Part of learning about making your own spells is to break down what a spell is and how it will work once it is activated. A spell is a metaphysical movement that is designed to change something in your everyday life, and this movement start's internally which then work's it way to the real world to take action. A spell is not turning yourself into a mythical creature or something out of folk-lore, this is not what magick is about. This article is my version of how to make, cast, and dispose of spells, you will find it effective if you apply each step and most importantly follow your intuition about what you feel is necessary while your working your own magick.
Understanding Energy & Visualization
Working with energy and understanding energy come's with practice, literally just by acknowledging the forces in our Universe your on your way on the up and up. The Universe consists of many types of energy a large portion of this energy is called "Dark Energy" which makes up nearly 70% of our known Universe. In middle school we are taught about the types of energy we interact with on a day to day bases such as kinetic, static, nuclear, thermal etc. We also know energy does not die but instead is transferred and is literally everywhere. Open yourself to these energies and how they work, part of getting your spell's working is knowing how to bring fourth the energies existing around us and incorparting that knowledge in your spell crafting.
Energy work is about learning to reach into these flows of energy, or learn to simply extract it without effort. The Earth you stand on is a source of energy, and she is a strong force with plenty of energy to go around. You don't have to be a master energy worker to get some juice in your spell's, you just have to be smart about it. One of the reason's i believe candle magick is the best course for a newbie is the whole idea of the candle itself. Visualize yourself for a second all excited about casting your very first spell, you may have it planned, you may not. In this case you are ready to work some magick, your holding your candle maybe reading your spell, and you are literally just bleeding excitement, focus, and energy into this poor candle. Just by holding the candle in your hand and mingling your intentions as you work will work but all the factor's have to play a part.
Energy can be grasped with the help of visualization, this is an important step, but more importantly you have to believe in what your doing, there is no room for doubt's. When i need energy my first step is to find silence, when that is covered i close my eye's while either standing straight up or sat down, i then close my eye's. Focus on the breathing, in and out, in and out. Clear your mind. Visualize yourself there in the darkness as the celestial mind of the Earth, you are the only star in this darkness. Keep them eye's closed and focus on that breathing. Now, visualize your own personal light reaching into the Earth much like root's, and allow yourself to visualize yourself drinking the energy from the Earth, it comes up through the legs, arms, torso, and head until it fill's your body. One lesson i really learned from Donald Michael Kraig's book Modern Magick is even if that orb/light your working with can not be seen using visualization it is still there, and you have to without a doubt believe that it is in fact there.
Energy work can be about touch as well, when you fill yourself up with energy for a spell/ritual you have to learn ways to ground and center yourself, and will go over a few ways to do that. Now what i mean by touch is by mingling with your candles/tool's for specific emotion's and intentions. All you do is push that into the candle, again we fall on visualization for this, this is when your over active imagination is really useful, i feel like people who dream well don't have many problems with visualization. Again even if you do not see it happening just know that it is because you feel that it is.
Grounding & Centering
Grounding and Centering is just giving the excess energy back to the Earth, we use this after spells and ill share my way for that process.
- After a spell i will cross my feet placing the right over the left.
- I will stretch my hand's high above my head and intertwine them together.
- Visualizing the energy i gathered from the Earth i will start pushing it down through the body, head to toe's.
- When the last bit of energy is depleted without giving it all, some of that i need myself obviously i will grab something healthy to munch on. Eating after a ritual/spell always helps me balance out completely.
Belief
To put this as easy to understand as i can, you need to believe in your work, you falter in your belief you falter your spells.
Tool's, Herb's, & Symbolism
I am not going to go over what types of tool's, herb's, and symbols you can use to add to your spell crafting. For starter's your the most important tool in this lifestyle, everything else is an added bonus. Tool's are simply an extension of our true metaphysical strength, they do help you do not get me wrong i am all about them, just don't be upset if you only have yourself to work with.
Herb's and plant's offer us more than just super cool medicinal properties you can whip up in the kitchen, they really do have magick properties. Part of knowing is learning about what types of aroma's, oil's, and energies mix well together. Take it easy though champ learn as you go this is not a race. When it comes to collecting herbs/plants that is the most free and witchy thing you can do, especially with todays technology identifying get's easier each year. Take a stroll through natures store when your in need, manifest what your looking for and be reasonable. What i mean is high expectations, don't try and manifest a apple tree over night in the front yard. Instead search your local plant/herb listing's find an alternative to the apple if it is not around.
Symbol's play an important role to some practitioners, you will find them in the form's of sigils, pentagrams, hexagrams, squares', or even etched in a specific spiritual/religious path with specific purposes. Teach yourself about symbol's, learn how to incorporate them in your spell work, learn where they come from, how to properly activate them, and if they will be useful in your endeavors.
Wording Spell's
You see many spells on the internet that have fancy rhyming, and you wonder what is that all about? To be frank rhyming is used as a way to help you remember your spells. This does not mean you need to speak in rhymes, or even speak at all, this is just a good way to remember your working spell's. When wording a spell you really need to think about what your asking for, and i mean you need to be careful on how you word your spell's. You can just as easily create a harmless spell for let's say friendship and one misplaced word will get you the wrong group of friend's. When you are creating your spell's, i just need you to remember this is very real, and you can damage your life with disastrous event's and all can be avoided by just thinking and rethinking what your trying to accomplish in magick. Bottom line, be careful what you say, we take speech for granted at times and underestimate the power behind word's.
The Formula
- Know what you want/need, and visualize that want/need. Contemplate it, meditate on it, or act on it. My opinion is cast your spells as the need arises and use what you got on hand.
- Protect yourself, before you even start your spell business take all precautions for safety, spell's can and do backfire, especially when your experimenting without prior knowledge.
- Be a practitioner of magick but do so with logic and reasonable expectations of your spell work, you can't become a butterfly no matter what you do.
- Infuse your spells with energies/symbols/symbolism that fit the bill which means research what your trying to do, get some feed back if you want to plan out your spell then correspond accordingly.
- Learn your moon phases, correspondence with day's, color's, and planet's as you go along before you know it you will no longer no to look you will just know.
- Don't give your spells out, if anything don't even talk about them to anyone, all your doing is pulling the focus away from the spell actually working. (MagicShawn Priest of Higher Magick's taught me this.)
- Believe in yourself, believe in your spell work, and never let anyone falter that.
Spell Disposal
When new practitioner's start to use items/offering's in their spells, they will ask okay what am i suppose to do with this stuff after? How long should i keep my offering on my altar? Should i re-use my candles for other spells?
- Bury the biodegradable object's, a couple year's ago i would have said bury it all, but one learns to respect Mother Earth.
- Burning is a type of purification and also an activation, it's how you perceive this method, when your dealing with multi purpose methods/properties it just need's to be clear in your mind and intentions. Fire can be used for the purpose of activation and disposal (given your safe and mature about working with fire)
- You may leave your offering for as long you feel is needed, personally i use the two day rule, after two day's i pitch it. If it is an offering of coffee i will use the grounds to sprinkle around my plant's in the garden (it helps deter tomatoe worm's and earth worm's love coffee grounds). If it is food i will also bury this in the garden which is good for the plants.
- Once a candle is used for a specific spell it should remain true to the original nature, or better yet let it burn out (this is why i recommend smaller thinner candles). The reason is simple, you do not want to mess around infusing completely different intentions expecting good results. I recommend always using brand new unlit, consecrated/charged candles for every spell, unless it is the same exact spell then i might use it again.
In time you will develop your own method of how spells are cast and work it's just apart of learning, hopefully this article will help give you a better understanding of making your own spells.