lillawood

Witchcraft and Naturalism in the Pacific Northwest

[lillawood]

Spells Not Working?

Ten Reasons your Magic Isn’t Effective- With Examples!

1- You’re working too hard Sometimes life is trying to teach you to let go, not grab on with both hands and use magic to get what you want. 

2- You’re not working hard enough You cast a spell for increasing your money, but you didn’t follow it up with the real life work that is indeed required if you want to be successful.

3- You’re using the wrong spell You wanted to find true love, so you tried to cast a love spell ON somebody to MAKE them fall in love with you. Are you really surprised to find out that true love doesn’t work that way?

4- You’re trying to invoke something that isn’t meant for you You cast a spell to make you the CEO of a company you work for, but your destiny is to be a CEO of your own company. Good thing your magic didn’t work out, huh?

5- You’re trying to invoke something that isn’t meant for someone else You cast a spell to make your friend land a scholarship for Harvard University, but if they go to Harvard they end up falling in with the wrong crowd, developing an alcohol problem, squandering the family fortune, and worst of all they never discover their true passion in the much less prestigious but far more fulfilling career of interior decorating. Thank Goodness your spell fell through or your poor friends life would have been ruined!

6- You didn’t ask for help when you needed it You’re cooking up a very powerful spell but you’re not actually a deity even if you feel as powerful as one some nights, and now your spell doesn’t have the fuel to get off the ground. It happens.

7- You asked the wrong entities for help You asked the house guardian to help you brew up a success spell. It probably would’ve been wiser to ask the house guardian for help guarding the house.

8- You’re working in a space that isn’t set up for you Your spells look great on paper but you can’t gather up the mojo to cast them right when your altar looks cramped and your worried about the candle accidentally lighting your prayer flags on fire.

9- You’re messing around in something you shouldn’t be messing around in. You knew damn well that it wasn’t your place to cast that specific spell for that specific reason but you did it anyways, in spite of what your gut told you and now your tarot cards are sassing you and oh, BOY what a mess it is.

10 - You’re dont believe in yourself Remember Toby McGuires spiderman when he stops being able to shoot webs because he’s basically lost faith in himself? Yeah, well.. that. Only magically.

[lillawood]

Vexed or Hexed?

If you’re suffering spiritual upheaval, don’t be too quick to assume you’re under attack.

Dozens upon dozens of people have come to me asking to have hexes removed. Some think they know who is hexing them, others don’t know who but they know they’re under spiritual attack. They blame demons, spirits, other witches, Satan himself, old friends who’ve turned against them, bosses, coworkers, and on and on.

There are means of removing hexes, yes. But once I started charging for my services, I started taking my work a lot more seriously, and stopped being so eager to pump out spells without understanding what’s happening in the clients life first. So when I do receive a client suffering from supernatural causes, I take the time to do a reading, like checking their temperature, so to speak. In my experience, when somebody has been hexed right and proper with malice and intent to harm, it manifests to me as a pressure around that person that feels like somebody is holding onto them very tightly. If I try to dislodge the energy, there’s sometimes a violent kickback, or a threatening mood that comes over the room, like the person responsible for that hex is standing right there and warning me to stay out of it. But sometimes, there’s no such kickback. There might be the generally frazzled energy of the client themselves, but no figurative bite marks on my hand when I withdraw it from the ether. What then? Usually I say something along these lines: 

“So, what makes you think you’ve been hexed?”

Several clients have told me they’ve confirmed that they’ve been hexed. Either because another witch told them so, or because the person responsible for the hex fessed up in person. While the client is explaining, I’m probing around the ether, feeling for bursts of energy that can shed light on what my client is saying. Sometime there are little hexes to break, but often these are petty hexes that were cast over some silly coven-related drama. And in all honesty, don’t worry yourself too much about these kinds of hexes. Petty hexes yield petty.results, and worrying about it often casts a bigger shadow than the hex itself, and many witches know this and will use it to their advantage to intimidate you into thinking they’re all great and powerful. Throw a handful of salt over your shoulder to blind your attacker and get on with your day, content in the knowledge that you don’t need to waste your time with petty people anyways. Its cheap, you can do it yourself, and you don’t have to come all the way down to my house to do it. 

Much more often, however, I find that its not a spiritual attack from outside that’s causing upheaval, but inner turbulence caused by the problems in life that we all face, whether we’re magic, mundane or otherwise. General lack of direction, tendency to look for the negative in situations, feeling anxious and depressed, genuinely struggling with mood disorders and other mental illnesses, or just lacking mojo and struggling to break old patterns of behavior.

These common problems that we all struggle with are in fact, WAY scarier than a hex, because you can’t come to a witch and have that magicked away. We can help you of course, and I often send my clients away with an armful of spells, potions and rituals for setting themselves up for success, often at the same time that I recommend they buy a copy of Marie Kondo’s “Tidying Up”. But the real work is done by you, a witches job is just to provide you the catalyzing energy to push you into a path of positive, forwards motion, and guide you down that path. Different witches will offer you different levels of guidance. Some hold your hand and walk you through it step by step, others throw you a survival kit and a thumbs up as they shove you into oncoming traffic where experience will do the guiding. 

So if you’re a witch who offers magical solutions to people’s problems, don’t be afraid to be honest when a client is asking for something they don’t need. You might lose money, and that’s okay, better to have integrity. Don’t let your ego get ahead of you of course, because someday science is going to catch up with witchcraft, and when they can prove who is actually working magic and who isn’t... well let’s just say it’ll be easier to have subsisted on a diet of humble pie from the start than it will be to have to eat the whole pie at once.

And lastly, if you or somebody you know might be suffering from a hex, before you go jumping to conclusions, ask yourself if maybe you’re suffering from just being alive in a world that has a lot of challenges and not a lot of people to warn you about them.

This is me, dropping in and out all evening long, wishing you a happy day. 

-M

[lillawood]

‎One Starry Night by Dirk Freymuth

‎Song · 4:01 min · 2006

[lillawood]

It’s a new moon tonight, a good time for new beginnings. The song ushering me into the late evening is “One starry night” by Dirk Freymuth from the Album, Celtic Meditation. And the words upon which I’m meditating tonight are:

When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. -Lao Tzu

If you’re into remote group meditation and you’ll be up for the next half an hour, I’ll be up there in the night sky learning of all the possibilities this next lunar phase will bring. I hope to see some of you up there.

This is me, dropping offline and wishing you all a very magical evening.

-M

Image courtesy of shutter stock.

[lillawood]

A Sweet Spell for Saving Botched Bread & Reversing Bad Fortune

The Backstory

Jump Ahead To Get Straight to The Recipe!

I have an incredible amount of energy these days and in order to keep myself from spiraling out of control (Can I get a hell-yea from all my fellow humans who struggle with crippling anxiety) I really like to pour my focus into positive pursuits. Thus, I’ve been charming all my meals lately. I don’t even make coffee these mornings without taking a moment to bid good morning to my kitchen workspace, bless my ingredients, and stir something special into each cup. It yields good results, and it’s a good way to be mindful of the energy that otherwise flows out of me unchecked.

However, I’m not the only one who cooks in my house, and when I left the bread making to my hubby, a small disaster befell him. He decided to use the bread machine and didn’t forget any ingredients, but did forget the paddle that mixes those ingredients before the heat comes and bakes the dough. The result was cooked pile of ingredients. The top was effectively a scoop of baked flour, while the bottom where the liquids soaked into the flour was an inconsistent texture that went from crumbly & moist to sort of rubbery and... weird.

He was pretty discouraged about the whole thing. And well, I can see why. But there’s nothing more symbolic of turning the tables in your favor than taking an actual situation that’s gone hay-wire and fixing it up with the help of a little kitchen witchcraft. 

So, drawing on my knowledge of saving botched dishes that has been handed down to me from my mother, the Reigning Queen of fixing things you thought were ruined, I’ve whipped up a little recipe for charmed bread pudding that you can adapt to your old bread or any baked good that isn’t too far gone.

The Recipe

-An old or ruined baked good, about 4 cups worth, or an entire 2lb loaf of bread. **It’s important to understand at what point a dish is actually beyond saving. Burnt, moldy, and rotten food should all be placed in the compost pile and returned to the earth. Dried bread, stale muffins, old pancakes, or in my case, a botched loaf of bread, all are great examples of things you can use in place of regular old bread. -Four Eggs, beaten. -2 tablespoons of butter, melted -pinch of salt -2 Cups Whole Milk, or dairy substitute -3/4 Cups Sugar -1/2 a vanilla bean pod, or vanilla extract. -Spices of your choosing, up to a teaspoon and a half’s worth. -Additions of your choosing, (maybe apples and raisins, or bananas, apricots, whatever you like.) about a cup’s worth. -Icing Sugar sprinkled on top to Serve

-A leaf or two of dried sage. (Not for the recipe itself.)

Method:

Greet and ready your workspace. Get your ingredients and equipment out and arrange them all on the counter where they can be easily seen and used. Take a moment to invoke the blessings of any beings you work with, I like to throw a sprinkle of sugar on a hot element as a burnt offering to the spirits I work with.  Now place the bit of dried sage in the oven and preheat it to 350F. Don’t worry if the sage smokes a little as things heat up, as it burns, the smell of sage fills the kitchen but the flavor doesn’t linger in the oven. 

Cut up the old baked good into small chunks and place them in a mixing bowl. As you’re doing this, be mindful of the what this baked good represents. In my case, I’m salvaging a situation, taking what good there was and putting it to new use. Take a pinch of salt and toss it over the baked good, neutralizing whatever residual negative mood has accumulated on the baked good and unlocking its potential to nourish you once more.  In a separate bowl, mix together all your wet ingredients and spices. As you add these ingredients, be aware of the symbolic meanings these items have to you. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t know the history of all or any of your ingredients.  All you need to know for a powerful charm is that Vanilla sweetens the mood, eggs represent fertility and hidden treasures, milk speaks of motherhood, butter greases the wheels of fortune, etc. Its up to you to ask the ingredients what they can do for you and follow your instinct. 

Now pour the wet mix onto the bread and stir, you want the bread to be completely soaked, if you’ve cut it up very small or used a crumbly baked good, it should be a consistency similar to lumpy cake batter. 

Pour the mixture into a 8x12 glass dish. Once the oven is hot and ready, remove the sage, place the pan in the oven and bake for 75 minutes, or until a knife comes out of the center clean and the edges are turning golden brown.

While its baking,  clean your space back up, thanking it for holding you and giving you a safe space to do your work. Put your tools and ingredients back where they belong so they may rest until its time to serve you again. And then, time to sit back and let your magic do its work in a kitchen that smells like sage, love and good fortune. 

[lillawood]

My mind is on gardening and the violas & clover laying dorment in the lawns.