What are protections and wards?
Protections and wards can be pretty much anything; you can make protection jars using herbs, you can use crystals as protections, you can even do protections with just energy! There will be some simple examples of protections listed later on in this post.
Why do protections at all? What if I don’t believe in trickster spirits?
Even if you don’t necessarily believe in trickster spirits, protections are still important. Negative energy still exists, and protecting yourself and your space from that negative energy may make it easier to deal with negativity around you in your daily life.
What is the difference between protections and warding?
Protections are a generalized term that describes using energy and intentions to protect yourself and your space. Warding specifically talks about using ordinary objects, setting intentions on them (possibly doing other things like blessing them or consecrating them) to turn them into protections.
Below is going to be a small list of some ideas for protections and wards, both for the home and for yourself. This list is not exhaustive, and there are many different ways to make protections and wards.
Protection oil (please make sure that any essential oil or oil-based products are safe for the skin and pets if you are going to be using this).
Protection candles (you can use color and scent magic for this as well!)
Some of the methods listed, such as veiliing, protection jewelry, and crystals are a bit more ‘beginner friendly’. Please make sure you’re doing your research and setting clear intentions with any protections you’re making!
Here is a short list of some easy, generally accessible herbs you can use in protection jars and satchels.
Sage (please remember to only use white sage is you are part of that closed practice)
What is veiling/how do I veil?
Veiling is a tradition that has a lot of history behind it; essentially, veiling is the practice of wearing some type of headwear in order to protect your own energies from outside influence. You can veil in many different ways. Wearing a headscarf of some kind is a good way to veil, but you can also veil using hats, scrunchies/hair-ties, and even simple energy can be used to veil. For me, I have put an energetic veil on my head before while washing my hair in the shower!
Is there a right/wrong way to use/do protections?
There is not really a right or wrong way to do or use protections; you can use protections however you like to protect your own energy and your space! For me personally, the majority of my protections are not physical objects, I purely use energy and visuals for my protections. A lot of my protections are also baneful in nature.
Can I make protections to make someone not think of me/ignore me?
Yes, you can! For protections like these, I recommend illusion magic or protections specifically made to hide you from them. Veiling is a good option in this scenario!
How do I know I need to redo my protections?
This can get a bit tricky to discern; I highly recommend using some form of divination to figure out if you need to re-do protections. I also recommend generally keeping up with your protections as part of a weekly/bi-weekly routine. As discussed in my previous post about cleansing, working in protections while you’re doing mundane tasks such as cleaning can be a good way to do this.
As far as discerning when you need to redo protections, this will get a little complicated, so bear with me. First and foremost, please try to distinguish the mundane vs magical causes for things. While things like getting sick, feeling suddenly run down all the time, or having a bout of bad luck can SOMETIMES be indications of negative energy around you and the need to cleanse and redo protections, this is not always the case. Sometimes, life just sucks. This is again why I recommend doing divination as a way to discern if the cause is mundane or magical. I will be going more into divination methods in a later post.
How do I make protection jewelry?
Again, there can be a few ways to do this. I firstly recommend cleansing the jewelry you are wanting to turn into a protection. Please make sure you’re being safe when doing this (make sure you check and see if the jewelry can safely be submerged in water, get salt on it, etc).
Next, you can consecrate the jewelry in a few ways. You can use protection oil to consecrate the jewelry (please make sure that your jewelry will not corrode or anything with oil). You can also ask your deities/spirit guides to bless the jewelry for you and put their protective energies on it. You can also soak the jewelry in water and herbs (again, make sure that the jewelry is safe to go in water).
How do I make protective sigils?
Sigils are a very fun, easy way to make protections (as well as doing other types of spellwork). You can find sigil online, however I do recommend making them on your own. There are also programs you can find online that will help you generate sigils. You can also make them up on your own, go based on associations (like you could draw a candle, and have that be a protective sigil for instance).
This is not an exhaustive list that covers all forms of protection and all questions about protection, however I hope that this post will help some newer witches learn more about how to work protections into their practice.
