Spirit work, whether communing with our ancestors or invoking deities, can be tricky business. Many of us have Ouija board stories from childhood that appropriately taught us the valuable lesson of never conjuring or calling what we couldn’t banish. The good news is, working with spirit can be informative, educational, and enlightening to a practitioner who approaches with reverence. It also creates a safe sacred space to engage spirit. I work with spirit from time to time and, though I don’t do it as often as I’d like, defensive magick is an area in which I consider myself an adept – it’s one of the only types of magick I worked for the first few years of my practice. Here are some tips and tricks for protecting yourself in spirit work.
Spirit Work: Protect yourself by covering your head.
Cover your head while engaging in spirit work.
1. Covering Your Head
Images of Romany women and wise women involved in indigenous witchcraft practices often show them with a wrapped head. This isn’t, and never was, merely a fashion statement. Wrapping the head helps protect the practitioner from malevolent spirits by covering the crown chakra. The energy that would go to the crown chakra also becomes focused into the third eye chakra enabling the practitioner to connect with spirit better. This was one of the first things that was drilled into my witchling brain. If ever you are going to delve into the spirit world, cover your head!
2. Cleansing, Protecting, Warding and Inviting
Gather the tools and people you choose to work with in the area in which you will engage in spirit work to perform a pre-working cleansing, protecting, warding, and inviting ritual. This includes any rattles, drums, crystals, spirit boards, pendulums, cards, etc. Proceed into a cleansing, protection, warding, inviting ritual you are comfortable and confident in performing. Be sure to cleanse each person as well. Why invite? Well, we want to protect against attachment but we also want to invite spirits with good intent into our spirit working.
Learn the Basics of Spirit Work First!
If you don’t have a ritual of this nature, I don’t recommend attempting to spirit work. Why? Put simply, basics first! If you don’t know how to cleanse and protect you really have no business attempting to invoke spirits. Once you open the door to the spirit world, you open a portal to which the only means of control you can assert is through rituals such as the ones listed above. Some will tell you that intention is enough. And for some, that may be the case. However, I have found that intention is not enough in most cases and the practitioner using only intention as protection ends up with an accidental spirit attachment. Trust me when I say you DO NOT want one.
Recommended Pre-Spirit Work Ingredients
Some ingredients I use in my pre-spirit workings include white sage, Angelica root, Dragon’s Blood incense, four black tourmaline points, smoky quartz, black salt, and sweetgrass. Sweetgrass is my go-to for invitation. Intention also should be focused in performing pre-spirit workings. Intention is equally important in the pre-working process.
When working with spirits, your ancestors are typically the most protective and beneficial.
3. Vet Your Spirit Work Practitioners
What do I mean? I mean ensure those you are working with are of sound mind. Those who may be experiencing emotional or spiritual turmoil shouldn’t be involved in spirit work – at least until they resolve their current issues. That’s not to say that everyone with something bothering them should be excluded. We all have our own demons to battle. However, if someone is experiencing serious trauma that makes them unable to protect themselves, it’s best if they don’t engage in spirit work. Spirit work demands vigilance in vulnerability. It’s the art of mastering vulnerability with hard-line boundaries. If someone is unable to assert boundaries in their everyday, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to set boundaries in other worlds as well.
Grounding after a spirit work session is crucial to balancing you out and bringing you back to “earth”.
Ground yourself with meat and drink directly following any spirit working.
4. Never Leave a Portal Open and grounding
This seems like a given but you’d be surprised how many practitioners forget to close the doors they opened to access spirit. At the end of your spirit working session close the portals or else you risk spirit attachment later when you’re not as aware of your vulnerability as you were during your pre-workings. Always perform a closing rite complete with cleansing, protection, and warding.
Portal Caveats
There is one caveat for the advanced practitioner. You can choose to leave a portal open, but you need to program the portal with the correct intentions. If your intention is for only your ancestors to have access – program your portal for only your ancestors to walk through. You never want to leave a portal open to all the spirits of the spirit world.
Grounding
There is also the issue of grounding after a spirit working session. Eat foods that are high in carbohydrates and, if you’re a meat eater, have a steak. Foods that are high in carbs and meat of large game will immediately pull you back down into your lower chakras balancing you out from all the work completed in your higher chakras.
Remember to protect yourself before doing spirit work in the cemetery. BUT don’t be afraid to either!
Cemeteries are a great place to exercise spirit-working muscles.
5. A Word About Cemetery Work
Cemeteries are a great place to exercise your spirit-working muscles. In fact, it’s the first place I went to hone my clairsentience and claircognizants. Experienced practitioners will understand my next statement: cemeteries are a great place to send out your spidey senses and get feedback. Cemetery work is even better if you happen to have access to a small family cemetery that has a living relative that can confirm whether your impressions are correct.
Protection During Cemetery Spirit Work
To protect yourself while in a cemetery, pick up some dirt or a rock at the entrance of the cemetery to place in your pocket (a rock is better, if possible). Why? Spirit work is very much associated with our higher chakras and extra sensory perceptions and can leave practitioners feeling too ‘light.’ Whenever you feel yourself become too detached from this world touch the rock or dirt in your pocket and concentrate on its energy for at least 60 seconds. This will immediately ground you back onto the earth plane.
