Altar

Inspiration has struck me recently and I began formulating an invocation ritual where the magician can create and assimilate a Guardian self who works to protect the magician from the malicious actions of others, such as slander, theft and exploitation.  It’s not that I have found a particular need for this magic, rather oddly, it was Isaac Bonewit’s preface in his book Real Magic that gave me the idea that it may be useful for all magicians to create for themselves this Guardian as a kind of insurance.

I probably won’t need to explain to the readers the kind of motivations rampant in the occult and Pagan communities where greed for profit as well as fame and glory is quite common.  I also quite regularly hear of ideas, especially when they are experimental and innovative, to be stolen and claimed as passed down by the culprit’s ancestors, not to mention quite regularly see the ideas of others being distributed (sometimes incorrectly) on the Internet without the permission of its author(s).

First, the Guardian needs to be personified. Any entity will do. For my purposes, I have chosen to invoke a warrior form of myself. The warrior in this case acts as the defender of the mage. She wields a mirror shield and a sword through which she directs her power. I found this imagery interesting to note as it symbolises that the mage is present within all forms–even my academic self wields a pen of ‘power’. Specifically, when malicious acts are done to the mage, conscious and unconscious, the warrior lifts her shields to deflect the negative energy straight back at the attacker.

She guards a fortress of knowledge. When the magician’s knowledge, whether they be her painstakingly formulated systems and theories, half-baked ideas, or even aspects of her constructed identity, the warrior turns her sword towards those who seek to steal, appropriate, and imitate for selfish gain will be struck with a powerful counterattack. When this sword is directed towards the guilty, it will turn the very things they stole against them. For instance, magical rituals and techniques misused without the permission of the author does the opposite of their intended goals. A ritual to make them wealthy throws them into financial hardship. When knowledge is claimed as one’s own, the stolen materials themselves ring the truth of of their origins so that anyone who looks upon them with question the honesty and trustworthiness of the thief.