Category: Discussions

Changing Your Perspective

One of the most common pieces of advice I see when reading tarot cards is “change your perspective”. Change your outlook, alter how you look at things, etc. I end up echoing that sentiment a lot when asked for advice outside of readings too.

For me, this isn’t just about walking a mile in someone else’s shoes or seeing through their eyes and motives. It’s also about changing how you look at something. It’s allowing the change of hope and optimism to take a front seat. It’s giving yourself, and others, the benefit of the doubt.

I’ll be honest, that’s very easy to say and very hard to do. Some people just want to be misunderstood or are angry for perfectly good reasons and they’re too frustrated to explain what seems obvious to them. Other people are more logical and reasonable or are thinking of the bigger (or smaller) picture. And some people are just assholes.

I find the easiest way to change your perspective for yourself is to alter a daily habit you don’t think about but it slightly “negative”. This doesn’t mean the habit itself it negative but rather it’s something that you know you shouldn’t do or prefer you didn’t do but still do anyway.

For example, since I work from home and rarely see people for more than ten minutes a day, more than half the time I’m in lounge clothes. Which is a really fancy way of saying sweats and/or leggings and a cute tee. But it gets old after a while and after a week of rain, work, and the same kind of clothes, I’m looking for a change and might pull on a cute dress and heels. It’s a little thing and doesn’t really affect my day in the end but the change is personal and it wakes me up a bit. Like a cup of coffee for the soul.

Here’s another example. I know someone who is addicted to a particular soda. They drink it everyday and they drink at least one 12-ounce can each time. They even got into the habit of keeping it near the bed when they sleep so it’s the first thing they drink when they wake up. But they don’t even taste the caffeine or sugar anymore. It’s just there because that’s what you do for them. They didn’t stop that habit but instead started keeping water nearby and every time they took a drink of soda, they also took a drink of water. In the end, they started picking up healthier habits and cutting back on the soda. That single move altered their day only slightly but it made a much large impact.

Make no mistake. Changing your perspective is HARD. You have to admit that something’s wrong or something could be better. Often times that something is you.

This is why self-introspection (and shadow work) is so important. It allows you to look at yourself and your life and analyze it. It gives you the opportunity to change where you’re going and what you’re doing. So many people do the same thing on automatic, without thinking about what they’re doing. Changing your perspective allows you to look at those habits and decide if they’re best for you. You may not be able to change anything, at first, but you can make a plan of action.

That’s some of the best advice I can offer: change your perspective. Allow yourself to think outside of the box, outside of your emotions, outside of the logic and see what others are seeing. It can make a greater impact than you realize.

13 Ways to Break a Curse

Need to break a curse fast? Here’s 13 ways you can do it.

Not sure you’re cursed? Go here and check out the symptoms of being cursed. Have a cursed item? Here’s some tips to end that curse on an object. Want a list of herbs to help break a curse? Go right here.

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1 Smoke cleansing

The best method to use smoke cleansing to break a curse is a two step process. First, pick a non-toxic hex-breaking herb(s) and burn that, waving the smoke around the cursed person, object, or place. Then repeat with a cleansing herb selection. Incense made with or using the scent of hex-breaking herbs will also work.

2 Living Water

Water universally is used in witchcraft and magical practices. The key is to select living water such as a river, ocean, and so on to allow the curse to wash away.

Want a more ritualized version? Go to the ocean and stand in the water while the sun rises. Allow the waves to hit you as many times as you need to feel freed from the curse. Some say being hit seven times with a wave breaks bad luck.

3 Bath Water

Baths are not only relaxing but they can un-hex you too. Create a bath with non-toxic hex-breaking herbs. Soak in the bathwater and scrub your body. Drain the tub, run the bath again this time with relaxing and cleansing herbs. Soak in this water and let yourself drift off, hex-free.

4 Mop Water or Floor Wash

Infuse your cleaning water with hex-breaking herbs to really get in the nitty-gritty. A pinch of herbs for a bucket of water can go a long way and can be used on most surfaces. Don’t forget to wash doors, windows, walls, ceilings, and floors too. Test the water in small areas first in case of staining.

5 Drink it

Make a potion with non-toxic non-allergenic hex-breaking herbs. Drink this before bed. In the morning, make sure you urinate first thing when you wake up. Then shower and wash all your bedding.

6 Egg Method

Get an egg and roll it over your body. Get as much of your body as you can, especially the palms of your hands, your head, gentiles, torso, and the soles of your feet. Then take the egg to a crossroad away from your house and smash it on the ground. Leave in a different direction from which you came.

Candle Smoke

7 Pass It On

Pass the curse on to someone else. You can use a person, a poppet, or even a rock as your subject. You’ll have to have a pretty good idea what the curse is and you’ll probably need a pretty good idea on how to manipulate energy or spells in order to push the spell onto someone else but it’s definitely doable.

A lit candle can also be used to pass the curse on. Then simply blow the candle out and toss it in the trash to be done with it.

8 Reverse It

Reversing the curse or sending it back on the sender is a popular choice. Usually a mirror or reflective surface is used for this. Ideally, you’ll look at the mirror and pronounce that the spell once cast on you is now returned to sender. There are lots of spells of this nature out there so look for one, if you’re interested.

9 Pass Through a Graveyard

Someone could break bad luck by passing through a graveyard on a full moon. Ideally, the graveyard should have two entrances, allowing you to pass through one side and out the other. If that’s not possible, then walk the perimeter of the graveyard in a full circle and pass through the entrance once again. Make sure you can legally enter that graveyard after dark.

10 Destroy the Source

Curses often have some sort of physical component to it. Breaking the physical vessel of the spell may break the spell itself. “May” being the operative word here. Some casters are clever and set up security measures for this sort of thing.

Additionally, some spells are cast in the spiritual realms or use spirits to do the dirty work. A trip to the astral may be needed in order to break the spell, if that’s the case.

11 Blessing Upon You

A simple way to counter a curse is to seek out a blessing. Find a clergy member of any religion capable of giving a blessing and go through the steps needed to cleanse yourself and be blessed in the name of the appropriate entity.

Invoking the name of an entity or deity often works just as well as a full blessing.

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12 Through Fire

Take a fresh picture of yourself and print it out. On the back, write down the symptoms and bad crap that keeps happening to you. Cast this into a flame, let the picture burn completely, and dose the fire. You could say something like “as this fire burns, so does the one who curses me” or “as this fire dies, so does my curse.”

13 Spin around three times and spit

This is an old one but is so commonplace. Plus, it’s the easiest one by far.

 

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of ways to break curses and the above are just a select few. It’s best to arm yourself with a few techniques so you can handle any type of curse or negativity thrown your way.

Book Review: The Magick of Aromatherapy by Gwydion O’Hara 4/5

The Magick of Aromatherapy by Gwydion O’Hara – 4/5 You should be reading this

Warnings: Binary discussion, weird printing choices, possible cultural appropriation?

This is a great little tome to pick up if you’re into aromatherapy and have a magical or spiritual practice. I can’t vouch for every single aromatherapy usage but I was impressed with the book and the few flaws I found probably won’t bother most people. But the flaws are there.

The recipes are useful and plentiful and the discussions are worth reading. Basics of aromatherapy are also covered so you don’t need to be an expert to read the book. Worth checking out and worth buying if you’re interested in the subject.

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Book Review: Magical Fashionista by Tess Whitehurst – 4/5

You should be reading this:4/5 – There’s binary discussion, some questionable and unintentional cultural appropriation and fetishing. Learn more about how I rate books here.

The book read much more like a lifestyle book for most of it rather than a magic or metaphysical book but that’s OK because the metaphysical stuff is there in later chapters. It’s going to be very much a topic book. If you’re interested in this topic, then you’ll likely enjoy the book. If you aren’t, then skip it. You won’t gain much from the book if this isn’t a topic that you’re interested in.

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How to Design Your Own Spiritual Calendar

The Wheel of the Year is one of the most popular new age systems of calendars but it’s not the only one out there. Hellenics and Heathens, for example, often follow a calendar of festival and holidays of historical relevance and reverence to their practice.

But what about everyone else?

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Source: Wikipedia.com

The Wheel of the Year is a fairly modern creation cobbled from historical (and in some cases still practiced) festivals and holidays, notably with Western European origins. But the world is not comprised with entirely Western European practices. Even if you don’t have a specific culture you work within, the Wheel of the Year might not appeal to you for many reasons. It feels weird to me to have a harvest festival when I don’t have a crop to harvest and it feels odd to celebrate the coming of spring when winter will go on for another six weeks in my neck of the woods. The Wheel of the Year works well for a select group of people and in a select climate and everything else is somewhat forced.

If you love the Wheel of the Year and want to use it, for whatever reason, that’s totally up to you. But if you want something different, stick around.

The first thing you really have to consider is selecting what days are important to you and how you’re going to incorporating your calendar with everyone else’s. Your family and fellow practitioners probably has certain holidays they consider important so that’s worth tracking as well. But what’s key is to pick out the events that you want to be most important to you.

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You might start off with just a single day for now but give it time and thought and often you’ll find that the calendar fills up. Maybe you need a day of rest and meditation after each college semester or you want to hold a ritual to pray for family and friends on the third of every month. Do you want to mark down the times with the best waves as an ocean witch? Maybe gardening practitioners want to hold their spring festivals on the days the frost is over for the year. There’s so many places you can go with this!

Don’t forget to look at historical holidays too. Are there special holidays or days associated with deities, gods, or spirits you worship or work with? Are there heroes you want to honor? Is there some pop culture being you wish to emulate? Dates and seasons relevant to these entities can all be marked on your calendar. Maybe you just raise a glass in their name or maybe you devise a ritual for them. How you denote what to do on those days is up to you.

You may also want to consider what’s a cornerstone festival and what’s more secondary. Do you need to add something to your calendar as an obligation? Or maybe something holds a more personal significance to you. It may not be spiritual or religious but it’s still time you want to spend doing something personally important to you. Figuring this out can save your sanity and let you focus on what’s really important and what’s nice to do when you have the time.

For example, the first week of September I spend rereading the entire Harry Potter series. It’s not spiritually important but it has personal importance to me. For another example, I hold seer’s vigils for spirits and the dead to clear the crossroads every couple of months. This isn’t a witchcraft or spiritual thing. It’s more of being a friendly neighbor duty to me. If I ever moved away from the Crossroads house, I probably wouldn’t need to hold those vigils anymore. Both these events aren’t nearly as important as my Demon Festivals however so if it came down to only paying attention to one holiday, the Demon Festivals would win out for me.

calendar 2

 

You can have as many or as few holidays and festivals as you like and they can serve whatever purpose you want. Do you want a three day event where you spend as much time as possible having sex and conducting fertility rites with a consenting lover? Have fun! Do you want to dedicate five days of rituals and rites to an honored goddess? Go for it. Want to include birthdays, a cleaning schedule, or your family TV shows schedules? You can add that too. It might not be religious but it’s still important to mark down and is good for mental health. Plus, having everything in one place is usually a good idea.

Start with days and events that are important to you and go from there. My calendar is a mix of religious and spiritual events with practical events (like the vigils) and personal events like Harry Potter Week. They all have some sort of significance to me but they serve different purposes.

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You can physically design your calendar any way you want. I have my calendar copied in full on Google Calendar (as shown above) but I also write down major events in my business planner. I don’t bother copying it, however, on a hanging calendar as I feel like it’s not necessary. I really adore using a calendar like Moon Planner which is set up by the phases of the moon. (The English version is available under “For Foreigners” and only as a PDF right now.) This could be a great option if you’re very into moon-based rituals.

And that’s how you design a holiday calendar personalized to your practice and you! A calendar is meant to keep track of days and events that you consider important. You can add or subtract to that calendar at any given time so there’s no reason to not give it a try. It’ll take time so don’t be afraid to experiment and see what works for you. You can always add days in addition to the Wheel of the Year as well, so you can be as flexible as you want.

 

Book Review: A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming: Mastering the Art of Oneironautics 4/5


A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming: Mastering the Art of Oneironautics by Dylan Tuccillo, Jared Zeizel, & Thomas Peisel

4/5 – You should be reading this [TCC review guide]

Warnings: Glossed over science and history

Overall, this book was pretty good and I’ll be looking to add it to my personal library. It’s a great how-to guide to lucid dreaming and many of the techniques can be used for astral travel as well.

You can pick up this book over on Amazon.

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Blessing & Ensorcelling Your Plants

Earth day is here. Some practitioners will even have rituals to renew the environment, praise mother nature, or volunteer to help clean up pollution. Others will spend their day adding or tending their garden or houseplants. And then there’s some who don’t care or have “oh shit!” moments ten minutes to midnight and light a candle and dust off their cactus. To each their own.

 

Nature tends to be a very large portion of a great many people’s practices and growing the plants used in your practice is kind of assumed at times. But gardening isn’t easy. Some plants are notoriously difficult to grow like mandrake and others like mint can go wildly out of control if caution isn’t taken. You have to decide what’s better for you to grow versus what’s better for you to buy when needed. Then you add in your climate, local laws, and just how much space you even need to grow plants. Gardening is a huge endeavor and can get expensive very quickly.

I’m no green thumb. I kill plants all the time. I blame this largely because of space issues – I have too much space in the Crossroads House. House plants are far-flung so it becomes a hassle to care for them in a timely manner and when conveniently or aesthetically placed, there’s little sun for the plants to grow. Outside, the soil’s not great but it’s the layout of the property itself that makes it a gardening challenge. And let me tell you: It is a major annoyance of mine. My neighbors have this palatial garden next door and it irks me so much.

My number one gardening tip is to take it slow. Pick two or three plants a growing season and focus on them. Read up about their care and see how that does. Then pick up another few the next year. Over time you’ll have all the plants you want and you’ll know how to care for them without sinking a big chunk of cash into it. Plus, you’ll develop gardening habits so six weeks in you don’t slack off and kill hundreds of dollars worth of plants.

But what do you do with them? Outside of caring for them and using the bits in your practice, how do you work magic with living plants? There’s numerous ways to do it.

 

Plant with a blessing. For my 21st birthday I asked for a tree and a cat. I got Kiki and a cherry blossom tree. My tree is now huge and beautiful but it didn’t grow that way without help. When I planted my tree, I layered clean water on blessed herbal water on clean water, then murmured numerous beneficial inspiration and motivation as I planted it. I layered in spells for protection and health. Make the entire act of planting a spell and ritual.

Add enchanted decoration. Hanging a crystal from a tree branch or adding quartz to a flower pot not only adds an aesthetic beauty but also can add energy to the plant itself. Crystals aren’t the only thing you can use though! I enchant a very large number of wind chimes to my purposes and hang them up.  I’ve also used pinwheels, tiny statues, and wooden signs.

 

Placement and pots. Adding a fun or funny pot can make or break a “boring” plant. Planting flowers with interesting color combinations can really make your garden stunning. Enchant those things. When you add soil to your garden or water the grow before planting, mutter your spells and send energy towards it. I write in chalk or water sigils or spells inside and outside the pot to encourage growth, strength, and health.

Work with what you got. Look to see what already grows naturally around you. The Crossroads House came with grapevines so I had a crash course in how to care for them. To my delight, poke weed and bittersweet nightshade all grow naturally in my yard (but so does poison ivy and poison sumac. Oops.) But don’t be afraid to ditch what you got. I’m not a fan of hostas but there were over a dozen of them when we bought the house. I ended up re-homing a bunch of them to friends back in college and I’m still finding more of them half a decade later. Just because you have plants you didn’t super want doesn’t mean you can’t enchant them too. When I cut back or rearrange the creeping jenny and grapevines, I put spells on them.

Ask the plant! If you’re an animist, then you’re probably of the school of thought that plants have spirits. So simply ask the plant what spells they should be used in. I tend to plop down somewhere sunny and meditate with the plant for a little while until I get a sense of what I should do. Sometimes it follows along with folklore and sometimes it’s out of left field. For example, I have a climbing rose bush that I only use for curses or vengeful bindings because the plant is mean and vindictive. I never come away working with that rose bush without several new wounds. No other rose bush gives me that trouble. My bittersweet nightshade is a sweetie though and super laid back. My hydrangeas are perfectly happy to protect, encourage, or connect to the spiritual world – in exchange for a a gallon or so of water. Maybe I’m projecting but my spells work and the plants are alive still so I give it the benefit of a doubt.

 

But what kind of spells can you use? Anything. Growth, protection, and health spells are the easiest to pull off. But money or job spells? Sure. I grow basil as a money spell. Curses? Yup. My creeping jenny will stop any enemy or thief in their tracks. It’ll take care of curses too. And that’s just from telling it what I want it to do while taking care of it. I find plants to be a really great alternative to positive jar spells. Plant some sunflowers or marigolds in soil mixed with a few pinches of other herbs can really boost household happiness.

Heads up though. Unless killing the plant is the purpose, be careful with what you add to your plant. You might want to toss in a bunch of ingredients to have a living spell but the weird additions to the soil ends up killing your plant – and your spell.

 

As for myself, this Earth Day I’ll spend my day picking up one of the local beaches, painting a few clever sayings on some pots, and getting to know my new plant friends.

Book Review: The Teen Witch Spell Book by Jamie Wood 2/5

2/5 – It’s OK. You can read more about my rating system here.

Things to watch for: Bad or vague history, binary thinking, sexism, Wicca = witchcraft, grab and go gods and goddesses, cultural appropriation, Harm None Rede and Threefold Law every three pages, “ancient (matriarchal) religions”, generalization and weird witchy folklore, and not really a good beginner book.

I picked up The Teen Witch Spell Book – Magick for Young Witches by Jaime Wood from the library. It was one of a dozen books I grabbed and one of two magic related books. I knew before even opening the book that I probably wasn’t going to like it. I was unpleasantly correct.

As said, this isn’t what I’d call a beginner’s book and the spells are pretty much the only thing worth reading in it. Still, the spells are certainly good for inspiration for people of all ages and that’s largely the redeeming quality of the book.

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How to Tell If You’ve Been Cursed

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Being cursed is one of the the most fearful things for a practitioner or superstitious person. I’ll be honest with you: I’m pro-curse and I’ve been cursed in the past at least a dozen times. It’s a thing, it has a history, and people kind of need to get over hating on those people who do decide to curse.

I am passionate about education. And I feel that even if you’re not going to curse someone ever you still need to know how curses work so you can create effective protections. Knowing how you can be hurt is one of the best ways to prevent being hurt, after all.

Plus, even if you’re not going to curse someone that doesn’t mean someone else won’t curse you. It’s a two way street after all.

What is a curse?

A curse is a prayer, utterance, or spell with the intent to cause harm, trouble, or ill luck to befall another. The word hex has an Pennsylvania origin, from what I can tell, and it meant from meaning simply ‘witch’ or ‘to practice witchcraft’ to ‘to cast a spell on’ and now it has a darker meaning. That probably comes from the ill-reputation that magic workers had for a long time, if I had to hazard a guess. I personally define hex as a short-term spell meant to cause mischief and trouble. Like a casual curse or minor vengeance. But it is regional speech so you’re probably better off just using the word curse and calling it a day.

So what are the symptoms of a curse?

Curses can be really casual such as spilling coffee on yourself. An extreme example would be someone who spills coffee on themselves, has a car break down, has the tow truck driver drop the tow bar ON THE CAR crushing it, is late for work, finds out they’re being laid off, and has a lover break up with them on the same day.

Other things to look for:

  • Nightmares
  • Trouble sleeping
  • Loss of energy (physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and so on)
  • Sudden legal troubles
  • Sudden relationship troubles
  • Sudden medical issues
  • Sudden financial issues
  • Random pain and aches
  • Scattered mind and unable to gather your thoughts, confusion, disorientation
  • Bad luck

Generally, it’s a culmination of several of these things at once. Please, please, please, check with doctors when you’re feeling aches, pain, or medical issues. Whether something medical is induce via a curse doesn’t mean that the curse breaking will actually REMOVE those issues. Same goes for any other issues that crop up. You’ll still have to deal with that shit. Removing the curse or hex means that nothing additional should crop up (beyond the normal “shit happens, that’s life” kind of deal)

How to tell if you’re cursed

The above symptoms should occur consistently and suddenly. They are persistent. You don’t ever catch a break. There are curses that last years and years but they are very rare. Most end up fading out over time. By and large, you can counter a curse simply by changing your lifestyle or behavior (but not always).

I’m going to be honest. There are some curses or hexes that won’t register because they’ve been designed to avoid detection. If you think this might be the case, simply move onto hex breaking and curse removal methods, followed by cleansing and protection.

However, there are some methods to determine if you’ve been cursed. Divination is the easiest way to go about it. Tarot cards, oracle cards, pendulums – you pick whatever method works best for you.

For a deity and/or spirit workers, I would ask for a sign of some kind within the next three days to confirm that there’s a curse. And then pray for help with the removal.

If you’re unsure still or want to be extra sure, just skip right onto the curse breaking and hex removing methods. Remember, don’t panic. You are your own worse enemy when you panic. (I know that’s nearly impossible for some folks with paranoia or anxiety but it’s something to keep in mind)

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How much do I have to worry about curses? Really?

You probably aren’t cursed. It’s just bad luck which happens to everyone. If you’re not a practitioner, then it’s even more likely that you’re not cursed. Sometimes bad shit just happens. But, when you deal with other practitioners, don’t be surprised to find that you’ve annoyed one of them and they fired back at you. I’m not saying that curses or hexes never happen, they absolutely do, but they’re not super common either.

But if you want to take some preventative measures, it can’t hurt either, right?

 

Adapted from my original post here.

Sources:

Morals & Ethics of Enchanting Food & Drink

I was asked to write this post about a year ago on tumblr but with St. Patrick’s Day fast approaching, enchanting food and drink is something that comes readily to my mind.

First, let’s cover what we’re even talking about here. Enchanting food and drink is the process of magically enhancing a piece of food or drink for a specific purpose via some magical process, like a spell. The food and drink is then to be consumed by the person you want that purpose to work on.

An example is you want to be more productive and inspired throughout the day so you add a pinch of cinnamon to your coffee that morning to give you an bit of a boost and stir the spoon clockwise and lift the mug to your lips while facing the sun. Sounds easy right?

Wrong. There’s a LOT that goes into this area of magic and a lot of be considered. A lot of people have food related allergies and others have food related taboos for spiritual, religious, or ethical reasons.

For example, I will rarely knowingly consume organ meat for spiritual reasons. The exceptions for this would be if I was starving and if I want to counter those spiritual reasons. I’m also slightly allergic to lactose so I tread carefully when consuming certain kinds of dairy like cheesecake so I don’t get sick.

Allergies and taboos are obvious clues to tread carefully but many people also don’t inform people about their allergies so you handing them an enchanted glass of water with a pinch of cinnamon when they’re allergic to cinnamon is really bad.

The obvious solution for this is to ask first before enchanting the food or drink or tell people that it’s enchanted. And that’s the real crux of the issue. Whether you even should enchant food you’re making for others. You’ll want to consider the morals and ethics of casting a spell on someone unknowingly. Often, food and drink is a stealth technique, used to cast a spell on someone subtly. Therefore, it’s pretty hard to ask permission if you’re trying to ensorcel them on the sly.

Additionally, many of the stealth techniques are used to make a person do something against their will. This is commonly seen in targeted love spells to make a specific person fall in love with you. Some spells even go so far where they’re the magical equivalent of a roofie. (Yes, really.)

Plus there’s witches enchanting other witches to “steal their power” or curse them via food or drink. Something to think about when you head over to your next witchy get together.

Not to mention there’s so many different way to enchant food and drink to from what you put into physical (ingredients) to the spells said over it to the way it’s stir and when and why it’s made. There’s so much. Food and drinks can be spells in and of themselves.

There’s no real true right answer for this. You’ll have to sit down and consider what you feel is right or wrong when it comes to enchanting food or drink. What’s your real intent (not magical intent, I mean your logical purpose) behind the spell? Why are you doing this? Address that issue and be honest. If you don’t like the answer you come up with, give the enchanting a miss.

As for me? Well, I bake a lot. A lot. In fact, there’s almost always a dessert hanging around my house. However, since I typically make my food for me, I enchant it. So when offering it to others, I’ll mention what I’ve enchanted it with. Just as a “hey, this food was made with cinnamon and is meant to inspire. I can make something else unenchanted if you want.” I feel like that covers my bases (plus, it gives me an excuse to keep a non-enchanted cake in the freezer.) Any chance to have more cake, right?