Stay Home; Do Magick

Things in the world are...not great right now.  Here in Seattle we've just received a stay-home order and closure of non-essential businesses.  My husband and I have been working from home for going on three weeks.  The anxiety and disruption of peoples lives is the highest it's been in my lifetime.  As a witch, the best thing I can do right now is stay home and do magick.

I hope the whole "staying at home" thing requires no explanation.  If you don't understand that, then you should probably put down the candle and just go watch some YouTube.  If you're still reading this, congratulations you're not a dumb ass!   Now let's get to work.

The world needs magick more than ever and we can be part of the solution.  That doesn't mean we all need to start attempting to heal the world.  I, for one, am a shitty healer.  I can destroy things, purify, and create barriers like a champ; but whenever I attempt more than the most minor healing I end up doing more harm than good.  Thankfully, there are TONS of things we can do magickally to help ourselves and our communities in dealing with the trash fire that is 2020.

Each practitioner has their own strengths; what we need to do now is figure out how each of our individual strengths can help and then actually do so.  Here are some common magickal strengths and suggested ways of applying them:

• Protection: Create strong energetic barriers around yourself and loved ones (with permission) to help enforce social distancing and create a sense of safety.
• Cleansing and Purification: Add magickal fuel to your mundane cleaning and sanitation practices to boost their effectiveness (this is just a boost, not a replacement for soap!).  Do workings to cleanse negative energy from your home and the public spaces in your neighborhood.
• Hearth Magick: Create an energetic oasis in these anxiety riddled times.  Add love and healing energies while cooking to make your food nourish body and spirit.
• Prosperity: In this time of economic uncertainty, do workings to enhance prosperity and stability for your family and community.  If you're fortunate enough to have financial stability and the ability to make charitable donations, infuse your gift with energy to encourage others to donate as well.
• Luck: Honestly, we all need as much good luck as we can get right now.  Do all you can.
• Spirit Workings: We need all the allies we can get right now, so encourage your spirit allies to help you and those around you to stay healthy and stable, as well as helping to heal the sick.  If you work with the ancestors, this is the time to ask them to help protection our vulnerable elders and those with fragile health.
• Justice/Activist Magick:  Work on our law and policy makers to force them to put the good of the people before their pocketbooks.
• Healing: The world is an energetic open wound right now and we need all the healing we can get.  As for physical healing, unless you're an expert and feel confident working otherwise, keep your focus small and to those who explicitly reach out to you.  As always, magickal healing is a support to mundane medicine, never a replacement.

These are just a few suggestions of the many ways we can all use our strengths to help out in these troubled times.  I encourage you to get creative and use the magick you already do well to make your little corner of the world a little bit better.  Focus on the small steps you can take every day and you will be surprised at the difference you can make.

Don't forget to take time for self-care as well.  Exhausting ourselves helps no one.  We can't be positive all the time.  Allow yourself time to freak out a little (or a lot) and be gentle with yourself.  Do what you can and don't stress what you can't. 

For my part, I'm doing a lot of work with Santa Muerte to protect the vulnerable.  If you're interested, I'll be doing a public Santa Muerte Rosary online via Zoom on 4/5/2020 at 1pm pacific time (Santa Muerte Rosary Details).

Take care of yourself and stay safe out there!

Magickal Self-Defense 101 - PPD 2019

Today I presented Magickal Self-Defense 101 at our local Pagan Pride celebration.  For participants and those who missed it, here are my notes for that workshop.  As these are just notes, it's not the fully fleshed out writing that you're used to from me.  Feel free to ask for clarification or elaboration on any point.

Magickal self-defense is about securing the self.  There are four basic parts:

• Cleansing - Get that which is “not me” out/off of me.
• The magickal equivalent of taking a daily shower or washing your hands.  Enhanced by common cleansing herbs such as sage, cedar, lavender, or rosemary.
• Asperging with herbs (or essential oil water in a spritz bottle) or censing/fumigating with incense are common techniques. 
• Grounding - Get rid of excess energy and any internal negativity.
• The act of flushing out negative or excess energy you have in your body into a place where it is naturally neutralized.  It’s basically the same as the concept of grounding electricity.  Some traditions refer to this practice as “earthing” because you send the unwanted energy into the earth.
• Roots down.  Envision all of the negative or excess energy in your body as black static that you allow to sink into the ground to be neutralized.
• Centering - Stabilize your own energies and connection to life energies/the universe.
• Finding the place in your body where you feel your energies the strongest and aligning your energies to concentrate and flow from that place.  For most people this energetic center is in the lower abdomen, but could be other places. 
• Branches up.  Breathe in and out while envisioning your energies flowing in and out of your center for a few minutes until you feel calm and stable, then connect yourself to your external source - whatever that may be (nature or the heart of the earth are good ones to start with)
• Shielding - Strengthen the barrier between “you” and “not you.”
• Shielding is the practice of forming a layer of protective energy around yourself in order to strengthen the barrier between you and the outside world.  Think strengthening the aura or putting a case around your phone. 
• Magickal shielding is entirely energetic. That means that while shielding can protect you from all kinds of bad juju and unpleasant emotions, it won’t do anything to stop a physical attack.
• To cast a bubble shield you just imagine a solid bubble of energy forming all the way around your body, creating a barrier that negative energy can't get through. If you've ever seen any of the Star Trek movies or television shows remember what it looks like when they raise the ship's shields. You are seeing the characters raise a bubble shield around the Enterprise. You can do the same thing by picturing a solid egg of energy forming around you, feeling the air thicken with energy around you, or even imagining a particular smell filling the space around you. This simple shield will protect you as long as you hold it in your mind. When you stop holding the shield in your mind the shield will fade away.
• Suit of armor can also be effective - the trick is to find the metaphor/visual/idea that clicks in your brain.

Quick Defensive Preparation

Whenever you feel the need to be on your guard do the following exercise.

• Take a deep breath, in and out.
• Take a deep breath in and feel all the stress in your body vibrating like static electricity. Forcefully breathe out and see it all rush out of your body and into the ground like a torrent of water.
• Breathe in and visualize a sphere of calm silver energy in the center of your body, breathe out and see it expand until it forms a sphere around you.
• Breathe in and let your mind still. Breathe out.

The whole exercise should take the time of four breaths. If it takes you longer than that, you’ll need to practice until you can do it quickly.  This exercise should make you feel calm and focused.

Psychic Self-Defense for Ghost Hunters (2015 edition)

Last weekend I gave a lecture on Psychic Self-Defense for Ghost Hunters down at the Spooked in Seattle's Metaphysical Market.  I wanted to share the important points of that lecture for those that were unable to attend.  

These days it seems like everyone and their grandmother wants to have an exciting paranormal experience like the ones they see on TV - hearing whispered voices, having their hair be moved by unseen hands, seeing shadowy figures, etc.  Just a few days ago I was telling a friend about the haunting of the restaurant we were eating in (Kells in Post Alley, highly recommended)  and the table next to us got terribly excited and asked how they could experience the haunting for themselves.  For most people most of the time ghost tours and ghost hunts are a fun and completely benign way to spend an evening.  However, every once in a while something goes amiss.  There are a few quick and east things you can do to make sure your experience is as safe and fun as it can be, avoid the dangers of attack, attachment, or bringing something home with you.

Visit the dead but don't join them prematurely

Brief Disclaimer: The following tips and techniques are things that will make you safer, not safe.  You will certainly be better off doing them than doing nothing at all, but the unseen world is unpredictable and nothing short of sealing yourself in a psychic bubble and never leaving your house again will guarantee that nothing metaphysically untoward will happen to you - and perhaps not even then.  Use common sense - if you ever feel like you are in danger in a haunted location you should leave.  Ghost hunting is about interacting with the dead, not becoming one yourself.  

Before 

There are certain things you should do before visiting a potentially haunted location:

• Know your environment - For maximum safety you should learn as much as you can about the types of experiences people have had in a location and what types of entities are generally believed to be present.  The more you know going in the more appropriate your protections can be.  However, knowing too much about what other people have experienced in a location can bias your own experiences.  The human mind is amazing at seeing what it expects to see.  As a result, you may choose not to find out too much about a location in order to guarantee a more authentic experience.  Most of the time that's an acceptable risk as long as you have something at hand that can increase your protections if necessary (I'll talk about that in a moment).  At the very least, find out if the paranormal activity in a location is generally benign or if it's considered malevolent; if it's benign then going in blind is probably an acceptable risk, if not then your safety should trump the desire to be "surprised" by paranormal activity.

• Choose how much protection you want going in - Psychic protection, at its core, is something that strengthens the barrier between you and the world around you.  It makes it more difficult for unseen entities to do things to you that you don't want - like pushing, scratching, or attaching themselves to you.  However, it can also make it more difficult for entities to do things you do want - like touching or talking to you.  Think of it like the difference between wearing rubber gloves as opposed to wearing a full hazmat suit.  They each put a protective barrier between you and something potentially dangerous, but one dulls your senses a lot more than the other.  Ideally, you want just enough protection to keep you safe, but not so much that it deters activity.  After all, the whole point of going on a ghost hunt or tour is to experience something.

• Basic Pre-Hunt Protections - These techniques are good for most situations (e.g. mild/med hauntings).  Do these before entering a potentially haunted location.    
• Prayer - If you are a person who prays it will probably be beneficial to pray for protection and good fortune before entering a haunted place.  The powers (gods, spirits, angels, etc.) that are a part of your personal belief system generally have a vested interest in helping you out and are probably willing to do so.  It never hurts to have a little outside muscle on your side.  However, keep in mind that prayer alone is almost never enough to be considered complete protection.  Also, depending on how your faith views the unseen world, the protective entities you call on might scare away all the ghosts.  Think about it and do what makes you comfortable.
• Ground and Center    
• When I use the term “grounding” I mean the act of flushing out negative or excess energy you have in your body into a place where it is naturally neutralized.  This is generally done by visualizing all the energy you don't want as static electricity and then moving it down your body and into the ground where it is neutralized.  Grounding helps to make sure that your energy doesn't interfere with the energy of the place you're visiting and it makes you more energetically stable.
• The act of centering is essentially finding the place in your body where you feel your energies the strongest and aligning your energies to concentrate and flow from that place.  For many people that place is the lower abdomen or the base of the spine - it make be different for you.  I generally center by visualizing my center (just below and behind the navel for me) and breathing into it until I feel my energies focus and stabilize there.  Having a calm and focused center makes it easier to pay attention to what's going on around you and adapt accordingly.  

• Shield - Shielding is the practice of forming a layer of protective energy around yourself in order to strengthen the barrier between you and the outside world.  The easiest way for most people to shield is to visualize an egg of white or pale blue electricity surrounding them like a bubble - just like the shields around the Enterprise on Star Trek.  Depending on how safe you feel in a given location you will want to make your shields thicker or thinner.  The nice thing about shields it that you can modify them at any time in response to what's happening around you.  This is also a great technique to use when dealing with angry co-workers or relatives.  It helps keep their negative energy off of you!

During a Tour or Hunt

• Statement of Intent - I consider it a common courtesy to introduce myself when first entering a haunted location.  You can do it out loud or in your head, paranormal entities are generally able to hear thoughts expressly directed at them, though I like to say it aloud unless it would make me look like a crazy person in the given situation.  I recommend introducing yourself, expressing your respect and compassion for the unseen entities present, and inviting the experience you would like to have, e.g. let the entities know that you'd like to hear them speak or be gently touched and that you do not want to be pushed, scratched, or otherwise harmed.  By expressly saying (aloud or silently) what you do and do not want to happen you actually make it easier for the entity to do what you want and make it more difficult to do what you do not want.  Clearly expressed desires create their own energy that can help or hinder paranormal entities to act.  It's also just the courteous thing to do.  Wouldn't you be more likely to be friendly to a stranger that introduced themselves and asked you to do thing rather than just barging in an making demands?    
• Protective Items - These are things to have on hand in order to escalate your protections as necessary.  Depending on the item and your own risk assessment you make choose to carry some of these things on your person (in a pocket or bad) or choose to leave them in a secure and easily accessible place just outside the haunted location.  I recommend choosing just 2-3 items to have on hand for most investigations.    
• Talismans/charms     
• Objects of faith (cross, star of david, pentagram, hand of fatima, etc.)  
• Personal objects of special significance (family heirloom, love token, etc.)     
• Bundles or small bags of protective herbs (Angelica, Bay, Cinnamon, Cloves, Fennel, Garlic, Mullein, Rosemary, Rue, Sage)    
• Mojos (bundle of protective objects in a red cotton bag worn next to the skin - to begin I recommend choosing an herb, a stone, and a metal charm, eg. a bay leaf, a hematite, and a small pewter dragon)     
  
• Protective stones (hematite, jet, obsidian, malachite, black tourmaline, etc.). 
• Salt water, salt, black salt - Salt has a unique ability to disrupt and neutralize negative energy.  Black salt is salt that also contains charcoal or crushed lava rock and it cannot be beat for absorbing and grounding negative energy.  Something as simple as putting a few grains of salt on your tongue or rubbing salt on your hands or feet can make a huge difference in mitigating negative energies.  You can also wash your hands or feet in salt water for the same effect.    
• Shielding - As I mentioned earlier, you can and should adapt your shields in response to what you feel in a haunted location.  If you feel threatened you can thicken shields or change their opacity, e.g. if your shields are a translucent electric blue you can change them to be made of solid steel or concrete.

Aftercare

What you do after a paranormal experience may actually be more important than anything you do before or during it.  If you do nothing else, I urge you to always do all three of the following:

• Closing statement - Before you leave a location, inform the spirits that you’re finishing up and give them one last chance to communicate with you. Thank them for allowing you to share their space and wish them well. (Being kind and courteous costs you nothing and can go a long way towards ending things on a positive note - especially if you think you might come back!) Then tell them that you’re done and that they are to remain where they are, that they are not allowed to follow you home.  As with your statement of intent, just saying that the spirits are not to follow you will make it more difficult for any troublemakers to do so.    
• Ground - After any paranormal experience you're likely to be either keyed up or extremely tired. Take a few moments to consiously let the energy of the experience calm down.  The easiest way to do this is to have some food and drink (fruits, nuts, cheese, bread, water or fruit juices all good - stay away from over processed or sugary foods for the best results).  Eating has a wonderful way of closing any open psychic connections and bringing down energy levels.  Rubbing your hands with salt or putting a little in your shoes is also an easy way to help you ground. 
• Cleanse - Cleansing after a paranormal experience is absolutely critical.  You never really know what energies have gotten on you during an investigation and you do not want any potential negatives lingering. Here are a few things that you can do to cleanse yourself energetically:    
• Smudge - A Native American technique of essentially fumigating yourself with the smoke of smoldering herbs, most often sage, cedar, and/or sweetgrass. 
• Spritz - Have a spray bottle with a few drops of cleansing essential oil in water or hydrosol (rosemary, cedar, sage, lavender all good) and give yourself a good spritz or three.  This technique is particularly useful while traveling. 
• Wash hands in salt water 
• Bathe/Shower -  If you can, I highly recommend taking a shower - standing in running water does wonders for washing away negative energy.  Try using cedar or sage soap, florida water soap (available at your local Hoodoo supplier), or a van van wash (also available at your local Hoodoo supplier).

Try out these techniques the next time you visit a local paranormal hot spot and see how different your experience is. 

tl;dr - be courteous (ghosts are people too), be firm (say exactly what you do and do not want to experience and mean it), be prepared (have some quick and easy methods of increasing your protection if necessary)

My previous post on this topic - I've refined things quite a bit over the last few years.

Possession and Oppression

First a disclaimer – I am not a mental health professional.  I am not giving mental health advice.  I’m a witch relating personal thoughts and experiences.  Take what I say as nothing more than that.

Over the last few months I’ve had several people come to me with concerns that someone they cared about might be possessed.  At first I assumed these people were...well...overly concerned.  After all, possession is absurdly rare.  It’s far more likely that someone’s mood swings or changing personality are due to a mid-life crisis or simple growth than some kind of malevolent outside force.  Consequently, when I investigated further I was surprised to find that these folks seemed to be dealing with honest to gods actually cases of possession.  That’s what I get for scoffing.  I will admit right up front that cases of possession or oppression scare me.  More than any other magickal malady, possession and oppression cases have the potential to go very, very badly. 

Possession and Oppression occur when an intelligent malevolent entity decides it’s going to make someone’s life hell.  The entity will single out a particular person and systematically harass him until he can no longer function normally.  At that point the person is Oppressed.  Now, just because someone is experiencing paranormal phenomena that he or she finds upsetting does not mean that person is Oppressed.  The big difference between a malevolent haunting and Oppression is the focus.  Hauntings generally affect anyone who comes within the sphere of the haunting.  Oppression is specifically focused on one individual.  If several people are feeling the effects, then you are not dealing with Oppression.  In a haunting everyone (or at least everyone with sensitivity to the paranormal) will feel the cold chill, hear the disembodied voices, etc.  In a case of Oppression only the target will feel the chill or hear the voices.  Therein lies the primary difficulty – if only one person is affected how do you know that the person is genuinely suffering from Oppression or if they’re just hallucinating?

In my experience the only way to tell if someone is Oppressed verses dealing with a mental issue is to have that person examined by someone who can see psychic energies.  To someone with the sight, an Oppressed person will appear draped in foreign energy and that foreign energy will look awful (dark, splotchy, cracked, etc.) – and it will feel even worse.  That foreign energy will appear very distinct from the person’s native energies, and the native energies will probably appear pale and weak.  Even then, there are some mental illnesses (particularly schizophrenia) that can give someone very similar energies.  An experienced practitioner should be able to feel the difference in the energies by their intensities and the level of malevolence present.  However, even the most experienced practitioner can misdiagnose this.  It is for this reason that I always recommend that anyone who thinks they might be Oppressed seek professional mental care.  Even if your root problem is that a demon is trying to eat you, a good psychologist can probably do you some good (just be careful what you say – we wouldn’t want anyone getting committed unnecessarily), and in the more likely event that you’ve got a chemical imbalance it will do you a lot of good. 

Oppression can sometimes lead to Possession.  In my opinion Possession is just about the most unsettling thing that can happen to a person – and I can personally attest that it is highly disturbing to witness.  Possession is when a foreign entity actually takes over someone’s body and controls his or her actions.  I’ve seen someone whose demeanour, speech patterns, aura, and even eye color changed during Possession.  Sometimes Possession occurs after a long period of Oppression that wears down the natural defences; other times it happens seemingly out of the blue.    In all the episodes of Possession that I’ve seen, some kind of traumatic event that severely compromised someone’s sense of self and all his mental defences precipitated the Possession.  I’ve never seen someone with a normal, healthy mind and aura become Possessed (at least not involuntarily – voluntary possession by deity is a whole different issue).  I’ve also never seen someone become Possessed as a result of dabbling in the occult.   

Like Oppression, Possession can look a lot like mental illness.  Illnesses such as multiple personality disorder and schizophrenia look damned similar to Possession.  People can have radical mood swings, fugue states, personality changes, etc., while suffering from Possession and the similar mental illnesses.  As with Oppression, those who think they might be Possessed should seek out a mental health professional, and for the same reasons.  Like with Oppression, the only way I’ve found to tell the difference between Possession and mental illness is viewing/feeling the energies involved and that isn’t foolproof. 

All that being said - what do you do if you think you or someone you love is Oppressed or Possessed?  As I’ve mentioned, the first thing you do is seek the aid of a mental health professional.  If someone is genuinely ill and they are left untreated or their delusions fed it can cause serious problems.  If someone is genuinely suffering from Oppression or Possession they are probably being severely traumatized and could greatly benefit from counselling - I’ve seen a case of Oppression lead the target to a serious anxiety disorder.  Magickally, Possession and Oppression are nothing to mess around with.  Best case scenario you are dealing with a malevolent entity and deep seated emotional trauma.  Worst case scenario you are dealing with a malevolent entity powerful enough to destroy someone’s mind.  Only experts in energy work and dealing with malevolent entities should attempt to deal with serious Possession.

For most cases of mild Oppression or the very first seeds of Possession, a thorough and powerful cleansing should rid a person of the negative outside influence.  However, it will not address the crack in that person’s energies that allowed the negative entity to take hold in the first place.  That requires a full mental/emotional magickal healing – something I really can’t help you with.  (I seriously can’t do healing work of any kind, it all goes pear shaped.)  If personal cleansings are insufficient, then it’s time to move up to a hex-breaking ritual.  Hex breakings (such as those I outline in my book) are designed to sever ties between the target and outside energies, rebuild the person’s own energies, and ward against future intrusions.  In my experience Hex breakings are quite effective against most forms of Oppression and mild Possession.   

What if it’s not mild Possession?  What if you’re dealing with something powerful, insidious, and long standing?  Well, that’s when all amateurs leave the building and call in a professional.  The only way to deal with serious Possession is to flat out battle the entity doing the possessing.  If you’re religious you call in the appropriate clergy person, if not find yourself a local witch of good repute and let her work.  If you’re me then you suit up, grab your kit, and gird yourself.  On the one occasion I have personally gone to bat against serious Possession I gathered up my strongest friends, we all called in our patron deities, we all called in every outstanding metaphysical favour we were owed, we gathered every iota of banishing energy we could lay our auras on until we were bursting with it, threw everything we had at the entity and wounded it enough to make it leave our friend alone.  It was the scariest thing I’ve ever had to deal with.

If you think you or someone you care about it Possessed or Oppressed start with a thorough cleansing, then move to a strong hex breaking.  If that doesn’t work, get help.