Cal Garrison - The Old Girls Book of Spells: The Real Meaning of Menopause, Sex, Car Keys, and Other Important Stuff About Magic

First published in 2002 by

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

York Beach, ME

With offices at:

500 Third Street, Suite 230

San Francisco, CA 94107

www.redwheelweiser.com

Copyright 2002 Cal Garrison

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages.

ISBN-10: 1-59003-018-4

ISBN-13: 978-1-59003-018-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Garrison, Cal.

The old girls' book of spells : the real meaning of menopause, sex, car keys & other important stuff / by Cal Garrison.

p. cm.

ISBN 1-59003-018-4 (alk. paper)

1. Witchcraft. 2. MenopauseMiscellanea. 3. Middle aged womenMiscellanea. I. Title.

BF1572.M46 .G37 2002

133.430846dc21

2002001040

Typeset in Kennerly

Cover design by David A. Freedman

Cover illustration by Tim Robinson

Printed in Canada

TCP

10 9 8 7 6 5

For my daughters Eliza, Julia, and Johanna.
Thanks for hanging in there and for always giving me the benefit of the doubt.

N ote to the reader: The spells, remedies, and techniques in this book are based on both tradition and long years of practice. They are meant to supplement, not to be a substitute for, professional medical care or treatment. They should not be used to treat a serious ailment without prior consultation with a qualified healthcare professional. Neither the publisher nor the author accepts any responsibility for your health or how you choose to handle and use the herbs described in this book.

W itchcraft, magic, and spell work are as old as time itself. There was a time, long before the Great Deluge, when the inhabitants of this planet had total control of their thought processes and could manifest anything just by thinking about it. But this sixth sense, which was once as much a part of us as the other five, we now call supernatural, simply because the mental pathway that accesses it has atrophied. Even though it appears as if we've lost that ability it is probably more accurate to say that it lies dormant. Somewhere in our collective unconscious, each one of us remembers how to awaken the sixth sense.

Our connection to our psychic abilities and our ability to tap our sixth sense actually strengthens as we become women of a certain age, or crones. Up until puberty the pineal gland, the gland that houses the third eye, is open and clear. Around the time we get our periods a shield of calcium forms around this gland. I'm not sure why, but I think it has something to do with needing all the higher vibrational energy to mate, conceive, and reproduce. This calcium shield stays in place until menopause, but at menopause it dissolves and the third eye is free to function without obstruction again.

All the freaking out that goes with having your period stop, all the emotional ups and downs, are really about the adjustment we make as these higher sensory perceptions reawaken. Even hot flashes are an expression of vital kundalini energy; they tell us to take all that heat and send it up to the third eye.

If it seems ridiculous to you that anyone would think about writing a book of spells expressly for crones, it should seem more ridiculous that it hasn't been done before. In the ancient Egyptian spiritual traditions women were not even considered to be ready for initiation until the age of forty-five. At that point, if a woman was chosen as a candidate for the priestess path, she had to spend the next twelve years in the temples of initiation that lined the Nile. Do the math. It took them till the age of fifty-seven to get to a place in themselves where their wisdom amounted to anything. Why we live in a culture that diminishes the power of the elder female is a question that is buried under mountains of patriarchal manipulation. The Egyptians must have known something about menopausal forces that we've certainly lost touch with. Here we are pumping hormones and whining about hot flashes when we could be connecting with the God head!

Menopause is a portal that takes us to higher levels of awareness. Younger women have it all going on in the T & A department, but their psychic intuitive abilities are clouded by the fact that 90 percent of that energy is going into their sexual-reproductive functions. After menopause, that force can't come forth reproductively anymore, but it doesn't disappear. But no one tells us that there's another purpose for that energy, so we accept it as a nuisance and take hormones to suppress it. In this book we'll be looking at using it to feed the higher spiritual centers instead.

There's a reason why all the old etchings and engravings of witches and their doings portray images of women with a lot of chin hairs whose bodies aren't exactly Playboy material. As crones, we have the gift, girls! Maybe now that the veil is being lifted on all the secrets, the one that's kept menopausal women relegated to the junk bin will get blown away too.

A lot of what's in the book is spellsall kinds of spells that are particularly appropriate to our time of life. Spells for reviving passion, spells for bringing you business or getting a better job, spells to clear bad vibes in your home, spells to help you find your car keys (or any other lost object), spells to help you sell your home, spells for protecting you while you travel, spells for voiding a traffic citation. Some people will think you're crazy when you start talking about spell work, but it's really not crazy at all. The images that many of us associate with witchcraft, magic, and spell work hark back to the days of the Inquisition; they're bogus. There's nothing spooky or hocus-pocus here to steer clear of. Doing a spell is a simple matter of focusing and directing your thoughts on something that you would like to make happen in your life. It's an excellent way to direct wayward thoughts toward a constructive goal.

It's easier for most people to swallow the idea of the power of positive thinking than it is to consider doing a spell because it doesn't offend our puritanical programming. I am pretty sure Norman Vincent Peale was no fan of The Great Beast. Nor am I. Even though there are plenty of people that worship Satan and practice the black arts, I am not concerned with these things in any way, shape, or form. At its essence, there's absolutely no difference between doing a spell and using positive thinking.

My first experience with the enormous power of focused intentions happened when I was about ten years old. I was sitting in the back of the station wagon and my thirteen-year-old sister, Christine, was up front with her best friend Marcia. The two of them were making fun of me, and I was enraged at being humiliated and rejected. Christine and I had issues that dated back to her attempt to poison me when I was six. She had always had it in for me, and I never knew why. Whatever my feelings were toward her on that day, they must have reached critical mass. I wanted to retaliate, but all I could find in the back of the car was a common pin and a pointed Dixie cup. I fashioned a missile by sticking the pin through the point of the cup. Fueled with the force of my clear intention I aimed this little rocket at Christine and it flew right up her left nostril. I couldn't believe it but at the same time I wasn't the least bit surprised because that's exactly where I wanted it to go.