Summer is a pretty good time to do magick (unless you’re me and abhor heat). Unlike Winter, this season can get you up and moving. Everything is in bloom – or baking from the heat – there are festivals everywhere, more energy roused up. It’s a pretty nice for spells that involve movement and action.

Although, for a person that doesn’t like heat and such, the concept of sun, summer and light is very appealing to me. Since the vast majority (most likely all but I’m leaving room for error) of my magick revolves around the abilities of fire for both creation and destruction, it makes me feel as if it boosts my spellwork where as the winter makes me focus on energy internally. Or makes me light more things.  Fire is pretty much a staple in my spellwork as I use a crap load of candles and even a stick of lit incense for a wand. I like the combustibility of fire and its absolute nature. Once you burn something, it’s gone and there’s no turning back. Hence, I personally prefer candle spells because I like fire. I’mma firebug, it runs in the family (mainly on my dad side).

When I was younger, I used birthday candles and would cast with a big pool of water nearby, such as doing spellwork on the ledge of a filled sink, because my mom had a strict no-fire rule (despite being a smoker, oh lol) and if something happened and I freak out, I can just shove everything into the sink and clean up afterwards without anyone knowing what went on. Of course, I didn’t use incense, too fragrant. I just made do with birthday candles and even a pack of Hanukkah candles a friend gave me. Actually, I still use birthday candles, I just bought some new ones recently.

Candle work stuck with me because they come in such different colors and if you’re new to magick, very affordable. Every Witch is different but I would feel the spell was going better with the visual cues of lighting a candle set for a purpose, seeing the smoke wafting in the air, watching the wax either pool up or disappear, if the wick curls up or break apart. There were times the candle I lit for whatever spell I was doing at the time would flare up greatly like a torch. I know I remember a time a flame went from a normal flickering light to a steadily burning five to six inch flare when I was doing a spell that involved Mars/Ares. All these visual cues would help me feel that the spell is moving forward and that the gods are communicating with me while doing the spell. I get a sense of things going right, things going wrong (I have had spells where things have gone very wrong) and if energy is moving or not. It tells me that a spell has been successfully sent into the universe when there’s a change in the flicker, color or height of the flame.

Besides candles, I use incense for a wand. I don’t always feel like charging or cleansing a wand and that’s already ignoring the fact that a) I don’t have one and b) never really had a strong desire to own one. Maybe if I start learning high magick/ceremonial magick I might get one. But for now, I use incense for wands because they’re more adjustable for magick work since you can get a particular stick for whatever type of spell you’re casting. Money spell? Patchouli incense. Good fortune spell? Sandalwood. Banish spell? Dragon’s Blood. Very versatile. It fine tunes the spell in a way that I feel a crystal can’t (or at least can’t for me). Not only but with incense, it’s used for that one spell so it’s specialized and hyper focused in guiding the energy of intent. It’s easier to charge or charm items because the waft of smoke provides visual aid. As the stick of incense burns away, the more it releases the spell to do its thing. If I did all that with a candle, I would have a mess everywhere from the dripping wax and may even potentially set something on fire with the open flame, something no one wants.  Incense is great general way for me to do magick from setting the circle to conducting the spell itself. Plus, once it’s all burnt out, I can chuck the little stick. A wand I have to put back – and keep out the hands of others who may want to simply play with my spellwork items – incense doesn’t catch anyone’s eyes or the person could be allergic to it and hence not want to touch or simply don’t like smoky things. Not to mention a wand, especially a metal one, is a strong conductor and if the practitioner is working around electricity, the built up energy can cause a spark (okay, the metal ones are likely to cause a spark, wooden ones are fine). There’s just an ease of use of incense for me and much like using a candle, it helps me guide the spell better.

I’ve tried using other methods of fire resemblance such as fire type stones or fire type plants but it simply doesn’t work for me. I see the connection but subconsciously, it still doesn’t make the jump because I associate stones and plants with earth unless there’s a strong connection to another element (for example, a water lily can represent water for me because water lilies, well, grow on water). It doesn’t make me a purist, just finicky. And simply letting my inner firebug shine.

That’s all for this week! Next weeks is The Arts! and look at who we’re featuring:

– Boobs Don’t Work That Way
– The Undertaker [Short Film]
– Miles Jai

Also, don’t forget to check out the current raffle that is going on right now with Princeless. Here’s the post on it!

And apparently the Black Weblog Awards nominations are happening again but I’ll write on that later. Don’t wanna overwhelm myself.