There are many online pagan sites that offer knowledge, advise and companionship to the both the solitary practitioner and those who are part of a coven. I have been to many different pagan communities. The one community that kept me coming back, to learn and share is Global Pagans Online, also known as GPO. It's unique offerings make it truly one-of-a-kind. GPO is celebrating it's second year and has been redone to offer a wheel of the year calendar, online rituals, chat room, private messages, and so much more. Come join us.

Casting Your Circle

CASTING CIRCLE

Before performing any spell or ritual it’s good to cast a circle for protection it’s not necessary but it gives you a “comfort zone” of added protection. Your circle may be physical or visual.

Use an athame or your finger and trace the circle clockwise. This is your sacred area. Visualize energy - your will - running out of your hand and through the tip of the athame or finger creating a protective sphere of energy.

As you create your circle, stop at each Watchtower (E,S,W,N) you invoke the corresponding elemental guardian. Use your energy as a silent call to the powers of that element (Guardians,
Elementals, or Spirit Guide) to protect and watch over you.

ELEMENTAL INVOCATIONS
Face East. Raise Athame to the sky, trace an East invoking pentagram with athame…(you can leave out the pentagram if you wish)Hail, Guardians(or spirit guides) of the East, Powers of Air, I invoke you and call you. Rising sun of hope, come! By the air that is Her breath, send forth Your light!Be with me now!
Trace circle in air to the South, trace a South invoking pentagram with athame…(pentagram optional)Hail, Guardians(or spirit guides) of the South, Powers of Fire, I invoke you and call you.Flaming ones, Spark of life, come!By the fire that is Her spirit, send forth Your flame, Be with me now!
Trace circle in air to the West, trace a West invoking pentagram with athame…(pentagram optional)Hail, Guardians(or spirit guides) of the West, Powers of Water, I invoke you and call you. Powerful waves, water of life, come! By the waters of the Living Womb, send forth Your flow, Be with me now!
Trace circle in air to the North, trace a North invoking pentagram with athame…(pentagram optional)Hail, Guardians(spirit guides) of the North, Powers of Earth, Cornerstone of all power I invoke and call you.Fertile field, towering mountain come!By the earth that is Her body, send forth your strength, Be with me now!
(Complete the circle)


HOW TO CLOSE THE CIRCLE: Starting again at the north, take your athame or index finger and move in a clockwise motion, visualizing the pure white light of your circle being drawn into the blade or your finger, say while doing this...
"Guardian of the North (spirit guide, element) , I thank you for coming to my circle, I thank you for your protection and wisdom", (continue on to the west)
"Guardian of the West (spirit guide, element), I thank you for coming to my circle, I thank you for your protection and wisdom", (continue on to the south)
"Guardian of the South (spirit guide, element), I thank you for coming to my circle, I thank you for your protection and wisdom (continue on to the east)
"Guardian of the east(spirit guide, element), I thank you for coming to my circle, I thank you for your protection and wisdom (continue back to north)
"The circle is open yet unbroken" while doing this. Finish in the north and either ground the energy by dispersing it into the earth or save it in your athame for use at a later time.

Grounding and Centering

Grounding

There are many ways to ground and I am not going to touch on all of them. I will give you my favorite and couple of others, but if they do not work for you, you can research others.
Grounding is being aware of the space you inhabit and your impact on it and its impact on you. Close your eyes. Feel the air against your skin. Feel the ground beneath your feet. Inhale and smell the different particles in the air. Feel your feet becoming heavy into the ground - like you are growing roots. The earth feeds and nourishes you - the air allows you to breathe and be free.

Tree grounding

You can perform this anywhere. All you have to is visualize yourself as a tree. You can imagine your legs as the trunk and roots growing out of your feet and into the ground. If you are into chakra work, imagine a trunk growing out of your root chakra and going into the ground. You need to form a ball of cleansing white energy in your body and feel it sweeping through and collecting any excess unwanted energy or negativity. When you feel you have collected all of it in this white ball, let the ball flow through your trunk and into the ground where the energy can be returned to the Goddess to be used as she sees fit.

River grounding
This may be easier for some and can also be used as a cleansing. Picture yourself lying in a river. Just as a river carries leaves and debris away, feel the water flow over you removing all of the debris(unwanted and excess energy) away from you to be returned to the Goddess as she sees fit.

Centering

I then begin to travel inside myself, after grounding. Breathing deeply I shut off my awareness of the sounds, smells, and feel of the space around me. Instead I travel to a place just below my heart. I can feel and hear the soft whoosh swoosh of the blood flowing through my body, the soft lub-lub of my heart beating. No thoughts or thought process are allowed to enter here - no input from the outside world. I am centered within myself.

Colour Correspondences

Colours play an important part of magick. Whether it be for visualization or in use of candle magick the colour you chose can aid your spell. The colour system that we use today most likely came from European magickal systems, one being Kabbalah. Here is the most common colour system used today, the last three being influences from Hoodoo practices.

1. White -- spiritual blessings, purity, healing, rest
2. Light Blue -- peace, harmony, joy, kindly intentions
3. Dark Blue -- moodiness, depression, unfortunate circumstances
4. Green -- money, gambling luck, business, steady work, good crops
5. Yellow -- devotion, prayer, money (gold), cheerfulness, attraction
6. Red -- love, affection, passion, bodily vigour
7. Pink -- attraction, romance, clean living
8. Purple -- mastery, power, ambition, control, command
9. Orange -- change of plans, opening the way, prophetic dreams
10. Brown -- court cases, neutrality
11. Black -- repulsion, dark thoughts, sorrow, freedom from evil
12. Red & Black (Double Action) -- love-jinxing, removal of love
13. White & Black (Double Action) -- to return evil to the sender
14. Green & Black (Double Action) -- money-jinxing, get money owed

Associations and Correspondences

Associations and Correspondences are things YOU relate together - the idea of one makes you think of the other. There are 4 types of association:

1) Personal - something you associate based on your own mind and life experiences (like the smell of grandma's cookies makes you happy)
2) Familial - something you are raised to associate together, sadly this also includes prejudices as well.
3) Regional - something your area tends to associate - like in the North East where most people are way liberal, not so with the south..
4) Traditional- these are associations based on the Path you follow, its an accumulation of all the above in regards to the people who came before you on that Path.

So what’s the point? Well, correspondences/associations tend to help us short-cut. You are trying to achieve a specific result, so you tend to use things that make you think of it. So, here's an example....
You want to connect with your Grandfather in the spirit world during a spirit walk (astral projection), to find this one spirit among the billions you need a strong connection to him. Having his picture, maybe his favorite fishing lure or hat, etc. This way your mind is over-loaded with things that remind you of grandpa. This builds the psychic connection. This is exactly how associations work.. Someone needed to achieve a purpose (like hooking up with grandpa) so they used all the tools they could find to help the connection. When it worked they made a list of all their tools and thus the Contact The Spirit correspondence list began.
So, even if you bought a book on Celtic Correspondences and Associations, and you are a strict Celtic Pagan - you may find NONE of the correspondences work for YOU!! The lists are meant to be a guide - what has worked for like-minded people in the past. But as you get more comfortable with practicing you'll make your own list of associations - things you relate together.

Shielding and Protection

Protection of your energy is important. There are a couple of different ways to protect yourself.
Simply surround yourself with white light, and imagine a force field being established around your physical body. However, to me this is equivalent to "trapping" unwanted stress, anxiety or negative energies within your physical body and inside your shield. So you might be blocking the external negative forces, but you're trapping your own negative energies that you create yourself, within your shield.
A better method is to generate a protection shield from the inside of your being and "push" those unwanted energies out of your body,balance your energy and then set a shield around you. This way you're clearing, cleansing, balancing and setting your shield of protection all at the same time. Now don't panic, it's not as hard as you think. You can even add a little step to this process to bring in positive Divine energy into your being to add to your well being or mental state of being as well.

Balancing your Energies

Why Balance Your Energies?

Have you ever woken up in the morning and felt "out of it", "not all
there" or flighty? Or perhaps you notice in the middle of the day
that you feel "heavy", or "pulled down". If you are sure there is not a medical problem, this could be from an unbalance in your energy field.

There is some validity in the old adage "Too much of a good thing can still be bad for you". It's very true. Living to much in the spiritual mind and not being grounded isn't any better than those who live in the physical world and never
give their spiritual natures a second thought. In a sense it tries to define living in extremes as not living in balance.

There are other ways to affect your energies as well. Worry and
anxiety that causes you to always be thinking of issues and problems
can make you flighty. Trying to burn the candle at both ends, always
bogged down in work and never taking time to relax or release stress
can pull you down. In either case, you can eventually affect your
energy to the point of developing physical ailments.

So occasionally working to balance your energies and setting a
shield of protection is a good idea. Depending on the events in your
life, you may want to balance your energies once a week, or twice a
month. Each person is different and handles life in different ways;
so it's really up to you how often you feel you need this exercise.
One of the best methods in balancing and protecting yourself is to
use visualization. Albert Einstein said in a theory paper "Thought
is energy, to create it, just use your imagination."