hello hi welcome to knit a spell i'm your host james divine and i'm katie rempe light from lantern presents knit a spell i'm magical maker katie rempe and i'm the maker of magic james divine join us as we stitch together the symbiotic relationship between crafting and the craft today we're going to talk about spiritual waters cleansing washes and room sprays and all the these similar and all and all that ilk yes your aura needs a cleanse honey for those of you who might recall back in episode 10 we did briefly talk about uh boundaries and spiritual hygiene which did include sprays of that nature but we didn't really dig in to the details especially after i realized that spiritual sprays is sort of just like a sub-topic of a much larger scale of the you know spiritual water uh kingdom i guess so for people who who are not really sure what the heck we're talking about we're not talking about bathroom cleaners i'm pretty sure although it could be we're talking about spiritual cleaners too right they're kind of related let's just talk about cleaning how do you clean your house you clean your house with you know you sprinkle that cleanser in the sink and you scrub it out and you spray that you know cleaner on the countertops or you scrub out that toilet bowl and you get out the lysol and you're you're cleaning your house you mop that floor yes there are how do we live a magical lifestyle we might make our everyday activities be magical and one of the ways to do that is to create magical cleansers and cleaners and so chemical cleaners that we would use to wash the floor or clean our house are actually related to spiritual waters so in american folk magic in things like who do and conjure and root work those sorts of terms there are things called spiritual washes or spiritual waters where someone would mix up a bucket of cleanser and and cleaning agent and a lot of times it does actually include ammonia because ammonia is seen as a magical has magical properties it is also a good cleaner for your actual house imagine that in that ammonia there would also potentially be other herbs that have magical properties herbs and oils essential oils there might be symbolic herbs that don't have chemical or cleaning properties but there might be a magical reason you would put a hija on the conqueror root that is floating around inside that floor wash or you might have a coin inside that floor wash for some reason for instance so you might have different things in that floor wash that bring energy or an energetic intention to that floor wash and maybe it's a wash not just for the floor well now you have the person that is using that floor wash and they are going to wash the door frame the door knobs they're going to wash the walls of the house they're going to wash the floors they're also going to have a particular way a process where they start in one part of the house and work their way around the house in a particular in a particular very particular method and series so that they are washing their way and they're washing their way either out the front door and then they throw the bucket of water out the front door or out the back door and it's very very intentional the method and the order in which things are cleaned when they're done they will maybe slam or close the door and not look back and have a very particular way in which things are done it's all intentional this is a little glimpse into what little bit i know about how people would use a spiritual water to clean their home and so you see how chemical cleaners that we might use to clean the bathroom are related to these spiritual washes people would use an american folk magic which is related to these folk magic that is inherited from the afro-caribbean and then the african traditions that are brought to us through the uh unfortunately through the slave trade but are taught to the americans and to um and and from the indigenous people and so we owe a great debt to the people who died and sacrificed themselves from slave through slavery yes indeed and so this is where we get a lot of spiritual waters and where these traditions come from so it's one example of the use of spiritual waters in the united states that is so mind-boggling i mean it's a ritual of cleaning right of course it is and it makes so much sense that it would have come from i mean original cleaners these are the original cleaners before we had you know manufactured man-made synthetic options that are right polluting the earth if you think about the delineation of space when we think about creating space magical space we think about the broom and what's the difference between inside your house and outside your house inside your hut outside your house inside the cave outside the cave it's the difference between where you're sweeping and where you're sweeping to where's the limit or the delineation of what you're sweeping and so i'm sweeping the inside of my house to the outside of my house and that doorway is where i stopped sweeping and so the broom becomes a magical object of creating space and so it becomes a a routine object of creating space but it's also kind of a magical object of oh i'm creating the space what what makes the difference between inside and outside and this is true of a wash you wash the inside of your house people can also wash the outside of the house magically but i create i wash the inside of my house and that's what's inside and protecting me and it's different from the outside it'd be a great follow-up episode to bring cindy toto back or some other folks that practice uh american folk magic and ask them about how they use spiritual waters however there's other ways to use spiritual waters as well for instance to uh wash not just your home but to wash yourself
yourself if you feel like you have some sort of contamination and this is something that goes back you know ages in western culture in african culture this is universal the idea of a ritual bath that we would look to water to purify us so we see this in the ancient greeks we see this um all over the idea that water can be purifying and so we see this in the idea of baptism you know from christian ideas but the spiritual wash is something that is again taken from the afro-caribbean traditions and and brought into american folk magic and also from indigenous traditions and this is the idea of adding herbs and oils to water and so the idea is you would take a great big pot you put it on the stove and you would add herbs to the pot and you would make like a tea if you imagined that and you would boil these herbs and like steep a tea of magical herbs that have certain intentions and then once that tea or that concoction cools um so that it's safe to use you would then perhaps in there would also be salt there would potentially be other herbs for you based on what intent you need you would then go into the bath or the shower and you would then put that concoction over your body you would either ladle it over you while saying certain prayers or incantations or reading verses from the bible or saying certain ritualistic terms or words while sort of rubbing it into you or anointing yourself with oils or other things and so you would use that as a ritual bath to anoint yourself and a lot of times you would have taken a shower beforehand to wash your body traditionally and then you would take this ritual bath and then you would get out of the shower and kind of um you know pat yourself dry but you would still have those oils and herbs scented on you so that you're radiating this energy this is a perfume almost yeah or maybe if it's a protective spell it might not be a perfume it might smell a little bit odd that's part of it and i'm giving you a very high level perspective on how this works there's lots of details that i'm leaving out my recommendation is find preferably a person of color who practices and is trained in who do and knows how to do these things and pay them to teach you glean from the experts the originators yeah absolutely why is it more powerful if through training we make it ourselves well just like why is it more powerful to make the scarf yourself or the you know whatever often the people who are selling the finished product are also selling the ingredients to make that finished product so making it yourself and gathering the materials you get to bring the intent and focus for the entire process so let me give you an example if i want to make a room spray so that my the room i'm in carries the intention or changes the vibration so that i have focus and you know i'm removing the blocks and i'm opening up the roads for me to write my book and i want to create a room spray for that i would have to look up like what are the herbs what are the scents what's the scent profile how would that work then i would start to do that research i would be educating myself i'd be crafting it together i'd be putting things together i'd be researching so i'd be educating myself i would be invested in this process i'd be invested in in doing the things that are here i would then put together the room spray and then i would shake it up know that i made this and i love the way it smells it's my own concoction and then every day i would spray it around the room and it would bring that vibration what a cool craft and magic to bring into the room knowing that i was the person that did it from beginning to end and it was extraordinarily powerful for me to bring that into fruition that is a truly magical act that through the act of my will i brought something into fruition how much more am i invested in actually removing the blocks in my life and invested in making that energy true in the office and and making my intent of what i'm doing with that room spray actually happen as a control freak i enjoy making my own sprays so i also have um i can get migraines triggered really easily so it's really important for me to know what's in the sprays that i use what are some different types of spiritual waters and what they mean i didn't even think that there would be so many varietals but of course there are because everything has a variety of options so florida water was always uh the one that i thought of first so florida water is not actually water from florida the floral scented water that was originally used as a perfume or cologne by both men and women in the 19th century so i think of it being like always smells like roses like really strongly of roses and it's in that distinctive bottle with a really skinny neck oh yeah it was traditionally uh used in the hudu traditions for like spiritual offerings protection on the home by putting a spray bottle you can spray it in the air um and it's good for cleaning objects as well then of course holy water we might be familiar with that concept right oh no kidding every time we i as a kid i would enter the catholic church i would do the sign of the cross with holy water i never i you know that's so funny i never thought about that being a spiritual water but like duh no duh that's totally a spiritual water another spiritual water is bay rum which is an astringent perfume which has famously been used by men as aftershave so i'm sure it smells great my dad in fact i have royal bay rum in my cabinet in the bathroom because it reminds me of my dad i actually love the way it smells i love the way royal bay rum smells it's so yummy how does it smell just like rum it no it smells like bay leaves oh i guess that makes sense and it smells like clove that's why i love it because it smells like cloves and bay leaves together it's fabulous but it does give me a mic oh well the last one which again i was like oh it's a blue water which i think we talked again about at one point because i i heard um bluing in here so blue water is used to get rid of a person or place of negativity negative energy hexes cross conditions and it can easily be made by adding liquid bluing to tap water with a pinch of salt i remember you commenting on liquid bluing that was not so good though right well you don't want to drink it but this is a traditional thing that you put on your ancestor altar so if you have an ancestor altar it's traditional in the south to put a glass of blue water some people put clear water but other people put a little glass of blue water so it's a little bit of bluing with salt and blueing in it i just never thought of blue water being a spiritual water but doi it totally is that's amazing yeah i i learned about that from mama star so star cassis wrote a book called old style conjurer who do your love herbal we should have her on as a guest she would make an amazing guest on a lot of these topics so star casus is a friend of cindy toto who knew well i'm i'm sure there are more spiritual waters out there that we're not even thinking of so if any listener knows that would like to tell us what we're missing you can always drop us a line at knittaspellpodcast gmail.com why don't we take a quick break and when we come back we'll talk about how these can be applied to your making exciting news listeners knittispell is coming to patreon this summer
our fan club will help you gain access to advanced notice to our monthly topics and guests episode outtakes voter power for future guests and episode topics private community to connect with other fans that's my favorite exclusive giveaways and promotions and coming soon we will be adding a special segment to knit a spell which will be a q and a segment with your questions patreon members will be exclusively answered for their questions so we hope you'll join us join us and you'll be doing this all while supporting one of your favorite podcasts wrapped up in our gratitude to learn more sign up for our newsletter at knittespell.com so jim i was hoping that you could tell the folks at home and our listeners about your amazing class palmistry tarot mashup with my friend madame pamita we dive in and decipher the secret signals the hand gestures are sending us in the tarot deck you will learn about how the hands and finger positions what they mean and how to interpret them and get an insight into human nature and human unconscious you can get lifetime access to this class for just 29 by visiting bit dot l y forward slash p t mash up the palmistry tarot mashup it's super fun lifetime access self-paced you took the class i did and i learned a lot and i can't recommend it highly enough so definitely check it out and you'll be glad you did because your tarot reading skills are going to be increased exponentially by these two wonderful hosts on this class so don't miss out and we're back so i have noticed especially on the instagrams and the tick tocks spiritual sprays like in particular sprays seem to be the thing right now on trent look at you with your spiritual sidekick right there yes exactly why at this time spiritual sprays in particular are like having a second coming oh i i think there's a real reason one of the things is well because of the internet dub but right one of the things that's happened is we've become very aware that white sage is endangered and then there's this idea that burning of sage is somehow cultural appropriation there's a lot of argument about whether the burning of or that smoke is somehow not permitted there's a lot of argument about whether that's true or not i mean smoke has been used as a purification by lots of cultures so there's all over the world sure not something that we're gonna talk about at the moment but so there is something about taking essential uh tincture of woods or of uh resins putting them into water and then using the water as a liquid smudge so that trend showed up as an alternative to smoke and it caught on because there's a lot of people that are also allergic to smoke there's a lot of people that live in buildings or apartments or uh college kids that are in dorms where smoke is not allowed but it is okay to then just yeah and that's not smoke it's just a mist and that mist is completely appropriate for an apartment or for a hotel room or for a dormitory and the scent is super light and if it's somewhere someone like i love love it's 100 natural there's nothing not even any essential oil it's really just you know a tincture into the water i never even thought about that that's because of the practicality of it exactly totally practical you can go you can get travel sizes of it you know like this where you can then use it bring it in your luggage and then use it at a hotel room or if you're at a conference and the hotel and you're doing a presentation and the hotel says you can't burn candles or incense in a conference room like all hotels are then you can use a spray to do a ritual there's a lot of really good practical reasons why these sprays have caught on in the magical community that makes a lot of sense so one of the things that i've made is during the pandemic of course people are making sourdough bread did you notice bread had a comeback during this yeah it was really good so did weight gain did you notice that oh yeah everything was rising i personally noticed that yeah but also we all we all wanted to make things because we're bored out of our skull so making had a really big thing and one of the things that i made was let's make our own hand sanitizer so but of course drinking had a comeback yeah right so i noticed so we we got everclear and added lemon peel and other herbs and some essential oils and made this amazing hand sanitizer and so that was a form of room spray if you then add water you can then create a room spray and a little more essential oil you have to shake it but then it's a really great room spray as well so that was kind of a fun room spray that we were making if you're using the extracts out of your spice cabinet ooh it becomes a spray and a banaca actually i kind of like that number can protect your mouth from saying something stupid later yeah you could make banaca blast a spiritual breath spray is that a thing you just it's not we're gonna make it let's make that the spirit it's bell's first product it gets you really drunk you'll never pass a um a breathalyzer that's right yeah don't take this right before the breathalyzer speaking of making now that we've made our banaca another spray i was thinking you could make was of course spraying for your magically made items so whether it's you know something you've knit or crocheted or woven or whatever quite often they need to be blocked um you know you could put it submerge it into a water or a wash that has you know the herbs in it as long as of course you have made sure to test the swatch that it won't bleed or that the ingredients you're putting in won't change the dye fiber whatever of the piece you're putting in you know do tests ahead of time however assuming all is good they're great too like you said uh with the body wash it adds the aroma of the energy that your intent is behind so why not make like a little spray that maybe has like some lavender in it that's just really mellow and you put that on your comfort shawl that you've made for your friends so that when they open it it's like it's it smells like the intent are there really some things that would mess up i mean isn't the blocking water i just can't imagine anything that you would put in a blocking water that would mess up your dies so i mean it would depend on the dye type and how it was set and even the fiber there's what are some examples of things to look out for like lemon i guess is an acid right so if something is too acidic or too basic that could mess up the dyes is that what you're saying yeah definitely that can be an issue also some agents pull you know the dirt out but by doing so they also pull some of the dye products out so um colors that are prone to you know having bad stick anyway like blues and reds they're more susceptible to losing color during the wash process even if it was just water so adding things that could further bring that out like even um wool washes that are specifically made for knitters and yarns have this problem occasionally where trying to wash it can accidentally lead to color wash or lost so you know it just is what it is yeah but that's part of you know the buyer beware slash be a good crafter and test your products first before you just submerge all your all your work in there or maybe it's part of the karma of the work that's right protect yourself from having a bad time and always test on a swatch first i love the idea of something that has pretty neutral is likely to have pretty neutral ph if i was blocking something and was following something that was pretty neutral like just water i knew that i was gonna block it with water or whatever then i would put something energetic in there it may not have end up having a scent i would go and get the herb the dried herb of something and sprinkle it in there remember that you can bring that herb in with the intent it will bring the energy of it without having a huge impact or be worried about gosh what is this going to do to my finished product to the dyes or to you know something to the yarn or to the fiber you can bring that into the energy and that's the same thing with when we talked last week about the crystals if you bring something from the quartz family a rose quartz an amethyst a citrine a clear quartz and put that quartz into your blocking water or near or on your piece that can bring that vibration to your piece or if you're incorporating those beads into your piece then you're bringing that energy into the piece that you're using those are the things that i would imagine without really needing to be overly like freaked out and i i think it's a great point to not forget about essences which is exactly like you said it's not submerging anything necessarily it's it's putting the energy of the thing next to water for that to be absorbed by it which interestingly enough i read a book called the hidden messages in water and it talks about an instance where like a glass of water was left next to something that was poisonous and the water became toxic poisonous like like what it was next to even though it never touched so it's a real scientific thing this is not just like made up woo-woo um it's it's for real so so this is one of the things that water can carry your emotions the element of water the capital w water is the idea the archetype of emotion and our empathy and compassion so water will adapt to the emotion that you put into it so one of the things that you can do with blocking water for your craft is to put your intent into the water if you want to make a spiritual water to block with you can put that big pot of water on the stove you can put herbs into it that are neutral ph neutral you can make a mild tea out of them it won't have any scent it won't have any dye it'll just be very mild you're just putting a little bit of the essence in there cool it off don't block it with hot water unless it's directed use is directed and then once the water is cold you strain it out or not and then you use that water to block your piece and the what you've done while you're boiling the water making the tea and then while you're holding that water you just imagine that intent if you're imagining this baby blanket then you imagine holding that baby with all of the love you have put all of your energy all of your love all of your intent all of you whatever it is into that water then you use that water to block that piece that water will hold that energy it's a really great magical yeah you could even like you know if this was a gift save a little bit put it in a spray bottle and send it along with it to have like a little extra recharge huh a fabulous idea is here's some of your spiritual blocking water yeah to recharge your piece it's like the amniotic fluid what your piece was birthed in huh well that's a weird way to end this but i like it well let's do a quick card poll before we leave what do you think yeah what deck should we use i have a new one sort of if you're down huh i'm down i'm always down it is the newly released because i just got it from the kickstarter i backed
lifeline tarot color outside the lines so thomas hermits mirror re-released his tarot deck in a tarot size as opposed to the playing card size that it was previously available in so we're going to do the full-size deck well is it in a magnetic box now it sure is so many wonderful people supported his work that he was able to do the magnetic box it's very beautiful beautiful inside are these colorized and they're colorized they just watch wow yes i know are they still playing card material you know they're similar playing card material yeah i would say they're very slick which i like and they're not really thick so they're going to be easy for me to shuffle in my preference our question today or for the week is uh what wants to be cleansed from us this week um interesting seven of swords so allow me to reflect on this for a quick second i feel like this card gets a bad rap i know it's all like perceived as like this guy's making off with something and i don't think that's incorrect however i also think this guy could be perceived as someone who's trying not to get overwhelmed by someone coming after them so instead of this person sneaking around to just steal their stuff maybe they're sneaking around to take some of their resources so that they can't hit back as hard you know what i'm saying so you're not giving someone as much power taking back your power take back your power yeah the swords are air the swords are ideas communication this is the realm of the mind so the seven of swords depicts a a person you stealing swords maybe and maybe stealing definitely swords this is the act of taking back your ideas how many times have you given your ideas away or let your ideas escape or told people your ideas to have them not be utilized or left behind the expression on this on your face is a sense of guilt like you're not allowed to own your intellectual property or they're not yours to keep they are yours to keep own your power take your ideas it's okay for you to own your ideas to own your thoughts and to run with them your ideas are worthy they're valid and you can you can have them that's the positive side the overuse of the skill is don't be a greedy pig and stealing other people's ideas but that's what we always focus on we always focus on the overuse of the skill in this card because we're afraid of being greedy advantage of or yes the proper use of this is own your ideas and run with that which is exactly what you said katie yeah you can let your ideas be stolen simply by not acting on them at all all right everybody we'll mull on that one for the weekend i hope that actually answered the question which was what is their clear what needs to be cleansed this week i think imposter syndrome huh yeah the idea that you're not worthy of your ideas you are worthy of your ideas exactly embrace them and don't be afraid of it you don't have to sneak around well until next week when we talk about safety sigils
this is very fun and i'll see you next week all right see you then thanks for thanks for listening if you enjoyed the show consider sharing it with a friend leaving a review on itunes and spotify or following knit a spell on instagram you can also subscribe to the like from lantern youtube channel to enjoy full episodes of knit a spell and see our happy faces you can also learn more about ratings classes and events going on with your favorite maker of magic james divine by visiting thedivinehand.com and subscribing to his newsletter then follow jim's fun and interactive instagram account at divine hand gym keep up with katie the magical maker by subscribing to her newsletter at lightfromlantern.com you'll even receive a free knitting pattern as a thank you gift then follow katie on instagram at lightfromlantern for even more magical making tips see you next week
