Your Personal Garden Fence: Working with Shields

Imagine your energy is like a garden. You carefully prune and nurture your energy through daily grounding and centering. It brings you peace and calm in an otherwise chaotic world because you are careful about what goes into your garden. You are taking time to water your interests, I mean flowers. But you have begun to notice that someone keeps coming into your garden and tramples on your carefully tended bushes, you notice that after having a friend visit that your rose bushes we drained of all its colorful blossoms. If only there was a way to protect that carefully tended garden, because why tend to it if it’s just going to get trampled and stolen from.

Allow me to introduce you to the metaphysical concept of Shielding. Shielding is a protective magick that you use to protect your personal energy. It is a lot like a wall that you build around a garden to keep unwanted people from walking through and stealing all your flowers. By definition, a shield is an impenetrable energy bubble that you place around your aura to protect you from picking up unwanted energy and from outsiders draining off your energy.

Like most metaphysical practices, shielding takes a little practice, but once you get it down, it is easy and becomes almost instinctual. Take a little time to ground and center yourself. Now visualize a bubble of white light forming around your center. After you have your bubble, see it expanding until it surrounds your body and your aura (the energy field around your physical body.) The idea is to tell this bubble that it is to keep negativity away from you and keep your energy safe. You are setting a spiritual boundary around you.

With practice, you learn that you can layer shields on top of each other for different purposes and extra strength. Let’s say you are going shopping in a store that you need things from, but every time you shop there you get a headache and feel drained by the end of the trip. Before you walk in, visualize an white glowing orb surrounding you and protecting you. See in your mind’s eye, everyone else’s negativity sliding off that bubble like rain down a window. Now, let’s say you must go shopping with someone that annoys you and really makes you feel drained. On the outside of your white bubble, add another layer of bubble, but this time, make the outside mirrored so that every time they try to get under your skin and annoy you that energy gets reflected back to them and doesn’t affect you. Practice with different colors and imagine different materials for your shields and see what effect they have on people. Use it like the magickal armor that it is and protect yourself.

Once the basics are mastered, there are essential oils, crystals, and sigils that can be used to make shields stronger and more complex. Crystals like amethyst, smoky quartz, pyrite, fluorite, onyx, and labradorite can also be carried to strengthen your aura bubble. Herbs like bay leaf, rosemary, cloves, dill, or fennel can be worn in an essential oil blend or just carried in a sachet to add extra protection to your shields. Design a sigil or symbol for protection, or use a readymade one, and draw it on a hidden part of you or your wardrobe can help aid your shield in protecting you.

Personal shields or wards can be used for many reasons, but it comes down to they are all to protect your energy. They can be defensive and stop others from getting near your energy and draining you or manipulating it. Offensive shields are designed to reflect or push away the energies others try to push on you. For example, that one person that pushes their energetic bad mood onto anyone within 20 feet of them. Less common are Invisibility shields or Notice Me Not shields and these are put into place to keep others from knowing you are there. Two notes on this type of shield, one, they are great if you don’t want that creepy guy at the grocery store to see you and try to talk to you, but two, other people may not notice you either and may physically run into you. Use with caution is my advice on this one. Finally, let’s say you need to change how you appear to others temporarily, like for example, you want to seem more confident or intimidating than you normally are. You could aways make your shield an illusion shield. Sheilds are very versatile and will practice you can do all types of things with them.

Sheilds are not permanent. Over time they will dissipate and disappear. That’s a good thing. You may need to remember that if you are going to be in a situation where you need shields for an extended amount of time, you will need to ground, center, and renew your shields occasionally.