What about Magic? Does yours work? Nothing is 100%, but are you creating what you want out of flower petals, crystals and incantations? Do you dare?

I am not an expert magician, but a friend of mine, Terry asked “How do you do magic.” He is the one among many that asks the best questions so it occurred to me I might make a year of blog posts answering Terry’s questions. I’ll answer yours too if you drop them in the comments if they are complex and simple enough to address in 1500 words, give or take.

When it comes to magic, I am more apt to rely on my own abilities than to work a spell or intervene with the might of spirits who may ask a price I’d rather not pay. They don’t usually work for free you know. On the other hand, the older I grow, the bolder I be. That may come from writing medieval novels about witches who keep giving me visions of spell work I didn’t know before. It may also stem from the realization that I might as well do it now, because tomorrow is not promised.

Consequently, this first Moon Books blog post focuses on using magic. Be aware. Magic is done in balance as far as I can tell. If you move a storm cloud here, it pushes the weather fronts around. While you may have a sunny day for your picnic, you rained on someone else’s parade. You should care about things like that because we are all One in ways you might not yet imagine.

So here I am, a senior witch, author of Identity and the Quartered Circle (how to be an adept witch part 1) and editor of Sacred Sex and Magic. Moon books essay collections feature several other short pieces, and I have fiction out there from other publishers about medieval witches. All of it is preparatory to success with magic.  As a bonus, the grandmother in my medieval novels has a grimoire from her grandmother. There is a bit of channeling in writing about that book!

In Sacred Sex and Magic, I defined magic as intentional acts taken with interested spirits, acted out and voiced aloud. Magic involves rituals or spells, two different things. More than any of that, magic requires energy: yours, mine and theirs (the spirits). My group, the Brookside Witches, created a magic spell on Lammas in August which I will use as an example of how energy flows.

First, we found symbols for the desires of our hearts for the harvest season and set them together on the altar. We added a candle because, hey. You always light a candle.  We added the power of the moment to our established grounding, drew earth energy to the altar and added celestial energy from above. Understand celestial energy as Sun, Moon, and Stars—one or any combination appropriate to the season, day, and zodiac. To work magic with these powers I have developed a personal relationship with the earth Goddess (for grounding) and the Goddesses or Gods of Sun, Moon, planets, signs of the Zodiac or specific stars if I call in star power. Sound understanding of the science associated with those bodies can assist people who work without deities. In other words, we might call in the force of gravity instead of the Earth Goddess; call in the moon in its phases instead of the Moon Goddess. We need to include astronomy in our education to call in planets and stars for a corresponding energy we add to a spell that reaches further than sun and moon.  It is optional. I usually stick with the sun and moon unless I need warrior energy (Mars) or lover energy (Venus).

Once we added the chosen energies to the altar we spoke aloud our desires represented in the items on the altar. We spoke carefully from the heart making sure our words conform to our intention. The spirits can be very literal. We envisioned the objects and altar glowing with the Gods (or powers of nature). That may or may not be visible to people in the circle. Doesn’t matter.

To strengthen the connection between witch, spell and object we added, one at a time, energy from the earth and sky running three ways through our bodies: first from the third eye (intellect), the heart (emotion) and solar plexus (will). You may recognize that intellect-emotion-will trichotomy from Plato’s description of the eternal soul. He gets credit for being first with that description because it was recorded, but I bet he wasn’t. Anyway, his is a useful way to consider who we are and how we can work our magic. We involve our thinking, feeling and wanting. Using that we make the wishes/spell into something powerful and creative and then release it to the Goddess (or Powers).

We did that by imagining or seeing a laser of indigo light coming from our third eyes to the altar. We held that image letting the mind travel the beam of light and charge one or all of the objects there with indigo vibrations. We let the light return to our brows to make a triangle of energy with tight angles going out, infusing and returning to its source in our third eye but on a different path to make a triangle. Because we were working together, including the others’ desires was a generous and loving act. Then we added a pink laser light from the heart to the altar in the same way. Finally, we added a yellow laser light from the stomach above the diaphragm, the place of manifestation of our will. Each of these lights infused the altar symbols and returned to our bodies and then back and forth in the narrow triangles from each of us for the duration of the spell working. We let that energy run as long as it would. When it faded, we released our individual components into the earth and sky from whence they came and sat back to evaluate the experience. We shared as we wished and said together “Let it be so.”

That is one way to blend energy in creating a spell. Had we wished to use a cone of power we could have directed those energies together at the end, swirled them deosil and whooshed them off to the stratosphere or higher, and let them fall back to earth in the correct places to manifest the working. That is a second way to direct the energy. We would still ground everything when we were done.

The third blending involves a braid. With the three levels of intellect, emotion and will, we collect the three colors of energy strands and plait them as we would hair. If you are not good at braiding, practice with physical ribbons before you use energy strands. You don’t want to knot them up and make a mess of it. In fact, we make witches ladders at Beltane and other times with colored ribbons braided and decorated with flowers or jewels. That is good practice before trying to imaginatively braid strands of colored light. You need strong concentration free of distraction and very clear vision. You may need to talk yourself through it. It’s easy to get confused. Don’t. Keep it straight in your mind. I have never tried to talk a group through that. Meanwhile keep the nature of your spell clear in your mind. Obviously all this requires dependable mental discipline. Practice, practice, practice.

If you use braided energy, keep going until the braiding reaches all the way from your body to the altar, wrap the braided energy around the symbols and charge the objects with the power of mind heart and will. Send very strong descriptions of the exact outcome you desire.  Hold that swirling braided energy between yourself and the altar for as long as you can without weakening yourself. Your own physical energy should be constantly recharged by earth and sky. At the end you can dissipate the energy and let the braid fade.

This energy work may be a different kind of spelling than you usually do. There are many ways to visualize a spell and its outcome. If they are to work predictably the magician needs to be firmly in control of their focused intent. A disciplined mind is a prerequisite. At this point it should be obvious that recipe spells which simply provide ingredients and not instructions about the energy that accompanies the spell can be like mixing the cake but not cooking it. See what that next step can do for you, working responsibly and for good.

Dorothy Abrams, known as Anemone Webweaver in the magickal community has practiced and taught Witchcraft, paganism, and core shamanism since 1984. Co-founder of the Web PATH Center, a pagan church and teaching center near her home in Clyde, New York USA, Dorothy has served as priestess and teacher weaving the Web of community among local pagans as they celebrate the solar and lunar sabbats. Material for Identity and the Quartered Circle and her other non-fiction titles on pagan thought and practice are complied from her original seminar materials in eclectic Wicca I-IV, healing, tarot and shamanic intensives. The Wiccan seminars guide students from the introductory level through initiations as healer, storyteller and sage. The shamanic intensives guide students through the practice of drum trance journeys all the way to soul retrievals. With her partner Merlin and other members of the Web PATH she practices Reiki and chakra healing. She taught an introductory course on A-mazing Tarot at the local community college.

For more details: https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/moon-books/authors/dorothy-abrams