Given the start of the new year & our eagerness to begin correctly, it seems appropriate to speak of foundations. In magic, foundational work usually takes the form of elemental rites as a basis for long-term achievements. That's rather fitting, as these are the assumed building blocks of our world.

And who amongst those creatures are more noted, in Western magical practice, than the "Elemental Kings": Nyxsa, Ghob, Djinn, and Paralda.

Now without getting in to the history behind them (as that's really rather convoluted), we'll instead take a more practical bend: focusing on how to work with them without much in the way of tooling.

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you'll notice that I've written about working with these spirits in an office environment. Those inclusions were a means of conveying the idea that you really don't need much to make this work....just some quiet and the ability to focus.

For those of you who like giving your monkey mind something to do so that it doesn't get distracted, raw simplicity doesn't quite work. When that's the case, I recommend procuring items that fit with your view of the element in question.

In my mind, the accessible elemental energies we're all familiar with are earth, air, fire, and water. They are respectively touted by the Gnomes whose king is Ghob, the Sylphs who answer to Paralda, the Salemanders who are ruled by Djinn, and the Undines who obey Nyxsa (or Nyksa, Nicksa, Nickse, Nyxse...there's a lot of potential Romanized spellings). There are other, more advanced components to this, but we're discussing basics, and these are the leaders of each.

I assume that each of you has a pretty good idea of what each element does and is used for, so I'll leave that out of this post. What may not be understood, however, is how to contact them and make use of their energies...there are a lot of ways to do it.

One such methodology involves the use of a miniature idol that you could carry with you to the office, then 'tap' as a means of activating that current. These should probably be the size of a dime or quarter, as you will wish to be able to keep them in your work bag or pocket. Beyond that, the form used is up to you.

When I first worked in an office environment in my teens, those items were a knife, a lighter, a USB drive, and a pen. The knife was made from ore, found deep within the earth, and formed into a shape useful to man. Dwarves & gnomes favor workmanship and tooling, and thus it was dedicated to them. The lighter is rather simple to connect the dots with, as flame is obviously sacred to fire spirits. Thus, they value the means of creating fire (matches work too, but they're a little less portable and water resistant). The USB drive struck me as being a means of storing and conveying data, which could be used to compress information. Information is valued by Sylphides, and so this became my micrototem for those spirits. Finally, the pen, while a simple and innocuous object at work, became associated with water for the simple facts that ink is a liquid & I've always had an easier time writing my emotions rather than saying them. And thus my my toolkit was built, and that was that.

I could use them in my day-to-day work (which was a serious benefit, outside the lighter) and nobody ever batted an eye at any of the other objects being used; I was constantly saving things on the USB, opening boxes with the knife, or writing notes. Easy, eh? And simplicity is usually more useful than complexity.

Whenever I needed to invoke a particular energy, I could just focus on the tool as a signal tuner, make the call to the appropriate King, then use the energy or spirit sent my way. It was fairly easy to get used to, and the spirits were responsive to my system. I could use it to make plans with friends more easily, help my boss to understand me, make writing a less difficult task, and so on and so forth. Didn't require a whole lot of effort, either, which in an office setting is basically required, lest you look like a total weirdo and get yourself fired.

If you like the idea put forth here, I would recommend giving this a go. Make a toolkit that works for you, and carry it about as a means of more readily accessing these currents. Over time, this will have an added benefit of making it easier for you to work with these energies, as well as show you what your strengths and weaknesses are.

It has been my experience that sometimes an immediate response is more useful than a large show of force. This sort of kitwork, if it works for you, will afford you a greater ability to utilize elemental magic in your day to day life, all while adding an element of expediency to it.

Have fun!
-Chris/SE

For those of you who have followed along the set of posts written recently, by now you should have some idea of how deep the magical rabbit hole can go. If you followed along, you'll have more of an idea of how you can mix and match various magical techs in to get a result.

Protection is an easy subject to start with as its all a matter of how you handle your business.  If things go wrong or you didn't do enough work, or you didn't handle the work properly, the effects are pretty obvious. If you handled the workings appropriately and all went well, life should improve for you.  The proof is in the pudding...or, in this case, the proof is in the response.

Having said as much, now that we've covered herbs, prayers, spirits, etc. and their uses with regard to defensive magic, we can now get into the subject of protection through the use of stones and metals that are amiable to that end.

Like plants, minerals have their uses too.  Each has their own properties and associations, both elemental and planetary. As such, they too are building blocks that can be used to spin your spells.

I've spent the last several days talking about the properties of various herbs that can be used in magical work.  I've spent relatively little time discoursing on the subject of actually using those herbs...more specifically, how to do it. The point of today's lessen is to remedy this.

Working with herbs is all about relationships.  What you cultivate is key, and if you don't have a relationship with the spirits behind the fleshy, fibrous mass that is their corporeal form, the roots, stems, leaves, resinous chunks, seeds mean nothing to you and have no power outside of what you create and will.  What you imbue into them, if you will.

Greetings folks! Hope you all enjoyed your Valentine's Day and weekend thus far.  We're getting back to protection magic in full swing.  If you've been reading the previous articles, you've probably realized, by now, that I've been speaking on magical herbs in alphabetical order.

That isn't to say that there are only a handful of herbs in each category that can be used for magic; really, the information is there to whet your appetite and spark a curious fire in you so that you can use the info I've provided to delve deeper into the Artes Magickal. They are, after all, a passion of mine. ;)

As a continuation to yesterday's post, I'll be talking more about herbs in this one. We covered a few helpful tidbits previously, and we're going to do the same thing today.

Herbs can be flexible, and that gives them great power and potency if you're wise in their use.  There's a reason folks who did magical work in Europe were once called Cunningfolk....cunning and intelligent are two traits you must have if you want to be successful here. Otherwise, you're just going to wind up being a dumb patsy who can't get anything done. Nature spirits are from nature, and thus have no real concern regarding whether or not they're honest, helpful, or harmful. Sometimes interactions with humans are there solely for the sake of the game. Just something to consider.

As discussed over the past two entries, protection is a multi-step, many stage affair that has a great deal to do with preparation, awareness, skill, and flexibility.  Learning to improvise is good, but being prepared is better.

When your preparations have failed you, its time to get creative and work with what you got.  In keeping with this theme, I've decided to discuss herbs that can be used for protective magic.  Some are offensive, some are defensive, and some are a mixture of the two.  There are those in this list that only work (for protection) when combined with other materia magica too.  I'll do what I can to summarize a portion of those tidbits here, but rest assured that you're going to have to play with the mixtures you want to use to learn the ins and outs of the spirits behind the flesh. I'll be using both folk names and Latin names where possible.