Gesture Magick and Spoken Spells

[Christinia Forshee]

Hi all. Does anyone have any online resources or book recommendations for studying spoken spells? I am talking about spells that use only your voice rather than needing herbs or candles or anything. I'm also interested in spells and how to do workings that might involve both words and gestures but I can't find a lot of resources on it because everything is like "For this you will need a candle and frankincense...." etc.

[Jenett]

Hi all. Does anyone have any online resources or book recommendations for studying spoken spells? I am talking about spells that use only your voice rather than needing herbs or candles or anything. I'm also interested in spells and how to do workings that might involve both words and gestures but I can't find a lot of resources on it because everything is like "For this you will need a candle and frankincense...." etc.

 
I'm thinking about online resources, but one thing you might want to also look at is sigil magic - you don't necessarily need anything other than pen and paper for it. (And there are a ton of websites on this one.)

You might also investigate chants: the trick, of course, is finding or creating a chant that works with your actual goal, but this can be highly effective. (Ideally, the best chants for magical purposes tend to be short - 2 lines, maybe 4 - that you can repeat over and over, and that have a sufficiently singable tune that you can sing it repeatedly.)

For books, there's the book Composing Magic: How to Create Magical Spells, Rituals, Blessings, Chants, and Prayer by Elizabeth Barrette. Marian Weinstein's book Postive Magick is an old classic, and has a chapter on Words of Power that can be very effective.

The other thing, simply, is to look at the spells you have, and break them down and figure out how to reframe them using items you do have. (The book recs I gave you in the other thread where you asked about magical techniques yesterday apply here.) I almost never do magic that is very 'use this particular candle and this particular oil' that I'm only going to do once or twice but I will sometimes do 'do these things with X, Y, and Z common cooking herb' or 'candle + chant'.

I do a variation on sigil magic for long-term workings, pretty often and with good results: I do a design, usually with some combination of words, sketched illustrations, use of color, etc. depending on my goals, and then color it in. I normally use watercolor pencils, so I can use the 'brush with water' part to activate the magical work and focus on spreading it out into the world, but you can easily do it with colored pens, or even black and white.