#realwitch Blending Traditions

:crystal_ball: :dizzy: :star2: :dizzy: 🧙‍♀ Well Met Lovelies! 🧙‍♀ :dizzy: :star2: :dizzy: :crystal_ball:

:new_moon: :dizzy: :waxing_crescent_moon: :dizzy: :first_quarter_moon: :dizzy: :waxing_gibbous_moon: :dizzy: :full_moon: :dizzy: :waning_gibbous_moon: :dizzy: :last_quarter_moon: :dizzy: :waning_crescent_moon:

This Samhain will be a busy one! Every year I find myself in a balancing act. Decorating our home with halloween decor (often jokingly referred to just as home decor because I find so many things I love that stay year round!) and spiritual items to honor Samhain. We buy treats to hand out before and after we make our rounds sharing in the festivities of trick or treating. We have a tradition of going to a local cider mill for pumpkins and donuts. Planning our costumes. Watching scary movies. Just a ton of fun!

Fall is my :maple_leaf: favorite :maple_leaf: time of year. And each year while we honor those traditions listed above that are associated with Halloween, we incorporate Samhain as well. We have a story night where we share our ideas and stories about Samhain, our ancestors, and different traditions. We light candles to ask for blessings, guidance, and protection as we transition from summer into fall and then into winter, and what this time of year brings. We petition for closure over the coming months and we commune with deity to convey our gratitude for the blessings we have had over the year.

I also have practices just for myself. I commune with my ancestors at their altar. This is something I do year round, but I find the energy is different at this time of year. It brings a more somber communication, more reflective. I also journal. I do private, simple rituals to my deities. The nature of the ritual depends on where the year has led me. This year will be of tying up loose ends and cleansing to bring a rebirth of self. I prepare mentally and meditate on the coming months and transitioning into the barren, still months of winter. I prepare to be silent and listen. And as I have stated in a few blogs, I will be beginning a sort of year and a day study I have designed for myself and my current needs. Let the shadow work begin! I have read in a source or two that beginning such studies is not advised during this time. While I can see the thought process behind such a recommendation, for me it makes alot of sense. Fall is a time in my practice of reflection, something I need to do. For looking inward. For watching the trees let go of their leaves, showing us how beautiful that process can be. Fall, especially Samhain, is perfect to me to make like a phoenix and rise from the ashes!

The veil will be thin, my ancestors will be more prominent than ever, and there is a special magickal energy in the air at this time. I am looking forward to it with much anticipation.

PHOENIX FIRE PETITION

I would also like to leave a little working you can do that became a tradition for me in my spiritual practice every year, the Phoenix Fire Petition. I love this petition spell because you need very little items and no tools unless you choose to adapt it and add them in. You will need a fire, taking all the proper safety precautions of course, and a piece of paper and something to write with.

To throw some ideas out there, I have used a candle for my fire, a small cauldron, a match~get as creative as you need to! I personally prefer a good bonfire but that is not always possible. For a writing implement I have used a pen, a marker, a pin to dig my words privately into the paper, or my finger with a drop or two of blood (again, practicing safety measures and hygiene as well). I have written on paper, a bay leaf, leaves that had fallen from trees, a napkin once even. The most important thing is the symbology and the intent.

***If you are seriously closeted or otherwise confined, you may also perform this working symbolically using visualization and putting your hands out to the flames. Simply envision the energy you are directing at the flames being transformed for whatever need you would have written down.***

The purpose of the Phoenix Fire Petition is letting go. Letting go so you may rise again, reborn and cleansed. Take your paper and your writing implement and jot down what is no longer serving you. What you do not wish to continue carrying with you. Anything that you feel is hindering you, magickally and/or mundanely. Feel these things you are writing, feel how they impact you. Then take the paper into your hands and ground and center your energy. I advise doing so now and not when beginning because I feel the energies you felt during the writing process need to be raw and free and wild. Once they are written and purged from your system, visualize yourself letting them go. As you ground and center, each breath in brings calm and cleansing energies. Each breath out brings the energies that arose from your petition out of you, neautralized and carried away in the air. Once you feel it is time, light your fire and keep your new intentions strong in your mind. Meditate on moving forward, where you want to go, how you want to be reborn, how you will be free.

Set the paper ablaze. Watch the flames engulf the paper. Look at the ashes and have a moment of silence for the death and decay of what is no longer serving you. Thank it for the lessons it gave you, for where it brought you.

and then let it go....

Feel the release. Feel reenergized. Scry the flames for any images unfolding for you. Visualize your intentions rising from the ashes and dancing among the flames, stepping out and merging with you, becoming one.

It is so.

:dizzy: :maple_leaf: :dizzy: :fire: :dizzy: :maple_leaf: :dizzy: :fire: :dizzy: :maple_leaf: :dizzy: :fire: :dizzy: :maple_leaf: :dizzy: :fire: :dizzy: :maple_leaf: :dizzy:

I find I also like to do a similar working at new years, the symbology of the traditions of that time run deeply with me. I usually altar it by doing the above to release what cannot come into the new year with me and then I use incense in the fire corresponding to what I would like to draw towards myself, saving the ashes mixture for my altar. I then take it and incorporate it into a form of witches salt, but that is a entirely different post to be had!

I hope you all enjoyed this as much as I enjoyed writing it. I look forward to reading everyone's posts!

:dizzy: :white_circle: :dizzy: Brightest blessings, #realwitches! :dizzy: :white_circle: :dizzy: