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A Mystic Guide to Cleansing & Clearing

John Hunt Publishing Ltd.

Cleansing Tools

My first teacher, Miss Tina, once told me: 'Tools are the icing on the cake.' I don't think she meant that they are in any way unnecessary, but that they're given to us to add richness to the deep well of power that magickal people draw from by virtue of their very nature. You can absolutely perform cleansing procedures on your own, and you should! A well-skilled mystic should be able to cleanse and clear without any tools whatsoever. After all, we never really know the types of situations we'll find ourselves in.

Tools are helpful because they speak to the subconscious in a way that raw actions usually cannot. In the psychological sense tools are symbols because they represent the ability to perform an added task that is learned through basic human evolution. When early humans learned how to use tools for building things like shelters, weapons and fires, humanity began to grow by leaps and bounds. It is for these reasons that tools have a certain power and prominence that cannot be understated. Picking up a tool for mystical purposes declares to the mind that 'something magickal is happening'. It's a trigger that is essential for propelling the mind into an alternate state of consciousness that's essential for magickal acts.

The following are descriptions of tools used for cleansing and clearing that I've come to know and love throughout my years as a mystic and witch. It is by no means exhaustive and I highly encourage you to research tools used by many spiritual traditions all over the world that you may find useful for your own personal practice.

The Broom (Besom)

In magickal practice, the word 'besom' is often used interchangeably with 'broom', although besom is the word used to describe any broom that is made with traditional folk methods. For our purposes here, the besom is the type of broom used by the magick-worker for sacred and mystical purposes only. In the traditional way, the handle is made from branches of hazel while the brush part is made from birch twigs bundled together. Hazel is the tree of enchantment and is widely known as being a plant favored by witches. Birch is the tree of beginnings and can be seen as a plant to bring in a fresh start to things. An alternative has the handle made of ash, which is sacred to the faery people of Celtic lore, with the brush made of willow branch ends, sacred to the Goddess and the powers of water. Some prefer a handle of oak, a tree most prized by the Druids as being the most powerful of all. Oak is also sacred to Zeus and Odin, the kings of their pantheons. The symbolism of the broom is special as the phallic shape of the handle and vulvic shape of the brush remind us of the importance of honoring the sacred power present within both sexes.

Obviously the broom has longstanding associations with witches thanks to Hollywood and modern art of American and European Halloween lore. Interestingly, the broom's connection with witchcraft extends much further than its partnership with the hook-nosed hags of the modern October celebrations. Witches have been connected with flight for hundreds of years, at least since the 16th century. Earlier stories show witches riding on common kitchen tools such as soup spoons and forks. Later images show them riding on tools like the pitchfork, and then finally the broom. The witch trials of early modern Europe claimed that witches used these tools to fly to the sabbath, the diabolical meeting grounds of the Devil who they would meet and copulate with in exchange for their infernal powers. In reality, the broom is more often used for what most think of as its intended purpose: cleaning!

Although you can obtain a traditional besom from any number of Pagan vendors or online retailers specializing in traditional brooms, I recommend you make your own if you can. Handmade tools tend to pack a stronger punch since there's an intimacy that grows from creating something out of nothing with your bare hands. All you need to do is obtain a branch from any sacred wood as your handle. Here are some ideas:

Alder: Storms

Apple: Healing and love

Ash: Faery magick, dreams, visions

Birch: Beginnings and new homes

Blackthorn: Expels the worst curses

Cedar: Earth energy

Elm: Stability and grounding

Fir: Clarity and perspective

Hawthorn: Protection

Hazel: Lunar magick

Holly: Resurrection, resurgence, and second chances

Oak: Horned gods, success, and stability

Pine: Purification

Rowan: Protection against enchantments

Willow: Lunar magick, goddesses, and adaptability

Simply hold the branch for your staff (which should be about the length of the ground to your heart) and bind your brush material with twine, yarn, or rope. Make sure the knot is tight since you may need your besom for intense future cleansings! Bless and empower your besom with prayers and energetic workings appropriate to your personal tradition. My favorite method is to sprinkle the staff and brush of the besom with blessed salt water while under the light of a bright full moon. I may say something along the lines of:

Handle to brush and brush to ground
sweep all illness outward bound
with cunning sight and speed
this besom is blessed and so the deed.

It is often recommended that the besom is swept with a west to east motion, following the course of the setting sun. Although when you're using it on a house with many rooms and floors, that can get a little confusing. I think it's fine to sweep any way that seems sensible for the room. I do, however, urge you to sweep in the direction of the doorway to the room that you are in. Instead of simply stirring up and disrupting negative energies, you want them to actually vacate the room and your home, so this is important.

Your besom's brush bristles don't actually need to touch the physical floor to sweep out energy. I like to imagine sparks of blue flame shooting from the tips of the brush blades as I sweep about 3-6 inches above the surface of the floor. As I do this, I imagine the pockets of negative energy being forcibly bound up and brushed aside with every sweeping motion.

Knowing the basics of besom cleansing, get creative with how you do your sweeping. Try a regular routine of besom cleansing where you 'sweep out' unhelpful energies right after you finish the chore of actually sweeping up dirt. If you have hardwood floors, try laying down a cleansing powder and sweeping that up along with the dirt before you begin your besom cleansing. This is a fun cleansing method for families since kids are given permission to make a mess, and then tasked with mindfully cleaning it up right after. You could even make a game out of it!

The Wand

The history of the wand in magick is even more widespread than the besom. Everyone from the priests of ancient Egypt to the ceremonial magicians of the Renaissance used magickal wands in one form or another. The wand is a symbol of sovereignty and represents the holder's authority over the self and their environment. It is a representation of the will and an energetic extension of the arm, showing the magick-worker's 'reach' into the otherworld. This sentiment is still seen in the rods and scepters carried by certain members of royalty in kingdoms throughout the world. And although those rods are more symbolic than anything, it shows how the power of the wand has survived in its prominence. We can think of it like the trunk of a tree or the stem of a plant, as a conduit connecting different types of energy and acting as a channel for them.

To craft your own wand, all you need to do is find a small fallen branch of the wood you like and cut it so it's the length of your elbow to the tip of your middle finger. It can really be any size you desire, but this is the standard length in many traditions and tends to feel the most comfortable for most people. Next, you'll want to perform any physical changes to it you want like shaving off parts of the bark, sanding it down, and even finishing it with a paint or enamel if you like. Most of these changes will be cosmetic, but I do think there is a certain power in personalizing the wand to make it your own. After that, bless the wand by whispering your intentions into it and making an offering to the tree spirit you took it from. A cup of blessed water is fine. A wand used specifically for clearing, banishing, and even cursing is called a 'blasting rod'. You may find it useful to have a wand that acts solely as your blasting rod and using it only for that purpose.

The power of the wand as a show of sovereignty and authority is what we're concerned with when we talk about cleansing work. This is especially so in the case of entity moving and removal. There are all kinds of interesting stories about magicians pointing a wand at a spirit or demon as it flees away in submission. Though I hope you'll never have to use a wand for such a thing, it's certainly handy to have it around in any case. I've found that pockets of negative energy in general will also have the same reaction, although you should put your own effort and energy into it as well, rather than just relying on the wand itself.

To use a wand in cleansing, first point it at the area. For a room cleansing, I will stand in the doorway of the room and point it towards the middle of the room in the center of the floor. Feel the power build up inside you in the form of glistening blue fire. Allow the fire to flow out through your arm and into the wand. Feel the flame becoming concentrated until at last it blasts out to the center of the room. The fire swirls about and disintegrates any and all negative energies in its path. You should use a little caution with this method when practicing it on a person, as the blast of blue fire can be a little harsh to experience. For a personal cleansing, I like to slowly wave it all around the person, like a metal detector wand, feeling any unhelpful energies flying off the person as the wand makes its way around the subject's energy bodies.

You can also use a wand to 'carry' energies to a better place for the purpose of transmuting them into something helpful. For example, let's say you just had an argument with a family member or roommate. You feel that the argument let a lot of things off both your chests and will ultimately lead to healing, but you don't really want the heavy and intense post-argument feeling to stay lingering in the air. Take your wand to the room(s) where the argument was held and slowly wave it counterclockwise in the air. As you do this, imagine that the words of the argument are swirling around the room like a dirty tornado. As the words gather together, see them being drawn towards the tip of the wand as if it were the point of a powerful magnet attracting metal flecks. Once you feel the memory of the argument attached to the wand, drag it outdoors. You may like to drag it completely off the bounds of your property, although I don't think that's really necessary. Point the wand to the ground and begin tapping the soil with the wand, seeing the words of the argument pour into the earth. Next, you can draw up power from the earth in the same way you drew up the memory of the argument. Carry this energy back into your home and into the room(s). Wave the wand around the room clockwise and feel the calming earth energies disperse into the environment around you. Clearing methods like this allow you to take control of a bad situation and turn it into an opportunity for empowerment and healing.

Be sure to get creative with not only the making of your wand, but in the use of it too. Anything that requires a strong will will be well aided by the use of a wand.

Musical Instruments

Bells, gongs, chimes, drums, and singing bowls all have a rich history in traditions of spiritual cleansing. Sound in general is another powerful method of triggering a shift in consciousness in our minds. Ringing a bell before a ritual act is like pushing a 'reset' button in my mind. It's an invitation to bring an end to whatever I was doing before I begin whatever sacred act I'm about to engage in. This is why so many spiritual traditions feature the ringing of bells and the striking of gongs before and after a ceremony. Catholics who come to Wicca later in life will often talk about feeling soothed by the memory of bells, since that practice exists in both faiths. Traditional magick-workers such as witches will ring a bell at the beginning and end of a spell to open the way for power to flow correctly from the start to the finish.

Bells are an easy way to begin incorporating sound into your cleansing practice. There are so many different kinds of handheld bells so you'll need to pick one that has a pitch that matches the type of energy you want to attract and/or drive away. Bigger bells with a lower pitch are good for general cleansing and 'neutralizing' the atmosphere. This is the type of bell you might use to signal the beginning of other types of cleansing or any other ceremonial work. They might remind you of the old church bells in your town that ring at specific intervals to signal the change in time throughout the day. Smaller bells with a higher pitch will raise the vibration of a room, making it difficult for negative energies that operate on a lower frequency to exist. As the Hermetic law of vibration states, the overpowering presence of something with a high vibration will always cancel out something with a lower vibration.

An easy method of cleansing with bells is to take one to each corner of a room and give it an enthusiastic ring three times. Do this in every corner of every room in your home. If you're in a hurry and need to cleanse quickly, you can just give it a ring in the center of each room instead. You can also pair each ringing with some kind of spoken declaration like: 'Toll of the bell signals my spell that all evil shall quell!' Another easy way to use bells is to put them in areas of the home where they'll ring on their own. Attach a bell to your front door so it rings every time it's opened and closed, like the bells of a small storefront. You can also attach one to your cat's collar so every movement of your feline companion is accompanied with a gentle jingle.

Tuning forks take the idea of a bell's vibration a step further. They're very common among the new age and alternative healing communities and you can find elaborate themed sets of them online and in many metaphysical stores. The idea of the forks are the same as the bell, but the forks will have single, long frequencies when struck. The long resounding tone allows a long wave of vibration to be sent through the air to affect more places than many of the bell methods. Different types of tuning forks are associated with different systems including body parts, parts of the soul, emotions, states of consciousness, states of evolution, and chakras. In the chakra system, forks with lower tunes belong to the root chakra. The higher the pitch of a fork, the higher up the chakra, until you get to the highest pitch tone at the crown chakra. Although I don't own a set of tuning forks myself, I have received a chakra cleansing by tuning forks and I could strongly feel the vibration of the tones purifying and recharging the chakras from bottom to top. Complete sets of the forks can be pricey, but if you have a strong interest in chakra balancing and aura cleansing through sound, it's probably worth the investment.

To use tuning forks for clearing space, try accompanying the pitch of the fork to an intention that you vocally intone. Match the pitch of your singing voice to the pitch of the fork. Strike the fork and intone loudly: 'I clear this space by the highest vibrations of the universe!' To cleanse a space with lower, soothing frequencies, strike a low-pitch fork and intone loudly: 'I clear this space by the deep vibrations of the earth!' For clearing unhelpful energies from the body, strike the fork as close to the skin as you can and imagine waves of vibrational energy rumbling through the entire physical body and out through the other end. Some people even believe that certain pitches of tuning forks can actually heal DNA in the body, restoring it to the most perfect state of health possible.

Wind chimes offer a great way to combine all types of pitches of sound. My only suggestion with hanging chimes is that you should use chimes that are at a similar level of pitch. Either have all high-pitch sets of wind chimes or all low-pitch sets. Listening to a mixture of high and low tones all the time all at once can make the energy of a space feel cluttered and chaotic. I don't think the combination generates harmful vibrations, but I tend to stay away from things that feel annoying and distortive. That said, if you have a genuine love of hearing the clamoring sounds of different pitches all at once, then by all means ignore that advice. Cleansing, as with most forms of energy manipulation, is a deeply personal experience.

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Excerpted from A Mystic Guide to Cleansing & Clearing by David Salisbury. Copyright © 2015 David Salisbury. Excerpted by permission of John Hunt Publishing Ltd..
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