I've Been Thinkin' 'Bout My Own Protection

December has not been pleasant for me. Granted it could have been much worse, but the amount of stress and anxiety eclipsed all the good that has happened lately. For some time it just seemed like things all around were going nuts. With my vehicle issues and the several fights that have come up, it felt like I was under some kind of weird assault.

Divinations did not reveal any crossed conditions, and I had no indication of such otherwise. So...what was the problem? Was I making mountains out of molehills? Was a reading into things too much? I didn't think I was, all things considered.

Then I went through another re-read of The Book of Abrasax, and something Frater MC talked about in the chapter of protective magic stood out. Admittedly, I've been light on the protective magic since early 2011 and dealing with the crossed condition I was under...and that's probably been to my detriment, quite frankly. Part of that was some limited thinking on my part regarding the utility and application of protective magic. Upon doing some introspection, I found my attitude was that I didn't need much protective magic beyond occasional anointing with a protective oil. Frater MC, on the other hand, talks about magical protection as being about more than safeguarding against spiritual assault. When you get down to it, it's really about protection from life's ills.

After all, that's part of what it's about, isn't it? Magic is about enhancing your life, using a backdoor to make one's efforts in life easier or more effective. And what is protective magic but making it so that life's ills don't gang up on you and beat your ass all the time?

With that in mind, I decided it was time to create a good protective amulet to carry with me. Since there are so many fine examples of this in The Book of Abrasax, I decided to go with one of those. I went with the "Preliminary Protection Rite" and the amulet MC made for it initially. But then I did a divination about it.

Somewhere along the way I found a fantastic article by Devi Spring on Witches & Pagans about using Tarot to choose the best rootwork approach, and I decided to try it out with this. So, asking about the aforementioned protective amulet from The Book of Abrasax, I pulled a card. It was The Moon! I found that very interesting, because of the things which jumped out at me. To sum up what I took from it:

• Possible need for obscuring or "invisibility" work or added element in the amulet.
• A need to influence emotions.
• Work with Hekate.

Of these, #3 stood out the most among the impressions, especially since I recently made a place for her in my life as a mentor and created a small shrine to her in my home. So I figured I would switch to one of the many Hekate-based protection spells in Jason's "Protection & Reversal Magic". I decided to pull another card to clarification, and I got the 3 of Cups. The deck I was using is the Robin Wood Tarot, and the 3 of Cups in that deck is pictured to the right. The impression I got was as follows:

• Hekate-based protective work from Jason's book: Yes!
• Work with triple-formed female spirits.

Anyone who has read "Protection & Reversal Magic" will know that this points mostly to one thing: The Wheel of Hekate (pictured left).

I took a 2.5" x 2.5" piece of parchment paper and drew the Wheel of Hekate on it using dragon's blood ink. I wanted to be able to roll it up and store it in a vial of some sort. None of the cleaned-out oil vials I have felt right for this, so I took an old mechanical pencil lead holder, stripped it of its labeling and cleaned it out with Florida water.

In order to empower it, I used the following procedure:

1. Use typical personal purification methods. I used spiritual bathing similar to how they do it in Hoodoo.
2. Recite the Prayer of the Design.
3. Ground and center. I established the Pillar and then performed the Universal Centering.
4. Gave an offering to the spirits of the area and then banished and performed the Sphere of Hekas.
5. Empowered the seal using Jason's instructions in "Protection & Reversal Magic", invoking the Morae, the Furies, the Gorgons, and the Graces in the name of Hekate.
6. Five-spotted the seal with some Hekate Oil that I made (contains myrrh and mint in a base of sesame oil), rolled it up and put it in the pencil lead holder. Anointed the holder itself with the oil too.

The feeling of calm and security afterward was unmistakable, and has continued to be in the background since then.

What I find interesting about this is that there are others who have been feeling the same need for protection lately. Among them Skyllaros and other commenters on his recent post where he used the Wheel of Hekate to make a Hekate-based protective amulet similar to an amparo.