Salt Water Purification

Ground and center.

Hold water in your right hand and say:

“Blessed be, thou creature of water.”

Hold salt in your left hand and say:

“Blessed be, thou creature of earth.”

Hold both up to the sky, and feel them being charged with energy.

Hold athame in your strongest hand and say:

“Blessed be, thou creature of art.”

Spill three mounds of salt into the water.

Stir counterclockwise three times, saying:

“Salt and water,
inner and outer,
body and soul,
Be cleansed!
Cast out all that is harmful,
take in all that is good and healing,
As I do will, so mote it be!”

Use the athame to sprinkle some salt water on the altar in front of you and say:

“May this athame be purified
and may my tools and my altar(s) be purified.
(using athame, shake water on altar)
And may I (we) be purified.
As I do will, so mote it be!”

Breathe on the water, then charge it until you 'see' it glowing.

Sip the water to cleanse yourself, if in a group pass the cup clockwise so everyone can take a sip of the water to purify themselves.

This is also the water that will be used to sprinkle the quarter candles when casting
Circle.

Phaedra's Notes:

This is the basic outline for what I do, I generally have it memorized but for the most part I play it by ear and say and do what comes naturally during this part of the ritual.

My reasoning behind holding water in the right hand and salt in the left: well, I associate my right hand and the right half of my central altar with the Goddess. Water is more Her element to me, plus sea water has always had a more Goddess-y connotation than just plain salt. My left hand and left half of my altar is dedicated to the God, He's generally seen as a pretty earthy guy so he gets salt with correlates with earth in my book. This way the holy water that I make imbues qualities from both deities. Nifty, huh?

The groups I have worked with generally eschews a bath or shower before ritual because it's darn hard to do for a bunch of people in a short period of time. In order for us all to be sanctified and purified before ritual we use this, then each of us takes a sip of the salt water and 'sees' it taking our impurities away. For rituals that require an extra punch on the purification front we generally combine this with smudging. I used to use sage but I'm one of those weird people that doesn't really like the scent of burning sage so we tend to use smudging blends of my own devising. One of my personal favorites currently is to use one with a base of cedar, lavender, and sandalwood. To that I add other sweet smelling herbs that are appropriate to the ritual at hand.