Hello and welcome to April! We have a lot coming our way this month; we have a full moon in Libra today, April 6, which will be a nice reprieve before the heat really turns up with the new moon in Taurus on Thursday, April 20th. Which will coincide with a solar eclipse, AND the beginning of Taurus season AND the very next day, Mercury goes retrograde. And we will have more to say about that as it approaches. But we just gotta be ready to hold on tight. We are going to be fine.
I wanted to start this episode with a question that I’ve gotten a few times and I’ve answered this question privately, but I don’t know that I’ve ever addressed it on the podcast. Well I got this question again this week so I thought maybe it’s time to get to it, and the question is what to do when you’re ready to undo or cancel a spell that you’ve worked in the past. And there are a lot of reasons we might want to do this. Maybe we have gotten the results we wanted and we don’t want to leave the spell hanging in the ether. Maybe the circumstances are different now than they were when we cast, and we want to call it back. But whatever the reason we may have, there are a couple different ways that we can go about it, depending on the kind of spell it was.
When we don’t have anything physically left from the spell, then we are going to use only our energy and intentions to undo the work, and I’ll expand on that in a minute. But, if we are talking about any kind of a container spell, and this might be a spell jar, or a poppet, a honey jar or vinegar jar, a witch bottle, a hex bag, or anything for which we have physical remnants of the spell itself, a great way to cancel or undo it is to open the container, dump out the remains, and burn them while speaking your intention.
If it’s not safe to burn these materials, you can bury them. If it isn’t safe to bury them, then just dispose of them safely, speak your intentions, and above all else, let it all go. Scatter the physical remains of the spell. But more importantly is to let go of the original intentions for which you created the spell, let go of the emotions that you were feeling at the time, let go of the energy that you raised while you created that spell.
We are cutting the thread between ourselves and the spell that we wove. We are dissolving all of the mental, spiritual, emotional and physical ties between ourselves and this work. That is really the most important part of undoing a spell, really. All of the physical elements may support the work, but the machine of the work itself is created inside of us. It’s made of the energetic waves of our intent, of our will. That is really what a spell is made of. The rest of it is window dressing. Doesn’t mean that the window dressing doesn’t matter, it’s just that the herbs and the oils, the stones, the hair, and all the rest of it are all inert without our will giving them power and meaning and purpose.
So if there’s a spell we’ve put out into the universe that we are no longer aligned with, we don’t have to leave it out there with its ass in the wind. We can absolutely call it back. So that’s all there is to it.
And now, after a few kind of heavy and esoteric episodes I wanted to explore a subject that is a little bit more feet-on-the-ground today. There is a lot coming down the pike for us this month astrologically and energetically and I think that we deserve a little bit of lightness after all the heaviness. That is not to say that we won’t be right back in it in a couple weeks. I’ve really been enjoying looking at the more obscure and arcane aspects of witchcraft and lord knows there is a whole lot of meat left on those bones for us to chew on. So we will be getting weird again soon, but not this week.
Because this is Spring, and I want to think about Spring things, lovely things, beautiful things. My tulips have all blossomed, I’ve got buds on all my fruit trees, and my geraniums are gorgeous so we are going to lean into that. Now, we have spoken before about herbal and plant correspondences and we have even touched on flower correspondences, but the weather has been really gorgeous here lately and I’m just feeling very inspired by all the beauty.
So let’s talk about how we can use flowers more in our craft, beyond chamomile tea. Although I do want to begin with ways that we can eat and drink our flower allies in order to literally embody all of their gifts. Please bear in mind that even though a lot of flowers are edible, many are not. And we should always bear in mind that allergies are a thing and we should not consume any flowers if we aren’t certain that they’re safe and if there’s a chance we’re going to have an anaphylactic emergency.
With that said, some flowers that are edible include all citrus blossoms, daisies, dandelions, hibiscus, honeysuckle, lavender, lilac, pansies, roses, and violets. These can be candied and used to decorate cookies or cakes and used in seasonal rituals and ceremonies or even major sabbats as another way to bring in some seasonal magick to those celebrations. They can be steeped as tea and added to spirits to impart not only those strong magickal correspondences, but also to give your drinks a beautiful aromatic quality.
Now, probably the easiest way to use flowers in our craft is to simply keep flowers on the altar, and you can find specific flowers to match your intention or even a specific deity that you may be working with, for example, Artemis is associated with carnations, so that would be a very apt flower to keep on the altar if you’re working with her or attempting to open a line of communication with her. And it’s just a matter of a simple google search to find that kind of info, or of course you can get a copy of Llewellyn’s Complete Book of Correspondences which I’ve been pimping on this podcast since day one.
Another thing I like to encourage if you’re keeping flowers on your altar is to use moon water when you can. It’s not necessary, and it may not make a difference at all in your practice, but I just like to encourage all the juice that I possibly can when it comes to my altars.
Ritual bath
Drying flowers to add them to your sage or herb bundles for smoke cleansing is a lovely way to combine flower power with air magick to really clear out the bad vibes, the funky, stale, ugly, busted energy. And I do love a smoke cleanse, in terms of clearing a space, it’s undefeated. However, we can make an infused room spray and add these flower allies to that and get nearly the same results without worrying about pissing off the smoke detectors.
We talked about how to make infusions for this purpose before but to quickly recap, we want to combine distilled water, and add a teaspoon each of any dried flowers that match up with your purpose, such as lavender for peace and lemon blossoms for positivity. Cover the jar and charge it overnight in the full moonlight, and of course you can steep it longer if you’d like. In the morning, strain out the herbs and pour your infusion into a spray bottle. Spray into the air, onto your carpets or rugs, onto your furniture, even your bedding. Don’t soak everything, just give it all a light spritz, and enjoy those floral benefits.
We can also make our own rose water for glamour magick, if those are the kind of spells we’d like to weave. To do this, we want to put rose petals in a small saucepan. Fresh organic petals are best, because we do want to avoid pesticides in anything that we’re going to be spraying onto our faces. Add distilled water to the pan,enough to cover those petals and simmer over a low heat for a half hour or so, until the petals are completely soft and they’re pretty much leached of all their color. Then just remove the pot from the heat, allow it to cool, and strain the petals out. Bottle your rose water and use it as you like.
Of course this is just a few of the ways we can use flowers in our work, beyond simply growing them in our homes or gardens, although that’s plenty powerful enough. And now that we know how we might use them, I want to namecheck specific flowers that I personally really like for various magickal applications. I have spoken about every single flower on this list before in past episodes, so if any of this seems familiar to you, that’s because it probably is. But these are really great plant allies that we can use and cultivate in our homes, in our yards and gardens and they are worthy of mentioning again.
Beginning with anemones: Anemones are an ornamental flower that is really beautiful and also promotes health and healing. The cool thing about anemones is that they’re so beautiful and when you grow them yourself, you’ll always have them when you need them for healing spells and rituals. They are at home in a poppet or a healing spell jar.
The next flower I want to talk about is the gardenia. These are gorgeous flowers, they smell really good and they actually attract benevolent spirits during rituals. This is one of those flowers that are great to keep on an ancestor altar for that reason. They also make excellent offerings to spirit guides or house fae, too. This could be a great flower to meditate with when you’re trying to make contact with your guides.
Another great flower for the witch’s garden is the geranium. Now, I know I’m in the minority here because I don’t really care for the way they smell, but I have geraniums anyway because they promote love and good health, AND they are also used in fertility rites. I’m not using mine in this way personally. But if you’re interested in performing fertility magick, geraniums may help.
Honeysuckle is next and this is one of my all-time favorite shrubs. The smell of my childhood. Now this isn’t a flower that can be grown indoors, and it is not something that you’re likely to find in a flower arrangement, but I felt like it should be included because, although you never hear about it much in witchcraft, it’s so powerful. Honeysuckle enhances psychic ability and it’s also used for money spells. This is one you will want on your property in some way, shape, or form. And of course, nothing smells as good as honeysuckle. And for the record, jasmine smells amazing too and is also used for money magic. So it’s a solid alternative to honeysuckle if that’s what you prefer.
Marigolds are another protective plant, and they’re actually also good in the garden for protecting other plants against pests and this is cool because then you don’t have to rely on chemical pesticides which I try to avoid because they’re so harmful to the beneficial insect population. But even better than that, marigolds promote prophetic dreams and psychic ability and, of all things, are known to be helpful in legal matters. I plant marigolds right in between my zucchini plants, my tomatillos, my peppers, just about every bed in my garden has a few marigolds in it because they really do discourage those harmful pests.
Peonies are another flower that you can keep in your garden and no one thinks twice about it. They’re inexpensive to buy at the nursery to plant in your flower beds or in a pot in a sunny room, and what’s so interesting about peonies is that they’ve been used historically for protection specifically against evil spirits. They’ve even been used in exorcism rites in some cultures. So if you feel as though you have a particularly negative spiritual attachment, consider keeping peonies. And even if you don’t, well it’s a good defensive flower anyway. And interestingly, peonies work in the opposite way that gardenias do, so you could actually go for the peony/gardenia combo to keep the bad guys away and the good guys nearby.
Another plant that can be kept inside or outside the home are roses. This seems obvious, I know, but roses are dual-purpose witches’ allies. They invite and promote love, luck, and divination abilities, and their thorns are excellent at repelling negativity, especially evil eye or any negativity being aimed in your direction, and of course they’re lovely for glamour and beauty magick. Now, there are those mini-rose bushes that frequently come in small pots at the grocery store and those are perfect for apartment witches or those who share a home with disapproving non-witches. And of course large rose bushes, and especially climbing roses are brilliant for catching and redirecting malevolence and negativity.
The final plant on my little list here is violets. I’m choosing violets because they are perfectly content in containers on a window sill and they just look like happy little potted plants to people who don’t know how incredibly magically powerful they are. Violets are first and foremost a flower of protection, so when they’re kept near the windows, they act as a ward keeping negative energies and entities at bay. I personally have a little pot of African violets at my desk at work and I like keeping them specifically for this reason. I do not appreciate anyone bringing ugly energy into my office and so I do what I can. Violets also promote peace and they invite luck.
And that’s just a little sample, a little taste. We are just at the beginning of the season, so there’s plenty of time to add some of these beautiful babies to the garden or the flower beds and call in all of their power. There are so many others that we didn’t even get to talk about, like hibiscus which is a great alternative to roses as they have so many overlapping magickal qualities. And I’m completely serious here, just as a little assignment, look up the magickal properties of your own favorite flower and see what kind of correspondences you find. I just bet you’ll be surprised to find out that there may be more to your affinity for a particular flower than just the look or the scent.
My own favorite flower is the tulip, which is considered a charm against evil in Turkish lore. And I’ve got them planted in my entryway, so that’s fortunate. And that’s my time today. I want to thank everyone for their kind words and well-wishes with regard to the passing of my husband’s grandfather, it really means a lot and I appreciate you all holding me in your thoughts. I am finally catching up on my emails and messages and I plan to be back in action on the Facebook group and in the Discord server, so I look forward to seeing what everyone has been up to.
I’ll link all of that in the episode description if you would like to join the discussion, and of course you can email me anytime at eli@middleagedwitch, or you can message me directly from the website at middleagedwitch.com, or you can find me on social media at @middleagedwitch. We’ll talk again next Thursday, I hope you get to bask in the full moon tonight and soak in that lovely Libra energy. My name is Eli Ro, and this has been the Middle-Aged Witch Podcast.
