 Hello people! I'm Ginny Metherill and I'm a very old, yet very wise, fourth generation witch. Today I want to look at cleansing and purifying. The reasons why you might cleanse and purify and when. Because this is a subject that's pretty close to my heart. So, pay attention witchlings! It is so important for you to learn how to cleanse and purify yourself properly. Those of you who know me know that part of my job is being a demonologist and I do this a lot. I mean a lot a lot, almost on a daily basis. Do I identify, banish or destroy demonic entities from other people? I learn whether people have demonic entities on them through the practice of purification and smudging. So one of the reasons why you must purify or smoke cleanse or smudge yourself before any magical practice is because you might have something negative on you. Even if it's not a demon it might be negative energy and this seriously impacts the outcome of your spells and makes them really imprecise and not particularly helpful. So that's reason number one. Reason number two is that you might be carrying negative energy from another person. This is something that parents tend to do towards their children. They'll pick up and carry their own child's negative energy. They're grown-up children, may I say, not their wee small ones. They're sort of, you know, mid to late teens onwards children and this is not helpful to either the child or the parent. It's not helpful to the child because the child doesn't know how to get through the emotions that they're feeling and so therefore cannot learn from it and the adult or the parent carries around somebody else's negative emotions which is just not good for anyone is it? Like there's no benefit that I can possibly think of. So cleansing is therefore a way of purging all these negative energies which makes your spells unpredictable and imprecise. You can use a variety of different substances to do this. Each individual which will have their own methodology of how to cleanse themselves but if you aren't really sure whether yours is working here is my version which I find works for 99.9% of people that I see. This is the ritual that I will go through. It's a quick smudge. Now I'm not going to apologise for using the word smudge here only because the word smudge is language. The actual use of using smoke as a cleansing agent has been used by European pagans for millennia. I don't believe it to be cultural appropriation because it's my culture as much as theirs. Remember the purifying ritual is actually not just about clearing the energies from yourself it's about making a sacred space and so therefore what I like to do first of all is cast a circle. Now this circle is going to be a cleansing circle and so I have a particular format which I find works for me. Now you may change this format however you see fit but this is mine and so I simply take my wand and I'll cast a circle saying I cast this circle let nothing negative or harmful be allowed within it. This will banish everything that's negative or harmful from the circle as long as it's not physically attached to you which it can be and therefore it will automatically create a sacred space. The next thing to do is to purify yourself. Now there's lots and lots and lots of different ways you can do this a personal favourite is to use a Jost stick. I didn't realise that we in the UK called these Jost sticks and Americans incense sticks but you know these ones. So you take your incense sticks and start at your head start at the top and work down. Take it across the back of your shoulders and your front of your chest and this is the most important area because when things attach to people they tend to grab them on the shoulders for reasons best known to themselves. That's why you see people hunched over you know they're holding the cares of the world on their shoulders. Finish off by doing the rest of your body and remember to go underneath your feet. Your feet aren't really quite important because they're what grinds you to the earth and so if you're using any kind of magic that's not your own personal prana or life force magic then you want to make sure that connection which is through your feet in general is clear and clean. Another excellent way to perform a purifying ritual before you start any spell work is to have a salt bath. This can be as simple as swimming in the sea. The sea is great for getting rid of negative energies and negative entities from you or you can just have a bath and a bit of a salt scrub that's what I like to do actually. I love a salt scrub especially one flavoured with roses because I like roses yum. However if neither of those two options are for you and quite a few people aren't allowed to have incense or jostics burning within their rooms because of you know smoke alarms etc etc one of the great ways to do this is to use sound. Now this can be as simple as a small ringing bell you could possibly use one of these wonderful singing bowls. How this works is the vibrations literally bounce the negative energies off you by vibrating through your aura so it's a really useful way to get rid of negative energies and purify your space. I would do it as loud as possible if I were you and enjoy the sound. Some people like to use herbs. I have a rose-centred sage stick which I often use because I find that the smoke is really aligned with my aura and using that as a cleansing formula works wonders for me. However you might be more attuned with I don't know bay leaves or or rosemary or anything that you particularly like oak trees I don't know so why don't you make your own smudge stick for this. Gather the leaves and bind them tightly with cotton and to hang them up to dry in a warm place and this will make a wonderful smudge stick which you can then use to purify yourself. Finally you might be really aligned to fire. Now I was aligned with fire very much as a younger witch I mean now I've grown old I don't use it so much because it's such a burning bright youthful energy and and my energy is not sort of that bright and youthful anymore but here is how I would do so. You're literally burning away any negative energies that you may be carrying. Although you know I can't recommend it because when I used to do this I used to burn my hair or singe my eyebrows or you know drop the bloody candle over the floor pouring hot wax everywhere. I was never very good at it because I'm a bit of a clumsy person and so it didn't suit me but it might suit you so take care however you do this. It is a simple and effective ceremony and one I cannot stress enough is so important for people to do. If you start spell work or interconnecting on the psychic plane with anything before having purified yourself you will find that you are not getting the results that you seek. They might be wrong they might be skewed they might be completely off the mark. I like effective and precise magical workings and so that is why I cleanse before every ceremony that I do. Now I'm really interested to know your cleansing ceremonies. Do you do what I do or do you do something different? Will you let me know in the comments below because it is a fascination to me and it's how we all learn from each other. If you want to see a group cleansing in action and me taking demons off people left right and centre the best way to do this is to come and join my coven meeting. In order to do this do go to patreon.com forward slash ginni methol and select the appropriate tier otherwise please don't forget to like and subscribe because it really helps my channel and ensures that I can carry on making these videos just for you and I will see you next week.