Horse Magick: Spells and Rituals for Self-Empowerment, Protection, and Prosperity - Lawren Leo 2020

The Wet Horse

Horses are no strangers to water. Herds running on a beach provide stock shots for artists and filmmakers trying to symbolize freedom and embody romanticism. Their movement creates a breathtaking spectacle of rippling reflections, water splashing under hooves, and slick manes and tails waving about in the wind. Feral horses and ponies on Chincoteague and Assateague Islands (in Virginia and Maryland) and the wild Camargue horses—perhaps one of the most ancient breeds, now found in the Rhône delta in southern France—have even learned to thrive in swampy marshes and eat seaweed. But in the realm of magick, the relationships between mythical, mystical, and divine horses and bodies of water are varied and unexpected.

Poseidon and Amphitrite

Poseidon, the Olympian god of the sea, is a deity of profound power, one to be taken seriously. The ancient Greek poet Homer addressed him as the great “shaker of the earth, tamer of horses . . . and savior of ships.”¹ His reputed powers have inspired artists in all media, across millennia. One has but to recall the scene in the film The Fellowship of the Ring in which the elven princess, Arwen, temporarily vanquishes the black-clad wraith riders by conjuring a herd of watery horses to plunge them into treacherous rapids. Although Homer's chapter on Poseidon follows that of Athena in this book, Poseidon is, in fact, both older and more powerful than she. His dominion encompasses all the waters and the ever-moving sea, and is second only to that of heaven. His waters have flooded the earth, drowned many a human, and swallowed countless seafaring vessels. To placate him, the Greeks offered many of his favorite sacrifices, including bellowing bulls and horse-drawn chariots.

The ancients, for whom maritime trade was a critical part of many economies, were wise to worship Poseidon and did so with great respect and reverence. The Greeks erected massive temples devoted to him, temples that commanded panoramic views on the furthest edges of the fingerlike promontories of the Peloponnese peninsula. The massive temple at Sounion, built by Perikles as part of a building campaign that included the Parthenon, and the temple at Tainaron on the Mani peninsula are examples of these. Sailors prayed in awed reaction to the cliff-temple at Sounion when they saw it from great distances, either returning to port or passing by. Waves crash high there to this day. Perhaps it was the glint of the setting sun or sacrificial flames on the gilded bronze trident of a monumental statue of Poseidon that reminded them of home or the safety of land. It is said that the temple at Tainaron was once to have been part of a sacred grove near the mouth of a cave that served as a sanctuary for soldiers and, in Roman times, for slaves. The cave was reputed to be an entrance—maybe even the entrance—to Hades and probably boasted a statue of Poseidon.

And we must not forget the importance of Amphitrite, Poseidon's wife. The daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, she is both a nereid and oceanid (nymphs associated with the sea). Some have argued that Amphitrite once held a more prominent position as a sea goddess or queen. She also appears in ancient images with a trident, as she does driving the god's chariot behind him on the west pediment of the Parthenon—her customary role. Let us, therefore, celebrate her in the tradition of all feminine deities linked to the sea, like the Great Amma. We can easily envision her windswept, dressed in fluttering seaweeds in varying translucent shades of jade to deep green, as cobalt hippocamps draw her spikey-shell chariot across the noisy sea and heaving waves. She holds aloft a golden trident and sits in splendor upon a red coral throne.

In Homer's Iliad, Book 13, Poseidon the Earth-shaker makes a brilliant, resplendent, and fearful appearance. From a vantage point high above the sea, he looks upon the ships of his beloved Achaians, who are at the mercy of the Trojans. Moved with pity and filled with rage, he bounds from land and descends to his glittering palace in the depths of the sea. He clads himself in gold and harnesses a pair of bronze-hoofed, wing-swift horses with fluttering manes of gold to a chariot. He then rises out of the sea and races over the waves. Although there were apparently eight steeds, only two of their names have come down to us—Skylla and Sthenios. One Roman writer called these wet horses “stormy-footed” ketea or “sea beasts.” (In Biblical Greek, the word means “whale”; think of cetaceans).

Homer's passage hints at something magickal, however. He lends an air of festivity and joyfulness to his narrative when he relates that the creatures of the sea come forth in delight to accompany Poseidon. Tritons (a type of brawny mermen) sound conch shells and nereid sea maidens flank their lord with dolphins crowding around.² Homer adds that the sea acquiesces to Poseidon, parting to permit the deity's chariot to speed so rapidly that its axle does not even get wet. The god was, in Homer's imagination, being drawn by hippocamps (literally, “crooked horses” in ancient Greek)—creatures that have the front part of a horse and the rear of a fish—who raise the chariot above the water. These steeds have webbed hooves, membranous manes, and curling scaly bodies that end in fanning split-fin tails. The ancients believed they were adult seahorses.

Hippocamps are numerous, social creatures that are as moody as the seas they inhabit. Although Poseidon and Amphitrite use them to draw their chariots, they remain free until called upon and lead lives of their own. Waves, currents, tides, salt, silt, sand, and shells—these are the forces and materials with which they work their magick.

Some say the sea holds countless mysteries. In fact, few know that the hippocamps' magick manifests in skyscraper waves that occur under the water. These are hundreds of feet higher than waves that crest above the sea and thousands of times more powerful. Your reputation is like these underwater waves. It has a life of its own and, inconspicuous to all, controls what happens on the surface. Your reputation can transport you throughout your life, building in momentum, or crush you in this life and beyond. In the end, its movement dictates your legacy.

SPELL TO RESTORE OR DESTROY A REPUTATION

Hippocamps, moving full speed ahead, can joyfully raise your reputation to unimaginable heights—or they can destroy it without another thought. In this spell, you will befriend the hippocamps with the help of Poseidon and Amphitrite.

What you need:

One dark-blue, shallow bowl, water, salt, one drop of your blood, one seashell, a hammer or mallet, a towel, and your intuition.

Instructions:

Once you have gathered everything necessary, follow the directives within the spell. Let your intuition be your guide.

To get what you need,

Deserving or not,

Summon the hippocamps

Follow what's taught:

Pour water, then salt

Into a vessel then halt;

It must be dark blue

To make the spell true.

Prick your right thumb,

But keep your tongue mum,

For a drop of your blood is due.

Water awaits, running or still;

Hippocamps too demand their fill.

As the spell dictates, find a body of water, running or still (puddle, river, ocean, etc.) in which to pour the mixture of blood, salt, and water. Do not discard the shell. As you do, say these words:

Underwater waves

From the Luzon Strait,

Rise to the surface, my wish now create.

If it is a reputation you choose to destroy, wrap the shell in a towel and crush it with a mallet or hammer. Throw the bits of shell back to Mother Earth and you are finished. If it is a reputation you choose to restore, carry the shell with you.

Why do you need blood? Compared to other sacrifices, bodily fluids have an aura strong enough to penetrate quickly and directly into the astral realm. The blood allows you to summon the spirits you are using—in this case, hippocamps—and will enable you to persuade them more easily. It will also coax them to bring about your wish.

Why do you need salt? First, because the spell is oceanic in nature and second, because salt is used in magick for banishing and cleansing. Within this spell, you can banish a good reputation or, perhaps, cleanse a tarnished one.

Why do you need a dark-blue vessel? Dark blue represents the element of water, the ocean, and the dark-blue coloration of the hippocamps. In this case, dark blue represents the naturally occurring phenomenon of internal or underwater waves in places of great depths, like the Luzon Straits in the Philippines.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Primary sources

Evelyn-White, Hugh G., trans. Hesiod, Homeric Hymns, Epic Cycle, Homerica (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1914).

Homer. The Iliad: A New Prose Translation, trans. Martin Hammond (London: Penguin Books, 1987).

————. The Odyssey, trans. Walter Shewring (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1980).

Quintus Smyrnaeus. The Fall of Troy, trans. A. S. Way (London: William Heinemann, 1913).

Secondary sources

Conway, D. J. Magickal Mermaids and Water Creatures: Invoke the Magick of the Waters (Newburyport, MA: New Page Books, 2005).

Pepper, Elizabeth, and Barbara Stacy. The Little Book of Magical Creatures, rev. ed. (Providence, RI: The Witches' Almanac, 2009).

NOTES

1 Evelyn-White, Homeric Hymns (22).

2 Quintus Smyrnaeus, Fall of Troy, 5.88ff.