  In the end you have to use your judgment and decide whether banishing is appropriate and necessary.  Remember, you never HAVE to banish an entity.  You always have a choice.

Oh No, That Can't Be Good II

It’s time for another edition of “Oh no, that can’t be good,” my posts telling some of the frightening but true stories of why I specialize in defensive magick.  I’ve been doing a fair number of radio interviews lately and interviewer just love to ask, “What’s the scariest thing that ever happened to you?”  They probably expect nothing more than a ghost story to give their listeners a chill – they get a bit more than that.  These days I’m so well protected that metaphysical baddies just don’t come anywhere near me.  That was not always the case.  This story begins all the way back in 1999, when I arrived at Wellesley for First-Year orientation.

Wellesley is a venerable, old institution that has old brick buildings and clanky radiators and a tradition called “tunnelling.”  Tunnelling is breaking into the old stream tunnels and exploring the school underground.  I don’t do bugs, so I opted out of an exciting expedition in the roach filled tunnels but heard all about it when my friends got back.  One of the most interesting things they found was an entire dorm hallway that was bricked off from the rest of the building.  They had found a heat vent into the hallway and taken a look around.  It was a typical hall with a bunch of dorm rooms, except bricked off from the rest of the building and filled with dusty broken furniture.  All the rooms were unlocked except one: one room had a shiny new padlock keeping it closed.  The only way into that hall was crawling through a vent from a steam tunnel.  How the hell did it get a new padlock?

Time passed and this bit of history slipped out of my mind, but I always felt uneasy in the building with the bricked off hall.  In fact, I avoided that entire dorm complex like it was infectious.  It always felt uncomfortable to me and it was filled with stories of strange happenings and hauntings.  I didn’t start thinking about the links between that hallway and the odd stories until a friend of mine from the pagan student's group (PSG) moved into that dorm.  In fact, her room shared a wall with that strange hallway.

After my friend had lived there for a few months some of the other members of PSG and I noticed that she was changing.  It was subtle at first, but slowly the girl I knew and really liked started getting mean.  Her personality began to shift; she became cruel, petty, and arrogant.  She began alienating her friends and became a loner.  We wondered what could be wrong, but chalked it up to people changing until she started to change physically.  It sounds crazy, but her face began to change – it was sharper somehow – and if you caught her just right her eyes would change color and then shift back.  It was at this point that we realized that something seriously unnatural was happening.

The more advanced of us got together to investigate what the hell was going on.  Through divination, channeling, and a seriously messed up ghost encounter (which I might tell you all about later), we determined that our friend was being oppressed by an infernal.  An infernal is a demon...a big one.  We found out that sometime around the turn of the century a girl had come to school and brought an infernal with her.  (Don’t ever play with a Ouija board without casting a protective circle first, just don’t.)  This infernal set up shop in the girl’s dorm room and sent her mad.  After that the infernal decided to hang around for the easy pickings of stressed out young women far from home for the first time – tasty treats indeed.

We begged, threatened, and cajoled our friend about switching to a different dorm.  We knew that sleeping with her head next to that hallway was opening her up to the infernal and that she needed to get out and fast.  She refused to leave, saying nothing was wrong.  One day I was talking to her and could actually see the infernal lurking behind her eyes.  Something had to be done.  This thing had to be dealt with or we would lose our friend forever.

More easily said than done.  We were all baby witches at that point: what did we know about dealing with infernals?  We researched every spell and ritual of protection, banishment, and binding that we could get our hands on, and nothing seemed strong enough to deal with that hallway and the thing that lurked there.  We knew we had to do something and through much more research, divination, channelling, and a little divine intervention we came up with a plan.  We would do a protection ritual for ourselves, create a banishing bomb (a container of banishing herbs and stones that had been charged and blessed by every protective power that would listen to us), and then go into that hallway, place the bomb and let it do its work.  As the old saying goes, the best plan in the world only lasts until the battle begins.  Things didn’t go exactly as planned.

The first part of the plan worked beautifully.  We did a strong protection ritual for ourselves to keep us safe and free from the influences of the infernal.  We created the bomb and charged it until we could see waves of energy coming off it.  Then we went outside to make our way to the other building.  One of the odd side-effects of moving about the world while in ritual space is that sometimes it allows you to see things that would normally be invisible.  What we saw scared the pants off of us.  There were monstrous creatures everywhere, minions of the infernal, and they were looking for us.  Thanks to our protections they were unable to see us, but it was the scariest walk I’ve ever had in my life. 

We made our way to the right building and got down into the basement, to the entrance to the stream tunnels.  With our psychic awareness at full blast we could actually see waves of negative energy streaming out of the tunnel.  I was about as scared as I could possibly be, or so I thought.  I looked around at my friends and they were all standing there with blank expressions.  Zombielike, they started walking towards the tunnel.  I could see tendrils of evil beginning to wrap themselves around my friends.  At that moment I understood what real terror was.  I grabbed at my friends, physically pulling them back, but they kept moving forward.  I snatched up the bomb and tossed it as far into the tunnels as I could.  The energy vanished and my friends snapped out of it.  I got us out of there as fast as humanly possible.

Within a week our friend had moved out of that building, and within a month she was completely back to normal – she had no idea how close she came to gods know what.  The infernal was injured, but not gone.  A few years later, when we were stronger and knew a hell of a lot more, a friend and I went back to campus and finished it off.  As far as I know nothing untoward has happened there since, but the bricked off hallway is still there.

Shadow Work

I was doing a radio interview last week and the interviewer asked me to describe my personal practice.  I found myself rather stumped as to how to describe what I do in a 15 second sound bite.  I said that I focused on defensive magick and shadow work.  It was obvious that he had no idea what shadow work was, but there just wasn’t time to go into it properly so we moved on.  I feel the need to more adequately explain what shadow work really is.

Everyone has positive traits and negative traits.  A lot of popular spiritual practices really emphasize creating a positive mindset, generative positive energy, etc.  This is great for most people most of the time, but it isn’t so easy for some of us.  Some of us look at all that love and light and just feel a little nauseated.  Sometimes the only way forward is not to look at the bright side, but instead to examine the shadows – to stare in the abyss.  This doesn’t mean that you’re a negative or bad person; it just means that you need to travel a different path to spiritual growth.

The essence of shadow work is looking at what isn’t working, the things that are broken, and changing them.  For many, the hardest part of shadow work is recognizing what those shadows are: our fears, insecurities, incorrect assumptions, weaknesses, pettiness, and irrationalities.  Some people can deal with these by bringing so much positive energy into their lives that there’s no room for these negatives – not me.  I’ve found that I really have trouble finding the light by reaching for it.  Instead, I have to dive deep into the darkness and keep going down until I punch out the other side.  That’s one of the main reasons I’ve called this blog Black Sun Magick – because my light is black as pitch and it shines.

One of the fundamentals of my shadow practice is what I call “Looking in Dorian Gray’s Mirror.”  For those of you who are unfamiliar with the story, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde is about a young man who wishes that a portrait of him would age instead of his body ageing.  Magically, this wish comes true and the portrait ages and bears all the scars of Dorian Gray’s soul.  Over the course of time Gray becomes more and more depraved and the portrait becomes so terribly and twisted Gray locks it away.  In the end Gray is confronted with the portrait, looking at everything he has become – being able to see with his eyes every twist of his soul – that he stabs the painting and ends up inadvertently taking his own life.  Shadow work is about looking into that portrait every day.  It takes time, discipline, and courage to look at oneself so honestly.  If you cannot see what you really are, how can you ever really change and grow?

Once you’ve identified the things you don’t like about yourself you’re not allowed to just sit there and moan about them, you have to do something about it.  This is where it gets really tricky, because some of those things you don’t like are genuine problems that need to be fixed and some of them are things that you’ve been taught to dislike that aren’t actually bad at all.  No one can tell you whether something you detest about yourself is something you need to change or if it’s just your way of looking at it that needs to change.  It’s something you have to figure out for yourself in whatever way works for you.  For me figuring this stuff outs is all about meditation, divination, talking to spirit guides and trusted friends, for you it could be any, all, or none of these things.

Once you’ve leapt that hurdle it’s time to forgive yourself for your weaknesses.  Don’t laugh, it’s important.  Most people that are actually motivated enough to do something about changing their lives and dark enough to do it via shadow work are really hard on themselves.  Whenever I find a new chink in my image of myself I tend to spend a goodly chunk of time wallowing in depression, bemoaning how horrible/useless/bad/etc. I am.  I allow myself a little bit of time to roll around in self-pity, and then I pick myself back and forgive myself.  Often I do this in a ritual where I call my goddess to witness my self-forgiveness and pledge to move forward – it’s hard to go back on something you’ve sworn to your god in his or her presence.

Then I will usually do some working where I work on “fixing” the problem.  More often than not it’s some kind of ceremony in which I embrace whatever the negative is.  What I mean by embracing a shadow is to allow yourself to have whatever feeling or though it is, but to then think about it rationally and not act on it unless it’s truly rational and correct to do so.  It’s really just a stylize way of reminding yourself to think before you act and to not get mad at yourself for not being perfect.  Sometimes the shadow is bad enough to really need to be excised rather than embraced, in which case I’ll do a personal banishing ritual just after the full moon and a confirmation on the new moon.

Shadow work is about being really, really honest with yourself and never being afraid to look in the dark.  Do it long enough and you end up knowing yourself really well and having a very good grasp of exactly what you’re capable of.  Sure, there are kinder, gentler ways of doing it, but sometimes you need a good drop-kick to move.  I sure do.

Proficiency in shadow work also opens up the world of shadow magick, but that’s a topic for another day.