Last summer, I had the pleasure of receiving all four of the elemental attunements in person at Salicrow’s sacred land, Solstice Meadow. These attunements, described in detail in her new book, The Path of Elemental Witchcraft, are magical techniques to calibrate your energetic body to each of the 4 elements: Earth, Air, Fire + Water. Each element has its wisdom to share + means of communicating with us. The teachings were incredibly thorough and the energy attunements were potent! With each and every attunement, I could feel myself deepening in sacred connection to the element itself. Fire, Earth, Water, and Air each showing themselves in different aspects of my life + environment; helping me to release old patterns that were keeping me stuck + transform that old energy into fertile soil to grow new life! After learning to work with the elements in this sacred way, I feel I have a deeper understanding + love of myself and the world around me. And boy did my life receive a major upgrade after doing this work! My summer was spent doing a deep dive with each of the elements at Solstice Meadow, and by fall, I was rearranging my whole life to purchase my own sacred land in PA. Needless to say, the experience was life-changing + powerful.
Before receiving the elemental attunements, Air was the element that I felt the least connected to. I would imagine that a lot of people probably feel this way. Air is invisible + intangible. We often take Air for granted. The truth is that without the element of Air in our lungs. We would perish in a very short amount of time. Air sustains us. Air inspires us. When we are talking about inspiration, we are really talking about Air. It is the inhalation of Air in each breath that provides the life giving force of Spirit. Connecting with Air in a sacred way, helped me to realize that every breath I take, every word I speak, every bright idea I have, is a gift from Air. At the Air elemental retreat, Sali taught us a sacred singing technique called vocal toning. When toning you elongate vowel sounds to recreate a resonance in your chest, activating your Heart + Throat Chakras. Toning within a group is nothing short of Magick. The vibrations from your sounds harmonize with the group’s and you can feel the synchronized sound vibrations reverberate within your own body. If you’ve ever OM’d in a yoga class, you’ve probably experienced this phenomenon.
A few days prior to the Air element retreat, I had recently learned of an injury on my left vocal cord due to vagus nerve damage. My voice would get tired after long periods of talking and be inconsistent at best. Sometimes I would lose my voice all together. The doctor recommended me to a voice therapist to work on vocal exercises to strengthen my vocal cords. And guess what the theme of these voice lessons was?! The therapist had me work on exercises to improve my Air flow as I speak. Is it really any coincidence that this injury/imbalance was revealing itself at the same time I was learning to work with the element of Air?! Ha! Of course not… this is how we know when there’s Magick afoot! This powerful synchronicity was Air’s way of letting me know that we had some serious work to do together!
Air also rules the Ethereal realms of the Astral plane, Dream Realm + Otherworld of Spirit. Which actually brings me to my next element… the element of Fire, who revealed to me in a dream that a part of my body + spirit needed healing.
I have built my life around working with Fire. It is my main tool in the studio. Almost everyday, I light my torch to solder silver together; using the flame to bring jewelry + Magical Talismans to life. I also adore hanging out around the camp fire + fire hoop for fun on occasions. I have always intuitively known that Fire is the spark of creativity. It brings the passion, drive + motivation to convert an inspired idea into the act of creation. Fire resides in our abdomen, in the Solar Plexus + Sacral Chakras. It is the heat of digestion, the process of transformation + the seat of our sexuality. It is taking a raw material and transforming it into something new; something different, something altered, a creation. We often think of the power of fire as being destructive, especially when we think of the increase in frequency + magnitude of wildfires that we’ve been experiencing around the world in the last decade. But what about the regenerative power of fire to transform a landscape and catalyze new life to spring forth?! There are many species of trees that have evolved with fire being a part of their landscape + need fire to activate their seeds in order to germinate. We can use this same flame of transformation to bring about regeneration into our own lives as well.
The first night back home in my own bed after receiving the Fire elemental attunement at Solstice Meadow, Fire revealed to me that I needed to do some work to heal an imbalance in my Sacral Chakra. In my dream, I was at a gynecologist appointment. I lay on the operating table in a hospital gown with my feet in the stirrups. I watched on a screen as the doctor was showing me my lady bits with a camera. During the procedure, the doctor used her finger to pull a live grub out from inside of me. I watched it squirm as she plopped it on the surgical tray. I woke up from this dream a bit disturbed and incredibly curious as to the dream’s meaning. I knew that dream was speaking to me in metaphors + I had to decode its symbolism. I immediately connected the feeling + imagery of this dream with my recent visit to the throat doctor to have my vocal cords checked in “real life.” At that appointment, the doctor stuck a camera down my throat, and I watched my vocal cords vibrate on a screen in the doctor’s office. I kept thinking that what my vocal cords looked like in real life was very similar to what I saw on the screen in the gynecologists office in my dream. I knew that these two experiences were connected so I started doing some research.
I discovered that when women are in embryonic development, the cells that become our vocal cords + Uterus actually start out as the same stem cells and then later divide to become their own organs. This is why the vocal cords + Uterus have a very similar anatomical structure. It’s also why when many women have an imbalance in their Throat Chakra, they will also have an imbalance in their Sacral Chakra and vice versa. These two Chakras + anatomical organs are intimately interconnected in all women. Thanks to the element of Fire for revealing this sacred connection, this was a big revelation on my healing path. And when we think about how this relates to the elements, Fire will suffocate without Air. After 18 months of feeling repressed from living in too tight of quarters with my partner + my jewelry business during the quarantine lockdown in a studio loft apartment with no walls, is it really that surprising?! My life was in transition + I knew that the elements were speaking to me in metaphors. I needed space to work on my Air flow to rekindle my inner Fire.
WATER
During this healing journey guided by the elements, there were many big emotions that bubbled up to the surface during this process. Enter the element of Water. Water is connected to our emotions + intuition. Water is conscious + carries information. It permeates every cell in our body. Water is the element that we are most made up of. Depending on how old you are, our bodies are between 50-75% water making it essential to our bodies’ composition. We are Water beings. Water effects the whole body, but energetically speaking, Water is mostly associated with the Heart + Third Eye Chakras. As the element of reflection, Water also effects how we perceive ourselves, how we relate to the world around us + the image of ourselves that we project to others.
During the Water Magick retreat, Sali taught us about how we can use reflective surfaces for protection Magick + how Glamour Magick can influence how others perceive us. On these elemental retreats, we would often go on a journey, which is essentially a guided meditation with the intention of having an experience + gathering information. On this particular journey, we were going in to meet our spirit guide; the spirit who would help us to become a more empowered version of ourselves. On my journey, I encountered Marilyn Monroe. I felt a soft breeze on my face + was instantly transported to the red carpet, making a big splash with my grand entrance. I was wearing the long white fox fur coat that I inherited from my Mother.
On one hand, having Marilyn Monroe come through was kind of surprising because in my younger years, I was always more of a tom boy. I didn't really embrace my femininity until later in life. But when I really I thought about it, I realized that Marilyn's been with me all along! I painted a portrait of her when I was in high school + I also grew up in a town that has a Marilyn Monroe themed diner. In my 20s, I had my own "Marilyn Monroe moment" when I was walking down the street in NYC and had my skirt blown up by a passing subway train. Ooo la la! And in the spirit of Marilyn, I've recently embraced wearing red lipstick. 💄💋 This may not seem like a big deal... but for a former tom boy who used to prefer remaining behind the scenes, IT IS! Hello shiny new self... I'm ready for my close up!
Learning about Glamour Magick through the element of Water helped me to shift out of the repressed version of myself that I had been feeling since the lockdown. Glamour Magick gave me reason to get dolled up + step into the empowered vision I have for myself.
Earth element is the element that I have always felt the most connected to (which should come as no surprise since I built my life around working with crystals!) Although the Earth element inspires all that I do, the stone that would be used in the "Elements of Magick" jewelry collection actually came to me last. I believe that this is because I needed to receive the Earth attunement before I could really tune into the energy of Moss Agate.
During the Earth elemental retreat at Solstice Meadow, we learned how to find the Earth’s energy lines, called ley lines, with copper dowsing rods. There are two types of ley lines: magnetic lines + water lines. After mapping these energy lines + the points where they cross, we built an Earth temple on one of these power places, called an energy vortex. Vortexes are places where 2 or more ley lines meet + they are potent spots for doing energy work. We built our Earth temple with stones + a shit ton of moss that you could lay down in, ground + experience Earth healing . Naturally we named this sacred place "The Moss Spa."
Earth element represents everything that is solid, physical + tangible in the 3D plane. It is the most dense of all of the elements. Unlike the other elements, Earth element you can hold in your hand. It relates to our physical body, our home + the physical space we reside in, how much money we make + the amount of abundance we experience, the food that we eat + the land that nourishes us. Earth element teaches us that more abundance we choose to see in our life + on our planet, the greater bandwidth for abundance we can experience. Earth element has the ability to help us compost old, dead, stuck energy into a fertile environment for new growth. After working with each element in its own specific domain of healing, I was ready to compost all of that old energy that was making me feel repressed. I was ready for a new space. I was ready to step into my dream life + start living it. I had always dreamed of living on a mountain, growing my own food + growing my jewelry business. I wanted my own sacred land to connect with and call home. A few weeks after receiving the Earth attunement, my partner + I received news that our offer was accepted on an old farmhouse on a 6.5 acre wooded property in Pennsylvania. This was a dream that I have been working on manifesting for the last decade, but I truly believe that each of the elements helped to show me what was standing in my way + how to heal it. I am now writing this from my cozy farmhouse, tucked away in the woods, on top of a small mountain in the Poconos. I look forward to connecting with each one of the elements in a sacred way on this land.
In addition to manifesting home, another dream of mine has come to fruition. Since receiving the elemental attunements, Salicrow + I have collaborated to launch a new jewelry collection inspired by these teaching called, Elements of Magick. I have carefully sourced each of the stones in this collection to embody the element they represent, and to take it a step further, each stone has been attuned to its corresponding element using Sali’s magical techniques. It is an honor + a privilege to work with the elements in this sacred way and help people adorn themselves with the power of Earth, Air, Fire + Water. The Elements of Magick collection invites you to deepen your relationship to the elements within you + around you! As Salicrow says, “Every good Witch needs a talisman or two…” Wear your Magick!