Llewellyn Journal: Ice Magick

My first winter in Eastern Washington was bitter. I had lived in California previously, and I didn’t know how to function in really cold, snowy, weather. I wandered bewildered through a world blanketed in white. Large, soft, snowflakes fell on my head, and my feet sank deep into the powdery coldness. Snow slid over the tops of my boots, encrusted the hems of my jeans and soaked my feet. It was cold, miserable and hard to get around. But it was also beautiful. The snow caused the land around me to shape shift into a pure, white, sparkling expanse. I got to know a phenomenon called “freezing fog,” when the fog moves in despite the low temperatures, and freezes onto everything it touches, coating the branches of trees with crystals of ice. The ice, though slippery and dangerous, had a beauty that caught my breath. It was powerful, and because it is a force of nature, I began to wonder how its power could be used magickally.

To understand how ice can be used in magick, it is important to first understand the element of water. Water is one of the most important elements to human beings, because we need it to survive; for this reason, water has always been thought of as sacred. Water is in constant motion, always flowing. In fact, water is so linked with the idea of movement that when we see water that is still, we give it the name “stagnant,” a name which denotes unnatural lack of change, and even decay. It is not surprising, then, that water magick is concerned with things that tend to remain in a state of flux: emotions, the subconscious and purity.

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