The Element Encyclopedia of 1000 Spells: A Concise Reference Book for the Magical Arts. Judika Illes
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no matter how ancient their roots, are a modern art, not relegated to the dusty past. However if you like all those “thees” and “thous,” if you enjoy archaic language, if it enhances your sense of magical ambience, adjust the spells to suit your taste and put them back
Many associate the verbal component of spells with rhymes. If you enjoy rhymes, that’s fine, however rhymes are not required. The advantage of rhymes is that they’re easily remembered, which can be crucial if it’s a spell that requires you to exactly repeat incantations at intervals, however what is being said is almost invariably more important than the literary devices used to say it
It is crucial that the verbal component of a spell express your goals and desires accurately, concisely, and without ambiguity, because living magical forces sometimes enjoy playing tricks. Change and adapt as needed. Make up your own words, keeping them simple and to the point, or use words composed by others that best express your desires. Psalms are traditionally used in this way; poems or the lyrics of your favorite songs may be able to articulate your desires and goals more accurately than any ancient charm
Speaking the Spell
Verbal components of spells are usually spoken aloud, however not all spells are spoken the same way. There are different techniques of speaking and enunciating used in spell-casting. Directions are incorporated into the text of the spells but you must understand these directions in order to put them to best effect.
Murmuring and Muttering
In many cases, the verbal component of the spell is not meant to be easily understood by others. This is not necessarily or only because of secrecy. In these spells, you are actually interjecting the power of your words into something, even if only the atmosphere, but more frequently into an object. A classic and simple spell is to murmur words over a glass of water, transforming it into a potion. By then giving it to another to drink, you are magically transferring and transmitting your magical message and directions.
Announcing and Chanting
Sometimes, however, words are used to express and announce one’s intentions and desires to the universe or toward a specific magic power. In that case, words need to be clearly understood. Articulate distinctly, expressively, and at a volume that you deem appropriate.
Key Concepts for Casting Magic Spells
Although one can just start casting spells, learning by trial and error, understanding certain key concepts boosts the chances of a spell-caster’s success.
Thresholds
Magic energy radiates from everything and everyone that occurs naturally on Earth to varying degrees, or is derived from naturally occurring parts. Some objects are sources of greater power than others. Frankincense, roses, and wild Syrian rue, for instance, permit greater access to magic power than many other botanicals. Certain areas are also sources of greater power than others, with “area” meant both in a literal and a metaphoric way.
Thresholds are border areas where one force, power, or element encounters another. These meeting areas are potentially the most highly magically charged of all. Thresholds exist everywhere: the seashore, that transitional area where ocean meets land; the foot of mountains, where land begins to rise; and caves, the subterranean thresholds between Earth’s outer and inner powers.
There are architectural thresholds: doors and windows. There are thresholds in time: twilight and dawn, where an incoming power approaches before the out-going power has completely dispersed. Life cycles are thresholds: the birth of a new baby, particularly a first child whose birth transforms someone into a parent. Death is a threshold between one existence and the next. Someone who lingers in a halflife is described as having a foot in both worlds, straddling the threshold. Any transformative ritual is defined as a threshold, by virtue of its very capacity to transform. There are thresholds on the body: the mouth is the threshold between thought and speech.
Thresholds are simultaneously the areas of greatest magical potential and also of extreme vulnerability. A vast percentage of protective amulets, rituals, and spells are designed to guard thresholds and the transformative process. In fact, every magic spell can be perceived as a transformative threshold, from a past that has left something to be desired toward the future that the spell hopefully produces.
Most thresholds consist of a simple boundary: with one foot you stand inside the house, with another you stand outside. If your feet are small enough and your balance is good, you can stand poised, neither inside, nor outside.
With one foot you stand in the river or ocean, with the other, you stand on the land. The ancient Egyptians called their country “the land of the red and the black,” because there was a distinct division, a visible dividing line between the black fertile land of Nile silt and the stark red land of the desert. You could literally stand with one foot in each color. Each color also typified a different kind of magic and a different spiritual ruler. The black belonged to Osiris, with his arts of orderly civilization; red belonged to his brother Seth, anarchic, chaotic Lord of Magic.
These are simple boundaries: you can hop from one to the other. There are also expanded, exponentially super-magically charged thresholds.
The Crossroads
The crossroads are literally where different roads meet and where they separate, where opportunity emerges to change directions. They are unpredictable; you could take any one of a variety of choices. Magically speaking a crossroads is the place where multiple forces converge, where anything can happen, where transformations may occur. Energy is liberated and expanded at the crossroads. Instead of hopping over boundaries, you can stand in the center and be inundated by power, potential, and choices.
There are four-way crossroads and three-way crossroads—the proverbial fork in the road. A classic movie scene, albeit one that occurs in real-life if you’ve ever been lost in the country, shows someone arriving at a fork in the road. With no identifying road-sign in sight, our hero or heroine is forced to choose a road. Choose either one and your destiny may be altered forever. Crossroads offer the opportunity for transformation, for a change of direction, a change in destiny.
Crossroads are ubiquitous in magic. Many spells demand to be cast at the crossroads; others require that the remnants of spells—left-over candle stubs, ashes, and the such—be buried at the crossroads, where their energy can safely disperse.
Specific types of spiritual entities, known as “road-openers” and inevitably beings of great power, preside over crossroads. These beings can be petitioned for knowledge, information, and for a change in destiny. They control thresholds and roads, and determine who has free access and who finds roads barred, who will choose the right fork in the road and who will wander hopelessly lost forever.
In ancient Greece, Hermes ruled the four-way crossroads, while Hecate presided over three-way crossroads, her epithet Hecate Trivia emphasizing this aspect. Trivia, from which the English trivial derives, literally means three roads.
In West Africa, Eshu-Elegbara rules the crossroads, as does his Western hemisphere incarnations Elegba, Papa Legba, and Exu. In Brazil, Exu’s female counterpart, Pomba Gira, presides over T-shaped crossroads.
Once upon a time, crossroads were where people met, where nomads rendezvoused, where gallows stood, where the death penalty was enacted and corpses left to hang, where suicides were buried. If magic spells were cast according to direction, then midnight at the crossroads must have frequently been a crowded, busy place, especially on a night like Halloween when the veil that divides the realms of living and dead is at its most permeable, leaving an open road for interrealm communication.