Working Your Woo: Building your Inner Temple 1.2
Crafting your firmament, as above, so below.
When I began to work on my new Inner Temple space, I found myself sitting on a beach before a sunset sunset so perfect it almost looked fake — weird how that’s the association we make nowadays, but there you are. I internally eye-rolled at how the setting felt like the most twee yoga photo setting ever, and I consciously tried to shift it into something a bit less Instagram-y. But, even though I gave it a fair go, the space wouldn’t budge. I could feel the surf-packed sand beneath me, could hear the waves pounding in, could feel them wash up over my feet, could see the kelp and seaweed floating in the surf, and could smell salt and the faint whiff of decay. The ocean and beach was solid and firm and stubbornly there, no matter what I did.
At that point I was both amused and gratified. I was stuck with the ocean as a starting point, like it or not, because this was where I needed to be. My inability to budge my surroundings meant I was not in mind-theatre territory: I had crossed into the Inner World. Now I could really get to work.
I’m going to assume readers of this series haven’t created an Inner Temple before, nor know what the Inner Worlds are. The easiest way I can put this is a guided visualisation or meditation is just that: guided by external forces, down a narrow path with a clear beginning, middle, and end. There’s nothing wrong with it, and it serves a purpose for many. I’ve always had a problem with guided meditation as I get so hung up on trying to visualise things exactly as it’s being described to me. “You want me to ‘visualise a golden light’? What do you mean by ‘golden’? Actual gold flecks, or gold-orange, or more yellow than gold?” Maybe I can blame my autism for the literalness, but I find myself dithering over minutae until I completely forget the point of whatever it is I am supposed to be doing. The result is I stay firmly in brain-theatre space and never leave it. I’m not participating or interacting with an inner world, I’m merely observing a scene like a movie.
So what is the Inner World, exactly? I think, for a lot of people, the Inner World means just another form of imagination-visualisation. But the Inner World is deeper than that: it is your connection to the All, a link to every dimension, every space. It’s a thread that connects you to the Universe and it is from this space that your magic as a Witch or mage or rootworker connects and manifests. The tools and trappings and altar-stuff you use is a trigger for your mental process to establish that link, a way to trigger your brain and your inner worlds into connection. As above, so below.
What’s the difference between brain-theatre meditation and going into the Inner World? For me, the shift is when I am no longer dictating minutae. I don’t have to figure out what colour is ‘gold coloured light’ — it’s right there in front of me without any input. When I can’t shift from a beach, even if I try to move the scene to have more trees, or maybe inside a house — it’s right there, down to the way sand feels packed and firm when wet. It takes shape in ways you may not be able to predict or affect, and for some people that is quite frightening.
The Inner World work is important to your work in Woo. Say that you have decided to do a spell to give yourself more assertiveness in your workplace. You look around the internet and you find a spell which requires you to use red candle dressed with oil upon an altar during a certain moon phase. A lot of Woo-folk just starting out thinking the candle, the oils, and the phase of the moon is what makes a spell magical. They’ll ask a tonne of questions about what kind of candle, what kind of oils, if it matters if the phase of the moon isn’t quite 100% full, and so on. They get so hung up on the setting and the props, they’ll refuse to cast a single spell unless everything is “perfect”. They are convinced if they do the spell wrong, it won’t work or it will backfire. They visualise and they say the trite incantation included with the spell, and then wonder why it doesn’t work.
The spell didn’t work because new Woo-workers tend to believe the power is in the tools, not in themselves. But spells done by skilled people work not because their trappings and props are cooler, but because years of practice means they know how to link to the Inner World. It is also why there is a lot of hype about ‘authentic’ practice. An authentic practice isn’t because it’s thousands of years old, but because if a spell has been used or a practice has been done for a while, then it is reinforced in our minds and becomes an immediate link.
Most people know what a pentagram means, even if they aren’t a Witch. It’s a widely recognised symbol, even though it is a relatively new one. There’s nothing ancient about a pentragram. But a pentegram used with the right mindset isn’t just a symbol, it’s an engram; a direct trigger to the brain for those in the know. When a witch draws a pentagram and knows what it means, and what it’s for, just like the thousands of witches before them, it triggers the process of Work. When someone without that understanding of the Inner World draws a pentagram, they may get a thrill, or feel uneasy, but chances are it isn’t going to do much. This is the real secret of doing Woo: it’s not the candle, it’s not the oils, it’s not the moon. It’s the combination-engram which triggers the caster’s own ability to connect into the Inner World. And it’s that connection to the Inner World where we hold the power and capacity to shift the pattern of our existence.
How do we get there? How do we get that connection started? Meditation is a good stepping stone. It’s a useful tool to get started on the Inner Worlds because it helps you push aside the intrusive thoughts of worrying about your bills, assessing your love life, or pondering what you’ll have for tea. For many belief systems, silence and stillness — the connection to Inner Worlds — is the main goal for meditation. But I feel meditation is the ‘Witch 101’; it doesn’t go deep enough. For the purposes of doing Woo you want to get to the Worlds so you can shift it, work with it, and create changes. This involves going beyond the stillness of meditation. It means you can’t yank yourself away from where your mind is trying to take you, and instead trust in the process. The yanking away from where my mind was trying to go when in a guided meditation is why I continuously had problems with meditation — indeed, I think it’s the main reason Woo-folk say meditation doesn’t work for them.
For the purpose of learning how to connect to your part of the Inner World, we need to dispel a few myths about meditation technique. If you have a practice that works for you, great, you can start there. If not, I would encourage you to find a piece of music, or sound, or something other than a talking voice giving you a specific scene to visualise. If we can distance ourselves from what we believe we should be seeing or experiencing in a meditation, we can embrace the unexpected without trying to rationalise or explain it away. This is a vital step to go a bit further into the Inner Worlds because, believe me, you’re going to see things that will make zero sense…and you gotta roll with it.
Another myth to get rid of; if you do not leave in the exact same way as you arrive to any form of meditation or Inner World work, you will NOT die or face dire circumstances. Maybe this is just my personal experience, but I have never lost my body or been unable to find my way back. I’ve never been possessed, either. When I do Inner Worlds work, I am usually in bed and I am more than likely going to fall asleep and drift into dream: a sistah is tired, y’all, and I’m confident in my lucid dreaming to get me out of trouble. According to a lot of sources this is ZOMGDANGEROUS, and I used to get ridiculously stressed trying to remember the exact way I came into my working sessions: which side of the hallway was the door? What colour was it? Was the tree a birch or an oak? And will I die if I get it wrong? I was reading resources in my 20s telling me I had to do it exactly that way in the book, even though I had done Inner World work since I was 10. I became convinced I had done it all wrong because all the books I read said so, and I didn’t trust my own experience to tell me otherwise.
While I don’t think these portents should put you off, you do need to take some precautions. Witchcraft isn’t ‘safe’, but we will establish a firm foundation to carve out a safe space for yourself, and you can then expand. You may even find the Inner World provides for you in some way; the ocean I snorted in derision about at the beginning of my recent Inner work turned out to be useful after all, because it gives me a place to bathe myself before I start and after I am done. I didn’t put the ocean shore there in my Inner connection, and I didn’t expect it. That was the Inner Worlds providing for me, and how I knew I was no longer just visualising: it manifested without my input.
To get started, you need first of all to commit to making meditation a regular practice. I set a timer during the day and I settle in, even just for five minutes. You do not need to make everything silent and dark in order to meditate, and I would even caution against doing so: in order to do Inner World work, it is my opinion you should be able to do that anywhere, even in less than pristine conditions. I have done Work on a bus, in the passenger seat of a car, and in a busy nightclub. With enough practice, it doesn’t matter what is going on without, just what is going on within.
If you’re experienced in meditation already, settle into what meditation works for you. For those of you new to this, I suggest you start out by getting comfortable, turning off phone notifications and getting rid of any other potential distractions for about ten minutes — set a timer if you’re worried about losing track of time. You may find covering your eyes helps you focus — I restarted doing my work by veiling my head with a scarf, which feels like a mini-tent and gives me a weird sense of security and focus. Once comfortable, concentrate on your breath, on releasing tension in your body. It might be useful to clench your hands into fists, and then to let them relax. Concentrate on feeling the tension go in your hands, feet, up into your arms and legs. Relax your shoulders. Unclench your jaw. Notice your breath going in and out. When your mind tries to send you off about what you want to post on your blog or the emails you need to send bring it back to your breath. Close your eyes. Be calm, gentle, serene. Sit in the darkness behind your eyes. It’s the blackness of space before the first light. Calm. Serene. Quiet.
For the first week or so, concentrate on just being able to get to this point. Experiment with it. Try it sitting, try lying down, then try standing up. Try opening your eyes but still concentrating on the meditation (obviously, don’t do this while driving or anything!). Try this until it becomes a second-nature thing you can do without needing the lights down, music on, or incense burning. It may take you a while, but once you get there, you can move on to the next part of the exercise.
This is the next bit to work on: once you’ve settled into your meditation space, and you are calm, still, and serene in the darkness, let a scene come to you. Don’t force it, and don’t try and shift it. If it doesn’t resonate with you at first, see if you can shift it to something more calming. Just let it appear to you. Don’t make any judgments about it, and don’t try to pull yourself back to the black because you think you’re doing meditation wrong. Trust in the process. Your space may be a beach, it may be a forest, it may be in the middle of a nebula in space, it may be a room in a house you loved. Just concentrate on your breathing, and let scenery unfold.
If you are in a forest, what kind of trees are there? What birds do you hear? What do you feel beneath you? Which direction is the breeze coming from? Where is the sun in relation to the trees? Visualise everything, every point of interest, but don’t be tempted to get up and explore. Just bring yourself back to that place when your brain tries to make you think about the phonecalls you need to make or what you ate for lunch. This should be the first focus of your meditations.
Once this meditation becomes comfortable and you are so practiced in your meditation that you can even feel the breeze or feel the ocean waves on your feet, you can add a new element. Now, once you have settled into your comfortable space, you should eventually put a circle around yourself in your meditation. You can draw it in chalk, or in salt. I once ended up doing this somehow with iron filings which suddenly appeared in my gloved hand. As you draw this space around you, be aware that this is giving you a safe space where nothing gets in. This is your protection. Once you’re able to make this happen, continue to sit in your space of meditation, in your safety and calm. The place in the circle is yours.
This all sounds very straightforward and a bit boring, I know, but bear with me. What you’re doing at this point is staking your claim on the Inner World. This circle is your starting place, and will be where you should end up when you begin in your practice, and where you come to in order to leave the Inner World. You will add things to it before you go exploring but for now, just observe from inside the circle. Is there a rock on the beach you find particularly interesting? Is there a tree that draws you to it? Make a note of it, mark it, and see what happens. When you come out of your meditation, make some notes on what you saw, and what came to you.
This is the foundation to your practice and it could be very quick, or it could take weeks. Take your time, because once you’ve got your protective circle in order, you can then start building and creating what you need in your Inner Worlds.
I wish you a good journey.
