Spellwork and Shadow Work

               This has been a strange few days, I won’t lie. Someone I have been estranged from attempted to make contact with me, which was less than Ideal for my mental health. I won’t go into too much detail, but instead, focus on the fact that I was lucky enough to have my very supportive significant other with me when it happened, and I am okay.

               The thing about being estranged from family is that there is a sort of lingering sense of being out of control; you’ve set a boundary – they violate it. When they violate said boundary, there is a deep-seated need to do something about it (at least, for me there is). Some kind of retribution, some kind of retort, an urgent sense to tell that person, “Stay the f*ck away from me!” something, anything to assert power and control. In my case, I cannot do this. Not because of any lingering sense of love for these people, but because I know that any response from me – positive, or negative – is exactly what they want. If I respond, be it with anger or kindness, they win. And they will thusly feel emboldened to try more things with me, to cross more boundaries, to push further.

               So, I did not respond. I reinforced my boundaries and did not give them what they wanted.

               And I’ll be totally honest here: It was completely unsatisfactory.

               I wanted to do something active. I wanted to make them feel the way that I did: angry, hurt, violated…I wanted them to feel pain.

               This, my friends, is perhaps (in my case at least) not the best place to attempt magic.

               I decided to do a protection spell with a lot of spiciness to it. And I was so angry. I was focused on what they’d done to me in the past, and the present. I was afraid of what they’d try in the future as the holidays approach. And I hate being afraid. And I let that fear galvanize in my gut to become anger as I worked on this spell, which was comprised of oil and spices.

               And as I picked up the jar with the lid, laden with things like red chili flakes, black pepper, and more, said lid came off. The oil spread on me, the floor, everywhere.

               I made sure my dog was safely away from the oil, then, I took a shower. I cried, and realized that I was very lucky – the protection oil I was making may have worked, in the sense that it protected me from completing the task. I had made it in anger, and I was not ready yet to work with that emotion and incorporate it into my practice.

               I cried and cleaned off the spicy blend before it could irritate my skin, then I cleaned my carpet, and everything else (which, honestly, was for the best and needed to be done anyway), and then I went and curled up in bed with my dog, and avoided doing what I knew I needed to do: Shadow work.

               Now, shadow work is quite the buzz phrase right now, and you’ll see it all over various social media. It comes from Carl Jung, who was a psychologist from Switzerland. The idea is that the shadow self is the hidden parts of who we are – the pieces we don’t want to acknowledge in daily life.

               Some people like to do shadow work with a therapist/psychologist/counselor, some prefer to do the work on their own. I worked with a therapist through much of 2021, and I can attest to how far I have come in a very short period in working through my traumas. I still reach out to this therapist on occasion, but I feel empowered to continue my work on my solitarily because she helped lay the foundation for such work.

               There are shadow workbooks out there for everyone, of every flavor, from the more strictly Jungian to the more witch-craft themed. The book I was drawn to incorporates tarot, and I use the deck I feel closest to when I do this work.

               I’m not going to go into detail about that day, or what I started working through – it’s a very private thing, and I’m just not ready to talk about it. What I will say, is that I am understanding that I am the sort of person who wants to skip to the end, the Happily Ever After, if you will, and ignore the gritty, less fun parts of the learning process. So, that is where I am at right now; working on the little bits at a time, reading, writing, and sharing some of what I learn with all of you.

               Thank you for reading,

-NL