#witch quotes

I’VE LEARNED

I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow. I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. I’ve learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you’ll miss them when they’re gone from your life. I’ve learned that making a “living” is not the same as making a “life”. I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back. I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. I’ve learned that even when I have pains, I don’t have to be one. I’ve learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back. I’ve learned that I still have a lot to learn.

─ Maya Angelou

You’re going to realize it one day - that happiness was never about your job or your degree or being in a relationship. Happiness was never about following the footsteps of all of those who came before you; it was never about being like the others. One day, you’re going to see it - that happiness was always about the discovery, the hope, the listening to your heart and following it wherever it chose to go. Happiness was always about being kinder to yourself; it was always about embracing the person you were becoming. One day, you will understand that happiness was always about learning how to live with yourself, that your happiness was never in the hands of others. It was always about you. It was always about you. 

“I think it’s brave. I think it’s brave that you get up in the morning when your heart aches and life is messy and you do not feel like being soft for the world. I think it is brave that you continue to love and express and open your soul, despite the way you were treated in the past. I think it is brave that you keep going, that you keep believing in something more, something bigger, even when you may not know what you are hoping for. I think it is brave that you fight, I think it is brave that you choose, every single day, to move forward - because that is what makes you strong. That is what makes you strong.”

─ Bianca Sparacino

and perhaps
what made her beautiful
was not her appearance
or what she achieved,
but in her love
and in her courage,
and her audacity
to believe:
no matter 
the darkness
around her,
Light ran wild
within her,
and that was the way 
she came alive,
and it showed up
in everything. 

“People should fall in love more. Fall in love with the way your coffee swirls as soon as you pour the milk in. Fall in love with the look your dog gives you when you wake up. Fall in love with the rare moment when your cat doesn’t ignore you. Fall in love with the person who tells you to have a good day. Fall in love with the waiter who gives you extra chili fries. Fall in love with sweaters in winter and cold lemonade in summer. Fall in love with the moment your head hits the pillow. Fall in love with talking to someone until 4 a.m. Fall in love with the days you can hit the snooze button over and over again. Fall in love when a lover stares at you for five hours. Fall in love with the stars when they look at you. Fall in love with the sound of someone breathing. Fall in love with the bus if it’s on time or the train if it comes early. Fall in love with everything possible.” 

─ Pillow Thoughts, Courtney Peppernell 

“But there are days I do feel that way, and I am beginning to know that it is because I hold on. I fight. I resist. It doesn’t even matter what I resist; there is simply something in me that tends to resist things as they are. I have been fighting since I was very small. And I believe that my addiction was a response, in some measure, to the fact that the fight was futile, and I could not tolerate that fact. I couldn’t tolerate the fact that I did not control the world. I could not, or would not, learn to accept it.” 

─ Waiting, Marya Hornbacher

YOU ARE FOREVER MAKING HISTORY.

Never forget this. Each time that you feel tempted to romanticise the past, believing that it was a much better time, remember that we are creating the present right here, in every making moment. We design as we go. Each passing minute is just as important as the rose-coloured past. One day we will say, of today, or next month, or next year, “Well, wasn’t that a moment? Wasn’t it a shocking, unpredictable time? There was so much I didn’t know. Didn’t the time fly?” 

─ Yrsa Daley-Ward

“If I am a witch, then so be it, I said. And I took to eating black things - coffee, dark chiles, the bruised part of fruit, the darkest, blackest things to make me hard and strong.” 

─ Sandra Cisneros

“Anger is the demand of accountability, It is evaluation, judgment, and refutation. It is reflective, visionary, and participatory. It’s a speech act, a social statement, an intention, and a purpose. It’s a risk and a threat. A confirmation and a wish. It is both powerlessness and power, palliative and a provocation. In anger, you will find both ferocity and comfort, vulnerability and hurt. Anger is the expression of hope.

How much anger is too much? Certainly not the anger that, for many of us, is a remembering of a self we learned to hide and quiet. It is wilful and disobedient. It is survival, liberation, creativity, urgency, and vibrancy. It is a statement of need. An insistence of acknowledgment. Anger is a boundary. Anger is boundless. An opportunity for contemplation and self-awareness. It is commitment. Empathy. Self-love. Social responsibility. If it is poison, it is also the antidote. The anger we have as women is an act of radical imagination. Angry women burn brighter than the sun.”

─ Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her

─ Painting by Frida Kahlo

“Yes, Mother,” I said. “Promise me you will never disappear from me again. Show me how I can always know you’re here. Show me how to share my joy with you, that you will be happy to receive it.”

“Oh, my daughter,” I said. “You will forget that I am here. This is the way of human beings, to forget. But you found your way back to me once and so can find your way back again, because I am always here. The world will hurt you again and again. You will hurt yourself again and again. And when it does, and when you do, you will remember me again and again. You will drop to your knees. You will hold yourself. You will be your own daughter again.” 

─ Melissa Broder, Milk Fed

“Why not? Why not be as ambitious as you want to be? Why not be pretentious? What is pretentions but to have the pretence to the assumption that you belong here. Be prepared to be inconceivable and then be prepared to innovate beyond that because we need you and we are ready for you.”

─ Ocean Vuong

Twenty-three

One day you wake up and you’re twenty-three and you can’t remember what it feels like to be seventeen but you still cry to your mother after a bad day and you look a little older but you don’t really feel it. One day you’re twenty-three and your great-aunt is telling you how mature you look and how you grew a little taller but inside you still remember sitting under the oak tree reading with no meetings tomorrow and no rent to pay and the only thing you can think about is how at seventeen you thought at twenty-three you would know everything and now you can’t remember how you got from there to here. But seventeen-year-old you was wrong because you know only some things and not everything.

You know that coffee tastes better in the mornings and your home isn’t your home anymore; it’s “Mum and Dad’s”. You know your car needs servicing every six months and groceries are harder to do after breakups. She liked cookie dough and walnuts and strawberry-flavored milk and now every time you go to the store you can’t buy spaghetti without remembering it was a Friday night and she kissed you for the first time and the heat from her skin could have set your entire place on fire. One day you’re twenty-three and you’re trying to explain to a seventeen-year-old all the mistakes you made so they won’t make them too, when all you really want is for someone to realize you still don’t have the first clue.

─ Courtney Peppernell, Pillow Thoughts

You are not required to be small.
You are not required to be pleasant.
You are not required to be conventional.
You are not required to be accommodating.
You are not required to be submissive.
You are not required to be merciful. 
You are not required to be quiet.

─ Trista Mateer

Her Time

“She has been feeling it for awhile now - that sense of awakening. There is a gentle rage simmering inside her, and it is getting stronger by the day. She will hold it close to her - she will nurture it and let it grow. She won’t let anyone take it away from her. It is her rocket fuel and finally, she is going places. She can feel it down to her very core - this is her time. She will not only climb mountains - she will move them too.”

─ Lang Leav

there are stars you
haven’t seen
and loves you haven’t loved
there’s light you haven’t felt
and sunrises yet to dawn
there are dreams 
you haven’t dreamt
and days you haven’t lived
and nights you won’t forget
and flowers yet to grow
and there is more to you
that you have yet to 
know.

I don’t know if ‘spell fallout’ is already a term or not, but I always feel like it’s an important thing to discuss in Witchcraft. Basically spell fallout are the unintended or unaccounted events that happen after you perform a spell. Let’s use what happened to me as a great example of how you can F up your life with magic. 

For about 4-5 years I was working at a company that I on and off loved. At first it was not great, but we moved around and I kind of began to like where I was at and more importantly what I was working on. I learned a lot and even though it was frustrating, I wanted to be there. Then after a few years we were moved again to another space and it was a little horrible. Around that time I was super stuck and not feeling like I was experiencing any growth. Of course I blamed my environment and the circumstances around me and not my own fear-driven decision making. I could have simply looked for another job that continued my career growth. But I didn’t, I blamed everything and everyone else around me. 

Out of frustration I did a spell on the waning moon to let go of all the things that didn’t serve me. I was NOT specific and I just generally did the magic without even reading my tarot. That week I was laid off at work. I have not always been financially stable in my life and having the security of a steady paycheck was a HUGE deal for me. And now it was gone. The rug was pulled out from under me and my safe little job had vanished. Being laid off or even fired was one of my biggest fears and that experience sent me into a huge month-long panic attack. 

Of course, afterwards everything was fine. It took some time, but I was able to secure employment and continue to grow in my career. I also had a lot of personal growth related to that experience. I let go of tons of fear, moved forward with my own side business and stopped giving into other people’s expectations of me and started living for myself. 

Although these were all AMAZING things that I could never have accomplished without the help of my irresponsible spell, THERE ARE BETTER WAYS to achieve this. So before you cast a spell and turn your life into a hot mess for months on end, think about why you need the spell and all the things that could happen in your life from the casting of this one spell. And most importantly, be specific about what you want in your spell. Otherwise you’ll accidentally ‘let go’ of that job that might no longer be serving you, but is still paying the bills. 

HOW TO MAKE A CLEANSING ROOM SPRAY

I was looking for a cleansing incense a few months ago and ran across a shop that sold room sprays. The idea is you can use these sprays to cleanse the ‘vibe’ in your room before ritual work. I picked up one for the Full Moon and one for the New Moon and I freaking LOVE them. Especially if I’m in a hurry and don’t want to light a whole charcoal block to cleanse with loose incense or any incense in general I just use these witchy sprays.

Both sprays are come in dark glass bottles and filled with incense, distilled water, crystals and blessed by the full moon. I use them so often now that I wanted to try my hand at making my own room spray.

This recipe is for a cleansing room spray that can be used pre any spell or ritual. It’s great for times you’re on the go and can’t light incense or are sensitive to the smoke from incense in general. Room sprays are my for sure go-to now,

What you need

One small glass spray bottle

Lavender and Sage essential oil

Moon water (bonus if it’s distilled)

One small Amethyst

What you’ll do

It’s pretty simple. You just need to place the ingredients in the spray bottle. Try decorating a sticker or label and place it on your glass bottle so you know which spray it is. If you’re curious about how to make Moon Water I’ve written about it before here. You basically leave water outside during the full moon to collect the energy and you can use the water for different things like ritual baths and to make this room spray.

Change it up by adding different crystals, essential oils and herbs to make sprays for energy, self love, or anything else you can think of. I would love to make a protection spray too.

One of my favorite ways to spell cast is with a deck of tarot cards. It’s so simple and effective, and you can literally use this basic spell for anything you want to draw in or release from your life. You can use any tarot deck for this spell technique, but I keep an older deck that I don’t use for readings anymore and use that. 

What you need:

You can improvise in any way, but I usually have incense burning, a few white candles out (tea lights are my fave) and whatever crystals I feel are appropriate for the issue at hand. You can always use a general white quartz if you’re unsure. 

I always include a physical portion of whatever I’m spell casting for. If it’s a job I want, I might print out my resume and have it laying on the bottom, or collect a some dirt from around the building. If the spell is about me, I might cut a lock of my hair. Just so there is something to anchor the spell to. 

I will usually add whatever other elements I might need for visualization or to set the tone. Some things I have used was ribbons for school colors, pictures, herbs that have relevant properties and things like that. 

What you’ll do:

Start out by predetermining which three tarot cards you want to use. If I am looking for a job for instance I might choose the 10 of pentacles to represent money, judgement to represent the decision of me working and a third card that closely represents the work I will be doing. 

Begin your spell by casting a circle or simply visualizing a bright white light around you, protecting you and your space. Light your candles and incense. Set out your physical items leaving space for your cards. 

Set out the first one and visualize in your minds eye the intention of your spell. Then lay out the second one and visualize you getting what you want or the decision being made in your favor. Set out your third card and visualize you in the position of where you want to be. 

Meditate on this for a few minutes, making sure you are releasing your intention out into the world and knowing that if there is any mundane work to be done that you are committed to your part. (Mundane work would be working on your resume, brushing up on any skills, and submitting for the job…basically doing your best effort to get where you want to be.)

When you feel like you have released your intention, blow out the candles (or let them burn up to you) and ignite your incense. Thank the energies and release your circle however you want to. 

Collect all the items and place them in a small bag and carry them with you. Leave your tarot cards out (if you can) and revisit that energy as many times as you want until your spell is successful. Happy casting!

Someone once told me that I was a collector of energy. That I walked around  picking up everyone else’s shit garbage vibes and let it effect me. And afterwards I would need so much time to decompress from even the smallest ‘peopley’ interaction. I would lay in bed and not want to get up for dayyyyyys. Of course I had to. I had to work and do all the things. But it was so overwhelming and exhausting that sometimes I felt myself dragging through the minutes just waiting to get back home. 

Then someone told me I was a collector of energy and that I needed to be a curator instead. Keep the good things, the positive feelings and interactions but trash the rest. 

That small tiny crumb of advice changed my life. Shitty things will always happen and there’s nothing you can do to change that. But don’t collect other people’s shit energy. Don’t bring it into you space and most importantly don’t let it effect you.