HedgeWitch: Spells, Crafts & Rituals For Natural Magick

by Silver RavenWolf

Overview

From starry night rituals to garden toad totems, discover the enchanting craft of the HedgeWitch.

Transform your life with a little help from nature! Working in harmony with the earth's energy is the heart of the free-spirited, simple garden magick known as HedgeWitchery. This guidebook from the immensely popular Silver RavenWolf has everything a new HedgeWitch needs to connect in a personal way with nature's creative, life-affirming energy and use it in magick and spellwork.

HedgeWitch features a fourteen-lesson, hands-on guide that you complete at your own pace, interacting with different aspects of nature in simple yet life-changing ways. The fourteen rituals, which can be done alone or with a group, culminate in an inspiring dedication ceremony.

Along with a wealth of helpful hints on using HedgeWitch magick for love, health, and beauty, this guide presents tips and recipes for soap making, tea-leaf reading, butterfly garden magick, organically growing your own herbs, and a variety of other ways to use HedgeWitchery in your hearth, home, and garden.

Praise for Silver RavenWolf:
"RavenWolf's prose is delightful and inviting...a wonderful guidebook for readers who are serious about beginning a Wiccan spiritual journey."—Publishers Weekly

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780738714233
Publisher:	Llewellyn Worldwide, LTD.
Publication date:	09/08/2008
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	1,081,495
Product dimensions:	7.50(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Silver RavenWolf (Pennsylvania) is a nationally recognized leader and elder of Wicca, and her writing has been instrumental in guiding the future of one of the fastest-growing faiths in America today. The author of many books, she has been interviewed by The New York Times, Newsweek Magazine, and the Wall Street Journal, and her work has been featured in numerous publications, including Bust Magazine, the Baltimore Sun, the St. Petersburg Times, the National Review, Publishers Weekly, Body & Soul Magazine, and Teen Lit Magazine.

Her titles include the bestselling Solitary Witch, Teen Witch, To Ride A Silver Broomstick, To Stir A Magick Cauldron, To Light A Sacred Flame, American Folk Magick, Angels: Companions in Magick, Silver’s Spells for Prosperity, Silver's Spells for Protection, Silver's Spells for Love, Halloween, HedgeWitch, and the Witches’ Night Out teen fiction series. 

Read an Excerpt

Section 1 - Nature: Your Connection to the Source

Your Key to the Universe 5
The Language of HedgeWitchery—The Primordial Universe 7
Draining and Irrigating Your Mental Garden— Release, Accept, Welcome 14
The Fertilizer of the Mind: Belief 18
Spellwork: The Gardening Tools of Belief 4
Your Personal Primal Language 28
Shifting with Nature 31
Primal Language (The Dialect of Mother Nature) Requires Changing the Way You Think 31
The Basics of HedgeWitchery 35
Entering the World of HedgeWitchery 37
Personal Cleansing 41

The Frequency of All Good Things

Consider your life as a fertile patch of ground, ready for planting your personal gar­den of potential. Take a few moments, and think of what you’d like to grow there. Success? Good health? Financial gain? Happiness in relationships? All of what I’ve just listed and more? Every moment of your life is that fertile piece of ground, capable of producing exactly what you desire. Now let’s grow it!

Your Key to the Universe

Whether you are trying to raise a successful business, manifest healing in your life, find a loving partner (or pet), buy a new house, or have a better relationship with a specific person, the starting point of change is always the same: connecting to the source of all things. You need that moment of focused quiet where you acknowledge the pure power of All That Is—and in that connection, anything, I mean anything, becomes possible. Getting there is as simple as shifting your weight from one foot to the other. Defining “it”? That truly depends on what you believe. The interesting thing about this engine of the universe is that you don’t have to understand what makes it tick to use it, nor is it ego-defined. There’s no such thing as a secret pass for the select few. In the practice of HedgeWitchery, the power just “is”—and everyone has access to it. All you have to do is shift your mind from here to the source, and in one breath you can move right into the heart and soul of the power of manifestation. From there, all things are possible. Believing in “it” isn’t hard. Getting to “it” isn’t difficult. The trick? Remembering to go there in the first place! Once you acknowledge that you must connect to your concept of Spirit to succeed, nothing can stop you.

How do you start using the amazing power of All That Is? With a smile.

Many times, we are so busy, frustrated, angry, hurt, depressed, irritated (you name it) we forget that a brief shift into the source will allow us the opportunity to fix our unhappiness, solve a problem, or provide just the right creative idea we need at a particular point in time. We let the outside world and our reactive thoughts so thoroughly inundate the situation that getting what we truly desire seems almost impossible. A simple smile functions as a magick key, because although we may be serious, the source isn’t. The source is pure joy. Your smile shifts your energy vibrations from impotent to empowered!

Try it! Close your eyes and take a deep breath, exhaling slowly. Give your mind a little time to settle into the source. Now smile! Doesn’t that feel great? Oh. You don’t feel like smiling? Give it a try, anyway! No, you don’t have to be happy to smile. Just do it. You want your smile to be genuine? Okay. Think of something wonderful that has happened to you in the past, something good, something marvelous. Is that a smile I see? Is it? Yes, it is! Now, see how wonderful you can feel when you smile? And when we feel wonderful, we increase our ability to reach our desires, find peace, and maintain happiness.

Hey, not bad for a simple muscle movement.

Time to practice smiling! For the next two weeks, throughout your daily tasks, remem­ber to smile! If you think of a pleasant memory, go ahead and smile. If you see something that amuses you, don’t keep a deadpan expression—smile! If you hear something funny or are enjoying a good conversation, be sure to pepper the moment and smile, smile, smile! Allowing yourself to smile puts you in a much better emotional place. Too many smiles will never hurt you—they’ll only make your life better! To remind yourself to practice smiling, why not carry a special key in your pocket, on your key ring, attached to your purse, or dangle a key charm on your iPod or cell. Spend some time choosing your special key, or just begin collecting keys as a constant reminder that to accomplish anything, we must unlock the door to our connection with the source.

As a HedgeWitch, you’re going to learn to smile a heck of a lot! Now that we have our very own magick key (the smile that connects us to the source), we need to learn how to communi­cate with the source so that we can use this unlimited power to the best of our advantage.

The Language of HedgeWitchery—The Primordial Universe

Have you ever visited a foreign country where you didn’t understand the language? Every­thing seems so strange, doesn’t it? Billboards in unintelligible, bright symbols. Whispers, screeches, and varied notes of sound emanating from the lips of strangely dressed people. Books and newspapers that look more like decorative art than a vehicle of direct communica­tion. You seem to float in the world—but, at the same time, you can’t quite seem to interact in it. Perhaps you can understand some of what is being said by observing gestures, facial expres­sions, and mannerisms, but the waiter could be telling you the special today is dog poop with a smile on his face, and how would you know? (Hey, it happened to me.)

Before we dive deeply into HedgeWitchery, we have to acknowledge a vital and important secret about the magickal universe—its language base isn’t English, Chinese, Russian, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Cherokee, or Swahili, or any of the others as we understand them. Throw grammar and sentence structure out the window. The universe does not acknowledge big words, flowery prose, or disclaimers. The source operates primordially: noun/verb. It does not understand the words no, don’t, maybe, possibly, might, not, etc. And the universe is not about creating lack, it is all about attracting abundance … of anything.

For example, let’s say you visit your mother every Thursday night, and she always makes chicken. You’ve politely mentioned that you love her beef stroganoff, and maybe next time she might make that? Chicken, however, always takes the day. You’ve even tried bringing dinner or suggesting you’ll make it this time, but somehow or other, Mother always makes chicken. Indeed, you’ve become really focused on how you don’t want chicken—and that’s the problem. The universe processes only chicken. The universe doesn’t understand the contraction don’t. It just hears I blah-blah-blah want chicken, which translates to I want chicken. Except you don’t, do you?

The easiest way to begin using primal language is to say I want ________ (and fill in your desire). Examples: I want a new sofa. I want a new mattress. I want a job that pays more. I want to get well. (And no, you are not being selfish in saying I want. As children we are told you can’t have everything you want and that it is rude to verbalize what you desire by using the word want. Wrong. When you are happy, everyone around you is happy. When you get what you want, you can provide others with what they want. Wanting leads to giving. Giving leads to happiness. Happiness leads to harmony … you get the picture.)

Saying what you want aloud speeds up the process. So! Go someplace right now where you will be alone and no one can hear you, and shout out loud what you want?! Say it three times and really mean it. If you believe you will receive what you desire, you’ll get exactly what you stated. A note of caution here: do not ask for something. The words ask for imply that you need permission from someone or from something somewhere, which becomes a muddy psycho­logical mess. Simply state I want, and leave it at that.

Timing

What if what you want doesn’t come right away? As soon as you utter what you desire, the universe goes about filling your order. To help the universe do this, you need to:

Believe (see page 18 for more information)

Don’t confuse the issue by adding more to it or changing your mind (see the haggling appendix for an example of this)

Remove any blocks by releasing old, negative thoughts or habits (review pages 14–18)

Accept and welcome your desire (read about this starting on page 14)

If you don’t believe, if you don’t release, if you don’t welcome change—your order to the universe goes in the Cancel bin. Further on in this section we’ll talk about belief, release, and acceptance, and how to handle them to make your desires occur faster. Right now, there is only one other block (perhaps) to your success that I’d like to talk about, and that is other people.

Circle of Influence

No HedgeWitch is an island. We have friends, those we love, perhaps children, significant others, parents, partners, co-workers—people that we allow to exert influence over our lives because we like them, because we love them, or because our environments somehow overlap. All of these people are in some way affected by our behavior, and our behavior is somehow affected by them. This influence doesn’t automatically disappear just because we want to do magick. Life and magick (for good or ill) are a bit more complicated than that.

In magick, we’ve always been taught to know (belief), to will (I want), to dare (open the way and accept change), and to be silent, because if every Jane, Lisa, and Abby in the world heard about what you want, they might try to block your desires—just by being jealous, they can mess things up for you, especially if your belief is shaky. Yet there is always an exception to any rule; on occasion, you will have to verbally agree with someone in order for the change to happen. By agreeing on any subject, then the stage is set for action. If you disagree, even subconsciously, failure is a possibility.

Let’s try an example.

You’re reading this book, working through the exercises, and you’re feeling really good about the whole thing. You live with someone (significant other, spouse, your child, mother, whatever), you are merrily doing the primal language thing, and you decide you want a new sofa. For brevity’s sake, let’s say the other party involved here is your husband.

Every day, you say: “I want a new sofa in my living room.” Day after day, you repeat these words. You’ve followed all the other suggestions on manifestation in this book, and so you think you’re good to go. Except days progress into weeks, and somewhere along the line you become convinced that primal language doesn’t really work, or at least isn’t working in this case, because you can’t seem to get your mitts on a new sofa. You are stuck with the same old, threadbare, smelly couch—which, by the way, you refuse to sit on.

This actually happened to me until it dawned on me that I wasn’t receiving my new sofa because my husband hadn’t let the old one go?! Heck, I’d have burned that blasted couch in a heartbeat, and I’d released the image of it in my mind just fine. But he hadn’t: not physi­cally and not in his mind. And, yes, we’d discussed how we needed a new one, but evidently we weren’t really in agreement. You see, my husband, blessed man, loves that sofa. He takes Sunday naps on it. Cuddles into the cushions. Sips his coffee on it. Wrestles with the dogs, watches the Friday night fights …my husband loves that sofa and hates change to his comfort. (Taurus moon, need I say more?)

Which, of course, resulted in keeping the old sofa just where it was. This was a totally duh moment for me. No wonder the universe couldn’t fulfill my desire for a new sofa. Only one couch could fit in that living room at a time, and it still sat there—physically and, more importantly, mentally—through my husband’s adoration of it. He simply wasn’t emotionally ready to part with it.

Okay, I thought, new line of attack. Haul out all the good wifely reasons why we need a new sofa, concentrating on, of course, his comfort. Bingo. He mentally released the old sofa, and a brand-new one finally trundled in the door.

My point here is this: those that you love influence you, therefore they will influence your desires if you allow them to. And you usually do … because you love them! (To read more about agreements with others, check out my MindLight book, which discusses various facets of human interaction and thought [especially partnerships], and how, simply through conver­sation, you manifest the circumstances of your own life without even realizing it.)

Dollars and Cents Aren’t Always Required

Your response to my sofa story may have been, why didn’t you just go out and buy one? Except the kind of sofa I wanted was a large purchase, and that costs money, doesn’t it? In a marriage, you usually agree on large purchases, or maybe we just didn’t have the money for a new sofa whenever we pleased. At the time, a new sofa was a luxury item, not a necessity (well, I thought it was necessary, but he didn’t). The very, very cool thing about using primal language is that you don’t worry about the money. Ever. You don’t ever think about how much anything costs. Isn’t that cool? You just say what you want, and visualize the thing. As long as you believe, one of four things happens …

You either get what you want for free, or

You get what you want at a price you can afford, or

You get the money to get what you want, or

You get something better than what you originally wanted.

Be Careful How You Wish for Something

Be careful what you simply state and what words precede and follow your stateent (which is why I advise setting aside a few moments to place your orders with the universe). For example, my son kept saying “I want a new car.” He meant he wanted it when he was ready for it, but he didn’t express it that way. Instead, he would say “I want a new car” and then surround that statement with complaints about the car he had. I kept trying to convince him that your life is how you talk it; watch what you say and when you say it.

But I’m a parent, so what do I know, right? He just kept complaining about the car he had and how he really wanted a new one. Indeed, he said some mighty nasty things about his cur­rent vehicle—over and over again. I cringed at the frequent torrents of how much he didn’t like his car.

Because I knew, you know? I knew exactly what was going to happen.

His car didn’t disappoint me. Everything seized. It turned itself into junk in less than three minutes: ball joints went bad, transmission went out, engine fried and left him stranded.

Now the way was open for the new car—except he had no money, no trade-in, nada. No way to work. No way home. (Uh-huh—that’ll teach ya not to complain.) Releasing anything with negativity leaves you sitting on an abandoned, winding road. Be careful what you’re ordering up to the universe and how you do it. Had I gotten into a big argument with my husband over the sofa, or simply took the old one away and bought a new one, his feelings would have been hurt, and I would have done him a great disservice. Now that would have been selfish.

Primal language works for all types of energy manifestation, not just receiving material items. You may wish to have more friends, a happy marriage, good health, great job … and it all begins with I want. Just remember to preface your desire from a positive mindset.

To receive the most benefit out of HedgeWitchery—working with the abundance of the universe—we must choose to alter the way we think and the way we communicate. Thoughts of worry or fear have no place in this type of universe, because if you give these negative thoughts energy, then that is what the universe will bring to you. To neutralize subversive, fear-filled thoughts when they pop up, try these easy transition techniques:

1. Smile.

2. Repeat “Always a blessing” in your mind until you feel the energy shift within yourself.

3. Begin thanking the universe for things you do have. Rattle off anything great you can think of, and don’t stop until you feel an energy shift to a lighter mood.

4. End every I want statement with the words “It always works.” Say this several times.

5. Go over what you really do believe (see page 21). Many times negative, fear-filled thoughts are a result of old belief patterns. Once we recognize them for what they are, then we can easily release them.

Formulate your thoughts and communications, concentrating on what you do want; your desires will be easily fulfilled! We must live like we believe. If we believe that the universe is an abundant place where all manner of success is possible, then that is precisely what we shall receive. Your choice of belief dictates your future. Rather than living like an outsider in our universe, HedgeWitchery encourages you to fully participate in the process of abundance by acknowledging your own fertile ground and adding the rich compost of basic universal com­munication. You simply have to learn the language—the fertilizer of how to word your wish­es—and your desires will grow! Primal language is a succinct formulation of spoken words describing a single desire that translates into an energy stream. It is this energy stream that the universe understands, not the words themselves.

Primal Language Exercise

Unchecked mind chatter or verbal communication complicates your life by sending mixed signals to the universe. Superfluous words can actually block your desires. Negative words will bring you things you truly didn’t want. To get what you want, try the minimalist approach—start thinking only in nouns.

Typically, when we want something, we begin listing and constantly repeating what we don’t want, thinking the universe understands this elimination process to make way for what we desire. Rather than clearing a nice mental garden path, we are instead throwing a variety of weeds in the way that will bring us a jungle of junk rather than the one thing we truly desire.

In the practice of HedgeWitchery, we use the fewest words possible in communicating our desires to the universe through meditation, ritual, spellwork, and even everyday thoughts. The more precise the verbiage, the greater the possibility of success!

Let’s say I want a new lawn mower—something simple that works only on me-power (no gas or electric). The machine needs to fit between the paths of my raised-bed garden, be light enough for me to handle easily, and have blades that stay sharp for longer than one season. Since I’m not sure exactly what I want (the problem that muddles most people), I visit several garden stores to determine what might work best for me. Once I choose the mower (a 16-inch Scotts Elite), I ask for a brochure. At home, I sit down at the dining room table with a piece of paper and the brochure side by side. On my paper, I begin describing this mower in very simple terms. To pinpoint exactly what I want, I’m going to begin with only nouns. As I add each descriptive word, I will also include a visualization of the noun or noun sequence in my mind, so I might close my eyes to better focus. If I do this, however, I need to project the nouns outside of myself and see myself interacting with them. For example: with my new mower, I visualize myself smiling and merrily pushing the machine back and forth across my property on a beautiful, sunny day over a rich carpet of green grass. To this, I add the aroma of the cut grass and the sound the mower makes as it shlip-shlip-shlips across the green grass (vibrating your thoughts by remembering sounds actually helps you manifest your desires fast­er—especially if you practice listening and then re-creating these sounds often in your mind). I breathe deeply, thinking how this mower will provide a very good exercise opportunity for me and what a nice tan I’ll have as a result of working outside.

Let’s try it. We begin with:

Lawn mower

New lawn mower (The universe understands “condition”—new, old, antique—because the universe itself works in cycles.)

New push reel lawn mower (The correct name of this type of lawn mower.)

New Scotts Elite 16-inch push reel lawn mower (Notice I added the brand and the size.)

New, green Scotts Elite 16-inch push reel lawn mower (Introducing color…)

New, green Scotts Elite 16-inch push reel lawn mower or better (Perhaps the universe has something better that can come to me faster, or maybe the store is out of green and they only have red—fine with me!)

Now, I walk outside and look at the beautiful stars (connecting to Spirit by surrounding myself with nature) and slap a big smile on my face. At this moment, I am doing what a HedgeWitch does best: I shift my mind totally into my concept of Spirit through the enjoy­ment of nature. Being outdoors helps me better connect. I take a deep breath, settle into the moment of the beauty of deep night, and then I say clearly to the universe, “I want a new, green Scotts Elite 16-inch push reel lawn mower or better. It always works. Always a bless­ing!” I close my eyes one more time, and I visualize all those things I mentioned earlier (sight, smell, sound, etc.), and I smile again. Done!

Although the universe recognizes honor (we’ll get to that), it doesn’t understand verbal manners, such as “May I please have _______?” This is a question, not a desire. Remembering to say “I want” acknowledges that you really do desire what you are asking for. Don’t worry, Spirit won’t be insulted.

Time for you to try the primal language formula. Choose something you want to manifest in your life. Begin with the basic noun and then build, being careful to add only enough words to give you a precise description of what you want. Stay away from words like hope, might, maybe, possibly, don’t, never, not, perhaps, etc., because they only confuse the translation of your desire. When you have your description finished, go outside and tell the universe what you want (no extra words), and save your description to work on through the next step. Don’t forget to smile!

I already know (believe) that the universe will bring me my new mower. My job is to keep the way clear for the mower to come to me and accept and welcome the fact that I deserve this mower. Clearing, accepting, and welcoming are actually the hardest parts!

Draining and Irrigating Your Mental Garden—
Release, Accept, Welcome

We’ve talked about how to enrich the soil of our minds by learning the right fertilizer (pri­mal language) to use. The next step, as in any good garden, is to provide an adequate drainage and irrigation system that allows your desires to manifest. If there is no release, there can be no growth! Your desires will drown in old habits, bad feelings, or negative memories. To keep the garden of your mind healthy and productive, we need to find avenues of release and we have to allow this discharge to take place! Think of your life as a great big house filled with all sorts of clutter. One day a magickal elf knocks on your door and says, “I heard you wanted a new lawn mower. Too cool! You deserve it, you do! I have it right here. But, since you already have something in the space where you wanted to put it—well, I won’t be able to give it to you.” See ya, lawn mower!

To get what you do want, you must let go of what you don’t want.

Although the premise of release works universally, I’ve noticed its greatest impact (where we can see the necessity of letting go most clearly) in the arena of personal relationships, particularly when folks say, “I just can’t seem to find the right person. Where is the man (or woman) of my dreams?” Many times, these people are holding on to old, dead relationships or memories of hurtful moments in human interaction. If they seriously close the door on old patterns and open doors to new ones, sure enough, the right person comes along! Throw away those “nesting gifts” that remind you of lost love, good love gone bad, or whatever. Change your phone number, block your e-mail, try a new hairstyle, build a spiritual garden, buy some new clothes, apply for a new job, tear down a building on your property, clean out the base­ment and the attic, wear a different scent, move your furniture around so it doesn’t remind you of “them.” Heck, burn the darned bed and all the sheets if necessary! Even better—move! (That’ll keep ya busy and force you to release a lot of junk.) Or, less drastic, find a new hobby: try skydiving, horseback riding, swimming, golf, or bowling; shop at stores you never tried before; take a class at a local college; or get interested in a different cuisine. Work on affirma­tions, spells, and rituals that are life-affirming and geared toward positive change. Do a thor­ough house cleansing and a personal ritual cleansing. Pick a new activity where you will meet exciting and vibrant people, and live! Live! Live! Live! Let go of the past, because the past isn’t really what you thought it was in the first place. (Star Wars and the Scream trilogy have at least taught us that much!) Even perennial plants don’t last forever; they have their proper cycle, too! Just ask my daughter. After a devastating breakup, she did many of the above-listed activities and changes, and in one month—you guessed it—she found the love of her life. She’s now married to the man of her dreams, a truly lovely individual that any mother-in-law would be proud of. In essence, my daughter concentrated on what she did want in her life (new experiences, people, places, and things), and she was so busy, she let go of what she didn’t want—and without the severe, elongated emotional pain one so often experiences after a bad breakup.

Let’s go back to my lawn mower example. I need to remove both physical and emotional clutter, clearing the way to receive the machine that I desire. In my shed, I have an old gas- powered lawn mower that is more finicky than a Capricorn maintaining a prize rosebush. This machine works only for my father, who doesn’t like the beast because of the amount of time it takes him to get it started and keep it running. Even with the best maintenance (my father is that Capricorn), this mower was the most cantankerous hunk of metal, gears, and gas ever to be built on the face of this planet. It refused to work for anyone else in the household (no kidding—which became a major pain when my father fell seriously ill). So, I wheel this monstrosity out to the curb and slap a sign on it: free—runs but stubborn—good for parts. And away it goes. I’ve done this before, by the way. Ever tried it? Instead of trashing something, I put it on the curb with some sort of fun sign. I’ve gotten rid of more junk this way—free, without hurting the environment one little bit, and making someone delightfully happy in the process!

Anyway … I’ve honestly cleared physical space in the shed (meaning I didn’t trick anyone into removing the old mower—bad karma—yet I gave someone who might want it the oppor­tunity to take it; this is good Pagan recycling). Then, I review my mental/emotional standpoint on receiving my new lawn mower. Obviously, I need it (or I’ll be fined by the borough for having unruly vegetation—you think I jest!). Second, I deserve having a new lawn mower as much as the next guy or gal; no issue there. Thankfully, neither politics nor religion has entered into the ownership of lawn equipment. Since my feelings tell me whether I’m on track with the receiving end (I feel good about getting a new lawn mower), I’m all set when that imaginary magickal elf (the process of quantum physics in action) comes knocking at my door with my brand-new lawn mower. I don’t think about how I’m going to pay for the machine. I’ve kept money totally out of my visualization process on purpose, because money, for a lot of people, can have its own emotional baggage, which adds unnecessary complications. We want a cut-and-dry scenario here. Instead, I simply concentrate on the item. The universe will work out how I’m going to get what I want and won’t bother me with the finances. (Isn’t it a relief to know that there’s actually a powerful force on this planet that doesn’t want your money?)

To be more specific: as I remove the old machine from the shed and push it along its last journey across my property, I concentrate on visualizing my new lawn mower and how won­derful it will feel. I take a deep breath and allow myself to connect with the source (that which runs the universe), and I remember to smile. I imagine I’m pushing not the old lawn mower out to the trash but the new one to make the yard look beautiful. I look at the green grass and enjoy the spicy aroma from my herb garden as I walk past, physically pushing “the stubborn one” out of my life. I simply let myself shift into Mother Nature as I trundle along, visual­izing myself delightfully tan, my arms and legs getting stronger, and my over-fifty paunch melting away under the gloriously blue summer sky. I smile broadly at that one. Then I say, “I am grateful for my new, green Scotts Elite 16-inch push reel lawn mower or better; it always works; always a blessing,” and I smile again. (Because when you are grateful about something, honestly grateful, you are in a happy mind place.) When I did this, a beautiful butterfly flitted over the old lawn mower—a signal in my mind that my desire was well on its way (I person­ally use animals, plants, birds, insects, and my physical garden as interpreters of what the uni­verse is trying to tell me about my life). In essence, by the time I pushed the old lawn mower to the curb, I’d mentally and physically released the cranky machine and acknowledged the receipt of my new one. Instead of kicking that nasty, grumpy lawn mower and declaring its foul nature, I said, “I’m grateful for your service,” and I meant it. After all, I could have been living without any mower at all, cutting the grass with a pair of kitchen shears. In this way, I honored what it did manage to accomplish and let it go at that (this actually works with nasty people, especially crappy employers or friends of betrayal, too). Then I walked back to the empty spot in the shed, imagined my new mower sitting there, and said, “Welcome, new lawn mower!” (Another big, happy smile!)

Okay, so the lawn mower isn’t like the love of your life, and the procedure to obtain it was pretty simple. It’s not like I had to legally divorce the old lawn mower, but you get the idea (although you might like to set your husband, wife, or partner on the street corner with a sign that says free, stubborn, use for parts, this isn’t legal and is certainly not moral).

The point here: I released (drained) and honored (irrigated positive energy) the old and welcomed the new, shifting into the joy of Mother Nature as I did it. My magickal ritual wasn’t performed in the formal way that you’ve read about before. Here, my ritual was the process of doing—wheeling that old machine out through my yard (which is actually sacred space) and actively meditating (visualizing) what I desired—all done in the arms of Mother Nature.

Whenever I thought about how soon I might get the new mower, I switched mental gears, smiled at the universe, and said, “Thank you for my new lawn mower,” then changed my thoughts to something else, because the biggest destroyer of getting what we want is actually our own minds and our myriad secondary thoughts on any situation. In essence, you only need to make your request once; however, your request can be altered by subsequent thoughts. If this mower is what I truly want, and I don’t want to change my mind, then I need to keep my thoughts clear of any doubt or worry. In traditional Witchcraft and other magickal disciplines, you’ll often see three-, seven-, or nine-day spells. As a rule, the bigger the problem or request, the longer the duration of the working. This type of timing is to assure the mind (yours) that you are actually doing something constructive, and the repetition helps to solidify confidence in yourself and cement your own belief. Likewise, offerings to the gods, another traditional practice, are simply the act of releasing, accepting, and welcoming. You are physically giving something away in order to make room to receive what you want. Honoring the gods by saying thank you is also a release-and-closure function. When you thank someone, you are basically ending the subject with an act of honor. The words thank you indicate an automatic closure and affirmation that your desire has come to pass.

Did I get my mower? Yep! Took two weeks. No expense. I named my new lawn mower Elf, put a garden talisman on it, got a great tan, and walked off ten pounds. Sweet!

Your turn: Review your request from the primal language exercise. What do you need to release to receive your desire? What physical steps or actions can you incorporate in your life to clear the way for your success? Remember to honor what has to leave—being grateful for the good is a powerful act of closure! Remove any doubts in your life about what you do and do not deserve. Be sure to clearly accept and welcome, through your words and actions, the changes you are working for. And don’t forget—smile, smile, smile!

The Fertilizer of the Mind: Belief

I’m sure you’ve read many spiritual articles over the past several years that have in one way or another discussed the universal connection of all beings and how we are all an integrated part of the whole. Writers teach about how to access what you most desire by using techniques and ideas that have worked for them. From motivational speakers to magickal practitioners, you’ll find a plethora of information just waiting to be downloaded into your eager brain. Sometimes these tips serve the reader well, and sometimes, depending upon the reader’s belief structure, they don’t work at all.

Belief, truly, is the key.

Our beliefs are structured on what we think to be true. Some of us delve into the scientific to give us a firm base of belief, others go the more mystical, spiritual route, and then there are those who don’t believe anything unless it works first (which is rather a conundrum). Finally, everyone’s beliefs are somehow shaped by the boogie-bird in the closet, commonly known as childhood misconceptions, which we either dreamed up ourselves or were exposed to by parents, caregivers, siblings, extended family members, teachers, spiritual advisors, neighbors, organization leaders, etc., as they peddled through their own lives doing (to be fair) the best they could. Which leaves us a bit on shaky ground when it comes to creating our own reality, which is nothing more than manipulating the world through quantum means. What I’m try­ing to say is: if you believe it is possible consciously and subconsciously, then it is. Period.

Each individual functions within the parameters of two types of belief: that which you consciously say to be true, and that which your subconscious has already accepted to be true. Which means you have two very different animal crackers in your head when it comes to what you believe in, and why you can say you believe in something and receive just the opposite. Both conscious and subconscious beliefs have to be in alignment in order for any desire to manifest.

Your conscious belief can be represented by the above-ground part of a plant, and your sub­conscious belief can equate to the root system; as you know, if your root system is lousy, you can baby the top of the plant all you want and still it will either die or grow poorly. Conversely, the root system can be great—but if pests or blight attack the above-ground portion of the plant, you can only go so long until the plant weakens beyond saving and dies. Just as the root system and the above-ground portion of a plant must be in alignment to create a beautiful, healthy plant, so your conscious and subconscious beliefs must also match to make a beautiful, healthy you.

Which brings us to why humans have created a compendium of religions. The various designs have occurred in an effort to create a system that appeals both to the conscious and subconscious minds of a particular culture. Did you ever wonder why you can’t force someone to believe like you do (well, people try), and why the belief in angels may work for some but not for others, and why the Holy Spirit performs like gangbusters for your sister but not for your father? Ogoun helps your best friend dance on the head of a pin, pulling in super sales, and your brother-in-law may swear by snake charming to get those eBay deals, and then there’s your uncle, who claims nothing works like a nice dead relative to provide assistance from the other side when the chips are down. Many cultures, many beliefs … who is right?

The one you believe in, of course.

Belief, quite frankly, isn’t as easy as it sounds. Let’s say everyone around you fervently believes that a Great Rabbit runs the universe. You have always been told, and therefore it must be true, that he sits up there, munches on carrots, wants you to be a good boy or girl, has an instruction manual for you to follow, and demands sole fealty. Everyone in town believes in the Great Rabbit (or so they say). They pray to the Great Rabbit and have holidays in his honor. You, however, sane person that you are, have always been a little iffy on that puffy-tailed furball-in-the-sky scenario. Perhaps you’ve outwardly questioned the validity, and you have certainly inwardly gone over it a million times—nothing with teeth that long can be good. You are told the Great Rabbit is also a wrathful rabbit because, if he isn’t pleased, he can cause hurricanes, drought, fires—you know, the normal Mother Nature stuff, which is now bad stuff and not normal because you, you infidel, did not believe deep down inside. So much for the concept of universal love in deity form. Indeed, the worst type of believer is the secret nonbe­liever. Do you see where I’m going with this? I’m not poking fun at any specific belief—what I’m saying is if you make believe you believe, it ain’t gonna work for ya, no matter how hard you try. What is worse, we can say we believe, but lo and behold, our subconscious (for whatever reason) doesn’t.

Then again, we can tell everyone what they believe in isn’t quite right and that they should change their beliefs, or at least tweak them so that we can all really believe now, because if everyone thinks the way we do, then we have created a believable comfort zone.

Therefore, what we all believe must be true—because we all believe it.

Except we know we told everyone what to believe without empirical evidence. So, there­fore, in our subconscious, we know what they believe in is not true, and therefore, we don’t really believe it either.

And if you don’t believe, you can’t make nothin’ happen.

Let’s, for the moment, move this topic away from religion and our All-Powerful Bunny. The same premise works for other things in your life as well: health, income, politics, perceived status, love, friends, working environment (flap hand, yada yada)—religion, really, is just one facet of the totality of your beliefs. Just one. So, even if you work diligently on your spirituality and let the rest go (or ignore them or deny their importance), then all you’ve done is focus the conscious mind in one direction while your subconscious mind is having a banquet—at your expense.

You’ll not find a truer bait-and-switch scam than what occurs in your own brain each and every day. Money problems? Don’t check what’s in your wallet—check what’s in your brain.

How do you know that your subconscious beliefs aren’t in alignment with your conscious mind? That’s easy. What part of your life has just gone down the toilet? Or, what in your life could be better? Or, maybe things have been holding steady, but you are bored, bored, bored. Or, where have you been placing your primary focus of thought and activity because you had to? Let’s take a look at what beliefs might be attached to that issue. We’ll keep it simple, one issue at a time. Pretty soon, you’ll see how troubles that seem separate can actually be the result of a single negative thought.

What’s Growing in Your Belief Garden?

In a physical garden, you need to test the soil to ensure the chemical balance is right for what you wish to produce. Indeed, you can buy all manner of kits and products to deter­mine the integrity of what you’ve got in that physical garden of yours. Your mental garden also requires specific elements for harmonious balance; the problem is you can’t buy them (although we often try)—you gotta make this mix yourself. Just as in a real garden, where you have to dig nice and deep to see what kind of soil you’ve got down there, so, too, will you have to be willing to test your mental soil, which consists of the totality of your beliefs. Only when you understand the fullness (or lack thereof) of your own beliefs can you plant anything and expect it to grow. Only by testing the contents of what’s hidden in your brain can you deter­mine what fertilizer you’ll need for a bumper crop of a full and harmonious lifestyle.

Before we begin, I’m going to tell you straight up: this isn’t easy. We have so many thoughts zooming around in our heads at any given time it can be hard to follow a single thread, especially if your subconscious mind wishes to pull that fast bait-and-switch. I think this thought about my past—whoops! I’m having tuna tonight. Wait. Where did that come from? Your subconscious mind will volley the strange and bizarre to center court just to keep you off-guard and away from ferreting out the boogie-bird that resides in the recesses of your deepest troubles. Then, too, it might be that rabbit ... therefore, a concerted effort on your part is required if you truly want to accomplish the good riddance of your woes and create better days ahead.

Let’s take a few general examples to help you on your way. First, meet Marissa: age twenty-seven; career okay; health general; attractive (she’s got great eyes and knockout legs)—and she has a history of broken romances that would prove enough fodder for at least two full-time romance writers (without the happy endings). She goes to the gym and buys expensive makeup. Yet the love fairy has completely forgotten Marissa exists. For the purposes of this example, the main question we are always going to ask is: what did your parents say to you about love, relationships, and marriage when you were growing up? Or what did your primary caregiver say to you about these things, and what comments did they always make when the subject arose? Here is Marissa’s reply:

“My father died when I was ten. My mother constantly talked about how he abandoned us. She would say, ‘Good men never live long,’ or ‘There aren’t any good men around like your dad.’ Even her offhand comments were negative when discussing any male (family or friends) in almost any situation, from politics to spirituality, let alone a serious relationship. To her, the day my dad passed away, all good men abandoned the planet and ascended into heaven—the biblical rapture, only for males. I’ve said repeatedly to myself that her beliefs are her own, but now, thinking about it, I realize that I absorbed those very same beliefs subconsciously and have been sabotaging my own relationships. You know, this is my life, not hers! My mother was not a bad parent—she treated me extremely well and loved me very much—but I realize now that I’ve been living her fears.”

Let’s move on to Harvey, fifty years old, general health with a few nasty bouts of this or that over the years, particularly during a financial crisis, a product of the Great Depression babies. “I grew up listening to how my grandfather and grandmother lost everything except their home during the Depression; about how my father was ignored and treated badly by his siblings; about how rotten the government is and how they (politicians) hurt and cheat people. How our family name screams that we’ll always be lower middle class—that there was no bright and glorious future for people like us. You know, come to think of it, I never heard anything nice—nothing about love, or caring, or sticking up for each other. Just the same old crap. In fact, my father is eighty-nine, and I’m still listening to the same garbage. He doesn’t tell a single story (and he has a ton) that doesn’t end on a depressive note. A Yank with a broken pickup, a dead dog, and a deceased wife. You know, I was doing really well for a while, and then I let my father move in with us. I just realized that the moment that happened, his beliefs brought our whole family down and kept us trapped for twenty-five years because we subconsciously believed his repeated negative comments about life and personal finances. As a parent, we treated him with respect and didn’t argue. Don’t get me wrong, the man had golden credit and still does to this day, yet I allowed his acid thoughts to almost completely destroy my career. I expected what he predicted about how I would be treated, and that’s exactly what I got. They aren’t my beliefs anymore!”

Julia, age thirty, has repeated health problems. Married, one child. Both she and her hus­band are overweight. Both have a terrific sense of humor. “My grandmother raised me. She was all about God smiting the sinner, especially when it came to health problems of con­gregational members—always said God made you sick to teach you a lesson, even for the most minor infraction. We used to make jokes about God doing overtime in our parish, and how with Him around, who needed the devil to blame your troubles on? Growing up, I truly thought she was just being loony. She was skinny as a rail and always this side of sickly, trying every wacky cure by a compendium of snake oil salesmen; but, you know, now I’m wondering how much of her insecurity, terror, and fear I absorbed as a kid, because she repeatedly told me that I was lazy, and that God made lazy people fat as they grew older as a punishment for not doing a hard day’s work. I’m a writer by trade, working at a desk for a newspaper, and even though I work long hours, my job isn’t physically exhausting. Like, I’m not out in the fields or anything, and I’m not up at dawn canning, baking bread, or washing laundry by hand. I suddenly realized I’ve been living her terror and fear. Not anymore!”

In these three examples, we followed the issue to the source, and it wasn’t easy for Marissa, Harvey, or Julia to go back there. They had to sit and think about the question for a while, and in one case (Harvey) it took him several days to work through all the negative programming he heard as a child. Every time he thought of another comment his father used to make (and evidently still does), his mind would flip to something else—from what time he needed to pick up his son to trouble with a new insurance company dropping the insurance on his house. The light finally dawned on Harvey when he drove his father to a doctor’s appointment and once again sat through the same string of worldly complaints. Finally, light bulb: Harvey deftly switched the subject and from then on endeavored to keep changing the subject every time his father began to work through the same verbal scenario and depressive soap-opera yarns. Harvey also discovered that some of his father’s newer negative ideas were actually coming from a klatch of seniors that had lunch at the same establishment as Harvey’s father (all Depression-era babies). Then Harvey started looking at the unsolicited mail his father was receiving, shocked to discover that many of the advertisements were targeting Depression-era mentality seniors, focusing on their fear to solicit money and sell products. Harvey made the comment, “What you create in your mind, you bring into your life. Sadly, my father is living proof.”

Granted, going back in time and dragging original fears out into the light of day isn’t going to solve all your problems. However, now that you know where the negative programming may have come from, you can adjust how you think and in what you choose to believe, as well as reprogram what you are saying to (and around) your own kids (should you have any). With your conscious and subconscious minds now in agreement, there is nothing you can’t accom­plish. Take this exercise further and pay close attention to what you are listening to on the news, what you are reading, even the conversations you hear at work. Weed out what you don’t believe and let the boogie-birds stay where they belong. With a fresh look at the universe, all you have to do is …

Believe!

Spellwork: The Gardening Tools of Belief

In a recent A & E Biography interview, I was asked what constitutes a “spell.” I wasn’t sur­prised at the question, because those who have never cast a spell find the process alluring but (thanks to the negative programming of some religious sects) frightening. Personally, I find spells fascinating, and I’ve been working them for over twenty years! Spells are nothing more than tools to focus the mind and support your beliefs in a positive way, to bring your desires to fruition through the means of quantum physics (energy manipulation). Spellwork focuses the mind on a specific subject in a specific way, many times using an activity (such as burning a candle) to bring the two parts of your belief (conscious and subconscious) into alignment. Words and tools are used together to poise your mind at its most capable point of manifesta­tion. When you cast a spell, you are throwing out your energy net through words and actions to bring something to you, whether that something is a new car or inner harmony. Choos­ing your words and your tools carefully and succinctly becomes very important, because it is not the universe you have to convince that you deserve whatever it is you want, it is yourself. Therefore, the tools and words of a spell are mental garden stepping stones that should:

(a) pull in divine energy through positive, uplifting thought and behavior, and

(b) align your conscious and subconscious beliefs.

If the spell does not do both of these things for you, your desire will not manifest.

The Universal Telephone Line

Remember Harvey? And do you recall how he said that his house insurance was cancelled? Here is the creative way in which he handled it:

“I got this darned letter in the mail that said ‘your house insurance is cancelled because your windows have peeling paint.’ I’d just finished arranging for a new loan on the house to fix the place up, and here I get this letter. I was furious, because the insurer knew about the loan that cleared not thirty days before and that I was planning to use the money to repair the house. Frustrated, I decided to fix this problem … promptly!

“The day before, I’d purchased an old-fashioned phone at the mall, thinking it would add a special touch that the wife would like. I marched to the bedroom and took the phone out of the package, repeating a mantra: ‘Always a blessing.’ I placed the phone on our bedroom dresser. I didn’t hook the phone up to the house line. In fact, I didn’t hook it up at all. In my mind, if a cell phone could call my kid, my magick phone could call the universe! What’s the difference?

“On a notecard, I wrote: ‘I want this house insurance mess fixed immediately, to my ben­efit.’ I stuck the card under the phone, picked up the receiver, and dialed 911. I said, ‘Hello, Universe? Harvey speaking. I want this house insurance mess fixed immediately, to my ben­efit. Thank you for helping me,’ and I hung up. In less than one hour, I had the phone number of a new agent. In less than twenty-four hours, I’d made arrangements with that new agent to come view the house. In forty-eight hours, I had a new policy that was cheaper than the old one, and it covered the exact same thing. And seventy-two hours after that phone call, the old agent phoned, wanting to fix things, where before when I originally called them they had all but ignored me.

“I didn’t stop there. My son has a new job as a salesman, and he was lamenting he needed at least two sales his first week to show his employer he would be good at the job. So, I went to the phone in my bedroom, dialed 411, and said, ‘Hello. This is Harvey. I want my son to land at least two sales today. Thank you,’ and hung up. Sure enough, my son called me that night. He made his two sales, and by the time the week was out, he’d made a total of four. You can bet I’m going to keep using my magick phone!”

Harvey’s example shows us that a simple spell can work miracles. Now, let’s check Harvey’s beliefs so we are all on the same page. Harvey believes that something runs the universe that is good, caring, and all-loving. He isn’t sure what that something is, but when he is addressing the universe, he believes that he is somehow aligning himself with divinity. Secondly, Harvey has always believed that a solution to every problem exists; you just have to find it sometimes. Therefore, solving this problem was well within both his conscious and subconscious minds, and calling on a solution was not out of bounds in either type of thought.

To help his mind believe that he could contact the source of all things, he used a vehicle familiar to all of us: the telephone. Like Harvey said, if he could call his son on a cell, he could call the source on his magick phone. The act of dialing familiar numbers—911, in most areas of the United States, is the three-digit Emergency number, and 411 is Information. Harvey later explained that he used 411 because he wanted the universe to find two people who need­ed what his son was selling. In both cases, remember, the phone was dead—he never hooked it up, so he didn’t really call 911 or 411. He just went through the motions. Also, in the desire for his son to land the sales, Harvey had the greatest confidence in his son’s ability—he’d seen him perform before, and knew his son could do it—meaning he believed his son was capable of landing the sale. As his son’s desire and Harvey’s desire for him matched, the sales were made in less than twenty-four hours. When two or more people are joined together in a single thought in which they both believe (both consciously and subconsciously), then that desire will mani­fest quickly. Finally, Harvey had this to say: “I didn’t for one moment allow myself to doubt. I just forged ahead, knowing that I would get what I wanted. I used a HedgeWitch technique whenever I felt doubt coming on. I said, repeatedly, ‘It always works!’ ”

And it did!

Linking your mind to a physical object to support your belief or matching your words to something you know to be true is not new. Magickal practitioners have been doing this for centuries. The trick is that you must believe in what you know to be true. Sounds funny, doesn’t it? We find an excellent example in mental fluidity when studying Pow-Wow spells (Pow-Wow is a German-American magickal system). In Christianized Pow-Wow, the practi­tioner often adds a rider, such as:

“As surely as Mary gave forth Jesus Christ, so will Suzanne experience the fullness of heal­ing in His name.”

For a Christian, this works perfectly, but that isn’t the original text. Indeed, the original version states rivers and territories that no longer hold the same names, so to update a bit, we might say:

“As surely as the Mosel River flows through France, Luxembourg, and Germany, so too will Suzanne experience the gentle flow of healing energy until she is completely well.”

Both versions work—again, it is what you believe that counts.

Conscious and Subconscious Mind: Your Personal Filter

There is a really good reason why your subconscious and conscious minds don’t readily believe the same thing, and at this point, you may wish you didn’t have a subconscious at all, because it manages to be a major pain on certain issues and definitely can stand in the way of what you want. Both your conscious and your subconscious minds act as police, trying to filter thoughts and silly statements so that you don’t manifest a shark on your dining room floor, a monster in the closet, or blow up the world. Both definitely have a unique function—gate­keepers to your running mouth and rambling brain. This way, you can think all you want, but it’s what you believe that is the key.

Your Personal Primal Language

Discussing the law of attraction and release based on your thoughts, words, and deeds and supported by your belief isn’t new (it has been done for centuries through different venues, especially in magickal circles). What’s different here is really this section of the book: you have to personalize your primal language for it to work for you continuously. As I mentioned in my book MindLight, many seekers try a technique for a month or two, have great success, and then something seems to go wrong. Success is overshadowed by failure, and we find ourselves once again back at square one, debating on whether a particular technique really works for us and perhaps jousting once again with a nasty mental monster we just can’t seem to shake. After contemplating this problem for several years, I realized that just as in everything else, no one human is like another, and therefore, no one human processes thoughts exactly like another. Yes, we all have certain human capabilities in common (like breathing), but it is those nuances that make us so unique that also make our approach to the law of attraction exclusive unto ourselves. If this is so, then how can everyone enjoy the laws of attraction and release equally? By determining what specific words, thoughts, and actions have meaning to our personal way of thinking. If we use our own favorite words, we can create the emotional certainty ensuring that what we want, we will recieve. If we can keep that emotional certainty at full power for sixty-five seconds, what we want has already begun to manifest. Once we have found those words and actions, using props and triggers—a motion of the hand, the scent of an herb, or the feel of a rock or crystal—helps to elongate a single thought, holding that heightened emotional certainty in place, giving us the necessary time for our desire to take root. These props or triggers can tie the unseen to the seen, the ephemeral to the physical, giving us an even flow of energy. As above, so below.

I know a woman who can always get a broken car started, no matter where she is. We’ll be standing in a parking lot or on the street and hear the familiar grind of someone desperately trying to start their car. She’ll wink, turn her back on the car, flip her hand, and three tries later (if they have kept at it), the car will start! When I asked her how she does this, she said, “I close my eyes, and I think of power filling the engine of the vehicle. At the same time, I clearly hear the sound of a perfectly running motor in my head. I flip my hand as if to turn on the car. I add to this my certainty that this always works and let the thought go.” Voilà!

I have a friend who runs his own business, and he’s also a fringe Voudon practitioner. Whenever sales are low, he simply surrounds a white candle with a mixture of white sugar and coconut, lights the candle, and within twenty-four hours he always has a sale. “I call on Ayizan,” he says, “goddess of the marketplace. Her offerings can include white sugar and coconut. I believe that she will answer me, and she always does. When I set out the candle and other things, I’m completely concentrating on how happy I am that money is coming in. The offerings I give are my act of releasing—giving something away to make room for the sale coming in. I’ve never been disappointed. It always works.”

A student of mine decorates her home for abundance with every Wiccan high holy day. “To receive abundance,” she says, “I need to welcome it, so I clear out all old decorations and either pack them away or throw them out, clean the house from top to bottom, and then spend a few days before the holiday decorating my home. I especially don’t like the dark days of winter, so I take extra care to brighten up the place any way I can think of. This allows me to be creative, busy, and think about new, fresh, exciting events and people surrounded by posi­tive energy entering my life.”

Does this work? She says, “I’ve been happily married for over twenty-five years, and all my grown children are doing well. I have a job I love, and I haven’t had any serious medical prob­lems. Yeah, it works for me. It always works.”

When my friend Jane wants money, she buys makeup. “It all started when I was super desperate for money,” she says. “I was doing the grocery shopping on a shoestring and decided to go next door to the pharmacy. As I walked through the pharmacy, I thought that even though I felt bad that I was in a poor financial state, I wanted to look good (if that makes any sense). I’d seen an advertisement on television for a new lipstick, and I really wanted to try it, but hadn’t found it at the grocers or anywhere else. I looked up and there were the lipstick and companion products right in front of my nose. I bought the lipstick and one or two other items. I tried the new products that night, and I liked them, so I threw away my old, yucky makeup. The very next day, I received a large check in the mail I hadn’t been expecting. From that day on, I associated drawing money to me with buying new makeup. I know that sounds silly, but it works for me. I don’t go overboard. I only buy what I need. I even understand that it works because I made the initial association. If things get tight for me at the end of the month, I look through my bathroom cabinet and determine what beauty products I’m low on or have run out of. That’s how I keep the spending under control. Then, when I go shopping, I try something new in that line. I’ve been doing this for about nine months, and I’ve yet to run out of money. It always works. The mind is an incredible thing!”

In some of my other books, I’ve written about the road fairy and the parking lot fairy—here, I take a mythical creature (or, if you believe in the Sidhe, a real one) and petition for what I need. I always merge safely on a major highway, and I always find the parking spot I want. I simply say aloud, “Okay, road fairy, give me a nice, long, clear space of road so that I can merge onto this highway safely,” or, “Hey, parking lot fairy, I want a good space by the cart return.” In this book, we’ll be using many aspects of nature as triggers for your future success.

Conversely, triggers can also spell failure. If you say, “I know that mint is a magickal cor­respondence for money, but when I use the plant as a trigger, it never works for me,” of course it won’t—because you believe, right at the onset, that it doesn’t.

For you to do: You already have loads of successful triggers stored in your mind—actions, thoughts, affirmations, sounds, colors, habits, etc. Think about actions, thoughts, or sym­bols you’ve used lately when experiencing success. Write them down on a piece of paper. Try using these triggers again on future endeavors! In the future, when you experience great joy or super success, think about the triggers you naturally used to obtain what you desired.

Shifting with Nature

Nature isn’t the only shift mechanism every human being has in his or her attraction arse­nal—there are others, such as music, memory recall of happy events or feelings, art, dance, even race car driving (no kidding, my son-in-law does it)—anything that mentally and emo­tionally makes you feel super good! When I first learned how to do magic, I used music as my primary shifter in ritual and spellwork. As I grew to understand the vast scope of Witchcraft, revisiting its building blocks time and again, studying Hoodoo, herbal magick, and spiritism under Houngan Ray Malbrough, learning hypnosis and Reiki, delving into classical astrol­ogy, learning tai chi, etc., I realized that Mother Nature has an incredible power that moves through all my (and your) interests—and She is more than willing to share! Her power can change your life in a heartbeat, and it’s right here, under your nose, all the time, day or night, rain or shine, no batteries necessary, wand included. All you have to do is state what you want and follow through. Mother Nature is the universe. She is quantum physics!

Primal Language (The Dialect of Mother Nature) Requires Changing the Way You Think

So far, I’ve explained that the basic idea of manifesting anything you want is to say exactly what you want, visualize it, feel good about it, and as soon as you open your eyes, think of something (anything) that makes you very happy. Then let the thought go and make the effort to release ideas, thoughts, and physical objects that may be blocking your desire. If you have been working magick for a long time, you’ll be sitting there saying, “This is spellcasting 101.So what?”

In spellcasting, the primary focus is on the preparation, the focus of the spell itself, and the closure, often done in sacred space or a magick circle (which defines the field for your focus). The HedgeWitch material you will be working with uses both sacred space and the magick circle, and this is explained as you work through Sections 2 and 3 of this book. I mention this here because we tend to forget that those thoughts and conversations we have with ourselves and with others before and after any working also communicate to the universe, which can result in a mixed message as to what we really desire.

My son’s situation with his car in the earlier example shows us that what you think, say, and do affects your life all the time. It shows us that we waste an inordinate amount of energy sending mixed messages to the universe. By complaining and being angry, he was transmitting a load of garbage that finally manifested into a broken car. To really make primal language work for you (remember, primal language is a succinct formulation of words that mirror a thought—that thought being your desire), you have to pay attention to what you are saying and doing outside that sacred space or magick circle.

Therefore, we must stop saying what we don’t want. We must stop complaining. We must stop transmitting garbled information, which means we have to make a concerted effort to change the way we think, the way we speak to ourselves, and the way we converse with others if we truly wish to manifest what we desire on a continual basis. Magick doesn’t just occur in circle. Magick and manifestation occur each day, every day, 24/7.

The old teachers asked us: where is the center of any circle? And our answer was to be: where the Witch is. That is the center of manifestation, inside or outside of the circle: where you are. Manifestation naturally happens all the time. How does it happen? That is entirely up to you. In the magick circle, we know to be observant and how to direct the energy with honor. But what about outside the magick circle? When you are outside of the sacred area, are you directing your thoughts in the same way as you do within sacred space? What is within is without. What is inside is outside. As above, so below.

Why use a magick circle at all? Because it succinctly defines a specific field wherein we can work in harmony with the universe. (Note: As you work through the HedgeWitch material, if you have more questions about how a magick circle works and why we use it, please refer to my book Solitary Witch, which provides a broad compendium of information about basic Witchcraft techniques.)

Those of us who have been working magick for a long time have learned that what we say or do within a magick circle is important, because we have defined a field of manifestation by using the circle as a boundary. When we speak to ourselves or others, this translates into symbols (or an energy stream) that the universe tries to interpret and, in turn, responds in kind to our desires. If our thoughts or conversations are muddy and unclear, how the heck is the universe supposed to know what we are saying?

We tend to believe that outside of the circle, or when we have taken the circle down, the power we wield becomes limited. This is not the case. The universe hears what we say inside or outside that circle. It is how we think that is different. The universe is as it is. It is what we believe that makes the difference to us.

The universe, remember, does not understand disclaimers, codicils, or addendums—the universe only understands nouns and verbs; that’s it. If you say, “I don’t want to be responsible for handling this project at work,” you are most likely going to get the darned project. The uni­verse drops the word don’t in the translation. Why? Because we tend to think in pictures and symbols, even though we don’t realize we do. In this primal language, there isn’t a symbol for the word don’t. If I say, “I don’t want to be responsible for this project at work,” what symbols am I transmitting to the universe? That’s right. I have formulated the project and my work environment in my mind. The want word generates strong emotional content (good or bad), which magnifies the thought and often works as an attraction device, not a repelling device. So, in all your thoughts, you need to train yourself to say what you do want—nothing more. All of us who have worked through this material have agreed that training your mind to not say “I don’t want” was the biggest challenge. Why is the concept of primal language confusing to some? Because we are trying to translate the spoken word (no matter our language—English, Spanish, Chinese, French, German, Russian, Japanese) into the universal one—that of feel­ings and thought symbols and energy streams. And as we all know with translation devices, miscommunication often occurs!

The universe does not speak English or French or Chinese. It speaks “universe.” The uni­verse does not hear your words—the universe vibrates to your thoughts and feelings. That’s how it communicates.

Your thoughts (not words) are vibrational symbols translated into a stream of energy. Your emotions dictate the strength of that transmission (for good or ill). Your belief determines the clarity of your transmission.

By using the primal language I recommend (nouns and verbs), you are training your mind to speak to the universe in a way it understands. When you speak a word out loud, your mind has already formulated a vibrational symbol, or stream of energy. It is that symbol or energy stream, not the word itself, that communicates to the universe. It is your emotion when saying the word, not the word itself, that quantifies the intensity of that communication to the uni­verse. It is your clarity of belief, not the words themselves, that speaks to the universe. Words aren’t for the universe, they are for us. The fewer words spoken, the stronger the message.

Which is why you can be deaf, dumb, and blind and still be able to communicate with the universe. There are no handicaps in the world that prevent you from this communication. You are never alone. And you have always known how to manifest anything you desire, you just didn’t realize it. The reason why we often don’t get what we want is because we don’t really know what we want—we are confused, ourselves, as to what we really desire. By using primal language, factoring down the number of words we use and how we use them, we are helping ourselves determine precisely what it is we truly desire. Once we have honed our words to a precision thought, the world is ours!

Prove It to Yourself

Just because I wrote the above doesn’t mean you have to believe it—right? So I’d like you to do an experiment for yourself. I’d like you to take one thing you complain about all the time, and I’d like you to totally rearrange your thinking on the subject. Remove words like don’t, not, hate, dislike, bugs me, crappy, irritate, etc. Change your thinking to what you do want that involves this subject. Translate this into as few words as possible that still gets your point across. Every day, communicate that positive statement to the universe. And every time you think about the subject or talk about it with others, do it in a positive way—no more complaining. If you open your mouth to complain, snap it shut and say to yourself, “Always a blessing,” and change the subject. Keep doing this until the change occurs, no matter how long it takes. Don’t give up, and don’t give in! You’ll be amazed at the consequences.

Putting It All Together

The HedgeWitch material combines the natural magick you already have within yourself (your ability to communicate your desires to the universe) and the techniques of Witchcraft (a natural platform on which to focus the mind) to create a super life-changing experience. Below, I’ve listed the basics of HedgeWitchery.

The Basics of HedgeWitchery

In this section, you are learning the basic building blocks of the mental aspects of Hedge­Witch magick. Here’s a “remember” list with a few additional tips:

1. Always connect to Spirit first. By Spirit I mean that which you believe runs the universe. Some call it the source, others God or Goddess, or both, or neither, or whatever, or lots of names with particular influences from different pantheons. The details don’t matter —what matters is that you believe in a greater power. As everyone’s needs for and in spiritual connection are different, there isn’t any one right belief. What you believe is right for you as long as it doesn’t purposefully hurt anyone. Power “over” in anything will bring you a whole lot of hurting in the end. Power “within” is the ultimate vehicle of success. (The universe does not take kindly to negative beliefs, thoughts, or actions.) Warning: Be careful that the beliefs of others don’t inhibit you; conversely, don’t shove your beliefs on others (it lessens your own personal power). Believe that you will receive, and it will be so.

2. Start and end everything, and I mean everything, with a smile! Smiling raises your per­sonal vibrational level, moving you toward the essence of the universe, which is pure joy. The magick key of the universe that opens the door to every opportunity is a simple, sincere smile.

3. Learn to speak the true language of the universe! The source of all things has its own language: basically, nouns and verbs that focus on the attraction of any given thing. The All doesn’t acknowledge the rules of grammar as humans have made them. Instead, we must learn to think and speak in a simple, fundamental syntax when focusing on our desires. Stick with nouns and verbs to begin. For example: “I want cookies.” The words “I” and “cookies” are nouns. “Want” is the verb. Then, embellish carefully. “I want chocolate chip cookies.” More? “I want delicious, freshly baked chocolate chip cookies.” Remember, by using primal language, we condense our desire into a translation that the universe will understand.

4. Visualize yourself absolutely delighted with what you want, which should produce a smile, which raises your personal vibrational level, which brings the thing faster. If you need something right away, be happy!

5. You must ensure that your conscious and subconscious beliefs about the issue are in agreement. If they do not agree, then your transmission to the universe will either be changed in a way you didn’t desire or will not manifest at all.

6. Nothing can grow if there isn’t space. You can’t receive if you’ve blocked the door and bolted the gate. For every specific thing that you want, whether it is healing, money, a new job, or a great relationship, let go of anything that inhibits the flow of what you desire. If you start listing a bunch of excuses, you’ve just lost big time. No magick elf presents for you! Allow change.

7. While you are waiting for what you desire, focus your attention on positive aspects in your life. Allow new and different energies to keep you occupied, rather than worrying or fretting about what you don’t have. Instead, learn to honor what you do have (or had), and go from there. When we are legitimately grateful, we bring closure to any situation and allow fresh, new experiences to energize our lives. And always remember to say thank you!

Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction: The Magickal Garden of Your Mind ix

Section 1 – Nature: Your Connection to the Source
The Frequency of All Good Things 5

Section 2 – Thirteen Rites: Guide for Personal Transformation
The HedgeWitch Guide to Personal Empowerment 47

Section 3 – Rite of Passage: The Fourteenth Ceremony
The HedgeWitch Dedication Ritual 117

Section 4 – Love, Health & Beauty: Tips, Formulas & Techniques
HedgeWitchery Within and Without 135

Section 5 – Hearth, Home & Garden: Tips, Formulas & Techniques
HedgeWitchery in Daily Life 179

Summary 265

Recommended Reading 267

Appendices

1: Your Garden Journal 269

2: How to Make Florida Water 281

3: HedgeWitch Haggling 283

4: HedgeWitch Fast Herbal Reference 297

5: HedgeWitch Meditation for Manifestation and Problem Solving 303

Index