Empowered

Empowered! 

What I love most about kids, is watching them feel empowered. Seeing my children do something on their own the first time and then loudly proclaiming, “I CAN DO IT MYSELF!” is one of the most awesome experiences of being a parent (or aunt, uncle, grandparent, teacher, guardian, etc.). I know that these children will grow up to be independent and able to solve any problems put in front of them. All it takes is encouragement to keep trying and a reminder that they CAN do it by themselves.

Another reason why it’s so exciting to see them feeling empowered, is because I know the feeling! When I feel like I have accomplished an event that took effort, whether it is physical or mental, I feel the rush of self-pride. I want to share with everyone, “LOOK! I DID IT MYSELF!” just like a kid. Adonis has even been there for several of these moments, including one last night where I made my own toothpaste for us to use.

 If you’re having trouble feeling self-empowered, you could try a few things (or you can try them with your children as well):

• Clear and charge a citrine or amethyst gemstone with the intention of assisting you in having more self-empowerment. 
• Clear your energy with sage, focusing on removing all doubts within yourself. 
• Do a ritual with a red or yellow candle for courage. A purple candle could be used for success. An indigo candle could be used to remove fear. During the ritual, focus your energy on the task, let the Gods know your intentions, and visualize yourself starting a task and following it through to completion. Envision breaking through a brick wall or climbing a tall mountain. The most important part of the visualization is to see yourself celebrating your victory. If you feel moved, you could even get up and do a “happy dance” around the circle. Throw some confetti for yourself. Then get out and accomplish what you want to do, no matter how hard it is.

Fear

I know I'm a little behind on the PBP. Life has been really crazy lately with sports starting up for the boys and the littlest boy on the way.

With that being said, I'm starting with last week's letter, F.

Fear.

Fear is a powerful thing. 

Fear of the unknown can stop forward progression through life. For some it just stops you from completing goals, for others it is so serious that they can’t leave their homes. 

Fear can manifest itself in many ways such as your heart beating faster, your palms sweating, your body shaking, or seeing big, black, evil creatures. 

Didn’t see me going that direction did you? And just in case you're wondering, I'm not talking about schizophrenia.

During times of fear and stress, meditation becomes difficult and at times I can “see” large black creatures trying to claw and bite their way into my energy bubble. These can be scary and I’ve found myself thinking, “Wow, my imagination is really running wild.” Occasionally I’ve thought, “AH DEMONS!” 

Do I actually think they’re demons? No. Demons have a lot better things to do then flail fruitlessly at my meditation energy bubble.

The more I meditate on them and what’s going on around me though, I realize that it’s more likely a manifestation of the fear and anxiety running rampant through my mind during the busy hours (and when I try to sleep). Bills, childbirth, our house being robbed, work, moving, deciding where to send my youngest son to school, custody issues, etc. can create a lot of anxiety and fear for the future. 

If I try to hide that fear away and not deal with it, it will manifest itself in other ways, like a big, black, angry creature trying to claw its way to the forefront of my mind. 

These are times when I know I need to focus and actually deal with that fear. I need to confront it instead of pushing it away or worrying about it constantly. 

There is a tale that goes something like:

“A Native American chief was speaking to his grandson. He said, ‘Inside me there is a white dog and a black dog and they are constantly fighting one another. The black dog is mean, angry, and full of fear. The white dog is good, kind, and full of happiness.’ The grandson asked, ‘Grandfather, which dog wins?’ The grandfather replied, ‘The one I feed the most.’”

Once I acknowledge the black dog inside me, I need to stop feeding it. I need to stop worrying about it and stressing about it. I need to feed the white dog and come up with helpful resolutions and, if necessary, I need to ask for help. 

Once I start to meditate and feel the black creatures, I know that I’ve given that fear too much power and have probably been trying to push it away for too long. Most of the time, this requires after-action on my part. This can be things like making a plan or even just telling someone else about my fears. During meditation I can visualize my spirit animal (which is a panther) assisting the white dog in its fight. I could visualize power flowing into the white dog, making it grown larger and larger. I could also visualize trapping the black dog in a cone of energy and communicating with it, telling it that it will no longer have control over my life.

Once I take charge of the black dog, the white dog has more power in my life and starts winning the constant battle.

Witch Bottles

Traditional witch bottles date back to the late 16^th century in England and have also been found in the US. The Archaeology Institute of America has an interesting article on a US version found in Pennsylvania that dates back to ~1750 (http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/halloween/witch_bottle.html). Witch bottles were mainly used to protect witches against evil or negative energy. Binding the bottles to the victim with urine, blood, or hair and filled with rusty nails and other nasty things, the bottles were intended to reflect ill intentions back onto the sender.

The witch bottles were a lot of fun to make and it helped the kids feel a little safer after what happened last week. They feel like they are taking charge of our safety. Our bottles are a little more friendly and instead are intended to take the negative energy directed toward us and transform it into good, sending it back out as positive energy. We also used apple cider vinegar instead of urine, blood, or hair.

Supplies:

•  A glass jar with a lid or cork – traditionally witch bottles are made from round glass jugs or jars.
• Pins, needles, and/or nails a.k.a. “nasties”
• Dirt from home
• 7 herbs of protection. We used:
•  Bay leaves
•  Dragonsblood
• Garlic
•  Juniper (especially useful in protection against thieves)
• Mistletoe 
•  Rue
• Vervain 
•  Glitter (or something shiny like colored glass)
• Tangled yarn or thread
•  Salt
• Apple cider vinegar
• Red candle
• Matches or a lighter

Construction:

Note: Adult only steps are notated by “***”

 

We used old sauce jars, because that’s what we had available.

*** Place the nasties in the bottom of the jar.***

Pour enough dirt from the home to cover the  nasties, representing their burial. 

Add in the seven protection herbs. 7 represents power and protection so we chose 7 protection herbs. 

Add the salt for purification.

Add the glitter to transform the negative energy into colorful positive energy and reflect the good back out.

Add in the tangled thread to confuse, trap, or trip the negative energy.

Pour the apple cider vinegar (stinky!) over everything. This drowns the buried negative energy and mixes all the herbs and glitter together. 

***Light the red candle and seal the jars with the wax while saying a spell.*** I had the kids each visualize and think good happy thoughts while I said the spell and sealed the jars. They thought about thieves realizing what they did wrong and thinking twice before they do it to someone else. They thought about no one sending negative energy at us and transforming negative energy into positive. They also thought about getting our things back. 

As they visualized, I sealed and said:

Take these items, herbs and spell

Protect our house and guard it well

Seven herbs for protection in the jar

Dirt over needles to keep harm buried far

Tangled thread to confuse and trap

Glitter to reflect only good back

This protection bottle bound to me

Guard from harm, so mote it be.

Hermes decided to really mix it all up by shaking his jar. His idea was that it would allow the nasties to come in contact with all of the good things so that they weren’t bad anymore. The rest of the kids wanted to mix theirs too.

After it was all complete, I drew the rune of protection on the lids and set them outside to be charged by the full moon light. I spent some time meditating with the jars and visualized the moonlight pouring into them.

In the morning, we buried the five jars in the very corners of our property and also under the window through which the burglars entered.  We held hands and made a circle around the buried jar, asking the Goddess and God for blessings and protection.

One last thing that I wanted the children to understand was that making the witch bottles will help guard against negative energy, but should not be our only line of defense. Making sure the windows and doors are shut and locked is just as important. We're also going to invest in a security system.

The witch bottles were a lot of fun to make and it helped the kids feel a little safer after what happened last week. They feel like they are taking charge of our safety.