Weather Magic Begins With The Winds

Weather Magic is real and it begins with the Winds. Elementally they are, of course, Air. The wind as scientific phenom is air pressure, responding to the temperature fluctuations and the Earth’s rotation.

Wind carries fragrance and air-borne creatures like birds or bees. Magically, it blows in messages, inspiration and memories from other lives. Vintage compass roses reveal various names for winds of each direction – Africus, the old Roman name for the South-West Wind, for example.

North could be Tramontana (‘over the mountains’) or Arctos (‘from the bear’- aka Ursa Major). Taoist sages related various winds to different organs and meridian systems, the ancient Egyptians to specific stars.

Some winds carry change with them, swirling and rattling as if even the air is restless. Others waft in weird nostalgia on a mere breeze. We all know the strange winds – remember nights when you’ve lain awake just listening to the wind?

Scent is an under-rated psychic sense and it belongs to the Wind. If winds go between worlds, lives and different eras, it makes sense that we throw ashes to the wind.

Significant encounters or souls moving dimensions are often heralded by a weird slap or swirl of the wind. There are a thousand classic texts detailing wind deities like Aura, the personification of the breeze but the most direct route to Wind magic? Knowing those active in your locale.

Every area has their classic winds -eg: the Mistral in Southern France – with different associations. You were born with a particular wind in play – look that up when you can.

Modern meterology has exact info on where winds originate from, their speed and the air pressure – why not use that data to track mood and magical intelligence insights? And…

You can go even further, giving the wind your name for it or finding out if it has any associations indigenous to your area. Think of it as helping to disturb stale air aka stagnant thought.

In some ancient cultures, people would write messages, tear them up – for privacy and because the gods would know what was intended – and scatter them to the winds. If you’re into Feng Shui, you can match the winds to the 12 Earthly Branches.

Interestingly, the Ancient Egyptian God of Wind and Primordial Air was Shu, and the Chinese eight directional compass is a Lo Shu. The Celtic words for wind often correlate to the ‘fair folk’ or Sidhe. In Ancient Rome, the wind gods were collectively known as the Venti – which is where the word ventilation comes from.

See the Wiki here for Wind Deities from more or less every culture.

Next time a big wind blows in, the kind that seems to ozone everything and, as D.H. Lawrence put it, “blow a new direction in time,” remember this: the Wind was deemed a sacred, magical force in basically every culture to date.

There are iconic winds like the Santa Ana or Mistral that fan the flames of wild fire or cause viscious headaches and, obviously destructive tornadoes.

Yet the Venti can also be therapeutic, as this evocative quote from a classic illustrates:

“It was November–the month of crimson sunsets, parting birds, deep, sad hymns of the sea, passionate wind-songs in the pines. Anne roamed through the pineland alleys in the park and, as she said, let that great sweeping wind blow the fogs out of her soul.”

Anne of Green Gables – L.M. Montgomery

Thoughts?

Image: Vincent Peters – Vogue Paris

90 thoughts on “Weather Magic Begins With The Winds”

  1. Beautiful! Thank you for helping me to remember to ask the Wind. I vaguely remember talking to the Wind as a child and find the longing for the Sacredness of my connection to these memories increasing daily. The connection is alive and buzzing!

    1. Yes! We so often have this innate connection as children and drift (or zoom) away from it in our haste to take on all the adult thrills & then arrive back to it later, marvelling anew at the magic of it.

  2. I was dating this great love and left his house at around 2am one night. The air was heavy and still as we embraced goodbye out on the street. We were so blissed that we took at least 20 minutes to canoodle goodbye. Normally a busy street it was eerily deserted.

    Out of nowhere a ferocious wind whipped up, tore down the street towards us, lifting debris, dirt, twigs and leaves in an angry spiral that enveloped us as we clung to each other shocked and trying to shield our eyes. It lasted about 20 seconds and died down as quickly as it formed.

    We were so stunned we both commented on it.

    I drove home still happy and on a high from the ‘adora-bubble’ when all of a sudden I was bereft and hysterical.
    I had to pull over on the side of the freeway and bawl. I knew the honeymoon would be over. We would never feel this heavenly and happy again.

    And so it proved. The wind had felt malevolent. I don’t know if it ushered in discontent or if it simply wiped the complacency from my eyes and I saw what I had been avoiding.

    1. Tripple Air Gem. Seeing that wind is shifting air, I can’t help feeling that with a moniker like that you might have an affinity with wind magic/spirits whether you know it consciously or not?

  3. Wish Upon a Star

    Well the star Antares is prominent in my chart. It is connected with the West Wind: Zephyr.

    Quite a few years ago I was compelled to buy a Bouguereau print. It was calling out to me. I today noticed that this artist also did a painting of Zephyr with the woman in my print. He also helped the cupid angels at her shoulders. I would love to get that Zephyr print.

  4. I am an Aqua rising and I’ve always felt the effects of the wind. A still hot summer night means no sleep. If the wind blows from a certain direction I feel as if my fur has been brushed the wrong way. My symptoms have included agoraphobia, fearfulness and irrational emotional responses. Thankfully these spooky symptoms disappear once the wind direction changes. When I was much younger I’d share this with my Mother and she would say this was because of the wind blowing in such and such direction. Think us kids were all raised on this wind logic theory and how it justified certain human behaviour.
    My brain does categorise time traveling winds with memories.
    Thank you Mystic for this post, I look forward to learning more.

    1. Hey S…you would not believe how many teachers have said to me over the years that they hated windy days….why?….cause the kids would be out of control….yeap….I now have a name for this phenomena…”wind logic”…thank you S! 🙂

      1. Thank you Cher 🙂
        I was chatting to my Mum about this yesterday, to see if she would tell me which direction the wind comes from. She called it the “witch winds”, makes the kids naughty. This has some lovely synchronicity with the posts here. Might need to keep a note of these witch winds and confer with Charles’s link (how fab is that site) and bingo…Wind Logic.

  5. Often joke I am a bit of a weather witch….can usually tell what the weather will do from the way it shapes the clouds…clouds are like signposts in the sky…you just have to learn how to read them……its funny how some winds are annoying, like in winter when they cut through all you wooly clothes and jab at you…..then there are those winds that MM mentioned that carry those sents…memories…that whisper things long gone but not forgotten…then there is my favorite type of wind…sometimes almost imperceptable at first…but enough that once detected…even just a whisp…you are supercharged….it carries that charge with it…I don’t find the ionising air to have a scent…if it does I am too caught up to notice it….rather every fibre of my being wants to pay homage…as it picks up I have to turn face into the oncoming breeze….and whoosh….its like you feel like you could just spread your arms and take off…hunt and run where the wild things are……soar….fly…..yes…old and I think deep magic…the kind you body knows if you let it….to run with the storm that is coming….it is always a joyous feeling….

    1. Watch the trees. The trees know when it is going to rain and when the sun will shine. Tree leaves will curl up, showing their underside when it will rain, and stretch out when it is sunny. The leaves wave on the wind differently when the weather changes. The tree devas know the seasons. They know when to sleep in the deep roots in winter, and when to rise up into the crown in summer.

      1. Hey Charles….so true….are you in northern hemisphere?…In land of Oz only the deciduous trees do that I think?….and I dont have so many of them around to watch….I will pay closer attention to them in future….Gum/Eucalypts are are different kettle of fish…they are great communicators…I know it sounds mad….but they talk and at night especually I feel…..not that I mean they have voices or are speaking per se, but you can sense they are sentient in a whole other way….trees are awsome…I have posted before on this…but my grandpa was a forester…and he had stories about fires and said the trees often kms away from fire front and not down wind of the front…so no changing CO2 to detect from a scientic view that might explain it….but he said you would hear great rushing sound when among them…even where no wind….he said it was them sending all their water to ground and roots to survive…but how did they know????….He always felt they ” talked” to one another….just so much we dont know and so much we ignorantly assume as humans…..

  6. This post about the wind, really brings home the importance and magic of the basic elements that we take so much for granted living in the city, and reminds me of a quote by Eden Ahbez – poet, musician and original hippie:

    I am a being of Heaven and Earth,
    of thunder and lightning,
    of rain and wind,
    of the galaxies,
    of the suns and the stars and the void through which they travel.
    The essence of nature, eternal, divine that all men seek to know to hear, known as the great illusion time, and the all-prevailing atmosphere. And now you know my background.

    And like i imagine a big wind turbine would say, “i’m a big fan of the wind”…..and i’ll now stop hogging this post.

  7. OK this is officially weird. I just had lunch with the Multi-Leo Muso at an outdoor place. He opened with a long and unprompted treatise about the strange winds we were experiencing right that minute.
    Nobody knows this but I am teaching myself one of his lesser known songs from 25 years ago as a little project to work on my singing/music skills. I have the CD in my car, I played it on the drive home from lunch….it’s about an obscure religious figure. Voila, just now in my newsfeed pops up a book about – you guessed it. Same religious dude. The song and the book have the same title. What the???

      1. Isn’t it? I wish I knew what it meant. I am so useless at knowing what to do when synchro strikes… and it strikes often. I have to assume it means that what I’m doing now with my music is the right path. And also with the Leo. It is not romantic at all between us, it is a strange vibe. Can’t work it out. Just that somehow he (or my association with him) seems to be integral to the future. Weird.

  8. Oh, I love this idea. Need breeze in my life. Lots of air in my chart. Cannot be in a space with no cross breeze if I can help it. If I am sick, I need to be outside to feel the wind on my face, I already start to feel better. City life and its ugh air quality compared to out of town and the sweet sweet smell of fresh air. I’m going to go and make friends with some air deities. I guess the wind party got a bit out of control in a certain oz city yesterday..

    1. Yes, i relate to this v much. Sometimes, when feeling bogged down with knotted emotions, or if in need of an instant energy boost, i imagine the wind blowing through me and clearing my cells of all that stagnant energy and feel instantly better. It works quicker if done outside in a breeze, but still works if you can’t be outside.

  9. This is lovely. I have never really thought about the wind much, but I’m loving all the comments here. I am pretty in-tune, psychically, so perhaps I will start paying more attention.
    The sea breeze in my part of the world is afforded godlike healing powers/importance, always has been. Even today the weather forecast in summer includes the time the breeze is expected in. Some suburbs hardly feel it but in the harbour town it always marks the start of the end of the day.
    I had a short visit to Adelaide a few years ago and stayed right on the beaches, I used to love it when the breeze came right up from the south. You could feel the different character of it.

  10. I wrote a poem about the wind when I was 17, expressing just this strange & mystical power it possesses. (I am, as a relative grownup, a ‘real’ poet, & a multiple Gemini naturally.) Now you make me think I ought to rediscover it. I’m interested to hear there’s so much culturally backing this up. This post makes me to revisit that moment in the English Patient: “let me tell you about winds…”

  11. This. Is cool.

    My thought has always been that the wind is most potent when it is not obstructed or hindered by man-made structures. So for instance, Chicago would not be as magical as any windy desert (for example) might be because its force can be altered or blocked by all of the city’s buildings. So in major cities I find myself battling the wind more than listening to its secrets.

  12. This summer I was hoping for the winds that whip your hair into your eyes and slam doors. Dry and blustery winds, ones carrying manic laughter and trails of crisp leaves and pollen. Those winds enliven. Those winds see me going for midnight walks, they see me throwing out everything that once I loved. They see me going for open road drives, screaming at the top of my lungs – the energy fizzes through me unhindered.

    Instead we have little breezes on the back of languorous humidity. I lay inside, half asleep, for days on end as these soft winds quietly come and go. The nights are still, punctuated by half-assed drizzle. There are mosquitoes and frustrating heaviness.

    I need to travel out this week to one of our west coast beaches, where the wind always blusters unhindered and the waves whip up and threaten to grab you and pull you under. The rocks there are sharp, the sand is black and hot; you stand facing a brutal and vast ocean, your eyes half closed against the wind as it cruelly throws sand in your face. As a child I watched many waterspouts form over those waters, some coming uncomfortably close to our spot on the hill. Xena was filmed at some of those beaches. I think she matched them well.

  13. I love this post. I love the wind, sometimes, other times I find it irritating (depends on what is going on for me), but there are many different types of winds, some are gentle, some are hot, some are cooling, some pull at your hair and clothes, some are relentless and make your clothes stick to you, some are barely there.

    I believe the wind is the breath of the Divine and if you think about it, our breath can be nearly all the things the wind can ……..

  14. I love her name: Gale.

    Oh the winds! I image them as a thousand giant horses in the sky. The most spirited herds come with the Equinoxes.

    Did you know that tornadoes typically form on the southwest side of a storm cell? Not always, but usually. So when you need to hide in your cellar, hunker down in a southwest corner where debris is least likely to accumulate (if the beast descends upon your house & rips up the floor boards). Southwest.

    I quit girl scouts when our troop stopped having parties at the roller rink. My Sagg MC was only in it for the wind thru my feathered hair under a disco ball 😛

    1. Yes to giant horses and wind! And for a real blast, riding a horse in the wind …. aaaaaahhh….

      Tornados/Southwest! Invaluable info, Ankh!

        1. In the Great Lakes we are not as rife with tornadic activity as the Central Plains of the Midwest, but their occurrence here is not uncommon.

          Every November though, we can rely on a visit or two by the “November Witch,” a hella windstorm out of the Northwest (having collided with the South winds) notorious for sinking ships in the lakes like the USS Edmund Fitzgerald. And of course I find it no accident I was born here in November lol.
          Temperance, temperance *wags finger*

  15. ‘Whispering Winds of Change’ a title by Stuart Wilde, a fave magician of mine
    and prolific author. This has bought that book to mind.
    Breezes i love, strong winds distress me, have always felt winds have entities
    attached to them. Have always thought they react to global conciousness also, that our thoughts create them.
    Winds can be friend or foe just like our thoughts.

    1. I enjoyed reading that book too. I think i got it for the title alone – sucker for a wind title.
      (On the same basis, i read Mistrals Daughter – also enjoyable).

  16. Lux Interior Is My Co-Pilot

    It’s interesting that we can control so much with technology these days, but the irrational, does-whatever-it-wants wind cannot be controlled.

    I’m going to heed the wind more.

    Ponderable: Is calling “gas” or “farts” wind actually empowering or insulting to the actual wind itself? Like the actual wind they cannot be controlled, so I am going to go with empowering.

  17. A tornado went through our area yesterday. 230 k wind. Never felt or heard anything like that before. Some massive branches from our grove of gums broke off and crashed around our house. None though landed on the house. I’ve got my work cut out for me the next few days cleaning up. I’m still in shock and awe of that power.

    1. Saw some images this morning David, it looked pretty full on! Amazing to have a tornado sweep through parts of Sydney, glad to hear you’re okay! It would have been freaky with winds at that speed 😯

    2. Read that about Sidder’s tornado, massive winds causing destruction. You have been having unusual weather patterns
      there from what i remember the climate to be from my residing there……very different!
      Best of luck with clean up David.
      Here in Adders we are doing 40’s celcius for days, a bit punishing is that rainbow serpent’s breathe coming from the North and Flinder’s Rangers.

    3. I saw the footage on the news. What a nightmare! I hope you are all ok and not too much damage.
      How’s your Virgo neighbour’s lawn?? 🙂

  18. Gorgeous MM!

    From a young age I used to tune in to the wind whenever I visited my parents resting place, the tress would be swaying gently in the background & I would feel the wind brush over my arms, legs, face & hair. It was like being comforted, in a very gently way.

    I live in a house now where every afternoon a beautiful breeze comes around the early afternoon. We open the entire house up & the wind fills out through the rooms. We planted some grasses around the house so when the wind comes we lie back on the couch & just listen. Sometimes I can smell the ocean & rain in the air, it’s really refreshing.

  19. Wonderful post, MM. I love the wind, I catch the breezes coming off the lake in the afternoons while walking the dogs and it sets my mood to serene.

  20. I’ve always been connected to the wind. I can smell a change coming and I’ve had that ability since childhood. Maybe it’s my Libra rising with Pluto there at intensifying 29 degrees. Shamanic air detector. I can also detect creepy dudes & haunted houses. Pretty rad.

  21. This post feels like the wind itself, swirling other dimensions together, ushering in something ancient and new all at once. Thank you for that.

    The wind terrified me as a kid. We had large trees around the house and I was afraid of them toppling onto our home and crushing me in the night but more than that I feared the wind because it felt haunting and strange. Now I love the wind and almost require it when I am sleeping.

    Green Tara is one of my favorite air goddesses and I think of her whenever the wind picks up. There are many Taras but Green Tara is green for the element of air and depicted with one foot out of her seated pose as she is getting up to help you from the first moment you ask. She is said to be fastest as she moves with the air.

    1. Love this. I love Green Tara too – compassion in action.
      In one of the stories describing her origins, she is called Yeshe Dawa, which means Moon of Primordial Awareness which sounds pretty awesome.

  22. The most potent magic is the most simple to perform – if you ever need to send a message – say it out loud to the wind. If you need an answer – listen to the wind.
    Two of my favourite words are Sirocco and Mistral – two winds which blow through this land. The first is a hot, dusty, southerly wind which blows from Africa, bringing ancient particles of wisdom; and the second, we were told: “is a wind that drives men and horses mad”.

      1. Yes, on the Med. And yes, me too re to V v Gough – he was obsessed with the Minstral.
        It is such a strange wind, it usually blows during the brightest and bluest skies with no clouds, literally out of the blue.
        It sounds and feels like there are screaming spirits running amok, unleashing their anger. It spirals, whistles and howls continually for days on end, rattling and shaking.
        The area near Carcassonne gets particularly hammered. A history of witch burnings and Cathar slaughter adds to the ambience.

        There is an old French law which states that any one who claims to have gone mad on account of the sound of the Mistral may be pardoned of their crime.

  23. Oh, I forgot to mention….! Entertainingly enough, it was quite windy in my neck of the (Hundred Acre) woods yesterday and as I took note of this while stepping out for a run, believe it or not this actually played in my head, LOL:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-jBs16sNNs

    I love my Neptune sometimes (well, most of the time, actually) – it is quite whimsical and has a very good sense of humor! As an aside, I do find the Aqua Moon good for some gale-force winds now and again…it is Fixed Air, after all….

    On that note: Happy Windsday, all!

  24. The synchronicity of this has compelled me to reply instead of my usual lurking.

    A few nights ago we had a very strong storm throughout the night, mostly strong winds. It came from the west. I had one of my most lucid, comforting dreams that night. An ex (who I highly regard as a person but just wasn’t the one for me romantically) and I had a lovely conversation that helped resolve my feelings of guilt for hurting him by ending our relationship. He now lives in another state, west of me. I woke up and just knew the storm had carried his message to me and we were able to communicate through the winds.

    I was exhausted the next day but felt a weight lifted. I know he is happy. We do have moon conjunct venus in Pisces in synastry so it doesn’t surprise me at all that we can communicate via dreams and wind.

    1. Like Tibetan Prayer Flags which spread goodwill and compassion through the wind – you spread magic through the electronic winds of cyberspace.

  25. Your synchronistic intuition never ceases to amaze.

    I just got some very emotionally disrupting news the other day- that two of my best and only friends in New York, the absolute core of my social anything, are suddenly moving across the country in two weeks, and permanently. My whole world was shaken up (thanks, Uranus, you asshole), and for the first time in weeks the wind was raging as I biked around- nearly blew off my bike.

    And I took note of it, as I always do, because the wind has been speaking to me for a while…confirming, I guess.

    1. My Libra sun and moon perhaps…

      Also I have a notoriously TERRIBLE sense of direction in the conventional sense. If I’m lost in the woods with no streets I can find my way out fine. If I’m driving and making turns and trying to match up memories of visual guides I get completely lost. Mercury in the 12th? I dunno.

        1. Electro- I used that method to get around the small mountain town I was living in in northern California. Strange stumps and rocks were how I remembered where everyone’s driveway was.

    2. Something similar happened to me this week – mine are moving half way around the world – also permanently. Uranus and Pluto have been squaring my 5th/11th. If I’m honest (which I am these days, thanks Saturn in Sagg) the relationship has been floundering for a while. There has been a lot of sabotaging and Qi vampery going on. How to explain that I’m upset yet relieved at the same time??

      1. Interesting, Chrysalis…sounds like a little bit of Stockholm syndrome on your part… we get attached to things no matter what they do to us. In my case, these were the people that were left over once I got rid of all the qi vampires and riff-raff. I can’t find any wisdom to deal with this. the Mars/Uranus/Pluto action was Mars in my 11th, Pluto in my 2nd, Uranus in my 5th!

  26. “Some winds carry change and the scent of strange other dimensions with them. We all know them. They smell like another time or place; one scent, one flower, one memory, a surreal swirling vortex of air + some heavy level deja vu and wham – instant past life flashback. Or…sudden urge to alter Everything.” This is my most favorite post by you so far. Poetry, like wind, is MAGIC! Thus spake me and MY Aquarius rising. Perhaps this ascendant makes us supersensitive to swirling air currents from SOMEPLACE ELSE.

  27. When I was very young (3?4?), I had a great affection for the breezes in my beach neighborhood. I thought they were created by the magnolia trees lining my street. Every time the wind blew, I felt the trees were caressing me.
    Very different from my teens, when I lived in the San Fernando Valley (CA). The winds blew so hard every afternoon certain times of the year, I actually planned my activities around the ‘wind schedule’. Dry, harsh, very unfriendly.
    Native people thought the valley to be cursed – I would have to agree.
    Mystic, thank you for this post! I haven’t thought about winds in this way for ages. xoxoxo

  28. This is beautiful, Mystic. You always come up with the best inspirational information! And so relevant to me-the novel I’m working on right now shares the name with a very well-known wind. 🙂 And I have asteroid Zephyr conjunct Gemini AC.

  29. i too was booted out of girl scouts and my navigation skills are legendary for all the wrong reasons; nevertheless, i spent years sailing and it was glorious beyond words as i’m a total wind and waves junkie…challenging beyond words as well and in the end, quite stressful as danger/death is just a wind away–i don’t feed off stress as other much more high octane folks do. the winds are magical, indeed and i do live in the “windy city”–although that name is actually for reasons other than wind. 🙂

  30. Funny, I’ve always had a very good sense of direction. I attribute this to all my Jupiter action – it’s like having an internal compass (in more ways than one), which is very handy when you go walkabout.

    Love, love, love your musings on Wind, MM – being an Airy creature, this post speaks to my soul <3 I often smell things like rain or snow coming in on the breeze, and do take particular note of all the various scents when I’m out on my runs. The scent of damp Earth, fresh grass clippings, hay drying in fields under the summer sun, a smoky wood-burning stove, the pungent aroma of fallen pine needles…yes, scent is a very underrated sense indeed.

    But Magical Winds? How excellent! TY also for the link to the list – I am familiar with the four Greek Deities of the Cardinal Winds, but it’s nice to have a reference point for other pantheons as well!

  31. That chart is fascinating and makes so much sense. A couple months ago I was doing a spell by the river and the wind really picked up and it just seemed like it was *doing something* with it, also I saw myself as (or perhaps saw a ripple in time to another place), in my head, a Native American woman standing in that same spot in that same wind.

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