The 13 Goals of a Witch, as interpreted by Killian Elhaz
Know Thyself: On a personal level, this is about knowing who you are and what you want. I think most people underestimate what goes into this process - it involves taking time to be alone with yourself, trekking into the darkest parts of yourself and then identifying/confronting your inner demons. Knowing oneself takes a level of self-honesty that most people are afraid of, being able to recognize that sometimes WE are the problem causing our problems, and it requires the refusal to blame anyone else. Knowing Thyself requires painfully honest reflection and introspection. On a Wiccan level, this goal is about discovering and recognizing who you are within the Craft, what your place is within it, evaluating what the Rede means to you, and recognizing the personal correspondences you have for certain colors, herbs, crystals, and divinatory practices, and then establishing how you want to incorporate these things into your everyday life.
Know Thy Craft: This one is not just about knowing your Witchcraft, however, as a practicing Wiccan, we should always be studying, practicing, and learning our Craft. This goal is also about whatever you decide to do with your life, outside of the Craft. If you want to be an actor, know your craft. If you want to be a lawyer, know your craft. If you want to be an engineer, know your craft. Whatever you decide to do for a living or hobby outside of your spiritual Craft, it is just as crucial to commit yourself to knowing it as deeply as possible.
Learn & Grow: This goal is somewhat a collective culmination of the previous two. The process of knowing thyself and knowing thy craft is a process that requires learning and growing at every level of your being. It’s a process that can be difficult, scary, and painful, but it can also be liberating, empowering, and self-affirming. It’s also important to learn simply for knowledge’s sake, and to grow from that learning in whatever way serves you most.
Apply Knowledge with Wisdom: This goal builds onto all the previous goals in a way that takes all the learning you’ve been doing, and tells you to apply it in a practical way. This goal requires us to move outside our comfort zone in the pursuit of our desires. I’d like to clarify that this goal isn’t necessarily referring to universal wisdom. However, understanding universal wisdom and operating within universal law can only serve you abundantly. The wisdom being referred to here is the wisdom that comes from learning through study and then doing what you’ve learned by putting it into practice, always analyzing your results. By analyzing the results, you learn more, you can subsequently change the way you put things into practice the next time, and from those new results, you gain more knowledge. As my dad always says, “We only gain wisdom after we needed it.” All the while, through trial & error, your wisdom continually grows, you know yourself a little better each time, and you know your craft just a little more deeply.
Achieve Balance: This one I’ve always struggled with - when I get involved in something new, I go ALL in. I become consumed by it. That’s what happened when I found Wicca and Witchcraft. It became my entire life, instead of becoming a part of my life, and in the process, it made me sick. I was way out of balance. Achieving balance requires looking at all the things you’re involved in, determining to what extent you’re engaging in them, and contemplating whether there’s something that is getting too much, or not enough, of your energy. It can also be applied to simple things, like dieting. Completely withholding certain foods you love because they’re “unhealthy” might seem more productive, but on a deeper, karmic level, ‘complete withholding’ is not an energy of balance nor abundance. Balance requires the avoidance of over-indulgence. Allowing yourself to have dessert periodically, or whatever happens to be the thing you love that you deny yourself the pleasure of having, will help keep you in balance on more than a physical level. I used to always keep myself from having sweets when I was trying to be healthy, but I only did so well at it before I felt unhappy or dissatisfied, and eventually I’d ‘relapse’ and end up binging. Now, I spend most of my days eating healthy, but occasionally, I’ll give myself a slice of brownie, or have some candy, just to satisfy my sweet tooth and remind myself of another goal, “Celebrate Life,” and sweets are a small something I want to celebrate about life!
Keep Your Thoughts/Words in Good Order: I had an epiphany about these two goals that changed everything for me. We hear all the time in ‘manifestation’ and ‘law of attraction’ literature and courses that we have to think positive thoughts about the things we want, or even other people. But when it comes to these rules, it became clear that the directions in which these are emanated are opposite one another, but work together harmoniously and with great results. I realized that keeping our words in good order is for others’ benefit, and keeping our thoughts in good order is for our own benefit, and not just for manifestation’s sake. The words we speak to others have the ability to destroy, or to create. To harm, or to heal. Our interactions with others should serve to heal, uplift, and empower others, and ourselves. It doesn’t mean becoming a doormat or never calling out maltreatment and injustice. It does mean that how we engage with others and the quality of those interactions is a huge indicator of our internal environment, and that internal environment is determined by our thoughts. What we think about ourselves, or even what we think about others, will always color our interactions with other people. Recently (a little over a month ago), I was able to detach from my harmful and damaging thoughts by recognizing them as inner demons. They were thoughts that I knew were not true, on a mental level, but they were wreaking havoc on my emotional body. After seeing these demons for what they were, I developed a ritual to vanquish them. Two days prior to the ritual, I believe they knew they were in danger, and they got LOUD. They put in a last ditch effort to win, to conquer my mind and destroy my faith and my spirit. I spent who knows how long in my bed, in the fetal position, bawling my eyes out. I was clutching my stomach because I was in physical pain from the emotions overwhelming me and the wailing, the whole time just letting it happen, but I also became the observer in the process. Through this battle, I was able to confront the horrible things they were saying and I was able to finally deal with the baggage and wounds I’ve carried with me from my childhood. The next day, for the first time in my life, I woke up feeling like a 25 year old man (I’m now 26), instead of a wounded child. On New Years Eve, I performed the ritual and vanquished those demons once and for all. My thoughts have since changed drastically. They’ve become more positive and self-affirming, and when a demon tries to sneak a thought into my head, I’m much better at capturing it and sending it away. Keeping our thoughts in good order is something that comes through the same process as knowing ourselves. When our thoughts are in good order, our words have no choice but to follow suit.
Celebrate Life: This one is simple, but the actual practice thereof seems complex to so many people. Everyday, there are million things to be grateful for, to celebrate. As human beings with complex mental and emotional bodies, we have a tendency to latch onto all the negative things that occur in our experience. All these goals seem to build onto each other beautifully, because as we begin to know ourself and our craft, as we begin to learn, grow, and apply knowledge with wisdom, as we begin to achieve balance, our thoughts change, and so then do our words, and suddenly, it becomes much easier to recognize all the things in life that we can celebrate. A small daily ritual to celebrate life can be saying, “thank you” three times before your feet even touch the ground in the morning. Creating small personal holidays to celebrate seemingly benign occurrences is a way to celebrate life (i.e. I created my own personal pagan holiday called Prima Nix, or ‘first snow’). And of course, starting a gratitude practice is a way of celebrating life - but remember that all those small great things in your experience are there because of YOU. YOU create all things that show up in your experience, so remember to thank yourself for bringing them to yourself. This practice will help affirm your own divinity and your divine creative power!
Attune with the Cycles of Earth: This one is also simple, but requires a level of discipline many Witches (including myself) lack. Keeping the new and full moons, as well as celebrating the sabbats (if you’re Wiccan), is something we should always do both as a way of celebrating life but also maintaining forward momentum in manifesting our intentions for desired outcomes. This means not just keeping the full and new moons, but paying attention to the phase of the moons and making choices aligned to the phases. Work to create new experience during the waxing phases, work to destroy old habits, relationships, and circumstances that no longer serve during the waning phases. For a magickal example, doing banishing work to vanquish inner demons is a practice that should only be engaged in during the waning phases. Mundanely, doing a purge of your clothing would be a great way to channel the waning energy of the moon. Repairs should happen, if possible, during the waxing phases, as you’re drawing in something new. Taking risks and making new choices to create new circumstances should also happen during the waxing phases. Magickally, you would do work to draw in luck, opportunities, etc. This attuning to the cycles keeps our eyes focused on the future from the perspective of the present moment, which is the only place from which we can create (and destroy, which is sometimes necessary for creating new and better circumstances).
Breathe & Eat Correctly: This goal tells us to eat healthy and treat the body we chose for ourselves kindly. This keeps us at our magickal apex. As I mentioned earlier, balance is still important. Allow yourself to indulge here and there, but balance is key. On a more personal level, breathing correctly (to me) doesn’t include smoking, and I do plan on quitting. I haven’t succeeded yet, but it is a goal I have. Breathing correctly also refers to maintaining awareness of our breath, recognizing when we’re anxious or angry, and using the breath to keep those emotions in check.
Exercise the Body: This one needs no explanation. Get off your ass and challenge yourself physically, provided you’re able-bodied enough to do so. If you’re a person with a disability, see if there are exercises that can be done by people with your condition. There are a multitude of ways to push ourselves, physically. Look for ones that you’re able to do, practice them safely, and do your best. This goal and the previous one are both to help keep you at your magickal (and physical) apex. As a witch, there is nothing more important than keeping your creative power at its peak.
Meditate: This one I haven’t done as well with implementing; I go a few days doing it routinely and then fall off. I’ll get there though; I’m a determined and ambitious Witch. Meditation ties into many other goals, such as breathing correctly, knowing yourself, and keeping your thoughts in good order. Meditation is not only our connection to the present moment, our current physical human experience, but it’s also our direct-connect to the divine and the spirit worlds. Achieving balance means being just as engaged in our physical world as we are in our spiritual world. When the two are in harmony, we are unstoppable. This harmony is best found through meditation. As High Priestess Morgana Moonwater of Coven of the Raven Moon always says, “Meditation is the key that opens every door.”
Honor the Goddess & God: This one, I feel, seems somewhat distant for a lot of Witches. They want to honor the Lord & Lady, but aren’t quite sure how to do it, or how to know if what they do is bringing honor to them. The truth is, if we’re living by the Rede and striving for all the aforementioned goals and implementing them as best we can, there is nothing that honors the Goddess & God more. For me, apart from living by the Rede and striving for the goals, I’ve gotten into the practice of unfiltered prayer within a conjured circle. Once in circle, I light a god & goddess candle and ask for their presence, and then I just talk to them. I’ve had full-on emotional breakdowns before the Lord & Lady, within circle. I’ve spent a whole prayer session just giving thanks to them for being with me and empowering me to make the choices necessary to create the things I was grateful for in my experience. This is my way of honoring them in a more intimate and personal way, by developing a genuine relationship with them.
This is my own personal interpretation of the 13 Goals of a Witch, but I pray they speak to a part of your being and ignite a small fire within you to reflect on your own life, and motivate you to find new and innovative ways to implement them into your own experience! May my own experience serve as the springboard for continued growth and spiritual expansion within you!
In the highest good of all beings,
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