The familiar phrase “building castles in the air” evokes images of majestic, imaginary structures with no substance.
Astral castles can have any foundation, and be in any location.
However, whoever coined this phrase didn’t take a witch’s determination into account. By building our castles in the astral, you can literally haunt your own psyche. Each feature and room in an astral castle can be designed to represent a piece of yourself. You can wander the hallways, examine forgotten rooms, dust away cobwebs on beloved childhood pastimes, revive the neglected gardens of your heart and spirit, and literally get your house back in order.
Astral castles:
Don’t need to make sense. They can be extremely simple or fantastically convoluted, with doors that lead nowhere on one trip, and everywhere on another. Perhaps the roof leads to the ocean floor, and the basement opens to the cosmos.
Can look however you like. They can be a literal castle, a cottage, a rundown townhome you’re renovating, whatever you like!
Will probably contain locked doors, ominous rooms, and literal skeletons in closets. You may meet people or versions of yourself that are unpleasant. This is part of the shadow work.
You may also meet astral beings who represent different areas of your nature, personality, or mind. Accept them for who they are, no matter how weird, and try to learn from them. Don’t be surprised if they have the ability to shapeshift or change based on your mood or mission.
Allow you to be in complete control of what you interact with psychologically and emotionally. If you’re not ready to deal with something yet, that’s okay! Put it in a safe place with a gargoyle, winged lion, or another strong guard in front of it. Try conversing with that guard sometimes about the things behind the door. They may have insight since you created them to know about and guard that thing.
Astral castles also provide a fantastic excuse to fill up our grimoires with all sorts of enchanted maps, convoluted floor plans, and contracts with astral beings.
A few ideas include:
Creating an ever-expanding fold-out floor plan of your castle. Mark different rooms with colors, symbols, sigils, stickers, etc. Record what each of them represents so you can easily reference them in your shadow work journal.
Keep a “personnel file” on each being you meet in your castle. Draw or describe them as clearly as you can, including a name, physical features, any special features (e.g., “always carries a yo-yo” or “chews watermelon-flavored gum”), and specific personality traits. Track conversations with these beings.
Draw a Bagua map on tracing paper and apply it to your castle. This can give you more insight into how different areas of the castle may be affecting you.
Make your astral castle into a game board, similar to Clue, complete with game pieces representing special beings and objects. Use it to interact with your castle in the physical world. You can even use an old game board as the base!
Use this in conjunction with tarot, runes, oracle cards, or pendulum work.
Use it as a physical manifestation of how you want to interact with certain things. For instance, if the piece representing you is in a scary area of the castle, place guardian pieces around you, or try moving your piece to a more peaceful area. This can help you do the same thing psychologically and move out of a stressful or dangerous mindset.
Build crystal grids on certain areas to amplify, dispel, or banish certain energies and memories.
Even if you’ve never entered the astral plane, you can still build a map of your inner landscape using the above ideas. Viewing psyche as your home can also help you reframe negative thoughts and fears—just as you’d lovingly fix a burned out lightbulb or spruce up an outdated room in a physical home, shadow work allows you to lovingly improve and care for your psyche and your inner selves.
For instance, if you do a lot of inner child work and reparenting, your astral castle may include things like a playroom with an endless supply of toys and art supplies, a treehouse complete with working telescopes, and/or a playground with swings that lift you all the way into space and slides that slip into an underwater paradise. Giving your inner child a happy, beautiful space to play in and express themselves will help them heal by making them feel safe and loved. It’ll also exercise your creativity—something that comes naturally to most children—and help you connect back to the joyous parts of yourself.
Similarly, an as mentioned above, exploring your castle may lead to rooms and spaces that are dusty, neglected, or even locked. These places may be scary or feel depressing, but there’s no need to hate or resent them. Going back to the lightbulb metaphor, those spaces aren’t good or bad. They’re just dirty and unpleasant because that’s what happens to unoccupied rooms. You can either clean these spaces right away, or save them to explore when you’re feeling braver.
You also don’t have to go it alone.
Above, I briefly mentioned guardians and servitors. It’s not only okay but encouraged to bring a spirit guide, deity, or other companion with you when exploring your castle, especially the first few times. You can even bring people from the physical plane there with you by showing them your map and talking through areas you’ve explored and things you discovered.
As you move through different areas of your castle, don’t be surprised if it doesn’t seem to have firm boundaries. Just as our spirits and minds are limitless, so will this structure be. Shadow work and self-exploration are lifelong pursuits to be savored and enjoyed for the journey and the progress we make, not to eventually achieve perfection.
Also, let the limitlessness of your castle remind you of your own limitless potential. Even if your castle begins as a rundown little cottage, try to view it with joy. Though it appears humble and shabby, every small improvement you make will ripple through the energy of the whole structure. Washing the windows will let in the light. Building a fire will warm the space. Weeding the garden will help the plants grow.
And, slowly, that derelict little space will become a beautiful, cozy dwelling that just needed some love.
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