Faeries & Elementals for Beginners: Learn About & Communicate With Nature Spirits (14 page)

delightful song, consider thanking the sylphs for their work.

Strangely, although sylphs make a cameo appearance

in myths and legends, there is a dearth of lore about them compared to the more well-known elemental characters like gnomes. Perhaps the lack of visibility is a serious handicap for the visual human mind. However, in the same

way that a beautiful score of music can inspire a paint-

ing, I encourage the visual learners amongst readers to be inspired to paint sylphs in the mind’s eye.

Meditation for Inspiration

Meditating on the concept of sylphs can help boost your

creativity and jump start your imagination, since the ele-

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ment of air is the source of all inspiration and new beginnings. I like to turn to the concept of sylphs when I am

experiencing a little bit of writer’s block. To use sylphs in meditation, I encourage you to try an active meditation technique by creating a work of art. If you’re a visual learner, as most people are, select tools for the visual arts such as canvas and paint or even simply paper and crayons.

If you’re an auditory learner like me, you may want to grab your favorite instrument and prepare to record a new song.

Find a place where you won’t be disturbed, and sur-

round yourself with an inspirational environment. I like to turn off my phone and go sit alone in nature. You might

want to try finding a comfortable spot in your home, play

instrumental music, and light some nice incense to inspire calmness and invite the element of air into the space. Close your eyes, and do some grounding and centering. Grounding and centering is a process to calm and balance yourself before meditation and ritual exercises. If grounding and

centering are new to you, please take a look at the primer to grounding and centering below this meditation. You’ll

find that it is generalized to all elementals, not just sylphs, in order to allow you to use it in all contexts.

Allow yourself some time to become calm before you

start your inspired artistic meditation, so that your heart rate can slow down and your mind can detach from the

earthly anxieties of your day. Try focusing on your breathing. Breathe in through your nose and out through your

mouth, taking deep belly breaths so that your belly button draws away from your spine as your diaphragm pulls in

more fresh air. Try square breathing by breathing in for four
110 • Chapter Three

counts, holding your breath for four counts, breathing out for four counts, and holding again for four counts before

renewing the cycle. Square breathing can be challenging at first, but you’ll find it gets easier the more calm you become and the deeper you sink into meditation, so don’t quit right away if you are feeling like you are gasping for breath.

After square breathing becomes so simple it’s auto-

matic, you can begin to create your art. You can open your eyes if you wish to see your work as you make it, or keep

your eyes closed and just make an abstract, freeform cre-

ation, which can be a solution if you find yourself overly critical of your own artwork. The idea is not to make the

perfect representation of a sylph, but to put your inspiration in motion to live inside the moment of creativity. It is only in the pure joy of starting something new and making

something out of nothing that you can truly meet a sylph.

When you are finished creating your work of art, sit

and look at it for a while, allowing yourself to relax and meditate upon the representation of a sylph. When you feel relaxed but alert, you can end your meditation session. If you’ve created a visual image of a sylph, you would do well to place it in the eastern part of a room or other area where you need the inspiration of the sylphs. If you are too shy to display your artwork, you can burn it outdoors as an offering to the sylphs and scatter the ashes to the east.

Sylphs—Elementals of Air • 111

Invocation for Purposes

The element of air is traditionally associated with the mind and the intellect. Rather than the emotional aspect of your brain, the airy realm of the sylph has to do with words popping into your head, the beginnings of a conceptual form

that you want to build or the communication that needs

to happen back and forth with an employer before you can

land a new job. When deciding whether to use sylphs to carry out your magic, make sure that your need isn’t something

so emotionally charged with feelings of love or loss that it would be better suited to other elements. There should be a cool, calculating aspect to your need that makes it perfect for the sylphs to manifest swiftly and without fanfare.

Rituals for New Beginnings

Sylphs reside in the east, where the sun rises. The sylphs are the essence of a new beginning just starting to happen.

Imagine sylphs as the warmth you can sense on the breeze

that tells you spring is coming a few days before the cal-

endar makes it true. Sylphs are the musing structures that dance in your head before you begin to build or sculpt

something that will exist in the real world. Before anything we imagine can be created on this terrestrial plane of existence on which we walk about, it must first be created on

the astral plane in our mind’s eye. You can think of sylphs as the architects of the astral plane, doing all of the necessary brainstorming and planning necessary before our

wildest hopes can be made manifest.

112 • Chapter Three

Performing a ritual for a new beginning is a good way

to help jumpstart your intentions before you get started on a project. A new beginning ritual is best performed during the waxing crescent phase of the moon on a Wednesday.

Perform the ritual before you get started on something,

instead of after you have just begun. If you have already

begun your project, you might do better boosting its prog-

ress by looking at the rituals for the other elementals.

As an example of a new beginnings ritual, I am going to

show you a ritual for starting a new business. However, this ritual can be adapted for other new beginnings that you

wish to celebrate or promote before they happen. Simply

change the cast of characters invited to your ritual and the content of your inspired hopes as they will be expressed as your intention. For this ritual, you’ll need to gather together all of the people involved with starting your new business, whether it be two business partners or a whole group of

people. You’ll also need a piece of paper and a pen with yellow ink to represent the element of air and to call the sylphs attention to your need. I also recommend you have a carbonated beverage to celebrate during the ritual.

Before you get started with any ritual, however, you

should know how to perform the ritual component known

as casting a circle. The purpose of casting a circle is to protect you from any unintended effects from the elementals

while simultaneously containing and concentrating the

intentions you want to gather toward your purpose until

such time as they can be released for maximum effective-

ness.

Sylphs—Elementals of Air • 113

If you are new to casting a circle or to including the

elements or quarters, keep reading. If you have already

encountered a few examples of circle casting and are not

sure which to choose, or even if you are already familiar

with casting a circle, examine your potential circle casting to confirm that it politely invites all four elementals and ends with a dismissal of each of them. For the following

ritual, as well as for all the rituals in this book, I’d like to provide you with a general circle casting that includes all the elementals so that you can use it in any context.

Ritual to Start a New Business

Perform this ritual to collect and concentrate the hope-

ful energies you will generate. Cast a circle. Refer to the instructions above, as this is the same ritual circle you will cast for any of the elementals. Once you have cast your circle, decide, if you haven’t already, on a title for each person in your new business. Then, present each person in turn

to the east with his or her full name and title, to introduce him or her to the sylphs and ask for blessings for your new business. Here is an example of how that would be done.

“Hail sylphs of the east, I introduce myself as Jane Doe,

President and CEO of New Business Incorporated. I ask

your blessings for myself and my new business venture.”

Once each person has been suitably introduced to the

sylphs, seat yourselves in a circle and draft together a formal business letter to the sylphs with the yellow pen on

the piece of paper. Open up your carbonated beverages

and brainstorm together as you celebrate. What do you

114 • Chapter Three

want your business to look like in five years? Ten years? Or later, after all of you retire and have to pass on the torch to your trusted employees or kindred? Write down all of your

wildest hopes as if they have already happened, and give a toast and thanksgivings to the amazing things that are yet to come but have not even been started. When your letter

to the sylphs is finished, each person should sign his or her full name.

Finally, fold your business letter to the sylphs into a

paper airplane and let it fly in an easterly direction. You might all decide what the manner of the flight tells you

about the potential success of your business. Does the

paper airplane actually fly? That’s good news! Does it veer to the right or to the left, showing that you will all need to be flexible as your needs change in the future? Or, does the paper airplane make a quick nosedive to the ground, indicating that perhaps the sylphs do not yet support your venture and you need to repeat the ritual with some changes

amended to your letter?

Hang the paper airplane in your new place of business,

if appropriate. If not, or if you have decided on a different new beginnings ritual that makes discarding the airplane

more fitting, you can burn it as an offering to the sylphs and then scatter the ashes to the east, out of doors.

Exercise Before Study

During my many years enjoying an excellent education

experience, I was always a big proponent of prayer before

study and exams. I was rewarded with a perfect grade point
Sylphs—Elementals of Air • 115

average, even during graduate-level studies. It has become common knowledge that taking the conditions experienced during study, and recreating them for an exam, can

help boost your memory. Repeating a prayer would be an

easy way to do that before a test; much more helpful than

overdosing on caffeine or wearing your pajamas as you did

when you were cramming for the test.

An invocation of the sylphs before study and exams is

an excellent way to pull the mental acuity that is the essential nature of the element of air and the sylphs into your own life in an instant. You can choose to close your eyes to allow inspired imagery to come to mind or you can gaze

out a window or look up during your prayer, as long as you don’t look like you might be peeking at somebody else’s

paper during the test. Make sure that you take three deep

breaths before your prayer, to relax and inhale the air that is the sylphs’ domain. If you are studying in privacy, you might choose to face east when invoking the sylphs. Here

is a sample invocation, but you can feel free to speak the words in your heart as they are inspired.

I whisper to invoke

the sylphs for whom knowledge is a dance:

Clear the mental air of ash and smoke;

of confusion and ignorance

Let right understanding spring to mind,

with harm to none, and blessed be.

In return I give you thanks in kind;

my inspired hopes, so mote it be.

116 • Chapter Three

Exercises for Communication

Sylphs are the ideal entities to invoke when applying com-

munication exercises of nearly any kind. Air is the space of instantaneous communication by telephone or Internet, as

well as the space between two people who speak with their

breath as their eyes meet across the air of a room. The element of air also applies to the thoughts and ideas contained even in slow moving communication such as postal mail,

which often travels through the air by plane anyhow.

A communication meditation using air may not be

well suited to issues of great emotion, such as communi-

cating with the dead or trying to better the communication in a love relationship, as those topics may be better suited to other elements. Rather, the airy and distant powers of

the sylphs are best for communicating general messages,

intellectual topics, data, networking, or swift business deals.

Inspiration is the gift of the sylphs. It is not a good idea to force your will on another person to communicate with

you, as that may bring an untimely end to your commu-

nications. However, sylphs can gently inspire other people with the idea to contact you, if they want. The example

below can be altered in order to send inspiration to oth-

ers to contact you, if you stay mindful of keeping free will intact.

Telephone ritual to get somebody to

call for job interview or after a job interview

The most frustrating time when job hunting is when you

are waiting endlessly for a call back after having submitted your application. It is even more maddening to have just

Sylphs—Elementals of Air • 117

gone through a successful job interview, feeling like you