City Magick: Urban Rituals, Spells and Shamanism - Christopher Penczak 2001
Office Tools
Tools of the Trade
Urban practitioners can find tools at home, but the workplace can also be a resource for a little bit of magick. Some find these tools in their home office, where privacy lets them do magick anytime they like. Others have to be more discreet, completing their rituals in the privacy of their minds, setting their intents out gently and quietly. The magick can be disguised as something as simple as sending a letter.
Most of these tools are focus points for sympathetic magick. An act performed in ritual, with intent, will manifest in the physical world. When you create or destroy an object that magically stands for something else, something larger, you affect the larger item. The traditional image is the voodoo doll. The doll acts as a proxy for a person, often using something connected to them, like hair, clothing, or a fingernail. The word “sympathy” originally meant “to resonate with,” not “empathize with”. The target’s name and image also resonate with them. By naming the doll, you empower it to send energy to the focus of the spell. Although most movies depict voodoo dolls as instruments of evil, these dolls are often used as healing tools, the pins denoting where healing power goes into the body. The doll image is simply one of the most popular forms of sympathetic magick, but there are all kinds to explore.
Envelopes
Envelopes are a tool of binding. Write the harmful situation on a small slip of paper, fold it up, and drop it into an envelope with the intention to bind it. Lick this magical trap and seal it, completely trapping away any harmful energy directed toward you.
Colored Pens and Highlighters
As agents of color and light, highlighters, pens, markers, and crayons can be used much as food coloring is used. Use the magical properties of colors as a focus for your magick. If your intention is to bring happiness to someone in a depression, write his or her name out and then highlight it in pink. Take a copy of your bank statement and mark it with green arrows going up, to increase your prosperity. If someone needs protection, take a picture of the person and draw a bubble around it, to activate his or her own protection shield. Be creative when practicing your magical art.
Elastics
Elastic bands are tools of binding, used like thread. The only problem with them is that they tend to break over time. Only use them for temporary binding spells, as a stopgap measure.
Glue
Glue is an agent of binding, literally bringing forces together and keeping them together. Glue can bind you to what you desire. By using a symbol for yourself-say, your business card-and gluing to it a new title that reflects the promotion you want, you can bind that new title, that new identity, to you through a simple act of sympathetic ritual. By making it a magical reality, you manifest it in the physical world.
Paper Clips
The lovely thing about paper clips is that they are so pliable. The metal wire can easily be bent into a shape or symbol as the focus of a spell. Chapter 7 will go into detail about making magical symbols, but some symbols you may already know. The five-pointed star, the cross, the “X,” and the circle are all potent symbols. Wrapping paper clips around pens can soften their straight lines into curves. If you have a problem making a sharp bend, fold the clip over the edge of your desk. Paper clip talismans are easily hidden in desk draws.
Scissors and Letter Openers
Both are extensions of the will, tools to focus intent. Each tool can break former bindings. Scissors cut threads and elastics. The dull blade of a letter opener can still easily open sealed envelopes. They both open up portals and clear obstacles from your path.
Pushpins
Tacks can temporarily bind something, getting it out of your way by symbolically sticking it to a board. The image is the office equivalent to the Hanged Man in the tarot, or the sacrificed God archetype. The pins can also be used as regular pins and needles, to stimulate points on a sympathetic poppet. I’ve used pushpins in rows to mark outlines of magical symbols on my bulletin board. They were far enough apart so no one could recognize the shape but myself. You have to be careful, however, that people don’t randomly borrow pushpins from you. If they take the wrong one, they can break the symbol.