Salicrow - The Path of Elemental Witchcraft: A Wyrd Womans Book of Shadows

THE PATH OF
ELEMENTAL WITCHCRAFT

The Path of Elemental Witchcraft is much more than a book, it is an intimate invitation into the sacred workings of the world. Through personal stories and guided practice you cant help but be enveloped in the unique vision of Salicrow, whose writing crystallizes the precious usefulness of elemental magic. This Book of Shadows makes a tantalizing subject accessible and beneficial to all.

STEPHANIE ROSE BIRD, AUTHOR OF 365 DAYS OF HOODOOAND STICKS, STONES, ROOTS, AND BONES

The Path of Elemental Witchcraft is abundantly filled with wisdom, heart, and deep teachings. Salicrows writing is authentic, passionate, and inspiring. In this wonder-full book she shares stories of her personal journey that illustrate who and what the elementals are, and she teaches us how to engage and relate with the elementals in safe and respectful ways. Each section is filled with a rich mix of practices, rituals, suggestions, and guidance for deepening our understanding and our relationship with Nature and the visible and invisible worlds around us. Each elemental section explores communication, divination, healing, protection, and magic with the beings of water, fire, air, and earth. Doing the practices will take you deep into your own experience of knowing. This book is a treasure trove that youll want to delve into over and over again.

KATHY WARNER, COFOUNDER OF HEAVEN AND EARTH, LLC

In The Path of Elemental Witchcraft, Salicrow takes readers into her cave of interconnectedness and sacred communication with a wealth of information and offerings that enable practitioners of any level to develop a richer relationship with the elements and elemental beings from many different origins. Salicrow does not simply tell you how to walk through the shadow, she teaches you how to see within the veil of its profuse darkness.

JENN LEBLANC,ELEMENTAL ENCHANTRESS

Contents

FOREWORD

The Elements of Magic

Anne-Marie Keppel

In your hand you hold one of the most important and sacred keys of our timefrom the graveyard to the heavens above, and everywhere betwixt and between. The key you hold opens gateways into self-healing, ancestral healing, the healing of other beings, and the healing of our own precious planet. Sound extraordinary? Indeed it is.

Allow the possibility that the key you possess is not just turned with your hand; its turned with your gaze, your senses, and your heart. You were born with your own unique key but with no instructions on how to unlock your greatest magical and healing potential. Many of us have not known what to do with ourselves or how to be with ourselves. We were not taught in school, we may or may not have been given support at home, and we probably were not taught in our community. In a rush for success and power, we have externalized all sources of such, so we walk blindfolded through an unmagical, unforgiving, lonely world. Our lives can often feel meaningless, empty, devoid of anything sacred, and tremendously mundane.

The Path of Elemental Witchcraft guides you through techniques of self-opening, self-empowerment, and connection to all that is seen and unseen with a foundation of curiosity and possibility. Through stories of phenomena, ordinary life, recipes, and magical potential, Salicrow offers techniques for turning everyday objects into sacred tools in ways that alter what we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and sense.

As a death educator and death doula, Im constantly encouraging individuals and families to put in the healthy work of discussing their ending, to feel their mortality so as to be fully awakened to the awe that living really is. Without deeply examining our roots and bones, without looking into the dark caverns of our fearful mind, we cannot have any way of understanding how much light there really is. We need death to show us life. We need dark to show us light. And we need guidance to understand how these play out in our livespast, present, and future. Fortunately, The Path of Elemental Witchcraft is such a guide.

When it is my time to die, I want to be comfortable in my surroundings. In the ideal dying, my closest people have drawn a boundary that signifies where my death nest begins and where the outside world stops. I have imagined that I am in my own bed, with sunlight shining on my face. Carefully chosen music will aid my transcendence, and my favorite scents of rose and vanilla will draw my consciousness deep into my core and then project it out through the top of my head. My grand escape, my final bow will be as extraordinary as any ordinary death. Ive imagined this. Ive imagined that I am old. I have imagined how peaceful my transition will be.

Yet because the time of our death is unknown and death in general is an enigma, I must not only carefully visualize my ideal dying but also carry the understanding that the unseen world is constantly at play and does not abide by any human rules or preferences. Like a paved road that heaves open with frost, exposing the earth beneath, we, too, are subject to Earths great power. I must live my life in awe of living within the unpredictable world and never pass a tree, a rock, a tangle of shrubbery without recognizing that its presence is just as valuable as my own. In this way, no one ever dies alone. It may not be the scenario that was perfectly imagined, but it will always be witnessed. When you live knowing that, you are seen by much more than the human eye. You can take full comfort that you are never alone.

One of Salicrows central themes is this:

To be an elemental witch is to step into a personal relationship with the natural forces of the world. This is not something reserved for the perfect astrological alignment or for sabbaths; instead, it is a way of life.

It takes bravery, trust, perseverance, sweat, blood, and humility to practice the ways of the Witch. The same ingredients will one day go into our dying. And when our time comes, the elements will not abandon us. The wind in our lungs will cease, the heaviness of Earths gravity will hold us steady, the fires in our blood and digestion will fade, and the waters that have nourished us for so long will let loose. Dying is intimately elemental. In death, these same elements will grace our bodies with their presence once again as we break down and return to the earth.

The Path of Elemental Witchcraft will teach you how to live. It will affirm that your favorite place near the river, the one that has always felt so magically soothing to you, really is a place of spirit to nurture you. When you finally recognize this place as such, you will undoubtedly want to give back, to give thanks in some way.