Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Cleansing Unwanted Energies II



Some time ago I wrote a rather cursory introduction to cleansing unwanted energies. Upon rereading it, I found it sadly wanting, as it only covers house cleansing and doesn't go into detail. Because it's such a common topic, I thought I should rectify that situation. To be honest with you, dear reader, it's a lot easier to post a blog link in Facebook comments than rewrite the same four things once a week!

Work of this kind could be broadly classified in two groups, cleansing and banishing. Cleansing would be dispelling unwanted or stagnant energies in general. Banishing would be targeting specific energies, generally of a person or non-corporeal entity. Trying to dispel the energy of a situation (like an argument) could be considered the "missing link" between the two. (These are just my definitions, please don't go definitively telling your friends this like I'm the Supreme Arbiter of Truth or something.) Cleansings and banishings could each be further divided into two groups, personal and environmental. The methods you use would depend to some extent on which of these four categories you're working within. However, there are certain tools that are pretty standard issue gear for this kind of work.

Broadly speaking, sage and sandalwood are good for simple cleansings. This is what I would normally use when moving into a new house. When I moved into my cubicle at work I flicked lemon water around. Not only did this prevent me from being fired my first day for starting a fire with burning sage, it also gave the place a more vibrant energy than sage or sandalwood would. Those are great for building serenity but, if you're anything like me, too much serenity and you'll be drooling on your desk by noon. While sage is great for a living room, and sandalwood is lovely for the bedroom, lemon is a better fit for a kitchen or home office. Likewise, for personal cleansing, I would end the day with sage but begin it with lemon. (In fact, Edgar Cayce recommended starting each morning with a hot cup of lemon water, before anything else. When I actually practice this, I find I have more energy and a better mood throughout the day and my metabolism functions much more effectively.) For a real heavy hitter, bust out the dragon's blood. You wouldn't use bleach to wash your hands and you wouldn't try to clean up black mold with just a wet rag! Sage and sandalwood are very gentle cleansers. They're nice for a periodic refresher. Dragon's blood digs down into your soul and roots out the evil like a rotten tooth that needs to be pulled. I recommend this for ridding your home of lingering deceased tenants or yourself of "influence" (light possession, basically). I absolutely love dragon's blood soap for ritually washing away those pesky non-corporeal hitchhikers!

Now, once you've got yourself or your environment all nice and clean, you want to keep it that way, right? Pennies really have a way of keeping energy flowing. For yourself, try keeping one in each pocket. Magnetite is also great for circulation but it has more of a grounding energy, while pennies and the copper bracelets you may have seen are a bit more perky. I like to wear my magnetite earrings to work, while I would prefer the penny method for an afternoon hike. For your home, placing pennies in corners and other strategic locations can keep the energy from aggregating and stagnating. If you're dealing with a particular entity, corporeal or otherwise, you'll be wanting to think about protection. Traditionally, salt (especially the expensive consecrated sea salt occult shops love to sell you) is spread on the thresholds of the home to prevent intruders or unsavory guests from entering. If you're dealing with a non-corporeal entity, you may want to put a ring around your entire house, inside or out, though I suggest inside for environmental reasons. (You're not a conquering invader salting the earth of your defeated foes, after all, this is YOUR earth!) If you're not fond of the idea of wanton salt-strewing, you could instead construct a crystal grid. Place appropriate stones in strategic locations throughout your home. I'd recommend black obsidian for protection and rose quartz for cancelling out "bad vibes". Keep in mind where the rooms in your house are when designing your crystal grid. For example, an obsidian point under your bed might have some unintended consequences for your relationship with your spouse, as it's a cutting tool used for warding. Presumably, you'd rather be cuddling up to your honey than warding 'em off! (Otherwise, you've got even worse problems than spooky Uncle Ghost.) Black obsidian is a wonderful stone to carry for personal protection as well. (And there's no more powerful magic than being able to deliver a solid ass-kicking to whoever might do you harm so, please, don't let an obsidian point be a replacement for martial arts, mace, a swift kick in the oh-no, the piercingly debilitating shrill scream of a Soprano I, or whatever your preferred method of self-defense. It's meant to give your efforts a boost, not do all the work for you.) Speaking of rocks, throw 'em everywhere! Well, don't throw them, that's hazardous. In fact, don't be haphazard about it. Uses strategery. Have a hard time thinking clearly at work? Get yourself a godawful gaudy clear quartz paper weight for your desk. Do physical labor and need some extra energy? Wear carnelian. And so on. Google and trial and error are your best friends here. More on this later, though.

Now, while these lovely tools carry their own weight, they're just aspects of the environment until your intent puts some momentum behind them. This is where we get down to details, dear reader, so put on the tea and your spectacles and settle in for some dry technical documentation.

Disclaimer: What follows is not exhaustive; it is a short collection of my own personal methods. Use what works for you. Some would say you could skip this entire post and just read this article about the LBRP. But that's boring! I love chicken casserole, but I don't wan to eat it every day!

Personal Cleansing:
I open and cleanse each chakra, starting from the root and working up towards the crown. What are chakras you say? Take two Google searches and call me in the morning. Open and cleanse them how you say? Well, if you can feel your chakras, great! This will be easy. If not, put your imagineer cap on and visualize with me. Personally, I see everyone's chakras differently. But a good start is to see them as pools of colored light. Visualize a spring of colored light rising up from within you to become a pool. The pool becomes a whirlpool as the chakra spins. All the debris collected by the river of your life rises to the surface where you can easily skim it off the top with one of those unwieldy nets. Luckily, you don't actually need to use a dangerously awkward net, just your intent. There are a lot of ways to see this, I tend to see it as black tar. Whatever works for you, go for it. I see the tar spinning off the chakra into a ball in front of me. Working my way up, I send all the tar from all the chakras into that ball. When I'm done I see a pillar of green light (earth energies) rise from the ground and a pillar of blue light (cosmic energies) descend fro the sky, meeting in the tar bal and dissolving it. I tell it, "Go do something useful!" as it's blown to smithereens and released, transmuted, to go harry a hare or something, presumably. Then I proceed to shore up the little bridges from pool to pool. Weaving in and out from front to back, a thread of light connects my root to my sacral to my solar plexus to my heart to my throat o my third eye to my crown to my third eye to my throat to my-- you get the idea. The shape the thread forms is something like this ooooo. Any time there is resistance in the thread, I focus my attention on the area and gently dislodge the blockage, like you would dislodge a log sticking out inconveniently into a canal you're canoeing through. Clean chakras do you little good if they're not talking to each other and allowing your energy to flow properly. That's a prime way for them to get all ucky again. Do you want a tar pit for a solar plexus? Do you? I didn't think so. Think of the tiny dinosaurs that are your hopes and dreams! Do you want them mired forever in muck? But I digress... Where was I? Oh yes, so once everything is properly connected, this chain becomes a pillar of white light. Push the light into every part of your body, seeing the secondary chakras in your hands and feet bloom. You can do a little work here to ensure your active and receptive hands are doing their jobs but sending the energy from the one to the other in a circuit. Samesies with the feetsies, sending it through the earth/floor/deck of the ship/whatever. Pull that light back in to the pillar. Now send it around yourself, enveloping you in an opalescent egg. Recently I've started adding what I call "a rose quartz aura" if I expect to be around other people. Basically it filters signals received and transmitted through a shell of love energy, canceling out things like fear and anger. 

There's also an exercise I do with a grounding cord descending from the root chakra to the center of the earth. Saying, "I release all foreign and unhelpful energies", allow them to flow down the grounding cord to burn up in the molten core, then release the grounding cord to burn. After that, form a new grounding cord. When I've done that I allow the earth energies to flow up through my feet and the cosmic energies to flow down through my crown chakra, meeting in the heart chakra and mingling throught my entire body. Sometimes I do this on its own, sometimes in concert with the chakra meditation. It really depends on my time and need. When I do psychic fairs I begin the day with the chakra meditation, use the grounding cord and a version of the personal banishing described below between readings, and close the day with a combination of both. (Credit where it's due, the grounding cord method comes from a wonderfully terrible little book called You Are Psychic by Debra Lynn Katz.)

Personal Banishing:
The following I learned from a speaker at the monthly Edgar Cayce Forum. (I surely wish I could remember which speaker it was because I hate not attributing!) To get a sense of the health of your chakras and your being you can ask them questions! How are you feeling today root chakra? Is there anything you need? There's a variation of this I find even more useful! First you get a baseline reading of how your chakras feel, then you picture a person you have a relationship with. And this is just so lovely, you read them again and see how they've changed! Maybe your heart chakra feels like it just drank a refreshing glass of lemonade but your third eye is crying. Even more useful is taking it a step further, looking at the energetic connections you've made with that person. (Shades of Celestine Prophecy, anyone?) You may notice a connection is very strong between you in a certain chakra, but rather weak in another. My best friend and I had strong, steady, but not blasting connections at ever chakra. I was remarkably consistent. My boyfriend and I had an interesting arrangement. Energy was cycling between us, using two pairs of our chakras. Take a long look at these connections, you can learn a lot about your relationships with others that way. The only thing I recommend doing with these connections is gently separating them. Some might encourage just cutting them like scissors through a taught rubber band but, in a relationship you want to preserve, I wonder if those ends might snap back and bite you in the wrist. The aforementioned cyclic connection between my boyfriend and I involved a gentle weaning process of about a week.Other slipped apart quite easily. Do what feels right for you. While some might disagree, I don't feel like this process is pressing enough in the ordinary course of things to warrant shocking your system. However, when you want a certain persistent someone gone, that extra jolt can be exactly what is called for. In this case I do a decisive cutting of all these energetic connections and then I bust out the giant ceremonial ribbon-cutting scissors and turn my attention to the Silver Cord. This, I consider to be your soul connection with the other person. Cutting this cord is no joke. It is severing the karmic connections between you and the other person. You're releasing yourself and them from the soul contracts between you. Some of these are karmic baggage we're still carrying around and some of these are things we're still trying to help each other with. That said, who's to say the cutting of the Silver Cord isn't a fulfillment of those contracts? (Which send me on interesting parallels regarding Jesus as fulfillment of the law and the prophets... but that kind of exegesis merits an entire book of its own.) Suffice it to say, this is not a regular practice for me and I don't recommend doing it casually. Loose ends and what not. And now, back with another blast from the Katz, is this little gem, which I've found is a common trick, in various masks, among professional psychics-- the simple quick energy return. You and the other person each have a golden sun overhead. Get a sense for their energy. Sense around yourself, where do you feel that energy on yourself? Send it into the golden sun above the other person's head. Repeat the process to reclaim your energy from them. The golden sun is purifying and revitalizing the energy for re-absorption. It bursts and the energy rains back down into the bearer. This is what I use in conjunction with the grounding cord between clients at psychic fairs. It's quick, easy, and harmless. Also easily adapted. A Santeria-trained professional reader I respect very much simply claps her hands three times. Certainly that's all you have time for at the busier fairs!

Environmental Cleansing:
At this point it is after 1 am, I am quite tired and becoming light headed for lack of food, So I apologize if I ramble, cut corners, or generally act wackadoodle. So I'm going to cut a corner here and bltantly plagiarize myself, by recycling the text of my previous post on this subject. For a simple but thorough house cleansing, I do a fragrant little walk around my house with a sage bundle. This is similar to the chakra cleansing in that I see all the uck as black tar. Sometimes the black tar has miraculously sublimated and is wisping and wafting about in the air. I do a similar visualization as I walk around, gathering all the tar into a ball and discharging it with the earth and cosmic energies and the exhortation to do something useful. When I'm feeling fancy, I throw in some Wiccanesque flair from my back-in-the-day days and call in the elements and their helpful qualities. Whether or not I call in the elements, I start in the East and walk around to North, and so on, proceeding clockwise, finishing in Center. Some walk counter-clockwise to banish but I sort of just push out the undesirable energy with the desired energy. It's essential with any energy work that you mindfully replace any energy banished or expended, so if you walk counter-clockwise fashion, please do a turn in the opposite direction to replenish the vacuum left by whatever you banished. I skip a step by condensing them together.

Environmental Banishing:
I saved the worst for last. These are your Big Spookies, the things people tell stories about around campfires. This is when you bust out a sword, cut a banishing pentagram in the air and recite the invocation of Archangel Michael! Lawd ha' mercy child! You push that motherhaunter through it!
I mean, you CAN do that. But usually you don't need to. Usually either calmly talking to the entity or screaming at it to get the fuck out works just fine. It's actually easier work sometimes because you're dealing with something that has motivations, so the motivations can be played. Energy doesn't have motivations, it just is, so you just laboriously push it around like so much bread dough. But things that have feelings, fears, desires, these just require acuity. Usually, in the case of "ghosts", either some thorough cleansings will clear out the residual energy or you'll be able to talk to them and let them know what's going on. Just talk to them like a friend. Worst case scenario, you open a portal to the other side for them. How do you open this portal you ask? I have no idea. You send out the intent to Source, allow yourself to be a sort of GPS marker and trivial conduit, and there it goes. Which is why my friend is no longer beset by ghost cats. Make sure you close it though, and keep an eye on it while open. With nasties, usually ordering them out will work. If it doesn't, bust out the dragon's blood to make them uncomfortable. Become an inhospitable environment to them. Which is to say, don't give it chinks in your aura to latch on to. Which is to say, lay off anything that weakens you (like alcohol), be mindful of your thoughts and emotions, stay centered in love, and FOR GODS' SAKES, don't be afraid of it! Which brings me to the most powerful tool in anyone's kit, Love. I was once dealing with a minor possession case; annoying and unsettling but not immediately dangerous. I shouted at it to "Get the fuck out of ______!" to no avail, so I changed tacks. Instead I thought about how much I love the affected person, I filled myself with my love for that person, I sent them that love. And the invader left quietly. Staying centered in Love creates an inhospitable environment for things that would work contrary to that purpose. If you can't be a tool or entertainment, they will lose interest. Don't let their torment unsettle you, dont let them manipulate your thoughts and feelings. This can become difficult, but it's the surest route away from "recidivism". Any time I've dealt with big nasties, it was Love that drove them out. Well, from their perspective, boredom or more trouble than it's worth.

And now 2 am is creeping up on me and I must say good night, dear reader. I'm so beat I'm going to commit the greatest sacrilege and not even edit this draft once, let alone my usual three times! Drop me a line in the comments for questions, clarification, and/or criticism. Let me know what you use, what you've experienced!

Love and Overabundant Blessings to you! 

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

Hydramanita


My subconscious started writing this song last night and it finally worked itself out of my head this morning. The rhythm is a little odd and might be hard to detect. Every time a pattern is established, it changes. Follow the punctuation and formatting for clues. I hope to upload an audio file at some point in the future. Right now, though, I don't think I can even read it one more time. Just release it. Oh, and for you astrologers and mythologists out there, no it wasn't a mistake, it was intentional (you'll see).

Hydramanita

Pupils wide,
Laughing cry.
Doorways to the other side
Of the rejection,
Of deception.
Perception,
Is
   A
     Lie.

Charon’s fee
For Styx’s weeds,
Pomegranate lantern seeds.
Hijack Hades’
Ashen steed,
Follow strands
You’re not supposed
To see.
Chasing crystal spheres
Of destiny.

Shadow rabbit,
Arctic fox,
Rainbow raven
Guide you to
Pandora’s box.
From inside
You feel
Your father
Knock.

Wounding healer,
Eyebright.
Flame-crowned woman’s
Gates of night.
Dance a spiral
To the sky:
Ascension,
Out
      Of
         Time.

Slip aside,
Step inside.
Every line
Is multiplied.
Lose the queen,
Loose between.
Every lifetime
Is a dream.
Slip aside,
Step inside.
Every line
Is multiplied.
Lose the queen,
Loose between.
Every timeline
Is a dream.
Slip aside,
Step inside.
Every line
Is multiplied.
Lose the queen,
Loose between.
Every lifeline
Is a dream.
Loose the queen,
Loose between.
Lose the queen,
Lose between.
Every mind
Is just a dream.
Slip aside,
Step inside.
Step aside,
Slip inside.
Every mind
Is multiplied.
Every mind is multiplied.
Every mind is multiplied.
Mul
      ti
        plied.
Mult
        i
          plied.
Mul
       tip
            lied.
Times.