Going Postal:
Magickal Uses for Mail

by Raven Digitalis

Swiftness of communication is at an all-time high in human civilization. No more than a minute before typing this, I sent an email to a friend in the Caribbean and another to a friend in the UK, both of whom received the message and responded immediately. Yesterday I spoke on the phone to my buddy in New Delhi. Earlier today I was watching the CCTV News (China Central Television). Last week, I listened to an EDM podcast from Egypt and briefly webcammed on a friend’s computer with a guy from Kashmir. Amazing!

While occurrences like these can easily be taken for granted, particularly by members of younger generations (like me!), it’s honestly miraculous that global communication can be transmitted instantaneously. Humanity has never seen this before—and there’s no telling what the future holds. Our level of immediate communication has reached such a fever pitch that it’s almost unique for you to be reading these words in a book made of real paper. Younger generations in the Western world tend to be incredibly proficient at screen-based communication, yet often encounter obstacles when faced with person-to-person dialogue.

Mail of one kind or another has been in existence for as long as we’ve had written communication. Our modern electronic mediums allow for instant gratification. Like all things, this can be for better or worse. I would consider electronic communication a big “pro” if compassion and global progression were the motivators. While I genuinely believe we are meant to be entering an age of global empathy and awareness, I find that many uses of electronic communication are instead “cons,” motivated by these malicious forces such as greed and exploitation. But, just like magick, emotions, mental prowess, or any other force in reality, electronic advancements are neutral rather than inherently good or bad.

That said, physical mail, or snail-mail, has its own properties and advantages. Utilizing the physical plane for our magick, we can help create potentially reverberating positive change simply by writing a letter. According to the Crowleyan or Thelemic definition of magick, simply writing a letter or postcard to a company would be a great way to harness change by physical means. Whereas emails are empty in many ways, when we get postal mail we can feel the energy or personality of the person sending the letter or item—unless it’s mass-manufactured junk mail! Postal mail is a magickal thing and has the potential to carry great amounts of energy and power from point A to point B. It’s also the only form of long-distance communication that is confidential, as phones and emails can be tapped. For less than 50 cents (at the time of this writing, in America), we can write a letter, stick it in a blue box, and kick back while it zips across the country in a few days. That truly is amazing.

Snail-mail Sorcery

So, how can someone work their magick through snail-mail? Let’s start by looking at something that most people don’t think of as necessarily “magickal.”

Corporations and political institutions often regard one consumer’s opinion as the voice of many more—hundreds or thousands of additional consumers, depending on the market. Most people never take the time to make corporate contact. By taking a few minutes to express sentiments, a company or institution may be more inclined to change in progressive ways. It literally only takes a few minutes and a bit of couch-change to pay for a stamp. In my opinion, this is an incredibly small sacrifice for a piece of activism that could potentially have rippling effects that could help people, animals, or the earth. Is this not our duty as magicians and seekers of consciousness? Indeed I’ve seen these sorts of positive changes happen due to my own brief letter-writing.

I should also add that postcards are also more likely to get read by ultra-large corporations or institutions. Postcards can be quickly written and are very inexpensive to send. If someone is receiving mounds upon mounds of mail, they are more likely to read the postcards before opening letters. However, both have their times and places and both can be effective.

Revitalize Long-Distance Relationships

My coven and I enjoy sending “care packages” to friends and relatives around the world, whether at Yuletide, harvest time, when someone falls ill, or whenever the mood strikes us. Sharing is caring. Care packages can be a fun and creative act of personal magick. Simply piece together a number of fun items from around the house or from local shops, write a note, channel energies of your choice into the package, seal it up, and send off the love. Opening a random package of random stuff is a fun experience, especially if it’s imbued with intentions of bonding or healing.

Creating a spiritual piece of art in collaboration with a long-distance friend can also be fun. Begin the piece—regardless of the medium—and mail it to your friend to add to, alter, and imbue. They can mail it back to you to do the same. This can continue for as long as you wish, until you both feel the piece is a completed work of magickal art that carries the intentions you set forth to create.

Enhance Your Practice Postally

Postal magick is something I’ve utilized in some of my Men’s Rituals for the Dark Sun. In the Order and Coven I cofounded, called Opus Aima Obscuræ (OAO), we utilize the Dark Sun or New Sun as the masculine equivalent to the women’s Dark Moon or New Moon. This occurs when the sun enters a new zodiac sign in tropical astrology.

During a ritual marking the sun’s entrance into Virgo (a sign ruled by Mercury, a planet/god of communication), we once performed postcard magick for the Men’s Ritual. Each of us took a small stack of postcards and visualized a place we wished to travel. Upon creating this traveling to-do list, we performed a series of magickal exercises to enchant and empower the postcards, which were to be mailed to those destinations. Magick included the creation of sigils to represent these traveling goals. (Note: there are multiple ways to create a sigil or magickal seal aligned to a specific purpose. Please consult a book or internet source for more about sigilry, particularly the methods given by Austin Osman Spare.) Our sigils represented these personal goals, acting a visual anchors for our intentions, which were worded in the form of “I will effortlessly and joyously travel to ______ in this lifetime,” or similar affirmations.

Once the sigils were created, drawn, and enchanted on the left sides of the postcards, the symbols were layered overtop in a series of fun stickers like smiley faces and hearts. Many of these stickers entirely covered up any given sigil. On the right side of each postcard, the address was written. We researched addresses of hotels in any given national or global location we picked, and addressed them as such. For example, if I wanted to travel to Ireland, I would research a functioning hotel in Ireland and address it to the hotel—this would ensure the postcard’s delivery to the city or country of manifestation. Additionally, we wrote a bit of text on the left sides of each postcard so they wouldn’t look too suspicious or strange—the goal is not to scare the randomized recipient! Because these were being sent to hotels, each postcard got a silly little message, like, “Thanks for the great stay! Love your hotel! Cheers!” or we simply made it look as if a child had written the postcard and an adult addressed it.

To conclude, each participant pricked the pointer finger of his left hand (to represent the future and the fiery command of one’s own energy) and put a small “blood stamp” in the right-hand uppermost part of the postcard. Once dried, proper national or international postage was secured atop the blood prints, leaving the blood hidden beneath the stamps.

To summarize, each of these were magically charged, odd-but-happy-looking postcards addressed to hotels across the globe. The postcards we had chosen had pleasant nature scenes on the front sides of each. The postcards were properly stamped depending on the area they were being mailed to (postage rates can be looked up online), and no postcards had a return address (this anonymity is important with this sort of magick). Postcards should be put in a public mailbox, not mailed from your place of residence, as to send off these energies without an obvious link to your person.

When each hotel receives any given postcard, it’s likely that the recipient would briefly read the postcard, look at it strangely, perhaps give a little chuckle, and then toss it in the trash. Once tossed in the trash, it ensures that the magician’s energy, through the sigil and bloodprint, is connected to the location being manifested for travel. If the address of the hotel is expired, the post office in that area will simply “dead letter” the postcard, which will also make its way into the trash. The magician, then, can choose when to astrally connect to the city or country of choice, helping pull the area closer energetically, thus making traveling to that location easier with time.

Anonymous Activism

Another type of magickal postal activism can be utilized, but it requires a different kind of creativity.

I’m not a liar. I don’t lie. I greatly dislike lying. But sometimes (and I mean very seldomly) untruths can be used for reverse effects without causing harm—and ideally perpetuating the contrary. Allow me to give an example. A church in my area was using severe, hellfire-and-brimstone messaging in their roadside letterboard, saying things like, “Don’t believe in Christ? You might believe once He sends you into a sea of eternal flame!” Of course, this sort of extreme religious musing is meant to shock people into conforming to their line of thinking (which, incidentally, is far from Christlike). In response, I wrote a postcard saying something along the lines of, “As a Christian woman, I encourage you to direct people to the Light of Christ. I feel this is most effective by professing the Love and Goodness that our Lord and Savior expressed through His teachings. I believe that more and more individuals can be saved by encouraging brotherly and sisterly love rather than perpetuating messages of hatred. What would Jesus do? Thanks for doing the good work of the Good Book.” Upon signing the letter with a fake name (“Yours in Christ, Amanda”) and not using a return address, I witnessed the local church entirely and immediately change their roadside letterboard to weekly messages of God’s love and compassion. Score! This was ten years ago, and they haven’t changed to this day. I can only hope their sermons also reflect this more progressive and unifying line of thinking.

However you choose to utilize the postal system to carry your magick, give thanks to Mercury, Hermes, or Thoth: three of the classical gods of communication. I often draw the alchemical symbol for Mercury on pieces of mail I send. This not only ensures safe delivery, but aligns the essence of the god to the postal system itself, giving thanks for the miracles of modern communication.