In the old days of the movement, the power of the magical practitioner was accessed, raised, and directed in a particular way, and didn’t require tools or herbs or oils. It just required a group of women, maybe a handful of men, but mostly women, and usually a small central fire.
It was of core importance that everyone present for the magic be of one mind. Everyone must be passionately devoted to the magical goal. Everyone should have a stake in it. Everyone should genuinely care. This was key.
If anyone was not fully onboard with the cause or goal of the working, their doubts could short-circuit the whole thing. It was vital, then, that only those of one mind on the issue should take part.
Usually, the magical goal or goals were known before the gathering was arranged. Often, the circle itself was called in response to an emergency situation—sometimes as narrowly focused as a crisis in the life of one of the women, sometimes as huge as a crisis affecting the whole of mankind, and every level in between.
The circle was usually called in response to the event or several events, and those who showed up were those who cared most passionately. (Much like protest marches.)
How it works
A circle is cast. The magic circle is visualized as sacred space, a world between the worlds of physical and non-physical existence. This gives the magic raised there a big boost, as it can gather energy from and send energy into both worlds.
So the circle is cast. The energies of the four directions are invited in. In large groups there are often people stationed at each compass point of the circle, in charge of inviting or even channeling those energies.
The energies of Goddess and God, or if you prefer form and force, the receptive and projective polarities that create the spark of life, are invoked, by and sometimes into the leader.
The magical goal is stated by whoever is leading the rite that evening, and then the magic begins.
The group begins chanting or singing a repetitive rhyme, while moving around the circle. Some might have rattles, some might have drums. The chant might be a list of Goddess names…
Isis Astarte Diana Hecate Demeter Kali Inanna
It might be a longer bit, like…
We all come from the goddess And to her we shall return Like a drop of rain Flowing to the ocean
Or…
Hoof and horn, hoof and horn All who die shall be reborn Corn and grain, corn and grain All that falls shall rise again
Or it might be nonsensical like…
Higgledy biggledy speck and spot What we wish for, now we’ve got
It might be the Witch’s Rune or some other popular old chant. They abound.
Once the chant begins…
The participants move in time with the beat of their spell, some shaking rattles or drumming in time, but the voice is all you really need.
They move in a clockwise direction, deosil (pronounced “djessle”) around the central fire to increase the power. As they move, the pace of their chant and their feet grow faster, and faster, and faster.
As the power reaches a vibrating, shimmering peak, the leader signals the group, and they all rush toward the fire, flinging out their hands OR alternatively, the leader shouts RELEASE and everyone relaxes themselves so thoroughly some might sink to the ground.
Some accounts say that if the goal of the magic is to get rid of something, then the energy is raised in a deosil direction but that they shift the motion to widdershins right before the release.
In either case, the imagery of what’s happening is that the energy from the participants forms a circular base that rises like a reversed twister, forming a point at the top above the workers. When they relax and release the power, or fling it toward the fire to, I think, burn through the bonds that hold it in the circle, the energy shoots like a missile directly into our desire. The energy becomes the desire. We have created it.
Afterward
The rite is concluded by releasing all energies invited or invoked with thanks, taking up the circle, and grounding oneself with a grain-based snack.
It’s important not to discuss the rite or start keeping score or complaining about it taking too long.
It’s even more important for the participants to begin looking for signs of the goal’s manifestation in their physical experience. And they will see them more and more in a spiral effect that builds upon itself much like the energy of the cone of power did. The more signs you see, the stronger your belief, the stronger your belief, the more signs you’ll see, until one day you’re living in the goal so easily you barely noticed it had shimmered into existence. It’s usually gradual like that, not in a flash of smoke and glitter.
“This is good old fashioned witchcraft,” said one elder, a guest speaker at an event I helped organize, when we did this very kind of thing in a segment we called Midnight Magic. People would shout out a need, and we’d all listen and hear them and feel empathy and oneness with them, and then we’d pick a chant and begin.
The energy of it was amazing. I’ll never forget it.
For the solitary
You can still do this very same thing without a group. I like to use background music to help me. I often drum or rattle. Even more often I dance around a central fire in my back yard or around a cauldron with a candle inside in my temple room. Belly dance is beautifully conducive to energy-raising. A song I love for this is Caravan from an album by Reclaiming. You can hear it below.
It starts slower than slow, then builds, and it’s the perfect dancing ‘round the balefire piece, IMHO. Just pick a perfect spot before the fade-out to release the raised energy. I’ve worked some major magic to this song!
How it applies to world events
A circle of magical practitioners — witches, if you like the term, and I do — is not so different from a gathering of protesters.
A place is chosen with care. It’s a public place that, for now, won’t interfere too much with the town or city’s normal operations or hinder local folks’ normal activities. These are peaceful protests and I hope they stay that way. A lot of very smart women have written that peaceful protests have historically proven the most effective method to bring about needed change. So I’m glad to stick with that, knowing it has a proven track record.
While bringing visibility to a problem will help it grow bigger, some issues have to reach a certain point of widespread awareness before they can change. They grow bigger like a pimple grows bigger, racing toward the moment it will finally burst.
Sorry for the gross analogy. But it fits where the US is as a nation.
Protests and meetings and circles, oh my!
The people who show up at protest marches and organizational gatherings are the people who care most passionately about the topic at hand. And like in our Midnight Magic rites all those years ago at Letchworth State Park with a bunch of like minded loved ones, we attend with many magical goals.
Return the disappeared and give them due process. Protect our nation’s immigrants. Care for our nation’s children, for our poor and disadvantaged, for the differently abled, and for the widows and orphans. Restore government services on which many depend and have paid for with their tax dollars. Resume working with our allies rather than our enemies. Protect and hold sacred the three equal branches of government and keep them autonomous. Restore the power of the purse to Congress. Defend the Constitution. Protect, preserve, and restore our natural environment. Care for our elders and our veterans. Defend free speech and freedom of expression. Slava Urkraini! And on and on and on.
But on the whole, folks who are in passionate support for one of these causes, support all of them.
Raising the energy
At a protest, we sometimes have a speaker to help rile us up and kind of organize our energy and get it pointed in the same direction.
We often use chants that we all repeat together. Repeating the same words together, much like breathing together, has a real effect on the psyche. Hearts begin to beat in unison, respirations synch up, and so does the energy. A feeling of connection is created. You cannot deny it, it’s present and palpable at these events. Unity, connection is what you’re feeling.
People at rallies and protests talk to each other, whether we know each other or not. There’s a link, a bond created by joining voices and goals, and yes, by raising energy together. That’s exactly what we are doing at a protest or rally. Raising energy, and directing it, usually with help from our cleverly worded signs.
Each time a passing car honks their horn, we RELEASE with a great cheer, the energy so far raised. And then we begin again.
A skilled magical practitioner in the midst of a protest, even among strangers, can help weave all the energy being raised into a cone of power, and can help direct it as it is released toward the improvement we seek. But this is also what energy tends to do on its own too.
The improvement we seek is a world where people care passionately about others, a world of true equality and abundance for all.
We get to glimpse the oneness and unity of that world in a microcosm at our protests and rallies and gatherings. Seeing is believing, and believing is creating, so we are creating that world just by showing up.
We are sending out our collective will, informed by our knowledge of what would be better, empowered by our passionate desire for improvement, which is the very recipe for creating reality.
This is exactly how “good old-fashioned witchcraft” works.
The final ingredient
It’s the hardest one, it really is. The final step in bringing about the change we want comes when we can take our attention off the stuff we don’t want, and put it entirely upon the better stuff we’re building.
We haven’t reached that point yet. Taking our attention off what’s happening is not yet possible. We have to contain and trip up and hinder the regime from executing its worst instincts and harming our fellow people in every way we can. Our attention to the horror is both making it grow and also (maybe) mitigating some of the damage it does during this growing phase.
Once the pimple pops, that’s when we can and should immediately shift our focus to building the better thing on the other side. And I think that moment occurs when enough of the public awaken and decide enough is enough.
Resistance has to grow to about 3.4% of the population to pop the pimple. That’s about 11 million Americans in the streets. So far we’ve been as high as 3.5 million on Easter weekend. So the pimple isn’t big enough to burst yet. We need to hit that magic number and sustain it for a bit.
May Day Protests = Beltane Magic
Thursday is May 1st, May Day, and the Celtic pagan holy day of Beltane. It’s a powerful “in-between” time. A date that falls in between the Vernal Equinox and the Summer Solstice, it’s considered one of the four High Holy Days of the year. (Imbolc, Beltane, Lammas, and Samhain.)
Beltane is the opposite of Samhain on the wheel of the year. And the veil between the worlds is said to be as thin as gossamer at this time. It’s the veil that separates the seen from the unseen worlds. But at Samhain, it’s the veil between the world of the living and the dead that thins.
At Beltane, however, it’s the veil between the physical and the non-physical aspects of nature, the veil that hides from us the “spiritual” essence of all things in nature. The spirit of each flower, plant, stone, tree, all the unseen elementals of nature, the airy sylphs, the watery undines, the fiery salamanders, the earthy gnomes.
All of nature is available and willing to help us in our worthy cause, whatever that cause might be.
How to protest magically
Before you attend, cast a circle around your body, like an outer shell that moves with you. It’s really just a super-charging of your aura.
You might say, “Naught but love may enter here, and naught but love may emerge.” It’s a lovely phrase from early Wiccan leader Scott Cunningham, to use as you visualize this.
Then when you arrive at the place, mentally expand your circle to enclose all the like-minded ones who are there.
And then, with each chant, get louder, move faster, raise your sign higher, and when you feel the moment is right, release that burst of energy toward the desired goal.
And then begin again.
Spring is the time for energy to grow and increase. it lends itself more readily for magic that is FOR things than to magic that is AGAINST things. Keep that in mind as you weave and release your Beltane magic.
Got Witches?
THE PORTAL SERIES
Three sisters, executed in ancient Babylon and cursed for eternity, must find each other in the modern world, remember their past, complete their mission to save their soulmates, and end the evil that has followed them through time.
Got Witches?
THE IMMORTALS
A novice priest, he watched a beautiful woman hanged for witchery in 1693, England.
How, then, is she alive and well across the sea, in the colonies?
When the witch hysteria that killed her once arrives on these new shores to hunt her again, how can he prevent what’s about to befall this woman who has somehow enchanted his soul?