Spell making For When Words Fail

Care that travels hand to hand

Recently, a man I know came to me carrying fear that had settled deep into his body. The kind that steals sleep. The kind that tightens the chest and makes the future feel like a wall you cannot see over.

I listened. I made a pot of tea and gave him a hug.

There were no words to meet the weight of what he shared, and found myself instead making two small bundles of meaning with my hands.

The materials came from a small collection I keep on a shelf near my desk — stones worn through by water. Bones found on the shore and in the hedgerows. Beads rolled slowly from ground petals.

I don’t think of them as magical in the way we’re taught to imagine magic — no puff of smoke, no abracadabra, no sudden reversal of fate. But I do think they know how to work.

One of the bundles I made was for this man — to keep near his bed at night. The other was for his son, who was facing a life-changing reckoning and the fear that came with it.

Each bundle was whispered over with prayer and made from the same quiet language of materials.

A hagstone, a shark’s bone, and some handmade rose-petal beads. Protection, tenacity, and beauty.
All of it threaded together with cordage made from nettle and dandelion — plants that survive where conditions are harsh.

Nothing rare. Nothing bought. Just materials gathered by hand, from my garden and on my walks by the sea and in the woodland.

I asked him to place his bundle near his bed. To let it rest where his body had been keeping vigil through the night. To allow it to do whatever quiet work it might.

Magic, I’ve learnt, is rarely dramatic. It settles something. It makes space to breathe. It loosens the grip of panic just enough for rest to come. Sometimes that is all it does — and sometimes it does more.

Later, he told me he was sleeping again.

Some time after that, he told me he had given the second bundle to his son. The son carried it into a formal room heavy with judgment and consequence. Not as armour. Not as a guarantee. Just as a reminder that he was not alone.

What moved me most came later.

The man spoke to a friend about what had helped him. And in the telling, his friend broke open too, carrying his own grief, his own fear for a child. Through tears, he rang me, asking if the gift I had made him could be passed on.

We like to imagine magic as an extraordinary intervention. But what if magic is two men crying together — men who were never taught how to speak about fear or grief — united by the hard business of watching their children struggle?

What if magic is the way something made with care helps a body stay present instead of fleeing? What if magic is the way the right words sometimes come when they are most needed, without anyone knowing where they arrived from?

Care doesn’t move in straight lines. Magic doesn’t either. It travels sideways. It moves like water. Like seed. Like story.
From hand to hand. From body to body. From one trembling heart to another.

I asked him to keep the gift that had helped him for himself and instead, I offered to make another. To begin again with the materials at hand.

I don’t make these things to control outcomes or bend the world to my will — to my version of how things should be. I make them to help people slow down enough to remember they are loved. To give fear somewhere to rest. To allow grief to be witnessed without needing to be solved.

I was left stilled by it all. Not astonished — just quiet. As if something very old had been remembered, briefly and tenderly, in a world that has forgotten how to name this kind of work, but still knows how to receive it.

This piece refers to experiences of fear and uncertainty, but all identifying details have been withheld to protect the people involved.

---

I’ve tried to make something visible here about the practice of spell-making — about working with the aliveness of what is already in our hands.

If you feel drawn to explore this way of working — to trust that stone, bone, thread, and breath are not inert but responsive — we’ll be gathering in May at The House at the Edge of the Woods for the three-day retreat we call Waking up The Witch.

Before, I did not know what to do with this huge love and compassion that I felt for the natural world around me. This weekend has woven together so many of the threads that were becoming so important to me. I wanted to feel more connected with the everyday miraculous beauty I see everywhere and now I have a sense of how to belong; in ritual and in the practice of reverence. My relationship with myself has changed. I trust myself more, my intuition and my decision making. I cannot wait to go back and learn more.” - Helen (Waking up the Witch Participant)

---

And finally… poetry corner.

Pray in Geese by Beth Weaver-Kreider

When the fragile egg of your heart is about to burst,
watch for the delta of geese winging across the sky.
“Look!” they cry. “Pray in geese today. Pray flow,
pray grace, pray the wild delight of trusting to air.”

Watch for the dragon who raises an eye above the horizon.
“Pray dragon,” she tells you. “Pray fierce. Pray focus.
Pray the way magenta flows into tangerine, and tangerine
to indigo. Pray in rays of rising sun.”

When the weight on your shoulders drops your eyes 
to Earth, watch for speedwell bursting, miraculous, 
from yesterday’s snowbank. “Pray Mary’s blue,” she tells you.
“Pray harbinger, pray hopefulness, pray unexpected.”

Watch for spider who weaves her webs in your corners.
“Pray webs,” she implores. “Pray nets, pray baskets,
pray whole networks of strands, knotted and woven.
Pray secret, quiet work that appears out of nowhere.”

When no words will come to hold the weight of your heart,
let the network of all that surrounds you speak the words
you dare not utter. Let the threads of geese and sunlight,
flower and root and spider, carry your prayers.
 

---