cleansing the body and spirit of negative energy, driving away evil spirits and so on are topics which don't receive a lot of attention in the traditional Western esoteric system. Beyond that, the practitioner is always expected to be practicing magic, clean, bathed and often fasted and so on. Mundane cleaning, prayer, sacrifice and when necessary, banishing are prioritized. But that's kind of the end of the story when it comes to spiritual cleansing in the Grimoire related traditions. Folk magic, the cunning tradition is where traditions regarding spiritual wellness and hygiene have thrived and evolved throughout history. So-called low magic is the stuff of medicine men, cottage witches, herbalists and those enlightened priests that strayed beyond the bounds of natural philosophy. But even in the magical community in modern times, we tend to broadly characterize in folk traditions like hanging a horseshoe over your door or sleeping with a sachet of herbs under your pillow, or smudging your house with burning herbs or incense as quaint superstitions at best, and idiotic leftovers at worst. but given the deteriorating state of science in the 21st century, I think it's time to dust off this discarded wisdom and see what we might have left undeservedly on the threshing floor of progress. all the darkest aspects of modern life are openly recognized by experts, rising depression and dissociation, rampant pandemics escalating tensions, deepening divides, greater and greater separation and more. And we have no rational explanation for this. But as magicians, we should be able to recognize spirit at work in the world, not just because it explains so much of what's happening, but also because denying or ignoring the truth puts us personally at risk. When you work magic regularly, but you don't maintain your energetic field, the energies you're working with magically rub off on you and affect your mood, your thoughts and the events that take place in your life, as do your heavier interactions in normal daily life. As you experience unpleasantness, trauma, anxiety, grief, fear, and so on. These energies weigh us down and cause imbalance in our energetic body, which then translates that imbalance into the physical body to produce effects which modern medicine has difficulty explaining. are so programed to look for direct causes for the events in our lives, but often we are driven by emotional energies that are bigger than us. Just take a look around. Right now, the world has collectively lost its mind. People of all nationalities and races and backgrounds from Hamas and Israel leadership to celebrities in the U.S. and the UK to everyone's favorite Instagram influencers are calling for mass murder, ethnic cleansing and genocide. Depending on how committed they are to the bit. This level of hatred and aggression is objectively unhealthy. It is wantonly self-destructive to exist in the state for any length of time. And it's been days going on, weeks. that's just in very, very recent history as of the recording of this episode, All of that energy does something. It has to go somewhere. When we saw it in our field, it harms our minds and our bodies until it causes us to work out our worst impulses. When this happens at a societal level, at a national level, we get things like this senseless tragedy unfolding in Gaza. negativity is harmful to you, to others, and to the field. In general. The evil eye is real. You can be harmed by negative thinking, your own or from others. I've experienced it and you probably have as well. If you've ever felt depressed or ill after a bad interaction with someone, then you've dealt with someone else's energy negatively affecting you and God knows that we've all been our own worst enemies and talked ourselves into feeling sick or depressed or angry or humiliated and done damage to our own field. As a result, when our field gets damaged, it needs to be repaired. It heals on its own under the right circumstances. But we rarely can or do give it that kind of attention until it's become some kind of a problem. Typically, this manifests as a health issue, some kind of a chronic pain or illness that resists solution or explanation. This is much more common than you probably realize. It makes up the bulk of the issues that I encounter in my energetic healing practice. Health is just one of the areas of your life that can be affected, though your luck and fortunes can also be made to suffer simply by having too much negative energy in your field. So you can imagine how this can compound. Bad luck, leads to misfortune, leads to ill health and so on. So invisible psychic or energetic phenomena can and do cause misfortune and illness. But what are we supposed to do about it? Well, this brings us back to folk magic old wives tales and the art of magical self care. In this episode, this is exactly what we're going to be discussing spiritual cleansing, limpias, energetic hygiene, and so on by comparing the work of two different authors and two cunning craft currents, Curanderismo and Hoodoo plus my own experiences as a shamanic healer and what I've encountered performing as a chaos magician. Stay tuned for all of that in just a moment. Welcome to the 24th episode of the Postmodernism Podcast. I'm your host, Nate, and you're listening to the show that talks about magic in postmodern times, attempting to reconstruct ancient practices to plug the increasingly obvious holes of our rationalist framework of mind that is practical magic for interesting times. in this episode, I'm going to tap two sources for inspiration on the topic of spiritual or energetic hygiene, cleansing, protection, blessing, and so on for your spiritual wellness. The first resource is Cleansing Rites of Curanderismo, Limpias Espirtuales of ancient Mesoamerican Shamans by Erika Bueno Flor and the second is Hoodoo Cleansing and Protection Magic by Miss Aida. Those books are worth a read because they're packed with examples of spells and ritual concepts from their respective traditions. But in this episode, I'm using them to explore the breadth of spiritual wellness techniques and also two distinctly different perspectives and approaches to this essentially universal, magical need. If you haven't yet, please consider subscribing to this podcast wherever you listen Apple, Spotify, Google, etc. so that you're notified when I produce new episodes like this one. And if you enjoy the show, you should check out my other content, like articles, videos, other episodes of this podcast, my weekly energy updates channeled from Hecate with real time tarot readings and more at my website. www.postmugglism.com. This episode is on a topic that I don't think enough magical practitioners pay attention to in general, and which is only increasingly more and more important. As the world turns darker and more violent, the energies we're all living with are heavier than we're accustomed to, than we're built for, and we've got to learn how to process them out of our physical and energetic bodies. Or they'll gather there and cause us harm, ruin our fortunes, and upset the balance of our lives. Living right means living from the heart. And that's easier said than done in our aggressive anxiety inducing modern context. Something has to bust past all the defenses we've erected around our hearts in self-protection and then heal those broken hearts under our defenses and get our life force energy flowing correctly again. And nothing does this better than the master healing spirit herself. Grandmother Ayahuasca. When taken in the context of an authentic healing ceremony under a practical guide with a lineage of healing spirits supporting them. Of course it can be challenging to find safe and trustworthy ayahuasca experiences that don't require you to trek deep into the Amazon and far beyond your comfort zone. that's why I'm very excited to announce that my company, The Sacred Serpent, is producing its first ayahuasca retreat, designed to be the gentlest, most rejuvenating ayahuasca experience possible. The perfect introduction to Aya, if you've been intimidated about the idea of taking medicine and a guaranteed way to gently open your heart purge any trauma that's stored there and make space for the beautiful future that you have ahead of you. Our retreat takes place March 4-8, 2024 and features five days and four nights of ayahuasca and other plant medicines, workshops, guided integration, sound and energy healing and a relaxing day at a beautiful private cenote all taking place deep in the jungle outside of Cancun, Mexico. Learn more and reserve your tickets at www.sacredserpent.co/retreat that's www.sacredserpent.co/retreat. bear in mind, there are only seven bungalows for this retreat and each can have only one additional guest. So there can only be between seven and 14 attendees. this will be a very intimate and all inclusive experience where you will receive lots of personal attention and dedicated support. Space may fill up quickly. So act accordingly and let me know if you have any questions. I hope you'll consider joining us. It's going to be a great experience. The retreat center is beautiful and our curandero, Edgar, is quite talented and it would just be a really fun way to get to know you on a personal level. Ayahuasca is a great way to stimulate a breakthrough, to overcome our defenses and limited concepts of reality, even to break reality for you if you're still stuck in materialism. She's also a profoundly wise healer that will help you understand what's happening in your life, in your body, etc., and what changes need to be made and what has to be purged. But her strengths as a purgative plant medicine are what make it implausible to go to for everything. Think of plant medicines as serious healing experiences and the content of this episode on spiritual or energetic cleansing techniques as your regular wellness practice Diving right in. Let's start with a brief comparison of the two currents Curanderismo and Hoodoo as represented by these authors. Erika Buenaflor and Miss Aida. What stood out to me most after reading both of these books voraciously, as someone who maintains a pretty thorough, energetic hygiene practice already is the breadth of techniques and approaches which exist to address an even broader array of potential problems. There are ways to remove negative energy, of course, but as many or more that are designed to prevent the negative energy from entering your field in the first place. Likewise, there are a multitude of approaches to clearing your spaces, shooing away negative spirits and inviting in good ones, detecting negative energy and removing lynxes and cross conditions. It could take a lifetime to master all this magic, but our goal here is just to understand how these various techniques fit together into a practice that's broad enough to offer protection from the many spiritual threats of human life. It all starts with the idea of positive and negative energy, which is a drastic but necessary oversimplification and a non dualist perspective. The existence of anything requires its opposite, so there is never any point to struggling with your shadow. But realistically, within our actual lived experience of reality. It matters greatly how much light, joy and opportunity are present in our lives. To live good quality lives. We've got to bring balance to the energy in the world by choosing the light. Spending our time. Caring. Nurturing, and healing ourselves and each other to keep humanity from sliding into the abyss. It's not as simple as white or black magic, good or evil or anything like that. It's more like heavier, dense energy and light or diffuse energy. Heavier energies are damaging to the energy body and thus the physical body. Eventually. Lighter energies are infused with divine light and are reparative. They heal and restore the psyche and the physical body. Our bodies simply don't function well with a heavy load of negative energy. They can handle brief periods of extreme stress and intense emotions and things like that, but they always need to process and release that energy afterwards. Cunning traditions tend to divide practices by how they are performed, delivered and what they are designed to effect, prevent, enhance, etc.. In these categorizations we can see the outline of a praxis worth modernizing across current verismo hoodoo and even my own training in shamanic healing. These practices categorize easily into clearing and cleansing spells, protection spells and spells and prayers for securing the blessings of potential spiritual allies for yourself and for any kind of a space like your home or apartment or even place of business. Within these categories, there are then always a variety of approaches which loosely align to the different elements particular saints or stars and so on. Focusing first on yourself and then on the spaces you inhabit. You need effective techniques for clearing unpleasant or traumatizing energy you've experienced protecting yourself from additional assaults by these energies and calling upon your spiritual allies for support. And this is where the cunning craft excels and why I look to two quite different currents of folk magic, which are particularly powerful in north and south American contexts. Curanderismo is an indigenous system of belief with ties to ancient practices of nature and goddess worship, and taps into the magic of the elements, directions and other natural sources of power. Very comparable, actually, to my shamanic practice, but with a more highly integrated and holistic approach. Energetic clearing and balancing is often achieved through a layered approach that's aligned with a particular element. Fire is good for transmuting energy quickly, for example, and water is good for draining, balancing and flushing or purging toxic energy and rejuvenating as well. Earth is where you plant things when you want them to grow or when you're returning them to the earth. And prayers and offerings are sent through the air. Instances are burns to cleanse and purify the air and so on. If you go to a current area about a run of bad luck you're having, they're likely to treat it like a condition you're experiencing. You need to be cleansed and purified. You might be led on a shamanic journey to understand your situation, and then you might be asked to fast bathe and perform a sacred fire ceremony, giving offerings and maintaining candle vigils called velaciones. Hoodoo, In comparison, has more tools and techniques, more traditionally witchy spell work, and it focuses more on external causes rather than internal states. If you approached a hoodoo practitioner about the same run of bad luck, you'd probably be instructed to take a jinx breaker or UN crossing bath and then perform a road opening to remove the obstacles from your path. And you'd certainly be tested with an egg and checked with divination to see if there was any foul play at work. If negative energy was detected, you might be instructed to cast a reflecting spell or to put your assailant in the freezer and be given a more serious regimen of cleansing and protection psalms to recite before bed and over concoctions like teas, herbal sprays and so on. You might be given a charm, a curio or an amulet for protection, or instructed to anoint yourself with protective oils and all kinds of spirits, from Catholic saints to African Orishas can be employed in support of these processes. And who do? Each method has its merits, and in my experience, there is usually equal truth in both perspectives. You can almost always find someone to blame for misfortunes that you either unconsciously or karmically bring on yourself. But it would be naive to think that there is no way that you can be harmed by the malevolent intentions of others. And for our purposes, we can learn more by looking at both systems and taking inspiration from and copying the broad strokes of both traditions as we attempt to reconstruct our own practices. These basic categories of cleansing, protection and blessing are a useful way to organize the corpus of magical practices which support spiritual wellness. And so I'm going to walk through each now with a lot of examples of different rites, spells, approaches, etc. for each category. Let's dive a little deeper into some of the rituals that I felt drawn to most personally, or that I have some personal experience with already. In Curanderismo, even a heart to heart conversation, properly ritualized can be a magical act called a Platica. Buenaflor describes a fairly rigorous preparation for the ritual, including fasting, praying, dressing in white, and being guided through an intention setting or shamanic journey, plus the curandera involved mirrors many of these actions and creates a safe, sacred setting for the conversation to take place in. When it comes time for the conversation, the curandera would lead the recipient with gentle, probing questions to get them to open up and talk about what's weighing on their mind in their heart. Talking through their emotions is cathartic and enables them to process and release the associated energy from their field. In Curanderismo, platicas and most other rituals too, honestly, will incorporate thoroughly suffumigating the recipient with incense smoke. And in South American context, this is often done by blowing or fanning smoke from a billowing goblet shaped censer with a deep bottom that is filled with charcoal, usually wood from the fire, and generous helpings of copal tears. This is done from your feet to your crown, exhaustively front and back, and it feels like you're being enveloped completely in smoke. For this reason, large feathers are prized by Mesoamerican healers and shamanic practitioners as well for their association with avian intelligence and sharpness of perception. They also make very convenient fans and brushes, especially when bound together and are used like this in ritual healings where the subject is lightly brushed, or rather their field is to remove negative energy, typically in conjunction with incense, drumming, prayers, etc. as well. As I mentioned a few minutes ago, Curanderismo is very earthy, magic, elemental in nature, and these prior techniques incense that the pratica can all be considered ere elemental magic(speaking and suffumigating, right?). The next cleansing ritual known as limpia in Curanderismo employs the element of fire to transmute negative energy and cleanse the spirit. Fires are widely employed in Curanderismo for a variety of purposes, and the distinctions between them were a little because of the commonality of the technique. Because Fire limpias can be as simple as making a fire and writing down what you intend to release and blowing those intentions into sticks and then burning those intentions or sticks in the fire. This mirrors exactly the fire ceremonies that I was taught in the training for my Andean Q’ero influenced shamanic energy healing. If this is called a base model for the Fire limpia, it grows in complexity as other elements are incorporated to target the effects in specific directions via limpias for gratitude, fire limpias for healing, for transformation, for releasing trauma, etc. and they're tailored to these specific purposes by incorporating particular herbs and incense, blending the transmutation of energy of fire with the subtleties of air magic. One example of this is the new fire ritual, which acts as a kind of road opener, which I'll talk more about in a few minutes, and then it clears the way old energies to open the way for new energies, new roads to follow. This new fire makes use of two different incense, frankincense and myrrh as a kind of offering that also renders a physical effect, turning a blazing fire into a giant incense brazier billowing, fragrant smoke to fill the whole area. And this can be done indoors and outdoors for various different effects. A dramatic fire limpia, like the new fire ritual, is used for special occasions, like a celebration of the new year or some other clinical occurrence, or to kick off a big personal transformation with a deep release. When it comes to water, there are many ways that the current arrows and grinders put this element to use in their cleansing rituals. The most culturally recognizable of which is probably the Mesoamerican temazcal a sweat lodge tradition in which participants enter a sacred sauna where water is poured over heated stones to create steam, purging toxins while prayers are recited. But there are simpler rituals as well which employ water, such as the use of spiritual baths and or bucket rinses where special water is prepared ritualistically and then added to a bath or to multiple buckets to be used for washing yourself thoroughly with enchanted water. These baths employ the same types of herbs and minerals used in other cleansing rituals like rosemary, lavender and so on, and always include sea salt of some kind as the essential common ingredient for removing unwanted energies. Water allows cleansing substances to be consumed as well, and so various tea blends are commonly concocted with mints, lavender, Cinnamon, nettle, jamaica flowers, (which is hibiscus) and so on. Similarly, I make a blend of lime juice and Jamaica each morning as a liver and blood cleanser. Flower water, which is essentially the same idea as Florida Water, which we'll talk about in a minute, is sprayed from the mouth and a fine mist or from a spray bottle as an offering and as a way to cleanse negative energy. In my healing practice. For example, I give offerings to the four directions, the earth and the sky. Each time I open ritual with flower water, and then I might also use this to cleanse an emotional wound and a client's energetic body. And all flower water is, is an infusion of flowers and like grain, alcohol or vodka. I typically make this on like a Sunday morning and then I'll let the flowers and usually I'll use some of the herbs like lavender as well, and some orange peels to kind of get the same essence as the Florida water. And then I'll just let that sit in the dark for a week so that I pull it out and I'll strain it. And what's left I use as flower water. Herbs also make appearances in the earthy rituals of barridas, brushing with herb bundles, which are sometimes also done with flowers. The appropriate herbs, in this case for cleansing, are loosely tied in long bundles and the subject is gently brushed or swept with them ritually while a prayer is continuously recited, head to toe or vice versa. And basically the same idea as a barrida is an egg sweep where a freshly laid egg is used to attract negative energies out of the body into the egg, which is considered sort of an offering by rolling it lightly all over the body in a sweeping motion. And after the sweep, the egg is cracked into a bowl of water and used for divination. To better understand the problem and to see if it will require additional effort to resolve. Where Curanderismo is indigenous, Hoodoo traditions derived from diaspora culture where separation from the source is its most defining aspect. Probably as a result, Hoodoo has taken a purely utilitarian approach to magic using what works because it works and without the benefit of a coherent mythological infrastructure. Hoodoo has a lot more spells and they look a lot more like witchcraft than Curanderismo. Brujeria or Santeria would be the direct equivalent of those witchcraft aspects of Hoodoo in Central and South America. More resistance flavored magic than herbalism, energetic hygiene, etc. In Mesoamerican traditions, healing magic and sorcery are traditionally viewed as two separate things where hoodoo treats the light and the dark is equally necessary and valid. Catholic saints play a colonial role in both currents of magic, superimposing the Abrahamic cosmology over older, more feral and pantheistic ones. It's common in both current verismo and hoodoo to call upon saints for spiritual aid and certain practices of the Americas became popular among the African diaspora, such as Florida water smudging and other folk magic techniques. But the similarities more or less in there and the differences between the two currents are fairly significant because, generally speaking, Curanderismo focuses more on techniques which affect internal states. Those to treat the subject and hoodoo focuses more on external influences who too is diverse and complex, maybe even self-contradictory in some ways, but it has more different rituals and spells and traditions to handle every nuance of human existence where Curanderismo is a little less complex and kind of dedicated to healing. In Curanderismo, the answer is usually purge the bad energy, purify herself with fire and prayer, and give offerings to the spirits, or make petitions to the saints and deeds which govern or act as intermediaries in various aspects of life. In Hoodoo, it would sound more like perform an unjinxing spell and a road opener, anoint with holy water, sleep with a sachet under your pillow, and leave an offering at the crossroads. The metaphors are richer and more diverse and hoodoo, and the causes are mostly external. There's not nearly as much talk of working on yourself. There's probably some cultural significance to that difference. Curanderos and Curanderas are typically from the native lands of their lineage, and by definition, hoodoo is not hoodoo happened under threat and in resistance to oppression. And I think that shows up in the spell work pretty directly. But in my experience, both approaches are relevant and both can be true in any given situation. In my shamanic practice, I frequently encounter situations where the solution is helping the client identify how they are attracting negative energy in their life and eliminating those karmic patterns. However, most of the time the negative energy they're encountering manifests as people giving them a hard time. So while it's true that they can ultimately break the cycle that keeps bringing these negative encounters into their lives, they still have to deal with some asshole. In the meantime, imagine that you're a woman and all the women in your matrilineal line, your mother's mother and her mother and so on keep finding themselves in abusive relationships. That's definitely an ancestral curse that needs to be broken, but it's also just an abusive relationship that you have to survive. The Curandrismo approach of working on the self transmuting heavier energies to lighter ones and journeying for understanding is valid and effective. But it doesn't mean that you can't also benefit from using hotfoot power to get the abuser out of your house or putting his ass in the freezer to keep him out of your life, which are popular hoodoo techniques. There's reason and opportunity for both in my experience In Hoodoo, personal energetic hygiene is accomplished through blessed material of various kinds, smudging with herbs, spraying with Florida water, which is similar to flower water, but an actual product originally produced in Florida, given salt and herb baths and herbal teas and so on, much of which is equivalent to a practice in Curanderismo. It's very common to recite certain psalms and to begin the process with performing an unknown crossing or a jinx breaker or perhaps an egg sweep. And to end it with the application of various magical oils. If the attack comes from a discoverable source, steps can be taken to reflect or combat the magic as well. Practically, this might look like using a reflection or mirror spell on someone who is sending you the evil eye or using a binding or not tying spell to restrict someone that's bullying you. There are spells for every need and they have clever metaphors and tend to use items that are easily accessible around the home. For simple cleansings, baths are typically the first stop using sea salt or black salt and herbs such as basil, hyssop or rue. The number 13 appears numerous times in Miss Aida’s book, including the suggestion to bathe 13 times for 13 minutes to maximize the effect of a spiritual bath. In more extreme cases where you can't shake a negative energy, you may consider sulfur soap to scrub clean, heavy energy that clings to you. Sulfur can be very harsh on the skin, so I would wash quickly and not make a habit out of this one. But it's good to know for emergencies and sulfur, soap can be easily acquired on Amazon. Smudging with incense bundles was a practice picked up from the Native American population, but has become popular in hoodoo circles. White sage is most traditional, but there are plenty of substitutes like rosemary and lavender and other herbal combinations plus, again, using different herbs can tailor the effect in different ways. You should smudge yourself pretty much every day and potentially after unpleasant encounters as well to help prevent heavy energies from collecting in your field long term. As I mentioned, when first discovering an issue like a magical attack or an energetic imbalance, hoodoo tradition would recommend the use of a jinx breaker or an crossing spell to help you break free of any external influences. More often than not, this causes the underlying issue to be exposed so that it can be resolved, which can happen in any number of ways. But the end result is the same. My preferred jinx breaker spell is a coffee bath, blessed with prayer to a crossroads like Hecate. We don't actually have a bath, so this ends up being a bath(scare quotes) in a pitcher. I brew full pot of super strong coffee and then dilute it with a whole bunch of tepid water and then take that into the shower where I wash myself for cleanliness first and then pour the coffee water over myself while praying and washing, wiping downwards from the crown of the head over the shoulders, down the chest and back across the belly, down across the waist and legs. And finally, all the way to the feet, always swiping downwards. And while I'm doing this, I'm also visualizing the breaking of chains bindings from around my wrists like I'm breaking free from something. And when this is complete, I give thanks to Hecate in my case for setting me free, releasing me from my bindings and on crossing my conditions. Then I give myself a quick rinse and wash my hair again as necessary and blot dry. This is typically followed by a road opener, which I'll discuss in a moment. I forget where I got the coffee bath from originally. It's probably a hoodoo thing though. It's definitely got that same energy and I trust it because it's worked for me both times that I've employed it right away and very effectively. But the jinxing baths that Miss Aida actually recommends are rue and nettle. She recommends soaking for 13 minutes in any spiritual bath and if circumstances are dire to repeat this process once a day for 13 days by the floor. And Cleansing Rites of Curanderismo, also recommends repeating spiritual baths. So I think this is just a good policy and you can repeat to taste, so to speak, but leaning to more often rather than less often it seems. However, having said that, in my own experiences with the coffee baths once was plenty. In both cases, rather than praying to Hekate hoodoo is more aligned with the Catholic esoteric tradition, Psalms, Saints and so on. And in the case of cross conditions, Psalm 37 is recommended by Miss Aida as the ideal prayer for unjinxing. She’d recite Psalm 37 while taking a bath or a nettle bath potentially while drinking nettle tea. After an uncrossing, It's typical to employ a road opener spell as well, which is a distinctly different but almost required next step in the process. Crossed conditions can be internally or externally imposed, they can be deliberate or circumstantial, targeting you or where you're just collateral damage, but experiencing crossed conditions does tend to indicate that you're out of flow with the universe. And the road opener is all about getting you back on track and on your way again. A road opener can be an entire ritual or it can be something that you add to your person, such as an oil or an amulet of some kind. I personally like to burn Abre Camino, which is an herbal blend popular in Central and South America, and the name literally means open road, while praying or journeying harmonically for a direction. I will also often follow this up with reciting some prayer to Hecate. or a spell I've crafted for the occasion while rotating around an incense since or in a clockwise direction, stopping in each of the four quarters north, east, south and west to sprinkle a little incense, alternating between frankincense or Copal and Dragonsblood. Most importantly, though, prayers to crossroads deities and Psychopomps for open roads ahead are the essential practice of this tradition. As I mentioned before, the Curanderismo approach is very reminiscent of various techniques I was taught as part of my shamanic energy healing training with the Four Winds Institute, who've taken a lot of inspiration from the practices of Mesoamerican indigenous traditions. In my practice, there are a few other techniques which are also worth mentioning when it comes to energetic hygiene and spiritual protection and blessings. So I'll also share what I know from direct experience. It's essential to keep your energetic field cleansed of old emotional energy and by far the most effective technique I've ever learned is a chocolate clearing. This is about a 70/30 split between visualization and ritual movements and breathwork in which you rotate your fingers or hand counterclockwise to open each chakra. And then you continue that motion like you've stuck your fingers in warm taffy and you're pulling and winding up a handful and then you flick that energy towards the candle or to the earth or a bowl of water that you dump when the clearing is done. This is performed while probing each chakra with your mind as well, breathing light into each chakra from above and exhaling the denser energies out of the chakras and down through the root chakra like your venting exhaust. This can also be performed in the ocean or in your shower to great effect, visualizing the water, moving to the chakras and washing them clean as well. Even simply swimming in the ocean is a remarkably powerful cleanse on its own. So doing so with intention is very effective. Sound healings can also be powerful ways to break up and really stuck energy in your field as different frequencies help different talkers open up and release, which is what's happening when a beautiful song makes you emotional. And lastly, the Curanderismo technique of Fire limpias is clearly the original inspiration for one very simple and very useful ritual that I've talked about before in a few places and recommend to, I think, all of my clients. The personal fire ceremony. All this requires is a candle and a toothpick. You focus your attention entirely on the desire to rid yourself of something and you blow that intention into the toothpick and you light it in the candle and watch it burn with intention. That's the whole ritual. But it works best if you do it daily for several weeks and you really mean it, really want it consistently. But you'll be surprised how often that works. All of these different methods are ways for cleansing your personal energy and with your self cleansed, you can then work on clearing out the space around you and while you want to clear your own energy at least a couple of times a week, if not every day, in some small way at least you only need to clear your house and your working spaces once a month unless something out of the ordinary happens. First, the house like you needs to be physically cleaned before spiritual cleansing. In fact, much of the same logic applies both to people and spaces. But there are some obvious differences that require the ritual aspects to be a little bit different. As you'll see, there are many techniques that cross over from personal cleansing to cleansing of space. There are variations of many of the same rituals, and many of the same materials are used as well, most notably herb bundles for smudging, salt, soda, water, fire instances, offerings and so on, and hoodoo specific items like oils and protective amulets similar to spiritual baths with salt and herbs. For cleansing spaces, you can blend spiritually cleansing herbs like rosemary and lavender with naturally disinfecting materials like pine oil to make a floor and I suppose a wall wash and mop previously cleaned surfaces in a counterclockwise direction, then disposing of that water either off your property or down the toilet. And as you would typically clean your home, you start at the top and work your way down. Traditional home cleaning products often use pine oil. Even modern ones use pine scent frequently, both for its anti-microbial purposes and because it's spiritually cleansing as well. And even modern ones will use pine scent. You can acquire pine essential oil and add a few drops to blast or charged water with sea salts dissolved in it and you have the perfect floor wash for purifying your personal spaces. The barrida of Curanderismo, the brushing or sweeping with herbs, flowers and feathers takes the shape of ritual sweeping when it comes to purifying physical spaces, sweeping a space regularly removes dust and dirt, of course, But this act signifies the cosmological difference between domesticated and wild spaces. Order. The spiritual implication is that an unclean space is chaotic, it's wild and therefore not domesticated. If the occupant of a space isn't keeping their house in order, so to speak, then they should not expect their lives to be in good order either, as one affects the other, like the floor wash and directly preceding it a sweeping ritual thoroughly removes the debris from the top floor first and then works down throughout the house in clockwise order, sweeping away any collected dust, etc. out the available doors along the way. The broom should be blessed with flower or holy water before the ritual begins and the whole affair should be conducted in ceremony. After opening to the directions Earth and the sky. White fire limpias are also used to purify and transform spaces, dedicating them to new purposes and resetting their energy made by pouring a mound of sea salt into a cauldron and adding a generous helping of rubbing alcohol and then lighting it and adding pinches of various purifying herbs like rosemary, lavender, oregano, basil and others. These are burned as offerings inside the space, which is being cleansed and therefore transformed. Similarly, a cauldron with a few large coals in it can function as a large censer for suffumigating a space with incense. This is called a Sahumerio and is intended to be much more thorough than a typical smudging, filling every crack and crevice of the space, with instant smoke blasting out any negative energy like you're fumigating for pests. A cauldron containing white hot burning coals is placed on a heat resistant surface in the center of a space. And Pachamama is called in, along with the spirits of fire, to cleanse and purify it. And then a significant amount of incense tears are added and hen fans or feather fans are used to direct that smoke into every nook and cranny before expressing gratitude to the spirits in attendance and closing the space from the hoodoo tradition. Herbs are often used in their natural form loosen little bags or simply cut and hanging to dry, slept with under pillows and so on, and are believed to convey their healing or protective properties simply by their presence alone, meaning they don't have to be consumed or burned, etc. Herbs can also be boiled to extract their essence into water or better placed in high grade alcohol to create a tincture. And then like flour, water diluted with blast or charged water and added to spray bottles to be misted in spaces or on surfaces, etc.. Common herbs used for this purpose include through agreement, for banishing negative energy rosemary and hyssop for cleansing and sulfur for hardcore banishing. Miss Aida also recommends planting herbs like basil and oregano around the house to keep out negative energy. There's even an old saying that wherever Basil resides, evil can't abide. Beyond things which are burned, mixed, washed and so on. Some materials are cleansing just by being like salt. Big bags of salt or smaller jars filled with salt can be placed near doors and the window to keep out bad energy and to drain away what already exists. Alternatively, bowls full of salt water can be placed by the windows and doors and changed frequently, acquiring large quartz crystals or more economically buying bags of cheap quartz crystal chips and pouring them into bowls that you keep by your doors and windows is another good way to absorb any negative energy that's hanging out in your space. The bowls of crystals should be rinsed and charged for a night under the moon and a day under the sun at the end of each waning phase. So you can see how cleansing the energy of a space like your home is similar in many ways to the process of cleansing your own field. Mostly it's just an extension of yourself, with a few exceptions, where rituals or charged objects are applied to the doors and windows, where energy enters and exits the space. After cleansing comes protection, which essentially is an attempt to keep out negative energy. So this makes logical sense. First, to cleanse the space of intrusive energies, and then you put up defenses to keep them out. Probably the oldest form of protection in history is the use of a potter picks, talismans, amulets, fetishes, totems, etc. blessed objects which possess an aspect of a guardian spirit. These protect you simply by being present, which usually means that you wear them. Protective talismans and ambulance are made in various different ways, in different traditions, but are not as popular among current eras and Curanderos and Curanderas as they are among hoodoo practitioners. While either current might recommend the wearing of a charm of a particular saint, hoodoo is more likely to recommend something like the all seeing eye. The Hamsa hand, Silver dimes, Pentagram of Solomon, lockets containing herbs or something like a master root or hydra on the concrete or seed on a string. Spells are often employed for protective purposes and who do like reflective spells designed to send negative energy back at your attacker. Miss Aida recommends a spell she calls a mirror box, which is a box with a lid that contains six small mirrors in the shape of a cross and one on the lid facing in the picture or the name of your aggressor is placed in the middle of the box and is sealed and placed somewhere forgotten. This spell in particular can backfire because it is dangerously close to malefica and you need to dispel any negative energy associated with that act. However, there are other approaches as well, like putting an aggressor in the freezer by writing their name on a piece of paper and placing that in a jar partially filled with water and placing the jar in the freezer to chill them out. Candle magic is common to both Curanderismo and hoodoo and can be employed in a wide variety of different ways to repel negative energies or to entreat different spirits for protection, incrementalism. Or this might look like a grid of four purple candles at the four corners of a platter with a white candle in the middle beside an offering of an egg and a bowl of water. The petition would be placed under the white candle at the center, and prayers to protective spirits would then be set over the working as the candles are lit around the outer edge first and then the white candle in the middle instead of candle magic current. Curanderismo refers to this as a velación and the color of the candles changes depending on the type of working that you're doing. In hoodoo, this might instead look like a prayer to the Archangel Michael with your petition under a vigil candle depicting the angel Michael in the center of a circle of nine candles, or just flanked on either side by a candle in a row of three. In both cases, the candles(or velas in Curanderismo) are allowed to burn down completely, and the residue can then be read for divination purposes, checking to see if the glass is clear (a sign of success), cloudy (the results might be unclear) or with soot on the glass(indicating trouble on the need to potentially repeat the working). For added protection at night, While your psychic being is more vulnerable to intrusion through the dream state, you can sleep with a bowl of salt water under your bed, which should be dumped out in the morning and refreshed each night. And anointing yourself with protective oil is probably the most common protective magic and hoodoo or magical oils and potions from a few producers are particularly prized and frequently employed, such as the Lucky Mojo curio company. Lucky Mojo's large catalog contains a general protection oil oils for various protective saints, oils for luck and protection such as Dragon's blood oil and other oils. For specialized forms of protective magic. You can create your own oils, of course, and Miss Aida recommends Eucalyptus and Ru as two excellent protective herbs to make oils from. When you apply the oil, be sure to anoint your crown and the nape of your neck, which are believed to be the most vulnerable points for spiritual attack. The greater half of protection is staying energetically clean, much like washing your hands to keep from getting sick. Prevention is the best protection. But then when something slips through those typical protocols, it's also important to have a few tricks to deflect attacks or to get yourself out of a bad relationship with the spirit. And as was the case for cleansing magic, the magic of protecting yourself extends very naturally to how you can protect your spaces as well. Protective amulets and lucky objects like horseshoes and various weapons or sharpened tools like sides and so forth are often kept above the door as a kind of threat, particularly when these are made of iron. They're expected to keep out evil spirits for washes, herbal sprays and so on can be tailored to protective magic versus cleansing magic by incorporating basil and oregano instead of cleansing focused herbs like citrus, lavender, rosemary and so on. And in the cases of an extreme haunting or dark present, you can wash the floors, windows and doors with blessed ammonia while reciting Psalm 37. Just like how you might take a salt bath and done protective oils on your person when protecting the home. You can throw salt in the corner of your rooms and sprinkle salt along the windowsills and anoint the doors and windows with protective oils. Miss Aida also recommends sprinkling sulfur across the thresholds of your doorways for protection from evil spirits, haunting etc. cups or bowls of camphor. or Florida water offer a similar kind of protection and purification when left near your doors and windows, which is a little less extreme than the sulfur. Clear quartz crystals or rose quartz crystals or crystal chips can be kept in bowls of water near windows to absorb negative energy and then dumped and washed to remove it for a more portable version of the same idea so cleansed crystals and charged water. And then add that to a spray bottle to spray in corners, kind of like sort of water around mirrors and windows as well, or to use when brewing a floor wash, red brick dust, which is said to be the modern equivalent of red ocher dust, is sort of a blood red threatening red kind of color is used traditionally for protective magic and can also be sprinkled across your threshold and regular protection rights. There's a clear theme of warding at the windows and doors, which is the most important takeaway here. But there's also useful logic behind what material marks the boundary red brick dust, sulfur, salt, etc. There are easily sprinkled spiritual boundaries which can be replaced frequently and marked protectively, which is to say aggressively or unpleasantly with red dust and sulfur. For example. And salt is purifying and cleanses energy so nothing can come in, which is a threat or energetically unclean. Taking a different tact, Miss Aida lists a number of plants which can be grown for protection and kept in pots around the home like cactus ferns, ivy palms, aloe vera, rosemary, sage, lemongrass, peppermint, lavender and others. And while most house cleansing magic is preventative, there's occasionally a need to respond to an intrusion defensively and both traditions, Curanderismo and hoodoo would probably recommend a bit of candle magic for calling in protective spirits. Saints are commonly petitioned with special long burning prayer, candles and multi-day vigils, which is what 90 candles are for. Typically a protective spirit like Saint Michael is invoked in a ritual where a Saint Michael prayer candle acquired from a local curio shop or here in Mexico from the grocery store, is placed in the center of a circle or a square of other candles and lit while the archangel is invoked in prayer. Additionally, a gift of water and an egg is customary in Curanderismo. After lighting, the candles are allowed to burn continually and are relit if necessary until burning down completely while being prayed over regularly in the meantime. You can swap saints here for any protective spirit that you're more comfortable with working with as well. The only thing to keep in mind is that protection comes from the threat of reprisal. So this job is not for friendly deities. Hekate Medusa, Shiva, even Archangel Michael are great protectors, but their energy is a little intense. This is what you want. Now that we've talked about cleansing and protection, we can wrap up by talking about seeking blessings. But blessing yourself isn't really a thing. We just call that prayer. And prayer is an essential part of living a blessed life, certainly. But when it comes to your house, the situation is a little different because you're essentially inviting spirits into your home as residents and gaining blessings from their presence. Being a good host starts with making your house feel inviting, inhospitable, epic spirits. Enjoy the same sweet, spicy smelling influences that we enjoy. Good smells, invite good times and good spirits as well. So the first step of inviting spirits into your home is to keep it clean, sweet smelling and free of negative energy. Basically, do all the stuff I've been talking about in preparation for inviting helpful spirits into your space, Miss Aida recommends burning Sweetgrass specifically to invite in good spirits. In Curanderismo, it would probably be done with copal. In the Curanderismo tradition in the local area here in the Yucatan It's typical to build a spirit house somewhere on your property for the local spirits called the Alux, and to give regular offerings to them of local foods and particularly corn. I talk more about this in episode 18, A Home for Spirits, and in episode 22, The Enchanted Home, I discuss Claude Lecouteux’s works regarding the spirits of place and traditions for inviting them to become the guardians of your home house spirits. And while that episode discusses house magic from a Western European context, there are still many parallels. Curanderismo primarily focuses on offerings and purification rituals, typically using elements like fire, water, incense and ash to ground the space and simple altars to seek the blessings of ancestors, nature, spirits, Pachamama, Mother Nature and the gods and goddesses of the sky, The seasons, fertility, etc. Different spaces would be dedicated to different spirits who govern the relevant aspects of life. This would take the form of tending a fire on the ground in the space itself, or in a cauldron in that space, and putting various offerings into the fire, such as incense or myrrh, various herbs, or even a full dispatched gratitude offering, which includes corn, grains, beans, seeds, sweets and other symbols of plenty and good fortune. It is a prayer for the fertility of the earth, a gesture of gratitude and a prosperity all rolled into one. The Catholic influences on Curanderismo and Hoodoo make the regular burning of Saint Candles a very common practice, in addition to using them for vigils and in addition to the fumigation of a space of a velación or candle vigil dedicated to a particular spirit is a common way to lay out the welcome mat. With all these many techniques to study and employ, there's plenty of magic to inspire our own regimen of magical cleansing, protection and blessing rituals. In fact, there is far more than anyone would realistically ever need. Unless you're actively summoning negative energy into your home, you shouldn't need to employ the most intense of these spells, but they're handy to have around just in case. What's far more common is that you unknowingly bring home negative energy that diminishes the quality of your experience of life and works against your good fortunes. And this is all too typical, of course, unless you maintain strict, energetic hygiene over yourself and your home. And when you notice that something's off some kind of external negative is having an effect in your life, you know how to handle it magically. Hopefully this episode has provided enough examples to help you solve any energetic problems that arise in your life or linger in your spaces. Thanks for tuning in for this episode. 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