#beginning witchcraft

positivehappenstance:

Can anyone help a baby witch out with how to figure out a solution for something nasty? I don’t know what it is per-say (I’ve tried to get answers but meh) all I know for sure is it’s annoying as fuck and I’m TIRED of it. 

I know I’m mostly able to put up warding when I’m feeling strong enough energetically. 

Problems I run into: It gets worse/angrier when offensive is used, and it LOVES preying on energetic vulnerability. 

I’m asking now because I’m a bit energetically spent. The other day I just put up some really taxing wards for protection because I knew me and my confidante (witchy partner) would be emotionally and energetically vulnerable and I wanted to ward off basically everything. (This place is very active with just like, nature and other types of things)

The good news? It worked FANTASTICALLY for the duration I needed it to. The bad news? I didn’t manage to design them to last and since I’m fairly drained they’re sort of getting weak which means ol’ nasty is a tap-tap-tapping on them. 

If Anyone has any advice or good references I could look up, that would be fantastic. Thank you!

@positivehappenstance

So I very rarely reblog anything, but you seem to need a helping hand and that’s really what my blog is about. 

So first things first: What are we working with?

To me, this sounds like it could be a number of things but there are a few things that are more likely that others, for the same reason that a person with a cough is more likely to have a cold than diphtheria; colds are just way more common.

1. A Predatory Natural Spirit:
   In the same way that a wild animal can be a predator, so can a spirit, and like all predators this means it needs to feed on prey. However, unlike a creature made of matter (such as a wolf or a human), it doesn’t eat the body of its prey but rather eats its energy. This doesn’t make it evil or malicious, so I would strongly advise against calling it as such: it’s just a predator, and like any living creature it needs to eat. It just happens to need to eat, basically, you. 
   
   
2. A Malicious Human Spirit:
   Now I work mostly with natural spirits but I have known many, many people who work with human spirits and so I would consider myself at least fairly knowledgeable of them, if not actually any good at working with them.Unlike natural spirits a human spirit CAN be malicious, usually as a result of being lost and scared and angry, and so it lashes out in any way it can which often means humans living in the area have their psyches and spirits injured. This can often cause a lot more than just fatigue and mental lethargy, but can actually result in illness and disease as your body’s vital energy is drained and it becomes less able to defend and repair itself against more physical problems like bacteria and lacerations.
   
   
3. A Psychic or Energy Vampire:
   These are essentially human beings who either knowingly or subconsciously are probing out into people’s spirits and stealing energy from them to feed themselves. They are not true “vampires” in the sense of an actual physiological need to do this in order to function, but instead are using this feeding as a means of boosting themselves and increasing their own strength. Again many (and I would argue most) psychic vampires don’t realise what they’re doing, but are often confused with just major extroverts because like extroverts they seem to become energised by having people around them. Unlike extroverts however, being in the presence of a psychic vampire will drain you of energy, mental acuity, and other faculties quite quickly. 

There are a few other things it could be, but these are by far the most likely so we’ll start with these. If that doesn’t work, feel free to ask me! 

Which is probably the cause? How can I stop it?

In my experience, it’s almost certainlya predatory natural spirit. They’re by far the most common, and thankfully also the easiest to deal with. In this case, stopping the problem is really as simple as purging the area of spirits and then keeping up barriers to stop more coming back to fill the gap. At the moment what you’re doing is essentially holding up a shield to stop the spirit from getting to you, but that’s an active process which means it uses a lot of energy and concentration. When you’re unable to actively hold up shields, such as when you’re asleep or fatigued, the spirit is able to freely attack you and slowly drain you of energy, and because you’re never pushing the spirit away from yourself even after you start defending yourself again it’ll just hang around outside your shields until you get too tired to keep them up again.

So, the best way to purge an area of natural spirits is to use banishing and exorcising herbs in all the areas where you’re usually affected (spirits tend to be tied to a specific place rather than following a person around), and then placing sigils at strategic points around the exorcised area to create a barrier that the spirits cannot cross to get back to you. The best herbs to use for banishing spirits from an area are sage, rosemary, agrimony, lavender, and angelica, but honestly starting off with just the most accessible to you is fine. I’d recommend taking a combination of dried sage leaves and dried rosemary leaves, and burning them in a pot (or using sage and rosemary incenses) before carrying the burning herbs/incense around your home in all the places that are affected by the spirits (so, all of it). 

If for some reason you can’t have an open flame, as I know some places don’t allow this, then you can instead mix sage and rosemary with water and salt in a large sealed bottle, and then leave it to sit for at least three days in a place out of direct sunlight. Then take the water from inside the bottle (leave the herbs) and using a brush “paint” the water across the lintel of all the doors and windows in your home that face the outside (so an inside door that just opens from one room to another would be ignored). There are more of these simple water spells on my blog.

After that, you’ll want to go to the most southerly, easterly, westerly and northerly points in your house (which is almost always the four corners of your home), and draw warding sigils on either the floor, walls or ceiling at that point to stop spirits from crossing the invisible lines they draw between each other. If you live in a house with space to do this, you could also go outside your house and bury four small stakes into the ground (you can bury them completely, that’s fine) that have the sigils drawn, burnt or carved into them. If you’d like to make your own warding sigils I have a post on learning the basics of sigil magick here on my blog, but if you don’t mind using a sigil someone else has already made then there’s one right here that I made last year!

How do I stop this in the future? 

Well, first off, like most novices you probably made the simple and easily made mistake that we’ve ALL made at some point or another: you didn’t cast a circle when you performed spells or messed around with energy work. A spell is basically a big ol’ beacon of power and energy into the universe, and if you don’t shield that, if you don’t protect that, then you’re going to attract predators who want to feed on that energy. It’s a common mistake, and simple enough to prevent by casting a circle before you do any spells or workings in the future! 

If you don’t know how to cast a circle, surprise surprise I’ve got a how-to on my blog. However, bear in mind that a circle doesn’t have to be physical, and it should be large enough for you to NOT STEP OUT OF IT as you perform your spell. If at any point you leave the circle during your spell, the FIRST THING you must do when you go to restart the spell is redraw the magick of the circle. If you’re using a physical circle as a focus to help the magick the physical circle doesn’t have to be redrawn, but the energy must be recast. 

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I hope that helps you dear! We’ve all been novice Witches before and you’ll learn fast, so I hope this helps you and answers your question! 

For my regular followers, if you’d like to read this again in the future, I’m tagging this post with “spirits”, “spirit exorcism”, and “common mistakes”.

– Juniper Wildwalk

Hello everyone! It’s been AGES since I’ve posted a Harry Potter inspired post. This isn’t really so much a spell or anything “serious”, but I thought it might be fun to equate the Hogwarts magical curriculum with magic that can be studied in the real world. This curriculum probably isn’t very practical to follow exactly, but it might be a fun guide for the beginning witch to help guide you in your magical learnings. Perhaps the “years” can be condensed into shorter time periods (like months, for example?) to help make the curriculum a bit more practical. Regardless, I hope you enjoy!

First-Second Years:

First years are sorted into one of the four houses (you can find plenty of quizzes online to help find out which house you belong in). Use this masterpost to learn more about your house and how it can relate to your real-world magical practice.

Required core classes:

Charms– Basics of spellwork, casting etc.

Potions– Basic kitchen witchcraft

History of magic– Study of the history of witchcraft throughout different cultures, time periods etc.

Defense against the Dark Arts– Basics of magical protection, cleansing etc.

Astronomy– Basics of astrology, planetary witchcraft (aka space witchcraft)

Herbology– Basic green witchcraft and herbalism

Flying– Basics of astral travel, not necessarily performing astral travel at this level yet. Optional for second year.

Transfiguration– Basic energy work & manipulation

Third-Fourth Years:

Each of the above core subjects should be continued at more advanced levels (flying is optional).

Students must choose a minimum of two of the following elective courses:

Arithmancy– Numerology for divination purposes, sacred geometry

Divination– Tarot reading, tea leaf reading, scrying, and other means of divination

Care and Keeping of Magical Creatures– Study of magical creatures, spirit work, fairy craft etc.

Study of Ancient Runes– Use of runes for divination and magical purposes

Muggle Studies– Use of witchcraft in everyday modern life

Fifth Year:

Classes are continued as in the 3rd and 4th years.

Magical skills and interests are assessed. Courses for the next year are determined based on these skills and interests. Courses may be specialized to fit the student’s needs and skill levels.

Sixth Year:

Certain core classes may be dropped at this time to make way for the classes that are of the student’s interests and skill-levels.

Optional: Apparition– Remote viewing, visualization skills etc.

Optional: Alchemy– Elemental magic studies

Seventh Year:

Classes continue on normally from the sixth year. Apparition will not be offered, but alchemy will still be available.

Extracurricular Activities:

Available all years. Can be used to help students explore their own personal interests.

Ancient Studies– Similar to History of Magic with an emphasis on ancient magical practices

Art– Sigil design and usage

Frog Choir, Music, Orchestra– Incorporating music and songs into witchcraft

Ghoul Studies– Spirit work

Magical Theory– Philosophical and theoretical approaches to different types of magic and how they work (see theseposts for some examples)s

Xylomancy– Obscure, overlooked, and uncommon forms of divination

I hope you enjoyed! Much of the information about Hogwarts curriculum is appreciatively sourced from the Harry Potter wiki :) Thanks for reading,

Livi

theoryofmagick:

I figured, “What better way to celebrate coming back to Tumblr?” (Yes, celebrate. I’m trying to be happy, dammit!). This is a variation of my own Ritual of Announcement - a pre-initiation or pre-dedication ritual, a simple act meant to be performed when one decides to first start studying magic. Traditionally, Rituals of Announcement (which varies in name across traditions) are for announcing your intent to walk the path, start learning, or begin practicing -  a cosmic “Hello World!” if you will!

Rituals of Announcement are designed to be personalized and non-binding - so feel free to tweak the recipe to your desire!

A Ritual of Announcement

Supplies: Red candle (of any size), rose petals, a wand (or your finger), something to mark the quarters

1. Get yourself ready - do what you like to get comfortable, in a magickal state of mind, etc. Play music, pick out your favorite incense, get really personal in your own space.

2. Place your candle and wand in the center of where you will be working.

3. Here, you will create a circle - if you want to skip this step, that’s fine. There are multiple ways to go about this, but a common method is to place four candles, four stones, or four markers at the four quarters (North, East, South, and West). It really is up to your own preference, as long as the markers form a rough circle.

4. Ground and center. Take your wand (or your finger), and, moving clockwise, draw a circle on the ground according to the markers. You don’t actually need to touch the ground or draw a physical circle, of course, but it does help to visualize the boundary of the circle spilling forth from the tip of your wand.

5. Now that your circle is complete, you can start the ritual. Strew the rose petals around the circle. Sitting in front of the candle, make a small speech, announcing your intent to begin practicing or studying magic. Something along the lines of “It is I, (name), and I welcome what is to come” would be perfectly fine.

6. Once you’re ready, light the candle. Once it is lit, that will be your signal of intent.

7. Sit by the fire for a while and contemplate. It’s generally rather nice to let the candle burn down if it is a small one (such as a tealight or chime), but you can always move the remnants to a fire-safe place later to let the burning finish.

8. Once the candle is burned down, it is done. Your announcement has been sent! Draw the circle back up through your wand (or, again, finger), and remove the markers. Leave the ritual components where they lie for a night, or, if you prefer, place the remains of the candle and the rose petals on your altar. It is done!

I created this Ritual of Announcement a while ago based on Hardie’s, and I’m still quite fond of it! It’s non-demoninational but does use circle-drawing, allowing for replacement for those who don’t call the elements. Theoretically, you could replace the rose with your own initiatory herb, or replace the Quarters with a cord, using the same ritual format!

Rituals of Announcement are not Rituals of Initiation - they act as more of a “hello, I’m here!”, an optional prerequisite to initiating study or practice formally, and do not require you to commit to a path to perform.