magic spell

Past + future spells

/ Faith Helma / Leave a comment

Hey everybody! It’s that time of year, when we reflect on the past and project into the future. I like to do some simple creative exercises (aka magic spells) on this, and obviously those exercises are SUPER WEIRD AND POTENT this year. I’ve been posting over at my Playhouse on Patreon about some of them, and I wanted to share this with you here too (oh and I made a video on this topic if you want to view it here).

This magic word association exercise is called LOOK AT YOURSELF, YOU BEAUTIFUL CREATURE

I came to this one because I was looking back over the self-portraits I drew this year. Whenever I do this, I see patterns and recurring images that I didn’t notice while I was drawing them. 

You can do this too, even if you don’t have drawings to look back on (though I highly recommend you start doing self portraits as a way to track your journey through life).

Look back at selfies, or pictures you posted on instagram, and see what visual cues jump out at you. Are there colors you are drawn to, a shirt you wore a lot, a way of framing yourself that you kept unconsciously repeating? Are there objects or symbols that you notice in the background a lot?

One thing I see, when I look back at the self portraits I drew this year, is a recurring image of gray stepping stones. I wasn’t really conscious how often I was drawing these, but they show up over and over. 

Something I notice in the pictures from my instagram grid is how much I like wearing warm pinks and purples. I posted a picture on New Years Eve of me jumping in my galaxy pants. I realized looking at the picture how much joy those pants have brought me this year. Why do I love the word GALAXY so much, why do I keep coming back to it?

See what images resonate with you from the past year, and then take it a step further and freewrite what associations you have with those images. What do they communicate to you? How do they make you feel?

For me, GRAY STEPPING STONES…

= one step at a time

= comforting and orderly yet mystical and mysterious

= part of the earth but also constructed

= harmony with the world

= the kind of path I like

= call to me, I want to step on a gray stepping stone

= be where you are, and also following your instincts one step at a time

= slow growth, exciting growth, following curiosity

= how to grow my business so it fits with my life

= sustainable growth

Wow. This is helping me see that one of the shifts for me this year is, accepting the slowness of my growth, not fighting it or pushing past it, not trying to trick myself out of it. 

My body insists on slow growth. My body insists on doing this the right way, even if it means I go in circles or take forever to learn. My body says, one stone step at a time. 

Here’s what I came up with for GALAXY:

= unknown

= exploration

= expansion

= mystery

= spirals

= dazzling

= multiple cultures, multiple worlds, multiple ways

= escape

= a better future

= afrofuturism (this raises the question… can I embrace this as a white person? What is futurism from a white perspective? Can I embrace expansion and escape without perpetuating white supremacy?)

= inner work / outer work

= as above so below

= look at the stars to see your mind at work

= get your ship together

= working together, a team in space, a team of equals

Interesting. What do these lists tell me about my goals and relationships and actions for the year? What are my YES and NO based on this?

For me what came up was this:

No hoarding, no hiding, no talking over people, no playing the victim, no all by myselfing, no rushing and skipping steps, no tricking myself.

Yes to paying 30% of my income to Black and Indigenous women, yes to showing up, yes to stepping into the light, YES to dazzling, yes to listening and learning actively, yes to taking in feedback, yes to going slow, yes to giving and receiving help as a powerful being. Yes to a team of equals.

Wow. Something really shifts for me, something expands in me when I think of 2021 that way.

What comes up for you?

The benefits of being lost

/ Faith Helma

I have a trait that drives me nuts: I get lost everywhere I go. I’m a terrible navigator, a map is mystifying to me. I google map everything and half the time I still get turned around.

I’ve been playing with this idea: what if getting lost is a sign that magic is at work?

I believe that traits we think of as flaws in our culture — running late, getting lost, losing keys, forgetting things — are actually invitations to step into magic.

It’s how most fairy tales start. Alice down the rabbit hole, Dorothy diving into the cellar to hide from a tornado, Sarah (from Labyrinth) running home in the rain to babysit her brother then accidentally invoking David Bowie the Goblin King (it happens).

It’s how two year olds live every moment of their day. It’s what happens when elders slip into dementia. We think of these stages as annoying — a terrible willful phase to be trained out of, a dreaded no turning back threshold to be held off as long as possible. And I’m not pretending they are beautiful! I have a two year old right now and this morning he stood on a chair shouting, I PEEING! I PEEING! and then ten minutes later he did the same exact thing again.

It’s not fun to clean up. It didn’t feel very magical to me. But then, I’m on the outside looking in. My two year old is in it, mystified, watching, wondering what it means.

It’s hard when you’re the caregiver, the boss, the clean upper, the project manager. We are in charge of keeping things running, maintaining order, moving everyone along, noticing what needs fixing. That’s the power, right? I’m the decider, I’m the fixer, I’m in control. 

Losing control = losing power. 

Except what if it isn’t? What if losing your way, losing track of time, letting things slide into chaos is a different kind of power? A power we could embrace?

What if instead of aiming to eradicate these moments from my life, I saw them as invitations to lay down my certainty and feel the strange tension of not knowing what is going on — the tension of magic. Is that possible? 

I had a dream two months ago, where someone said to me, Uncertainty breeds confidence. In the middle of the night I wrote that down and I keep coming back to it.

Uncertainty breeds confidence.

There’s no way to real confidence without fumbling through not knowing. So if you’re fumbling right now: you are in the magic. Instead of fighting it, can you feel it’s tension, it’s bubbling chaos, it’s mystery?

Here is a magic spell to try tonight:

Go outside and stand under the dark sky. Whisper the things you do not know.  Welcome in the uncertainty all around you.

Feel the earth, how solid it seems. Feel it whispering back, rotating and shifting for miles and miles and miles under your feet.

See the blinking of stars in the sky, sending you signals from light years past.

Hear the sounds of night life, the scratching and rooting and scrabbling that is mysterious because you cannot see it. 

Leave a tiny object outside in the night, with a question. Go inside and make yourself a cup of tea. In the morning, see if the object is still outside where you left it.

If it is, pick it up and carry it in your pocket like a talisman.

If it is not, take it as a sign that your question has been taken under consideration by a creature of the night, and await their answer.

If you want help interpreting their answer or making space for magic in your life, I am offering 20 free coaching sessions for my spring People Project.

Saying what you want out loud is a magic spell

/ Faith Helma / Leave a comment

I wrote a post two years ago about accidental spellcasting, about how we are casting accidental spells all the time — we  use our imaginations to predict, reflect, reframe, process and distract from reality. We speak predictions of the future as if they were certain, we worry ourselves into a repeating loop, we tell stories to make sense of trauma and thus, shake off it’s hold on us. We cast spells without realizing it — plant the seeds deep in our unconscious mind for the kind of world we want to live in. 

I think of magic as PHYSICALIZING YOUR UNCONSCIOUS. It’s a process for taking your inner world — the symbols, images and associations that make you do what you do — and expressing it on the outside. It’s about changing the inner tangle of associations so your perception of the outer world can radically change.

One of the simplest, most powerful magic spells you can cast is saying what you want out loud.

I’m not talking about manifesting or positive thinking. This is not about crossing your fingers and wishing hard. This is not about expecting everything to work out exactly the way you want it to.

No – this is a different beast. This is following the thread of what you want where it leads. This is paying attention to the images and shadows and surges and obstacles that arise when you say out loud what you want. This magic is a sideways, circular, cyclical, practical process. When you say your unconscious desires out loud — when you embrace them, play with them, pretend with them — they take on a life outside of you. You don’t control them — you dance with them, ride with them where they lead. It’s about co-creating with your unconscious mind.

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If this sounds whimsical or daydreamy, think of a baby. Babies cry for what they want. They voice their desire. They WANT with all their being, without question, without hesitation. They want milk, they cry out for milk. And you know what? IT WORKS. They don’t manifest the milk, they cry until they get it (or mine did. Babies vary, obviously). 

This is basic human survival. And yet what we learn as we grow is to hide our wants. Especially if you were socialized as a white American woman like me, you learn to wait and see what everyone else wants before you say anything. You mold your wants to fit the group. You try not to want too much, so you’re not a burden, a diva, an annoyance.

Overcoming that programming is not easy. It feels scary and weird and uncomfortable — impossible even.

But it’s like any hard thing: you practice, and you get better.

You can practice saying what you want out loud. You can practice being honest about your YES and NO. You can revel in the tension, the thrills, the fears of wanting. You can WANT with all your night, even if it’s just for two minutes.

I have an example from my life. Seven years ago I was channeling my creative energy into theater — creating charged multimedia performances about big unanswerable questions, leading warm ups and trainings, co-leading with a group of strong artists who had been working together for years. Then I gave birth to my son Waylon, and everything turned upside down. What arose (slowly) from the ashes was a new idea — or more accurately, the old idea, with new wings. A new frame for what I had been doing all those years. What if another word for these skills is active listening, facilitating and … coaching? Could I be a coach?

Something about becoming a mother compelled me to physicalize this question, so I made a show to practice embodying a coach. That show was I Hate Positive Thinking, and over the course of a year, I went from calling myself a “coach” in air quotes to doing it for real, working with clients and leading workshops and classes. For over a year, I got up in front of people and practiced being this new thing I wanted to be. I tried it on. I performed my WANT with hundreds of people as witnesses and I felt the spell working it’s magic, night after night.

I am still practicing that want. I am still casting that spell. And guess what,  it’s still hard! It’s vulnerable and scary and feels weird to say what I want out loud. 

But we can do hard things. Try saying out loud what you want and seeing what happens as a result. Maybe nothing! That’s possible. But since change is the only constant in our universe, isn’t it more likely that SOMETHING will happen?