by Erica Sittler

Let’s talk about Instant Magick for a moment, which for this Level 1 Witch is one of the most powerful tools in my day-to-day life. Yes, yes, I use it for red lights and parking spots and not being seen by the police as I drive a little too fast down the Natchez Trace. It is also useful to secure the house when I just might have left the front door open and again it can turn off the oven which I actually am prone to do regularly. But there is so much more to instant magick than that!

Yesterday, a fierce, sudden storm blew in while we were driving home. Winds gusted upwards of 70 mph. Suddenly, we found ourselves in what felt like an isolated tornado.

Swirling, blinding sheets of rain blew against my husband’s old truck. Pine cones or hail pelting us. Suddenly, I could feel the trees snapping, though I could not see or hear them, due to the raging of the wind and rain.

I barked out a cry of alarm while my husband drove and immediately started doing instant magick with breath, words, and hands.

Breathe. I started using my breath to fill a protective sphere around the truck.

Speak. I began talking to the swirling wind and the trees as we were now enfolded in the yellow-green cast that is the hallmark of a tornado.

Hands. Trigger symbols firmly locked, I began moving in a pattern while I and breathed and spoke, enforcing the shield: front, sides, top, below, and back… over and over and over… filling that shield till it was the equivalent of a steel dirigible. Breath, command, hand gestures.

Commanding calmly and firmly for the wind to go over and not through us. Mentally and with my hand gestures, hoisting it up and over our vehicle. Fearlessly facing the wind where I knew the storm was originating, while simultaneously enforcing the truck’s protective shield, I repeatedly told it what it would do. For a little over a mile, I did this, while my husband drove us to safety and our 13-year-old son sat in utter silence in the back.

Understand, there was no place to pull over. Further, I do not advise or encourage you to ever put yourself willingly in harm’s way as a lark, but the only path for us in that moment was to go through the storm.

Later that night, we drove back down the roads we had traversed as well as others to see what damage had been done. Snapped trees and fences were everywhere, but on the road we had travelled none of those fallen objects had turned into projectiles. The road itself was eerily clear of everything save leaves and twigs. Other nearby roads had snapped power lines and downed trees flung across them. The nearby park looks as though a bomb went off, with massive oaks tumbled about and upended like toy blocks.

Later that night, under the guidance of my high priestess, I lay on the ground in the backyard in as little clothing as possible with dark stones placed on my 3rd eye, my chest, and a strand of jet beads (that I’ve owned seemingly forever) wrapped around my neck. The purpose, as you may know, was to let the excess energy drain out of me. For hours later you see, I still had ringing in my ears, felt like I was on the verge of vomiting, and walking was more like a drunken stumble best not attempted, even after eating “grounding” foods.

That laying on the cool, damp, leaf-strewn soil, feeling the curious bugs crawling over my skin, looking up through the leaf canopy into the dark, stormy sky, while letting that excess energy go back into the earth was perhaps the best bath I’ve ever had. As I lay there, all I could say over and over again to earth, sky, stones, and trees was “thank you”, “thank you”, “thank you”.

This, I believe, makes magick different from prayer, though a magickal practice can certainly incorporate prayers and hymns. This experience was using a magickal skill I had been taught and applying it in a real situation in which I felt danger and needed actual protection. Because of this skill, instant magick, I had a form of power. I was not helpless. Unlike prayer, I was not requesting we not get hurt by the storm. I was not making a petition. Rather, both physically and psychically, I was using my will and my magick to both command the elements and to move the harm away. Furthermore, because of my lessons, I knew enough to bid those elements not to harm others in their now rerouted path I had created through instant magick.

More than 24 hours later, we still do not have electrical power, and yet the storm, from the local news media accounting at least, was a “non-event”. Tree wreckage, true. Power lines down? A couple. A few roofs damaged. No fatalities. No hospitalizations. Nothing actually to report here. Perhaps that, my friends, is one of the biggest side benefits of instant magick in action. “Nothing happened.”

It was “only” a F0 tornado (winds under 70 mph). Most folks will simply shrug it off. However, for me, it was a seminal moment in my practice. My son will not likely forget it either. “I knew you were doing magick, Mom, and I wasn’t afraid of the storm anymore.” Even my skeptical husband, who would like to chalk it up to his good driving skills, in seeing the aftermath of those various roads, knows that something peculiar happened on that particular patch of road that wasn’t quite ordinary.

So, consider practicing your instant magick regularly. Sure, use it for parking spaces, avoiding tickets, and winning door prizes. Just remember, it just might become a more powerful form of magick in your mundane life, if you work with it.

Erica Sittler is a Witch practicing her craft in Mississippi where she is a local, active member of the Temple of Witchcraft. Her magick is in the mundane and in bringing honor and attention to those small things that build a sustainable and adventurous life. She is a Witchcraft I Mystery School student under the instruction of High Priestess Sellena Dear.