One of the things that makes the Druid Journal 2008 Almanac unique is the section on weather magic — theory and practice. I am no weather magician myself; I got my information from Esmerelda, a witch who has had great success with it. In fact, she sometimes finds that she can’t avoid affecting the weather! Esmerelda contributed a large section of the introduction, as well as weather maps and average temperatures and precipitation for the US throughout the year, all of it essential for the responsible practice of weather magic.
This is the first of a two-part interview with Esmerelda. In this part, she discusses what weather magic is, how you know you might have a talent for it, and the limits of its influence. In the second part, she’ll go over her personal history with it, its ethical considerations (which are very important, as you can imagine), including its potential to influence global warming, and other tips on effective practice.
What is Weather Witchcraft?
In general, weather witching is the practice of changing the weather for a specific place and time. Once you are good at it, the only limit you have is your own imagination. It’s a lot like what Yoda said about the Force: “Size matters not.” Making a strengthening hurricane 1000 miles away fall apart is no more difficult than making the local temperature drop 3 degrees.
If I am relaxed and centered, and make a positive, well-formed request, I generally see results within 48 hours. How do I reach my relaxed state? Rolling my shoulders and closing my eyes, then taking a deep breath, can work just about anywhere. But more effective for me is a nice hot shower (with more shoulder-rolling and deep breathing). Or a candle and a cup of herbal tea.
Let me give an example.
Last fall, I was one of the planners for a very large public festival at our school, where thousands of people would be visiting. I knew that I would be too mentally and emotionally scattered during the final days to be able to organize the weather in addition to the concession tent. So I called on two friends of mine, one of whom was pagan and the other a non-pagan that I knew had influence on the weather. I hoped that sitting down with two others, and really focusing and pooling our talents, would allow us to have an excellent success that none of us could have pulled off on our own.
The long-range forecast was for a warm rain, which was completely unacceptable: this was a fall festival, so it needed to be clear and cold. I knew that once the greater part of the population in the area saw the short-range forecast, it would be very difficult to change the weather. I had to preempt the negative worrying that would surely happen if the weather forecasters were to call for rain during the couple of days prior to the event.
The ladies and I had some herbal tea (red lavender–so relaxing!), and I had them close their eyes, and I did a guided meditation through the weather that we wanted to see. We did our weather working on a Monday for the following Saturday, so the prediction for the Saturday was just what we wanted by the time it came looming up upon us.
And the day was perfect: the festival had exactly the right temperature, the right wind speed, the right amount of cloud cover, everything that we asked for! It was so satisfying! The only negative side-effect was that the wind had to blow hard to carry ‘our’ weather in, so it was pretty extreme the day before, during set-up, which made things more difficult. But it was the wind of our weather arriving that caused the problems, so no harm was done!
As a white American, I always used to stick my nose up in the air at the tradition of Native American rain dances. They seemed so silly and pointless! But now I know better; they really do work if all of the participants (dancers and audience) truly believe that it will work and focus on the desired outcome. Interestingly, the early history of Ireland includes a series of stories about the land herself rising up and repelling invaders with storms. These stories are all from about the time of the Druids in the British Isles; I can’t help but think that perhaps the ancient Druids were adept at weather witching, just like the Native Americans, and, presumably, all other pagan peoples.
Can anyone do Weather Witchcraft? How do you know if you might have a talent for it?
My observations have been that everybody does do weather magic to some degree, although the vast majority of it is subconscious. Some individuals can have a very powerful effect, totally without doing it on purpose.
It seems to me, just like with any spiritual/psychic work, deliberate and conscious practice can make even someone with little natural talent into an effective weather witch.
Here are some questions that you can ask yourself to see if you have some natural weather witching talent. The more “yes” answers you get, the stronger your talent:
- Are you under the impression that weather forecasts are too unreliable to be useful?
- Have you gotten a reputation for outdoor events? For instance, whenever my mother was signed up to go on a Girl Scout camping trip, everybody knew it would pour. Another mom in our town had the opposite reputation: the sun always shone for her trips. When they went camping together, we always had one gorgeous day and one downpour day.
- Can you cloud-bust? (That’s when you look at a cloud and will it to dissipate.)
- Have you ever wished very hard for a particular type of weather and had it arrive when you wanted it, despite it not being forecast?
- Do you worry about possible weather conditions that would ruin your plans and then have them come about?
If you do have some natural talent, then you owe it to yourself to see if you can use it consciously and deliberately. But like I said, anybody could learn how to do basic weather witching. It’s fun, and a total trip–you should try it!
What kinds of things do you do with your magic? What are its limits?
I bring sunshine to my picnics and outdoor festivities, rain to the farmers, snow to the children. I can adjust the temperature to within a degree of what I am aiming for. I can alter wind speed with a high degree of accuracy. I can stop or shift the course of hurricanes. In fact, the last two hurricane seasons have been decidedly average, despite being forecast as horrendously huge and starting out at a rate that would make them be huge. All of the “experts” are baffled, but I know what is going on…
I must admit, though, that it works better if I leave the details up to the weather itself; if I focus on what I want when and where, the weather very graciously rearranges itself to accommodate me, but I can’t command it to move around in a specific way. So, if I want to divert a big storm, I can’t tell it to go to the north or the south and have it happen, but I can just ask it to not go to a certain place, and it will move in whichever way it feels is most convenient. Sometimes these rearrangements take a bit of time, so I always try to look ahead and not work too last-minute.
Clearly, I have personified the weather; it has feelings and preferences and intelligence. I respect that about the weather, and the weather respects that I have only the best interests of Mother Earth in mind and will therefore go along with me.
The next post will have the second half of the interview, in which Esmerelda addresses how she was first convinced that weather witchcraft was real, the ethics of weather witchcraft, global warming, and other tips for weather-working.
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Wow!!! I enjoyed the interview. I look forward to Part 2. I never thought about the possibility of influencing the weather with our thoughts. To be that highly attuned to Nature must be great. Thanks for sharing and for stretching my ideas again.
I know you’re going to write about the ethics of weather magic in a post shortly, but I do want to share my personal sense of caution about weather magic. Not just the obvious ethical concerns about mucking about with climate for our personal convenience and maybe causing harm in the process–that’s about threefold law stuff and competence, and hopefully all your readers are aware of the importance of those concerns.
My caution is a bit simpler. The easiest forms of weather to affect are going to be local and chaotic systems. Read that: it’s hard to end a cycle of drought that involves patterns of wind and water flow on a global scale, but relatively easy to affect small and highly turbulent weather systems. Hence, cloud busting: dissipating a small, low cloud mass or fog bank, or even gently nudging a gap in a brief but intense cloudburst. Relatively easy.
So, by the same token, is tinkering with far more dangerous chaotic weather systems, like thunderstorms, tornados, and the like. But please DON’T! Such systems have a tendency to be ATTRACTED to the weather worker, and to give you way more than you bargained for. Tinkering with thunder and lightening magically is about as smart as standing out in the middle of a golf course in a thunderstorm and holding a large metal pole overhead. Yep, you can probably get the attention of the storm. But you may very well regret doing so!
In fact, those who are naturally gifted at weather magic might want to take the precaution of never working magic of any kind during a thunderstorm. Seriously–I’m not normally one for the doom and gloom school of thought when it comes to magic working, but on the subject of weather magic, I really, really urge caution.
(Burning holes in fog banks, OTOH, is fun and safe. Pagans with small kids might even want to use it for teaching meditation and magic. Just as playing with kittens is fun and educational, but poking a lion with a stick may not be–there’s weather and there’s weather!)
To Cat, from Esmerelda, via Jeff:
I must admit that I have not “attracted” weather to my location before, in the sense of calling a thunderstorm to rage over my house. Instead, they go where I send them. I’m not a magnet for powerful storms. I don’t deliberately mess with thunder generally, but I also don’t feel that this is a time for me to avoid all magical workings.
Then again, I don’t always do weather magic deliberately at all, so to not do it during a storm is well nigh impossible for me! I recently had a freezer delivered; it could have gone in through either of two different doors. The more convenient one would have been the basement storm doors, on the north side of my apartment building. They were under about 8 inches of compacted snow. I swear I didn’t do it on purpose; the temperature rose 20 degrees the next day (high enough for the snow to turn to slush, which I could shovel off), just in time for the delivery. This temperature spike was not forecasted–it was awful! Then it cooled off back down to normal. I didn’t ask for it, it just happened. And sure, it was convenient for me, but it was out-of-whack with my analysis of appropriate high temperatures for my area. I felt bad. In retrospect, instead of not doing anything about my local conditions, what I needed to do was to reinforce the original predictions, to prevent my subconscious influence.
What is interesting is that you assume that local, chaotic weather is easier than far-away, global-huge weather for a single witch to control; I have found that to be as far from the truth as you can get! (More on that in the second part of the interview, though.)
It sounds like you have had some success with cloud-busting and the like. If so, I’d love to hear about it, as I have found it difficult to find people who have a talent for it in the Pagan community. I’m sure they’re out there; it’s just that weather-witching does not make it into any of the books I’ve seen, and does not seem to be a topic of conversation at big events.
In fact, I went to a large (maybe 100 people) Beltaine ceremony this year; I kept my ear to the ground. The only thing I heard about the day’s weather was how beautiful it was, and how they had never had a sunny, spring-like Beltaine before. Clearly none of the Pagans there had ever dabbled in weather magic, otherwise their reactions would have different! And yes, I had made the sun shine. But I kept my lips sealed.
I hope you enjoy the second post!
Yep. Lots of Pagans don’t do weather magic at all.
I confess, I’m a good deal less casual about it than you are. I don’t mean to disparage you or your experience, but my experiences as well as the advice of my teachers have made me quite cautious. Perhaps the experiences around thunderstorms say more about some elemental relationship I may have with some aspect of the storm–though not all storms are the same, I must say. It’s an intuitive matter with me, based on a few strong experiences.
Not to mention that good ol’ sci-fi/fantasy philosophy, that it’s “ill-done to chain a dragon to roast your meat.” I’d rather wear a nice weather-proof cloak, candidly–a good deal of the difficulties I see in human relationships with nature seem to me to boil down to feeling that our wanting something and being able to get it justifies doing so. I’m a cautious kind of a gal all around, perhaps, and my philosophy around weather magic undoubtedly reflects that.
Again–not intending disrespect toward you or your ideas. As my friend Macha likes to say, “Individual mileage may vary.”
Sorry, but color me extremely skeptical. Especially about anyones’ ability to control hurricanes.
From Jeff Lilly:
Cat: How do you feel about American Indian rain dances?
Kullervo: No one is asking you to believe anything.
I’m just saying… I’ve lived on the Gulf Coast, and served in the Florida National Guard. I’ve been deployed for hurricane relief missions.
To Kullervo, from Esmerelda:
Here is a recent entry on Jamaican hurricanes on the Wunderground site. Ever since forecasting systems have improved, Jamaica has had only one direct hit from a hurricane–in years!–despite being in the direct line of fire at least twice per hurricane season. Here’s the link:
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=755&tstamp=200708
And here’s a quote:
“Can Jamaica pray away Hurricane Dean? The official forecast and nearly all of the computer models have put Jamaica in the bulls-eye for several days now. But hurricanes have a funny way of taking 11th-hour wobbles that spare the island a direct hit. Witness the remarkable turn Hurricane Ivan took in 2004, as it headed directly for the island with 145 mph winds. Ivan took a sudden turn 35 miles from the island, traced out an exact outline of the island’s coast 35 miles offshore, then resumed its previous track. In the Jamaica Observer, Custos of Kingston, Reverend Carmen Stewart, contends that it was not the first time that prayers had influenced the turn of events when disaster faced Jamaica. “It has happened time and time again,” Reverend Stewart says. “I know people have been praying and I don’t see any other reason why it (the hurricane) would make such a drastic turn…. God hears prayer.” ”
Other Caribean islands get pounded by hurricanes; they do not have a history of successfully praying the storms off-course. I’m not sure how many people pray about hurricanes on each island; it would make a nice survey!
You don’t have to believe; just realize that there are so many coincidences like this, that it becomes hard to not believe in it, just a little bit…
For Cat:
I am only now coming out the broom-closet about this, so to speak. I have found so many of the bad things happening to our planet and its ecosystems unbearable–and I have found that I can lessen the blow.
But I don’t have the time and concentration available to help out _all_ of the world’s weather at the same time; it is way too draining. I’m coming out of the closet in the hopes that I can find a few good allies, who might be able to help me.
In general, I take a hand’s-off approach (again, it can be overwhelming otherwise). And I absolutely do not do as you assume: “human relationships with nature seem to me to boil down to feeling that our wanting something and being able to get it justifies doing so.” I would have deliberately made the weather cold before my freezer delivery if I had realized that I had subconsciously asked for the air to defrost my doors!
So here’s my thing: I change the weather anyway, whether I like it or not. I would much rather keep myself on a short chain and wish for seasonally appropriate weather, than to be like my good friend who seems to be just as naturally strong in this trait as I am, but she does not do things deliberately! She went to Chicago for the holidays, and didn’t want to drive in the snow. So the temperature jumped 20 degrees for the two days of her drive! I would much rather do it my way than hers…
I was deployed to Pensacola when it was devastated by hurricane Ivan (the one “prayed away” by the Jamaicans). We actually drove into the tail end of the storm. Don’t tell me about praying away hurricanes.
Kullervo’s last comment addresses a question that came to me when I was reading Esmerelda’s description of redirecting a hurricane. Obviously if you are asking a hurricane to move away from you, it is going to go somewhere else. And there are probably other people in that somewhere else who will experience the effects of that hurricane that you chose not to experience for yourself. Wouldn’t it be better, instead of letting the hurricane decide where it wants to go on its own, to redirect it to as benign a location as possible?
I think I’m with Cat on this issue – better to leave the weather alone because there are too many possible consequences. I believe very strongly in the law of return. Even if I started out with the very best of intentions I would hate to experience the return of whatever unintentional harm I’d created by changing the weather to suit myself.
I certainly don’t mean any disrespect to Esmerelda, and I’m fascinated by her descriptions of her work. Jeff, I know your wife is a weather witch as well. It’s just that I’m a follower of the tenet that says that just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should. I think there may be greater benefit in the grand scheme of things to leaving the weather alone than in ensuring cool weather for one community’s fall festival.
I suppose the one exception to that would be getting a group of witches together to combat global warming. That would be a working that I would could see as benefitting everyone.
This is an interesting debate, and I am looking forward to part two. The idea of working on weather at a distance being as easy as working on it close by is interesting: I’ve found it more difficult, but that could be my biases, so I will be interested to see how I find it when I next work on the weather at a distance. That would probably be for my parents: my mother lives on 10 acres located 2,000km away and has come close to running out of water in her rainwater tanks a few times, but seems to “miraculously” get rain when she needs it
Apart from the thical concerns which have been covered so far, one aspect I am interested in is others’ thoughts on is the effect on the attitudes and learning of humanity when weather witches work on the weather.
Here in Australia we’re currently experiencing the worst drought in over a century. I’ve done a little to bring some rain, but I’ve held off at times as well because of a debate which has led to far more sustainable attitudes towards water use – that debate and change of attitude was, I felt, far more important in the long term than the short term consequences.
In addition, you can bet that there were plenty of people in Florida (including at least one National Guardsman) that were praying for the Hurricane to dissipate or go somewhere else, too. It was like the fifth one to hit Florida in a month, and I was looking at getting dropped from my schedule at college because of their inflexible attendance policy, because we were deployed the whole time.
And this is North Florida, where the faith is… fervent.
But pretty much every place that a hurricane aims, the people try to pray it away. Sometimes it “works,” and sometimes it doesn’t. And even when it “works,” the ‘cane just goes somewhere else where the people are also praying it will leave them alone.
And magic’s not going to combat global warming. There are actual ways to do that.
I think combatting global warming can use all the effort we can throw at it – actual, magickal or otherwise.
I suppose I fall in with Kullervo. My main thought was, if you are out there deflecting hurricanes, what happened with Hurricane Katrina?
[...] « Interview with a Weather Witch I [...]
Jeff Lilly here: Thanks so much to all of you for taking the time to leave your thoughts and have such a great discussion. Esmerelda gives her personal answers to a lot of these concerns in the second half of the interview, posted here. However, I’m sure that won’t be the last word, and I look forward to more discussion!
A quick response to Jeff’s question on how I feel about Native American rain dances, and also a word to Kayleen, on the Australian drought issue.
The very short answer to the question on Native American ceremonies is that I don’t know enough about them to judge.
The slightly longer answer might be implied in the memory that Kayleen’s comment on the historic drought in Australia brought back for me… of a serious drought several years ago, here in New England. Non-gardeners were mostly ecstatic, that year, at all the sunny weather, but gardeners knew early on that it was a problem. I was not tempted to work weather magic, but, at the point when the trees began dying back, and I started to worry about damage to their root systems, I began thinking about what to do.
There’s a ceremony in the tradition of Witchcraft in which my husband and I were trained that is particularly appropriate for attempting to help the land find a balance; it involves working with the God and Goddess of the land and the sky–the local aspect of deity relating to place.
The drought broke before we’d arranged a suitable location for the ritual. (We have a microscopic yard in a pretty urban area, totally unsuitable for outdoor workings.) So we never did get around to trying that particular ritual.
However, working with Gods and land-spirits, rather than directly, would be my inclination when attempting to do any large scale intervention with weather.
Oh, yeah–and also, keeping in mind that it might not work. In my experience, while skepticism toward magic that’s in process might not be helpful, humility is. I suspect that my abilities–indeed, all of our abilities–are not something that might ever interest the CIA in recruiting me for covert ops! (Just as well, for oh, so many reasons…)
[...] gone before Wisdom from the other shore Offerings we make to you Fire, water, living wood. Esmerelda’s weather witching this year has apparently led to a striking result. Look at this map, which shows temperatures for [...]
One method I’ve found that really REALLY helps with dispursing clouds and light rain is to burn white bich bark in an open fire while meditating on the Sun burning through each and every water molecule. Results usually appear in 5-10 minutes. My best recommendation is to work with these types of systems first. Get used to the personality of each weather system. The light rain is usually a bit more managable and easier to manipulate.
I’m currently working on larger systems such as hurricanes, tornados, etc. (This is simply research for now, so I’m not interested in lectures about 3-fold rules or whatever.)
Good luck in your endevours and keep up the good work.
Brightest Blessings,
Laz
Hahaha
Your speaking as if bad weather is totally bad. That’s being biased! Bad is what we recognize subjectively, not objectively and so theres only shades of gray.
At least for me, which is a good point that you came out about as I really want to know your opinion about what is good and bad. I recently met a shaman in town who was saying these Oxygen theives were latched onto me. Firstly, we shopped for clothes at a shop they owned next door to, dated their daughter in high school, and started piano lessons next door to a house they lived in. (They live in a masion, but not for long I hope, they will get what they deserve!)
Stopped going to the teacher about two years ago. This year, however, I asked if I could have lessons with her again (at that stage I didn’t know they were completely wicked) and what do you know, a cyclone caterogy 5 shows up….During the intervals at which I seeked to go there….. I live in Townsville, Australia, and it stayed off the coast for about a week, then, mysteriously disappeared when I thought something strange was telling me to back off, as I knew I was causing it. At the time, the daughter was sooooooo pretty(hahahaha) but now…well, thoughts changed of course when you realize they are a bit different to their appearances.
Also, clouds always appear, within say, 5 minutes, the sky will be completely covered if theres just a little cloud around when I go outside. On several nights I decided to test this, and within 10 mins, not a star could be seen. The nights were virtually clear before I went out there.
i’d try not to credit myself to much. all i do is just believe in something and let it go and it happens. there are moments when you can feel the change in weather, and love the way rain comes down when you know it will! basically i just love it when you feel connected to stuff abnormally. but weather witching is something i have to look in deeply, i don’t really understand it, though i’m learning a lot from this site!
The rate of change is today of CO2 is orders of magnitude larger, and the absolute concentration is also much higher than the whole ice core record show and even much longer. ,
You are amazing. I’m a weather witch myself you may not think I’m much for I am only 14 but I can make the sun come out when I would like it to and can you talk to the wind? Because I would like to see if anyone else can talk to the wind like me. She’s nice, she warns me when theres trouble and tells me off when I’m not naturally me ,she’s like a mother but she’s nice to talk to but she won’t tell me her acctual name. Anyway I can talk to the wind can anyone else she says some can but I would like to know myself
Thank you
I have never “talked to” the wind, although most of my beseechings for a change in weather are accompanied by a sudden breeze. I think that as an adult, set in my ways, I am not as open as the commenter just above is; I think that 14 is a _much_ more reasonable age to be and be astute at weather-witching!
I try very hard to only wish for appropriate weather (rain for the growing plants, cold in winter, etc), and weather that will benefit all of the area I am wishing for. For instance, we had a huge rain storm predicted for Beltaine weekend; I pushed it around a bit so that the rain came _after_ all the pagans and others who celebrate May Day could get out and enjoy the sunshine and bless the goddesses and gods of their choice. It rained late the next day, and kept at for 3 days afterwards, but I was happy and gave thanks, because we need the rain, but we also need to have sunny weather, especially when there are plans afoot to gather and celebrate nature.
Keep at it, and never let your connection whither away!
Thank you ever so much Esmerelda for replying. As some people have heard the Radio 1 Big Weekend is in Bangor Wales and I am trying my very best to keep the amazing weather up especialy for Sunday for that is the day I am going it would be much help if a few weather witches helped me out at this but by the look of the mountainous clouds and the wind it should stay but I will be ever so greatfull if other would help just incase
Thank you again Esmerelda you are truly a fasintaing person and the others that will try to help me out
To anyone that helped me out on Sunday thank you! The day was amazing!! It was hot stuffy purfect festival weather!! thank you so much blessed be!