For Better or Worse: Navigating the Supermarket
When I was a kid, I loved to go shopping. Of course, when you are a child, things often seem a lot more adventurous than they really are. As an adult, grocery shopping is usually a weekly two- to three-hour ordeal for me, as I have to stop at four different stores to gather all the essentials. As a witch, being around large groups of people can be a bit of an emotional minefield; all those people, most of whom are hurriedly searching for their needed items, just fill me with anxiety. I have made the mistake of going to a supermarket on the day before Thanksgiving twice in my life, and it has become a goal of mine to never, ever do that again. That crowd was just unbearable!
Despite some flaws, such as crowds or narrow aisles, supermarkets can be wonderful treasure troves of magical ingredients. They have herbs, candles, oils, food and drink, things like cheesecloth which can be used for charm bags, and sometimes even incense sticks or oil diffusers, which bring added magical atmosphere. Properly prepared, a witch can have a calm, pleasant shopping trip and load up on all sorts of magical essentials. Granted, some stores are larger than others and to get all the ingredients for a spell may take more than one stop, but none of the spells included here contain any overly exotic or rare ingredients. Of course, if you live near one of those mega markets, everything will probably be right there.
The first time I walked into one of those gigantic, warehouse-type supermarkets I was genuinely awe-struck; I could not believe how many different products were all brought together in one place. Granted, the place was about the size of a football field and they were loading crates of food onto the shelves using an actual forklift, but it was still all in one building. Personally, I feel that the rise of the mega warehouse supermarket is a mixed blessing. While it is wonderful to be able to buy such an incredible variety of food in one place, having to work our way through over a hundred people just to get a bag of potatoes, a box of cereal, and some yogurt is a huge drawback. Luckily, there are still smaller “mom and pop” markets out there, and the energy in many of them is so much softer. They are usually much easier to shop in and what they may lack in variety, they more than make up for in relaxed atmospheres. Of course, if you’re like me and you have to do weekly grocery shopping at the big stores for your family, it is a good idea to have a magical game plan to help insulate you from some of the potential frenzy.
Witches are by nature psychically sensitive people and though this has many spiritual advantages, our sensitivity can make it difficult to handle being in large crowds. Most of the witches I know avoid large groups of people for this reason, which can make grocery shopping in megamart-type stores exceedingly stressful. For me at least, establishing a bit of a routine is helpful, as is shopping in off hours. I always write my shopping lists the night before I intend to go to the store, and I try to write down the items in the order I find them in the store. I’ve been in there so many times, I can picture the layout in my head as I make the list. The first time I went to a store and almost no one was there was an amazing experience. The huge supermarkets here are open twenty-four hours a day, and I ended up having to buy a few things at eleven o’clock at night. I walked into the store and it was like a ghost town. It was so quiet and empty. The only people in the whole store were the employees stocking the shelves. It’s a fun experience to shop in a giant supermarket when it’s practically empty. For safety’s sake, it makes more sense to shop in early morning off-hours, like with the small breakfast crowd from 6am to about 9am, than it does to shop around midnight or later, but either way, the stores are usually much less crowded.
When the stores aren’t full of people it is so much easier to shop slowly and browse. That’s when you can find all sorts of new things to try. I had never tried quinoa until just last year, and I love it; I happened to find it in the store one day when it wasn’t too crowded and I was able to look around for a while. Grocery shopping can actually be a lot of fun if you have the time and there aren’t a ton of people in the store. I don’t mean to imply that people are bad or that when shopping in a large crowd, the people will be mean or anything. I’m just saying that a significant portion of the stress many people feel when grocery shopping stems from the glut of psychic energy around large groups of people. Witches and psychics tend to feel this discordant energy more than the average person.
Being a realistic person with a hectic schedule, most of the time I end up having to shop during the busy hours. I figure that most of us are in the same crowded-supermarket-stress situation. That being the case, a good defense against the psychic pandemonium is shielding. In my book Spellcasting for Beginners there’s a spell in the “Verbal Magic” chapter for creating a psychic shield of protection. I include it here, as it is a good idea to surround yourself with a magical safeguard to help block all that chaos, if there is any. This spell should be cast before you head to the supermarket.
Protection
If you feel in need of protection, visualize yourself surrounded by a bubble of white light that condenses and “solidifies” into a shining, mirrored orb that repels any and all negativity and danger. As you visualize, chant the following:
Shield of power, protect me from harm,
From threat of danger, negativity, and storm;
Glowing power, mirrored might,
Keep me safe with your magic light.
This spell really does help, though it may have to be repeated more than once if the crowds are too big. The last time I went shopping, the store was packed, so I had to repeat the spell silently to myself four times as I went through the aisles.
Another similar spell to help the overall shopping experience is something I like to call an Anti-Anxiety Orb. This spell is for those times when you forget to work a protection shield before you go into the store and the anxiety has already crept in. Like the standard shield above, it can be repeated and strengthened as needed.
Anti-Anxiety Orb
Find a place to stop for a moment and imagine a thin thread of cool, electric-blue light coming down from above and entering your body through the top of your head. Imagine this thread continues straight through the middle of your body, down to your feet. Now, imagine that the thread is expanding within you and pushing out all the stress and anxiety. See this light expanding until it has become an orb around you and you are fully cleansed of the anxiety and protected from any further psychic disruption. To seal the spell, say this chant to yourself:
Anxiety banished, stress cast away;
Calm returns, here to stay.
The key to this is starting with the thinnest thread so that as it expands it pushes out all the anxiety, leaving you calm and refreshed. I love this spell and use it often.
For help in casting these two spells, please see the next section. It covers all the steps in casting spells, such as meditation, visualization, projection, timing, colors, ethical considerations, etc., and should give you a solid grounding in magical philosophy. If however you are already magically experienced, you may want to skip ahead to section 3 or just skim the next two chapters. Personally, I like to review the basics in books, both with a critical eye and also to see other people’s take on the subject of spell casting. It always gives me food for thought, and it never hurts to brush up on the fundamentals.