Tree of Life Candle Spell

At Beltane, we celebrate the fertile earth – flowers are blooming and trees are green again (in most places). Trees are sacred in the myths of many different cultures – the idea of a world tree or tree of life is a popular symbol. In Norse mythology, the cosmos is viewed as a giant tree connecting the nine worlds that encompass all of existence. Druids are believed to have worshipped in oak groves.

The tree of life motif integrates the underworld, humanity, and the sky – a flow of energy through all levels. The motif of a cosmic tree is found throughout the world, from Europe to Africa, Australia, and China. In The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin uses the analogy of a “tree of life” to describe the process of evolution and the succession of species. The tree seems to be part of our human-nature connection in a variety of ways.

If you observe a tree and consider it carefully, they truly are amazing palnts. Think of how long-lived some of them are – and there is such variety! And the fact they grow so big from something so small is remarkable, really. Use this spell to invoke the strength and power of trees – their longevity and stability.

Use a fairly large candle – a pillar or three-wick works best. Draw the tree of life on the candle with a branch, twig or wooden skewer. Don’t worry about how it looks; it only atters what the symbol means to you. Just draw a simple tree breanching upward, then draw roots reaching down. Curve the roots up and the breanches down so they connect, making a circle around the trunk. This represents the connection of all life, nourishment, and sustainability. After you finish drwing, say, “As above, so below” and anoint the candle if so desired.

Surround the candle with leaves and branches from trees – ones that have fallen on the ground are fine. You can also include nuts, pinecones, and more. If you wish, you can put the candle in a flower pot or toher container filled with dirt, potting soil, or mulch, and arrange the leaves and branches around the container.

Root and trunk, branch and leaves, 
flower and fruit - sway with the breeze ...
grant to me ... 
the strength and wisdom of the tree, 
grounded yet still reaching high, 
a link between the earth an sky.   

This spell can be performed day or night, on Beltane or any season – ideally during the waxing or full moon.

Allow the candle to burn out. You can snuff it out and relight it if you wish. When you feel hte spell is complete, or the candle is spent, discard it and return the plant materials to nature – but keep one reminder on your alater of the greatness of the tree. This could be a breanch, leaf, piece of bark, or a seed or nut.

A Spring Spell for Growth and Increase

  • Scented green candle
  • Scented yellow candle
  • Matches or lighter
  • 4 paperwhite bulbs
  • Small pot filled with potting soil
  • 1 tablespoon yellow flower petals (dandelions are perfect)

Set these items on your altar so that you can reach them while facing eastward.

This spell can be cast at any time between dawn and midday in early spring. You will primarily be calling upon power from the Sun, but do the spell on the day of a full or waxing Moon.

Light the green candle and say,

I call upon hte powers of Mother Nature to help increase (love, money, success, whatever) in my (or someone else's) life.  

Light the yellow candle and say,

I call upon the powers of the Sun to aid in this increase.

Take the bulbs between your cupped hands and picture each one of them representing one step in the increase you seek. Picture this in as great a detail as possible. When you are ready, say,

I plant my desire fore increase deep in the nourishing earth, and as the days lengthen and the green parts unfurl and rise up out of the soil, so shall my desire grow and seek the light.

Plant the bulbs in the pot, flat side down. Sprinle the yellow petals over the soil and place hte pot in a sunny windowsill. As the flowers grow and bloom, so will that which you desire.

Transformative Bubbles

By themselves, bubbles are great for lifting spirits. It’s nearly impossible to feel negative around them. But of course, we’re Witches, so we’re going to make bubbles that magically transform our energy to match our desires.

Buy a transluscnet bottle of bubbles in a color that corresponds to the energy you wish to cultivate. For example, a blue bottle could bring serenity, and a purple bottle would be perferct for spirituality. A bottle in a sunny color can bring cheer, and a red bottle would call forth love. It doesn’t hurt to spend a few extra dollars on this purchase – it could mean the difference between bubbles that last a couple senconds and ones that last for much longer.

Remove the label and cleanse the outside of the bottle with soap and water. Allow it to air dry. Next, place the bottle in moonlight or sunlight, whichever corresponds best with your intention. Full moonlight will call forth a gentle, emotional energy, and sunlight will instill the bubbles with more powerful, logical energy. As the bottle bathes in the light, as for a blessing from the Sun or the Moon for your purposes: for examples, “I call upon the energy fo the moon to bless these bubbles with emotional wisdom and magic.”

When you’re ready to enchnat your bubbles, drop a crystal that’s not water-soluble intot he charged liquid. Some of the best crystals for this are clear quartz, rose quartz, citrine, and amethyst. Say what you wish it to do: for example, “With this piece of amethyst, I call upon the energy of serenity.”

Place your hands around the bottle and repeat your intention one more time: “I call upon the energy of serenity to bless these bubbles.” Create teh energy of serenity in your mind and body, and then send the serenity through your hands and into the bottle. When the energy transfer feels complete, cap the bubbles ad write the purpose on the bottle with a permanent marker. Keep it on your air shrine to charge them up for later use.

The next time you’re feeling the opposite emotion of the magical transformative bubbles, take your bubbles outside and open them up. Dip the wand in the solution, hold it before you, draw a deep breath, and say something like, “I release the emotion of anger and encase it in serenity” or “I release any blocks I have to feeling serenity.”

Blow into the wand. You’ll have to blow out at just the right speed – too fast and the bubbles will pop. Too slow and nothing will come out. Find the just-right breath to create bubbles.

When you blow the bubbles, see them as the energy that you wished to release trapped in a shell of your desired energy. In our examples, that would be anger encase in serenity. Watch the bubbles float away from you, and feel the emotion leave from you. Repeat as many times as you need to release the emotion.

A Modern Hearth Blessing

  • Candle
  • Your favorite incense
  • Offering
  • Small bowl

This blessing is just a starting point and can be used as is or modified to suit the kind of hearth you will be working with.

Place your items on your hearth and light the candle. Light the incense, waft the smoke over the area, and visualize any unwanted energy dispersing. Take a moment to open your awareness and see your entire house from a bird’s-eye view. In your mind, track its borders and see all the oroms in the home. Every home has a kind of spirit of its own, a spirit of that place. Try to connect with this spirit of place, sending out your intentions to protect the borders of this place and those who live within. You could also choose wo see wealth and love flowin ginto the space.

I light my hearth's flame.  
I stand at the sacred center of my home and heart.  
May this flame be a flame of protection, 
A flame of love and warmth, 
A flame of (whatever you wish to draw into your space).  
I leave this offering to (hearth deity, home spirits, etc.), who watch over this space.  
Bring your blessing and gentle protection.  

Leave your offering in the bowl. Let the candle burn for a little while before extinguishing it. Make sure to visit your hearth regularly, renewing your intentions and making offerings.

How to Summon a Grief Eater by Sasha Graham

One of the most useful techniques I’ve ever come across was inspired by my travel and research in the Tibetan Himalayas. …

A grief eater will aid you when you are moving through sadness, picking up fractured pieces, and tending to your soul. A grief eater soothes emotional and mental issues as well as challenging daily situations. Call upon a grief eater to make life bearable through the grieving process. Access it when your heart has been shattered. Use it to vanquish a repetitive or painful thought cycle.

The Magician’s Secret

Working with a grief eater is a three-step process. First, integrate the Magician’s secret of reality. Second, select and invoke the grief eater you want to work with. Third, ask for permission and begin working with the grief eater.

The Magician’s secret of reality resides inside the tarot deck. Observe the Magician card in any historical tarot from the Italian Visconti deck to the French Marseilles to Pamela Colman Smith’s Magician card. Each Magician is depicted the same way. He stands behind a table with teh four suit symbols of tarot upon it: wand, cup, sword, and pentacle. It is a reminder that the tools you need are always in front of you. The secret of reality also hides among his tools.

Wands align with elemental fire. We feel tarot’s wands in our body when we experience passion, desire, and energy. We observe energy in others and feel it when our cheeks flush red with excitement. But we can’t hold passion in our hands. It is intangible. Cups align with elemental water,a nd we experience tarot’s cups via emotions, imagination, and love. We make things using our creativity, yet fantasies aren’t something we can place in a box. We know empathy when we feel it. But love and dreams are not something we can touch with our fingers. Swords align with elemental air. Tarot’s swords move through our body as thoughts, ideas and the sotries we tell ourselves and others. We can write or articulate a thought when we speak. But a thought isn’t somehting we can actually touch or taste. Ideas and calculations are intangible. Pentacles align with elemental earth. We can feel tarot’s pentacles with our blood, bones, and body. Elemental earth is everything we can see, feel, touch, taste, and smell. Have you figured out the Magician’s secret? It contains teh secret of who you are.

We are not our passions. We feel excitement, identify with the exhilaration, but it isn’t us. We are not our emotions. We experience waves of feeling driving us to act. But it isn’t us. We are not our feelings. Wild ideas and narratives fill our ever-calculating minds. But we are not our thoughts. A thought is simply something we have. Earth is the only element we can see, touch, taste, hear, and smell.

The magician’s secret: three-quarters of the world is invisible. The universe doesn’t exist “out there.” It exists inside us!

Who are we? We are the intelligence gazing through our eyes. We are the active observer. We are hte Magician. This secret gives us the space t choose how we respond to any emotion, idea or impulse. We can choose to respond to anything with our deepest authenticity. The Magician does not cast magic on the outside world. He casts the magic on himself.

It is easy to be a magical witcy creature when life is humming along beautifully. But what about when brush up against the hard stuff? What can we do when life gets in the way? The grief eater is a relationship you can cultivate to help you through life’s toughest times. A grief eater is energy you will befriend and whom you will feed your negative thought patterns and dark emotions to.

Choosing Your Grief Eater

Choose your grief eater through a familiar and comfortable association. It can bea god energy, archetypal energy, or plant energy. The god or goddess should align within your spiritual system. Hecate, Brigid, and Kali make excellent choices. The Death card from tarot makes a perfect grief eater because death will devour your grief adn reprocess it into something new. Trust your instincts for this work. You can choose an herb or tree (but not an animal). Motherwort herb is highly recommended due to its soothing qualities, but you can select any herb or tree energy you like and have access to.

Sit before your chosen image or in fornt of the herb or tree you ahve chosen to work with at twilight. As the setting Sun casts long shadows and the sky turns pink and purple, light a candle and gaze at your chosen goddess, tarot card, or plant. Focus intently. Observe everything. What does it look like? What does it smell like? What are the colors? How does it make you feel?

Close your eyes and continue to explore the goddess, archetype, or plant. Move close to the energy and officially welcome it into your life. Explain your situation to the energy and ask for permission to transfer your negative, repetitive, dark, or heartbreaking thought patterns to it. Allow the energy to speak for itself. If the energy gives you permission to work with it, you may ask if there are any additional messages it would like to share with you.

Keep the grief eater’s image close by in the coming days. Every time you feel yourself overcome with challenging emotions or destructive, sad, or heartbreaking thoughts, bring the image of your grief eater to mind. Take a deep breath, close your eyes. In your mind’s eye, allow the grief eater to absorb the negative or repetitive thoughts and emotions. This will give you space to heal and the ability to change the thought pattern, and it creates room to grow.

Thank your grief eater by making charitable donations in its name or by planting herbs, trees, or flowers. Working with energies and spirits is a two-way relationship. It mirrors the “regular” relationships in our life. Always treat a sacred pact with good manners and respect to keep your bond health and strong.

Winter Dream Bath

  • 1 handful dried hibiscus flowers
  • 1 handful dried rose petals
  • 1 teaspoon dried mugwort
  • 7 dried bay leaves

Toss the mixture into your steaming bathwater, and add 1 teaspoon orange flower water. Light candles all around the bath and turn off the electric lights. Submerge yourself in the scented water. Watch the flickering candle flames and breathe deeply of the scented steam. Picture your exhaled breath mingling with the steam and the warm air above the candles. After a while, close your eyes and relax completely. Stay as long as you like.

When you are ready, emergy from the water, wrapping yourself in clean white terrycloth towels or a bathrobe. Blow out the candles with your magical breath and go to bed. Sweet dreams!

To Restore Justice

Justice work differs from restoration but sometimes needs restoration spells beforehand to succeed. This spell restores the social structure that allows justice. It takes 3 to 7 days of spell sessions at a minimum because it requires contact with an assisting spirit.

Only perform this working outside with adequate tools for putting out fires.

  • Spirit (saint, deity, angel, daemon, etc.) associated with engineering or hard work, such as Hephaestus, St. Patrick, St. Joseph, Hestia, Aediculus, or Vishwakarma
  • Charcoal grill, safe for burning outdoors
  • Offering for the spirit
  • Pen
  • Paper
  • Bay leaves
  • Resin incense, something gun-based like frankincense
  • Liquid offering of thanks

First, establish a relationship with the spirit whose help you desire. Don’t switch being immediately if you don’t feel like you got a response. Sometimes you have to let the entity turn you away a few times to prove that you’re serious.

Open interaction by establishing a small altar, preferably outside near your grill. Give an offering appropriate to your chosen spirit. During this time, present a written petition asking for help in creating conditions that allow a path for the return of justice. Take the time to read it out loud, if possible. Much of this particular spell relies on the ancient Egyptian belief that smoke raised prayers and messages to teh deiteis. Burn incense. Talk. Some may succum to the temptation to burn a history book as a means of offering context.

Sit in front of the altar once a day. During these sessions, speak out loud, explaining what happened to undermine justice. Provide an offering to ehs pirit, speak its name and a prayer, and then assemble the petition, the bay leaves (for justice), and the resin incense (to repair gaps) on the gril and burn to ash. Allow to burn out, and then pour a liquid offering of thanks to your deity or spirit.

Allow 24 hours to elapse, and then commense with any justice work.

To Restore Peace to a Neighborhood

If your neighborhood has had frequent disturbances, this spell restores equanimity in the community. Gather the materials for the candle spell to restore peace to a home.

  • Restoration Oil
  • Blue 7-day candle
  • Bowl
  • Water
  • Orange peel
  • Stick of cinnamon
  • Vanilla bean

Grab a marker. On the candle, write the name of the major intersections in your neighborhood. Add a little dirt from those cross streets, leaving a penny at each crossroads as payment for the energies. When the candle burns down completely, throw out the candle glass and reserve the water. Sprinkle the water in front of trouble spots and at the crossroads named on the candle.

Charging a Stone for Protection

Now that you have a consecrated tool, you can use it to help focus and direct your energy when charging objects. Select an object you wish to carry for protection. Some stones that work well for this are black tourmaline, black obsidian, tiger’s eye and clear quartz.

Cleanse the stone by letting it soak in the bowl of blesse water for a few minutes. You can also expose to moonlight or sunlight* for an hour to cleanse it prior to your ritual. Focus your energy with the same visualization as you used to consecrate your tool. Hold your wand or athame and draw energy up from the earth, through the tool, and into the stone. Notice how the tool really helps channel your power! While visualizing and projecting your energy, you may wish to say Words of Power or vocalize an affirmation such as:

"Three time three I charge thee, 
to protect from harm to sento me."  

* Caution

The color of some stones such as amehtyst, rose quartz, ruby, and aventurine may fade in sunlight. These are best cleansed in running water, moonlight, or censing. Minerals like calcite and selenite may be damaged by water and are best cleansed by censing and moonlight.

Clear quartz gets a powerful charge from sunlight, but use caution when sunning spheres, eggs, and other quartz with curved shapes as these are especially good at magnifying sunlight and starting fires.

To Restore Peace to a Home

Sometimes after you cleanse the home and establish wards, it still feels frayed. Whiel some peace only happens after repairing relationships, restting hte ambient vibe to mellow can help.

  • Restoration Oil
  • Blue 7-day candle
  • Bowl
  • Water
  • Orange peel
  • Stick of cinnamon
  • Vanilla bean

Rub a small amount of restoration oil on the wick of the candle and place it in the bowl. Fill the bowl with 1 of water for fire safety. Add the orange peel, cinnamon, and vanilla to the water. Light the candle, adn if appropriate to your spirituality, request Psyche, arcangel Gabriel, or an ancestor you have a relationshipo with to expand peace through the house. Imagine that energy evaporating from the bowl of water. Burn the candle for 1 hour a day until the wax is completely gone.