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Cleansing Before Spellwork

This post is part of a series of animistic, spirit-oriented spellcasting for beginners. Go to the masterpost to see them all.

I'm one of those people that likes to cleanse my spell components before spellwork - sometimes, depending on the circumstances.

Let's take a quick look (lmao, can you imagine if I could say a point quickly?) at cleansing before spells, when it's useful, and when it's not.

Once again friends, this post is about the specific ways I like to work practical magic, as part of a series attempting to teach a specific way of doing practical magic - this post is not "standard" on any level.

Cleanse to open doors and clear the way for magic and spirits to dwell in the materials.

Your friend is going to fly into town help you with an important project for the next week. You greet them, give them a snack, and show them to the guest bedroom.

The guest bedroom is cluttered full of old junk that ended up getting pushed in there. It's totally uncomfortable for your guest. They can't dwell in there while the room is in that state. So your friend spends all night pushing stuff out and cleaning it just to the point where they can comfortably reside in that space.

Now, they've spent a lot of energy that should have gone to helping you with your project. They leave early and the project was not completed.

Scene change: Now you're a gardener getting ready to seed a plot with wildflowers. The soil is full of large stones. You sprinkle the wildflower seeds everywhere. But the wildflowers have no ability to push away the stones. Instead, the stones reduce the capacity of the plot by 50%. Many wildflowers still sprout and grow, and live out their full and natural lives, but as the gardener you still got half the results you wanted.

Cleanse to restore the natural vessels of spirits before calling them back into it.

A stream has become polluted. It's clogged with garbage. A group of people want to honor and work with the stream spirit - but it's well known that this spirit has withdrawn. It pains the spirit to indwell in a polluted stream, and it is tired of how its body has been disrespected by humans, so it has "left" - perhaps it is hibernating, or withdrawn deep into the spirit world.

The group of people don't clean any of the garbage up. They perform a ritual to call the spirit back. They are surprised when the spirit barely arrives, and is frustrated with them to boot.

Commercially mined stones and farm-harvested plants are not automatically going to have awakened spirits actively dwelling inside of them. Commercial products almost always need to have the spirit called back into them, if their help is desired.

And doing so without gently cleansing their vessel and bringing respect to their doorstep sucks for the spirit.

No need to go scorched earth on your materials, though - that's probably going to make things worse.

I delight in a beautiful bath scented with flowers, luxurious oils resplendent on my skin.

I do not delight in being scrubbed with lye and sprayed down with a high-pressure hose. Such an act is liable to make me hibernate or withdraw (maybe absent spirits are just disassociating... random thought of the day).

It is sometimes said that cleansing spell objects strips them of their power - I find this to be true if you over-do it. This seems to be true in both animist and secular models: either the harsh cleansing is painful to the spirit and they withdraw, or you're wiping away all the energy you've charged into the item.

It's also a waste of time if you don't need to, you know what I'm saying?

Even in the animist model, objects can absolutely be charged with a lot of energy that doesn't come from the spirit within. So if you've found a very special stone or something and you want to use its energies in a spell, cleansing probably isn't necessary at all - the object is ALREADY filled with the kind of power you want, so cleansing it to prepare to call in more power is pointless.

But not every act of magic is about gathering a bunch of ingredients and chanting inside a magic circle. I'm not cleansing my morning coffee before I put a "please Holy Lord let me survive my work meeting" spell into it. The Horned Master himself could be like "windvexer, that's going to work better if you cleanse that coffee first," and I still wouldn't do it.

It's coffee. It'll be fine.

Also, in the interest of diversity: I'm pretty sure a minority of witches cleanse all their shit before spellcasting, and the ones who don't are doing just fine.

But if you're not already cleansing your stuff, and you're having trouble getting reliable manifestations, maybe give it a go and see if it helps!

What about cleansing yourself or your space?

I mean yeah. Both decent ideas for sure. But I find them to be less important than cleansing the material components.

I typically cleanse my space the same way I cleanse my materials - which is a very quick method I'll be posting as part of this series.

But I only really do so because turning on my psychic senses makes me more aware of the energies of my space, and I've already got the cleansing components activated and ready. So it's more of a "why not, I'm already here," thing. And it takes me about five seconds, it's not an in-depth thing.

If I were for some reason going out to do a spell in a really low vibes area, or if I was doing a really important and serious ritual, sure, I'd make a point of really cleansing that space. But I think most of us don't really need to.

As for cleansing myself - nope. I don't have the energy or inclination to do so. I only bother with such things when I'm doing a very serious, intense ritual, perhaps one I've prepared for over several weeks. I mean I wash my hands before I cook a meal, but the spaghetti isn't going to suffer if I don't take a shower first.

This post is part of a series of animistic, spirit-oriented spellcasting for beginners. Go to the masterpost to see them all.

Raising Power: An Intro Into Powering Your Spells

This post is part of a series of animistic, spirit-oriented spellcasting for beginners. Go to the masterpost to see them all.

I'm having a fun time thinking of a new way to say the same disclaimer for what is now my 13th post in this series: I'm attempting to present one way of working with practical magic. This way is not universal. It's not even particularly helpful for many. If you are already pleased with your magical success, I am not trying to invalidate you by telling you to start doing stuff in a much more formal, ritualistic way. Rather, this series is for people who aren't happy with where they're at and want to try new stuff to troubleshoot their success.

I'm worried that in most of this post my tone is a little more "this is definitely the right way to do things" than my other posts in this series. While I always strive to state and restate that this is really only one way of doing magic, sadly I can't afford to hire a copy editor. Just please be aware that for the whole post I really only am talking about the style of spellcraft described in the overall series.

This post is I think the longest out of any of them, almost all of it is under the cut :)

Yes. Let's get to it.

Stuff needs power to go.

Car needs gas. Lightbulb needs electricity. Spell needs energy.

If you have a car without gas, you'll still have a car. The lights might even turn on and the engine will try to turn over - it's just not going to go, you know?

I have a lightbulb in the lamp. I still have it; it's just not doing anything. If I turn on the flow of electricity, it's going to do it's job - until I turn the flow off again (or it burns out; it happens).

I very commonly see spells that explain how to set up a magical machine, but fail to explain how to actually power it.

"Just leave it in the sun!"

If the sun automatically charged everything in its light with magical power, why aren't my lawn ornaments incredibly powerful sources of magical energy?

"Leave it in the sun with intent!"

Yes, now we're getting somewhere! But this is charging or recharging outside of actual spellwork - taking something out into the sunlight once you're done with a spell really isn't the same thing as raising and directing energy during the course of a spell.

And, okay, once again, this is just my belief system that I believe in because it's how stuff works for me:

But if no energy was raised during the actual creation of the enchantment, how do you know that the spell actually exists? I mean an enchantment has to exist before you can charge it, according to my linear understanding of time.

"All you need to do is speak or think your intent, and your enchantment is complete."

Well, that's true. I have been practicing magic for a little while now, and I know how to access my personal power, and raise and direct it only through my words. This is a fair bit more tiring for me because it directly drains my personal energy into the spell's battery, so to speak.

But in order for this process to be really successful, I still have to access and raise my personal power.

Consider the differences in these two approaches:

I hold a rose quartz ring and say, "this ring glamours me to look beautiful," with the same state of mind as ordering from Taco Bell. I say it with a ton of intent - I mean I really mean what I say - and that's that.

I hold a rose quartz ring and drop into my magical state of mind that connects me to my personal power. I scoop a ladle of golden energy out of myself, and pour it through the crystalized intent of my words - "this ring glamours me to look beautiful." My words are a hollow structure with specific form, and as I speak them I pour the nectar of my power into them, filling them up as molten metal fills a mold. My intent had structure, but now it is set, permanently - my power has made my words real; my words have given structure to my power. And that's that.

When I do the former, there is still some enchantment. I truly believe that words spoken by humans have incredible power. Truly, just by speaking "this ring glamours me," I have already done an act of magic. It is not psychological - as my word, so shall it be. Not, as my power.

Yet I find that when words are spoken without being filled with power, they are like molds made of sand. Yes, there is structure there for now - yes, you can fill it with power. But if you are not careful, and do not quickly empower the enchantment, the sand will crumble under the pressure of astral winds, and little of the original will be left.

But I kind of feel that raising a lot of power during the initial casting is way more important than raising little/no power and just charging it later.

Let's switch metaphors away from molten metal and sandy molds.

Let’s imagine something a lot more mystical.

Suppose your intent is pencil drawing. During your act of magic, you are literally raising your two-dimensional drawing off the paper and turning it into a living, animated, three-dimensional form.

Once the spell is done, the three-dimensional form is set. Yes, you can go back to your spellspace and modify it later, but unless you do that, the spell is what it is.

The amount of power you raise during the initial casting of the spell is how much of your two-dimensional drawing actually gets converted into its animated, 3D form.

Let's say I cast a spell for *spins wheel*... opening doorways to learn more about witchcraft. My pencil drawing might be books about witchcraft and a teacher willing to mentor me.

If I raise only a little power, maybe only the books pop out of the page and become real. They're small and don't take much energy to raise up, after all. If that's all the power I put in the spell, that's what the spell is going to do for me - it's going to bring interesting and helpful books to my attention. When I recharge the spell later on, it's still just an "interesting books, come hither!" spell. Recharging is not the same as going back to reforge and expand the capacity of the spell.

If I raise a little more power, maybe the head and shoulders of the teacher pop up along with the books. Now, I will not only get lots of books coming my way, but also knowledgeable people start talking to me to give me tips. If I recharge the spell, it's still going to be a "interesting books and helpful advice" spell. Because what the spell is now, and what it does when I recharge it, was set during the initial casting.

What about the initial intent? The initial intent doesn't matter once you actually create something and set it loose.

The initial intent will influence the spell during it's creation.

But if you lacked the resources, energy, etc., to call that intent fully into being during the initial casting, then it's like drawing up the plans for a Ferrari, only having the energy to build the frame, and asking why the battery isn't powering the interior lights. There are no interior lights. There is no interior. You never built it. Putting gas into an engine on a frame can't power features that you never had the energy to build.

I hear you barking big dog - What about people who are really bad at raising energy and have difficulty casting huge whopper spells?

This is why I'm a huge advocate of limited, focused spell intents.

Guess who can't pull of amazing feats of expansive power and build a Ferrari all in one setting?

Remember our spell intent to "open doorways to learn more about witchcraft"? And how some of that energy went to pulling in books, and only after that, the rest of the energy started going towards a teacher?

Well as it turned out, what I really wanted was the teacher. I just had a spell focus too general, and some of that energy went to other places.

If I recast the spell to only say, "connect me with a teacher who will help me improve my craft," the books aren't sucking up my energy any more. And yeah, maybe I can't manifest the whole teacher in a perfect way, but I can at least this manifestation is going way further. At the very least I can pull him out of the page down to like, his knees.

You can also do stuff like, cast one spell to banish blockages, so that your "addition" spell cast next week (when you've had a chance to recharge a bit) has way less resistance, so that energy goes even further.

Or, you can basically keep spells "under construction" (ideally on altar, but we all do what we gotta do) for an extended period of time, returning to work on it and slowly empower it for a period of time before sealing it ("so mote it be," etc.).

And, what the whole point of this whole dang series is about - you can just pay spirits and powers to donate their energy to fill up your spell and really make it pop off the page.

How do you access your personal energy, or tap into external power sources?

Okay! Yes! THIS IS WHAT ALL THOSE SUPER IRRITATING PSYCHIC/MAGICAL EXERCISES ARE FOR!

Have you ever seen someone say, "how can I get started with spells?" and someone else is like "why not try meditating and making energy balls?"

And you were like "how? How does that help? What does that have to do with anything??"

As it turns out, they really help a lot! There's just usually a huge disconnect between explaining techniques that teach accessing and manipulating power, and spellcasting.

So let's plug 'em in together :)

Now y'all might be a bit frustrated because this post is not the place to step out detailed descriptions of various exercises. I'm just going to put some general categories here to provide search terms and such.

Breathing, meditation, visualizing, and altered states of consciousness

Accessing your personal power is something you're going to have to figure out for yourself. Generally, most people find success through breathing techniques, meditative exercises, or any method which provides an altered state of consciousness (ASC).

Entering into an ASC on its own is not likely to automatically connect you with your personal power.

Rather, it can help give you the space to explore yourself, outside of everyday concerns, so you can find the power within.

Visualization is therefore often used to guide yourself through altered states until you find what you're looking for.

Examples include using breathing techniques to reach ASC, then using visualization to develop a connection to your inner power. For example, if I continuously use a visualization that my inner power is located at a very specific lake in my mindscape, that lake will eventually legitimately become connected to my inner source of power.

You could also pathwork to your source of inner power, or use ASC to speak to guiding spirits who explain to you how to access it.

You can experiment with energy body techniques to see if your personal energy is primarily located at a certain point (many people store their energy in their spines, hearts, or solar plexus, for example).

You can also get yourself very worked up into a certain emotional state and drain out that emotional energy to power a spell (useful if you want to be emotionally drained).

I found my inner source of power by fucking around until I figured it out. One day I was trying to send messages out to spirits, but I could intuitively tell they didn't work. Then I figured out if I visualized my inner voice as a certain color, it suddenly... just started working. That was the first building block. Later on, I "spoke" words not from my throat, but from a different place within. That worked even better. Just by a process of experimentation, I discovered how to speak with power, and that led me back to my source of power.

Although practice to reach ASC and/or discovering how to tap your inner power may be frustrating at first, and be time-consuming each time you do it, that practice stacks up. I can slide in and out of my magical awareness now very quickly, not because I am a talented natural witch (HAH), but because I've spend such a long time practicing that it's become easy for me.

Straight up energy work exercises

Practice taking energy from one thing and using it to power another thing, like how this post describes.

Practice energy exercises where you root into the ground and draw power up into yourself.

Practice energy exercises where you call your excess energy back from wherever you left it and into your body.

Practice those elemental energy balls!

Now I want to make a wee note here. I don't practice "energy work" when I cast spells. When I cast a spell I do it Ye Olde Wytche style, with candles and herbs and chanting and stuff. I do not sit down and specifically visualize and direct balls or tendrils of energy myself as one does with energy work techniques. However, because I have a background in energy work, I know how it feels when energy is moving. I can feel the difference between when I'm working with energy, or working with nothing. Because I've sat down and made energy tethers between lots of things, I know what it feels like when an object is properly tied to an energy source that powers it.

You don't need to specifically do energy work to cast spells. But if you are struggling to understand what it feels like to raise, manipulate, and program energy, then energy workers have you covered! They have like a million exercises that's just practice, practice, practice of working with energy.

Just ask. That's what this whole series is about.

Here's a fucked up lil trick that's basically cheating, it's so goddamn easy. It's so wild. You don't have to feel energies or enter ASC or tap into your personal power or any of that shit. It's the best. It goes like this:

*Gather some kitchen basil in a little dish* *Gentle incense cleansing going on* *Wash face and hands, prepare to meet important, special guest.* *Hold basil dish.*

"Basil, hi. My name is Fool Chicken. I've been reading about you and I've been told you're a really powerful, special plant with a lot of uses. I'm actually quite fucked in the finance department lately, if you know what I mean. There's no way I can pay all my bills this month and I need, need, need my phone for work. I'm asking you to please help me out and donate your energy to this money candle I'm making. I know such a spell would be trivial for you to accomplish; I've heard you can make mountains move if you choose to do so. I'm therefore asking you now to apply your great powers to my purpose, that my bills are taken care of this month, or at the very least my phone. As upfront payment to you, I'm dedicating this incense to you, and this glass of water. And once this spell has become manifest I will bring you whatever offering I am able to afford. I trust that in your hands my finances are safe. Thank you."

*Sprinkles basil in a little circle around cleansed, consecrated candle* *Light candle*

All that being said, talking to spirits like this now automatically sends me to ASC. But your mileage will vary ^-^

Like for example, maybe Basil isn't your BFF right now and doesn't want to hear your life story; maybe he's not going to be keen to sort out your needs and he's only going to help if you give him a clear, direct statement of intent: "Basil, I request your power unto this intent: My bills are taken care of this month. I thank you for undertaking this operation for me." *Lights candle* "Basil, as thanks for assisting me in this spell, I have these offerings for you:..."

Or maybe, you've not got the strongest spirit voice yet, and you need a couple extra little steps like casting a circle, or opening the roads, to help you. Or maybe your spells are only really thriving when you call on Hekate ahead of time, or pray to your ancestors first.

There's a lot of troubleshooting that sometimes needs to go down. But actually stopping to either personally raise power, or invoke spiritual powers, is going to go a long, long, long ways towards powering your spells.

Powering them to such an extent that you make yourself scared about the power of witchcraft ^-^

Sooo.... what you’re saying is that Regina did not practice dark magic, she practiced magic while untethered.  As she was not grounded within herself when the world bent back her self was too rigidly formed or unstable and unable to bend with or adjust to the force, resulting in her self or inner aspect breaking or unbalancing.  Meaning that the seen and ignored price of her learning magic was the slow erosion of her sense of who she was, even though it was so subtle a price that one may question whether any price was extracted at all.  Because instead of magic practitioners who are experienced with their sense of self being her tutors and guides to harnessing the natural ability her magic knowledge was shaped by an innate magical being who’s price is paid prior to magical use, like the fairy’s whose sense of self is completely congruent with the way magic would unbalance them from birth.  And now that Regina has more life experience and a better understanding of who she is, via life experiences including raising a child who she loves, she has more stability for magic to ‘push’ against.  Although this gets me wonder if it would be an economical or financial style of price where goods/services are gained for payment or a more ecological style of price where the state of world automatically corrects itself to maintain homeostasis.

Something that’s always bothered me whenever I encountered magic in any medium: the idea that all of a person’s magical power or ability is something they’re born with,...