witchacademia

[witchacademia]

Purification Floor Sweep

Living in an apartment with mostly carpet, doing a traditional floor wash/sweep is not really a possibility for me when I want to do a house cleansing. So, I instead use my vacuum as my "besom", and I do a carpet sweep. Feel free to customise this with different herbs to suit your needs!

Ingredients: 1 cup baking soda (cleansing) 1-2 teaspoons each of: Violet (protection) Garden sage (purification) Cedar (Stability)

Ritual: Grind all of the herbs to a FINE powder (we don't want to clog your vacuum) in a mortar and pestle or an herb/coffee grinder. Transfer into a bowl and add your baking soda. Gently mix the herbs together; I like to use my fingers to do this, it helps me feel like I'm adding my energy to it.

After your blend is finished, sprinkle a very thin layer across your carpets. You really don't need a lot of this, just a light powdering. You don't want big clumps. Leave for at least 15 minutes or longer.

After letting the blend absorb the negative energy, you're going to vacuum around your space. I like to go clockwise, ending in the center of the room. Feel free to speak or think a blessing as you do so. Mine goes something like:

No negativity can exist in this space. As I clean this room, I also cleanse this home of all negative energy. Only positive energy can exist in this space.

Once you've vacuumed up all of your powder, empty the bag immeditately. If you can dispose of it outside, do that. Otherwise, you can put it directly in the trash and then take the trash out of your house/apartment. You don't want all the stuff you absorbed to stick around.

Anyway, I hope this helped some other apartment witches out there!

[witchacademia]

Witchcraft for the New Year

Correspondences and ideas:

Herbal correspondences 

Witchy (and practical) ways to start the new year

Cleansing and preparation for the new year

Quick things to do before the new year

New Year’s resolution alternatives

New Year’s Traditions (little things to do)

New Year’s Eve and Day Spiritual Practices

What to do for the new year as a spiritual person

Good luck traditions on NYE

Spells:

New Year’s Wishing Jar

A New Year Spell

New Year’s Blessing

New Beginnings Spell

My New Year Spell

End of the year spell

Candle Spell to Welcome the New Year

Sigils:

New year blessings

New year sigil set

The upcoming year is peaceful

For leaving behind what no longer serves you

For entering the New Year with clear mind, soul and general well-being

Tarot:

New Year’s Spread! (3 card)

Seasonal New Year’s Spread (4 card)

Tarot Spread for the New Year! (5 card)

New Year Spread (5 card)

New Year Tarot Spread (8 card)

New Year Tarot Spread (11 card)

The Yearly Spread (11 card)

New Year’s Spread (12 card)

New Year Tarot Spread (13 card)

The New Year (14 card)

Last updated December, 2023. Please inform me of broken links via askbox!

[witchacademia]

The Yearly Spread

Present Position 

Positive Influences New Year

Negative Influences New Year 

Goal(s) for New Year

Yearly Lesson 

Relationships (romantic, family, and or friends)

Work/School

Health 

Spirituality

Deck’s Comment/Reading Reflection

Advice

This is a bit of a larger spread that I made for my birthday, but can be used for the new year as well! I typically like to do this on my birthday because it is a more personal way of counting years! Anyways, I really love the result I got, Honest, but what I needed to know! Looking forward to next year’s new adventures! 

[witchacademia]

[witchacademia]

I have adhd and I'm constsntly getting interested in various topics about witchcraft, which leads me to buying books because I NEEDED right now and saving podcasts and YouTube videos and tumblr posts to listen/watch/read later.

And then I get paralized. I feel like i'm never developing in the craft as I should because I struggle to focus on one topic and really learning it before going to the next

Oh honey, you are preaching to the proverbial choir. I have ADHD as well and I have the same damn problem. So much information, so little attention span, so much Decision Paralysis.

Saving things to a Watch Later is a really good hack. Bookmarks and Notes To Self are my lifeline when it comes to keeping track of those random little ideas that flit in and out of my head all day. Choosing a thing is indeed the hard part. Sometimes I just pick a random book or saved thing to explore and if it scratches the itch, I continue with it. If not, I try again later (because going back to the Decision part can be too overwhelming).

What finally worked for me was figuring out that I could totally multitask and do things piecemeal as my interests dictated. It meant that I didn't progress in any one thing very quickly, but it meant that I was making small amounts of progress in several things at once, which was better than nothing. Sometimes, I'd sit down with a stack of books and start to take notes on one of them at random. It was rare that I'd get through more than a chapter or so, but having the other options there in case my interest waned was helpful for me.

Also, learning about various topics when they caught my attention helped me start to see connections between ideas and subject matter that made things easier to understand. It was a slow process, but a lot less frustrating than trying to make myself focus on one thing at a time.

The important thing is to be patient with yourself. The progress you make is entirely at your own pace and there's plenty to learn, so there's no need to rush. That way lies frustration and burnout. Pick and choose the things that resonate with you. Do what you can when you can. Small steppy is better than no steppy, as the meme says.

Something else that helped me was sitting down occasionally and reviewing my progress from the previous year. I keep records of the spells I cast and the research I do, and it's surprising how much you can learn over the space of a year without hardly realizing it. If you want, you can check out this list of Witchcraft Exercises I put together. Some of them might be helpful. 😘

Good luck!

[witchacademia]

Witchy Self-Care

*pulls out draft from over a year ago* ENJOY

Hi! this is a list of witchy self-care things you can do. Most of these are pretty basic on account that i wrote this ages ago but they definitely still work. Anyways, I hope these help :)

Do the dishes and dedicate it to your house spirit (if you have one) or a deity (if you're religious)

sweep/mop your floor in the shape of sigils

add rosemary (or rosemary water/essential oils) to the water you mop with to set an intention of cleansing

taking ritual a bath/shower

cleansing your energy. it's so basic but I forget more than i'd like to admit

dedicating time to yourself. it's just as important as dedicating time to your deities/other spirits

light shadow work or going to therapy. bettering your mental health also betters your spiritual.

go outside and ground yourself

take a nap (less witchy, more, I love naps. rest is important)

work out/stretch and dedicate it to an entity

do some gratitude

take 5 minutes to just sit and turn off your devices. you can use this time for anything, just take a second to get off screens and connect with the world around you

meditate. if you can't sit still long enough to meditate, just focus on taking 3 deep breathes

when you wash your face, draw sigils on your face with the cleanser and moisturiser

^do the same as above but with your body wash and when you wash your hair

say some affirmations/manifestations while brushing your teeth

just check in with yourself and see how you're feeling spiritually, psychically and emotionally. sometimes we don't actually know how we're feeling until we sit down and actually ask ourselves.

If anyone has any more to add please comment. I'll add them to the list (with credit of course)

[witchacademia]

It's always "Hades isn't bad or cruel, his deeds are just metaphors of the inevitable death" or "Hades kidnapping Persephone represent the premature death".

But when the argument "Zeus has numerous affairs and many children because he represent the fertile rain" is brought up, all nuance is suddenly out of the window and Zeus is just a womanizer who can't keep it in his pants.

[witchacademia]

Secular Celebrations - Yule

At the very end of the Gregorian calendar comes the winter solstice and Yule. Technically, this is the FIRST holiday on the Wheel, since Samhain is the boundary between the old year and the new. But since most of us have to follow the January to December schedule in our day-to-day lives, we’ll end with Yule.

The winter solstice is a time when we focus on hunkering down and staying warm. We look to the homestead, we take care of our families, and we make sure our communities are surviving the winter as comfortably as possible. This is one of the times that the Wild Hunt was said to ride, their presence indicated by howling winds and stormy nights when it wasn’t safe to venture out. All manner of entities personifying hunger and cold and death stalk the landscapes of winter mythology, so we fortify our homes however we can and indulge in a little midwinter revelry to keep ourselves going until the spring.

Decorate with pine bunting, pine cones, holly, mistletoe, snow symbols, fairy lights, electric candles, ribbons, streamers, local fauna active during winter, whatever you like. There are plenty of Christmas wreaths out there, so don’t be afraid to make a witchy one with a big old star in the middle. Make sure that any ACTUAL foliage is kept away from the pets, and of course, observe fire safety for any lights you put up. Way too many house fires are caused by electrical shorts in holiday lights, so be extra careful. Do NOT plug an extension cord into a power strip. And go easy on the plastic glitter. Anathema to some, I know, but the more of that we can keep out of the waste cycle and the water system, the less will end up in the oceans.

If you have a fireplace, you can burn a symbolic log “to drive the cold winter away.” Or, if you only have a cauldron or a burning bowl, you can find an outdoor space to burn some twigs and incense for the same purpose. Or you can light some candles with appropriately wintry scents. Or, if you can’t burn anything at all, an LED candle left alight overnight on the altar should do the trick. The whole idea is to symbolize keeping warmth in the home, keeping the dark and the cold at bay, and keeping the home fires literally burning for those who must be elsewhere. However you manage this is fine.

Spend time with your near-and-dear, if you can. Eat good food, drink good wine, and do cozy things. Share treasured memories, and tell stories. Fun fact: Yule and Christmas are another traditional time of year for ghost stories, so feel free to pull those out again. If there’s a family tradition of feasting and gift-giving, lean into it. There are a lot of Christian traditions from Christmas that have made their way into the secular sphere. Sure, they still have some religious associations, but I know plenty of atheists who still exchange presents because it’s FUN. You can also give gifts to others by contributing to charitable organizations, donating to clothing drives and food pantries, or through random acts of kindness to those who need it.

Charity and compassion should be emphasized during this time of year. I mean, you should be charitable and compassionate ALL year when you can manage it, that’s just common decency. But especially when it’s cold and people are feeling that lack of money or resources and we’re surrounded by all these super-capitalistic ad campaigns telling us that our love for others is worth only as much as the kitchen appliances and diamond jewelry we put under the tree….yeah, maybe bring something a little more altruistic to the table. It doesn’t have to be huge, it doesn’t have to be performative. Just look for those opportunities to help someone out or make their life a little easier. You’ll know them when you see them.

If you’re crafty, pull out those projects you’ve been saving for a rainy day. We often spend a lot of time cooped up in the house during cold weather, the more so in 2020 with the various lockdowns, so why not turn it into something productive? Fix something, create something new, work on that scarf you’ve been meaning to finish since last winter. Make a pinecone feeder for the local birds, or scatter some nuts and dried berries for any critters that happen to be out and about. Do winter crafts with your kids to keep them occupied, if they happen to get bored of watching Frozen 2 for the hundredth time this week. (Hey, I only have nieces and a nephew, but I’ve still heard the horror stories.)

Let me pause a moment to address the proverbial elephant in the room. And this MIGHT be dipping a toe into the religion pool, but it’s an issue that a lot of us face. Late December can be a tough time for witches who were raised Christian but are, for one reason or another, disconnected from the faith or the Church at present. There’s the constant symbolism in music and decorations all around, pressure from our friends and families, people gnashing their teeth about red coffee cups, and so on. And we’re not even going to talk about the annual arguments over who stole whose holidays. If you know me, you know exactly how salty I can get on the topic, and we don’t have time for that today. This is about finding ways to celebrate, not my personal rage over people who don’t understand the difference between conflation and syncretism, and can’t be arsed to read history that doesn’t come from-...

Ooooo deep cleansing breath. Come on, Bree, you promised. (-hiss- I LIED.)

ANYWAY. Yule is a time when it might be worth remembering literally anything positive that came out of your experience with Christianity. Some of us have it, some of us don’t, that’s purely a personal matter. Some of us miss the carols, okay? There can be a lot of nostalgia involved in the season that’s disconnected from whatever trauma or differences in belief led to that split. And if you want to pause and remember that fondly, that’s okay. I will fully confess to singing along to Christmas hymns on the radio in my car at top volume because that’s a big part of the season for me and always has been. Heck, I might even attend a service at the local Unitarian church. They’re nice and non-denominational and they focus much more on the meaning behind the season than any particular holiday. So if you feel the need for that fellowship, see if there’s a UU church near you, or a virtual service online. There’s nothing wrong with revisiting your roots.

Moving back into witchcraft territory, you can collect clean snow and icicles to melt for winter moon water. This isn’t really much different from moon water you’d make at any other time of year, but it’s another method of gathering the base material. Also, icicles are great for any water you’re setting aside for more aggressive or protective purposes. The fact that they look like hanging spears isn’t lost on me.

Check your household protections and see if anything needs shoring up. Like I said, I cast my wards every year at Samhain, but they always seem to need a bit of detail work by the time Yule rolls around. Or heck, you might find Yule a more appropriate time to perform that casting, or maybe you refresh your wards at every holiday, who knows. Whatever works for you, as long as you remember to do it at some point. Cleanse your thresholds and the corners of your home, at the very least, just for good measure. But don’t go sweeping anything out the door. That’s sweeping away your good luck for next year.

And speaking of New Year’s, if the year you’ve had has been particularly….well, like the year we’ve had, you can also burn the year in effigy and cleanse with incense for a fresh start. Just write it on a piece of paper and burn that S.O.B. in the cauldron. While you’re at it, you can symbolically burn lingering worries, bad habits, bad memories, and regrets with either candle flame or a burning bowl. And yes, that includes all those negative things you think about yourself that you wish would go away.

And finally, reflect on the year as a whole, with all the joys and lessons it’s brought you. What memories have you made? What has brought you joy? What do you regret? What have you learned? What skills have you developed and how will you use them? What improvements do you still wish to make? And what do you want to do with the coming year?

And around and around it goes….

Like I said at the beginning, this is by no means exhaustive. These are just some basic ideas to get you started. You can make your own celebrations and your own traditions as you, either by building off of existing ones or by creating something new. As long as it has meaning to you and marks the occasions you deem important in ways that are fun and festive, it’s all good. This is something I’d love to see more often as a discussion - personal traditions, things that are unique to families or particular regions or individual witches, all the places they intersect, and all the various ways that we celebrate ourselves and each other and our craft.

- Hex Positive, Ep. 011 - Secular Celebrations (November 1, 2020)

Other Posts In This Series:

Imbolc

Spring Equinox

Beltane

Midsummer

Lughnasadh

Autumn Equinox

Samhain

Yule

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.

The Hex Positive podcast is a proud member of the Nerd and Tie Podcast Network.😊

[witchacademia]

Hi Alex! I'm a secular witch and I've been thinking of doing some more serious research about different kind of witchcraft and the history of magical practices- I was wondering if you had some sort of reading list of thing you'd recommend for beginners, or things that helped shape your personal philosophy of your craft? No prob if not of course! Your style of practice really resonates with me and I'd love to learn more :D

Sorry it took me so long to get to this! I don't have a personal list and generally ask people what they are into and recommend a book to suit that, but I hadn't thought of one that helped form my practice. I'd end of telling you to read all the Amber Chronicles to explain how I understand Chaos Magic or an old stack of Cometbus zines or a copy of Art of War by Sun Tzu. I also really enjoyed Ellen Dugan's books at the beginning of my practice (Cottage Witchery, Garden Witchery, etc) because she was the first author that didn't make me feel like I had to follow rules and she included personal anecdotes that really felt like applied magic.

Two of my new favorites for new witches that are more educational are Beginner's Guide to the Occult by Deborah Lipp and How To Study Magic by Sarah Lyons. Both of these books give a layout of the land and give you and idea of what there is to know without telling you what to do. I think a lot of people have an urge but don't know what direction to take, and these books are kind of like signposts.

For a great books for new witches I'll always suggest @breelandwalker Grovedaughter Witchery. I also enjoy Kelly-Ann Maddox's Rebel Witch, Folk Witchcraft by Roger J Horne and Six Ways by Aidan Watcher. From there I explore my neighborhood and notice seasonal changes, books about specific interests whether witchy or not. Then start to see the throughlines in your life and practice and see how they integrate into each other. Your ethics, values, and experiences do not exist in bubbles. I think practices are most satisfying when they celebrate the whole experience.

[witchacademia]

WITCHY PEOPLE WHO BLOG STUFF:

What’s a post of yours that you are particularly proud of? I don’t mean popular, just one you’re proud of. Could be informational, could be a diary-entry thing where you figured out something cool, could be a nice pic of your altar or whatever… anything, just A Post You’re Proud Of. Link it in the replies or reblogs!

[witchacademia]

Witchling tips

Read all the books and other info you can, but learn to read critically.

Don’t be afraid to read things you might not agree with or identify with. Study is study and just because you read it doesn’t mean you have to believe it or incorporate it into your practice.

That being said, don’t appropriate cultures or cultural practices that do not belong to your or that you have not be trained and/or initiated in. There are ways to study cultures that are not appropriative, pay attention and be respectful.

Let your personal curiosity lead your study. What are you interested in about witchcraft? History? Divination? Plants? tarot? sigils? candle magic? charms or talismans? knot magic? Energy work? Study what you are interested in and see where it goes. There is a learning theory called “unschooling” that believes humans are naturally curious and that we should follow that curiosity to create our study. So, seek what interests you about witchcraft and find information about that.

You don’t have to buy all the fancy witchy stuff, especially if you don’t know if you are even going to use it. Stuff you already have is fine.  Things from thrift store are cheap, and work just as well. You might not ever use that cheap athame from the witch shop, but you might fall in love with a thrift shop mason jar.

You don’t have to spend a lot of money to practice witchcraft. Walk around your neighborhood and get to know the plants and animals, even urban spaces have unique magical things. Check out the spices in your spice rack and look up their correspondences. There are lots of books on witchcraft online for free as well as phone apps that could suit your needs.

Check out your local library. If they don’t specifically have books on witchcraft they will still have books on plants, history, and folklore. you might also be able to check things out with inter-library loans.

You don’t have to publicly document your path. I’m really happy there isn’t a public documentation of my witchling years or my baby punk years. Seriously, so much stumbling embarrassment. However, it is always helpful to document your progress for yourself; a hidden blog, a notebook, or google doc are just fine to start.

There is no universal witch. If you don’t want to work witchcraft in a religion, don’t. maybe secular witchcraft is for you. If you don’t want to work with deities, don’t. If forests give you the creeps and you love cities more, great, maybe urban witchery is for you. Make your witchcraft, your witchcraft.

There is little good in arguing with people that disagree with you, especially on the internet. If someone is not being hurtful and they just happen to believe differently than you, leave them alone. A witch that believes differently than you does not diminish what you do.

Remember that witchcraft is a collected set of skills and practices. These are things that you hone as you find what works for you. It is not something that will be given to you or that you will have instantly. It is something to be worked at that you can always learn more.

Basically, if you study and practice witchcraft, whatever that means to you, you can call yourself a witch. Also, if you do those things and don’t want to call yourself a witch, you don’t have to.

[witchacademia]

Why is Wicca not a preferred way of practice? I’ve read a couple of posts, and Wicca isn’t favored.

Moral puritanism and performative outrage, plain and simple. There's nothing inherently wrong with Wicca or Wiccans. Some people in the community just aren't doing the work and seem to think that decolonizing our thinking begins and ends with screaming BOYCOTT at anything they deem even remotely reprehensible.

Let's do some of the work and dig a little deeper, shall we?

The main complaint is that Wicca started with people who had problematic worldviews and has had some growing pains and issues with racism, sexism, cultural appropriation, and bad actors in the community as it has evolved, reaching into the present day.

But here's the thing - SHOW ME A RELIGION THAT DOESN'T HAVE THESE PROBLEMS SOMEWHERE IN ITS' HISTORY OR CURRENT CULTURE. GO AHEAD, I'LL WAIT.

It's neither fair nor reasonable to judge a religion based on its' beginnings, or to dismiss the ability of a community to grow and evolve over time, or to pretend that the modern witchcraft movement doesn't owe a large part of its' existence to Wicca. Like it or not, if it weren't for Wiccans, we wouldn't have the kind of organization or recognition that we do, nor would we have had certain landmark legal cases that led to pagans being able to claim the protection of law against religious discrimination in the States.

(And because someone somewhere is going to demand the encyclopedia answer - This is not to discount the contributions of other groups, but the historical fact remains that the people responsible for the foundations of Wicca kickstarted the movement in the UK and subsequent practitioners brought it into public view in a positive light during the counterculture movements of the 1950s and 1960s. And it was Wicca that was first pagan religion in the US to be recognized and therefore included under the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom. This does not change the CULTURAL AND SOCIETAL response to witchcraft or paganism, or the problems that witches and pagans still face in other places, only the presence of civil rights that were not there before. And that has, in fact, contributed to an increase in wider normalization and acceptance. We may not owe EVERYTHING to Wicca and Wiccans, but we would not be where we are as a movement or a community without them.)

Not to mention, Wicca hasn't even been around for a whole century yet and already it's being judged like it has the same kind of cultural and political clout that, oh say, Christianity does in much of the Western world. And it's no coincidence that a good number of the criticisms leveled at Wiccans are the same ones flung at Christians.

Wicca DOES have a strong influence on modern witchcraft, because Wicca and Wiccans were such a big part of the foundation of the movement. Furthermore, many of the published works viewed as standard beginner texts were written by Wiccans or heavily influenced by Wiccan ideas and concepts. Admittedly, there was a tendency for quite some time to think of Wicca and Wiccan tenets as the default for modern witchcraft, and now that we're moving away from that and discovering just how much of our thinking relies on that framework and the ideas present within it, there's backlash happening.

It's important to try and decolonize your thinking as much as possible when it comes to witchcraft. But that involves more work and more effort than just pointing fingers and broadly condemning anything remotely problematic or anything that's ever been touched or influenced by people whose moral and ethical codes don't pass muster under a modern lens. We cannot and should not expect people from 50+ years ago to toe the line when people living today can't even do so reliably.

So to wrap it all up - there's nothing wrong with Wicca and there's nothing wrong with being Wiccan. We are none of us completely unproblematic and until we address the fact that issues with racism, sexism, manipulation, cultural appropriation, and so forth exist in MANY parts of the modern witchcraft and pagan community, we don't get to tar and feather any one group. A bit of critical thinking and self-reflection, and a great deal of Knowing Our Own History, is the key to moving forward here.

Because until the people voicing these complaints most loudly can realize the head-splitting irony of condemning Wicca in one breath and celebrating the Wheel of the Year or venerating a Maiden-Mother-Crone-model goddess in the next, we're not actually getting anywhere.

Anyway, I hope this helps to answer some of your questions. For more information, I highly recommend reading Margot Adler's "Drawing Down The Moon" and Ronald Hutton's "Triumph of the Moon" for a more comprehensive overview of the history of the modern witchcraft movement. Both are written from an outside scholar's perspective and are presented as research rather than rhetoric. Part of knowing where we are and deciding where to go next is knowing where we started and where we've been, after all.

[witchacademia]

So when I started practicing I had kind of a negative mindset towards having to ask the land for permission to take energy or work magic in certain places.

Also didn't really care for the idea that to do a really optimal spell might take 3 months of planning.

I felt that these (and similar) concepts were restricting and took the joy out of the novelty and discovery of witchcraft.

But it does go both ways.

If any little thing might have serious consequences, and if there are external opportunities in the world that we have to capitalize on or miss out on...

Then that also means that any little act of magic you do might have serious consequences (positive) without having to put in a ton of effort.

That also means there are pockets of opportunity and alignment around us all the time that we can find and use to our advantage.

If outside circumstances don't matter (where, when, what you work with), then that means for every single act of magic, you have to do everything yourself.

If outside circumstances do matter, then that means while sometimes the deck is stacked against you, oftentimes it will be stacked in your favor.

It's not just the "big" advantages of celestial timing. Throw a stone and you may find a loose thread in the tapestry of fate. Many such cases.

[witchacademia]

hi! so i'm a beginner witch, but i'm struggling to start my practice because i can't seem to look past my skepticism. how did you first start to believe in your practice? if you have any advice i would greatly appreciate it – perhaps a simple spell that can 'prove', at least psychologically, that i'm not doing nothing?

Hmm. The desire for verification is very valid. Nothing wrong with it; it's good to experience the validation that yes, your magic works.

Let me ask you this.

Are you interested in witchcraft as a skill, or even a hobby (nothing wrong with that), because gaining the ability to influence the world around you with magic is cool?

Or, are you interested in witchcraft as a framework of spiritual belief that improves your lived experience on this world, and helps you navigate the "big questions" about yourself and your life?

Of course, there can be plenty of overlap between the two.

If you're in it for the sorcerous skills, divination is a quick fix that can start producing immediate results - for most. I was horrible with divination the first couple of years I tried it. But lots of people have great success right off the bat.

Beyond that, just try casting spells. Keep decent records. Different kinds of magic work better or worse for different people. Some people can do really amazing things with energy work, but I can't really do that because it exhausts me. I work very well with spirit petitions, but some witches out there don't believe in spirits at all, so of course they would have a lot of trouble working with that style. So experiment around.

Try small quality of life spells - getting work or school closed for the day, quick cash, open parking spots, etc etc. Keep in mind that some people will never excel at certain types of magic - for example, a person may never be good at love or romance magic even if they excel in other areas - so if a spell type doesn't work for you (like money, or finance) try other types.

I don't recall being very successful with magic for a while after I started practicing (like, years!) so unfortunately not all of us are blessed with quick results.

Now, on the other hand, if you are interested in witchcraft as a spiritual framework, "I know I can trust this because I've seen it work" might be a lousy way to go about things.

Witches who have practiced for decades still get crises of faith and question their experiences, their reality, and their beliefs. Many of us live in a world where these beliefs are actively shut down - either as being fake, foolish, and delusional; or, as being evil and demonic.

It can be hard to keep the torch of faith lit in the face of such a storm. And unfortunately, pulling off a few slick spells isn't going to provide perfect armor against doubts.

And what about the all too common phenomenon of someone's magic failing to work for a period of time? It is unfortunately normal for techniques witches have personally relied on for years to simply stop working for them, stalling their practice out for months or longer while they try to rebuild.

If you're looking for a spirituality to call home, you should consider seeking more stable bedrock than "my spells really do work" to build it on.

Does your practice provide you with liberation, excitement, hope? Does it grant you feelings of peace and security? When you think about the world through the lens of witchcraft, does your life become easier to navigate? Do the painful little cracks in life get smoothed over, or become easier to avoid? Does the mindset of a witch help you learn, grow, and prosper?

In the long term, I believe these are the things that keep us going - not whether or not a spell can be made manifest. If this mindset brings you peace, hope, and empowerment, then you are never just doing nothing.

To answer your question about myself, I was raised in a religious household that acknowledged the reality of spirits and witchcraft, except that they were just "evil." So, believing that it was real was never an issue for me - it was believing that I could do it which was the problem.

The answer for me is just experience, time and time again. Years of experiences stamped onto the soft clay of my life. When you look at them one at a time it seems like nothing but little divots, but after a few years you can zoom out and say, ah-

they are not random little pock marks after all.

That is a carving of a chicken.

[witchacademia]

A lot of "daily witchcraft" stuff just boils down to practicing basic mindfulness and self-awareness. That's not a bad thing. Like mysticism aside, yeah your little daily witchcraft practices are certainly going to yield good results if it's making you reflect on your emotions, identify your goals, analyze what food and drink you're putting in your body, ground yourself, and act with intention on a daily basis if you weren't doing it before.

[witchacademia]

Sometimes you will have powerful moments that aren't signs and don't turn into anything.

Sometimes you'll encounter a hard "NO" and there won't be a way to turn it into a yes.

Sometimes you'll be very interested in a specific practice or method, you try it, and it just never really clicks the way you want it to.

Sometimes you'll click with a practice and can't find a community around it, or dislike who you do find.

Sometimes there aren't easy-digestible online resources for that thing you're curious about, and the only way to learn more is really digging to find old, dense books and scholarly papers.

Sometimes there's barely any information online and you'll have to do research "around" the subject and fill in the blanks yourself.

Sometimes you'll do a huge ritual and just not feel it like you'd hoped, or you don't get the results you wanted.

And that's all fine, that's life. That's normal. People love to talk online about the big powerful moments and the success stories because the everyday boring stuff or mildly disappointing stuff isn't very interesting to talk about. It's normal for your practice to not look as "exciting" as theirs because you see how the sausage gets made for your own but not theirs!

[witchacademia]

how to be a functional witch:

- remember magic and science can coexist , don’t blow off a doctor’s appointment for a healing spell.

- don’t act higher and mightier than non-witch freinds

- don’t like drink water that’s been sitting there a while (sun water, moon water, rainwater, etc) without boiling it first to rid diseases. don’t drink lake, pond, or sea water at all.

- respect others in their chosen paths. yes, even that one.

- please be kind to the environment. when leaving offerings, try not to leave things that will take a long time to degrade. don’t use plastic bags, jars, glitter, etc.. she’ll be hurt.

- factcheck. factcheck. factcheck! I’ve heard stories about lotions and tea made with highly acidic or heck even poisonous tea.

- you come first. if you don’t have the energy to do ritual, don’t do it! don’t neglect necessary things in favour of witchin’. drink water, get sun, eat fruit, sleep, shower.

- try to practice little magic wherever you can. say soft incantations on the way to school, meditate on the bus, add herbs or to your tea to make spells or rituals in a cup, draw sigils on the backs of your hands.

- PLS…..don’t burn things while you sleep….candles, incense….don’t do it.