Jeffrey's Blog: Going Old School
February 9, 2010
by Jeffrey Pierce
On Sunday, I was working out in our bedroom (trying to get in shape) when I caught something out of the corner of my eye. There, on the wall, was a face. It was formed from a large smudge and had two holes (apparently filled with wood putty) for eyes.
Things like this tend to run to one of two extremes in my world. On one hand there are the patterns you see in the plaster on the ceiling as you're laying in bed. It's sort of like cloud watching. Your brain seeks patterns in chaos and puts them together as recognizable pictures. On the other extreme are things like footsteps walking down the wall or the hand print on my car that make you go, "Hmmmm... I really can't explain that one."
This face fell somewhere in between those two extremes. It was like a pattern that forced itself into being rather than your mind pulling it from the visual background noise. The picture below doesn't do it justice but, as it can only be seen from exactly one angle in the entire room (it disappears from any other perspective) and I recently dropped my camera and broke one of the two lenses, this photo was the best that I could do - even after playing with it in Photoshop.
a smudged face can only be seen from certain places in the room
It's worth noting that we live in a fairly run down rental home that was built in 1924 and has seen its share of history. We have spirals painted on the floor of the only hallway...
spirals painted on our hallway floor
...and a Quami who lives in our basement.
a smudged face can only be seen from certain places in the room
Those are the more oddly fun aspects of the home. There are chains bolted to the wall in a couple areas of the basement and numerous doorways have been clawed and chewed upon by large dogs that were apparently kept her by a previous tenant and poorly cared for. (Our dog, Kismet, completely freaks out whenever she goes into the basement).
For now, it's home, and where we're supposed to be.
But the face seemed a little on the creepy end of the spectrum. What's more is that instead of just being a pattern it had a "feel" to it. A strong, creepy feel to it. I have some experience dealing this things that tend to give other people the heebie jeebies and the face was no different.
The first thing I did was get a second opinion. I called Bri in with a simple, "Will you look at something for me?" I had her stand in the one spot in the room where the face could be seen and look at it. Her first response was to recoil. "That gives me a really uncomfortable feeling?" she said. I agreed.
The banishing is pretty simple. Get a bowl of water. Add salt. Spit in it. Take a dark colored wash cloth, wet it in the water and scrub the area. Take two iron nails (we used very small ones since we're renting) and nail them through the eyes of the face, starting on its left (your right). Then cover the face with some kind of ward. (We hung a large plaque with spiritual symbols on it that had been given to us as a gift over the face.) Don't say anything within earshot of hte room until the process is complete.
The concepts are pretty simple. The water and salt are a pretty standard magickal base; think of it as an early form of holy water. Since the face was in the bedroom (which is personal, intimate spacE) a personal connection to the process was needed, which is where the saliva came in. [Editor's Note: Blood also creates a strong personal connection, but is only used when you're connecting something to you. Blood runs in your veins and the sympathetic bridge with blood is built between what's inside you and what you're connecting to. When you're trying to get rid of something, you use saliva - and you have to actually spit it out. It's the process of expelling a physical connection - spitting the saliva out - that is used as the sympathetic bridge.] Nails contain trace amounts of iron (unless you have really old rusty nails) and iron grounds magickal energy, essentially negating what it's trying to do. You start with the left (your right) eye as left is traditionally the energetically receiving side and finish with the right. The nails go through the eyes to symbolic blind it, the iron in the nails blinding its magickal sight. Nothing is said within earshot, basically to form the magickal "element of surprise."
Do I think the face was actually "something"? Maybe. Maybe not. However, as soon as the nails had been sunk through the eyes, the entire energy of the room changed. A heaviness and a presence that we'd been consciously unaware of, but had been there all along, was gone.