Through Mistakes, We Learn

A couple of things happened over the last two weeks. Well, several things happened, but only a couple are worth writing about - unless you want to read how I make the same fucking choices over and over again thinking I’ll get a different result, particularly and especially, when I am dealing with unrelated humans that have cocks. I have since noticed and course corrected said choices and will do better next time - if there is a next time.

ANYHOO! No, the couple of things that are worth reading about have to do with my craft. Now, I’m prefacing everything you are about to read with this DISCLAIMER: WITCHCRAFT IS EXTREMELY PERSONAL TO THE INDIVIDUAL AND THEIR PATH. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO HANDBOOK, NO RANKING, NO HIERARCHY IN THE PRACTICE UNLESS THE INDIVIDUAL CHOOSES TO FOLLOW SAID HIERARCHY. I ONLY USE TERMS TO INDICATE EXPERIENCE IN THE CRAFT AND WHAT IS TYPICALLY USED WITHIN THE WITCHCRAFT COMMUNITY. IF YOU’VE JUST STARTED OUT AND THINK YOU’RE ALL THAT AND A BAG OF CHIPS, GOOD ON YOU - THAT’S YOUR PATH. MY PATH IS NO WHERE NEAR THAT, BECAUSE I HAVE A NATURAL PENCHANT FOR THINKING I KNOW EVERYTHING - AS YOU WILL READ FURTHER ON - SO I WILL CONTINUE TO USE “DEROGATORY” TERMS TO PUT MY EXPERIENCE LEVEL IN TERMS THAT WILL BE UNIVERSALLY UNDERSTOOD

Anyhoo, I have not said I was anything other than a baby witch, meaning I am learning. As with all learning, mistakes are the norm. Like, using a makeshift metal pail to burn your petitions in a releasing ceremony and you set off the smoke detector - that hasn’t gone off in over 10 years, even with cigarette smoke right next to it. Now, as funny as that was, it was also a little nerve-racking because I live in a very small town in the middle of the Bible Belt; and while I do not begrudge Christians for their belief system (I believe Christianity is the “gateway drug” to spirituality), I do not need them coming at me with torches and pitchforks because I’m practicing my craft at three in the morning (with the window open to clear the smoke) and creating a racket with a smoke detector. I had to use my bedside baseball bat to knock the stupid thing off of the ceiling to get it to shut up. As I’ve said, lesson learned. And coincidentally enough, the alarm was a confirmation that my letting go worked because right now, I can’t even remember what I let go of. Incidentally, when I burn inside, I disconnect the smoke detector.

I also got a new one of these, just in case.

Another mistake is with candles and divination. One would think that when fire is involved, in any form, you keep an eye on it, right? Especially when you’re using a small taper candle (called a chime candle) on top of PAPER instead of a proper candleholder. And in divination, you need to be thinking about what you’re asking. Well, I’m an over-thinker. A constant over thinker. I don’t need to be sitting for three hours staring at a candle thinking the same question over and over again. It’s boring. And I’m pretty sure I have whichever type of ADD that makes me bounce from task to task without finishing a single one of them. But, by golly, I’ll be thinking about the same fucking thing for DAYS on end. So sitting there, asking Spirit a question and waiting for the candle to drip its wax is like watching paint dry, and I only have two days to get the time-consuming life shit done. Spirit understands me and allows me to go get other shit done - Spirit knows I’m gonna be thinking about the question. I don’t need to be there.

Except, I forgot I lit the candle. I sat down on the couch, still thinking my question and over-thinking both answers, and started reading a book on empaths and shielding. I don’t know how long I was reading, but I had gotten a whiff of something burning. I dismissed it. The windows were cracked, people were getting their wood stoves started, the city was burning the brush pile a block south of my house AND the wind was coming from that direction. My cat, Nibbles makes her customary THUMP on the landing and meows at me. Now, Nibbles doesn’t just meow, she caterwauls. Think alley cat looking for a mate kind of shrieking. She does this when she’s hungry, so I tell her it’s not time to eat. She shrieks at me - louder if that was possible - and goes back upstairs. Nibbles has never done that before, so she had piqued my curiousity. I followed her upstairs and noticed the burning smell was stronger and it didn’t smell like brush or wood. It smelled like paper. And that was when I remembered I had a candle burning - out of a proper holder - for divination and the answer paper had caught on fire. Thankfully, it was placed on a glass top table, so nothing else caught fire. The paper hadn’t erupted into flames, and I still got my answer - I chose to take it as a resounding YES from Spirit and a caution to not be squirreling when doing candle divinations. Now, I have a special marble trivet and I do my candle divining in the area of the house I am usually in regardless of what I’m doing. I’ve also gotten good at timing the candle wax pool so I can focus on things that require my complete attention - like baking or warding windows (that takes forever in a house that has a shit ton of windows, let me tell ya).

When the candle looks like this, you’ve got maybe five more minutes before you have your answer. Wait for the answer. Just trust me on that.

Those are just some of the mistakes I’ve made early on. Dumb mistakes done out of my own idiocy and hubris. My higher self loves to bring them up when I’m getting too big for my britches. Enter my most current mistake:

Now, when you start out in witchcraft, it’s always a smart thing to focus on learning protection spells, chants, rituals, whatever you want to call them. I’m a firm believer that everything is connected, so if it resonates with me, I do it. Warding my mirrors and windows; salt baths to cleanse my aura of the funkiness of others (the “perk” of being empathic); using lavender and dried sage from what my kid planted in the spring (I can’t believe its STILL alive and kicking - usually I kill plants that are inside) to smoke myself, my house, my pets, my yard, my car (I get shit from people about that last part because its basically smudging and part of a “closed” practice. As I said, I believe in energy and everything is connected. If that means I’m “cultural appropriating” or whatever the fuck it’s called, then so be it. Energy belongs to all of us, not specific peoples - I said what I said); lining my thresholds with black salt; doing egg cleanses - the works. Not all is done at the same time, but one or two are done if I feel that is what is warranted (discernment is key - if you don’t trust yourself, you have no business doing witchcraft and will get hurt - more on that later). Also, if you are empathic, you will need to work on shielding yourself from others’ emotions. It’s not as easy as it sounds, especially if you are my age and finally know wtf is “wrong” with you and how to manage it. Actually, it’s probably easier to learn the shielding first, then protective witchcraft second - I did both at the same time and I do not recommend it.

One of my most valuable lessons was the time I had someone else’s negative mojo stuck on me. I was truly just learning about shielding (for me it’s not as easy as it sounds) and was becoming depressed. This was going on for days. No amount of egg cleanses or salt baths was getting this shit off. Finally, I had enough and asked Spirit who’s it was, cuz I was gonna send it back to them. I had a hunch who’s it was and, without waiting for the confirmation from Spirit, I wrote the person’s name on a piece of paper, rubbed it all over my body to transfer the low vibes to the paper and said, “Send this shit back,” ya know, cuz, well, I’m poetic like that. Seriously, unless you want to be all flowery and rhyme stuff, you can. I am not that kind of person. I’m more direct in what I’m doing. Anyways, after I said, “Send this shit back” I torched the paper - safely this time - and watched it completely burn to ash.

Oh, my God, what happened next made me an ABSOLUTE believer in spiritual condoms! I literally felt this pull from my chest, like something had crawled out of it. The only thing I could say to describe it is think of Alien and the creature bursting from the dude’s chest, but minus what would be most likely excruciating pain. I start patting at my chest like my boobs were on fire, and I feel what I can only describe as a tendril latch onto my wrist and a mass of something scurry up my arm and latch itself to the base of my neck. Again, the sensation is what I would think would be what it feels like to have a giant leech attach itself to you. My whole neck started hurting and I thought, “Well, at least you aren’t feeling depressed anymore,” because, you know, ya gotta see the silver lining. Turned out I was wrong in who the low vibes belonged to (hubris is one of my biggest faults) and because the Universe doesn’t send shit to the wrong people, it sent it back to me because I, like a dumbass, didn’t have a condom on. Honestly I think it would have sent it back to me regardless because the energy didn’t belong to the person I thought it belonged to, but I’m not putting that theory to the test. I told my boyfriend about it and his response was, “Well, you play around with that kind of shit…” and my higher self is cackling at me because I was miffed he said that.

Closest thing I could find to describe what I felt. Seriously, protect yourself.

ANYHOO, that’s what you do: start with the “magick condom” and get really good at it. Like, its something you can do in your sleep. Once you do that, then you graduate from “baby witch” to “new broom.” I think I’m in the in between stage right now. Like, I’m good with the protection - consistency is something I’ve had difficulty with my whole life, so it’s not too big a stretch to think I don’t consistently keep my wards fresh, my car smoked, nor do I do egg cleanses often - my chickens were killed by a neighbor’s dogs and eggs are fucking expensive. I do, however, take salt baths religiously - like, that’s one of my cleansing rituals - and smoking the spaces in my home I am in the most. I’ve also taken to using protective oils in my dryer balls when I dry my clothes - I learned the hard way about entities attaching themselves to me and I do not want to go through that again. I’m not stuck on one way to gain answers to my questions. I use candle divination in three ways; I use incense divination; smoke divination; and tarot. I’ve also started using pendulum divination just to see if it’s something I would do - I’m still on the fence about it. I’m trusting my intuition more and more every day, and I commune with my ancestors (FYI, sometimes it truly is like Mulan - everyone arguing all at once). Because of this, I decided I need to “kick it up a notch.” As an empath, I know it’s easy to absorb others’ energies and emotions. It also makes you a target for energy vampires because empaths tend to vibrate at a higher frequency (to balance the low vibrations they absorb). I have several energy vampires that I deal with consistently that truly do drain the life from me - with or without shielding or protection. One night, one of those vampires energetically came into my house - my left ear ringing was my first clue.

One divination tool

I tuned into it and felt a presence. It was familiar, but unknown. Like, I knew the energy signature, but I didn’t know from where. Then the animals started acting off. Then the energy messed with my hair. That was the last straw - NOTHING messes with my hair unless I say so. I told the entity to leave my space and never come back. The energy lessened, but didn’t disappear entirely. I could still feel it, but the animals had settled down. I started my nightly divination of who had drained my energy without my permission (sometimes I allow others to take my energy as long as they give me their low vibes in return - I’ll explain that in another post) and the incense smoke gave the entity away - they were still in the same room with me. I grabbed my sage and lit a protection candle and cleansed my space telling them to get the fuck out of my house. I got my answers as to who siphoned me and I did an egg cleanse.

Except this time I was going to return it back to the sender with some extra goodies. “I’m not a baby witch now. I can do these things.” Yeah, of course I can. Some “gunpowder,” rock salt (because I don’t have rusty nails or bullets) and the ancestral tradition of shaking the jar twice a day for a week (likes it a frigging antibiotic - pretty sure that was the Hag’s doing). It was going to work and those assholes siphoning me will fucking STOP.

Every aspect of an egg cleanse is analyzed. The tall spike of egg white? That’s my low vibes.

If I had remembered that egg cleanses don’t do shit for energy vampires, but takes the negativity off of me. I had already done my “who’s low vibes am I carrying” question and, well, I had some of my own low vibes in the mix with everyone else’s (tough times with men, what can I say?). Long story short, not only did I return to sender other people’s low vibes, I return to sender’d my own low vibes, right back to me. With all the extras including the shaking of the jar shit. I’m 48, I don’t break out in pimples UNDER MY NOSE. I have been itchy with no amount of water consumed nor lotion applied to relieve the itch. I have a couple of false teeth that I haven’t been able to get re-cemented into my mouth yet - I dropped one in the toilet. I wasn’t even at work for eleven minutes on Sunday when the train left the rails and I had a frigging chaotic shit storm to deal with. All of this shit started happening on Wednesday of last week. Needless to say, I figured out what happened after work on Sunday and I stopped shaking the jar. Kinda terrified of how to move it so I can dispose of the contents, but at least I know what happened.

I fucking hexed myself. “But I used black salt. That’s for protection. Why didn’t it work?” That was what I asked my great great great great grandmother, The Hag the other night while we were smoking cigars (Idk why, but she likes the same cigars my dad smoked when I was a kid) and communing. At the time I had done the spell jar, she wasn’t crazy about me adding the black salt to begin with, but she didn’t press the matter. I had a sense of someone energetically saying to her, “Let her find out on her own,” but I didn’t really pay attention to it - I was so focused on getting payback, love and light can kiss my ass. The Hag had me list everything I put in the jar and the reason for it being in there. When I got to the black salt, I said it was protection from reversal. She is STILL laughing at me and this was LITERALLY three days ago, she and I had this conversation, and I still don’t know why she’s…oh for FUCK’S SAKE!

You can’t reverse a return to sender spell. You are literally giving the energy to Spirit to disperse back to the rightful owners with or without the extra kick. The energy is going to go to the rightful owner - in this case, my low vibes came back to me. That absolute chaotic work day I had? I had shaken the jar a touch more vigorously than necessary - hence the chaos.

And right now, my higher self is saying, “Well, at least you learned from last time and put a sock on it. Sure, it had a hole in it, but you remembered!”

Even my higher self looks at the bright side of things. Now if the damned fort would stop their live fire exercises and shaking the fucking house, I can get rid of the damned jar and not be itchy.