#Advice For Beginner Witches

[breelandwalker]

How to Write Your Own Spells

There are lots of ways to create spells, from planning everything to the minutest detail ahead of time to absolutely flying by the seat of your pants in the moment. If you'd like to write your own spells, either for use in your craft or as a creative exercise, here are some suggested steps that I use in my own practice:

1) Determine the intent or goal of your spell. Decide, first and foremost, what you want the spell to do. Refine your goal if necessary and try not to be too nebulous. Your intent tells the spell what it's meant to do. A more focused goal may increase the chances of success.

2) Determine how you want the spell to manifest. Decide how the spell should work and what the result should look like. This is a good time to build in a sign of success, especially for spells that may not work in an obvious or visible way.

3) Determine what or whom the spell will affect. If the spell is to have a target, be it a person or a place or an animal or an object, decide what that should be and how they or it will be represented in the casting.

4) Determine how long the spell is meant to work. If your spell is timebound or has a deadline, decide what that will be. If the spell is meant to work long-term, you may want to check in and refresh it from time to time. (Not every spell will be timebound. Many spells will simply expire when they have fulfilled their purpose or if they are blocked or circumstances are not favorable.)

5) Determine the timing of the spell, if applicable. Not everyone uses celestial or astrological timing for their spells, but if you do, look into the prevailing conditions and decide on an advantageous time for your casting. (Please note that magical timing can only enhance your spell and casting something on the "wrong" day will not necessarily cause it to fail.)

6) Determine what methods and materials you want to use to cast the spell. Decide how you're going to go about performing the casting, whether you're doing a ritual or making a charm or just using energy. If you're going to need a ritual space or physical components, plan that out and make sure it fits with what you want to do.

7) Determine the words, if any, which will empower the spell. If you want to include a prayer or a petition or a song or an incantation with your spell, decide what that should be. This is not strictly necessary and the words need not be spoken aloud. (Rhyming incantations are not required, but if you prefer them that way, you can certainly do so.)

8) Prepare the materials for casting the spell. Get all your necessaries together ahead of time. Make sure you have everything you need, that tools and components are in good and useable condition, prepare your workspace, and make sure everything is within easy reach so you don't have to stop and search for things in the middle of your casting. (And for goodness sake, if you're working with open flame, observe fire safety and tie your hair and sleeves back.)

9) Finalize details and perform the casting. When you're ready to begin, try to eliminate as many possibilities for distraction or interruption as possible. Go over your spell and components one more time, then proceed with casting the spell.

10) Record the particulars for future reference and to determine how well the spell worked. Make a record of the spell, including your goal, how it should manifest, the words and components used, the date of the casting, the casting method and procedure, and how the casting went. If there are any additional details or observations that seem important, include those as well. This will serve as a useful learning tool in the future and will allow you to check your work if the results make themselves known.

It's useful to write spells from time to time if the inspiration strikes you, in order to better understand how they fit together and how they work. Plus it's a fun and creative journaling exercise and recording the spells you cast a great way to measure your progress later on.

For additional tips on writing your own spells and helpful tricks for using timing and available materials to your advantage, check out my podcast, Hex Positive, Eps. 006-007, "Come In For A Spell, pt 1 & 2."

More Witchcraft Exercises Here

(And if you’re enjoying my content, please feel free to drop a little something in the tip jar or check out my published works on Amazon or in the Willow Wings Witch Shop. 😊)

Happy Witching! 🔮✨

[the-trans-folk-witch]

A Warning to new witches

Reading makes you smarter. But reading does not mean you are smart. This applies to those who read occult texts as well. Just because it is about magic and witchcraft, does not mean you are smart to read it. Be discerning of authors, publishers, and wording. You should not judge a book by its cover but you SHOULD judge a book by its title. be cautious of books using words like ____ Magic(k). The overuse of adjectives to describe types of witchcraft are purely used to make books attract crowds who follow trends. An example would be "Lunar Magick" which is a title to over 200+ books on amazon. They use these names to get your money for very little information. Most of these self published books are plagiarized or just watered down versions of actual grimoires with a historical basis. Be perceptive. And if you struggle to discern if a book will be good or not, ask me! I try to read the shitty throw away books just so I can help educate my mentees on what to NOT do. Know your enemies including bad authors. (Matt auryn is one of these bad authors. No matter how popular "psychic witch" is.

[stagkingswife]

Hello I’m very interested in witchcraft and want to get into it I have some crystals and stuff but I’m not sure wear to start

I'm probably one of the worst people you could ask about where to start, because I got my start as a child in what some would consider the deep end, namely spirit work. Many people say "start with cleansing!" or "start with protection!" my best advice is start with what you're into. Nothing will kill an interest faster than having to jump through hoops and fulfill prerequisites like you're taking a college 300 level course. You have some crystals? Great! If crystals and magic that you can do with them is something that your interested in start there. Follow some blogs that talk about crystal magic, find some books about crystal magic (though I'm afraid I don't really have any recs beyond the classic Cunningham's Encyclopedia - I have my problems with Cunningham, but his encyclopedias are pretty solid). If you don't know what you're into, that's okay too. Start with listening, learning, and research. Tumblr has a great occult, magical, and spiritual community with all sorts of people representing all kinds of different practices. Start exploring the tags and see who you find and what they're talking about, and if any of it sounds like something you would want to learn. Then you can research that specific topic more in depth. Do be sure to read critically and keep your bullshit detector on though, people do just come onto the internet and lie, and sometimes people promise things that are too good to be true. Feel free to circle back if you have more questions, or if you want specific blog or book recs!

[lunasapphire]

Yule or the Winter Solstice is for me kind of a time to slow down and listen to the things around me.

Anyone else agree? Summer time is more of an active hands on learning experience vs winter being introverted note taking listening to a lecture type vibe?

I watched thewitchofwonderlust talk about their practice in that way and it opened my mind and made me realize it’s sort of like that.

[politefroggo]

I don’t usually post stuff like this but one of my best witch tips, if you’re religious and/or devoted to a specific god, but still in the broom closet or don’t have space for a physical altar:

Make a Pinterest board as an altar

If you have a religious family that prays before meals, take that time to deticate your meal to your deity if you cannot make physical offerings.

Use a book or notebook and write in the margins as an altar.

You can also dedicate a specific task to your deity as an offering.

Not specifically deity work, but learn to read normal playing cards, you can find guides online for it.

Obviously, Do your best to stay safe if it is unsafe for you to practice, and please take care of yourself!

[breelandwalker]

Agreed. On the heels of that, a lot of us have been given the impression that once you become a witch, the universe / spirit world / faery realm / etc is going to take more notice of you and just start fastballing signs and omens your way, with the underlying idea that as a Proper Witch, you should now be able to intuitively recognize and understand them.

Trouble is, when you're looking for signs and omens, EVERYTHING looks like a sign or an omen. This is not to say they don't turn up, just that it's not quite as frequent, or as subtle, as one might think. And as Alex said above, as human beings, we are hardwired to look for patterns. And what we're looking for, we generally find. Because we're looking for it. And therefore paying attention.

Being detail-oriented in this way can be very beneficial to your practice, so long as you don't tie yourself up in knots worrying about whether that leaf that just scuttled across your path is a sign from the Great Beyond. Discernment and critical thinking require some practice, but these will serve you well in separating signs from synchronicity.

(I find that it helps to create your own set of signs and omens, so that you aren't constantly worried about Missing Something and so that when something does turn up, you're more likely to recognize it for what it is.)

WhAt DoEs iT MEaN?!

I keep seeing so many post on Facebook and tumblr by new witches who find a feather and want to know what it means, or someone’s candle burned a certain way, or they keep seeing 11:11 on the clock.

My theory is that when you decide to be a witch you a deciding to see the world a different way. You notice things you would not have noticed before. You move through the world differently and see things differently. Sometimes you are attuning you clever and pattern driven mind to see new patterns. Sometimes you are seeing where the world is more malleable and where you can affect change.

Our brains are marvelous things always running in the background trying to piece together what we are experiencing with sight, sound, smell, and touch. Being a witch is like a new program plugged into the old program. Sometimes that seeing number on a clock or you brain seeing plants and automatically thinking of their magical use.

It’s synchronicity. Synchronicity isn’t the world “trying to tell you something” it’s your brain telling the world that you see it.

[breelandwalker]

You seem like you're more familiar with the broader occult community than my scholarly shut in ass. I'm curious. If there were a few lessons you wish you could drill into the head of every prominent social media occultist, what would they be?

Ohhh the number one thing I wish I could drill into the head of every aspiring occultist and magical practitioner is that CRITICAL THINKING IS YOUR FRIEND.

Study magic but keep fact-checking! If there's a claim in a book on witchcraft that should be able to be backed up by mundane sources, look for those sources. If they're not cited in the book, that's a red flag. If the sources you do find don't support the claim, that's another, bigger red flag. This is especially true with claims about history, science, medicine, psychology, anthropology, and religion.

Also, be wary of anything New Age. There's a pipeline to anti-science, eugenics, and racism there that runs directly through portions of the modern pagan and witchcraft communities and it's brightly painted with New Age buzzwords.

If something seems too good to be true, it probably is. If something seems geared to appeal to your emotions, especially that which seems formulated to make you feel special or "chosen" or to fire up some kind of righteous anger or feelings of superiority, you should immediately be suspicious of it.

If a source tells you to disregard science, modern medicine, or recorded history, or tries to tell you that some people are inherently more special or magical or deserving of power than others, discard it immediately. That is a bad source.

Don't believe everything you see or hear online. Too many witches roll their eyes at their parents and grandparents believing everything they read on Facebook, then turn around and insist that everything they've seen on TikTok or Tumblr or YouTube is Absolute Truth.

Believing in and studying magic does not mean that common sense goes out the window. You should be supplementing your magical studies with parallel practical topics (i.e. botany, geology, chemistry, mythology, etc) and ALWAYS keep one foot squarely planted on the ground.

[ihavehisdvds]

Just 7 low-key basics for any beginning witch:

1) learn how to dress and light a candle without burning your house down. A little oil goes a long way. A lot of oil goes right into a bad situation.

2) learn how to light and position incense so you don’t set off the fire alarms. Fans are an amazing friend. They circulate the smell of the incense to your whole living space, but also diffuses the smoke.

3) do not store your planchette on your ouija board (it’s like leaving your house unlocked).

4) make sure you research oils before you diffuse them if you have animals. I.e citrus straight oils or citrus oil in oil blends make dogs sick and lily oil can kill cats.

And by the gods don’t diffuse banishing oil because you’ll end up with a pepper spray situation.

5) you don’t absolutely need a holder. You just need to soften the bottom of a candle enough (yes with fire) and it will stick to a surface. A flame resistant surface (see rule one about accidentally burning down things).

6) don’t poison the earth with a ring of salt on the grass. Ashes from incense or powdered egg shells works the same. And add nutrients to the soil.

Salt inside, not outside.

And 7) if you live in an apartment or house that will not be friendly to any burning, make your favorite herbs into infusions. You can use them on their own, or mix different ones easily, for any desirable effect. Unlike burning the herbs, smoke detectors shouldn’t go off unless you spray right at them. (Watch for mold in the bottle).

I’m being a touch humerus but I also mean every bit of it.

[breelandwalker]

I keep seeing "Signs You're A Witch" type posts popping up in the tags and ohhhh I'm so tempted to start a fight.

For anyone that needs to hear it, there is NO SUCH THING as being a witch without knowing it.

Being a witch is not a birthright or a genetic marker or a secret superpower or some hidden trait that needs discovering. Being a witch is a conscious personal choice that is entirely up to the individual. There is power in walking the path BECAUSE it is a choice.

There is no quiz or infographic or reading that can tell you whether or not you're a witch. It doesn't matter whether you've had an affinity to magic and nature since childhood or are only just discovering the craft later in life. It doesn't matter if you've read every book on magic there is or only theorized about what you might like to do. (And yes, you can learn about witchcraft without ever being a witch.) The only one who can decide whether you're a witch is YOU.

And just to be SUPER clear on the matter, ANYONE can be a witch if they want to. Things like gender, race, religion, and physical ability are not determining factors.

Do you want to be a witch? Are you willing to self-identify as one, even just to yourself, and practice some form of witchcraft?

Congratulations! You can be a witch!

Give it a try if you want to. The path is yours to enter or leave as you will, for as long as you choose to explore it.

[breelandwalker]

Witchcraft Exercise - Creating Correspondences

There are dozens of plant species in the arsenal of the green witch. Commonly-used varieties and usage varies somewhat between traditions, but most of us are fairly familiar with industry standards like basil, bay, rosemary, sage, and so on.

But what do you do when faced with a plant that has no listed magical correspondences anywhere that you can find in your witchcraft library? Simple - you create some.

Allow me to demonstrate with a little plant I found in my own backyard. It's a common weed called Virginia copperleaf (Acalypha virginica). But despite it's widespread range and abundant growth as a field weed, there are surprisingly few references to the plant in regional folk medicine and none at all that I could find in contemporary witchcraft.

So in order to incorporate this hardy little weed into my practice, I set about creating some correspondences for it.

First, I researched the physical properties of the plant. It is a small annual spurge with long taproots, a resistance to drought and many herbicides, and a reputation for fast growth and being difficult to eradicate from fields due to prolific seeding. The leaves turn coppery-red in the fall and small spiky flowers bloom among the foliage. It is also mildly poisonous. The juice of the plant may cause contact dermatitis or a mild rash in some people and if ingested, it may cause GI symptoms such as vomiting and diarrhea.

Next, I researched references to the plant in folk medicine. I could only find a single reference that cited copperleaf as a possible diuretic and expectorant. That does track with the previous mention of GI symptoms, but it doesn't mean the plant is safe to use. I did discover that an alternate name for the plant is three-seeded mercury or mercury weed, likely because of its' tendency for fast growth and the fact that it is propagated by the wind.

So now comes the business of creating the correspondences, using the physical properties of the plant as a basis.

The first and most obvious association is strength. Any weed that is resistant to drought and herbicide and uprooting is bound to be useful for spells involving tenacity and fortitude. Prosperity is also a likely use, both because of the name copperleaf and the way in which the plant grows and spreads quickly. Because of the alternate name mercury weed and the wind propagation, it could be used for wind magic or communication spells. (I often associate the element of air with communication and the name of a messenger god is right there as well, but your mileage may vary.)

The plant could also be used as an ingredient for baneful magic, either to bind and frustrate someone's efforts by consuming available ground where their ambitions might grow, or in its' capacity as a mild poison, to cause physical discomfort and stomach trouble.

So in the end, I have a handful of copperleaf and a listing in my witchbook that details the properties of the plant and notes that it could be useful for spells involving strength, tenacity, prosperity, wind, or communication, as well as possible baneful uses including binding, discomfort, and sickness.

This is my system for assigning correspondences to previously-unknown plants, and I encourage readers to use it as a template for their own practices or to create their own system. Either way, I recommend the use of a field guide or plant identification app like PlantNet to properly identify plants as you find them. Remember to forage and harvest responsibly, be a good steward of the land around you, and always label your plant cuttings.

Happy Witching! 💚🌿

(If you're enjoying my content, please feel free to drop a little something in the tip jar or check out my published works on Amazon or in the Willow Wings Witch Shop. You can also check out my show Hex Positive wherever fine podcasts are heard. 😊)

More witchcraft exercises here:

[breelandwalker]

Friendly reminder to all witches (and especially newer practitioners) that it's a good idea to include the basic mechanics of curses and other baneful magic in your studies.

EVEN IF YOU NEVER INTEND TO USE THEM.

The choice of whether to cast baneful magic is yours and yours alone, but you should still know how it works and what types of spells are out there.

While protection and warding magic are all well and good, certain magical countermeasures like bindings and turning spells may be considered baneful by some practitioners. Despite this, you may need to employ them proactively or reactively as a matter of defense.

The chances are very low that you'll ever find yourself in a situation where someone uses baneful magic on you or someone you know, but if that should happen, you need to know how to recognize it, how to undo it, and how to protect yourself in the future.

If you do not understand the nature of a potential threat, you are not adequately prepared to avoid or combat it.

[breelandwalker]

Wise words indeed.

There is SO much self-sabotage rhetoric in witchcraft spaces and we would do well to avoid it like the fucking plague wherever we can.

It's impossible to banish self-doubt entirely, but you can at least make sure you're limiting or critically examining whatever sources are telling you that thinking or doing or saying The Wrong Thing will cause your magic to fail. The entire concept smacks of ableism and thought policing and the gross side of Law-of-Attraction-speak to me.

It's also important to remember that a goodly number of these "rules" you hear about in books and on social media are HIGHLY ARBITRARY. Somebody somewhere decided they were a good idea and The Correct Way To Magic, and if they happened to find a platform and an audience, the idea spread and became part of the community discussion.

Are there parameters for magic under which spells are more likely or less likely to work? Of course. But that's due to probability and circumstance, not I Said A Word Wrong And Extinguished My Candle Incorrectly.

When you first started practicing, did you ever have trouble letting go or forgetting a spell after you did it? I know that obsession can be a spell killer but sometimes I can’t help when my mind wanders and I think of the spell or potential outcomes

When I first started practicing this was one of the first notions I was disabused of. So while I think I recall pondering the concept, especially while I was developing my understanding of manifestation, it's not something I currently believe in.

"Random thoughts that pass through my mind can ruin my magic or cause bad things to happen" is not a magical rule. It's not a law of magical physics under which all magic operates. It's a personal belief that some people choose to adopt.

And in my opinion it's one of the poorer beliefs to adopt, because if we spend like two minutes pondering it, I think we can agree that it's not only a shitty way to treat your own practice, but it also just does not make sense at all.

As far as I can recall, the justification for this belief is that if you think about your own spells, they are "pulled back" towards you, preventing them from being able to go to their destination and carry out the work. In addition to that, perhaps you are "tainting" your spellwork by dragging it down with emotional baggage.

However, all of this is immediately solved if you don't operate on a paradigm that your spells are defenseless blobs power created out of the pure thought and belief.

But even if we do operate on a paradigm that spells are blobs of thought power:

I don't believe there is any reason to think that casual thoughts create real metaphysical connections or "cords" with anything.

I think that believing that any random passing thought you have creates real metaphysical tethers is a harmful brainworm.

Not only do I think it encourages you to treat your own mind as an unsafe space where random thoughts can literally hurt you in a real metaphysical sense, or at least harm your willful efforts towards progress and change,

But I just don't believe it to be true at all, because we don't see the results of it when we apply it to anything verifiable.

For example, we might say that spells are a special circumstance where thinking about them always creates an energetic tether or energetic baggage. Perhaps spells are a special case for the following reasons:

The spell was personally created by you, so there is a special link or connection there which wouldn't exist for other things.

Spells exist in nonphysical state, which is more susceptible to being warped by random thoughts being "attached" to them.

If these things are true, then I believe the following would also have to be true:

Literally everything you've ever created has a special link to you that will be pulled towards you every time you randomly think about it, which means if you've ever knit something and then lost it, simply thinking about it will automatically draw the object towards you, such objects perhaps even returning into your life years or decades later because you created them and sometimes thought about them.

Other things you've created which only exist in nonphysical states, like original characters, are susceptible to being warped and losing their true form if you randomly think about them in ways that don't correspond to canon. In other words, you will not be able to control the canon of that character because random thoughts automatically change what you've intentionally worked towards. Which... we know isn't true. You can choose the canon for your characters and it stays that way no matter what little AUs you randomly think of them being in.

And this isn't even to mention that even if an energetic cord does exist, there is no particular reason to think the cord has a drawing or magnetic effect.

And, this also doesn't address the idea that spells aren't necessarily like sponges. There is no reason, in my point of view, to assume that a random spell will automatically absorb any energy sent to it at all.

In fact, I believe that spells often tend to have quite reactive and self-protective natures.

Go on a thought experiment with me here, Anon:

We cast a distance protection spell for our friend. It's our intent to send our friend very warm, cozy, guardianship energies. The spell is created out of our intent and willpower, and perhaps some raised energy, and we send it on it's way.

Then randomly the next day we accidentally start thinking about the spell, and how good it will be to help our friend get out of that "cold," unsafe situation they're in.

So, working on this paradigm, we would assume that thinking about someone we care about automatically hurts our efforts to help them, which again I can't point out enough how weird I think that is, but also,

We would have to assume that our warm protection spell is somehow easily susceptible to feelings of doubt and danger, when it's literal purpose is to melt away and transform those feelings and realities.

So we'd have to believe that our spell is so weak that a few random thoughts that it is designed to overcome can "kill" it.

Which leads us to the next point, would we assume that our random thoughts would have the power to affect a well-cast spell?

I mean, not at you directly Anon, but how weak are we assuming the spell is that all the steps we did to cast it (like.... grounding, entering trance state, raising energy, charging candles, chanting, praying, releasing energy, making offerings of thanksgiving) are literally going to be overwhelmed by randomly thinking, "awwh dang, I hope the spell ends up manifesting this certain outcome, that would be really cool if it did."

Like, if we're saying that the power of random thoughts can control, influence, and dismantle metaphysical energies with almost no effort on our part whatsoever, then what is the point of ever "casting a spell?"

Under this exact same logic, you should just be able to randomly think about what you desire coming to pass, and links will automatically be created to it to pull it towards you, and those energies of desire will have *as much power as an actual spell* to bring it to you.

I mean, if this is all true, why would anyone ever learn how to reverse a spell? All they'd have to do is think random thoughts about a prior spell to eliminate it.

None of this very much even touches on the idea that if you use a separate spellcasting paradigm, none of this is relevant at all.

Suppose you summon a spirit and pay it to carry out a task. The spirit is a real entity that exists independently of you. The spell is not a blob of your mental energy encoded towards a purpose; it's an entity who's going to act on your behalf.

Are we now saying that your random thoughts count as a clear psychic link to entities and they are watching you 100% of the time and interpreting your random thoughts as new spell instructions?

Because in my experience, once you've set those guys on a task, it actually kind of doesn't matter what you think - they're going to do what you asked unless you specifically call them back to the ritual space and ask them to do something else, which they might not even agree to do.

Or another method perhaps - devotional faith. You pray to a god and complete earnest devotional rituals in pursuit of some particular manifestation.

So, your thoughts have the power to control or dismantle that god's efforts? Or, the god watched you perform that special ritual night after night, and then is randomly like "lmao well this morning she idly wondered what the outcome might be so fuck her, I'm not doing it then"?

In the greater scheme of things, Anon, I actually think it's quite difficult to accidentally ruin spells just by pondering the outcomes that might occur, or to have personal doubt, or even to feel very anxious and worried and filled with disbelief.

And regardless of how easy or hard it is, I encourage you to avoid adopting spellcasting "rules" which by default make your own mind an unsafe space for your magic.

[breelandwalker]

Witchcraft Exercise - Annual Review

The end of the old calendar year and the beginning of a new one are excellent times for reflection and recalibration. We do this in our mundane lives by making resolutions, setting new goals, starting new projects, and sketching out our schedule for the coming year. So why not do the same with your witchcraft!

As a journaling exercise, sit down and record how your journey has progressed over the past year. You can include things like spells you’ve cast, rituals you’ve performed, holidays you’ve celebrated, gatherings you attended, new ideas you’ve encountered or incorporated, important lessons learned, and any significant milestones you’ve achieved. It doesn’t have to be fully comprehensive or bite-by-bite - the level of detail is entirely up to you.

(If you’ve already performed the exercise Quantifying Your Craft, then you already have a place to start. If you haven’t, I do suggest doing that first to give yourself a clear set of data and pre-determined information to reference.)

Once you’ve recorded your progress, decide where you want to go next. What new goals will you set? What new subjects do you want to explore? What habits do you want to alter or adopt? Are there any new books you want to read? Places you want to visit? New methods or techniques you want to try? Dream big and then sketch out a path to get you there, or just decide where you want to go next. And don’t worry about accomplishing everything on the list in the span of a year. Whatever doesn’t get done in the short term can always become the seed of something you grow into over time.

Of course, this doesn’t necessarily have to be an exercise that happens exclusively at the beginning or end of a calendar year. You can (and should) review and recalibrate periodically throughout the year whenever you incorporate new information or new ideas or new processes into your practice. This can be done as frequently or infrequently as you feel the need, whether that be monthly or quarterly or annually or just once every few years. Pausing for reflection is a necessary part of any long-term path or project, and it is a good way to both measure your progress so far and decide how best to move forward.

One more thing - Don’t be too hard on yourself or feel like you haven’t accomplished enough or learned enough or progressed enough to be a “proper” witch. Don’t compare your craft to anyone else’s or measure your viability by another's rod. Your journey is your own and will proceed at its’ own pace. Periods of rest or recovery or low motivation or preoccupation with other concerns are going to be part of that. As long as you’re making an effort, you’re doing just fine.

Happy Witching!

Image Credit - Witch Workspace, by Mylène Richard

Want more witchcraft exercises? Check out the masterpost here.

(If you’re enjoying my content, please feel free to drop a little something in the tip jar, tune in to my monthly show Hex Positive on your favorite podcast app, or check out my published works on Amazon or in the Willow Wings Witch Shop. 😊)

[magickmama777]

Witchy tip: Do rituals under the same moon phase that was present the day you were born. You have a special connection with that energy.

I have found this to be very useful. For some reason folks think you can only harness the most energy from the New and Full moons.

[a-single-white-crow]

Graveyard Etiquette

“If you take from a graveyard, you’ll leave more than you took.”

Graveyard vs. Cemetery-

A Graveyard is a burial ground attached to a church.

A Cemetery is any burial ground.

[For simplicity, I will be refering to all burial grounds as "cemeteries."]

As a paranormal investigator first and a witch second, I find cemeteries to be the least terrifying places to interact with the dead. Yes, there are bodies all around you, but in almost all cases, cemeteries are not haunted. That being said, this does not mean the cemetery is empty. In fact, it's far from it.

Gatekeeper-

Every cemetery has a Spirit designated as the Gatekeeper. They are the Guardian/Protector of the land and spirits within. This Spirit is usually from the first person buried there. Though, the job as the Gatekeeper may be taken by a physical visualization of protection for the cemetery, such as a statue (e.g., a gargoyle or angel).

When visiting a graveyard, it's always a good idea to bring an offering for the Gatekeeper.

Each cemetery has its own rules and preferred offerings. This can become more detailed when focusing on a specific spirit within the cemetery. Like people, each spirit has its own personality and tastes. When visiting a cemetery, make sure to do your research. An example: reading the Torah to the spirits of a Catholic cemetery would be seen as useless at best and rude at worst.

Offerings Ideas-

Clean the graveyard- pick up litter, and debris left behind by guests or just blown in.

Apples (an Irish tradition)

Flowers (Chrysanthemums, Hyacinth, Red Poppies, Lily, Cypress Tree, ect.)

Stones (Jewish Tradition)

When in a Cemetery-

Do:

Interact with the Graves that have less visitors

Have respect while acting normal

When dealing with children-spirits have fun, play games, or share some jokes

Don't:

Walk over the Graves

Lean/sit on tombstones

Take anything without permission

Take anything off of a grave with permission or otherwise (unless the family or keeper allows you to)

Litter

[Opinion] Whistling - Some believe this act will summon a doppelganger or forerunner to appear, and if one hears whistling, this may invite Death.

Graveyard Dirt-

In certain spells and practices, the ingredient graveyard dirt may be needed or mentioned. This, as one would assume, is dirt from a cemetery.

Always ask for permission before taking anything out of a cemetery, including the dirt

Graveyard Dirt Alternatives-

Dirt from a deceased plant

Used coffee grounds

Cinnamon powder (for protection based spells)

"The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place." -Percy Bysshe Shelley

[breelandwalker]

Excellent advice from Jasper.

Most of the stuff you'll find in a bookstore is variations on the theme of Basic Witchcraft 101, because that's what sells, and bookstores stock what sells. (Also those sections are littered with terrible books that push outdated views and theories, and the decent stuff sits right next to New Age trash that will tell you to replace your pills with essential oils and meditation.) It has its' uses, just don't assume that that's all there is or that you can't progress until you find a more "advanced" book.

And get out of the witchtok tag as well, at least until you have some context to understand what you're seeing (and thus won't be as easily swayed by whatever is catchy or popular with the algorithm this week).

Talk to other witches. Learn about things you don't necessarily agree with, without starting a debate or trying to correct people. Study practical stuff like history and botany and religion (and NOT from witchy books) to get that broader context I mentioned a second ago. Figure out what actually works for you, instead of just assuming that you need to precisely follow the models and methods put forth by a shiny-looking infographic or a book that's older than you are.

The path is fine, there's nothing wrong with sticking to established routes. But sometimes it's fun to play in the weeds too.

My best advice for advancing mages of any stripe: Get off of social media and out of the "New Age & Spirituality" section of the bookstore, as these things are so focused on the basic stuff. Don't hold yourself back at the 101 level forever.

Instead, find people you disagree with on how magic works. Discuss topics and enjoy your differences.

Use things for magic that other people won't understand.

Find or make up the most fucked up magic thing you can think of and work from there.

The more your craft, path, or other form of magic deviates from the "normal" 101 stuff, the better.