The intentional landscape of glamour magick

Glamour magick is a form of magick most well-known in folklore with the stories of Changelings, faery babies disguised as and switched with human babies. It was a form of magick used to disguise someone's true form, and elevate a form they wish to take for a specific purpose. 

Today, it is seen as a form of magick that manifests self-confidence and magnetism- creating an aligned, vibrant, energetic, and magnetic life. In this episode, I discuss how the heart of glamour magick is building your landscape, both internal and external, through intention and truth. 

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Transcript

Ashlie McDiarmid: 0:00

Hello there dear souls and thank you so much for tuning in and listening to the Tea and Tombstones podcast. Tea and Tombstones is a platform dedicated to both the haunted and the hallowed of life through tarot and spiritual counsel, and I welcome you here. With today's episode, I intend to talk about glamour magic. Glamour magic has been on my mind a lot recently. It's been something I've really been thinking about and leaning into more in my own practice. So if you are interested and I hope you are about learning about some glamour magic or just want to hear my take on glamour magic, then grab some tea and we will go ahead and get started. I am drinking some jasmine tea today, which is lovely. Colorado, .. will Colorado's dry, all year round. I mean, we're technically a desert. But this is the time of year where I can really start to feel that shift between summer and fall, and I can feel it just being a lot drier. So I apologize. I know it is not the best to hear me taking drinks from my tea cup. But I don't want to edit out every single time I take a sip and my throat is a little hoarse, and I'm just trying to make sure that I am getting fluids in. So, let's talk glamour magick. What is glamour magick? So I'm first going to give a just a brief definition of what my take on glamour magick is and then I'm going to talk about how because my mission statement and the compass that leads me through all of my creations with Tea and Tombstones is meeting both the haunted and the hallowed of life through tarot and spiritual counsel. I, that's how I introduce the podcast. It's on the website. I'm going to talk a little bit about how glamour magick can fit into both the haunted and the hallowed and some things to maybe think about, or just some things to take note of if you are seasoned in glamour magick and you just want to maybe take these into consideration, that's great. If you're brand new to glamour magick, and what it is, then you can use these as maybe a little bit of a starting point or just a little bit of a barometer to see if it is something that is working for you. My take on glamour magick is that it is a draping and a layering to enhance your internal power or the sensations that you feel internally to be expanded and embodied and embraced externally. This does not mean that glamour magick is only make up, fashion, sex. Although that is often a great way to use glamour magick because it is such an easy starting point. But that is how I see glamour magick. You may see some things a little bit differently, and I do have some articles that I want to reference. One of them in particular I want to reference because it has a spell that I actually want to try for myself. I think the article has some good points, and then there's another article that I will have all of these listed in the show notes so that you can see these articles. You can read them, and as always, you can form your own opinion around glamour magick and see how it works for you. So that is my definition of glamour magick: that it is a layering of resources, energies, and objects to take my internal energies, my internal sensations, my internal power, my internal expression, and bring it forth out into the physical world, even if it's not something that can be perhaps physically seen, even if it's just the way I'm carrying myself. If I'm carrying myself more confidently that day, and I'm feeling more confident because I have a bra on that makes you know, my tits look great I think, then that is a form of confidence boost for me and I'm going to carry that confidence, and that power maybe a little bit more. So that is one way and that's also a very surface level form of glamour magick, so I just want to point that out but, so that is how I see glamour magick. As I said it's just a way to bring in, receive in, and layer with resources and with physical objects or with energies or with things that make us feel a certain way, and that layering and that complexity helps bring the... it helps kind of be like a crucible a little bit, that it's like bringing and whittling down these things to elevate internal energy, internal feelings, internal sensations. And this is why glamour magick, as I said, is often linked to things like makeup, fashion, clothes, shoes because it is just such a visible way to, and it's such a convenient way, to step into glamour magick. And that is one form of magic that has not dwindled for me. So my spiritual and magickal self has been coming under a little bit of challenge or obstacle or distance with me. Part of- and it's both personally and collectively that I feel this way -I feel this way, one because the state of the world right now is very at times scary to me. It makes me feel fear and afraid. Because the things that I care, about the things that elevate my spiritual and magickal practice, the thing that elevates my rituals is deeply tied to the earth. And I see the Earth as a living, breathing body because she is. When I see the state of things as they are today, it's hard not to have my collective magickal practice, feel that fear, feel that pain, in some way because it's just so apparent. I mean, it's been apparent for a long time, but I think I think that right now, things just are so compounded and 2020 has been just such a shit year anyway, that it just feels like the uphill battle is never ending. It's just hard. I mean, it's hard for me. I don't know how else to describe it. It just kind of makes me feel weary. It makes me feel drained. It makes me feel afraid. And then personally, I've also kind of been feeling that because we- as I mentioned, in an Instagram post, we were renovating the condo, so we had to be out of the condo for three weeks, which basically meant that we have to have everything packed up, moved out and away so that they could completely flip our condo. So that meant that everything that I use in my magickal practice, in my spell crafting, in my rituals all had to be packed away. The only thing I did not pack basically was my decks. My tarot and my oracle decks because I could not bring myself to put those precious tools in a box, so I just put them in my suitcase and just brought them with me when we stay with my parents. And now that we're back in Grizzly and I are actively looking for a place to move to, so I'm not unpacking all of the boxes that I packed up when we left because I don't want to have to just repack them if we find a home So, a lot of my magickal tools, my spell crafting tools, my ritual tools are all in boxes. I do have some big petrified wood pieces that I use- I've been using as a way to kind of help connect me ancestrally to this land, to this place. And I have my decks and that's pretty much it. And rituals and glamour magick - a great way to honor glamour magick is when you are in the space of either spell-crafting, tarot reading, astrology, birth charts, or divination of any kind, you can bring in glamour magick by u..., by using or utilizing different resources and tools to help elevate this space. So using incense and crystals, and if you want to use some personal piece of clothing that is, you know, or some piece of jewelry that is important for that ritual. If you want to use candles. If you want to use use it if you want the spell to be done outside or inside, all of these things are, I think, at least a form of glamour magic because what it's doing is it's changing the landscape of your physical environment, which is going to change your spell-crafting. It's going to change your ritual. It's going to change your magickal space, your magickal self within that environment because you're co-creating within that environment. That's what witches do. And so I recognize that I use glamour magick a lot and I didn't really realize I was using glamour magick and my rituals and in my spell-crafting until all of those objects were packed away. It's been on my mind a lot recently and also if you are brand new to glamour magick utilizing some of those resources in meditation or in spell-crafting or in ritual are a great way to kind of see how glamour magick works for you and to how you can make it your own, make it unique, and make it something that's really serving you because the key point with glamour magick is that it's all about intention. It's all about intentionally receiving or actively bringing in these resources, these energies, these colors, these tools, these objects, because they help elevate your space some way. They help elevate your energy some way. It's bringing in- actively and intentionally bringing in or receiving in anything that elevates the landscape, that changes the landscape in some way. And the landscape, again, does not have to be just external and it doesn't have to be just aesthetics and we're gonna talk about that in a second. But I just want to make sure that this is coming across clearly and that this is coming across in a way that it can be used or utilized in a way that works for you. So as I said, my, all of my resources, all of my books, all of my incense, and my lovely sage or cedar wands,... I've been using cedar and pine a lot, because one, I fully recognize that sage is, well being from Colorado, there is some native sage here, but the act of using sage as a form of cleansing, clearing, or elevating the space is not from my culture, so I've been wanting to look to more other plants that I want to bring in. Cedar, Juniper, a lot of those kind of heavy tree scents are really their, they've been really lovely for me, in just elevating my own magical space. I don't have them right now, as I said, so I need to get some more, but because I don't have those I've been turning into my daily morning ritual a lot. I don't do this every morning because some days I just cannot be bothered if I'm being honest. But most days, I try to get ready for the day, even if I don't go anywhere I try to get ready for the day and getting ready for me is the full shebang. It is the full thing, like I am going to take a nice shower. I'm going to put on a full face of makeup, and I am going to pick out an outfit that I feel is awesome and banging and everything I want it to be that day, and I'm going to do my hair. And I am going to go through all of that because that is part of my glamour magick practice. That is part of my morning ritual on the days that I do it. And so it's really about, again, me changing the landscape of my own body in a way that makes me feel grounded. It makes me feel centered and makes me feel rooted into myself because in that hour and a half between shower to when I'm fully done, that hour and a half is pure sacred. It is absolutely sacred. And that is the reason why I do it as often as I can, and I actively take time and make time to put it into my day. I could have an extra hour of sleep or I could have an extra hour of reading my book or working on this thing for my business. But I choose to get in the shower, I choose to put on a podcast. When I get out I have that one cup of coffee, snd then I just start getting ready for the day, snd I am just fully in the present moment. I'm not thinking about really anything beyond, you know, what colors do I want to use? What outfits do I want to wear, like I am just fully in that space of creative play. It's so invaluable to me. It's so invaluable because it has no consequence on anything, snd that's kind of the point is that it is simply for me. but yet, in doing that for myself, I feel more confident. I just feel better. I feel a little bit more energized to complete the tasks that I need to get done for that day. It also just really again, it really calms me. It's like a form of therapy. It is a way for me to feel more grounded into myself, more rooted and self-planted into my present moment, into my day because it is something that I love to do. And there's no other reason. There's no other purpose for it. As I said I define glamour magic as actively receiving or intentionally bringing in anything to change the internal or external landscape and then to expand on that or to layer that- glamour magick, I think, it can be used to claim yourself sovereign or as I like to say claim yourself unicorn. What I mean when I say this is that like unicorns, who are these magical, beautiful, transcendent, un-earthly creatures that are opposite of time so connected to the earth, so too glamour magic can help us get into this space of complete and wild reclamation. Through glamour magick we can reclaim ourselves, step into our truth and claim the way that we are both seeing and receive the world as it is, and as we want it to be. And also like unicorns, we can also use glamour magick as a way to at times invoke a reaction. So, for instance, one of the ways that I use glamour magick- long time ago, I did not recognize that I was using it this way- was it was either 2005 or 2006. It was right as I was leaving high school, I cut my hair very, very short, and I used to have hair that was average length, and I did it as a way to claim myself wild against the standard narratives of beauty that you can only be a beautiful woman with long hair. And obviously, that's not true. I was so tired of seeing this portrayal of beauty, seeing this portrayal of beauty and transcendence in a way that was very, very limiting. And so, I chose to cut off all my hair because that was a way that I could claim myself and claim myself sovereign claim, claim myself unicorn and allow that wild reclamation be how I wanted to be seen in this world. So sometimes glamour magick can be used to invoke a reaction. This is where sometimes we see sex-magick and glamour-magick intersect because using sects[error] using sex magick or using glamour magick, in relation to sex magick, can be to invoke a reaction which obviously is to invoke a reaction in terms of libido. It can go... so glamour magick can be used to invoke a reaction good or bad. It can be used as a form of expression, a way to express a belief system. Like I said, I don't believe that only long haired girls are pretty glamour magick can also be used to conceal something. In fact, concealing something is where we see the foundation and the roots and the tradition of glamour magick often. In this article that I will have linked in the show notes, It is from HelloGiggles.com fashion witch Gabriela Herstick tells us how to incorporate magick into our beauty routines. And she is talking about how she uses glamour magic daily with intention to claim her power and stuffed into her beautiful and sovereign self and space. But she mentioned that glamour magick in regards to folklore is when a fairy baby would be switched with a human baby. They would cast a glamour upon the fairy baby so that it would look like the human baby, and the parents would not know. And this was called a changeling. There's a really great movie called the changeling with the Angelina Jolie that's really fascinating. And it kind of goes into this narrative of how sometimes visuals are a way of distraction, are a way of concealing something that is harmful or wrong. It's a great movie, I suggest you watch it. But beyond folklore and then to the space here now, and at least the way I see glamour magick in terms of concealing something is that it can be used to conceal anything someone doesn't want shared, visible or known. Sometimes this could just be an energy sometimes this could be an experience, a feeling. This could also be something physical, and then this way glamour magick can also be used in relation with other spells or other rituals such as boundary spells or protective spells. And this is a great way to use glamour magick as a way to heighten other spells that you're doing. So, if you are wondering if glamour magick is right for you, if you've never really used glamour magick before, I recommend trying it, well... trying it in any way that you see fit, but if you are working with any sort of protective or boundary spells, stepping into that kind of ritual, I really recommend using glamour spells as a way to enhance that other spell that protective or boundary spell because glamour magick can be used to conceal that and it can layer the complexities and the nuance of any other form of your magical practice. Tattoos are another form of glamour magick because we are the living altars of our spiritual path. We are those living altars our body is the messenger for our spiritual selves into and out of all things. So it's, it's lovely, and tattoos are a great way to adorn that living altar which is our bodies if you choose. A lot of times people want to get tattoos to conceal some ex- boyfriends name or some ex- girlfriend's name or they want to use tattoos to, to conceal, maybe like scars, to transform the landscape from what was this place of hardship and challenge and turn it into something beautiful and so transcendent and it's lovely. Sometimes, glamour magick can simply be used to reveal something powerful, to consciously manipulate and reveal the internal energy externally. I want to go in now to how glamour magick meets the haunted and the hallowed. The haunted and the hallowed is the internal or external spectrum of all things. At times that hallowed ground often has those tombstone moments, or those haunted moments, and that could be what makes the ground hallowed. That could be what makes the situation sacred, so the haunted and the hallowed is really just the energetic spectrum of all things, in my opinion. So glamour magick can be, as with everything, on that spectrum . When it's standing on hallowed ground, when it's in that place of pure sacred awakening, I should say- pure sacred awakening or pure sacred expression, glamour magick is literally draping yourself in these multitude of layers that make you everything that you are. Glamour magick is literally layering yourself and the complexities of yourself and inviting in actively, intentionally bringing in everything that elevates your personal landscape. When you are in that pure space of sacred expression, and glamour magick is a part of that that is full hallowed ground. However, the haunted part is when glamour magick is used to control or manipulate others and to usurp serve their free will. Under no circumstances should we be using glamour magick to force someone to do what we want them to do. This is also different than hexes, bindings, and curses. I just want to point that out and get that out of the way because that is a whole other topic, but I would never use glamour magick as a way to make someone else do what I want them to do because that shit can backfire so fast. It's like doing a love spell I would personally never do a love spell because I don't want to be responsible for the fallout of the spell that I do. My glamour magick is purely for me too.... it is purely for me to express and be in landscape expansion of myself and to feel into and embrace [bless you] and accept, excuse me, and to embrace and accept and empower myself My[inaudible] cat won't stop sneezing. Glamour magick can step easily into this, into the haunted space into the tombstone space, into the space that is not serving us when we use glamour magick for completely overriding someone else's freewill, or to hurt them or to use them, to take advantage of them. That's not... that's not okay. So what are some ways that we can use glamour magick. There's the obvious, like I said makeup, clothes, shoes, bags, designer labels, or social media or pop culture or popularity can really influence glamour magick into a space of leaning, I would say more towards the haunted than the hallowed. So for instance, going back to the statement of there's only one way to be beautiful- if you want to look like one of the supermodels you see, let's just say like the Jenners or the Kardashians because they're such a big family. Now if you truly want to look that way, and that is in your heart of hearts and that is your truth, that is beautiful and gorgeous, and I encourage you in all ways to use your glamour magick to influence and to elevate your landscape to match that vision you have of it. If you feel that you need to look like that because they are successful, they have a lot of money, people know their names, that is where glamour magick can go out of control in my opinion, because you're actively seeking to change your landscape based on what an external force or an external presence or external pressure is telling you to do. So there is also a very big difference between internal truth and external pressure. Do not feel pressured in any way to look a certain way, have a certain type of aesthetic, to have a certain type of bag or shoes or clothes. If you want them, if you truly want them, then again, awesome, beautiful, great, go and buy them and love them and cherish them, but if you feel that you need to have designer labels or a certain haircut or a certain type of look, because that's what you see on TV, and it doesn't match your internal truth, then don't do it. I think glamour magick is more informed where we can often see external pressures because... let me back up.... When we think of our magickal selves, our spiritual selves, we think of that as being our sovereign place, and it is and it should be. That is the place that no one else can touch, unless we let them. No one else can influence you to change your beliefs, to change your opinions, unless you choose to do so. And so, glamour magick is a part of that, and it should be a part of that, because it is a part of your magickal and spiritual self. It's part of your ritual. It's a part of your craft, and it shouldn't be sovereign, so again, if your sovereign truth matches up with what you see in Instagram, in pop culture, and it's seen as like what's trendy, then, absolutely. But if it's not within your truth, then that is where glamour magick can stray into the haunted because you are letting external pressure strip you of your sovereignty, strip you of your sovereign truth, and conform it to a way that's easily acceptable. And that is not what glamour magick is about. Glamour magick is about owning and honoring and embracing the power that you have as a unique and sovereign being because that is fucking beautiful. And however that looks, however extra that is, however not extra that is, however that is, it's beautiful, because it's you. So when we look to glamour magick, it's really important to make sure that we are coming from a place of autonomy and self-governance because we don't want to let those external pressures make us feel like we have to spend money, look a certain way, or act a certain way, or be a certain way. This is also leading into a conversation that I would just love to have on the podcast as well about how can we be sovereign in our magickal selves when we are constantly being sold to. And glamour magick fits beautifully into that. But it reads so much more into other things as well, that I obviously won't get into, but I just want to make the point that glamour magick is about expressing your sovereign truth. It's about expressing your landscape and your landscape is different from And I can almost guarantee- I would bet dollars to donuts- that you would.. that you're going to feel an energetic shift, an energetic upload of whatever costume you're wearing. Some other ways to use glamour magick, if you do not want to use makeup is just to invite in color theory. If you want to everybody else's because it is yours. And glamour magick can be decorate your house or maybe you want to plant some flowers and you kind of wanna bring in color theory maybe to make it more peaceful, or to make it match a certain energy or a certain vibe that you want, you can use color theory in that way. And that's a form of glamour magick, because again, you're elevating the used in all sorts of ways. We're going to be seeing a lot of landscape of something. So if it's your home, you're elevating the landscape of your home by what you intentionally bring into it. Another form of glamour magick, and this is one that I reject a little bit,- it kind of goes back to color theory a glamour magick with Halloween coming up. Costumes are an little bit, but you see this even in ways that you may not have ever known that glamour magick was being used, and it's, if you're not using it intentionally, I wouldn't call it glamour magick,- but I see it as a form of glamour magick, and that is dressing up for an interview. I don't know if you excellent form of glamour magick, because it totally were ever told, but I was told when I go to an interview to wear neutral toned clothes. So wear beige and tan, black, white, maybe. That was pretty much it because neutrals will allow the boss or the person doing the interview, they're allows you to step into a character. Whatever that gonna get a neutral effect from your outfit, and so they're going to be focused on what you have to say in the interview. They're going to be focused on your question. So if you wear something bright and bold, they may, quote, unquote, not be character is, feel into that sensational shift when you put focused on you. I think if they can't focus on you and they're focused on an article of clothing, then maybe they shouldn't be doing the interview, but that's just me. But that is a form of color- of glamour magick that you dress a that costume on. It's like it's like an armor in a way. It's certain way to reap a benefit or, again, to invoke a reaction or to step into and express your power. Also go into belief systems, just believing that you are a sovereign beautiful being is going to elevate your glamour magick. I fully believe glamour magick is um, is going to help truly is like an energy change. It's like an energy upload of you take control of some energies that are within your control. This can also be, again, as all things can be both on the haunted and the hallowed. So when I step into my morning ritual of getting ready and I'm doing my whole shebang, that is whatever character or whatever costume you have. It doesn't me taking control of my day. That is me saying I am worth the time to do this because I want to do it. If I didn't want to do it I wouldn't. That can also, though, go to- that sense of control can go again- towards the haunted end of the spectrum. We see this in things, like again, like using it to have to be Halloween that's just obviously what's coming up. So manipulate someone's force of will. Another way that we can see glamour magick go wrong, is in just out of control obsessive vanity. I would like to make clear that when I say obsessive vanity, I don't mean it with any sort of judgment or stigma Halloween is a great time to step into glamour magick. If attached. I am not using that term or referencing that term with the intention to again limit the narrative or the conception of beauty into one limited narrow path. I believe everyone should be able to look and feel and express themselves that's the only time of the year you want to step into internally and externally however, their truth leads them to. What I'm talking about when I say obsessive vanity, what my point is, is when we place look and aesthetics, above everything intentional glamour magick, that's great. I invite you if else as significant or important. When we base the entirety of our importance on looks or aesthetic, we're limiting ourselves to one narrow path, one narrow narrative of you- I never dress up for Halloween because I just don't what it means to be of worth or of value. Live your extra life. Do whatever you feel you need or want to do that is in alignment with your truth, but I would at least invite, suggest, or encourage and hope that however extra you are, however you lead like to dress up. I mean I do like to dress up I shouldn't say yourself, or express yourself internally and externally, that you're doing it from that place of truth and not placing aesthetics and looks as the foundation or pinnacle of all your worth because that is obviously not true. You are that but I don't like to spend the money and I don't want to go worth so much more. You are more valuable than just how you look or how you are perceived in this world. I'm saying that obsessive vanity is a place where we feel that we have to be beautiful. We have to subscribe to this version or this narrative of out to these overpriced busy bars. That's just not really my aesthetics and looks because that's how we will be perceived as worthy, as important or as the only way to step into our power. And obviously that is not the only way to express our power, to embody our power. There are so many other ways that glamour magick is merely one of them. And so I just I thing. Usually I just spend Halloween eating dinner and just would like to make that point clear. And so glamour magick can turn into the haunted, can step into that haunted space when we place glamour magick or we place the outcome of glamour magick above every other way of claiming ourselves, when we put it in front of every other form of watching horror movies and that's lovely for me. So I power, or we reduce our power to nothing but glamour magick. We can even see this in trends we can see glamour magick kind of, again, be used through social media, pop culture, what's popular what's trendy to the extent of appropriation. invite you if you are going to go out and if you are going to YouTube, I used to watch you know, different like beauty uh, beauty gurus on YouTube, and I have since stopped up because the beauty community is just so toxic in my opinion, Not all of them are toxic, but just the community as a whole is a toxic place. There used to be this trend going around that was just be in costume or if you're just going to be in costume and hand so dumb, when people would be color correcting using different colors like green or blue or yellow or lavender to color correct their face, and then you'd blend them out with like a brush or a beauty blender, or a sponge because you're trying to out candy even, when you put your costume on, just take a correct any colors or blemishes or imperfections within your skin. Well it started turning- a very normal standard beauty practice of color correcting- morphed into just pure moment just to see how the energy shifts within you. Take a appropriation because people started to try to do like really elaborate looks with their color correctors. And you can like see this, you can like go on YouTube and find this, where they would want their color corrector to have a look before they blended it out. And it's often straight into makeup gurus using their moment to kind of see and feel into the sensation of that color correctors to basically paint indigenous face paint on them. That's pure appropriation goes back to intention. Also, I think very important, coming back to truth, and sometimes that can be a historical or cultural truth. When we bring costume and feel into the sensation of yourself wearing something in intentionally we want to make sure that we are not overstepping overreaching, especially those of us with privilege. cisgendered white people want to make sure that we are not stepping over and on the representation or undermining that costume. the representation of someone else to fulfill our own claim or magick. So I'm gonna go ahead and wrap it up here. I hope that this podcast was informative. I hope it made sense and as easy to follow. I was a little worried about doing this podcast episode because it's very easy for me to discuss and talk about tarot cards because I'm just so steeped in them every day almost. I'm usually playing a card every day. I'm.. I'm still working on how to kind of get my flow, so if it was a little bit all over, I apologize, but I hope it was listenable. I hope it was you know, informational and a good place to start. If you are brand new to glamour magick, I hope that it also provided some thing, if you're not someone who's into makeup or fashion or anything like that, but it's still offered you ways of working with glamour magick. I did enjoy that one of the articles mentioned THE CRAFT because if you were a baby which like me, my first introduction as a baby, which into glamour, magic was through the movie, the craft, which I first have to say did not has not aged well with me. Like that's just a movie that has not accompanied me on my spiritual magical journey. But I digress. But I just fully remember the part where Sarah like, changes her hair color. And then at the very end, Nancy who's trying to get back and Sarah like, makes herself look like Sarah and I just remember kind of being like creeped out that someone could make themselves look like me and then go do something terrible and I would get blamed for it. So I love that they mentioned that. It kind of brought me back to again, my baby witch path. Thank you so much for listening. I hope that this was again listenable and gave you some good things to work with and chomp on the bit on, so thank you so much. If you have any thoughts or questions, please let me know. You can reach out to me via Instagram or via email at teaandtombstones@gmail.com. So thank you so much again. I will talk to you guys later.