Today I’ve been trying to get a love handle on both my middle age spread and my lockdown arse. Although as I writer, I’m prone to spending a lot of time sitting down, the whole lockdown thing has taken my inertia to soaring new levels and with it my hankering for all things carbohydrate. So I thought I would try a spell to curb my enthusiasm for eating.
For the third time this month, my lovely friend, Hildegunn Traa has come to my aid suggesting this charm, and I’m hoping that the power of three will lend weight to my endeavour. Weight being the operative word. The instructions are pretty simple; draw a pentagram, think about what you want to achieve, write your goals at the points, stick on the fridge and hey pesto presto! But never having drawn a pentagram to ‘use’ before, I thought I should just check a few things out first.
And of course, it’s never as simple as just drawing a pentagram. There’s invoking pentagrams, banishing or devoking pentagrams, starting at different points, drawing in different directions, the points representing one thing, or another thing, or lots of things, drawing clockwise, drawing anti-clockwise, being a goat face, being a naked man, being a five pointed star, being anything but a five pointed star. Which is a lot to take in when you’ve only given yourself 15 minutes to research and do your day’s activity.
So, first things first, not a goat face. Then Spirit, Water, Fire, Earth, Air clockwise from the top as the points. Next an invoking pattern, the spell mentions goals which feels more positive than banishing things. 4) use yellow paper as yellow is the colour of the solar-plexus chakra which affects the stomach and is associated with motivation. And E) when setting my goals, I tried to formulate them so they tied in with each element for extra brownie points.
Then all I had to do was draw it. I went freehand. It took a while. But after I’d finished rehearsing, I went for it. Not too shabby. And then I stuck it up on my cupboard. The instructions said to stick it on the fridge, but it’s the cupboard that holds all the really good stuff. Like the chocolate. And the popcorn, the figs, the tahini, the rice cakes, the Marmite, the peanut butter, the olives, the brazil nuts, the walnuts, the almonds, the noodles, the tins of mandarin slices, the…. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Also, if you’re on Twitter this weekend, check out the fantastic hashtag #scaryfairies. This weekend was supposed to be the Dark Side Of The Fae Conference in Todmorden run by Holly Elsdon from the Centre for Folklore, Myth and Magic, and Mark Norman of the Folklore Podcast. For obvious reasons it had to be cancelled, but not ones to be daunted, they’ve shifted the spirit of it onto Twitter. And my lovely friend, Claire Slack is one of the guest curators! So have a look, join in, follow everyone, and get an eyeful of those fae (unlike me on Lady Day).
Resources
Galenorn, Y. (2002) Embracing the Moon: A Witch’s Guide to Ritual Spellcraft and Shadow Work, St Paul, MN, Llewellyn Publications
Illes, J. (2009) The Encyclopedia of 5000 Spells, San Francisco, HarperOne
Moorey, T. (2003) A Beginner’s Guide: Spells & Rituals, Abingdon, Hodder & Stoughton
Struthers, J. (2007) The Psychic’s Bible, London, Octopus Publishing Group Ltd
