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I was sitting at my βhearthβ today, working on a simple abundance spell. Nothing crazy. A green candle. A copper offering bowl. A piece of parchment off to the side, waiting for me write my intention. The scent of burning incense filled the room. Just a quiet moment to ask the universe for a little steadiness and support in my often chaotic life.Β
Usually, my work is a bit moreβ¦ liminal. Iβm used to the quiet company of spirits and energies - visitors who come to me more often than I go out seeking them; the restless, often heavy shadows of the crossroads.
My 10 year-old son wandered in to see what I was doing, lingering the way kids do when something is a bit unfamiliar but piques their interest at the same time. He was curious. A little spooked, but curious.
Heβs at the age where curiosity and unease of the unknown sit side by side. Part of him was fascinated, part of him was a little creeped out. And I canβt say I blame him. Heβs grown up surrounded by the same imagery and rhetoric we all have: church sermons, movies, videos, Halloween decorations that tie witches to spookiness, horror, and darkness. Generational trauma that feels like itβs been woven into our very DNA over the centuries, an almost innate, knee-jerk reaction that tells us witchcraft and magic are things to be feared.
That kind of conditioning runs deep. The insidious social conditioning that says witchcraft is dangerousβ¦ wrongβ¦ even βdemonic.β
Heβs absorbed those stories, that energy, just like anyone raised in a culture shaped so heavily by evangelical fear and control. And I understand that feeling. I lived it once too. More deeply than he ever has to (thankfully). When I was his age, I was taught to believe the craft was something evil. Something that invited demonic oppression, demonic possession and even the devil himself.
But it isnβt.
And now, my children get to have something I didnβt: the space to see something different free of fear. They have the choice to explore their curiosities in an environment that tells them that they are safe, and that itβs okay.
My son worries sometimes - the way children do when they see a door they arenβt ready to walk through - that the spirits who seek me out might find him, too. And maybe someday they will. I've seen the same gift in him that I see in me.
But for now, I am his anchor. I tell him that he is safe, that the shadows arenβt monsters, and that his world is his own to command. I want him to know that the veil doesnβt have to be a source of fear, and more importantly, that he holds the key to his own boundaries. He doesnβt have to open his heart or his sight to anything he isnβt ready for. Not ever, if that is the path he chooses. And that Iβll be right there, holding the light so he never has to navigate the dark alone.
And tonight, the light was particularly warm. Despite his usual apprehensions, he chose to stay. He hovered nearby, watching me arrange my tools like he was trying to solve a puzzle.
βWhat are you doing?β he asked as I worked quietly, steadily.
βIβm about to go full Harry Potter,β I half-joked, hoping to put him at ease with something familiar to him. Something that softens spell-work and witchcraft, painting it in a not-so-terrifying light.
It seemed to work a little. He giggled at my joke, and even brought his tablet back to pull up the Harry Potter theme music re-mixed as a hauntingly beautiful instrumental for me to listen to while I set up the workstation. He stuck around. Asked questions. And I answered them the way I always try to. Honestly. Gently. Carefully.
Iβve always been firm about one thing: I will never force my path onto my children. Because I grew up in a household where βchoiceβ of belief wasnβt even a concept. As a child, I didnβt have the capacity to conclude that anything aside from what my parents taught me could be the truth.
I know that my parents thought they were doing the right thing at the time. That they were βtraining up their child in the way they should go,β as their belief had taught them to do. But without realizing it, they stripped my agency away from me. And now, looking back as an adult, I wish I could have been shown that there are other ways to believe. I wish I had been given the βOKβ to explore without fear.
So, I donβt tell my children what to believe. I donβt give them answers to memorize. I give them that βOKβ to explore. I let them ask the hard questions, and I try my best to answer. None of that βbecause I said so,β or βGodβs ways are higher than ours." None of those bullshit excuses to avoid having to think beyond what we've been told to believe, or to challenge ideas we've been conditioned from a young age not to challenge.
As they grow, my children get to choose their own path whether they eventually want to pick up a candle themselves or simply watch from the doorway. They know the light is always there. And they always have the agency to choose.
And tonight, I got to see that agency in action. My son didnβt just stay to watch. He engaged. He wanted to understand the βhowβ and βwhyβ of the work I was doing, processing it through his own lens. He admitted he found it βcreepyβ but also βkind of coolβ. He told me he might even want to help me with spells someday. Just not the βscaryβ ones. Nothing that calls upon or summons spirits, or anything like that. I smiled and told him that was completely fair, and I would never ask him to do anything like that. Heβs my priority and I want him to feel safe. Comfortable. Confident and ready if and when the time comes.
Instead, I explained that not everything I do is about spirits. Sometimes these spells and rituals are about setting intentions. About being mindful. About putting our hopes, our wishes, and intentions out into the universe and seeing what grows from it.
The apprehension was still there, but the fear shifted more and more into the realm of curiosity.
My oldest son is a world-builder at heart. He always has been since he was little. He has always been creating and building worlds of his own through games like Minecraft and Roblox. So the idea of βsetting the rulesβ for our own environment clicked for him.
And the best part of all of this was the wisdom of this child.
As I burned the parchment in my copper bowl, we both watched the flame take its time. It caught slowly, smoldering rather than bursting into flame. While I was focused on the energy of the spell, he was focused on the metaphor.
βMaybe itβs burning slow to show us we need to be responsible,β he said. βLikeβ¦ take it slow and be careful with the money when it comes.β
That wasnβt something I had said. It was an insight that had come to him entirely on its own. Him trusting his own intuition and wisdom already.
And for a moment I just sat there, letting it sink in. Realizing that this is what it looks like when you donβt teach someone what to believe but give them space to think. To interpret and find meaning in their own way.
He looked proud of himself then. And I was proud of him too, as always.
In my practice, I work with Hecate mainly and other deities of wisdom and transformation. But today, my 10-year-old son reminded me that sometimes the most profound insights donβt come from spirits, but from the minds of children who have not yet been taught by the world that their thoughts, curiosities and intuition are wrong.
Image ID: A reply from @le-violoniste-du-diable that reads: "Why organize by date and not topic? What's the purpose? How can you find anything if it's not grouped together by subject?"
I was going to leave a reply beneath this question I got on my note-taking post, but it was getting really long, so I decided to turn it into its own post. Because these are good questions!
I recommend writing raw, in the moment notes for studying or experimentation by date instead of topic for a few reasons.
The first reason is to prevent writing paralysis and/or shame over jumping between topics or dropping a topic altogether. I find that putting a date and title on things and letting that be enough without worrying about putting something in the "right" category or making it "look good" makes it easier to focus on the notes themselves. These notes aren't for an aesthetic or even for a formal reference book. They're for me to remember what I learned or thought about on a particular day.
Which leads to my second reason. Writing in a linear fashion helps me remember things. Due to time blindness, I struggle with recognizing my progress and remembering when I did things. Taking notes in date order helps me recall when I took them and keep time on a greater scale.
The third reason is kind of twofold. I recommend writing raw notes in date order instead of by topic to prevent leaving excessive blank pages and running out of room. When I take a notebook meant for experimental notes and put page dividers or sections in, I always run out of room in one place and leave too much space in others. It's a waste of space. I can't know in advance how many notes something will take up.
If I pick up a book and reserve 20 pages to it and drop it immediately, that's 20 blank pages. See point #1 regarding shame. On the other hand, if I look briefly into a new topic that I end up fixated on, even dedicating a whole section of notebook to it might not be enough space. Then, my notes end up separated anyways.
The fourth reason is for memory reasons again. Sometimes, I want to look back on the things I researched and learned in a given year. My raw note-taking notebooks are organized by year for a reason. Once a year ends, even if the notebook isn't full yet, I start a new one. This lets me open up a notebook and read through my old thoughts in the order I had them, seeing a linear progression of my growth.
As for your questions about how to find things, that's what the titles and descriptions are for. The entry titles should be short and descriptive. "Notes about Spells" won't get you very far. "Personal Theories about Spell Paradigms" is much, much better. Not to mention, they should be large and obvious. The descriptions go into more but still brief detail, allowing easy skimming to figure out if a set of notes are the ones you're actually looking for.
The other part of finding things and linking pages is the page numbers. Anytime I cover a topic in my notes that I've written about before in the same book (or even previous ones!) or when I pick up where I left off, I reference the previous page(s). That way, I can easily find prior entries by flipping right to them. It can be time-consuming, but I find the act of physically going back and noting down where I've taken notes before forces me to get in the mindset and remember what I've already written. The physical reminder and drawing of the connection between then and now helps connect all of my thoughts coherently.
The final point I want to make is that the note-taking post specifically is not about making a grimoire. It isn't about making a formal reference document to come back to for tried and true spells or confirmed information. It's about testing things, taking down your thoughts, and learning. It isn't a textbook, it's a research log.
Confirmed, solid information you're confident in, proven spells, fleshed out theories and beliefs, and other parts of your actual practice go from the notebook into a grimoire. The grimoire should be organized by topic, definitely, since it's a reference document. Not only that, but I believe a grimoire should be in a binder, as opposed to a bound notebook.
(I have a whole post in the works about turning notes into a nice-looking grimoire; stay tuned for that at some point in the next few weeks!)
Obviously, this method isn't going to work for everyone. No single method is perfect. Hence why I stated my guidelines are extremely opinion-driven. If you prefer to take your notes directly into your grimoire or have a system already that works for you, that's great! Good for you. The purpose of the note-taking post was to help encourage people who are afraid of "ruining" a notebook or taking "bad notes" to give it a go in a structured way.
As with all advice you find on the internet, use your good judgment. If organizing by date doesn't make sense for you, don't do it. Use a binder, use a digital app, whatever you want. Take what resonates, leave what doesn't, and all that.
Thank you for asking this!! It really is a great question about information I didn't want to get into on the original post for length reasons. (:
Last year, I began the process of compiling my first grimoire. After more than sixteen years of practicing witchcraft, finally writing things down has been something of a strange experience.
For one thing, this book's organization seems completely arbitrary from a reader's perspective, but feels quite stable from an energy perspective. The organization techniques are unlikely to change, so an index shall have to find its way into the last pages of the book, which means that the pages will have to become numbered at some point.
For another, I find myself walking a line between wanting to write an entirely instructional grimoire and wanting to write in sections that could best be defined as "field notes." Fortunately, there is still time before that decision needs to be made, but the indecisiveness stems primarily from what purpose this grimoire is intended to serve. Will it be shared with other witches at any point, or is it entirely for me? Perhaps more relevantly, will it be shared with other witches in my lifetime? And why does this distinction seem to matter so much?
There's also the matter of belatedly realizing that I've added sections I neither need nor want. They're not useful to me. They're simply bits of information I happen to have. The kitchen correspondences section, for example, is utterly unnecessary. Why on Earth should I care to note what chamomile does for one's tea when I do not like the taste of chamomile or half the other things I wrote down? Sometimes, it would seem, the hoarding of knowledge is only that. Thus, it appears some adjustments will need to be made.
And in the vein of adjustments, it occurs to me that there may be rather distinct benefits to having a grimoire in a binder format. How much of this information am I likely to find irrelevant or juvenile some years down the path? How much will I someday want to remove? Unfortunately, I dislike the way that paper moves in binders; so, instead, I shall simply need to be more mindful in the future.
The book I have started my grimoire in is neither a binder nor refillable, but it is rather excellent. The paper takes most every pen in my collection without bleeding (though the ones it did not take well leave me with a distinct desire to redo that entire section). And the book's energy is incredibly steady; I could not possibly be more pleased with the results of the sigil I crafted for it.
I am, however, beginning to suspect that this book is too small. And, thus, I am left with yet another decision. There is a larger journal in my collection that I could possibly transfer everything to, but it's cover is markedly different and I am uncertain about how that will impact the energy. It would also be possible to acquire the same journal I'm already using, again, which might be large enough were I to remove the unnecessary sections. And, still, there is a third option on the table, which is a slightly larger journal whose cover would allow for embossment; that idea is intriguing, but I don't know how I feel about the fact that it ties shut. Alas, I find I am no closer to making any particular call. Indecision, it seems, makes for relatively constant company.
For now, I'll carry on in the book that I already have, so as to get a better sense of what ought to go into the next one.
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A simple, elegant design, set in holographic gold foil. The Priestess is represented by a floating skull dressed in a veil of some type and crowned with an upturned crescent moon. Her skull floats above a set of what appear to be robes. The black background is speckled with dots, perhaps indicating stars.
Ko-Fi supporters (even one-time supporters for as low as $1!) can read my grimoire notes on this card in the Alleyman's Tarot deck, plus notes on interesting card combinations!
Aese the Witch published a supporter-only post on Ko-fi!
[picture of tasseomantic tea cup with the four directions, south at the handle]
Conceptions of the Cup:
Centre/Bottom of the Cup: Where the tea is most potent and the leaves settle βnaturallyβ...
-time/events/symbols most immediate to the self/spirit/heart and the present.
Horizontal Middle of the Cup: Where the fingers may support or hold the cup and the spoon stirs...
-time/events/symbols relating to the near future. Often predicaments of mind, subtle hints, puzzles and small symbols to scrutinize. It gets harder to read as I go βupβ the Cup, farther into the future, it seems. Makes sense??
Top/Lip of the Cup: Where the water ripples as lips touch lip and whispers question and stir ripples tea...
-time/events/symbols and trails of hints and direction towards the path of the future beyond the βnearβ. When the question contains a short time frame (ie., asking about an event in the near future), nothing but a few illegible specks may appear here, if anything at all. I often find spirals here that trail up from the near future.β
-Ra, a witch.
P.S. I wrote yβall an embellished version. What can I say, I felt inspired. Thanks if you read this! ^^
