Pele’s Protection Ward
Pele is a powerful protector in her own right and it’s only natural to want to tap into that for a protective ward that taps into her fiery Destructive current. At first, I dug down into the Earth, attempting to tap into the raw current itself. I searched for it, but didn’t find the powerfully flowing (river) current I was expecting. Instead, it seemed almost sluggish and felt as if it was far away. I had asked Madame Pele about this in several different ways during the week I had with her, but she didn’t really answer the question (she clearly knew the answer, though).
Once I was back on Oahu, it was time to get back to work. I invited both Abaddon and Pele into my space to attempt to bridge this gap in knowledge.
“You failed.”, Abaddon said as a way of greeting me.
“I may again, if the problems are hard enough.”, I replied. It would be foolish to try to smooth it over. “I went in search of a river of energy, but found a sort of trickle, more like sludge. I don’t think I would be sent on a hunt for something that didn’t exist. Yet, that trickle I found didn’t feel strong enough to be useful to me and definitely wasn’t the solution.”.
“Shall I find you an easier problem?”
“Will I not still have to learn this lesson? Could I get more direction? A vague mention of a Destructive Current with no additional information hasn’t worked very well.”
Instead, I got a trial by Fire.
Abaddon waved his hand and I could feel some sort of slow-moving force full of…things…coming to test my defenses. I looked at both of them for some sort of clues or hints. They knew that I hadn’t been able to tap into the current I was expecting. They looked on in silence for a few minutes while I kept track of this threat creeping towards me.
“What’s under your feet?”, Pele asked. There was some amusement present in her voice.
The wave of things was only a few minutes away.
It finally came to me. There, very deep down, was molten earth. Now, how to tap into it in time?
It was at this point that I reached down into both myself and the Earth, connecting a raw, primal part of me to it, and, using this primal core, pulled the essence of the molten Earth up and into a dome. My space was protected. Abaddon called them off.
There were some key points that happened in that learning experience. They are worth considering and although they may not be lessons that everyone needs to learn, they may help others increase their craft. It should be noted that the point of the trial wasn’t to call to other Deities for help or some sort of “deliverance”. This had to come from me and what I could do about it.
The first is that simple wardings, although powerful enough for everyday use, wouldn’t have been enough. Their energy would’ve been depleted by successive waves and I wouldn’t have been able to keep it up against waves of (presumed) legions that went on for as far as I could see (mentally). Something greater was needed.
The second was that I had to feel under threat to take it seriously. I came to them knowing I had “failed” the tasks of tapping into the Destructive undercurrent. It was looking for that current that helped me remember to look down into the different parts of the Earth for a specific energy type. Probing and testing the currents I found helped me pull from the much greater current I felt from the molten lake inside the earth.
The third point was that I had to pull from a raw, external source of power to magnify what I could already do. Anyone that’s done energy work, especially tool-less energy workings, learns to clear out the energy of a space. Not just to clear away any unwanted energy remnants, but also for protective measures. You learn to do it or the power you start displaying, beaconing, as you do your workings can attract unwanted attention from lesser spirits (“ankle biters”). You get complacent when you repel lesser entities successfully enough that you rarely have to manually remove anything. The ego decides that it can handle most things with simpler energy workings without having to step up defensive abilities. Thus, they designed the exercise to force me to use what I knew, but that would also force me to use something in addition to myself. Again, this wasn’t an exercise in calling upon other Deities for safety.
The final point of interest was that I couldn’t just “wish” the fiery current to come up and into my space. I had to reach inside of myself, draw on that divine spark deep inside all of us, and use the authority from that divinity to pull it up and shape it into a protective sphere. The mind guided the energy, but that deep part of my soul is what brought it forth - pure, raw will acting with authority. I had been told by other Deities I work with that I needed to learn to tap into that part of myself not long before this happened. The truth was, I had dabbled with it, but hadn’t really had a good reason for reaching that far down and actually grabbing hold of it. Once it was done, it changed how I was going to do many of my rituals from then on.
That one trial, less than ten minutes long, changed how I practiced. I’ve developed the following exercise/ritual to help others achieve the same thing - before you need it. Please keep in mind the points I stated above and feel free to change it as is best for your practice. I want to also remind you that I had unknowingly practiced small parts of this separately prior to needing to put it together “on the fly”.
Prior to the Next Exercise -
I would encourage you to use a banishing ritual. I would also encourage you to be able to sense the energy in your environment. If you cannot feel the energy of your environment, it is a skill that is absolutely necessary for your future magical endeavors. Will this work without being able to do this? It could. It will grow in power with your ability to feel and manipulate energy, both inside of yourself and your environment. You need to be able to sink inside of yourself until you find and recognize that core part of your soul that only belongs to you. This part of yourself is the main driver of this ritual. If you cannot feel it at this point, I would encourage you to strive to find it (by going within) and using the Fire and Earth Meditation to connect with it more readily.