BELLS IN WITCHCRAFT

🔔 BELLS IN WITCHCRAFT 🔔

Bells might just be the earliest form of superstitious practise that I remember. My baba attached three sakura-patterned suzu bells on my schoolbag as a kid, purportedly for good luck and protection from evil spirits – and Japan is far from the only place to have associated bells and bellringing with mystic practise. They’ve been used worldwide to ward off evil and carry messages – and in a more metaphysical sense, sound is the movement of energy through substance. Sounds have the potential to work powerful magic.

Here are some of the ways I’ve found utilising bells to be helpful to my craft. While I’m more likely to use traditional suzu type bells, your own background, path and culture will likely have its own types of bells – and as ever, bells can be ornate antiques or they can be a bottle cap in a tin can, as long as they’re used with intent.

GETTING STARTED

🔔 As with so much of the craft, if you’re new to the witching bell, it’s a matter of exploration and experimentation. Get a “feel” for what works for you and the specific bell you’re using.

🔔 It’s good practise to ensure that the bell itself is cleansed, warded and protected – you don’t want anything nasty tapping into that power. All witching tools can do as much harm as good, intentional or accidental.

🔔 A good way to begin incorporating bells into your craft is infuse them into any typical ritual that you’re comfortable with, or even just a prayer or moment of contemplation at your altar if you have one.

🔔 Give the bell a soft ring while focusing on the energy it’ll ripple and move, try to track the movements it creates and what it touches. The tone it’s sending out.  The most primal and versatile use of the bell – and what many of the below come down to – is simply another manner of physically channelling energy, giving it shape and direction.

PROTECTION

🔔 “Passive” bells such as windchimes or small bells attached to belongings you don’t want disturbed are a starting point. They will scare off some forms of spirit all by themselves, especially if appropriately blessed, charmed or enchanted. Or cursed.

🔔 Gently tolling can draw energy into a ward or circle you are forming and enforce its protective properties, or for a simple cleanse, letting the sound travel to every corner of the area you are protecting. It’s a little more “cutting” than a smoke or incense cleansing, which I view as more “gentle” forms of cleansing. Both have their uses.

🔔 Harder tolling is, in my opinion, one of the most powerful ways in which to enforce a banishing – however, it’s best to you know what you’re doing with the bell before you go bashing it about.

DISCERNMENT

🔔 Bells can have quite the effect on your perception and awareness. Ringing and then stopping, listening to the silence left in its wake, can bring you new perceptions or make things you’d previously missed obvious. Let it attune your mind and senses to something new, whether that’s in your thoughts or something with a little more presence. Visualise travelling with the sound, taking heed of the energies it touches and disturbs. Take note of the echoes – you’ll learn what they mean with experience.

🔔 A set of windchimes can let you know if something is passing through or if there’s some unusual energy afoot – and, yes, it may also just be letting you know that it’s a particularly breezy day, but that’s witchcraft for you.

CONJURING

🔔 This can be as simple as calling good energies to witching tools, spell jars, tarot decks, crystals, altars and shrines, your favourite teddy bar, anything at all.

🔔 With spirit work, it can truly help to magnify your “calling”. This can range from gently bringing your latest offering to the attention of your friendly neighbourhood house spirit – all the way to trying to catch the attention of something more. Be mindful, however. As I said, I consider bells pretty powerful tools and a call that’s too loud is not good spirit work practise for the spirit worker’s own sake. It can really help coax something out of hiding if you’re gentle with it, though.

COMMUNING

🔔 Some use bells to mark the beginning and end of a ritual, and I’ve read that in Wiccan practise an altar bell can be used to invoke the Goddess, although as a non-Wiccan, I’ll welcome corrections on that if I’m wrong.

🔔 In my experience, very simple forms of communication via bell work a lot better than anything too complex – “come here” and “stay away” have already been covered, and other than that they can serve as greetings or signals of a start or end of some practise or ritual, the opening or closing of a door, etc.

🔔 They can also serve as a warning or a litmus test regarding spirits, a signalling of your presence and awareness, lack of fear, or willingness to defend – but be prepared to deal with whatever responses these garner.

BINDING

🔔 Bindings are where you most often see that famous (clockwise) circular motion of the bell, embodying the meaning of the spell. This can be a simple binding to seal a spell or charm or enchantment, or a spirit-binding.

🔔 Personally, spirit-binding is something I do as little as possible simply due to my beliefs holding the autonomy of spirits in very high regard. However, sometimes situations arise that call for it, and I’m aware that not all bindings are unwilling. Far from it – and some spirits are dangerous when unbound.

🔔 As an animist (believing that all things, including inanimate objects, contain a spirit of their own), I consider gently nudging a spirit back into its physical form a sort of semi-binding, and that can be useful.

I’ll leave you all with a note that I am an urban apartment-dwelling witch through and through, so I understand that we can’t all be jangling away at all hours. I myself have a glass windchime in my front window that makes a distinct but muted sound when disturbed by passers-through, and highly recommend wooden ones also. I also only use my small and relatively quiet suzu bell for my crafting – one given to me by my baba herself.

Feel free to add any of your own findings, and happy tolling.

Common Spell Items

Here’s a collection of items you can easily find outside and their correspondences/associations

Grass:  Psychic powers, protection, growth, nature, learning, healing, new beginnings, recovery from loss Pine needles:  Cleansing, healing and strengthening. It also acts as a natural insect repellent Pine cones: Masculinity, fertility Maple Leaves: Feminine, moon magic, travel, learning, dealing with change, decision making, spiritual healing Pennies: Luck, wealth Dandelions: Divination, wishes, calling spirits Dandelion leaves:  Summoning spirits, healing, purification, defeating negativity Red/purple wild clover:  Fidelity, love, money, protection, the blessing of domestic animals White wild clover: Breaking curses Two leaf clover: Love, luck Three leaf clover: protection, luck Four leaf clover: Protection, psychic powers, spirit work, luck, success Oak leaf:  Truth, steadfast knowledge, protection Acorn:  Good luck, protection, wisdom, and personal power Walnut: Healing and protection

Feel free to add any more! 

Best way to banish a spirit: Throwing salt while yelling “does this look like a goddamn hotel to you?!”

friendly witchcraft reminder that

- intrusive thoughts won’t affect your magic or draw bad things into your life because there’s no intent behind them

- your deities are smart enough to know that you don’t mean your intrusive thoughts and to therefore not act on them or be offended by them

- if you have anxiety, then anxiety when you do magic isn’t your intuition telling you that something’s wrong. It’s just a symptom of your mental illness and it doesn’t mean anything.

Eggshell Protection Powder for home

(This is the process that works for me, practices and traditions vary)

1: Save old eggshells. In this batch I used approximately 10 eggs. If you choose, use a number of eggs which could be magically or energetically significant. Wash eggshells in hot water and set aside to dry. Some people will take the extra step to peel the inner membrane off in order to get a finer powered, but I didn’t mind if it was chunkier.

2: Bake eggshells for 10 min at 250 degrees. Watch them closely, don’t let them burn! Allow time to cool.

3: To pulverize the shells: A clean coffee/herb grinder will work, but I prefer my pestle and mortar in order to work my intentions in kinetically. -I do a lot of spirit work so I also added protective/purifying herbs including himalayan salt, pepper, red pepper, and angelica root. As I set my intentions during grinding, I left a ‘door’ for the specific spirits which are my primary contacts so as not to inadvertently wall them out.

4: Transfer powder to clean, air tight storage. - Use a small funnel and a reused salt or small herb jar and gently transfer powder. Pour in batches in order not to accidentally over spill. I made more powder then this jar could hold so I ended up transferring to a larger one.

5: Use After smoke and bell cleansing the house, I sprinkled the powder around the perimeter of the property and along all door and windowsills.

There ya have it! Layer your protections with other techniques such as sigils, energy shields, salt rings or protective entities and enjoy an energetically safe home!

When making sigils

don’t use future tense. 

Instead of “I will be successful” write down “I am successful”.

The future tense only means that your goal will never come to you, because it’s stuck in the future forever and there is no point in time when it should come true. Unless you write “I will be successful when I am thirty” the future will never come, because you have no fixed point in time. 

If you write it in future tense you’re basically saying “nah, no big deal, this has time…” and your subconsciousness will postpone it forever. If you say that you are something there is not other option but to fulfill your wish and work towards it. Your sigils are stronger that way.