Spiritual Cleaning

A comparison of two methods and a bonus ritual!

When we start digging into spiritual and magical practices, a major concern is keeping the heebie jeebies off! Doing tarot readings, casting spells, and performing rituals have been compared to bleeding in shark infested waters. Spiritual parasites, nonphysical beings that feed on human energy and emotion, sense activity and latch right on.

Well, I discovered that even if you aren’t intentionally engaging in magical or spiritual practices you can indeed be plagued by a little life sucker. Not only will it take away from your vitality, parasites can actually trigger their victims into having the emotions they feed upon. We’re going to cover the two popular approaches to ridding yourself and your living space of such nasties. As with all things in magic, they can be compared to their counterparts in the mundane world. First, we’ll talk about the sterilizing approach, banishing rituals. Then we’ll talk about an approach that is more environmentally friendly; ritual baths, scents, and sounds. After our comparison, as an added bonus, I’ll provide a method that my Muse gave me and I used to permanently shrug off one of those nasties that had been embedded into my personality since long before my interest in magic.

When I first delved into the study of magic, I got the Self-Initiation into the Golden Dawn Tradition and began working the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram. It is probably the most popular ritual in the Western Esoteric Tradition. The banishing form, which is more common, is used to create a space for you to be in that is devoid of any spiritual energy, except for your own. It’s like going into a room that smells strongly of bleach. You know no energetic parasites are in there. It is effective.

One night, after we had company over, someone who sees ghosts, my wife and I were sitting on our bed getting ready to read and wind down from the day. We didn’t know it at the time, but our friend had just been visited by the ghost of a middle-aged man, looking for someplace to be while avoiding the afterlife. Having years of similar experiences, our friend sent the ghost packing. It must have followed the trail from their home to ours, and it was looking to settle in.

The foot of our bed began vibrating. Literally physically vibrating, like the washing machine on spin cycle. It has never happened before or since! My wife is far more sensitive than I am and said she felt the presence of a man who wanted to stay. I mustered courage and performed the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram like I had every day for the past couple months. The vibration stopped. My wife felt the ghost flee our home and yard out the back. It did not return.

This method of protection was developed in the Victorian era when germs had just been discovered. Science and industry were just beginning to flourish and humanity’s place in the world was learning to clean and control their environments. To separate themselves from filthy nature.

Well, now we’ve learned that bleach kills almost everything. What’s left thriving can devastate an environment now free of its own natural competition, like a staph infection running rampant in a gym or hospital setting. Sterile isn’t always the best approach. Sometimes necessary, but often overkill.

Now let’s talk about the more natural sort of cleansing. Working to balance an ecosystem so that natural presences serve to deter parasites.

After trying Golden Dawn stuff out on my own for a while, and taking an online course that covered Raja Yoga and Bardon’s Black and White Mirror concept, I found a great resource in Quareia, a self-study program available for free online that brings a total newbie like me all the way through to becoming proficient or fully adept in several magical aspects. If you prefer a beautiful hardback book to work out of, Quareia is also for sale in print.

Quareia teaches from the concept that spirits inhabit living and inanimate things. A practitioner seeks to cultivate relationships with positive entities within their natural and home environment and to build up their own magical immune system. That way between their own defenses and their spirit allies, they can fend off anything untoward without making their space uninviting for beneficial or benign entities.

A mundane example would be limiting the amount of antibacterial cleaning agents one uses in order to protect the beneficial intestinal flora in their digestive tract. Our tummies are an environment for more bacteria helpers than we have cells in our own bodies.

Through Quareia, I’m learning to communicate with the beneficial spirits in my area to warn me of the nasties, instead of purging everything. The lessons are broken into three sections- Apprentice, Initiate, and Adept. Each section has ten modules, and each module has eight Lessons. Module one delivers several skills to cleans, protect, and diagnose your spiritual environment.

In Tarot basics in Lesson 2, you learn how to interpret the energy in each part of your home, neighborhood, and town. In Lesson 5 you begin to establish a relationship with spirits that reside around your residence and can warn of danger, you also learn to apply energetic seals of protection on the doors and windows of your home. In Lesson 6 you learn Quareia’s alternative to the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram, which is like wearing a facemask instead of spraying Lysol. Lesson 7 is all about Magical Protection and covers smells that cleanse, sounds that cleanse, and how to energetically deep clean your home and self over the course of six weeks.

My wife and I both did the ritual cleansing and observed personal and household improvements right away. At first, I thought I was too bro for tubby time, but I was wrong. It’s a worthwhile endeavor!

Choose whichever method you feel drawn to. I’ve obviously got my opinion, but I also know firsthand that both methods can provide acute relief. Now, as promised, here’s something that came to me during the transition between these two paths. It has made such a profound difference in the quality of a few special relationships in my life that it would be a shame not to share with those who can benefit from it.

Update

The Lesson 5 method of sealing your home paid off! The ghost I mentioned scaring off with the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram tried to come back, but this time, thanks to sealing up the windows and doors of my home in Vision (Quareia’s term for the spirit/ astral/ etheric/ imaginal realm) every night, I repelled him. I had no idea at first. Here’s how things played out.

I was asleep in the middle of the night, when I knew that an unwanted intruder was about to come into my house. I jumped out of bed and slapped my hand onto the front door, just like I do every night while sealing it. A moment later I sensed it coming up the sidewalk and porch. Then the intruder attempted to pass through the door. Upon contacting my hand, it was thrown back onto my front lawn. So was I! Only instead of falling on my butt, I jolted upright in bed. It felt like I had been mildly electrocuted.

I wondered if I was dreaming or if I was in Vision. Some folks in the Quareia forum suggested I do tarot reading to see what was going on, so I did.

My first question was, “Was the entity I repelled last night real or a dream?” Here’s the spread:

The layout is Josephine McCarthy’s Directional Layout available in Module 1 Lesson 2 of Quareia and here is my interpretation of the cards (note that I marked keywords right on the cards for ease of use):

1. It is a dead entity. Like physically dead, a ghost.
2. Who arrived mentally or as an intelligence.
3. Frenzy…mania…extravagance… I didn’t know what to make of this card.
4. My perception was stable and reasonable.
5. Wisdom came from ancestors or elders.
6. Alliance, mercy, and goodness were its intentions.

Then I followed up with a Tree of Life reading (from Quareia module 2 lesson 2) and asked, “What was the entity I repelled hoping to do by entering?”

Which I interpreted by the following:

1,2,3. Seeking success and to learn something of (or for) the intelligent woman.

4. Hoping to deliver a message.

5. Woman being removed from a situation.

6. Loss is at the crux of the issue.

7. Then it will retreat (possibly to report what it found).

8. Material trouble needs relieving.

9. Dreams of gaining riches

10. From Jenny.

Sure enough, same as the first time, my wife got a call from her friend the following morning. The ghost had paid her a return visit as well, but this time it was enraged at her. Perhaps it was upset at being kept out of our home.

My theory is that we were on the friend’s mind because a potential business deal between us never worked out and it was near the end of the contract. The ghost came around hoping to spy on us to deliver information to our friend and win her favor, but instead we repelled it again and she still wanted nothing to do with it.

Actually, I kind of feel sorry for the ghost. When I’m far enough into the training to effectively communicate with spirits, I intend to leave my office unsealed, that way they can have a place to hang around, and hopefully I can help them move on.

Nun’s Death of Unwanted Traits

Nun glyph courtesy of T.Bednarz, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

S Shane Thomas

Have you ever felt that a part of your personality contradicted your true self? Do your emotions sometimes run off with you and you later feel disassociated from things you said or did in the heat of the moment. Mystics and magicians speak of nonphysical entities that latch onto people and feed on certain types of emotional energy. Imagine a leach that pushes your emotional buttons in order to feed themselves on your misery! In my case, it was anger. Whatever you may be dealing with, this combination of meditation, ritual, and visualization can help you get rid of your life drain.

Prerequisites:

• Familiarity with the four directions and their elements, especially South/fire.
• Familiarity with the Hebrew Alphabet and the tree of life, this calls on path #13 for Nun, between Tiphareth and Hod. Cosmic Navigator has an excellent website on it.
• Inner Flame meditation as prescribed by Quareia in module 1 Lesson 1 (meditation #3).
• Golden Dawn’s sign of the enterer- from a standing posture with your arms at  your sides, pull your hands up to your shoulders with fingers extended and palms down, then thrust both hands forward while staring beyond your fingertips. At the same time step your left foot forward half a pace.
• Golden Dawn’s sign of silence- Starting from the sign of the enterer, return your left foot to a standing posture, with your left hand close a fist, except for your pointing index finger, leave that extended. Pull your left hand to your lips in a “hush” gesture.

Light a small candle, one that burns in about an hour.

Meditate by looking at the Hebrew letter Nun until the glyph seems to come alive. I prefer to pair the focus with pranayama. Contemplate Nun’s representation of death and rebirth. Next, visualize the parasitic thought embedded in your ego/ personality. Think of a time it has taken over control of you, swept away who you think you are and dominated your actions. Spend the remainder of your meditation staring at Nun while visualizing your soul shedding the parasite like a serpent sheds old skin into a bundle.

When Nun has come alive and you feel like the parasite has completely been removed, force the bundled parasite into a candle. Exhale while performing the sign of the enterer and visualize pushing the bundled parasite into the candle. Then do the sign of silence and visualize locking the parasite into the candle.

Return to your meditative pose for fifteen minutes. Ask the power of the South/fire to purify you with the white fire of compassion and focus on the purified inner flame. You may feel a presence wash through you like an icy wind. Spend the time alternating between watching the physical candle’s flame and closing your eyes while visualizing the pure white flame, charged with Kether’s energy and filled with the compassion of Tiphareth, burning within you. Its flame purifies your ego and personality. Any lingering remnants of the parasite are burned both within and without.

At the end, thank the power of fire from the South for assisting in the purification. Don’t snuff the candle, keep an eye on it as you resume your mundane life until it has been completely burned away.

Update – Jan 19 2022

I’ve been working through Aidan Wachter’s exercises in Weaving Fate and my feverstone literally crumbled apart after two weeks. I’ve been meditating on it and was inspired with the thought that Nun’s Death and the Feverstone must be addressing the same or a similar problem.

I’m really stoked to push on with the remainder of the Feverstone practice. Washing the stone is only the beginning of where Wachter and his inner allies take you in this exercise.