A Quick Spell for Lessening Social Anxiety
This was Apollo's gentle suggestion.
Today, I was on my morning walk with my dogson and I noticed that I became very anxious and harried when a nearby homeowner and some contractors came outside a few feet from us. I have a long history of social anxiety, which I generally consider resolved, so I observed with interest how such a mundane, safe situation left me on edge.
This is where I mention that I keep a private Discord server to use as a magical and spiritual journal. Later, I noticed a glitch occurred on the Discord app indicating that there were unread messages on the server even though I'm the sole user and author. When I looked, four channels were highlighted: Havurah, Magic, Herbalism, and the Warning channel that is the only unlocked channel in the case that someone else accesses the server.
The Herbalism channel had this excerpt from a book that was uncredited about bay leaves:
In the Middle East, the leaves are used in herbal preparations to treat nervous conditions.
So after some quick check ins with my occult friends to make sure I was not missing a more obvious use of bay leaves, I went to Apollo's shrine and did the following:
- Cleansed myself with Florida Water
- Anointed myself with Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's Laurel Wreath Perfume Oil
- Took out 7 bay leaves
- Boiled water and infused it with 4 of the bay leaves for 10 minutes
- Lit a candle at Apollo's shrine, sang some of the bars of Maria from West Side Story but with Apollo's name as is my own custom (Apollo/I just met a god named Apollo/and suddenly that name will never mean the same/to me...)
- Burned the remaining 3 bay leaves while praying for Apollo to remove my anxiety around people and to make me confident, open, and warm toward everyone, but especially those who are aligned with me so that my havurah could be expanded
I entered the state of trance I do where my perception/body begins to rock so I know I reached him (other than I can just feel his warm presence at this point almost immediately) and my spell succeeded. I then drank the bay leaf tisane to cleanse me of impurities and hopefully the last of my nervousness.
Let me know if you try this out and what your results are. :)
