Saturday, November 25, 2017

For Witchlings

+ What book should i read? Everything’s kinda confuse right now… do you have any advices? Or ideas of how can I start? Thank you so much anyway ♡ (it was a bit long, hope you can read it, sorry xx)
It wasn’t too long, and I can read it just fine. :)
But, this is going to be a long ass post. So, yeah, be warned.
First of all, you don’t really need to buy anything if you don’t want to. (Check this post: [“Do I Need a ________ to Be a Witch?”]. The answer: no.) There are some branches of magic that don’t really require any physical components - energy work or sigil magic being the ones that jump to mind first. There are also many average household items that have their own energies that can be used in magic. Sometimes people already have some witchy supplies in their homes that can be used - many people have spice racks and candles and jars from other food, and those are pretty common tools in the craft.
It also highly depends on the sort of magic you want to do. Do you want to work with candles, crystals, herbs, all of the above? Then you’ll want to look into places to find those. (I get my herbs from the grocery store and candles from the dollar store, honestly.) Do you plan on grinding herbs into powders? Then you’ll probably need a mortar and pestle, or something similar. Plan on making poppets or sachets? You’ll need fabric, thread, and sewing needles, though poppets can be made out of paper instead, and you can buy little baggies that can work for sachets. Want to make magical jars? Hit up the dollar store for bottles and containers. Do you want a wand? Do you want a ritual space / altar? Tarot decks / other methods of divination? It seriously comes down to what you want, and what you might plan on doing.
Here is a list of some things that might be useful in your magic, more as a jumping off point of ideas, and in no way absolute or complete:
  • candles
  • crystals
  • herbs
  • jars
  • sachets / tiny pouches
  • sewing needles, thread and fabric
  • thicker string / ribbon
  • paper and writing utensils
You can use almost anything in your magic, though, and many things you can just find outside, like:
  • leaves
  • nuts
  • rocks
  • water from streams or rain
  • feathers (some places have laws about picking up feathers, be sure to check out where you live and if that will be an issue)
Everything has magical potential. You can even enchant regular objects like jewelry to bring about magical effects. This is also good if you have to be super discreet. The options are literally endless.
Here are a couple of posts, [The Beginner Witch’s Starter Spell Kit] and [New Witch’s Shopping Guide], that I think you should check out as well. Some other useful posts:
If you are on a budget…
If you need to be discreet…
* not my choice of title
And just because something might be useful, doesn’t mean you have to use it. For example, I find blood to be very useful in magic - it is super potent with energies - but some people aren’t comfortable using it. And that’s fine. If you don’t want to utilize something, you don’t have to.
Notebooks are almost vital as a witch, in my opinion. You’ll want a place to store all the information you’ve learned to access later. It’ll be a place to keep all your spells and correspondences, and notes on any magical workings you do as well.
However, you can go completely digital and forego a physical book - using programs like OneNote, Google Drive and the like can be another way for you to store your info discreetly, password protected, and have access to it anywhere you have internet and your mobile device.
As to finding out what you want to do with magic, where you should start, I generally give people this list of questions that will hopefully help them narrow their focus and figure out where it is they want to go:
  • Why were you drawn to the craft in the first place? What got you interested in studying / practicing it?
  • What sorts of expectations do you have, if any, about what you can do with magic?
  • Is magic something you just want to experiment with, or do you want to practice long-term?
  • Are there any things in particular you hope to achieve by doing magic? Do you have any end goals for yourself or your craft? Any expectations?
  • What sorts of things would you like to do (in regards to different varieties of spellwork [candle magic, sachet magic, etc.], divination, etc.)?
  • Do you feel an attraction / affinity to any particular branch of magic (chaos magic, green magic, spirit work, hedgework, etc.)? Why? What in particular makes it appealing to you?
  • Are there things you don’t want to go near no matter what? Why? What bothers you about those things?
Ultimately that’s what matters - what you want, where you want to go. Here is my advice on that front: pick something to start with, and go with it - learn what you can from it, play with it, and when you think you’ve got it covered, try something else, while still keeping in mind what you’ve already learned.
Witchcraft is such a personal practice and area of study - it allows you to experiment and find out what works for you, while also not enforcing anything that you may not be comfortable with. Don’t wanna do this thing? You don’t have to. Maybe you would prefer to focus on this thing? Go right ahead. Oh, wait, you changed your mind, and now you wanna do this? Yep, go for it. It is a beautiful thing.
Here is a list I ended up throwing together of some common branches of magic. You are not bound or excluded to only one - you can practice many of these at any one time, and you are not stuck with it of you happen to pick it up but decide you don’t like it. This list is also not exclusive, but a way to give you an idea of some of the things you can do.
  • energy work
  • candle magic
  • crystal magic
    • crystal grids
  • sachet magic
  • knot magic
  • poppet magic
  • kitchen magic
    • tea magic
  • bath magic
  • traditional magic
  • urban magic
  • chaos magic
    • sigil magic
  • pop culture magic
  • green magic
  • cottage magic
  • hedgework
  • spirit work
  • shadow work
  • blood magic
  • sex magic
  • death magic
    • necromancy
There are so man different veins of magic, and they can blend and mix in such cool ways. Most spells have components of different varieties of magic - you might see a spell call for candles and crystals, or jars and poppets.
It takes some time to build up witchy supplies, so don’t be discouraged if you don’t have 20 different herbs in the span of a week. It’s taken me two years to build u the supplies I have, just picking up bits and pieces here and there. A good idea to start would be pick one spell then buy the ingredients for that, and do that spell. Then, decide on a spell you want to do next - you’ll find you might already have some of the ingredients left over from the first one, then you just need to pick up what you’re missing. It is also good to keep lists of substitutions for various herbs if you decide to use them. Not everything has a substitution, but if you can find things with similar correspondences as to what is being used in that spell and why, you should be okay.
Learning to write your own spells is also a great way to ensure you’ll have the ingredients you need (by basing it off what you have), but that can be a bit daunting, and is in no way necessary, just a handy skill to have.
I am not so sure on the books you should buy - I tend to get my witchcraft resources from online, and this whole blog is my resource compilation. I use Tumblr as my main source of info, along with my discretion of course. I know other witches have lists of book recommendations, and I can give you those:
[Here] is a list of authors you should try to avoid - trigger warning for mention of various disturbing topics. [Here] is a post that talks about why your book on witchcraft might be full of it; if you have any questions as to why that might be, feel free to ask the OP or even myself. [Here] is a post that explains using discretion and critical reading in regards to witchcraft books.
I have a page on my blog, [Advice for Witchlings], that has more advice that can help you out. I also made it into two rebloggable posts if that is easier for you to access: [part 01] and [part 02].
I am also going to toss a huge list of posts here. You don’t need to read them all immediately, but they do all contain various points of interest and things to note, as well as useful information (and sometimes even more links). Witchcraft is a practice of study and learning, after all.
Oh dear gods, okay, I am done with this. Not only because it’s way too long, but because my fingers hurt. xD
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