Being chronically ill is exhausting.

Let’s put the illness to one side for a second… the exhaustion comes from the the waiting, the navigation of medical systems that feel more bureaucratic than hippocratic, the endless decision making, medicine testing, appointments, and the long stretches of crippling uncertainty that grinds you down in such a visceral way that is very hard to explain to people who haven’t lived in a chronically ill body.

As witches you’d have thought that we would have stumbled upon a spell to rectify all that ails us, but witchcraft doesn’t work like that, unfortunately. Magickal healing just doesn’t exist and anyone who promises you that your chronic illness can be cured though positive vibes, intention, manifestation, vibration, or a pretty crystal is always selling you something… and its usually expensive. There are real, true and tested ways that witchcraft can help you to live in a very poorly body, and cope with all of the emotional and physical paperwork that comes with that. Witchcraft can give you a sense of control back, a sense of agency in situations where agency is very much removed, it can soothe you during those 3am headache storms, orient you and help you find answers, and give you a clear head ready to advocate for yourself in the doctors office… again.

I wrote a post about Creating with Chronic Illness, and I received a lot of messages about how hard people were finding trying to balance being creative and feeling so sick, a lot of people empathised, and quite a few people asked for more information on how to navigate chronic illness as a witch, so that they could tackle that and leave the creativity for later. So this essay is for anyone who is navigating a diagnosis, a long referral process, treatments that aren’t working, or just living in a body that requires a lot of management. I am someone who is chronically ill with several conditions (vestibular migraine, PMOS, hypothyroidism, LVH) so I know how you are feeling, and I also know how to help you cope a little better.

One more thing before we dive in, everything is designed to be low energy. It isn’t low effort in the sense that I’m asking you to just wave an incense stick around yourself and trust that all will be well, but rather that all the tips have been designed to protect the energy that you do have. This level of illness means that energy is hard won, and precious, and usually spoken for in the form of pain management and basic functioning. Any witchcraft practice that is asking us to spend all of that or borrow it from another important task isn’t a practice that is built for us. The spells and rituals have been carefully chosen and curated to not require sustained focus, elaborate preparation and execution, or physical exertion.

Let’s take a look…

Spells for Waiting Rooms:

We spend an awful lot of time waiting around for appointments or test results, operations or procedures, decisions from consultants and from insurance or benefit companies. The waiting adds to the suffering and the uncertainty is exhausting.

When we practice spell work we aren’t expecting it to magically hasten a stamp of approval on an application, or for a doctor to sit up suddenly in their chair and feel compelled to let you jump to the top of an enormous waiting list of patients, it just gives you somewhere to set your anxiety down whilst you wait. You take the heavy thing that you are carrying and you do something with it, it shifts the relationship you have with the situation helps you feel a little more in control.

For a speedy decision or outcome - Herbal knowledge works well here, find plants that are linked with swiftness and communication. Bay is wonderful for communicating, we witches use it all the time to write our petitions on, laurel is a good choice for victorious outcomes, cinnamon gives everything a swift sparky energy. You might also consider lavender which is associated with air, it can invoke wind energy to hasten decision making. Write what it is that you are working towards on a slip of paper or on a bay or laurel leaf if you can get access, anoint it with some cinnamon oil and burn it over a flame safe vessel. Direct your intention in the form of thinking that whatever needs to happen, happens at the correct pace for you, not for others.
If you can’t work with an open flame then you can either bury the slip of paper or leaf.

For appointments - Appointments are really tough on those who are chronically ill, as are assessments and consultations, basically any meeting about your health is an automatic one way trip to anxiety town. Before your appointment do something really simple to ground yourself and give you a sense of authority over the situation. You might wear a specific piece of jewellery that is charged especially for appointments, and is intended to make it so you are heard clearly. You might anoint your wrists with an oil before you go in, again cinnamon is a great oil for positive energy. Another practice might be you standing in front of the mirror and speaking loudly and clearly into the air what you want from the appointment, what you want to be heard and what you want to be understood.
If you can get hold of fresh honeysuckle I would encourage you to use it. This lovely flower has long been associated with persuasion, and sweetening your words, it helps your words to land the way that you want them too. A drop of honeysuckle nectar on the tongue before you walk into your appointment will make sure that your words reach the person you are talking to in a way that works in your favour, they will hear you clearly. As we know in a medical context being heard is not a small thing at all, it can make such a difference.

For waiting on results - Take a jar (it can be a completely plain empty jam jar if you wish, but if you have the energy you might want to decorate it, or write sigils on it) and designate it as an uncertainty vessel. This is where your anxious thoughts will live as you wait, when an anxious thought pops into your head sit with it for a moment and then write it down, roll it up making sure to roll it away from you, and then put it in the jar. It will fill up, but you can see just how many ‘slips of paper’ you were holding in your head, think that you have already done as much as you can do, your thoughts can live in the jar, not rot in your already tired brain. When you get your results empty the jar and dispose of the contents… you will be surprised just how many of those anxious thoughts didn’t manifest.

Tarot for Navigating:

One of the main things about being chronically ill, that I wish I had understood more about when I was first navigating this strange world, is that you are asked to make an awful lot of decisions with incomplete information, and often whilst unwell. This is where tarot comes in… and please don’t think that I’m asking you to make important medical decisions based on slips of card, tarot doesn’t work like that, it tends to give you answers for your subconscious to think through, cards are always a way to make sense of a situation, never to predict an outcome.

Questions that work well are:
”What is it that I am forgetting to consider about this situation?”
”What do I need to focus on the most right now?”
”What is my gut telling me about this doctor/decision/treatment?”
”How can I best support myself through this?”
There are the sort of questions to ask when you have partial answers and are just having a bit of trouble thinking about them more deeply because of the stress, the illness, or the brain fog.

Questions that don’t work well are:
”Will my insurance/benefit be approved?”
”Am I going to get sicker?”
”Will this medication work?”
”Am I going to need an operation?”
Tarot doesn’t predict the future and trying to get it to do so skews the relationship you have with your deck, it gives you false and strange answers that might frighten you in an unhelpful way when you are already vulnerable. Asking tarot if you are going to die and then pulling The Tower would put even the healthiest person into an anxiety spiral.

A Three Card Spread for Chronic Illness:

The first card you pull represents what is taking up the most space in your brain, and what is sapping you of mental and physical energy apart from the illness itself.

The second card represents what you can work with and do now to feel as comfortable as possible as this illness and all the scenarios that comes with it unfold.

The third card represents what is safe to let go of for the moment. When you are poorly you are often in a hyper vigilant state, I know that when I first started having my heart problems all I would do is track everything, thinking that it gave me some sort of control to know my blood pressure, my heart rate, the number of ectopics I was having, at all times. This third card gives you permission to set some of that down safely and leave room for things that add to your life rather than take away.

Symptomatic Support:

I just want to make a quick point that this section isn’t about herbs being used as medicine, herbs have a real significant effect on your body and if you are on prescription medications you should always check for interactions before you add anything to your routine, even if it seems very safe you should always check. I have done my homework as best as I can but I am not able to check every drug against every plant to see if they are safe, if you are interested in using any of the following treatments as a support for your illness then please do check that you are safe to do so.

For the nervous system - Chamomile and lemon balm are tried and true herbs when it comes to dealing with an anxious nervous system. Lemonbalm grows in abundance on my allotment (mainly because it spreads everywhere I was silly enough to plant it directly into the ground rather than contain it in a pot) and when dried you can use it in a tea along with chamomile, and sweetened with honey, to enjoy when you’re feeling a little fraught.

For pain and inflammation - Ginger is SO good for inflammation, especially when paired with turmeric, you can make teas from them both, or you can press them and take the raw juice neat, with a sprinkling of black pepper and a squeeze of lemons to add to the properties of turmeric. It’s warming, spicy, and when you have it every day it can significantly reduce the inflammatory pressure you feel on your joint.

For fatigue and brain fog - Rosemary has been scientifically proven to help with memory and mental clarity. There is a scent compound in it called Cineole (also known as eucalyptol) it is a natural, colourless bicyclic ether and is the primary active constituent in eucalyptus oil but it is also found in rosemary, tea tree, and bay leaves. Steaming your face with rosemary oil when your brain is feeling like marshmallow fluff helps to clear a bit of the stickiness, and makes you feel a bit sharper mentally.

For really hard emotional days - Baths are your best friend. Unless you are particularly sore from your joints and would find it difficult to get in and out of a bath, you can turn bath time into a soothing and restorative ritual. Epsom salts work well for aching joints, a few drops of lavender for comfort, and candles for focus and for pulling the negative energy out of you. As you bathe imagine the stress and the emotions seeping out of your pores and into the bathwater, the properties and oils you have put into the bath draw out the heaviness, and when you get out it washes away down the plug hole. You may feel slightly lighter emotionally, but do take the time to care for yourself by getting into your softest pyjamas, and then resting on the bed.

A note on tears - You cry a lot when you are chronically ill, and you cry lots of different kinds of tears. Grief filled tears for the body you used to have, frustrated tears for when you aren’t being listened to, happy tears when you have been able to do something you thought would have been impossible. Human tears, especially those that have been shed from emotion rather than actual physical pain, carry an enormous magickal weight in witchcraft. If you find yourself in a heavy crying session consider grabbing a small glass bottle and collecting those tears… I know it might not be what you want to think about in the moment but stored tears can be used in banishing spells, in anointing candles, and mixing into water used to charge or cleanse magickal tools. Please don’t feel like every time you cry you need to be spiritually productive, but just capturing a few tears to use as an ingredient in spells directed towards your chronic illness can help them enormously.

Baneful Magick:

Ok, we should definitely talk about this because anyone who is living with chronic illness knows exactly who I am about to talk about… (it isn’t doctors, this isn’t for them at all as I believe that most doctors are trying their best in systems that are set up to make money rather than take care of people) this portion of the essay is for the people in your life who downplay what you are going through, who call you overdramatic or imply (or say outright, lets face it we’ve all been there) that you are exaggerating, that you are lazy and just need to try a bit harder, or that you are doing aaallll of this for attention.

There are two workings to consider…

Direct their crappy energy elsewhere:
This is admittedly the less taxing of the two, this is where each time that someone dismisses, or mocks, or speaks ill of you and your suffering behind your back the energy is redirected, you don’t absorb it. The negative energy directed at you is transmuted into something useable, something practical, it turns into the right amount of energy needed to bake a tasty cake, the amount of energy to have a long shower, or to walk somewhere for a while without feeling pain, tasks that would otherwise be full of pain and cut short can now be given a bit of extra energy, and add some pep in your step. You aren’t wishing them any ill per se, you’re just redirecting that draining, negative energy. Do this at your altar and speak this intention out loud, your breath should be directed towards a candle with their name carved into it and anointed with cinnamon oil.

Take a walk in my shoes:
This is a tricky one to explain because the goal here isn’t directing hatred and frustration into pain and suffering, you don’t want them to suffer exactly but you want them to know. This working is really low effort so hooray for that, write their name and the phrase ‘Have the day you deserve’ on a small slip of paper, tuck it into the sole of your sock, or into your shoe and then go about your normal day and everything that your ‘normal’ entails… the dizziness, the fatigue, the joints that seize as you climb the stairs, the heart that speeds up just from standing, and the brain that just doesn’t seem to be able to communicate correctly. By the end of the day your chosen denier might have a bit of a headache, they might feel stiff and sore, and out of sorts… unable to place what has happened, confused and weak, but it might just make them reflect on what it would be like to feel like this all of the time. See how they like it.

Lastly…

Your witchcraft practice doesn’t have to be grand, imposing, beautiful or lengthy to be real. Witchcraft has always been about adapting magick to the purpose, needs, routines and intentions of the witch, so you can take that summary and bring your practice to your sick bed, you can fit it into a life that is taken up by medications and appointments, intention counts here more than anywhere else.

Please do let me know if you have tried or are interested in trying anything that I’ve spoken about here, feel free to leave a comment or DM me if you would like to talk more about coping with chronic illness as a witch… I feel like this might become a bit of a series so do let me know if you have an ideas on what I should include/talk about.

Laura ♉︎

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