#witch vibes

Fall has always been my favorite season, especially after a long summer. The way the leaves change and everything just has this spooky ambiance to it. I like to think of fall as very introspective. Whereas summer and spring are more about growth and moving forward with something new, Fall for me is about celebrating death and the cycle of turning inward. 

Salt your doors and windows - I like to add an extra ‘layer’ of protection in the fall with all the extra spirit activity. I have overdone the salt on occasion so a small sprinkle will do. You don’t need a 3 inch thick line of salt that messes with the way your windows close. 

Tie up your herbs to dry through the winter - If I’m at a fresh market I like to pick up some herbs and dry them out for use in the season. You can even bundle them up with sage or add them to bathwater. 

DIY Candles - I have made SOME candles before but sometimes I just melt the tops of candles from the dollar store and toss in herbs and oils in the wax. You can even add crystal shards or charms that go with your intentions.

Make an apple pie (or pumpkin!) - I always try to make one good fall pie from scratch, pie crust and all. When I knead the crust I think about health and prosperity for my family.

Sweep your porch for prosperity - I do this in the summer too but keeping your porch clean of debris helps the funds flow in. 

Dry orange slices - This makes your place smell amazing. Dry some orange slices and keep them on hand for citrus cleansing baths throughout the fall. Citrus baths are especially good when you’re feeling that seasonal depression. 

Read tarot on Halloween - I always do a full reading for myself on Halloween to see what the new year brings in for me. 

Thoroughly cleanse your space - You don’t have to do this with incense. Especially if it’s cold. Just leave out bowls of water with a few Tablespoons of salt. Flush it down the toilet the next day with all the bad vibes.

Leave out offerings for ancestors - If you do ancestral offerings leave them out some apples, Whiskey, or anything they would have liked in their life.

Tidy up your spells - I try to do this a few times a year when I feel like I have too much going on. It helps me cleanse my mind and rethink all my priorities. 

Collect fall findings outside - Acorns, feathers, seeds, there are a lot of things you can find just by stepping outside that will help you along in your practice. 

Nature walks - Nature walks are also great for this. I once found a dead squirrel at a park and took it home to collect the skull. 

Make moon cookies - I love sugar cookies so sometimes I just use a glass and cut out moon phases with the dough and bake. 

Write or journal - Fall is a great time to sit by the fire or a cozy space in your house and dig into your own thoughts and just write out what you feel. 

Pick up a new witch book - My reading always gets more intense in the colder months. I think there’s just less to do and I always pick up the latest witch book to stay in the loop with what’s going on in the magical community. 

Brush up on meditation - Meditate when it’s freezing outside and warm up your inner core. Try having some relaxing hot tea beforehand. 

Record your dreams - We tend to sleep more in the fall/winter months so it’s a great time to start a dream journal. To help with remembering your dreams, sleep with your journal on your nightstand and write down anything you remember as soon as you wake up.

Thrift for witchy finds - Thrift stores are great in the fall. So much fun stuff can be found snooping around old thrift shops or even Goodwill. I’ve picked up the majority of my witch things second hand. 

Cast a fire spell in a bonfire - If you’re at a bonfire write a wish on a piece of paper and toss it in for a fun spell. 

Visit a cemetery - Nothing is better than a cemetery on a crisp Fall day. Just don’t forget to leave your pennies for the gatekeepers. 

I don’t know if ‘spell fallout’ is already a term or not, but I always feel like it’s an important thing to discuss in Witchcraft. Basically spell fallout are the unintended or unaccounted events that happen after you perform a spell. Let’s use what happened to me as a great example of how you can F up your life with magic. 

For about 4-5 years I was working at a company that I on and off loved. At first it was not great, but we moved around and I kind of began to like where I was at and more importantly what I was working on. I learned a lot and even though it was frustrating, I wanted to be there. Then after a few years we were moved again to another space and it was a little horrible. Around that time I was super stuck and not feeling like I was experiencing any growth. Of course I blamed my environment and the circumstances around me and not my own fear-driven decision making. I could have simply looked for another job that continued my career growth. But I didn’t, I blamed everything and everyone else around me. 

Out of frustration I did a spell on the waning moon to let go of all the things that didn’t serve me. I was NOT specific and I just generally did the magic without even reading my tarot. That week I was laid off at work. I have not always been financially stable in my life and having the security of a steady paycheck was a HUGE deal for me. And now it was gone. The rug was pulled out from under me and my safe little job had vanished. Being laid off or even fired was one of my biggest fears and that experience sent me into a huge month-long panic attack. 

Of course, afterwards everything was fine. It took some time, but I was able to secure employment and continue to grow in my career. I also had a lot of personal growth related to that experience. I let go of tons of fear, moved forward with my own side business and stopped giving into other people’s expectations of me and started living for myself. 

Although these were all AMAZING things that I could never have accomplished without the help of my irresponsible spell, THERE ARE BETTER WAYS to achieve this. So before you cast a spell and turn your life into a hot mess for months on end, think about why you need the spell and all the things that could happen in your life from the casting of this one spell. And most importantly, be specific about what you want in your spell. Otherwise you’ll accidentally ‘let go’ of that job that might no longer be serving you, but is still paying the bills. 

HOW TO MAKE A CLEANSING ROOM SPRAY

I was looking for a cleansing incense a few months ago and ran across a shop that sold room sprays. The idea is you can use these sprays to cleanse the ‘vibe’ in your room before ritual work. I picked up one for the Full Moon and one for the New Moon and I freaking LOVE them. Especially if I’m in a hurry and don’t want to light a whole charcoal block to cleanse with loose incense or any incense in general I just use these witchy sprays.

Both sprays are come in dark glass bottles and filled with incense, distilled water, crystals and blessed by the full moon. I use them so often now that I wanted to try my hand at making my own room spray.

This recipe is for a cleansing room spray that can be used pre any spell or ritual. It’s great for times you’re on the go and can’t light incense or are sensitive to the smoke from incense in general. Room sprays are my for sure go-to now,

What you need

One small glass spray bottle

Lavender and Sage essential oil

Moon water (bonus if it’s distilled)

One small Amethyst

What you’ll do

It’s pretty simple. You just need to place the ingredients in the spray bottle. Try decorating a sticker or label and place it on your glass bottle so you know which spray it is. If you’re curious about how to make Moon Water I’ve written about it before here. You basically leave water outside during the full moon to collect the energy and you can use the water for different things like ritual baths and to make this room spray.

Change it up by adding different crystals, essential oils and herbs to make sprays for energy, self love, or anything else you can think of. I would love to make a protection spray too.

What TF is a spirit attachment

As I understand it, a spirit attachment is a collective of negative energy, or a form of an entity that has attached itself to you for various reasons, usually not good ones. Sometimes (most of the time really) the attachment is from you. You have harbored some negativity in your life that has now manifested into its own energy-form and is currently hanging out dragging you down. Things that can cause this? Maybe a bad break-up, a rough patch at work, or anything that seems to cause extended periods of mental distress. (Think trauma. Also this isn’t your fault sometimes it just happens because life.) Constant self-doubt, anguish, or negativity forms these things into bad energy fields that just hang around our aura making us feel like absolute shit for no reason. They can also cause us to get stuck in loops, attracting into our lives the types of people, things and situations that we have not processed out or healed from yet. 

The second kind, and far rarer are you have a nasty spirit entity clawing around you, and you need to get rid of it ASAP. Where can they come from? Could be somewhere you went that wasn’t really a spiritual ‘safe space’ but could be as simple as an old house or just a random place that had a nasty thing inhabiting it. 

Another more likely cause is that you attracted it to you with your bad vibes. (Sorry!) Sometimes these entities are pretty much just loitering around looking for someone to grab onto. They thrive off of our negativity. That’s why it’s so important to keep your space high-vibing, so you don’t attract any lower entity beings. 

How can you tell

There’s not really a ‘way’ to 100% clearly tell, sometimes you just feel off. Maybe you’ve had a stream of bad luck, sleepless nights of insomnia, nightmares or just generally feeling like shit for no reason. Of course these aren’t always the signs, so before you think you have a spirit attachment make sure to get your physical and mental health checked out first. 

You honestly probably don’t have one…even if you think you do

If you’re freaking out because you feel like you might have a spirit attachment, you probably don’t have one. I’ve only ever come in contact with one or two really HORRIBLE ones and one of those I created myself. More than likely if you are feeling off you just need to do a basic cleanse to get rid of any projecting energy BEFORE it starts manifesting into something larger. 

But in case you do here’s a cleanse 

Cleanses are always a good thing to do regularly no matter what. Especially for any magical practitioner because usually we are more sensitive to picking up energy and things, so it’s not a bad idea to start the habit of performing a monthly cleanse if you don’t already do so.

My FAVORITE way to do a cleanse is in a ritual bath. I realize not everyone takes a bath, so you can definitely do this in the shower or just stick your feet in water if you are pressed for time, space or privacy. 

What you need

One chunk of clear quartz

Incense (any kind)

White candles (My favorite inexpensive way to do this is to line the tub with white tealights)

What to do

• Open the window. Even if it’s freezing, crack it open. Otherwise, your bad energy will just be circling the room with you. 
• Light the candles. 
• Light the incense. 
• Lay out your quartz. Add more crystals if you feel it’s necessary. Sometimes I pop in a rose quartz for self-love because you can never have too much of that. 
• You can also add herbs in at this point. My favorites are lavender or rose petals, but I HATE picking all that shit out of the tub, so I’ve gotten to the point where I’ll either put the herbs in a cloth bag beforehand or just skip it because it’s too much trouble. 
• Fill the tub and get in. 
• Visualize a white light protecting you and your space and ask to connect to your highest self. 
• Next, meditate until your mind is clear. Then visualize a bright white light coming from the center of your chest radiating out to your fingers and toes, removing any blocks, attachments or bad feelings. Imagine anything you don’t want in your energy space leaving out the window alongside the incense smoke. Stay as long as you need to in this space. 

Someone once told me that I was a collector of energy. That I walked around  picking up everyone else’s shit garbage vibes and let it effect me. And afterwards I would need so much time to decompress from even the smallest ‘peopley’ interaction. I would lay in bed and not want to get up for dayyyyyys. Of course I had to. I had to work and do all the things. But it was so overwhelming and exhausting that sometimes I felt myself dragging through the minutes just waiting to get back home. 

Then someone told me I was a collector of energy and that I needed to be a curator instead. Keep the good things, the positive feelings and interactions but trash the rest. 

That small tiny crumb of advice changed my life. Shitty things will always happen and there’s nothing you can do to change that. But don’t collect other people’s shit energy. Don’t bring it into you space and most importantly don’t let it effect you. 

Salem Pioneer Village
Shot on Lomography Spinner 360° with 35mm FujiColor film