A Witch's World of Magick (16 page)

Similarly, if a place rather than a person is to be the focus of a spell, history, location, and physical or geographical features can be used to help establish identity. For example, if I were doing a spell to protect the town I live in, I might refer to, “Denver, Colorado, founded in 1858, Denver in the midwestern US, Denver with mountains to the west and plains to the east.” A photo or postcard depicting the town, as well as a stone or some soil taken from the place might also add strength to the connection and power to the magick.

An object might likewise be identified by its history, location, and physical features. If you were empowering a new wand, for example, you might identify the wand as, “this wand that I hold in my hand, this wand that was born from the oak tree, this wand that was carved with the knife, this wand that is twisted and bent,” or similar.

Some Advantage

Let’s take a look at another hypothetical situation, imagining this time that we have only limited information regarding the focus of our spell. Suppose, for instance, that we want to do some magick to protect homeless dogs in our area. We don’t know what these particular dogs look like, we don’t know their names or origins, and we don’t know their precise location. We only know that we have a whole bunch of dogs in our city that we’d like to protect. In this “limited information” scenario, the witch would play up what they
do
know, and make use of generalities, imagination, guessed idiosyncrasies, and figurative language to fill in the blanks. For example, our unknown homeless dogs might be identified as “the homeless dogs that live outside in Atlanta, the dogs who sleep under trees, who sleep in the alleys in Atlanta, the brown dogs, the white dogs, the black dogs, the multi-colored dogs, the dogs with short hair, the dogs with long hair, the dogs with curly hair and fluffy hair, the puppy of a mother dog, the dog who’s searching for a light in the storm, the dog with a drooping tail, the dog who wanders, lost,” or some such lengthy and detailed outline describing exactly
which
dogs we are aiming to help. Even if our descriptions are very general, there is power in the specifying itself, helping to concentrate and direct our magickal power to exactly where it’s needed most.

Likewise, if your spell is focused on an unknown place, generalities, imagination, and metaphor can pick up where factual information stops. For example, if you wanted to perform a spell to help capture a fugitive on the loose, your magick might center around sealing off, “that ground on which the fugitive now stands, the earth beneath the fugitive’s feet, that place that is a trap for the beast, the town that is a prison for the fugitive, the place whose air the fugitive now breaths, the place whose sights the fugitive now sees, the place whose perimeter is now sealed.”

If the focus of your spell is a physical object that is far away, very large, or otherwise unattainable, try using a smaller “model” of the original as a means of magickal identification. For example, if you’re working a spell to protect a large marble building in another part of the country from where you live, try using a small piece of marble to forge a link of identification with the true, full-scale target of the magick.

In the Dark

Now suppose you know next to nothing about the person or place to be the focus of a spell. In establishing magickal identification in such a case, generalities, imagination, and metaphor will here be invaluable. For example, suppose you’re aiming to attract to yourself your ideal love match. You feel certain you’ve yet to encounter this person, and thus have no idea what they look like, how they act, or where they live, much less their name and who their parents are. In this case, you might make the magickal identification with generalities such as “the one whose spirit matches mine,” or “the one who loves me passionately and unconditionally.”

You can use imagination and figurative language to help prop up and better define these general descriptions. Delve into your innermost fantasies and see what you come up with, see what you sense. Then use this intuitive knowledge to help identify your mystery partner. For example, you might describe your dream lover as “the one whose eyes are like a dark starry night, the one whose skin is like the warm, strong earth, the one who sees me as an equal, the one who
is
my equal, the one who holds me close to the tree, the master who calls me darling,” or any other such name that speaks to your most deeply held desires and most persistent intuitive instincts. Be as specific as possible; the greatest benefit of magickal identification is that it narrows down the options for where a spell might choose to land.

Points to Ponder

• Do you believe that there is power in a name? If so, what is the nature of this power?
  
• How much of a god or a man does a name encompass? What aspects of one’s true identity are reflected in a name? Which aspects are not?
  
• Having a magickal name or a secret name can be a handy tool for self-protection as well as for powerful magick. By having a name no one else knows, the power of that name is reserved for you and your gods alone, and no one can use it against you. What are some additional benefits to having a hidden name?
  
• In addition to the use of names and parental lineage, this chapter also discussed origin as a means of magickal identification. In what ways do our actual or metaphoric roots connect us with who we are in the present moment? Do you think that in knowing the beginning of a thing, that therein lies the power to potentially destroy (or create) it?
  
• Body-derived ingredients such as hair, fingernails, or saliva can be useful in the magickal identification of a particular person, just as soil, stones, and flora can help establish the energetic identity of a specific locale. What other types of substances might be useful in magickal identification?
  
• Can you think of any additional methods of magickal identification not discussed in this chapter?
  

[contents]

79.
Daniel Ogden, “Binding Spells: Curse Tablets and Voodoo Dolls in the Greek and Roman Worlds,” in
Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, Volume 2: Ancient Greece and Rome,
edited by Bengt Ankarloo and Stuart Clark (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 6.

80.
John Arnott MacCulloch,
The Religion of the Ancient Celts
(1911; repr., Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar, LLC, 2006), 196.

81.
Joshua Trachtenberg,
Jewish Magic and Superstition
(New York: Behrman’s Jewish Book House, 1939), 115–116, accessed January 11, 2012. http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/jms/jms11.htm.

82.
Daniel Ogden
, Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Sourcebook
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 212.

83.
Fayza Haikal, “The Mother’s Heart, the Hidden Name, and True Identity: Paternal/Maternal Descent and Gender Dichotomy,” in
Echoes of Eternity: Studies Presented to Gaballa Aly Gaballa,
edited by Ola El-Aguizy and Mohamed Sherif Ali (Wiesbaden, DE: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2010), 197.

84.
Samuel A. B. Mercer, trans.
, The Pyramid Texts
(New York, London, Toronto: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1952), Utterance 293, accessed January 1, 2013, http://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/pyt/pyt14.htm.

85.
“Nmi” and “Nmi.t” are translated as “traveler” and “female traveler,” respectively, according to Wim van den Dungen’s article at sofiatopia.org titled, “The Pyramid Texts of Unas: The Royal Ritual of Rebirth and Illumination,” accessed January 1, 2013, http://maat.sofiatopia.org/wenis_text.htm#XII.

86.
John Abercromby,
Magic Songs of the West Finns, Vol. 2
(London: David Nutt, 1898), 108, accessed January 3, 2013, http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/ms2/ms204.htm.

87.
Marah Ellis Ryan,
Pagan Prayers
(Chicago: A.C. McClurg and Company, 1913), “Prayer of Transformation into a Lotus,” accessed March 23, 2013, http://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/ppr/ppr14.htm.

88.
Samuel A. B. Mercer, trans.,
The Pyramid Texts
(New York, London, Toronto: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1952), Utterance 534, accessed January 1, 2013, http://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/pyt/pyt29.htm.

89.
Ancient Egypt Online, “Nephthys,” accessed March 13, 2013, http://ancientegyptonline.co.uk/nephthys.html.

Seven

Decoy Magick

T
he decoy principle is a magickal theory that can be effectively applied for cursebreaking, curse prevention, spell diversion, and spell recall. It’s the idea that a curse or other spell can be diverted away from its original target by using a decoy to create a distraction and take the heat of the magick. The decoy principle is particularly useful in its scope and versatility, as it can be employed to not only break active curses, but also to prevent them or divert them before the ill intentions have a chance to reach their target. In addition, the decoy principle can also be effectively applied in situations where a love spell or other less malicious but still unwanted magickal intention has been hurled your way. The decoy principle can even be used to affect our own magick, offering us a way to “call back” or otherwise divert spells we’ve cast before having a change of heart that makes the earlier magick undesirable or obsolete. In this chapter, we’ll examine some of the many ways the decoy principle has been applied in different cultures, different times, and different places, then we’ll see how these same ideas can be expanded to suit the modern witch.

Decoy Magick Around the World

One example of the decoy principle in action is probably already familiar to you; in fact, you might have such a decoy buried in your yard right now; its use still common in England, America, and elsewhere. The witch’s bottle is used to render protection through the means of diversion. Although construction methods vary, generally the object consists of a bottle or flask filled with a mixture of blood, urine, saliva, hair, nail clippings, rusty nails, pins, thorns, and other unsavory objects. The bottle is then buried or hidden in or near the home to draw off and absorb any curses or other ill intentions directed toward the house’s occupants.

More than two hundred witch’s bottles dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have been unearthed to date, with a majority of the bottles containing some combination of iron and human-derived materials such as urine, blood, hair, and fingernails. According to an article in
Current Archeology
, one witch’s bottle discovered in a ruined cottage just south of London was analyzed by a Dr. Alan Massey, and it was found to contain traces of urine, hair, and bent pins. The iron often incorporated in the bottles frequently takes the form of nails or pins that have been bent into an L-shape.
⁹⁰

Here, the human-derived ingredients provide the energetic similarity with the intended victim needed to make the bottle into a proper decoy that will attract the curse. The hair, urine, blood, or fingernails provide the energetic signature of the would-be victim, thereby creating a vibrational similarity that “tricks” the curse into entering the bottle rather than affecting the originally intended person. The bent pins or nails, thorns, or other sharp objects are included as a way to further divert, confuse, harm, or damage the curse once the ill-wrought magick reaches its psuedo-target.

The African Wanika, a large tribe centered in the Coastal Province of what is now southern Kenya, also made use of the decoy principle. In
Religion and Myth
, an anthropological study published in 1883, James Macdonald describes how the Wanika might perform an exorcism ritual to expel an evil spirit from a victim. The Wanika believed that illness was caused by malicious spirits, and in order to heal the sickness, the evil entity had to be brought out and away from the patient. To start the rite, drums are played wildly, and other loud, raucous noises are made in order to help distract and excite the demon. A brightly colored stick decorated with beads and other trinkets is placed in the ground to further attract the demon’s attentions away from the victim. The people play like they are having a good time, partying and playing music, in order to trick the evil spirit into believing that they have let their guard down. The spirit eventually becomes enthralled with the colorful stick and is enticed by its dazzling appeal to enter into it. The magician leading the exorcism then pulls the stick out of the ground, thereby trapping the demon within it.
⁹¹