Recently I’ve had several people ask me for suggestions on protection magic. The specific questions vary, but they share a common theme: how can I use magic to protect myself, my family, and my community from harm in our current political and economic environment?
This is a very relevant question. Our current situation is difficult, unpleasant, and getting worse by the day. It’s bad for all of us. It’s worse if you’re especially vulnerable due to age, health, financial situation, or simply because of who you are.
Hopefully you’ve made good use of your time over the past few years and you’ve developed some skill with magic. If you haven’t, start now. While skills are best developed in a low-risk environment (if you need to learn to drive, start practicing in an empty parking lot and not on an expressway at rush hour) there’s nothing like urgent deep need to power a spell.
There are numerous books that teach numerous different magical techniques and traditions. The best book for these times is Blackthorn’s Protection Magic: A Witch’s Guide to Mental and Physical Self-Defense. If you’re looking for instruction, my on-line, on-demand course in Operative Magic is the most popular of all the Under the Ancient Oaks classes.
Basic defensive magic is both essential and effective. I begin every day with a simple grounding and shielding exercise. I have wards on my house. I use regular divination to see what threats may be out there that I need to be concerned with. If basic defensive magic isn’t enough, there are more aggressive approaches available.
All this is necessary and good.
And yet…
There’s somewhat of a “raise the drawbridge” mentality to these questions. Or to use a different metaphor, a “board up the house before the hurricane hits” approach. It’s the idea that if we can just avoid calamity for a short time, eventually things will get better and we can go back to living our lives.
This is not an effective strategy for success in these times.
The Four of Pentacles
In the classic Waite-Smith Tarot deck, the Four of Pentacles shows a wealthy man sitting by himself. He has one pentacle on his head, he’s clutching another with both arms, and his feet are firmly planted on two more. Robin Wood takes it a step further and shows the man with castle walls around him. Traditionally, this image speaks of greed, hoarding, and isolating yourself from others.
But if a picture says a thousand words, a Tarot card says a million. What the man is doing is obvious. Why he’s doing it is not. Perhaps, as many have suggested, he’s Ebenezer Scrooge (pre-ghosts) who simply wants to hold onto everything he has and never share with anyone.
But perhaps these four pentacles are all he has. Perhaps someone is actively trying to take them away from him. Perhaps he’s living on the edge of town because he’s been forced out of his home in the city, because his job was eliminated by a billionaire and his team of hackers. Perhaps his very identity is under attack.
Perhaps he’s not selfish and evil, he’s just scared – for good and valid reasons. That’s understandable.
Still, the Four of Pentacles is not a helpful strategy.
Hiding won’t get you where you want to go
Protection magic is necessary and helpful. At the same time, “hunker down and wait it out” is not an effective strategy.
First, there’s no guarantee that waiting – even in relative safety – will get you where you want to go. The progress we experienced in the mid-2010s felt like it would go on forever. But it stopped in 2017 and we’ve been headed in the wrong direction ever since. If we keep waiting for things to get better we may be waiting a very long time.
And second, you can burn a lot of years hugging your pentacles behind those walls. Perhaps I’m just getting to an age where this is obvious, but even if you’re relatively young, years spent behind castle walls are years that you don’t move forward, don’t build for the future, don’t lay a foundation for something bigger and better down the road.
By all means, learn protection magic and use it often. It can help keep you out of serious trouble.
But protection magic alone isn’t enough.
Sometimes you have to just survive
That said, if you can’t then you can’t and you shouldn’t feel bad about it.
For all that I’m not as vulnerable as many, 2024 was a difficult year for me. Early 2024 was so bad I wrote Survive And Advance where I used a basketball metaphor to remind myself and everyone else that sometimes all you can do is all you can do. Sometimes anything beyond eating, sleeping, and doing what you have to do to make sure you have food to eat and a place to sleep has to be postponed. Or canceled.
I also pointed out that while surviving is Priority 1, advancing is Priority 1-A. “I can see better days even though I can’t see a path to get to them.” I kept moving and things got better.
But the days when all I could do was survive weren’t fun. I don’t blame myself for just surviving, but the sooner I could get back on track the better.
The key to effective magic – a good strategy
Working magic is easy.
No, seriously – it’s easy. There are hundreds if not thousands of books that will teach you how to do it. There are techniques ranging from elaborate spirit invocations to drawing sigils to simply lighting candles. And contrary to what some people say, you don’t have to be “born a witch” to do magic and witchcraft. Yes, some people have more natural talent for magic than others, but anyone can do it, and with a little practice almost anyone can do it well.
What’s hard is figuring out what to work magic for.
One of the reasons “protection magic” is difficult at times like these is the question of “protection against what?” Magic works best when it’s narrowly directed toward very specific targets. And also, magic works best when you use it to bring what you want, not to avoid what you don’t want. One of the core principles of operative magic is to state your goal in the positive and in the present tense.
So what do you want?
Carpe diem can bring some amazing experiences, and it can keep you from spending so much time worrying about the future that you forget to enjoy life. But an overemphasis on carpe diem, combined with an economic system that has us constantly chasing money for rent that’s always going up, can cause us to spend huge chunks of our lives spinning our wheels and never building or doing any of those wonderful and magical things we dreamed about when we were kids.
We need to figure out what we want, and then figure out a strategy to get there.
Seven of Swords? Eight of Cups?
Divination can’t tell you what you should do, but it can help you figure out what you want to do.
We don’t want to be the Seven of Cups with our head in the clouds, spending so much time on what could be that we never do anything. If you’re feeling the need to actively resist, you may want to be the Seven of Swords – especially as drawn by Robin Wood. The Six of Swords is a good model for moving on in troubled times.
I’m particularly fond of the Eight of Cups. I like it so much I led a UU Sunday Service on it titled I Like It Here – Why Do I Have To Leave? Even if you don’t like your current situation, it’s often easier to stick with what we know than to move on toward something uncertain, even if it might be better… and in doing so, burn a few more of our limited years living in ways that do not serve us or our highest values.
The key is to be moving toward what we want.
What do you want?
Yes, we want to be safe. Yes, we want to be protected from those who would do us harm, either directly or through negligence. That’s what you want to be free from.
What do you want to be filled with instead?
Now, how are you going to get it?
Jason Miller of Strategic Sorcery likes to say “make a plan that doesn’t require magic to work, then use magic to improve the odds that it will work.” I’ve found that to be a very effective approach.
Beyond figuring out what you want, this requires doing some research on how to get there. What training do you need? What skills do you need to develop? What intermediate experiences do you need, and how can you get them? Make a plan, put the plan on a calendar, and start working it. Review your progress regularly and make adjustments as necessary.
As you do, figure out what magical operations will help you get there. Your ultimate goal may be more of a vision and thus too general for effective spellcasting. The intermediate steps should be clear and concrete, and those are the kind of goals that respond well to magical boosting.
But you can’t do any of that if you’re living the Four of Pentacles.
Be safe, be an engaged citizen, but above all, be yourself
I don’t want to diminish the concerns of those who are looking for magical – and mundane – protection. Do what you have to do to take care of you and yours. We all have an obligation to be engaged citizens and to not let the current chaos go unchallenged.
But boarding up the windows and trying to wait it out isn’t likely to bring what you want. Instead, be the Seven of Swords. Be the Six of Swords. Be the Eight of Cups.
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