I found these pictures of Angels in an old book with poetry for children (a Christian one from the early 90s).
Just thought they are so cute!
I have no idea who the artist is, they did not list them anywhere in the book ...:(
For example, I found an Orthodox prayer for 'Peace at home', which is to bring peace to a physical location. Judging from the effectiveness of the other ones from the same book where I found it, I would be very inclined to use it soon in the future. But it requests a Guardian angel for the physical house - that sounds a lot weird to me? Because are they supposed to be someone under Archangel Barachiel?... It feels like bad manners to be that deep in angelolatry and randomly request an unknown angel....
There is a ritual for invisibility in Jason Miller's book Protection and reversal magick, which calls on Hekate and Helios. And he stated in that book that all the rituals can be used with different deities if you want.
Which ones would you suggest for someone using only the Christian pantheon? I am at my wits end because I need to stay away from someone at work and don't want to harm them or bind them either.
I do work within the solar aspect so I know plenty of entities will fit 'being a solar divinity', but it's not that easy. I'm thinking of calling on Mary instead of Hekate? Is that controversial...
I don't...work with Hekate and I respect her too much to call her just for this out of nowhere.
Also how to calibrate what solar divinity to call in? I get the feeling they must be kind of balanced with the feminine aspect and that won't be the case for some of them...
It’s always this question, right? ‘How do we make it work’. I myself always imagined getting what I want with magic similar to ordering food, or shopping, where I just stay the same (person who thought of wanting or reaching for this), and just ‘get stuff’. Maybe transactionally. Maybe where I would feel (very subjectively, again from an unchanged pov, feel) the hefty transactional effect, so then I could fret about it and complain how hard it was.
That was not it.
Because when everything changes, everything did change. And now the world is different. You know those old sci-fi movies, that talk about switching timelines, and the butterfly effect…or that shifting trend from a few years ago ? Yeah, it’s like that…except not in third person. When you materialise what you asked for, what you really need, it’s not magical or whimsical anymore. It’s just…material. It actually becomes a part of the mundane. If you go as far as to perform a spell or a ritual that asks to change key points in your physical reality, if this succeeds then, this will be a different reality. It will still be real though. Not in your head. And the other thing which you gave up, will be unavailable now.
…something very important was recently ‘fixed’ in my life, unexpectedly, that I honestly expected was never gonna be fixed at this point, or that it’s gonna take very taxing methods and even more resources and time. It….didn’t. Because of its significance, I was inclined to believe that once it’s done, everything will be perfect somehow, empowering or more calm or whatever else the dreamy part of my brain was imagining to have been ‘so much better before this issue’.
But days go by, and I am still the same person. I still get angry. I still feel ungrateful. I still have my other issues in this aspect and in every other aspect of my life. The built up resentment over these years still has to be addressed, because it didn’t magically go away.
The more unpleasant part is that I was told multiple times that it is going to be like this. Each one of the angels I have told about this, asked me in my face ‘ok, what are you going to do with it, when you have it?’ ‘So you can guarantee you will use it for good?’ ‘Have you thought about how you are going to react when you have it?’ ‘What can I expect from you in that case?’ ‘What is going to be different, what can you do with it for your development, that you can’t do without it?’
And I had to admit to myself that I couldn’t guarantee that. They couldn’t..’count on me’. Whatever happens, happens, just like that time before when I got myself into this trouble. It felt so wrong to even promise to try to be good. It’s life, and it’s rough, and it’s haste, and it would probably take me less than two hours to forget to be grateful and revert to my fafo attitude.
It’s like being a child, begging for a puppy for Christmas. Great, you got the puppy! ….now you have to take care of it everyday. Oh, and also behave for the indefinitely many years ahead. And you can’t ask for a cat or a fish or a bike next year either.
I don’t even know which one of the things I did, ‘worked’. Probably one of the mundane things I did. Or ten of them. Or hundreds of them. But……but what they said to me, sticks.
It’s not a transaction, not something I can pay for with my good behavior or offerings…..it’s largely a responsibility, to take care of myself every day of my life from now on.
And when I go about life, interacting with others, that has to come from my decisions too. For a long time, I’ve been acting better in some situations because of the possibility of ‘being watched’ by the angels I work with….but that was a temporary solution to just get me to consider a different point of view. It still has to come from me, to have any real power.
It’s just life is heavier than some of us are socially conditioned to imagine it.
…and discomfort is also not some type of punishment…I’ve been thinking in black and white all these years. The problem was a mobility type of issue that’s bound to resurface - a sports trauma, stacked onto pneumonia complications. And when it does…I won’t be ready. I already knew there’s little I can do strategically, but it turns out that there’s nothing I can do in terms of character or willpower as well.
There’s more to …’me’ than ‘me’ is ready to accept. That was the issue, and that was the secret. And now I know. Somehow this makes it bitter.
It wasn’t straightforward….and it won’t be straightforward in the future. There’s going to be many things one just has to …’accept’. And that’s a new concept to me.
(It ends up changing the character of the person)
Аlso something else I wanted to mention here, because it’s kinda relevant and too short for a separate post - I feel, for the first time in my life, not ashamed that I cannot deepclean a whole apartment in one go. That is, I assume a result of talking to Archangel Michael for some time - when building a strategy, the strategy is supposed to be flexible as you go. All my life I have been mocked for not being able to plan perfectly (in general) , or for not being able to clean a whole house in one go. The combination of this resulted in shame and just trying less often than I would like to. No matter which way I try, I always fail to make it perfect, because the ‘spoons’ are just not there (the red cells’ size in this case), and they’re never gonna be.
I was already good at making complex, beautiful strategies, that’s how I was able to live a relatively normal life for 3 decades (because if I came in optimistic, didn’t cut corners aggressively, didn’t hide my weaknesses, and didn’t lower my standards, I would have had a serious issue. Poverty and chronic health issues don’t go hand in hand very well…)
But what I was not good at, is making flexible strategies.
See, when one has to choose to clean one room this weekend, and one room the next, and so on, (well first it’s demoralising but leave that aside), which one do you pick? How does one know the correct order, without feeling guilty for their choice?...
The secret is, you pick the first one to provide more health benefits (whatever needed at the moment), then you pick the second one, and then the process itself will lead to the correct order as you go. The strategy is a good strategy when it’s applicable to the problem at hand, that means it has to evolve during the ‘fight’.
Or in the words of Archangel Raphael, ‘Pay attention!!’ …Raphael, to what? To you, to me….? …to everything.
I have prayed to Archangel Raphael for health, of course, who hasn’t. But I have trouble ‘hearing’ him. Unlike the other angels, he is very perceptably ‘there’, but I cannot make out anything of what he’s saying.
In the beginning, I was asking him for quite big things, but as it turns out, health is complicated. And he never seemed to do what I forgot or didn’t have the courage to mention, he never went above the exact extent of my request. Which, if I would have paid attention, would have gone a lot smoother, as I asked for things that were simultaneously big, partial, and in the wrong direction long-term.
….I asked things that had to do with physical things, but ultimately, in broader terms, I asked for things that had to do with me. With how I navigate life being in this body…
…Guess I would have to mention Archangel Uriel here, for helping to deal with shame.
Too many times I found in my practice that it’s very hard to see the forest from the trees. And that doesn’t mean I’ll change my practice...but I won’t hinder it from changing.
There’s probably things out there I haven’t even imagined that this is how they click. I wish the moral of the story was straightforward at least, but that’s not the case either.
No, I am grateful…it’s just that I realised now how much gratitude is a living breathing thing, same as ‘faith’....you can’t exactly lean on it, because it would lean on you in return.
Angels and deities…would it have been different if it were something else instead?...
‘This works!’ But if I still feel like the girl who trusted a deaf GP to hear my lungs 5 years ago? That’s on me. To work on my conscious thoughts. To work on my subconscious thoughts/ core beliefs/ family systems…whatever you name it. To read huge occult libraries and normal books about the natural world, and other literature to find the tiniest niche correspondence needed. To take care of my physical health (a whole lifestyle in itself…like a full-time job on top of your full-time job!) To practice the rituals and understand my own energy and cope with the info about it I hoped I never have to face. That I hope I was going to remain clueless forever. Now I can’t be…’but I’m just a girl’. I’m wearing this girl as a costume…but I’m just a cosmic energy who routinely gets denied some things by angels, on the basis of being able to get it herself. That’s…so cool, only if you were, like 8 or 9 years old.
Life, life is so very complicated.
I've worked with Angels and did some other stuff until now.
I have seen my fair share of weird and supernatural in my practice, so I am not really surprised or scared by anything these days.
I have prayed to her before, just not...never that seriously. I've always been afraid of her.
However, as you can see, I was raised in a denomination where having feelings and visualisation is kind of frowned upon.
And I have never been taught enough factual information, to feel what I feel from her just from a 'purely psychological', or 'archetype' perspective.
There is more to it, and I was writing a really long post, but decided against it because it went into the controversial territory of biochemistry. And that's not really the point.
The point is, since day one, since I've been working with the Angels, every single time when there is a result, it is always something inevitably so tangible, niche, specific, intricate, and so undeniably....real, that it breaks me a little bit. Same with prayers to God.....but now her. At least I was somehow indoctrinated by my time on the internet in the last decade into thinking she's an 'archetype', but I can't think that way anymore now.
And I can't get over the fact that she does't reject me, after I ignored her all my life...that she doesn't want anything in return....
I know that doing magick itself undermines my question here, but I was really trying to stick to some parts of the doctrine, like dismissing any signs/encounters, and switching off visualisation during prayer. But even if I do that, there is no way to switch off my emotions, at least not a sincere way.
I'm still struggling with ...all of it being real, you know, not my personal choice for an imaginary set of beliefs, but something deep down which can be life changing.
And somehow until now I've been able to brush it off, but I can't now....not with her. I can't be dismissive to her.
I'm not complaining. It has been good. But it somehow feels like I cannot get past the stage of being surprised in order to actually start feeling grateful. It feels so wrong when I thank...any of them. Like it's a 'thanks' for some casual thing, when it wasn't.
Is this like a 'me-issue'? My upbringing, or the fact that I spent the first decade of my adulthood trying to be agnostic (and failing at that).
Is it better to just accept things as they are now for the moment?
I have been torn between trying to verbalize mundane explanations for everything, just in case, and my practice working.
I realise that...this is a 'me' issue, my insecurities, but...sometimes the thing you so badly want to be there, just isn't. Many times, this is the supernatural thing. It just...isn't there for you. It just doesn't arrive when you call it. That's ok. And sometimes, it is the mundane thing.
Spirituality cannot and should not substitute things like medicine and psychology, because they perform a different function. At the same time, the opposite is also true. Medicine and psychology cannot fit inside the human at the same spot as spirituality, because they perform a different function.
If I were to tear my practice out of myself/my life, nothing else would ever be able to fill this hole.
Because nothing else has the same shape or function.
I have a long list of changes in my life that would have never taken place or even remotely begun, has it not been for the Angels.
I started...very unprepared. I'm still unprepared.
But among my character flaws and the searching for info and the being unskilled in the techniques, the bigger issue I am having, is that doing these things, one has to take themselves seriously. You can't do the work without doing the work. There is no workaround for this.
Maybe for the rituals, and for the paradigms somehow there is, but not for the central intent. There is no substitute for the practitioner.
So..I am having to actually go all in and to stop viewing it as something metaphorical or 'quirky'.
That is....hard.
I had the fear this will happen.
Ever since I was a little child, I noticed that I am forced to play a zero-sum game - my happiness always meant that somebody else gets screwed over. People kept demanding outright impossible things of me, etc.
I am ...very happy with my spititual practice. I have ideas about the direction I'm going to take it in the future, as well as what I want.
But it's become obvious I will unwillingly be screwing over people by this.
I am pondering how to save them from themselves, and I can't. It's like in childhood all over again.
The last woman that tried to hurt me energetically and mundane, something really bad happened to her. I had only said a short prayer. Not even a psalm. I was considering the psalm.
The other day I did a spell for reclaiming my energy from some memories, places and people, and I knew this will draw it back, and it did. Now some people feel really tired and out of place, and I can understand it, I'm an energy vampire myself so I know how it's like to not notice you've been feeding. I tend to keep my energy flowing all around in a frantic manner so it's really easy to mistake for ambience.
I have been told a lot that I was a people pleaser, that I have no boundaries...the truth is I am very good at taking care of myself, but everytime I do, someone else suffers. Relatives throwing a fit when they cannot have things their way, then spikes their blood pressure. My ex, he was abusive - my safety meant that he'd be putting himself in danger instead. Employers losing literal real life money all because I refuse to use shady practices. Friends being unhappy when I don't agree with an obviously bad plan.
Then there is the religion also.
In the last year, some spiritual practices have hepled me with health issues to an extent I never expected. And I'm still very bitter and unable to forgive supposed professionals, who only gaslit me when I was at my worst. But somehow I'm supposed to lie and say they were the ones who helped me fix things, and humiliate myself further? Not cool.
I work at a very chaotic place with bad practices, and literally 4 Archangels have said to get out of there. This will mean the place losing important workforce and knowledge I provide, as well as family members possibly losing out on budget I provide until I can find the next one.
Keeping my workout routine and hobbies means almost no time to spend with partner.
Continuing with my faith means that I am now completely incompatible with the majority of things in the modern world - like overconsumption, climbing corporate ladders, wanting to stand out at the expense of others, milking nature for resources, etc.
Every single time my path leads me to a decision to make, it's always about dividing resources between myself and someone else. It's always a zero-sum situation.
It makes sense but, all my path has been about....me ?? And I'm honestly so tired of walking on eggshells in all aspects of my life, with everyone I meet.
Is everything supposed to be a confrontation?
Is life about being selfish? Is the religion or magick about being selfish?...
Do you analyze your inner personal motivations for working with Angels, or the precise nature of your other works? How do you usually go about it?
...last week I said to myself 'well, it looks like it's time to start a diary' and it turned out, I have been already keeping a diary - the notebook I considered almost empty, was half-full, just with more irregular entries here and there. Then I remembered this is far from being the first such notebook, so I have been bashing myself for nothing over this time.
Recently I was forced to see how much meaning my own motivations need to have within my own life. Basically doing these things because of specific personal reasons, and not because someone else says it's a good idea...
Because no one in my life thinks it's a good idea, and if I allow this feeling to throw me off, I'll get only negatives.
I have struggled with low self esteem and people pleasing all my life.
And I'm not talking about friendly advice on best practices.
I mean things like practitioners IRL straight up telling to my face that a specific tradition is 'evil', or that Angels are bad for me as a type of entity, or that it's physically impossible to work with them as a human, stuff like that.
But there's the other thing as well. Other people doing the same thing will have different goals.
Metaphorically speaking, I knit because I want to make alternative clothes for myself, my friend knits to sell the hats and accessories, and their aquintance knits to sell toys because they are obsessed with cute toys. It's still knitting, but the question 'How to knit' won't help you understand it.
This is true also for other interests.
So even if other occultists hypothetically understand me, they won't understand the importance of my goals, because it is....by me, for me. It's not a one size fits all. And that can sometimes feel really lonely.
It's a beginner dillema, sure...
I'm just struck how much one has to believe in oneself, in our true intentions. But that's hard enough already, because one needs to understand directing intentions for it to work....
But it's not even the 'How', it's the 'Why'.
It's both at the same time....
I have heard before all the stuff like 'angels work with broad strokes', and 'they are such and such in their attitude'...
But nothing, nothing could have prepared me for my own practice. For the gravity of my own motivations and intentions. For meeting my habits which I have unknowingly strenghtened to a scary degree, both the good and the bad.
Nothing could have prepared me for myself.
Not listening to other's opinion on angels, not podcasts, not videos, not books, not even my religious background.
And not the Angels themselves.
Contrary to what I hoped, it does have a lot to do with being true to oneself...regardelss of the methods for that.
I found so many reasons why I want to be doing what I'm doing...It's the most intense thing in my life. (I promise I'm not doing anything weird or unhealthy or public, I have been very sneaky about it in front of non-practitioners).
And I have never seen that backlash even when I have been into much more controversial activities when I was younger. But somehow....this doesn't hurt me the way I thought it does.
...there is always a 'why' along the 'how to'......
I have stopped thinking about this term for a decade, all because the info makes it so vague.
However I am now reading a book that I trust, and it had a chapter about wounds in the aura and the treatment.
My problem is that this book claims that the healthy human aura should always be egg-shaped, while I have a completely different experience with mine ans others' energy bodies.
Is the 'aura' supposed to be only ambience?
Or a shield?
I have some very considerable damage in my energy on my left side, legit reasons for it and so on, medicine telling me it's nothing and so on, rituals fixing it in minutes/hours, so I know it's energetic.
However, this should not relate to the 'aura' as described as an egg shape?
Because I'm definately not egg shaped energetically even on my healthy side.
And what I see in others also is not.
So does this relate to something else?...
Last week I used salt, sugar, and black pepper (accedentally mixed with white pepper) in a candle spell that was meant for self cleansing (a complex one because it was like a self love candle in between the two negativity cleansing candles, burned before and after).
It worked too well, but how 'quirky' is it that I included pepper? I tend to always use one baneful ingredient in positive stuff as well, just in case, and I also meant it to represent warmth and repelling negativity.
Is it....weird? It's been enough time now and I don't think this had any bad effects...
Where do you personally compare spell ingredients function?
A lot of unexpected things happened to me energetically in the last three days (the full moon) and today (btw today is Lughnasadh) I got to look back on the long-term development of one of my tasks.
Had to check in with St. Michael, and something he said strikes me as important.
(he didn’t actually ‘say’ most of it, I’m translating through scrying and emotions)
A bit of an earlier context about my endeavors
This was as an answer to my a bit misplaced request to him for working on something very complex for health (I had just turned down St. Raphael two minutes prior because of concerns he’d be ‘too gentle’), but in the last year (about this time last year), st. Michael asked me to give up my hobby of lamenting (for many years, I literally had a hobby of choosing a free evening, and making myself purposely sad about fictional situations which I craved but were impossible. I called it ‘crying on schedule’).
Since it’s a specific strong feeling in the chest, he had the (brutal and genius idea) that once I feel this energy forming, I can pull it out of my chest and give it to him.
It worked, of course, and it resulted in me being unable to cry directly after, which meant the habit of rewarding myself for negative beliefs about myself, was being weakened every time.
So this is the type of transmutation that’s been going on.
The day today went almost too perfectly in the mundane sense, had a lot of fun, and the last few weeks had some very serious interpersonal issues resolved in an abrupt manner, and other areas had developments too. I did not expect things to go this well so my natural reaction is to revert to being ungrateful and cynical.
It’s the evening and I finally start thinking.
I’ve put up some protections (not very fancy), and cleaned everything I can, but there are still objectively people out there who would benefit from a possible confrontation. I am still, in a way, allowed to feel in danger and to indulge in these lingering emotions of injustice and tension from the past, which allow then access to other such emotions from a more distant past, and so on.
But as planned I start to melt into the subconscious to talk to him. And I notice St. Michael has really quite a bit against my viewpoint.
He was trying to show me that resentment won’t lead me anywhere and I was not listening.
He pulled me towards peace, I pulled away. The sparkling fire of hostility is just too alluring. Then he suggested peace again, that I be the bigger person. I pretended to be deaf. He suggested a third time.
..but I know Michael is fine with me having different opinions and leaning towards methods he disapproves of? Maybe I don’t want to give in to positivity just yet.
‘No, your way of viewing it is wrong’
And then I allowed myself to understand it. If I want to actually affect ‘my enemies’, I have to think strategically about them, not just boil emotions until it harms me or facilitates chaos between the two sides.
It’s so complex, it’s the real world. I would have to think about alchemy, and the soul, and things like that. Timelines, side effects, and collateral damage.
‘You can’t just sit inside your own head and keep thinking about how much you hate them, because this is not a battle.’
…so, I might actually not be allowed petty emotions right now.
I have to continue. I used to be such a hateful person… Now things are so calm, and I am responsible for keeping them calm. No irony, no time to waste. Just responsibility.
And I’m so eager to continue..
I am trying to research from a Christian perspective, but I run into the concepts which are on another contextual level entirely.
So, logically, all ancient religions had Goddesses, or the Goddess - but symbolism is really a mystery to me. Why are round shapes considered feminine for example?
I have a book on Wicca with a lot of correspondences, but that doesn't explain where they came from.
The one very persistent feminine correspondence I keep seeing in Christianity is the sky and the stars.
What do you think ?
How come all the stuff that I experiment with lately works?
How come techniques from different schools and even different religions work at the same time?
I was supposed to believe it's all imaginary, to let out a cutesy little laugh about it at brunch with the girls and downplay results and only meditate to show off on my lunchbreak, wasn't I?
I wasn't suposed to go on astral travels allover dimensions and heal trauma lastingly and talk to beings and learn stuff about myself wasn't I?
Why are prayers tailored to anger issues helping with phobias? Why is centering negating lack of sleep for the first time in 33 years while other factors can't? Why is the LBRP working?
Why is the tarot giving correct answers?
How am I supposed to keep myself from being disappointed at the people around me who say buzzwords while they spread misinformation about the occult?.....
Hi, would you say it's normal for example that I can feel the Moon. I mean for a very long time now, when it's visible, I almost feel like there's a thread connecting me to her, and I can feel her presence physically.
I can feel...the weather. The storms, the rain...the snow. The energy of plants.
...after some confusing periods in my life, I decided it would be easiest to just be a Christian witch. But events are happening in my life which can't fit into that paradigm, and with the sensing celestial bodies and plants..... I definately want to get some perspective on this?
Unfortunately I live in an area where some of the top practitioners decided to serve a conspiracy which speaks bad about the Moon, and it's making me very sad.
There are female entities who reached out in meditation whom I could not identify..... I don't want to have to change paradigms again but it's not looking good at this point.
Plus I have already done some really disrespectul things towards Nature in an earlier period of my life.... I'm wondering how to make up for it.
I am definately of the opinion that there is such a thing as too many angels in a moment/space, so throughtout my practice I have always harboured this suspicion - that there may be a 'correct', or an advisable order in which to work with them.
I have already done quite a few steps, so I can't change that, but at least I can think of how to plan out things for the next few years.
I had always had to put certain angels on hold to prioritise working with another, so I had to pay a very high 'alternative price' for choosing to work with a certain angel at a certain portion of time, so it's something that I had to think about very seriously.
If one were to start working with them now, or to start a new chapter in honoring/working with them, what would be the order in which you personally would contact them? Would any one or a few take up more space/time in your practice than others (who you still work with)? And what would be the reasoning behind it?
I am aware that there is no manual about this sort of thing, so I know there is no universal way. Just wanted to hear from a perspective that doesn't have to do with 'high magick'/math/astrology....
I started out believing it's all in the mind, but the more I practice the more overwhelming evidence I meet that it just isn't. This isn't me doing these things, I'm not some kind of solitary god inside my own twisted universe.
Is it possible to believe in the supernatural in our day and age? Is it even 'allowed'?
I am growing more and more worried about this disrupting social norms when communicating with other practitioners....
I find myself wondering who is the authority on the extent to which one is allowed to be a solitary practitioner? Surely, there is an egregore out there from people's beliefs concerning that as well.
To what extent would a person's personal opinion matter?
What determines whether a person would do better alone or in a group? Or whether a person would benefit from being couched in a specific practice?
Also is having teachers a want or a need?
Are people's learning needs similar in the occult and in other life aspects?
And most importantly, how to vet the people we take advice from for immaterial practices?
Another ugh moment. I got back to Christianity because I work with Angels.
However I am too well aware of a few key memories from what appears to be 'past lifes'.
I'm not supposed to believe this, so how do I stop? Especially if it holds valuable info.....
I have been told so many times throughout my life to do breathing techniques against anxiety and they always make me more anxious. Today, I discovered that this really is their effect on me - the effect is making me more upbeat, more awake - because they help me against depressive moments!
What is wrong with me, the whole world is doing deep breaths to calm them while I'm doing it to awaken me.
Once again been lied to and cheated out of years of healthy practices.
Does it vary from person to person? Am I just going to have to keep my mouth shut as with everything else...... why is nobody mentioning this in contemporary culture as a possible effect?
I am trying really hard to read Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner by Scott Cunningham, and I am not understanding anything. It's not the theology that I find problematic, it's the style of explanation. I feel very neurotic after reading it and the information is all over the place.
I am reading other staple occult books at the same time and I only feel like that with this book. All the others make me feel really calm and grounded and like I understood the instructions.
So....am I secretely prejudiced? I expected so very much out of this particular book. But it's so hard to read and to make sense of.
