A Tale of Two Magix.

And two execrations.

I’m not much of a witch. In fact, I don’t really consider myself a witch at all. I should, in effect, because I practice magical art forms, or spell casting or wanga making. However, I just laugh to myself uproariously when I call myself a witch. “Me,” I said softly, giggling, “a witch? I think not.” So, I’m just me and sometimes, I perform ornate, or not, forms of magic to see my will materialize in a way or five. In this post, we’re going to talk about three separate magical forms: wanga, heka, and cursing.

Dinosaurs are also an excellent fun activity no matter your age group.

About two weeks ago, an integral part of my personal community asked us for some assistance on behalf of her husband. He’s not having a good time, being in the military and being away from her and you know, being not in country at the moment. Everything really sucks and is just shitty. So, the request went out for “SOMETHING NICE AND SOFT AND WARM AND FUZZY AND LACE IT WITH HAPPY JUICE” to those of us who are in that community. Initially, I wanted to be really over the top and silly: I wanted to use dinosaurs like Wash from Firefly. Her husband would choose a dinosaur as the “evil one” and we would both ritually kill it whenever he needed to ritually kill BAD JUJU/SAUCE. It was heka and it was fun! However, apparently, people don’t actually sell small scale dinosaurs in the spring time, so all I could find were big ones. And since I had to ship her a package that she would then ship to her husband, I nixed the idea.

I immediately asked Papa Legba for some assistance here and he, of course, told me I should look to wanga. He said I should make a paket for the occasion. And I figured, well, I was doing spells in jars so it wouldn’t be too hard to bind them up in fabric. However, since the man in question is military, I didn’t want to be too overt or anything. I chose a bandanna (blue) to hold the magical items in. I then added a bunch of herbs together in a bowl, specifically with the intention of calming or healing purposes. I used chamomile, lavender, rosemary, carnations, and various other herbs that I’m running low on. (My curse and healing spell herbs are nearly gone. Gee. What in the world do I focus on.) I also added key charms I saw in passing, blessed by Papa Legba and soaked in Florida water to help open the way for the healing/calming herbs to happen. And finally, I added black tourmaline (protection), amethyst (inner strength/relieving stress), green aventurine (comfort, healing, and harmony), snowflake obsidian (inner calm), and hematite (grounding). Also, as a side note, I don’t know why I chose most of the stones I did until after I had sewn up the paket.

My son showing me what “real magic” is.

I requested that Papa Legba bless the bandana and the keys, while everything else was mixed in a bowl for Aset to look over for twenty-four hours. At this point, my son happened to notice me praying in front of Papa Legba’s altar, on my knees and with my hands waving about. He asked me what I was up to and when I told him I was doing magic, he looked around. He turns to me and says, “Mommy, it’s not magically here.” So I had to have one of the many discussions with him regarding reality and TV-shown magic. He then proceeded to perform the exact same hand gestures and mumbled words akin to my own in front of Papa Legba’s altar. So, technically, the bandana and the key charms are thrice blessed: Papa Legba, myself, and a five-year-old child learning at his mama’s knee.

The final bit was the most difficult part because I had to sew. I looked online for helping videos. I freaked out about it for the full twenty-four hour period the ingredients were busy gettin’ down with my OTHERS™. In the end, I just did what someone on Tumblr suggested, “Stab in one place, push it through, turn the needle around. Repeat.” I’m not going to show a picture of my really shitty sewing job, but it was pretty bad. However, I did it on my own even though TH offering to help since he took home ec and remembers weird things like how to sew. I closed the paket up with blue ribbon, also blessed by Papa Legba, with the thee key charms attached.

I can’t say if he’s enjoying its calming effects or not, but I’m pretty proud of myself on numerous fronts: I sewed. I created my first paket. I sewed. I was able to choose stones based on my gut. I sewed. And did I mention that I sewed?

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For the last week, I’ve been exceedingly depressed. As I said on Tumblr earlier today, I have been in a habitual “AUBS SMASH” mode since last Saturday. (I’ll get into more specifics about last Saturday with my next section.) Usually, when I’m in this kind of funk, I can get away with doing a mental execration and be done with it. I don’t have to waste any spoons and I don’t have to worry about setting things on fire outside of a bar of busybodies. However, considering how completely prevalent my mood has been and how completely depressed I have been about everything, I knew I had to do a full-fledged rite on this. If not, I could very well end up sinking into as deep a depression as I’ve ever known. I did two specific execrations.

Consciously, I know it’s only a matter of time before Olga kicks it, but anything to stop the constantly frightening sounds/movements that accompany my drive to/from work.

My car is very old. If I’m remembering my insurance paperwork correctly, then she is a 2001. We just hit 180K on her odometer, but I really cannot afford a new one. I have very bad credit and when I made my money spell to get the job I have today, I never took into consideration the type of things that would be required for a car payment. So, until I actually go ahead and start doing magical work to afford a new car, Olga has to last me. It’s the only way we have to get anywhere and as much as I love TH’s mother, I do not want her to “donate” her BMW to us. (It’s shittier than my car. It was in a massive accident and the parts were not BMW parts to fix it. So. It’s not doing well at all.) As you can tell from the list of varying items that are wrong with her and the amount of gremlins I ritually destroyed on the paper, there is a lot wrong with her. Hopefully, I can get some of the stuff fixed cheaply, but in the mean time (A) no new gremlins and (B) the current ones have got to go.

I’m sorry, but you’re not allowed to know the names of people who piss me off. I may be execrating them, but announcing who they are to the world would be kind of rude.

On top of the car gremlins and that seriously heart attack-inducing situation, I have had a lot of very dark and angsty thoughts in the last week. None of them are a product of what happened on Saturday, but just the fact that I have been affected so spectacularly by what I cursed has allowed my anxiety to get a hold of me. I decided that it was pretty much time to nip that in the bud. I’m a quiet anxious person, not a loud, depressed, and anxious person. No one is supposed to know that I have “failure messages” I leave myself all the time or that I read into situations too often. So, all of that shit just had to go. And on top of that, the people whose names I’ve blocked off have been hurting me in various ways, so I needed to fucking stop that shit. And the best way to do that? Execrate them.

I know I say it a lot to various people, but I’m going to reiterate this right now. If you’re ever feeling low, depressed, angry, or anything, then you need to exercise your right to execrate. It is one of the most liberating and exciting forms of heka I have ever practiced in my life. The fact that I put it off for as long as I did before my first one makes me upset at all of the times I missed out on ritually executing my enemies or ritually destroying the very things that wound me. Seriously. If you are a Kemetic – shit, even if you’re not – you need to try this. If you do it once and don’t like it, well, I’ll think your fucking weird and insane. But, at least you tried it and saw how liberating it can be.

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All right. The part that may induce some squeamishness in my readers. If you are not a curse kind of person, close out of this blog right now. Here goes.

As anyone who has been reading my blog for any length of time is aware, I was fired from my job in August of 2011. I was actually never given a reason as to why I was fired. As the company changed its story as to why I was fired in the four months I had to fight for unemployment a total of four times, I just assumed I had done something stupid and they didn’t want to say. The “official” reason, as of last count, was that I was that I had “allowed bullying” in my store. This is not true – no one bullied anyone in my presence. And the only bully was the old bitch who manned the counter during the day. She was a bully, but she was well-loved by the company, so it didn’t matter what I said or who I told. After months of soul-searching and deciding that my firing was probably in my best interest, I decided that I had actually been fired for failing to manage the store properly.

That would have been a valid reason, too, as this is an at-will work state, but they wouldn’t have been able to get me denied on my unemployment. (And for those not aware because you are newcomers, I got myself an unemployment lawyer and won my unemployment.) Now, when I was fired, they had also fired my worker, K, who was the supposed bully. K was pregnant at the time and they were probably really firing her because they wouldn’t have to hold her position open for the two months of FMLA provides for pregnant women. She’s in the middle of suing the company because, you know, pregnant and needed the job. But, she’s also got a discrimination card that I don’t: she’s half black.

Now, the woman who fired us was recently fired herself and had contacted my lawyer (who is also K’s lawyer) to get her unemployment. Of course she was denied because GREED, INC (the company) makes up a shit-ton of lies as to why they fire people. So, she contacted him and requested his assistance. He said he would only provide it if she gave a deposition stating implicitly why K was fired. K was able to read this deposition, although she has been asked not to reveal to me what it says because it will come up with I am depositioned by the Massachusetts Labor Board (who is investigating the asshole firing practices of this company for K’s lawsuit). I asked her if I was mentioned in the depo: yes. I asked her if it said why I was fired: no. I asked her if there were inferences as to why I was fire: yes. I asked her if she could tell me anything: technically no. But she inferred that was a casualty. The company wanted to fire K desperately (for reasons I cannot say) and I had to go because they had a ready made story in front of them when that fucking bitchcuntwhore ex-employee made up lies about us bullying her. (She made up the lies because she no called, no showed to her shift, which is an auto-quit in normal land.)

Let me repeat this: I was fired because they wanted to fire someone else.

There is no reason as to why I lost my job. There is no real reason as to why I have spent the last year and a half crying over the loss of income. I was depending on that to send my son to a private school. I was depending on that financial stability to maintain my family. I have lived in poverty and anguish for the last year and a half (prior to getting my new job) because the company wanted to fire a pregnant, half-black woman who was the best employee in the store. I have no legal recourse of action and Papa Legba showed me in a dream this week how futile it would be if I tried. I can only sit and stew and be really fucking angry.

So, I put my anger to good use.

Black paper for the vitriol I felt.

When I do a curse, I start with an execration first. Technically, execrations are curses unto themselves. But I don’t tend to view them that way, personally. The execration I went with here was initially just going to be black paper with black marker used to insinuate my hatred, pain, and desire to see justice done. I decided to make it visible only after the fact, so I had already written a good many things before finding a white colored pencil to finish the rest out. You’ll notice I wrote “LIAR” in three strategic places. These are above the names of the people who specifically had a hand in why I was fired (for no reason). I was going to add a fourth name – an ex-manager who sort of betrayed me when I was fired – but decided against it at the last minute. I think it’s better this way because I can just ignore the fact that the man was a piece of shit instead of the upstart manager he made himself out to be and he can be ignored for all eternity as far as I am concerned.

What I wrote for heka.

This is the actual curse outside of the contents of the jar. I have always utilized heka in my spell, which is then magnified by adding herbs and other bits. I’m going to recreate what I have written here so you can kind of see how very angry I am. “May your illegal business practices be found out by the proper authorities. May you lose customers and their money. May you be sued publicly for all of your racist/ablist/sexist firing practices. May your stores close their doors. May your food rot, your drinks go stale, may your beer go flat, and your cartons of cigarettes stolen. May your employees rise up against you. May you only be able to employ thieves and liars. May you be audited on your taxes. May you all know what it is to suffer in grief and poverty.” You can kind of tell I’m pissed off, maybe?

The final product.

I use jars for most of my magical workings. There’s something to the adage that “witches love jars.” I may not be a witch, but I sure do enjoy filling a jar with various items to help materialize my desires. I wrapped up my heka and attached it to a name tag I found while cleaning out my miscellaneous items drawer a while back. I, then, added a bunch of exciting ingredients to help materialize: urine, spit, blood, cayenne, chili, may apple, screws, nails, and vinegar. I was going to add a stiff bristled brush to “clean up” their business practices, but decided that letting them suffer for being such a shitty company was a better solution.

To top it all off, I drew the vévé of Kalfu on the top of the jar. I then added some black candle wax drippings to seal it all in. Currently, the jar is sitting on Aset’s altar while she “molds” it as Hekate once did for the curse I did a while back. As tomorrow night is supposed to be warmer than tonight, I will hike up the road to bury it properly then.