Wards - Protecting Yourself and Your Home

A ward is simply a protection or guardian. This post is in response to a question about household wards but it basically applies to everything.

What do wards protect you from?

1.      Your own fears: Most people that I know had some fear of attracting evil with their magick when they were first getting started. That fear in and off itself can stop your practice before it starts. Having some protection in place just may ease a person’s mind long enough to take a few steps along the magickal path.

2.      Random people: A decent household protection can ward off door-to-door salesman and criminals that have no reason to burglarize your particular home. The former doesn’t appear to be much of a problem any more but at one time salesman were an annoyance.  As for the later, the ward is basically a lock they cannot see. Your home may simply look less attractive to them or they just may make a random decision to keep moving.

3.      Random spirits: Spirits move about just like people. Often, they are not barred by locked doors and the like and will just pass through your home. Most of the time, they go unnoticed. Yet, in a magician’s home, they just may hang around for the ambient energy. Who likes uninvited unknown house guests?

4.      Magickal Attacks: I was taught that no one that knows how to attack you will because they are too spiritual to do so. Well well-meaning and something that can be taught to tamp down any suspicions within a group. This is likely the most harmful thing I was ever taught. Magick users are humans and so are you. Eventually, someone will get angry with you whether you deserve it or not. Sooner or later, someone will throw some negative magick in your direction. Such things can result in problems ranging from annoyance to the quite serious.

5.      Not-So-Random People: Some people have enemies that are willing to be criminally physical. A strong ward can deflect, distract or even harm these people before they get into your home. Such a word may also get the police there faster as well.

6.      Your Own Mistakes: Sometimes practitioners call a spirit and do not dismiss it correctly. Other times, something gets out of hand. Some wards can fight these things off for you or at least weaken their impact.

I am sure that is not an exhaustive list but that should be a good start.

There are several types of wards energetic, physical, natural, spirit and spiritual.

Energetic wards are by far the easiest to put up. Beginners simply use their active imagination and visualize energies at appropriate places in the home such as doors, windows, entry gates and the like. When I was at this stage, I preferred red crosses and spider web forms on the windows. Doors require a lot of maintenance because they get a lot of normal use. Very few people enter and leave their house through windows.

My problem is that I could not see my own work. So, I had friends that had the ability look for me. The were able to describe the shape of my wards to my satisfaction. Then they could tell me if they had been tampered with, broken or had weakened over time. Obviously, these did not protect me from things that broke through but likely did for random passersby.

While these can be the weakest form of protection do not underestimate their utility. This type of ward can easily discourage random spirits and people that have no real personal interest in you or your property. They can also be extremely effective against people that are very sensitive to energy, such as empaths.

Try this experiment. Go to a public place with a lot of foot traffic that has some sort of physical barrier like the image. Create an energy ward between two of the bollards. Then watch how many people choose to walk between the unguarded bollards and those you warded. Then, take down your wards and move them to the opposite space and see if the traffic flows differently. If you can change the traffic flow you are pretty good. If you completely stop it, you are damn good. If you do not have any effect, keep practicing. This is a skill that can be learned by almost anyone. Doing this exercise well will develop skills that can be used in a variety of magickal tasks that appear to have nothing in common with warding.

Physical wards at their non-magickal level are locks, closed doors, burglar alarms and the like. There are also other forms of wards with a physical basis. Perhaps you energies a sword you have hanging on a wall facing an entrance. Maybe it is a statue of your deity to which you have cared for, kept dust free and made offerings before. This can also be a talisman or other item created for the purpose. These types of things can become more sentient and active than a passive energy ward.

Natural wards are live plants, herbs, stones, minerals and crystals that have protective properties. These can simply be placed near doors and windows. You do not need to do much magick for these. I simply tell them what I want them to do but you may not even need that.

Spirit wards are defenses supplied by spirits one conjures or creates (servitors). These can be extremely strong against pretty much everything. Spirits from the Lesser Key of Solomon can be extremely effective. The problem is they can come off as a bit creepy as well. Their energy signature can be unpleasant. Angels and the like can enforce some pretty rigid thinking. So, you need a bit of experience to make these work effectively.

If you are up against strong practitioners, here is a little trick. Make several servitors. Instructions on how to do this are outside the scope of this post. Using creative instructions can confuse the heck out of your attackers. For example, Spirit A protects the home on odd calendar days, Spirit B on even days and Spirit C augments on Fridays and Saturdays when most people have the time to get up to no good. Since most people do not attack every day, each time they come to your home they get a different guardian. They may come prepared for the first one they encounter and find something else. Yikes!

Spirits can also advise you and unique techniques to ward your home. The most effective ward I ever made came from this sort of advice. This is one I keep in my secret bag of tricks not because I am all that secretive but when it comes to protection it is wise to have some surprises.

Spiritual wards are just that. A deity that you work with or worship consistently combined with a physical anchor can be very effective. Your soul, properly aligned and actively energized can be impenetrable. Again, how to do that is beyond the scope of this post.

See this post about my favorite protective strategy.

If you do magick, heck, even if you do not do magick, you need some warding. Hopefully, this post will get you started. 

 

 

 

Do Acts of Magick or Intuitions Attract Evil?

This is the last post in the series to my step daughter.*

Sometimes, people that are new to magickal practices come into the shop, buy a fixed candle or other item, and ask me if just doing something like that is dangerous. Will evil things find me? I always answer no. On the rare cases when I see a danger, I tell the person.

I am never comfortable with a yes or no answer to that question.

The short answer is no. A single act of magick is very unlikely to attract anything that isn’t already there. Sometimes, a single or frequent acts of magick can create the illusion of attracting something negative. The illusion is hard to explain without scaring the daylights out of people. They only hear the first few words and their fears drown out the rest. So, take a breath and relax.

An effective act of magick, at the very least, opens the veils between worlds a little bit. It is technically possible for some lower-level astral creature to take notice and get up to something. This is not the norm. More often than not, people become aware of something that has always existed and blame the magick for creating the problem. The problem was always there. Magick simply expanded the person’s awareness.

Hypothetical Example: A person does magick to get some money. Suddenly, they are in a car accident. The damage is less than their $1,000 deductible. Something happens at work and they lose a few hours a week causing a financial squeeze. People blame the magick for ‘bad luck’. In reality, they had a large deductible before they even thought about magick. Large deductibles can be a good financial move if you have the deductible amount in savings. As far as losing some hours at work, they were already financially on the edge. That is why they did magick in the first place. Sometimes, magick teaches us what we need to fix.

We could blame the magick or think that perhaps taking a weekend job for six month to put some money in savings which is a buffer against losing hours and the deductible. Magickal lessons are often life lessons. If you do those things and then realize you are less stressed. Perhaps you get the bug and start reading about money and how to handle it.

Hypothetical Example: A person does love magick to bolster their relationship. Suddenly, a series of arguments break out and the relationship ends. If the practitioner looks back, the subject of the arguments was nothing new. Years later, she may look back and realize she dodged a bullet when that man left. All that happened was the magick added passion to an already shaky situation. The emotions boiled over. Better sooner than later.

Hypothetical Example. The same scenario but now glimpses of a mean face are seen out the corner of the eyes. Some things go bump in the night. Holy cow! The magick opened the door to some dark force! Well, that cannot be eliminated. On the other hand, that force may be the reason the magick was needed in your love life in the first place. Perhaps, the mean man has been there for a lot longer than you realized. The magick revealed the problem. Isn’t that a good thing? Now, you know what you need to deal with.

It is possible for totally random ‘things’ to drop on you from the astral when you do magick. A regular practitioner does need protection from these things.  On a one-off act of magick, usually, that is not the case.

When it comes to intuitives there is a greater danger. Intuitives live between the worlds anyway. That is why their intuitions work. When you spend a lot of time between the worlds, the chances of negative forces attaching increase. Why? Because most of the time people live like this live just above the surface of this world. Which, is the bottom of the next world. Gravity still applies. Muck descends.

The best protection is to stay out of low-vibe places like bars, adult book stores, drug infested neighborhoods, and dance-clubs that are mostly meat markets.

The next level of protection is the wearing of certain stones, smudging oneself and the home and keeping cleansing stones and herbs around the house.

The last level is learning to do some basic defensive magick.

Magick can create some problems but those problems are usually already existing and thus simply revealed by magick. While not always the case, that is a better place to start looking than some scary evil force. Intuitives, often quite afraid of magick, need protective magick more than the occasional magick user

*She is actually my step-daughter. I even get undeserved but appreciated Father’s Day cards. Sometimes, I am just oblivious and think of things like being related by marriage as in in-law.

 

Is Being a Psychic or Intuitive Dangerous to Self or Other?

I may not be the most qualified person to write this. I cannot claim to being an empath or psychic. With rare exception, my psychic insights occur when I am focused on the person I am reading for. A couple months ago, I was able to describe a scene from my client’s childhood in great detail. Things like that are rarely a problem because I am seeking to have that experience and pass it on to another. I am not usually hit with an intuition or feel someone else’s emotions while walking down the street.  Empaths or Psychics are not asking. They just see, hear, feel or receive input that usually has deep emotional connections.

Simply receiving information cannot possibly harm another. That is the good news.

The biggest issues with psychics/intuitives doing harm falls into two categories, hurting themselves and others.

Psychics, especially new ones, often have a trouble distinguishing their intuition from their emotions. This turns an insecurity that could be dealt with to an externalized ‘fact’. The person on the other end of that fact has no chance of disproving the ‘intuition’. This can destroy relationships that otherwise would have worked out fine. Thus, harming both parties.

The way to prevent this is to follow the advice of the Oracle at Delphi, Know Thyself. Knowing what your insecurities are, how you normally feel and the like goes a long way to help judge between feelings and intuitions. If you are normally insecure when speaking while eating and you feel insecure on a dinner date, it may be best to chalk that up to yourself rather than an intuition about your date. If you do not normally feel that way and you suddenly do, chalk it up to intuition.

You are going to be wrong once in a while until you really figure things out. So, record your intuitions in writing along with the circumstances you were in when you felt them. Later go a back and figure out which intuitions were correct.

So, act on your own intuitions first. Carefully assess the results and slowly build confidence. Do not foist them on others until you have good reason to be confident in yourself.

You can harm others in the same way. By insisting your intuition is correct, you can cause people to break up, become medically paranoid or who knows what. Don’t share until you have a handle on it. When I pray, I pray that my teachings land light as a feather on the hearts and minds of others. Cultivate that attitude when revealing them.

I am amazed how willing people are to change their lives around when I give a psychic reading. I am equally amazed when the absolutely know I am right and others have told them the same thing and they refuse to change. Once you share an intuition you cannot own other people’s response. Let them live without your interference.

Intuitives/empaths and the like do have personal issues. They can feel other people’s emotions so strongly that it messes with their heads. I have walked by and felt a human predator once. The emotion and my response to it were disconcerting and it lasted for a day and a half. I feel for those that go through that on the regular.

The trick is to learn how to shield and psychically protect yourself. Even learning a little protection magick is a help. You cannot harm people with protection magick unless they are trying to harm you.  

People in this category at their worst are much less dangerous than magick users. So, I wouldn’t worry about doing harm overmuch but it is good to keep the above in mind. That last little bit out shielding and protecting is important. I highly recommend becoming proficient in those skills.

 

Safely Manifesting Magick

This is Part II of How Magick Manifests

I left the last post with two questions. What happens when there is no path of least resistance? And, does the fact that we cannot predict where magick will manifest make it dangerous?

The answer to these questions is it depends upon the operator but yes, magick is inherently dangerous. So is driving a car, owning a gun and the poisonous cleaners we have in our homes. All of these things are more of a danger in some people’s hands than others.

Manifesting safe magick is a matter of the skill, experience and humility of the operater. Skill is the ability to do the magick. Experience is just like anyone else’s. Though, the lessons have to be learned a bit faster when it comes to manifesting in a safe manner. Humility means recognizing things that could be done better and making no excuses for error. A humble magician does not repeat mistakes out of a need to prove she was right the first time if some unknown factor had not crept in to the working. If the practitioner was right the first time, the ‘mistake’ would not have happened.

There are several principles I employ to keep my magick safe

1.      Never heat a closed circuit

2.      Use the right tool for the job

3.      Use a proper approach

4.      Word spells properly

5.      Never magick a child or pregnant woman

Never Heat a Closed Circuit

This basic fact was taught in my 9^th grade Intro to Physical Science class. With a closed circuit the heat and gases have no place to go. This will cause your lab equipment to explode. The same is true with magick.

A closed circuit is a situation where magick has no place to go. This most likely time for this to occur is when attacking another person with magick but it can and does happen when the magick is intended to be helpful or benevolent.

A hypothetical example would be a man that wants to meet a girlfriend but is unemployed, rarely leaves his apartment, is not on social networking apps and does not have a wide circle of friends. This leaves the magick with no place to go. If he had no talent, he is likely fine. If he has some talent, nothing will happen. If he has a lot of talent, he will heat a closed circuit and the magick will explode. Perhaps, he falls down the stairs of his apartment complex and the rehab nurse takes a shine to him. I have related my real-life experience when I heated a closed circuit.

To prevent this, I make sure that the magick has someplace to go. In the example above, I would insist on applying for jobs, going to church and/or joining some sort of hobby club before I would do the magick. This way the magick not only has someplace to move but a wider path to success. So, even someone of some talent can get a result.

Using the Right Tool for the Job

There are spirits of the Lesser Key of Solomon that are said to heal. Those spirits are called demons by many. While that name can be debated, the term does aptly describe the danger of working with them. The very nature of these spirits seems to preclude healing. I would be very unlikely to use one except in situations where it is life and death and nothing else worked. Instead, I would use a spirit of Jupiter. Or, depending upon the illness, something related to the elements. I may use water for a blood ailment, for example.

In a similar fashion, if I needed a job, I would not call on a war deity like Mars. While I can definitely see some benefits, that may be like using a sledge hammer to drive a finishing nail. I can imagine Mars creating strife within a company to the point someone gets fired, leaving a job open. Yet, I wouldn’t want to work there if that happened. The strife would linger and the work environment would be war-torn.

Instead, I may call upon Hermes (for commerce and trade) or Hephestus (for trade craft). I may even approach a spirit of earth or the spirits of the Prince or King of Pentacles.

The point being is that there are many ways to get things done that will work but the practitioner must be smart enough to avoid creating a disaster by a poor choice of tools.

Use a Proper Approach

Sometimes magick takes precision and a lack thereof could result in disaster.

Imagine a marriage where there is a violent domestic situation. Two people must be separated for sake of the child. Magick could be done for outside intervention. The problem is that outside intervention may arrive as a concerned neighbor, another family member or a cop responding to a domestic violence call. That cop may have to shoot a parent in front of the child. Or, as leaving is the most dangerous part of such scenarios, the abuser ends up beating or otherwise harming the concerned neighbor.

Working internally to push the two apart where they have nothing but each other to blame, may reduce the chances of tragedy. Imagine if the abuser just gets totally bored with his victim or falls out of whatever kind of so-called ‘love’ held for the other. While still a dangerous situation, this approach is less dangerous.

An experienced magician can reduce the danger by being wise in her approach to a problem.

Word the Spells Properly

There is an old joke about a hungry man that finds a genie in a bottle. The genie grants him three wishes. The man says, “Make me a ham sandwich.” Poof! The man turns into a ham sandwich. There is a grain of truth here. I have known many a magician to get exactly what was asked for and been sorely disappointed.

I recall asking for something, seeing the spell work but not manifest correctly. I used a dictionary and looked up a word I used and the tertiary definition fit perfectly and meant something significantly different from the first two! From that point forward, I have made liberal use of the dictionary when crafting spells.  Imagine someone looking for a job and coming up with spell wording.

Manifest employment that lasts three years.

Manifest employment for me that lasts at least three years doing a job that I am neutral about or enjoy.

Manifest employment for me that lasts as long as I want to work there, that I enjoy, and allows me to save $500 a month.

The first statement could result in signing a contract for a three-year temporary job that you hate and doesn’t pay well! The result would feel like a prison term. Risking misery fits my definition of unsafe magick.

Also, since ‘for me’ wasn’t included. My best friend may land the job while I am still unemployed.

The second is better in at least we will not be miserable. The job may last longer than three years as well. This is handy if a recession hits in year two. With the first spell you are definitely unemployed in three years. The second may let you hang on even in tough economic times.

The benefits of the last spell or obvious but with those restrictions the spell may have a harder time finding a way to manifest. You better be networking, have resume’s in the mail and improving yourself in any way you can.

Never Magick a Child or Pregnant Woman

Children and pregnant people have a natural magickal protection. You may as well try to curse a goddess. Good luck. The best you can expect is nothing happening. The worse is more than the full force of your magick landing in your lap. Boom!

The exception is healing magick but still care is needed. A pregnant woman’s defenses are formidable.

We started this with the question, is the fact that we cannot predict where magick will flow make it inherently dangerous? My answer is no. Magick can be dangerous. Mistakes can be made. And, the best of spells can go awry. That said, a great deal of danger can be nullified by wise practices. I can recall times in the last decade when my magick did not work. I cannot recall a single dangerous outcome over that time period.

Next time: Is just being psychic but not doing magick dangerous in and of itself?

Below is my real-life example of heating a closed circuit.

Example of Heating a Closed Circuit

One of my first successful spells was one to “give me a job that will keep me financially secure for life.” I am forever grateful that one worked. However, I had not yet applied for work, had no real marketable skills, nor education and my past jobs did not contain a seed of a financially successful future.

The magick found the one path open to it, a job I wasn’t hired for a year before. They needed more help and all three people at the company, all family, took credit for remembering that I was going to be hired before the fellow hired his son-in-law. The day after I did the magick I received a call and was hired. This was another dead-end job.

So the magick wasn’t done. To complete the spell, it had to break through all the negative inertia of my job history. There was no place to go. My magick exploded.  I severely injured my back on that job to the point that I had to take two-inch steps for two years. To force myself to walk and move, I bought one day of groceries at a time. It took an hour and half to walk through the grocery store in agony. The job didn’t wait for me.

As I began to heal, I volunteered for Ross Perot’s petition drive. From there, I ran the Fresno Clinton/Gore ground operation. There I met a soon to be state assemblyman. During his campaign, I met his best friend.

When I applied for real jobs no one would touch me with a wonky back. The County government would. I was offered a job by every department because I blew out the entry level test. I ended up working below the politician’s best friend. I was promoted several times. I left that department for the job I worked until I retired. The spell completed.

I was also left with a horrendous amount of unexplainable back pain for the rest of my life.

That happened because as a rookie, I generated enough power to create enough magickal kinetic energy to move things forward. If I didn’t have the talent to raise that much energy, the spell would have ended at that first job. That magick was dangerous because of my inexperience. If I had it to do over again, I would have applied for a lot more jobs before doing the magick or at least registered for college

How Magick Manifests

 Not long ago, I tested Spirit. I said, “Tell me something I do not know about some people I do know.”  I learned something about my friend Jenny’s cooking habits. And, I learned my daughter-in-law (DIL), is “consciously aware of a small fear of you.” I contacted them both and told them I needed an honest answer because I was confirming a new level of communication that I was experiencing. A magician that doesn’t test his sources is on the road to self-deception. Both women confirmed the facts I received.

Over a couple of weeks, it was hard to pin down my DIL’s fear. I inquired of spirit again, not to get a direct answer but, to learn a better way of communicating with her. I could have asked for a direct answer but I am also interested in relationship building and chose this direction. I was given a question to ask her. I asked, “Is your fear regarding magick that it is non-linear or do you fear that the source may be unholy?” She replied “Non-Linear”.  I am writing this in hopes of sharing with her how magick works.

In the West, we are trained to believe in the linear, logic, scientific assessment (unless it is vaccinations or climate change) and the like. We are comfortable with things having a reason for happening. If you pause long enough to look at it, we are imposing a world view upon a reality that does not correspond well with what we like to believe. While the universe can be seen as mechanical and perhaps is at times, magick and life are both a bit messier.

Mechanically, we can explain what happened to get that young boy killed by a train near Christmas Tree Lane a couple of days ago. His mother pulled forward thinking she was far enough off the tracks. She felt her vehicle move as if it had descended from the danger zone. She heard the frantic horn blasts but didn’t think it was for her. She misjudged by a foot. The train slammed into the car costing the young boy his life. Terrible. Mechanically that is a solid explanation.

What does it leave out? How did she misperceive the car’s position on the tracks? Why did her mind tell her the whistles could be ignored? How did it come to pass that the family chose that day and time to visit the attraction? Why was that boy in the backseat versus the other child? How did the train arrive at just that time?  We could probably find a mechanical answer for each question. Yet what happened was but one variation to an infinite number of scenarios where that event did not occur. Why did that event happen at all? And, at the time, it was so surprising, so unexpected, that it certainly felt non-linear to the poor mother driving the van. The boy’s father is going to have a reaction too. Will the marriage survive? Maybe or maybe not but, and here is the rub, whichever way it goes could be explained by a mechanical answer. Cause and effect. How can a mechanical answer be applied after the fact but not before? We should know what he is going to do before he does acts. If the universe behaved in a direct logical line, the future would be predictable in the short term.

The linear view is simply our own projection. That is not a description of how life really works.

Magick and life both work via the application of pressure moving a fluid through its natural course. In short, magick and life flow like water. This is easier to see with magick than with life so we will start there but first, simple fluid dynamics.

Think of a spilled glass of water on a dining room table. The pressure is the kinetic energy of the water moving in the direction the glass was tipped. From there, that natural flow of water is towards gravity along the path of least resistance. If the table is ever so slightly uneven leaning to the west, once the kinetic force dissipates the water will flow in a westerly direction. It will not, cannot ascend upward on the table. When it comes to the seam where the leaf could be inserted that crack becomes the path of least resistance. The liquid will not, cannot, hop over the crack and continue flowing west. Following its draw toward gravity and finding a new path of least resistance, flows down the crack and drops to the floor. If that area of the floor is ever so slightly uneven descending to the north, the water accumulates until it creates is own pressure and flows northward. The water cannot and will not go south.

Magick works exactly the same way.

If I do magick for a job that magick will follow its path to ground (manifest) along the path of least resistance. For simplicity’s sake, lets say that I have a lot of friends, three of them are in the industry I want to work in and I have put in twelve job applications so far. Most of the time I will predict that the magick will naturally flow to a place that a) has a job opening b) has my application in hand and c) a place where one of my friends has some influence in hiring. Rarely does it work out that way.

The influence of magick normally finds a weak point (path of least resistance) in ways we humans do not perceive until after the magick happens. In the case above, someone at my current job may have a friend that works in the industry. During a chat his friend mentions that he is looking for someone and knowing I am trying to change careers my coworker suggests me. No one else is even aware the job is open and no one else is interviewed. The magick influence one and only one conversation, the path of least resistance.

Magick appears to be non-linear but it follows the basic rules of fluid dynamics. Again, we just don’t know what that path is from our human perspective.

What happens when there is no path? Does our inability to spot the path of manifestation make magick dangerous?  Stay tuned for Part 2.