City Magick: Urban Rituals, Spells and Shamanism - Christopher Penczak 2001
Devas of The City and City Nature Spirits
Metropolitan Spirits
Recently, I have started working with the devic world, the universe’s architects in the vast landscape of Earth. I guess I have always worked with them, but never acknowledged it. Devas are energies, or spirit forms, who create the patterns of reality on higher levels of existence. The word is originally from Hindu myth, meaning something akin to angel, but the New Age has adopted it to mean creators, or angels, of nature.
Nature spirits, sometimes identified with the faeries, plant life, and elementals, come in and fulfill the deva’s patterns, making them a physical reality. Sometimes, the two terms are used synonymously, but nature spirits and devas are not the same. They work as partners and want to include us in the partnership.
The idea of “city nature spirits” may seem contradictory. Would a nature spirit not be in nature, in the wild? That very sentiment is the antithesis of the magick we are working here. The prevailing belief is that cities are unnatural, while the country is natural. You must break that existing belief structure to acknowledge that all is real, all is sacred, and, ultimately, all is natural.
Everything on Earth has a deva. All species, places, concepts, and organizations have a deva. There is a deva of strawberry fields, both the location, in England, and the Beatles’ song. There is a deva of healing and of grasshoppers. General Electric has a deva helping the company, as do the Boston Red Sox and Greenpeace. One does not have to be all-natural, or doing only charitable, humane, or healing work. All things with structure and organization, which is pretty much everything, have some sort of devic spirit working with them. Anything created, naturally or by humans, has a deva. They move the right things into place. When you are not aware of these forces, some projects are more difficult, because you may be fighting against the natural structure the deva wants to use. Construction projects may take years longer than planned because of unseen delays. The city deva in that area is trying to tell you to do something different. Devas want to work with humans, as they do with nature spirits, in partnership, but most humans do not listen to them. I think if they did, our communities would be much more beautiful and harmonious. Cities would not be seen as evil or dirty. They would be in a stronger balance with the whole, and not based on the arbitrary judgments of power-hungry men in control. They would be based in a co-creative partnership with the land below and around them.
Some devas are called “overlighting,” because they organize their peers into subcategories around them. The main deva of healing is the overlighting deva of healing, because it works with all the devas specializing in heart healing, brain healing, or muscle healing. Each deva works with the appropriate nature spirits to make the new patterns take hold in physical reality. Although never called overlighting, Pan, the Greek god, is considered a global nature spirit capable of guiding other nature energies to the right positions. Other gods have similar roles, like the Celtic and Sufi Green Man.
As I came to realize this, I gained a profound insight. All cities have a devic spirit in control of them. In many ways, this is the spirit of the city itself. The overlighting deva of the city organizes the other spirits. The deva of New York City works with the deva of the Empire State Building, the deva of the Statue of Liberty, the deva of Central Park, and the devas of the East and West Villages. I am sure there are some pretty fabulous divas in the village who would be disappointed to know they were not the “Deva” of the village.
Call upon these forces in ritual. They want to make contact with you. They want to work together. Doing magick on their territory is going to affect them. The energy you send out for your spells will be working through these city architects. They do more than guide the physical structure of the city. Meditate to make contact with them. Call upon the city spirit if you are not comfortable with the more “New Agey” paradigm of devas and nature spirits, but do work with them directly, regardless of the label you give them or the form they take. Devas, nature spirits, faeries, or elementals are just labels for energies, to make the discussion easier. Call upon the spirits of your apartment building or house. Call on the spirit of the land around you, the neighborhood, your company, or your own intuition. These things all have their own energy, their own metabolism and life force. By living in them, they transfer attributes of their own life force to you, and vice versa. Apartments, homes, and neighborhoods take on the characteristics of the people who live there, and people often take on the characteristics of the neighborhood spirits. The exchange is symbiotic, but mostly unconscious. These spirit forms want to be in partnership with us. They want to be acknowledged by the mystics living with them. They are all waiting to be asked.
Do another variation of the totem exercise, asking to speak directly with these city spirits and devas around you. Request to feel and commune with the deva of your home, block, building, or city. Ask how you can enter into partnership with it, and how it can work in partnership with you.