How to Invoke Yourself

invoke:

1a: to petition for help or support
1b: to appeal to or cite as authority
2: to call forth by incantation: conjure
3: to make an earnest request for: solicit
4: to put into effect or operation

I believe (and know) we wander away from ourselves from time to time. While we might inhabit a body and follow the schedules of our lives, we do not always stay in our own edges.

We leave. We escape. We remove ourselves. Accidentally. On purpose.

For survival. For there is no other way.

And can we call ourselves back? Can we invoke ourselves?

To Invoke What is Lost or Left

We are the spell. The phrase fell into the room, at our feet, into the magick of a Witchcamp with Artemis. With the story of arrows that traveled into the heart of the one she loved. With the story of recognizing how we can all jump to conclusions and lose ourselves. And lose the ones we love.

I am inspired to remind myself of this magick, of this promise. Of this ritual in which we were meant to leave the room – and remember our embodied spells.

But life. The universe.

Everything.

Perhaps in a definition lies the stepping stones that will return us to the door of our promises.

• Help – Offer yourself the possibility that help is on the way. You may need to give it to yourself. You may need to ask others. You may need to ask again and again until it doesn’t make your face scrunch. Until it becomes a prayer that you offer to yourself.
• Appeal – Call to yourself. Call to the parts that are missing or tired or sad or angry. Call out to the parts of yourself that have wandered off because they didn’t feel they were home anymore. Call out to the places that crumpled up in the winds of change. The things that tumbled. Appeal for their return.
• Conjure – Use the magick that you are. The magick that only you know. Do the things that bring your heart into its rightful place again. Make that intention. Grab the herbs or the candles or the athame. The salt. The sand. The journal. The paper you will burn. The stone you will bless and carry in your pocket. Sing to the godds. Sing to the trees and the waters.
• Ask – Be willing to ask what you need to ask. Be like Demeter and scream to the godds. Petition for guidance and grace. Scream as the waves crash on the shore. Ask for their blessing. Ask for their wisdom.
• Act – And above all else, do something. The greatest gift you can give yourself is action. The one small thing that becomes the start. Becomes the thing that you look back on and know that you were coming back to you. You remembered you.

And you might have other steps, other stones, other wanderings, other wondering to go before you invoke yourself fully. You might take your entire lifetime to bring yourself into yourself again.

But home awaits.

And when you’re ready, you’ll return.