This week, we’re looking in a bit more detail at how to interact with specific spirits, and how to know which spirits might require gifts, offerings, and/or praise.

I have found that the best way to start is like you would when planning a meeting with a person in mundane life—namely, considering anything you’ve ever heard or learned about the particular spirit or type of spirit you want to communicate with. If you have a particular religious or spiritual background, start with what you’ve learned from that tradition (but keeping in mind that some traditions sometimes cast undeserved aspersions on spirits from other pantheons and cultures). Even consider popular culture. Tales of and details about particular spirits can change a lot through the years, but odds are, if one or two characteristics of a spirit type are similar across most tales, it’s likely a characteristic rooted in fact—at least a little. Take dwarves, for example. In nearly every tale, they tend to interact little with humans and are subterranean, spending much of their time mining stones and metals, then crafting what they have mined. For another example, most stories agree that fairies like shiny things and that if you want their help, you should make an offering to them of something shiny, but that you might want to keep a garden space for them rather than inviting them into your home, because they can be a little…pesky.

After considering what you already know about the spirit (probably more than you realize), you can move on to research. The internet is a good place to start, but you can find highly conflicting information, or sometimes one piece of information repeated by dozens of websites, with no attribution. I’m a bookworm, so I always recommend books too.[1]

Over the years, I have found two books very helpful for providing general knowledge of spirits of all sorts: Judika Illes’s Encyclopedia of Spirits and D. J. Conway’s The Ancient & Shining Ones. The bibliographies of both books are quite comprehensive and can lead you to even more detailed information about specific spirits.

If you want to know more about a certain type of spirit, you can do further research to discover who are generally seen as authorities on the subjects. For example, when it comes to angels, the works of Peter Kreeft are valuable, though they offer a decidedly Catholic viewpoint. Doreen Virtue’s work offers some good information on angels from a more New Age perspective—though now that she’s changed her tune, she may begin offering a more Christian viewpoint. If you are interested in speaking with animals or nature spirits, Ted Andrews might be a very good place to start.

Once you’ve done all the research you can stomach (and maybe a bit more than that), you can try learning from experience. Nothing replaces experience for learning. I’m a bit of a skeptic, so I am always a bit uncomfortable here—I don’t want to do too much research, because I don’t want my imagination to create an experience based on what I’ve read, but then how do I trust that whatever spirit I think I’m talking to is actually who I think I’m talking to? I tend to settle for gathering resources about a particular spirit, but then reading only about half of them before beginning a conversation with the spirit. Then, after the conversation, I read the rest of the information. This means sometimes I go into a conversation expecting a spirit to behave a certain way, but then I end up very surprised. For example, I read about Ishtar in Doreen Virtue’s Archangels & Ascended Masters. Virtue said that Ishtar is also known as Absus and Inanna, and the experience she recounts with Ishtar seemed gentle and pleasant. I felt a particular draw to Inanna, so I decided to have my own conversation with Ishtar. My experience of Ishtar was markedly different from the one Virtue reported. The spirit I spoke with was less Kindly Mother and more Stern Mother, and she expected—very clearly—to be given her due reverence and respect, make no mistake about it. After my encounter with Ishtar, I did more reading and learned that both of these sides of Mother are in keeping with Inanna and Ishtar.

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There you have it: The “secret” to learning how to contact a specific spirit—and what that spirit may require in the way of gifts, praise, or even the tone of your voice—basically comes down to research. This gives you the chance to use other people’s experiences and gained knowledge so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. (I highly recommend Judika Illes’s Encyclopedia of Spirits as a starting place, as it covers spirits from all over the world and has an extensive bibliography. Such sources will state whether much is known about a spirit or whether much was once known and has been lost.) And then at a certain point, you have to do your own firsthand research, getting your own experience. Through my own experience, I have found that most spirits will be very clear if they want/require more of you. When you’re just starting, I would advise you to start with those who want little or nothing from you. As you gain experience, you may consider working with those who want more, but you’ll probably want to get your feet wet first—kind of like starting at a supermarket where the prices are always clearly marked, then slowly working your way to the street market where you can haggle over everything.

Okay, now your turn to share, in the comments. Do you have any great resources for contacting whatever aspect of Spirit you prefer to contact? If you work with a particular spirit or type of spirit, what are the specific things you have found that you need to do to keep the relationship going?

I’ll start. I don’t often communicate directly with them, but I have a strong affinity with nature spirits. When I do lawn work, I often talk to the plants, which to me also equates to talking to whatever nature spirits tend them or live in/among them. On those rare occasions that I do magical work and then have an offering or even an “offcast” item from ritual (a spent candle, for example), I always place these outside in a certain area so the fae may make use of them. On certain holidays, I leave bits of food and drink around certain of the older trees and some flower gardens where I sense that more of the spirits gather. I also see normal tending of plants as a means of communicating to the local nature spirits that we are working toward the same end: increasing and maintaining the health of the Earth. In my experience, this has made it much more likely that the nature spirits will help me when I make a particular request—such as protection of the property from people who consider doing us harm, or helping me understand what’s ailing a particular plant and how I might help it, when I can’t find the answer from other resources.

 

Note

[1] Remember that anyone can post anything on the internet, so it’s best to not rely solely on what you find there. You shouldn’t trust something just because it’s printed in a book, either. It’s best to use common sense when reviewing or using any source. I find the internet a good place to start, especially for finding books with much more detailed information. I find books a bit more trustworthy and helpful for three main reasons: (1) you can read reviews of books to learn which seem to be more reliable; (2) it takes a lot more effort and/or money to get a book published than to publish something on the internet; and (3) books can often go far more in-depth on topics than websites can.

 

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