Are you ready to begin your journey as a witch? Perhaps you’re already a practicing witch looking to brush up on the basic skills of your craft. Well, whether you’re brand new to witchcraft or a seasoned witch, everyone can benefit by returning to the basics.
Recently I’ve felt a renewed call to help guide and encourage others to embrace their magick. Whilst gathering myself and helping guide some people in my personal life, I started looking back at the foundations of my craft. And I’ve come up with a list of things I think every witch should know… a Witchcraft 101, if you will.
While every magickal path is unique, the fundamental skills are the same across most traditions. Today, we will be discussing those skills essential to any magickal practice.
The five skills I want to focus on are Meditation, Visualization, Sensing energy, manipulating energy, and grounding/centering your energy.
Skill 1 – Altering Your State of Consciousness
The first skill any witch must learn is the ability to alter their state of consciousness. Most commonly accomplished through meditation, the process of altering your consciousness sounds, frankly, more dramatic than it really is.
Throughout the day, we switch between different states of consciousness. It’s an entirely natural process. Once you recognize it, it can be easy to do on command.
However, while changing our state of mind isn’t a particularly difficult task, it does require practice. In order to get started, we need to understand what it means to meditate.
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Meditation
Primarily, we, as witches, will use meditation in order to shift our consciousness. Simply put, meditation is a process of relaxing the body and mind. There are many different ways to meditate but for our purposes, the goal of meditation is to clear the mind and achieve an alpha brainwave state of consciousness.
What is an alpha state?
Brain activity can be measured in waves. Each state of mind is attributed to the different number of cycles occurring per second. In deeper meditations, the brain can enter into trance-like states. There are also states that occur during sleep and during comas. Meanwhile, beta brain waves are the frequency we likely know best. As this is our waking consciousness. This is the state we are in while we are using active attention and doing things like work or interacting with others.
The alpha state is an aware but relaxed state that occurs while we are “zoning out” or daydreaming. Through the use of meditation and mindfulness, we can do this with greater awareness. Thus, alpha can be best described as a meditative state. And it is in this meditative state that we become more aligned with our psychic mind and the subconscious. For witches, this is the state of mind we want to be in when engaging in meditation and magick.
Honestly, I don’t know a lot about the science of brain wave states. However, a lot of authors cite this subject when discussing the idea of altering consciousness. What I do know with certainty is that when I prepare myself for any kind of magickal work, meditation brings me to a state of relaxation where I am more aware of my intuitive senses and the energy around me.
Furthermore, meditation doesn’t just mean you have to sit still and empty your mind. There are numerous ways to focus your attention to bring about a state of mindfulness through meditation.
Some of my favorites include affirmations/prayers/chants, the use of hand gestures or mudras, slowing the breath, as well as counting your breaths. Breath work by counting out your breathing is something I learned in therapy – and I’ve found it to be a great way to maintain my focus whilst achieving the proper state of mind for magickal work.
Additionally, visualization and guided meditations can be used to achieve the same result.
My Meditation Practice
Personally, as a practitioner with ADHD, the stereotypical idea of sitting half-lotus, unmoving, and meditating silently was an incredibly daunting idea. Whilst I can meditate in silence, I find that it takes me longer to reach the right state of mind. Instead, I have created a metaphorical toolbox of triggers and useful tools that help me meditate more effectively.
Firstly, I find that some quiet meditation music from YouTube or Spotify (even just some white or brown noise) helps me avoid being distracted by the noises around me.
Moreover, through the use of hand gestures, I’ve created a trigger that helps quicken the process. The idea of using a trigger is discussed more fully in Christopher Penczak’s book Instant Magick. Which I will be discussing in a later post!
Finally, ritual accessories like incense, candles, and especially a good cup of tea all help bring me into a place where I am able to alter my consciousness.
Your Turn
In order to practice altering your consciousness and raising your awareness for magickal work, you’ll first want to find a quiet and calm environment to practice in.
Once you’ve done this, simply sit comfortably or lie down and close your eyes. I like to start counting down in my mind from a number like 13, 20, 50, or even 100 depending on what else I’ve done to prepare for meditation.
Allow your breath to slow and focus simply on the numbers drifting down toward 0. There’s no need to force them or rush it. Just allow yourself to slowly count down as you begin to relax.
After this, I find that my mind is quieted, and the space around me feels bigger. As though I’m more aware of myself and the expansiveness of my mind. It feels quite similar to zoning out in class. But the difference is my awareness of this. That’s when I know I’m ready to start my magickal work.
Before we move on to the next skill, I’d like to note that mediation is a huge topic. Today’s post is just a discussion of each of these fundamental skills. I am working on writing about them on their own in more detail. Be sure to check back soon to read more about meditation in its own post.
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Skill 2 – Visualization: Using your Willpower to Make Magick
Our next fundamental skill is visualization. When we hear the term visualization, a lot of us think of the imagination and creating images in our minds. And essentially, that’s what visualization is. But visualization isn’t just creating an image. Instead, visualization can involve any and all senses. It can incorporate emotions and feelings too.
Early on in my practice, I thought visualization was the skill I had the greatest handle on. Throughout my life, I was told I had a creative or imaginative mind. When I used to play with toys as a kid, I had detailed stories and could picture the world around the action figures as I played.
But the longer I practiced witchcraft, the more I saw that this fundamental skill was actually one of my weak links. You see, the images I try to create in my head are dull, dimly lit, and oftentimes appear to be translucent even behind closed eyes. It has been a constant struggle to create a detailed image or scene inside my mind.
For the most part, I was only ever able to focus on one particular aspect of what I tried to visualize. For example, while in therapy I found that I really enjoyed a coping skill called 5-4-3-2-1. Where I would have to name five things I could see, four I could touch, three I could hear, two I could smell, and one thing I could taste.
While learning this coping skill/grounding technique, I was told I could use the room I was in, or if it was detailed enough I could use a place from my memory. I could even imagine my ideal happy spot.
Personally, that was deep in a forest, a grove of dark towering trees and rich loamy earth. During the exercise, I found I could get small flashes of an image. I could conjure up singular snapshots. But I couldn’t hold them together. It was as if each piece was disconnected.
At the time, I didn’t realize some people could hold such strong images in their heads. Sadly, I began to see that I wasn’t really visualizing much through my senses… but through words. Most of my thoughts and memories are shaped through words, and those words help create fleeting images.
Truthfully, it’s hard to describe what the experience is like. But I started to think I had a mild form of aphantasia.
While I still am unsure if that’s the case or not; I do know that visualization is much more than just a picture. It’s important to incorporate various senses, feelings, and even words when you visualize. Each of our minds is unique, and you’ll have to find what works for you.
Currently, I’m researching more on visualization and reading about it from a psychological perspective. One article I found from Psychology Today says that the more we practice visualization and try to make the image as real as possible, the more our neural pathways will develop, where this becomes easier to do.
Hopefully, this is the case. And I’ll be sure to discuss it in greater depth in my upcoming post about visualization. For now, I’d like to share how you can begin practicing this fundamental skill.
Visualization Exercises
Several of my favorite books on witchcraft have different visualization techniques in the early chapters. Including Penczak’s ITOW and Witch Crafting by Phyllis Curott. Both of these books are on my list of essential reading for witches!
Essentially, you’ll want to reach a relaxed meditative state first. Then you’ll focus on conjuring up simple shapes in your mind’s eye. A triangle, a circle, a square.
It’s important to hold the image. As you get better at creating the shape in your mind, try changing its color, its size, and as that gets easier, start making 3D shapes.
Afterward, you can begin moving on to things like fruits and other more complex images. It’s recommended that you practice for about 15 minutes during a session and do so on a pretty regular basis.
Over time start to delve deeper and further with this process. Take notes in your Book of Shadows or journal to see how you experience the visualization process. I promise this will be helpful as time goes on.
Skills 3 & 4 – Working with Energy
So, we know about meditation and visualization, our next skills are all about working with subtle energy and magick. And this is why visualization is such an important skill to practice. You see, when we are in a meditative state, we have access to our psychic mind. Now, we are in tune with our magick. And by visualizing our goals and the energy we work with, we are able to lace it with our intent and direct it through our willpower.
Remember, belief is one of the three keys to making magick work. Our belief that we are moving energy makes it so. Meanwhile, our doubts and conflicting thoughts all play a role in affecting the energy we try to direct. This is why our intention must be clear. Indeed, we can’t work that energy effectively if we are struggling to focus our thoughts on our goal. Even if those doubts and conflicting feelings aren’t occurring at a conscious level.
A helpful way to get past this hurdle is to start by learning to sense energy. Although this skill develops alongside directing energy, I’ve found that it took longer for me to really feel like I could sense energy. Even after I was certain that I was moving it.
In my opinion, learning to do so will help you overcome early hurdles as well as help you develop future skills more effectively.
Sensing Energy
Before we dive into exercises, I’d like to mention that sensing energy is one of the skills that, I’ve found, takes the most time to develop. Furthermore, magick is a powerful and intense force undoubtedly. But that doesn’t mean it will automatically feel that way when you start working with energy.
After all, these are called subtle energies. When I first started practicing magick way back in middle school. Long before I even identified as a witch, I was using minimal resources and had no idea what it would feel like.
Back then, it initially felt as if I wasn’t even doing anything. Granted, I had absolutely no helpful information or guides to assist me. I was reliant on one website that I found. A site that was mainly just spells without any of the skills needed to get started.
Yet, it was during one of these early attempts of mine that I really felt magick for the first time. I found myself in a meditative headspace, and then the very air around me felt more sensitive. Almost like it was charged with static. Looking back, it’s hard to explain in any detail. But in that moment, I knew I was working with something…
Over time, I began to get a better feeling for what magick and subtle energies felt like around me. But this was the skill that didn’t seem to grow through spell casting personally. Instead, it happened when I practiced the beginner exercises in ITOW and, more recently, in Psychic Witch.
If you want to build a strong foundation for your craft as a witch or mystic, I highly recommend The Inner Temple of Witchcraft by Christopher Penczak. This is the first in a series of books that have been some of my favorite resources as a witch. ITOW will help you build these fundamental skills, and Penczak does an excellent job of going into detail on a lot of these subjects.
A Unique Set of Skills
Additionally, I think it’s important to say that everyone will sense magick differently. Personally, I feel magick strongest when directing it through my hands. As if a faucet has been opened behind my palms. From the center of my hand, there is a strong feeling as though trying to push two magnets with the same charge against one another. Akin to pins and needles in my hand that originate at this point too.
Others have described it as a change in temperature or a sense of pressure. Naturally, magick will feel unique to you. Thus it is important to make note of what it feels like in these exercises and write about it in your Book of Shadows.
Over time, with practice, you will be able to more easily identify how you perceive magick, and in doing so, you can more easily direct these forces. By sensing magick, you’ll be able to sense it in the things around you and know when you are charging and consecrating amulets, talismans, and various tools.
Similarly, you will better recognize your own power, and through sensing it, you begin to strengthen that connection. This will allow you to more confidently and efficiently raise and direct power.
Directing Power
Finally, now that we know the essentials required to start working with magick, we can now examine how we go about directing it! This also relies on using all of the skills discussed today.
During spells and rituals, there will be numerous ways to raise power. From chanting and using affirmations or charms to drumming and dancing, there are plenty of ways to raise up enough power to direct a full spell.
In order to do so confidently, we will begin by working with our personal power. And getting a feel for directing it. Afterward, we will be ready to move onto a post fully dedicated to raising and evoking power from other sources to make our magick more successful.
Honestly, this might feel like you’re just playing pretend or making this all up at first. But our imagination is a powerful tool, and this energy responds to our thoughts and beliefs. By acting as if the change has occurred, it does occur.
Directing your Power Exercise
Firstly, this exercise will help you learn how to draw upon your own magickal power as well as how to sense it. This exercise brings all our fundamental skills together and begins to teach us how they all work together.
In order to practice raising and directing energy, we want to start by getting into a magickal state of consciousness. Before we truly start the exercise, we want to set the right ambiance. Using the tips mentioned in meditation, let’s set up our space for success.
Once this has been accomplished, we’ll get comfortable and begin meditating. Allow yourself to drift into a more relaxed state of mind. Close your eyes, set your intention, and allow your thoughts to drift by until you feel you’ve achieved the right state of mind to continue.
Now, once you feel sufficiently relaxed whilst still feeling aware, of course, we’ll shift our focus to visualization. Technically, I wouldn’t say this step is “required,” at least not as an official step. However, as you are developing these skills, I think it’s important to practice them wherever possible. So, in your mind’s eye, practice visualizing shapes – especially focusing on visualizing a sphere, as this will be important going forward.
Finally, we will use visualization to focus on opening up our energy centers. Essentially, and there are numerous ways to describe the process, we want to focus on visualizing our personal power so that we can access it and begin moving it.
There are plenty of different modalities you can use for this step; whether it’s focusing on your chakras, aura, or something like a pool of light and energy in your chest. You want to picture it in your mind’s eye.
Now, as you are doing this, take your hands and press them together, palms touching — as if in prayer. And rub them together vigorously. Do so as if trying to warm your hands on a cold day. After a few moments, pull your hands apart, keeping your palms facing one another. Do so almost as if you were in the middle of clapping. You want them to be a few inches, maybe a foot apart, something comfortable.
Finally, focus on that feeling. How does it feel? Describe it and note the experience. Likewise, you can begin to visualize and will the energy inside you to flow out through your hands.
This is a sensation you want to grow familiar with. Although, in my experience, my energy work feels slightly different based on what I’m doing. Energy work like this feels one way, but when holding an athame or wand, it feels slightly different, and during ritual work, it isn’t focused on my hands as much. So be sure to note the sensory experience in your hands but also the rest of your body, your mind, and anything else that feels worthy to note. This is the feeling I focus on and look for every time I’m practicing magick.
Now, once you’re ready, feel the circuit of energy, the pathways, or the flow that moves down one arm and out your hand before crossing over and flowing up the other, a circle of power. I want you to spend a few moments just visualizing this. It’s important to develop this awareness so that you can not only get better at sensing energy but also consciously directing it around you.
Once you’re ready, we’ll move on to shaping the energy.
Shaping your Energy
To start, visualize the energy moving from your hand, forming a sphere in the space between your palms. Believe that you can do this and will it to happen.
As the sphere of energy forms, note your perception of it. What does it look like? How does it feel? Density? Size? Is it hollow like a balloon or basketball? Try changing these. Simply focus on visualizing it in your mind’s eye and see what happens.
Does the sphere have a unique look? Maybe the energy moved like a spool of thread, weaving out and stitching itself into this form. Perhaps it began as a small speck, growing and expanding like a fiery star of your power.
Allow yourself to relish in whatever sensory experiences you have. Try to visualize this energy ball as fully as you can. Does it change if your eyes are open versus shut?
Fundamental Skills: Taking it One Step Further
Now that you have successfully learned how to direct and shape energy into a sphere like this, you can go a step further if you’d like. This ball of energy can be “programmed” — by setting an intention, you can give the energy purpose. This can be something like personal healing, health for another, protection, etc. The possibilities are pretty much limitless.
Intention can be set in a variety of ways. The simplest is to state your intention, such as, “I am protected” or “I am shielded,” and focus on the energy following that purpose. Then you release the ball, and it goes out into the universe to accomplish that goal. This can be further set by using correspondences. In this case, the easiest would be color. By imagining the ball of energy as a certain color, you can further attach your intention to it.
This is a topic that I am planning to discuss in a separate post; so if you don’t feel comfortable with setting an intention during this exercise, simply put your hands together again and imagine the ball of energy being absorbed back into you. Then you can shake your hands and begin grounding. Which we will discuss now.
Here is a Printable Version of the Exercise for Easy Practice!
The Last Fundamental Skill: Grounding
Lastly, after any magickal work, we need to make sure to ground our excess energy. Honestly, grounding is a skill I was consistent with at the start of my practice. Then I began neglecting it for a time. But when I returned to practicing my fundamentals, I realized just how important it is to make sure you’re grounding.
In the years that have followed, I have remained aware of how powerful and useful grounding has been for me. Even outside of magickal workings, there were times when I struggled with picking up stray energy or being acutely aware of others’ auras. In every instance, grounding allows me to remove that energy and re-align myself. Additionally, grounding is something you can do alongside shielding yourself. Together this helps prevent these problems altogether.
So what exactly is grounding?
Grounding is a skill that is used to direct and release excess energies we draw up during spell casting, rituals, and even just the stray ones that seem to stick to our auras. It is a useful skill that not only helps us redirect those energies but can also help bring us out of a meditative state of mind and back into the mundane.
In fact, the term grounding is derived from the idea of grounding electricity. The principle remains largely the same when it comes to our subtle energies.
How to Ground Yourself
Rather than practicing grounding as its own separate exercise. I’ve found this skill is easy enough to develop and train after any of the other exercises we’ve discussed.
So, after you’ve raised any kind of energy or been practicing your skills, you’ll wrap up and start your grounding process.
As with the skills above, grounding is unique and personal, and there are countless ways to practice this skill. Today we’re going to focus on the method that has worked best for me.
After I’ve finished a ritual, opened a circle, or done any other energy work, I’ll take a few deep breaths and bring my attention to my feet. When I’m outside or if I’m dealing with a lot of energy around me, I’ll actually place my hands on the ground.
From my feet (and hands if they’re on the ground), I focus on feeling roots begin to spread into the Earth. They begin to spread and tunnel into the ground – as if I were a tree. The roots spread further and further down until I felt truly connected to the Earth.
Then, once I have reached deep enough and can feel the energy of the Earth, I let out a long exhale. Whilst doing so, I visualize, and I feel all the excess energy moving down from my aura. Down from my body. Down into the Earth. This energy sometimes looks like bright sparks of static trickling downward. Other times it appears as black smog rolling past my body and along my roots.
Further and further, the energy travels until it at last passes from my roots and into the Earth itself. And there, the Earth will transmute it.
In order to balance my energy out, I envision the white light at the core of the Earth traveling up my roots. Again like a tree; pulling and absorbing nutrients from the Earth. That earthly energy will nourish and balance you out.
Finally, when my mind feels more focused, and the subtle energy feels like it’s died down, I’ll release the visualization and shake myself out.
Personally, I’ve found shaking out my hands and moving around helps stir out any remaining imbalances and bring my focus back to the mundane.
And it’s as easy as that! You may wish to include a thank you to the Earth or the Earth Goddess, depending on your practice.
Wrapping Up
No matter what kind of magickal tradition you practice or what belief system you ascribe to, these five skills will be a key cornerstone to working magick. Certainly, there are other skills I would consider to be fundamental, or at least fundamental to my practice.
But in order to gain confidence in your practice and develop further, this is where just about everyone starts. And these are skills no one masters immediately. In fact, coming back to them and practicing them on their own can be useful even for highly experienced practitioners.
What was your experience with each of these? Is there a skill you feel like you need more help developing? Comment below.
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