Molecular Bridging in Magick
In magick and sorcery, molecular bridging is when an object is divided into parts so that there is an obvious connection between them. This sort of bridging is commonly used in the making of nkisi or gri gri where energy from the priest/ess or a Spirit whose home in the aye is on their altar needs to flow to their patron or house member or to another area.
If the bridge needs to be stable, then a low magnetic object is used. If there needs to be constant flow, then a conductive material such as metal is used. If the parts of the object need to be drawn back together, a magnetic object or material is used.
Molecular bridging is very important in stubborn love spells. If one has tried drawing a person by way of energy and spiritual persuasion, and this has not worked, the next step is molecular bridging using magnetism. A lodestone, magnetic hematite, herbs with a magnetic energy, or magnets or charged metals that have been consecrated and stored together for a long time are divided. One of the parts is placed in a beacon like nkisi and the other is ground to a powder. The nkisi is buried and the powder or a suspension of it is sprinkled someplace that the person one wishes to draw is sure to touch. Then as the materials seek their origin, the person is drawn to the patron.
When there is something going on that requires maintenance and notification through the collective conscious in case something goes wrong, a sorcerer may place a bridge in the nkisi they send to a patron. This keeps a connection alive so that problems can be sorted before they get out of hand. Some may even put a small amount of their hair or spray a nkisi from their mouth or a little soil from their yard in a nkisi to make this connection. In this way, the nkisi they make or consecrate becomes an extension of themselves.
Sometimes purposeful molecular bridging is a bad idea. There is no way for a person to completely separate themselves from something they constructed, but one may, in some cases, wish to minimize the connection.
Another example of molecular bridging is the carrying of cremains or leavings from an offering to a Spirit. When you participate in or donate towards a ceremony, some of its energy is retained in these things, and you keep it so that its energy stays concentrated and doesn’t dissipate so quickly. It is also physical evidence of an offering that helps you not only benefit from but align with that Spirit.
So molecular bridging is a very important concept in many flavors of magick including Obeah.
New Videos on How to Read the Bones
I’ve posted four new videos on how to read the bones using Sheloya’s Hoodoo Bones system:
Video: Sheloya on Nkisi, Macuto, and Amulets
Sheloya shows and talks about various nkisi used in Vodun and diaspora systems.
Healing Black Angels (Blood Angels, Jumpers, or Abiku)
In some diaspora traditions, we call children who die young Black Angels. In Yorubaland, they are called Abiku. Iku means “death” and abiku is essentially, someone who was born to die.
Since nothing created is absolutely perfect because life could not exist in a Universe of complete rigidity, even Death does not always work exactly as it normally would. Since children are very newly physical, their connection with both the physical realm and the Egungun (Ancestors) is highly volatile. So it can happen that if a newly joined Spirit is too early extracted from its physical form, it can enter the realm of “functional” Spirits rather than re-merging with the Egungun.
Having very little or no physical life experience, for a long time in human terms, its perspective of the physical realm can be in terms of the most extreme and malignant narcissism, but without physical constraints. Even if the pregnancy and what little of childhood they experienced was very positive, this can encourage such a Spirit to be very selfish and exploitive in their interactions with physical beings.
In most cases, Abiku simply return to the Egungun to come back to us again the normal way. If they return to the same family and die early again, this is not usually cause for panic (though some do panic anyway). Most of the time, the reason is purely physical/medical, and the parents should reconsider having children through their own bodies, or seek counseling from someone who is very accepting of Death, so they don’t harden and distance themselves from children who are simply destined to have a short life. These children are quite often souls that for some reason need to be processed quickly as scouts of the Egungun. They are just here to look around for awhile and check out the situation, and return to the Egungun with a sort of emotional data so they can send the right souls to balance things to the Earth.
Some will die moments after they are conceived because they were just here to check the state of fertility in humans, and return before they have forgotten what the womb was like. Some are born with severe disabilities so they can see how people with severe disabilities are treated in an area, and report back to Obatala and the Egungun.
So on the one hand, things certainly do not always go the way we like, or “perfectly”, but on the other, the system runs exactly as it should to make sure the Forces of Nature have experiential contact with and information about e v e r y t h i n g.
Sometimes though, things do go wrong. When there is a time of great atrocity, such as a war, forced relocations, famine, rigid societies that essentially sacrifice children needlessly, and other horrors usually caused by human aggressions and/or stupidity, childrens’ souls take on damage that they do not have the life experience to process. What many don’t understand about this is that some of these souls may take many years to find their way back to the species that harmed them.
An Abiku soul who was killed a thousand years ago in a war may be just now finding its way back to humanity, and pick someone to torment because in their child-like brain, they thought the mother was somehow wrong for not being able to protect them from the sword. That the mother may have already been dead or separated from them is irrelevant. The baby or child has no idea that someone who has been stabbed or chopped up or burned alive cannot just get up and shield them. Some who made it to perhaps five years old and did understand what Death is, are angry that someone would bring them into such a horrible world at all.
As a warrior, a powerful and deeply spiritual Ancestor, or close to pure monk is able to leave behind some shards of their identity to aid the living, the child can as well. Just, unlike the warrior or monk, they do not know friend from foe. They only know pain and pleasure. So when they find their way back to humanity, it is unfortunately not their enemies who bear the brunt of their bouts of rage and greed unless the enemies have replaced them in the land or interbred with them. It is the people from whom they came.
This may seem highly unfair in human terms, but consider that what usually goes wrong is the loss of mystics who help to guide the dead back to the Ancestors. Every culture on Earth had ways to deal with death. Even if you look at it from a purely psychological and atheist point of view, grief is necessary. If people have not been properly grieved, then the psychological consequences are astronomical and can affect people many generations later.
A woman can miscarry or a child be damaged in the womb because of psychological traumas. The ceremonies and practices that developed around Death should not be minimized or dismissed as “mumbo jumbo”. We’d need them even if there were no Spirits.
How to deal with Abiku
Abiku return in three ways:
- taking form in order to communicate and usually frighten people (Black Angels)
- vampirically feeding through a child (Blood Angels)
- being repeatedly reborn and dying again (Jumpers)
Healing Black Angels
You may not feel so, but you are fortunate if the Abiku just wants to scare you. Their poltergeist like antics may be dangerous, but these children don’t have too much interest in physical pleasures, just emotional ones.
Some of the paranormal experts of today say that if you just ignore them they will go away because paying attention to them gives them energy. The problem with this is that if they don’t get it from you, they will get it from someone else, and unlike other ghosts, they are not shards but full souls. They will get what they want or they will graduate to become more aggressive vampiric Spirits or Jumpers.
So if a Vodun or diaspora priest tells you it is a child ghost, it needs healing before things get out of hand. However, remember to start with Eshu in communicating with the child. If you ask the child things directly about their life and what they want without going through Eshu, they may trick you into giving offerings or doing silly things for them forever and ever.
Whatever you say to them should be said through Eshu. Whatever messages you get from them should be through Eshu.
Most likely, what they need in order to be convinced to go back to the Egungun is whatever a proper funeral was in their culture. If the child had the orientation of a mystic at the time they were born, this may mean a proper funeral according to their ancestral culture.
Healing Blood Angels
These are Abiku who have gotten to the point of enjoying the pleasures of being a baby or child somewhat vicariously through other children. If your child is eating a lot and isn’t hyperactive but is still skinny as a rail, and doctors can’t find anything wrong with them, they may be carrying a Blood Angel. I don’t mean normal eating a lot and still being thin because of growing. I mean eating a whole lot of food almost all the time, and still losing weight to where you can see their ribs.
Sometimes this is not such a bad thing, especially in the case of the death of a twin. The survivors of a multiple birth in which one or more have died may be eating for two (or more). Unless real weirdness starts to happen, you can be fairly sure that you are still feeding your own children, and that at some point the one(s) who died will return to the Ancestors or maybe stay on as Guardians of the survivors. They are aware, and their experience is growing with your surviving children. This can also be the case if you had multiple miscarriages and/or stillbirths before having a healthy child who is fit enough to be able to spare some calories for their siblings.
If it goes too far though, and your surviving child becomes ill, it is clear that the Spirit plaguing them does not have an interest in the survivors’ protection. Again, get the child fully checked out by more than one conventional doctor before assuming that it is an Abiku who is responsible. Move quickly though.
In such cases, in a panic, parents and priests of the past, and some crazy ones closer to the present, have done all manner of horrors to extract Abiku from children. They have put heavy chains on children, tortured them, and put them through many traumas attempting to scare away the Abiku. They are seldom effective and usually just end up harming the child.
The way to handle a Blood Angel is to convince them, again through Eshu, that this is not the way to satisfy their hunger. They are not at the point of rebirth, so they should be convinced to return to the Egungun.
This may take some doing. Find a priest and do not balk at their instructions (so long as they’re reasonable, and if they’re not find another priest). You may have to actually count calories for your kids and only give them what they need to thrive. You may have to stop giving them any sweets and tell everyone who might do that to stop. You may have to be more strict. The point is to be aware that some other entity is capitalizing off of whatever excesses you give to your child.
By the way, not over indulging your children is protective of them. Blood Angels usually pick out children who are coddled and spoiled to the extreme. So sane discipline is the way to go for more reasons than just raising responsible adults. Teach them the value of trust and resources, and save the sugary sweets for weekends and special occasions.
In some cases, they pick out children who are not spoiled, but just disabled or ill, and have to be indulged a bit. Strictness won’t work on these children, and the Abiku does not understand that the child does not have an easy life. The Abiku envies the child. So the family has to get Eshu to explain this to them and as he guides us in the right direction when we’re messing up, guide the Abiku in the right direction to the Ancestors.
Healing Jumpers
Jumpers are a special case. They are at the point of rebirth, but they are vengeful against humanity. They are angry and have no care that they are harming people when they are conceived or born and then die repeatedly.
Since they are being conceived or born and not just contacting or capitalizing off of humans, they need to be convinced to stay. This can be very difficult in a world where there is still extreme poverty, war, and hate.
In this case, again with Eshu as the intermediary, the priest and parents must convince the child to stay. In some cases, the child must be forced to stay.
Just like a person who wishes to commit suicide needs a weapon, so does the Jumper. This is usually a stone, stick, or poisonous plant or substance growing near someplace the pregnant mother is or goes day to day. For a time, the next time the mother conceives, she may need to be kept in a place with no stones that a baby or small child could pick up and throw, no pointed sticks that are or could easily be dislodged from a tree, and no plants that could be poisonous in an amount that could fill a baby’s stomach.
If all the previous children have died at specific ages, the mother and child should be watched at all times by people who are either initiated or have reached the level of practice that they are capable of easily sensing malevolent spiritual activity, until the child is seven months past the usual death age. The child should wear protection amulets until the age of 12 both for external and internal forces.
In summary, the way to heal an Abiku is to properly grieve and show them the benefit of either going back to the Egungun or being reborn. The aggressive methods of the past are highly unecessary. They may have been in the past, but they are no longer. If it is the case that they were very necessary in the past then this may be because people were less rational then, or just more brutal, so even an afflicted child needed a heavy show of force. My gutt feeling though, is that these severe means were never needed, and humans simply misinterpreted instructions to be strict to mean being brutal in the extraction process.
By the same, I am not saying that we should adhere to western style coddling when dealing with the Spirits. That would be silly since the Spirits do not care what year it is in the terms that we do. What I am saying is that certainly harming a Blood Angel afflicted child or a settled Jumper doesn’t help their view of the Earth as a good place to be born into.
Crystals In African and Diaspora Mysticism
This is a quick guide to the mystical properties of crystals and minerals in the context of African and Diaspora mysticism.
Though the mystical/metaphysical properties are generally the same, they may have different uses that are less…generalized. In Obeah, their psychological significance and how they act on the psyche through light play and even taste and texture are also very important.
Crystals and other minerals are used in mojo bags, dolls, bochio, and many other mystical items. The right ingredients do make a difference, so if you’re the DIY type, it helps to know what you’re doing.
Browse our Do-It-Yourself Mojo Bag Kits or Consecrated Mojo Bags.
Just a warning before you read on, none of this is intended to be a substitute for medical care or consultation with a qualified mystic. Misuse of these tools can cause more destruction than you bargained for, or backfire with devastating consequences. This article is just for information purposes so that you have some idea what your priest/ess or counselor is doing for you. Also, we know that you peek in your mojo bags if we don’t seal or sew them shut. If you’re curious about what you saw in one does, here are some answers.
This article is a work in progress, so please visit again soon for updates. Also, if you have any comments or notes to add, feel free. I am happy to link to contributors.
alum – a good deodorant for people of African descent who find others irritating or allergy inducing, it also tightens up other things…and wards off “evil eye”. Also used to suck the evil out of people or close doors that are currently open and allowing them to harm others. Clean a new home by putting a chunk of it in the corners.
amber – sacred to Yemaya/Olokun and Oshun, it wards off negativity, and can be charged with various emotions. Most commonly used for protection and preservation of love. Blue and green amber are particularly rare, and help to draw powerful yet peaceful, loving energy. Black sea amber is a strong protection tool.
agate
- carnelian agate – actually a chalcedony, sacred to Shango and Eshu, and treasured by Middle Eastern peoples as protective against evil and tragedy. In the diaspora, it is used to make necklaces and talismans for Eshu and Shango. It increases luck and boosts the fire element.
- onyx (black and white or gray banded agate) – cut into spheres, domes, or diamond shapes it is used to repel the “evil eye”. Helps a person to keep their cool in sexual or intense situations. It can also be left in a place for psychic surveillance. Also helps one to remember lessons from their past.
- sardonyx (red and white or red, white, and orange banded agate) – sacred to Shango. Repels “evil eye” when cut into spheres, domes, or diamond shapes, but in the way of burning it away as opposed to just repelling. Useful when the evil eye is coming from posessiveness and exploitive desire rather than just jealousy.
- zig-zag pattern banded agates – used to confuse enemies or repel negative energy
anhydrite, called “angelite” when blue - although the new age scene has decided this stone is all positive, it can serve as a beacon for the unquiet dead. Blue stones are often found as the treasures or weapons of Abiku. So on the one hand, anhydrite is good for people who travel astrally, make sure that nothing but the kind of energy you want is connected to it when you return. It’s one of those stones with a “handle with care” warning.
beryl
- aquamarine – sacred to Yemaya/Olokun, used for good luck in sea voyages and swimming or diving
- emerald – sacred to Oshun, enhances beauty and elegance, makes one feel younger and refreshed
- goshenite (clear) – helps to achieve justice and find out what justice would be in a situation
- heliodor beryl (green-brownish yellow) – sacred to Oshun and Orun, enhances sun tolerance, makes one feel energetic despite hot weather, shines a light on hidden motives
- morganite (pink) – sacred to Oba, helps to preserve marriage in the long term by reminding people why and how they fell in love, helps keep a woman loyal if you give her some jewelry made from it, symbolizes enduring love
chalcedony – Various kinds of chalcedony are used for protection, healing, and the making of talismans that require symbols or text to be written or engraved on a surface. Carving something into chalcedony “sets it in stone” because the engravings tend to last through considerable wear and tear over the years. Some talismans that are hundreds of years old are still being worn for normal wear by the great great grandchildren of those who first received them.
- aventurine – sacred to Osayin, helps to heal skin problems and boosts the power of healing herbal formulas
- bloodstone – sacred to Ogun, helps to clean the blood and one’s life of impurities. It is good for breaking addictions more quickly. Helps one to become or stay organized and calm in tough situations. Also helps people in metallurgy or technology to succeed.
- green ocean jasper - protects fields and helps plants to grow more healthily
- mterolite – sacred to Ogun, strengthens resolve by sealing a person off from outside influence. It is especially helpful when going into hostile situations in which one doesn’t wish to be obvious by carrying or wearing black stones such as jet, obsidian, or nuummite. People will just think you’re wearing jade or aventurine.
- red jasper – increases sexual stamina and energy, sometimes carved into phallic or frog shapes and carried as talismans, also helps people to be more expressive in love
charcoal and ashes – the charcoal or ashes of various plants are used to mark the body and heal ailments(usually some sort of mineral deficiency). Some ashes are used as sunscreen, while others are used to indicate mourning or connection with the Ancestors.
cobalt (blue) – sacred to Yemaya/Olokun, it is used to hypnotize, remind one of the sea, as a homing mineral for water Spirits, and to dispell the evil eye by reminding people of our common origin. If you are wealthy, you should always serve guests in your home water in cobalt blue glasses whether they ask for it or not.
copper – sacred to Ogun and Oya, helps to channel and direct energy. If you want to make a storm, this is the metal to use. It can give a boost of energy from the elements or send lightning to strike an enemy if properly used.
gagate (also called jet, black amber, black earth amber, or azabache) – an extremely strong protection against “evil eye” and negative spells.
garnet (dark red almandine and pyrope) – sacred to Oya, it represents the “eye of the storm”. It helps you to keep your head in chaotic situations. Also aids in depression due to frustration and cleans the blood.
glass – sacred to Ogun, glass is an amplifier of the properties of other crystals, and a container for energy corresponding to its color and chemicals and minerals used to color it. It can also be used as a homing stone for Spirits. Sea tumbled glass has a lot of Yemaya/Olokun energy in it, though red sea tumbled glass is associated with Exu Mare (Eshu of the sea). Slag glass, a byproduct of iron slag, is especially sacred to Ogun, and will bring you the gifts of the Earth.
gold – sacred to Orun and Oshun, it helps to attract success and heighten the charisma and endurance of happy people so they don’t get discouraged. It can however, cause greed or “gold fever” if it is acquired from an unethical source.
kyanite – sacred to Yemaya, calms a person down and helps them to organize their thoughts, induces happiness, helps in meditation, concentration, and reduces test anxiety
niobium and columbite-tantalite ore – sacred to Ogun, it increases emotional and psychic flexibility and endurance. It is an excellent gift for a maker of mystical items, as it helps them to stay spiritually connected and inspired while they are working. See this brilliant page on the meta-science of columbite-tantalite.
obsidian (black) – used for protection and reflecting negative energy back to the sender
opal
- chocolate opal – boosts confidence, especially sexual, symbolic of African beauty
- green opal – sacred to Ochossi, helps to reconnect one with Nature or helps them accept some difficult aspect of Nature, aids in healing water/fluid related ailments
- pink opal – sacred to Pacha Mama, the Andean Mother Goddess. Enhances fertility and sensuality but also can make someone fatally passionate. Aids in healing heartbreak by reminding a person’s soul how much the Mother loves them, so they need not despair over a mortal’s rejection.
- white rainbow opal – absorbs and dissipates negative energy, but can also be a container for it
- yellow/golden opal – sacred to Oshun, used to enhance beauty, charisma, and dancing abilities in women and androgynes
porcelain – blue and white Chinese porcelain is used for vessels of Yemaya, and beads are used to make necklaces to honor her. Porcelain vases, containers, and such are considered as good as clay and carved stone ones, and sometimes bits of broken porcelain ware are used for house blessing and protection.
quartz crystals
- amethyst – sacred to Iku, Sakpata, and Oya, helps one to commune with the ancestors and keep family traditions, aids in grief due to deaths, and is a good homing stone for Guardians. Wear an amethyst necklace or hatpin when you need to hold your ground against outside influence.
- citrine – sacred to Oshun, brings success and attracts money
- clear quartz – symbolizes light, Obatala, clarity, purity, or a full spectrum, and is used to send or receive positive energy or see all sizes of an issue in case of a dilema, and to tell if someone is lying or self deceiving
- red quartz – boosts fire element, and also used to send and receive fire oriented energy or purge someone of too much fire
- rose quartz – sacred to Oba, increases attraction by enhancing femininity, etiquitte and charm. Especially powerful when worn with pearls.
- rutilated quartz – helps one to find a path to reach a difficult goal or find a solution when it seems there is none
- smoky quartz – symbolizes stability, balance, and realism, and is used specifically solve dilemas or bring someone to a more realistic perspective
- tiger eye – helps to sort out dilemas and tell true friends from enemies
red clay – used in ritual face painting to symbolize fire or blood, or as a beauty enhancement
ruby – sacred to Shango and Aganju, super booster for fire element. Attracts lust, and puts passion into love. Also purifies love and makes the deceivers who will break your heart reveal their motives quickly. In conjunction with pink opal, it creates a kind of vortex that sucks out heartbreak, accelerating both healing and recovering ability to love again. Used with kyanite, it helps reduce drama in relationships without killing the passion. Star rubies are especially useful to help men not to be overly vulnerable to womens’ charms. When properly blessed, they help a man to keep the upper hand and protect themselves from women’s love spells.
salt – cleans, purifies, and dries. It is used for protection and healing, but also containment-cursing in situations where a person isn’t to be exactly harmed but prevented from doing something bad that they have a habit of doing. So the person may feel they’ve been cursed, but really they’re just being prevented from harming others.
sapphire (blue) – sacred to Olokun and Damballah, helps with balance, meditation, mental clarity, and decisiveness. Also a good homing stone for masculine water Spirits.
silver – cleans, purifies, and protects. It helps to insulate a person from negative psychic energy, and having their energy sucked without their consent or cooperation, so it is a favored metal for making amulets. Another practical use is of colloidial silver to help wounds heal by blocking microbes.
sphene (titanite) – sacred to Orun, it helps one to focus and concentrate on a task or mission. With overexposure it can cause overexcitability or obsession.
tourmaline – sacred to Oya, Ayida Wedo, and the literal Rainbow Serpent animal Spirit. Increases fertility and confidence. Watermelon tourmaline helps to manage or heal conditions affecting the immune system.
topaz – a power stone for when you need a particular kind of energy fast
uranium glass – sacred to Ogun, uranium is present in safe, small amounts in nearly all minerals, and is not supposed to be extracted for non medical applications. Some believe that uranium is a part of the cycle of life and matter that causes things to be able to decay and crumble, so to extract and concentrate it of course accelerates things’ destruction. Uranium glass is generally safe, but mystically, it is an abomination. Very radioactive stones should be left in the ground. When they are left alone and in their place of origin, an adept in close connection with Ogun can access their power without drawing his anger. So if you receive a piece of uranium glass, the best thing you can do is bury it. Do not buy it for this purpose, but if you happen to be given any uranium glass, vaseline glass, fiestaware, depression glass, etc. return it to the Earth. Doing so will bring you blessings.
white clay - used in ritual face and body painting to signify connection to the ancestors, death, or the dead
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