Witchy Wednesday: A Jar Ritual for Recognizing and Sending Love and Blessings into the World

 

A Jar Ritual for Recognizing and Sending Love and Blessings 

Materials 

A red or pink candle 

A jar or other glass container with lid (preferably with a wide mouth to make it easy to place items within)

Small pieces of paper (one per name)

Scraps of ribbon/string/twine (optional)

A pen (pink or red preferably)

Pink Salt (enough to create a thin layer on the bottom of your container)*

Ground Cinnamon and/or Ground Cayenne (enough to create a thin layer on the bottom of your container)

Dried rose petals** 

*Please remember salt can harm growing plants. When disposing of jar contents, if you'd like to make it plant safe, use Epsom salt instead of regular salt.

**If roses aren't your thing or you do not have any, substitute any dried flower that represent love in your mind.

Instructions 

1. Follow your normal procedure for prepping a magical space to perform your ritual.

2. Light your candle(s) and think about the people who bring love and happiness into your life. Why do they come to mind when you meditate on love? How do they enliven your life? What emotions and thoughts come to you as you think of them. Think about the blessings and love you'd like to see returned to them this week. Maybe it's a new job for a friend or a few hours of sleep for a new parent or much needed calm and peace for a loved one having a particular trying time right now. Maybe it's renewed love of life or passion in the bedroom. Love comes in many forms. Don't feel constricted to a single definition. you are wanting to send love and blessings to and why.

3. Write the name of each person you thought about on the pieces of paper you prepared. Roll them into tiny scrolls and tie them with a scrap of ribbon/string/twine. (Optionally you can just roll or fold the pieces of paper as-is. If you want to get really fancy with it, you can fold them into origami hearts. Sometimes the folding is part of the meditative act. Do whatever feels right to you.)

4. Add a layer of salt to the bottom of your contain. Draw a heart shape with the cinnamon and/or
cayenne on top of the layer of salt. If  you aren't feeling artistic or the opening of the jar is too small to draw a design, you can just layer the spices on the top of the salt. Add your pieces of paper interspersing your flower petals in-between and around the paper. 5. Hold the jar in your hand and picture in your mind again the love you'd like to see going to your named loves ones. See the light of your love flowing from you to them. See it surrounding their bodies in a soft, unbroken glow. See the love you send lifting their spirits and raising their joy.                                        6. Keep the jar somewhere safe where you will see it daily and be reminded of the love that you are sending out to each person. Touch it and renew the request in your mind each day.

7. At the end of the week, you can renew the spell for another week by meditating on it again and choosing the blessings you'd like to send, or if you feel it has done its job, you can burn the contents in a fire safe vessel (or compost if using plant safe materials).                              8. If not renewing, cleanse the jar so that it can be used again in future rituals/spells.

Inspired by a ritual found within Em, Mandi. Happy Witch: Activities, Spells, and Rituals to Calm the Chaos and Find Your Joy (pp. 180-182). Adams Media. Kindle Edition.

Daily Meditation - Elevating your Energy

Close your eyes, steady your breathing, and feel the earth beneath you  and around you. Bring to mind one thing in your life that embodies  _______________ (gratitude, love, family, peace, courage, balance, etc.) and focus on it. Feel the energies it brings come into and flow through your body. Where does it settle? Does it have a color? A smell? A general feeling? Continue to breathe slowly and steadily. Let the energy expand to fill your whole body and then spill over into your aura and out creating a bubble of energy around you. Imagine it bringing joy, love, and peace to all it comes in contact with, both to yourself and to others.

1) Gratitude

My gratitude is golden yellow like the light of an early summer sun. Warm and intense light without the burn. It's the color of dandelion flowers and smells of fresh cut grass. 

2) Family

The aura of my Family is green like early Spring grass. It nourishes and feeds me, body and soul. It smells like the leaves of a healthy tomato plant, sounds like the snap of beans, and tastes like a sweet, sun-warmed melon.

3) Love

Love is pink and red and purple. Soft pinks of new love, a little innocent and a little wild. Red hot for love that has come into its own, blazing bright. You can't look away. Deep wine red purple for love that is strong and mature and has withstood storms and battles and come out better for it. It smells like cinnamon and oak and vanilla.

4) Peace

Peace is blue like a pool of cool water that is so deep you can't see the bottom on it. No smell, no sound, nothing to touch but the water. It's full of silence and a sense of calm isolation. It's beautiful and welcoming and a bit frightening too. It's frightening because I don't trust what is just beneath the surface that I can't see.

5) Courage

Courage is gray and shines with flecks of silver. It's the strong steel beam that runs through the middle of the biggest structures. It's the reflection of the light off of shiny plate armor. It's the sharp edge of a blade. It smells like machine oil and the metallic tang of blood.

6) Balance

Balance is a kaleidoscope of browns, the color of every bark of every tree that reaches toward the sky and the color of every type of soil that covers the ground. It is strong and flexible and vital for life. It smells like the forest after a rain, clean and loamy and a tiny bit of decomposing vegetation. Life sprouts from the ground, we grow and live, and then we return to it again to fuel life anew after death. A continuous cycle.

Witchy Wednesday 5/25/2022 - Writing Prompt - What Happens in the Garden of your Dark?

What happens when you get naked and sit in the garden of your dark?

This sentence is so evocative for me that I had to start with it first. My dark is fluid and warm and forms a sphere around me, a womb in the middle of my garden where it's always dusk, purple and pale yellow, fire flies flashing among the night blooming flowers that are just waking up. There are mice in the roses. The darkness flows like water, but it has solid depth and the texture of slow pour molasses. My dark is like the amniotic breathing fluid in The Abyss. I breathe it in, and it fills me. The thick silence is deafening and amplifying. Sometimes it wraps me in its arms, and sometimes it crashes against and around me like a wave. It becomes what it needs so that I can be what I need.

My dark is surrounded by the corn from The Stand, both Mother Abigail's and Nadine's. A wonderful maze of green. Close your eyes and breathe deep. You can smell it. You can almost taste it in the air. Fresh, sweet kernels plump and sticky and full of milky fluid. Velvety fuzz, sleek silk, razor sharp edges. Sex and danger and life.

A riot of vines criss-cross the ground, bisecting the rows, growing up the towering corn, flowering and laden with fruit among the stalks. Dark purple fruit filled with red flesh, dripping juice that looks like blood. Sweet, tangy, salty all at once. Chaos in order. Comforting. Frightening. Exciting. Intoxicating.

We're all in our Dark. Everything happens in the Dark.