It’s difficult to remember to breathe, to center, and meditate when you’re traveling – everything is so new, and you’ve been thrown out of your usual routine (which is a good thing and totally the point of travel). But too much of newness and excitement can leave us feeling exhausted, especially if you’re psychically or emotionally sensitive, so it’s important to remember to take time every day to reach within ourselves and connect to the Divine, to do magick and to meditate.
Let me take this time to point something out: I don’t do “travel magick” spells. I don’t create charms to protect me while I fly (if the plane crashes, even if I survive the initial landing, doesn’t mean I’ll survive the ensuing problems, depending on where we crash), I don’t carry stones to keep me safe while walking the streets of some city at night. If I get mugged, pretty polished stones aren’t going to help me one stinkin’ bit. I don’t cast spells to protect my car from getting broken into, and I don’t chant to find a parking space.
To be quite honest, I’m of the “mundane acts first, magickal acts later” type. If I’m walking down a city street at night, I’ll darn well avoid the quiet areas where there’s not many people, and if the country I’m in allows it, I’ll probably be carrying some pepper or bear spray. After those precautions have been set, I’ll erect a shield around myself for extra measure to send the “stay the heck away from me” vibe. If I fly, I’ll choose the seats that have the best survival rate of crashes (the back seats and the emergency exit row seats). I don’t keep valuables in the rental car. If I can’t find a parking space out front of where I need to be, I’ll park down a block and walk.
Not so hard, is it? *grin*
Now, moving along. Though I don’t cast travel magick spells, I do create magick when I travel, and make sure I keep a firm grasp on my spirituality and my relationship with the Divine. I do this in several ways: firstly, I keep a little “magick bag” filled with key items I use. Secondly, I make sure to get up nice and early every day – if I’m traveling with someone, before they’re awake – and take a half hour to forty five minutes to focus on spiritual items. Thirdly, I do spontaneous pathworking. And fourthly, I honor my spiritual and nature-based values by eating and buying locally-grown and locally-made food and products, thus supporting the people of the place I’m visiting.
Magick Bag of Wondrousness
Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll talk about my Magick Bag of Wondrousness (yes, that is what I call it). It’s a pink bag with an Asian design that I got in a gift store. It fits on my palm when full, and I only put within it items that I use when doing magick, when meditating, when praying, when practicing breathing, et cetera. At the moment, on this Hawaii trip I’m on, it contains Goddess prayer beads, a pendulum, and a piece of the following stones: laktite, quartz, moonstone, lapis lazuli, hematite, amethyst, fluorite, lacy agate, and rose quartz. Outside of my magick bag, I also have my selenite wand and my tarot cards.
Each morning, I try to take the time to breathe, ground, center, meditate, and choose a tarot card and stone. Some mornings I don’t feel the need to, but as long as I have those things with me, I can do it whenever I feel the need to.
Travel as Conducive to Spirituality
I feel that travel is highly beneficial to spirituality, no matter what spiritual path you follow. If you follow a nature-based path, you know that there is no specific sacred space – all of the earth is sacred. In this way, travel can make that belief more real and focused. The amount of natural beauty there is at our fingertips when we travel is phenomenal. The 3 billion year old Daintree Rainforest of Queensland, Australia, the volcanoes of Hawaii, the deserts of west America, the towering mountains of Alaska, the reefs of the ocean…on and on. The earth is such an amazing and complex place, and often, it’s hard to tell how beautiful it is when we’ve gotten used to the repetition and routine of our home. It takes jolting ourselves out of that auto-pilot mode to see that. (This can be done without traveling, of course – simply take a stroll somewhere natural near your home and pay attention to the world around you!)
Even if you follow a Christian or other book-based path, travel can benefit you in many ways – the cathedrals of Europe are a sight to behold. I had the amazing privilege, a couple of years ago, to tour the cathedrals of Germany, the Czech Republic, and Austria with a choir I was part of, and singing in those massive, ancient buildings was awe-inspiring in a way I never thought I would feel about anything Christian. Someday, I would love to visit sacred sites of other religions – Mecca, perhaps. Or the Buddhist temples of Asia. Any and all. Because that spiritual energy, that welling of the Divine within our breasts, is not exclusive to Pagans – I’ve felt it in a teen Christian youth group!
But I digress. My point of all this is, if you’re struggling to get in touch with the Divine in a deep, substantial, sacred level, I encourage you to travel. It doesn’t even have to be very far – as long as you are jolting yourself out of your routine and spending time in the world that the Divine created and is a part of.
At this moment, I’m sitting on the lanai of the hotel room my partner and I have rented for the next two weeks in Maui. I would have loved to stay in a B&B or hostel or even a condo, but because this is the busy season of Maui and because my partner didn’t want to stay in a hostel because it’s not private enough, we had to settle for this. But even here, in this developed, touristy section, I can feel Spirit in little unexpected corners – in the tiny strip of sand between the rock wall and the pounding surf, in the coral I step gingerly beside as I explore, my love’s hand in mine. I can feel Spirit in the sun as it rises joyfully in the East. I can feel Her in the rustling of the palm trees in the wind. I can feel Her when I come out at 6:30 in the morning and see an elegant old woman doing gloriously graceful yoga in the grass, the surf crashing and rising up to meet her floating hands.
Spirit is found anywhere we let ourselves go and allow our beings to be swept away in the sacred current of what we aren’t used to. It opens our eyes, and our hearts.
How do you practice your spirituality when traveling?
