Hello everyone, and happy solstice to you. I have been loving all the pictures and the beautiful rituals and I keep going back to some of them to have another look and I get all emotional again. This is such a magical time of year, and I do mean that in the most literal sense. There is powerful solstice magick all around us at this time, and a lot of it has to do with that little balancing act that we do right on the edge of midsummer or midwinter. When we get right to the cusp of the longest day of the year or the shortest day, depending on your hemisphere, before tipping over into the downswing again.
It reminds me like when you’re little and you’re on the swing and you’re swinging higher and higher until you get right to the point where you literally couldn’t swing any higher and you lift out of the seat of the swing, just a bit, you know? Do you remember that feeling? You feel the swing fall away from you just for the tiniest fraction of a second, before you begin the descent again, and you swing back down. That’s how this time of year feels to me. We get all the way to the tippy top, as close to the sun as we could go, for just the barest moment. And then we begin to swing back down to the bottom again.
That is magick. That is magical. And I have really tried to immerse myself in that feeling. I know everything in the world, in the news, socially, politically, even personally it’s all very chaotic and overwhelming and it’s really hard to feel settled, to feel secure, it’s hard to feel like we can get our feet underneath us, but at least, at the very least, we can count on the seasons, on the wheel of the year to continue turning. We can rely on the little signs of the seasons, the little indicators. Last week, as I was putting a jar of water out to charge in the full moon I was reminded of this because it really does depend on the time of year, whether I put my water in the front yard or the back so that it can get the best view of the moon while it charges. I headed out front, realized my jar was only gonna get an hour of moonlight based on the time of year, and turned right back around and headed out back.
And sometimes those little reminders are all we can hang onto, to recognize that yes, you know, maybe things are kind of ugly right now, but the moon is reliable. The tilt of the earth is reliable. Whatever is going on in the world, all of the bullshit that we think is so important, the trees don’t care. They are going to blossom in the spring and shed their leaves in the fall, and whatever else may happen in the meantime doesn’t really amount to a whole lot. We are here for such a limited time, and yes, we have to pay our property taxes and renew our drivers licenses and all that stupid made up stuff that isn’t even real, but in this limited time we have here, we’ve also gotta go outside and look around from time to time and remind ourselves what is real and what does matter.
But anyway, today we are going to talk about intuitive magick. And I mentioned at the end of last week’s episode that this topic was a suggestion from a witch named Kate, who lives in Australia incidentally and who just passed the winter solstice down in her neck of the woods.
And I think this is such a great topic for a couple reasons. Firstly, because it is something that most of us struggle with from time to time, especially as beginners. But secondly, we just entered Cancer season on Tuesday darlings, we are in deep intuitive waters right now. Our collective intuition is going to be showing us all kinds of crazy shit so we should make ourselves ready to receive it.
But in order to receive reliable messages from the vast depths of our intuition, we have to first start showing some faith in the messages we do receive. And this is the absolute biggest hurdle. It can’t work the other way around; there’s no way for our intuition to become trustworthy unless and until we start trusting it. The trust comes first, and then once we’ve seen our intuition in action, it will become even easier to recognize the messages it gives us, which will enable it to rely on it even more, which makes those messages even easier to recognize, and so on. Learning to recognize the difference between intuition and our negative self thoughts is not easy when, like so many people, we haven’t ever put a lot of stock or a lot of faith in the little voice that speaks to us unless it’s telling us bad stuff.
Do you know what I mean? Like, when we’re in a situation and we suddenly get a bad feeling like we need to get out of there, those messages are usually easy to hear and they’re easy to listen to. But when the messages are more positive, or even when the message seems neutral, it’s sometimes a lot harder to pay attention to it. If we get a weird impulse to take a different way home from work, or to reach out and check on someone we haven’t talked to in a while, that could easily be an intuitive message, but if we just ignore it, we may never realize that’s what it was. But those are the little inklings that I’m talking about. We have to start listening for those kinds of prompts and when we get them, we need to act on them.
So that’s the first exercise, and it’s the one we need to do the most and it’s the one that’s going to be the most surprising I think. When we get that odd little impression to call that friend we haven’t seen in a while, if we trust it, if we act on it, we might be surprised by what we find out. We may be exactly who that friend needed to hear from at a crucial time. Either way, worst case scenario, even if it turns out that wasn’t our intuition giving us a clue, at least we get to catch up with an old friend and let them know we haven’t forgotten them. Is that so bad?
The point here is that the more we listen, the more we will begin to hear. And it’s going to become a lot easier to discern the difference between our own internal thoughts and actual intuitive messages. And our intuition will also start manifesting itself in some surprising ways as well. When something catches our attention and we’re not sure why, don’t just write it off. And even if we don’t get a ‘hit’ so to speak, even if our curiosity isn’t rewarded instantly, we can’t think of that as a false alarm, and I’ll tell you why.
I’m sure we have all had experiences where something insignificant has led to something far greater in our lives. And if we go back and think about a lot of the more significant events and people in our lives, it’s frequently traceable back to some small, seemingly meaningless happenstance, some little impulsive thing we did that didn’t seem like much at the time. So even if we don’t get that payoff right away, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good idea to go ahead and heed those inclinations that we have. Because our intuition knows so much more than our conscious mind does, AND our intuition can see much further into the future.
So that strange little nudge to take a different way home from work may not amount to anything we can ever see as a concrete result. Maybe we just get home, a couple minutes later than if we took the normal route. We should acknowledge our intuition anyway, because maybe it kept us out of trouble. Maybe, if we’d gone the normal way, we would have gotten stuck in traffic or had a fender bender. Don’t become frustrated when the results aren’t immediately apparent.
So, now that we’re all on the same page and we’re all ready to follow those promptings, let’s look at some ways we can support and enhance our results. And I’m talking about spells to increase and to strengthen intuition and the first item on my list here is moon water.
The New Moon is this coming Tuesday, the 28th I think. And strengthening intuition would be such a great intention for our moon water during this lunar cycle. We’re in Cancer season, the New Moon will also be in Cancer, Cancer is a water sign and Cancer is ruled by the moon, and the moon rules intuition and hidden knowledge, and all of these elements are going to come into play for us as we do this work.
So if we want to add some amethyst into the water as it charges under the new moon, that’s gonna be very helpful, but on top of the jar we could place maybe some moonstone, which you may recall is not water safe but is a stone that is super conducive to intuition. This would be good water to add to coffee or tea, especially with some herbs that correspond to intuition such as chamomile. And new moon water charged with intuitive intentions is going to be really potent in a ritual bath.
And if we want to really make the most of this ritual bath, along with our moon water, we could add some lavender or rosemary, light some candles, especially blue, purple or silver candles. And we might also during this bath make an attempt to connect to a deity such as Neptune or Bastet, both of whom are very powerful in matters of intention. So, again, getting into a really focused mindset and drawing a bath and making an offering of wine or spirits to the deity of your choosing, and then sinking into these deep intuitive waters of our ritual bath and welcoming the images, the messages, those thoughts that seem to come from somewhere deep inside us, but which we usually ignore or try to downplay. All of this is going to help us in this work.
Meditation is also a really good way to quiet the noise of the mind and put ourselves in a place where we can hear and notice our intuitive messages. Meditating with specific intention is going to open us up to receive visions, impressions, shapes, colors, sounds. Don’t work to hold onto those images, let them ebb and flow, come and go. Don’t try to make sense of any of it while you’re meditating. When your session is over, go ahead and jot down anything that stood out, draw any pictures you may have seen, make a note of any words or sounds that came to you. And then watch for those things to make sense as you go about your day or your week.
Pay attention to any animals you may have seen in your meditation, any numbers or sequences of numbers. Any people or places that may have crossed your mind. Just start paying attention. We have to be present for our intuition the same way we are for our families, our friends, our partners, our kids. We try to pay attention when they have something to tell us, don’t we? We can’t treat our own intuition as any less important.
Working with tarot is another great way to sort of flex that muscle. Asking our intuition a question and then pulling a card or cards, and then using only the powers of our intuition to interpret them is such a great practice. So if we ask our intuition an open ended question like, what is holding me back from achieving the life I want? Or maybe something a little less profound like, what does my partner need from me that I haven’t been giving? And then pull a card and try to understand the message it has for you. Don’t worry so much about the correct keywords or getting the meaning quote-unquote correct. Just try to understand the message it has FOR YOU.
Tarot is a really powerful tool for not just divination or telling the future, but also for allowing us to tap into our intuition, but only if we treat it that way. Learning the cards and the intended meanings is a great base of knowledge, but we also need to get familiar with them on a more personal level and occasionally try to develop our own meanings for them. I have a few cards that have very personal meanings for me. When I pull the seven of cups, I immediately think of my oldest daughter. For a few reasons, this card has come to represent her for me. So anytime that card comes to the surface, I just try to check in with her and make sure she’s doing well.
And then, the last thing I want to talk about today as relates to intuition is that we have to be willing to be wrong. We have to be ok with that. Getting things wrong doesn’t mean our intuition is weak, or that we don’t really have any intuitive ability. Not at all. We aren’t going to be right 100 percent of the time and we have to be okay with it. We can’t let that discourage us or color our perception of our ability. Leave the doubt out of it. Have faith. Meteorologists get things wrong all the time, but I still check the weather forecast every morning because overall, they’ve demonstrated that they have a pretty good track record.
So when you receive an intuitive message, accept it at face value and allow yourself to be pleasantly surprised when things go right, and just shake it off when you get it wrong. You don’t stop trying to learn piano just because you can’t play Chopin right out the gate.
These are very good spells to do and rituals to perform and practices to have. And working with intuition isn’t a one-and-done activity. This is an exercise. Strengthening intuition is just like any other discipline. It should really be done intentionally and it should be done often to make the most progress and to really start to recognize what those intuitive messages feel like. So that when they do come, we will know them immediately.
So, keep flexing those muscles, and keep writing me with topics you’d like to talk about. I’m available on social media at @middleagedwitch, or via email at eli@middleagedwitch.com. We will talk again next week, and I can’t wait. Happy birthday, Cancers. My name is Eli, and this has been the MIddle Aged Witch podcast.
