Magic Never Works as Expected

December 11, 2017

It’s been a long long while since I last visited this blog. Life got in the way and I wasn’t feeling up to sharing at the time. Now, this coming new year, I’m moving into a new and exciting phase of my life. Here’s the story of what happened.

As you know, I was planning on building a house but council rules and regulations were getting in the way of my ultimate off-the-grid dream. It was looking less like the house I wanted and more like the house the council wanted. I was getting really frustrated too, so I busted out the old spellbook and got cracking.

I cast a spell and thought, ‘Great! That’s going to clear the path forward for me.’ The funny thing is, instead of removing the obstacles blocking progress down my chosen route, the magic ran around behind me and punched me in the back of the head screaming, “Wrong way, bitch!” Typical magic moment, really.

My goal was to live in my own house in the southwest. The problem with houses in the southwest of W.A. is that they are generally unaffordable to me (at least in my current job which I love and will not change). That’s why I had decided to build my own home. It’s one thing to try and get the funds all together in one enormous hit, it’s another to slowly build as funds come in. The problem, I soon discovered, was that new builds, particularly owner-builder projects, are so heavily micromanaged by local government. I’m not talking about safety concerns here, I’m talking about absurdities like what colour water tank you plan to have in your backyard etc etc. It all needs to be specified on the plans and woe betide you if you pick something they don’t like. You know something is dumb when even I think we are delving into nanny state territory. The only answer to that problem, that I could see, was to buy a house already built, in a rural location where the council wouldn’t hassle me unless someone complained. Circle back around again to where buying a house already built is unaffordable and so on and so forth.

Two days after my spell, while trying to figure out how to get council to pass my sewerage application and house plans, to let me live on my own land without connecting to mains water (hint: they won’t), a break in the cycle occurred. I saw a house in the southwest that I could afford, and then another. My spell had kicked in but instead of it clearing a path through council bureaucracy like intended, I was being presented with some new previously unseen choices.

Well, I found my perfect dream home, in my perfect dream location at an affordable price (using my block of land as collateral for the loan.) It’s a pretty little 2 bedroom a-frame cottage on a 1/4 acre, there’s room for my orchard and veggies and it’s already off-grid for water so the council can’t do anything about that. There are some minor renovations to be done to make it my own but it’s ultimately going to cost me a lot less than building the council’s dream house.

Now that I finally have my own place, I’ll be delving more into homesteading. I’ve already set up the orchard. I’ve planted an apple, peach, orange, lemonade, olive and macadamia tree, grape vine, boysenberry and blueberry bush. I’ve started my herb garden in the front with lavender, rosemary, peppermint, sage and curry leaf.

I have loads more in mind and that isn’t even including the veggies that need to be set up round back. I’ll wait until I’ve permanently moved down there before starting on that.

Magic lesson for 2017: Never dig you heels in regarding a particular pathway to your goal. Let life take you off track and see where you end up.

My book is a hypersigil

February 11, 2017

In fiction, author surrogates are generally derided but the fact that my character, Alley, closely resembles aspects of me is no accident of terrible writing. I’m not that lacking in self-awareness nor that self-indulgent. I made a deliberate choice to write a story involving myself and changed the name because the book is actually a hypersigil.

The best explanation of a hypersigil, I think, comes from Klintron Finley who said, “The hypersigil is a dynamic miniature model of the magician’s universe, a hologram, microcosm, or ‘voodoo doll’ which can be manipulated in real time to produce changes in the macrocosmic environment of ‘real’ life.”

Without delving into the specifics of how it works the hypersigil reinforces the behaviors and perceptions of the creator, helping to manifest objects or events in their life.

To find out more info about my book click here. You can read the first chapter or purchase Spider Eats Fright at Amazon or Book Depository.

Sustainable Actions – Plastic Free

September 26, 2016

In working towards self-sufficiency and a more ecologically aware lifestyle, I took up the challenge of going plastic free for a few months. I wanted to see what changes I could make and more importantly maintain. Some of the actions I took to limit my consumption of plastics included using an apple branch for a toothbrush with rosemary mouthwash and bicarb to replace the toothpaste, using Dr Bronners soap for my hair and body, exchanging plastic disposable razors for a metal one, using cloth pads during menstruation and finally refusing to purchase food wrapped in plastic. Many of the changes I made, I have kept up with, however there was also one big failure.

My plastic free trial started off well but towards the end of the month my throat started to get really scratchy and sore. A few days later, I came down with a terrible flu. It was so severe that I needed to take time off work. I was coughing badly, wheezing with every difficult breath and producing a lot of phlegm. Even after the flu passed, the cough lingered….and lingered….and lingered. My throat became scratchy all over again and I was on the verge of going through that terrible cycle of sickness once more, when I came across some articles on the internet that mentioned a link between oral hygiene and respiratory illnesses. Now, I had been diligently cleaning my teeth with my plastic free replacements, but I decided to switch back to a normal toothbrush and toothpaste just to see what would happen. Within one single day the coughing stopped and I felt fine again.

That’s not to say that plastic free versions won’t work for others, but whatever I was doing, I was obviously doing wrong. I won’t rule out trying alternate teeth cleaning tools in the future but, for now, I’m staying with the usual ones. I’ll change what I can but I won’t compromise my health. The changes I make need to be sustainable, not just in the environmental sense but also in the sense that I can keep it up.

Tea Pet Fetish

August 28, 2016

Sometimes with the Chinese tea ceremony you’ll notice cute little clay figures sitting on the tea tray. These are tea pets.

The initial brew of pu-erh is generally poured away as you are just washing and waking up the leaves. If there are tea pets on the tray, it is poured over them as a way of giving thanks and showing respect to the Earth. That’s how you feed a tea pet.

Why not use the tea pet as a fetish linked to a servitor? The mechanism for feeding and growing your servitor is thus already defined.

Here’s a beautiful video I found on youtube of a tea ceremony including the feeding of tea pets.

 

Acknowledgments

Featured image Chinese tea set by David Boté Estrada. Used under the creative commons license.
Teatime for Tea Pet by RyansTea.
The Chinese Tea Company – Brewing Puer Cha by TheChineseTeaCompany

Magical Ideas for a New House

August 5, 2016

I’ve been busy lately getting the design plans drawn up for my dream home. As much as I’d like things to move ahead more quickly, at least I’m making a bit of progress. I’ll just have to be patient, so to help with that I’ve come up with some magical ideas to incorporate into the house building process.

  1. Create a protection spell to work into the foundations of the building
  2. Place items representing the elements within the walls of the house, in their corresponding directions
  3. Design a magical garden
  4. Give the house a secret, magical name
  5. Turn the house name into a sigil and draw it above the door
  6. Create a servitor to protect the house
  7. Dedicate space in the home to the servitor

I Don’t Believe in the Law of Three!

June 12, 2016

Actually, being a Chaos Witch I should write “I don’t believe in the law of three, today,” but let’s not get into Chaos magic right now.

I made my first mistake this morning by scrolling through facebook, where I saw on my feed that some witches had gotten together to do a hex on some particularly bad criminal. My initial thought was, “That’s their business, why are they discussing it so publicly with others?” Then, I saw it was a few hundred Witches so I realised it wasn’t a private thing.

I made my second mistake that morning by reading the comments section. What can I say? Curiosity killed the cat. There were comments like:

“What about the creed and the law of three?”
“This is so wrong.”
“They don’t understand or care about the negative energy they are sending out into the world.”
“Do what you will but harm none, hmmm they need to reread the rede.”
“It’s bad karma.”

Guess what Witches? Not everyone is Wiccan! How many times does that need to be said before it sinks in? The article clearly stated that people “conducted various Pagan-related rituals.” These people doing the hexing very obviously don’t follow your creed or believe the law of three. This doesn’t shock me because neither do I (right now, heh.) It is not fundamental to being a Witch for everyone to follow your set of rules, no matter how much you think it is. It would be nice if other Witches could leave the passive aggressive quotes alone too when it comes to labeling other people’s spirituality. We get enough of that from the mainstream media. Honestly, it’s as absurd as a Catholic telling a Protestant they are going to hell for not doing it right and that they are not real Christians.

It is only wrong for you. You do not get to apply, what some would consider an arbitrary morality from your own personal practice to someone else and then judge them for not conforming. Well, actually you can. No one is going to stop you, but you certainly don’t need to voice it. Might I offer some alternative comment suggestions for next time?

“I wouldn’t be able to do this as I follow the creed and the law of three.”
“I feel it would be wrong for me to do this.”
“I personally believe that it would continue a cycle of unnecessary negative energy but that’s just me.”
“I follow the concept of ‘do what you will but harm none,’ hmmm I need to reread the rede and contemplate that some more.”
“It’s bad karma for me if I do something like that.”

All of these are re-framed to reflect back on the comment maker and poses no outside judgement of others who don’t think exactly like them. The language you use matters, because words put out into a public space show others the kind of person that you are. Thoughtful, courteous, judgmental or negative etc. That image is projected out into the world and people respond accordingly to that image. Wait, isn’t that a kind of karma? Maybe.

As for the actual spellworking, I think social media has once again stirred people up into a temporary frenzy. If some Witches want to hex this criminal, luckily they are free to do so. I do question how long this righteous fury will last though, and how long it will be until everyone moves onto the next hot button topic. Remember Kony 2012? Do you? Have they got him yet? How many still care? I think working magic on issues of such magnitude takes a lot of time and hard, consistent effort. It needs to be more than just a flash in the pan.

Shadow Work

June 3, 2016

There’s lots of talk about shadow work among spiritual circles these days. If you haven’t already heard about it, a quick explanation of shadow work, as I understand it, would be that it is a term originally coined by Carl Jung to describe the aspects of yourself that you have rejected and therefore pushed into your unconscious. There, they can be more easily ignored by our conscious selves, however, our shadows still tend to pop up and cause issues in our daily lives, despite our denials that they even exist. They may manifest as misplaced anger, judgmental attitudes or self-esteem issues that instead of being recognised for what they are, get blown out of proportion and consume us. Shadow work seeks to uncover those hidden pieces of ourselves that we deny and bring them out into the light where they can be readily understood. In doing this we can learn to love all aspects of ourselves and reintegrate them into our conscious lives in a more healthy, balanced way. Yes, that was the quick explanation, phew!

How do you actually go about doing it though? Since I’m still going through the process myself, I’m not going to try and instruct others. I will just share these two videos with you as a place to start. They have fantastic practical tips on how to go about confronting your shadow so, have at it.

Teal Swan’s video on shadow work (link opens to the video on her website)

I particularly took to Kelly-ann’s suggestion to personify your shadow self and talk to it. This technique has worked great for me:

Once you’ve done your preliminary work, make yourself two cups of rose tea. Hold the first cup in your hands and focus on a feeling of deep love for another. Hold onto that emotion and then send it out of yourself, into the tea. Now visualise or sense, in whatever way you prefer, your shadow self sitting in front of you. Pass them the second cup and have a good long chat about life, the universe and everything while you drink the first cup down.

 

Tea and Crystal Grids

May 19, 2016

I love using grids to charge objects on my altar. I use a combination of crystals and tea. That’s right, tea! I use the tea as grid lines, to connect the power of the crystals, enhance it and direct it. I also carefully choose which teas to use in the same way as I choose the crystals because each tea has their own magical correspondences.

Here is the grid I use for my Prosperity tea.

prosperity grid

 

The crystals I chose for this grid are:

malachite- manifesting on the material plane, transformation and growth

jade- good luck and blessings

pyrite- generating wealth using your own powers, bold action and will

ruby – prosperity, motivation and passion

chrysoprase – joy, happiness and abundance

bloodstone – attraction, good fortune, riches and success

turquoise – power and luck

The inner circle is made up of Fairy Ladies Golden Rings. It’s a golden brown, nutty, tea with a scent of jasmine that adds extra charge to the crystals. It’s really earthy and grounding, and heightens the manifestation, growth, money and wealth energies flowing along the grid. Grand Yunnan is one of the lords of tea and it brings strength, without bitterness, to the power of the crystals as well as the cleansing qualities of citrus. Rose tea makes up the outer circle to enclose everything in harmony and compassion. Piles are also placed midway between the  quarters to bring a gentle balancing energy to the tea grid. Bringing all this power into the centre is sencha, which is the ultimate carrier tea. It takes on the properties of whatever it is put with and transmits that without any added influences. That’s it really. That’s the basics of my tea and crystal grid.

Tea Spell Videos

April 23, 2016

I’ve started making videos about how to use tea in spellworking. It’s something that I’m really passionate about and I hope it encourages more people to experiment with tea in magic and ritual. These animations are pretty basic though, as I’m still learning how to use the platform GoAnimate. I’m sure my videos will become a little smoother and more complex in the future.

You’ll find new ones posted regularly to this website’s homepage. They are also available on my youtube channel.

Creative Spell Ideas

March 30, 2016

Blooming flowers, like in the video below, would work so well in a spell. I love it when things I stumble across online spark my creativity and get me working more magic.

I’ve also been toying with the idea of moving beyond using colouring books just for  meditation and using that concentration together with some sigils worked into the images for manifestation.