Ritual Life - Episode 3 of The Simply Witchery Podcast

Hello witches, diviners and cosmic beings I’m your host Laurel and welcome to the Simply Witchery Podcast. Where we discuss witchery ritual the divine and magic of all sorts.  

This week I’m talking all about rituals. I’ll go into more detail about my daily rituals, talk about ritual and mental illness, and give tips on how you can make the most mundane moments magical. Then we’ll step into Tarot Time where I do a reading for the collective and answer a listener question. This week I’m also adding in a new segment called, Magic and Me, where I talk about the magic I’ve been getting up to since the last episode. Stay Tuned!

Before we get stated this weeks episode has a trigger warning for mentions of self harm and suicidal thoughts. I mention them but do not go into any detail. Time stamps for the mentions will be in the show notes so that you can skip them if you’d like to.

Welcome, welcome beautiful souls to this weeks episode of The Simply Witchery Podcast. During the planning phase of Simply Witchery I reached out to my Instagram Fam to see if anyone had anything they’d be interested in me discussing on the podcast and a lovely follower suggested I talk about my daily rituals and after our last episode in which I talked about how I worship deity through ritual I figured this would be a good time to go over what a typical day, week, and month looks like magically for me. I do want to give you a little bit of a disclaimer, I’m going to talk about what a day where I accomplish 100% of what I want to do and I want you to know that not every day looks like this. I’ve been slowly working my way up to this point and I’d say about 50% of my days are like this. Some days I hit 75% of everything I want to do some days I’m at 50% and there are still days where I hit a big fat zero. No one is perfect all the time, least of all me, so don’t let this make you feel like you have to do more in your own practice than you’re capable of. Doing your best is doing enough and if you’re like me anxiety, depression, and impostor syndrome will do what ever it can to make you believe that you’re not doing your best but you probably are and I want you to know that.

For me ritual and mental illness are intertwined. I use ritual to help me manage my mental illnesses and I want to talk a little bit about how that started and how its evolved over time. When I first started my witch-y practice I was as low in just about every area of life but especially in my mental health. I hated myself, I was trapped in a pit of despair and pain, I was wanted to die but I didn’t want to hurt the people I loved so I was willing to suffer for the rest of my life, and worst of all I didn't have any hope that anything would ever change. I really thought that I would suffer for the rest of my natural life. It was awful and I suffered through that for years.

Nothing really happened to make me change things but slowly I started paying attention to my feelings and what triggered my anxiety and depression and once I understood myself I could keep myself out of situations that triggered me and start dealing with the trigger points themselves. Ritual was a big part of managing triggers and unwinding the causes of them. Having a sacred task and being able to trust in my own strength to accomplish them allowed me to take away the power of them. Without the ritual healing would have taken me much longer.

So  let’s get into my Daily Rituals that keep me balanced and on the path of healing. On week days I wake up and post my daily oracle reading for on instagram and let the twitter-verse know its up. I’ll then spend some time in my social media feeds sharing things I like and catching up on anything I might have missed. Once that’s done I get out of bed grab a tarot deck and prep the other two instagram posts for the day. Then I’ll prep the daily reading for the next morning. Any exercises I do to strengthen my intuition like doing readings for myself or the collective is an offering to Persephone. Once pictures are take and captions are written I’ll stretch a little as an offering to Frig. Then I grab my journal box and start to journal.

My stream of consciousness journal is always first. In this journal I write what ever comes to mind without judgment just to get thoughts and emotions out of my head so that I can better process them. Then depending on the day and what I have time for I will journal in any number of the following journals, manifestation, tarot readings, tarot spread development, positivity and gratitude, dream, prayer, business, deity, or shadow work journals. As you can tell by the sheer volume of journals I keep I am a big believer in writing things down. I find this helps a lot with managing my anxiety, working out any situations I’m struggling with, understanding my self and what I want, it is also a part of how I manifest the things I want it life and communicate with my deities and for a hundred other reasons.

After journaling is complete I take my shower for the day which is always a cleansing ritual for me. Its an opportunity to process the things that come up during my journaling and to clean away any negativity and release anything that I need to let go of. After my shower it’s time for my beauty routine in which all the products I use are magically boosted somehow. I most often use sigils for glamour and protection. Most of this is an offering to Hephaestus who I dedicate basically all of my self care to. Some of the glamour magic is an offering for Aphrodite, anything that boost my power and confidence is for Her.  

Once I’m done in the bath room its time for my daily offerings. I talked about what and why I offer to my deities daily so if you’re interested go listen to the last episode. I’ll also be posting a video of me doing the offerings on instagram if you’re interested. Once the offerings are set I’ll do my reading/studying for the day writing any notes I feel called to along the way. This is my main daily offering to Ares and/or Odin. Studying with the intention of learning about something new is for Odin and studying with the intention of learning something for myself is for Ares. Lastly, I choose any deity rings I might to wear that day, and then spend some time enjoying music, outside of the music I offer to Apollo as a way to reset and relax before I go to work.

After work I will spend some time meditating and then go on a walk to the wetlands near my house to connect with my spirit guide and then with nature and to disconnect from technology for a while as I have a bad habit of never putting my phone down. If study time didn’t happen in the morning I will often do it after my walk or work on an art project, my grimoire, and more recently this podcast. Art projects are another offering for Hephaestus and who I offer grimoire work to depends on what I’m working on.

My night time ritual relies solely on the magic that is always cooking in my bathroom as by the time I get to it I’m exhausted. Thank the gods for magic-ed beauty products and crystal rollers.

There isn’t too much difference between week days and the weekend. I don’t have to prep posts on the weekend and I try to disconnect from social media a bit more. If I’m going to do a blot or feast or any spell work aside from daily stuff weekends are probably when they happen.

On a weekly basis Thursday nights are my ritual self care night. I am obsessed with a D and D web series called Critical Role. It airs on Thursdays and its just four glorious hours of incredibly talented voice actors playing d&d. I’ll have a special snack, most often ice cream, and just shut my brain off until I wake up on Friday. If I’m feeling extra worn out I’ll watch and eat in the bath because bath rituals are amazing. Its simple but it is so, so important for me too keep it locked in my schedule. I’d lose my mind without it. I also water my window garden once a week as part of my offerings, check the moon water stock to see if I need to make some, and do mundane and spiritual cleansing when its needed.

I struggle hard to do anything on a monthly basis both full moons and new moons kick my ass. New moons make me sleep way more than usual. Full moons are also exhausting but only mentally. While my mind and spirit are begging for sleep my body often feels like a love wire and I can’t sleep no matter how desperately I want to and that makes doing ritual or magic on new or full moons basically impossible and I’ve given up trying. Simple self care is all I have the energy for. So for me the waxing and waning moons are something I’m starting to really connect with. Moon magic and holidays are new to my practice. I started celebrating them seriously just this year. Its been lovely so far to free myself from expectations when it comes to moon magic and picking up more traditional magic in the way I honor the wheel of the year though I’m still very simplistic in my celebrations. I wouldn’t be simply witchery if I wasn’t.

Now that I’ve gone through all my rituals let’s talk a bit about making magic in our every moment. Cleaning my bathroom is as much ritual and an offering as a feast for the Hellenic Deities is. I truly believe that everything you do can have magic in it if you feel so inclined to put intent behind it. As a witch your every breath is magic and you can make everything you do magic if you create the habits, frame work, and rituals behind it, cleaning becomes cleansing, watching a documentary on Netflix becomes an offering, and cooking with intent makes your food magical.

A great way to make moments magical is to put up the bones of ritual when you have an abundance of energy so that when you don’t have a lot of energy you’ll have to give less. For example, I don’t often have a lot of energy at the end of the day and I often struggle with basic self care. I combat this by adding sigils and charms to my face wash, moisturizers, crystal roller, toothbrush, toothpaste, and just about anything else you can think of in a bathroom. Recently I added a sigil under my sink that is specifically there to combat extreme lethargy and to prioritize necessary self care. I also like to tie magic into the elements and give them a trigger point so that all I have to do when I want to activate a spell is reach for it and flip a metaphysical switch. Its things like this that can keep magic in your every moment even when you’re low energy.

Magic can be all around you. It takes work and trial and error but once you find the sweet spot its there to stay. You might drift away but you will always have the space to come back to it because even when you have one of those 0% days or weeks or months or years, the magic is always within you and it can never truly be gone.

Magic and Me

In this segment I want to talk about elemental balance. As I’ve said before elements are really important to me and thought my study of Qabalah it was called to my attention that while I am very connected to fire and water, I’m not very connected to earth and air. Which is ingesting as my natal chart is earth dominate. Because of this realization I’ve been spending a lot time in meditation, especially on the sphira of Malkuth and its temple. In my meetings with the angel Sandalphon I was given the idea to do a spell to create  elemental balance. While I was writing up the spell and gathering materials, I decided that I wanted the spell to allow me to able to use the components as talismans in meditation. This lead me to doing four small jar spells one for each element.

For this spell you need: four small vials, jars or containers, dirt, eggshell powder, moon water, a small birthday candle, and a tealight candle.

To preform the spell I first lit the tea light to get the wax melted for later and then filled each vial with a representation of an element, one with water, one with dirt and eggshell powder, one with the small birthday candle, and one with my breath. I sealed each vial with wax from the tealight. I then tethered each vial to its element through visualization and meditation.

These talismans have been really useful in balancing out the elements within myself. During meditation they really help me connect to the element I want to focus on. I’ve been caring the earth and air vials with me when I feel that I might need their energy during the day as well and have found myself feeling more grounded and able to get in touch with logic much easier than I have before.

When I’m not meditating or caring the vials with me the vials make great alter pieces as representations of the elements and I’m also excited to use them in spell work as I think they’ll be great in the regard as well.

Here’s a great way to modify this spell into something a little less obviously magical for you secret witches out there. Straws make great water proof envelopes. You can melt one end with a liter to seal it, fill it with whatever you want to, and then seal the other end. Be careful and practice fire safety here and don’t burn yourself or anything else. The straws are probably a lot easier to keep hidden if you need to.  

Let me know if you try out the spell or make some of your own modifications to it. I’d love to see what you do!

Tarot Time

Welcome to the Tarot corner everyone. We’ll start with the reading for the collective and then we’ll do the listener question. This week I was called to pull six cards from the Cosmos Tarot. The Hermit, Queen of Fire,Three of Water, Justice, Eight of Air, and Ten of Fire.

The Hermit of this deck depicts a white dog that is nearly as tall as the tree behind it. The dog has a ring looped through one ear, its eyes are closed and a scar slides over it. Green circlets loop around its neck and tail. On its back is a green saddle with a woman sitting in it. The woman holds a small white bird in her hand.

The Queen of Fire depicts a woman and her child in the deep black rolling waves of the ocean. Their faces are above the waves and they are both oddly peaceful in what seems to be such a dire situation. Two creatures swim in the water around the pair, one holds onto her hair and the other looks into her face.

The Three of Water depicts a unicorn in 80s power suit. It has long flowing blond hair and wears teal earrings, headband, and eye makeup. Its suit is pink and in the background another perspective on the unicorns face can be seen.

Justice is a person in white robes holding an urn. Water bursts from the urn surrounding them. Behind the robed figure is a large purple bird with wings spread partially sheltering its companion. There are clouds and the colors of the setting sun behind the pair.

The Eight of Air is a picture of a hot pink fox that is surrounded by shrubbery. In it jaws is a distressed pastel pink bird. The fox steps on an arrow breaking it in two.

Finally the Ten of Fire shows us a woman in a white dress embroidered with golden geometric designs. One hand is extended toward an open arch way out of witch fly black birds that she has released from a golden cage.

The cards come in threes this week. The Hermit, Queen of Fire, and the Three of Water come to speak to the internal journey each member of the collective faces this week. We must examine our worth as a people and appreciate our individuality that keeps the whole thriving. Difference of opinion and experience should be celebrated and embraced and be a point of pride for us. Validating someone else does not invalidate you or your beliefs. There is success and space enough for the individual within the collective and it is our differences that make us strong.

The next trio is Justice, Eight of Air, and the Ten of Fire. They speak to the externalization of the internal adjustments that the first trio advises. Show others, specifically those that you disagree with, that you will stand up for their right to believe what they believe as long as it doesn’t harm another and that you will take specific action to protect that right.

I feel called to stress that differences of opinion are not the same as fundamental beliefs. The cards are not asking you to accept or embrace those who’s beliefs harm another life as racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia do. The cards are charging us to embrace each other and support each other so that the collective can rises as one against oppressors and bigots. The energy reminds me of the Martin Luther King Jr. Quote about the white moderates.

He wrote - I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.

The cards are telling us that we must not be moderate. We must love one another and take action to protect one another and that action must be within our minds and be shown in our actions.

I hope these words inspire you to action and help to guide you to your highest good where peace and blessings flow.

Now it time for this week’s listener reading. Their question is “How am I preforming in the eyes of my deity” I felt called to pull three cards from the Wild Wood Tarot. I pulled The Pole Star, The Archer, and the Six of Vessels.

The Pole Star depicts a human figure walking down a path and into a  dense forest. There is a glow of bright yellow light around them. Above the trees in the sky glows a large star in the night sky. Smaller stars orbit around it and they show the figure the way.

The Archer is a forest dwelling hunter with her bow knocked and ready to shoot. She wears green and brown amour and an animal tooth on a chain around her neck. Two white shaggy dogs attend her in the back ground waiting to go and retrieve her kill.

The Six of Vessels shows a hill where trees grow call into the sky. Water pours down a small fall about half way down the hill into the pool. Two otters drink at the banks of the water. Six lily flowers float in the pool in the foreground of the image.

These cards have a united message for you. They want you to know that your deity is please with the progress you’re making. You are beginning to achieve the balance that they want you to hsbr and are excited to move forward as you continue to grow and walk down the path you’re on. Be sure to continue to cultivate balance and keep hope in your heart and the things you seek will come to you.

That’s what the cards have for you today. I hope this reading helps you. Thank you for sending in your question. It was my pleasure to read for you. Love and luck to you.

Here we are at the end of this weeks episode. Thank you so much for listening. Please subscribe where ever you get your podcasts and rantings and review would be greatly appreciated. If you would like a transcript of the episode please visit our blog at simplywitchery.wixsight.com/home. You can find daily oracle readings, magical tips, and spiritual musings at Simply Witchery on Instagram and Twitter. Feel free to come on over and ask me any questions you may have about the episode as well. If you’d like to receive a reading for yourself on a future episode send your question to simplywitchery@gmail.com. The music in this episode is THINGAMAJIG by AUDIONAUTIX. Love and light to each and everyone of you and I’ll see you next time. Bye.