For the last couple of years, a relative of mine has been causing my partner and I a lot of grief. We believed this person had good intentions, but was also ignorant, bigoted and self-centric, and was leading themselves down a path of self-destruction, burning every bridge they could in our family. For the last 18 months, I found it difficult to step back from the situation and regard it without becoming too emotionally involved. However, the tension has been building in the last few months and I did not think it was acceptable to let it keep going on.

I began by doing a tarot reading to explore any unforeseen consequences that may arise out of a magical working towards this purpose. After following prescriptive spreads during my years as a Wiccan, fellow magicians have encouraged me to break from my habits and allow spreads to intuitively form. In other words, rather than placing cards in a specific, instructed way (e.g. the Celtic Cross spread), I simply draw any number of cards that feels right to me at the time and arrange them in anyway I wish. The result becomes more freeform and creative, often leading to interesting interpretations and relationships between the cards that I would have not previously considered.

I drew three cards and arrange them as a simple fan and my interpretation of them led me to the impression that I should be employing a two-pronged approach with my magical working, something that had not crossed my mind. One of them was the more material, immediate aspect of allowing the person to see their mistakes and the damage it is doing to our family. The second, represented by the Queen of Swords, spoke to me about changing my consciousness, in particular, to heighten my perceptiveness about the situation. Prior to the tarot reading, my mind was predominantly fixated upon the first prong, that is, wanting this person to see their mistakes so naturally, I was motivated to begin that one first.

I relied on a favoured workhorse of mine, the sigil, and designed one for this purpose. I charged it and set the wheels in motion before I left on vacation.

While I do not feel at liberty to speak of the result in detail, there has been one occurrence that I know of, which suggests the sigil has been effective so far.

When I returned from vacation, I began the second working. I read a few interpretations of the Queen of Swords card until I decided that perceptiveness and deliberate action were the two aspects that resonated the most with my purpose. I took a blank notebook and constructed that as a magical working. In the first page, I wrote some details about the Queen of Swords, then divided the remaining book into two sections, ‘Perceptiveness’ and ‘Action’. It is a record-in-progress of this particular prong of my working and I intend to write down my ideas and results to maintain a perceptive and assertive aspect of myself when it comes to dealing with this person.

Last night, I had a friend over for dinner and we were talking when I suddenly had something which I described to him at the time as an ‘epiphany’. I came to a conclusion that the resentment I feel towards this family member is not for them, but rather, for who I am when I around them. It is as if the Perceptiveness facet is coming into fruition where now the Action facet remains for me to strategise how I will further attempt to alter my consciousness when I am around that person to be something more constructive.