INFORME ANUAL

Apart from beating the bounds, it is good to erect at least one ritual marker at the border or your property. In the modern day, often our boundaries are marked for us with fences, or even walls if we live in an apartment. Still, a stone marker that is dedicated to Terminus serves as an excellent marker. Whether or not you Beat the Bounds on February 23rd you can still make an offering of wine and honey on this stone, and offer the following praise to Terminus which is inspired by a traditional hymn from Ovids Fasti. The invoca- tion can be repeated any time that you feel your borders are under siege, be it from magick or just annoying neighbors.

You who set bounds to peoples, cities, great kingdoms: Without you every field would be disputed.

You curry no favour: you aren’t bribed with gold, Guarding the land entrusted to you in good faith. Stay there, in the place where you’ve been put, And yield not an inch to your neighbor’s prayers,

And whether they beat you with swords, or ploughshares, Call out: “This is your place, and that is his!

Cleansing

If we are already under attack, it’s important to cleanse out any hostile energies, spirits, or forces before we use the previous protection procedures. If we don’t cleanse first, we run the risk of sealing in what we are trying to protect ourselves from. The best way to cleanse oneself if already under attack is the same way that you would cleanse yourself from regular dirt: take a bath. Spiritual baths are one of the oldest strata of magickal practice on this planet. From time immemorial sacred baths have been believed to clean far more than just the body, and the purity of water used in conjunction with certain herbs, minerals, and oils can yield very potent results. We see evi- dence of sacred baths mentioned as far back as the Sumerian Hymn to Nanna, and see its practice reflected everywhere today from the Christian baptism to the health spa. All over the world are places of power dedicated to magickal bathing: Varnassi’s ghats on the Ganga river, Haiti’s waterfalls of Saut d’Eau, and Glastonbury, England’s, pool in King Arthur’s courtyard.

The first consideration when putting together a bath ritual is the water. Traditionally you would use water from a natural source, such as a spring, lake, or water collected during rainstorms. If you live near a sacred spring or river, that is ideal as a source of water, but the general idea is that the more natural the source of the water, the better. That said, I will admit that most of the time I end up using tap water and suspect most of my clients do as well. It is far better to use tap water than not to take the bath at all!

After you are settled on the water to be used, you need to know what you are adding to the bath. Formulas typically call for three or more ingredients, usually odd numbers. These ingredients can be mineral, herbal, or zoologi- cal. There are traditional bathing formulas for everything from drawing money and love, to influencing those around you, to repelling jinxes and negativity. It is this last category that we are concerned with here.

My favorite protection formula is a bath of oak bark, cinnamon, and pine needles, brewed in the water like a tea. If you want to make something out of

stuff that you probably already have in the kitchen you can mix salt, ammonia, and vinegar. The salt and vinegar can be equal parts of about a half a cup or so, but the ammonia should only be a tablespoon. Ammonia is considered such a strong cleaner that if more is used it will not only remove negative influ- ences, but positive and neutral ones as well.

During the bath there is often the reading of a spell or prayer. For in- stance, in Hoodoo, and also in Solomonic Magick, certain psalms would be read during the bath such as the 23rd for protection and the 51st for purifica- tion. A Pagan might do well to recite one of the protection incantations from the magickal papyri. The Invocation of the Bornless One will make an excel- lent prayer for this as it was originally an exorcism.

In a protection bath you should wash yourself from the head downward. As you wash yourself, you can also conjure the purifying column from above, as per the column and elements exercise. As the herb infused water washes you on the physical plane of Level 3, the energy from the column can run through you, flushing out impure energies of Level 2 into the water that pools at your feet. The invocation will cleanse you on the divine/causal plane of Level 1, giving you a complete cleansing on all levels of body, energy, and mind.