The Modern Witchcraft Grimoire Read online

  Gaze into them to see the past or future.

  Choosing Gemstones for Spells

  As you might suspect, different stones possess different qualities and serve different functions in spellworking. A general rule of thumb is that clear stones are best for mental and spiritual issues, translucent or milky stones for emotional situations, and opaque stones for physical matters. You can use gems alone or in combination with other substances to produce the results you desire.

  A stone’s color or pattern can provide clues to its abilities. Pink gems, such as rose quartz and morganite, are perfect for love spells. Jade, aventurine, and other green stones can benefit money spells. Since ancient times, people have valued stones with eye-like markings as protection charms against the “evil eye” and all sorts of misfortune.

  The following guidelines offer suggestions for using gems in spellwork. In time, you’ll develop your own ideas about which stones you find best for which spells. Be sure to note these in your grimoire.

  STONES AND THEIR MAGICKAL PROPERTIES

  Amber For physical and psychic protection

  Amethyst For meditation, enhancing and remembering dreams, calming emotions, increasing psychic ability

  Aquamarine For clarity and mental awareness, encouraging spiritual insight, stimulating creativity

  Aventurine To attract wealth or abundance

  Bloodstone For healing, strength, and physical protection

  Carnelian To stimulate passion, sexual energy, courage, and initiative

  Citrine For clearing vibrations from other stones and crystals

  Coral To attract love or increase affectionate feelings; to enhance self-esteem; to calm emotions

  Diamond To deepen commitment and trust, especially in a love relationship; to absorb and retain energies and vibrations; for strength and victory

  Emerald To aid clairvoyance and divination; to promote healing, growth, mental and emotional balance

  Hematite For grounding; to help stabilize emotions

  Jade For prosperity; to enhance beauty and health

  Jasper Red jasper is good in love spells to stir up passions; brown jasper is excellent for healing purposes; poppy jasper breaks up blockages that prevent energy from circulating through the body

  Lapis lazuli For opening psychic channels, dealing with children; to stimulate the upper chakras

  Moldavite To energize psychic talent, to quicken spiritual evolution, to open the upper chakras; moldavite is regarded as an extraterrestrial stone because it resulted from a meteor collision with the earth nearly 15 million years ago

  Moonstone To enhance the vividness of dreams and dream recall; to calm emotions

  Onyx For banishing and absorbing negative energy, grounding and stabilizing; to help break deeply ingrained habits

  Opal For protection; to encourage psychic ability and visions; to attract love

  Pearl To strengthen self-esteem; for balance in love relationships; to increase femininity

  Quartz (clear) To retain information; to amplify the energy of other stones; to transmit ideas and energy; for psychic awareness

  Rose quartz To attract love and friendship; for emotional healing and balance; to amplify psychic energy

  Ruby To stimulate the emotions, passion, love; to open your heart to divine love

  Sapphire To increase spiritual knowledge and connection with the Divine; for wisdom, insight, and prophetic vision; star sapphires provide hope and clarity of purpose

  Smoky quartz For endurance; to hold problems until you are ready to deal with them

  Tiger’s eye For abundance, self-confidence, the freedom to follow your own path

  Tourmaline Green and black tourmaline are good for cleansing, healing, and absorbing negative vibrations; pink and watermelon tourmaline attract friendship, love, and fulfillment; use them to transmit messages and energy

  Turquoise For protection, healing, prosperity; to ease mental tension and emotional anxiety

  You can combine several stones to address various aspects of a spell. Let’s say your goal is to find a job that pays well and brings you into contact with interesting people—aventurine plus watermelon tourmaline should do the trick. In a love spell, you might seek both passion and affection, in which case you’d choose carnelian and rose quartz. After a while, you’ll start to intuit which stones are right for your intentions. Stones play such an important role in magick work that you’ll probably want to spend time familiarizing yourself with their many properties. Judy Hall’s books provide extensive information about how to use stones for a wide range of purposes.

  Caring for Your Stones

  Gemstones hold on to thoughts, emotions, and information programmed into them for a long time, even for centuries. You’ve probably heard of the Hope Diamond, a 45-carat blue diamond that for more than a century supposedly bore a curse that brought death and misfortune to the people who owned it. Although you probably have nothing to fear from the stones you acquire, nonetheless it’s a good idea to cleanse and purify them before you use them for magickal work.

  Wash them in running water, with mild soap if you like, while you envision them cleansed by pure white light. You can also purify gemstones energetically by gently rubbing them with a piece of golden citrine.

  Try one of these other methods for cleansing stones, if you prefer:

  Leave them in sunlight or moonlight for a specific period, say twenty-four hours or a week—it’s your call. Do what you feel is necessary.

  Bury them in a small dish of soil or sand for a time.

  Hold the stone in the smoke of burning sage or purifying incense.

  Immerse the stone in water for a time. Holding it in a running stream or the ocean’s waves will purify it faster, but leaving the stone in a small bowl of water will work too. Don’t worry; you cannot remove the innate energy of a stone, so it’s impossible to over-purify or wipe out its powers.

  Each time you use a stone for a magickal purpose, it is important to cleanse it before working with it again. You’ll also want to purify your stones if someone else handles them—you don’t want that person’s energy to interfere with your own.

  Keep a record in your grimoire of the stones you use in spells. Can you perceive different resonances emanating from different stones? Do you feel an affinity for some more than others? If you combined gems with other ingredients in a spell, how did that work out? Do you sense that certain gems enhance one another’s powers? Do you use some stones for healing, others for meditation, others for scrying, and so on? Note any impressions, insights, sensations, or other reactions you experience while working with gemstones and crystals—sometimes these can be pretty amazing. You might even choose to affix small gemstones to the pages of your grimoire, to remind you of spells you did with these gems or because they add a decorative element to your book of shadows—or both.

  Chapter 17

  SYMBOLS IN SPELLWORK

  We’ve talked a lot about symbols and the importance of symbolic association in spellwork. Symbols are such powerful magickal tools because they speak to us at an unconscious level, evoking hidden truths, archetypes, emotions, and spiritual qualities that lie at the core of our psyches. As a result, we often experience profound feelings in connection with them. Observe the way patriotic people respond to their nation’s flag, how Christians relate to the cross, or how the Nazis reacted to the swastika and you’ll see the power of symbols at work.

  We respond to symbols in collective ways as well as personal ones. Many symbols are universal, appearing in the art and artifacts of numerous cultures from different times and places. The spiral, which represents life energy, is one such symbol. In addition, each of us has a set of individual symbols that have special meanings for us alone. When you use a symbol in spellwork, you draw upon the energy of whatever it represents. Simultaneously, you project your intentions through it to generate a result in the manifest world.

  “Witchcraft promotes the advantages of learning and applying ne
w symbolism into one’s psyche; this is the Witch’s code.”

  —GEDE PARMA, SPIRITED: TAKING PAGANISM BEYOND THE CIRCLE

  What symbols speak to you? Keep a record in your grimoire of the symbols with which you feel a special connection—especially the “secret” ones known as sigils that you create yourself. Note your personal symbols and what they mean to you. Draw symbols in your book of shadows and spend time reflecting on them, allowing their secrets to rise into your consciousness. Meditate on various symbols to intuit their deeper meanings. How do you feel when you hold a symbol in your mind’s eye? What insights do you gain? Do you see representations of these symbols in the material world? In your own life?

  Intricate or Simple?

  Intricate shapes strengthen concentration and your ability to perceive detail, beauty, and complexity. Simple shapes free your mind to imagine what lies beyond the pattern.

  SHAPES AS SYMBOLS

  Remember the saying, “As above, so below”? This means that all things in the spirit realm have some kind of representation here on earth. Spiritual energies manifest themselves as shapes in the mundane world—and because witches understand this we can tap these energies for our own purposes.

  Numbers, letters, and geometric shapes are common symbols you see around you every day, usually without giving them a second thought. The average person only recognizes the obvious meanings of these familiar images. To someone versed in occult knowledge, however, symbols reveal something much deeper.

  “An idea, in the highest sense of that word, cannot be conveyed but by a symbol.”

  —SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

  The Shapes of Things

  Geometric shapes contain symbolism that transcends time and place. The cross, for example, isn’t unique to Christian belief; it existed in ancient Celtic, Egyptian, and Native American cultures too. This simple yet powerful image represents the union of the archetypal male energy or sky (the vertical line) with female energy or earth (the horizontal line). The intersecting lines also designate the four directions that divide the four quarters we’ve talked about in earlier chapters.

  The star is a common symbol of hope, the circle a well-known symbol of wholeness. Spirals represent life energy in many cultures. Triangles signify trinities, whether Father-Son-Holy Spirit, maiden-mother-crone, past-present-future, or some other threefold concept. The following list gives the symbolic meanings of basic geometric shapes:

  Shape Meanings

  Arrow warrior energy, direction, movement, hitting the mark

  Circle union, wholeness, life’s cycles, the full moon, containment

  Circle with a slash refusal or banishing

  Cross intersection of male and female/heaven and earth/spirit and matter, the four corners of creation

  Spiral life energy, the spiritual path that leads inward and outward

  Square foundations, stability, permanence, truth and rightness

  Star hope, wishes and dreams, protection

  Triangle (point down) feminine energy, the element of water

  Triangle (point up) masculine energy, the fire element

  According to green witches, the shape of a natural item provides a blueprint for how it should be used magickally. If you find a heart-shaped stone or leaf, for example, you can apply it to spells that involve matters of the heart. You see a heart, you think love—and that thought produces positive energy to support your intention.

  Elemental Symbols

  Alchemy uses triangles to depict the four elements we’ve talked about in earlier chapters. Triangles that point upward toward the sky and spirit symbolize the masculine force. A simple triangle stands for the element of fire; one with a horizontal line through it signifies the air element. Downward-pointing triangles aim toward the earth and the realm of matter. They represent the feminine force and the elements of water and earth. The emblem for earth has a horizontal line through the center of the triangle, the one for water doesn’t.

  Historically, symbols have offered one meaning for the masses and another, deeper meaning for initiates. The Star of David is a good example. To most people, the six-pointed star is an image associated with the Jewish faith. However, when you view it as the intersection of two triangles—one pointing up and one pointing down—it depicts the union of masculine and feminine, spirit and matter. The merger of these two energies creates life.

  The ancient grimoire known as The Clavicule of Solomon or Key of Solomon (discussed in Chapter 1) says that the archangel Michael gave King Solomon a magick ring. Its power lay in the symbol engraved on the ring—the Seal of Solomon—which enabled the king to trap demons in jars so they could do no harm. This symbol geometrically depicts the union of all four elements.

  Fire

  Water

  Air

  Earth

  Seal of Solomon

  Magick Numbers

  We usually credit the Greek mathematician and philosopher, Pythagoras, who lived in the sixth century B.C.E., with having developed the system of numerology that’s still used today. The study of numbers, known as gematria, is also based in esoteric Judaism and the Kabbalah. This practice attaches a number equivalent to each letter in a word (see Chapter 5 for details). Viewed in this way, every word contains a secret meaning based on the number values of its letters, as well as its outer meaning.

  Additionally, each number possesses certain characteristics or resonances, as the following list explains:

  Number Meanings

  0 wholeness, all and nothing

  1 beginnings, individuality, initiative

  2 polarity, partnership, duality, balance

  3 creativity, self-expression, expansion

  4 form, stability, permanence, order

  5 change, instability, communication

  6 give-and-take, cooperation, beauty, harmony

  7 retreat, introspection, rest, spirituality

  8 material mastery, manifestation, responsibility, sincerity, practical matters

  9 transition, completion, fulfillment, abundance

  11 humanitarianism, higher knowledge, insight

  22 spiritual power, wisdom, mastery beyond the physical realm

  You can tap the qualities inherent in numbers to enhance, activate, bind, or otherwise influence a spell. Witches often use the number three to complete a spell. This number signifies bringing an intention into the realm of form, literally making it three-dimensional.

  SHAPES AND NUMBERS IN SPELLS AND RITUALS

  Once you understand the symbolism inherent in shapes and numbers, you can utilize them in spells and rituals to emphasize specific energies or intentions. As you know, witches cast circles around a space where a spell or ritual will take place. The circle represents union, wholeness, life’s cycles, the full moon, and containment. Tarot cards beautifully depict a smorgasbord of symbols, including numbers. We’ve talked about carving symbols on candles, using runes and astrological glyphs in talismans and amulets, and creating your own symbols known as sigils.

  Let’s say you want to do a candle spell to attract a romantic partner. Because two is the number of partnership, you’d light two candles to represent you and your prospective partner. If you’re fashioning a prosperity talisman, you could place eight items in a medicine pouch or seal the pouch with a ribbon into which you’ve tied eight knots. That’s because eight is the number of material mastery and manifestation. You can mix and match symbols to customize a spell, as in the one that follows. The important thing is to get your imagination involved. Remember, visualization precedes manifestation.

  Candle Spell for Prosperity

  This spell incorporates number, image, botanical, shape, and color symbolism to light the way to prosperity and brighten your financial prospects. Start the spell 8 days before the full moon.

  TOOLS AND INGREDIENTS

  8 green or gold candles

  Ballpoint pen (or another sharp instrument)

  Peppermint essential oil

  8 candleholders
>
  Matches or a lighter

  On each candle use the pen to inscribe a symbol or word that represents prosperity to you. You can use the same symbol on all 8 candles, or choose several different images.

  Pour a little essential oil in your palm and rub it on the candles, coating everything except the wicks.

  Put the candles in the candleholders and position them on your altar, making a square pattern to represent the 4 directions, the 4 quarters, and stability.

  Light the candles and gaze at the flames.

  Say aloud: “As these candles burn, prosperity flows to me from all directions, in harmony with Divine Will, my own true will, and with good to all.”

  Let the candles burn for a few minutes, then snuff them out.

  Repeat this ritual each day for 8 days. Complete the spell on the day of the full moon.

  After you’ve completed the spell, write in your grimoire what transpired. What images did you inscribe on the candles? How did you feel working the spell? Did your experiences change from day to day? What insights did you gain? What results did you get and how long did they take?

  Experiment with using symbols in spellwork, trying out different combinations to see which ones you like best. Record the variations you use and describe your experiences in your book of shadows.

  THE MAGICK OF DATES

  We’ve talked about the significance of choosing certain days of the week for magickal work, but what about dates? Dates contain numbers and those numbers can be important in spellcasting. The first day of the month, for example, might be a good time to do a spell to launch a new venture.