(Direct Link to the Mp3)

On Friday, I needed to do a thread of a thing, so if you hate threads and you were waiting until I collected it, here it is.

But this originally needed to be done in situ. It needed to be a serialized and systematized intervention and imposition into the machinery of that particular flow of time. That day…

There is a principle within many schools of magical thought known as “shielding.” In practice and theory, it’s closely related to the notion of “grounding” and the notion of “centering.” (If you need to think of magical praxis as merely a cipher for psychological manipulation toward particular behaviours or outcomes, these all still scan.)

When you ground, when you centre, when you shield, you are anchoring yourself in an awareness of a) your present moment, your temporality; b) your Self and all emotions and thoughts; and c) your environment. You are using your awareness to carve out a space for you to safely inhabit while in the fullness of that awareness. It’s a way to regroup, breathe, gather yourself, and know what and where you are, and to know what’s there with you.

You can shield your self, your home, your car, your group of friends, but moving parts do increase the complexity of what you’re trying to hold in mind, which may lead to anxiety or frustration, which kind of opposes the exercise’s point. (Another sympathetic notion, here, is that of “warding,” though that can be said to be more for objects,not people.)

So what is the point?

The point is that many of us are being drained, today, this week, this month, this year, this life, and we need to remember to take the time to regroup and recharge. We need to shield ourselves, our spaces, and those we love, to ward them against those things that would sap us of strength and the will to fight. We know we are strong. We know that we are fierce, and capable. But we must not lash out wildly, meaninglessly. We mustn’t be lured into exhausting ourselves. We must collect ourselves, protect ourselves, replenish ourselves, and by “ourselves” I also obviously mean “each other.”

Mutual support and endurance will be crucial.

…So imagine that you’ve built a web out of all the things you love, and all of the things you love are connected to each other and the strands between them vibrate when touched. And you touch them all, yes?

And so you touch them all and they all touch you and the energy you generate is cyclically replenished, like ocean currents and gravity. And you use what you build—that thrumming hum of energy—to blanket and to protect and to energize that which creates it.

And we’ll do this every day. We’ll do this like breathing. We’ll do this like the way our muscles and tendons and bones slide across and pull against and support each other. We’ll do this like heartbeats. Cyclical. Mutually supporting. The burden on all of us, together, so that it’s never on any one of us alone.

So please take some time today, tomorrow, very soon to build your shields. Because, soon, we’re going to need you to deploy them more and more.

Thank you, and good luck.

The audio and text above are modified versions of this Twitter thread. This isn’t the first time we’ve talked about the overlap of politics, psychology, philosophy, and magic, and if you think it’ll be the last, then you haven’t been paying attention.

Sometimes, there isn’t much it feels like we can do, but we can support  and shield each other. We have to remember that, in the days, weeks, month, and years to come. We should probably be doing our best to remember it forever.

Anyway, I hope this helps.

Until Next Time