🕛 Witchy CHALLENGE ~ Catch-Up!

[carol3]

Challenge entry : spirit animals

So my spirit animal is definitely the bearded dragon. How this came about is that a friend of mine had started dating a new guy and wanted me to meet him. So I go to his house and see this huge tank with this really scary looking thing in it. I asked what the **** is that thing. He said it was a bearded dragon. So at first I was terrified of it. He took it out and eventually i got the nerve up to touch it then finally to hold it. As soon as i had him against my chest I was in love. We just clicked. So I tell him if he ever wants to get rid of him I would love to have him. He says well actually he had gotten it for his ex and my friend didnt like it because of that. So he gives me, Spike is what I named him, wilh his cage lights and all his accessories. Over a grand worth of stuff not including whatever he paid for the dragon himself. Well sadly about 2 years ago Spike passed away. My kids have been begging me to get another one. So last week I went to visit my same friend in a new town I had never been to before. I go through the McDonalds drive through and look over to see Petsmart and just “knew” my next new spirit amimal was in there. So I walked in and peeked at the cage and one jumped down from his basking spot walked to the glass and cocked his lil head and looked at me. When our eyes met it was a magical monent.so of course I got him and brought him home. Luckily I had kept all of Spike’s stuff so didnt have to get much stuff for him. We named him Spitter. The pic of the big one is Spike and the lil guy is Spitter.

[Nikki-Phoenix]

CHALLENGE ENTRY

@BryWisteria

The Wizardry of Words - Word Witch

There were so many things I was going to do for this challenge, in the end I decided to create a Gratitude ritual, which sounds simple but really isn’t. It’s exciting, creating your own ritual and deciding exactly what you’re going to do and why you’re doing it and how you’re doing it; and yet it’s only once you get into it, you realise just how much you can think about. For example, what elements will I include - and when I say elements, I mean all the options available; candles, crystals, chants, actions, herbs, tarot, runes, sigils, energies (deities), petitions and the actual elements (Earth, water, air, fire and spirit). Side note: that list is sooooo not all of the elements, just the ones I use at the moment.

For this ritual, I decided to keep it simple and specific, because it’s something I want to repeat fairly regularly, and if it’s too complicated, I’ll run out of ingredients in no time! Besides, I can always jazz it up in the future with Citrine and an amber candle (if I can find one), and by keeping it simple I can use the virtual altar, perfect for the park!

First order of business - create a circle of protection; not something I do very often, but sometimes I just literally feel drawn to doing it.

I lit 3 white candles, put on meditation music and aligned my chakra, and charged my new wand - ooo the excitement! First I warmed up the magic makers (I rubbed my hands together until fizzy) then I held it in both hands and infused the wand with that energy. Then starting at north, I turned 360 degrees clockwise 3 times for the Mind, Body and Spirit - slowly, because I didn’t want to get dizzy. Once the Circle felt charged, I said my COP chant:

I humbly call upon the Divine Family,
Deities and Guardians; draw near to me.
Spirits of the Water, Earth, Air and Fire,
Align with my Spirit, and grant my desire.
Embrace and enrich me with protection and sight,
Watch over and guide me, bathe me in light.
Repel negativity so I can be free,
With harm to no one, so mote it be.

Then I wrote a gratitude chant:
Thank you for the planet, which spins around in space,
Magically held together by Your grace.
Thank you for the earth, the plants and the trees,
The flowers and grass which bend with the breeze.
Thank you for the Sun, which always shines bright,
Thank you for the Moon, to illuminate the night.
Thank you for the animals, creatures big and small,
Thank you for the oceans and the waterfalls.
Thank you for my daughter, my many families,
Thank you for love, for them and for me.
Thank you for all the things I can’t see,
Thank You for life; it is precious to me.

Then I spent some time just bathing in warm fuzziness basically. Then I thanked the energies for their time and continued blessings, closed the circle, and respectfully extinguished the candles.

x Blessed Be x

[Nikki-Phoenix]

CHALLENGE ENTRY

@BryWisteria

Liminal Magick – Liminal Witch

I’ve only ever talked about this with one person before, I am so excited to talk about liminal spaces! Reading the threads was so fascinating, so many ideas that I agree with, experiences I’ve also had and never talked about, and possibilities I didn’t think of.

When I think of liminal spaces, like Megan it brings to mind the Charmed episode, although not necessarily in that way; it’s the bridge between here and there. Now, where exactly “there” is, will be different for everyone I think, could be a different house, city, continent, past life, future life - the common denominator is that there is a here, and there is a there, and the possibility of mentally moving between them. I also agree that Water is a liminal space, being between land and sky; one could argue that the planet itself is a liminal space, seeing as it’s literally floating in the space between us, the heavens and the nethers. Forests are definitely liminal spaces, again I don’t know whether to a parallel universe, a different plane, but there’s definitely a there there lol. But I digress.

I’m totally going to reveal clues about my age here, but my first encounter with “proof there’s a there” came when I was about 9 or 10 I think, and my parents bought us kids a couple of Magic Eye books:

For those who’ve never seen one, it’s literally a book full of very colourful pages, and you can train your eyes to see a 3D image hidden within that page. For me, here was proof that there are other worlds here, which are easily hidden - even inside a piece of paper. But if you know where and how to look, they can be found. It brought to mind the animated movie Ferngully, where Magi tells Crysta that “there are worlds within worlds”, something which always stuck with me. In this world/reality, there’s the world of the rich, of farming, race, politics, celebrities, underworld, cyberworld and a hundred other worlds, so why wouldn’t there be actual magickal worlds within this one? So there were points throughout my life where I would actively look for such places, and every now and again I’d find them.

A few days ago I did a shadow spread, the main takeaway of which was that I’m afraid of my gifts, which I totally am - they’re awesome, but I think a little fear is healthy…as long as it’s a little. So for this challenge, I decided to go well and truly outside my comfort zone, to let go and see what happens.

As I would technically be travelling through space (although not literally, not intentionally anyway), I thought I would introduce a little cosmic energy into my spell. I thought Ostara would be a great time to try it, being an inbetween time so maybe a little cosmic boost there. Then I remembered a post I saw here by CosmicCuriosity I think, which led to getting a natal chart, which led to using one’s name to determine significant numbers relating to things such as personality. So using the no vowels method, I did some scribbling with my full first and last name; my personality number for my first name is 11, and for my surname it’s 22.
After creating a strong COP, I wrote my name and the numbers on bay leaves and burned them, whilst saying this chant to Hecate:

Queen of the Night, Protector of All,
I pray for your guidance, please protect my soul.
Let my mind drift off and fly from this plane,
Physically here, but mentally away.
Help me to see beyond what is here,
Lend me your sight, true and clear.
When I see what I need, please let me return,
Empowered and humbled at all I have learned.
I thank You for giving this precious gift to me,
With harm to no one, so mote it be.

Then I downloaded a new meditation in the Wicca app, Exploring Past Lives - something I’ve been really curious about but too scared to ever try. And it was the most amazing and surreal experience of my life, kind of like wearing a virtual reality headset, but not as clear, and the feelings were intense, I’m drawn to the feelings more than the images. Also, it was more like I was watching the events as opposed to being in the body of my past self, which is kind of what I was hoping for; but the sensation of floating between those moments was truly special. And yes, I’m being vague on details on purpose, because I’m not quite sure I believe it yet, so how could anyone else…I guess I’m still processing. Wishing everyone a magickal weekend xxx

x Blessed Be x

[amanda6]

Thank you Dan

[dan3]

@carol3

So my spirit animal is definitely the bearded dragon.

Spirit animals are great.

My daughter’s spirit animal is a small dragon that was actually her ‘blanky’ embodied as a rubbery toy. When she was young. It never left her for years.

My spirit animal is canine and, in my case, a particular one I knew and loved in my youth. When I visualize her I automatically smile even when in deep meditation.

[Jeannie1]

@Nikki-Phoenix

@Nikki-Phoenix

visualise a willow tree, it’s roots go deep into the Earth to draw the energy up through each chakra.

I really like how you emphasize the willow tree I love the willow tree. I just got a twig so that way I can make a wand out of willow . It’s good that you visualize each chakra

@Nikki-Phoenix

Then I visualise the others to create a picture in my mind; the sacral is a deep orange sunset behind the willow tree,

I can imagine the sunset this would be a great entry for the book of Shawdows !! Even having a crystal to help.
I just wanted to say Nikki Phoenix, I like how you used colors to in the meditation that’s really good! Thank you to help add some definition to my practice
Jeannie

[WrenEve]

I loved those books when I was little! I just had one at home, swear it was that top right one…

What a special experience! (Curious to hear more when you’re ready!)

[WrenEve]

Challenge #3

WITCH CHALLENGE - Purify & Cleanse

Merry meet! Thank you once again to all those who joined in for the previous Witchy Challenge - Who’s Your Deity? After exploring the many divine influences honored by the coven, it’s time to welcome the Lunar New Year, the month of purification, and the pagan holiday Imbolc The theme for this week’s challenge is inspired by these current events and is… [Purify & Cleanse] Cleansing & Purification February is named after the a…

A spiritual cleansing bath in which I wanted to clear negative energy and start the spring season with a clean slate. I used rosemary, lavender and salt. A lot came up emotionally and mentally that I hadn’t realized were just beneath the surface. I actually felt a bit unwell so I think I have more to release.

[georgia]

Challenge Entry
5 Ancestor Work

Today, I found

Cast for the Past

Cast for the Past So as a few of you know, I’ve become very into frequency work. I do it for healing, but also for casting…you know, align my personal vibrations and chakras with the spell I’m working with. Along this path, I’ve started working with theories and meditations by Dr. Joe Dispenza (the guy from What the Bleep Do We Know). And I’m reading his books. Currently, I’m reading “Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One”. In this book, Dr. Dispe…

Then I remembered a post I’d done about my ancestors

Weekly Witchy CHALLENGE - Celtic Traditions, Pantheon, & Magick

Let me start with a bit of trivia collected from the PBS series Nova. Scottish tartans were discovered in a burial mound in China! Maps used during the show seemed to reveal a path from Phoenicia through a desert to the burial mound and then up through France and England to spread out and become the Celts we all know and love. It is said that the Phoenicians as a people vanished without a trace like the Aztecs, Incans, and Mayans. I think the burial mound reveals that the blood line still exists…

I chose to cast a forgiveness on the things my Cagot ancestors were forced to do because of an accident.

1. I forgive the builders of the cathedral which collapsed. You did your best with what you had available. It is not your fault that someone famous was inside at the time of the collapse.
2. I forgive the innocent who were rejected because their ancestor worked on the doomed project. You didn’t have a chance at a good life because of an unfair judgement. You weren’t part of the building process which destroyed your hopes for a future.
3. I forgive those who had no other jobs than what they were forced to do in order to survive- all the jobs no one else wanted to do. You still had to put food on the table and pay the bills, even if the quality of life wasn’t going to be the hoped for reward.
4. I forgive the poverty and terror related to being an outcast of society. You deserved a chance. May this forgiveness allow you to better your experiences.
5. I forgive those who were forced to take the lives of others, accused witches or framed innocents. You may have wielded the axe or pushed the lever to drop the floor out from under somone, but the true killers were the ones who made the decision to kill, the framers, the judges, the lawmakers who had no heart.
6. I forgive those who were judges and lawmakers for their ignorance.
7. I forgive those who framed the innocent- not because of anything you did or were, but out of pure grace. Let the Creator who saw into your heart at the time deal with it.

May this spell free the innocent, heal the crimes they were forced into against their better judgement, remove the curse, heal minds and souls, and ease disease on every level.

[Nikki-Phoenix]

@Jeannie1

I just wanted to say Nikki Phoenix, I like how you used colors to in the meditation that’s really good! Thank you to help add some definition to my practice

You are most welcome @Jeannie1, I’m so glad it helped you! I started adding colours and/or using familiar inages after getting frustrated with guided meditations. Nearly all of them to visualise this, that or the other, and if I’m having trouble visualising, then I just end up frustrated. But then I decided to swap the word “visualise” for “feel”, then once I felt them I put them into an image I know well. If I’m doing a chakra ritual then I use crystals too, first selenite or clear quartz to cleanse it, then the chakra set to charge each chakra individually. Have fun!

@WrenEve I still love those books, in fact I’ve been considering lately whether to buy them again, we’ll see!

x Blessed Be x

[WrenEve]

Challenge #4 A Touch of Tarot

I have finally decided to give tarot a try (although I still love my comforting oracle decks!). My hesitation has been that tarot reading always seem so direct and harsh to me…

For this challenge I got a traditional Rider deck and I did a smoke cleanse on it. I have almost completed the Tarot course (phew! It’s a long one). And for starters I have done a deck interview ( https://littleredtarot.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Tarot-Deck-Interview-Spread.pdf ):

Anyone have insight into card 1 ( 4pentacles) and 2 (high priestess)being so contradictory?
1 is the deck’s most important characteristic
2 is its greatest strength

[georgia]

@WrenEve

Anyone have insight into card 1 ( 4pentacles) and 2 (high priestess)being so contradictory?

I don’t see them as being contradictory. Yes, pentacles is grounding while the High Priestess is intuitive, but the meanings seem to me more a message of pinning down the answers to questions and supporting your subconscious mind. Am I off base, here?

[WrenEve]

@georgia That is a good point!
I was considering it as material vs spiritual, but certainly it could be well suited for practical, material or financial matters while strengthening my intuition and revealing my subconscious thoughts.

[Jeannie1]

Amanda
Beautifully done!! I love it all!!

Challenge # 3 “MagicKal Mender Cures and Remedies”
Healing Balm that is super easy to make?
Silver Bear helped with this recipe.
I wanna say I had most of everything for this slave.

Make it mor powerful by using a sigil, on the tin can

I am working on a spell that I am going to write, but for now I’m going to share
#4 Creative Magic

This is a visual reference to help with grounding me right before my meditation I’m not all the way done but it’s getting there.
One more challenge to go!
I’m not sure if you can read the print
I used
1 teaspoon arrowroot
Vitamin E oil
Candela oil which I made out of sunflower seed oil
19 drops of lavender
I also used some Shea butter that was not in the recipe, but I added it because I thought it would be good for it.
I also used some anointing oil which was home made out of an awakening intention.
Jeannie

Jeannie

[BryWisteria]

This is the last day to join the challenge

It’s always magickal around here, but this week the forum is glowing with so many kinds of magick on display! A big thank you to everyone who jumped into a previous challenge theme (or or two, or more!) and shared their creativity with the forum so far.

This is your heads up that the challenge is approaching its end. It will close to entries tomorrow: Tuesday, March 25 at 7:00 AM ET (Eastern US Time)

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If you haven’t already shared an entry with the coven but would like to join in, this is your friendly reminder that you still have time left to do so.

Blessed Be!

[MeganB]

Challenge Entry #3 - A Witch’s Divination – Diviner

We always talk about the things we’re good at, but for this challenge, I want to talk about something I’m pretty bad at! I’m good with cards, picking up on symbols, and putting meaning together. One method of divination that I’ve always struggled with is actually a pendulum! For me, I think it has more to do with not enjoying the type of questions that suit a pendulum and having unsteady hands. I’ve also tried to use pendulums with a stand so that I’m not holding it at all, but I’ve never had any success.

So, I have this pretty pendulum that my sister-in-law made for me but it just sits around and looks pretty because I just don’t use it I also have a wooden pendulum board that my partner made for me to use a few years ago that sits here, too

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Challenge Entry 4 - Purify & Cleanse – Crafty Cleanser

So… I’m taking this in a slightly different direction We just had a D&D session this past weekend and out of several sets of dice, only ONE rolled okay enough for me. I don’t know how many nat-1s I rolled – my character is a freakin’ Teifling Barbarian with 85hp and I was getting whacked in combat anyway, they ended up in dice jail, so I think they need a good cleansing! Since I can’t put them in water, I chose to light some incense and sound cleanse all of my dice!

Cleansing them with sound is a lot easier than smoke since I don’t have a good container to put them in with the smoke. I lit some Dragon’s Blood incense and used my brass bell to ring sound over the tray that holds my dice.

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Challenge Entry #5 - Your Magickal Senses – Sensational Witch

There’s one aspect of my witchy senses that I haven’t explored as much as I’d like and that’s how music makes me feel. The closest thing I can think to describe it is that feeling people get when they listen to ASMR stuff. I’ve never found anything that really explains it, but there are some songs, sounds, and melodies that give me a full-body sensation or, at the very minimum, one in my face or my scalp. I’ve always been musically inclined. I play the flute and I can play the oboe, and singing is one of my favorite things to do, especially if I’m struggling through something and can’t find the words to explain something on my own.

I want to try using songs that make me feel like that in my spells. It makes me feel magical, honestly, like I’m literally feeling the energy of the music and the artist in my body. One artist that I’ve been enjoying lately that makes me feel this way is Paris Paloma. I’ll admit that I didn’t know too much about her music until I binged her songs before I went to her concert but her voice, music, and messages affect me in ways that are difficult to explain. For example, her songs Rider and Last Woman On Earth make me stop in my tracks and I have to close my eyes and experience the physical sensations from listening to them.

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim | "The Rider" by Paris Paloma

I think these physical sensations and the energy of these songs, and others, can be a simple way to build energy for a spell, especially if the song relates to the working.

[amanda6]

Thank you @Jeannie1 Yours are amazing

[Artemisia]

@MeganB

pretty pendulum that my sister-in-law made for me but it just sits around and looks pretty because I just don’t use it I also have a wooden pendulum board that my partner made

They are both beautiful!!! What lovely and well-made gifts! I can relate that things don’t click in our practice. I have used a pendulum a couple of times but don’t feel very drawn to it.

@MeganB

dice jail, so I think they need a good cleansing

Bad dice are perfect for cleansing!! I love it Terrible rolls are frustrating at best and heartbreaking at worst.

[WrenEve]

Challenge #5 Enchanting Herbs – Herbal Witch

I finally made a Calm Balm that I’ve been meaning to do for months! The recipe is from The Green Witch’s Guide to Herbal Magic.

I used chamomile that I harvested last summer, local lavender and lemon verbena that I purchased. I’m hoping to grow them all for the next time I make it. As it’s a waning moon, I used the intention of dissolving anxiety and reducing stress.

I loved these colours as I ground the herbs and infused them with my intentions:

It was a longer process than I expected, especially as the melting point of the wax I used was higher than I expected (I used candelilla wax instead of beeswax to make it vegan). My point being that I was interrupted a lot by my family so next time I will a better job of casting a protection circle around my work space. Here is my balm finished and cooling:

[WrenEve]

What a great idea adding the sigil!