Poll for Spirit Workers and Witches that interact frequently with spirits!
Please vote on the option that fits you the best. People who are not witches nor spirit workers please refrain from casting votes, I’m trying to see something.
Please note that “see/hear” is talking specifically about those two forms of mediunity. If you have something like Knowing, Tact or general Intuition, it doesn’t count as “see/hear” for the purposes of this poll.
When working with spirits, do you feel influenced by their presence or energy? Influence here being in personality, speech and/or movements; be this a very light influence to even something akin to spirit possession.
I can see/hear spirits, but I don’t feel like they influence me at all.
I can see/hear spirits, and I do feel influenced slightly.
I can see/hear spirits, and I do feel influenced moderately.
I can see/hear spirits, and I do feel influenced heavily.
I can’t see/hear spirits, but I do feel influenced slightly.
I can’t see/hear spirits, but I do feel influenced moderately.
I can’t see/hear spirits, but I do feel influenced heavily.
I can’t see/hear spirits, and I don’t feel like they influence me at all.
do you think its possible for a witch who don't see/hear spirits to develop that ? Or is something you're either born with or not
I have heard that through spirit initiation you may be granted the ability if you were not born with it.
I don’t know if it is impossible to develop these abilities without some sort of initiation, but I am assuming it might be difficult since we all have some sort of affinity with certain abilities.
Think of it like people who are naturally more likely to understand math, or to be good with music, or to draw nicely: even when you’re naturally good with these things, you still have to work to make good use out of them, and if you decide to pursue something you’re not as naturally inclined to do you’ll probably have to work a bit harder to get where you want to.
I am yet to see a spirit with my own two eyes even though I’ve been initiated, but I do feel like my intuition/knowing has improved when interacting with spirits. I have also worked more magic since the initiation, and, like I said, we need to practice to make good use of our natural inclinations, so it most likely has more to do with the fact that I’m using my senses more then to the initiation itself.
I believe @windvexer has spoken quite a bit on this topic, so you might wanna read through their blog!
On the Practice of “Curing” Plant Spirits in Northern Brazilian Folk Magic
In the northern region of Brazil, particularly in the state of Pará, there is a form of protective magic known as “curing a plant”, and involves a person regularly watering the plant to be cured with a mixture of water, animal blood, and sometimes cachaça. The animal blood does not come from any sort of sacrifice, but from the residual blood present in store bought meat or fish, for example.
There is also this understanding that not every plant can be cured. The ones most commonly put through this process are snake plants, species in the calladium genus, pothos, taro and dumbcane. This is particularly interesting because all of these plants are very toxic when ingested raw, so there’s this clear connection between the toxicity of the plant in the physical world and it’s potency to be awakened in the spiritual world through curing.
To cure a plant, one would take the aforementioned mixture and water the plant while stating that it is now awakened, is going to be fed regularly, and should therefore take the role of a house guardian. The plant is now considered “cured”, and shall be fed regularly as promised.
In the rural areas of Pará, it is commonly understood that the plant will now be spiritually strengthened, and it’s spirit may take human form both for protecting the house it inhabits and to remind the caretakers of the land it is still there and the accorded offerings should not stop.
Some accounts have described the human form of a cured plant to be that of an indigenous man, others describe it as a black man, but regardless of race they all look very strong or warrior-like. This is also a reflection of where this practice comes from: indigenous spiritual knowledge taking form under the changing circumstances of a society that push and pulls at traditions.
In my point of view, the practice of curing plants not only highlights what we already know to be widespread in folk magic — that is, the necessity of finding solutions for our problems in ways that require few resources — but also prevents part of indigenous knowledge and spiritual understanding from fading away.
Glory to Helios, oh Mighty Sun, you who come from the east.
Holy fire rising far above into the sky, in midday, by virtue of your light, you can see all, you can hear all, you can touch all.
As you descend westwards into Hades, oh, Red-Faced Helios, drag evil under the earth with you, and pin it to the ground with the shining spears which are your rays.
Something that really throws me off about the way some religious groups speak about mediumship (at least here in Brazil) is that it seems as if it's a way to explain every single spiritual experience and ability a live human can have.
Like, sometimes you're not a "sponge medium" you're just a normal person having a normal reaction to crap energy. That's normal for most people who have some sort of spiritual attunement idk
Since I did this just for funsies, I'll just put it here. An altar for Hekate, the witch ancestors and the spirit allies that I received as an epiphany through the sacred act of taking a shower... All hail the pipewater 🙌🏻
Let's make a quick breakdown!
On the very top of the altar, taking the spotlight, of course, is the Witchmother of this lineage, the matriarch herself, Miss Hekate of the Many Names! Formless Fire, Trimorphis, Brimo! This is her altar before anything else!
Her statue carries a coral-snake-like beaded necklace that tethers my practice to the land I live in, while also honoring these three sacred colors that represent her domain. A skeleton key hanged by red thread can also be seen, and, of course, her black candle is present, representing her main realm, which is earthly and subterranean. The ways, the dead, the world in which she makes herself Most Manifest.
On the lower left side, is the witch-ancestors part of the altar. I must admit I don't have much to put there considering this can only be fleshed out through practice, which is something I want to do with ancestors, but haven't yet.
Regardless, it is a place for deceased witches that worked under Hekate's guidance in life. A skull is a classic for ancestry, and the cunning witch Medea is a main figure that would serve both as a gateway for these spirits and as a warden.
The candle is red, representing the oceanic part of Hekate's realms, but it's also the same blood that runs through our veins, that which is witchfire.
The lower right side of the altar is for the spirit allies.
The candle is white, representing the last realm of Hekate, that which is heavenly, and further away still. It is also the color of fog and elusiveness, that which is present in these spirits.
The star comes in a symbolic way, bringing the mystery of magic again through the lense of elusivity and unknown-ness.
☆
This was done just as a visual aid for the idea I had. I wish I'll be able to bring these thoughts into reality soon enough.
Transparency: I couldn't bother drawing the statues from scratch just for a visual exercise. The Hekate statue is very common and you'll find tons of them with a quick search. The statue of Medea was carved by William Wetmore, and the news it cannot be easily attained as a replica soured my day. /hyperbole
⚠️Disclaimer! All thoughts discussed here are not hard truths. The purpose of this research is to explore possibilities and think about phenomena that, in my opinion, cannot be fully understood or measured. This will be a lengthy post, so I’ll put a read more under the introduction.
INTRODUCTION
About a week ago I made a tumblr poll asking how much did witches and spirit workers felt like the spirits they engage with influenced their way of thinking, speaking, moving, etc. This curiosity was born out of feelings that I myself have been feeling for a while when engaging with some of my spirits, particularly the ones related to witchcraft — though this last bit is not directly relevant to this experiment.
To those unaware, I am brazilian, and as such I have had extensive indirect contact with afro-brazilian religions — umbanda, candomblé, kimbanda, catimbó, etc. Why is that important, you ask? Because in those religions the concept of spirit possession or spirit channeling is of extreme importance, to the point that the houses of worship will divide their members into positions that either support the medium to be possessed, or to be the possesseés themselves — the latter not being uncommon at all.
Many years ago I had seen a video of someone who was part of umbanda questioning the legitimacy of part of the spirit possessions. They claimed that it would be impossible to have so many mediums naturally inclined to spirit possession and that many of them were faking. While it is important to recognize that fake-possessions can happen in any house of any of those religions, it is also seen in a very negative light and the spirits that are actually possessing the other mediums will often times confront the faker, as I have been made aware of by practitioner friends of mine.
With that in mind I started questioning. It is true that there are many possession-oriented mediums in those religions, but in my opinion it seems very unlikely that most of them are faking the process. I theorized, then, that the ability to be possessed is not necessarily a form of mediumship as it is traditionally conceptualized, but a general spiritual skill, like magic or divination. That’s where the poll comes in.
STATISTICS AND DISCUSSION
Out of the 136 participants in the poll, 56.7% of them (that’s 77 people) attested being able to see/hear spirits, while 43.3% of them (59 people) attested being unable to see/hear spirits. Among people that can see/hear, 27 of them (that’s 35% of all people who can see/hear) claim they don’t feel influenced by the spirits they’re in contact with at all, while only 14 (that’s 23.7% of all people who don’t see/hear) of those who can’t see/hear claim the same.
That leaves us with 50 people who do see/hear and do feel influenced by spirits (65% of all), and 45 people who don’t see/hear and do feel influenced by spirits (76.3% of all). In total, 95 of the participants of this poll (69.8% of total participants) feel some sort of spirit influence, be it heavy or light.
Among all the people that feel influenced in any capacity, there is a striking similarity in the way the number organize themselves. Most people in the two groups feel only a slight influence of the spirits when engaging, a smaller number feels a moderate influence and an even smaller number — only 6 people who can’t see/hear and 12 who can — feels heavily influenced, perhaps to the point of possession.
Now, why are those numbers important? What does only feeling the influence of a spirit has to do with The Spirit Possession™? In umbanda there is a process that roughly translates to “irradiation”. This process is initiated by the spirit guides of a person to prepare the body of the medium for the possession, and is done in such a way that makes their energies more similar and compatible, but also serves as a way for the spirit to share knowledge. The process of irradiation is one of the things that brings a practitioner closer to a spirit and develops a connection between them.
With that in mind, the process of spirit possession — at least in these particular traditions — do show notable differences to regular mediumship in my opinion. We can observe that the person feels the spirit getting closer, energetically speaking, and we can observe that it’s a gradual process, unlike being born with the capacity to see or hear spirits out of the blue.
Mediumship, through the influence of kardecism, is generally understood here as something innate to a person, rather than something you can choose to cultivate on your own accord. The fact that possession can be rather easily developed among so many people with varying types and levels of mediumship is one of the things that, to me, highlight its position as a skill rather than a form of de facto mediunity.
One of my best friends, who is a practicing umbandista, also let me know that irradiation is not a process that necessarily leads to spirit possession. Many people who go regularly to these houses of worship will never be possessed or channel the spirit even if they do feel their entities very present through irradiation — which also makes the feelings I personally feel with my witching spirits much more understandable, as I do feel very close to them energetically, especially during rituals and communication, but possession doesn’t really strike me as necessary or even a possibility within my own personal framework.
FINAL THOUGHTS
In conclusion, I do feel like the poll results corroborate with my initial hypothesis of spirit possession as a skill and not an innate capacity that you either have or don’t have. This, perhaps, would already be obvious to some people coming from different backgrounds, but to me this is an important — even if admittedly flawed — research whose results seem to go against what is generally taught through the influence of kardecism.
By saying that, I am not disqualifying the whole of kardecist influences in the many religions of Brazil, but I do feel like there are certain kardecist-derived ideas that are an overcomplication or even a misunderstanding of spiritual reality.
While the conclusions I made here might be a case of confirmation bias, as spirituality is something that cannot be fully measured or studied through scientific methodology in my personal opinion, I do hope that this was an interesting read, and I do hope that the topics discussed here sparked your own curiosity and desire for knowledge.
I would like to give a special thanks to my dear umbandista friend who was very invested in this research and helped me out with some information I was unaware of. If you’re interested in learning more on afro-brazilian religions, this video by Aster Perpetua is probably the best english-language resource on umbanda you’ll find on youtube, as she is a brazilian woman, was raised in the religion and works closely with her spirit guides.
Thank you to everyone who read this until the end :)
