Meridiana: An Unbinding Spell

Oh, Meridiana, the crime was his. He tasted of your delights and then disowned you. Oh, Meridiana, I strip away the devil's mask unjustly forced upon you, permitting your sultry visage to freely enchant once more.    

Magically Cleaning And Protecting Your Home

Methods for magically cleaning and protecting ones home vary widely between magical traditions and oftentimes among the practitioners comprising those traditions as well. Some of the methods are complex and involve intricate rituals and diverse accoutrements, while others are simple and involve few trappings. The procedure for magically cleansing and securing a dwelling delineated below is a very simple method of clearing negative energy from ones home and securing it so that negativity is prevented from entering into ones place of residence.  The method itself is an adaptation of certain other clearing/protecting practices that best suit my particular needs. If you find it useful … great … if not, there are a plethora of other methods to choose from.

What you will need…

Clearing/Banishing material:

1) Small black candle (I like tealite candles).

2) Small portion of sage incense.

3) Small dish/cup containing banishing oil (make your own oil, it’s easy).

4) Plate to hold the black candle, sage incense and dish of banishing oil.

Protecting material:

1) Small white candle (tealight or other).

2) Small portion of dragon’s blood incense.

3) Small dish/cup containing protection oil (again, no need to buy – just create your own).

4) Plate to hold the white candle, dragon’s blood incense and dish of protection oil (I reuse the plate used for the banishing material).

Procedure:

The procedure starts with a banishing of negativity from the home. Initiate the banishing in a room at the highest level of living space and work your way down to the basement/cellar (if you have one). At your beginning point light the black candle and sage incense and say, “By fire and air I purify this room of all negative energy and malevolent entities” (or something equivalent). Then dip your finger into the banishing oil and “anoint” some inconspicuous spot in the room (I say “inconspicuous” because the oil tends to leave an unsightly oil smudge. I prefer to “anoint” the top of the door frame, which prevents the oil smudges from being seen).* Proceed in like fashion throughout your entire house/apartment. When finished, find some central location and say, “By fire and air I purify this entire house/apartment so that every space, dark corner and crevice is free of negativity.” Afterwards, you can remove the banishing material from your plate.

After your banishing is complete and you have removed your banishing material from the plate, load your plate with your protecting material and return to the point at which you began your banishing. Light your white candle and dragon’s blood incense and say, “Having banished all negativity from this room, I now establish a wall of protection so that no negative energy or malevolent entity may enter here” (or something equivalent). ). Then dip your finger into the protection oil and “anoint” some inconspicuous spot in the room.* Proceed in like fashion throughout your entire house/apartment. When finished, find some central location and say, “Having banished all negativity from this house/apartment, I now establish a wall of protection around my home so that no negative energy or malevolent entity may enter.”  -  Il est fini.

*If you prefer not to “anoint” a spot in the room, simply dress each candle with their corresponding oils prior beginning the procedure and dispense with the anointing portion of the procedure entirely.

Two Tools For the Eclectic Magician

Working within the confines of a magical tradition has its advantages. One of those advantages is that members are usually given a map of the magical terrain that will be traversed, where already devised rituals are dispensed, magical implements are specifically detailed, entities/powers are enumerated and world views/paradigms are advocated. This does not mean that one’s journey through the magical terrain of a given tradition will be easy. It does, however, mean that the map provided by the tradition will offer its members a means by which they can locate themselves within a magical terrain as well as indicate the pathways by which the landscape may be traversed. Having recognized the usefulness of such maps, I have, over the course of several years, explored various magical traditions in the hopes of finding a system of magical praxis that would provide me with a map or schematic for doing magic. Despite my best efforts, my personal world view has in each instance prohibited me from feeling a sense of compatibility with any particular magical system and the world view it espouses. This state of affairs has made my magical journey an incredibly slow and difficult endeavor. Much like the Borg in the Star Trek universe who go about assimilating life forms into the Collective, I have had to learn to incorporate into my magical repertoire various magical elements that are compatible with the world view or paradigm that I find myself hosting at any given time. As an eclectic magician, I am ever vigilant to discover magical elements that I can incorporate into my ever so slowly expanding magical inventory. I know I am not alone in this endeavor. It is for this reason that I wish to present below two magical items that I have recently constructed. I do not expect these two items to be duplicated by other seeking eclectics, however. Rather, I hope that by sharing these two items I can generate some ideas that will assist the eclectic magician on his or her own magical journey.

The first item is designed to be a home for a servitor who will assist me in penetrating nebulous situations with both insight and foresight. It was constructed from corn starch clay and shaped and painted to look like an open book. On the two pages that lie open I have painted the words “insight” (left) and “foresight” (right) in sigilized form. I used yellow to draw the “insight” sigil on account that this mental ability appears (to me) to be an air element and blue to draw the “foresight” sigil since this mental ability appears (to me) to be a water element. On the back of the book (bottom of object) I have painted a sigilized form of the servitor’s name in green (not shown for security purposes). The color green was chosen on account that the servitor is an entity created from a mixture of both air (yellow) and water (blue) elements.

  

The second item is designed to trap all negative energies within my house and permit their disposal. It too was constructed from corn starch clay. As the object’s initial objective is to trap the negative energies in my home, it was given a triangular shape (viz., triangle of invocation and spirit trap) and painted black (an absorbing color that is associated with banishing and protection).  To help lure the negative energies to the object some personal artifacts from each of the members of my family were included within the object during its formation. Also, each of the object’s three sides displays the name of a family member in sigilized form in its corresponding astrological color (not pictured for security reasons). The top of the object was constructed in such a fashion that it would easily and securely hold an egg. Once the object draws the negative energies to itself they will become absorbed by the egg, which then can be discarded.

Death To The Demon Retalitonis

I have been thinking about Retalitonis on and off since I first blogged about him awhile back (read about it here). While it is true that Retalitonis’ influence has been practically nil since that entry, I have come to feel that my relationship with Retalitonis would not be completely eradicated until I did a proper banishing ritual. So, about two hours ago I undertook just such a banishing. First I created an image of Retalitonis. Then I printed his picture and drew his seal alongside his likeness.

After placing the image a short distance in front of me, I performed the Kabbalistic Cross and the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram. I then lit a white candle and called upon Kalvin (see here and here) to come and oversee the ritual. I asked him/her to both guide and protect me. I then called Retalitonis out from me and ordered him into his likeness in front of me. After binding Retalitonis to his image, I again performed the KC and LBRP and gave a license to depart (overkill I know). I then took Retalitonis’ image and ritually slayed him by piercing his image and seal with a ritual dagger. The image was then placed inside a glass jar and burned outside (I don’t know if it was the ink or the type of paper, but this paper was extremely difficult to burn).

Tomorrow the ritual will be complete after I toss the glass jar containing Retalitonis’ ashes into a nearby river.

When Your Wand Talks, You Should Listen

Well, there it is… my wand, in all its glory, still incomplete after two years. Around two years ago I purchased the wooden dowel from Magicians-R-Us (aka Walmart) and dedicated it to the Art at 3:00am under a full moon on a particularly auspicious morning. It was later coated with a consecrated white paint (purity of will/ intent/spirit) and then covered with a consecrated red paint (action/fire/will). At the time, red was suggestive of the strength or force needed to banish. At one end I painted the colors of the four elements and drilled a shallow hole down the center of the wand. It was my intention to place some type of fibrous material that had been soaked in water that had been charged with the four elements into the hole and then to seal the hole. It was also my intention to paint the other side of the wand with the planetary colors and place some water charged with the planetary powers in that end as well. To complete the wand, it would have been sealed with polyurethane. Then I would have a duel functioning wand. By rotating the wand I could banish either the elemental powers or planetary powers by whichever end pointed forward. Alas, intentions alone seldom deliver.

For whatever reason, just as I was drifting off to sleep the other day, quite out of the blue, without any prior thought to my wand, I had a vision of how my wand should look. It was a VERY SIMPLE design. I was utterly astounded by this vision and began to question why I should scrap the old design in favor of the new. My wand gave me the answer. Here is what it said:

One of the reasons I remain unfinished after two years is not because you are lazy, but because you are not motivated. You do not feel any pressing need to use me or any other magical tool. You have discussed your inability to want things in a prior blog post (the post my wand is referring to can be read here). However, you only scratched the surface. What you need to realize is that I am incomplete because you are quite comfortable with your life in spite of your inability to admit it to be so. You fight against yourself, unwilling to acknowledge your happiness in order to avoid feeling as though you have “given up.” If you need proof that you are more content than you realize, just look at me and ask why I remain unfinished.

The other reason I remain a work in progress is on account of something that runs very deep within you. You have nearly always been a seeker of God, Truth, a spiritual path, etc. Yet you have never found any belief or belief system to call your home. When confronted with a given philosophy/religion/belief you say, “Yes, maybe, but….” Now, I need power to be effective. Because you lack an external source of power you must find the power within yourself to construct and empower me. Because you have no roadmap (an existing system) to guide you, your choices concerning my completion will require much time and deliberation on your part. But when you do complete me, I will be as powerful as any magical tool ever created.

I might also add that you tend to make things more complicated than they need be. I have given you a vision as to how I could look. Are you able to let go of your need for complexity in order to posses me?

What can you, the reader, take away from all this? You will probably take very little, as my wand’s comments were for me alone. But what about your wand, or any of your magical tools? What do they say to you? I would be inclined to pay special heed to anything they say in unison.

Why Pursue Magic?

Why did I pursue magic? One obvious answer might be that I did so in order to attain my desires. While this may be a common motivation for many individuals, I now think that initially I began to pursue the study of magic in earnest not to get those things I desired but, somewhat paradoxically, in order to get those things that I did not yet desire. For whatever reason I thought magic would be a valuable tool to assist me in evoking or manifesting things in my life. Learning to evoke was important because I had reached a point in my life where I just accepted every turn of fate with no resistance. Whatever happened…happened.  My path in life had functioned like a banishing ritual where the motivation to strive for or accomplish anything had been expunged from me.  Some may say that this state of being is the true goal of the mystic or contemplative. For me, however, it was what is known in Buddhist parlance as an extreme.  It was an extreme of the unconcern for practical matters. I realized that I would never be a hermit or recluse; the vows I held precluded my withdrawal and kept me bound to the world. As such, my lack of concern with practical issues needed to be redressed.  For whatever reason I chose magic as the tool that would help correct this imbalance.  To my dismay, however, my will to evoke has not increased in proportion to my magical knowledge and I now find myself with a set of untapped skills. I find myself hard put to unearth ways to employ my magic. In many ways it is easier for me to identify those things that I do not want as opposed to those things I do want. I don’t want harm to come to my family, for example. I suppose turning such negatives into positives might be helpful. The desire for safety for my family might be something I could work with.

Banishing the Demon Retalitonis

Recently I have come to recognize the workings of a “demon” in my life. Where this “demon” came from and how it got its talons securely fastened to my astral and mental bodies are a mystery. But the whys and hows are really not important. Its presence in my life is not wanted and I WILL to be rid of it. While my awareness of its presence has diminished its power over me to a large degree, I still hear it whisper in my ear now and then. So, I plan to wage war with the damn thing and excise it from my life through a proper banishing (or series of banishings).

Below is a brief portrayal of the “demon.” It is undertaken in the hopes that it might be recognized should one be unfortunate enough to find it lurking within the shadows of one’s own life.

DEMON’S NAME: Retalitonis

DEMON’S SEAL:

DEMON’S SPHERE OF INFLUENCE: (Within the host) Retalitonis has power over the astral and mental bodies. (Targets external to the host) Retalitonis attacks its victim’s astral and mental bodies alike. Retalitonis is particularly strong within family dynamics.

DEMON’S ABILITIES: Retalitonis causes its host to strike back at an individual due to some perceived wrong. Typically this is made presentable to the host by dressing up the attack under the guise of “teaching the perpetrator a lesson.” The attack is further made palatable on account that the desire “to teach” is not initially seen as vindictive by the host. The host is tricked into believing that he/she is “waking the perpetrator up” and “showing the perpetrator the truth of the matter.” An argument that demonstrates the perpetrator’s folly in regards to the host is a vehicle especially favored by Retalitonis. Retalitonis takes secret delight in the thought that it just might be causing some mental anguish in the perpetrator due to such an argument. Perhaps the most insidious aspect of Retalitonis is its ability to cause emotional withdrawl between the host and the perpetrator alike.

QUALITIES/CHARACTERISTICS/MENTAL ASPECTS THAT ARE CONGRUENT WITH THE INFESTATION OF RETALITONIS: controlling, dominating, vengeful, spiteful, beyond reproach.