Here is my more personal altar to Brighid and for Imbolc! I also have my Ogham staves for divination and communication and a cute ‘witch ball’ ornament that @barberwitch sent me for the holidays. It really represents what I want from this new year and new spring. Plus the fire bush berries are great to represent new plant life and the fire of Brighid!
Also featured is my shrine to my ancestors, spirits, and deities. The fair folk are represented as well. You can also see my new magical herb and oil shelf, a straw angel, and a devotional art for Brighid.
Have a bright and blessed Imbolc, may the coming spring warm your heart and spark inspiration in your soul!
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I created this to get rid of a person who was making me feel
very uncomfortable and would not take my hints to leave me alone. This is a
banishing spell to target a specific person who you want out of your life. It
also has some protective elements to keep you safe from them.
Ingredients
-Salt (protection)
-Ground black pepper (banishing)
-Black peppercorns (banishing)
-One dried hot pepper (banishing, adds “heat” to your intent”)
-Bay leaves (protection)
-Basil (protection)
-Black thread and wax for sealing
Preparation
Grind all of your ingredients except for the whole
peppercorns. It may be easier to crush the bay leaves and dried pepper with
your hands first. While you are grinding, keep your intent on the person you
wish to banish, and recite (either vocally or mentally):
“I am done with you
Leave me be
Rid your presence
I am free”
Fill the bottle with the mixture, and add the pepper corns on
top. Cork your bottle, tie the black string around the neck, and seal with wax.
As you do this, continue the recitation, but alternate the verse with:
“get away, get away,
get away”
You can store the bottle at home for general use, or carry
it with you. I kept mine in a backpack pocket to protect me in case I run into
the person on campus.
My living situation is very small, so my altar lives (happily) in the middle of my bookshelf.
The internet is filled with images of huge, beautiful altars, but an altar doesn’t have to be particularly fancy or big to be special. The magic of an altar comes from the resonance you feel with the items on it, so size and aesthetics don’t necessarily matter;
My friend has an altar on her windowsill, my other friend has a slightly bigger altar, also on top of her bookshelf.
Wherever there’s an empty space, there’s an opportunity!
Some small altar ideas:
🔮Shelf Altar: clear off a shelf. Depending on the size of the shelf, you may be able to display a wide range of altar items in varying sizes.
🔮Bedside Altar: devote a portion of your bedside table to use as a small altar, this works especially well with small items.
🔮Make a pocket or box shrine that you can keep by your side, or in your bedroom.
🔮Window Shrine: This one may only be useful for very small altars, but if your windowsill is wider/ deeper you can still get some good use out of it. Line your windowsill with special objects. If you have room, you can even try hanging a rosary or pendulum.
**Always be careful with fire, ESPECIALLY in small spaces. Don’t leave candles burning in cramped spaces, and be careful with incense as well!**
*I refrain from using items associated with closed cultures, with the exception of the palo santo which was given to me as a freebie in a trade. *
‘Within the witch’s craft many apparently mundane objects are considered to have both magical and mystical virtue, one example being the humble nail. Although some, on basis of morphology, ascribe to nails a phallic virtue, they also have a fixative power, i.e. the ability to bind one thing to another, for good or bane. Nails also partake in no small measure of the powers ascribed to their material, which is normally iron, that heavenly metal linked in the occult mind with blood and the virtues of redness.
When a thing is brought into contact with another it makes an alligation. The basis of alligation is that all things created, whether by the hands of man or nature, are bestowed by the Soul of the World with virtue, which is harnessed by bringing the virtuous object into contact with people/places/objects. Included in this is the binding of two things together in alligation by a nail, so that one might influence the other.
The thing or power being fixed by the nail to person, place or object can be manifold; even celestial powers corresponding to the time at which the nail was struck into its medium can be bound into workings. Herein we understand the basis of hammering various amulets into the lintel above the threshold, such as the apotropaic images of the sun, open hand or ubiquitous horseshoe.
Contrary to popular belief, nails are as protective as the horseshoes they affix. Indeed, Pliny the Elder advised hammering three iron nails, not horseshoes, into the threshold’s lintel to protect the home, likewise Paul Huson in Mastering Witchcraft advocated driving three iron coffin nails into the door, one above and two below in triangular formation. Similarly, protective enclosures are fashioned by striking nails into their four corners and wandering spirits are stopped by hammering nails into their coffins, whilst Romans averted plague and misfortune by driving nails into house walls. Thus is it axiomatic that the number of nails found within a horseshoe affects its potency, the more nails the greater the luck, although some hold true to the custom of fixing the shoe with three nails by means of three blows, alluding to the kinship betwixt nails and the number three.
Horseshoe nails have long been held to possess an array of powers, e.g. the crooked horseshoe nails hung as amulets about the necks of Irish children, and the horseshoe nails driven into the hearth by Teutonic peoples to draw back stolen property. Traditional witch Robert Cochrane recounted that “a horseshoe nail dipped in spring water was considered a prime remedy to use against the ‘little people’ when they grew bothersome”, which relies also on the well-known enmity betwixt the Fair Folk & iron.’ …
‘The most familiar witch tradition concerning nails is their use to pierce the witch’s manikin with benevolent or malevolent intent, yet there is equal tradition in using blackthorn spines, which like nails have an innate warding virtue. Thorns are often used alongside or in place of nails in the magical arts, e.g. in the famed witch-bottle or being tied into the end of the curse cord in place of a rusty nail. We might thus consider them as ‘wooden nails’ fashioned by the green hand of the Faerie Smith, to which Schulke alludes in Viridarium Umbris when he says, “the Thorn is both punitive & binding, the Holy Nail of the Greenwood executing the grim sentence of Crucifixion at once harnessing the forces of binding & torment”; it is in the crucifixion that we discover the nail’s apotheosis.’
Make yourself comfortable and close your eyes, focus on your breathing, deep breathes in…deep breathes out…
As
your world around you dissipates you find yourself at the bottom of a
mountain, the grass is green and lush beneath your feet and the air is
clear and crisp.
