u/qu33n0live

A couple weeks ago I started becoming interested in developing more solid relationships with my spirit guides. I read that if you put out a glass of water and a white candle it can signify that you’re looking to open up communication. So that’s what I did with the hope of beginning the process of getting to know who it is in my spirit circle. During one of my nightly prayers to Hecate/general altar time I put out the water and lit the candle and asked to start developing the relationship and asked for signs. I was so excited within the next couple days when I started to get actual signs and thought “holy shit it’s working” and continued with the water and the candle.

Fast forward to last night when I was doing divination with tarot and an oracle deck for the strawberry new moon. I asked my oracle deck (hedgewitch oracle deck) “what is it that I’m not paying attention to right now that I need to be paying attention to” and I drew Repel (cohosh), Mystery (ghost pipe), and Purify (sage). In the book that the deck comes with the author discusses repel- we need to set firm boundaries with negative energy, mystery - represented by a parasitic plant that feeds off of the energy of others, and purify - returning yourself to a balanced energy state. I switched to my tarot deck, which I’m more familiar with using, to ask for clarification and asked what is the “mystery” i need to be repelling and how do I repel it and drew the reversed 3 of coins, reversed king of coins, and the ace of swords. I was asking the deck clarifying questions to try to figure out what area of my life it was referring to but every card I drew was bringing to mind this new spirit that i was attempting to develop a relationship with. I asked Hecate if this spread was specifically referring to the energy/entity that I had connected to this week and drew the reversed magician. 

I asked specifically of Hecate “what is this energy/entity that I connected with this week?” and drew 5 of swords, reversed 7 of wands, and reversed magician (again). I then asked Hecate “what does this energy/entity that I connected with want from me?” I drew Knight of swords, reversed 10 of cups, and reversed 3 of cups. When I asked how do I fix/repel this i drew Strength and Ace of Swords. 

I decided to heed the warning and flushed the water offering to the spirit down the toilet banishing it from my home and took the candle I burned for it and chucked it into the woods behind my home off my property. I walked my space and banished any entity that would feed on my energy and severed any energetic ties that were made in deceit. I burned sage, devils claw, and lavender on a coal disk to cleanse and repel, then burned frankincense and sprayed my thresholds/mirrors/windows with salt water and florida water that had yarrow and rue in it. After i completed i went back to my deck and asked if my cleansing had been successful at removing the energy/entity and drew reversed 2 of coins, the lovers, the hermit, the king of swords.

Tbh when i was getting this reading i wasn’t afraid i was disappointed. I’ve never tried communicating with spirit before other than with Hecate and was so excited to be developing and learning about my “spirit court”. I’m in my 8th month of practice and 7th month of venerating and maintaining an altar to Hecate and thought I had enough protections up that it was safe to start venturing out a little bit but I’m thinking that that is maybe not the case. I’m looking to use this as a learning opportunity and want to break this situation down to see what I can do differently. Thanks for any wisdom or insight. 

So I had the bright idea to use the mass of candle drippings I have collected over the past few months to make an altar candle with. I also had bought some beeswax candles of high quality for my bday that just did not burn well at all. So I gathered it all up and put it in a double boiler to melt down. From start to finish the process was a disaster. I burned myself 10 times, got wax everywhere, spilled it, etc. I haven’t been feeling well the last 2 days and thought it would be a nice diversion lol. Twas not. At all. I was getting so mad (I still am) and at one point yelled “fuck these fuck ass candles!” And later “goddamn this fucking wax”. After I finally poured them into repurposed 7 day candle jars I thought maybe I have tainted their energy and should not use them as altar candles to venerate a deity (Hecate). Anybody think I can cleans them enough to use them? Or use them another way? Ps I put salt, lavender, and obsidian chips in the bottom. Self cleaning? Idk lol

I am white, I am male but queer. I am a chaos type witch I guess. I have a black friend who has asked me to make a protection jar for her for a solo trip she is taking for her birthday. I came across spells that include High John root so I bought some. When researching the spirit of the root I learned some history about it and now am questioning whether or not it would be respectful of me to use it as a white practitioner. I asked permission of the root if I could use specifically in this situation and not for myself and used a pendulum which indicated yes. I’m looking for more insight tho and wisdom from other practitioners for whether or not it’s ok and how it would be used respectfully and honorably. Thoughts?

This is long.

I am coming asking for advice. I have been working heavily with Hecate for about 6 months now and have been leaning heavily into developing my psychic abilities and intuition. I come from a fundamentalist Abrahamic background and feel that any gifts or abilities I had were suppressed as a child and I have been looking to see if I do, in fact, have any and what they are. I’ve always loved tarot and even before working with Hecate I used them for self reflection and of all the divination tactics I have tried (scrying, runes, pendulums) tarot has resonated with me the most. 

I sat down today to work on my practice and have been working through a book on tarot rituals. I wanted to do a ritual to aid in my intuition so I crafted one using the elements that I’ve learned. My plan was to use this to evaluate the effectiveness of an abundance spell I’ve been running all week in preparation for a car negotiation I have coming up this month that is making me nervous.

Ingredients as follows:

Cards: The Moon, The High Priestess, 2 of swords
Candle: Blue
Objects: Clear quartz, obsidian, and a Key
Herbs: mugwort, vervain, lavender, salt, a single blue lotus flower, and a smidge of wormwood.
**sidenote this was also my first time crafting a spell and using a pendulum to get yes/no on whether or not an ingredient should be included. All the ingredients above were “yes” per the pendulum.

The three cards laid out, blue candle in front surrounded by a salt circle and ingredients.

Plan: meditate for 15 mins on the spell/intention, and then spend time “embodying” the cards i.e. putting myself in the card and visualize myself being the high priestess, the moon, etc. 

I started meditating and visualizing and all was going to plan until I embodied The High Priestess. I saw myself in a temple above the earth standing barefoot on the steps leading up to it. I’m dressed in a black cloak and carrying two torches. In some instances my hands holding the torches look like skeleton hands and at other times look normal. I saw myself dropping to earth and being in a pitch black landscape. I’m walking around and coming across spirits of the dead that don’t know they are dead. I’m seeing bloodied, dirty, naked spirits huddle in fetal positions sobbing, wailing, screaming. Terrified. (at this point my viewpoint goes to third person) and I see the spirits notice the High Priestess standing there cloaked and with torches (obvs Hecate) and immediately stop crying. The High Priestess never says a word, she turns to walk away and the spirit instinctively knows to follow. This is where things take a turn, however. I’m walking with The High Priestess through the woods and hear screaming. Blood curdling screaming. We come upon a lake and there is a child standing there on the shore soaking wet. Water dripping from her hair, dirt on her face. Terror. Wailing. Clearly she had just drowned and had crawled her way back onto the shore. I get to the child and see that it is my 5 year old niece, and we are standing on the edge of a lake that the kids swim in in the summer. I opened my eyes and immediately shoved myself off the bed and yelled “STOP!”. I can’t even begin to describe the physical sensations I had after seeing that - sick to my stomach, like I wanted to weep, numb, paralysed with fear, dread. Even typing it out now I am revisited by those sensations. I couldn’t and can’t get the images out of my head or rid myself of those images. I tried to reimagine the scenario where she was saved by us instead but I cannot change what played out in my mind. I’ve always been really good at visualization and day dreaming but I have NEVER “day dreamed” myself into being physically ill or had to cut myself off from it. I went to my altar with my tarot deck and asked Hecate if I had been gifted with a psychic vision. I drew the Page of Swords. I never even finished the initial ritual I set out to do. And tbh IDGAF about the car negotiation anymore. Literally F the car I’ll bike to work. I ended up journaling for about an hour writing the experience down and trying to understand it. 

Please help me interpret that in the context of what I described above. I have a loose feeling of what it means but could really use some input. I am a novice at this and am looking to receive feedback from others who have received psychic visions to see if there is any alignment with what I experienced, i’d like some help interpreting the message of the Page of Swords, and I’d love feedback on the structure of the spell I created. I feel a strong need to tell my sister not to take the kids to this lake this summer but my uncertainty of my abilities and the newness of this experience is causing me to doubt myself. I welcome any wisdom from the collective.

Thank you