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Earth Magic: Take Action with a Charm Bag, by Dodge Graham McKay

(Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal.)

I like to think of magical work that involves assembling, building, concocting or creating an item as a form of earth magic. You are the creator responsible for bringing an item into existence as a focal point for your will and desire. You are the manifester, giving form and function to the object you are making.

A charm bag is a quick and effective magical object that you can create for a specific purpose and discreetly carry with you or tuck into a strategic spot in your environment. Creating one gives you a sense of control over a situation and the gratification of taking action to do something about it. It is a hands-on, satisfying way to make a magical item that does not need to take a lot of time or money to create.

Gather the Parts
The magic starts when you begin to assemble the items you will use to make your charm bag. Do this with intent and carefully select the very best materials you can afford and source. Take time to consider your magical footprint on the Earth and make your charm bag as earth-friendly as possible. Try to use natural materials that will biodegrade. Plastic or synthetic materials may be tempting, but they can take hundreds of years to break down or release noxious chemicals if burned. As magical practitioners, we often call on the energy of the earth to perform our spells and rituals, so being conscious of the impact our magic has on the planet seems only fair and responsible.

Your charm bag does not need to be elaborate or complicated in order to be effective. I like to use four components to make mine:

• A small drawstring bag
• Herbs
• A small crystal
• A token to represent your intent

I like to keep the bag fairly small, no more than about 5 cm by 7 cm (2 inches by 3 inches), with a drawstring to close it. You can check your local arts and crafts supply shop or dollar store for these. I can usually find small muslin or cotton bags at these places, or you can sew your own using scraps of cloth.

Herbs should be dried, as fresh herbs can get moldy and soggy in the bag. Whenever possible I like to cut and dry my own herbs from my garden, or I head outside to harvest responsibly from the wild. But that is not always possible, and it is easy to overthink this one. The herbs you have in your kitchen can be equally effective.

The crystals should be small—something no larger than the end of your thumb or even a just a single bead is perfect. If you don't have a suggested crystal you can substitute a simple clear quartz. If shopping for crystals is not for you, head outside to find a pebble in a suitable color or a shape that resonates with you.

Assemble the Bag
Before you assemble your charm bag, take a moment to ground and center yourself. Make every movement intentional and state your intent out loud. Visualize a successful outcome as you work.

Money Charm Bag

• Bay leaf
• Mint leaf
• Small citrine crystal

The key to success with this one is to not be greedy. Visualize what you really need the money for. Write it on the bay leaf and place it in the bag. Add a liberal pinch of dried mint leaves and sprinkle into the bag, imagining each flake as the cash tumbling into your hands. Next, add the citrine. Citrine is a stone of manifestation, and is referred to as an abundance stone or merchant's stone as it attracts money and financial success. Many a witch shop owner have been known to keep a piece of citrine in their cash register. Pro tip: keep a small piece in your wallet!

Grounding Charm Bag

• Sage
• Dirt from home or other place of comfort and security
• Small hematite stone

Collect a spoonful of dirt from outside your home or any other location where you feel absolutely safe and secure. Thank the place for this gift as you collect it. Add the dirt to your bag and follow this with a generous pinch of garden sage. Any culinary sage you may have in your kitchen will work just fine. Take a moment to smell the sage and focus on the smell and texture of the leaves as you do this. After a moment, add the hematite. Hematite has a coolness and stability that connects us to our inner strength, enabling us to securely ground ourselves and feel calm and centred.

Confidence Charm Bag

• A penny or similar coin noted for luck
• Valerian root
• Small carnelian

Select a coin for your bag, preferably one you found (I have been known to root through sofa cushions or all of the pockets of jackets hanging by the door to find a coin). A found coin represents luck and unexpected abundance. Valerian root adds relief from stress and anxiety while cheerful carnelian stimulates motivation and creativity, enhancing confidence. Try sewing your own bag for this, using cloth that is your favourite colour or has sentimental value. Maybe you have a favorite old shirt that you can't wear anymore, or a sentimental textile that can be recycled for this purpose. These personal touches serve as a reminder of who you are and all of the great things of which you are capable.

Healing Charm Bag

• Chamomile and/or lavender
• A small photo or drawing of the person in need of healing
• Small rose quartz

Chamomile is extremely popular as a tea herb, beloved for its soothing qualities. Lavender has a strong, comforting, and evocative fragrance that aids with pain relief and promoting good sleep. Add these to your bag with a piece of rose quartz, a stone of unconditional love and healing, with a strong association to the heart and circulatory system. Take a moment with the photo or drawing and visualize the person as strong and healthy, then slip it into the bag. You may want to change out the herbs for other ones that target the specific illness from which you need relief—mint for stomach upset, turmeric for inflammation, etc.

Protection Charm Bag

• Thorns, thistles or prickly plant matter wildcrafted from your environment
• Black salt (a complete recipe with instructions for making your own black salt can be found in my book, Earth Magic)
• Black tourmaline

Go out for a walk in your environment and seek out plants that have thorns, thistles, bristles, or spikes. Be sure to take some rugged gardening gloves along with you and carefully harvest a small amount of the aggressive, sharp parts of the plant. Look for plants growing along borders and boundary lines and take a moment to appreciate how these fierce guardians grew in these places. Add the plant matter to your bag along with a spoonful of black salt. Drop in the black tourmaline, which will absorb negative energy and protect against psychic attack.

Use Your Bag
Once your bag is complete, you can use it as it, or you may want to ritually charge it by placing it on your altar or in sacred space and focusing your will on it. How you choose to do this is up to you.

Charm bags should be small enough to fit in your pocket, or you may want to wear it on a cord around your neck. You can also place these strategically in relevant spots in your space—a confidence charm bag in your desk at work, or a protection charm bag hanging above your front door, for example. With a little research you can make a charm bag for any purpose.

A charm bag can be held in your hand to help you ground yourself and refocus your magical intent when you need to activate it. If you are not able to physically hold it, try visualizing it: how does it feel or smell? What is its texture? How much does it weigh?

When the Work is Done
When a charm bag has served its purpose and the magic has run its course, you may want to ritually dispose of it. I have a hard time throwing a magical item into a garbage can, so I have a couple tried and true ways to deal with them:

• Bury the used charm bag somewhere where it will not be disturbed, and it can decompose back into the earth. For this reason it is very important to use only biodegradable materials.
• Collect used charm bags and any other spent magical items in a paper bag. Ensure that these are all things that can safely be burned. Items that release noxious fumes, such as plastic items, should be left out of this. Burn the bag outdoors in a bonfire as part of your Samhain celebrations. My coven has a tradition of doing this, and it is a cathartic part of the ceremony. Candle stubs, matchsticks, poppets, papers—all of the earthly reminders of magic and spell work performed over the past year gets sent into the fire.

I hope you give charm bags a try! To learn more about how to incorporate the element of earth into your magic, please check out my new book Earth Magic.

Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal. Copyright Llewellyn Worldwide, 2021. All rights reserved.

Can the departed actually show you a physical sign that they are there with you? I went to visit my dad at the cemetery the other day and wanted to place a stone on his grave as is tradition in Judaism. I walked around for a few minutes, looking in the grass for one. When I came upon a stone, I picked it up and discovered that it was a clump of dirt, pebbles and debris, all shaped in an absolutely perfect heart. I placed it on his grave. Do you think this could have been a sign from my dad?

Sherry

Susyn:

The departed can absolutely guide you to signs that they are with you. It's a wonderful gift that we can connect with our loved ones in these unique and tangible ways.

I have heard many stories of people who were hoping for an indication that a loved one was near and had that wish fulfilled in a wonderful way. I have experienced it myself. Soon after my mother passed away, I ran across a CD about angels she had given me years before, stuck in the back of a drawer as I was searching for something else. My brother had this experience with a unique sunrise while praying for a sign that our mom was doing okay.

Another friend of mine was standing on a beach, watching the ocean and contemplating the recent loss of his partner. All of a sudden, a glint of light caught his eye and he too was directed to a stone that was in the shape of a perfect heart.

Our longing to connect with our departed loved ones combined with their ability to send us a sign tends to produce some very powerful spiritual experiences. Whether they send us a sign through dreams, smells or images, they are usually so profound as to be undeniable.

Many of my clients lament the fact that they do not dream about their loved ones or hear from them directly. The key to experiencing these types of messages is an open heart and mind. While spirits try to send us clear signs, they can be overlooked if we expect them to come in a certain form.

One of the most effective ways to connect with a departed spirit is through a psychic channeling session in which the psychic acts as a third party and can relay messages between you and your loved ones. With this method, you will be able to ask direct questions and receive specific answers.

Many times when channeling spirits during a reading, the spirits will specify how they will appear to their living loved ones. Sometimes it is in the form of a certain animal, such as a bird, horse or lion that shows up in unexpected ways or places. At other times, loved ones in spirit may indicate their presence through scents that are familiar to us, or unusual songs, images or memories that may come up out of the blue.

You can also perform guided meditations in which you request that your dad come visit you, or return to his gravesite and try to communicate with him there. Though you may not always feel like you have connected with him, the more you practice, the better your chance of experiencing many amazing signs that your father is near you.

*****

Oceania:

I believe that departed loved ones can communicate with us if we are open to receiving their messages. Your father may have been aware of the heart-shaped stone in the vicinity and nudged you towards it. The stone served as a meeting place for your two souls, a physical focal point for the love you share. Even the shape of a heart suggests two blending into one.

Another explanation for the stone's appearance is the mind's amazing ability to filter out irrelevant data. As we are constantly bombarded by more information than we can pay attention to, only that which matches up with what's important to us tends to make it through to our conscious awareness.

During your visit to the cemetery, your love for your father was your focus. As you scanned the environment, looking for a stone, much information was discarded, but the heart-shaped stone caught your attention. Had you not been feeling immense love, you may have overlooked it.

I live in a large condo complex with a circular drive lined with many dumpster corrals. Because I walk dogs several times a day, I regularly enter those corrals to toss my baggies after the dogs do their business. It is customary for our residents to leave usable items sitting next to the dumpsters as opposed to tossing them inside the dumpster. Whenever Iím in need of a particular item, it invariably appears.

I was in need of large vase and found one. I needed a pot to make a big batch of soup in and - hello! I wanted a few more nice wine glasses for entertaining - check! Were these gifts from the Dumpster Gods? Maybe. Did I manifest them through the Law of Attraction by focusing my mind on them? Could be. Were they examples of synchronicity, the universal order underlying all the seeming chaos? Perhaps!

However, I tend to believe that because I needed an item, it was on my mind and so my mental filter brought it to my attention instead of overlooking it. There are always items alongside the dumpsters, but my mind tends to be too full of other thoughts to even notice them unless they hold meaning for me.

With the greatest of ease, you overlooked what was insignificant at the cemetery and stumbled upon the perfect symbol for your visit. However it got there and however you found it, that heart set in stone served as a solid token to represent the eternal love you share with your father. As that loves lives on in YOUR heart, the thing to do now is ponder how you can carry it forward in your life and share it with the world.

Astrea:

Many times in life we hear, "You will always have what you NEED, but not necessarily what you WANT." Your spirit must have needed to experience the feeling of leaving your human body, and the suggestion in the next chapter of Sylvia Brown's book was all it took to get you there.

Even though you hadn't read it yet, your SOUL recognized the title of that chapter as something it had been seeking, and your soul, knowing that you had that reference to read after your experience, got with it and out you went!

While I don't usually recommend her books, Sylvia Brown has a wide reaching and powerful effect on lots of people. A Gemini like you would be able to relate easily to her writing and put it to good use. Synchronicity - you gotta love it!

I like your description of "getting caught." That's exactly what it feels like, isn't it? One minute you're free and hovering above the room, and the next minute, ZAP! back down into your corporeal form you go!

As a little kid, I loved that "feeling of return." With practice, most of the time we can control that event, but sometimes, when our physical ears hear a distracting noise or something else occurs to knock us back into reality, back we go. With practice you will be able to control your return better.

I find it interesting that you were visiting your mother-in-law and not someone in your own genetic family. Evidently, you and your husband got married for reasons that are even deeper than love. His family's interest in "psychic stuff" will nurture your children in such matters and help them to grow into their own abilities.

You'll never have to be concerned that when your daughter visits them, she'll be discouraged from exploring her own psychic life and power. My parents encouraged me to develop my psychic senses in a time when it wasn't nice to even discuss such things in public. Heck, it's STILL not considered a great topic at the dinner table in some families!

Your kids will get to talk about it ALL and ask questions and read and study. This is going to give them such an edge in life! Talk with your husband about how you want to present this to your kiddos, so that you are united in your approach and ready to tell them their experiences are all natural and okay.

A word or two of warning: Geminis often have difficulty staying grounded in REAL LIFE. Don't get so strung out on your ASTRAL life that you neglect what you're doing here on Earth.

You are at the beginning of a long journey to learn where your power really lies. Try to be patient with this process and take your time.