MY FIRST ANGEL RITUAL, WAY BACK WHEN: A MEMOIR OF PRACTICE
We always start where we start, and it’s usually not going to be where we stay—and that’s okay. I was reflective about this last week as I felt parts of my personal spirituality and spiritual journey reconnecting and a circle closing. This past week it has to do with angel magic. I am learning a more Latin and folk-inspired method of angel work, and I can already feel the difference for my spirituality it is making. But more than anything, I am very aware of how it feels like coming back home, like I am incorporating something that has been like a dangling thread I didn’t know what to do with.
This also brought back memories of my forays into this specific form of magic right at the beginning of my occult spiritual journey. I had already been a person of faith solidly since my college years. But as I embarked on my professional life, served in ministry, and found more and more that I needed to nurse my own spiritual development, I began to explore what was out here. At the time I was not as comfortable veering away from the Christian tradition. But I did begin to gently explore certain aspects of New Agism that were more comfortable. I had believed in the angels since I was a little boy. My mom used to tell me this story of when I was little and I sat with her and told her that I knew the angels up in heaven and we used to play and look down at her on earth! I don’t remember saying that, but either I had a kick-ass time pre-incarnation or a vivid imagination (or both)!
My first stint of working with angels composed of reading Richard Webster books on the four main Archangels, meditating with Angelite stones that I had carved their sigils into, and lighting candles and incense. I prayed a lot to them. I asked for their aid, guidance and for them to appear. I did this for months. It was calming and comforting, but I did not have any sort of manifestation of them.
Until I did!
One night as I was sound asleep, the place where I was sleeping began to light up like someone had turned a light on. Naturally I woke up. When I opened my eyes, hovering over me was a slightly smaller than human-sized angel! She looked female, had a gentle smile, and seemed to take great joy in the look of awe on my face. She didn’t speak to me, even as I spoke to her. She eventually alighted on a freezer chest my friend had in their basement, and seemed to keep vigil over me as I slept. Since that was one of my first experiences with a spirit presence, I was both elated and a bit wired. But eventually I actually went back to sleep, feeling like a dear friend was watching over me.
In hindsight thinking back, I think I was seeing my guardian angel. She did not evoke fear or any sense of dread so often spoken of with the angels. She felt approachable and gentle. She had an interest in me, but I thought it interesting that she did not talk. I later learned that this is likely because the relationship was new and I needed to develop the connection and my own spiritual senses more for a greater effect. But just SEEING an angel changes your sense of what’s real. And for me, that vision of her confirmed that truly anything was possible.
