Cottage Witchery (17 page)

a cleansing spell

For this cleansing spell you will need the following supplies:

* A bottle of spring water

* Sea salt—a teaspoon or two

* A bowl made out of natural materials (no plastic)

* A large decorative seashell (clamshell type)

* A small hand towel

* A silver paint pen

Pour the spring water into the bowl. Add the salt to the spring water. Stir the salt with your dominant hand—the one you write with—and stir the salt widdershins until it dissolves. Add the clamshell to the water. Now hold the bowl of water up and charge it with your magickal intentions. Say this line:

By the powers of water, this potion is blessed,

Bring light and hope from north to south and east to west.

Now start in the heart of your home and work outwards. Sprinkle a little water in the corner of each room. You don't have to soak the carpet, just a flick of the fingers will do. Also make sure you get all of the doorways and entrances. Dip your fingers in the blessed water and draw a star on every window, doorframe, and mirror. Once that is finished, return to the heart of your home and turn to face the west. Remove the shell from the water and dry it off thoroughly with the towel. Now draw the rune of protection, Algiz (
), on the inside of the shell with the silver paint pen. Take a moment to ground and center. Pick up the shell by the edges so as not to smudge the paint, then close this cleansing with this elemental protection charm:

See the silvery rune inside this seashell?

When used like a talisman, all will be well.

Algiz stands for protection, and it seals in power,

From roof to foundation, and at every hour.

By the powers of water, I cast out all harm,

Bringing protection and peace with this simple charm.

Add the seashell to your altar or hearthstone setup. Then close the spell by saying:

By all the power of river and sea,

As I do will it, then so shall it be.

Clean up the area. You may pour any remaining water down the sink. Leave the shell in a place where you'll see it every day. That shell is now a powerful protective talisman. Keep it on hand and incorporate it into other spells of your own design.

Earth Magick

For our last elemental protection spell we are going to work with crystals. Now it is true that you already have your hearthstone or altar setup working for you. That has lots of earthy energy just perking right along. However, when working protection magick with the element of earth, we start talking about grounding and centering magick. What we are looking for here is to build you a solid, strong, and secure magickal foundation. Once you have that built, it's really tough for somebody else to come along and throw things off with random negativity or unbalanced personalities. So how do you ward them off? With strength, determination, and a strong magickal base. You achieve that by believing in yourself, by strengthening your own personal shield, and by beefing up your home's defenses.

tiger's-eye spell

The tiger's-eye is an affordable and easy-to-find tumbled stone. It is a projective stone that imparts both courage and protection to its wearer. It was thought that soldiers once wore engraved tiger's-eye as a talisman for protection during battle. The tiger's-eye is a great tumbled stone to keep in your pocket to protect you from all sorts of mishaps and danger. It increases your energy flow and boosts your inner confidence and courage, which is just the thing for our upcoming spellwork.

For this spell, the supply list is short but sweet. What are you going to need? Yourself and four tumbled tiger's-eye stones. First things first: take yourself and the four tumbled stones and then go to the center of your home and sit on the floor. Get comfortable and close your eyes and focus on your breathing. Once you feel all centered and calm, open your eyes and set the four tiger's-eyes around you, one at each cardinal point or direction. (If you are not sure which direction is where, you can always place one stone in front of yourself, one in back, one on your right hand, and the last stone on your left.)

Now take a moment and visualize that you are surrounded by an earthy, warm, golden glow. Raise up your personal power as high as you can. (Picture your aura expanding out and becoming lush and full.) Now repeat the charm three times:

By the element of earth I work this homespun charm,

Bring me focus and strength and cause others no harm.

These four tiger's-eye stones cast protection around,

Within these walls, no evil will ever be found.

Sit there for a few moments and enjoy the stabilizing effects of the stones. Then gather up the crystals and place one in each of the farthest four corners of your home. After you've tucked the stones away, return to the center of the house and close the spell up with these lines:

From the four corners, I cast protection both strong and true,

Lord and Lady, watch over my home and all that I do.

By the hearth and home this warding charm is sung

For the protection of all, with harm to none.

O to be a dragon, a symbol of the power of Heaven . . .

Marianne Moore

Conjuring a Dragon to Ward the Home

Well, I bet you're wondering what sort of situation would possibly make a Witch like me pull out all the stops for this type of heavy-duty magick? The type of situation was a masked stalker. Yeah, no kidding. A few summers ago we had a big problem in my neighborhood with some guy who got his kicks by skulking around and peeping in homes of teenage girls. He added a little terror to the mix by wearing a white Halloween mask.

It was the end of June when I first started to notice that something felt “off.” At first it was a few weird dreams about someone trying to get in the windows, which would haunt me during the day. I said nothing about the dreams, which I chalked up to watching too many scary movies on television. Then things got a little more interesting.

As mentioned before, I enjoy sitting on my back patio in the evenings and watching the moonlight filter down onto the flowers. One mild summer evening while I was gathering a few blossoms in my backyard's perennial gardens for a spell, I felt all the hair rise up on the back of my neck. My stomach clenched and I felt a rush of adrenaline hit. I stood up slowly, armed with a pair of small pruning shears and a gathering basket, and looked around. I automatically tried to sense the yard to see what could account for the feeling of dread, but as I cast my feelings out, I only sensed that it was close. I stood there and silently argued with myself for a few moments.
I was a grown woman, this was my yard, I was just being silly . . .
and so on.

Unfortunately, the feeling of unease only increased. Deciding to investigate, I cautiously and quietly walked around to the side yard to the back patio area, trying to see what was causing the disturbance. I could see nothing to account for my discomfort. But as I made my way to the patio, my dread increased. For the first time in my life I was afraid of being outside in my own yard. I quietly backed up toward the door and eased my way inside. Once inside I checked on my teenagers, who were all sound asleep. Then I threw all of the locks and double-checked all of the windows.

Now that I was safely inside, my nervousness turned to anger. We have lived at our home for more than twenty years and I had never been frightened to be outside in my own yard at night before. What was up with that? I decided to cast a protection spell around the inside of the house and did so before I turned in for the night.

The next morning while I was getting ready for work my teenage daughter staggered into the bathroom to announce that she had been having bad dreams. “I think we need to recharge my dream catcher,” she announced as she elbowed me out of the way to brush her teeth.

“What are you having nightmares about?” I asked her.

“About some guy climbing in my window,” she spoke around her toothbrush.

“What?!” I demanded.

Once she was finished brushing her teeth, she told me about her dream. “So, can you recharge that thing or what?” she asked grumpily. I followed her into her bedroom to take another look at the purple dream catcher that was hanging above her bed from the curtain rod.

I stared at it thoughtfully for a moment. “Yeah, Kat. I certainly can,” I told her. And while I was at it, I would put one hell of a protection spell on my daughter, I decided.

A week passed and all was quiet on the home front. However, I stopped any moonlight rambles in the garden. Every time I went outside, I felt intruded upon, that my gardens were no longer safe, and that my sanctuary was violated. I then began to notice in the daylight hours broken flower stalks in my rose garden and stomped flowers in the perennial beds, which I immediately asked my sons and husband about. Hmm, maybe things weren't so quiet after all. My husband and sons started watching the yard more closely.

The next week was the Fourth of July holiday. We did the usual things—watched my daughter's high school band march in the hometown parade, had a barbecue, went to see the fireworks. Later in the evening we were standing in the side yard lighting a few sparklers and watching the kids set off a few bottle rockets when I happened to see a person walking along the outside of our privacy fence.

I turned to my guest and said, “Do you see that?” We both watched as this person began knocking on the neighbor's windows. We have six-foot-tall fences and I could only see the person's face in the darkness but it did look odd. What . . . were they wearing a mask? I shouted over at the person as the kids inside the neighbor's house started to scream. The culprit turned, looked right at me, and then took off at a run. We looked around, but didn't see where he had gone off to. When the neighbor's kids started shouting insults out the windows, I decided to talk to their parents as soon as possible. Thinking it was just a teenage prank, I shrugged it off.

A bit later when the parents arrived home, I spoke to them about it. We didn't exactly get along. These were the kinds of neighbors you wouldn't wish on anybody. They had a problem with playing loud music at all hours of the day and night and the police department was always over there for one type of domestic violence problem or another. So I approached them carefully. When I mentioned the guy in the mask, the father went ballistic.

Seems this stalker had been hanging around their house for weeks. The father had even challenged the guy on the deck late one night with a baseball bat and the stalker charged him, knocked him down, and then jumped over my privacy fence and took off through my yard. (Which explained the broken flowers and trampled-on gardens.) According to my neighbor, the stalker kept coming back. He was using my gardens as cover and then cutting through our yard to get away. Because of the ongoing domestic problems next door, the neighbor hadn't warned any of his other neighbors, or even called the police to report the stalker. Idiot.

I thought about it all night. Well, that certainly explained the dreams, the fear, and the uneasy feelings I had whenever I was out in the gardens at night. First thing in the morning, I called the police department and told them about the problem. When the police suggested that I add more landscape lighting to the gardens and put the word out to the other families in the neighborhood, I got on the phone and started making a few phone calls.

That same day my husband and I added some more outdoor lighting to the perennial beds. This jerk's days of using my gardens as cover were over. Man, did he pick the wrong Witch's gardens to skulk around in! The longer I thought about it, the more annoyed I became. Enough was enough, I decided. So that evening I called a Witch friend for backup.

I called my friend Morgan, who is also a mother of three. She's a Reiki Master and one hell of a powerful Witch. I wanted someone mature, strong, and able to stand with me in case things went “bump in the night” while we were casting this big protection spell. Over the phone I brought her up to speed.