The Cold Moon

Some call the full moon that falls in Capricorn the Cold Moon. It is time for hand work, for knotting and weaving magic, for working to protect and preserve through the winter.

This chant "Weave and Mend" is good for raising power.

After the Spell is Over

When the work is finished, if the goal is something you can work for on the physical as well as spiritual planes, so so immediately in order to help your spell take effect. 

If you were casting a spell for a job new apartment, for example, get onto Craigslist. 

If, on the other hand, the matter is one in which your only control is magical (a far healing, for example), it is best to let go of the spell and refrain from thinking about it for awhile, giving it time to take effect.

If the spell involved a concrete magical image like a picture or a poppet, that should be kept on your altar or in some other safe place until the need for it has passed. 

In some cases, the image is a talisman which is given as a present to the person for whom the spell was cast. 

If you eventually want to dispose of a magical image or talisman, it can be burned, buried, or thrown into water. Take pains to avoid littering.

In some cases, you may want to deactivate an image or talisman by cleansing it with one or more of the elements, and then use it for another purpose. A poppet, for example, can be packed away in rock salt and rosemary for a time, and then used to represent another person in another spell. 

Similarly, a crystal can be washed with salt water and then charged again for another purpose.

I find that in spite of all I can do, the regular habit of spell-casting inevitably results in an accumulation of ritual rubbish. 

Ultimately, when something has been lying around so long that you no longer remember what it was for, it is safe to assume that its magical charge has worn off and that it can just be deposited in the trash.

Grounding

When the spell has been bound, give attention to grounding the energy. 

This is necessary because magic is not an exact science; you rarely use exactly the same amount of energy that you raised for a spell, although you get better at this with practice.

If the spell has “taken,” there is probably at least a little loose energy knocking around in you and in your work space which needs to be grounded before you are done.

When you neglect to ground after magical work you are likely to feel the results throughout the next 24 hours or so; depending on how much surplus is zapping around, these can include restlessness, insomnia, fatigue, headaches, absent-mindedness, irritability, and proneness to accidents. 

Fortunately, there are some very easy ways to ground:

Eating: protein and complex carbohydrates, not sugar.

Physical connection with others: hugging, massage, sex.

Talking, laughing and joking.

Visualizations that root you in the earth, or centers you in the middle of the four elements. 

You can say, visualizing the elements around you, 

EARTH AND FIRE, WIND AND SEA, 

I AM THE CENTER OF YOUR CROSS, 

LIVE EQUALLY IN ME. 

You can ground yourself by paying attention to the four elements in your body--your breathing, your heartbeat which is your inner fire, your fluids and the weigh of your body on the earth. 

You can also use a grounding-cord meditation for this, feeling how the life energy of your spine connects you to the Earth.

Ground energy with a staff, wand or broom: place the tool upside-down on the ground and grasp it firmly, letting excess energy run through your hands and into the stick, and then down into the earth.

Bind the Spell

This is the critical step in casting a spell, and often not sufficiently understood. 

You have created an image of what you want to achieve, but it is real only within the sacred space "between the worlds" where you have created it. 

Now, with closely focused will, you must perform some symbolic act which will bring the image through to the material plane, and cause it to manifest physically. 

A spell works best if you know specific moment at which it is bound; you should plan in advance when this is to happen, and focus your will on that phase of the spell. 

There are a variety of ways to bind a spell:

Finishing the image: taking the final stitch, placing the final bead, and saying, “It is done.”

A verbal formula: for example,

WITH ALL THE POWER OF THREE TIMES THREE,

THIS SPELL BOUND AROUND SHALL BE,

TO DO NO HARM, NONE COME ON ME,

AS I DO WILL, SO MOTE IT BE.

Breathing life into the image, or empowering it with any of your bodily fluids.

Tying a knot, or the final knot in a predetermined number. An effective kind of spell is the Witch's ladder, a cord in which a magical number of knots are tied (3, 7, 9, 13, or 40) while the witch repeats her intention over and over with each knot.

Burning the image: the magical effect of fire is not to destroy but to transform.

Charging the image with energy conducted through your own body, using your consecrated blade, wand or just your hand: this is done especially with talismans and crystals.

Passing the image through the four elements, earth, air, fire and water. (Be careful not to damage something which you value or intend as a gift, by over-exposing it to heat or salt!)

Placing the image on a pentacle, or inscribing a pentacle on the image: the pentacle symbolizes Earth, and therefore manifestation.

Releasing the power build by the group:  spell will be done when the energy is sent off, either by the decision of a leader or by intuitive consensus.

Orgasm will bind the spell if you have been using sexual energy to raise power. Or, in true tantric tradition, it is especially effective to raise erotic power and then bind the spell by some other means.

A pre-determined natural event: you can program a spell to be bound at the rising of the moon, for example, or by some other event which will naturally and inevitably come to pass.

Reflecting the image in a mirror: a mirror is a gate between the worlds, and so you can bring an image into manifestation in this way.

Passing the image through a hole: if you have created an image on a small piece of cloth or paper, you can pass it through a stone with a hole, or a vertebrae bone, or a Chinese coin with a hole in it.

Note: an effective variation on spell-binding is to perform an initial action to charge the image, and then leave the spell to take effect on its own over a period of time. This is what you do when you light a charged candle, or give someone a charged talisman. It is always advisable to place a time-limit on the charge you give an object.

Create the Magical Image

This piece of the spell may happen at the same time as the raising of power, or it may come after, or before. For the sake of clarity, however, it is helpful to consider the two matters separately.

Using one or more of a variety of possible means, the Witch creates an image of what she wishes to make a reality.
Effective techniques include:

Graphic images: pictures, sigils or symbolic drawings, mandalas, sculptures, carvings, poppets, textile art, beadwork, metal work.

Tokens and talismans: these are frequently gifts for the person for whom the spell is being cast.

Candles can be chosen, made or carved with symbols of what you wish to attain.
Potions: magical intent can be added to something which has medicinal powers.

Visualizations or other kinds of mental imagery: Your skill at constructing vivid images in your mind is one of the most important elements in working magic, and one you should practice and hone over time.

Verbalizations of your magical intention, spoken or written, should be very simple and direct, and are most effective when combined with non-verbal activity or non-verbal sound.

Naming: if a picture or poppet, for example, is to represent a certain person for the purposes of your spell, it should be formally named.

Here again, more than one technique can be used in a single spell. Visualization and verbalization can go together, and the combination can be especially effective when a group builds a composite image, speaking and visualizing together as the power is raised. 

Raising Power

A Witch's power is raised from her own body. There are other ways to work magic that draw power from other sources, but our power is our own life force.

Ways to raise power for working magic include:

Dance and movement: most often in a circle, with mounting intensity.

Sound: chanting, singing, toning, drumming and other percussion methods. Traditional shamans, whose way of working is similar to that of western Witches, often use drumming, and often have personal songs of power that have been given to them by their sprits.

A chant or song of power often relates previous feats of magic that the Witch has performed.

Altered breathing patterns: deeper and/or more rapid than normal.

Incenses and other aromas:  The sense of smell has great magical power. Over time you can program yourself to respond to a certain scent in a certain way, and use a specific scent for a specific magical purpose. Roses for love, cinnamon for wealth, rosemary for protection--these are traditional associations, but any association that a Witch makes regularly in her own practice will be effective for the Witch who uses it.

Sewing, weaving, knotting: especially effective for building a charge into an object you are creating.

Erotic energy: you can build this alone or with a partner, in order to lend power to a spell.

Mind-altering substances: drugs and alcohol have had a time-honored place in the magical traditions of many cultures. However, because of the corrupt role which such substances more often play in our own culture, they are not a good starting place for a novice magic-worker.

Stimulating the skin by rubbing, massage, scratching, scourging. Power is raised by doing this just below the pain threshold, which varies from one person to another.

Power may be raised by more than one method for any given spell.