Cleaning Day

Today I carried out the cleansing spell from Judika Illes' Element Encyclopedia of 5000 Spells. After cleaning the house in the usual way, the first part of the spell was a simple broom spell. The second part involved a herbal floorwash and the third part involved burning some herbal incense. I added my own prayers to St Joseph, protector of the family, and to Martha (a biblical character who was a close friend of Jesus' and who was chastised by him for spending more time on her household chores than listening to him preach - typical man!). It was quite time-consuming but the house definitely feels cleansed now.

The final piece of magic I want to do today is a personal cleansing. I will be using the personal cleansing ritual from Theresa Chaze's website. It involves at least half an hour of undisturbed time in the bath, with music, incense and candles. As well as completing my day of cleansing it will also be a self-indulgent relaxation and reward. I wonder if I can meaningfully incorporate a glass of white wine into the ritual?

Cleansing

I need cleansing. Myself, my house; it all needs a good clean. Perhaps it is the start of the new year which has brought on this feeling. Perhaps it is the new moon. Perhaps something else.

I look up cleansing spells in The Element Encyclopedia of 5000 Spells by Judika Illes. There are Animal Ally spells, but they don't appeal to me unless they actually make squirrels and chipmunks come and do the laundry like in the Disney film of Snow White. But I rather suspect they don't. There are also Asperging Spells (flicking water about). I can get behind the idea of that for some purposes. There is something very similar in Roman Catholic masses at certain times of year, including last Sunday. But it is not the atmosphere I want to clear, it is the house itself. I keep looking.

There are lots of spells (I just wrote "smells" - a delicious Freudian slip) involving candles and incense and smoke. Again, I feel these are more suitable for "clearing the air". That is not quite what I want. At least, it is not all that I want.

Two kinds of cleansing spells catch my eye - broom spells and floorwash spells. That's what you need to clean a house - a broom and a mop! Some of them specify a single-use ritual broom, but I like the look of one which can be done with my own every-day broom. I could follow this by a floorwash with agrimony, peppermint and vinegar. I might play some calming, soothing music whilst I clean and afterwards light candles. During the whole cleansing I can invoke the archangels to cleanse my house.

I like the sound of this. I can believe in it. I already know that after I have done this I will feel that my house is cleansed.

I have also seen a promising-looking ritual for personal cleansing on Theresa Chaze's website. Again, it is quite down-to earth, doesn't require anything too peculiar or hard-to-get. It has a spoken component which sounds to me very like a prayer. And best of all it requires me to lock the bathroom door and stay in the tub for at least 30 minutes. I don't need to keep looking, this is what I want.

All I really need to find is some agrimony, more baking soda (I have a tiny tub of it for baking, not half a cup) and a black candle. While I am doing that I can get on with tidying up the house.

Build-A-Bear

Last week, as a birthday treat, my daughter chose to go to Build-A-Bear Workshop and make herself a new teddy bear. I'd been there with her before a couple of years ago, and cynically thought it a very effective way to get people to pay three- or four-times over the usual price for a stuffed toy, whilst getting the schmuck customer to actually do the work of assembling it instead of some underpaid ten-year-old in a Korean sweatshop. This year though I had a slightly different interpretation. Let me describe to you the process so you can see what I mean.

First, the child chooses a "skin" for her new toy. You can get traditional bears, or other critters such as dogs or pandas, or even characters from movies such as Alvin and the Chipmunks. Then the child may optionally choose a "voice" - a little box of electronics which roars when pressed, or says "mama" or various other options.

Then they must choose a "heart". One choice was a box of electronics which beats when pressed. You feel the pulsation quite clearly. My daughter thought this was rather creepy, and so did I (but nonetheless I can think of quite a few uses for such a thing. I don't know if you can purchase just a heart from the store, or if they will only sell it as part of a bear. I'll bet I could find them on the internet). Anyway, my daughter chose a red silk heart.

A member of staff then instructs the child to rub the heart between her hands "to warm it up". Then to hold it next to her heart "to fill it with love". And finally to kiss it on both sides "to seal in the love". Then it is inserted in the skin along with the voicebox, and the staff member fills the bear with fluff and ties it off to seal it shut.

There are a few other steps. Briefly, the child brushes the bear under jets of air to fluff it up, names the bear, fills in a "birth certificate", may optionally buy clothes and accessories for the bear, and gets to take it home in a house-shaped box complete with windows and doors.

I was struck by how closely this process resembled the making of a hand or a sachet or a poppet. Into a carefully chosen bag (which may resemble a person or creature) are placed specially chosen items. In witchcraft these might be herbs, dirt, slips of paper with things written on them, fingernails, whatever. The spellcaster might have to perform ritual actions over some of these contents, or over the whole bag. These steps imbue the item with magical power.

Do you see what I am getting at? The process of building a bear (rather than buying one from Toys-R-Us for a fraction of the price) endows it with extra significance for the child. Such a bear is more likely to become especially loved and treasured rather than piled on a shelf with all the other random meaningless teddies. And if the child ever feels sad or is hurt or lonely, the magically-empowered bear will have extra powers to cheer and heal the child because of the mojo in it. This is real magic, albeit a very plastic, commercialised version. But this time I was happy to hand over the extra money.

Dream Magic

Last night I cast a simple charm to remember my dream, and it worked perfectly. The charm came from Judika Illes book Pure Magic, so I won't give any details here. If you want to know how to cast the charm you should buy the book. I can recommend it, it is a great book. But I will say the charm takes less than a second to cast and requires the very simplest of materials which you are guaranteed to have in your own home. As soon as I read it I knew it would work, if only as a clever piece of applied psychology.

What was my dream? It was very silly and was about the children's TV series Ben 10. But I then dozed off again and dreamed I was standing in a pleasant park on a summer's day, talking to two people. One was a man and one was a woman and they were both from Denmark. They were both young and attractive. They were studying "War" at the local college. I don't know what college - there isn't a local college near to my home. But then again I did not recognise the park as a real place, and there is no park that resembles it anywhere near my home. But in my dream these places were known and local, because I asked them if they would recommend the course for my father. They said they would.