Protection

There are two types of protection magick:

Preventative: Learning to set up wards and boundaries around yourself and your home to keep negativity out.

Defensive: Where you have been physically or verbally attacked and move to protect yourself in mundane and magickal ways.

Preventative Magick

One of the first methods of protection magick that the new student learns is that of shielding or warding one’s body or environment. Two books that you may find extremely helpful are:

Practical Guide to Psychic Self-Defense and Well-Being by Denning and Phillips

Psychic Self-Defense by Dion Fortune

Although you might first think that protective magicks are geared only to combat someone coming at you with fists or angry words, that’s just part of it. Protection magicks also work for situations that we don’t think much about, or those minor irritations in which we believe little can be done—putting a lid on your impulse buying when you are teased by flashy advertisements and other marketing gimmicks, the kid who keeps bugging you to borrow money, the friend who borrows CDs and never gives them back, the friend of your older brother who tries to convince you that drugs are okay (which they aren’t), that girl that got your phone number from a supposed friend and now calls your house every day and then hangs up before someone can answer, the football player that keeps moving your stuff at the lunch table, the bill collector who is harassing your mom, that sleazy guy at your dad’s work who is always coming over to the house and looking at you funny, that friend of your dad’s that keeps trying to get him into bad financial deals, the nasty aunt that blows in and out of your family life leaving unhappiness and emotional pain in her wake, or the friend who despite her good intentions always seems to get you into hot water with your other friends . . . whew! Have I missed anything? As Carl Llewellyn Weschcke, owner and publisher of Llewellyn, says:

[Psychic self-defense] is a matter of strength, of confidence, of success and fulfillment coming to you through the use of some simple and perfectly natural psychic techniques.24

The biggest problem I’ve found in training students is not that they can’t learn defensive techniques, but that as the years go by and their lives improve, they forget them. Granted, some of the things they learn become very much a part of their everyday lives and continue to work subconsciously, but if the student moves to a new environment (from high school to college, from an old job to a new one, from an old home or apartment to a different one), they sometimes forget to rework some of the original techniques they learned years ago. I have also seen difficulties arise exponentially with a person’s public identity. Let’s say in your freshman year at high school you didn’t know too many people, you weren’t in many school clubs or activities—you basically kept to yourself. But over the summer you blossomed, matured, and gained more self-confidence. In your sophomore year, with that newfound inner strength, you began joining things, becoming more active in your community. In your junior year you find yourself surrounded by lots of friends, enjoying popularity, and finding yourself extremely active in school. Suddenly where no one paid attention before, now eyes are turning toward you, and some of those eyes are jealous, vindictive, and spiteful. The small minds behind these eyes plot to take you down. To be hit unprepared with this negative energy is a shock. This happens to adults, too, and can rattle anyone right down to the bone.

This doesn’t mean that you should be afraid or look for a boogie-teen around every corner. Indeed, psychic self-defense techniques teach you to deal with and eliminate fear, but the above example (which really happened) is to remind you that psychic self-defense techniques are important throughout your life, not just when you face something upsetting, like a bully or jealous ex-friend, and should be practiced even when everything is going great and no black clouds loom on the horizon. If you begin experiencing difficulties, and you’ve been working with magick for a year or two (or even more), you might want to remember to “get back to basics” by going over those techniques you learned early on in the Craft—grounding and centering, meditation, daily devotions, and psychic self-defense techniques. Yes, these are all mental activities, yet they form the strong foundation of your magickal work.

Web of Stars Psychic
Protection Meditation

This meditation, practiced every day alone or with other meditations, exercises your ability to protect yourself from negativity, relieves stress, and urges you to think about the divine. Sometimes we call this activity “shielding” or “warding.” This meditation takes only a few moments, so it’s easy to fit into your busy day.

Find a place where you will not be disturbed. Sit comfortably in a chair. You can play soft music if you like. Close your eyes. Ground and center. Take three nice, deep breaths. Count down from ten to one. Imagine that you are surrounded by white light. Allow that white light to grow stronger. The light becomes a solid shield around your body. Now surround the white light with a web of stars. This web is like an electrical force field. When any negativity touches the web, it disintegrates. The waves that result from these tiny explosions turn into positive energy, clinging to the net, thereby reinforcing the original web. If you have trouble visualizing this, think of a bug light. The bug hits the light, and there is a zapping sound as the light grows brighter. Hold this visualization as long as you can. Then take a deep breath. Reach out with your heart and feel the presence of Spirit, allowing that peaceful feeling to flow through your body. Take another deep breath. Count from one to five and open your eyes. Practice at least twice a day, every day. You can also use this visualization when you feel sick, upset, sad, or think you are in danger.

When you have practiced at least two weeks, you can begin to use the same meditation to protect pets, friends, and family members. Follow the instructions above, then visualize the person surrounded by white light, covered by the web of stars. Hold the visualization as long as you can. Practice every day until you feel the threat is over, or practice as a part of your daily prayers that include pets, friends, and family members.

Protecting Inanimate Items

Hold the object in your hands, or lay hands on the item if it is too large to hold. Close your eyes. Ground and center. Take three deep breaths. Imagine a bright, white light surrounding the object. Now add the web of stars as in the previous examples. Hold the visualization as long as you can. Take a deep breath and then open your eyes.

Defensive Magicks

Defensive magicks are performed when you have been attacked, either physically or verbally. If you have come under physical attack it is vitally important that you tell someone who can help you—parents, teachers, close family friends, or the police. Verbal threats can be just as bad, and you need to share what is happening to you with someone you trust. Don’t bottle it up inside and suffer through alone. On a lesser scale, small things such as gossip, intolerance to the way you feel about something, or ignoring how you feel can also put you on the defensive. It isn’t always easy to see the other person’s point of view when your feelings have been hurt. Sometimes we just want to come out fighting no matter what!

While an event occurs (or has just happened) that makes you feel bad, it is really important to consider doing some (or all) of the following:

• Remember to breathe properly. Taking several deep breaths throughout the day when you feel very stressed is important. It helps you capture some semblance of order in your brain and releases nervous tension, which can make you irritable, snappish, and downright yucky to be around.

• Get plenty of sleep. Sleep deprivation not only turns your brain to mush and makes you useless physically, it also tinkers with your magick in unpleasant ways.

• Practice a cleansing visualization every morning and evening. Keep up with the basics of daily meditations, devotions, and grounding and centering. I know it’s hard, especially when you are upset, but these exercises give you something to do so that you don’t focus on the negative.

• Add physical exercise to your daily life. In times of crisis, keeping busy through physical exercise helps you to heal faster
mentally.

• Physically and magickally cleanse the area of your home or apartment where you spend the most time. For most teens and young adults, this will be your bedroom or dorm room. During times of great crisis, magickally cleanse the area every day with any of the following: incense, sage, holy water, drumming, bells, or rattles. You may not feel like doing it, but allowing the negativity to grow around you while you sit there and stew will make any magick you attempt difficult to accomplish. You want the area to be as pure as possible when you decide on the best course of action.

• Crying is okay. If we weren’t supposed to cry, we wouldn’t have tear ducts. Crying allows you to vent those wild emotions.

So far, most of the above suggestions don’t seem particularly magickal, but all of them open the mental pathway for sound decision-making in times of crises. Here are some simple, immediate protective magicks to keep the situation from getting any worse than it already is:

• Mix a large quantity of salt and protective herbs of your choice together. Walk around your home and scatter the mixture, uttering your own protective prayer. Be careful, however, as salt kills grass and other plants, so be sure to watch where the mixture falls. If you live in an apartment, scatter the mixture under the front doormat and under the rug near the fire escape.

• Draw pentacles with holy water on all windows and access doors to keep negativity out.

• Burn a black candle to dispel negativity and send evil back to its source.

• Use your magickal voice whenever you feel it is necessary to cleanse body, mind, and area.

Letters to the Ancestral Dead Spell

When someone passes away, many people mistakenly think that they cannot hear us, nor do many individuals believe that they can help us if we are in trouble. Granted, they cannot take the place of your spiritual source, but they can work with that source to assist you. Where prayers to honor the dead are intoned to keep the connection open between us and are said to help them continue to work on their own karma, prayers for assistance are used to bridge the gap between the worlds and draw the protection we need on this plane around us with their help.

Supplies: A purple candle; paper; pen; an envelope; 3 stones.

Instructions: Light the purple candle, intoning prayers for the deceased. For example, you can say:

I honor my grandmother and grandfather,
who have passed beyond the veil.
May the light of perfect love and perfect peace always surround them.

Write a letter to one of the people you honored in your prayer. Detail the problem. Ask for their assistance. Place the letter in the envelope and seal with a kiss. Release the circle by drawing the energy into the letter. Take the letter outside and place on top of three stones ar-ranged like a pyramid. Put the letter on top. Repeat the prayer of honor. Burn the letter. Let the cool ashes escape in the wind. Know that help is on the way. Leave the stones the way you have placed them.

You will find many spells and rituals in this book on protection. Check the index if you can’t find them right away.