Shadow Magick I - What is Shadow Magick?

I am pleased to announce my latest class, Shadow Magick I, which is available for enrollment today!  Head on over to Shadowkrafting.com to enroll :)

Shadow Magick I - What is Shadow Magick?

Class Description:  The purpose of this course is to answer common questions about what shadow magick is and what it isn’t, as well as giving students enough information to decide whether they want to pursue shadow magick as a discipline.  We will look at the fundamentals of shadow work and shadow magick as well as common misconceptions of both.  We will take a more in-depth look at what the shadow is and how to deal with it.  The course ends with a look forward into the next course, Shadow Magick II - The Work, and what to expect if you decide to move forward.  

Cost: $10 payable via paypal to signup@shadowkrafting.com

What you need to know beforehand:  This course is designed to be accessible by anyone who is willing to do a bit of introspection.  However, students with some magickal experience, preferably more than six (6) months, will get the most benefit.  Shadow magick as a whole is best when added to an existing set of magickal skills and practices.    

You will have no trouble with the course if you know the following (though it is not 100% necessary):

• Visualization - You should be able to visualize the movement of energy in your mind.  If you have an imagination and can daydream then chances are you can do this without difficulty.
• Basic energy manipulation - You should have a basic understanding of what energy is and be comfortable moving it, e.g. pulling energy and moving it into a candle to charge it.  If you are not comfortable charging an object you will have difficulty with some of the material in this class.
• Basic spellcrafting - You do not have to be proficient in spellcasting, but you should understand the basic principles (such as like attracts like, contagion, etc.) and be able to perform simple spells.

Recommended resources if you’re not already there (note these are all from very different traditions):

Bird, Stephanie Rose. Sticks, Stones, Roots & Bones: Hoodoo, Mojo & Conjuring with Herbs. St. Paul, Minn.: Llewellyn Publications, 2004.

Bonewits, Isaac. Real Magic: An Introductory Treatise on the Basic Principles of Yellow Magic. York Beach, ME: Weiser, 1989.

Cunningham, Scott. Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner. St. Paul, Minn.: Llewellyn Publications, 1989.

Kraig, Donald Michael. Modern Magick: Twelve Lessons in the High Magickal Arts. Rev. and Expanded. ed. St. Paul, Minn.: Llewellyn Publications, 2010.

Miller, Jason. The Sorcerer's Secrets: Strategies to Practical Magick. Franklin Lakes, NJ: New Page, 2009.

Required

• This course is for students 18+ years of age.  There will be no exceptions under any circumstances.  
• This course must be paid via paypal.  
• This course is taught exclusively in English.  You must be able to read/write comfortably in English to participate.
• All lessons are delivered as pdf files via email.  
• You must have a functioning email address that you check regularly in order to receive your class materials.
• You will need a pdf reader such as Adobe Acrobat Reader.  You can download it for free at http://get.adobe.com/reader/

Strongly Recommended (you will need in order to get the full value of your course)

• Some lessons may include links to videos, so access to high speed internet will improve your experience.
• This course includes one (1) one-on-one Skype or Google Hangout session with me.  You will need either a Skype or Google+ account (both free), along with a functioning webcam and microphone in order to have a one-on-one.

Lessons and Homework

All lessons will be delivered weekly via email as pdf files.  

This class does not include formal homework.  Instead it includes a series of suggested exercises and practices that are clearly labelled within the lessons.  You are encouraged to do all of the exercises and recommended practices, and to discuss your results with me, in order to get the maximum value out of this course.  

This course includes one (1) thirty minute one-on-one session with me via Skype or Google Hangout.  One-on-one sessions must be completed within three (3) months of enrollment.

Course Completion

Completion of this course is required before applying for Shadow Magick II - The Work.

Shadow Magick and the Ooky Spooky

I love October.  I love Halloween.  I love Samhain.  I love Dia de los Muertos.  I love autumn and all its glorious accoutrement.  But you know what I don’t love?  I don’t love when people come up to me and say, “Oh, you do shadow magick?  I’m not really into all the spooky stuff.”  That’s when I facepalm so hard that my hand goes through my forehead and comes out the back of my brain stem.  *sigh*  So let me tell you a little bit about shadow magick and the “spooky stuff.”

Yes, I personally like the spooky stuff.  No, that has nothing whatsoever to do with my shadow magick.  In fact, my shadow working are probably the least “ooky spooky” of any workings I do.  Shadow magick, in its many forms, is about the process of magickally integrating the shadow or using that integrated shadow as a mechanism in other magickal workings.  It is serious work either way.  If a particular practitioner happens to like using spooky regalia in their shadow magick that’s their business, but it’s just not the way I do things.  

So let me be very clear about this: shadow magick does not equal gothcraft.  Gothcraft is just regular witchcraft with skull covered drapes done while listening to dark music. (There’s nothing wrong with that, in fact I rather enjoy it.)  Shadow magick is magick specifically involving the psychological shadow - the aspects of our personality that aren’t considered viable for public presentation.  They are totally different things.

Also, shadow magick is not evil or unethical.  A lot of people hear the word “shadow” and immediately associated it with “the darkness,” “evil,” or other things they consider unsavory.  The shadow is not evil.  Yes, our shadow contains bits of ourselves that we don’t like very much and yes those bits can be dangerous, but that doesn’t make them evil.  A huge part of shadow work is learning how to look at those oh so unsavory parts of ourselves and not see them as “evil” or “bad.”  The shadow is not evil, it’s just different and a little intimidating.  

Shadow magick is a discipline like any other, it can be wielded ethically or unethically by its practitioners as they see fit.  However, by its very nature it is more difficult to use shadow magick balefully than other forms of magick for two reasons.  One, you have to be extremely proficient in order to use shadow magick for anything other than the integration of the shadow (never really a bad thing).  Two, once you’ve reached the level of proficiency where you could use shadow magick to do harm you’ll be so integrated and balanced that you will rarely want to.  Shadow work makes people healthier psychologically and generally more stable and self-aware, this does not generally incline people to violence or harm towards others.  I’d be much more concerned about the holier than thou types than shadow workers any day.

Further, shadow magick does not equal the left hand path.  I don’t happen to practice the left hand path so I can’t really say much about it.  As I understand it, the left hand path is the practice of magick with a more personal approach to morality and ethics, often less strict than other forms of magick, and with greater emphasis on serving the self rather than the community at large.  While this is a rather interesting path, it really has nothing to do with shadow magick.  As I said earlier, shadow magick is a tool that can be wielded by practitioners of any path, it is not a path in and of itself.  

So yeah, shadow magick is not “ooky spooky.”  Don’t get me wrong, I have a deep and unabated love for the ooky spooky going back to my embarrassing teenage goth years.  It’s just that the ooky spooky has absolutely nothing to do with shadow magick.  So please, for the sake of my poor head, when someone makes a flippant comment about shadow magick being evil, set that person straight.  

The Shadow of Music

Last Friday I had the pleasure of performing my absolute favorite shadow magick ritual.  I went to a Nine Inch Nails concert.  Oh yes, when approached with the proper mindset the right concert can absolutely be used to facilitate a deeply transformative magickal experience.

Unlike any other art, music has the ability to penetrate your entire being, particularly live music.  Music touches us not only emotionally and mentally, but physically as well.  There is nothing like the physical feeling of that first bass note thrumming through an arena; feeling your sternum vibrate and resonate with every single person both on stage and in the crowd.  When the musicians hit the stage the outpouring of energy back and forth between the band and the audience is visceral and intense.  Live music creates an energetic resonance between everyone who hears it, creating a circuit of movement and life.  A good concert raises is the finest ritual magick.

In order for a concert to facilitate shadow magick it needs a few things.  First, the music must speak to your shadow.  Second, you must feel safe enough in the venue to be open to your magick taking you somewhere unexpected.  Third, you need to be good enough (or have someone with you who is good enough) to shield what you're doing so it doesn't interfere with the people around you.  Fourth, you need to have a safe space afterwards for decompression and grounding.

The first thing you have to consider is the music itself.  The purpose of shadow magick is to open ourselves to our shadows, get to know them, and to play nice with them.  Happy, shiny, bubble gum pop is not going to help you work with your shadow.  You're going to need to go into the darker stuff: music that expresses pain, anger, sorrow, grief, helplessness, etc. - the emotions of the shadow.  Music is a wonderful way to safely integrate these shadows because it can be an intense emotional and energetic release that doesn't hurt anyone, regardless of how dark those shadows are.  (Yes, you can argue that some music fuels the shadow in a negative way - encouraging bad behavior like violence and misogyny.  It comes down to personal responsibility.  If you don't think you can loose yourself in the music without acting on its suggestions then you are probably not ready for shadow work.)  For me, Nine Inch Nails expresses my shadow just about perfectly; it's dark and intense and resonates with all the scary bits that live inside my head.

You'll need to take the concert venue into account before deciding to use the concert magickally.  Shadow magick, when done correctly, is very intense.  We're talking uncontrollably shaking or sobbing levels of intensity.  It's amazing, but intense.  The venue needs to be such that you're actually comfortable letting things potentially go that far.  If you know that freaking out it going to get you pummeled, perhaps you should just enjoy the show rather than trying to work it.  I only do shadow magick at concerts where I'm comfortable with the venue (and its security staff) and only when I've got a magickally skilled friend to act as a spotter.  I'm quite capable of shielding myself in a way that I can have a magickal meltdown and not get it on other people's shoes, and I can hold myself together through any level of shadow work that I would do in public.  However, I'm not so foolish as to think it impossible that something might happen that would be too much for me.  If you don't have a friend to spot you and you really want to work the concert then you'd better have some energetic backup plans in case something goes wonky.

If your concert's got all that going on, then you just have to make sure you have a place to decompress in afterwards.  This could be sitting in the venue for a little longer as you make your way out, it could be curled up in the back seat of the car on the drive home, a closed room at home, etc.  What you'll need will depend entirely on how intense an experience you let yourself have and how well you've grounded.  Don't leave the venue without grounding.  Concerts in general tend to energize the hell out of people, let alone to those doing magick during them.  If you're the designated driver then ground twice.  I mean it.  Ground, drink a glass of water, ground again, go to the bathroom, ground again, then get in the car.  Crashing your car helps no one.  Then get yourself to safe space and either talk out your experiences with a really understanding friend or write it out in your journal.  Shadow work is intense and you will need a record of what happened in order to look back at it objectively while you stew for the next week or so.  Trust me.

And now for the fun part: shadow magick in public. 

A good ritual warms you up, raises energy, does its work, and then brings you back down again.  A well thought-out concert does exactly the same thing.  The opening bands raise general energy levels and open you to the potential of the headliner.  A good set opens by raising energy, moves through different emotions and energy levels, peaks with songs you can get truly lost in, and then ends with tapering energy and satisfaction.  Really polished bands that work with dark energy (intentionally or not) tend to open with energetic songs, move to darker ones, and then end with cathartic songs - this is absolutely perfect for shadow magick.

The first thing I do when I get to my seat at a concert where I intend to do magick is to cast some very specific filters and shields.  First I put up an inside-out grounding shield: this is a shield designed to keep the energy I put out from getting all over the people around me.  I cast it at skin level and have it ground about 80% of what I output.  Then I put up a filter to dampen any negativity from the people around me - I'll have plenty of my own to deal with.  I also put up an aversion shield to keep drunk people away from me - basically it makes people not want to touch me and is designed to get stronger when I'm approached by folks who aren't sober.  Shadow work takes a lot of concentration and being slobbered on is not conducive to any working.  Once those shields and filters are up I'm ready to go.  I will actually lower a lot of my normal shields during a concert because I do want to allow the music to influence me more heavily than I usually allow any external energy to do.  I also want to benefit from the collective resonance of the crowd; there is nothing like the energy of a crowd of 10,000 people all singing the same song with the same emotions. 

Once the music starts it's just a matter of letting go.  For me that's the hardest part.  Let down your walls, let down your regular shields, stop trying to be cool, stop trying to bury your shadow, remove the stick from your ass and just let go.  Close your eyes and feel.  Feel the resonance of the music shaking your sternum.  Feel the energy of the music penetrating your normal barriers and let yourself resonate with it.  Allow the music to guide your energies.  Let your shadow sing and dance and release. 

Let the music guide your experience.  If you don't want to follow the energy of a certain song, just pull back a little and just listen.  When you're ready to dive back in just do so.  You are the only judge of your experience.  Some songs will resonate more than others.  You might find yourself crying during some songs, raging during others.  That's ok.  Let the energy out by singing or dancing.  You might have visions during your experience (no hallucinogens necessary or desired), that's normal.  You can learn startling things about yourself when you let your shadow out to play.  It may show you things about yourself you never knew or wanted to know, but that knowledge is important.  Just because it's a little dark and misshapen doesn't mean that your shadow isn't an important part of who you are.  Accept what your shadow has to show you, remember it, and then let the emotions attached to it release with the music.  Let your shadow take hold of your voice and let it sing out and let go for you. 

When the concert's over don't be surprised if you're a little shaky, especially if it's your first time doing this.  The combination of excitement and catharsis is a heady mix and it can leave you vibrating with energy or utterly drained.  It all depends on both the intensity of your experience and how well the last song brought down the energy of the crowd.  If you need to, just sit down and put your head between your knees and breathe.  Ground like you've never grounded before.  Eat something. (I like to keep a package of almonds or a granola bar in my bag for just such occasions.)
I tend to be a bit twitchy even after grounding after doing any intense working, so I like to take a walk or do something physical just to calm down and clear my head.  I will often do readings after a working like this to help wrap my head around the things that come up. 

All in all, workings like this are designed to help integrate the shadow by bringing it to the surface and letting it release.  It's amazing how good it feels to let that kind of energy go in a way that is safe and socially acceptable.  We all face huge amounts of pressure to conform in our daily lives, so indulging in the shadow is incredibly cathartic.  It's sort of like having a huge holiday meal after months of dieting: you can't really do it all the time, but damn it's awesome.

If you liked this post you should check out my previous post: Magick of Music

Shadow Magick Correspondence Course

Due to popular demand I'm developing a correspondence course in Shadow Magick.  The plan is for it to be available starting Samhain (October 31st) of this year.  I've got a pretty decent start on it, but I need your help in deciding what should be included in the course.

The course will start of with the basics of shadow work and the psychology of it, then move on to how the shadow can be used in magick.  There will be a lot of work on identifying your own shadow and figuring out how to work with it, as well as what to do once you've gotten a handle on it.  What I need to know is what specific concepts and practices folks want to learn about.

What do you folks find most interesting about shadow magick?  Is it the personal exploration and psychic strengthening?  Is it the application of shadow work in magickal practice?  The dark side of more traditional works?  Something else entirely?  I want to know.

You can let me know either by commenting on this entry or via email: emily [@] e-carlin.com

I really, really want to hear from you!

Shadow Work: Expectations

In shadow work psychology and magick mix in fascinating ways.  One of the most interesting phenomena I've observed in shadow work, and in a lot of other types of magick really, is the power of expectations.  This can be our own expectations of people or events or the expectations of others that are projected on to us.

Expectations really are magickal when you think about it.  Magick is a deliberate attempt to use our energies to shape reality.  We focus on a particular goal, visualize the changes to reality we want to make in order to achieve it, and then project that energy out into the world to manifest itself.  In essence, we're creating an expectation of what the results of our magick will be and letting ourselves embrace and believe in that expectation. The more sure we are that reality will me our expectations, the more energy those expectations contain, the more magickal those expectations become giving them an ability to actually make it more likely for reality to conform to them.

This is all well and good when our expectations are positive; less good when they're negative.  Oh yes, negative expectations can be a self-fulfilling prophecy on soooo many levels.  Our own negative expectations, when believed in strongly enough, are essentially self-hexing.  When you've trained yourself to focus your thoughts and will enough to perform magick it does tend to trickle down into unconscious thought.  As we all know, like attracts like, and our negative expectation of reality will shape that reality - self-hexing.  Of course, from a purely psychological point of view, negative expectations make us interpret our situations in a way that conforms to how we expect it to be.  Thus even if you haven't managed to hex yourself, you'll still see things as being worse than they probably are.  This is our shadow at work.

Shadow work is all about embracing our darker thoughts and feelings, but that does not mean we need to roll around in them all day; an hour or so a day sure, but not all day every day.  When you find yourself having negative expectations about yourself or a situation it's important to take a step back and really assess things.  Realistic expectations when a situation truly is overwhelmingly negative is healthy; overwhelmingly negative expectations when things really aren't so bad is harmful.  Take some time out to meditate and clear your head.  Take some time to do some divination if you need to (this is the kind of situation where getting someone else to do divination for you can be extremely helpful, that way your negative feelings won't affect the divination as badly).  If you need to, consider doing some spellwork to help clear your head of prejudices and let you see things as they really are.  I would never, ever, ask someone to put on a happy face and think positive - because it makes me want to vomit - but I do ask for realism rather than moping. 

This brings us to the expectations most difficult to deal with: the expectations others have of us.  As much as some of us might like to, we do not live in a vacuum.  We live in a world populated by other people and, unless you're a hermit, we have to deal with other people and their expectations of us on a daily basis.  People that truly know and understand us tend to expect us to be who and what we really are, unfortunately people that truly know and understand who we really are tend to be pretty thin on the ground.  Instead, we are surrounded by people that know only bits and pieces of us. 

This limited knowledge means that people generally expect us to be something different than our authentic selves.  As you might imagine this can create all manner of problems for us.  On a mundane level, having to wear masks and live up (or down) to other people's expectations can be emotionally exhausting.  It can be equally exhausting on a magickal level.  Our shields do a lot of work keeping outside energies from unduly influencing us - that's their job - this includes the energy of other people's expectations.  If you spend the majority of your day surrounded by people who expect you to be something you're not it's going to take a toll on your shields. 

For most people it isn't too bad - who they portray themselves to be to the outside world isn't usually too far off from who they really are.  Of course we shadow workers tend to be...well...what other people consider to be "weirdos."  This can cause trouble even if you're letting your freak flag fly.  If you're spending most of your time pretending to be someone you're not, the combination of cognitive dissonance and energetic drain is eventually going to bite you in the ass.  If you're open about your weirdness a lot of shortsighted people probably have really negative expectations of you based on their own fears and hangups - causing pretty much the same toll on your shields as hiding would have, but hey less cognitive dissonance is good.  In the long term the best situation is to be yourself and educate others so that they understand what that means.  However, that takes time, energy, and won't fix everybody.  In the mean time creating an anchored shield specifically for dealing with other people's projected expectations can help a lot.  This is pretty much the only shield that I would actually recommend anchoring in rose quartz as it is naturally good at soothing emotions and aiding healing. 

Expectations are powerful things and as magickal practitioners we need to be aware of how they affect us whether they be from within or without.  The next time you approach a negative situation or feel the need to follow someone else's expectations of you take a step back and examine the reality of things and what you really want to see happen.  Just being aware of the influence of expectations can help you take control of the situation make it better.

Shadow Offerings

As I have said many times, the essence of shadow work is the act of accepting and integrating your own shadow.  Doing so makes you a stronger, more whole person with fewer chinks in your armor and more control over your self.  One mechanism for helping make such integration possible is to make regular offerings to your shadow.

The purpose of making an offering to your shadow is not to strengthen it, but to acknowledge it and to recognize its importance.  It's mostly about keeping your self-awareness sharp.  Taking a little extra time to think about and recognize your shadow will make you more comfortable with it, help you to recognize it in action in your life, and ease your working with it both spiritually and magickally. 

Oftentimes offerings are made in gratitude, but that can be a rather difficult emotion when it comes to the shadow.  Our shadows are often difficult to deal with and can cause us to do things that make our lives more difficult than they need to be.  Our shadows are often the catalyst for learning unpleasant life lessons, and it can be really difficult to be grateful for that.  However, those hard lessons are what shape us and help us grow, so we should be grateful for them - however uncomfortable they may be.  It's your choice on any given day whether you want to add the emotion of gratitude in your shadow offering.

My favorite thing to offer for this purpose is incense.  I like to get the highest quality resin sticks that I can find (like Mountain Natural's Palo Santo Resin Sticks) and use them.  Yes, I know actual resins on charcoal would be better but I find working with the charcoals to burn them to be a huge pain (you try keeping them fresh in the incredible dampness of the Pacific Northwest!) and if something is a pain I'm less likely to actually do it.  An offering of energy would certainly work too, but it would have to be very clearly tuned for shadow work.  I generally only do energy offerings when either a) I'm in a place where burning things isn't appropriate/allowed, or b) I have a very specific purpose I want to accomplish with my offering, like recognizing a particular thing that happened or an important lesson I've learned.  In the end, what you offer isn't nearly as important as the fact that you're offering something on a regular basis.

I like to do my shadow offerings once a week on a Saturday in the hour of Saturn.  As I am both a tech and lazy, I use an app on my phone (Planetary Hours) to determine when the hour of Saturn happens. If something particularly shadowy comes up during the week I might add in an extra offering here and there as necessary.

To perform the offering I light a black candle (sometimes it's a tea light or taper, sometimes it's a big fat pillar that I use over and over again - doesn't really matter) and light the incense from the candle, rather than from a match.  As the incense lights I like to say a short incantation that varies depending on the day.  It's usually something along the lines of:

This day I make an offering to the shadow;
May I always see the truth of the shadow in my life;
May I always absorb its teachings;
May I learn to integrate my shadow and be whole;
As I do will so mote it be.

 I find making these regular offerings to be strangely grounding.  The act of preemptively accepting whatever weirdness life may throw at me is oddly calming.  Maybe it's just appeasing my Virgo nature to always be prepared for anything ;)

Change Is Good

One of the key aspects of Shadow Work is letting go of the things that no longer serve you.  Of course, that is usually easier said than done.  I never said Shadow Work was easy now did I?  In fact I think it's more worthwhile because it is difficult - but I'm a bit of a masochist.

As you may have noticed, I haven't been particularly active of late.  I haven't written anything substantial in a while.  I've been suffering from ennui of the most emo kind, to the point where I'm a little bit disgusted with myself.  This state of things cannot stand, therefore it's time for me to suck it up and look at the things that are creating all this damnable inertia and act like the shadow worker I am.

I had to take a good long look at how I've been spending my time and determine which of those things are actually feeding my soul and which ones aren't.  I came to the realization that some of the things I've dedicate a good portion of my adult life to just aren't serving me anymore and it's time to move on.  It's kind of like when you've been watching a television series for years and one day you realize that it's actually sucked for a while now and it's time to stop watching (if you're a completist like me that's actually really, really hard).  You still kind of love it, but it's just not where your energies need to go.

Death in the Shadowscapes Tarot

What were my big clues that it was time for a drastic shift?  First off, I stopped looking forward to spending my time on things.  Then I started avoiding them.  Then I just sort of stopped doing the things I was supposed to do and didn't even want to talk about them.  Then one day I realized that I don't actually care about fixing the problems I was presented with.  That was the kicker for me.  I'm a puzzle person.  There is nothing I like better than being presented with a challenge and then twisting my brain until I can come up with a solution.  I love problem solving.  It makes me all tingly.  When I don't want to solve a puzzle, then I am well and truly gone.

The Tower in the Shadowscapes Tarot

And so I now have to face the rather frightening prospect of saying goodbye to something that has become part of my identity.  There's a reason that big changes in life are indicated by the Death and Tower cards in tarot.  On the one hand this is going to create a void in my life - which is very scary, and on the other this is going to create a void in my life which can be filled with something significantly more awesome - which is very exciting.  I'm going to do my best to be a glass half full person just this once so I don't start hyperventilating into a paper bag.  I'm going to choose to be excited by the prospect of doing something better for myself and allow myself to be proud of making a hard decision.

Now that the decision is made I actually have a lot more energy for interesting things, like shadow magick (all magick actually), so expect to see more of me again.

**Update 11-19-2013 It's official now, so I can say what the change is.  As of December 1st I am leaving the Grey School after nine years.  It's incredibly liberating :) **

Shadow Magick and Compassion

I've been doing shadow work for so long, I sometimes forget how ooky it can seem from the outside.  Yes, shadow work is dark, difficult, and sometimes scary.  And yes, the magick that derives from all that work is potent, sharp, and has the potential to break things.  But the darkness isn't the point.  The ooky spooky scary bits are there because if you want something special you have to earn it.  The ookiness is a means to an end, not the end in and of itself.  Shadow magick isn't about being angry and dark and wanting to hurt yourself or others - and if you approach it from that point of view you will either change in a hurry or deal with the consequences.  For the Shadow to work for you, your intent actually has to come from a place of compassion.

It's easy to hurl your anger into the darkness; but shadow work isn't easy.  Real shadow work is about facing the darkness and having compassion for it.  It's about coming face to face with your flaws, with your fears, and both forgiving yourself for your weakness and forgiving the world for allowing the thing you fear to exist.  It's not about conquering your fears; it's about learning to live with them.  Shadow work is about seeing yourself and the world around you clearly, warts and all, and learning to accept that truth.  The only way I've found to accomplish that without going completely mad is to learn to have real compassion. 

When I tell people that I'm a "black witch" or a "shadow worker," they will usually either say "what does that mean" or they will completely freak out.  The freak out is rare and it always surprises me a little.  You see, I don't tell just anyone that I'm a shadow worker - people whose only exposure to the spooky is television will inevitably react uncomfortably - I generally only tell other practitioners and I generally expect other practitioners to be able to look at my aura and realize that I'm not evil.  Sadly, that's not always the case.  There are always those folks who were taught that anything outside their particular brand of magick is evil (anyone who calls themselves a white witch will always react badly to someone who calls themselves a black witch, regardless of what either one means by those terms), and they do not tend to like me very much.  It's always a little disheartening to see that kind of knee-jerk prejudice in my own community.  I expect an abrahamic fundamentalist to object to what I do, I don't expect it from my own people.  It always makes me sad when people who should know better never bother too look beneath the label to find out what shadow workers actually do.  Maybe it bother me because my own reaction to something I fear is to find out all I can about it (this almost always alleviates me fears), so I have trouble understanding why other people don't do the same.

You see, people who are afraid of shadow workers are actually quite ridiculous.  It's almost impossible to become adept at shadow work without developing a deep rooted sense of compassion and understanding.  An adept has to learn to look at their own flaws every day without melting into a useless heap on the floor (this can be rather difficult), and one of the side effects of this skill is the ability to see those same flaws in others.  And let me tell you, it's really difficult not to feel at least some compassion for someone (regardless of how awful their behavior) when you see that their doing it because they have the same damned flaws you've got, that they just haven't dealt with yet.  It's hard to sustain anger with someone who you can see only lashed out because they don't know how to handle their own pain or fear.  This doesn't mean shadow workers all turn into Mother Theresa - hell no - but it does mean that our knee-jerk reactions aren't terribly violent and don't usually last very long.  The only "curse" a shadow worker is likely to lob at another person is one to make them see themselves more clearly and to develop a better understanding of what their doing - nothing more than what we voluntarily do to ourselves every day. 

Sure, the process of becoming an adept at shadow magick is difficult and often painful, but that doesn't make us bastards or masochists or anything else.  All it makes us is honest people who don't lie to themselves.  To be afraid of us just means you're afraid of yourself and we remind you of what you aren't willing to do.  Fear is a natural and healthy thing, just point it in the right direction.

Ostara Shadow Work

It’s almost that time of year again, springtime.  Yay?  I honestly have very mixed feelings about spring.  On the one hand I love not freezing my ass off at the bus stop, on the other hand I’m not especially enamored of being soaking wet either.  Spring in Seattle is a rather soppy affair, with rather absurd amounts of rain, but less of the biting chill that accompanies it’s winter rains.  I love the occasionally dry (ok, less wet) Saturday for getting to early season hikes and getting back out into nature after the cold dark of winter.  I love witnessing the turn of the seasons and the Wheel of the Year.  But you know what I really don’t love?  Pastels.  I don’t like wearing them and I definitely don’t want them in my rituals.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Ostara.  The Vernal Equinox is full of potent energy for growth and new beginnings.  It’s a very hopeful time and shadow workers often need a good dose of hope more than most.  However, I’d rather gouge out my own eyes than attend a sparkly, shiny, “love and light” ritual.  So, naturally, I do things a little differently.  

This Ostara my ritual is going to be about balance and wholeness.  You can’t have light without dark and at the Vernal Equinox the day and night are of equal length - thus light and dark are symbolically of equal strength.  Instead of celebrating the triumph of light over darkness, I’m going to spend my Ostara recognizing both the parts of me that are light and the parts that are dark and what those things give me.  Shadow work is all about recognizing the less pleasant parts of yourself and integrating them, rather than cutting them off or hiding them away - about finding strength in wholeness.  Despite it’s occasionally sinister image, shadow work is actually a very hopeful practice.

My main working is going to involve meditating on some of my less pleasant features.  I’ll write down a list of things I don’t like about myself and try to narrow it down to one specific trait that I think is being the most trouble right now.  Once I’ve selected the one trait to focus on, I’ll burn the list of negative traits - it doesn’t do to dwell on them and there’s always going to be too much to tackle everything at once.  Then I’ll create a sigil to represent that one negative trait.  I’ll use a crayon to draw that symbol on a raw egg and then I’ll hard boil it.  (If I’m feeling like I really need to go the extra mile I might dye the shell black)  Then I’ll eat the egg to symbolize my recognition that my negative trait is a part of me and that I’m willing to work with it, rather than just blacklist it or try to remove it.  

There’s no banishing at Ostara, just gentle acceptance and willingness to grow.  Negative traits can be a problem, but they can also be teachers.  My avoiding a particular project might teach me that I need to solve an interpersonal problem with a teammate, or that I’m afraid of what will happen when the project is finished.  My shocking inability to get off my ass and go running (even though I really want to) teaches me that I’m still clinging to the image I had of myself a year ago (when I ran four times a week) and don’t want to be smacked in the face with how far I’ve fallen off the wagon.  It’s hard to look beyond what we don’t like about ourselves to really figure out why those things bother us so much.  Ostara is the time to be a bit more gentle with yourself and take baby steps.  We’ll save the more drastic measures for the waning half of the year.

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.

On Demons and Demonology

This weekend I read a book called Encounter with Hell by Alexis McQuinllan.  It's a supposedly true account of a woman with some psychic ability and her encounter with a demon.  It's a very quick and rather thought-provoking read, though I'm not entirely sure if I liked it or not.  The basic gist of it is that Alexis moves to a smallish town and immediately becomes obsessed with a haunted house.  She goes there and ignores a bunch of metaphysical red flags that would have had me out of there in a heartbeat.  She goes blundering about and eventually really pisses off the demon that happened to be living in the basement.  She then fails to get proper help in dealing with the situation she's created for herself and her life becomes a living hell for a while - as it would.  This book is a worthwhile read as a cautionary tale of what never to do.  The author seems to realize this and repeatedly points out the mistakes she made, which I respect.  I certainly didn't do everything (or if I'm honest even most things) right the first time I came up against a demon, but at least I had a better idea of what I was dealing with.  If you're interested in how demons tend to actually behave this is a worthwhile read, just do not emulate the author.  If you think you've encountered a demon get help, serious help, wherever you can find it.

Reading this book really got me thinking about demons and demonology. What most people think of as demonology is based in Ceremonial Magick (see The Lesser Key of Solomon and other Goetic grimoires for more info) and Ceremonial Magick is based on Abrahamic lore.  There are lots of books and websites (like Demonicpedia) that list out all of the Goetic demons, their descriptions, habits, dominions, and places in hell.  That's all well and good if you believe in the Abrahamic cosmology - heave, hell, purgatory, and all that.  However, I don't.  Therefore, the classical view of demonology just doesn't work for me.  Yes, yes, I know that all of these cosmologies are just frameworks through which people learn to relate to things we don't understand rather than how things actually are; and yes this framework is so pervasive that it's gotten enough energy put into it to make it "real" even if things weren't that way originally.  However, I just can't work with this.  Further, it just doesn't fit with my experiences.  

I've had the misfortune of dealing with a couple of demons in my time (and I sincerely hope that I won't again).  In my experience demons are essentially distilled malevolence with independent thought and a lot of power.  Now, that picture probably has a lot to do with how I experience energy; I feel it intuitively and sometimes "see" it.  I didn't learn about energy from within an existing framework with ideas of how things should be, so I didn't immediately label particular energies (e.g. oh that energy is a pixy, that energy is an imp, that energy is Amon the seventh lord of hell).  Rather, I'd feel the energy and look at the behavior it exhibited and try to fit it with the best label I could find (this is the method behind all the identifications in my book Defense Against the Dark).  Using this method of feeling out what things are, nothing I've encountered and labelled as a demon makes me think they were any of the Goetic demons. 

In my experience demons seem to evaluate people as either prey or a threat.  If you have the misfortune of being identified as prey, well you're going to have a very bad day.  Demons are insidious bastards and will do everything they can to sour every good thing in your life without you realizing what's happening until it's too late.  They threaten, cajole, and generally manipulate the shit out of you.  If you are identified as a threat you are probably going to be attacked - hardcore.  I'm talking scratching, biting, pushing, screaming, nightmares, visions, and anything else it can think of to get you to run far, far away and never come back.  They are horrible miasmas of malevolence.  There is nothing good about them and they need to be banished back to wherever they came from or completely dispelled.  There are no other ethical options in my opinion.

Goetic demons are an entirely different thing.  They seem to be intelligent, non-human, amoral entities that can be worked with as long as the practitioner understands their natures and is cautious.  I personally believe that Goetic demons are just thought forms and that calling them demons at all is a misnomer, which is why a lot of practitioners call them daemons (after the greek intermediaries) rather than demons - totally different connotation.  

It's for this reason that I don't think traditional demonology is terribly useful in defensive situations, except psychologically.  If you encounter something horrible and decide it's a particular Goetic demon then you have a psychological advantage.  Something with a name that other people have dealt with is a lot less scary than dealing with an unnamed, unseen malevolence (think of the difference between scary movies that show you the monster verses the ones that just suggest it and leave your imagination to fill in the blanks).  In the human mind if you can name something you can have power over it.  So, using traditional demonology as a tool can be helpful, but it's just not quite accurate. 

The entities I call demons are not the same as Goetic demons and require a very different method of approach.  In my encounters with demons the best defense you can possibly have is a strong sense of self, extreme confidence, and either massive shields or a totally uncracked aura (easier said than done).  Demons can taste weakness and will exploit it to the Nth degree.  All the circles, incense, and prayer in the world won't help unless you KNOW that they will keep you safe.  All it takes is one seed of doubt for your fortifications to crack and let it in.  Demons are not to be messed with by the inexperienced - they are scary, scary bastards and can take down even the most skilled and experienced if they get caught on the wrong day. 

If you think you might encounter a demon one day be diligent in your shadow work and heal those cracks in your aura.  Every internal demon you vanquish is one less thing for an external one to prey on.  And, for the love of all that is good, get help IMMEDIATELY!

Setbacks in Shadow Work

I've spent a lot of the past few months consumed by my shadow.  For me the shadow tends to  manifest as procrastination, over-indulgence, and self-recrimination.  This means I haven't gotten a whole lot done of late and pretty much feel like crap about it.  I've let way too many things that are important to me slide by the wayside and I mean to remedy that.  So today I'm going to talk a little about setbacks in shadow work - appropriate no?

The thing about shadow work is - it's hard.  If it's not hard you're not doing it right.  Shadow work is soul searing, gut churning, bone shakingly difficult.  Reaching into your own abyss, pulling things out, and turning them into strengths is a lot like re-breaking an improperly set bone so that it can grow straight and healthy again - absolutely necessary and worthwhile but hurts like hell.  The more it scares you and the more you try to avoid it the more important it is to face it.  Remember the movie Labyrinth?  There's a scene in the movie when the main character is trying to navigate underground tunnels and huge rock faces start shouting at her to turn around and that she's on the path to her own doom.  Then her companion tells her that the stone faces are actually "false alarms" and that the more of them there are and the louder they get the more likely they are to actually be going the right way.  Shadow work is a lot like that, the harder it is the closer you're probably getting to something important.

Setbacks in shadow work are inevitable.  Anything as difficult as proper shadow work is going to be mentally, emotionally, and magickally exhausting.  It's absolutely necessary to take a rest every once in a while or you'll burn out and probably experience some major mental backlash (I know I do when I take things too far too fast).  Every few weeks take a rest from shadow work.  Go do something that doesn't take a lot of mental prowess and that is emotionally and spiritually fulfilling.  Go for a hike, paint a picture, play some games, throw a party.  Do a ritual of thanksgiving to celebrate the bits of you that aren't covered in psychic muck of your own making.  It's easy to go myopic doing shadow work and forget that your shadow is just a small part of who you are.  You are not your shadow. 

The whole point of shadow work is to make you stronger and more whole so that your shadow becomes your ally instead of your enemy.  The shadow is not bad; it's just unacknowledged and unfulfilled and occasionally acts out like a bored child.  Sometimes it doesn't feel like it's making you stronger, but just the opposite.  As you sit in meditation, shaking with stress and fighting back tears that make no sense to your logical brain you feel anything but strong.  But here's the thing, would you rather breakdown in the safety and privacy of your circle or wait until something in the world triggers your shadow in public where who knows where the fallout will land?  And, once you've faced a particular aspect of your shadow, once you've had your shootout at high noon moment, it's never quite as bad again.  The next time it will be a little less fierce, and even less fierce the time after that, until eventually you'll wonder what the big deal was.  Of course, you'll probably have exposed more deeply buried scary bits in the mean time and have other things to worry about. 

Shadow work really does make things better.  The more you integrate your shadow the more whole you become and the strong your center becomes.  As we all know, our center is the seat of our magickal power and the stronger it is the better able we are to do just about anything and the less vulnerable we are to any kind of outside attack.  If you specialize in defensive magicks like me, strengthening the center is absolutely critical.  Shadow work seals the cracks and fissures in the aura and makes shielding little more than childsplay.  Yeah, shadow work is hard and can really suck ass some times but it's worth it.

Shadow Work and Depression

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And first a disclaimer - I am not a psychiatrist, counselor, mental health professional, or even a terribly good listener.  This entry is about things I experience and ways that work for me to deal with them.  If you are seriously depressed I urge you to talk to someone who knows more about this stuff than me - find a good counselor, that’s what they’re there for.  And now back to our regularly scheduled blog post.
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Shadow work is a wonderful thing.  It’s enlightening, liberating, and satisfying once you’ve done it.  However, the process of going through it can be damned unpleasant.  Doing real shadow work brings up a lot of unpleasant memories and feelings.  If you’re doing things right you could be looking at a decently sized mountain of the worst moments of your life.  It’s daunting, really daunting.  If you’re not absolutely on top of things it’s easy to get sucked into the emotions that pile represents, making it very easy to slip into depression.  When this happens (‘cause it will) don’t panic – you’re not alone.

Depression is awful.  For me, depression usually take the form of extreme lethargy and hopelessness.  I look at myself dealing with the same shadows in slightly different forms over and over again and have to ask myself “what’s the point?”  It becomes impossible to move forward so I turn my back on my work and run to escapism.  Now, don’t get me wrong, a little escapism can be a very good thing.  It’s when escapism turns into avoiding what I really need to be doing that it becomes a problem.  There’s nothing worse that dredging up some old emotional horror and then running screaming for this hills because I just can’t take it, and knowing that I ran away just makes it all worse.  

Unfortunately, this seems to just be a part of the process.  If your shadows weren’t awful they wouldn’t be shadows.  If you weren’t afraid to deal with things they wouldn’t become shadows in the first place.  The fact that you’re willing to even try to look at them shows a lot of bravery.  Failure is part of the process.  

When you find yourself running away from shadow work the first step is to forgive yourself.  It sounds like psycho-babble, but it’s true.  Knowing that you’re not doing something that is important makes you feel like crap.  Forgive yourself for screwing up and get on with making it right.  The worse you feel, the more important it becomes to get up from whatever quagmire you’ve sunk into and get working again.  Of course, that’s more easily said than done.

When you’re in the middle of a deep depression the idea of getting out of bed can be daunting, let alone doing serious work.  Unfortunately, only you can figure out what you need in order to get yourself started again.  If you’re aware enough to realize that you’re stuck in depression (rather than life actually being completely worthless), then you can probably reason yourself into doing something to get momentum going again.  If not, try and show yourself a little love and forgive yourself for being stuck - and keep doing it until you believe it. 

Protection at Work

If you work full time you probably spend more time at work with your co-workers than at home with your family.  As a result, the energies in your work environment can greatly affect your well-being.  Most of the practitioners I know have good solid shields for when they're at work, but that's all.  If you work in a high stress environment, like say a high volume law firm, then shielding alone might not be enough for you.  In that case, you might want to take some more active protective measures.

If you have a permanent workspace (desk/cube/office/etc.) then you can set up basic wards on your space.  Traditional wards are often worded along the lines of "nothing intending me or mine harm may pass these bounds."  This type of ward really only works if you have absolute control of your space; if you don't necessarily have control over who comes into your space (like your belligerent boss or conniving co-worker) then other wording is necessary.  I find that my work wards are most effective when I'm reasonable with them.  Rather than saying "Co-worker X cannot come into my space and spew negativity on me," I would say "Limit co-worker X's entrance to my space to when it is absolutely necessary to complete a work task and s/he will depart as soon as our business is concluded."  Part of being an adult and holding a job is learning to deal with people we don't like.  To have our magick geared to make everything go "our way" all the time is tantamount to having a magickal tantrum - no wonder it's ineffective.  I have wards on my desk to keep a particular co-worker from stealing my pens (and chewing on them like a beaver - so gross!) worded as "When Y needs to use my pen he will use it, not chew on it, and then put it back."  I could have worded it as "Y shall not touch my pens!" but I really don't care if he uses them as long as he doesn't chew on them and walk away with them. I like to keep my wards at work to the bare minimum necessary to meet my needs because I really don't feel that I have the right to put my needs above the genuine needs of my co-workers. 

Another reason to be minimal in your office protections is because many companies actually have office spirits.  By that I don't mean that they're haunted, but that the culture and ethos of a business can actually create a thoughtform that embodies the espree d'corps of that business: its spirit.  The older and more established the business, the stronger its corporate culture, the stronger its spirit will be.  If you model your protections so that they work for the good of the business (e.g., asking for the ability to maximize your efficiency or to get critical work done before being bothered with the less important - thus minimizing your stress and making you a happier and better worker), you can tap into the power of this spirit, making your protections stronger and more effective.  You can take further advantage by giving specific offerings to the spirit of your office.  I've found that work spirits seems to really love offerings of service like bringing in cookies for the office, being the one to always make a fresh pot of coffee, or other "extra mile" services that make your office a more pleasant place to be.

I like to enhance the protections on my workspace by filling it with subtle, yet powerful objects that give me positive energy and a sense of refuge.  One of the most important objects I have at my desk is my mini-altar.  To the casual observer my mini-altar is nothing but a tin of altoids.

However, when you open the tin it's a very small altar geared towards protection.

It has a tiny candle, match, an obsidian, a small vial of salt, and a small vial of war water. It's nice to know that should an emergency ever arise I've got everything I need to do a full protective ritual; though I hope to never really need it. (A big thanks to Moonwriter for teaching me how to make tiny altars!)

The other thing I keep on my desk is a large stuffed bat.

His name is Bert (don't ask me why, it's just what came to me) and he sits with my tea.  He was given to me by my husband and I find that giving him a squeeze is a great stress reliever.  He may not be strictly magickal, but anything that can give me a sense of love and well being just by looking at it is magickal enough for me. 

It's possible to have many seemingly mundane objects in your workspace that do double duty in both strengthening your magickal intentions and making the space your own.  Pictures and postcards, stuffed animals, quirky coffee mugs, tea jars, pretty rocks (aka crystals), desk toys, hand lotions, lip balms, snacks and candies, pens, etc., can all be imbued with intent and can serve as reminders of your intent or even charged anchors for spells.  Get creative with bringing magick into your workspace as subtly as possible.  Even if your co-workers are open and understanding of your practices, subtle is better.  Other than making certain muggles uncomfortable, having your magick out in the open can actually drain it of its power.  Of course, you also don't want to be so subtle that your objects get fiddled with or thrown away by well meaning co-workers.  Use your common sense; you know what is and isn't acceptable in your workplace, and if you don't check with your supervisor.

Curses and the Aura

Yesterday I promised you a good meaty entry so here you go.

I get a lot of emails from people with subject lines like this: “HELP VOODOO BLACK MAGIC CURSE!!!!!” - except the usually have more spelling errors and random punctuation.  These folks are genuinely frightened and upset by things that are happening in their lives and they do need help.  Are they cursed?  Unlikely, but you never can tell.

Now, of the many emails I get from people who believe themselves to be cursed I’d say about 10% or less of them appear genuine.  For me, a genuine curse is focused and potent negative energy sent from one person to another with the specific intent of doing them harm in a particular way.  This almost never happens.  In order to send a proper curse someone has to have a strong will, a deep understanding of energy work (including the consequences of lobbing a curse), a certain amount of skill, and the willingness to accept the consequences.  Most people that have a deep understanding of the way energy really works don’t want to burden themselves with the consequences of cursing – it’s just not a very good idea 99.999% of the time.  Most people who want to curse someone don’t have the ability to manipulate energy very well.  Yes, the co-worker or neighbour that hates you can flood your surroundings with negative energy but that’s not a curse it’s just being a dick.

However, when you believe yourself to be cursed you can effectively curse yourself.  If you look at everything that happens to you that doesn’t fit into your plans as some kind of deliberate attack you will make it so.  The mind has power to affect the physical world –this is the basis of all forms of magick.  When you believe yourself to be surrounded by the malefic you will draw it towards yourself.  The principle of like attracts like is the basis of all sympathetic magick and that holds true to the negative as well as the positive.  The more you allow your mind to unfoundedly color your experience negatively the more negative energy you will attract.  Once you’ve stepped onto the downward spiral of negative energy - voilà, you’re cursed. 

At this point it’s time to do a hex-breaking to help break the vicious cycle of bad begetting more bad.  In my book I’ve got several different levels of hex-breaking broken down into simple, easy to follow instructions so I won’t got over them here.  Performing a hex-breaking will sever any attachments to negative energies coming from within or without (so it doesn’t matter if someone’s actually out to get you or if you’ve worried yourself into things), clean up residual negative energy, and strengthen your personal shields to help protect you in the future.  Hex-breakings are great tools, but wouldn’t it be better not to have done this to yourself in the first place?

The best protection against curses, from within or without, is a strong personal energy field.  The aura, our personal energy field, is the natural shield that distinguishes us from our surroundings.  A strong, solid aura is a natural defense against curses.  Imagine a strong aura as a perfect sphere made of solid teflon – nothing sticks to it and nothing gets through it – if negative energy has nowhere to grab a hold of us then we cannot be cursed.  Unfortunately, almost no one has that perfect an aura.  As we go through life we experience annoyances, angst, and tragedy.  Those negative experiences can scratch and mar the aura, giving external negative energy a handhold, and real trauma can even shatter it completely.  The more we’ve been through the more pockmarked and scarred our aura can be, and most adults have at least a few decent cracks that make the very core of our beings vulnerable.  Thankfully the aura can be healed and strengthened.

The goal of modern psychotherapy, ancient spirituality, and a good chunk of religions is to heal the mind and connect the self to greater powers (be it the collective unconscious, archetypal understandings, or deity).  This is also the goal of shadow work.  Working with the shadow is basically the process of looking at the cracks and craters in our sense of self and doing what is necessary to heal them.  Each time we learn to accept a fragment of our shadow we heal a part of our souls.  Each time we heal a part of our soul one of those auric craters fills in; the cracks begin to mend. 

A whole, healed aura makes us curse-proof and it’s the only thing that can do so.  All the shielding and energy work in the world will still leave you vulnerable if you’ve got a crack in your soul.  If you think you’re under psychic attack take a good look at yourself and ask just what it is about you that left you vulnerable.  Worry less about what might be coming at you from without and more about what about you lets it in.