The Restless Dead

The Restless Dead

Spirits 101.

Spirits are the energy imprint, spirit body, projection or emotional idea. Some of them used to be living humans (ie dead people). Some of them did not. Energy does not die. It just changes form. When it passes from this place to another (as it naturally should) it goes back to through The Veil or astral to be reunited, healed, taught and/or reborn. 

On this plane spirits can see us but often can not touch or interact with things. Sometimes we even appear as ghosts or shadows to them. This makes most people (even dead people) get pretty pissed off when people ignore them, when they are frightened or lost. This is what most haunting is like.

The worst spirits to deal with (as a house clearing medium) are drug addicts and alcoholics. They often have no idea they are dead and are full of unresolved issues. For regular people, child spirits are the most terrifying. If you have never seen a full screaming snot bubble tantrum of a scared and angry 3 year old you can not imagine how that translates into spirit activity.

Spirits are supposed to "cross over" into the light. (This light is what Light workers and mediums are connected to).

A medium should be able to speak to the spirit, find out what is wrong. Calm everything down and cross them over (guides the other side often help).

Spirits who have "crossed over" and who are guides don't move things, or interact with the physical much at all. They often become guides and protectors of the living and will communicate with me easily messages and the like to the living.

The first thing to do if you are being haunted is to calm down. Spirits can draw energy from strong emotions and being frightened is not going to do anyone any favours.

If you are not a trained medium, find a reputable professional to help you. 

Poking at something with a spiritual stick when you have no training or idea what you are doing is really dumb.

Smudging can help.  

You can buy Banishing the Dark incense here

Crystals and charms can help protect you too.

You can have something created by an expert.

Cascarilla is used to create wards and protection too.

Ground eggshells and herbs can stop spirit from getting in or out.

Salt is your friend.

Salt washes, salt in jar or bottles, salt in circles. Salt (you can have it tailored to your needs) is not liked by most spirits, especially when charged with crystals, herbs and oils.

Most spirit is not evil, dark or unnatural. Most are just confused and lost.Compassion and kindness, light and love are the best idea.

If you are sensitive or find yourself drawing these beings to you, a good idea would be to train yourself with a decent group of mediums. They are unlikely to stop coming to you, all you can do is deal with them kindly. 

Bright Blessings xxx

Don't forget to get my book The Key Opening the Doorway to Magickal Practice. 

Binding

Binding

The Short Term Solution

This is a Paracelsusian Binding Box. As Bindings go, it is a mid-level binding. It neutralises what ever is put in it for a period of time.

It could be a crystal you used in a healing that has gone black (happened a few times to me when healing folks). Or it could be something very brightly "light" that you want to hide, or shield away from someone (or something).

However when we talk about binding what we usually mean is a person.

Lots of people prefer binding to hexing or cursing as it seems nicer.

Except it binds your power, energy and magick into the mix. (If your power, magick and energy isn't going into your magick... then it isn't magick).

I don't think binding (or "put a bubble of light around it/them") is nicer, smarter or better magickally than say a Banishing or a nice clear "Fuck Off, Fuck Off when you get there, then Fuck Off Again."

Granted this makes this person SEP (Someone Else's Problem) but essentially it works.

Binding weaves complicated magickal threads of your fate and the other persons together. 

I just don't care enough about "the Great Unwashed" to mix my magick with their energy and their fate. If I do care I do a temporary one (you weave how long it will last into the spell in the first place).

Binding works well on people being "lead" astray. (In real world terms, many a guy is lead by his penis, has a break down, falls in with the wrong crowd, can't shake an ex no matter how destructive, is being a bit of a dick for some reason.) 

It doesn't work well on people who are toxic, asshole, abusers, users, liars. The binding might rob them of their "fix". This can make them more dangerous.

When the binding erodes or breaks it will be all the worse for the binding. Some binding would take maintenance, and again you would be binding yourself to their actions, thoughts and feelings. Yuck!

The other thing is these threads can be traced back to the witch or magick worker. Right to you! It takes some serious skill (not to mention practice) to remove, disguise or erase these threads on all planes. You might manage one or two but rarely all of them.

So if this is still something you think is a great idea.

How to Bind.

You will need.

Poppet/Object of connection.  

A vessel.

Thread/cordage/something to bind with.

You can use a poppet you make and stuff it with their hair, or just as easily some dirt from their foot print. You can even pin their shadow onto a paper (add the name though).

You then need a vessel. You can visualise (make a thought-form bubble), put the dirt in an halved onion, sew it into a lemon.

Then you need to find your poise. You need to find that thread, that essence in The Veil and wind it.The colour of the thread is not as important as you feeling you are binding around this person. Is it a spider web, a cotton wool wrap, a thread of nettles, or a bind of Morning Glory. As you you need to fix the length of time the binding will last.

How to Break a Binding.

Bindings are always still connected to the person who worked the magick. As she used to say "Be sure your sins will find you out". Fire, glass, witch blades and certain places within the Veil it's self remove all bindings. (If you work with the dead/spirit, all binding from life fall away in the White Fire.)

Careful removal of the bindings from someone's aura works well too. 

Summary

Binding is not a "nicer" thing to do to someone. A binding requires a lot of work to maintain. It doesn't "fix" the problem. Holistically I am always a "deal with the cause, rather than treat the symptoms" kind of witch.

If a "Shut Up, Fuck Off" spell gets rid of the problem, do it. Maybe a Truth and Justice spell instead?

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing with Bindings, luckily I have been doing this a long time.

Bright Blessings xxx

Don't forget. Buy the book The Key Opening the Doorway to Magickal Practice. 

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Lughnasdha

Lughnasdha Lammas

 Celebrating Earth And Sun 

It has been a wet and cold(ish) July here. The plants can't decide if it is Autumn or Spring (the horse-chestnut trees leaves are all on the turn but my back garden looks like a jungle).
When I "touch base" during a ritual I am not turning my back on the world. How odd that would be. Of course my practice is still based on Celtic customs and "18th century peasants" but as I grew up in Wales on a farm, that doesn't seem too odd. It doesn't seem odd that people took their beliefs with them, especially as they had had what was theirs stolen from them (their land).
While the grain harvest is a dusty (and thoroughly unpleasant job) Lammas, loaf mass, is not only celebrating the death of "John Barley-corn" but the earth that grew him. The rain that didn't fall. The storms that didn't happen. The community coming together, because in order to eat everyone needed to help. That the water is still pure and sweet.
The beer drunk, the whiskey, the bread eaten is not of this years harvest. No that is too wet and green.
In fact if you can eat bread, if you can drink beer, or whiskey, or a thousand other foods with grain in it you have a lot to be thankful for!
A thousand miracles have to happen for a harvest.
The earth that bears grain in one place may still be green and growing somewhere else.
It isn't just this years harvest we celebrate. It is last years, and all those that came before so we could be where we are.
If this years "harvest" is yet to bear fruit, that is not important. What is important is the abundance and generosity of the earth. For the wells and water ways. For the bilberries, and early blackberries. For the lush grass making milk in goats and cows. For butter and cream.
Lughnasdha might bear the Gods name but the feast and games and playful rites were in celebration of his mother. It was her wisdom and her death that brought growing and sowing to people.
At this festival we are drawn back to the ancient places, the wells and barrows, the track ways and stones. Not only because the best bilberries grow there, but many a baby was conceived under the bilberry bush, in the sunshine under our ancestors knowing gaze.
The seeds we sow, and harvest we gather are not just based on some idea Gerard Gardener wrote down. They are based on forces and miracles we rarely stop to notice.
Flour isn't some hard won prize these days, but it was. It takes a huge amount of water and nurture and care to grow. Harvesting it (even with technology) is messy, dry, dusty work. Work still subject to the weather, and earth. Still subject the the magick and miracles.
At Lughnasda I am not celebrating something I am divorced from. I am celebrating the thousand things that go right to make one loaf of bread.
Celebrating the griddle stone. The oven. The butter and cream. The bilberries and stary nights.
I remember the way corn looks like water under the wind. Sounds like the ocean when you pour it and feels like water or sand beneath the fingers.
Your miracles won't be mine. Your harvest will not be mine either but if Lughnadha sound silly, or out of season, every piece of toast, every muffin, every bottle of beer came from this spiritual place. It can trace it's lines back so far and deep into our history. Our ancestors who worked so hard, and play so hard too, who danced across mountains, sailed over seas and reshaped the world with a few grains, and plough.

Ritual is not a space to turn your back on the world, but a space to draw into the myth and symbolic to express something deep and ancient and beautiful. It is a different space but that makes it no less worthy, no less real or no less special for those within it.
It is a patriarchal dichotomy to place "doing" over "feeling", to place "real" over ritual, intellect over body. To be whole and spiritual and within the world both are needed and no more or less magickal than each other.

Bright Billberry Blessings xx

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