Sarah Bartlett - The Witchs Spellbook: Enchantments, Incantations, and Rituals from Around the World

THE WITCHS SPELLBOOK

Enchantments, Incantations, and Rituals from Around the World

Sarah Bartlett

2018 Quarto Publishing Group USA Inc.

Text 2015 Fair Winds Press

First Published in 2018 by Fair Winds Press, an imprint of The Quarto Group,

100 Cummings Center, Suite 265-D, Beverly, MA 01915, USA.

T (978) 282-9590 F (978) 283-2742 QuartoKnows.com

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Digital edition: 978-1-63159-486-1

Hardcover edition: 978-1-59233-823-8

Digital edition published in 2018

The content for this book originally appeared in Spellcraft for a Magical Year (Fair Winds, 2015) by Sarah Bartlett.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data can be found under Spellcraft for a Magical Year.

Design, illustrations, and page layout: The Lost & Found Dept.

To Jess

When I was in my early twenties, I worked in London and would spend my lunch hours indulging in one of my favorite pastimes: browsing the dusty shelves of antiquarian bookshops. One warm day in June, my fingers ran across a thin, leather-bound volume with no title; inside, the frontispiece read, Invocations for the Summer Solstice. The twenty-four thick parchment pages revealed twelve magic spells to be performed for each hour of the day between dawn and dusk. One spell stood out for me, a spell to get back a lover. (Yes, Id recently been dumped.) I bought the book.

As the solstice was only four days away, I was tempted to try out the spell the next day. What did a few days difference matter? Yet scrawled in black ink in the back of the book were the words, Invoke the right power on the right day, and only then will you have your way. Impatient as I was to have a go at my chosen spell, I humbly waited for the twenty-first of June and the hour that was set for the spell3 p.m.

I followed the magic recipe, used the right ingredients, and believedoh, how I believed that my ex would come running back to me! But an hour or so after I had cast the spell, I felt disillusioned and thought it was just a silly game. Yet two weeks later, my ex phoned to say hed made a terrible mistake, and could we meet up? Two weeks after that he moved into my flat, and a year later we got married. In fact, that fragile book was not only the trigger for my new life direction as an astrologer practicing the magical arts, but it is the inspiration behind writing this spell book for you.

We all want to lead a magical lifeone in which we are able to both shape and take responsibility for our destinies. This book reveals how, by simply casting spells that align with the cycles of nature and the universe, you too can begin to manifest your dreams.

You too can create magic in your life by working with the cycles of nature to help shape your own future. Go out and be united with the stars to help bring you the magical happiness you are seeking.

To every witch reading this book, let the light of the universe shine through you every day.

What you need to know

W hen you think about it, life on earth came into being simply because of our proximity to the sun. As the center of our planetary system, the suns source of power has a direct influence on both the world around us and the force that permeats all things: magical power. In fact, all of nature is imbued with solar energy, which is why most of the materials used for spell work include crystals, paper, flowers, herbs, and so on.

Still, it was only five hundred years ago that most of humanity believed the Earth was the center of the universe and the sun and planets revolved around it. In the sixteenth century, Polish astrologer Nicolaus Copernicus revived an ancient Greek theory that the Earth rotated daily on its axis and circled the sun. Yet even though astronomers such as Kepler and Galileo knew this theory to be true a century later, the Roman Catholic Church considered it heretical, and it wasnt until the middle of the eighteenth century that it was finally proved by science. All these astronomers, or rather astrologers, also believed that there was more to heaven and earth than imagined, a force that permeated and shaped the universe.

This magical force included an established system of correspondences rooted in ancient Egyptian and Greek magical texts, such as the Egyptian Papyrus of Ani (ca. 1250 BCE) and the so-called Greek Magical Papyria collection of fragments of parchment from Greco-Roman spell books and magical writings dating from the second century BCE. Correspondencesthat is, colors, deities, planets, talismans, plants, herbs, directions, animals, weather patterns, and so onwere all symbolic of one another. Whether sun, rain, earthquake, storm, or volcano, or even an abstract concept such as jealousy, each was identified with a presiding deity or spirit. These gods were associated with the planets, and their corresponding attributes were used in magic potions or worn as talismans to invoke their specific powers. For example, Venus is the closest planet to Earth, and it is associated with love, women, fertility, vanity, and beauty. To the ancients, Venus appeared as both the morning star and the evening star, so it was also thought at times to usher in the dawn, and at others the duskas ambivalent as the goddess Venus was thought to be. Going back even further, in Paleolithic times, plants and animals were used to heal, cure, or protect; the use of symbols carved into stone or in cave paintings called on spirits or the otherworld to aid in hunting or fertility, and the natural world and its cycles were respected and honored.

In fact, magic developed from simply a means to get help from the powers that be, to an ability to manipulate the energy of the cosmos so that you, the individual, could control your own destiny. By working with talismans, symbols, and correspondences you could also invoke the power of the divine to see into the future, or to make changes in the world. By drawing on the suns power and magnifying it in your life by using talismans of the solar gods and their associated correspondencesby wearing gold jewelry, lighting candles, and so onyou could keep the power of the sun on your side, ready to help you in your quest.