witchwrd

Doll Tor stone circle. Photo by Barry Teague.

sunsets are divine moments

Do you need to cleanse a space, but don’t have (or want) sage to burn, specialty sprays (which can get pricy), or fancy sound-healing tools? This spell is for you! You can modify it to not just cleanse, but also bring joy, love, light, and peace to a space.

What do you think of when you imagine blowing bubbles? Odds are, it’s probably an image of childhood springs and summers spent outside, barbecues, parades, festivals, and fairs. Bubbles have a playful, young, and sweet energy. They bring light and a sense of laughter to any space. Just looking at those perfect orbs of shimmering iridescent rainbows seems to lighten the mood.

This spell works best for outdoor spaces, but if you really want to do this indoors, go crazy! This spell is all about fun :)

YOU WILL NEED:

Blowing bubbles (or you can make your own. Just find a good water/soap ratio. Dish soap works the best).

The essential oil of your choosing (sage oil for plain old cleansing; orange oil for joy and laughter; lavender for peace; or rose oil for love. You can experiment with combinations, depending on your intention).

1 small quartz crystal (citrine for happiness; amethyst for calm; smoky quartz to transmute negative energy; rose quartz for love; or just clear quartz for general cleansing).

Once you have everything, do all your pre-spell preparations, whatever they may be. Cast your circle, invoke whatever spirits you want (my suggestion in this case would be a Light Being or a spirit who specializes in healing, cleansing, or happiness and abundance). However you like to perform a spell, do it!

Mix 3 drops of your chosen essential oil, and mix them in with the bubble wand clockwise. As you stir, imagine the feeling of youthful joy and laughter, infusing it into the mixture. You might choose to repeat an incantation or a mantra (such as one for Tara or Quan Yin), or any prayer of your specific tradition that evokes happiness, love, and light.

Next, hold your chosen quartz in your hands and charge it by telling it what you want it to do. Specify that cleansing the old energy is the goal, but also include what you want to replace the old energy with—is it joy and sunshine? Calm and peace? Love and light? Whatever your intention, infuse it into the quartz. Put the quartz into the bottle.

Now screw the lid back onto the bottle. You can either let it sit outside in the sunshine to soak up the solar energy, or you can put it on an altar to charge its magical properties. Or you can use it right away!

As you blow the bubbles, imagine that they’re made of pure light. Wherever the bubbles fly, their cleansing energy will spread. You can repeat your mantra, prayer, or incantation again every time you blow. Watch the bubbles dance and roam through the air, catching in the light. Blow bubbles as long as you’d like, until you feel that they’ve done their job. Now you can store the rest on your altar or someplace outdoors, to be used again whenever you feel the need to.

NOTES!

🌬 Have multiple people help out and fill the area with laughter! Nothing clears negative energy quite like a crowd of friends.

🌬 Pick a bottle of bubble soap whose color corresponds to your intention—orange for warm and sunny energy, purple or blue for calm, green for healing, pink or red for love, yellow for joy, etc.

🌬 This activity is great for little kids. Children have such joyful energy, just give them some bubbles and let them go!

🌬 This spell works the best for areas that feel creepy, “off”, negative, or full of dead energy (ie ghosts). This could be your backyard, your local park, your cul-de-sac, or even someplace indoors. As long as you don’t mind cleaning up sticky soap, you can do this anywhere you want!

This is about a 20-30min meditation.

Start by focusing yourself on your breath for 5 minutes.

Go back to a forest or other outdoor natural setting. Find your sacred space, your personal clearing in the woods that is only yours. It can be a picnic, a tent or a shack. You’ve decorated it yourself with herbs and a circle of flat, white rocks. There are two bushes there, stinging nettle, for protection. Be sure not to touch it. 

Sit here and notice your body, where your feet are, how your ankles and knees are bent, where your arms are. Bring your attention to your skin. We’re going to put a silver metal onto it. Imagine the liquid silver climbing up from your toes, up your legs, across your stomach, and up your back, over your shoulders, and up over your head and face. Let the metal harden like armor, able to move when you move but hard enough to keep out anything. Sit and feel what this changes in yourself and how the outside feels like now.

Now imagine this silver armor expanding like an egg around you and encompassing your aura. It is dark in here, in the silver metal. You can place your palm on the metal surface and feel its smoothness. 

Expand the silver out further until it is as big as your space, enclosing the picnic and even bigger to gather in the entire clearing which is yours. Let it reach into the trees and form a nice, smooth circle along the ground.

You can barely see the trees here. Let’s make the silver translucent. The hard material changes color, turns to glass, but unbreakable. We can see the trees now, the sun shining down, through the dome. Set your intention to your dome:  to be safe, to ward against all influences and spirits not in accordance with your own energy, with peace and quiet.

Lastly. let’s change its material. Let that hard dome shift in an instant to a cloud, airy and still there, still filled with your intent, but we are able to pass through it easily now, able to let our thoughts breathe through it.

Finish by creating a little project here. Gather some twigs or rocks or feathers and flowers and create a symbol or sigil of protection with them.

A pentagram, a spiral going counter-clockwise, circles within squares and squares within circles. As you create, send your intention into your symbols and creation.

This post is dedicated to the bees, make sure you do your part to save the bees! 

Facts to increase your love for bees:

They have personalities.

They can recognize human faces.

Their honey contains all the substances needed to sustain life.

Eating Honey can make you smarter.

Honeybees can only sting once.

They beat their wings up to 200 times per second.

Honeybees are the only insects that produce food for humans.

Bees don’t sleep.

All worker bees are female.

Ways to attract bees:

Plant flowers that attract bees.

Build a bee houses.

Place bee waterers and bee baths around your garden.

Do not use pesticides or herbicides of any kind.

Plants that attract bees:

Bee balm

Lavender

Crocus

Snow Drop

Wildflowers/Any native species

Catmint

Borage

Anise hyssop

Heliotrope

Sunflower

Oregano

Yarrow

Coneflower

Black eyed susan

Asters

Goldenrod

Foxglove

Marigold

Pansies

Sweet peas

Nasturtiums

Bee folklore:

It is unlucky to kill bees.

Believed to have the knowledge of the future and all secrets. 

If a bee lands on your hand, it suggests money is on it’s way.

If a bee lands on someones head, they will become successful in life. 

If a bee flies into a home, it means either good luck or a stranger is on their way. If you kill the bee it means the stranger will be bringing bad news.

Seeing a single bee will bring luck.

Bees buzzing around a child’s head foretells a happy, successful life.

Bee mythology:

Ancient Egyptian pharaohs used the bee as their royalty symbol. They believed honey bees were born from the tears of the sun God, Ra. To the Egyptians, bees represented resurrection and protected against evil spirits. 

Druids believed that bees represented the sun, the Goddess, celebration, and community.

The Greeks thought that a babies whose lips where touched by a bee would become a great poet or a great speaker. In ancient Greece it was also thought that they symbolized industry, hard work, messengers of the dead, and obedience. Honey was often used as an offering to their Gods. They also believed bees were the surviving souls of the priestesses who served the Goddess Aphrodite. 

They have been seen as a symbol of sacredness and could be associated with the Great Mother or Divine feminine. The Mother can be symbolized as the queen bee. 

In Celtic mythology honey bees had great wisdom and thought to be messengers between worlds. Honey was sacred and used in rituals.

In some cultures they can be associated with purity, health, and wealth. Some also believed bees were a symbol of the human soul.

The druids believed that bees symbolized the sun, the goddess, celebration, and community.

Deities associated with bees and honey:

Aphrodite

Ra

Vishnu

Pan

Vishnu

Cybele

Mellona

Melissa (Melisae)

Neith

Apollo

Artemis

Freya

Thor

Demeter

Bees in Magick:

Bees are closely associated with the fae and their presence in gardens which indicates blessings of fae. Encourage the bees, by putting up bee houses, hives, planting bee-friendly plants and waterers and not using pesticides. Thus, encouraging the blessings from the fae, while harming bees can anger them and cause them to seek revenge. 

The symbol of a bee can be used to seal a spell with sweetness for one who appreciates good will and a sting for one who takes it for granted or doesn’t keep his end of the bargain. 

Honey stirred into your tea can ‘sweeten’ your day. 

Honey is used often in magick to sweeten a situation.

Anointing your lips with honey will make your words sound sweeter. 

Bees in your dreams:

May be a good omen.

Bees in your dreams may be telling you to take a look at your social networks. They may be pointing toward a desire for more harmonious and functional relationships, or celebrating the ones you already have.

A visit from a bee in a dream may also be notifying you that a friend or family member needs to speak with you. You will know as this person will also pop into your mind somehow. It means call them or perhaps, that you will hear from them soon.

Dreaming of a beehive usually relates to the home and family or your business and coworkers. A happy, buzzing hive means a happy, buzzing home. It may foretell incoming abundance, and fruitful times ahead. If the bees are swarming around the hive, rather than working in it, proceed with caution. There is a lack of harmony that is interfering with productivity.

A swarm of bees may indicate that you feel that a group of people upon whose cooperation you rely is becoming chaotic and out of control. Perhaps the need to balance your own interactions with your different business and social groups for your own sanity.

Beehives bring to mind abundance and prosperity: bees seem to work hard and are rewarded by flowing stores of honey. An empty beehive, then, represents the opposite: lost opportunity and financial misfortune.

A beehive can also represent a home. The fullness or emptiness of the beehive may indicate unconscious feelings about family life, marriage, children, or the house itself. Honey may represent your property or belongings.

A beehive on fire or burned bees are often interpreted depending on your emotional and physical condition. Burned bees may mean you are overcoming fear and want to take control of life and anger, are you’re progressing through life with more confidence without any fear of obstacles. Burned beehives can also mean you have lost something precious, like money, a relationship, or some valuable information that you’ve forgotten or ignored.

If a bee or a swarm of bees is chasing you in dream, it may mean there is some unsettled business or a memory that haunts you. Make sure you let it go from your mind or deal with it in order to avoid these bees.

If you dream about getting a bee sting then something may be bothering you, or you have a persistent annoyance in your life. Concerns about your relationship, career, finance, or some unknown issue is bugging your subconscious mind. Find out what it is and sort it out.

Magickal uses for Honey:

Can be used in binding spells to symbolically stick things together.

Used for offerings to fae and deities.

Can sweeten a person or a situation.

 Honey is sacred to Aphrodite.

Can be used in spells corresponding to purification, health, love, happiness, spirituality, wisdom, good fortune, fertility, 

Use certain types of honey that corresponded with your spell.

Bathe in warm water and honey to attract love.

A dish filled with honey can attract angels and beneficial spirits.

Do your part to save the bees they are an important part of our life and in our magick practices. 

May the moon light your path!

==Moonlight Academy==

Aka Lúnasa or Lammas, the first of the 3 harvest festivals, celebrated on August 1st.

I know Lughnasadh is still a ways away, but I thought I’d jump the gun a bit anyway cuz I LIKE BREAD.

🌻Go pick apples or any other produce that’s in season! You can offer some to the Earth or whatever deities you worship. In ancient times, people would bury their offerings at the tops of hills during Lughnasadh.

🌻Bake bread! Make it magical by inscribing symbols or runes into it, using herbs and spices with special properties, and adding sun water. Bless it. Ask your deities to put their energy into it. As you knead and mix, imagine all your magick getting folded in right into the dough. Think of this loaf of bread as your own unique little bundle of magick. This bread can be for anything you want, but some common Lughnasadh themes would be abundance, prosperity, healing, family harmony, and good over evil.

🌻Bask in the color gold

🌻Perform spells for abundance and prosperity

🌻Organize a group sports event—paintball, laser tag, baseball, capture the flag, even something as small as a jump rope competition. The point is to honor Lugh through traditional athletic competitions! What kind of competition that is, is up to you.

🌻Visit a sacred well. No sacred wells around? Go visit a body of water that’s special to you and spend some time dipping your feet in, basking in the sun, and eating some seasonal fruits.

🌻Go to a local farmers market and buy some in-season produce, then cook it up however you want. Save some to offer to the deities of your choice, and eat the rest with friends!

🌻Do a tarot reading for yourself. What’s beginning to manifest in your life? What’s ripe, and what still needs time?

🌻This celebration traditionally included matchmaking and courting. Why not give this tradition a modern twist by going to a speed dating event, a blind date, or another dating-related event?

🌻Sit outside and paint with golds and yellows and oranges. Wear flowers in your hair. Drink some dandelion tea.

🌻Fill your altar with sheaves of wheat, decorative corn, sunstone and citrine and pyrite, gold colors, scoops of earth in decorative jars, fresh-picked herbs and weeds and wildflowers, and that cool thing you painted earlier.

☀️ God of the sun, oaths, justice, and kings

☀️ Patron of kings, artisans, poets, blacksmiths, and carpenters

☀️ Titles include...

~ Lugh of the Long Arm

~ Shining One

~ Lugh of Artful Hands

~ The Skilled God

~ Master of All Arts

☀️ Animals: lion, horses, raven, stag, crow, hound, lynx

☀️ Trees: apple, oak, hazelnut, holly

☀️ Flowers: marigold, goldenrod, sunflower, carnation, rose

☀️ Herbs: bay, basil, allspice, rosemary, cinnamon

☀️ Foods: corn, bread, apple, potato, berries

☀️ Beverages: wine, mead, apple cider

☀️ Colors: brown, gold, yellow, green

☀️ Crystals: citrine, carnelian, sunstone, topaz, quartz

☀️ Element: air, fire

☀️ Day: Sunday

☀️ Sabbat: Lughnasadh

☀️ Symbols: spear, harp, sun, slingshot

☀️ Tarot Cards: The Sun, Justice

☀️ Moon Phase: full, waxing

Celebrated on the first of August.

Here are some things I have gathered circulating around folklore and legend of the sacred celebration of the beginning of autumn and the harvest.

🌾In Modern Irish the spelling is Lúnasa, which is also the name for the month of August.

🌾The main theme that emerges from the folklore and rituals of Lughnasadh is a struggle for the harvest between two gods. One god – usually called Crom Dubh (in older myths, Crom Cruach) – guards the grain as his treasure. The other god – Lugh – must seize it for mankind. Crom (or cromm) means "bent, crooked, stooped". Cruach (or crúach) is a noun meaning "pile, heap, mound, stack".

🌾Lughnasadh was also considered a funeral feast and athletic competition in commemoration of Lugh's mother or foster-mother Tailtiu. She was said to have died of exhaustion after clearing the plains of Ireland for agriculture. Tailtiu may have been an earth goddess who represented the dying vegetation that fed mankind. The funeral games in her honour were called the Óenach Tailten or Áenach Tailten.

🌾Another form of celebration included The Puck Fair. The Puck Fair is held each year in early August in the town of Killorglin, County Kerry. It has been traced as far back as the 16th century but is believed to be a survival of a Lughnasadh festival. At the beginning of the three-day festival, a wild goat is brought into the town and crowned 'king', while a local girl is crowned 'queen'. The festival includes traditional music and dancing, a parade, arts and crafts workshops, a horse and cattle fair, and a market.

🌾other legends depict Lugh defeating Balor, which seems to represent the overcoming of blight, drought and the scorching summer sun.

🌾These fights, interestingly mirror the Cornish 'quoit throwing' between two giants who were believed to be nature deities or spirits - hinting at Lugh and Crom Dubh's/ Balors annual fight.

🌾At some gatherings, everyone wore flowers while climbing the hill and then buried them at the summit as a sign that summer was ending. In other places, the first sheaf of the harvest was buried.

🌾This is similar to the tradition of making corn dollies and then burying them, possibly symbolising the death of Crom Cruach or a memorial ritual to commemorate the goddess Tailtiu.

🌾Matchmaking was common by marrying a couple together for a year and a day, after which they can decide to leave or stay. During the month, kings would frequently make decisions and choices.

🌾There were also visits to holy wells. Visitors to holy wells would pray for health while walking sunwise around the well. They would then leave offerings.

These are from my own personal experience. As a general rule, black crystals are naturally very protective because they’re extremely grounding. Purple crystals are psychically protective, and white crystals purify the energy around them. But here’s a comprehensive list:

⭐️Selenite - it’s such a high-vibration crystal that it resonates with the angelic realm, and known for being incredibly protective. Plus it’s really cheap! Yay! Buy raw pieces in bulk and place them in a grid around your personal space for powerful protection.

⭐️Sugilite - emanates the Violet Ray, which is highly protective against psychic attack, curses, hexes, and general negative energy.

⭐️Charoite - VERY powerful against inter- dimensional parasites, wonderful for wearing during astral travel. Keep by your bed to ward off nasty entities that like to feed on your energy. Think of it like a purple fire burning away all negative influence. It’s really amazing stuff.

⭐️Amethyst - well-known, easy to come by, and usually pretty cheap (just find real amethyst and not fake). Psychically protective, also very soothing. When you’re afraid, you tend to attract nasty entities, and so amethyst has the dual purpose of keeping you calm and feeling safe AND protecting you against negative energy.

⭐️Black tourmaline - the old standby for protection against negative energy, curses, malicious entities, and general feelings of being overwhelmed. Also easy to come by!

⭐️Hematite - another old favorite in the metaphysical community, good for keeping you grounded on earth, which in itself is protective. Regular black hematite is protective, but rainbow hematite has the added benefit of aligning your chakra column.

⭐️Magnetite - Same as hematite, but because it’s magnetic, I like to think of it like an energy trap that sucks in all the nasty energy around it. Cleanse it more often!

⭐️Labradorite - aside from being gorgeous, this stone is specifically protective during magickal practices. It can guard against magickal attack, curses, hexes, and general bad energy.

⭐️ Regular black stones you find outdoors are grounding, ESPECIALLY ones you find deep in the dirt. I can’t tell you how powerful it is to find your own magick materials. Since it’s been soaking up all that lovely earth energy, any dark-colored stone in the dirt will have protective qualities. Take it home, wash it, cleanse it, charge it, and familiarize it with your energy. You’ll be best buds, I promise! You don’t have to spend a dime on protective stones, if you don’t want to.