February, 2022
How many of us have days where we feel like the world is dying and there is nothing we can do? That the degradation of our Mother has reached a point of no return? That we have so little power to enact change that we just feel like giving up? I know I have had my days feeling this way. Then I remember the principals of sympathetic magic, and how I can make large scale changes in tiny, incremental ways.
All sympathetic magic is based upon two principles: first, "likes produce likes," or that an effect resembles its’ cause; and, second, that things having been in contact with each other continue to react upon one and another at a distant even after they have been severed or disconnected. Ancient cultures understood the energy behind this and because they felt a part of Nature, were able to use this type of energy to influence outcomes. Black magic is when someone disconnects from the intelligence of Nature and uses the art of magic to override another’s free will. An example of this is our current paradigm of poisoning insects and plants to achieve our idea of what a garden should look like. By disconnecting from the land we manipulate, and then forcing our will upon it, we are actually practicing Black Magic.
Sympathetic magic is a way we can influence the world by specifically using ourselves as the “like” to attract the “like” we want to see. When done in a sacred way, the energy is amplified and expands outward. This is why group rituals have so much power - whether they are intentionally done for healing and abundance, or for more nefarious reasons (think mob mentality on social media), group energy is powerful and can create chaos or peace. So let’s look at some ways we can use ourselves as a conduit for bringing more love and balance into human actions.
Restoring your biome.
What a mess we’ve made on the Earth. Almost all the water is polluted, we’ve cut down so many forests to wipe our butts that floods, mudslides and tornados are becoming the norm, plastic is in every single place on earth, we’ve drained the soil of anything healthy, and we continue to wage war on Nature in every conceivable way. How do we stop this, beside being more conscious of reducing our needs? One way is through the “as above so below” principal of homeopathy, or sympathetic magic. Each of us contains the Earth’s mountains, rivers, continents, soil, insects, animals, etc. We are a hologram of the Earth. So we can use that principal to restore the Earth by restoring our own biome.
How do we do this? First of all, we must begin to heal our gut. Food is either a medicine or a drug, nothing in between. When we have more drugs than medicine, our biome, or gut, suffers. When the gut suffers, the entire body suffers. Much like depleting the soil and then wondering why we can’t grow healthy food, a damaged gut will not be able to assimilate even the most expensive supplements. We can all make small changes in choosing what we put into our body. As we heal our biome, our ability to manifest increases.
We can then look at how we may be polluting our “rivers” (too much alcohol, coffee, etc.), if we are giving our living forests enough sunshine (don’t believe the hype that the sun is dangerous to you - you can’t thrive without it!), and perhaps most importantly, what are we growing in our thriving new landscape? If we do all the work to restore our biome and then plant gardens that drain us or are at odds with our soul purpose, we deplete our resources and end up back where we started. So as you heal your biome, be thoughtful about where you spend your energy.
Unlearn, then relearn how to converse.
“Conversation changes the way you see the world, and thus changes the world itself” Theodore Zeldin , a fellow and former dean of St. Anthony’s College, Oxford is internationally hailed as one of the 100 most important thinkers of the world. His book “Conversations” explains what kind of talk charmed and excited people in the past and why we talk differently today. It explores the history of conversation and how it can be the key to a happier, more interesting future. The book ends with 36 topics of conversation that asks us to examine our word habits, and perhaps change how we interact verbally with others. Zeldin then took his ideas public and began hosting conversation dinners. “The Conversation Muse organises Conversation Meals at which you are seated in pairs with someone you have never met, or know only very vaguely. You are each given a Menu of Conversation that looks like a restaurant menu, with starters, fish, grills, dessert etc, but instead of descriptions of food dishes, each heading contains topics to talk about, 25 in all.” Consider exploring Zeldin’s ideas, then host a dinner party with a conversation menu. If we see our words as energetic resources to be spent thoughtfully, who knows what kind of world we can manifest quickly and magically?
Hoʻoponopono is a Hawaiian practice of reconciliation and forgiveness. The Hawaiian word translates into English simply as correction, with the synonyms manage or supervise, and the antonym careless. The theory behind Hoʻoponopono is again, a sympathetic magic intent. The healer takes responsibility for the illness! This is at great odds with the “It’s not my fault” mindset pervasive of western thought, but the underlying energy is that we are co-creators of everything we experience, therefore if someone comes to us for healing and we accept them, we have some responsibility in their illness. If we accept this responsibility, we have the potential to change it.
The simple method of Ho’oponopono is “I am sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.” These simple phrases have tremendous power. They contain the power of repentance, forgiveness, transmutation, and gratitude, to erase and transmute any limiting memories or beliefs. You can use the four steps to solve any problem, and it’s not necessary to know the cause of the problem or to know what the exact problem is. You can say these four sentences as much as you like, in any order that resonates for you. The more you repeat them, and the more you clear, the better.
Ho’oponopono prayers are basically self-forgiveness & repentance prayers, but also reconciliation & cleansing prayers, and they are also prayers for peace, including peace of mind, for health, wealth, strength, and happiness. They are in fact, according to native practitioners, miracle prayers. They can be used to cleanse and heal anything. They are incredibly powerful healing prayers. The thing I love about this technique the most is it does not put the power of healing in the hands of an outside force, but instead allows the body/mind/spirit/emotion of each human to step into their power to transmute and transform what is happening in their immediate environment.
Abundance through releasing.
There is no such thing as scarcity in Nature. When you release the scarcity mindset, you will want less and need less, and you will experience more and receive more, and you may be amazed at the simplicity of life. Realize how much you are loved to be here right now at the tipping point of all things, and how valuable you are, that you would surrender control and become part of something greater than yourself.
We have been taught that abundance is based on how much stuff we have. Boats, cabins, “toys”, clothing, etc, have all taken an exaggerated idea of value and affects our choices. Some people can never feel comfortable unless they have rooms bulging at the seams full of items they deem necessary.
But strangely enough, the less you have, the more abundant your life will become. Things require energy to keep in manifestation. The more you have, the more of your life force will be needed to keep those things. The less life force you have available, the more susceptible you become to illness, stress and overwhelm. An energetic spiral of true abundance is created when we let go of the need to “have”.
Become an urban seed ninja!
Cities are filled with concrete. Yet plants are great opportunists. They know how to find a crack in any facade, and enough soil to grow. We can help our pollinators and create beauty everywhere we go by becoming seed ninjas. Simply fill a parmesan shaker with wildflower seeds and then every time you go for a walk, just shake away!! Tiny steps like this can make the difference for entire species struggling to survive in a city.
Explore Homeopathy.
Homeopathy may be the King or Queen of sympathetic magic. There is now significant proof that water has memory, and retains the vibration of things that it encounters. Homeopathy dates back to the late 1700s, and today the World Health Organization recognizes it as “the second largest therapeutic system in use in the world.” Homeopathy is a system of medicine that is fundamentally different from conventional (allopathic) medicine. Allopathic medicine tends to heavily focus on pharmaceuticals, many of which merely suppress symptoms and cause side-effects leading to further imbalance.
Homeopathy is derived from the Greek word “homeo” meaning like or similar and “pathos” meaning pathology or illness. So the literal meaning of homeopathy is similar illness. This means that a homeopathic medicine is administered based upon its ability to mimic the disease state, thereby stimulating the body to heal itself.
Homeopathy seeks to stimulate the body's own healing mechanisms to correct the underlying imbalance that caused the symptoms in the first place. It is based on the “like produces like” idea mentioned above in sympathetic magic. When a substance from nature is potentized by diluting and shaking, it enhances the therapeutic qualities of natural substances, making it safe to take without any side effects. As the original natural substance is diluted and shaken in water, it retains in its memory the curative properties and when given to someone suffering from illness stimulates the immune system to heal itself and restores health.
Not only can you heal yourself with homepathics, you can use them in your garden to bring balance to the soil. This requires a knowledge of muscle testing or else hiring someone familiar with the process of working with Nature in this way.
Buy bamboo/sugar cane/hemp toilet paper.
Trees are disappearing at an alarming rate, and with them goes centuries of wisdom. How can we continue to wipe our asses with trees when we see them suffering? Bamboo and/or sugar cane TP is a bit more expensive, but so worth it. Thick, luxurious and each time you use it you can take a sigh of relief with you out the door, that you are supporting an excellent transition from trees to a renewable source. Hemp TP is hard to find in the US due to our paranoia of all things hemp related, but an interesting side effect of hemp TP is it is highly antibacterial (good for the ladies) and highly biodegradable, as well as needing little to no chemicals to process. Hopefully Winona LaDuke’s hemp farm can be a leader in this area! My two favorite brands of TP are Who Gives a Crap (most cost effective) and REEL. WGaC is slightly more cost effective (I once spent an entire day doing a cost comparison between 35 different alternative toilet papers, WGaC came out ahead on cost and quality). If enough of us stopped buying those huge bags of TP from Costco and other big box stores and instead used the thicker bamboo (which means you use about half as much or less) we could make an enormous difference by voting with our dollars. While this may be a stretch as far as sympathetic magic goes, small acts done repeatedly by many people can greatly affect our outward, collective manifestations.
So there you have some ways that you, as an individual, can bring about collective change. There is no need to focus on changing the collective; the idea is to change the self, which then sends out resonant waves that affect the collective. I’m sure each of you also have some small way that you are making change in the world, and I applaud your creative spirit!