HOW TO FIND YOUR PATH

You never actually find a path, it is a lifelong journey of discovery, research, and practice. This is why we call it a practice! In the future I will be deep-diving each of these subjects so keep an eye out.

YOU WILL WANT TO:

DECOLONIZE

If you are looking into witchcraft it is likely you are from a Western Civilization. Because we were colonized and have created man made environments, we have lost our ability to connect to nature, our ancestors, and rituals that cultivate our magic. Western culture has been forged by capitalism, racism, the church (as a political power), and patriarchy. When we live in a society that is not made for us, it's hard to create magic that benefits us. 

Some ways to decolonize is to:

• Do a guided meditation to meet your ancestors and spirit guides. 

• Learn your family's migration story.

• Learn how capitalism, racism, the church, and patriarchy harms your power. 

• Teach others so we can fight against it and reclaim our power as a collective.

• If you have religious trauma, to help heal that, and separate spirituality from the church as an institution, I highly recommend the book "The Law of Light" by Lars Muhl. It views the bible through it's original spirit, and not what the church warped it to be for political power. Much of it aligns with pagan beliefs and today, there are many Christian witches who have created their own relationships with the spirit of Christ.

  
  

  For a deeper dive into this topic check out Finding Your Path - Decolonizing

UNDERSTAND YOUR COSMOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

Magic falls under two major umbrellas Folk Practices and Western Esoteric. Both systems work they just require different framework of belief, and different disciplines to be successful. Folk traditions approach magic as something that rises out of relationships. It's connection with the land, with community, with ancestors, and with the living world. "Power" is cultivated through reciprocity and participation in a shared, conscious universe. Magic is viewed as balance not "power." Western esoteric paths, by contrast, treat magic as a process of inner refinement and intentional alignment with the deeper structures of reality. They see the cosmos as layered and symbolic, something to be studied, mapped, and navigated through discipline and will. Where folk practices create balance through belonging, exchange, and collective memory, esoteric traditions seek power through personal awakening, mastery, and direct engagement with the unseen architecture of existence.

I'll dive deeper into this in a future post, but to understand a bit better here is a list of different Sci-Fi and Fantasy worlds that represents each of these well through different characters or communities within their respective universes:

• Luna Lovegood vs Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter series

• Scarlet Witch vs Dr. Strange from the Marvel Universe

• Practical Magic vs The Magicians two very popular books on Magic

• The Nightsisters vs The Jedi Order from Star Wars

• Sazed vs Vin from Mistborn

• Rayla vs Claudia from the Dragon Prince

• Spock vs Data from the Star Trek Universe

• Guinan vs Picard from The next Generation

(I could go on and on, I am particularly obsessed with fictional magic systems)

DEVELOP GOOD SPIRITUAL HYGEINE

Energy attracts like energy.  When we communicate with spirits, spirits want to communicate with us, when we manifest negative energy, we attract negative energy that can manifest more negative energy. Having good spiritual hygiene is critical if we don't want to attract spirits that we want to communicate with, or prevent attracting negative energy that can manifest around us. In order to manage this you will want to learn how to:

• Cleanse your space and self.  Both physically and psychically. 

• Set up protections, both physical and psychic. 

• Set up wards to alert you when energy you don't want is around.

• Do shadow work.

• Learn to properly Ground.

• Drink water, touch the ground and get some sun everyday.

LEARN A FORM OF DIVINATION

Learning a form of divination lets us gain insight on what's going on with spiritual energy. In witchcraft, its vital because it lets us peak into the future to make a game plan on how best to proceed. Or reflect on our own actions in the past to learn how far we've come. It also helps us check in on a spell or our protections to see how they are working out. Different cultures do this differently, learning a method from your ancestry usually works the best. There are modern accessible ways to do it as well, such as:

• Tarot

• Pendulum

• Coin Tossing

• Shufflemancy

• Numerology

CREATE SACRED SPACE

When we create a sacred space, we call this an altar. It is a dedicated space that concentrates energy. They are typically used as a space to do witchcraft or store your workings. You can also dedicate it to a specific spirit to gift them offerings, ground them to your space (since many don't have physical bodies) to venerate, and communicate with them.

LEARN A BASIC SPELL

Many traditions, religions, and cultures do this differently but they all have a common format. I can teach that here:

Plan: Decide on what kind of spell you want to do. Gather ingredients. Western traditions view this as things that correspond to your intention, folk traditions view this as things that have the same state of being as your intention.

Cleanse: Clean your space physically and psychically to ensure no other energies will affect it. If you are new it helps to already be in the state of mind as your intention.

Open: Invite the spirits that will help you. You can do this by putting out objects that represent them or things that they like. You can also give them an offering at their altar.

Do the Spell: Combine your ingredients that correspond with your intentions for the spell during a time that aligns with your intentions.

Align the energy: While the spell is going, you need a technique that helps you get into a meditative/trans like state. You'll need to figure out what works best for you. Some examples are chanting, dancing, singing, beating a drum, writing, drawing or rubbing your hands together. These tend to be rhythmic type things as the universe is always in motion. Kitchen witches will kneed dough, fabric crafters will knit or crochet, garden witches will rake or dig. Then, visualize what you want the spell to do in your mind's eye. You can also say how you want the spell to be carried out, out loud, or use tools to act out your intentions.

Close: End the spell by thanking the spirits for working with you, and clean up your mess. If its physical you can put it on an altar, if its consumable: eat, drink or use at your leisure.

Some types of spells include:

• Candle Spells

• Jar Spells

• Ritual Baths

• Spelled food, drinks, and crafts.

• Psychic Manifestation

• ... and many many more.

LEARN CELESTIAL TIMING

The strongest energy that we can access is celestial. Doing our spells during the timing of celestial bodies makes our spells more predictable. For beginners, focusing on moon phases is all you need. Some prefer to do rituals and spells around the seasons, and some like to do it based on astrology. It's up to you how much you want to learn here and how nuanced you want it to get. As always learning how your ancestors did it, works best. Personally, I use Western Astrology and you can find a calendar on my site that helps with astrological timing for spells. 

LEARN ABOUT SUPPORTING SPIRITS

Getting to know the spirits that have your back greatly increases spell reliability. I typically recommend working with spirits that want to work with you. These are your ancestors, spirit guides, or ancestral deities.

You don't have to work with sentient spirits if you are new and that freaks you out. You can just as easily use the collective energy of the universe. In traditional witchcraft we do this with the alchemical elements like earth, fire, wind, and water. There are many successful atheist witches and atheo-pagans that view magic this way.

I usually recommend trying something in the middle and work with living spirits like people, plants, and animals. That way as you do the work, you can gain real world insight based on their behavior.

LEARN TO USE DISCERNMENT

Discernment is the most important thing you need to learn in your practice. Because we are working with energy we can't physically see, but that we see physical evidence of, it's easy to get in our own head and lose touch with reality. Grounding helps with this, but sadly, spiritual psychosis is a very real problem in witch communities and this often happens when people focus too much on the psychic/spiritual side of witchcraft. They forget about animism, and start to believe everything is some unseen puppeteer pulling all the strings or get paranoid about being cursed when negative energy isn't properly managed or are simply having a bad day.  Usually the obvious, grounded real world answer is the correct one. Physical space and spiritual space are symbiotic, magic is the force that communicates between the two, you need to understand both for successful witchcraft.

DEVELOP CLAIRSENSES (PSYCHIC ABILITY)

With divination, this isn't required. But learning how to use your psychic abilities to gain insight or communicate with spirit lets you see in real time how your spells are doing and you can learn things from the spirits you work with to gain advantages. Understanding how your psychic skills work, or don't work also greatly aid in discernment and can help you avoid spiritual psychosis. You can start by setting the intention "I am open to connecting with energies and spirits outside myself, I am one with the earth and universe." As you move throughout your day be mindful of your surroundings in your mind. If something stands out, pay attention to how you feel. You'll begin to notice patterns between the environment and your mind.

RESEARCH RESEARCH RESEARCH

Knowledge is power. Misinformation is rampant about witchcraft. And pop culture sets unrealistic expectations with how it works. Magic always takes the path of least resistance, and adheres to the laws of physics when being carried out. When researching, be sure to find primary sources, speak to pagan and indigenous elders, and people who can speak critically about their practice along with their lessons learned. Read, Listen, Learn, trust your intuition! Keep what resonates and let go of what does not feel right to you.

FACE YOUR FEARS

The first step out of the spiritual kiddie pool is to stop being afraid of spirits and energy. Stop believing in the lies that colonizers spread about divine punishment and demons. Stop believing that spirits are some physical apparition that only certain people can see. It is your mind processing energy, and often, we are anthropomorphizing that energy to look human in our mind because we have human bias.

Remember, most of civilization is written by the victors of war. Books written by anyone that wasn't part of the church were burned, the authors killed. Women were prohibited from learning to read or write for most of history. Knowledge about spiritual energy has been hidden, twisted, villainized or suppressed so that a small few can maintain the power of the many.

Release your fear, find balance and take your power back.