2 - Creating Spells And Rituals
I have said that magick comes from within the individual, as a spontaneous expression of a higher force. This is not to suggest that it is entirely haphazard, however. In this chapter we shall look briefly at some general aspects of its theory and practice. At the end, I have included a simple ritual to illustrate some of these points.
Folk Magick And Ritual Magick
Whether you are casting a simple spell, using items from your kitchen cupboard, or performing a complicated group ceremony, the source of the power behind it is the same. Every spell or ritual involves channelling the life force that runs through all forms of existence and transforming it into higher spiritual energies. These spiritual powers include our own evolved self, which some say is formed through many lifetimes, and the higher divine cosmic energies, such as a supreme god or goddess, or, more abstractly, some sort of divine light, spirit and goodness.
Magick for healing, it must be said, is not so far removed from the prayers of conventional religions, whose positive influence is well documented. The same effect can be created whatever the focus or faith, and I know from personal experience that positive results can be achieved when a Wiccan coven sends healing light to a sick member or a friend.
For hundreds of years, angels have been invoked in magick, just as in religion, both for protection and to act as vehicles for healing or positive energies. Practitioners of white magick may focus on particular aspects of a god or goddess figure, or benign power, personified through different deities from many age and cultures.
When I began practising magick ten years ago, I found it very artificial to invoke a goddess who belonged to another time and culture. However, I have since found that such symbols do hold a great deal of power and therefore can concentrate specific energies. I have listed in Chapter 4 a number of deities that seem to be especially potent in ritual or as a focus for meditation. But if you do not find them helpful, there is no need to use them.
Most rituals are related to the basic human needs for health, love, fertility and prosperity. In Chapter 13, Seasons and Festivals, I describe the major solar, lunar and agricultural festivals that formed a focus for attracting abundance and increase to the land, animals, crops and people, tapping into the life force that connected them all.
In past time, the well-being of the planet was considered to be the responsibility of peasant as well as king through paying tributes and enacting age-old ceremonies to invoke the necessary energies for the Wheel of the Year to turn. So individual prosperity or fertility was attained both through private spells and charms and by sending positive energies to the Earth and the cosmos and, in a sense, receiving bounty as those beams were amplified and returned to the sender.
Folk or domestic magick was an important part of people's everyday lives right up until the nineteenth century. In rural areas, the implements used in and around the home and garden could be easily adapted for use in magick; and for town-dwellers, flowers and herbs could be gathered on a day in the country or grown on allotments or in urban back gardens.
In the days before central heating systems, the focus of the home was the family hearth. Focus is Latin for 'hearth' and from Ancient Rome to China, the household deities have always had their place, being offered morsels of food, nectar and flowers and consulted on family happenings.
It was believed that the ancestors as well as the living gathered around the family hearth, and so it became a natural focus for magick. The witches' cauldron started off as the iron cooking pot that hung over the fire (such pots are still used in country regions of Europe - I saw one for sale quite recently in the market in Rouen in France).
Herbal brews were not only created to cure coughs and colds but also, with magical words spoken over them, transformed into potions to bring a desired lover, employment or an unexpected helping hand in times of sorrow. A grandmother would put any small coins she could spare into a money pot and warm it near the fire to 'incubate' the money into sufficient to mend the roof or buy new coats for the winter.
A young wife eager to be pregnant would secretly prick a fertilised hen's egg with a needle on the night of the full moon immediately before making love. Such actions were quite a normal part of life, a way of tapping into the same energies that made the cattle fertile and the corn set seed.
Farmers would leave milk for the faeries that they might bring good fortune, young girls recited love charms while planting herbs in soil embedded with a would-be lover's footprint. On Hallowe'en, housewives opened their windows and placed garlic on the window ledge so that only the good family dead might enter and take shelter from the cold.
This simple folk magick, rather than ceremonial magick, forms the basis for the majority of spells. As above, so below', the words of the semi-divine father of magick, Hermes Trismegistos, may originally have evolved from popular magick that is practised in many different cultures around the world to this day. They are certainly as applicable today as they ever were.
Whatever the aim of your magick may be, if you look around your home, garden, workshop or even office, you have the necessary tools for the spells you require. What is more, rooted as they are in domesticity and the daily world, these implements could not be safer: fruit, vegetables, salt, sand, seeds, flowers, coins, pots and jars, together with your crystals, candles, incense and oils, and perhaps a few coloured scarves or ribbons to tie knots. Whether your spell is small and personal, or vast and universal, whether you are working to attract love, harmony in the home, prosperity or fertility for yourself or loved ones, for people in the wider environment or the planet, these are all you need.
Thoroughly Modern Magick
Not everything you use for magick must be of ancient origin, however. Even your computer can be a magical tool, used to draw magick circles. You can draw figures to represent lovers, estranged family members or yourself and a baby you hope to conceive and draw them closer with your mouse until they join. You can draw a square on the screen and enclose in it anything you wish to bind from harming you, perhaps the name of a destructive habit or a malicious person, and send it to the recycle bin where the energies will be transformed.
Alternatively, you can reduce the size of a word or image symbolising something you wish to rid yourself of, and as you make it disappear from your computer screen, create sympathetic banishing magick to remove it from your life. You can attract objects or people by filling your screen with them, then print out the images on the screen and burn the paper in a candle flame to get the energies moving. You can even e-mail empowerments to yourself!
Different Kinds Of Magick
What is certain is that whether folk customs or more formal ceremonies are used, the underlying principles of all types of white magick are the same throughout the world, and can be categorised under the following headings.
Sympathetic Magick
This involves performing a ritual that imitates what you would desire in the outer world, so bringing on to the material plane a desire or need or wish from the inner or thought plane. This is done using appropriate tools and symbols. So in a spell for the gradual increase of money, for example, you might grow a pot of basil seedlings (a herb of prosperity) and light a green candle.
Contagious Magick
This involves transferring and absorbing power directly from a creature or an object, such as an animal, a bird, a crystal, a metal, the wax of an empowered candle or even the Earth itself. This principle is central to the potency of talismans and amulets; for example, traditionally, hunters might wear the pelt of a lion to bring them the beast's courage and ferocity. So, by the same token, if you wished to become pregnant, you might make love in a newly ripening cornfield (near the edge so as not to damage the crops); alternatively, you might try one of the ancient power sites of Earth, close to the phallus of the chalk Cerne Abbas fertility giant that is carved in the hillside at Cerne in Dorset.
Attracting Magick
This type of magick embraces both sympathetic and contagious magick to bring you something you desire. For example, you could scatter pins across a map between the places you and a lover live and with a magnet collect them, while reciting:
Come love, come to me, love to me come, if it is right to be.
You would then place your pins in a silk, heart-shaped pincushion or a piece of pink silk, also in the shape of a heart, and leave it on the window ledge on the night of the full moon, surrounded by a circle of rose petals.
Banishing And Protective Magick
This involves driving away negative feelings, fears and influences by casting away or burying a focus of the negativity. For example, you might scratch on a stone a word or symbol representing some bad memories you wished to shed, and cast the stone into fast-flowing water. Alternatively, you could bury it, together with quick-growing seeds or seedlings to transform the redundant into new life.
Binding Magick
Binding magick has two functions, one to bind a person in love or fidelity and the other to bind another from doing harm. This may be done in various ways, using knots in a symbolic thread, or by creating an image of the object or person and wrapping it tightly. But all binding can be problematic in terms of white magick, for whatever method you use, you are very definitely interfering with the person's karma, or path of fate.
However, it is tempting to think that if someone is hurting animals, children, the sick or elderly, you may be justified in binding them. And what if your partner has deserted you on the whim of passion, taking all the money and leaving you and your children penniless? These are very real dilemmas; in dealing with them, I have always performed such rituals adding the proviso"... if it is right to do so.'
I believe that it is essential to include that phrase in all binding magic rituals.
My friend Lilian, a white witch and healer, used to wrap the perpetrators of crimes in a mantle of pink and visualise them in a sea of tranquillity so that they might be diverted from a destructive course of action. However, I usually cast a protective barrier around the victims and I think this is the best answer to a very difficult problem. We must harm none, not even the evil, hard though it is, and we should leave the punishment to natural justice.
In my own experience, few who find happiness at the expense of others achieve more than temporary, superficial pleasure, and in time they do seem to end badly. We should never use magick in order to act as judge and jury. After all, some who do act badly do so only out of unhappiness or ignorance.
What Are Spells?
There is a clear difference between spells and rituals. 'Spell' tends to be the term used for the less formal folk magick that, unlike ceremonial magick, is not so rigid about such things as circle casting and the use of specific tools, though it may be based in forms and use words that date back hundreds of years. Our kitchen witch ancestors swept clean their magical areas and danced in circles under the Moon or round sacred fires on one of the old festivals to bring fertility to land and people, but most of their magick was done by firelight or the light of smoking tallow candles in a cramped living room or in muddy fields.
It is a serious mistake to regard informal spells as inferior to the kind of magick in which the appropriate planetary hour is carefully chosen, incense is burned, the tools laid out in the correct position and the names of all the archangels recited without a mistake. Both have a place and even if there were an actual deity watching the minutiae of the ritual, he or she would be less interested in whether a correct elemental pentagram was drawn than if the intent and the heart were pure and the need was genuine.
The Purposes Of White Magick
There are three distinct and yet related types of magick, all of which can be used informally, in spells, or formally, in ceremonial rituals.
Personal Magick
As I have already said, it is quite permissible to use magick to empower your personal needs, though this does not bring lottery wins or the object of your romantic fantasies delivered gift-wrapped to your door. Magick has traditionally encompassed material needs, and spirituality is very difficult to achieve at a time when there is a crisis of physical need or emotional shortfall in your life. For example, in days when having sufficient food and heating was an ongoing concern, abundance for the coming winter months was a prime focus of Mabon, the harvest festival at the autumn equinox. Many kitchen witches would carry out private spells using the equinox energies, to empower talismans and cast spells to ensure their own family would survive the inhospitable months of winter.
In the modern world, concerns are different, but no less urgent, and for many of us still centre on the home, family and employment. We need money to fulfil obligations, help for a child who is studying for exams or perhaps suffering bullying, a partner to share joys and sorrows, better health for ourselves and our loved ones. There are subjects for spells for yourself, your partner or lover, your children, close relatives and friends. They are usually the strongest in terms of emotion and so can be very simply carried out at home, in the garden or on the balcony, often with everyday items.
Magick For Others
You may, however, wish to carry out rituals for people or groups with whom you are less intimately involved, who are vulnerable or to whom you relate in a caring, social or a professional capacity. These might include the people in your workplace, a sick neighbour, or a colleague you know is unhappy or worried; or perhaps it could be an animal park or environmental project that is under threat or needs help financially, legally or practically or even a local disaster.
As you send out loving or healing energies, so you will receive them in return, often in unexpected ways or perhaps at some future time when you yourself are vulnerable. This is part of the cosmic banking system and in practice there is considerable overlap between this and personal spells.
Magick To Increase Positivity
These are the least focused kind of spells. They are used to send out energies to whoever needs them, for example of love, happiness, health or abundance. They may be for an endangered species, a war-torn land, a country in need of water or the planet itself. If a large number of people do send positive energies either to a large-scale project or into the cosmos, followed where possible by practical help or support, then this can really make a difference. Again, by sending out healing you will receive in return threefold healing in indirect but powerful ways.
The Four Stages Of Magick
Although there are many different kinds of magick, in practice all spells and more formal magical rituals tend to follow four stages, though informal spells may combine one or more steps.
The Focus
This defines the purpose of the ritual or spell and is generally represented either by a symbol or a declaration of intent. These could take the form of a candle etched with the name or zodiacal glyph of a desired lover, a little silver key charm or an actual key in a spell to find a new home, a picture of an ideal holiday location, and so on.
In a sense, this part of the spell begins before the actual rite and involves verbalising the purpose. As you define it in a few words or a symbol, you may realise that what you are really seeking lies beyond the immediate external purpose. Spending time at this stage is quite vital as it is said we tend to get what we ask for, so we should take care to ask for what would truly fulfil our potential, rather than what we think we need immediately.
If you are working alone, hold the symbol while speaking words that summarise the purpose of the magick. You may be surprised to discover that it is your wise psyche speaking, guiding the intention towards what you truly need or desire - and afterwards you realise it could have been no other way.
If you are working in a group, a declaration of intent, created by the group collectively before the ritual, is a good way of focusing the energies. After the initial circle is cast, the symbol can be handed round while the person leading the ritual speaks the intention. Alternatively, each person can add his or her special interpretation while holding the symbol and so the declaration is worked as part of the ritual. As others are holding the symbol, visualise it within your own hands; this provides the transition to the next stage of the ritual.
Concentration is the key to this first stage.
The Action
This is the stage where you use actions to endow the symbol with magical energies. This is part of the continuous process of translating your magical thoughts and words from the first stage, the inner plan, to manifestation as the impetus for success or fulfilment in the everyday world. These energies amplify your own. For example, passing incense, representing the Air element, over the symbol activates the innate power of rushing winds that cut through inertia and bring welcome change, harnessing the energies of wide skies in which there are no limits, soaring like eagles, carrying your wishes to the Sun. You can unite other elemental forces by using the appropriate tools and substances.
Similarly, you might begin a chant, a medley of goddess names or a mantra of power linked with the theme, or a slow spiral dance around the circle. You could try drumming or tying knots either on individual cords or in a group, creating a pattern with the longer cords of fellow witches, perhaps looped around a tree.
The action of the magick is limited only by the environment and your imagination. You may find that improvisation enters quite spontaneously as the energies unfold and spiral.
Movement is the key to this stage.
Raising The Power
This is the most powerful part of the magick, as the magical energies are amplified and the power of the ritual carries you along joyously. Ecstasy forms a major part of shamanic ceremony and the old mystery religions; it is akin to the exhilaration you experience riding on a carousel or running barefoot along a sandy shore with the wind lifting your hair.
You might repeat a chant of power, dance faster, drum with greater intensity, bind your cords in ever more intricate patterns or add more knots if working alone, visualising a cone of spiralling, coloured light, rising and increasing in size and intensity as this stage progresses.
Stretch your arms and hands vertically as high as possible to absorb power from the cosmos. If you are in a group and have been linking hands, as the power increases to a great intensity, this is the time to loose them.
As the power builds, you will create what is known as a cone of power. The cone-shaped hats traditionally associated with witches and bishops' mitres reflect the concentration of spiritual potency. The purpose of the cone, like the sacred pyramid, is to concentrate energy in a narrowing shape so that it reaches a pinnacle of power, which can then be released at the end of the ritual to carry your wishes or desires into the cosmos. In order to create a cone of power in magick, you can visualise these energies as coloured light or as gold.
Alternatively, you can visualise different rainbow colours to create a cone of every colour that merges to brilliant white at the apex. In healing work, some people see this as silver blue light that becomes brilliant.
Whether working alone or in a group, as you build up the power, breathe in pure white light and exhale and project your chosen colour, seeing it become ever more vibrant and faster-moving as the intensity increases. After you have been practising magick for a while, you will notice that the cone of colour builds up quite spontaneously, with no apparent effort. It has also been described as a cloud of energy. At the point when the climax is reached, comes the release of power.
Note that for some people the cone concept interferes with their own natural magical abilities - some of the most skilled witches and healers see circles of light, shimmering golden beams or rainbows with their psychic eye. Some see nothing at all, but instead feel power pushing their feet almost off the ground.
Growth is the key to this stage.
Release Of Power
When you release the power in the final stage, you may see the cone exploding and cascading as coloured stars or light beams, which surge away into the cosmos and break into brilliant rainbow colours.
If you wish, you can direct the energy after the final release of power by pointing with your hands, or a wand or knife, so that the energies cascade horizontally and downwards, for example into herbs on the altar that you are empowering to make into herb sachets. Or you can direct the cascading energies in a specific direction, perhaps towards a person who is ill or in need of magical strength.
Release is the key at this stage.
This release may take the form of a final shout, a leap, or words. As you extinguish your candle of need, you may shout:
It is free, the power is mine!
Or, at the point of release, you may throw your extended hands wide in an arc above your head. If the ceremony is formal and you are using an athame, you can at this moment bring it in front of you to mark the invisible cutting of the knot holding the power. Pull your visualised or actual knots tight, cut them, leap into the air, shouting:
The Power is free! or It is done! Sometimes there is just a sudden stillness, as the power leaves.
Afterwards, you need to ground the energies by sitting or lying on the ground and letting excess energies fade away into the Earth as you press down with your hands and feet.
The Four Elements
I have mentioned the use of the elements in rituals. In magick, there are four elements - Earth, Air, Fire and Water. They all contain symbolic qualities and powers that together form the energies used in rituals. Each element controls a quadrant in the magical circle.
Earth, in the North, represents the stability, security and strength of old stone circles, mighty castle walls, tall craggy rocks and mountain peaks. It is also associated with the time of midnight and winter. Salt is often used to represent Earth in spells and rituals.
Air, in the East, is action, freshness and power for change, the winds blowing across plains, vast, cloudless skies stretching endlessly, storms and whirlwinds stirring stagnation but also bringing destruction of the old. Air is also associated with the dawn and spring. Incense is often used to represent Air in spells and rituals.
Fire, in the South, is the quicksilver, inspirational energy and clear light of the Sun, the lightning flash. It is the hearth fire that warms, the ritual fire that cleanses, the forest fire that sweeps all away. It represents the full power of the Sun and light at noon and in summer. Candles are used to represent Fire.
Finally, in the West is Water, that falls as refreshing rain, tides that ebb and flow, watercourses always finding a way, moving ever onwards, never backwards. Water is associated with autumn and sunset. It represents the changing responsive, human emotions of life cycles, and personal ebbs and flows of energies. Water is used to represent its own element.
Magick In The Southern Hemisphere
In magick, time and direction have an important place and it is necessary to understand that there may be differences according to which hemisphere of the globe you are working in. In the northern hemisphere, magical circles are cast clockwise, or 'deosil', which means 'in the direction of the Sun'. In the southern hemisphere, however, practitioners casting their circles deosil should normally cast them anti-clockwise, because that is the direction of the Sun in that hemisphere.
For this reason, I have used the term 'deosil' (and its opposite, 'widdershins') throughout this book when referring to the direction of circles. These terms are clearer than clockwise and anticlockwise, because as long as you think in terms of the direction of the Sun, the terms can be applied wherever you are standing on the globe.
Practitioners in the southern hemisphere will also need to alter the dates I have given. For them, for example, the mid-winter solstice is celebrated on or around 21 June and the summer solstice, when the Sun is at it most powerful, is around 21 December.
In the same way, the two annual equinoxes, when there is equal day and equal night, move round so that the spring equinox falls around 21 September and the autumn equinox around 21 March. It is perhaps better to think in terms of the Wheel of the Year, rather than our modern-day calendar, for what matters is not the date but what is happening with the cycle of growth and fruition. So the autumn equinox is the time of harvest, whenever that may be in your part of the globe.
Things are a little more complicated, however, when it comes to the use of the quadrants of your magical circle and the directions, North, South, etc. I explained on page 41 that North is the direction of Earth and winter. However, in the southern hemisphere since the equator, the area of maximum heat, is to the North, this direction will more naturally be regarded as Fire. To face the colder direction of winter, you must turn away from the equator, towards the Antarctic - the South.
This means that when following the instructions in this book practitioners in the southern hemisphere should substitute the opposite for each direction. So, for example, where I have said you should set up your altar in the North, and enter your circles from the East, you would set up your altar in the South, and enter from the West.
If you find this too complicated, don't worry. Some practitioners in the southern hemisphere follow the northern traditions, especially if they have ancestors from colder climes. It really is a matter of preference and all this diversity actually has a very positive effect, because it means that you can weave the natural forces into your personal creation of magick. The only important thing is that you are consistent in your attitude.
A Ritual Using Light And Cosmic Power
The following ritual can be carried out anywhere at all, as direction is not important. It is most powerful when performed standing beneath a tree that perhaps has stood for hundreds of years. If sunlight is filtering through the leaves, so much the better. You can work alone, with a group of friends, or in a more formal coven. You may want to decide in advance on a focus for the power, for example healing a particular place or a person you know. Alternatively, you can let the energies find their own target as they cascade though the cosmos, increasing the positivity of the universe.
* Stand with your feet apart and your arms outstretched above your head like the branches of a tree. Through your feet, draw up rich, golden light from the Earth and let it flow upwards, becoming lighter and more golden as it rises to your fingertips. Feel the light from above flowing downwards to merge with it.
* If you are working alone, then, holding a long, silk scarf in either hand, move around the tree with your hands rising and falling in a spiral path to create swirls of energies, the most ancient of the Mother Goddess sacred geometric forms, while chanting and dancing. If you are with friends, join hands around the tree and pass the light and energy between you from hand to hand, deosil, until you can feel the circle of light (you may even see luminous energy transferring from hand to hand).
* Begin to circle the tree deosil, reciting faster and faster:
Tree power, Earth power, Sun shower and light,
Encircle me, enfold me, Goddess radiance bright.
If you do not want to use the Goddess as a focus for your magick, you can substitute the word 'god' or say 'golden radiance bright'. You can also create your own chant, if you prefer, that may change from line to line, or use a simple mantra, such as:
Touch me,
enfold me,
enclose me.
* When you feel the power reaching a climax, cast the scarves high into the air and hug the tree, pressing your feet down hard to ground your energy and receive healing light from the trunk. If you are working alone, you may feel that in a sense you are not alone but are joining with the tree spirits and Devas, the higher forces of nature who will dance with you as you spiral. You may even see their luminous outlines.
* If you are working in a group, when you feel the power has reached a climax, unclasp your hands and with a final call,
Above!
raise them straight above your head and allow the energies to spiral through the cosmos.
* Then sink down so that your hands and feet are pressing the ground and let any excess golden radiance and power return to the Earth. (If you do not do this, you will be buzzing all day and night as though you had been drinking too much coffee.)
