kimberlysteele | Entries tagged with natural magic

As a traditional occultist, I feel perfectly at liberty to do a deep dive on vampires. Sure, I may be accused of woo by people who lack the attention span and reading comprehension to grok this article, but that is hardly a concern of mine as someone who has written an entire book about talking to toilets, rooms, and trees as if they were other humans. In my own case, I feel especially qualified to speak on vampires because I am the author of multiple vampire novels. The first novel I ever wrote, Forever Fifteen, follows the story of 15 year old Lucia Alberti. During the scourge of the Black Death, Lucy is turned into a vampire by an errant lothario and diplomat who keeps her as his pet until she escapes and boards a ship to America where she falls in love with a 16 year old boy in the 1980s. I turned Forever Fifteen into a trilogy. I wrote another vampire book after that one about a girl born during the settlement of the great American West who is half Native American and half white called River’s Heart. After that, I wrote a satirical send up of Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey called Shadeylight: Vella the Vegan Vampire under the pseudonym J.K. Elemenopy. Get it? JKLMNOP? Anyway, I like writing about vampires.

Vampiric but not vampires

Vampires are thoroughly misunderstood, and the people who literally believe in them as animated corpses are to be pitied. Back in the day, I met and conversed with a man who was semi-famous for believing he was a vampire. This wasn’t just a Chicago Med episode. Many people in my diaspora in the old days took goth to the next level. This guy was no exception. He was young-ish and had fangs attached to his eyeteeth (I asked him bluntly if his fangs were fake and he would not admit it) and talked about drinking blood. Of course the blood he drank was from consensual donors — he had a small harem of hangers-on that were OK with pricking themselves and letting him nibble on whatever body part they had injured. Yes, this was genuinely odd as my era was a time of AIDS paranoia. I dimly remember a whole presentation that was somehow focused on him. In my fiction, vampirism isn’t just about draining a thimble or two of blood from the host as erotic foreplay — the blood was the life. Wholesale slaughter had to occur or the vampire would go insane with starvation. He was all aesthetic and no grit. His vampirism was as fake as a four dollar bill.

Just as magic is real, vampires are real. The trouble here is that most people have grown up immersed in boneheaded literalism, and for magic to be real to them, it must take the form of Harry Potter waving a wand and zapping Voldemort’s minions or something that rhymes with that sort of farce. For vampires to be real, they had better be Anne Rice’s eternal hotties who abuse children and have lots of butt sex between blood drinking marathons, or at the very bottom of the twilit barrel, a class of folk who sizzle when they encounter sunlight. I am going to level with you here: if this is what you think magic is and what you think vampires are, you are completely wrong and you need to go outside and touch some grass.

On the opposite side of imbalance, we have the armchair psychologists who think I’m going in their direction, which I infuriatingly am not. Vampires are not just metaphors. They are real and pose real physical danger. Every single person reading this is at constant risk of being victimized by one or more vampires or vampiric forces. They can and will take your life. You should take magical and practical precautions against them. Vampires will ruin you and you will have no idea what happened. There are solid reasons why 17th century peasants hated and feared them, and it is not because they walked the earth in anything similar to the Sookie Stackhouse (True Blood) books or had themselves shipped overseas in comfy coffins a la Stoker’s Dracula. The kind of vampire the peasants (who were far more intelligent than us when it came to matters of the unseen world) used to fear was the etheric type. More on that later.

The first kind of vampirism we should recognize is subtle, yet it is the type most of us can intuitively understand. Current events seem designed to shepherd entire nations into civil war, and indeed some are currently in civil war. War of any sort not only requires a great deal of energy, it gives off copious energy. The Rothschild (nee Bauer) family’s predilection for financing both sides of any given war makes more sense when you consider war as a kind of farm. Besides resources being freed up, the polarization of wars creates emotional energy. If you position yourself in the right magical place at the right magical time, you can soak up the emotional energy and hoover up plenty of raw astral power as well as ill-gotten material gains in the form of interest wealth. The Rothschild family farmers know their livestock, that’s for sure.

Consider all the people who are polarizing over the latest civil war-inciting shenanigans on the local and world stage. Though each pole represents a wing on the same bird, the twain vow never to meet and comfortably numb politicians and technocrats get rich by their subject’s hatred of each other. For if they worked together, they might realize who the true enemy is, and we can’t have that. If most of us were too preoccupied with making our own lives better to bother with the latest and most salacious causes célèbres, the Rothschilds and their brethren would starve to death because their clan needs more than food to survive. I am not saying the Rothschilds have superpowers — they don’t. They want superpowers and they do not have them. The kind of magic they do is the grubby sort that has been done since ancient Babylon. It is actually simple to defeat such magic by realizing the other party is doing it and refusing to have anything to do with them or icky vibe.

The black magic of the vampiric egregore

An egregore is a massive spirit that takes on its own life and will. It is formed by the thoughts and intentions of humans and non-humans within reach of its ecosystem. If you have ever become overwhelmed by patriotism for any particular nation, you have felt the will of an egregore. If you have ever hated any particular group or institution, that was likely at least partially the will of an egregore sitting beside your own will. Like any entity formed of an astral pyramid, egregores want to grow. As the egregore grows, it draws adjacent forces into it like the gyre behind a black hole.

In order to understand how massive astral pyramids and egregores are vampirizing you, let’s consider the story of a man we will call Ray McMahon. McMahon starts his first burger stand at the county fair. His fast burgers become so popular, an investor propositions him, he accepts, and in a few years, he sells off the Rayburger franchises to a major food company. Seventy years later, he would not recognize his own burgers or the business, which has its own publicly traded stock and is known across the world, but there is still a bit of his essence in every bite. He started it. The egregore of Rayburger combines Ray’s original desire to sell a uniform product that looked and tasted the same no matter who was making it or what restaurant it was being served. It amassed power via the suffering and joy of the workers he employed, the impressions and memories made by Rayburger restaurants, and the copious Rayburger advertising that imprinted itself in many human minds, including the minds of children. The egregore was not innocent: Rayburger oppressed workers, cut down plenty of rainforests, killed more cows, chickens, and pigs than anyone wants to count, and generally represented a peculiarly left-brained, human-dominant system of governance that reflected Ray’s own WASP suburban childhood and the car culture that spawned his restaurant. Rayburger’s egregore colonized entire generations, mostly because its success helped a thousand imitators into existence. Rayburger’s unhealthy, inflammation-inducing food became synonymous with America itself, and the portrait it painted of its average consumer was not exactly flattering. When your child throws a tantrum because he wants a Rayburger and you don’t want to A. feed him genetically engineered slop and B. pay the currently exorbitant Rayburger prices, it is the Rayburger egregore attempting a vampiric attack. Do not think that the egregore is sleeping just because your child stops crying about it. Rayburger’s egregore is just like a person: it has an ego and it is panicking because its relevance is fading. Panic has made it vicious, and that is why it inserts itself where it does not belong and exploits whatever mind is fragile enough to let it in.

Now multiply this egregore times a million and you have a good explanation why the collective astral plane is such a steaming pile of garbage and why you need daily discursive meditation, a banishing ritual or a traditional mass, and divination. People used to have banishing rituals, seasonal ceremonies, and general spiritual hygiene. There is not much of that anymore, and that is why most are sitting ducks for whatever intrusive egregore wants to stroll in and suck their energy.

Consider the people freaking out over politics right now. Some are despondent and some are basking in glory (again, two wings of the same bird). Neither party manages to stop for five seconds and ask “Why am I so tired and drained all the time? Why am I always suspicious of everyone around me? Why is it that I am always sick, constantly plagued with intrusive thoughts and foul memories that serve no purpose?” If I were to tell them it is because they are volunteering themselves as hosts for a wide array of astral loosh-suckers every time they throw their emotions into the toxic soup, they would scoff and call me a crank. The astral plane makes no sense to them because it’s not an actual place where aristocratic children go to hang out with talking animals via a wardrobe portal. They are hopelessly literal and because of their literalism, they will remain enslaved puppets for a long time.

Screens are vampiric

I have been ranting about screens for a while, and though they are a necessary evil, they act as etheric drains. Right now, I am typing this essay on a personal computer that is literally draining my life force. I want to go to sleep. Screens manipulate on the emotional level first, compelling us to watch their information, entertainment, and games. Behind each diversion is an ecosystem of egregores and astral pyramids unique to our infotainment-addled era. Pornography is the most insidious vampire of all. It slips in while boys and girls (porn-addicted women and girls are a real and growing problem) are young. There is the “I’m only curious” aspect that turns an innocent foray into what should be laughed about and forgotten into a hideous, life-ruining addiction. Those who think there are no disembodied forces running the show behind the scenes are naive. The porn/human trafficking industry is part of a complex web of blackmail, loosh harvesting, and palm-greasing that only exists because of the original astral pyramid of human greed.

The physical faux vampires

Like the goth boy I described in the beginning of this article, there are many self-styled vampires, none of which have superpowers. These poseurs do not need to drink human blood to survive. If they wear fangs, they are fake. Nearly every high status celebrity and billionaire is a physical vampire, meaning they have partaken or been forced to partake in a blood sacrifice ritual. The most obvious example of a physical vampire is Jeffrey Epstein, who supposedly needed (or needs, if you believe the substantial allegations that he is still alive somewhere) three orgasms a day, preferably with young girls, in order to exist. Sex, as I have explained in previous essays, is an etheric transaction. The hole-in-slot part of sex is the least of it. It is the etheric or energy dimension of sex that makes it great or horrible, and Epstein needed the polarization of sex like a junkie needed heroin.

He certainly was not alone. The rape of children thing tends to go with elite celebrities like bread and butter. The mega rich, having long since forgotten what it was to struggle to make ends meet (if they ever worried about that at all) also forget what it is to be human. When every need is met and every whim indulged, for some, it is a recipe for extreme boredom. The bored seek the edgy: pushing boundaries, seeking the margins, courting ruin. A universe of vicious egregores and pyramids rush to meet them: addictions of various stripes are always egregores, and vicious and hungry egregores at that. Sex addiction is yet another Wendigo: the more you feed it, the hungrier and thinner it becomes. At the end of the day, mega rich cannibal pedophile Satanists are addicts just like their poorer, meth and Oxycontin-addicted counterparts. Elites are vampires with limitations (pedophile ghouls to be specific) who have handed themselves over in multi-lifetime contracts to powerful, ancient vampiric entities known as demons.

The blood sacrifice/orgy rituals, humiliation displays, and clandestine mutilations are all meant to court demonic forces that the elites believe will help them to “live forever”, meaning to extend their physical bodies well beyond the usual amount of time. They are the dumb ones though because we all live forever, just not in the same body and personality for an inordinate amount of time. It is almost amusing when a human ego is so over-inflated that it wants to stay in the same old body for over a hundred years, and to look like a 30-something sexpot the whole time.

Kris Jenner’s and Martha Stewart’s are likely more than just the result of good plastic surgery. Dark rumors circulate that the kind of unnatural youth that both those women possess is linked to the harvest of adrenochrome, which can only be gotten by terrifying a child and then violently vivisecting her for her kidneys, preferably during her last moments of life. It grants a young appearance for a time, not unlike the essence of Gelfling in Jim Henson’s Dark Crystal. Combined with skilled plastic surgery, it can create a fairly convincing glamour. Glamours are not, by definition, real. If looking young is a superpower, Kris Jenner and Martha Stewart have achieved all there is to achieve. At what cost? Nobody knows.

The spirit etheric body carries on

Demons are not vampires and vampires are not demons, though vampires can have demonic assistance. In order to understand what a vampire is, you need to acknowledge the existence of the etheric or energy body that I have discussed in many an essay.

It is the corpse in the tomb and not the tomb itself that houses the vampire, which is the etheric body of a dead person that detaches and wanders after the physical body dies. Death is not as simple of a process as materialist atheism and its kissing cousin, monotheism, would have you believe. When you die, there will be a moment when your physical life is clearly snuffed out, and that is what will be labeled as Time of Death on your toe tag if you die in a hospital. You may or may not know you are dead. You will still very much be there and you will feel like you are floating above or around your own body. If you’ve had any real education concerning death, you will recognize yourself as having experienced the First Death of the physical body. You now will have anywhere from several days to several months of time to wander. Most dead people spend this time visiting their loved ones and trying to reassure them as they mourn on the physical plane. Since almost nobody has enough spiritual literacy or sensitivity to talk to the dead anymore, you will likely not be able to genuinely communicate with the people you loved, because even if you pierce the veil, they will shrug it off as a spooky but meaningless experience. Typically, there are two spirit guides who will show up in the period after your first death to shepherd you around and guide you through the process. If you are a retarded, so-called gnostic who returns to his ignorance like a dog to his own feces, you will depart from your guides while screaming something about evil Archons and you will be swallowed by one of several voids. Maybe you’ll hitch a fun ride on a comet out of here. See ya, wouldn’t want to be ya!

If you are less retarded, you will make your rounds and visit your friends and relatives in semi-physical, telluric energy form. If you are embalmed, cremated, or dissolved in acid, the semi-physical existence will end immediately. This is called the Second Death. If you are buried au natural and allowed to decompose underground, you’ll have a little while longer to roam. Once physical decay gets its hold on your discarded body, you’ll go through the Second Death just as reliably as your embalmed and cremated brethren. At that point, you’ll be going to a place that is beyond space and time to sort out the aftermath of your incarnation. You will still be able to visit loved ones, but the rules and circumstances will be different.

Now let’s imagine you are a hell of a lot more attached to your old body and personality. When you die, your overwhelming urge is to keep on consuming whatever you were addicted to in life. You might not even realize that you are dead. Your physical body will remain still and lifeless, but its etheric revenant will be free to roam. Because of the nature of etheric energy, you won’t be able to wander far from your own dead body. If you can get a few miles between it and you, that would be a miracle. If you were an alcoholic, your first destination will likely be the bar, where dozens of glowing bodies of energy (people) will be congregating around your substance of choice (alcohol). If your addiction was not a substance but instead a behavior, such as abusing your children, you will be drawn to them and frustrated by an inability to feed off of them like you used to, and you will hope they marinate in lower vibrations so you can suck up the residual energy of anger and sadness, much like the egregores I mentioned earlier in this essay. Unfortunately for you as a vampire, your existence will be terminated rather quickly because of embalming or cremation and you’ll be forced to die the Second Death. If you’re lucky and are buried in an earth mound or meticulously entombed in the style of an ancient Egyptian (highly unlikely), then your Second Death will be delayed. If the appropriate sacrifices are made, you’ll be able to avoid the reincarnation process and wander the planet for hundreds of years.

The ancient Egyptians intentionally created vampires. So did the ancient Chinese, Japanese, Welsh, and Aztecs. They did not call them vampires and they did not loathe them — they did it to kings so that way the king could watch over his kingdom well beyond his death. The trouble with these practices was their maintenance. If the sacrifices were not kept up, the etheric body of the king starved and died the Second Death. I hope it goes without saying that ancient peoples knew a great deal more about the etheric body and what happens after death than we do. What is dismissed as mystery and woo was once considered technology.

Nowadays, I would argue that it is better just to die the Second Death and not try to extend your existence as a hungry ghost/vampire. I hope Kris Jenner never reads this, because I can absolutely see her trying to avoid the Second Death later just as she is currently scrambling to avoid the First Death now. At some point, I will probably do an essay on how laughable it is to want to upload one’s consciousness into the cloud, but I digress.

If you are ever attacked by a recently dead etheric revenant a.k.a. a vampire, it will most likely be at night while you are sleeping. Unfortunately, I have been attacked by one. It happened when I was a teenager with someone I knew who died badly. Vampire attacks can easily be fatal. Obviously mine was not fatal as I am still very much alive. You can and should take precautions every night, not just from vampires, but also from a host of awful and malevolent members of the unseen ecosystem. That is largely what my book Sacred Homemaking is about.

Repelling vampires

Since vampires are most likely going to be dead people you knew in life who are attracted to your familiar energy, do not keep any of their leftover objects in your bedroom or sleeping area. Gather their objects and photographs and place them on a table with an artificial or real candle, and say prayers for their safe and blessed passage to the afterlife one or more times a day. An offering of food they liked, music they enjoyed, or fresh flowers or herbs can help their passage much like coins were given to assist ancient Greeks to pay Charon the ferryman. Prayers for divine help are extremely useful for the recently dead. Never doubt in your mind that they make a huge difference.

For more general protection, I suggest eating garlic if it does not rip your digestion to shreds like it does to me. I love garlic and it hates me. Strangely I can eat plenty of onions, which also have the same vampire-repelling effect. Hanging garlic or solar herbs by your windows and doors can stop vampires from entering and staying in your house. I wish vampires of the etheric revenant sort needed permission to enter a building — in my experience, they do not.

Vinegar is always your friend when it comes to battling any kind of night or day terror. Vinegar scrambles the etheric bodies of vampires and demonic manifestations from the lower astral, though it has little to no effect of any divine or divinely-helped being, such as the detached etheric body of a recently dead person visiting their living relatives before the Second Death. Leaving several bowls of vinegar near your sleeping area to evaporate while you sleep squelches vampiric and demonic interference.

Weighted blankets are excellent for preventing etheric mischief. Sleeping underneath a glass bead filled blanket makes you into the equivalent of a burrito wrapped in shattered glass: tasty underneath but not worth the pain of the bite. Glass is an etheric insulator and can protect you from various energy plane assaults.

For the skeptics still reading this, my hat is off to you because I would have presumed you would have thrown your tablet or phone across the room by now. Keep in mind I was an atheist ten short years ago and I get where you are coming from. “Where’s the proof?” you ask, and you do not understand that I just gave you all the tools to get it for yourself. Dismiss this information at your own peril and copious laziness. Vampires are lurking everywhere!

Everything Soup

I am delaying Part 2 of my dissection of Diddy for yet another week as I don't want it to be a focal point during an especially trying era of history. I hope all of you will continue saying the Pledge at least once a day. I like to say my polytheist adaptation of it whenever I receive a political spam text, which is at this point about 25x per day.

Banishing the Flu

It begins with a slight burning at the back of the throat. You become conscious of what you were not conscious before. You become acutely aware of a strip of flesh stretching from nostril to sinus. Perhaps you develop a throbbing sinus headache. Mucus thickens and becomes sludgy, prompting you to hock a loogie or if you are more civilized, to find a private bathroom and a box of tissue to empty your nasal cavity and throat.

We sort of know what happens when a human being catches the flu: after initial entry via one of the body's many vulnerable intake passages, the virus sets up shop and begins to hijack cells in order to rampantly reproduce itself. A battle is waged as the host's immune system sends out arrays of white blood cells to engage the invaders. By the time a sore throat and inflamed sinuses arrive, it is already too late: symptoms are indicators of the war being fought.

You are Here, and Here is Awful

What we don't know at all (or have forgotten is more like it) are logical strategies for winning wars against misunderstood viral invaders. The fight against the flu is merely the tip of the iceberg. The flu is the final, physical manifestation of what comes down the pipe from the spiritual plane. Meatworld sucks and it was designed to suck. It is as if we all dwelled within a gigantic classroom where lead eventually (very, VERY eventually) gets beaten into gold.

Therein lies the rub: even enlightened people who are a stone's throw from ascension out of physical incarnation get sick. Why? BECAUSE. Sickness is a common effect here because this is Meatworld. Viruses or whatever forces that cause flu that we have primitively dubbed "viruses" are the yin to the blood cell's yang. Death and decay are as normal and indigenous to Meatworld as birth and growth. Nobody beats natural law, and sickness is an inviolate rule of Meatworld existence. It is as if death is a symptom of life... or is it life that is the symptom of death?

Modern allopathic medicine has utterly failed to come up with healing modalities in general, and modern allopathic remedies for the flu are especially misled and vile (cough self-assembling MRNA graphene nanobot vaccines uncough). Modern allopathic medicine replies on two specific crutches to replace the legs it cut out from under itself. Both of these crutches are designed solely to benefit the middle managers of insurance companies and Big Pharma lackeys. Notice the patient is not one of the benefactors. These two strategies are:

1. Amputation: Cut out or cut off the offending body part
2. Drugs: Chemically blitzkrieg the offending body part

To play devil's advocate, sometimes amputating body parts is a good idea, especially in cases of triage. A relative of mine had a uterus so full of tumors, she thought she was pregnant. Her false pregnancy ended in a life-saving hysterectomy. In my own case, a combo of genetic wild cards and years of hormonal birth control landed me on the surgeon's table. My gall bladder was gangrenous and about half an hour away from killing me. Obviously, it was removed because I am still here. Amputation may have saved me but it was hormones that likely caused my gall bladder disease to begin with.

Modern medicine has lost the formula of health maintenance in Meatworld. In order to build any kind of good in Meatworld, we must strengthen the good that is already there while avoiding and ignoring the negative, despite that being really hard to do at times. Modern medicine suffers the delusion that this "building good/ignoring bad" strategy can be sidelined. It cannot. The only strategy to heal or better yet to avoid flu is to build up the patient's natural immunity and strength so he or she can avoid or overcome random pathogens.

Vaccinating babies does not build their immune systems. Instead, the infant's body is turned into a battleground the exact moment he or she needs to be sequestered in a sanctum far away from fighting and war in general. It is no wonder that perfectly normal, intelligent, happy babies and toddlers are transformed into stimming, hostile idiots a few hours or days after pharmaceutical Walpurgisnacht is injected into their fragile flesh. This is done by a compliant crew of well-meaning but also well-bought-off medical goons who call themselves educated. In this way, a series of unfortunate events rolls itself into a generational avalanche. Woe be to the Zoomers and those after them.

We cannot help the poor souls trapped in iatrogenic autistic hell. We can, however, be the change we want to see in the world. In a world of medical bunglers Charlie Chaplin-ing their latest pharmaceutical shuck and jives, we can opt to heal ourselves at home. We can surreptitiously avoid the system that profits from know-nothings who attempt to indoctrinate and force their quack potions into us and our children.

Step 1: Banishing the Flu by the Power of Water

Water should be the first defense against the flu. There are many ways to use water to beat back the flu, but the best by far is the nasal wash, also known as Neti pot or sinus irrigation. In what used to be called the Third World but is now more patronizingly referred to as "developing nations", the nasal wash has been the go-to method for prevention and relief of respiratory illness since God was a boy. There are two types of sinus wash: salt-water only and disinfectant-added. The salt water only wash can be done every day up to four times a day, especially when allergies are kicking up. The disinfectant-added wash is the equivalent of getting out the big guns and should only be done for more severe allergies or when there is a headache and thickening or dripping of mucus.

Recipe for Salt Water Only Sinus Wash
¼ cup lukewarm water
¼ teaspoon salt

Recipe for Disinfectant-Added Sinus Wash
¼ cup lukewarm water
¼ teaspoon salt
4 drops Betadine or ¼ teaspoon hydrogen peroxide

To do the sinus wash, mix up the wash and snort the water by either pouring it or pumping it into each nostril a little at a time, allowing it to flow out through the mouth via the back of the throat. Double the recipe for every extra hundred pounds you weigh. If you weigh 200 pounds and not 100 pounds, use ½ cup of water and ½ teaspoon salt and 8 drops of Betadine or ½ teaspoon of hydrogen peroxide.

Taking regular baths or showers is an imperative when you are fighting a virus. Viruses are most active in the etheric body, which is a non-physical body that extends beyond the Meatworld body by a few inches. Scrub every nook and cranny at least once a day, making sure to wash your hair. Finish with a rinse in the coldest water you can stand, even if this water is merely lukewarm. It still helps. Make sure to clean and rinse the back of your head and neck and the crotch and armpits, because this is where negative etheric energy builds up the most.

Step 2: Banishing the Flu by the Power of FIre

It may seem redundant to bathe and then immediately exercise afterwards, because you get clean only to sweat yourself dirty again. When a virus is sabotaging your system, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Do 5-15 minutes of the hardest exercise you can stand. You should be huffing and puffing and your heart rate should be the thumping. Occultists will understand we are following a watery, lunar technique with a fiery, Martial, solar one. In my own case, I do jumping jacks, squats, and push ups for about five minutes, often several times a day if the illness is manifesting mild symptoms and I am not all that sick. Basically you need to use your judgement. If you are truly sick, you will have to skip the Fire part and put yourself to bed, or sip on some hot tea.

Step 3: Banishing the Flu by the Power of Air

Materialist allopathy skips the realm of air entirely, amputating the natural, sacred breath itself by telling its adherents to don a Satanic symbol in the form of a mask. I hope it goes without saying that the very last thing you should do unless you are removing asbestos or literally performing brain surgery is to wear a mask.

The reason we banished with water first via the nasal wash was to clear the breathing passages. We then bolstered and encouraged the natural immune fighters inside us with vigorous exercise. Now we take eight deep, slow breaths. Do this preferably sitting down with your feet on the ground or standing erect. Imagine the eight breaths infused with golden light. In my case, I like to envision my favorite school bus yellow, which is somewhere between a taxicab and turmeric. For extra oomph, chant a holy name, Om, or Awen on the outbreath. Just breathing while visualizing yellow is fine if you cannot chant.

Step 4: Banishing the Flu by the Power of Earth

This process grounds out the energies invoked by the previous steps. There are many, many ways to ground, so by all means experiment and see what results you get. I would love to hear what you did in this space if you can find something that gives you traction. The simplest way to ground is to take your shoes off and put your feet on the floor or better yet, the naked Earth. Simply doing this and feeling the weight of your earthly body as you visualize the virus sinking into the ground is good enough.

In my own case, I like to ground by doing a self-belly massage with massage oil. I rub the oil into my hands and then press deeply into my abdomen from lower right, up and around to the lower ribcage, and then down to the lower left in a slow circle. This moves waste the way it is supposed to go. At any rate, this kind of self-belly massage is perfect especially if you are prone to tummy aches or constipation.

Yet a third way of grounding is to eat. Eating the Earth's food is the most grounding activity of all. Be sure to say a short prayer of thanks and blessing before you eat the food, for instance "North, South, East, West, may all who brought this food be blessed" or the even simpler "Itadakimasu".

While you ground, employ the most crucial element of all: gratitude. Gratitude is the world's greatest healer. The great healer Jesus knew this and was able to sublimate himself right up to heaven by refusing non-grateful emotional states. Clearly his suffering made even the worst flu look like a fun trip to the candy store. As most of you know, I am not Christian, but if the analogy fits, I tend to use it.

Finally, I conclude this group of suggestions with a recipe for a particularly healthy soup I am calling Everything Soup because it has a bit of everything in it. Soups are gentle and easy on the gut; be sure to eat them even when you are not sick! The gut comprises 75 percent of the immune system. Even allopath dummies can agree that gut health is important. Adapt this recipe to your own needs and preferences, by all means.

Everything Soup

1 onion, chopped
2 T oil or butter
3 stalks celery, chopped
3 large carrots, chopped in large chunks
Some garden tomatoes, chopped, or leftover salsa
½ cup chopped bell peppers
1 cup of frozen corn, pea, green bean and carrot mixture
1 can tomato puree (about 12 ounces)
2 medium sized potatoes, washed but not skinned, chopped
2 cups split mung beans, split peas, or brown lentils

Herbs and spices
½ teaspoon thyme
2 Tablespoons minced ginger
½ teaspoon garlic powder (if I wasn't mildly allergic to garlic, I would use 3-4 cloves of fresh, minced garlic here)
dash of cloves
dash of nutmeg
2 tablespoons mushroom broth powder or other bouillon
2 teaspoons Turmeric (add after soup is cooked for maximum benefit)

8 cups water

Turn pressure cooker or crockpot to a low setting and saute the onion in the oil or butter for about 5 minutes. Add all herbs and spices except turmeric. Add all remaining ingredients, finishing by mixing and taste-testing for saltiness. If it needs more salt, add salt in small increments and stir until you get the exact saltiness of broth you want.

Pressure cook for 10 minutes on the soup setting or if using a crockpot for 4-6 hours on low. The cooking directions are the same on the stovetop -- saute the onion and herbs and spices first in the bottom of the pot, add the veggies and beans, then low boil it until the lentils, carrots, and potatoes are tender and soft, which on the stovetop will take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. Add turmeric last once the soup is cooked. Stir well and serve.

We live in a time where the concept of magic has become foreign and remote. Magic, the materialists claim, is a figment of the imagination. It is confined to mind tricks. Any time it works, it must be a coincidence put forth in a random, chaotic universe. The most bothersome statement to the devout atheist is "As above, so below", because that bon mot, originally written by Hermes Trismegistus, implies an ordered universe where God the highest is reflected in everything. It also implies there are beings capable of understanding it or at least figuring out a small part of it. The atheist would like to believe he or she sees it all, because only what is obvious is allowed to be truth. Magic must therefore be relegated to the denizens of make believe worlds. Magic could not possibly be in everything and all around us at all times: that would mean too much is possible and it would also mean that everything has sentience. Nope: magic must conform to Harry Potter expectations. "If it ain't levitating brooms and bastardized Latin, it ain't magic!" cries the atheist. All that is not plain as the nose on my face and easily grokked by materialism-indoctrinated humans is simply not magical -- this is what the Scientism believers claim.

Yet anyone who has given the study of Western magic more than a cursory once-over knows there is more to magic than meets Harry Potter's bespectacled eye. For when you open yourself to the possibility that perhaps neither you nor any human will ever be the smartest being in any given room, a transformation occurs. You begin to listen instead of constantly gibbering about your own expectations and needs. If you do enough occult work (none of which includes killing animals, doing drugs, or chanting in retarded Latin) you may even become so good at listening, a message from better beings than you might get through your thick skull. You might find out these beings have been trying to get a message through your thick skull this whole time.

Mundane Magic

The magical is everyday and every day is magical. Mundane means "before the temple". It is no surprise that we have come to see our entire lives as one long, mundane slog of Eat, Work, Sleep, Die. There are large forces and astral pyramids intent on keeping as many humans as possible in a materialistic trance from cradle to grave. The cleverest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people he does not exist. But the mundane is the magical. Magic is the inception, process, and reverberation of intention. It is not about Doing What Thou Wilt because Do What Thou Wilt is a grandiose assumption that human will comprises the whole (of the Law). Instead, human will is a drop in the ocean of wills. As mere drops in the Ocean of Intention, we humans would do far better to work with natural forces instead of the alternative. Go with the flow, baby!

If scient~~ism~~ists still believed in actual science and observed the world around them like they did in the old days, they might notice the world as we know it is ruled by seasons. As above, so below being what it is, we can presume the great is reflected in the small. Just as there are seasons that play out over the grand arcs of millennia, there are seasons in the year and seasons of the week. It is the seasons of the week I want to look at in this moment and how to work with them in daily, mundane life.

Astrological Rulers of the Day: Timing Really is Everything

Each day is ruled by two main factors: planetary influence and status of the moon. Though there are smaller divisions of gradation known as planetary hours, I am going to omit them for the time being to keep it simple and to the point. Each day has its own planetary ruler. "Planet" is a generic term for celestial body in astrology. In order to court beneficial planetary influence, we can make a daily study and devotion of our own mundane activities by tuning them to the planet of the day. By this form of subtle adjustment, we become human radios, combing through the noisy static so we can find the good music and vibe to it.

The second factor is lunar status. Is the moon waxing or waning? The moon rules water and tides. Humans are mostly made of water, and that means we are profoundly affected by the moon whether we realize it or not. When the moon is waxing, it is a good time for starting new projects, expanding influence, and doing active work. A waning moon is better for resolutions, endings, tamping down energy, and doing quiet, secretive work.

MONDAY

Monday is ruled by the moon, hence the Mon- prefix. The moon is generally passive and receptive. Laundry is the most basic and passive of tasks. It is tailor made for Mondays because it involves a great deal of water. Another lunar aspect of laundry: it involves repetitive sorting and patience. Sorting, cycling, patience, and repetition are lunar. Like the waves of the ocean itself, they ebb, flow, and repeat ad infinitum. If it is repetitive and requires a chill attitude, maybe save it for Monday. Monday is my preferred day for walking meditation.

TUESDAY

Tuesday, ruled by Mars/Aries, is fiery and energetic. Tuesday is well suited to intense physical activity, strength building exercise, and reconnaissance of old skills via the defeat of one's own mental weakness. Tuesday is a day for facing your own regrets, debilities, and mea culpas, gritting your teeth, and overcoming them with stern determination. Invoke the fire necessary to torch your own bull**t on Tuesdays. Tuesday is excellent for take-no-prisoners cleanouts, especially of the type that involves heavy physical exertion. It is a great day to begin new, positive habits that require willpower to maintain.

WEDNESDAY

Wednesday is ruled by Hermes/Mercury. It is a day to contemplate, analyze, and communicate. Hermes is the god of communication and commerce. When you need to add power to your own written words, remember Wednesday is the premier day for writing and language. Buying and selling are also easier on Wednesday. Shopping online or offline, publishing on the internet or in paper, and engaging in discourse are a little easier and more productive on Wednesday. If you are lucky enough to be near a good library, Wednesday is the perfect day to visit.

THURSDAY

Thursday is ruled by Jupiter. It is vast, expansive, and fatherly. Anything legal or law-related is best done on a Thursday. If you want to have justice done (while being willing to accept the personal consequences) Thursday is the best day to pray for it. Thursday is a day of teaching, learning, mentoring, and being mentored. Tutoring is especially blessed on Thursday, whether you are on the giving or receiving end. Mediating conflict is easier on Thursdays, especially when you have made the Jovian connection. Thursday is great for encouraging your own will in daily practice. If you are in school, you might try implementing better homework habits starting on a Thursday. If you are a musician, Thursday is ideal for getting an extra hour of practice. For those who work with their hands, Thursday is perfect for extra work as well as cooperation. For instance, if you knit, sew, or quilt, Thursday would be a great day to host a sewing circle.

FRIDAY

Everyone looks forward to Friday. Ruled by Venus/Aphrodite, it is the sweetest day of the week by far. Friday kicks off literal and metaphorical shoes and gets footloose. It is a day for partying, celebration, and romance. Aphrodite is the restorer of the etheric body. She alone is the arbiter of true satisfaction on the material plane, as no physical urge can be satisfied without the cooperation of the etheric. Aphrodite is the most interactive of the gods. You can invoke her by simply keeping your living space clean and tidy and by thanking the items and spaces you use during and after their use. It goes without saying that single people are advised to do the majority of their exploratory expeditions on Friday night, preferably during a waxing moon.

SATURDAY

Saturday is a day of accounting and accountability, deliberate simplicity, and grace. Ruled by Saturn, Saturday is the true Sabbath and the week's blessed end. If I was Queen of the World, Saturday and not Sunday would be subject to blue closure laws. I would close everything on Saturday and give everyone the day off except for police, firefighters, and emergency medics. Saturday is for rest but it is also for closure. I have gotten decent results from scheduling my tax dealings on Saturdays during waning moons. Saturday is an ideal day for gardening and working with soil. It reminds us of where our food comes from and where are bodies go when they die. It is also a great day for paring down material possessions and either donating them or throwing them away. I prefer to donate to my local homeless shelter on Saturdays in hopes of gaining Saturn's potent blessing for the people I am trying to help.

SUNDAY

Sunday is the true beginning of the week. I always plan on working hard on Sunday, whether it is paid or unpaid. Ruled by Helios Apollo, who BTW bears a striking resemblance to one Jesus Christ, Sunday is a day of benevolence, understanding, and forgiveness for all. "Everything under the sun" is Sunday's motto. Of all the days, it is the most robust and varied in its activity and influence. Sundays are remarkable for their clarity: write down your grocery list, plan your projects, and contemplate the near and far future. Though I have often made Sundays lazy, I believe they should actually be full of activity and outings. If you need to travel, Sunday is the best day to do it. The Sun's influence is broader and more expansive than Jupiter's. Sunday is the finest day for friend and family gatherings. Sunday is great for its eclecticism. It is a "You do you" sort of day where you can be yourself and still enjoy your moment in the sun.

One word of caution... none of the suggestions offered here, or in anything else I have ever written, should be taken as gospel. If you do laundry on Tuesdays and found the love of your life on a Saturday, by all means full steam ahead. These suggestions are food for thought. Try them and see where they take you.

Image Credit: Malcolm Lidbury (aka Pinkpasty), CC BY-SA 3.0

Witch bottles are a classic example of a type of natural magic that is no longer appropriate and that should only be used as an absolute last resort under the careful supervision of an experienced practitioner of natural magic, if such a human can be found (highly unlikely). The witch bottle is problematic because it is a form of etheric bait. The etheric plane is the layer of energy between us and the world of images; imagine it as one plane more subtle than smell. Placing your own nails, hair, and other effluents into a jar is a way of siphoning off a bit of your etheric energy. The purpose of a witch bottle is to entice the evil person or the spirit sent by her into attacking an etheric lure. The reason it contains sharp metal objects is to trap the witch tricked into attacking the bottle. The witch or her familiar sees the witch bottle radiating etheric energy from whatever astral spying she has done upon the victim’s house and commences an astral attack on the bottle, mistaking it for the victim. When she does attack, her etheric body is bound by the magic of the bottle and punished by the pins, nails, and other sharp objects. If the witch bottle works as planned and the witch's etheric body is damaged, her physical body will also be damaged here on the meat plane.

What if the Witch is You?

The trouble with witch bottles is not their ineffectiveness. The trouble with them is the intention of the creator/victim. I have never met a miserable, unlucky person who was not at least partially responsible for their own misery and bad luck. We humans are experts at getting in our own way and making our own lives difficult and depressing. A person who fails to look at herself as a potential cause of her own problems is overlooking Prime Suspect Witch No. 1. Creating a witch bottle almost always traps the creator of the bottle. If the witch bottle’s creator is plagued by hatred and paranoia, the witch bottle becomes a literal etheric extension of that hatred and paranoia. Anyone considering making a witch bottle should first ask herself, “What if there’s no witch out to get me?” Linking yourself to fear and paranoia through your physical action of making a witch bottle means that you are prone to fear and loathing of witches without evidence, analysis, or reason. If you are indeed the cause of your own woes, then you just did the magical equivalent of walking into a booby trap that you set for your enemy.

Alternatives to Peeing in Glass Containers

In the Cosmic Doctrine, Dion Fortune set you never overcome evil by fighting it directly. Instead, you build your own strength and use evil as a stepping stone or thrust block while overwhelming it with sheer force. If you do have a bona fide witch cursing you, don’t lure her to your house by peeing in a jar! Instead, ignore her whenever possible and build your own self until you dwarf her foul influence. Vanquish her by ignoring her and leaving her to her own toxic fate.

“I Don’t Know Her”

Once upon a time, Jennifer Lopez, a celebrity known as J.Lo, decided to pick a fight with Mariah Carey, another celebrity on the same record label known for her amazing voice. Despite frantic efforts by J.Lo and her team over the course of multiple decades to engage Mariah by asking the singer for her opinion of J.Lo in interviews, Mariah repeatedly claimed “I don’t know her”, refusing to acknowledge J.Lo or their alleged fight. In one interview, a prodded Mariah commented “Singing is first and foremost, it’s a God-given talent that I’m grateful for. Her thing is something different.” Without speaking J.Lo’s name, Mariah decimated the opposition. The subtext that J.Lo’s singing voice profoundly lacked in comparison to Mariah’s was crystal clear. One could picture J.Lo fuming like Snow White’s wicked stepmother in front of her mirror while Mariah practiced pentatonic runs, even if the image was far from the truth.

The moral of the story is that witch bottles are better left to the rare expert or the rarer individual who isn’t at all responsible for her own self-sabotage. Instead of creating a potential etheric booby trap for yourself, spend time in discursive meditation getting to the root of your problems, starting first and foremost with the ones you laid upon yourself. If you have zero responsibility for causing your current set of problems and you have an expert natural magician on hand to help you craft a witch bottle, then have at it. If you don’t, consider avoiding witch bottles altogether.

I have had a lot of experience with hypnogogic states, for better or for worse. For reasons I'd rather not go into detail about on this post, along with my daily Sphere of Protection, I do other things to avoid hypnogogia.

On the natural magic front, I have found that putting a geometric symbol near the bed is a huge deterrent to entities who would otherwise feel free to mess with me. I'll be explaining exactly why & how I believe these symbols work in my upcoming book Sacred Homemaking, but for now, the short version is they act as spirit traps. Placed near the sleeper, they draw in the entity (that wants to mess with the sleeper during hypnogogia or night terrors) on the astral plane and lock them in an unending pattern.

Similar images to the ones below are available for free at Canva.com. If you'd rather not go through the trouble, I have made a PDF with some good sacred geometry glyphs HERE. Print the glyph/glyphs you like the best and either stick it on the wall or place it on the bedside table near where you sleep.

Here you can see the round demon trap I have put by my own bed, printed on computer paper and made in Canva.com in only a few minutes:

Here are the symbols -- again these are just random free ones from Canva. You could always draw your own or find other geometric symbols, these are not the end all and be all! Time to dig out the old Spirograph, right? I am considering having my husband put up a geometric wallpaper across the headboard wall!