HedgeWitch (5 page)

Julia, age thirty, has repeated health problems. Married, one child. Both she and her husband are overweight. Both have a terrific sense of humor. “My grandmother raised me. She was all about God smiting the sinner, especially when it came to health problems of congregational members—always said God made you sick to teach you a lesson, even for the most minor infraction. We used to make jokes about God doing overtime in our parish, and how with Him around, who needed the devil to blame your troubles on? Growing up, I truly thought she was just being loony. She was skinny as a rail and always this side of sickly, trying every wacky cure by a compendium of snake oil salesmen; but, you know, now I'm wondering how much of her insecurity, terror, and fear I absorbed as a kid, because she repeatedly told me that I was lazy, and that God made lazy people fat as they grew older as a punishment for not doing a hard day's work. I'm a writer by trade, working at a desk for a newspaper, and even though I work long hours, my job isn't physically exhausting. Like, I'm not out in the fields or anything, and I'm not up at dawn canning, baking bread, or washing laundry by hand. I suddenly realized I've been living her terror and fear. Not anymore!”

In these three examples, we followed the issue to the source, and it wasn't easy for Marissa, Harvey, or Julia to go back there. They had to sit and think about the question for a while, and in one case (Harvey) it took him several days to work through all the negative programming he heard as a child. Every time he thought of another comment his father used to make (and evidently still does), his mind would flip to something else—from what time he needed to pick up his son to trouble with a new insurance company dropping the insurance on his house. The light finally dawned on Harvey when he drove his father to a doctor's appointment and once again sat through the same string of worldly complaints. Finally, light bulb: Harvey deftly switched the subject and from then on endeavored to keep changing the subject every time his father began to work through the same verbal scenario and depressive soap-opera yarns. Harvey also discovered that some of his father's newer negative ideas were actually coming from a klatch of seniors that had lunch at the same establishment as Harvey's father (all Depression-era babies). Then Harvey started looking at the unsolicited mail his father was receiving, shocked to discover that many of the advertisements were targeting Depression-era mentality seniors, focusing on their fear to solicit money and sell products. Harvey made the comment, “What you create in your mind, you bring into your life. Sadly, my father is living proof.”

Granted, going back in time and dragging original fears out into the light of day isn't going to solve all your problems. However, now that you know where the negative programming may have come from, you can adjust how you think and in what you choose to believe, as well as reprogram what you are saying to (and around) your own kids (should you have any). With your conscious and subconscious minds now in agreement, there is nothing you can't accomplish. Take this exercise further and pay close attention to what you are listening to on the news, what you are reading, even the conversations you hear at work. Weed out what you don't believe and let the boogie-birds stay where they belong. With a fresh look at the universe, all you have to do is …

Believe!

Spellwork: The Gardening Tools of Belief

In a recent
A & E Biography
interview, I was asked what constitutes a “spell.” I wasn't surprised at the question, because those who have never cast a spell find the process alluring but (thanks to the negative programming of some religious sects) frightening. Personally, I find spells fascinating, and I've been working them for over twenty years! Spells are nothing more than tools to focus the mind and support your beliefs in a positive way, to bring your desires to fruition through the means of quantum physics (energy manipulation). Spellwork focuses the mind on a specific subject in a specific way, many times using an activity (such as burning a candle) to bring the two parts of your belief (conscious and subconscious) into alignment. Words and tools are used together to poise your mind at its most capable point of manifestation. When you cast a spell, you are throwing out your energy net through words and actions to bring something to you, whether that something is a new car or inner harmony. Choosing your words and your tools carefully and succinctly becomes very important, because it is not the universe you have to convince that you deserve whatever it is you want, it is yourself. Therefore, the tools and words of a spell are mental garden stepping stones that should:

(a) pull in divine energy through positive, uplifting thought and behavior, and

(b) align your conscious and subconscious beliefs.

If the spell does not do both of these things for you, your desire will not manifest.

The Universal Telephone Line

Remember Harvey? And do you recall how he said that his house insurance was cancelled? Here is the creative way in which he handled it:

“I got this darned letter in the mail that said ‘your house insurance is cancelled because your windows have peeling paint.' I'd just finished arranging for a new loan on the house to fix the place up, and here I get this letter. I was furious, because the insurer knew about the loan that cleared not thirty days before and that I was planning to use the money to repair the house. Frustrated, I decided to fix this problem … promptly!

“The day before, I'd purchased an old-fashioned phone at the mall, thinking it would add a special touch that the wife would like. I marched to the bedroom and took the phone out of the package, repeating a mantra: ‘Always a blessing.' I placed the phone on our bedroom dresser. I didn't hook the phone up to the house line. In fact, I didn't hook it up at all. In my mind, if a cell phone could call my kid, my magick phone could call the universe! What's the difference?

“On a notecard, I wrote: ‘I want this house insurance mess fixed immediately, to my benefit.' I stuck the card under the phone, picked up the receiver, and dialed 911. I said, ‘Hello, Universe? Harvey speaking. I want this house insurance mess fixed immediately, to my benefit. Thank you for helping me,' and I hung up. In less than one hour, I had the phone number of a new agent. In less than twenty-four hours, I'd made arrangements with that new agent to come view the house. In forty-eight hours, I had a new policy that was cheaper than the old one, and it covered the exact same thing. And seventy-two hours after that phone call, the old agent phoned, wanting to fix things, where before when I originally called them they had all but ignored me.

“I didn't stop there. My son has a new job as a salesman, and he was lamenting he needed at least two sales his first week to show his employer he would be good at the job. So, I went to the phone in my bedroom, dialed 411, and said, ‘Hello. This is Harvey. I want my son to land at least two sales today. Thank you,' and hung up. Sure enough, my son called me that night. He made his two sales, and by the time the week was out, he'd made a total of four. You can bet I'm going to keep using my magick phone!”

Harvey's example shows us that a simple spell can work miracles. Now, let's check Harvey's beliefs so we are all on the same page. Harvey believes that something runs the universe that is good, caring, and all-loving. He isn't sure what that something is, but when he is addressing the universe, he believes that he is somehow aligning himself with divinity. Secondly, Harvey has always believed that a solution to every problem exists; you just have to find it sometimes. Therefore, solving this problem was well within both his conscious and subconscious minds, and calling on a solution was not out of bounds in either type of thought.

To help his mind believe that he could contact the source of all things, he used a vehicle familiar to all of us: the telephone. Like Harvey said, if he could call his son on a cell, he could call the source on his magick phone. The act of dialing familiar numbers—911, in most areas of the United States, is the three-digit Emergency number, and 411 is Information. Harvey later explained that he used 411 because he wanted the universe to find two people who needed what his son was selling. In both cases, remember, the phone was dead—he never hooked it up, so he didn't really call 911 or 411. He just went through the motions. Also, in the desire for his son to land the sales, Harvey had the greatest confidence in his son's ability—he'd seen him perform before, and knew his son could do it—meaning he believed his son was capable of landing the sale. As his son's desire and Harvey's desire for him matched, the sales were made in less than twenty-four hours. When two or more people are joined together in a single thought in which they both believe (both consciously and subconsciously), then that desire will manifest quickly. Finally, Harvey had this to say: “I didn't for one moment allow myself to doubt. I just forged ahead, knowing that I would get what I wanted. I used a HedgeWitch technique whenever I felt doubt coming on. I said, repeatedly, ‘It always works!' ”

And it did!

Linking your mind to a physical object to support your belief or matching your words to something you know to be true is not new. Magickal practitioners have been doing this for centuries. The trick is that you must believe in what you know to be true. Sounds funny, doesn't it? We find an excellent example in mental fluidity when studying Pow-Wow spells (Pow-Wow is a German-American magickal system). In Christianized Pow-Wow, the practitioner often adds a rider, such as:

“As surely as Mary gave forth Jesus Christ, so will Suzanne experience the fullness of healing in His name.”

For a Christian, this works perfectly, but that isn't the original text. Indeed, the original version states rivers and territories that no longer hold the same names, so to update a bit, we might say:

“As surely as the Mosel River flows through France, Luxembourg, and Germany, so too will Suzanne experience the gentle flow of healing energy until she is completely well.”

Both versions work—again, it is what you believe that counts.

Conscious and Subconscious Mind: Your Personal Filter

There is a really good reason why your subconscious and conscious minds don't readily believe the same thing, and at this point, you may wish you didn't have a subconscious at all, because it manages to be a major pain on certain issues and definitely can stand in the way of what you want. Both your conscious and your subconscious minds act as police, trying to filter thoughts and silly statements so that you don't manifest a shark on your dining room floor, a monster in the closet, or blow up the world. Both definitely have a unique function—gatekeepers to your running mouth and rambling brain. This way, you can think all you want, but it's what you
believe
that is the key.

Your Personal Primal Language

Discussing the law of attraction and release based on your thoughts, words, and deeds and supported by your belief isn't new (it has been done for centuries through different venues, especially in magickal circles). What's different here is really this section of the book: you have to personalize your primal language for it to work for you continuously. As I mentioned in my book
MindLight
, many seekers try a technique for a month or two, have great success, and then something seems to go wrong. Success is overshadowed by failure, and we find ourselves once again back at square one, debating on whether a particular technique really works for us and perhaps jousting once again with a nasty mental monster we just can't seem to shake. After contemplating this problem for several years, I realized that just as in everything else, no one human is like another, and therefore, no one human processes thoughts exactly like another. Yes, we all have certain human capabilities in common (like breathing), but it is those nuances that make us so unique that also make our approach to the law of attraction exclusive unto ourselves. If this is so, then how can everyone enjoy the laws of attraction and release equally? By determining what specific words, thoughts, and actions have meaning to our personal way of thinking. If we use our own favorite words, we can create the emotional certainty ensuring that what we want, we will recieve. If we can keep that emotional certainty at full power for sixty-five seconds, what we want has already begun to manifest. Once we have found those words and actions, using props and triggers—a motion of the hand, the scent of an herb, or the feel of a rock or crystal—helps to elongate a single thought, holding that heightened emotional certainty in place, giving us the necessary time for our desire to take root. These props or triggers can tie the unseen to the seen, the ephemeral to the physical, giving us an even flow of energy. As above, so below.

I know a woman who can always get a broken car started, no matter where she is. We'll be standing in a parking lot or on the street and hear the familiar grind of someone desperately trying to start their car. She'll wink, turn her back on the car, flip her hand, and three tries later (if they have kept at it), the car will start! When I asked her how she does this, she said, “I close my eyes, and I think of power filling the engine of the vehicle. At the same time, I clearly hear the sound of a perfectly running motor in my head. I flip my hand as if to turn on the car. I add to this my certainty that this always works and let the thought go.” Voilà!

I have a friend who runs his own business, and he's also a fringe Voudon practitioner. Whenever sales are low, he simply surrounds a white candle with a mixture of white sugar and coconut, lights the candle, and within twenty-four hours he always has a sale. “I call on Ayizan,” he says, “goddess of the marketplace. Her offerings can include white sugar and coconut. I believe that she will answer me, and she always does. When I set out the candle and other things, I'm completely concentrating on how happy I am that money is coming in. The offerings I give are my act of releasing—giving something away to make room for the sale coming in. I've never been disappointed. It always works.”