Safety in Love Spell (Spell Saturday #15)

Being single and looking has its dangers. There’s always the chance of some creep not taking “no” for an answer. There’s always a chance of putting yourself in danger.

There’s also always the risk that someone else is using a love spell on you. If you suspect a spell against you of any kind, immediately do curse-breaking and cleansing spells. But preventive measures will help too.

A spell to protect someone from love spells and other dating dangers.

You’ll need:

  • Shells of nuts (almond, acorn, pistachio, etc.)
  • Dried fruit (strawberries, mango, raisins, etc.)
  • Onion, dried
  • Parsley, dried
  • Garlic, dried
  • Peppers or paprika, dried
  • Salt
  • Rice
  • Rue, dried
  • Sandalwood (optional)
  • Ashes from your fireplace in your home (see notes)

Collect your ingredients and grind them into a fine powder. As you do this, concentrate on you going out, having a good time, and being safe. Think of love spells being absorbed by the charm. Think of returning home happy and healthy. Once they’re powdered as much as possible, place them in a silk bag and carry this with you.

Making a second or additional copy of the charm during the same time using the same ingredients could be extremely useful so you can leave one at work, home, in your car, or what-have-you.

Notes:

While ashes from a fireplace in your home is ideal, you can just as easily use ashes from an incense stick or a bit of wax collected from a burned candle. It simply has to be from a fire that was burned then extinguished in your house. That bit is the important part.

A silk bag is recommended but definitely not necessary. You can easily omit the bag and sprinkle the powder in an unused pocket, at the bottom of your shoes, or even keep it in a ziploc bag or bottle.

Sandalwood can be omitted. It’s not integral to the spell but rather is used to keep spirits at bay.

Powdering nut shells can be difficult. Use a food processor or buy powdered from the flour and baking section of a grocery store. You can leave any of the ingredients whole, if you like but powder is easier to keep around.

Happy casting and stay safe!

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.

calendar 1

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.

Continue reading →

Vanishing Spell [Spell Saturday #7]

While the title and purpose is loosely inspired by the Vanishing Spell from the Harry Potter series, this spell is a This Crooked Crown original.

The spell is not design to make something literally and physical vanish before your eyes but it is intended to remove the object in question from your life and give it back to the world around you. Essentially, it will banish something from your life and scatter it to the world around you.

Because of the specific purpose of this spell, it might not be the best sort of spell to use to banish something from your life like a curse or ghost. Instead, it may be more useful to speed up the selling of a particular item, making a house guest that has stayed too long go away, or something similar. This isn’t intended to be used in a baneful fashion but rather as a dismissal of the object in question.

Make sure you read the whole spell, including the notes, all the way through before attempting. The structure of this spell is specific for reasons outlined below.

Candle Smoke

Vanishing Spell by This Crooked Crown

What you’ll need:

  • Magical circle creating materials
  • Object you want to make disappear or a representation of it
  • 9 white candles and candle-lighting stuff

1.Get your object or the representation of it. If you want to make a non-physical object disappear, like guilt or a bad habit. Write down the thing or place something that represents and reminds you of the thing you want vanished.

2. Cast a circle. Your method of casting a magical circle can depend entirely on your paradigm and purpose. The circle needs to be big enough to hold the object or representation of the object you want to make disappear.

3. Light your white candles and place them outside of the magical circle.

4. Now say or think the following very clearly. Make sure you blow out every single candle at the “as this fire vanishes into smoke” line. This must be done entirely before the final line is said.

[Object name] stands before me

I want it gone.

Disappear [object] from my life

Scatter to the winds and be sent elsewhere

As this fire vanishes into smoke 

[blow out the candles]

[Object] vanishes from my life

5. Now you can clean up the spell, starting with the candles, then the magical circle, and finally the object itself. You may wish to burn the object, especially if it’s something that’s written on a piece of paper. Otherwise, make sure you remove the object from your sight and as close to a door if possible if you can’t just outright throw the object out.

Notes:

  • I am not one who casts magical circles. Outside of specific spells, I almost never cast a magical circle. I don’t see the need of it in my practice. Your style of practice is probably different though. There are hundreds of ways of casting  a magical circle. Pick the method you like best. I usually draw a circle in the dirt or with salt, sugar, or chalk.
  • You absolutely DO need a magical circle for this spell and it definitely should NOT be cast on a surface without doing the magical circle first. If you can’t or don’t want to do a magical circle, you’ll need a very empty space with nothing surrounding the object by a few good feet in all directions. Use common sense here folks. The spell is designed and exists on the theory that it can make stuff go away. So why not contain it in a specific space? An unconstrained spell of this nature might banish stuff you do want in your life like a favorite altar piece, your good coat, or your cat. Risk it if you want but you’ve been warned.
  • I specify nine white candles as nine is a popular number for rebirth or opening new doors in your practice. You can also use the same number of candles that you have number of exists in a room. For example, if you have two windows, a chimney, sink drain, and two doors in your room, you’d need five candles. You can always use just a single candle, if you prefer.

Interested in a pinable image? Try this one:

Vanish Spell

That’s everything! Happy casting!

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.

Continue reading →

Break That Luck Candle Spell [tumblr repost] (Spell Saturday #5)

il_570xn-888729652_ja2bSometimes we just get some terrible bouts of luck that just needs to end and go away. Here’s how.

What you’ll need:

  • Candle. A smaller red, white, gold, or black candle is suggested. Comforting or cleansing scents optional.
  • Incense or aromatherapy oils in cleansing or comforting scents (optional)
  • Powdered good luck herbs (optional)
  • Good Luck dressing/ anointing oil (optional)
  1. Get your candle and charge it  with intent or visualize you goal. Alternative, just TELL the candle what you want to happen or carve it into the wax. This depends on your personal practice and if there’s enough space on the candle to even carve things into.
  2. (Optional) If you’re using scents in this spell, it’s recommended that you start with a cleansing scent and during the break in the spell, start a comforting scent.
  3. If you’ve got it, use a good luck oil to coat your candle. You can also roll the oiled candle in good luck herbs, if you like.
  4. Light your candle and chant:

Trouble has come my way,

Bad luck and bad times are bad friends

I turn them away. Unwelcomed and unwanted, 

I break this cycle now.

[Blow out the candle. Take a deep breath and release it. Light any comforting scents now. Take some time to reflect that the bad luck’s gone now. Once ready, light it again, saying the following]

With this new flame, I bring good luck into my life

Good things, beneficial things, will happen

And when this candle died, my good luck will live on

[Let the candle burn out]

Examples of cleansing and comforting scents could be: Cleansing might be mint, citrus, sage, etc but comforting might might pumpkin, vanilla, or apple.

Examples of good luck herbs could be: Cinquefoil (five finger grass), clover, good luck iron cross, basil, allspice, cloves, ginger, wintergreen berries, star anise, bay, cinnamon, chamomile, mint, peppermint, or spearmint.

Your good luck dressing / anointing oil could be any recipe. I make up my own. You can simply soak some good luck herbs in oil for a few weeks or simmer them on the stove for a few hours in oil.

Why’s so much of this spell optional? Because of the structure of the spell, you have to breath, blow out, and relight the candle. That can be distressing if one has sensitivities to scents or smoke. So the scent aspect of this spell is optional but recommended.

Please use fire safety! Use small candles to shorten wait times when you’re waiting for candles to burn down. Don’t set yourself, your home, your loved ones, or a forest on fire.

Happy casting!

Originally posted on tumblr. Published April 2nd, 2016. Updated: January 22nd, 2022.

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)

spells and herbs

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:

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On facebook, This Crooked Crown published a “daily tip” which is shared with the twitter account.

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Cleansing Yourself

Bringing this back for spring!

thiscrookedcrown's avatarThis Crooked Crown

Cleansing yourself (or other people or your home) is the spiritual equivalent of “did you try turning it off?” (Meditation, of course, being the equivalent of “is it plugged in?”)

Even though it is such a common remedy for so many things, it is often one of the things people just don’t know how to do or only know one method of. This intent of this particular post is to list and describe a few common cleansing practices. For some folks, this will be basic 101 stuff and others may find revelation in this. Wherever you fall in that spectrum, hopefully this is an interesting read and it helps you some.

First, safety tips: Don’t use anything you’re allergic to. It’s very likely a quick 40 seconds google search will give you an idea whether the mixtures suggested elsewhere or even here will be harmful for you. Use common sense and…

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