My preparation of my magickal oil goes on, as does my research into the craft of Road Opening! Best way to learn potioncraft, and everything else, is hands-on!
Making a new recipe, a completely custom potion, is one thing: The field is wide open, and freedom reigns. But when adapting an old or existing recipe, there is the urge to conpare our product to others, to hedge for maximum effectiveness and "authenticity". Even, and perhaps especially, in magick, which is technically powered by intent, but which has so much inherent mystique and where the results may not be scientifically provable or even visible.
Naturally, I'm constantly asking myself: "Did I do this right? Am I close enough to the real hoodoo/Gypsy/alchemical/Druidic etc., etc. recipe? What can I put in this to make it more potent? What am I missing, if anything?" I have to remind myself to relax: If the faith and magick are there, they're there!
Gearing up: Abre Camino herbs and additional stuff
Late on the night of the 17th, I added some more stuff. I put in a lodestone, my extra oils from the store, and some of my own blood essence since, conveniently, I'd just gotten my moon and wanted to personalize the oil. I put in a few drops of the Road Opener oil I bought, to further "authenticate" my own oil, while thinking: "Hmm, mine smells different. This other oil smells like pure magic temple and hoodoo. What am I missing? More sandalwood. More vanilla."
But perhaps most importantly, I put in a bit of each of the sacred leaves and herbs from the Abre Camino bath mixture I bought. That certainly seems as genuine as I can get right now. I needn't a lot --- just a sample of each, to get the essence in the oil. I enchanted the pieces and put them in, then stirred.
In summary:
Besides base oil, Tangerine, Lemongrass and Camphor essential oils, a couple of added ingredients:
• A few grains of Instant Bliss (condensed cotton candy)
• My own menses, powdered
• Added oils from store:
- Jasmine
- Sandalwood
- Black Pepper
- Vanilla
- Grapefruit
- Clove
--- approximately 3 drops of each.
• A few drops professional blend Road Opener oil
• Abre Camino herbs
• Lodestone
• Old used key.
And I still don't feel finished!
I've been toying with the idea of putting in some special kind of dirt. Something to do with roads. As it turned out, only a few days ago, there was a patch of street marked off near my workplace: I don't know how it happened, but something dug or blew a little hole right through the pavement. It went at least a foot deep, and felt rather hot inside when I cautiously poked my hand in (hoping it wouldn't get blown off!). My fingers came up with a chunk of melted black road asphalt and some age-old dead leaves. I checked my photo files --- this was on Friday the 13th, last week.
A hole in the road!
My first thought was: "A portal to another place." Rabbit holes. Wormholes. Manhole covers that conceal a tunnel between Andalasia and New York.
My second thought was of the Underworld, a scary thought. But an under-place needn't be bad, in the vein of Faust or Hades. It could be simply an alternate or parallel state of consciousness. A Disneylike world parallel to our dreary regular one; the realm of magick, second sight, the Faery.
What I did find indisputable is: This, be what it may, is a powerful force. Powerful enough to literally dig or blow a street open!
Besides the above, this could embody a much-needed disruption to the well-worn streets and pathways I've traveled for years, a new tangent off of old familiar terrain. Even if it was only time, wearing away at a small pocket already there, that timing was right. And on Friday the 13th, too! A crazy little hole on a magick day!
Take some, it seemed to whisper. Take some of this medicine from inside the opened road. And I, with a new eye for ingredients, did.
In this world, intention and ascribed meaning is everything.
Riding home with a few paper towels loaded with chunks of broken street in your lunch bag, is, well ... kinda weird. If I didn't know before, I'm finding it's all just part of being a witch:
Less than a week later, a crew filled the little hole with fresh asphalt. That oddity, and that magickal pathway if you will, is no longer open. So, this last meaning of the road hole is equally pertinent: opportunity. Just because a road somehow gets opened doesn't mean it will stay open! I don't know exactly why or how yet, but I feel this is good "medicine" for this critical planetary juncture in my life and the world scene. How can I not incorporate this odd type of magickal dirt, offered me in such a curious and timely fashion, into my working?
I haven't added in the Road Hole dirt to my oil yet. But I, ever the diligent researcher, checked out two YouTubes later that night after snuggling down into bed (as that's the sort of mage I am), in which other practitioners demonstrated their methods and recipes for making this type of oil. I got ideas for other types of crystals and herbs to add, should I choose. Things like Citrine quartz, and good ol' crossroads dirt, sacred to Road Opener divinities like Hekate and Papa Legba.
I also picked up on a trend: Both these recipes use negativity-banishing and even explosive ingredients, namely saltpetre and sulfur. These are forceful magicks; they're like Road Opener combined with my delicious-smelling Banishing oil! It seems this time, I'm using two or more formulae in tandem, but it's possible to combine them in one.
As with so many other aspects of magick, there are nearly as many recipes for this stuff as there are practitioners. For each of us, the Path --- the Road --- is unique.
Road Opener or Obstacle Remover Oil Recipes
~ ~ Recipe No. 1: ~ ~
-- For this recipe, be ready to gear up on ingredients and fill a standard marmalade jar.
• Herbs:
1 spoonful (spn.) Orange powder
1 piece Orange peel
1 spn. Catmint
1 spn. Mugwort
1 spn. Lemongrass
1 spn. Sandalwood
1 Cinnamon stick
1 small sprig Pine needles
Couple scales of Pinecone
1 sprig White sage
1 spn. Ginger powder
• Other Dry Goods:
1 spn. Dragons Blood pwd. (if it's a resinous lump, pestle some off into a powder)
1 pinch Sulfur
1 pinch Saltpetre
1 Palo Santo stick
{ 1 broken Camphor tablet }
{ 2 spns. Sea Salt }
-- Mix these last two ingredients well in a mortar and pestle before adding to jar.
• Essential Oils:
20 drops (dps.) Orange essential oil (e.o.)
10 dps. Lemongrass e.o.
10 dps. Sandalwood e.o.
10 dps. Pine e.o.
10 dps. Cinnamon e.o.
10 dps. Sage e.o.
10 dps. Citronella e.o.
10 dps. Lime e.o.
10 dps. Lemon e.o.
10 dps. Grapefruit e.o.
5 dps. Geranium e.o.
• Base Oils:
Fill half the jar with Sunflower oil.
Top off rest of jar with green Olive oil.
• Other Ingredients:
1 Key, used, preferably old
1 piece Snakeskin sheddings
1 pinch Crossroads Dirt
--- To Finish: Seal with wax and hang a key on the jar to charge this Road Opener blend. For the spell, this fellow uses a candle combination of green, white and orange.
See how complicated such an oil recipe can be, and how tailored to the individual practitioner's tastes!
Ready to open some road?
~ ~ Recipe No. 2: ~ ~
-- While making up this recipe, the practitioner beautifully enchanted the bottle of oil after adding each ingredient, transferring energy to it with Reiki-like gestures of the hands. This version of Road Opener was tailored for a specific focus of "opening", i.e. psychic work.
• Cleanse: Sage bottle or jar to cleanse it, by inverting it and letting smoke swirl up in.
• Add Ingredients: -- may choose to add with special spoon for potion use.
- 1 small spn. Saltpetre -- burst of energy
- 1 spn. Eyebright -- psychic ability
- 1 spn. Mint -- obstacle remover, sickness healing, cleansing, money
- 1 spn. Sulfur -- banish negativity and obstacles, cleansing
- 1 spn. Salt -- for cleansing Self, your own purification. Black Salt is good for this.
- 1 spn. Dragons Blood -- cleanse, protect, love, money (again, use pestle if it's a big lump)
- 1 used key --used is important. Or, use key dust, i.e. from a hardware store
- 1 pinch Crossroads dirt -- may or may not be from a cemetery crossroads. If psychic or working with spirits, latter may be ideal.
- Chosen Base oil. Fill jar.
- A hair from your head -- could also use blood, nail clippings, etc.
• Mix: Shake, with intention.
• Charge: Seal bottle or jar with black wax, and hang a key on it.
-- This practitioner also likes to use a blend of Sulfur, Birdseed and Salt for protection, cleansing, etc. Very multi-use, family recipe.
Open the route; embrace the Way.
So, we have a more herbal approach here, and a less herbal but no-less-symbolic approach. And either way, it's clear we have endless room to custom-make a "road opener" or obstacle remover formula.
But what are these oils good for? According to the second practitioner, a recipe for road opening, "block busting" or obstacle-removing magick can have lots of uses, including:
• Finance and business. For example, use a dropper to put oil in the shape of an arrow to your business's doorway. Or, annoint a candle and burn it on top of financial stuff, papers, check stubs, letters, and so on.
• Money spinning, or optimum use of a budget.
• Changing a negative mindset to a positive one.
• Open yourself to love.
• Open yourself to trust others or the "process", especially after you've been burned in the past, and it's thus hard to trust. (Yup, I'm there. Why do you think I stayed at the beer factory.)
• Get a raise, recognition, opportunities at work.
• Get past that obstacle of a boss!
• Artists' block.
• Writers' block.
• Psychic block! Trouble reading Tarot cards? Annoint your cards, tools, space, and so on.
• Trouble connecting to your deities.
• Evil eye, or if you get bad jujus from somebody else.
• Feeling stagnated. In anything.
• Good to use when you're not sure what you want. Annoint your temples to help you find direction, and the next step.
All too often this past decade, I've been in the last category of, "What do I even want?" It seems so easy for some women: They're corporate climbers in one single company, or they get married and knocked up and that's that. But where am I, and what do I want? Clearly, I'm an independent soul, a wanderer, with very fluctuent states of growth, even when not much seems to happen on the outside.
The Magician card popping up a lot seems to suggest that maybe all that internal work is panning out, enough for me to choose a direction and manifest big results with it. It's hard to take a step when you can't decide which way the hell to go, or you're doing a lot of practice drives to prep for a huge step. I keep coming back to when I first began to talk. I was three --- and I went right to three-syllable words. I waited, until I knew.
I guess I'm just one of those folks who piddles about on back roads for years, not very impressive, practicing my moves in secret, finding what I really, really want, until that day comes when I punch it cross-country on the Interstate and head right fucking there --- fully planned itinerary, all the right parts in stock, and no quibbling about gas prices.
I look forward, too, to incorporating all this new road magick into my tale of Johnny Velton, a young chap whose road of life seems destined to start and end at a small-town (what town?) Southern gas station, until fate lands him on the doorstep of the notorious Slick 66, veteran whore and roadtrip sister extraordinaire, saint of the Old Mother Route --- and witch.
Now for some inspiring photos, because . . .
Oh those crazy roads!!! I may not drive much at the moment, but I love awesome road pics.
Aiming high, sneaking around, or shortest route across.
Jiggery pokery! Squiggly wiggly! Scenic routes and loopy mountain roads from around the globe, Romania to India
Where there's a will, there's a way: Be it over, around or straight through, there's no terrain too steep, too high, or too generally impassably im-effing-possible.
Happy trails . . .
Door County, WI
No comments:
Post a Comment