Purification and protection

Purification and protection are uneasy ideas for some, but ultimately all spiritual traditions have rituals and tools related to removing and keeping hostile spiritual influences away. Rather than being seen as some completely separate dimension of life, I think they form a continuum with mundane everyday life. A lot of common sense applies here. Just as it is easier to keep our bodies and homes clean if we don't drag dirt in or get ourselves dirty, avoiding "spiritual dirt" is a reasonable first step. A lot of everyday protection is simply staying away from hazardous situations, and the same applies to spiritual protection. However, living in this world in itself tends to make things "dirty". We may avoid the puddles of mud outside, yet we still drag dust in with our shoes. And no matter how much we stay out of danger, sometimes danger finds us. It's impossible to live without becoming tarnished in some way. It is how we deal with these things that matters.

Purification and cleansing

As the spiritual and material dimensions of reality are linked together, it is good to begin purufication and cleansing with some very concrete things.

First is maintaining personal hygiene, both before any rituals and in general. For example, if you are doing an I Ching or Tarot reading, it is good to wash your hands before doing it. Second is maintaining the cleanliness of your living space to the best of your abilities. Dirt and clutter draw in all kinds of negative and stale energies and therefore entities attracted to those energies.

Beyond these baseline two, you can spiritually cleanse spaces, items and yourself by other means. Salt is widely recognized to have purifying effects. You can scrub yourself with salt as part of personal purification, and you can use it to purify objects and spaces. Sprinkling salt into the corners of a room and then cleaning it out after 24 hours have passed is a way to purify a room. Some forms of incense, beyond being common offerings, are also thought to have purifying effects. These vary from culture to culture and tradition to tradition, but sandalwood, frankincense and sage are commonly used for purification. Frankincense is regarded to have near-universal effect.

There is another dimension of purification and cleansing that needs to be addressed. That is a kind of ”spiritual hygiene” via avoiding the consumption of distressing and inflaming material. This includes things like excessive consumption of horror, violent media, pornography or social media. These things are engineered to generate very strong, visceral reactions. Many people fill themselves with ”entertainment” that carries extremely strong energies. This affects not only their behaviors, but also fills them with the kind of energies that are very attractive to hostile and parasitic entities.

I don't think it's good to be hysteric about such things either, and we do live in a reality that includes fundamentally violent and horrifying aspects. Sexuality ever-present in both nature and human society. It's however one thing to be occasionally exposed to such things versus being completely immersed in them all of the time. Realizing just what kind of an impact such has on you can be a very stark experience.

Going beyond these basics, many spiritual traditions have their own purifying and protective measures. These include certain Buddhist mantras, the haraekotoba of Shinto and rituals from Chinese and Western traditions. Utilizing them most likely requires sincere belief and the desire to associate with the entities and values associated with these systems, as well as taking care of the baseline. Thus these particular techniques are out of the scope of this document.

Purification practices are not really separate from other practices or day to day life. Take the time needed to keep yourself and your living environment clean. Commit purification before prayers, divination and rituals.

Protection

A lot of entry level spiritual practice guides have some kind of section on protection rituals. I find these tend to be quite troublesome for a couple of reasons. First is that a lot of them basically require you to call upon specific entities. This is sometimes done with the mentality that the entities called upon are akin to spiritual vending machines that anyone can use if they just say the right words. I find this rather puzzling and I doubt that beings associated with specific traditions have very much interest in helping out someone who is not genuinely committed to that particular tradition. Calling upon specific beings begins a relationships that will likely come with two-way expectations. I find it downright unethical to urge people to use such rituals without clearly establishing what will happen.

Secondly, the focus on spiritual protection can cultivate either a false sense of security or a false sense of insecurity. The first will lead to the practitioner taking unnecessary risks that would have been best avoided if they had not been taken in the first place. The second will lead into a dynamic where the practitioner starts to view spirituality as a kind of combat, where the whole world is full of dangerous forces that have to be blocked off. This is an excessive reaction that will just cultivate some kind of an anxiety disorder or paranoid psychosis, unless the practitioner already has something like that. Excessive concern with protection and blocking off external influences will also lead to diminishing of the kind of sensitivity and receptivity required for spiritual practice.

Thirdly, the techniques require very good handle on visualization and being able to drive the “energy” to work, and a lot of practitioners who are starting out lack the ability to really do one or both effectively. It’s very strange then that often some kind of protection ritual is given as the very first thing to do. At worst this will agitate local garbage entities who will sense the intent, while the practitioner lacks any kind of ability to actually protect themselves. Riling up the locals who then knock on the walls and flash lights and project apparitions and learning to manage the situation seems to be an almost unspoken rite of passage for some traditions…

The best defense against spiritual threats are maintaining spiritual hygiene in the broad sense, allying yourself with a higher power and not seeking trouble. That said, sometimes trouble finds you, and this appears to be the case either when the practitioner suddenly “lights up” or becomes sufficiently advanced through practice.

With that in mind I give you the most stripped down, minimal form of a general protection ritual that I have found. It relies entirely on driving energy and visualization, and thus requires being able to do so.

1) Visualize a shaft of white light descending from the heavens, reaching down to the middle of your chest, called the heart center in some spiritual circles.
2) Visualize a shaft of red light ascending from the earth, reaching to the middle of your chest.
3) Visualize these two shafts of light blending into one and really try to feel their energy.
4) Clench your arm into a fist and press on the middle of your chest with enough force to feel the pressure.
5) Visualize the energy expanding outwards into a sphere that blocks hostile external influences.

An alternative is to perform the Tree Exercise and when you feel yourself filled with energy, start pushing it outwards into a sphere. Staying grounded – in all senses – is also a form of protection.