A Witch's World of Magick (8 page)

Once all the ingredients are added, swirl the potion clockwise, making a number of circles equal to your number of years on earth. Wrap the container in a piece of your clothing for safe keeping, taking care to seal the top or store it upright so it doesn’t spill. Your potion is now ready for use. If you’ve crafted a nontoxic edible blend, simply ingest it straight or add it to food or drink. If your potion contains any non-food ingredients that aren’t safe to eat, simply use the potion externally wherever and whenever it’s needed. You might use your inedible potions to anoint your home, body, clothes, keys, or other personal effects. Anoint your pulse points with the magickal mixture, sprinkle a bit in your shoes, or place a few drops on your jewelry for an extra boost of personal magnetism and power anytime you need it.

Points to Ponder

• When mixing energies, do you think the order in which ingredients are added makes a difference? Why or why not?
  
• Might astrological timing be considered when performing mixing magick? Would a cheering potion created during a new moon work a little differently than a cheering potion blended during a full moon? What might the difference be, and could this effect be altered or manipulated with the addition of other ingredients?
  
• This chapter discussed the use of potions and other forms of mixing magick for the purposes of gaining bravery, wisdom, healing, and more. What other applications of magick to combine energies can you think of?
  
• Can infusing oneself with courage or other qualities through the ingestion of magickally charged food really be described as a combining of energies? Why or why not? What happens to the energy of the foods we ingest? Is some of the energy absorbed into the body? Is the energy of food and drink all physical, or might there also be a spiritual or magickal component?
  
• Besides mixing energies through the blending of foods and potions, what other mediums for combining magick can you think of? Might a collage made of various images glued together be classified as mixing magick? Could a bracelet made with multiple beads selected for their attributes be a medium for a spell to combine energies? How about a homemade patchwork quilt to foster friendly family relations and cooperation?
  
• This chapter mentioned several ways potions can be used externally, including administration through contact with the skin or through the bottom of a shoe. Can you think of other ways a witch might employ a potion externally?
  
• In some of the recipes presented in this chapter, energies were combined through the agents of dissolving, blending, mixing, and proximity. What other ways to combine one energy with another might there be? For what purposes might you use such magick?
  

[contents]

22.
Adam Ashforth
, Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 52–57, 133–142.

23.
The word
umsizi
is also used to denote a disease caused by a mixture of witchcraft and infidelity, in addition to its meaning as a magickal powder or medicine here described.

24.
Henry Callaway
, The Religious System of the Amazulu
(Springvale, Natal: J. A. Blair, 1870), 443, accessed January 15, 2012, http://www.sacred-texts.com/afr/rsa/rsa11.htm.

25.
Amazulu: The Life of the Zulu Nation, “Zulu Healing,” accessed March 24, 2013, http://library.thinkquest.org/27209/Healing.htm.

26.
Joshua Trachtenberg
, Jewish Magic and Superstition
(New York: Behrman’s Jewish Book House, 1939), 122–123, accessed January 11, 2012, http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/jms/jms11.htm.

27.
Joshua Trachtenberg
, Jewish Magic and Superstition
(New York: Behrman’s Jewish Book House, 1939), 123, accessed January 11, 2012, http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/jms/jms11.htm.

28.
Sir George Grey
, Polynesian Mythology and Ancient Traditional History of the New Zealanders: As Furnished by Their Priests and Chiefs
(London: John Murray, 1855), 201–202, accessed March 23, 2013, http://www.sacred-texts.com/pac/grey/grey019htm.

29.
Glen Hanson, Peter Venturelli, and Annette Fleckenstein
, Drugs and Society
(Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, LLC, 2009), 327.

30.
Charles Godfrey Leland
, Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling
(London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1891), 120–121, accessed January 2, 2012, http://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/gsft/gsft09.htm.

31.
Steven Edmund Winduo, “Indigenous Knowledge of Medicinal Plants in Papau New Guinea” (paper presented to the Macmillan Brown Center for Pacific Studies, 2006), 15, accessed March 15, 2013, http://www.pacs.canterbury.ac.nz/documents/Steven%20Winduo%20Macmillan%20Brown%20Seminar.pdf.

32.
“Acalypha,” The World Botanical Associates, accessed March 3, 2013, http://www.worldbotanical.com/acalypha.htm.

33.
Lady Francesca Speranza Wilde
, Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland
(London: Ward & Downey, 1887), “A Love Potion,” accessed March 23, 2013, http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/ali/ali104.htm.

34.
Florence Johnson Scott, “Customs and Superstitions among Texas Mexicans on the Rio Grande Border,” in
Coffee in the Gourd,
ed. J. Frank Dobie (Austin, TX: Texas Folklore Society, 1923), section IV, Omens and Superstitions, accessed February 1, 2012, http://www.sacred-texts.com/ame/cig/cig14.htm.

35.
Joshua Trachtenberg
, Jewish Magic and Superstition
(New York: Behrman’s Jewish Book House, 1939), 123–124, accessed January 11, 2012, http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/jms/jms11.htm.

36.
Charles Godfrey Leland
, Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling
(London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1891), 95, accessed January 2, 2012, http://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/gsft/gsft07.htm.

37.
Harold R. Willoughby
, Pagan Regeneration
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1929), Chapter 2, III, “The Greater Mysteries at Eleusis,” accessed March 23, 2013, http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/pr/pr04.htm.

Three

The Art of Containing Energies: Magick to Have and to Hold

N
ow that you’ve mastered mixing magick, let’s focus on magick intended to
confine
energies rather than combine them. Whether you wish to trap an unfriendly ghost or store some luck within a lucky charm, knowing how to do magick to contain energy is a skill quite useful to a witch. Through containing magick, energies can be held in one place, bound into restriction, or simply kept close by in order to attract desired vibrations or impart specific attributes. In this chapter, we’ll take a look at some magickal techniques for containing energies that have been successfully employed throughout the world by magicians past, then we’ll try putting these tricks to the test in the here and now.

Containing Magick Around the World

A containing spell might take a variety of outward forms, be it a talisman, an enchanted jar, or even a mock coffin. In ancient Egypt, images of the divine placed inside a miniature casket made for a magick spell to procure an afterlife. Wood carvings called Ptah-Seker-Ausar figures represented an important trinity of gods ruling over the life, death, and afterlife of the individual human being. These were set into rectangular wooden stands resembling coffins, and then placed in the tombs of the dead. Ptah, Seker, and Ausar (aka Osiris) were the gods of sunrise, the night sun, and resurrection, respectively, and it was believed that these deities together could work together to help the souls of the dead continue on after bodily demise. In E. A. Wallis Budge’s 1901 work
Egyptian Magic
, a description of the use of Ptah-Seker-Ausar figures is given that nicely illuminates some of the finer points of symbolism. Budge writes:

Now the life of a man upon earth was identified with that of the sun; he “opened” or began his life as Ptah, and after death he was “shut in” or “coffined,” like it also. But the sun rises again when the night is past, and, as it begins a new life with renewed strength and vigour, it became the type of the new life which the Egyptian hoped to live in the world beyond the grave. But the difficulty was how to obtain the protection of Ptah, Seker, and Osiris, and how to make them do for the man that which they did for themselves, and so secure their attributes. To attain this end a figure was fashioned in such a way as to include the chief characteristics of the forms of these gods, and was inserted in a rectangular wooden stand which was intended to represent the coffin or chest out of which the trinity Ptah-Seker-Ausar came forth. On the figure itself and on the sides of the stand were inscribed prayers on behalf of the man for whom it was made, and the Egyptian believed that these prayers caused the might and powers of the three gods to come and dwell in the wooden figure. But in order to make the stand of the figure as much like a coffin as possible, a small portion of the body of the deceased was carefully mummified and placed in it, and it was thought that if the three gods protected and preserved that piece, and if they revivified it in due season, the whole body would be protected, and preserved, and revivified.
³⁸

This example reveals a belief that at least a measure of the very essence of the gods can be brought into an object through magickal means. Through inscribed prayers, the “might and powers” of the three gods is enticed to enter into the wooden figure, which in effect animates the object, infusing it with energy and life. A piece of flesh from the corpse formerly belonging to the soul to be assured resurrection was then inserted into the mock coffin along with the mock gods. This act of containing a portion of energy of the dead person within the energy of the coffin—which itself now contains the energies of the gods through the containing action of the prayer inscriptions, provides a sort of triple-layered containment system that holds firmly in place the energetic essences required for the spell.

Another example of containing magick is the Taoist practice of demon-trapping. In his 1893 work
Chinese Buddhism
, Joseph Edkins writes:

The power of expelling demons from haunted houses and localities, is believed to belong chiefly to the hereditary chief of the Tauists
[sic]
, Chang Tien-shï, and subordinately to any Tauist priest. To expel demons he wields the sword that is said to have come down, a priceless heirloom, from his ancestors of the Han dynasty. All demons fear this sword. He who wields it, the great Tauist magician, can catch demons and shut them up in jars. These jars are sealed with a “charm” (fu). I have heard that at the home of this chief of wizards on the Dragon and Tiger mountain in the province of Kiang-si, there are many rows of such jars, all of them supposed to hold demons in captivity.
³⁹

The wizard, the charm, the sword—the power of all these work in unison to create one fearsome combination powerful enough to ensnare a demon. The wizard and the sword take care of the initial intimidation and show of power needed to scare the demon into the trap. Once in, the jar is sealed with a charm and the demon is therein contained. In the mention of the rows of demon traps kept at the chief wizard’s home on the Dragon and Tiger mountain, we might infer that jars are a solid, practical choice for containing magick, capable of sealing away energies for presumably as long as is desired. Who would have guessed that a good old-fashioned jar is just as useful in preserving demons as it is in preserving jellies and jams?

A somewhat similar method of spirit-trapping through containment was practiced by the Ibibio, a large tribe centered in southeastern Nigeria. In her 1915 work
Woman’s Mysteries of a Primitive People
, D. Amaury Talbot writes of a ritual in which an
Idiong
, a type of diviner-priest, traps the ghost of an interfering ex-husband; the “chop” here mentioned is simply Nigerian slang for “food”: