Ghostbusting - How to Banish a Ghost

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

How to banish a ghost

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

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

Ghost Banishing Ritual

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dreams of the Zombie Apocalypse

Last night I had a series of really weird...not quite nightmares, but rather worse than dreams.  I only remember bits and pieces, but I know it started off with me living in a small town in the forest.  The town looked like a picturesque fairy tale village except for one small detail.  Rather than having a wall or fence to protect the town, the town was ringed with ghost lamps – human skulls on pikes lit with magick fire.  The ghost lamps protected the town from the evil spirits that roamed the forest after dark.  (Yes, my dreams are often freaky.)  Normally, the fire from the ghost lamps burned a healthy orange-red, like any other fire.  But, because this was one of my dreams, this was the day where at sunset the lamps fire went from orange to blue and slowly guttered out.  At that point we knew it was only a matter of time before the town was overrun by the angry dead.

Of course, here’s where dream logic comes into play.  I was living in this town and was aware of everything that was going on, but I was still in my actual house with my husband.  Our friend Scott was over fixing a car for some reason.  He saw the lamps go out and shouted at us to warn us that the zombies were coming (at this point they’d morphed from angry ghosts to shambling zombies – it’s a dream, whatcha gonna do).  I scrambled for my emergency kit and hurried to find shoes.  Then for some reason Ty and Scott started arguing over our exist strategy for what seemed like half an hour (zombie horde bearing down on us mind you).  Then the dream skipped forward to us driving to Priest Lake because we figured there wouldn’t be zombies there.

It was a very odd dream.  It’s more odd because I’ve had a series of similar dreams lately.  In all of them some serious metaphysical danger was approaching, but in none of them was I really frightened or panicky.  Are these dreams a result of stress or it something more interesting going on.  I may have to call my witches for readings.

Haunted Seattle - Spooked in Seattle Pioneer Square

On Saturday we had the first gloriously sunny and warm day of the year.  It was a long time coming and I was determined to get out and enjoy as much of it as possible.  Of course, being me this did not mean spending the day on the beach.  Instead I spent my morning and early afternoon walking to and from Ballard from a friend’s house and my evening taking the Spooked in Seattle ghost tour of Pioneer Square.  The tour lasted about two hours and there was a nice combination of walking and standing that was quite comfortable.

The tour began at Ye Olde Curiosity Shop down on the waterfront and walked over and down into Pioneer Square.  One of the first things that sets this tour apart from other local tours, like the Market Ghost Tour, is how recent some of the stories are.  Most of the other tours I’ve been on focus a lot on history – the times of the city’s founding, the Gold Rush, etc.  This tour had its fair share of history, but a lot of the stories were much more recent.  One of the first stories our guide, Ross, told us was about the Pioneer Square Hotel which was a flop house in the 1970s.  Pioneer Square is still a bit seedy, so it’s not difficult to imagine.  Apparently the hotel owner was allowing the homeless to stay in the hotel if they signed over their social security checks to him.  Sometimes those people would then die in the hotel and the owner, rather than reporting this, would bury the bodies in the basement and continue to collect their checks.  Apparently this pissed off their ghosts and some of them continue to haunt the building.

Another standout location from the tour was the Arctic Club Hotel.  This was a beautiful building that used to be a gentlemens club back at the turn of the century.  The tour led us into the hotel and up into the Northern Lights Room for some choice tidbits.  If you ever saw the Stephen King movie Rose Red, then you’ll recognize the stunning glass domed ceiling because the movie shot several scenes here.  Once we all got comfy Ross told us about Marion Zioncheck, a man who was a congressional rep in the mid-1930s.  Apparently he was a wild man of Charlie Sheen proportions, once drunkenly driving a car onto the White House lawn when he was in a hurry.  Zioncheck had his offices on the fifth floor of the building and during a scandalous re-election campaign plummeted to his death from the window of what is now room 517.  Though a suicide note was left, some members of Zioncheck’s family believe to this day that he was murdered.  We may never know the truth, but it is believed that Zioncheck’s ghost haunts his former offices and has been known to ride the hotel elevator.

The tour then wound its way through Occidental Square and stopped at the Seattle Fallen Firefighter Memorial.  The memorial was inspired by the 1995 Chinatown warehouse fire that claimed the lives of several firefighters when the building collapsed around them.  I vividly remember watching those events unfold on the local news and have an Uncle who’s a fireman, so it was something to see.  The lot where the warehouse once stood is now a dirt parking lot and there have been witnesses who have claimed to hear yelling and smell smoke at the location.

Another element that really made this tour fun was the proper use of multimedia.  A lot of ghost tours have binders of old pictures and maybe an old newspaper clipping or two.  This tour had the obligator binder of old photos, but the guide also had an iPad that he put to good use.  He was able to show us dozens of archive photos, play EVPs (electronic voice phenomena) recorded by his investigative group, and even show us video pertaining to relevant events.  It was quite eerie watching video of a performance artist’s rope snapping knowing that he then fell six stories to his death right across from where you’re standing – eerie, but really cool.

I would highly recommend this tour for anyone interested in hauntings and some of the darker bits of Seattle history.

A Brief Rant

Ok, this has nothing to do with magick whatsoever.  I just need to rant for a moment. *takes a deep breath*

Yes, I am a female.  No, I do not want to hold your baby.  I don't want to hear your baby.  I sure as hell don't want to smell your baby.  No, I do not think babies are cute (though I'm fairly decent at faking it). I do not have a maternal bone in my body.  I would happily sell my ovaries if I didn't need them to regulate my hormones.  I'm very glad that you've found being a parent rewarding and enriching.  Good for you.  You are not me.  No, telling me how special your children are doesn't make me want to have any.  My biological clock is more quiet than a mute gerbil.  I have no problem with other people breeding, I just don't care to join the club.  At no point in my entire life have I ever wanted children.  I didn't like children when I was one.  For the love of all the Gods leave me alone.

This rant was prompted by a co-worker bringing in her month old baby to show it to the office and I was asked by a different co-worker why I wasn't rushing to see the squeeling bundle of pinkness.  Saying that I was as interested in seeing someone's baby as I was in watching an appendectomy would have been rude.  So I was polite to my co-workers and did my ranting here.

Peninsula Adventure

I had a fantastically witchy Memorial Day weekend.  I went out to the Olympic Peninsula with a covenmate and basked in nature for two and a half days.  No, shadow work doesn’t have anything to do with nature and yes, I do most of my workings indoors, but I’m still a Pagan and I still love being out in nature.  Although the Cascades are my normal haunt when I want to get out, the Peninsula does have a special place in my heart.  One thing that the Peninsula has going for it that there are so very few people out there.  Apart from a few towns and villages, the Peninsula is largely uninhabited – most of it being state or national park or forest.  This gives it a special feeling of primitive wildness that is unmatched just about anywhere else I frequent.  Then there’s the rainforest.  If you haven’t been out to the Hoh Rainforest you’re missing out, just bring a really good raincoat or deal with being damp.

We got out to the Peninsula on Saturday evening, settling into our hotel in Forks.  We spent the evening drinking tea, doing massive amounts of tarot work, and generally figuring out how to direct our magickal lives for the next year or so.  I am blessed with some amazing tarot readers as friends and what I learn never ceases to amaze me.  One of the really important concepts that we explored was the idea of grounding and centering in deity.  Normally, when you ground and center you envision excess/unwanted energies flowing out of you and into the ground and then envision ambient/natural energies flowing into you and helping to anchor your magicks by centering your physical and etheric bodies together.  A common way of doing this is to envision yourself as a tree with roots going down into the earth to allow unwanted energy to flow out and branches reaching up into the sky to take in the energy of the universe.  This works just fine 99.999% of the time, but not always – particularly if you’re in a location with unpleasant energy or if the ambient energy just isn’t compatible with you.  The best way to deal with that sort of scenario is to just ground and center into a different location.  All of this work is done energetically by envisioning things, so there’s nothing to keep you from envisioning your roots growing into a particular location (like Mt. Rainier or Stonehenge) rather than where you happen to be.  However, if you have a very close relationship to a particular deity you might be able to get their permission to ground and center into the energy of that deity.  If you can get that kind of permission, then your deity will tell you how to go about doing so.  It’s a little bit disturbing and the results are a little like being half drawn down all day (having deity almost inhabiting you, but not quite).  I wouldn’t recommend doing this unless your deity actually tells you to, but it would be useful in an emergency where you needed every bit of energy you could get.

The next day we went hiking, first in the Hoh and then out to Cape Alava.  Every time we go to the Hoh we do the Hall of Mosses trail – a short (3/4 mile) walk through some really spectacular trees covered in moss.  After lunch we made the drive out to Lake Ozette to the Cape Alava trailhead.  The trail is a little over six miles round-trip (there’s a 9.2 miles loop that we decided against this time ‘round) on a boardwalk through the rainforest.  It is some of the most spectacularly beautiful and powerful wilderness I know.  Walking through the trees you can feel the power of the place coming through your feet and wafting off the trees.  It’s the sort of place that makes you think of magick and fairytales, as if an elf could come walking out of the woods at any moment.  There was a particular stretch of trail near the beach we nicknamed “Narnia” because it felt so magickal and alive.  The trail leads to a stretch of wild coastline with nothing but a few tents and sea lions for miles.  Down on the beach we sat on a piece of driftwood during misting rain, munching on dried fruit and jerky just listening to the surf, watching the birds, and marvelling at the ocean.  It’s a trek, but it’s worth it.

On Monday morning we bid Forks farewell and began the drive back to civilization.  (No, I don’t consider Forks civilization – anywhere wild enough to wake up to otters playing outside is not civilization.)  We always like to stop at Lake Cresent on our way home just to enjoy the last glimpses of turquoise glacial water and rising mists.  This much natural energy will keep me going for the next month or two.

Shadow Magick II - Self-Cleansing

Once you’ve seen yourself clearly you can study yourself and determine what traits you have that are not serving you, whether they be bits of personality, habits, communication styles, or something else entirely.  Traits that no longer serve are the bits of yourself that are working against your goals or are in some way delaying your accomplishment of goals for personal growth and transformation.  These are not necessarily “bad” traits.  We often develop traits, like not caring what other people think or eating quickly, in order to protect ourselves (mentally, physically, spiritually) and those traits are appropriate when we’re threatened in certain ways.  However, once the threat has passed those traits can become problematic and end up being counterproductive.  That’s when it’s time to sever them and move on.

You can find a plethora of personal cleansing techniques on the web and in various New Age/Metaphysical books and most of them will work for most people.  However, for those of us who do a lot of shadow work the gentle garden variety cleansing can be a bit too gentle.  There are many cleansings that go along the lines of “step into the shower and visualize the water washing away your negativity/stagnant energy/unwanted trait/etc. and the black ooze of this flowing off your body and down into the drain.”  For an everyday cleansing that sort of thing is great, but it isn’t always enough.  Those sorts of cleansings area bit like vacuuming the carpet – it takes care of dust and a bit of grit, but does nothing for set in stains.  That requires something a bit stronger.

I recently performed the Order of Scathach Armouring Ritual which included a self-cleansing.  In that ritual you write down a list of traits of which you would like to be freed and then burn the list to banish them.  Before performing that ritual you do about six months of work.  After six months of introspection I was pretty much rid of the surface level grit that such a simple cleansing could effectively get rid of.  So I had to ramp things up a bit in order to feel really cleansed.  In the ritual you need a physical fire to burn your paper and I did this as step one of the process.  Then I closed my eyes and went to my astral temple (a sacred space in the astral plane that I can go to mentally and energetically to do workings that I don’t want to do physically – very useful when your mental work would be dangerous if carried out physically).

At my astral temple I called the spirits of fire to be present and to aid me.  They showed up in the form of a large magickal bonfire directly in front of me.  I asked the spirits of the fire to help me burn out the things I was having the most trouble with (self-doubt and fear).  I then, astrally, stepped into the fire and let the flame burn.  As the flames burn my clothes and skin I visualized all of my ingrained fears and doubts burning away.  I stayed in the fire until it seared through my bones and reduced all but the best parts of me to ash.  All that was left was the etheric body in its purest form.  As I stepped out of the flames my physical body regenerated without the old patterns.  I thanked the fire for its help and watched it depart.  I then returned to my physical body and completed my ritual.

This type of intense visualization is a very effective way of giving magickal workings extra oomph.  It’s not the sort of thing that anyone in their right mind would ever do physically – it would kill you.  But doing this sort of thing mentally sends a definite message to your subconscious and will generate much more powerful energy than your average rite.  It’s not for everyone, most people don’t want to dig so deeply to root out the source of their problems – particularly when they are the problem.

This sort of work should only be done after months of prep, working through the cycle of cleansing and realization gradually.  Every time you cleanse yourself of one kind of negativity it allows you to see the negativity underneath, you get rid of that and see what was below that, and so on forever.  This sort of work is never finished, but as you do it the process becomes its own reward.  With each layer of myself that I cleanse and purify I find myself become a stronger, kinder, wiser person.  It can be really hard to look at the components that have caused me problems over the year and harder still to see what I did to make it worse, but facing it sets me free.  Self-examination is hard work, but we owe it to ourselves to undertake it and become the best we can be.

Momentum, I Has None

Some days you wake up and marvel at the world around you; the sun shining, the birds singing, blah blah blah.  Other days you hide under the pillow and hope that your alarm clock dies a horrible death.  I will give you three guesses as to which one of those was the case today and the first two don’t count.  I am one of those people who can build up a good head of steam and keep myself motivated and working for days.  Unfortunately, once that momentum is lost I have a hell of a time building it up again.  This is as true in my magick as it is in my mundane life.  When I’m on a roll I can write for days, cook gourmet meals, and connect to the divine with ease.  When I’m not...not so much.

Saturday was a good day, a motivated day.  I knew the weather was going to be nice in the morning and turn to rain by the afternoon, so I got up early and headed up the pass to get in some hiking.  I walked the Rattlesnake Ledge trail up by North Bend.  The trail is just about four miles round trip, with a decent amount of elevation.  For someone as out of shape as I am it was more than a little challenging.  It was worth it though.  The woods were quiet, the mountains beautiful, and the weather absolutely perfect.  It was basically a two hour long moving meditation and it was wonderful.  It was nice to let my mind come down from the buzz of constant though and just settle into my body and the present moment.

Unfortunately, once I got home the rain started up again and my moment was washed away.  This morning I woke up to icy feet and thick fog.  It’s putting my right back into my winter/introspective mode and out of my spring/action mode.  I love Seattle and all its rain, but the dark is even starting to get me down.  The sun is supposed to come out tomorrow and it really better.  I’m hoping that some sunshine will wake me back out of these doldrums.

I’m teaching a workshop tomorrow at Eastwest Books in Roosevelt and I’d better be energized by then.  If not, I may have to resort to cupcakes to perk myself up.  The workshop will be an abridged version of my Common Magickal Pests class at the Grey School.  I’ll be talking about annoying/dangerous metaphysical creatures and how to get them to leave you alone.  It should be good fun.