Hello Occulties,
Thanks to everyone who took part in this year’s contest! Without further ado…let’s get to our WINNING QUESTION!!! π
Q: How can one improve their success rate at spellcasting? Are there meditations or mental exercises one can do to improve? Is it something like learning how to play the piano, or are some people just gifted and some are not?
A: I would say spellcasting IS a bit like playing the piano – some people are naturally gifted and get the hang of it easily, quickly, and work strongly with it, while others struggle and need to practice. It helps to determine, if the petitioner can, where your weaknesses lie.
For example, some people have a hard time retaining focus during the ritual, others have a hard time “grounding and centering” the energy, and yet others are hyper-exact about manistations which can create LENGTHY manfestation times (for example, if you wanted a job in a bank that was within 10 miles of your home, this may be easier to manifest than a job as the vice president of this exact bank and this exact address, and the news must be delivered to you on a tuesday,) whilst others then are far too vague (if you want Johnny to love you, well, love doesn’t always come with desire or romance…sometimes its just friends!) and do not get what they want…exactly. π
Exercises one might try to help with issues of keeping focused during the ritual can be as simple as just a concentration exercise, or even more complex meditiation techniques. For example, a concentration exercise I might recommend is to try to envision a red number one. Keep this image of the number one, colored red, without any interfering thoughts. When you find you’re thinking of ANYTHING other than that red one, note the time you were able to hold this singular thought in your mind (you may wish to use a stop-watch,) and then move on to an orange number 2, then when you move focus at all from the orange 2, note the time and try to envision a yellow three, then a green four, then a blue five, then a violet six. Repeat this exercise about once a day until you can keep your thought focused on one of those colored numbers for AT LEAST 1 minute. Many people often discover that when they start this exercise, they can barely hold a solid thought for more than a few seconds. π This is normal and to be expected.
While meditiation by itself is helpful with spellwork and visualization, there are as many methods to learning how to meditiate as there are people in the world. π People ask me how I meditate, and since I often have trouble sitting and meditating (apparently my babyhood issue of drooling re-awakens when I do, and I drool on myself, thus rousing myself from meditiation,) the method I use is to allow my body to begin to slip into sleep while lying down, and then just as I start to feel myself going into a sleep state, I wake my mind without waking my relaxed body. I realize a bunch of you are scratching your heads and telling yourselves that doesn’t make much sense, but its how it works for me. I allow body to relax, and my mind to wander on any subject or thought it would like to wander to. As I begin to drop off, my thinking becomes a bit incoherent (even to me,) and this is when I pull my mind into thinking lucidly, but I do not tell my body to rouse itself along with my brain. π This has proved the best method for me personally, and I’ve actually helped a few people learn to meditate the same way, as I just said “Well, try meditiating before you go to sleep or when you first wake. Especially in the example of waking, your body is already near the proper level of relaxation…” Hey, maybe it sounds funky, but it works for me.
Also, there is a non-religious explaination and how-to on meditiation (if memory serves me right) in the book You Are Psychic! by Pete A. Sanders (a wonderful book with a stupid title that I regularly recommend.) π I will try to add a few more meditation links in the next day or so (at which point, I’ll delete this sentence you’re reading.) π
Basically, like anything else, whether or not you are naturally gifted or have to keep practicing, the key is still regular study and use of spellcraft.
Q: When doing your own rootwork but using another person’s spell, is it best to follow that spell exactly or is it best to do what you’re feeling for the spell?
A: I generally hear this more from neophyte spellcasters than anyone else, and my best answer is… if you are strongly familiar with whatever you’re doing to change the spell (for example, the author recommends you use a Friday in a Venus hour, and you decide to work Friday in a Mercury hour to aid communication; or perhaps if you feel driven to add in some cinammon to a spell, you know the correspondeces with the herb cinammon are going to work with the spell, and you’re prepared to add or eliminate another ingredient in the knowledge that the spell author may be using numerological correspondences with the ingredients; etc,) then its up to you as to whether or not you feel you should alter the spell to your liking.
Quite frankly, I’m all for invention and exploration, but when people seem drawn to “doing what FEELS right,” when it comes to spells, it seems I hear a lot of either oddly slapped together ingredients which the person put together not out of knowing what the herbs did but rather because it was there and they tossed it in (sometimes that works, sometimes it fizzles, sometimes it blows up in your face,) or someone wanted to mess with spirits and beings they are not initiated to play with and end up calling say…Erzulie and Oshun together (oh, and Mama Chola, too, all at once) in the name of “whatever feels right,” and I get some frantic letter with someone telling me some horror story of the outcome of that ridiculousness (don’t mix your spirits like that, kids.) π So…this puts me in a precarious position in answering. Do I think someone should just act stupid because they sort of had an urge one day to do this or that, and, in ignorance, this person went ahead and acted on the urge, thus harming themselves? Well, not at all. I’ve heard way too many “Cat, I effed up stories,” to be a huge fan of the “It just felt right” philosophy. π
So….try learning to familiarize yourself on basic herblore, planetary and color correspondeces, etc, and when you’ve reached an intermediate to advanced level of knowledge in rootwork, THEN start changing the spells around. If you want to sort of experiment on your own, then use simple candle magic for this when you are still in your beginner stage, and be sure to check your correspondences before casting the spell. π As you become more and more knowledgable, sure, experiment or test out different ingredients in more advanced spells.
BUT until out of the newbie state, its probably best to stick to another’s directions. I personally use the exact specifications of the author when trying out a new spell, and I hope people feel I’m advanced in my level of spell knowledge.
So, short answer, its best to use someone else’s instructions when doing a spell authored or passed on by that person at least the first time you do the spell, and if you’ve got an urge to alter the spell, you should do so with some caution until you’ve reached at least an intermediate level of knowledge with spellcasting.
Q: In quite a few spells I run across, they almost always state to drop whatever spell remnants are left on the target’s property. Sometimes that’s not always possible (due to logistics, big ass dogs that surround the place or nosy neighbors that tell it all!). What are your feelings on alternative foot trick placements (ie crossroads the targets have to go through daily, etc)?
A: I am definitely proud to be an owner of a big-ass dog for this very reason – j/k! π
Perhaps you want them to see what you’re leaving (back in the day if you found rootwork remains and TOUCHED them, you were terrified the evil was upon you,) OR you do put them in a place the person would feasibly pass close by to. For example, if I had wanted to put a curse on someone and not have them know I was involved, I might place the item in an empty lot or field near where the person works or lives, but OFF my property.
If you’re working with just powders (ie tricking through the feet,) you can spread these powders on the ground very easily and have them not apt to be seen – how? Because in all honesty using colored talc is the only thing that gives that away, and is why I make my powders TALC-FREE and uncolored, and recommend that you either make your own powders talc-free and uncolored or find a rootworker who will. Talc is nothing more than a cheap filler, IMHO, that larger supply houses use to spread out the more expensive herbal matter in their powders and powdered herbs can easily be obtained from any herbal supply outlet, like I use Mountain Rose Herbs which sells many roots and herbs in powdered form.
Some traditional powders do have some “colored” elements due to the inclusion of colorful roots or minerals. Hot foot and goofer dust both have red and light yellow elements, but this can be minimized by placing the powder on a lawn or an uneven surface where the person may walk. A deviation of this method is to dress a door knob with powder or oil so that skin contact is made.
BUT if the idea is to leave ritual remains (which could look like trash or something freakier than trash, lol,) where the spell target may come in contact with them, failing the idea that you could get in or on the property without suspicion, hiding these items along a well known route the target travels on (near the home or job, – even in or under the car when its parked off the target’s property,) is perfectly acceptable and can help with the problem of detecting a trick, as the target is not apt to go searching off of their property for a trick someone has laid. HOWEVER, if there is any way you can leave the remains on the intended target’s property, this is stronger than just leaving the remains along a route the person may travel.
I guess if you can’t get on the target’s property for whatever reason, putting the remains into a tree near where the target will pass, off of the petitioner’s property in some location where they will be apt to walk by or over the remains, by their job (rather than home,) or near or by their car in a lot off their property might be the best recommendations.
Q: What’s the deal with “live things in you?” Are live things in you? Is this a myth?
A: This is an interesting topic for many reasons, but the one I’ve always been the most intrigued by is that there is literally a split amongst rootworkers I know who claim this is a real condition (anyone remember the movie The Believers where Helen Shaver has all those spiders come out of her face? Wasn’t that also the one where Jimmy Smits has a big black snake come out of his gut?) which either is manifested with real live things in you (this is the smallest group,) or that its real in the sense of the spirit of the animal/creature being inside you and/or the spell itself causing Morgellons Syndrome or delusional parasitosis, OR that its just total altogether crap and no such thing is possible through spellwork or any other means.
In my opinion…is this total crap? Like all sorts of spells there are definitely people who have performed bogus acts and called it a spell (some of the Harry Hyatt Hoodoo transcripts include reports made by doctors who coach on how to palm or hide a small insect and then how to let this free and make it look as though it came out of the victim,) but in the same respect, I have also heard more than one report of a curse causing an illness that was neither understood nor explainable by medical science. While the reports I’ve heard directly follow more along the lines of a wasting disease which is incurable, strange rashes, unexplainable fevers, flu-like symptoms, vomiting, and/or outright insanity, I do not discredit that a spell could cause a victim to feel as though bugs, snakes, and assorted crawlies are under their skin. I mean, people can be killed by cursing, so…I’m sure the manifestation of making someone crazy or sick may include giving them the notion that a certain bug is under the flesh.
Also, in an interesting sort of aside here, often the victim has some how consumed a powdered insect or part of an animal, OR has had direct contact with a powder made from a powdered insect, creature or animal, so this lends (in my humble opinion) to the credibility that there are actual spells with the intention of creating the sensation of creatures living under someone’s skin…
But do I personally believe that there are spells made where crawlies come out like the spiders on Helen Shaver’s face in The Believers? No, I don’t think any real spider or snake or scorpion or any other thing literally is inside you. I can conceed that perhaps the spirit or essence of the animal could be placed inside you and cause symptoms that FEEL like the animal is inside you, and I can believe there are spells which make you believe there are things living under your skin…but I am not really…well, open to the idea that an actual scorpion is crawling away under your arm skin or something and you can’t even see it.
So…I would say its accurate that its possible to make a person feel like and believe that they have any nature of bug or crawly under their skin by using a curse. I can believe that a spell and not a medical cure will be needed to stop this sensation… But I am not really strong in believing that an actual living crawly item is under the skin in the sense that a full-bodied snake is swimming around in your gut or something. I also can agree that maybe you could like use scorpions to kill someone and they would come out of that person’s mouth or something after you discover the body…but I think the animal would have entered the body after it died and not before.
That means, while its not a MYTH, its perhaps a misunderstood concept in the world of spellcraft.
Alrightey, kids, that’s part one with my four winners! π Next up I’ll be posting the questions which all deserve HONORABLE MENTIONS!! Keep your eyes open and peeled for it as I hope to have it up before the end of this week!
~Cat
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