I had the honor of being a guest on Taylor Ellwood’s excellent Magical Experiments podcast, talking about Defense Against the Dark Arts and bringing pop culture aspects to one’s protective spells.
Tag: psychic self defense
Why Spiritual Cleansing is a good idea for everyone
Spiritual Cleansing is something the a lot of people don’t realize they even need. We wash ourselves in the shower, we clean our homes (some of us less than others *cough*) and we clean our clothes, but almost no one thinks to clean our energetic bodies of the psychic nastiness we’ve accumulated over a lifetime of being human. Well, I should clarify; no Muggles think like that. Even I admit to slacking off on the spiritual cleansing as daily practice. For me, it has become an as-needed procedure for when I’m dealing with heavy situations, or emotions. I’ve performed house cleansing/blessings for friends who are moving, or expecting a new baby, and I get cleansed in the process. I also have a looooong drive home through protected forest areas and being out in nature, crossing dozens of underground streams and waterways, or having the ability to crank up the volume on my favorite heavy metal music does a decent job of clearing away most of the gunk by the time I get to my driveway.
When I bought my house last summer, I made a point to set up wards and protective measures on the land itself. I have a collection of protective stones buried in all four corners, scented oils anointing the doors and windows, I burn enough incense to set off the smoke alarms, and I personally think that my husband’s vaping habit acts like incense smoke and chokes out anything malevolent.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to own their home in this day and age. When I lived in apartments, I was able to ward my little space fairly well with stones, herbs, salt and smoke. But sometimes the building was so infested that nothing short of a full-on exorcism could have gotten rid of things for good. Decades of life and death, violence and arguments, drug use and abuse of all kinds had tainted the whole apartment complex down to the foundation. I was once chased up the laundry room stairs by a horde of goblins at 2:30am. My clothes stayed in the dryer until morning and I was not the least bit annoyed when someone left them on top of the machine so they could use it. Even my personal guardian spirits were like “Dude, what the hell was that?”
In my little unit, I was able to keep things down to a manageable level of weirdness. There were moving shadows in the corners, but they mostly stayed there. Residual ghosts that stalked the hallways would not cross over my doorway threshold because of the salt and herb mixtures I regularly sprinkled on the floor.
But there was one thing, one simple thing that I’m embarrassed to say took me a long time to figure out; When I cleaned the apartment with intention and purpose, things died down and stayed quiet until the clutter started to build back up. When the clutter started to pile up, and the trash can was ready to fall over, and the cat was afraid to perch on the edge of her litter box ( I lived in squalor for a while, depression did not help to motivate me) that’s when the negative entities in my building would act out and I’d start having bad dreams, or a feeling of oppression, or shadows would start moving at night and the cat would stare at corners with her tail fluffed up. Then I would perform a massive cleaning burst and throw out weeks worth of junk mail, soak the litter box in vinegar and baking soda, sprinkle fragrant herbs on the carpets and vacuum them up an hour later. And the air would almost sparkle! I could feel my helper spirits nodding in approval and probably wishing that I’d keep things clean from then on. And paranormal activity would die down for a bit. But once I let things go to pot, the negative critters came right back.
Just like we need to be diligent in cleaning our homes to keep germs, dust, and allergens at bay, so too must we be diligent in Cleansing our Spirits to help keep negative energies away.
Negative energies and people are like the ultimate nasty dust devils ; they’re attracted to people with an aura that is heavy with negativity and psychic gunk. So keep your home clean or at least as tidy as you can manage (let’s be realistic here.) If you have a physical disability that inhibits your activity, know that even the smallest clean area you can maintain will go a long way toward keeping a spiritually clean house. If you have an altar or special sacred area, keep it clean and your spirit allies will be happier to help.
The Seven Levels of Evil, as described by Torkom Saraydarian
In his book, Battling Dark Forces: A Guide to Psychic Self-Defense mystical author Torkom Saraydarian (1917–1997) goes in-depth about the nature of Evil in this world and what must be done to combat it. Some of his writings are a little out-there, and while I do not personally agree with some of his more militant stances on some political issues (he despised hippies because they smoked pot, and had some very old-fashioned ideas about sex), the information he provides is utterly invaluable and can be applied to just about any belief system. I am still currently working through this book, which is one of his longer volumes, and the amount of information is so dense that I need to take a few days to grok everything to fullness.
Evil comes in many forms, at many different levels. There is no stopping it, as with the duality of our universe we cannot have Good without Evil, for how else would we know the difference of one without the other? Within that duality lies a sliding scale of Little Evils to Crimes Against Nature. As human beings, imperfect creatures that we are, we are subject to the little evils and dark forces that have plagued the Earth since time began, but we have the power to negate or deflect these evil forces from causing massive damage. We also have the power to aid these Dark Forces in their plan to un-do the world. The first step is in recognizing the different levels of Evil and rectifying them, either through word or deed.
Seven Levels Of Evil
1) Evil Thoughts – Angry thoughts, evil ideas, “energy smog”. Relatively harmless, but can accumulate if not regularly cleansed. These are our judgments, our angry thoughts of annoyance and criticism that all of us have every day. There are so many of them around that they become like an energy smog; polluting the ether and slowly poisoning humanity. These “Thought Satellites” hover around the earth and invade the thoughts of people who carry a similar energetic vibration. If you’ve ever had a sudden negative thought pop in out of the blue, that’s what happened. (Or so Torkom says. His views on mental health and illness are very much based on old information and could be considered ‘problematic’ by modern standards.)
2) Evil Intentions – Emotionally Charged thoughts specifically meant to harm others. Homing Arrows of evil thoughts and energy. Intentions are more powerful than thoughts. Thoughts are just formless vapor, whereas an intention has body and direction to it. If one thinks ill about an enemy, really ruminating on thoughts of harm to that person, the evil intentions act like a lightning rod and the Dark Forces who are looking for a good time can more easily find the target of those Evil Intentions. (Those of us who are a bit more grey-area when it comes to cursing may not see this as a bad thing.)
3) Negative Emotions – Negative feelings that we perpetuate or destroy of our own accord. He says very little on the negative emotions, save that we as humans perpetuate these three types of Evil on our own. Evil thoughts, emotions, and intentions will continue to exist as long as we feed them our energy. (Once again, his ideas on mental health and wellness are not clear, or accountable to modern standards.)
4) Subliminal Suggestions of Self-Interest – One could argue that the toxic mentality of our current society is a prime example of Subconscious Manipulation. Anything that goes against one’s free-will, that undermines our nature, or that seeks to destroy our healthy self-images without us being consciously aware of it, that is a subliminal suggestion. Advertising agents use it all the time; We are constantly bombarded with messages of how we’re imperfect, how we’re bad, or wrong, and can only be made ‘right’ again by purchasing a product or service or intoxicant to make us ‘better’ or not feel anymore at all. Gaslighting and other forms of manipulative emotional abuse are examples of human-created subliminal suggestions of evil.
The first four levels of Evil are predominantly of Human-origin. We create our own evil, and in these areas, we can fix our own evils before they get too large and take on a life-force of their own. And then there are the other forms of Evil, which are outside of the Human realm, but will make use of our own fallible nature to enhance their own agenda.
5) Evil Entities – Former Humans of a highly negative nature, who became parasitic energy vampires after death. Someone who was an angry, abusive jackass in life will often continue to be an angry, abusing jackass after death, only now they’re not confined to a physical body or human laws. Angry ghosts, violent spirit attacks, possession of a person, sudden changes in personality; those are all the hallmarks of an Evil Entity attachment. They want to perpetuate the same misery they did in life, since that’s the only thing that made them ‘feel alive’ in the first place. Paranormal investigators run into these entities a lot, especially when they go to places where there was a lot of violence, death, or strong negative emotions; Prisons, old asylums, homes where severe abuse or a murder took place are where we can usually find these entities.
6) Dark Forces – Non-Human Entities of high rank. Devils and demons. These are creatures older than humanity. They are the monsters and demons of mythology and Biblical texts. They are sentient, they are not human, and they want nothing more than the destruction of the Divine Plan.
7) Those Who Sold Their Souls to Darkness – Humans who willingly, and knowingly, sign away their souls to Dark Forces. Faustian deals with the devil. People who are obsessed with, and later possessed by Dark Forces and demonic entities. They have made some kind of pact with a Dark Force and sold their soul in order to gain something; Money, power, sexual conquest, revenge against their enemies, all sorts of things. Sometimes a person can be damaged, either by accident or trauma, and the Soul will run away in fear. That leaves the body open for a Dark Force to take over, to become that person, and then whatever or whoever they were before will be gone forever. (I have personally witnessed this happen… I do not recommend.)
When described like this, it seems impossible to think that there’s any way we can overcome the Evils of the world. And that’s just what the evil and dark forces want us to think. They want us to despair and fall into a hopeless stupor, because then they win and can do as they please with no resistance.
What can be done to combat these Dark Forces?
Thankfully, there’s a LOT we can do to counteract these negative influences on our lives. Being aware of them is the first step. We can then identify when an evil or dark force is effecting our behavior and make the conscious choice to NOT do what they’re telling us. We can also set up wards and protections against these forces, especially the latter three which are outside of our personal control. There are innumerable books about the subject, including this one (which i haven’t gotten to yet in my reading), but sometimes you don’t want to go digging through a book to find what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for a primer of defense techniques and methods, I invite you to join my Psychic Self-Defense (Against the Dark Arts) class beginning June 18th. There you will learn the basic, but highly effective combat methods of regular spiritual cleansing, protective wards and charms, how to get rid of or live-with ghosts, and magical & mundane methods of dealing with troublesome humans.
Dark Forces will always exist. Evil will always be here, hiding in dark corners and in the mind & hearts of sentient humans. But we have a choice in whether we will become Agents of Darkness, or Warriors of Light. Some of us may even walk a crooked path in-between the two forces, but we must not allow Evil to triumph over Good.
Psychic Self-Defense (Against the Dark Arts)
I’m PVWitch, aka Tallah . I’m a witch, I live in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts, and I’ve been studying the occult since I was seventeen.
I discovered that I had a knack for protective and cleansing spells when I was forced to use them extensively to heal my own life after it went Krakatoa. As I worked on healing myself and getting my energy levels back to something recognizable as human, I experienced an influx of folks coming into the HERBARIUM (my family’s place of business) looking for help in the same area.
People who felt under the influence of a curse or hex, people who had recently left abusive relationships, or were currently trapped in them and couldn’t get out, but needed protection. I had taught Spiritual Cleansing before, but these folks needed more help than just a cleansing; they needed a complete overhaul.
Inspired by pop culture and personal experiences, I decided to offer Psychic Self-Defense (Against the Dark Arts) as a way to share the knowledge and foresight I wish I had set up years ago. Had I known the red flags to watch out for, it might have saved me some pain and suffering. It is my hope that someone else may be spared that same fate, and if so then I’ve done my job.
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