Monday 15 October 2018

The Art and Secrets of Practicing Magic.

"Magic is as old as the universe and so are you." That´s what our grandma said to my siblings and me when we started learning about spells, rituals and magic.  

Basically: performing magic is the ability to manipulate and shift our energy to summon a favourable "spiritual environment" for whatever you need; attract love, improve health or curse someone. 

We wanted to wear luxurious tunics with intricate magical symbols on them; cast sacred circles with our athames (ritual knives with a double edge) and the consecrated candles; wear the quartz and selenite amulets; pronounce the incantations of the book of shadows; and purify our mind and bodies with the fennel potion and the smoke of cleansing herbs like sage or eucalyptus.  

Magic Circle by John William Waterhouse
But true magic is not about any of that. Many rituals and incantations might include these or a large variety of other objects or tools. But real magic is all about energy.
Our grandma taught us that the most important thing any witch needs to learn is the ability to align your own personal energy with the natural energies of the universe.

The first thing you should understand is that witches believe that absolutely everything is connected. Therefor the creative energy of the universe is also a natural part of us.

The main tool we use to do magic is our own will power. But just that won´t do.
Visualizing, wishing and concentrating your will power are important. Just as important as being one with the creative energy of the universe in what I call "the magic state".

In order to enter the magic state we need to overcome our three main human "limitations" that separate us from this powerful energy and successful magic.

We will need to forget the idea of time. Since seconds and minutes, or concepts such as the future and the past are all human inventions. In the world of magic and energies time doesn´t exist and all possibilities coexist in the present.
Your consciousness needs to be fully present in the here and now. 

We will also need to forget about the "physical world". For us, mortal beings, disconnecting from everything physical is extremely hard. We are constantly feeling and thinking about our surroundings and are victims of our senses. But we need to understand that in the energetic realm nothing is impossible the material affects the intangible and so it works the other way around. 

Last but not least, we need to surpass the idea each individual has about themselves. Namely our ego. We need to get rid of all the concepts and beliefs we hold about ourselves; our feeling of belonging to a group, our occupation and ideals. Because in the energetic and magical level we are nothing and we are everything at the same time. So we need to, momentarily, abandon our reduced human life and truly be one with the universe.  

In our coven we accomplished this with meditation and the raw contact with nature. But other things can trigger the magical state too. 

I´m not going to lie, it feels amazing to enter this mode and the first times I did I wanted to stay in it forever. You feel more centred, somehow more alive. Intensely present and happy. More than happy I think I´d say peaceful. You feel a great serenity that rises through your body and somehow you know that everything is as it should be and you also feel an amazing power.     

Saturday 31 March 2018

Story Time: That time I Got Attacked by a Ghost.

Do you believe in ghosts and spirits?

When I was little I used to dream, recurrently, that spirits visited my bedroom at night. They would carry my bed around the house. It felt like an amusement park I actually enjoyed it. 

Portrait of a Weary Ghost, by M. Tumulty
These supernatural dreams just stopped one day. And I must confess I sort of missed them. That is until last summer when the events of the story I'm about to tell you occurred:

It seemed like a totally uneventful day, but for some reason, I felt weird right when I was about to go to sleep. So I decided to sleep upside down. By that, I mean that I took my pillow to the other side of the bed. Why did I do that? I don't know. What I do know is that it didn't help, it felt even weirder. 

Anyway, I fell asleep. I'm usually a pretty heavy sleeper so waking up in the middle of the night was strange enough but the first scary thing was that, though my eyes were open, I couldn't move at all. Not even a little. 

I tried not to panic and looked around the room. It was definitely my room. It was not a dream. Yet, I couldn't move. 
My paralysis wasn't the only thing I had to worry about. I could sense a presence. Something invisible, a strange force was there in the room with me. I kept trying to move, to run, but it was in vain. The strange presence grew stronger as if fed by my fear and then it touched me. 

I felt a pressure on my legs. Whatever that thing was it was grabbing me with ease. I was defenseless but I desperately tried to shake the ghost off of my leg. Indeed, all for nothing. I wasn't able to move! It didn't take me long to realize that that strategy wasn't going to work. If I was dealing with an ethereal being, fighting using physical strength was not going to work anyways. So I used my mind instead. I concentrated all my mental energy on getting rid of that thing. I was scared but I also liked the fact that in an extreme situation, like this one,  instead of panicking and crying I confronted the danger and was determined to win. Somehow I freed myself but I was immobile still.  

The presence struck back more violently. It grabbed me by the waist. The thing took me higher and higher into the air. I wanted to scream, in my mind, it was so loud but no-one heard a thing. I don't know how or why but I fell back down to my bed and I regained the ability to move. I ran to my desk, opened the drawer where I keep my crystals and positioned a few in a circle around my bed. I also took my rose quartz pendant and put it on. Then I went back to sleep, ready to defend myself from any ghost, spirit or demon. It had chosen the wrong victim! 

Everything went back to normal after that, no more attacks, no more immobility, nothing. Next morning I thought for a second that it was all just a dream, but I was wearing my pendant and the protective crystals laid circling my bed. 

Nothing like it has happened ever since. Was it an evil spirit? Was it a hallusination produced by what is known as dream paralisis?