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June 8 - June 9, 2025
not an eclectic path, but rather a curated one, requiring you to consider and choose the elements carefully that define and make up your personal practice.
My Witchcraft talks to gods in many forms. However, the magick depends not on the gods to function. My Witchcraft speaks to connections between beings. Its roots curl within the wild of my own heart. My Witchcraft is a gathering of spirits. The Witch always walks alone.
It’s a bit more like furniture from IKEA that you have to assemble yourself, but with better instructions and metaphysical tools—and, well, the furniture is essentially you.
True wisdom is expressed not by seeing how complex you can make the material but by how well you are able to make it accessible for others to grasp.
I feel like I came to Witchcraft through the back door—but is there really any other way?
I can’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t interested in mystical and mysterious things, metaphysical powers, and the occult. Growing up, I spent a lot of time out in nature having conversations with plants, trees, animals, and other things.
I’m not from one particular ethnic background, so why would I align only with the gods found in a portion of my blood when there are many more talking to me?
To know yourself means to be aware of your strengths and weaknesses, mentally, spiritually, and physically. When we are conscious of these things, we can make better choices about what we need to do, how to do it, and who to do it with. Be mindful of your own limitations as well as those of others.
When it comes to Witchcraft, authenticity has nothing to do with age. Rather, the focus should be on answering the question Does this work—for me?
Authenticity is being true to oneself in what one does.
That means the search of authenticity is a quest to find what’s real, what works, and what is true for that specific person.
Roots is about exploring the origins and makeup of you. Inspiration delves into what inspires and influences you. Time asks you to think about your schedule and overall calendar of the year. Environment is an examination of location, particularly where you live. Star helps you craft a system to guide your path.
Yet the idea that we live many times in numerous incarnations and places does strike a chord with many people. Maybe we cycle from life to life, changing genders, roles, cultures, and places so that we can experience life from many angles. Perhaps every time we die, our spirit returns to a primordial soup bowl, and parts of us get ladled into newly combined spirits. We could even be our own ancestors, following those theories. So perhaps something we’ve been fascinated with from a young age or unexpectedly drawn to later in life comes from a memory or preference in a previous life. Or they
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So what do you do in this situation? Do you say no to that goddess who keeps visiting you because you’re from one background and she from another? How does that even happen?
Research Suggestion: Make a list of inspirations and practices that appeal to you. Start with your childhood and work your way to the present day. Are there connecting threads? Can you pinpoint how you got interested in these things? Mark the ones that particularly stand out to you, prioritize them by how much they pull your attention, brainstorm what you know about them already, and start to investigate how to learn more.
Research Suggestion: Map out your average week. About how much time on average is devoted daily to work, family, schooling, hobbies, friends, etc.? When does free time occur for you?
Your Body’s Clock Although many people are not consciously aware of it, every body has a preference for how and when it functions best. Your body has its own internal clock.
Why is understanding your body’s schedule important for Witchcraft? Knowing when you work best means you can plan your practice for those times. If you are a morning person, then plotting out some time in the morning to go for a walk outside or commune at your altar can help you create a meaningful daily practice that deepens your connection to everything. Just because there’s a stereotype of Witches doing work late at night doesn’t mean you’re a failure because you fall asleep by 10:00 p.m. Listen to your body.
The social schedule has a heavy impact on your body’s clock as well. In the best-case scenario, the social schedule is in line with what works best for you, so you spend less time fighting against your body’s natural flow. When the social schedule works in opposition to your body, it tends to wreak havoc with your overall well-being. Sometimes you simply can’t avoid this conflict and have to make do. However, being aware of it means you can try to take extra steps to care for your body.
Research Suggestion: Examine the map you made for your social schedule. How does this line up with sleeping, eating, and general rest/relaxation? What are you doing to...
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Research Suggestion: Consult a lunar calendar and mark out the cycle over the next month in a journal, datebook, or notepad. Twice a day—upon waking up and before you go to bed—write down a word or phrase that describes how you are feeling (calm, anxious, stressed, depressed, excited, etc.). Once you reach the end of the first month, look back and see if you notice any correlations between the phase of the moon and how you felt at that time. It may take several months to start noticing a larger pattern.
How to Rest: It is perfectly fine to say no, especially if saying no means you are taking care of yourself. Rest means taking a break from doing all the things, removing excess stimuli, and just being quiet for a bit. Sometimes rest involves getting lost in a story or watching a movie or just taking a nap with the cats. Go take a walk in the park, in the woods, or by the water. Sit down, smell the air, count the birds, and watch the clouds and people go by. It’s not being lazy, it’s refueling.
We’re often so hard on ourselves. We read how other people do things, and instead of going, “That’s a neat way of looking at it,” we may wonder if our way is wrong, even if it’s been working great, with fantastic results. But then we wonder if maybe there’s something we don’t know. Trusting ourselves can be incredibly hard. That requires listening to our own bodies and thoughts, and considering them in turn.
In fact, some service animals are specially trained to recognize hard-to-see things like anxiety and the warning signs for seizures.
There are stories about cats who live at nursing homes that are able to sense who is close to death.
1. Take care of yourself. If you don’t take care of your needs and respect yourself, it’s going to be difficult to find anyone else who will. Being “selfish” isn’t always a bad thing, especially when other people’s demands are exhausting you.
2. Take care of others. When you can, help out others in need. Whether they need healing, protection, love, inspiration, or prosperity, a little help goes a long way. Looking out for each other strengthens the fabric we weave.
3. Don’t be a jerk. Be kind, compassionate, and strong. Listen to people, learn to receive feedback, and respect the wishes of others. While it is technically possible to take care of yourself and others while still being a...
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Boiling water is essentially choosing an appropriately sized pot or kettle to boil water in, pouring the water into the container, and adding a heat source. That seems very simple and straightforward, yes? Well, when working magick you are the heat source, your intention is the water, and the spell is the kettle. The kettle assists in providing the form for what you need to hold your focus on and achieve your goal. In the end, it doesn’t really matter if you use the spell equivalent of a high-end fancy kettle or an old saucepan, as long as the spell gets the job done. Similarly, you don’t need
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Only got a pen, a sticky note, and a tealight? Make it work and manifest!
I suppose my inherent dislike for talking about spells is due to the fact that the majority of people don’t understand them or how they work. They’re looking for an easy fix for whatever their issue is. They think if they follow a series of steps and put in the right ingredients, it’s just like a recipe for baking a cake. But as I mentioned earlier, even baking a cake isn’t that easy. There’s more to it than following a recipe. You have to think about the quality of the ingredients, timing, heat, humidity, containers, etc. And if you’re working with a broken oven or old flour, things aren’t
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There is no instant-fix, wave-of-a-wand spell to solve your problems.
Magick isn’t an outside force, mystically waiting around to do your bidding. Magick is the energy of things you set into motion—in your environment and most especially in yourself. A spell can help give you focus, but you need to actively invest in your choices and needs and take responsibility.
A ritual can help relieve tension, stress, and emotional issues, but they still need to be dealt with mundanely.
Cursing, when used responsibly, can be extremely effective in bringing about positive change when other ways aren’t going to work.
“Magick follows the path of least resistance,” “Mind the Fates,” and “Words have power.”
Magick happens not so much because we say the right words in just the right way under the right conditions, but because behind those words is a desire to bring about change. And if our will is strong enough, we follow through with our statements by making change happen—in ourselves and in the world around us.
I tend to hold to the idea that there are three nights around the full moon for ritual and other workings. These nights correspond to the day before, the day of, and the day after the exact time of the full moon, when the lunar body appears to be full to the naked eye.
Often without thinking about it, we do certain things every single day or semi-regularly, finding comfort in the repetition. Brushing your teeth, making your morning cup of tea, putting on your favorite necklace, doing your evening meditation practice, cooking your family’s favorite meal, going through your emails in a certain way—these tasks may seem ordinary or mundane, but they are little rituals that help to bring meaning and order to our daily lives.
We also have a tendency to default to rituals that have been done before. With ones we have done ourselves, there is comfort in the familiar. A ritual that has been passed down through generations can generate a certain kind of hum or vibration, like a needle settling into a record groove. For rituals that we may not have personally experienced previously but are provided for us in a book or similar context, we hope to plug into that same hum.
In order to plan, prepare, and perform an excellent ritual, there are seven points to consider: 1. Purpose: What is the reason for your ritual? Which category does it mainly fall under? There has to be a purpose, or otherwise why are you doing it? 2. Energy: What is the nature of the working? What are the goals for how it will flow? Do you need to raise, banish, heal, cleanse, etc.? 3. Timeline: What marks the beginning, middle, and end of your ritual? How will the ritual start, what will happen in the middle section, and how will it end? 4. Persons: Who is involved in this ritual (the
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“Who are the people in your spirithood?”
Our skills can be astonishing to others because most people are barely in touch with themselves or the world around them. In a nutshell, they’re not paying enough attention and they’re failing to connect the threads.
Yes, it’s time to talk about deities, spirits, the dead, and possibly other things that go bump in your head.
because your own personal belief system is exactly that.
No one can tell you what you should believe. You need to find what works best for you and discover your own mysteries and answers.
“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
You evolve and grow—and so do your gods.
the gods have a tendency to poke us—some gently and others with a bit more force to get our attention and bring us up to speed.
The gods might not always make sense to us, but there are times when we don’t even make sense to ourselves. Understanding comes through time and experience, and even then, none of us (gods, humans, or otherwise) can know everything. The best—and perhaps the most crazy—thing we can do is seek to communicate and learn from the experience.
