#practicality in witchcraft

[snakeflower-cottage]

Witchcraft is not about belief.

Spirits are tangible existing things, plants have inborn occult qualities, gods have opinions and rules.

The difference between a practicing witch and a neopagan is that we don’t delusion ourselves with “I believe this is right so it is.” Witchcraft isn’t a religion, we are not made to blindly believe. We are active in what we do and interact with the forces of it.

Of course every path needs personalization and the ability to change it up to fit your lifestyle, but it’s completely counterproductive to base your knowledge on belief. Or your understanding of things on belief.

Talk to spirits. To plants. To the gods you bargain with. Don’t trust in written word alone to accomplish what you need.

Witchcraft is interaction, it’s discovering the truth of things and figuring out how to use it to get what you want.

[venusmage]

Illustration for a local Tarot Reading class.

[rhetthammersmithhorror]

Häxan | 1922

[nocturnalbatt]

.🌛🌝🌜.

[fluidity-stupidity]

Beginner Witch Things to Research

So many older - more experienced - witches tell beginner - baby - witches to start with researching things like protection spells, grounding, cleansing and warding but what do you research afterward? These are just a few things that I would recommend every individual to research, regardless of how experienced you may think you are.

Carl Jung's Map of the Soul This is where the archetypes stem from, a what a lot of witches dread doing - Shadow Work. Shadow Work is uncovering not just traumatic ventures of our pasts but also revealing what made and makes us who we are today. Studying where it all started makes working through your own shadow a lot less stressful and a lot hammering on the soul, it also leads to a lot less martyrdom in the spiritual community.

Honing in on your psychic abilities and Intuition Gaining the ability is easy, everyone has these abilities, you just have to work to get them to where you want them to be. Remember a spiritual practice is still a practice, you have to put in the effort to get better, just as you would a physical sport or an instrument.

Egregores and Amalgamations vs. Deitys vs. Pop Culture Deitys Egregores and amalgamations exist solely in the astral plane and can (and will) mimic, imitate, and parody deities. Being able to decern these, especially with your intuition will always provide useful. Learning that Lucifer from Dantes' Inferno is reaching out to you versus aspected, epithetic source Lucifer will give you a much better relationship and outcome in your practice.

Deity Work vs. Deity Worship Offering play a key role when learning to decern these from each other. You can in fact, do both, but be warned deities get jealous of each other.

Find what you love and surround yourself with it Incorporating things that you love into your practice and not actually doing what you love about your practice is one of the key differences I saw in my practice when I learned how to differentiate them. I found incoporating pop culture media into my practice made me get burnout from both that piece of pop culture and my spiritual practices.

Finding a form of divination that you are most comfortable with Everyone likes using cartomancy, divination using cards or pieces of paper, is the most common form of divination, but learning your favorite form of divination will help avoid burnout and creating tension for yourself in your practice.

[psychopomp-recital]

Unpopular Opinion Time

The doodle you make or the picrew you use, the poorly executed poetry or basic bare bones prayer will ALWAYS be better than AI generated offerings.

I am sick of having my feed flooded with practitioners, pagans and other polytheists using AI. Specifically deities like Brigid should never be offered AI in my opinion, it’s essentially a slap in the face.

AI generated spells aren’t shit, it’s what a computer assumes will work based off of what it can gather from internet trends and research. MAKE IT YOURSELF, ask a human for help anything but AI.

There is no place for Artificial Intelligence in these spaces.

[ancat-dubh]

🧹💐 SPRING CLEANING REFLECTION ASKS for your magical practice 💐🧹

You can treat this as an ask game or journal prompts leading up to Beltane – I might do both!

Talk about....

🔥 A favourite ritual 🐉 A deity or spirit you used to work with 🐚 A deity or spirit you currently work with 🌻 A magical encounter in nature ☕ A magical encounter in the city 🌟 A time you improvised with what you had 🌶 A risky offering 🥀 A working that didn't work out 🦉 A mentor or person who's influenced your practice 🌱 A skill you're working on 🍇 An offering you're proud of ⚡ A favourite collaboration 🐾 The furthest you've ever travelled for magical purposes 🏺 An ancestor (blood or chosen) 🐬 A culturally specific belief or practice of yours 🦂 A mistake (that you're willing to talk about) ⛈ An ethic or value that's central to your practice 🌗 One way that your practice has changed 🍁 Something you miss about an older version of your practice 🦀 A bad habit 🌋 A magical gift (either something you're Gifted At, or a gift you've received) 🐝 Your magical/spiritual community 🔮 A memorable divination session 🍄 A dream or vision 🐣 A goal for your practice

[aesethewitch]

You can write down as many correspondences as you want, memorize entire lists from someone else's blog or book or whatever, but none of it will matter if you do not understand those correspondences. It's so critically important to ask "Why?"

Why is spirit purple? Why is love red? Why is chamomile calm? Why is quartz "all purpose"? Why does cinnamon speed up a spell?

Why, why, why?

What do you actually believe? And why?

[thespectralcottage]

Getting Back Into Your Practice

Sometimes life is shitty and your spiritual practice doesn't take priority. Thats okay. Here are some tips for how to get back into your practice once you're feeling up for it.

Cleanse and Clean Your Space This is defiantly the first think you should focus your energy on. This can take as long as needed and as intensive as you want or feel is needed. Spiritual and physically cleanse your space. Pick up items, open windows and start your cleansing method of choice.

Redo Wards and Protections Once you've cleansed its important to redo your protection. Cleanse to get rid of, protect to keep it away. Even if nothing has *hit* your protections and wards, its important to keep up to date on them being energized.

Keep Actives Low on Spoons Now that you've done the basics, stick to low spoon actives and slowly build from there. Even if you feel super energized and ready to get into it- you want to take things slow. This'll help you from losing steam..

Slowly Add Back In Your Daily Practice This is totally unique person to person, but dont expect to be back into your multi step daily routine right away. Add in each step one at a time, or slowly so you wont feel overwhelmed.

Come Up with a Ritual Youre EXCITED About You want to focus on the parts of witchcraft you love. Do something you've always wanted to try, something you always love doing, or anything that will make you excited for the working.

Pick a New Topic, Not an Older One Getting into your practice and going to an older topic might feel disheartening. Pick a new topic like astrology, plants, or an aspect of witchcraft you havent gotten too into before. Then go back to the older topic you left on.

Do Some Divination on What You Need Right Now Spend time with your spirit team, deities or ancestors and figure out what you should be focusing in on right now. Maybe you need more rest, maybe theres a ritual they want you to work on.

Remember You Dont Have To Do Magic Daily Dont put too much stress into doing something every single day. Take breaks. Youre still a witch.

I hope these helped. Remember to take things slow and dont let the pressure of getting back into it weigh you down. Magic is suppose to help not hinder.

[blackthornwren]

I ask myself this a lot lately: is everything exactly what it seems?

The mind and the senses kind of naturally rail against those spirits we engage with that can't be categorized or rationalized easily - not the unknown, but rather the can't-be-known.

Some things have no name, others have no form. On a very surface level, we work to let go of expectations so we can see what's really there. In a deeper sense, I believe we have to continue to cast aside these constraints we put on the spirits we engage with, and our way of perceiving them.

Spirit work involves a lot of fighting against our own apophenia - a need to distort by forcing into form and creating connections that aren't there. It's really easy to want to assign name and nature to something that can't fit neatly into a box.

It's a fact that we will make mistakes, be mistaken about the nature of, or identity of, a spirit at some point in the journey. The trick is to keep peeling away the layers, until pretty wrappings and trappings fall away and we can see what's really in front of us.

Don't blink. Don't be afraid to take yourself apart. Let yourself, and the spirits around you, become complicated.

[delusionalisted]

“Low Spoon” witchcraft doesn’t exist.

This is a post for all my disabled siblings. (But it applies to broke or low-income siblings as well.)

By the way, you heard me. What does exist is capitalism, consumerism and scarcity, all things that don’t belong to witchcraft. Witches in the past were mostly poor, unprivileged and unhealthy individuals with just one skill: knowledge. Yes, for today’s americentric standards they’d have been called “low-spoons practitioners”.

No fancy candles? No cauldron? Just one heavily used tarot deck?

Yes, no fancy candles Susan, you can keep those paraffin toxins to yourself.

Cauldron, Deborah? I have no money to waste for your pinterest aesthetics. We cook in this house, I can simply use a kitchen pot.

Mais oui Elizabeth, just one old tarot deck. It’s used my dear Elizabeth, you know… that’s something that happens when you actually use… tarot instead of purchasing 15 decks, then ending up using just one or two of them and leaving the other 13 to collect dust and resentment towards you.

*Sigh*

This is all to say, witchcraft doesn’t need a 9-steps process to be achieved. Calling it “low-spoons” practice just means “high spoons” practice is the norm. It is not. Most importantly, it never was. You don’t need 30 specific crystals to perform a spell, you don’t even need one most of the times.

— Addition: If you fit into the “Low Spoons” type of witch and you noticed that your spells or rituals don’t work, then let me share one of the possible reasons why they fail: you followed a “low spoons” recipe or spell preparation, consciously or unconsciously gave the title “too much power” (your subconscious registered your spell as something lesser than a proper ceremony) and any energy that you and the ingredients released just plopped like a pudding on the floor.

Branding something as “lesser” in spirituality can lead to two results: failure or high delays. Yes, the herbs you use still have, nourish and release power, but without YOUR faith, their power alone can do so much; in most cases, your subconscious skepticism rejects your desired manifestation leading to a delayed or completely failed magickal attempt.

[mossyforrest113]

Loki,

Storyteller,

Trickster,

Cunning-God,

Show us joy and love and happiness in trying, scary times.

Loki,

Fire god,

Loving Parent of the discarded,

Share your stories and give comfort to those who too often go without.

Loki,

God of many faces,

Shapeshifter,

God who uses he/she/they,

Protect those targeted for being themselves,

Who goes against the norm and are shunned for it.

[rhetthammersmithhorror]

Häxan | 1922

[deepwaterwritingprompts]

Text: It is taboo, or course, to decorate with human souls. The rich complain that the plentiful beetle and moth souls you can buy in shops don’t glow as brightly, or come in the colors they desire.

[fernthewhimsical]

Okay now that I got the bitchiness out of my system a bit, let's see if I can write a bit on """"rules"""" of witchcraft as I would like to see them.

Stop bitching about other people's practices and focus on your own. If you spent a lot of time worrying or raging about how other people practice, how will you ever grow your own? Focus on yourself and your own power and let other people do their thing.

Other people's practices are inspiration, not goals. On the flip side, if there is someone who you look up to, or someone's practice you love seeing, take it as inspiration for your own, but don't look it at as a goal to achieve. Firstly, what people share online is not the whole of their practice, and secondly you're not them and their path is not yours.

Be curious. Why are people harping on "black and white magic"? Why are Starseeds bad, but Alienkin and Starkin are fine? Why is cultural appropriation such a bad thing? (If you answered "because racism" on all three of these, have a cookie!) And not just curiosity about these concepts, but also about correspondences (Why are red roses a symbol for love?) or ingredients you have in your home (will this basil work as well as rosemary for this spell?) or other paths and techniques, or spirits, or -- you get the point. Once you know the "why" you can use your own discernment. Does this work for me? Do I agree with the why? Etc. etc.

Be respectful -. To other people, to other practices and cultures, to spirits and deities. Find out their customs and cultures if you can, and act accordingly. Did you know that not saying "thank you" to the Fair Folk is only a custom in Irish and Scottish folk tales? Yeah, exactly.

-But don't be terrified. You're a witch/wizard/warlock/unicorn/whatever dammit! Act like one! Witchcraft is about empowerment, so be fucking empowered! An anarchy saying is "no gods, no kings, no masters". As a polytheist witch who works with the Fair Folk for me it's more "lots of Gods, some Kings, no masters!" I meet them with respect, but on equal footing. I experiment because if I screw up, well, I'll have learned something, and I've learned a lot about getting myself out of weird stuff.

Have fun. For fuck's sake, your practice is supposed to bring you joy. If it doesn't bring you joy or make you feel fizzy with inspiration and energy, try something else. If you need to, toss the whole thing out and start over. Trust me, it helps.