spiritual baths

Spiritual Baths: What It's All About

Author: Shakti Conjure
Posted: April 20th. 2008
Times Viewed: 1,220

Spiritual baths are of major importance in many spiritual traditions and its a very important component of old-style HooDoo.

In India it is customary to bathe in the sacred water of a ghat (temple pool) or in the Ganges River before entering a shrine. Washing ones face and hands after entering a synagogue, or washing in a mikve (a pool of rain water) is common in the Jewish tradition, and it is done in the Muslim tradition as well before entering a mosque.

And while sweat lodges are sacred spaces for the Native Americans, in HooDoo bathing before starting a major magickal undertaking is a key ritual that came from the African roots of this tradition.

Bathing is important not only for spiritual cleansing, but also for aligning your energy and purpose with the magickal intent of the work at hand. If you are planning on working a money spell, for instance, the prescribed spiritual bath would include herbs, minerals and/or oils that are aligned with the energy of your purpose.

After taking such bath, you will be not only more focused on your spiritual intent and removed from the daily clatter that happens in our heads, but you will actually be aligned with the purpose of your work due to the magickal properties of the herbal and mineral essences that permeated the cells of your physical body as your were bathing yourself.

Sometimes a bath would be enough if the purpose of the work is cleansing oneself of a “sin” -- like after performing a coercive spell -- but most often a spiritual bath would be performed as a beginning of a magickal rite.

In HooDoo it is common to spiritually bathe before dawn. Some of the bath water is kept to be disposed before or at sunrise, at specific locations deemed to be magickal. The crossroads, for example, is a notorious place for the disposal of bath water (and other ritual remains). One would be encouraged to throw their bath water Eastwards, the direction of the rising sun.

There are three types of spiritual baths:

(1) Herbal: containing roots, herbs, barks, etc.
(2) Mineral: composed of sea salt, Epsom salt, Laundry Bluing, etc.
(3) Combination: made up of herbs and minerals.

Making an Herbal Bath requires first steeping the herbs and roots in boiling water, just like you would steep tea. Then straining the steeped liquid; and adding it to your regular bath water, or washing yourself directly with the tea-bath liquid. The amount of time for steeping Herbal Baths depends on the amount of herbs used in a tea-bath.

Mineral Baths, on the other hand, require melting the salts in hot water, whether in a regular tub or in a basin, and then pouring it over yourself.

Combinations require both, steeping herbs and melting salts.

Appropriate oils and colognes can be also added to spiritual baths to augment the magickal effect of the work.

HOW TO PERFORM A SPIRITUAL BATH

Well, now that you steeped your tea-bath and added some oils, what to do next? Though seating in a tub filled with hot water, Epsom salts and aromatic herbal essences is pleasant and relaxing, its only the effect of a spiritual bath and not its purpose.

Performing a spiritual bath depends on the reason of our magick. Are we trying to bring something beneficial onto ourselves (i.e. wisdom, wealth, love, etc.) or are we trying to take something malefic away (like crossed conditions, the evil eye, bad habits, and so on?

If we are trying to bring positive effects onto ourselves, we will bathe our bodies with upward strokes. On the other hand, to remove negative properties would require bathing with downward strokes.

Lets say that my magickal intention is to find a new job and I am planning to take a ' steady work bath '

After pouring each time, I would caress my body from the tips of my toes to my head, while repeating a prayer or mantra. For instance I would say: New and successful work comes to me. The 23rd Psalm of David could also be very effective in this case

Finally, in HooDoo, it is custom to air-dry or drip-dry, and wear clean clothes after taking a spiritual bath. It is not advised to towel yourself after such rite because it will signal Spirit that you are removing your spiritual intention.

I hope that this information would be useful and helpful.

Happy hoodooing yall!


With Bright Blessings,
Miss Nadezda Karuna
Shanti Sa'ham (She I Am, Sanskrit)