How to Tell If A Spirit is Friend or Foe?

Though we are out of the holy days of the dead, tradition teaches us that the veils between the Spirit worlds are still quite thin and permeable. This is a period that actually lasts (according to some sources) until the Day of Epiphany on January 6th and (according to other sources) lasts right through Candlemass/Imbolg on February 2nd.

For magically minded folk this is a potent time where we often feel that we are able to walk especially close to our Holy Helpers, but this can also be a time of unrest and interruption, especially if we have attracted a being from the Spirit world that does not have our best interests at heart.

In Called to the Crossroads this month we are going to talk about Ancestor work but we are also going to talk about working with Spirits and Ghosts that are not necessarily allies. I’ll be diving deeply into how to banish, remove, and rehome troublesome spirits but there is one thing we need to do before that which is figuring out what kind of spirit we are dealing with! Is it friendly? Is it malicious? Is it something else entirely?

Here is a quick checklist:

If you feel the presence of a Spirit or Being from the Otherworld in your living space/land then consider the following questions to help you determine if it is friend or foe or somewhere in between:

1.) How has this spirit made its presence known to you?

2.) Has this spirit tried to communicate with you directly? If so, what does it want/how has it expressed itself?

3.) Have any external events occurred at the onset of your awareness of this spirit? (ie, have you had a lucky windfall of good fortune, or have you experienced a run of “bad luck”?

4.) Is this spirit familiar to you or unfamiliar?

5.) Are you related to this spirit?

6.) Is this spirit attached to a specific object?

I’ll be diving into each of these questions and why they matter later this month in our Called to the Crossroads teaching call, but for now this is a good place to start your assessment.

And…if you want to join Called to the Crossroads, you can do that too – we would love to have you!

Learn more + join here.