Let’s face it, everybody needs spells for protection. It doesn’t matter if you’re not worried about getting into arguments with other witches. It doesn’t matter if you don’t work with spirits. It doesn’t matter if you consider yourself a super nice person that nobody would ever want to hurt. You need spells for protection. Hell, I think even people who aren’t witches should have spells for protection! There are just too many ways for things to go wrong.
Protection spells and defensive magic are some of the first things I teach my students. I consider this to be a completely non-negotiable part of any witchcraft education. It’s just plain common sense to make sure that you’re safe spiritually no matter what kind of witchcraft you do. Today we’re going to talk about the three kinds of spells for protection that every which needs to have.
Do You Really Need Spells For Protection?
Short answer: YES!
Even if you consider yourself to be the kind of person that no one would ever want to throw a nasty spell at, things still go wrong. Protection isn’t just for when someone casts a curse on you or when you piss off another witch. There are so many dangers, big and small, that you can run into as a witch. Do you have a plan for what you’re going to do if a malicious spirit decides it wants to screw with you? Do you know how to deal with accidental psychic influences that are harming you? What about the potential for spell backlash? Psychic vampires? Errant nasty energy hitching a ride home with you?
The truth is, there are so many ways for things to go wrong on a spiritual level. I’m not telling you this to freak you out or scare you away from witchcraft. I’m telling you this so that you can prepare yourself. Most of these kinds of issues are very easy to deal with and many of them you won’t have to deal with at all as long as you put the right defensive magic in place before the problem ever crops up. The best time to prevent a magical problem is before the problem has occurred.
These are the tools that I want to give you today. You might not feel like you’re in any danger. You might not feel like you need a bunch of protection magic, but I guarantee that at some point you will need spells for protection. It’s inevitable! In the same way that you would lock your car doors after you get into the car, or in the same way that you would always keep your cell phone charged when you’re going out at night alone, protective magic is a small step that you can take to give yourself a greater sense of safety and peace of mind.
Top 3 Types Of Protection Magic
There are three main types of protective magic that I recommend for absolutely everybody. These are definitely not the only types of protective magic out there, so if you want to take this deeper, you definitely can and I offer classes in Defensive Magic for exactly that. These are simply the most widely applicable safety precautions that you can take on a magical level that will help to reduce the chances of you running into serious magical trouble. If you have all three of these in your toolbox, you’re much less likely to have to deal with negative spirits, psychic vampires, hexes, and smaller curses. These precautions will also greatly lessen the impact of more serious magical dangers and will serve to give you a bit of a warning and some time to respond so that you can nullify the threat.
1. Simple Protection Spells
I’m calling these simple protection spells, but please do not underestimate the power of these kinds of spells. The reason they’re called simple spells is that they are simple to perform and because of this, you can perform them on a very regular basis without expending an excessive amount of energy or time to do so. When we repeat spells like this on a daily or weekly basis, the magic and energy that we pour into the spell begins to compound on itself and amplify the magic. This creates a spell that is deeply layered in power and can create a much stronger effect in the long run than the simplicity of the spells might suggest. Here are a few examples of simple protection spells that you can use in your day-to-day life.
- Tie a bundle of cinnamon sticks to the front door to keep out bad energies and attract luck
- An evil eye pendant across from your front door will ward off evil
- Placing a bowl of salt water in a room will gently cleanse it
- Sprinkling black salt across your doorstep prevents anyone from tracking in bad energy
- Carrying onyx or smoky quartz will protect you from energetic harm
- Carrying a tiger’s eye prevents major accidents and stops harm from reaching you
- Bells on the front door drive off unwanted spirits
- Painting protective sigils on the bottoms of your shoes can make an excellent personal ward. Just be sure to use durable paint!
- Close your eyes and envision your home as a forest with a stream running through it. The stream should run from your back door to your front door. This energetic stream will carry unwanted energies that enter your home right back out of your house.
Remember that the point of these spells is repetition. By themselves, they may not seem like much but repeated daily or weekly, the power begins to build on itself and create an incredibly strong spell that’s woven into your day-to-day life. You can incorporate one or several of these into your home and routine. If you use one of the simple spells that involve placing something on or at your doors, make sure to take them down, cleanse them, and put it back where it belongs weekly to maintain the spell and create the compounding effect.
2. Warding Spells
Every witch needs wards. Not having wards is akin to moving into a new house and just not worrying about the fact that none of the doors or windows lock. Would you be comfortable with that? I know I sure wouldn’t be! A good ward creates a barrier that keeps unwanted energies and influences out. They’ll work to keep out anything from a nasty spirit, to a curse, to a visitor’s funky energy, allowing your space to remain clean and clear of energetic debris. Wards can be impermeable and let absolutely nothing through, or they can be partially permeable and let only approved energies and influences through. Wards can also be used to shield a single room, an entire house, an entire property, or just you. They’re highly versatile and finding the right wards for your needs can take time.
I personally like to layer my wards and cover different needs with different wards. For example, I have personal protection wards that protect only my energy. These are focused on keeping unwanted influences from accessing my energy. These wards are rarely down and they’re such an ingrained part of my energy that it takes little to no effort to maintain them. And it’s a good thing I have this layer of warding!
Just a few nights ago, I was struck with such a bad headache that I wound up locking myself in a dark room just to cope. Since I seldom get headaches, I went to check on my wards and what do you know, there was a curse pounding away at my ward! Since I’ve been traveling a lot recently, I don’t have my home wards to protect me, so my personal ward was taking the full brunt of this curse, and that draw on my energy translated to a pounding headache. The headache certainly wasn’t pleasant, but I’ll take a headache over a curse ravaging my life without my knowledge any day! I was able to cast a quick counter-curse to dispel it and by the next morning; I was feeling back to my normal self. (For those of you who are wondering why I was cursed, I have no idea! I get cursed once or twice a year as a consequence of being very public about my craft. I can’t please everyone and in witchcraft circles that sometimes means getting cursed out of the blue.)
The second layer of warding that I use is a home ward. This is a ward that protects your house from general nastiness. My home ward is pretty light because I let spirits come and go freely as long as they mind the house rules. I also have a travel ward on my car for safety while I’m on the road and I’ll throw up an extra ward around my magical workspace anytime I feel like I need the extra protection. You may find that you only need one of these, or some of these, or even wards that I don’t personally use, such as wards designed to keep out empathic influence, wards for your workspace, wards designed to repel specific people, etc.
3. Banishing Spells
The final type of protection spell that I recommend every witch use are banishing spells. These are absolutely vital! Now, unlike the previous two types of spells, banishing spells aren’t something you cast that just continues to run in the background all the time. Instead, these are spells that you pull out any time you’re dealing with a magical threat that your wards and simple protection spells haven’t handled. Maybe a spirit followed you home and you want it gone. Maybe a psychic vampire has latched onto you and you want them gone. Maybe someone keeps antagonizing you magically. Whatever the cause, a banishing spell will take the unwanted influence and propel it away from you and out of your life.
Because we use banishing spells on a situation by situation basis, I recommend creating a banishing spell kit. This is a small kit with everything you need to perform a banishing spell, ready to go. What you include in your kit, how large it is, and whether it’s portable will depend on the specific banishing spell you use. You could even keep several banishing kits for various purposes on hand if you like. For example, you could have your main banishing kit at home with a more powerful, more involved banishing spell while you keep a much smaller emergency banishing kit with a very quick spell in your purse, so you’ve always got it with you. I keep this Candle Banishing spell in my home kit while I keep my Wild West Powder in a small bottle in my purse.
You hopefully won’t need to use these often, but it’s always better to have your fail-safes in place just in case. When you create your banishing spell kit, make sure that you’re using a spell you’re comfortable casting. Assume you’ll be casting this spell in less-than-ideal conditions. It needs to be a spell you’re confident you can cast and cast successfully. Designate a specific location for your kit so that you always know where it is, it’s no use having a banishing kit if you can’t find it. And finally, make sure that you write or print out the spell instructions and include them in the kit. You do not want to have to try to find the spell instructions or struggle to remember them from memory when you’re freaking out about a malicious spirit or dealing with the physical effects of a curse.
Putting these three types of spells in place in your craft will help to keep you safe and prevent any accidents, mishaps, or malicious attacks from disturbing your life. These won’t necessarily keep you safe from every magical danger out there, but they will go a long way toward keeping your life and craft peaceful and safe.
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Updated on August 8, 2024 by Avery Hart
Hello!
I am curious to know some examples of “wards” and how you would know if one was cursed?
Thank you!
Hi Avery, just curious- when you say you “checked your wards and found a curse,” what does this mean in practice? Some form of divination I would guess? And do you check them at some regular interval or just when something feels off to you?
Hi Cecaelia,
For me, it’s a mental check. My wards are fully mental constructs that I can see and interact with on an energetic level so to check them all I have to do is focus my attention on that plane of my perception. For anyone who is not naturally adept at this kind of magic, this would be a very advanced skill. Divination would be an excellent way to check for someone with more limited access to their psychic senses.
I typically only check my wards when something feels off but that’s because I’m both very sensitive to them and because I’ve had them for a long time. When I first created the wards, I checked them very regularly (almost daily) to make sure that I was attuned to them and that they weren’t failing without my notice. I checked them this frequently because I needed to! I was living in a situation that attracted a LOT of negative spirit activity growing up so my wards had to be rock solid. If you’re in a more peaceful situation, it’s probably fine to check your wards weekly to start.
Hi Avery I wanted to know how to protect my home before casting a love spell /jar?
Hi! I live in an apartment with only a front door. We’re on the ground floor, we’re a corner with walkways around two sides of us and we’re near the main entrance to the whole building. We get a lot of people walking by all the time – like a lot a lot. Some are other residents but most are total strangers (food delivery people, USPS or other mail delivery people, landscapers). I was wondering if there are any protection spells specifically for apartments or if any for homes might be better suited for apartments? Thank you so much!
Many home protection spells can be altered to suit apartments! You want to keep an eye out for spells that are done inside the home, rather than on the land outside the home. These will transfer into an apartment very easily. Some of these spells will involve the use of both a front and a back door. In these cases, you can work in a circle around your apartment starting and ending at the front door, or you can designate a window or balcony door as your back door. Either is fine.
Could you give some examples of wards? I am not sure I am completely understanding them. Thank you!
Can I create a poppet for a ward? Also, I use my bathroom (only private space) for my magic, but I’m SURROUNDED by mirrors. I’m renting so I can’t justify changing the huge ones, but I’m wondering if they’re causing the energy drop.