#cleansing magic

[elminx]

Elminx's Ritual Walkthrough: A Spell to

Remove Unwanted Things From Your Life

Note: This ritual is my own creation - it combines the elements of a cleansing spell with cord-cutting. It also involves the basic concepts of sympathetic magic and some candle magic. Feel free to make it your own in any way that fits your personality and practice.

This is one of the most versatile spells in my repertoire - it can be used as a general all-purpose cleansing spell or specifically to target a particular problem you are currently experiencing. I am going to go through the basics of the spell first. The second section will involve how to adapt this spell to varying concerns. Its ingredients are meant to be simple and accessible - you can follow it as written or add more for flare. As always, I assume you will arrange your sacred space before you begin.

At its bare bones, this is a longer-lasting candle ritual of cleansing that involves strong elements of cord-cutting into the mix. You will be asked to actively attend to your candle every 30 minutes while your candle is lit. This is not optional - if you are not willing to do this, this is not the spell for you. A lot of the magic of this spell comes into play with the repetition of action - this is the MOST IMPORTANT element of this ritual, do not skip out on this step.

The Basic Ritual

You will Need:

1 Pillar Candle, preferably a figure candle* A fireproof bowl or tray Salt or Sand 1 or more Cleansing Herbs** A Cleansing oil, olive is fine (optional) A pair of scissors*** A stopwatch (the app of your phone is fine)

*This is especially true when you are new to this ritual. This candle is supposed to represent you and using a figure candle of your gender will reinforce this in your mind. I prefer to use the figure candles by Darknessvoid on Etsy, but any figure candle will do. Beeswax is best for this purpose because it has a long burn time which we want for this rituatl. For those of you who are nonbinary, I know that Madame Pamita sells nonbinary figure candles. Any pillar candle will do in a pinch just keep in mind that we WANT the candle to burn for a long time. I don't find the color of the candle to be important here (I use undyed beeswax) but you can add color magic here if you wish. **This should be a cleansing herb that you have a solid relationship with. I would suggest lemon, mint, sage, hyssop, or cedar as good options for this step but ultimately use what you have and feel comfortable with. For additional fire safety, use fresh herbs when applicable as they are less likely to ignite. ***I use regular old house scissors for this ritual. If you have a cutting device that is sanctified and important to your craft, use that. It does not have to be scissors, a knife or other cutting utensil will be fine

Set up your sacred space - this does not have to be fancy; do what feels right.

Prepare for A Long Burn, aka Candle Burning Safety - This is a long candle ritual - the longer your candle burns, the more effective the end results (in my experience). So we want to set up for candle safety - I do this by choosing a fire-safe plate and lining it with salt (you can use sand as an alternative). I place my candle in a safe space with nothing flammable nearby. Please follow your very best fire safety rules here.

Prepare your candle for burning - Take your pillar candle and become better acquainted with it. This candle is supposed to represent you; you may wish to carve your name and date of birth into the candle. Rub the candle over your entire body - focusing on problem areas (I'll go more into that below). If you do energy work, focus on pulling what you want to remove out of your body and into the candle. You can breathe into the face of the candle - whatever you have to do until you feel like the candle is a representation of you. This is an important step - take as long as you need to here. When this step feels complete, you can anoint your candle with a cleansing oil if you are using it (many traditions will call for holding the candle against your body and anointing the candle from the feet to the wick signifying that we are working on removal.) Place your candle in the center of your plate of salt/sand.

Sanctify or Empower Your Herb(s) - I will not go into details about how to do this because you should have a way that is already in your practice. The goal here is to somehow "wake up" the herbs and inform them of their role in this ritual. I like to arrange the herbs in an ascetic way around my candle, but do what works for you here. They just need to end up on the plate on top of the sand/salt. Keep in mind that dry herbs are quite flammable, so keep them farther away from the candle for fire safety.

Light your candle and begin the ritual - the goal of this ritual is to cut away any problems in your life every 1/2 hour while the candle is burning. The first cut should begin immediately after you have lit the candle and is the most important. I like to speak out loud as I make cuts around the candle with my scissors - I "name" each thing I am cutting as I focus on letting it go to exit my life. As I see it, there are five planes involved in a candle spell like this: to the left and right of the candle, in front of the candle, behind the candle, and above the candle. I was taught that the left side represents the past, the right the future, the back the mental realm, in front the physical realm, and above the spiritual realm. You do not need to use this format, but it can be a helpful way of thinking about WHERE to cut on the candle. Bring whatever is bothering you to mind, speak your intentions to remove it from your life, and then cut the air around the candle in the appropriate location. If you are good at energy work, you may be able to "find" the cord to cut, but it's okay if you can't do this. If something is feeling especially stuck, I sometimes cut the cords from around the candle and then from around my body. I am most likely to do this on the first cut.

Set Your Timer for 30 Minutes - You want to repeat the cutting part of the ritual every 30 minutes for as long as the candle burns. You may find that you are cutting at the same locations every time you return to this action, or you may find areas that need cutting that seem to be revealed as the ritual progresses. You can go with your intuition here or do divination on this subject - I wouldn't start divination for this until you've lit your candle and begun the ritual.

Take an action in your physical life to aid this spell - This is a great opportunity to take real-world steps that reflect the magic you are working on. You could cut your hair. You could clean your space. If you are removing a person from your life, this is the time to block them on social media if you have not done so already.

Rinse and Repeat - You should be cutting as part of this ritual for as long as your candle burns. It is okay to put out and relight your candle as needed; just make sure to burn it in half-hour increments. You could use numerology to your advantage here by burning the candle over nine days (nine is the number of completion). Doing this for the nine days leading up to a new moon would enhance the natural energy of this spell.

Finishing Touches - because this is a spell of removal, you want to clean up and discard any leftover elements of this spell as close to spell completion as possible. These items should be thrown away and I suggest doing so away from your house. I gather the items into a plastic bag and dispose of them in a public trash bin. If you can't do that for whatever reason, at least put them in the bin outside of your house.

How to Modify This Ritual

This ritual can be modified in any way that you can think of to remove something specific.

To Remove a Person From Your Life - To do a gentle cord cutting, repeat this ritual as written. Specify that you are cutting the ties that bind you and the person you want to remove during the cutting sections. Adding an herb like lavender that has a soft and calming domination element to it can aid in this effect. Here you might put your focus on the past, the future, and the physical sides of the candle.

If you need to forcibly remove a person from your life - add in some banishment herbs. If there is an air of obsession on either of your parts, cut in the mental realms as well.

Hexbreaking - this isn't in and of itself a hex-breaking ritual, but it can be used in conjunction with other magics to mollify some of the effects of baneful magic or the evil eye on your person. In this case, it is best to have a good idea of what effect the baneful magic is having and, from there, cut in the appropriate quadrant of the candle specifying "I am cutting away the baneful magic cast by xxx on my xxx". Add hex-breaking herbs to your ritual for this purpose.

Healing - I can't believe I have to say this, but magic cannot heal you of anything major, life-threatening, or chronic. But this spell is especially good at drawing out SYMPTOMS (I have used it to augment the treatment for my chronic illness and to help with colds and viruses in the past). On the step where you rub your candle over your body, focus on areas where you are symptomatic and draw the symptoms out of your body and into the candle. Add herbs that help you with these symptoms to this ritual.

For Help with Trauma - Please only do this if you have some handle on the trauma you have undergone. If you feel that there is a chance that thinking about the trauma may hurt you further, this is not a helpful ritual for you. When you are at a point where you understand your trauma well and wish to do a ritual to help release it, you can cut it away from your body as part of this ritual. It will help to understand where you are carrying the trauma - cut it away from your mental realm if you keep ruminating on it, or away from the belly of your candle if you carry it as stomach issues. You may need a buddy to be with while you attempt this sort of work; tread with care here.

For Intrusive Thoughts - Again, this ritual cannot cure you of intrusive thoughts, but it can help to manage them for a time. Rub the candle all over your head during step 3, focusing on pushing your intrusive thoughts out and into the head of the candle. During the cutting stage, focus on cutting in the mental realm.

I…could go on. If you need to remove it from your person, this ritual can be adapted for that purpose. If you have an idea in your head but don't know how to actualize it, feel free to send me an ask so I can spitball ideas with you.

A Few Final Thoughts

As humans, we tend to accumulate lots of stuff in our minds and in our bodies. This is a ritual that is designed, at its core, to separate out what is ours to carry forward from what we might just be carrying with us. This may not be the right ritual for you; if so, that is completely okay. You should never perform magic that doesn't feel right.

That said, keep in mind that when you clear out a lot of stuff, you can create a bit of a vacuum. Once whatever you want gone IS gone, you should take steps to protect yourself from its return. As always, I hope that this post was helpful. Do you like my work? You can support me by tipping me on KoFi or purchasing an astrology report written just for you.

[tenofmuses]

Sometimes the “cleansing” you require isn’t what we typically view as magic, and can be quite mundane:

Open your windows to air out your room/house if the energy or air inside is feeling stagnant.

Wash your surfaces with thieves vinegar or your favourite cleaner. Get rid of that dust.

Clean up clutter and mess. Put away that laundry you did last week. Tidy your altar and clean your magical items. Change your sheets. Have a bath.

To some, this may not seem like cleansing magic, but to me it very much is. The relief I feel when I clean my room as my depression starts to lift, for example, is palpable. Cleansing your home and yourself, keeping your space tidy, etc., it all helps! And like all things, you can imbue many of these tasks with magic, if you would like, though it isn’t necessary. Do what feels right for you.

[herballwitch]

Moon and Sea Healing + Cleansing Spell

Hello, My name is Alva Tauri! I am an herbalist, spirit worker, tarot and oracle reader, and lunar and herbal witch dedicated to closing the education gap when it comes to herbalism and witch practices!

Today I wanted to share a spell I made myself that I often use for healing and cleansing, as I have noticed there are not a lot of people discussing healing magic on tumblr.

I created this spell relatively recently to correspond with the Waning Gibbous moon cycle, as it is meant to be a time of cleansing and healing and is known to be a blessed time for water/ocean magic. (I am a lunar witch, so I do tend to do spells and perform magic in relation to the moon)

If you have any questions about the spell, how it's used, why certain ingredients are used, etc. please feel free to send an ask to my ask box!

With that being said, here is my moon and sea healing and cleansing spell!

Ingredients Needed for This Spell:

moon water

a bowl

a tealight candle

sea salt

mint

rosemary

jade

How to Perform the Spell:

as always, before you do anything, you should cleanse your tools and your space. this is immensely important. if you are new to cleansing, I have made a post about the many ways you can do this here that you may want to check out!

once your tools and space having been cleansed, take your bowl and pour moon water inside, only leaving about a quarter of an inch of room off the top.

then take your sea salt, mint, and rosemary and sprinkle each of them on the top one at a time. make sure that as you are doing this you are asking each herb to bless you, to aid you in healing, and to cleanse you and your space to ensure that it is a safe space for healing. remember to thank your herbs as well! gratitude goes a long way.

(optional step) take your tealight candle and carve a protection and/or cleansing sigil on the top. if you do not have a sigil to use check out my post here where I discuss what protection sigils I use. you can use one of these for this spell! if you are new to sigils and would like to learn more so that you can make your own, check out my sigil navigation post linked here.

now, place your tealight candle in the center of the water and light it.

grab your jade and hold it in your hands, clasping it firmly. while jade is normally representative of harmony and eternity, it is also known to take away stress and to support the bodies natural healing process.

now, you may call upon the gods, deities, and/or spirit guides that you work with and pray to them. ask them to aid you in this journey of healing, ask them to protect you and to cleanse your space so that you may grow and heal. if it feels right, you may leave them an additional offering to them at this time. however, in my experience the spell itself stands as an offering and this is not necessary.

let the tealight candle burn out completely. you do not have to sit at the altar the entire time it is burning. however, leaving it burning allows your connection with the gods/deities/spirits to remain open and allows the bowl and the gods/deities/spirits to absorb its energy.

when the candle has burned out you may get rid of the bowl and clean your space, as the spell is now complete.

That's all for the moon and sea healing and cleansing spell! I hope that you found this helpful in your spiritual journey and I hope that you are able to apply this information to your practice.

if you have any questions regarding anything discussed here or anything you feel that I have missed, please send an ask to my ask box! I appreciate all comments and questions and would be more than happy to go into more detail about spirit work!

For more information on my practice, witchcraft, herbalism, spirit work, and divination please check out the guide on my page (linked here)! Everything I have ever posted can be found there!

I wish you all a blessed day filled with peace, endless wealth, and eternal health! Until the next time we meet!

[breelandwalker]

Hey Bree! Quick question for you: in one of your podcast episodes, you mention a little cleaning rhyme that starts with “out, out dirt and dust” and my garbage adhd brain can neither remember the rest nor which episode it’s from. Help?

Never fear! My penchant for archiving will help!

The cleaning rhyme is from Hex Positive, Ep. 037 - Cleaning, Cleansing, and Magical Germophobia (August 2023). It's a little something I occasionally mutter while using general household cleaning as a vehicle for cleansing magic, and it runs thus:

Out out, dirt and dust Out out, mold and must Gone you be at count of three And take my ills away with thee

Have fun!

[raining-tulips]

magic checklist for tomorrow:

✦ cleanse new apartment ✦ cleanse myself (smoke, then bath) ✦ protect, protect, protect ✦money / luck spell

✦ and if i'm feeling up for it, journaling mid-year reflections

[annoyingnightlightbug]

Have you cleansed your home yet? Have you cleansed yourself (I desperately need to do an egg cleansed and just haven't had the energy)?

There's a lot happening in the world. Don't forget to scrub and shake and smoke that negative sludge clinging to you off (literal and metaphorical).

Also, don't forget to fight for the people of Palestine. It is our duty. In whatever way we are able. 🍉🇵🇸✨️

I do not post here often. At all. And this isn't entirely on theme. But there's the door 🚪 if you don't like it. Don't let it hit you on the way out (it is hexed).

Light a candle for the lost children. Light the darkness till they get home (their respective gods arms) if you're able. I've dedicated every last piece of advantage chocolate to them. Because it's what I have. And otherwise I likely wouldn't have eaten it.

So, at least once a day. Stop. Think of them. If you cannot do anything else. Just don't forget them.

[felixlunallena]

It's cleansing sunday and I've made this cute cinnamon stick 🌙🔮👁

[sassyllamaspirit]

Recharging my space

I needed to cleanse and recharge my space after the long storm days this week. So much frustration just hanging about the house. So today I lit my favorite scented candle and blasted my favorite tunes while I cleaned. Everything feels so much better now.

You don't need to be fancy, just put the energy you want into your space.

[thelittlewitchway]

Now hold on you might be on to something here

I JUST HAD THE STUPIDEST FUCKING IDEA FOR CLEANSING A SPACE

put liquid soap in the moonlight. moon soap. get a bubble wand. blow moon bubbles.

[vigilskeep]

the mortalitasi may be the funniest mages in thedas because as far as i can tell their entire strategy is just to do blood magic with so much confidence nobody questions it

[tenofmuses]

One of my favourite parts of delving into folk magic in my practice has been the various realizations of things my family does that seemed mundane but are, in fact, quite magical.

The best example of this that I can think of is the simmer pot. Aka: when you have a bunch of citrus scraps to use up, so you put them in a pot with water and herbs and simmer them on low heat and it makes your house smell fucking delicious.

Growing up, simmer pots were something my mum just kind of did, and so she taught me how to do them too. She learned it from her mum, who probably learned it from hers, and so on. And with each subsequent generation in my family, there seems to have been a dilution of the magical meaning behind the action. To my Grammie, simmer pots are a way to cleanse the air in your home, to “freshen things up”; to my mum, they’re a way to use up scraps and make your house smell nice.

It’s interesting to me that what is clearly a cleansing spell would never be labeled as such by my family. Even if it serves the exact same purpose as one. It’s just something you do.

And that’s one of the most interesting parts of folk magic, to me. People who aren’t practitioners rarely view what they’re doing as folk magic, because it’s just something they’ve always done. That makes these practices all the more rich, since they’re usually so embedded in people’s lives, and have important cosmological reasons for existing, even when they seem mundane. But at the same time, this makes folk magic really hard to research, because most of the time people don’t even consider these sorts of things as magical.

[the-lunar-vixen]

Totally agree! I always think of cleaning as part of my witchcraft! I often sage my apartment afterward too ❤️

one of the best minimalistic witchy things you can do is clean your house.

seriously. light a candle and go to town. in the process of cleaning, you’re also metaphysically cleansing your space which opens doors to renew wards and put up additional barriers if necessary.

you’ll feel much better afterwards, and remember to take breaks if you need to.

[brila1997]

Maid to Service

[hearth-and-veil]

Pssst hey kid. Wanna cleanse your home for free with no effort?

Open a window.

That's it. That's all you have to do. Open a window and let Nature cleanse the space. Free and easy down the road we go.

[ambermotta]

Protection Magic: Some Important Concepts

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Long post based on my experience and research. Meant to be informative. I don't claim to know the absolute truth.

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Protection magic is any type of work meant to protect A from B, and there are many ways that this can be done: prayers, charms, talismans, tokens, casting circles, setting up wards, visualization. The list can go on and on because it can be done in many different ways and combining many different methods.

But methods are not the topic of this post today. No, today I would like to talk about some key concepts to keep in mind before getting started on making protections and keeping them effective.

The Importance of Cleansing

Before doing any protection work I like to do a cleansing. Imagine you have an open water bottle, and because it was open, a lot of dirt has found its way into it over time. You decide to seal the bottle so no dirt comes in, but you don't pour out the old water, so you end up sealing it in. Yes, you'll keep more dirt from coming in, but the muck is still there.

It is easier to see this being applied to a physical location, but I personally also apply this to personal protective tokens. I feel they work better when you are taking care of your energies by doing regular cleanses and managing internal negativity.

Important Definitions

Protection ≠ Banishing ≠ Cleansing

I feel a lot of people are under the impression that these are all the same. I think they all work together towards a similar goal, but their jobs are different.

Protection: protecting something from something

Banishing: driving out entities

Cleansing: clearing out energy

You can do cleansing, banishing, and protection at the same time, but that doesn't mean they are the same. You can do a ritual including all of them, but you can also just do a cleansing or just do warding (which is a form of protection).

Note: cleansing is not restricted to “negative energy”. You can cleanse any kind of energy. Exemple: a friend of yours decides tarot is not for them and hands down their deck to you. If you wanna work with that deck it is highly advisable that you do a thorough cleansing of it and then infuse it/consecrate it with the energies you want. It's not that your friend has “bad” energy, it's just that you might not want to work with the same energies they have, or use a tool that has someone else's energy in it.

Not Necessarily a Lazy Job

One important thing with protection magic is that no matter how strong or how successful are at doing it is that it is not failproof. I have yet to see protection work that lasts forever, and there may be a few reasons for it.

Negativity also comes from within

Imagine you have a fish inside an open fish tank. Just like the bottle example earlier, you decide to put a lid on so you prevent leaves from falling into the tank and polluting the water. However, there's a fish, a living being in there, and it produces waste. It is impossible for the fish to live without producing waste. If you don’t regularly clean the water, ammonia and fecal matter will build up.

In this analogy, you are the fish. I am the fish. Humans literally cannot live without ever having a negative thought or feeling, it is part of our existence and we have to live with it. No one lives in constant bliss.

That doesn't mean we have to live in the muck though. That's why cleansing yourself is important.

No one is immune to the environment

Here I have another analogy for you. Imagine you're facing a harsh winter, but you are safe in the security and warmth of your house. Your house is protected from the cold so you don't even mind it. However, you have to go outside. You dress up, go out and you feel very, very cold. You could perhaps wear something warmer, but it will never feel the same as home. Yet it is better than going outside naked, no?

Same thing for energies. You can have protection, but depending on how strong the energy in the environment is you are sure to feel it to at least some degree. However it's best to have some protection than no protection at all.

And there is a difference between Feeling an energy and dwelling in it vs Feeling an energy and not letting it latch onto you.

Energy can wear off, and new energy can build up

Energy is ever changing, ever moving. If you do a strong protection spell once, it can last for a long while, but if you forget about it it will likely lose a lot of its strength over time. Some of what you put out there might wear off and be substituted by something else. The energy can also grow stale, which means it becomes less effective.

But if you do a strong spell every month you will not only make your protections stronger, but also constantly renew the energies and not let them stagnate.

So keep doing cleanses and every now and then give a boost to your protections so they are refreshed and recharged.

Note on "Negative Energy"

One of the main reasons someone might choose to do a protection ritual and a cleansing is to ward off negative energy. But is that really needed? What is "negative energy"?

Negative energy might feel like a sense of heaviness, dread, pain, sadness, feeling ill, angry, sad or anxious. Emotions produce and attract what we can call "negative energy", the same way it can make us feel those things.

And while I personally think nobody wants to feel them, we must understand they are not always bad at their core.

The uncomfortable feelings they can cause may also be a gateway for healing and transformation. Pain tells us there is something that needs to be worked on, that needs change.

If you are feeling negative, ask yourself why. Why does this bother me? What makes me feel this way? What can I learn from this pain?

If you happen to feel negative energy, it is good to cleanse and protect. But I advise you to always look for the source to see what can be done about it or what you can learn from it. Don't just try to use spellcasting to run away from your shit. Own your shit. Deal with it.

Otherwise, it will keep coming back no matter how much protection you have.

Conclusion

It is impossible to always be free from “negative energy” all the time, no matter how strong your protections are. But protections can absorb some of the blows that you would otherwise take and ease the ones you were going to take no matter what.

Protection magic alone will not solve all your problems. It is a great tool to help you keep your center and remain grounded, but it is not usually something you do once and forget. It is a continuous, ever evolving work, meant to be used in conjunction with other types of spellwork.

And most importantly, it can give you some comfort through the many trials of life.

Thank you for reading, and good luck on your path! ♡

[felixlunallena]