Continuing with the conceptual basis of Serpent Sorcery, one of the techniques I've been urged to share with you is a protection mechanism known to me as Constriction.

This is a magical meditation technique meant to cause both internal and external change, and its goal is to limit and drain those things that do not serve you. Constriction pulls away at threads that hamper your growth, day to day experiences, and magical rites while also knocking down the potency of adverse rituals performed against you. Done correctly, this technology has both internal impact  and the capacity to cause external change, forcing healing in the areas touched by the troubles brought against you. It inspires regeneration, in a sense, as the troubles brought against you mirror your inner landscape, so resolving the external turmoil causes related chaos inside you to terminate and likewise resolve itself.

In a manner of speaking, this is a kind of serpentine alchemy of the heart, mind, and soul as a means of balancing the microcosm & the macrocosm.

Performing this spiritual alchemy within this context can be quite uncomfortable. It requires a deep awareness of the internal troubles caused by external sources of discomfort. If you are able to face your inner demons, so to speak, the act of doing so then fuels this work. extending your reach beyond the inner sanctum of your mind in turn. Without this understanding & the emotion related to it present, the ritual has no heart for the serpent to encircle and ensorcell.

To begin this process, you must start with meditation. Close your eyes, slow your breathing, and connect with yourself. Feel you rooting into yourself, and as you do so, begin to contemplate what you feel at this time. Become cognizant of all that troubles you, be it ill will, frustration, anger, resentment, sadness, or fear, and seek to maintain this awareness *without falling to those emotions OR walking away*(...this last part is extra important!).

As you face this upset, consider the vectors through which this has made its way into your life. Consider who and what brought it into being, and search for a mental awareness of the threads bound between occurrence and cause. At first, this will make little sense to most people, as we have a way of attributing causality with the wrong people & things. When you have the wrong concept in mind, it won't feel weighty or impactful, but rather like its a "miss". When this occurs, don't get discouraged, as when you do finally stumble across the right connection, you'll feel its weight like a stone. It might take some soul-searching, but that connection will eventually be made.

When it is, its not uncommon for a person to begin to shake uncontrollably. At times, it'll feel like you're about to shake yourself out of your body and mind, and this is very often connected to an internal sense of swirling. Like a vortex just opened up within you and a storm's popped out of it in turn. When this occurs, focus through it, but take this awareness as a clear sign that you are on the right path. 

When you've made the leap necessary to create this mental link, this is where the magic begins. Feel the serpentine entity you've made friends with through this work awaken and slither about you. Feel that weight settle upon your crown, shoulders, torso, and lap. Feel the serpent tighten its coils around you, and let this sensation deepen until you feel like you might pop. As you do this, see too that your external troubles are treated in a similar fashion, becoming enwrapped by and encased within a serpent's coils, binding, constraining, and Constricting both the trauma and its cause, grinding both sides of the same coin into nothingness. 

When you feel that weight begin to disappear and the serpent's coils loosen about you, stir and stand. Return to your usual state of awareness and begin to ground yourself out. Its not uncommon to be incredibly hungry as a direct result of this work, and if you've done this right, you will not be safe to drive for at least an hour. These states of heightened awareness can be extraordinarily intoxicating, and you do not want to do anything that could potentially be hazardous while you're "high" on spiritwork. 

After you've grounded, you should feel like that internal weight has less an impact on you. You'll then be free to go about your day to interact with others, likely with less fear and concern in tow. This process can be repeated until you feel more free of the things that hamper growth.

For weightier concerns and experiences, this will take repeated efforts to fully resolve. The more lightweight issues will often be sorted within one session. This is a relatively simple ritual, but it is not at all easy. Working on yourself in this capacity builds an ability to create manifest shifts and changes within your internal and external worlds alike, and you will find in time that performing this Constriction allows other magical projects to flow more readily.

Blessings to you all, and good luck.
-Chris

I wasn't really sure what to title this at the start, as I had some options. "Automatic writing gone wrong.", "Safety First: Magic Edition", "Bad Ideas & Exorcism"....All would have been appropriate.

Yesterday, someone reached out to me over my Instagram page and she was not in a good space as a result of some particularly careless magic. She'd smoked a joint and thought it was a good idea to try some automatic writing, and while none of those things are particularly "bad" when someone has the talent for it, trance work has some serious risks for the uninitiated. Here, the uninitiated was initiated into the spirit world by a kind of trial by fire that likely did some serious damage, as she was possessed by the spirit of a sassy female that did not have her best interests at heart. 

As such, this is a Public Safety Announcement: if you're going to try your hand at magical endeavors, especially ones where some form of trance and/or spiritual possession are likely to occur, do so safely and sanely. The spirit world is a wide-open place and for every beneficial angel, respectful land spirit, or kindly demon you encounter, there are a whole lot of desperate, unsavory beings out there. You don't really want those entities taking control of you, as when they do so, they act out & generally do things that can get you into serious trouble.

Last night, this lass lost total control of her left arm for several hours as a result of her attempt at automatic writing. Up until the point at which I negated the presence of this spirit, it could have caused her to harm herself. There were several points at which she was near pointed objects that the spirit could have jammed into her eyes, throat, or neck, making for a very real danger when you're working with entities of this kind.

If you would like to attempt automatic writing and other such experiences, do so after you've made friends with sufficiently powerful entities to remove whatever it is you call to. If this is your end goal, your guides had better have the strength necessary to go to war over your body. If you are going to call something up, be sure you have the means of putting it down. Spirits exist, magic exists, and the capacity for both to do great harm to you exists if you're careless.

This isn't intended to be a fearmongering post, so much as its a reminder to be careful. I rather like you guys and gals, and would very much like to see each of you happy, healthy, and whole. That's quite difficult to achieve if someone is careless and/or negligent in their interactions with the other side.

Blessings,
Chris

Following last week's post about Spiritual Protection within the context of Serpent Sorcery, we're going to take this up a notch. So much of progress is tied to one's ability to face down the darkness and grow from it that the act of doing so can create relatively insane shifts in one's circumstances. This is a rather pronounced trend, and it affects both spiritual & mundane gains. We slow ourselves down less, we halt our progress less, and we create additional momentum for our good works.

This momentum can be ridden and used. One such use involves using what fears we face to then create additional protections for ourselves.

When you reach that point where you're walking away from the last meditation I shared with a kind of "psychological high" where you feel stimulated and a bit floaty, you're ready to roll with this. Following a productive meditation, open your eyes and switch your focus over into a creation mode & grab a needle, a candle, and star anise. Carve into the candle a sigil that you feel represents you, then place your spit upon the graven image. Rub powdered star anise into that wet mark as a means of activating the sigil, then place the candle and set it alight. In so doing, you'll have created a somewhat protective rite that insulates your psychic senses from harm while also stimulating deeper growth.

Following this, you can begin to work more serious magical rites. This can be repeated as needed.

Blessings,
Chris

​As a continuation of the Serpent Sorcery series, our focus today is on protection magic done within that sphere of influence. The protection associated with serpents is largely connected to changing how someone experiences adversity. This is a rather substantial difference from other systems of magic, as the general idea is to negate and avert damaging energy before it can be made manifest. That's not at all the focus here, as instead serpent spirits use what occurs as a kind of tool for growth, rather than as a disaster to be averted or avoided.

If you feel that someone is working ill against you, close your eyes. Focus on this concept of being attacked, and attempt to give it shape. Consider the force behind it, its form, and the means through which this is to be made manifest in your life.

When you have some grasp of this foulness and have a sense of its distance from you, mentally invoke and call out to the serpent presence you've been feeling throughout this process. Reach out to it and, in turn, connect your essence to this serpentine flow. When you feel that this has been established, reach out and wrap yourself around the harm that's coming your way. Let this sense of presence guide your feelings and thoughts about this trouble, and let its impact decline, recognizing that you only as impacted by it as you allow yourself to be.

Then, feel this serpentine force wrap itself about you as if it were to create a strong cocoon of tightly-wrapped muscle and scales. Feel yourself cool slightly, and let yourself grow comfortable inside this insulated state. Sit in this protected space for a time and feel yourself becoming ensorcelled by this energy, as this act forms of a protective shield of a kind. When you feel that you've done this correctly, open your eyes, ground yourself out, and go about your day. You will likely feel a bit distant from others, but that distance has quite a lot to do with this act of insulating yourself from harm.

This is a tool for inspiring growth as a means of increasing your own strength. This can work beautifully as a means of improving your own throughput and work ethic, and its a means of forcing your spirit/life essence to grow. As you do this, you should feel a sense of calm. If your panic grows, walk away from this and start over. Anxiety will not serve you here, as the act of facing this down reprograms you to an impressive degree.

Blessings,
Chris