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| http://www.luckymojo.com |
Wk 5 - Mar. 30 - Any topic of your choice! Have fun with this one. Prose, poetry, fiction, art
work or any other creative format are welcome!
"Cleanliness and Godliness"
I’ve
been studying a little bit of hoodoo while working at a local occult and
conjure shop. My boss is a little very obsessive about cleanliness, which has
been a bit of a challenge for me. I’m not
a dirty person, but I am a
messy/cluttered person. Also, a little
dust doesn’t really bother me; it flies right under my radar. My boss would like me to sweep more, I’d like
him to pay more attention to the inventories I do. You give, you take, you win some, you lose
some. C'est la vie.
In
the tradition of hoodoo, however, cleanliness is very important. Though I’m no expert, it seems as if hoodoo
is heavily reliant on sympathetic magic.
That is, imitation and correspondence are very important. Phallic-shaped items are good for male
virility, green items are good for money, walnuts are good for the brain
because they resemble little brains, and a cluttered and messy home attracts a
cluttered and messy life. So, if you
have dust bunnies and clutter all over your living space, lower-level entities
and spirits will be attracted to those spaces.
These guys, while not necessarily evil or anything, aren’t really good,
either and they can really muck stuff up.
(Not to mention, if you have a lot of low-level bad stuff around you,
that in turn may attract other stuff, which will attract other stuff, which
will attract other stuff. Not good!)
I’ve
seen it recommended that before doing any magical working one should clean their
whole space. This would include your
house, your room, your altar, and yourself.
Magical baths are incredibly important in hoodoo, too, both to banish
energies away and to draw them into your life.
Pre-ritual baths are popular in Neo-Paganism as well, though most often
for a body/mind/spirit cleansing.
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About
a year ago I came down with a bad case of the flu. I was sick for about a week, being able to do
little else than sit around, sleep, and watch terrible 80s movies all day. I was in graduate school at the time, and I
didn’t even have the energy to catch up on homework or reading. After a few days of Gatorade, pajamas and
soup, I decided I had just enough energy to clean up my room a bit, to air out
the stench of sick and illness. I
rearranged things, cleaned up any piles of clutter, dusted, lit incense,
smudged, and wiped down surfaces… until my whole room was perfect. Even though I was exhausted from working so
hard, I felt so much better, and the flu cleared the next day.
So,
my challenge for all of my readers right now is to go clean something! It doesn’t matter what it is. Clean your body, clean your desk, clean your
room, clean your whole house from top to bottom, clean one room, clean one
closet – just go clean something. I
promise it won’t take as long as you think it will, it will be painless, and
you’ll feel good after doing something so productive.
Go! Go do it!
If you don’t clean your house, at least go clean your altar. It will feel wonderful!
