At the start of spring, I was feeling generally horrible. I was constantly exhausted, but sleeping badly, with little energy during the day. I was bloated. I found my willpower was at a low ebb as well, and I was eating shit (shame on my hypocritical self) and not getting much of anything done. Everything felt sort of sideways in my life. And while my immediate family relationships were going fine, the general malaise was starting to affect that as well.
I couldn’t write it off to seasonal effects as my favorite season was in full bloom outside (my low energy season is usually Jan/Feb). And there was no recent change, shock, event, or trauma that could explain it — there was no visible external cause. At some point, it occurred to me that I was crossed, and crossed big time. Note, crossed doesn’t equal cursed. Cursed is someone actively working against you. Crossed is more general, meaning that you are in the way of some bad energy or thoughts or that your own energy and thoughts are working against you. If you’re cursed, it’s a really good idea to figure out who’s got it in for you and deal with them. Crossed however can be handled through general magical housekeeping.
Of course the trouble with feeling like this is that you don’t really have much energy to fix things. It’s a vicious catch-22. In order to feel better you have to: clean up your house magically and mundanely, buy good food and eat it, go for a walk, get some laundry done. But whatever it is, you don’t do it, because you don’t feel better — you feel terrible. I’ve actually got a whole post planned on energy magic, because one of the smartest thing you can do to improve just about anything in your life is increase your energy levels. But that magic is proactive (building energy) rather than reactive.
Now, I’m typically a very DIY kind of person. This isn’t a brag. It’s not always a good thing to decide you can figure everything out for yourself. I’ve had plenty of failures caused by my unwillingness to just follow the exact recipe or a pattern for things like baking or knitting. Of course, I learn a lot from those failures as well and it’s made me a better baker and knitter. And every time things go sideways in project management is a chance to learn and improve. In real life recipes only take you so far and beyond that you just kind of have to wing it, relying on experience to get you through. Still, there are probably better ways to learn.
It’s the same with magic. I like to make my own supplies (I’ve even made witchcraft soap, like from fat and lye and activated charcoal), craft my own spells, write my own rituals, and create my own prayers. When I use elements from other places, they are usually older or based on older things (Carmina Gadelica, Ho Ophis, Enheduanna, selection from the Romantic Poets). But in this case, I was feeling too mired down and exhausted to come up with much of anything useful. So I decided to look to an alternate source for some help.
Which brings us to the Book Review. I immediately purchased Protection & Reversal Magic by Jason Miller of the excellent Inominandum blog. When I say immediately, I mean that. While I typically prefer paper, I got the book for the Kindle, so that I could get started right away.
I like Jason’s stuff A LOT. I like his blog posts and I like his Financial Sorcery book. I’ve even considered taking his course (though I’m not a beginner, I feel like you should never stop learning and refreshing). Not only does his focus really work for me, his ritual is spot on with my particular practice. There’s no feeling that I have to adjust things to make them work for my approach.
So a big thank you to Jason for his excellent book, which is practical and level headed, but also very liminal and powerful. It definitely kick-started my magical engine. I’m usually an advocate for proactive magic, rather than reactive. I like working and planning longer term and trying to weave aspect of my magic throughout my every day life. But this feeling had been creeping up on me for some time without me realizing it, so by the time I set myself to deal with it, I needed to deal with it right away.
I performed Jason’s Sphere of Hekas ritual from the book and then got to work. It was an explosion of cleansing, cleaning, consecrating, blessing, banishing, and so on. As part of the work, I blended a 9x uncrossing oil (a recipe of my own) and blessed it with the chant from The Mirror Cage working in the book (see, I always have to tweak the recipe).
Once I had cleaned up my act, so to speak, things were much better. I have to say the oil was particularly effective. I used it on lintels and door charms as well as carried on my person. It’s really powerful and I will definitely be using this recipe again.
I’m traveling this week and hope to catch up on my writing during the long hours it takes to go halfway around the globe.
