Lots of people are wondering what they can do to support the forces of love, equality, justice and democracy at this time. Yes, we all need to get out there and march if we can. We need to think about how we show up and what energy we are putting out. But in-between those times, we can use our spiritual talents, too.
Things to ask before entering magical activism are:
- Is the practice safe for us?
- Is the practice ethical?
Safe Practices
The reason I bring up safety as a foremost consideration is because there are a lot of people doing magical work on the political level, and many of them are far more powerful than you or I. To go to battle with such forces is liable to wipe us out. The good news is that there is no reason to work in these fields of energy. There are plenty of powerful, essential and needed works that can be done in other ways.
First, let’s talk about why going to battle is not a good idea. As I mentioned before, there are a lot of forces out of there, collectively, and individually that are far more powerful than we are. The act of going to battle is a violent act, functioning in a field of violence, so it just makes sense that there’s a high risk of experiencing violence. Not only is it possible to be harmed while doing this work, it is possible to be energetically tracked by other beings and people who may want to create messes in our lives on a long-term basis.
Isn’t life hard enough already?
There are plenty of blind spots and weaknesses that can be taken advantage of without violence. For example, institutions that are doing harmful work can only do it in the dark. The people who are supporting that work also need to be in the dark. This brings up ideas of doing magical workings to bring the truth to light. However, because everything bounces back on us, only people who don’t have things to hide would be perfectly safe doing this sort of work.
Even better than that is the work we can do to make ourselves and our communities stronger. It is more fun. The work itself is nourishing and inspiring. It supports our psychic health and our energetic fields become stronger, making us safer.
Not only is it dangerous to go to battle on a psychic level, but it is also unethical. And dangerous because it is unethical. Let me explain.
The Sanctity of Psychic Space
It is easy to understand that sexual assault is an inadmissible violation of body and psyche. In the same way, our psychic space must not be violated. This is because of the Universal Law that states that every being has sovereignty over their own private sphere. To honor this, we do not send energy into other people’s fields without explicit permission, whether it be to harm or to heal.
To try to help or heal someone without their permission is interfering with their free will and their sovereignty. We may do it and see what we perceive as good results, but we do not see that we may have greatly delayed the other in finding what they truly needed. Some of us warriors are so hard-headed, life needs to knock us down a few times before we figure things out. No one can change that for us. We have to hit bottom. If we are prevented from experiencing the very pain that will teach us, we are sentenced to another cycle of agony.
To harm or bind another being in order to prevent them from hurting others, even if we consider it “tough love,” is just that—harmful and binding. It can’t be defined in any other way. Also, what we do to others, we do to ourselves. We are so intricately connected to the web of life that our actions, words and thoughts will always be reflected back to us, in ways that are obvious as well as obscure.
If we harm someone, we change the shape of the most private space inside ourselves. We shape our world into one where harming is a go-to, instead of the harder path of seeing through the eyes of love. We limit the kinds of beings who are willing to interact with us. This is an even more difficult road, one which we cannot return from without a painstaking, arduous journey.
I knew about magic before I knew about the spirits of kindness. When I first met them, they took me on a spirit journey and showed me the harm I had caused with a binding spell. They told me that they would not teach me anything more until I reversed the spell. I witnessed a level of pain I did not know I had inflicted, and it was clear to me that I would never, ever do that sort of magic again. It was a horrible but necessary revelation.
If you cast any sort of predatory magic on another person, you cannot help but bind yourself to them because you have invested your own emotion and energy into changing their lives. The more powerful your spell, the more powerful your target, the more powerful the repercussions will be. Take this to the political arena, and it’s unfathomable.
Instead of going down that road, we turn our focus to our own self-care. We pour all our energy into creating and maintaining a solid, loving container so we can do other effective work.
Once we are grounded and ready, our goal is to interact with the psychic fields of those who are already, boots on the ground, fighting for justice – or wish they were but don’t know how. Some of these people are front line activists. Some are directing purifying energies to the collective with the help of the spirits of kindness. Some are hosting refugees in their homes, delivering food to the elderly, cooking dinner for campaign staff – the entire spectrum of helping people is a vibrant, brilliant, multi-faceted canvas of growing love and concern.
This canvas is growing because of your work and everybody else’s work. The time of the white knight is over. We don’t need a knight. We don’t need a singular man. We don’t need to be saved. We need each other. We need all the different ways and different viewpoints collectively. We work in the collective space.
It’s not unethical to work in the common psychic space. It’s fair game. If a business is going to cast enchantments of greed, over-sexualization, body shame and consumerism into the collective psychic field, I am not going to have any problem with inviting the essence of organic growth, mutual respect, sharing and kindness into the same field.
The collective consciousness is supposed to be a people space, not an institutional space. We have town squares, not the Safeco square or the Pepsi square—oh, yes, the corporations have taken over and regulated our literal town squares. So, we have the right to take them back in the collective consciousness. If we don’t, and we allow their crappy noise to continue to lure people away from health, we may not survive much longer.
So, we flood the collective with our own songs about the world we want to live in, with any music, vision or flavor of healing energy we want. We do not, however, intend a result that would interfere with other people’s free will. We cannot direct energy at individuals, but we can hold out support for people in general. We place our gifts in the common space, and they will be there when others reach for them. Things like sparkly faerie dust of inspiration, comforting waters, mind-centering tones.
Don’t underestimate the power of your light. It influences those around you, without your even knowing it. We can send grounding energy into situations that are getting out of hand. We can ask the spirits of kindness to stand by those that are lost with the disclaimer that our intentions will not interfere with their free will. We can pour loving light into the common collective, asking it to go where it is needed and called for.
We don’t even have to expose ourselves to the town square all the time, just as we don’t have to listen to the news all the time. We take care of ourselves when we do this work. We connect to the collective web of people doing this work when we do our meditations and visualizations. It is magnificent and nourishing to be in touch with the potential here. When we let fly our ceremonial hope to bring the great forces back into balance, it only makes this goodness stronger. This is an area where we do not have enough magic and ceremony.
This article is greatly sourced from my book The Ancient Bones of Ceremony: Remembering the Heartfelt Ways.
