Welcome one and all to the unique, intellectual, and interdimensional portal known as Aquarius season. We entered the season of the water bearer on January 20th, and will be in this air sign’s domain until February 18th, and during this time we have the opportunity to shine our freakiest, most revolutionary light at the world around us. Known as aliens from the future, Aquarians aren’t afraid to think outside of the box; in fact, they’d rather destroy it. This is the sign of the innovative trailblazer, scientist and stoner alike, and this zodiac season is the perfect time to embrace all the unknowns out there by working with cannabis as a cosmic doorway to other dimensions; both of ourselves and of reality.

As an Aquarius, I know firsthand how this energy can inspire us to honor our own truth, while also encouraging us to step outside of our comfort zone and blast off to unexplored and unexplainable depths. And we can work with cannabis, plant medicine and magick to do just that and help us remember that the truth is out there. To dig even further down the rabbit hole, I talked to fellow Aquarius Valeria Ruelas, the Mexican Witch and author of Cosmopolitan’s Love Potions, about how we can work with cannabis as a conduit for connecting to our psychic senses, as a tool for empathic protection and as a catalyst for some out of this world experiences.

Ivory Woods

Cannabis As A Tool For Psychic Connection

There’s a common misconception that you have to be born a psychic to have affinity at connecting to other realms, dimensions and beings. But much like practicing magick, being psychic is a skill that can be cultivated and learned. While some may have a natural ability to feel, see, hear, sense, or taste things (all different forms of “clair” senses), you can cultivate these gifts through meditation, ritual, and visualization. You can also work with plant magick to help foster this connection as well. Aquarius season, as well as Pisces season which starts on February 18th, is the perfect time to dip your toes into the unknown in this way; you can use cannabis as a starting point in exploring this.

“Marijuana really facilitates my channeling, especially coming from a very peaceful place in my body. I find that after I’m smoking a little bit, what happens with me and my personal energy is that, I am already very tapped into other worlds and when I smoke, I feel like I can teleport there,” Valeria explains. “What I really like is that it dissolves the barriers of reality for you and that’s so useful. Your world becomes supernatural.”

Even if you’re not naturally connected to other realms, you may wish to consume a small amount of cannabis, or work with other plant medicine like drinking kava or some mugwort tea before meditating and setting the intention of deepening your psychic abilities. Mugwort is an herb often utilized to psychic dreams and visions, and can be drank in a tea or burned as sacred smoke to help open up the crown chakra, the energy center at the crown of the head that helps us connect to other realms. Kava is a root that promotes relaxation and also helps you tap into your clair-senses and it can be taken as a powder or mixed into water, as Valeria does, or as a tincture.

A simple meditation to try after working with plant medicine in this way is the following: After smoking, drinking some mugwort tea or kava, find a comfortable position sitting or laying down. Start to come back to your breath and the present moment, finding an even inhale and exhale. Allow yourself to find a sense of calm and center, allowing any anxieties, worries, or tension to dissolve with each exhale. Then start to visualize the crown of your head opening like a door, allowing messages from the cosmos, your ancestors, and benevolent energies to come into your being through this portal. Sit with any messages you feel, receive, hear, or notice. Stay here as long as you’d like, and when you feel the meditation is complete, visualize the door at the top of your head closing. Make sure to record whatever visions, feelings or energies you noticed here.

Ivory Woods

Cannabis As A Tool For Protection From Other People’s Energy

The more you work on developing your psychic skills, however, the more receptive you’ll be to the energies around you. And making sure to have proper energetic boundaries and protocol to keep you safe and grounded is vital. And during Aquarius season, a sign which is dedicated to serving the collective and tapped into the whole, this can be especially true. Besides energetic maintenance like practicing a grounding or shielding meditation before channeling, your cannabis can help us find just the right amount of Aquarius detachment we need to not take things personally and to protect ourselves and our energy.

“Everyone on Instagram who identifies as an empath is always asking me how I don’t absorb peoples energies. I realized I don’t hold onto people’s energy is because, let’s say after a really heavy day of energy reading, I just smoke and unless someone is really, really toxic or affected by an entity, I let it go and marijuana helps me with the practice,” Valeria explains. “At the end of the day, even after a really hard day, if I’m just having my joint and I’m in bed and I’m relaxed, I can very easily let go of energy. I want to encourage people to work with marijuana in this way.”

You can utilize this use of marijuana for yourself the next time you’re feeling ungrounded and in other people’s energy. Since Aquarius is ruled by the element of air—the element of expansion, freedom, and presence—we can work with smoke to help us return to a state of equilibrium. Pack a bowl or roll a joint with your favorite strain, and before you take a hit, take a few deep breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth. With each exhale, feel yourself releasing other people’s energetic hold on you. Set the intention to dissolve this, to release any energy that’s not yours, and as you take a hit, feel the smoke circulating through your lungs and body and cleansing you of this connection. As you exhale, let the smoke carry this intention to the heavens. Bask in the feeling of being sovereign in your energy.

While many will stereotype Aquarius energy as very detached and disconnected from their feelings, the truth is, this little bit of distance can be extremely useful; especially for those of us who are sensitive to other people’s energy. We can, once again, use cannabis as a barrier from feeling too personally attached to stories that aren’t ours; a perfect ritual to practice during the reign of the water bearer. Cannabis can also help us from giving into the monkey mind, or mental chatter, that can come up with the intellectual driven energy of air; another potent tool we can use when we want to come back to ourselves in the present.

“People are also kind of weird about the use of detachment, but I find a little bit of detachment is healthy,” Valeria reminds us. “If marijuana can help you detach a little bit and you’re not avoiding your feelings than that’s a great thing because it’s providing you with mental health help, its providing you with an aid in which you can literally calm your mind when maybe otherwise your mind will never shut up.”

Ivory Woods

Cannabis As A Magical Practice

As a sign devoted to exploring the occult and the unknown, Aquarius season is a good time to deepen our magical practice. And with the New Moon in Aquarius on January 24th, this is an especially powerful time to dig deep into alternate dimensions, using cannabis as a vehicle for reaching new heights in our mind and reality. Establishing a magical practice doesn’t have to be difficult or lengthy; it can be five minutes of meditation, or visualization or prayer in the morning. It can be lighting sacred herbs to cleanse your space, lighting a devotional candle, or asking your benevolent ancestors for guidance. And you can use cannabis as a stepping stone in connecting more deeply with this.

“It’s really nice to combine anxiety reducing behaviors- meditation, reiki, singing bowls- all that fun stuff that gets your brain relaxed with a little bit of weed. It maximizes the effect and just calms you down, and I just love that part of my practice,” Valeria shares. Although there’s a delicate point between using cannabis as a portal to awareness and just getting way too stoned, once you find that medium for yourself, this plant medicine can be an incredibly powerful aid. “Weed gives you the small push you need to start to see things that are there but not visible to the naked eye,” Valeria says.

One way to connect to the psychic potential of this plant is by working with divination through reading tarot, or even something a little bit more obscure (hello Aquarius season) like reading charcoal. “I think cannabis in many ways makes you use a more creative pathway system in your brain, and it makes you use a more spiritual pathway because the endocannabinoid system is a spiritual system, it’s part of the nervous system,” Valeria says.

She suggests inviting the spirit of the cannabis plant into your reading if you choose to engage with tarot after smoking or consuming some weed. You can even open this up to other benevolent energies and spirits who may wish to make their way to you through the portal of your tarot cards. Valeria says that she has spirits come through her tarot cards when she’s stoned more often than when she reads the cards sober.

Cannabis, in this way, can act as an invitation to the astral realm that we are open to receiving messages and connections. If you’re worried about inviting negative energies or spirits in, you can visualize a circle of protection as a golden sphere of light stretching above your head and below your feet, engulfing you in its warm, potent and protective energy. Only that which is positive and in your highest favor can make its way through this protective barrier. Visualize this circle moving back into your chest or dissolving at the end of the ritual.

When we’re working with other realms in this way, we have to expect the unexpected as well. Sometimes surprising spirits may make their way through to you if you allow it; Valeria had occultist Aleister Crowley come through after smoking some cannabis and pulling some tarot cards. Although she notes that he is a problematic figure, she does remind us of how important his work is—something Western occultists will know!

“I did a sex magick ritual where i was working with his spirit. In this sexual ritual, the cannabis helped me be able to make contact with him,” Valeria says. “He opened up portals of pleasure energy for me from the other side that I don’t have access to.”

If you don’t choose to work with tarot to connect to the other dimensions, you may wish to try working with coal. “Using your intuition to read charcoal, like lighting five or six pieces and then reading the messages in it, is a really great way of practicing an ancient divination,” Valeria suggests. Letting cannabis release your inhibitions and expectations to what you’ll see, hear, taste and feel is a powerful way in opening yourself up to divine possibilities. In this way, even gazing at charcoal can be turned into an incredibly powerful and intuitive act when met with the right state of mind and intention.

Ivory Woods

Rituals For The Self And Collective

Aquarius is the zodiac sign associated with the collective, the communal, the all. It is through this sign that we are able to form community and give back through our own personal gifts, passions, and vision. And we can utilize this through rituals of self-love that feed into healing humanity and the earth. Something Valeria and I both love is to dress up and go dancing, and embrace glamour to get us into a higher state of mind. As an innovator, Aquarius is all about unique expression, and fashion and style are one way in which we can hone this. The next time you want to give back to the world, especially during Aquarius season, may we suggest dressing up and dancing?

“One of the rituals that I suggest is that you smoke a little bit and do your makeup really cool. If you don’t wear makeup then put some glitter on because hello! You need it! Put some funky, awesome outfit on and play some loud music and smoke. Listen to music like Nicki Minaj, Ariana Grande, Cardi B—really hardcore girl power songs,” Valeria shares. “Get yourself looking really fly, look in the mirror and get dressed up and then go dance and then feel like you’re the most badass person in the fucking room … and then put some intention behind your dancing. Every time you jump on that floor, jump up and down, make it manifest something for you. Whenever I dance out in public I go hardcore in manifesting for the world, when I dance and I’m on weed, I feel like I’m helping the world. “

You can set your intention to send rain to Australian bushfires, to help heal the planet, to help usher in a new paradigm of matriarchy and support, or to simply bring the energy of heaven back to earth. No matter what you set your sights to, let your body and soul raise this energy through intentional movement, and don’t forget to bask in the endless freaky, stoned possibilities of Aquarius season.