Hello my Occulties!
It’s time for another wonderful installment of questions you’ve asked me.
Q: I broke up with so and so, and s/he was right about how I failed them. I totally want to make it up to them now, and I keep telling them that, but they won’t listen. S/He tells me to stop contacting her/him and is trying to ignore me. How do I do a spell to make them listen to me? I know if they know I will do what they want, that I can fix this!
A: For starters, since the above person is so big on how they can listen now, the first problem is…well, that person just isn’t listening. Re-read that question. How is contacting someone who asked you to stop contacting them listening to them? Because if you’re listening to them, you’re not hearing them. Nothing is absorbing. Want to be a good listener? Do as they ask. Stop contacting them. All you are doing by NOT hearing them is being disrespectful to their needs, and not listening to anyone but yourself (so not listening to them.) That’s all you’re accomplishing.
If you do not take the advice to stop contacting them and asking them to just hear you, all you accomplish is making yourself be remembered badly. You’re the self-absorbed ass that just does not get it. Because you really don’t get it. Until you stop harassing that person who has asked you to please stop, all you accomplish is pushing them farther away.
You just feel me slap you on the back of your hand? That’s me trying to make sure you stop acting like a panicked child, and that you listen to me, and DO NOT send that text. Because you’re a listener, right? If not, you just keep pushing that ex you “love” away, because you can’t control your douchebag response.
You will not be forgotten, but you will be remembered poorly if you can’t control yourself. Immediately stop stalking your ex. No more FaceBook/social media spying. No more texts. No more calls. No more asking through shared friends what so and so is doing. We’ve been over this in here before.
Now, if you can manage to stop panicking and acting like a frightened animal and accomplish the first step of “stop acting when you’re scared, hurt, and panicked,” you might yet salvage your relationship with that person. However, you have to forgive yourself for whatever you did wrong. Think you can do that? I don’t care if so-and-so forgives you, because it’s not relevant to whether or not you forgive you. You can say it is, but it’s not.
Once you forgive yourself, you will begin to heal. When you are not crazy with pain and fear, you will be able to think tactically also. That’s a very important thing when it comes to reconciliation – tactics are your friend. Crazy hurt people don’t have tactics. People who have come to terms with what happened, have forgiven themselves for their mistakes, and who have a still mind do have tactics. Choose which one you want to be.
Then start with reconciliation spellwork when you’re ready. I find reconciliation targets are so much easier to bring back when the petitioner (person for who the spell is cast on behalf of,) is not acting like an obsessive and insane person – and the target more willing to believe the petitioner has changed for the better when the petitioner isn’t acting insane too. So…want to be heard? Calm down, collect yourself, stop acting out, and THEN do some spells. It should work if you can do that.
Q: Is there a “best time of day” to do spells?
A: I personally use planetary hours when I can. Since those are changeable by when the sun rises, I can’t give you a time of day that will always work – you would need to calculate it. While I do know of systems where dawn, noon, dusk, midnight, etc are how people gauge what time of day to spellcast, I personally prefer planetary hours over that system.
That said, if you’re new to spells, learning to actually cast a spell might mean you need to stick a pin in “time of day” questions until you’ve cut your teeth on some simpler spells and are a bit more acquainted with the process. Basically, you’ve got to learn to make the entree before you start worrying if you should add a dash of salt to it. 😉
Q: I found a cool tarot app for my phone. Do think this works?
A: Probably not. A few friends and I actually picked up a few of these, and while they might help you learn how certain spreads were read, I didn’t find any of the readings on the mark for anyone – in fact some were so ridiculous it was almost humorous. The opinion was shared by the others who tried.
See, tarot cards are a tool, but not one, in my opinion, that’s ready right out of the box. 😛 Would that it were so easy to have “seasoned” cards. And yeah, they need to get seasoned to work at the peak capacity for the owner of the cards, which means they are treated in a manner to make them attached to only you. My method for seasoning a deck starts with me taking the brand-new, never-used cards out of the box and shuffling. And shuffling, and shuffling, and shuffling. Then after they’ve gotten a good 30-60 minutes of it, I put them under my pillow. Then I sleep on them (which I will continue to do so for at least a year.) The next day I shuffle the cards or hold them whenever I get the chance which I continue to do for months. They need constant contact. However, after the first 7-14 days of just shuffling my cards and holding them when they aren’t under my pillow, I will lie out my first spread. The first question is often one I know the answer to, though in subsequent spreads I’ll ask things I’d LIKE TO KNOW the answer to. I check how accurate it is. I then go back to shuffling, holding, sleeping upon. So, at least every other day after I’ve laid out the initial spread, I use them to read. I should be using them every day but it’s hard to come up with questions I need to know anything about. I will continue to work these cards for AT LEAST six months before I consider them seasoned, though generally I prefer about a year. During this time, absolutely NO OTHER HUMAN is to come in contact with this deck. Ever. When I’ve finished seasoning them, I can dispose of my “working deck” be that the one I am using for work (if that’s the one I’m replacing) or for myself (if that’s the one I’m replacing.)
Some people burn their deck and let the smoke go into the new one once they are done seasoning their new deck. I can see how this is a useful trick if you liked your old deck’s energies, but if you’ve found your old deck is not living up to your standards, I’d not add it’s smoke to your new seasoned deck.
In fact, I have found if I over-use a deck for my clients, it starts to feel “dirty” because too many of my client’s energies have permeated my deck…but that does (at least for me,) take a few years for the deck to get “dirtied” to a point I can notice it…perhaps because I don’t let anyone handle my cards even after the seasoning process is complete.
Now, don’t get me wrong, in a live reading, you would momentarily handle my cards. Of course rare is it that someone is in my home for a reading. I do most of my readings via phone. So, in many ways, by less molestation of my deck by alien hands (by which I mean hands which aren’t mine, and not actually extra-terrestrial’s hands,) my deck lasts longer. At least in my opinion.
So, after that lengthy discourse on seasoning a deck, please let me know how you will season that virtual deck in your phone the same way so it has the same energies as a physical deck has, because, as I said, a deck of tarot cards is not really a tool I consider to be ready for real use out of the box. It can still be played with if you don’t season it, and hell, I can read a deck of playing cards in a pinch, but there is no comparison to a seasoned deck vs an unseasoned one when it comes to accuracy, in my opinion.
Q: Who will be the more effective person in casting my spell – an expert or myself? (Implied: the asker has little to no experience in spellcasting.)
A: The expert. Always. Anyone who is an expert at a thing will always do a better job than a novice, and will always be the more effective at whatever they are an expert at than a novice could hope to be. Anyone who tells you otherwise is probably trying to sell you spell supplies. 😉
I love that people want to learn spellcasting, and I encourage you to learn to do it for yourself. I think it’s great that you want to learn to spellcast and to be a master spellcaster. That said, I’ve answered this very question several times in here, and the answer remains the same. Experts are always better than novices. 😛 You having an attachment to the situation is actually often an impediment and not something helpful as well. Why? Oh, how many times have we discussed thinking it to death, kiddos? 😉
Q: I do my spells slightly differently than you – am I doing them right?
A: There is a possibility you are and there is a possibility you aren’t. If you’re unsure enough to ask me, my stock answer would normally be that I do things how I do them from 25ish years of experience in spellcasting telling me that’s the right way to do those things. If you base your methods on a similar level of experience, by all means, do them your way.
I’m not against trying new methods, and have heard other expert magician’s methods of spellcasting which intrigued me, and which I tried (Jason Miller, for example, taught me some very interesting methods of casting a circle which I’d not seen before, and which I felt were very effective, it’s just as a Hoodooist, it’s rare for me to use a magic circle,) but that doesn’t mean I’d go and change how I suggest you do the same stuff. In fact, if I start suggesting you cast magic circles in here, the Hermeticists finally won me over to their team entirely and can claim me as their own, instead of just the peripheral dabbler in Hermetics that they know me to be.
So, while I try new stuff whenever I get a chance, I do actually try to post things which are tried and tested, things I’m experienced with using. My experimental stuff might be interesting to some of you, but I’d rather post what I have made work on more than one occasion. I find that’s the best way to help my readers to be successful. If your method differs slightly from mine, then I suspect you have a good reason for that (like that’s what you were taught and how you practiced for a few years, or maybe you’ve cut your teeth enough to start making your brand of spellcasting tailored to you.) If you’re just tossing stuff together like a jackass, though, and you’re a noob, you probably want to read my semi-recent post regarding faking it til you make it. There is stupid for the case of being willfully stupid, and there really is no excuse for that. Don’t throw cherries on something because you, like, totally, like, felt, like, that was going to help (and yet when that ingredient has no basis in being helpful in whatever spell you’re trying to accomplish, it probably, like totally, is like totally a bad idea and stuffs, and like and stuff,) because I assure you, it’s normally hubris -and not divine inspiration- when I hear things like that, and hubris makes for one painful teacher. 😉
Q: I know you probably get asked this frequently, but what are the mistakes you see people making the most?
A: With their own spells it’s going all over the internet to locate spells to cast (many of which are of a dubious nature at best) of varying paradigms – many of which are not based on real spellcraft and were made up on the fly by some over-excited noob, – purchasing worthless ritual supply, using “review” sites, thinking their spells to death in a group setting, trying to use St Expedite for love, using “fast luck” on reconciliation, and people saying they are past the beginner stage when they have only done simple candle spells. And, of course, thinking their work to death has to be repeated. Stop thinking your work unto death, people. Staaaaaahhhp!
With purchasing work it’s: using “review” sites, listening to people as ignorant as themselves for advice on who to work with, not paying attention to how the worker they solicit gauges whether or not they can work with the client (if they accept anyone and anything, then you’re probably dealing with a fraud,) not doing actual research (which means not using Google in this case, or at least only using it to find educational pages like Wikipedia,) on how certain cultures and paradigms cast spells (because if you’re not clueless on how it’s done you won’t be so easily fooled,) being rude and ill-mannered to a worker, thinking super expensive or super cheap are going to net good results (usually neither – you want someone in the middle,) and that some people still actually think California Astrology Association is legit despite that being hugely laughable and obviously false. 🙂
Q: Wait…if tarot cards are as old as I think they are, why do you say the card of naked Ryan Gosling didn’t come up?
A: Because I was making an attempt at being humorous. Also, if that card did exist, my drool would have already made it unusable. I would drink that man’s bathwater. 😉
Hope that has been educational, my dear occulties, and I do hope to get a spell up for you in the next few days as promised on my Twitter. 🙂
Best wishes,
~Cat
Cat’s Rants: Confessions of an Occult Mastermind 
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