Magick is a craft that encompasses many skills. To practice magick effectively requires discipline, focus and an ability to go with the flow. Magic isn’t just about the power to make things happen. It’s about shaping your own perceptions while coming to understand the world around you in a profound way. Cultivating each of these habits will help you to embrace magic in a way that is intuitive and natural. This is just an overview. I will be discussing these more in-depth over the next few weeks.
1. Observe the World and Its Patterns
One of the most skills you can cultivate is that of observation. Careful observation of nature, cycles, and the people and other creatures around you provides valuable insights that can lead to powerful, actionable revelations.
Seekers have asked me how to speak the language of animals, how to predict and affect the weather and how to change peoples minds about things. You can teach yourself these skills better than ever could through careful and conscious observation. Keep your eyes, ears and mind open as you move through your daily life. Observe the way people, plants and animals tend to react to different situations and at different times. Watch their body and facial movements as well as vocalizations and understand what isn’t being said directly. The information gathered in this way can be used to better understand others (even non-humans) and to make yourself better understood. You can also use this information to manipulate behavior and thought patterns. This is what advertisers and spin doctors do. It is also what educators and diplomats do.
Observation of your environment, weather and social patterns can also help you discover the best times and places to perform your spellwork. Spells to bring in more foot traffic for a business will be most effective during summer music festivals. When folks are less likely to be out and about, you may wish to do some work to encourage enthusiasm about your product or place of business more specifically.
Likewise, observing the surrounding nature, including plants, animals, weather, and hours of sunlight, will help you understand its effects on your mood and those around you. This understanding will help you determine when the best energy is available for certain tasks. You might also realize when spellwork is needed to boost lagging energy. These low periods might also be fired up by a festival or a Sabbat.
2. Meditation
Witch, know thyself. Meditation is ultimately the act of observing yourself. There is nothing in this world over which you should have greater control than yourself. Through meditation you gain greater control over your actions and reactions, improve your stress responses, and strengthen your focus and self-control. These things don’t just come naturally to most people but must be learned and practiced. This is what meditation does. As magick relies on energetic focus and control, the self-knowledge and control gained by meditation can only improve your skill.
As you become more skilled at meditation, you may find yourself taking further steps in altered states of consciousness to explore some truly powerful spiritual activities such as astral projection and intentional dreaming.
3. Keep a Journal
The most important knowledge a witch has is the knowledge of self. Keeping a journal helps you internalize what you have observed and experienced each day. It is a place to record not just what happens in a day. It also captures how it made you feel and your observations about its affect on others. This is important information. Your instinctive and reactive feelings in response to things in your environment can be harnessed for spell work later.
A journal also gives us a place to record our experiments. If you try out a spell or a recipe, use your journal to write down how it went. Note what you liked and didn’t. Think about what you might want to change for next time.
Some witches keep specialized journals related to what they are working on. Tarot or divination journals are popular, as are dream journals and recipe journals.
Also, many of us feel at the end of the day that we have not accomplished anything. At the end of a month or even a year that we may feel that have made no progress. A browse through our journals shows us that progress has been made, and that is empowering.
4. Practice Empathy
Many folks in the magickal community claim to be empaths, but describe it as a passive thing. “I am affected by others’ moods” “other peoples energy brings me down/stresses me out”. Witches aren’t passive. Those who simply react to the emotions and actions of those around them are just spreading the energy around and that benefits no one. Practicing empathy means intentionally attempting to understand the feelings and motivations of another and literally imagining yourself in their shoes. Recognizing that each person has their own unique lived experience that colors their beliefs and reactions is an important part of understanding people; whether you seek to understand to be a better healer or a better manipulator.
5. Practice Self Care
You are your most important asset. The magick you make comes from you. You cannot help yourself or anyone else if you aren’t feeling your best. Many people feel like self care is selfish or frivolous but I am here to tell you it is necessary! Keep your body exercised, well-fed, clean and comfortable. Wear clothes and shoes that provide the comfort and support that you need to feel capable in your daily duties. Keep your nails clean and smooth and as short or long as suits your daily activities. Shave if smooth skin makes you feel good. Don’t if it makes you itchy or feels like a waste of time.
You will be less efficient if you are itchy or if your feet hurt. It is hard to stay focused if your nails are breaking and snagging on things. Clothes are too tight and pinching or too loose so you have to keep adjusting them is incredibly distracting. And you’re going to be irritable, clumsy and forgetful if you don’t get enough sleep. Do what you need to do to feel good. Don’t feel bad about it. Your body and your mind are tools that need regular maintenance. They can only work well for you and anyone who depends on you if they are kept sharp and rust free.
6. Choose your Thoughts and Words with Care
Words have power, as the wise are aware. Gossip and miscommunication can do serious damage and many a politician can attest the power of misinformation. Words shape our thoughts and our culture and vice versa. Spend some time researching other languages and how the way they use words reflects the way they see the world. Research the etymology of words and think about how their meanings have changed – what they once meant, what they mean now and what people who use them in various ways are saying about themselves. Applying these concepts to your own communications, both internal and external, can help you shape your own world to your Will.
7. Practice Magick Every Day
Magick isn’t just for special occasions. Sprinkling magick into your everyday activities doesn’t just make life more interesting, it makes you more skilled. After all, practice makes perfect. Great musicians aren’t musicians only when they are on the stage. They practice their instrument at every opportunity. They bring it along to gatherings so they can lead the sing along. They play along with their favorite albums. They noodle around in the quiet moments of their evenings. They gather together with other musicians to play old favorites, create new pieces or just jam. You can do that with your magick. Enchant your makeup to bring you confidence and your perfume to keep the energy around you positive and uplifting. Weave energetic cleansing rituals into your housekeeping chores. Place growth sigils under your potted plants. Brew healing teas and soups for anyone feeling under the weather, to lift their spirits and help their doctors’ treatment work more efficiently.
8. Limit Your Scope
Some practitioners try to practice all the magick. This is a mistake. While it is interesting and useful to research and learn from various magical styles and traditions, you should use this information to experiment and meditate on creating your own style and specialties. You cannot and should not try master everything. Try everything, by all means, but strive to become an expert in a few areas that are meaningful to you rather than a mediocre jack of all techniques that someone else says witches do. You can focus on herbs, like myself, or not. Or focus on casting spells using the natural energies of crystals. Perhaps you’re a psychic and you wish to really lean into that, but not all witches are psychic- it’s certainly not a requirement. You may wish to focus on activism and politics, or remain hyper-local tending primarily to your household.
9. Practice Locally
Many practitioners and teachers present magical and spiritual theories and practices from other times and places as the only right and effective way to work- as if wisdom can only be found far away. But each of those theories and practices were developed in a specific time and place in response to specific environmental pressures. Your magick will be most effective if you develop your practice in response to your own environment. Use magical tools and spell components that are culturally familiar to you and native to the area you live in. Embrace the sacred according to what is conducive to abundance where you are. The sacred groves of California or Wisconsin or Perth are going to look quite different from those of Great Britain, Ireland or Greece. The augurs and portents in a temperate zone near the sea will differ greatly from those in a a desert environment.
10. Trust Your Own Council
Some wisdom, whether ancient or popular, isn’t going to sit right with you, and that is okay. Your magick comes from your energy, your emotions, your Will- not that of any writer, ancestor or group of experts on the internet. If something doesn’t feel right, don’t do it. If something feels right, you don’t need anyone’s permission. You might specialize in love spells, or refuse to ever do them. You might believe that charging for spell work is wrong, or you might make a living casting spells for others. Or anything in between. Your magick is yours. If you try to do it in a way that doesn’t feel 100% you, it won’t be as effective anyway. So don’t try to force it and don’t believe anyone who says you have to do something you don’t want to do or you’ll never be a proper witch.
11. Explore and Experiment
Do not be afraid to try new things, to ask questions and to read the really weird books. Experiment with different techniques to find the ones that resonate with you. If you practice and art, think up new ways to incorporate your magic into it. Knotwork in your knitting? Enchanted paints? Music to raise energy to? Sex magick? Magic itself has no limits. It is up to you to decide your own boundaries.
While you are doing all this experimenting, don’t forget to write about it in your journal.
12. Keep Tidy
It may seem strange to talk about housekeeping when talking about magick, but clutter can really affect the flow of energy through our space and it can affect our mood. I know I get grumpy when I have to clear off the table before I can sit at it or weave my way through a maze of mess on the floor to get to my favorite chair. You don’t have to go all feng shui (though it is a fun practice to explore) or keep your whole house spotless all the time. If you don’t have control over your larger space, I hope you can at least claim one room to keep just the way you like it. I personally do a 10 minute tidy of my bedroom and make my bed every morning before I do anything else so I always have somewhere to go that doesn’t make me feel like I’m in disaster response mode. If I am in a room that is messy, I feel guilty about studying or performing self care or, really, doing anything fun or relaxing. If I feel guilty or anxious or grumpy, I am no good at spellcasting.
13. Ground and Center
There are a lot of rituals various magical traditions prescribe for beginner practitioners and this is, in my opinion, the most important. Grounding means finding your place in space and time. That means you aren’t thinking about what you are going to do next or fretting about what you did before, you are right here and now. You are present. This is very similar to what some call mindfulness. Centering means bringing all of your energy and focus to the task at hand. Your energy. Not that of the last person you had a spat with or the rude cashier or the person you might have insulted when you said that thing but you’re not sure. You are here, you are focused on this task and only this task and your energy is present and ready to work.
Grounding and centering is a meditative practice that focuses on not being in an altered state of consciousness. When you are preparing to cast a spell or take part in a group ritual, it provides a starting point, it puts you at zero. After your spell or ritual, it brings you back from whatever altered state of consciousness you were in.
But it’s not just for rituals. Grounding and centering is a great practice to overcome anxiety and panic attacks, to help stop the internal chatter that is keeping you from getting good sleep and to calm your nerves before a test, interview or performance. And if you practice often, you will soon be able to do it quickly without anyone else noticing in public.
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