“It comes from a super-secret lineage, gurl!”
New York Witch Damon Stang talks to us about highly effective ways to Magickally cleanse your home. He leads us through the steps of cleansing your house thoroughly of negative energies and shares the importance of working with and warding the land as well as the role of cleansing prior to making Magick. Damon also discusses a closeted famous author, the homophobic history within Wicca, the importance of not clinging to perfection, tending altars, and how his mother cured a wart by “kissing it to the moon.” Hilary is not with us today, but Kanani gives us a tour of her personal Magickal space and how she keeps Magick going in own home. Courtney shares her misadventures with a controversial rockstar in the Tarot deck she produced, and the tough feelings that arise when respected people make bad decisions.
Our Guest Today
Damon Stang is a scholar of comparative folk magic and the cultural significance of ritual in contemporary cultures. He is a practitioner of Traditional European Witchcraft in both the pre Christian and modern lineages. He resides in Brooklyn, New York and is a senior spiritual consultant and diviner at Catland Books. Damon Stang’s work has been covered in The New York Times, The Huffington Post, The New York Post, Elle Magazine, and Newsweek Magazine.
Resource List
Marie Kondo
Amy Brown
Tarot of the Boroughs and Tarot for One
Catland Books
Scott Cunningham: Witchcraft Today
The House of Stang
Damon Stang Facebook
Damon Stang Twitter
Damon’s Spell For Cleansing Your Home
During the Bright Hours, the Wayfarer should prepare in both mind and spirit and go wandering in an intentional manner around the furthest boundaries of the area in which they seek access. It is advised to pay attention to such landmarks that present themselves with special characters. Examples of such would be crossroads, both three and four fold, natural bodies of water, churches, abandoned structures, local plants of potency and virtue. Border markers, cemeteries, and of course venerable trees either in solitude or grouped together. On the evening the work is to be undertaken, the Wayfayer should attend to all matters of the home in such a way that they should be found if there was no possibility of return. All things should be cleaned and returned to their proper place. All unfinished tasks should be hidden from sight. A small bag should be prepared containing such things as which that serve the purpose of celebrating and indicating such beings and potentialities which are sought by the cunning and the quick. Such things should be purer and of the land and may include honey, wine, eggs, home baked bread, treasured objects of glass, clay, or metal. The only limit is the practitioner’s imagination and skill. These limits are never failing. If possible, the wayfarer should prepare by bathing in an infusion of birchbark and spring rainwater. The infusion should be boiled for nine minutes at an astrological hour appropriate to the wayfarer’s intent. Birch is a protective tree, but also conveys the virtue of freshness of inner light and liberates the wayfarer from hindrance and opens the ghostly roads. Spiritual bathing must happen by candlelight without the intrusion of soaps or unguents. Packed, bathed, and ready to set forth, the wayfarer should sit without electric light in a room illuminated by a single flame and gaze steadily into its center. At this point, a verse of power may be recited. Damon’s preference: Number 81:81 in the Rood Book Song Index:
How many miles to Babylon?
Three score and ten.
Can I get there by candlelight?
Yes, and back again.
If your heels be nimble,
And your toes be light,
You may get there and back again,
All by candlelight.
Extinguishing the candle, the wayfarer should sit in as much darkness as can be gathered. The darkness should be longed into, yearned into. From the bottoms of the feet, the crown of the head, from behind the eyes, the ears, the palms of the hands. The beating heart, the stomach, the tongue, and all other parts. The spine shall manifest as crossroads indicating both outward and inward. At this point, time shall suspend and something will extend an invitation. The wayfarer shall stand and lead into the darkness to answer the call. The feet shall lead and the hands will know where to offer and when. And so the land is open, and so the land is healed. ~Damon Stang
