Psalm 36: An Ancient Spell for Safety

Today we are working with Psalm 36.

Some traditional magical uses for Psalm 36 include destroying envy, ending gossip, receiving grace and blessings, exposing lies, lifting a curse, and protection against the evil eye. Today, I'm going to gear this Psalm toward having safety in a seemingly unsafe situation. If you're not feeling safe in the world, you can come to this Psalm and use it to invoke safety, even in places and times when you feel like safety doesn't exist. You can use this Psalm for anything you'd like, though. Just take the seeds of magic that we discover in the Psalm and apply them to whatever your purpose is.

The way we work Psalm magic is simple, easy, and effective. We take the Psalm we're working and we speak it out loud, all the way through, once without stopping. This is known as an incantation. When we finish our incantation, we go back through that Psalm and consider each verse in turn. We search for hidden, occult meanings that lie behind each verse. By doing this work—searching for, finding, and then applying what we find to the situation at hand—we are in effect dislodging all the magical seeds necessary for our spell that exist within the Psalms. Those seeds are then planted into the depths of our mind, where they take root, grow, blossom forth, and bear fruit after their kind. And that is exactly what you and I are going to do right now with Psalm 36.

The transgression of the wicked saith within my heart that there is no fear of God before his eyes. For he flattereth himself in his own eyes until his iniquity be found to be hateful. The words of his mouth are iniquity and deceit. He hath left off to be wise and to do no good. He deviseth mischief upon his bed, he setteth himself in a way that is not good, he abhorreth not evil.

Thy mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens, and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds. Thy righteousness is like the great mountains, thy judgments are a great deep. O Lord, thou preservest man and beast. How excellent is thy lovingkindness, O God! Therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings. They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house, and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures. For with thee is the fountain of life, in thy light shall we see light. O continue thy lovingkindness unto them that know thee, and thy righteousness to the upright in heart. Let not the foot of pride come against me, and let not the hand of the wicked remove me. There are the workers of iniquity fallen. They are cast down and shall not be able to rise.

Bring to mind whatever it is that you're feeling unsafe about. It starts out with a contemplation about whatever your plight is. The psalmist is musing about what's happening: "The transgression of the wicked saith within my heart that there is no fear of God before his eyes." If you were looking at, say, a person who's mistreating you or others, and that's where you're feeling this lack of safety, this almost is understanding that the reason why this person is acting out is because they don't have any connection to the infinite. They have no understanding of the infinite. They don't understand that they're one with the infinite and therefore one with all, and that anything they do to another, they're doing to themselves. They don't understand this. There's almost a sense of pity for this person.

Now also, it's important that we understand that the external world is merely a projection of an internal idea. So it's imperative to find resolution in the world that we find that resolution within. Otherwise, whatever we get as resolution in the world is temporary at best. So we want to make sure that we understand that when we are preoccupied with anything other than the infinite, we are contributing to the problem.

"For he flattereth himself in his own eyes, until his iniquity be found to be hateful." When somebody is being abusive, they're flattering themselves because they are feeling inadequate. And this is not excusing their abusive behavior, but it's important that we understand where this comes from. And this is true for ourselves as well. We may not be abusing others, but we do abuse ourselves, especially internally. And when we do that, we understand that's arrogant. That's a type of self-flattery. Self-flattery is not something that has eternality. There's no staying power in self-flattery. Self-flattery is done when we feel inadequate, when we feel lost, when we are believing the lies of the ego that we're all alone and that we are lonely, we are upset, we're depressed—all of those things—instead of looking to the infinite to deliver us from those, the ego suggests that we puff ourselves up as a way to protect ourselves from these perceived evils. So we want to both understand where the abuse comes from externally, and also we want to avoid reinforcing that by doing the same with ourselves.

"The words of his mouth are iniquity and deceit. He hath left off to be wise and to do good." When you are preoccupied with self-flattery, your natural inclination is what it's calling here iniquity and deceit. Everything you say is a lie. You can't tell the truth because you don't know the truth. So all you have is one string of lies after the other, and one lie begets another lie begets another lie until you are living in a world of lies and untruth. And the only way that you can prop up this world of illusions, this house of cards, is by abusing those outside of you, is by making everyone else feel less than. And this is such a lonely, harsh, horrible reality for everyone involved, but mostly to the abuser, mostly to the perpetrator.

We can't just be one-sided with this, otherwise we don't have the correction that we seek. We have to understand that we have this idea that we are separate from our good, that we are alone, that we can possibly be victimized. Then we are involved in the lie ourselves. So we need to withdraw our involvement in the lie, and then whatever that evil is destroys itself.

"He deviseth mischief upon his bed. He setteth himself in a way that is not good. He abhorreth not evil." When you devise mischief upon your bed, that means that you sleep with mischief. When you go to sleep with mischief, when you go to sleep with lies, you're programming yourself to have more lies, to have more mischief, to have more attack. What do you think about as you fall asleep at night? It's very important to ask yourself, am I falling asleep with the thought of the infinite, or am I falling asleep with the thought of my troubles? Because if you're falling asleep with the thought of your troubles, you are devising your own version of mischief upon your bed. And then you will be setting yourself in a way that is not good for you.

The only way to say no to evil as you go to sleep at night is to think only of the infinite, to think only of good. What do you want rather than what don't you want? It's not enough to fall asleep thinking, "I don't want this person to be so mean to me," because then you're falling asleep to the mischief itself. You want to fall asleep at night thinking in terms of how protected, safe, and at one with the infinite you are.

"Thy mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens, and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds." So these ancient civilizations didn't understand that there was a solar system. They believed that anything above the clouds was the dwelling place of the gods, these heavens. Heaven as a concept is really what they would call the house of God. And the house of God is not just a temple. The house of God is you. You are the heavens. That's what it means that the kingdom of heaven is within you. The idea that the kingdom of heaven is within you doesn't mean that something outside of you is in you. The kingdom of heaven is within you, is declaring that you are the kingdom of heaven. You are the holy, created child of the infinite, in whom the infinite is well pleased. And once you realize that, it's ridiculous to even ponder the idea that something could be unsafe for you. You are the beloved child of the infinite. Therefore, you are the heavens. "Thy mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens." That means you are the mercy of the infinite. "And thy faithfulness reaches unto the clouds." Now, unto the clouds meaning the loftiest thoughts, the farthest reaches of your mind. Not just of space, not just of time, but of your mind. So the highest thought you can think is where you and the infinite are one.

And that's why it's important that even in the midst of times in this world in which we feel unsafe, that we are vigilant with our minds and how we think. We think the highest thoughts we're capable of thinking at every moment. This isn't to go into denial about what's happening. It's to reorient and fine-tune our consciousness so that what's going on can be healed.

"Thy righteousness is like the great mountains, thy judgments are a great deep. O Lord, thou preservest man and beast." So the highest things in nature and the depths of nature just begin to scratch the surface of what the righteousness of the infinite is, and you and the infinite are one. Therefore, your righteousness knows no bounds. Since you and the infinite are both righteous together, this means that you cannot be harmed. "O Lord, thou preservest man and beast." So man and beast meaning, you could look at that quite literally, that the infinite preserves everybody. But internally, the infinite preserves you not only as you are thinking loftily, but also as you are thinking instinctually.

"How excellent is thy loving kindness, O God! Therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings." It's about orienting our thoughts. If you're spending your time trying to protect yourself, being afraid of what's out there, then that's what you're projecting onto the screen of space. But when you turn your mind into what is being described here in this verse and say, "How excellent is thy loving kindness, O God," that the infinite in you are one and the infinite's only will for you is happiness, the infinite doesn't will that you be victimized. The infinite doesn't will that you be terrorized. The infinite doesn't will that you feel unsafe or that you be unsafe. Therefore, the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings.

So the children of men in this regard is you. The idea of men being the divine child of God, the divine child of the infinite, and you are one expression of that. You're like a sunbeam radiating from the sun. If you were to conceive of the infinite as the sun and you as the sunbeam, you can see that you are a star in the company of stars. So therefore, the children of men put their trust under the shadow of the wings of the infinite, meaning protection. There's nothing that can harm you, but you're free to think your thoughts that you want to think. Nobody can force you to think this way. So if you're thinking in terms of how vulnerable you are and how you have to run and hide and that you're possibly going to be destroyed by these evil forces out there, you're at liberty to experience that for yourself. But it's saying that there's an alternative way of using your mind. And if you use your mind to invoke your spiritual right to be protected under the shadow of the wings of the Infinite, then that will be the case for you.

"They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house, and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures." It's not just that the Infinite's going to protect you so you don't get hurt, and that's the end of the story. When you orient yourself to the infinite in the way that is being described in this Psalm, the ability to be protected from harm is just the beginning. Not only that, but you get prosperity, wisdom, and pleasure. If you aren't feeling pleasure, if you aren't feeling joy, if you aren't feeling all of the emotions that come about under the category of infinite love, then you need to do some work on reorienting your mind. Because the infinite's will for you is not just being protected from this perceived threat. The infinite's will for you is absolute pleasure, joy, wisdom, and prosperity. The fatness of thy house. The house of the infinite. When we think of infinite, that's almost too much to think of. Infinite prosperity is yours.

"For with thee is the fountain of life, in thy light shall we see light." So the light shines away the darkness, the infinite's light is your light. And your sight is opened in the presence of this light. And the fountain of life, not the fountain of death, not the fountain of insecurity, not the fountain of attack—the fountain of life. You and the fountain of life are one. All of those ancient alchemists were searching for the Fountain of Youth, which is synonymous with the Fountain of Life, that philosopher's stone, and it's available to you right here and right now. And you don't have to know anything about laboratory equipment or any of that, like the ancient alchemists taught. Not that those things aren't worth studying—absolutely they are. But you don't need to know any of that in order to have access to this fountain.

"Continue thy loving kindness unto them that know thee and thy righteousness to the upright in heart." And this is a statement of what's true. When it says, "Oh, continue," that means that there's an eternal, never-ending source of loving kindness and righteousness that is available to each and every divine child of the infinite. Ultimately, there's only one divine child of the infinite, all being expressed as individual souls. So yes, you are an individual soul, and you are one with every other individual soul. So we're all one, and we're all individual, both at the same time. And for all of us, we have the right to everlasting loving kindness and righteousness. The upright in heart means that in order to access this, we have to orient our deep minds to this, which is why you don't want to go to sleep, as it was talking about earlier, with worry. You don't want to go to sleep with evil thoughts. You want to go to sleep understanding that the infinite is with you and that all of the gifts of the infinite are never ending and eternal.

"Let not the foot of pride come against me and let not the hand of the wicked remove me." I don't want the foot of pride within me to come against me. And what is pride? Thinking that you're all alone, thinking you got to figure it all out, thinking that it's you, this little speck against this big, bad, evil world. And maybe if you're nice enough that some external divinity will come and help and rescue you—but you better cross your fingers. That's pride. So on that one level, there's an internal pride that we've got to be vigilant against. And when we do that, when we are constantly vigilant about our awareness of our oneness with the infinite, then the pride that appears externally can't come against us. We are not vulnerable to these proud people, to these abusive individuals.

"And let not the hand of the wicked remove me." This first has to happen internally by you using your mind in ways other than connecting with the oneness that you have with the infinite, thinking thoughts that are unrighteous, in other words. When you do that, then you are vulnerable to the wicked outside of you. It's just reminding ourselves, I'm not going to do that. Let not the foot of pride come against me and let not the hand of the wicked remove me. It's not going to happen.

"There are the workers of iniquity fallen. They are cast down and shall not be able to rise." The workers of iniquity internally fall, and they fall away back into the native nothingness from whence they came, when we turn our minds to the infinite. They're cast down and they cannot rise. Then we are going to see with our own eyes the external falling of the workers of iniquity, and they will not be able to rise. And it's miraculous sometimes that all of these problems that we had with people that seem so powerful against us, they stop having any power, and they fall, and they can't rise again, and they can't harm us. But that's not our primary goal. That's just an added bonus when we see that happening. Our goal is to keep our minds stayed on the infinite.

When we keep our minds locked onto the infinite and we refuse to let ourselves tarry, we refuse to let ourselves be distracted. And when we are distracted, we notice it and we return again and again. And we learn how to be tough. We learn how to be tough with ourselves about this. We're no longer going to just say, "Well, maybe I will, maybe I won't." No, we're going to be vigilant. We are going to commit ourselves. I'm using my mind in one way only, and that is to stay focused on the infinite and my righteousness. When we do that, everything in the physical world has no choice but to reorganize itself to reflect that. And part of that is we get to see all of the problematic situations and people fall away and not be able to rise up against us.

So you just keep coming back to the same Psalm again and again until you get a sense of peace and certainty about whatever the situation was that you brought to the Psalm. And that is a sign to you that your spell has been cast. Once you get that sense, then you just move off of it. And you just put the whole situation out of mind and move on to something else and let it resolve itself beautifully.

Thank you so much for spending some time with me today. Until next time, blessed be.