Not all spirits have your best interests at heart. Sometimes you’ll encounter hostile spirits and in such a situation you need to figure out what to do about the hostile spirit, because if you don’t do anything, it’s going to make your life miserable. So how do you handle a hostile spirit?
Let’s first consider the reasons a spirit might be hostile. The first reason could be because the spirit is inimical to life. It’s function is about destruction and breaking things down and you happen to be in the way. It’s nothing personal. It just doesn’t want anything to do with you and you happen to be in the way of its function.
The second reason could be because someone decided to call a spirit and send it after you. It’s been put on the attack, and in any other situation, it might not attack you or at least be less likely to attack you. However it’s being compelled to attack you and you’ve got to figure out what to do about the attack and stopping it from continuing to attack you.
The third reason could be because you called a spirit up and tried to coerce into doing something for you and even if you succeeded in the moment, the spirit may have found a loophole and is trying to attack you, because like any other being, including yourself, it doesn’t want to be forced to do something.
The fourth reason could be because you’ve encroached on the spirit’s territory and done something without considering what you were doing. For example, maybe you cut a tree branch without asking permission of the tree, and as a result the nature spirits have taken action against you because of what you did.
There could be other reasons a spirit could be hostile toward you, but these are the typical reasons you’ll encounter a hostile spirit. Now that we have those reasons laid out, let’s look at the solution for resolving each situation.
In situation 1, the spirit is hostile to you because you are the antithesis of it and its function is to destroy you. As I said above, it’s nothing personal. Basically you’re dealing with an abyssal spirit. It’s not necessarily evil. It’s just not on your side or remotely interested in being on your side. So how you do deal with a spirit like that? First and foremost get out of its way! If you can’t do that, then it’s time to call up some spirits that are friendly to you can help you drive that spirit off. You should also do whatever flavor of protection magic you normally do. And when it’s all done, ask yourself how you got yourself in that situation in the first place, so you never do it again.
In situation 2, you have a spirit being sent after you. The approach I take with such a spirit is to release it from its compulsion. More than likely the person sending it after you has coerced it into attacking you, and if you get rid of the coercion and have a conversation with it, the spirit will end up not attacking you and might even go on to attack the person who sent it after you (Bonus!). You might also ask the spirit if its part of a hierarchy and go up the chain to talk with the spirit above it and negate any future attacks.
In situation 3, you called a spirit up, threatened it to make it do something for you and you didn’t factor in a loophole, and now the spirit is after you. I recommend banishing the spirit. More importantly I recommend taking a different approach to your work with spirits. Instead of taking the grimoire conjuration approach and trying to force the spirit to do things for you, why not just ask the spirit for what you want and offer something in return?
In situation 4, if you’ve done something like cut a tree without permission, acknowledge the mistake and make offerings. Expect that it will take a while for the spirits to trust you again and make sure from now on that you ask permission before you do something. Even if the tree is technically on your land, it’s worthwhile to remember that we live in the world, not above it, and how we interact with the land speaks a lot to the spirits that are part of it and don’t have a human’s perspective on ownership.
Some spirits are going to be hostile, but even if that is the case, it’s worth figuring out why and what your role in that hostility might be. That way you can address your role and make changes for the future, while also dealing with the immediate situation.
