Out of sight, out of mind

Whether or not we are able to keep our magical practice out in the open or not, sometimes we may not want to have things where we will see them every day. One practice that is pretty common in Chaos workings is to charge a symbol and then forget it, placing it someplace unseen and essentially walking away. This is also seen in some types of protection spells, where the bottle or bundle is buried and left alone.

The mind is a powerful thing, but it also tends to wander. I am a 'what if' person. Since childhood, I've played the what if game: what would I do if (insert random occurrence or disaster here)? While normally I quite embrace this (and it is a wonderful technique for facing things like job interviews, because you go into it already ready for the wacky questions they might ask you!), it isn't the best thing for reinforcing a spell because your mind is bringing up all the negative things that could happen or even idly wondering if your spell is working, which can weaken the energy you put into it at the creation.

One thing I like to do with symbols or other written pieces of workings that need to be placed about the house is put them behind things like pictures. Most picture frames can be opened up and something slipped inside so that even if you need to move the picture, it's not visible. You can pick spells to go behind pictures so they work together, a spell for harmony behind your family portrait, one for peaceful days behind a lovely landscape. I also love the potential of mirrors, being that they are natural portals, so they make a great place to reflect your energy out into the room by hanging something behind them.

I have a protection spell in a small compact that has one side set with a mirror and the other was for a picture. When closed my sigil will reflect in the mirror. This one is never opened (as you aren't supposed to look at the sigil directly). You could do something similar in a locket. (A locket also provides an easy way to incorporate spellwork tailored to each day, you just tuck in your slip of paper with your daily wishes written on it, and you can even tuck in other things depending on the locket)

I read of a neat way to add an extra layer of protection to your windows, by drawing symbols on them with blessed or herbed water. This reminds me of writing in the fog on a mirror, which I believe has a lot of magical potential as well.

As I was writing about the paint strips the other week, I was thinking about these small strips of colored paper and other things you could do with them. Some were just about the width of a door frame. If you paired up two pieces, the same width as your door, and drew or wrote your working across the both of them (so when they touch it is complete), you could then fix one half to the door and the other to the frame, so that it was 'whole' when the door was shut.