Birthday Invocation to Lucifer in the Five Directions

So, I wrote this ritual and did it last night, for my birthday. I now have some critiques of my own ritual which I will go into in another post, but it worked well enough so I am sharing it here anyway.

Caps are used to indicate everything that is NOT a spoken part of the script.

This ritual involves a temporary self-piercing. Do not attempt self-piercing without knowledge of how to do it properly or without sanitary supplies. I used self-piercing because I am a kinkster who has done many safe play piercings on myself and others, and because I am a masochist who is comfy using endorphins to induce an altered state. The point of that part of the ritual is to connect with and honor yourself. Use an alternative if self-piercing is not right for you! I am sure you can figure something else out.

NEEDED SUPPLIES:

CHALK OR SOMETHING ELSE TO MAKE THE CIRCLE/PENTAGRAM ON THE GROUND
TAROT CARDS TO REPRESENT DIRECTIONS– I USED THE ACES OF ALL SUITS AND THE MAGICIAN FOR THE CENTER
FEATHER
CANDLE OR INCENSE AND MATCHES/LIGHTER
WATER AND BOWL/JUG/BOTTLE TO HOLD IT– MY FRIEND GAVE ME A BOTTLE OF ECLIPSE WATER AT THE LAST SECOND, WHICH WAS REALLY NICE!
RED GRAPES OR OTHER FRUIT THAT PARTICIPANTS CAN ALL EAT/ARE NOT ALLERGIC TO, AND BOWL FOR THE SAME
NEEDLES FOR RITUAL PIERCING
RUBBING ALCOHOL AND OTHER SANITARY SUPPLIES FOR RITUAL PIERCING/ACCESS TO FIRST AID SUPPLIES/BANDAGES IN CASE OF TOO MUCH BLOOD
SHARPS CONTAINER FOR SAFE DISPOSAL OF NEEDLES

INSTRUCTIONS

THIS RITUAL IS DESIGNED TO BE PERFORMED ON YOUR BIRTHDAY. YOU CAN ADAPT IT FOR OTHER OCCASIONS.

DRAW CIRCLE WITH CHALK. USE A COMPASS TO FIND THE DIRECTIONS, AND MARK THEM ON THE GROUND. DRAW THE SIGIL OF LUCIFER IN THE CENTER. OR MAKE IT A BIG PENTAGRAM. DO WHAT THOU WILT.

TAROT CARDS ARE USED TO REPRESENT LUCIFER’S ASPECTS IN THE FOUR ELEMENTS—THE ACES OF EACH SUIT FOR THE FOUR ELEMENTS, AND THE MAGICIAN TO SYMBOLIZE THE CONFLUENCE OF ALL. (OTHER CARDS MAY BE USED INSTEAD OR ADDITIONALLY AS DESIRED.

ARRANGE RITUAL COMPONENTS IN THEIR PROPER DIRECTIONS. FEATHER FOR EAST, INCENSE OR CANDLE FOR SOUTH, WATER FOR WEST, FRUIT FOR NORTH. PLACE CORRESPONDING TAROT CARDS BESIDE THEM. GENERALLY SWORDS GO TO THE EAST, WANDS TO THE SOUTH, CUPS TO THE WEST AND PENTACLES TO THE NORTH. YOU CAN ADD OTHER OFFERINGS AND SYMBOLS FOR EACH OF THE ELEMENTS– IN THE EAST I ADDED A PRISM TO REPRESENT LIGHT, AND TO HOLD DOWN THE TAROT CARD AND FEATHER BECAUSE IT WAS OUTSIDE AND WINDY.

IN THE CENTER, PLACE YOUR CARD REPRESENTING LUCIFER, FOR ME, THE MAGICIAN. I ALSO HAD A PRAYER CANDLE I MADE FOR HIM BESIDE IT.

RITUAL PARTICIPANTS STAND AROUND THE CIRCLE. YOU CAN HAVE THE RITUAL PARTICIPANTS CHOOSE TO ORIENT THEMSELVES TO THE DIRECTIONS/ELEMENTS THAT THEY FEEL MOST ALIGNED WITH.

OFFICIATOR/SUPPLICANT IN THE CENTER, TO INVOKE THE FIVE DIRECTIONS.

I READ THESE WORDS OUT OF MY GRIMOIRE, BUT I KIND OF WISH I HAD JUST TRANCED OUT AND IMPROVISED. TRYING TO SPEAK FROM A SCRIPT WAS DISTRACTING AND PROBABLY UNNECESSARY.

SCRIPT

EAST

In the East you are the Morning Star,

The Prince of the powers of the Air,

The angel of Music,

The bringer of illumination,

The thunder and the flash,

The rebel who falls like lightning from Heaven,

The blinding revelation and purity of thought.

You are truth and liberation.

LET A FEATHER FALL TO THE GROUND

SOUTH

In the South you dance with Lilith in the dust storm.

You tempt Christ in the desert.

You are the flames that sear and purify,

You are that which burns and is not consumed.

You are the Great Red Dragon and the woman cloaked with Sun.

You are passion and lust.

LIGHT CANDLE OR INCENSE

WEST

In the West you are the Evening Star,

The first to shine in the face of night.

You are the solace of all souls who perished in the flood,

The patron of the sprites and spirits of the waters.

You are the tears of Heaven falling as rain.

You are black baptisms in the dark waters of night.

You are sorrow and healing.

ANOINT ALL WITH WATER

NORTH

In the North you are the serpent of Eden,

You are the Fruit of Knowledge and we eat its flesh in remembrance of you.

You are the Darklight and the Aurora Borealis.

You are the witching hour in the wild dark forest.

The emerald from your broken crown became the sacred Earth.

You are the God of this world.

You are life, and you are creation.

ALL EAT FRUIT (EVERYONE TOOK THE FRUIT DIRECTLY FROM MY FINGERS WITH THEIR LIPS, LIKE COMMUNION. IT WAS REALLY NICE)

CENTER

Within my flesh you guide me towards my higher self,

My Inner Power, that unsuspected and infinite resource.

You are the breath that blows the spark of my divinity into a raging fire.

You are the waters that heal me and the shuddering ground beneath my feet.

You are the friend of my progress,

The lover of my potential.

You are the bringer of Apotheosis.

Be with me on this the day of my birth,

And act as midwife to me as I am born again and again in this life.

RITUAL SELF-PIERCING OF/BY SUPPLICANT. IF ALL PARTICIPANTS ARE NOT COMFORTABLE WITH THIS, FIND A SYMBOLIC ALTERNATIVE! LUCIFER HATES COERCION. IF YOU HAVE NO EXPERIENCE WITH SAFE, SANITARY SELF-PIERCING, ALSO DON’T DO THIS, FOR THE LOVE OF SATAN AND ALL THAT IS UNHOLY!

TO END THE RITUAL, ALL LINK HANDS AND SAY:

ALL:

Be it so!

Quote

Always retain the ability to walk away, without sentimentality, from a situation that felt unmanageable. That was a basic rule of survival.

Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Played With Fire

(via luciformspiral)

Image

Quote

No one will understand you. It is not, ultimately, that important. What is important is that you understand you.

Matt Haig, The Humans (via luciformspiral)

blackbearmagic’s Crystal Hunting Guide

blackbearmagic:

Introduction

Scientific Fact: Witches love crystals almost as much as they love jars.
Consumerism Fact: In many metaphysical shops, nice-looking crystals can be had for relatively cheap.
Ethical Fact: Many of those crystals are as cheap as they are because they are mined with no consideration for the damage done to the environment or the welfare of the humans collecting them.

So what’s a good, honest, ethically-minded witch to do, especially if he/she/they don’t have the money to afford crystals that were mined sustainably and responsibly, or the time to research which sellers obtain their wares from ethical mines?

Find their own.

I’ve been crystal hunting all my life, but only within the last year have I started doing it seriously. I’ve walked away from a creeking expedition with slabs of smoky quartz the size of my palm or calcite hunks bigger than my fist, and I personally think creek-crystal energy is much more vibrant and easy to work with; by comparison, the crystal points I’ve bought from metaphysical shops feel… inert, lifeless.

So let’s get straight into it!

What You’ll Need

a good-sized creek or stream with lots of gravel spits along its length

offerings to the spirit of the creek, if appropriate to your personal practice

bug spray, sunscreen, snacks, water, and anything else you’d normally bring on a hike

your trusty adventurer’s Bag of Holding

your sweet self

Now let’s talk details.

When I say “gravel spits”, this is what I’m referring to:

These tumbles of stone are going to be where you’ll find your treasures, and the size of the stones themselves actually tells you what size of crystal you might find: When the conditions are right (ie, during a flood), the water flowing through that portion of the creek is capable of lifting and moving rocks of the size you see there now.

In my experience, the crystal specimens you’ll find are typically half or one-third the size of the average rock on the spit. They’re usually larger than the smallest rocks, but much smaller than the largest rocks. Not always, though–I have found specimens larger. (See the introduction.)

Regarding offerings, if that’s part of your path, you’ll want to make sure it’s nothing that will harm the local wildlife or damage the ecosystem in any way. My personal go-to is water, ideally water from a bottle I haven’t drunk from yet.

In the same vein as offerings, I’ve had great success in making a sort of bargain with the spirit of the place: That in return for treasures, I will pick up and remove any litter I find in the area. It is, of course, always a good idea to remove any litter you see when you’re out in nature, but it doesn’t hurt to point out to the spirit of the place that it’s something you’re doing for it. Bring along a trash bag to help collect it.

Lastly, with regards to your bag, I would advise something with two shoulder straps. Rocks are heavy.

What You’ll Do

Once you’ve hiked to your creek and found a gravel spit with lots of good-sized rocks, it’s time to start looking. There’s two main approaches I’ve found that work well, and I tend to use both.

The first is a broad sweep. This one works best if you’ve got good lighting on the rocks. All you do is stand in one spot and sway side to side slightly while looking over the gravel, looking for anything that glints, shines, or otherwise catches the light shining on it. If you see something, investigate it. Repeat.

The second is the more detailed search. Get down on the ground–whether that means kneeling, crouching, laying on your belly, I don’t care–and go over each rock one by one. Use your eyes and use your hands. I imagine this method is probably going to be unpleasant for a lot of you, but honestly, it’s like crack to me.

Once you’ve combed over the current gravel spit as thoroughly as you please, pack up and move on to the next. Continue for as long as you like, or until you feel it’s time to go. Just remember that as far out as you go is how far you’ll have to walk back!

Advice and Warnings

Tell someone where you’re going and when you expect to be back. If you godsforbid go missing, they’ll be able to give the police an idea of where to start searching for your poor, lost ass.

Keep a charged cell phone with you at all times.

If you see something or someone iffy, do your best avoid it. Sometimes there are creepy people in the woods, and sometimes they do creepy things. Don’t get involved.

Make sure you’re not trespassing on private property. All of the creeks I hike on are on public land. If you’re in a state park or other protected environmental area, don’t go off the trail–you could cause damage to a fragile ecosystem.

Following the creek is a good way to get out and back without losing your way.

Don’t stray too far from it if you’re in unfamiliar territory.

The best times of year to go hunting–assuming Northern Hemisphere, a temperate climate and deciduous forests around the creek–are the spring and summer. In the autumn, you’ll have to clear fallen leaves off of the gravel before you can look, and winter is too cold.

The best time of day is the morning, when the sun angle is lower and is more likely to glint off of shiny rocks.

You’ll have your best luck the day after heavy rain. Rain will swell the stream and shift the stones around, and could uncover new treasures!

Inspect anything that looks even remotely worthwhile. You’ll find a lot of duds, sure, but that will help train your brain to tune out what you don’t care about finding.

“What Can I Find?”

Exactly what sort of minerals and crystals you’ll find is highly variable. All minerals are not equally distributed across the planet, because many of them require very different conditions to form and the crust composition varies slightly from place to place. However, there are some stones that are pretty common all over the Earth, so no matter where you go hunting, you’re likely to find them.

Of course, for more specific identifications, please consult the internet, a book on mineralogy, or your local rockhounding club.

Quartz

The chemical formula of quartz is SiO₂, or silicon dioxide. Silicon and oxygen are, by mass, the two most abundant elements in Earth’s crust; around 90% of it is composed of silicate minerals like quartz. Ever find a pretty, sparkly, mostly-clear rock on the ground? It was probably quartz.

Quartz comes in a mind-boggling array of colors, from smoky quartz so dark it’s practically opaque to purple-and-orange ametrine to the brilliant clear of a Herkimer diamond (yup, not actually diamonds) but all of these varieties are still quartz. In my region of North America, clear and smoky quartz seem to be the most plentiful.

Calcite

Calcite is calcium carbonate, CaCO₃. Like quartz, it is made of some of the Earth’s most abundant crustal elements (in this case, calcium and oxygen) and comes in a stunning array of colors. In my creeks, I’ve found calcite in yellow, orange, white, and even blue and red.

The biggest giveaway for rough calcite is its texture. If you pick up a rock and it feels like someone rubbed wax all over it, you’ve probably got yourself a calcite specimen.

Feldspar

Feldspar is one of the most abundant minerals in the crust, alongside quartz. It’s also a silicate, and it frequently finds its way into other minerals, such as granite.

What sets feldspar apart from the other two minerals I’ve mentioned here is its fracture habit: It naturally fractures along cleavage planes which intersect at 90-degree angles. It doesn’t shatter–it shears. If you find a rock with a smooth face that looks like a polished stone countertop, it’s probably feldspar.

“But Bear, I Want Crystal Points!”

Oh. Yeah.

You can find those too.

Every one of those pictures is of quartz points that I have found in my area. (In fact, they’re actually all from the same crystal-hunting hike, and represent only about a third of the specimens I found that day!) As you can see, they aren’t all perfect–and I have plenty of others that are, like, three facets and no point–but they’re all beautiful, and some of them really sing, if you know what I mean.

Conclusion

Finding your own crystals can be pretty simple, when you get down to it. It can be a lot of fun to get down and dirty, and is a great way to get yourself out in nature for a while. And, of course, you can rest assured that your crystals were gathered in a sustainable, respectful, ethical manner–assuming you took care of yourself and the environment while finding them!

Best of luck! –Bear