Shadow work

Walking the Edge – Part IV: The Gate That Speaks Your Name

A Guided Meditation to Meet the Guardian at the Threshold

Find a quiet place where the veil is thin,
between breaths, between heartbeats, between thoughts.
Sit with your spine tall and your body grounded.
Feel the weight of the world beneath you,
not as a burden,
but as the Earth remembering your name.

Close your eyes.

Breathe.

Let the breath spiral in.
Let it spiral out.
Like wind threading a labyrinth,
like the turning of a wand in your palm.

With each breath, you descend.

Down through the coils of your spine,
Down through the roots of your being.
The world above fades into silence.
You are walking the edge now.

You find yourself on a narrow path,
worn smooth by countless feet;
witches, seekers, visionaries, fools.
The mist curls around your ankles,
and the air hums with memory.

Before you rises a gate.

Not of iron or stone,
but made of something older,
woven from your choices, your pain, your longing.
It shimmers with the language of your soul.

This is the Gate That Speaks Your Name.

Approach it slowly.

Listen.
What does it whisper?

Is it a challenge? A riddle?
Does it call you by the name you give others,
or by the one you have never spoken aloud?

You reach out.
Your hand trembles. That’s all right.

Touch the gate.
Feel how it responds to your presence,
not as a stranger,
but as something that has always known you.

And then,

From the shadows beside the gate,
someone steps forward.

The Guardian.

This being is neither enemy nor friend,
but a force shaped in the forge of your becoming.

It may wear your face.
Or the face of your deepest fear.
Or something ancient, winged, shrouded, radiant.

Do not turn away.

Look into their eyes.

Ask them what they guard.
What they protect you from.
What they hold back until you are ready.

Listen.

This is the voice of the threshold.

When you are ready,
ask the Guardian:

“What must I become to pass?”

Let the answer rise like smoke in your mind.
Let it burn if it must.
Let it show you something true.

You may pass through the gate today.
Or not.
It does not matter.

You have stood before it.
You have heard your name.

And that… is the beginning.

Return now.

Return with the breath.
Return with the whisper of your name still echoing.
Return with the knowing that there is power in waiting,
and greater power in daring.

When you are ready,
open your eyes.

And write what you saw.

Walking the Edge- Part III: A Witch’s Journey Through Power, Preparing the Vessel

Know Thyself

Before you can wield real power, you must become a vessel capable of holding it.

That sounds poetic, but it’s also literal. Power rushes through the body like fire, like song, like voltage. It cannot be held in a cracked and leaking cup. It requires inner scaffolding, ethics, discipline, clarity, and alignment, so it doesn’t simply burn through you and leave you empty.

And most of all, it requires this:
To hold power, you must know yourself.

Not the fantasy-self, not the spiritual persona, not the carefully curated mirror you show to the world. You must look unflinching into the truest mirror, the one that shows your capability and your shadow. Because power will not lie to you. And even if power did not, the spirits, gods, and adversaries you may face absolutely will not. They will press every weakness, amplify every doubt, and offer tempting shapes to your most hidden desires.

Knowing yourself is not a luxury. It is armor.

Ethical Grounding

You cannot walk the edge if you don’t know where the cliff is.

Ethical grounding is more than knowing right from wrong. It’s learning how to hold power without exploiting others, how to be feared without being cruel, how to lead without controlling. It’s also about boundaries: yours and theirs.

Witchcraft does not hand you a rulebook. It demands something far more difficult: discernment.

Ethics requires that we build our own moral compass. Unlike, many religions, which foist theirs onto their laity, assuming them incapable of doing so. Witchcraft requires your full participation. You must know yourself, examine your motives, and choose the values you will live by, even when no one is watching.

Only you can hold your mirror. Only you can choose your line in the sand.

I have watched many a witch do this work, and I can say honestly: they are some of the most moral people I have ever encountered in my life. Not because they were told what to believe, but because they chose, again and again, to align power with integrity.

In the Wild Blackthorn Tradition, power is a flame cupped between two hands: one is Will, the other is Ethics. Lose either, and the fire goes out, or turns wild and devours.

Psychic Hygiene

Witches are sensitive. That’s part of the gift. But sensitivity without sovereignty makes you a sponge, not a channel.

Psychic hygiene is the daily practice of clearing, shielding, and reclaiming your energy. Just as you wash your body and tend your home, you must cleanse your spirit. Not occasionally. Not only when things feel “off.” But as a habit. As devotion.

A simple daily practice:

  • Breathe deeply.
  • Call your energy home.
  • Visualize a cleansing light or elemental force (fire, wind, water) moving through you.
  • Expel what does not belong. Thank it, then release.
  • Seal yourself with light, symbols, breath, or intention.

Neglect this and you invite intrusion. Practice it, and your light becomes sharp—less buffet, more blade.

Even in the most formal ceremonial traditions, daily spiritual hygiene is non-negotiable. In systems like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, new initiates (Neophytes) are encouraged to perform the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (LBRP) every day for a full year. This ritual clears unwanted influences, centers the self, invokes elemental guardians, and aligns the practitioner vibrationally with their highest purpose. It also builds confidence, discipline, and internalization.

It’s not the ritual itself that creates mastery; it’s the daily doing of it.

Whatever your path, the principle remains: cleanse, center, protect. Again and again. Power respects those who tend their temple.

Neglect this and you invite intrusion. Practice it, and your light becomes sharp, less buffet, more blade.

Shadow Integration

The edge will cut you if you’re afraid of your own darkness.

Every witch has a shadow. Power will expose it. That’s not failure,it’s an invitation.

Do you long to be adored? Feared? Vindicated? Do you still seek permission? Revenge? Are there wounds beneath your rituals?

Shadow work isn’t about banishing these parts of you. It’s about acknowledgment, integration, and transformation. You must be able to name your hungers before they name you. You must be able to say:
I know what I am capable of, both the holy and the terrifying.

This is the first armor. This is the mirror you must not break.

Embracing your shadow is not only an act of healing but also of creating wholeness. In this wholeness, we are no longer divided. Our power courses freely without obstacle, unblocked by shame or self-denial. This integration can make us more powerful than we ever dared to dream.

As the saying goes: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

Strengthening the Will

The Will is the blade of the Witch.

Discipline sharpens it. Desire drives it. Belief tempers it. But it is forged in fire, by choosing, again and again, to act from the deepest truth of who you are.

Ritual strengthens Will. Repetition carves paths in the mind. Every time you say the words, light the candle, cast the circle, you are reminding the world (and yourself): I choose. I shape. I remember.

You don’t need to feel ready. You need to begin.

The Guardian at the Threshold

There comes a point in every path of power when you meet the one who bars the gate.

Sometimes they appear in dreams. Sometimes as illness, fear, loss, or a sudden pull to abandon the Work entirely. They are not your enemy.

They are you. The part of you that remembers every failure, every trauma, every vow you made to stay small or safe or silent. They wear your face. They know your secrets.

But if you face them, not with violence, but with presence, they become the ally you didn’t know you needed. They test you because power will test you. If you cannot meet your own shadow and stand your ground, what will you do when a real force opposes you?

Next time, I will offer a guided meditation to meet the Guardian at the Threshold.

But for now…
Cleanse your altar.
Name your values.
Look into the mirror.
Feel your breath return to your body.
Strengthen the vessel.
And prepare to knock at the door.

Footnote:
 The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (LBRP) is a foundational ceremonial magic rite used to clear space, establish energetic boundaries, and invoke the archangels of the four quarters. Originating in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, it is widely practiced in Western esotericism and often recommended as a daily practice for beginners to build clarity, presence, and alignment.
A simplified instructional version can be found in:

  • Modern Magick by Donald Michael Kraig
  • The Middle Pillar by Israel Regardie
  • Or online: [Search “LBRP ritual text” or “LBRP walkthrough” for trusted resources]

Walking the Edge – Part II: The Fire Beneath the Thorn

A Witch’s Journey Through Power Series

There comes a moment in every witch’s path where the wind changes.

You are no longer simply learning. The spells you cast begin to ripple outward. Your words take on weight. People turn to you for insight, for healing, for justice. And the power you once touched with trembling hands begins to move through you with ease, sometimes unbidden.

This is not mastery.
This is the dangerous middle.

The Moment When Power Answers

In the beginning, power is something we reach for. We read, we train, we practice. We cast the same spell again and again, tweaking the moon phase or the herb blend, trying to catch the current just right.

But then… something shifts. A whisper moves through you, a knowing rises in your gut. The work deepens because you are becoming more refined.

Your aura takes on a gravity of its own. Ritual becomes less about calling and more about opening. Your presence stirs reaction, resonance, or resistance.

And with that shift, the world begins to test you.

The Ladder to True Power

We speak in the Wild Blackthorn Tradition of a progression; a ladder of fire, climbed not in haste but with care:

  1. Knowledge – The gathering of lore, theory, tools, and stories. Books and breath.
  2. Experience – The doing. The failed spells. The moments of awe. The nights of doubt.
  3. Actualization – The integration. When the witch no longer works the spell, but becomes it.
  4. Wisdom – The still point. When discernment is sharper than desire.
  5. Power – Not the lightning. The conductor. The one who knows what to do with the storm.

This is not a linear journey. We rise and fall through these states. But when one tries to leap ahead, when power is seized without wisdom, when understanding blooms without humility, something fractures.

This is where obsession is born. And obsession is not power, it is power turned inward, festering.

The False Fire

There is a kind of power that masquerades as mastery. It is loud, impressive, and intoxicating. It commands attention. It often gets called “influence.”

But true power does not always shine. Sometimes it walks barefoot. Sometimes it bleeds. Sometimes it waits in silence until the moment is right.

Beware the gleam that demands your gaze. In magic, as in life, the brightest thing in the room is not always the most powerful. Sometimes, it is the trap.

The Peril of Outer Praise

Power wants to be witnessed. This is part of its nature—it radiates. But the desire to be seen as powerful is not the same as being powerful.

There is danger in chasing recognition before the soul is ready. In every tradition, we see those who begin to shine a little too early—and who then reshape their magic around being seen rather than becoming whole.

This happens in subtle ways:

  • We post a ritual and check for likes.
  • We speak in circle hoping for admiration, not alignment.
  • We wear our title louder than our integrity.

The desire for outer validation is often a mask for unworked insecurity. When we seek applause, it’s  because some part of us doubts our worth, and would rather hear others say it than learn to believe it ourselves.

But this kind of validation feeds the wrong fire. It grows the ego, not the spirit.

And ego, once fed too long, becomes a hungry ghost, always needing more. It will whisper that you are wiser than your elders, more gifted than your peers, immune to correction. It will resist stillness. It will panic at silence.

This is not sovereignty. It is spiritual inflation.

The Witch’s power must rise from within, not depend on a mirror held up by others. Otherwise, when that mirror breaks, and it always does, we are shattered with it.

The Forge of Becoming

You must be tempered, Witch. And that tempering is never comfortable. There will be days when the magic feels like fire in your mouth. When your spirit aches from holding boundaries. When you are tempted to use the Craft for validation, revenge, or escape.

Those are the crossroads. Not whether you can cast, but why.

Power without ethics is violence.
Power without devotion is vanity.
Power without will is waste.
But power with all these? That is the mark of the Witch whole.

A Vision: The Path of Ash and Ember

Close your eyes and walk with me.

You stand at the edge of twilight on a mountain pass older than maps. The air is sharp with myrrh and woodsmoke, and beneath your feet, the stones are warm with something ancient, something watching.

To your right, the land falls away into a golden plain lit by sunset. A wide road stretches across it, paved with sigils and scattered with broken wands, dulled blades, and tarnished crowns. Here walked those who hungered for power, who cast great spells and gathered titles—but whose works crumbled for lack of root.

To your left, a narrow path coils upward into mist and shadow. It is hard going. The ground is uneven, the stones slick with old blood and weathered tears. Thorn branches clutch at your sleeves. Along the trail stand cairns, one for each who walked the path to its end. Some bear names carved in languages long dead. Others are unmarked, known only to the stars and the Gods.

Here and there you glimpse offerings: a braid of hair, a ring of iron, a tooth, a prayer etched in salt. These are the tools of the true initiate, not trophies, but sacrifices.

Then, from within the thicket of blackthorn to your left, a voice stirs. It is dry as wind, sharp as bone, and yet somehow your own:

“Will you carry the fire, or be consumed by it?”

The forge is not at the summit.
It is within the climb.

The Power of Restraint

The witch who knows their own limits, and tests them with intention, is already walking toward wisdom.

We must build not just spellcraft, but soulcraft.

Restraint is not weakness. Patience is not passivity. These are disciplines of the deep magician, who understands that a spell well-timed is worth a thousand flung in frenzy.

Power must be shaped, not hoarded.
It must serve something greater, or it will devour its bearer.

The Witch as Keeper of Fire

You are not here to burn the world down.

You are here to carry the ember forward.
To protect the spark.
To light the beacon when others are lost.
To warm. To forge. To cauterize.
To know when to let the fire die into coals… and when to breathe it back to life.

In Part III

In the next part of this journey, we will begin preparing the vessel:

  • Ethical grounding
  • Psychic hygiene
  • Shadow integration
  • Ritual techniques for strengthening will
  • And a meditation on the “Guardian at the Threshold.”

But for now, I leave you with this: What in you is still flammable?
And what in you has already survived the fire?

The Edge and the Spiral, A Witch’s First Reckoning with Power

Power Begins at the Edge

The Witch’s First Reckoning with Risk, Growth, and the Call of the Spiral

Most of us begin the path of witchcraft with small, beautiful things.
A phase of the moon, an herb tucked under the pillow, a card drawn in curiosity.
A whisper, a candle flame, a sense that something more is possible.

These are good beginnings.
Gentle. Curious. Sacred in their own way.

But there comes a time, sometimes after years, sometimes overnight, when something shifts.
The dream becomes a hunger. The candlelight isn’t enough. You want more than spells that look pretty and rituals that feel safe.

This is where the edge appears.

The First Reckoning

There’s no flashing sign that says, Power this way.
Instead, there’s a tension in the chest. A feeling that what you’re doing isn’t wrong, but it isn’t enough, you could go deeper. Maybe it happens in ritual, when your voice shakes as you call the Goddess, and something answers back. Perhaps it’s in a dream, when you wake, sobbing with a name you’ve never heard still on your lips. Or it could be when the world cracks open; grief, love, illness, birth, and the veil thins without warning.

And suddenly, you know: This path is real.
And real means risk.

You are standing on the edge.
And something inside you is asking if you’ll step forward.

The Path Isn’t Straight, It Spirals

No one hands you a map for what comes next. You don’t become powerful all at once.
It doesn’t matter how many books you’ve read or how many tools you own.

Power unfolds in spirals.

You begin with knowledge; learning names, signs, symbols.
You move into experience; casting, contacting,  stumbling, trying again.
You start to understand the deeper structures and the “why’s”
Then, sometimes slowly, sometimes all at once, you grow into wisdom.
And from that wisdom, you begin to touch true power.

You come back to the same ideas again and again, and each time, they meet you deeper. The moon isn’t just a phase. It becomes a mirror.
The spell isn’t just a charm. It becomes a choice.

And here’s the truth no one glamorizes:
The people who succeed at this path, the witches, the magicians, mystics and healers who truly grow, have failed more than most people have even dared to try.
They’ve stumbled. Been humbled. Risked. Gotten it wrong. Chosen again.

Every scar is a sign of movement.
Every mistake is part of the spiral.

Power Will Ask Something of You

This is the part few people say out loud.

Awakening isn’t always beautiful, it breaks things.

You might lose the version of yourself that always played small.
You might lose people who loved that version.

You’ll face your fears. Those of failure and of success.
And you’ll meet your shadow, one who is not the villain you fear, but a wounded protector.

Because here’s the truth:

We all have a dark side.
It is simply hidden, not evil. Built from old pain and forged in moments we had to survive.

If you repress it, ignore it, pretend it isn’t there, it will find its way out anyway.
And when it bursts free, it will do so without your consent, or your control.

But if you turn toward it, if you meet it, name it, embrace it, you begin to reclaim your full self.

Your shadow has shielded you.
It carried the weight you couldn’t bear at the time.
It knows your wounds and your power.

When you embrace it, when you do the slow, brave work of integration you don’t become less.

You become more.
More whole.
More honest.
More powerful than you ever imagined.

You Don’t Have to Be Ready

You don’t need to know everything.
You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t need a coven, a title, a perfect altar, or the current aesthetic.

You need one thing:
A willingness to keep going, to be reshaped, to listen deeply to yourself, to the land, to the gods.
A willingness to walk forward even when the path vanishes into mist.

Because power isn’t a destination.
It’s a devotion.
And it begins the moment you say:
Yes, I will walk.

A Note for the Ones Still Standing on the Edge

If you’re here, if you’re reading this…
If you’ve felt the edge under your feet and the pull of something deeper.

Then you’re already on the path.

The spiral has already begun.

So take one breath.
Take one step.
And trust that you are not alone. We’ve walked this way too.
And the road ahead, while steep, is full of wonder.