The month of October is half gone and we are fast approaching Halloween, my absolute favorite holiday. Fall is the season were the Earth give us the abundance of her gifts before sleeping during the long winter months. It is only fitting therefore that spiritual traditions that pay attention to the Earth’s cycle would see the end of fall as the end of one year and the start of another. In Wicca and many Pagan traditions, Halloween is seen as the New Year and as a night to honor the dead. This is also the case in Haitian Vodou where the period between October 30th and November 2 is known as Fete Ghede and is a time to remember and honor the dead and also is considered the start of a New Year. As a practitioner of New Orleans Voodoo, I consider November 1st to be the start of a spiritual new year and I observe the proper rituals to ensure the cleansing away of any negativity from the previous year and the inviting in of good luck and prosperity for the year to come. In recent years, I have been giving a lot of thought to making New Year’s resolutions on Halloween instead of on the calendar New Year, January 1st, and I can say from my own experience that the resolutions made on Halloween are easier to keep and manifest better than those I’ve made at the end of December which I’m certain is because of the intense magic that abounds on that night. Today, I would like to discuss the topic of Halloween resolutions as well as a share a magical ritual that can greatly increase your probability of keeping them.
The main difference between resolutions made on January 1st and those made at Halloween is that the ones made during Halloween tend to be kept and actually manifest during the coming year whereas all the ones I’ve made for the calendar New Year are broken no later than the 3rd of January! I attribute this to the fact that for me Halloween and Fete Ghede are the spiritual New Year and the energy on that night is so incredible that our goals and resolutions are charged with so much magic that it gives us a tremendous edge when it comes to doing the practical work to fulfill them. Last year at my annual Halloween gathering, my group of friends and I wrote our goals for the coming year out on paper and then placed them in an envelope only to be opened on the 30th of October of this year, the night before Halloween. I don’t remember exactly what I wrote, but the parts that I do remember have been pretty much fulfilled and I am looking forward to making new goals for the coming year at this year’s Halloween gathering. I have designed the following ritual to help spiritually charge our Halloween goals and I definitely recommend giving it a try this October 31st. If you prefer to make resolutions on January 1st, this ritual could be used as well on that date, but I seriously recommend making them on Halloween since the energy that night is so superb and the veil between the worlds is so thin that it just makes sense to take advantage all the magic that abounds.
For those interested in making Halloween resolutions, I would recommend taking a few minutes to meditate on what you would like to accomplish in the coming year. This can be done individually or in a group and it can even be done the night before Halloween on October 30th which is when the spiritual veil starts to lift in the event that you have some fun plans for Halloween. Write down your goals for the coming year and place them inside a sealed envelope marked with the date October 30th of the following year. Then light an orange or white candle over it and say, “May the powerful energies and benevolent spirits afoot on this night bring me success and help me achieve my goals. So be it!” Allow the candle to burn out and then tuck the envelope away in a discrete location until the day before Halloween of the follow year. When you open it, you will be surprised by how much you have accomplished!
I hope you have enjoyed this post and that you are enjoying this most amazing of seasons. If you decide to give the Halloween resolution ritual a try, please share your experience with me. As always I thank you for taking the time to visit my blog and I wish you peace, happiness and abundant blessings!
Spell for Weight Loss
Several people who have tried the potato doll spell for weight loss that I posted here several weeks ago and have written to me saying that they have had success with the spell and are looking for others that they might try to aid in their ongoing weight loss efforts. So, today I have decided to share a weight loss spell involving a bathroom scale that has proven highly successful for me and others.
Oftentimes when we are involved in an ongoing effort to lose weight, we feel like slaves to the scale and we give it and the number it generates the power to make us feel fabulous or miserable. I don’t agree with this at all and I have designed this spell to use the scale as sort of a weight loss altar and channel all the power that we give it into being used for our benefit.
You will need:
The bathroom scale on which you normally weigh yourself
A yellow taper candle
A small piece of paper (a post-it will do) and a pen
First take the paper and write on it your desired weight goal. It can be the final goal you want to weigh or it can be a smaller goal along the way.
Place the paper over the part of the scale where your weight is visible when you weigh yourself.
Take the yellow taper candle and scratch your name and goal weight into the wax.
Place the candle on the scale in a candle holder and light it.
Meditate for a few minutes and envision yourself weighing your ideal weight and seeing that number appear on the scale.
Allow the candle to burn itself out.
Put the scale away until your next scheduled weigh-in day but leave the paper with your ideal weight on the scale and change it only when you are ready to set a new goal for yourself or leave it indefinitely if the number you’ve chosen is your healthy and ideal final goal weight.
I hope you have enjoyed this spells and if you decide to give it a try, please share your experience with me. I thank you for taking the time to visit my blog and as always I wish you peace, happiness and abundant blessings.
Chuseok: An Autumn Festival of Remembrance and Thanksgiving
We are well into September and fast approaching the autumnal equinox and the Harvest Festival of Mabon. As I have mentioned many times before, this is my absolute favorite time of year! September and October have always been months of pure beauty and magic for me. It is a time to enjoy all the gifts the earth has given us and to offer thanks in return. For this reason many autumn harvest festivals exist throughout the world. We have discussed several of these in the past on the blog, most notably Mabon, the Chinese Mid-Autumn Moon Festival and of course Halloween which is a celebration of the late harvest among its other attributes. Today, I would like a take a look at Chuseok, a Korean harvest festival that is also a time to honor ancestors and shares many characteristics with the American celebration of Thanksgiving. Chuseok, like the Chinese Mid Autumn Moon Festival, falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month, which this year coincides with October 4th on the western calendar.
Chuseok occurs on the same date as the Chinese Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, although curiously the beautiful harvest moon is not really a focal point of Chuseok celebrations. It is much more about celebrating the harvest and venerating ancestors and also spending time with family. All schools and businesses close down for at least three days during Chuseok and people travel to their native cities and villages to spend time with family and enjoy lavish meals. In this regard, Chuseok bears a sticking resemblance to the American Thanksgiving. It is common in many homes for the younger generations to wear traditional costumes and kowtow to elderly family members as a sign of respect while making their annual Chuseok visit. In addition to paying respects to living relatives, it is also a time to honor the dead. It is a common practice to visit cemeteries in the days leading up to Chuseok and clean and decorate the family tombs in preparation for the holiday. In addition to visiting familial graves, it is a common practice to prepare a table at home called a Charye on which food offerings are placed for the ancestors. Soup and rice are placed on the north sides of the table, on the south freshly harvested fruits and vegetables, on the west meat and on the east rice cakes and drinks. Also, a small plate of food is placed outside the home for wandering spirits who may not have families to prepare an altar for them. There are also regional customs throughout Korea and different local ways of honoring ancestors and making offerings, but the custom of remembering one’s family both living and departed remains a constant theme of Chuseok wherever it is celebrated.
There are also many secular aspects to the celebration of Chuseok in modern times. Starting in the 1960’s it became customary to give gifts to family members and friends. At first the typical gifts were household items that people would commonly need such as soap, shampoo, socks etc. but as Korea became more prosperous the gifts became more elaborate and today they can be as expensive and extravagant as one’s personal finances will permit. Playing games and engaging in folk dances are traditional activities and it is customary to indulge in a variety of sticky rice cakes called songpyeon filled with syrups and other sweet fillings. Chuseok is celebrated in both North and South Korea but in the north it tends to be a much more subdued affair as freedom of religion and movement are highly restricted in North Korea making it difficult to perform ancestor veneration rituals and travel to different parts of the country to see family. In fact, from the 1950’s until the 1980’s the celebration of Chuseok was forbidden all together. Today most people in the north make a simple visit to their family graves and may indulge in a more elaborate meal than usual during Chuseok if supplies and money permit.
I hope you have enjoyed this brief discussion of Chuseok which I feel is a beautiful way of honoring family both living and departed and celebrating the bounty of the Earth. I hope that you are enjoying the fall season and as always I wish you peace, happiness and abundant blessings!
September Love Potion
We are now heading into my favorite time of year. It is no secret that I absolutely love the fall season and await it impatiently all throughout the balmy days of summer. To me it is the most magical of seasons when the Earth gives us her gifts in the form of a bountiful harvest and the trees and their leaves put on a spectacular color show before resting during the long winter months. Today I would like to talk about a ritual that I perform this time of year, which is the brewing and blessing of a love potion that by its very nature can only be made once a year on the 9th of September at 9am or 9pm. The resulting blessed liquid is meant to be sprinkled around a room while entertaining a lover to drive him or her mad with passion. It can also be used to anoint candles burnt for purposes of love and applied discretely to gifts given to intended partners to draw them to you. It is definitely a potent love potion and one of the most sought after items that I prepare for matters of the heart.
The recipe for this particular potion exploded onto Wiccan, Pagan and other spiritually included newsgroups and message boards in the 90’s when the internet was in its infancy and I suspect before that it existed in oral and possibly printed form prior to that. It was usually called “Love Potion Number 9” no doubt taking its name from the popular 1959 song by The Clovers which describes the dazzling effects of a potion given by a mysterious magical woman to a young man. I’m sure that some clever witch created this potion sometime in the 1960’s or afterwards based on the title of this popular song, however the ingredients and procedure for blessing the potion are entirely based in solid magical folk knowledge found in various spiritual traditions. Even the number 9 has highly mystical and magical properties as we will discuss further below. While most likely developed by a modern Pagan or eclectic witch, this potion has become popular with practioners of Hoodoo and other spiritual paths who will often brew a yearly batch. Each individual spiritual practitioner will often add different ingredients or employ his or her own particular methods for blessing the potion appropriate to his or her spiritual tradition, but across the board one rule remains steadfast: this potion can only be made once each year on the 9th of September and it must be magically charged either at 9 am or 9 pm on that day.
While I’m sure that this potion was named after and inspired by the hit song Love Potion No. 9, it is worth mentioning that the number 9 from a numerological standpoint is quite powerful. It is a number of tolerance, peace, power and, above all else, love. This is true not only in western numerology, but also in Asian cultures. In fact, in China the 9th of September is one of the most popular days for scheduling weddings since the number 9 is associated with good luck in matters of love and having one’s wedding on this day will give the marriage an auspicious start. The potion itself makes heavy use of the number 9, not only with the date and time of its brewing but also many of the ingredients themselves are added in 9’s: the petals of 9 pink roses, 9 cinnamon sticks, 9 cloves etc. and 9 pink or red candles are used in the blessing of the potion after the brewing. A base of red wine or cranberry juice is common as well since red is a color of passion and love. The exact ingredients I use for my recipe are a personal secret as is the case for most witches and spiritual workers, but I will say that I brew the potion earlier in the day on the 9th of September and begin the blessing promptly at 9 pm. You can also bless or magically charge the potion at 9 am, but I’ve never been much of a morning person!
I hope you have enjoyed learning about the September love potion and if you wish to acquire some for personal use, don’t hesitate to contact me. I thank you for taking the time to visit my blog and as always I wish you peace, happiness and abundant blessings.
Potato Doll Weight Loss Spell
Today I would like to share a highly effective spell for weight loss that works on the principal of sympathetic magic. The name of this spell sounds incredibly funny but it is a fun to perform and highly effective for weight loss. The use of dolls is a fundamental part of folk magic and sympathetic magic and is a valuable tool for focusing energy. Dolls for spiritual use can be made out of many materials- cloth, wax, moss and in this case even potatoes! I first learned this spell in the late 90’s from a kitchen witch in New England named Wendy. Since then I have recommended it to others who have reported great success.
You will need:
One large potato
A carving knife
Sit in a quiet room with the potato and knife where you can focus and meditate undisturbed.
Carve the potato into a human shape.
Hold it in your hands and meditate, imagining that it represents yourself.
Take the knife and mark X’s of the areas of your body from which you’d like to rid yourself of excess weight.
Continue to hold the potato doll and meditate for as long as you’d like, imagining your ideal body shape and ideal state of health.
Take the doll outside to a quiet place somewhere in nature and leave it there.
As you walk away, pray in your own way and in your own words asking that your excess weight be taken away and that you be blessed with perfect health, happiness and the body you desire.
I hope you have enjoyed this post and if you decide to give the potato doll spell a try, please share your experience with me. I thank you for taking the time to visit by blog and as always I wish you peace, happiness and abundant blessings!
