A LOVE SPELL TO CHANGE THE WORLD…

I am sitting in our garden on the edge of the woods..

Its been a long week.

The fire is crackling quietly, while the warm wind breaks through the branches above my head … if I close my eyes I can almost imagine the sound of waves crashing on the shore as the breeze twists branches and dances through the leaves.

Black cats at my feet..

hungry… of course.

And I wonder … about the spells we cast each day.

Automatically… sometimes even unknowingly.

A wish over a blown out birthday candle..

A kiss on a grazed knee..

A knock on wood… just in case..

A dandelion clock..

A four leaf clover …

A hag stone… or two… or a hundred!

Hello Mr. Magpie ….

And I wonder how we find ourselves performing these little rituals without stopping for a moment to consider, that they are simply spells.

Words to manifest an end result …

Set the intention … (to make a wish)

Take action (blow out the candle)

And wait for the wish to come true (manifestation)

We’ve all crossed our fingers to hope for a better outcome… or to tell a little while lie…

somehow protected from retribution by simply twisting our fingers around each other. A binding rule that almost everyone knows..

I had never considered these everyday spells to be anything more than tradition or superstition, in fact, I had never actually considered these little actions at all.

I grew up in the New Forest, a place steeped in ancient history imbued with many old stories of magic.

My Dad, although not particularly an outwardly spiritual person, would simply tell tales that, for me, made the most mundane days glitter and sparkle with a magical twist.

He would be forever finding four leaf clovers. Pops had a gift for just looking down from his towering six foot four height and there would be a little green clover right at his feet. He would bend over, pick it, and hand it to me… telling me once again to keep it for luck.

I now have the same gift and spot them all the time, especially when I need them most.. as if he is watching, listening and sending me a little gift.

A reminder that he’s there, with my ancestors and I’m not alone.

He also had an eye for hag stones.. often picking them up or pointing them out to me so that I could collect them, my pockets always heavy with these magical talisman as I stumbled home excitedly to thread them on a string and hang them in my room.

Each time he made sure to remind me that it was a ‘hole with a stone around it’ … the hole is the magic bit … the gap between worlds.

He never expanded on this, maybe he didn’t know the traditional ideas behind hag stones, I guess I’ll never know, but I later learnt that a hag stone will trap negative energy in the hole and so protect you from harm.. similar to a dream catcher trapping bad dreams like a fly in a spiders web.

Have you noticed how easy it is to transport yourself back in time simply with a smell? Or a song ?

How you can suddenly feel a lost loved one right next to you because you get a waft of their aftershave?

Just for a second you can close your eyes, breath in the scent of them and bring them back from the dead…

Or play a piece of music and find yourself at the school disco in 1984 awkwardly slow dancing with that blond boy you’d had a crush on for ages… braces hiding your smile and hair frizzy in all the wrong directions.

Time travel…

Magic.

Al will never ever pass me on the stairs.. a superstition that I myself had never heard of but now I automatically know to wait at the top or bottom … or that he will do the same.. because, no one knows exactly why .. but it’s bad luck to pass on the stairs.

(I’m not sure how this applies out in the world … where there are many steps with many many people on them at the same time … I thought it best not to ask! )

Al’s lovely mum was afraid of the colour green. Her fear was so strong that, when he was younger and still living at home, he would tak advantage of his job in the motor trade and respray his newly aquired second hand car a different colour so as not to upset her by bringing home a green car!

Are black cats crossing your path good luck? Or bad? I’ve never been sure .. but living with two back cats I tend to lean towards good luck.

Thoughts and words have power.

Real power.

Magical power.

We have the ability to change our own worlds by thinking differently.

If I can bring back the dead with a smell … or a song…

Imagine what is possible.

How, collectively powerful we could be.

Those of you who are old enough to remember the 90’s, may be aware of how, during that time, smoking went from commonplace to socially unacceptable.

From cool to not cool in a relatively short period of time.

A change brought about intentionally by a simple change in rhetoric.

As well as the obvious anti smoking adverts that hit our screens in the 90’s, all of a sudden we didn’t see our movie heroes smoking anymore, and race cars were no longer sponsored by the big cigarette companies.

One of the most interesting examples for me, and something I think about a lot, was the tv series Friends.

In Friends, the character of Chandler suddenly wants to start smoking again after having quit apparently in a time before the show started.

His friends made it quite clear that they thought the habit disgusting and socially unacceptable. The theme continued for a little while in the series with Chandler secretly trying to smoke a cigarettes and inevitably being found out and shamed. Such a subtle but powerful manipulation.

Words.

Our entire belief system around smoking literally went from its enormous health benefits in the 50’s to completely unacceptable in society in the 90’s … just because we changed the way we talked about it.

So …

Doesn’t it follow that we can make small changes to our own lives but also.. huge changes to the consciousness of the world just by changing how we speak and what we send out into the world?

Al and I love Vinted. If you haven’t discovered this website yet, it’s a place to sell and buy second hand clothes and other bits and bobs. A brilliant way to make a shift and sell on loved clothes that are no longer worn … move that stagnant energy.

When we joined Vinted we noticed that people could be a little, how shall I put it.. ‘detached’ on the app. They might ask a question and when you reply they don’t respond back, or they purchase an item but there’s no thank yous or chit chats.. often not even an acknowledgment that they’ve received their purchase.

From the start, Al has intentionally and actively approached this app and the many people he comes into contact with through it with a positive energy. He will always say thank you and send happy emojis or messages to hope they love their purchase, even if it’s £2 t-shirt.

And it has worked.

By being relentlessly happy, polite and wishing people joy … he now receives the same treatment back. His reviews are glowing and the whole vibe of his account emanates a happy, respectful vibe.

What a beautiful change.

We get to choose how we see the world and how it sees us.

My world may be small … a blip in a tiny corner of the world, but I can change it. Just by sending love out and breathing it back in.

I can choose, right this moment to be happy.

Happiness isn’t an achievement or a stage of life, it’s a feeling. You don’t have to BE happy but you can choose to FEEL happy whenever you like, and that’s magic.

Often with all the challenges we are seeing in the wider world right now… the less than positive messages that are circulating, we can feel a little helpless or despondent. But I try to remember that this is also just speech. Hate speech is words… so if the world feels a little ‘off’ right now, I think it’s more important than ever to remember that, just as we were able to make smoking unacceptable, we have the power collectively to make hate speech and all that goes with it socially unacceptable too.

We don’t have to accept it. It holds no power if it’s not believed. (Think Captain Hook and Tinkerbell )

It is simply even more reason to send positive energy and loving words into the world.

As the Dalai Lama said:

“When we have inner peace, we can be at peace with those around us. When our community is in a state of peace, it can share that peace with neighbouring communities.” Dalai Lama

A snowball of loving kindness that starts with you and with me.

I choose to be kind, send out love and acceptance.

I choose to be happy in this moment.

I choose to believe in the magic that is all around me.

“Happy people build their inner world, unhappy people blame their outer world.” Dalai Lama

“When we feel love and kindness toward others, it not only makes others feel love and cared for, but it helps us to develop inner happiness and peace” Dalai Lama

Magic.

Right?

Like collecting four leaf clovers or cuddling black cats.