Supportive Spellwork
If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me how to get a big sum of money or how to get a hot girlfriend—usually paired with how to sell their soul— I would be able to take myself out to a nice restaurant at the very least, more so when I spent a lot of time in predominately Left Hand Path geared online spaces. Some of it was trolling. Some of that trolling was people who don’t believe in magic and would go after anyone who does the same way, demons or not. Some was other practitioners who take personal offense at the existence of Demonolatry, but that’s an entirely different article. For all the trolls, there was an equal number of people who honestly believed that’s what magic is all about, that that’s how it looks, how our practice works and as nice as that’d be, that ain’t it. This isn’t some black and white “well if you really work with demons why haven’t you won the lottery” all or none sort of thing.
So what does my practice look like, then?
In my now incredibly outdated daily practice post, I talked about my morning routine— grounding, energy raising, devotional prayers and meditations, protection, the works. It’s outdated because my daily needs and wants have changed a bit, but it still serves as one example of what the craft can look like. It can be just that, and still be considered a practice. Subtract from it, add to it, and you might find someone else’s day to day spiritual work. Currently, my dailies look more like waking up my senses, grounding and cleansing if necessary, some divination, all first thing, with devotionals and other works sprinkled in later depending on my daily needs, and if I have work or not.
But what about big rituals? Casting big spells? Doing big workings?
Yeah? What about them? No really, I am being entirely serious here. There are phases in my practice where I have done a lot of big rituals, where everything I did needed to be something elaborate and intricate and entirely too complicated. There’s a time and a place for that, but it’s not a sign of being advanced or being “a real witch” or even being a better practitioner. I’ve found that when first diving into something new, there’s this urge and drive to do all the things, to hop right in the deep end and go to town, and it’s largely perpetuated by authors and content creators and the social media push for the exciting, not talking about the “boring” parts—which aren’t boring to me, but I digress— and this drive to do bigger and better than everyone else. I’m not immune to that, and falling into that, the constant need to keep up with elaborate ceremonies is a quick ass way straight into burn out and dropping the craft all together. I’ve been there too many times to count over the years, cycle after cycle, and it’s taken me really having a big sit down with myself to move past that point. Maybe being past my Saturn Return and mellowing out a bit once I hit my 30s helped too, who knows.
My craft is not predominately large rituals. I don’t do a ritual for every New Moon or Full Moon. I don’t follow the Wheel of the Year. I don’t celebrate all of the Holidays talked about in books by other Demonolaters. When I do actually decide that a large ritual is needed, I take my time with it. I figure out all of the working components, how they all fit together, the ways it could effect my life and how to prepare for that, as well as what sort of work I will have to do on the back end. There are some Holidays I do ceremony for, but I do not keep to it as religiously (haha) as I did when I was running an online Demonolatry Temple, because that was for them, a service to the community, not part of my personal craft. A priest is definitely going to have a different “what my craft looks like” talk than someone who is not, and that’s not a role I am interested in fulfilling currently, and has not been for a year or two now.
This isn’t an article about the big things, though. This is about all the little things, the ones which are small and contained, which might be a tiny nudge on their own, but as they come together, make for a steady, strong directional tow. All too often, I feel like this sort of work is compartmentalized from the rest of our lives in a way which isolates us from our work and from our own success in more ways than we realize.
I call these little things Supportive Spellwork. This isn’t some fancy category that spells fall under on a giant list you’d find on an Angelfire site, or some pretty covered cozy looking book on a B&N endcap. I mean that each of these things is intrinsically linked to other parts of my life or my work as a whole, by the act of supporting itself. It is part of the larger structure. Some are on the micro scale, more like nails used to build a structure, and they go up in scale from there.
What really got me thinking about the nature of my magic and my craft was when I started the journey to lead a healthier life, and to take better care of my body. Sadly, my body has enough issues passed down to it on its own; I don’t need to add to them, or just give up entirely due to what I’ve been given by bullshit genetic inheritance. I bought a water bottle. I’m actually sipping from that very bottle as I write this. When I first got this bottle, I decided that I wanted to personalize it, make it something I liked looking at and having with me, to encourage me to use it regularly, and so I got a whole bunch of themed stickers to plaster it with. But I also had Tarot stickers, and that got me thinking: what if I used the Tarot to bring its magic into my water bottle and into my health journey?
The Strength card is the one I ended up choosing for my water bottle. I wanted to conquer my goals, to wrestle down my constant drinking of coffee and soda as my only forms of hydration, and I wanted to use it to catapult into my other goals, like regular exercise that wasn’t my job. So, I took my water bottle and this tarot sticker over to my altar and I sat with them, and explained to them what I wanted, put the sticker on and filled it up for the first time. That whole first bottle’s worth of water, I reminded myself of what I wanted to do with it, and repeated those goals to the bottle and the sticker.
In the coming weeks, every time I saw the water bottle, I would get this massive wave of feeling like I needed to get up and do something. I needed to grab my water bottle and head to the gym. I needed to get up and stretch. I needed to go for a walk. My water bottle was kicking my ass. When I had a flare up, and my entire body felt like it was wanting to murder me, I ended up hiding the bottle away, and forgot about it for a time.
Next time I fished out the bottle, it was quiet. It was like I had snuffed out a candle and plunged the whole room in the dark. I left it like that for a while, and continually forgot where I had sat my water bottle, where I’d placed it, forgot to fill it. But then I remembered, going through my notes, that I’d done that session, and decided to renew it again. This time I modified it a bit more, refined it a bit, but the water bottle continues to support me now, with it’s little Strength tarot card sticker.
This is just one small example of what I mean by Supportive Spellwork, and one small example of the way I try to weave my craft into the rest of my life. I could go on for pages and pages with one example after another of all the little things I do in my life which I infuse with my own magic. An article isn’t the place for that, so let’s get to how this can be applied.
Here is a list of questions I ask myself when thinking about spellwork:
Is this something which would benefit from having spellwork supporting it?
In what ways would the spellwork potentially effect the outcome?
What would I need to do in order to support the spellwork once it is completed?
Would this working conflict with any other workings I am currently doing, or otherwise muddy the magical waters?
Would this working further support other workings I am currently doing, or otherwise elevate them?
Is this something I could dedicate to one of the divine— demonic or otherwise— and is it something that I would want the divine involved with?
Some of these questions are easier to answer than others. For instance, when looking at #1, I don’t do a spell to get to work on time, or to never hit a traffic jam; I do, however have protection charms in my car so that I have safe trips, and that’s something that I set and then recharge monthly. Using this list with the example of my car charms: The aim is to make sure I get places safely. I need to recharge it regularly, but not do any other complicated things with it. The charms do not conflict with any of my other workings, and they don’t support any of my other workings. While I could potentially work with one of the divine to further bolster this, such as Duke Bathin for travel, I don’t feel it is necessary to ask for the extra help, nor do I see how dedicating my car to Duke Bathin would help either of us in the long-run; doing so would further complicate a simple set and go ward, and take a considerable amount of time away from other things I am wanting to accomplish, of which my car has no real bearing.
For the most part, going through this list is quick, and doesn’t take a lot of thought. Many of my day-to-day workings follow a similar flow, where I can check off the boxes without a deep sit down, and without making a chart of connecting lines. These things all help improve my life in small ways, and are ways to bring magic into my everyday.
The bigger the change you are wanting to cause in your life, the more complicated the answers you will have, and the more potential layers will be involved. This is where keeping a journal with all your workings annotated down really helps out, because you’ve got a reference to go over, and won’t forget when put on the spot.
Let’s take a look at something which would complicate things. Money. Everyone wants more money— or really wants society to change so that we aren’t in wage labor constantly scrounging for more scraps while corporations bloat at the top level in this broken capitalist system— so let’s take a look at the way Supportive Spellwork can be used for this.
The Money Example
First step is to brainstorm ways to get money. We’ve already said winning the lottery is out the window, so let’s actually think of some other ways to go about it. Here’s what I’ve come up with:
Get a raise at work
Get more hours at work
Get a promotion
Find a better paying position in the same field, different place
Find secondary work opportunities
All of these pass question #1 on my list immediately. They are situations which would benefit from spellwork, and all of these situations would benefit the most from layered work. While you could do a big ritual calling on Belphegor to help you find a better job and leave it at that, there are so many small things you can do, to support each step in the process, which will harmonize and work together to make a smoother transition from where you are currently to where you want to be.
How would I build a layer cake of spellcraft for this, then?
Each one of these situations requires you to be noticed before other people, to stand out from the crowd and for your abilities to shine through. This could be in the form of a spell designed to draw in the attention of those in a position of power, or a glamour to make you appear as an authority on the subject, or a road opener to help you be in the best possible position to see where the opportunities are and jump on them before anyone else can. Or, all of them in separate workings, which are supportive of each other, aiming at the same goal.
I like making sigils for a lot of my workings, as a way to channel my work into a physical form. One thing I have done is create a sigil and then make an invisible watermark of it, which I then put my cover letter or resume on. I know it is there, I’ve put it there, and packed my working on into it, but it isn’t visible to anyone else. I have also taken the business card of a boss, the business card of a place, and then written petitions on it, drawn sigils on the card, and used them in a bowl working, in a candle working, or burned, depending on what exactly it was I was trying to achieve. Even if you aren’t artistic, you can still take one of those invisible ink pens, write your petition on a blank piece of paper, have it on your altar for a working, and then scan that in, and use it as the background for your CV.
My glasses are always something I have on me, and I’m always looking through them, so I absolutely do charm the hell out of them depending on what I am currently up to. A lot of the time, I am utilizing wards and veils on my glasses, but when I was job hunting, I charmed my glasses to help me see opportunities, and wore them while actively searching for things. When I didn’t do that, it was a hard slog and nothing was really coming of it, but when I did the charm, I was finding a lot of listings really fast, and was really kicking myself for not thinking to do it sooner.
The possibilities here really are endless. Keeping each working small but interrelated allows you to guide the direction of your spellwork in a way that one large ritual really doesn’t allow. And while there are some things where Satan Take the Wheel is your last and only resort, there’s a lot of little things you can be doing before then to enrich your life and get you in the exact position you want to be in.