What is Deity Work?
Deity work is when you open your energies and attention to a Deity you wish to engage in a working relationship with. Typically this is a give and receive type of relationship in which you are giving the deity offerings and the deity is giving you advice or help in someway in return.
Working vs Worshipping.
When you are working with a deity, there is either a verbal or nonverbal agreement that you are both contributing to the encounter. Either bein through offerings and knowledge or offerings and company. Worshipping is very one sided, when you are simply leaving offerings for a deity or entity and expect nothing in return.
Patron and Matrons.
A patron or matron deity is one that you have an extremely deep connection with. They typically helped you find your path or have helped you through a tough time. They appreciate offerings and such, however they have also stuck with you through low or zero offering times. In my case, Apollo is my patron.
How Does One Start Deity Work?
You have to know three things before you even consider deity work. Protection, banishing, and vetting. Once you have these three things down, then you may continue on researching the deity you wish to reach out to.
Step One: Protection.
You need to know how to protect yourself before you even consider deity work. This can be done by casting a circle, cleansing your space, and creating sigils. There are many other ways, but I seem to find these the easiest.
To cast a circle, you need to know a little energy work. You should stand in a quiet space with little to no distractions and focus on pushing your energy out around you. This can be aided with salt in a circle around your practicing space. Focus on pushing your energy out to the salt ring and hold it. Please note that if you leave the circle, the circle breaks and will need to be redone. This may take a few tries to get down, and it can be very tiring, so please give yourself grace.
Next is cleansing. Cleansing should be one of the first things you learn when you start your practice. Cleansing can be broken into two sections: intention and tools. It is semitrue that you dont need anything to practice witchcraft, but it makes things a lot easier.
When I cleanse, I only think my enchantments, but you can say them outloud if that helps you focus. An easy way I cleanse my space is by sound cleansing and cleaning supplies. I typically will put on an upbeat song that makes me feel happy and refreshed and then go to town with disinfecting wipes, a broom, and a Swiffer. Simply cleaning your space is a part of cleansing that is greatly overlooked. Other ways you can cleanse are through charged crystals, singing, dancing, sigils, and wands. Please find whatever works for you best, as everyone is different.
Speaking of sigils, they are super easy to make and can be made with whatever you have lying around. There are so many ways to make one, but my favorite way is to write down what my intention is and then I organize the letters of the intention alphabetically and cross out the doubles. I do a doodle with the remaining letters and boom, sigil. But you can also free scribble or look up a unique way to do the sigil. There is no limit to chaos magic. Once youve made your sigil, you can place it in your work space to aid in protection.
In lieu of a sigil, you can set up wards. I recommend everyone has at least one ward in their house. It wards away negative energy and are typically pretty simple to make. They can be a spell jar with protection as the base, or a satchel. Some people use sigils as wards, however the sigils need to be refreshed more often.
Step Two: Banishing.
Once you've gotten protection down, you can move onto banishing. Banishing is draining and very not beginner friendly, but is a necessity if you wish to work with entities and deities. It would suck if you accidently invited a negative spirit into your space and now you can't get rid of it. Here are a few steps you can take to banish.
One: Ask.
You can simply ask the energy to leave. Most of the time, passing energies or lingering energies (please refer back to cleansing) can get suck in circles and that is who you are talking to. They don't really want anything to do with you so simply open the circle and let them leave! An easy way to avoid this is to be very specific with who or what you want to enter your space. If you invite all of the energies in by saying something along the lines of "I invite anyone to speak to me," then you are going to get a lot of strays.
Two: Cleanse again
Okay, so you asked the energy to leave and they either ignored you or refused. It's time to cleanse again. You need to be more forceful with this cleansing, but not rude. "Please leave," may or may not be enough to deter them, but "I demand you leave," may seem too rude if the energy isn't actively harming you. My personal favorite is either "You don't have to go home but you can't stay here," or "I was expecting someone else, but thank you for stopping by." Very firm but not rude.
Three: Demand
So now you've asked nicely and firmly. You know this energy is not welcome and has intention of harming you. Cast a new circle, deep cleanse AGAIN and demand the spirit leaves. Candles are a huge help and if it is too much for you to handle on your own, you can request the help of ancestors or another diety you work with. Now you're allowed to be forceful.
The last step is vetting.
What is vetting?
To vet a deity is to make sure that it is who you think it is. In the realm if worshipping and working with deities and entities, vetting is extremely important so you know exactly who or what you are devoting your time and energy too.
How does vetting help?
It helps by ensuring you are speaking to the right entity. There are many trickster spirits out there that want you to believe they are someone else so they can gain access to your attention and energy. It would suck if you thought you were giving energy to a god or goddess and it turns out to be a trickster.
How does one vet?
This is a broad question that doesn't have a singular answer. My personal favoritr way to vet takes a while, because I want to be 100% certain that this is who I want and need to be speaking to.
1. I do three separate forms of divination for every encounter. I ask personal questions about deities like their symbols and offerings. If im using pendulum, I ask a few questions and I repeat them using different words. If I get the wrong answer (say, I were to ask if Apollos bird was a swan and the energy replied yes) I know its not the energy or entity I thought it was. I do this for multiple sessions to be sure. I also use tarot cards and ask similar questions. My last form of divination i bibilomancy. I open to a random page and read the first paragraph that catches my eye. If it has any symbols if the deity, I am a little more sure of who I am speaking too.
2. I meditate on it and open myself up to thoughts. I go completely off of intuition here and if I continually keep thinking of symbols or the deity themselves, I know I am speaking to the diety. This is something that took me a long time to get good at, so please be gentle with yourself.
3. Last, I go off of pure intuition. Sometimes, I just feel a wave if relief when I start to vet, where all my anxieties are gone, which is another very good sign. But please remember that this also took me a long time to realize, so be gentle with yourself.
When you first start deity work, please keep these steps in mind. I really dont want to see anyone start to worship a trickster under the guise of a deity. Be safe out there!
