Local Magic: Creating Magic in Your Locality

What type of earth magic exists where you are? What is the local nature of air, fire and water? How do you make magic with the living forces all around you – not as they appear in books, but as you see and experience them when you step outside your front door? Every locality has its own flavours, energies and secrets… and when we work our magic and ritual in alignment with our locality we enter deep into the earth’s living magic.

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How Do I Begin Local Magic?

Local Magic is location-specific magic. It's the magic you can make, and feel, in the place where you live. Of course, where we live isn't always where we ideally want to be living, and the landscape isn't always the one that calls to our heart. Perhaps we prefer to create magic and ritual indoors, imagining we are really in Avalon, or an Egyptian temple, or the forests of our childhood. This can be a powerful magic, with the weight of our yearning, our imagination or our history bound up in it. And yet Local Magic - the type that happens specifically where you live, and happens only there, has its own allure.

Local Magic can teach you not just about locality, wherever you find yourself but it will also teach you about the nature of magic; specifically Pagan magic. Unless you happen to find yourself living in a temple complex, or on an ancient sacred site, the magic you will learn to participate in with Local Magic will be of the natural variety. It will concern the types of soil, rock, trees, birds and animals, airs and waters, skies and moods of the place where you live. Previous learnings, such as herbalism, astronomy, trance, working with deity can all be alive in Local Magic but there will be one great difference.

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The magic part of Local Magic is based in relationship - your relationship to the land. In Local Magic you will be creating ritual and magic in conjunction with the land; not some broad, generalised idea of 'land' but the actual land you are sitting, standing, walking upon. This relationship is not one-way, an observer (you) and the observed (the land). It is interactive. The land will speak to you. Perhaps it will speak in the voices of its birds, the winds, the insects and the silences. You may hear it speaking within you. It will reveal itself, in its seasons and patterns and the hidden things only seen with close observation. It will offer you suggestions, of magic for new growth when everything greens, rituals for cleansing when it storms, the reminder of the abundance of beauty in the world in wildflower season. It will contain and hold your energy and your magic, creating a circle around you of rock and tree and sky. It will offer you spirit allies, in its birds and animals, or its energies of waterfall, desert, ocean, forest.

How does one begin to interact with this idea of Local Magic? One way to begin is with the Elements.

Go outside. You can just go into your backyard or a local park, but for raw local magic, less adulterated by introduced species, building regulations and human aesthetics, choose somewhere at least on the edge of the wild. This might be a nearby river, national park, woodland, beach or other place that calls to you. Take some practical things with you, that will allow you to spend some time there - water and food, shelter from sun/rain and comfortable walking shoes. You might also take a journal and pen, camera, and an offering for the place. If you do take an offering, make sure it is natural and won't interfere with the place you are visiting; you could take a rock, a leaf, some water or other simple, natural gift. 

When you are there, spend some time finding a place that feels right to you - you might be searching for somewhere sheltered, or inviting, or cool, or open. Then settle into the place; you might like to spend time meditating, simply breathing or in some other form of preparation. You might like to give your offering now, or at the end of your process.

Once you feel centered and fully present begin to look for the elements. What is the nature of Earth, where you are? Spend some time really getting to know this Earth; its look, feel, components and differences. What type of Air is here? Breathe it in and feel it interacting with the cells of your body. What about Water? Can you sense or see water here? It may be very subtle, just as it is in our own bodies, someone looking at us would not immediately see water. How do you sense Fire in this place? Is it the sunlight, the energy of the growing green things, or some other way? Lastly you might ask to receive a sense of Spirit - of the spirit of this place. This may come to you as a sensation, a vision, words, an idea or remain open.

You can deepen into this elemental journey if you wish. One way to do this is ask which of these elements of this place has something to teach or show you now. If you are stuck in some area of your life, you might ask for strength, cleansing, inspiration or peace and wait to see which element or element offers that, and in what way. You might decide to trance into all, or one of the elements, imagining your body dissolving into particles of earth, air, fire or water and feeling more deeply into their exact nature, in this place. You can travel through the elements with a question or problem, seeing what each of them have to offer as you experience them interacting with you.

Like any relationship, Local Magic does not spring into play overnight. It takes time, it takes some focus, willingness and experiment. It is fundamentally Pagan, it is about humans relationship to the land. It is about our understanding of that, and our response to that. When we open our ears and eyes and hearts to the landscape we live in, we will find that it is alive and right there, actively engaging with us and a willing partner in our magic.

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Jane Meredith is an Australian author and ritualist. Her books include 'Journey to the Dark Goddess', 'Aspecting the Goddess', 'Rituals of Celebration' and 'Circle of Eight: Creating Magic for Your Place on Earth', about Local Magic. Jane's latest book, co-edited with Gede Parma is 'Elements of Magic: Reclaiming Earth, Air, Water, Fire & Spirit'. Jane offers workshops and distance courses and also teaches in the Reclaiming tradition. She is passionate about magic, myth and co-created ritual, as well as rivers, trees and dark chocolate.

Comments

  • Gwion Raven
    Gwion Raven Wednesday, 17 December 2014

    Oh Jane Meredith! I so love this blog post. Many years ago, when I began my journey into magic, one of my first teachers told me to introduce myself to the spirits of Place. I'd sit in my back yard, in the local, rural park I had an affinity for and just sit and listen. Today when I work with folks that are new to this path, it's one of the first "exercises" we do together. What do you notice about this place? How does the light move here? What sounds are int he air, on the ground. What non-humans visit inhabit this place?

    Blessed be this local magic!

    Gwion

  • Michelle Simkins
    Michelle Simkins Sunday, 11 January 2015

    Yes. So very much yes! There's nothing like really connecting with where you are, and drawing your spiritual practice and magic from your home ground.

  • Susan B. Chandler
    Susan B. Chandler Tuesday, 24 February 2015

    Thank you so much for this post! There is a trail to which I am repeatedly drawn and one day while sitting in one of its quiet places, I noticed the wind all around me. It was a blustery winter day with the wind whipping though the tree tops and then being still -to come again as a breeze following the natural contours of the small drainage basin in which I sat or as a small eddy of air in the leaves around me. Just as the Inuit have many words for snow,I saw that I could have many words for the wind.

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