Merry Meet<br/><br/>please do not worry. By doing spellwork of this kind you will not invite anything dark or horrible into your life! Have you looked at the Wiccan Rede? If you are not harming anyone then what you do is for your own consience to bear and as for your daughter, i'm sure she was just having a restless night as all children do sometimes. The coincidence of the two is probably more down to maybe some uncertainess on your behalf - do you truly feel ready for spellwork or feel comfortable with the concept of withcraft given your previous christian faith?That is more likely the explanations of the nightmares. If you know this is the path for you - maybe you should try to relax a bit more about it and maybe do alot more research until you feel more confidant about the spellwork? You don't have to do work magic in order to be a good wiccan. Please beleive that you have done nothing wrong and nothing bad is going to come out of it. Blessed Be x

Amazing to hear your story. I too chose to turn to Wicca because I lost my full term baby girl, Lauren, for no reason that they could find at all. She just 'stopped' a few hours before I was due for a C-Section and no one noticed in the hospital because I wasn't high risk.<br/>I believed in the Christian God but never felt he understood what a woman goes through with the loss of a child, which bears no resemblance to the loss of a sibling/parent etc.<br/>It seemed far more reasonable and believable that a female Goddess who had birthed the entire universe would understand that after many years I was still struggling and know EXACTLY how I was feeling.<br/>I set about becoming Wiccan carefully and with due reverance and consideration. I self dedicated myself to a year and a day of study. I read many books before casting my first circle and studied and celebrated the sabbats.<br/>I don't use magic often at all but have also done a home protection spell. <br/>Then I decided to see if I could try to heal myself. I wrote the spell myself and worded it VERY carefully. I did not ask for a cure, to move on, to put it behind me or anything like that. I asked to 'easier live with' and to 'better cope with' the loss of my daughter after six years of struggle when my family made me feel that I should have moved on by then.<br/>For a few days nothing happened and then one morning I was on the bus going to work and I suddenly gasped because I felt the most incredible sensation in my mind. There were no words only an overall message. If you want to grieve, you go ahead and grieve for as long as you want to. She's your daughter and you are her mother and you have the right. But above all live your life at the same time.<br/>So now the grief of my daughter is no longer a 'thing' I have to cope with but part of me like the shade of my eyes or the freckles on my nose. If I want to cry, I cry whether it be seven, seventeen or seventy years in the past.<br/>You are on the right path. If you want your deity to love you and understand your every painful thought tor your child. Go slow, maybe celebrate the sabbats before trying spellwork (you don't need to cast a circle for them). And above all rid your head of that sneaky worry that you are doing wrong. That's Christian bully tactics. Follow the Rede. It's fullproof and the Goddess and God know your intentions better than you know yourself.<br/>Blessed Be.

Firstly it is of the utmost importance to get a thorough understanding of the mechanics of ritual before engaging in any spellwork, secondly it is important to arm yourself with a banishing ritual such as the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram and practice such a thing for at least six months before engaging in any other forms of ritual. If this ritual is to christianized there are pagan versions available, i have an excellent one in Gaelic. The reason such rituals are important is that it is easy to call things into being yet hard to get rid of them. When one engages in ritual you are working at the astral level. This realm is not empty, but full off thought forms, elementals, shells of the departed, the smog of emotions that are in constant flux etc. When working with rituals you are directly linking in with this area of being and on occasion these entities can stray into your working area. By performing a banishing before ritual you clear the mind and sphere of sensation of any residual energies thus giving yourself a clean slate to work with. You also establish astral wards to prevent the intrusion of such entities. If the nightmare episode was a one off i wouldnt worry, if however it becomes regular, then the time for action is at hand. These things need to be nipped in the bud before they gain momentum, my advice to you would be to monitor the situation. I would also advise you before engaging in any more ritual to research about the functions of magic, the nature of the psyche and get information regarding the levels of being and what can be expected to reside within each. Many books you will find and also many teachers offer a very fluffy view of magic, and will push the idea that nothing can hurt you, unfortunately this way is most promenant in the pagan and New Age fields. This is not the case however and why before engaging in magical practice the correct training must be learned. This takes a lot of time and practice but is the safe and only way to proceed. With magic you are dealing with the subconcious mind, and those ill prepared can and have suffered things like full mental breakdowns etc. If under psychic attack it is the mind that is targeted, most people think of physical attacks and poltergeist phenomena, however the most common form is far more subtle, involving the manifestation of physical and mental illness and neurosis by attacking the mind and enaid. Again I urge you not to be overly concerned but to keep one eye open in the forth coming weeks, just to make sure. I will also repeat how important it is to get a thorough grounding in magical theory and psychology, such as he works of Jung. Books such as the one you describe are no good, kind of like the teach yourself guitar in a day nonsense. Learn from books by people who have the credentials and experience, like Israel Regardie, Agrippa, Lon Milo Duquette, John Michael Greer and Dion Fortune. The magical path is a very long one. If you are on the right path, then you will stick with it, if not the flake filter will kick in and you will not proceed. Physical, mental and spiritual preperation is a requirement that if denied can find you in some very bleak waters.

Take care and try not to worry

Daniel