Magical Invocation of the Spirits of Water

MAGICAL INVOCATION OF THE SPIRITS OF WATER

A L S O B Y T H E A U T H O R Magical Invocation of the Spirits of Earth Magical Invocation of the Spirits of Fire

MAGICAL INVOCATION OF THE SPIRITS OF WATER A Practical Grimoire for Invoking Love, Healing, Intuition, Cleansing, Flow and Peace EMMANUEL OLUWASEGUN TAIWO A F R I K D P

For everyone who has ever carried water on their head for a family, and for everyone still waiting for clean water to reach their door.

AUTHOR'S NOTE On the Third Book Anyone who grew up in West Africa knows the sound of the first rain on a zinc roof. It starts as a few hard taps, like someone throwing gravel. Then it builds, and builds, until you cannot hear the person sitting next to you, and the whole house seems to be inside a drum. Children run out into it. Old people put buckets under the eaves. Somebody’s mother starts singing. And the smell comes up off the red ground — that smell you cannot describe to anyone who has not stood in it. Nobody teaches you what that rain means. You know it in your body. The dry season is over. Things will grow again. Something that was held back has been let go. That is water. And that is what this book is about. The first book, Magical Invocation of the Spirits of Earth, was about the ground under your feet: patience, foundation, the slow, certain return. The second, Magical Invocation of the Spirits of Fire, was about will: courage, purification, the nerve to stand up and begin. Readers of both wrote back with the same question in a dozen different forms. I have the ground. I have the fire. So why do I still feel dry? Why can I build and act and still not feel anything? Why is love so hard? Why can I not rest? Those are water questions. Water is the element of feeling, love, healing, dreams, intuition, cleansing and flow. It is also the element of the unconscious — everything in you that sits below the surface and moves you without asking permission. Earth gives you a floor. Fire gives you an engine. Water gives you a life: the part that is soft, receptive, moved, and able to be moved. Without it, a person can be strong and effective and still be a desert. A few things to say plainly before you begin. Water is the third discipline, and it is neither of the first two. Earth work is done kneeling, facing north, slow and heavy, nine times, judged at ninety days. Fire work is done standing, facing south, fast and bright, seven times, judged at seven days. Water work is done seated, facing west, soft and 1

M A G I C A L I N V O C A T I O N O F T H E S P I R I T S O F W A T E R rising and falling like a wave, eight times, and judged over one full turn of the moon. Earth asks you to wait. Fire asks you to go. Water asks you to feel — and then to let go. Water is gentle, and water is the most dangerous element of the three. A candle can burn a house, but people drown in bathtubs, in shallow streams, in a few centimetres of water. Chapter 4 of this book is a safety chapter written seriously, because a grimoire that sends people toward rivers and seas and baths without teaching them how to stay alive is a badly made object. And water deepens whatever it touches. Given sorrow, it can make sorrow deeper. That is why the first law of this book is about despair, the way the first law of the fire book was about anger. There is no binding of love in this book. Water governs love, and every old grimoire in the world is full of spells to make a particular person love you. None of them are here. Part Three contains eight workings for love and relationship, and every one of them is built to make you more able to give and receive love — never to reach into another person’s will. Chapter 16 explains why in terms that have nothing to do with superstition. And it is still not a replacement for a doctor. Water governs the emotions and the body’s fluids, and so this book touches grief, anxiety, sleep, fertility and recovery from illness. Every one of those workings is written to stand beside proper care. If you are ill, see a doctor. If you are struggling to cope, speak to a professional and to the people who love you. Then come to the bowl. What is here: fifty spirits of water — the king of the undines, the archangel of the west, the river mothers of Africa, India, Ireland and Persia, the sovereigns of the sea, the moon in seven faces, the rain-bringers, the primordial deep, and the one bowl of still water you will keep in your own house. Forty-five solutions for forty-five matters of the heart. A master rite that fits them all. Twenty-one laws that will keep you safe and sane. And a final chapter on working earth, fire and water as one system — because a life needs all three. Fill a bowl with clean water. Sit down beside it. Let the surface go still. Let us begin. — E. O. Taiwo 2

P A R T O N E THE FOUNDATION OF WATER Spring, river and deep: the three depths of water. 3

M A G I C A L I N V O C A T I O N O F T H E S P I R I T S O F W A T E R C H A P T E R 1 WATER TAKES THE SHAPE OF WHAT HOLDS IT Start with the thing about water that every child knows and no adult thinks about. Pour water into a cup and it becomes cup-shaped. Pour it into a bowl and it becomes bowl-shaped. Pour it on the floor and it spreads until something stops it. Water has no shape of its own. It takes the shape of whatever holds it. That is not a weakness. It is the entire secret of the element. Earth is something. Fire does something. Water receives something. It is the element of relationship — of what happens when one thing meets another and takes it in. Every rite in this book works through that principle. You do not command water. You give it a shape to fill, and it fills it. What water governs Strip away the romance and water governs seven things. Feeling. Emotion in all its forms: love, grief, joy, longing, fear, tenderness. Not the thought about the feeling — the feeling itself, moving in the body. Love and relationship. Attraction, bonding, reconciliation, marriage, friendship, family, and the long work of staying close to another human being. Healing. Rest, recovery, the body’s fluids, sleep, the slow return of health after illness, and the healing of old emotional wounds. Intuition and dreams. Knowing without reasoning. Vision. The messages that arrive in sleep, in reflections, in the space between thoughts. Cleansing. Washing away what clings to you — heaviness, shame, other people’s moods, the residue of a hard season. Earth cleans by burying. Fire cleans by burning. Water cleans by carrying away. Flow. Things moving that were stuck: money, opportunity, creativity, words, tears. Water is the element of circulation. 4

T H E F O U N D A T I O N O F W A T E R The unconscious. Everything below the surface — memory, instinct, the patterns you inherited, the things you have not said even to yourself. If your problem is on that list, you are in the right book. If it is not — if you need a foundation, go to earth; if you need courage and action, go to fire. The three depths Every spirit in this book lives at one of three depths, and you must know which you are addressing. The Spring. Fresh water rising near the surface: the well, the spring, the bowl, the bath, the rain on your face. Near, gentle, personal, safe. Sweetness, refreshment, small healings, daily peace. This is where a beginner starts — and almost nobody does, because it is not dramatic. The River. Water in motion: rivers, streams, currents, tides. Change, flow, journeys, relationships in movement, money that circulates, emotions that need to move through rather than sit. Most of the serious work of this book happens here. The Deep. The ocean, the abyss, the primordial waters before creation. The great mothers of the sea, the moon that pulls the tides, the dead on the far shore, the unconscious at its bottom. These are approached with reverence and never casually. What goes down into the Deep does not come back the same. Match the depth to the matter. Do not take a small longing to Olokun. Do not take a lifetime’s grief to a garden spring. The single most important sentence in this book Water does not give you what you want. Water softens you until you can receive it — and then carries away whatever you were holding too tightly. The second half of that sentence matters as much as the first. Water workings very often produce, in the first weeks, tears — sometimes for no reason you can name. That is not the working failing. That is the working starting. A river cannot run through a closed fist. If you are not prepared to feel something, do not fill the bowl. 5

M A G I C A L I N V O C A T I O N O F T H E S P I R I T S O F W A T E R C H A P T E R 2 WHO THE SPIRITS OF WATER ARE Six families. Every one of the fifty…