When you don't believe in an all-powerful, omnicient or all-good god but you still believe in something

Even though I was raised “sort of Pagan” and I only ever attended the services of monotheistic religions a handful of times for reasons of friendship or journalism, it has been hard to rid myself of monotheistic assumptions. They permeate our culture and society.

Even a lot of agnostics like to say “Oh, the universe is moving toward a higher good.” It’s like there still has to be “something” to look to as a higher power and a power for good.

The basic assumptions of the big monotheistic religions are these. God is all powerful, God is omniscient, and God is entirely and only good. And this leads to endless agonizing, confusion and misery among deeply thinking theologians—at least the ones who are internally honest.

My mother raised me in what I’d like to call “the Martin Luther King tradition,” because of his statement that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” She applied this both to the world at large and to her own life.

Image via Pixabay

There were hard times, really hard times. There were days when she didn’t know how we were going to eat and keep the electricity on that day or the next. She had three young children and local jobs were scarce and unreliable. It was rock bottom.

On one such day, she went down the muddy driveway to the mailbox crying, and sitting in there was a government check for back payments of SSI for her disabled child, which she didn’t know was coming. It provided just enough to scrape by.

That sort of thing happened a lot during the first twenty years of my life. It was possible for me to believe in my mother’s philosophy as long as I lived in our sheltered little valley where generally things did work out in the end, even if the working out was really hard. But when I grew up and travelled around the world, I met a lot of people in situations that did not work out.

I met refugees fleeing violence who were going to starve and whose toddler was already dying of dysentery. I met a 28-year-old mother in a Bangladeshi slum who was so broken in body from breaking bricks for a dollar a day to keep her stick-limbed children barely alive that she looked like a rugged 80-year-old. I met bright, hopeful Romani kids leaving Eastern European orphanages knowing that most of them would be in prison within a year. I met a 16-year-old girl being inducted into the lethal black-market coal mining gangs in the Eastern Ukraine. I met a 10-year-old street kid in the same country who smeared dog feces on herself every day to keep rapists away.

And I met all the kinds of people whose decisions or lifestyles or indifference or hatred kept those horrible things happening. I wrote about injustice and I joined the clamor of voices demanding change. I clung to the hope that Dr. King was right and that what it needed was for people like me to work and shout and scream for compassion and justice.

I spent all my spending money on yellow fruits for kids in the Bangladeshi slum, because a nurse told me that even just a little yellow fruit could keep a malnourished kid from going blind. But there were literally millions of kids in that slum alone and I was one shoe-string journalist living out of a backpack. I desperately wanted to believe in the arc of the universe, because things had worked out reasonably well for me and I wanted to be a journalist and travel around without feeling guilty for not dropping everything and giving everything whenever I saw desperate need and impending tragedy.

It was a philosophy that functioned like a bandaid on spirituality—until twenty years of really hard luck gradually stripped away my dreams, my opportunities, my family life, my rock-solid health, and finally, my home. I’m not saying that spirituality should rest on my experience alone. It’s just that I was brought face to face with the fact that my “arc of the universe” philosophy was a cover for a person with relative privilege navigating a world in which justice and hope is random at best and often just plain rigged.

It made me feel better a times, but it also made me feel deeply uncomfortable. And that same philosophy--and its lone omnipotent god--is cold comfort when chance leaves you crushed and broken in the ditch.

I tried asking a lot of spiritual people who subscribed to some form of the omniscient, all-knowing, for-some-greater-good God / universe idea. How could this God or universal good spirit allow the unimaginable misery and tragedy I had witnessed?

“It takes time.” “Patience.” “The arc is long.” “It takes good people…” They had answers… of sorts.

“But what about the all-powerful part?” I’d always ask. And the conversation generally disintegrated one way or another. That three-part backbone of monotheistic spirituality or agnostic universe-ism, doesn’t hold up. At least one of the three parts has got to give for me to believe in anything like a god or goddess or universe spirit—and not feel like a sham.

For the past ten years, I have been experimenting with really integrating a more polytheistic worldview. At first, I thought I was just trying to be closer to nature and even science in my spirituality. I was practicing what is called “soft polytheism.” That is the idea that ancient gods and goddesses are archetypes and meditating on them or praying to them is psychologically healthy and will help one’s internal integration and mental health.

I found that soft polytheism worked pretty well for me. I enjoyed it and did gain psychological benefits. I developed a solid daily practice. But soft polytheism has a few drawbacks. It essentially side steps the “arc of the universe” issue. It is when you get right down to the nitty gritty actually a lot like atheism. If gods and goddesses are all psychological constructs then nothing is really there. All spiritual practice is just an exercise for mental health and on a deeper level it is… well… bogus.

And shit kept happening in my world—things that demanded something real in the spiritual arena, if I was to keep my sanity or at least keep suicidal thoughts at bay.

So, I leaned into hard polytheism a bit. And then a bit more. Hard polytheism is broadly the idea that gods are real in one sense or another.

It is often defined as “one name one being.” It is fashionable among hardline “hard polytheists” to insist that Odin, the one-eyed Norse god who sacrificed himself to gain ultimate wisdom and the Norse runes, and Woden, the one-eyed Anglo-Saxon god who sacrificed himself to gain ultimate wisdom and the Anglo-Saxon runes, are two completely different real entities, and it is a kind of blasphemy to behave as if they are the same god.

But in truth, hard polytheism broadly doesn’t necessarily mean a strict interpretation. It just means that you are not on the “gods are archetypes in our subconscious” bandwagon and you believe there is some real power or being on some level of something that can be called upon as a god and you are at least open to the idea that there are likely to be more than one of them out there. And it includes everything more strict and specific than that as well.

In this polytheism I have finally found something that, although a bit shaky, holds water for both my spiritual nature and my overly literal brain.

I started six years ago with the goddess Brigid or Brighid. And no, I’m not a hard enough polytheist to insist that the Irish Brighid and the Scottish Bride and the more widely recognized Brigid are all separate goddesses. I don’t have an answer on that. At least, not yet.

I am willing for now to let that be a matter that humans don’t know because we are not gods. I hold my concept of her both whole and separate, in an openness that asks understanding over time rather than demands certainty right now.

I have studied the various faces and names that are at least associated with this goddess, memorized many of her traditional prayers and devoted a daily spiritual practice to walking in her footsteps as healer, poet, craftswoman and social justice defender. I have come to call myself a bearer of Brigid’s flame as many others do today. And in the process I have developed a sense of her influence in the world and in my life.

So, then if I test my polytheist spirituality against the old monotheist paradox of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good god in a very screwed up world, it goes something like this.

Is Brigid all good?

Well, from my perspective I’d say, “Yes.” But mine isn’t the only perspective. Brigid is a healer. She does care more about humans and animals than about the lives of the bacteria that make us sick. On the other hand, I’m not sure that she cares as much about humans as she does about trees. She is good to me and to my animals, not necessarily to bacteria and viruses, even though she acknowledges that they are also alive and needed in the ecosystem of earth. She is good but she does not contain all goodness. Her focus is on creative work and social justice. She is not all that focused on sports competitions, winning battles, making money or pure enlightenment. Could she influence those things? Maybe. She’s a very powerful goddess, but she might well choose not to.

Is Brigid all-powerful?

No. That’s the simple answer. Yes, she’s a goddess and she has a main line on the greatest powers of the universe. But she cannot redo the laws of nature or society. I can feel the benefit of her protection, healing and inspiration in my life. But she does not fix things like the fact that my family is on the other side of the ocean. She does not heal my congenital vision impairment which causes me to be nearly blind. And she is definitely more able to influence things in her areas of expertise than in unrelated areas.

She is known for protecting against house fires and I have had a number of close calls in which Brigid’s image occurred to me in time to catch something smoldering that could well have resulted in a house fire. But clearly she doesn’t stop all house fires and won’t stop even my house from burning if I’m careless.

Is Brigid omniscient?

Not in the general, knowing-everything-all-the-time-everywhere-in-the-world sense, the way children in Christian Sunday school are taught about Jesus. But she certainly has a wider and deeper understanding of the world, time, interrelationships and possibilities than I can fathom. I personally feel very unqualified to guess at the limits of her knowledge. But I do find that calling her attention to a need for healing or protection appears to help. Maybe that’s just Brigid being reciprocal with me, since I devote a lot of time and energy to my service to her. But it is possible that calling her attention is also helpful in an of itself.

Here is an example, which is actually the thing that prompted me to write this post.

I have called on Brigid to protect my family many times. According to lore, she has a particular interest in orphans, fosterlings and adopted children. So, it’s a natural fit beyond the fact that my interests in healing, creative work and hearth keeping mirror hers. Both of my children have faced massive challenges over the past several years and there has been plenty to ask help for, including mental health crises, bullying, the disintegration of the local school under the pressure of Covid and so forth.

After my son started American online school in January, things improved for him. He started learning and slowly improving in emotional areas. But with all organized sports closed he took to learning stunt riding on his BMX bike with a couple of local boys. There were several gangs of bullies specifically on the look out for my son because even though he left the local school, he is still one of the few people of color in our small town. I worried every time he left the house—about the bullies and about the stunt riding.

But what can you do? Parents in so many places know the struggle. I kept him safe as long and as much as I could, but there comes a point when restricting a kid becomes less and less tenable and the more you try to exercise direct control the less real control you actually have. So, I supplemented physical safety measures with petitions to Brigid for his protection and empowerment.

And then last month, the day came that I knew was going to come in some form. My son came home injured. I heard a clatter in the hallway and him weakly calling for me. I ran out to see him collapsed against the wall, still in his biking gear. He had the breath knocked out of him so that he could only breathe in short gasps. He managed to explain that he had raced down a steep hill and gone off of a new extra-high jump and come down wrong and flown over the handlebars.

I checked his arms and legs and head and neck, all the things a parent does. He gripped his left shoulder and winced. I felt it carefully and found it to be the right shape and size. I felt his ribs and found only the bottom most ribs tender. He claimed he hadn’t hit his head or punched the handlebars into his abdomen. The bike had flown up behind him and come down on the back of his head, but he was wearing a special stunt helmet that covers the back of the head. It looked like he had been very, very lucky.

I can’t drive. I believe I would have taken him someplace to get checked out if I could have. But as I watched him over the next hour he improved. I could have called for an ambulance. We have universal health care here. But the last time I had called an ambulance 12 years ago, when my husband thought he might be having a hearth attack at 4:00 in the morning I was yelled at and shamed by the ambulance crew because he was much better by the time they arrived. I was scared and my son wasn’t visibly bleeding or unconscious or broken.

My husband rushed home from a distant worksite and by then my son had taken an ibuprofen and felt significantly better. He mostly didn’t want to sit up because it made his stomach hurt. He said he had bellyflopped on the ground and it made sense that it would hurt. And as we thought it through we realized that if my husband took him to the emergency room, he would have to sit upright in a hard chair for at least three hours waiting to see a doctor. Since he wasn’t bleeding and had no head injury, he would be their last priority. And that would clearly be agony. So, we made the decision not to go.

Thirty-six hours later, his stomach pain was worsening, so we took him to a local pediatrician and then to a small hospital and then to a big hospital. After six hours of dragging him through hallways and around large hospital corridors and waiting rooms on foot, he was found to have a torn spleen. The internal injury to the organ was classified as severe, though it had not fully ruptured, which was the only reason he hadn’t bled out internally by that time. We soon read about the case of a local boy who had fallen on a stick and complained of abdominal pain just like our son had and the parents hadn’t taken him to the emergency room immediately and by the time they did, he had bled too much internally and he died.

My son spent the next three days in the ICU and another ten days in the hospital, during most of which he couldn’t even sit up to eat or use the bathroom. He’ll recuperate over the next several months with strict doctor’s orders to avoid physical strain and any sporting activities.

He was a lot more than lucky. The fact that with the severity of the injury, he didn’t bleed out despite our delay in taking him to a major hospital where the correct diagnosis could be made might be characterized as a miracle. If we had taken him to the small-town emergency room and he had not had profuse internal bleeding yet, it is very possible that the extent of the injury would have been missed with lower level scans and his spleen could have burst later, when we thought we had done due diligence by going in to the small local hospital immediately.

So, this is where I’m at with gods and omnipotence and all that. I can accept that there is some power of help and comfort in the universe. I personally feel that Brigid helped to keep my son alive, despite the fact that there is no power on earth or in the spiritual realm that could have kept him out of dangerous sports activities, since that was all he wanted to do. Something like this was bound to happen eventually. So, it happened. But my son was protected from the worst outcomes.

Because the injury was so painful and the recovery is likely to be long, he may actually take a warning from it. And we will be moving away from this country and the roving gangs of bullies by the time he is out and about again. No god or goddess can change what is most basic about our world. If a kid insists on high-risk sports, injury is going to happened eventually. If a society is deeply ravaged by racism and hate, violence is going to happen. My goddess has an interest in protecting the vulnerable, but not absolute power.

Once I had a solid relationship with on deity for several years, I found my awareness and heart opening up to others in different but also profound ways. Those are stories for another time, but for now the crucial point is that polytheism, a philosophy derided as “primitive” and “backward” for centuries by monotheistic religions is coming back precisely because it offers reasonable spirituality connected both to heart and to the day-to-day world. I’m perfectly content that it isn’t for everyone. There are many gods and it isn’t my place to tell anyone else what to rely on, even if they rely on the dry and heartless god of science or on a god who knows all and controls all in this hard world.

Blessing of the Ballots

A sigil and a candle spell you can participate in to speed and assist ballots bringing justice and hope back to the United States of America

Are you anxious or full of fire about the election? Do you want to do more than just vote? Volunteering to help get voters the information they need to get through red tape and rampant voter suppression schemes is a good avenue for that energy. Here is another.

If you read my blog, I doubt you’re vehemently against metaphysical action. If you are among those who firmly believe in the power of real-world, non-fantasy magic, then you’re reading the right post. If you are—like me for most of my life—still skeptical but desperate enough to try, you’re also reading the right post.

The past ten years of my life have been outwardly drab and unsuccessful. But these years have been a cauldron for me to brew and stew in. I have spent that time studying the arts of the disenfranchised, the powers of the powerless, what has been called “witchcraft.”

There are some of us who when trapped and downtrodden beyond all hope in the physical world, go beyond the physical in our efforts, rather than languish in despair. That’s what I did and I have finally come to a point where I am confident enough to share some of what I’ve learned.

I have learned that one person can influence their own fate or the fate of someone close to them through force of will and the powers willing to help. To influence something vast, something that affects hundreds of millions of people, a whole country and in truth the whole world—that is a harder proposition. But there are ways.

You have to choose a leverage point, something small that is possible to lift with the power you have. And this working to bless the ballots of change and justice is one such.

I don’t regularly publish my. workings—first because to speak or write about them before they are finished can, in some cases, be detrimental, and second because as someone already vulnerable to social exclusion, I fear judgment and attack due to yet one more thing that sets me outside the norm.

In this case, the need is stronger. While Trump supporters might notice and try to counteract this working, my blog has a pretty focused audience and the nature of this working—to support ballots—makes it particularly hard to counteract. It would be like trying to swat a swarm of gnats as they blow past.

And as for my fear… well, there are other workings for that.

This working is one that I could do alone. Even one person doing it can have significant effect, but more workers should also have significant effect. It does not need to be millions though or even thousands of us. Not every person casting a ballot needs to do magic. Those few of us will be enough because of the power of the symbols involved.

The leverage point

With any kind of magic it is important to remember that it still takes our personal energy and effort, including practical steps in the real world. We won't influence the election very much if we don't vote. Just as it feels like a tiny thing to send in one ballot, it also feels like doing magic for a good and just election result is probably just a drop in the bucket.

But it is possible to add an extra boost that will actually matter if we are very specific and ensure that we are pushing on a leverage point that doesn't have too much focused will against it.

Just doing magic to get Biden to beat Trump may not actually be that helpful. There are plenty of people putting their wills to work on both sides of that. It may not be useless to put your will toward it, just as it is far from useless to vote. But using a more strategic leverage point may be a better use of your time and energy.

One such leverage point is simply the ballots themselves and the ability of every citizen to vote. Every objective indicator shows that if everyone who wants to vote is able to vote, Trump will not win. And while a lot of people have their wills focused on trying to get Trump to win and other people have their wills focused on trying to get Biden to win. only a few corporate hacks are actually sitting around focusing their will on not allowing people to vote in the first place.

There were widespread reports of voter suppression and vote tampering by Republicans in the 2000 election. That was the first election where I really became aware of the issue. But most of the concern came after the fact and all such reports were denied by those accused of carrying them out.

This time it’s different. Trump has called for mail-in ballots to be rejected and has openly disrupted the Post Office system in service of that goal. This is because statistics show some 70 to 75 percent of mail-in ballots are Democratic. It’s the best gamble Trump has got.

Trump talks about his opponents using “voting fraud” but never gives any specifics. It’s a classic tactic. If you’re doing something nefarious, accuse others of doing it. At the very least, it muddies the waters and creates chaos. Only very precise investigation will be able to tell what is real and what isn’t and who was actually breaking the law.

But at the same time, Trump and his supporters call for paramilitary poll watchers to intimidate voters, particularly people of color, and to get as many voters struck from the rolls as possible. It’s all about figuring out which demographics—such as people of color, mail-in voters, people in historically liberal locations or citizens living abroad—are likely to vote for his opponent and then throwing every possible barrier to voting against them.

As I wrote about earlier this month, I was hit by this tactic myself. Every year since I turned eighteen and registered to vote, I have received a mail-in ballot automatically, as long as I kept my address up to date. This year, Trump supporters forced through quiet new rules and my ballot didn’t arrive as it always had. I never would have received one at all had a volunteer for Democrats Abroad not called me and tipped me off that I had to specifically request my ballot this time.

Another new regulation means that the postmark on the ballot envelope is of no use. The ballot must arrive in the ballot box by November 3 or the vote does not count. And of course, between Covid and Trump’s actions to disrupt the Post Office, there is a significant chance that many ballots won’t arrive on time.

So this is a good leverage point where positive energy can help volunteers reach the right people, mail processes flow smoothly and circumstances favor voters and their ballots. The negative energy opposing this effort is likely to be lower than if one simply pits one’s will against the wills of Trump supporters in a head-to-head contest of who can raise the most energy, and the results we want will still be the same in the end.

It also helps that you will have all the spiritual powers of justice on your side since all you're asking for is fairness in the democratic system.

Natural allies

National politics are often matters we as ordinary people can do little about. The volunteers help to get out the vote, but at this later stage even they have done all they can. Now we need help from beyond the purely physical, ordinary reality. We need to harness the energies of will and the power of natural justice.

As I’m sure you’re aware, this election is both an issue of human justice against an unjust, bigoted and criminal regime and also a matter of justice and survival for many of the earth’s other inhabitants.

Both the fact that this working calls upon basic fairness—every person who wants to vote having the chance to vote and all votes being counted—helps to call in primal energies. The fact that the Trump regime endangers the climate and many vulnerable populations both human and non-human around the world also means that many natural entities will willingly stand with us.

Here is a list of herbs, essential oils and stones that will be particularly helpful to you in this working. If you can get any of these, it will be that much easier to call on the natural energies of the earth that are eager to support this kind of work. Don’t worry over much if you can’t get exactly these herbs and stones, however. I list more widely available substitutes and even if you have none of them, calling on the powers of herbs and stones found in the world around you will draw this helpful energy.

Herbs

• Rosemary (for clarity of mind and electoral processes, and for protection against thieves and fraud in the election)

• Plantain (for the power to withstand all difficulty and rush against the current regime)

• High John (for strong will power and added luck, and to remove obstacles and protect the vulnerable and disenfranchised)

• Substitutions: You can use just rosemary or oregano or these two kitchen herbs in combination. Like High John and plantain, oregano has a subtle warrior energy for the protection of the vulnerable. I prefer High John in this case largely because it has a history of protecting African Americans and it was named for a slavery resister according to old herb lore.

Essential Oils:

• Bay laurel (to break the power of the unjust and power-hungry)

• Patchouli (for a strong woman on the ticket).

• Rosemary (see above in the herbs section, particularly for protection agains voter suppression, which is a form of theft)

• Substitutions: pine and cedar are also useful in this kind of working for their clarifying, protective and communication enhancing energies..

Stones

• Obsidian (to block and bury negating and opposing forces)

• Amethyst (for written communications such as ballots and mail, clear pathways, truth and justice)

• Jasper (for added protection, strength and energy)

• Substitutions: If you don’t have these specific stones, you can use clear quartz. You can also use any stones collected on the territory of the United States or other areas impacted by the U.S. election, even just pebbles from an empty lot. Stones have their own ways to communicate with one another and will pass on your call for assistance.)

A symbol for many uses

Here is where things get specific to my path. This past year I have begun studying Anglo-Saxon runes, thanks to learning more about my genetic ancestry. From an ancestral perspective, I can call upon Norse and Anglo-Saxon runes as well as the Irish Ogham alphabet as symbols related to my ancestry.

But here’s the thing, this working can be made universal. You are welcome to use my Anglo-Saxon runes, even if you have no relation to them. That is because this is my working, developed through my studies and it is my gift to others.

It is advisable to call on Woden (the Anglo-Saxon name of more widely known Odin) who is the master of the runes and who, according to ancient myth, discovered them through a harrowing sacrifice. You may ask his permission to use these runes for this purpose, even if you have never spoken to him before because the rune sigil has already been made with his blessing.

However, you can do this working with other symbols from other cultures as well. I advise you to include symbols for focus, truth, justice, a nation or tribe, fair results based on merit, patience rewarded, protection and just leadership. If you can combine such symbols from another culture and call upon other gods, ancestors, guides or entities to aid you, the result should be completely compatible with my working and those of others doing the same working.

If you aren’t comfortable using esoteric symbols and calling on gods or spirits, you can also simply write the words “truth,” “justice,” “fairness,” “nation,” “protection,” “ballots,” “votes,” and “good leadership” as well as other relevant words in an artful way to create a symbol for yourself and focus the power of your will.

It’s like baking a cake. The ingredients may be different if you’re vegan or gluten-free or lactose intolerant, but the basic types of ingredients are needed. In this case, those ingredients are the meanings of the symbols and the energetic power of your will and entities willing to lend support to your will.

Here are the Anglo-Saxon runes I have chosen for this particular working:

Runes:

• Tir (pronounced “teer,” for steadfast direction and focus as well as for objective truth and justice)

• Gear (pronounced “yee-ar,” for fairness to all based on their effort and for a long awaited beneficial result)

• Ethel (pronounced “ethel,” for justice and protection of the nation)

Several extra runes appeared without conscious intent in the sigil: Sigel (pronounced “see-yel,” for a good leader and speaker for the nation), Rad (pronounced “rad” for the swift and smooth journey of ballots) and Eolh (pronounced “eh-olkh,” for protection of the poor and vulnerable)

When the instructions ask for you to draw the sigil, you draw each of these runes fully, even though that requires you to trace the same line more than once. As you trace the rune, you speak it’s name and call on it for the particular power we want here, such as, “Tir, I call the rune Tir to bring focused direction, truth and justice in this working.” And so forth with the other runes.

The function of these runes is to create a visible sigil or symbol that can be inscribed onto the candle you will use in this working, onto a piece of paper to be placed under the candle, on a photocopy of your ballot or a picture of a ballot from the internet or on the back side of your ballot envelope in a corner where it does not obstruct anything official.

This sigil can also be drawn in the air as you stand in line to vote or when you see people standing in line to vote on TV or while driving or walking by. The sigil can be put on your kitchen table, on your computer monitor or on top of your TV, where you will see it often until the election result is secured.

The blessing

The way this magic works is that you build energy and strength of will through calling on deities, ancestors, other entities, herbs, stones and symbols, such as runes, and then you release that power in a focused moment while lighting a candle and saying a blessing for the ballots.

I have written this blessing to include the rune sounds of the main three runes of the sigil—T, Y and OY. (Ethel’s sound correspondence is OY. I am not advanced enough in old English linguistics to know why its name is so different from its sound.)

“Total trust, truth this time.
Ye ballots of change speed to the mark.
End the reign of vicious crime.
Bring us to joy out of the dark.
Yay joy! Yay joy! Yay joy!”

Here is the blessing to recite both while inscribing your sigil onto the candle, while lighting the candle and while sprinkling herbs on your ballot or an image of a ballot.

The step-by-step working

If you are experienced and you have been skimming, this is the brief recipe part that you’ll want to stop for. All philosophy, lore and background aside, here’s the working for the Blessing of the Ballots

Other than the herbs, stones, sigil and blessing text listed above, you will also need the following for this working:

Printable symbolic ballot image: Print, mark symbolically and draw your sigil in the space on the right. This does not count as an actual vote.

• A blue or orange candle (White can always be substituted for any color in a pinch)

• A heat-proof candle holder

• A pin or stiff metal wire

• Matches or lighter

• Olive oil or other oil that doesn't irritate your skin

• Small bottle or measuring cup for mixing oils

• Piece of paper and a pen or pencil

• Your ballot, a copy or a picture of a ballot from the internet, such as the one posted here. (Caution: In some states it is illegal to publicly display or copy a pre-marked ballot, which is why this copy is blank. There is no law against printing and marking a photo for your own private use.)

Process:

1. Sit quietly and center yourself in which ever way works for you. envision your roots going down into the earth or ground yourself in some other way.

2. Clearly state that you are going to vote or have voted and that you intend to support everyone's right to vote in this election through this work.

3. Call on your gods, ancestors, guides or other spiritual entities to bless this endeavor and aid you with their energy.

4. Call Woden, master of the runes, and ask for his blessing in using the rune sigil I provided (or call on other deities or entities relevant to your own symbol, if you choose).

5. Pour a teaspoon of olive oil into your bottle or small measuring cup and add one to three drops of each essential oil. As you drop the essential oils into the carrier oil ask the spirit of each herb to lend the particular blessing listed above to the work.

6. Draw the rune sigil onto the piece of paper while speaking the name of each rune: Tir /teer/, Gear /yee-ar/ and Ethel. Envision each rune lighting up in turn as you say their names again and ask for their particular energy listed above. Place the paper on your table or working surface where you are going to put your candle holder.

7. Take up your candle and using the pen or stiff wire inscribe the same runic sigil into the candle wax, while repeating the names and energies of the runes.

8. Dip your fingers into the mixed oil or dab drops of it from the bottle onto your fingers and rub these into the candle swirling in a clockwise direction. Meditate on your intent.

9. Place your candle in its holder on top of the paper with the sigil.

10. Place the stones around it, while calling on the specific energies of each stone as listed above.

11. Read the Blessing of the Ballots text out loud until you can say it from memory.. Then speak it while lighting the candle.

12. Prepare your ballot or copy safely away from the candle. Take a pinch of each dried herb, calling on their specific blessings listed above. Rub them together in your hands and smell the aroma. Then sprinkle them over your ballot or copy, while repeating the blessing of the ballots again. Scatter any extra herbs around the candle holder. Recite the Blessing of the Ballots again.

13. If you are using a copy or a picture from the Internet, draw the runic sigil on it while repeating the Blessing of the Ballots a third time. Also rub some of the mixed oil onto the photocopy or image. Using a copy or image is effective, using the principles of “sympathetic energy.” If you are doing this with your actual mail-in ballot—which lends another level to this working—your best bet is to draw a small version of the sigil on the back of the outside of the envelope where it will not interfere with any official texts. (Don’t mark anything on the inner “secrecy” envelope or the inside of your mail-in ballot that is not exactly according to the instructions. Dust off any herbs before putting the ballot into the envelope and don’t put oils on it.)

14. Put your hands on the ballot or image of a ballot and pour the energy of your need and will and all the power you have gathered around you into it.

15. Place your ballot or copy at a safe distance from your candle and let the candle burn out.

16. Thank all deities, ancestors, other entities, friends, animals, herbs and stones that have helped you in this working. Release the pent up energy in your space, sending it out to assist other ballots all over the country. I find it helpful to ring a bell to signify releasing the energy or to go outside and throw my arms up in the air and feel the energy spread out wide.

17. If you feel jittery or “keyed up” even after releasing the energy, place your hands on the ground and allow any scattered and unfocused energy to dissipate into the earth.

18. Mail your mail-in ballot if that is what you used. Or keep the copy or picture from the Internet under the stones until the election result has been secured.

That’s the whole of it. Pass this along to friends and family who want to put their wills toward a just and hopeful outcome to the election. I did this after I voted, using a copy of my actual ballot. There are benefits to doing it with an actual mail-in ballot that will be sent, but if you have found this only after your ballot was submitted, you can still add your will to this working. Use my photocopy image or another from the internet that you can print.

Keep passing this working around, making the sigil and repeating the Blessing of the Ballots words until election day. There are no done deals or guarantees in this season, but the only major possibility that Trump could win relies on the suppression of these ballots. This work complimenting the work of voter-assistance volunteers has an excellent chance to prevail.

Regardless of the imperfection of any other outcome, the overthrow of a dangerous, bigoted tyrant will serve to protect the nation and further justice. With the free expression of the voices of the many that is already coming to pass.

Blessed be!