Cover by Authors' Life Saver
Before we get started on today’s post, I want to crow a little about my soon to be blockbuster non-fiction release, Shayne on You. It goes on sale later this week, and there will be links to buy on my Website, Facebook Page, Twitter, and on my Solo Blog.
For several years I wrote an advice column for the Norwich Evening Sun, and this book is a compilation of the best of those, along with some original essays, blog posts and other pieces, giving advice and insights on every problem I was asked about (and some that I wasn’t.) It’s very positive energy, Law of Attraction based, just like most of my posts here, so if you like the things I talk about here and think you’d like more, this book is for you. I’ve enjoyed it so much it’s going to lead to more non-fiction, I’m sure.
And now, on to today’s topic, which is sort of an advice column in itself. I want to talk about manners, and how we seem to have forgotten what they are, or how to use them when it comes to the Internet.
The event that got me onto this topic was that a dear friend of mine and a talented, professional, multipublished author, re-released one of her out of print titles, formerly pubbed by a major house, to rave reviews and lovely acclaim. The praise for the book was universal. Until one person posted a scathing review, giving the book 1 star, and insulting it and its author. The reviewer got most of the facts about the book wrong, proving she hadn’t read it (and given her spelling and grammar, I wondered if she was capable of reading it.) When I checked, this reviewer had no other reviews posted anywhere ever. Which led me to believe she had a personal grudge with the author (which would be like having a grudge with Mary Poppins, or Maria Von Trapp, or any other character Julie Andrews ever played, but that’s beside the point.)
The point is, why do people do this? Even if they really don’t like a book, why do they think it’s okay to publicly berate, insult, and spit upon someone else’s creation like that? What is up with these anonymous reviewers on Amazon? Okay, art is subjective. What one person loves, another person doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean they have to hate it. Why not just accept it’s not their cup of tea, write a thoughtful review explaining why, and move on? Why the vitriol? The anger? The viciousness?
Don’t they know that when you spill that sort of venom everywhere you go, you’re getting it all over yourself, and attracting more of it your way?
So I was thinking about that, and thinking too about all the other rude, obnoxious things I see online that always surprise me. Girlfriends spitting venom at each other on Facebook, relatives airing their family squabbles, women sniping at other women, teens griping about their moms, and just all around nastiness.
People, you may feel as if you are sitting home alone, just you and your device of choice. But your words are shooting out into the world as loudly as if you were speaking into a microphone on CNN, or standing in the middle of a crowded shopping mall shouting them at the top of your lungs. So really, just knock it off already.
There. Now that I’ve got that off my chest, I promised some other friends who’ve been feeling slightly attacked lately that I’d post this wonderful ritual created by famous mega-Witch and author Miss Dorothy Morrison. It is a spell, really, for taking negative energy and transmuting it into any goal your little heart desires. With apologies to Miss D if I get anything slightly different from her original version, as it’s been a while since I’ve read it. You know how as you use recipes over the years, you tend to tweak them as you go? Well, I’ve probably tweaked this a bit, but it’s one of my favorite spells ever, and it works.
Transmuting Negative Energy Spell
You’ll need: a cookie sheet, tin foil, some salt, pen and paper, a lighter, and three altar candles (they’re tiny and used to come 4 or 5 for a buck in various colors. Use any candle you like, even birthday candles can work. Color them with magic markers or even crayons.) The candles, ideally, should be black, white, and some in-between color you consider neutral, such as gray.
Line the cookie sheet with tin foil.
Heat the bottom of the first candle until it’s a little melty, and stand it on one end of the cookie sheet.
Repeat with the gray candle, standing it in the center.
Repeat with the white candle, standing it on the opposite end.
Using the salt, draw a line from the black candle to the gray, and then from the gray to the white, making a circle of salt around the white.
Write your magickal goal (a wish, if you will) on the piece of paper, fold it, and set it within the circle of salt with the white candle.
Now, get yourself into a nice, quiet, calm state, and as you light that black candle, think about all the negativity others have been sending your way. Any hate, anger, resentment, insults, bad reviews, etc. Put all of it right into that candle. Let it burn as you just send it all to the candle. See that candle capturing every bit of it.
Follow the trail of salt with your gaze, to the gray candle, and now light that. Think about how energy isn’t ever good or bad, it’s just energy. Like electricity, it doesn’t have malicious thoughts or evil intent. It’s just power. It’s what people do with it that make it good or bad. See the energy moving from the black candle, through the trail of salt, becoming purified by the salt, until it is just energy, neutral, pliable, filling that gray candle. All the bad stuff got left behind in the salt. Now you’ve just got pure raw power.
Good. Once you’re comfortable with that thought, shift your attention to the next trail of salt, and follow it with your eyes and attention to the white candle, moving that now neutral energy right along with your focus. It’s shooting forward, no longer hampered by anything dark, it’s yours to use as you wish, and you are controlling and directing that energy now, toward something you really want. The something that you wrote on the piece of paper. Light the white candle and watch it burn as you meditate on the wish, the goal, the thing you want. See all the energy following the trail of salt into that circle, activated by the candle, empowered by your focus, and really begin to feel the feelings of having the thing you desire, as if you already do. Feel it, practice it in your mind. (Give the acceptance speech, cry real tears. That sort of thing.)
When you feel as if you are finished, you are finished. You can let the candles burn until they burn themselves out, or if you need to extinguish them, put out black first, then gray, and let the white one burn a bit longer.
The final thing you should do is burn your slip of paper, lighting it from the flame of the white candle, and then letting it burn itself out within the circle of salt.
When you’ve finished, peel the tin foil off the pan, wrapping up everything inside it, salt, candle stubs, ashes and all. Bury it to ground the energy, and wash your hands when you’ve finished. And then forget it. As we say in The Craft, “It is done.”
What better revenge can you have, ever, than using some hater’s anger and nastiness toward you, to get something wonderful for yourself? How fun is it that the more they hate you, the more energy they’ve given you to work with? Isn’t it just the most deliciously delightful spell ever?
And isn’t it also a fantastic way to stop feeling bad about some nasty thing someone said or did to you? It’s always best if you can ignore it, not feel hurt by it to begin with. But we’re human, and sometimes these things (especially nasty reviews by anonymous haters) just keep eating away at us no matter how aligned we think we are. This little ritual gives us a way to burn that bad feeling up, and shift our focus onto something good instead. And since you always get what you are most focused on, it’s a very useful little trick indeed, to help you pivot from feeling bad, to feeling great again.
Enjoy!
Maggie
