I am new to my magic. I have always been drawn to magic and the magical. Even before Harry Potter made it cool, I found myself fascinated by the occult, by witches, by enchantments and spellwork. And I dabbled once in a while. A little spell here, a few sigils there: magic is what I turned to when I found life a struggle. And for about thirty years of my life, while I may not have been a practising witch, the magical folk continued to hold my interest. Then, about a month or so ago, propelled by some changes in my personal life -- I won't digress further -- I found myself being called to it strongly.
I read up about witchcraft vociferously, I sought out information on the various kinds of witchcraft. The hows and whats and most important of all, the whys. Here's are two important things I've learnt (among other things):
1. Something I knew instinctually as I matured, but needed it to be reiterated to me: witchcraft is not a shortcut to manifest your wildest desires. Like Hearth (of the channel HearthWitch on YouTube) says, witchcraft is just that, a craft. We have to put as much of an effort honing our skills here as we would in any other craft of our choosing.
2. We have to access our magical energy first. I've been there, I've desperately just wanted to sink my teeth into a good spell and feel witchy and live the aesthetics of a practising witch! But, as has been mentioned time and again by every good witchcraft source I found, what matters most is intention. And to go about the right way to go about attaching intent to your spell is to access your energy.
How I chose to access my magic is meditation. And that may not be for everyone, but it worked for me, after some initial struggles with random itches, aches, and distractions. All of us just need to find what works for us. Ginny Metheral (who has a channel of the same name on YouTube), says in one of her videos that she can barely get past a few seconds of meditation when she tries. And yet, she's an advanced meditation practitioner. So, root around and find what works for you.
Now, to the point of this post: I saw my magic today. And it was exactly how Hearth describes it and then some! It came to me a sudden flash of light about twenty minutes into my meditation today, and changed into a shifting, glittering, swaying energy that I could see in my mind's eye. I could sense the heat in my hands and tingling in my face and at the same time was rather aware of my physical surroundings. I became fully conscious of everything I was experiencing in that moment and certainly didn't want to let go of it. I'm so grateful that it happened, and I wasn't really expecting it to happen so soon (I have only been meditating with this intent for about 15 days or so). I also really hope that I will be able to access it again tomorrow and that with time, it gets easier and comes to me faster. That I am able to know it's within reach as surely as I know my cell phone is within reach.
I also hope that everyone who is starting their witchy journey is able to experience this.
To help you along, I want to share the links to the channels and blogs of some wonderful people I've found over the past month. They are all different kinds of witches and have helped me understand magic (it's a work in progress, really) much better than I ever did before. I've already linked to a couple of YouTube channels in the passage, but if you'd like to skip all that, I've repeated them here:
Ginny is the first person I found who was really talking any sense when it comes to witchcraft, and is just a fount of knowledge. My journey as a witch began with a simple celebration of Imbolc, and it was thanks to her.
Go here for myth-busting and getting a more well-rounded understanding of how to approach witchcraft. And how the heck do you centre and ground?! Hearth will tell you.
They have everything from tutorials to book reviews and well-researched videos that drop esoteric knowledge in terms that a layperson can understand
Their guided meditations for 'Awakening to Your Magic' are fantastic and have helped me immensely.
Another useful resource about the types of magic and how to practise them.
There are things here that I don't fully understand, and some others that I have little interest in. But it's a useful blog for certain tutorials.
I am not yet comfortable recommending books to read as a beginner. There are a lot of books out there, and I don't know enough to be able to say that any of the ones I've read are founded in sound research or knowledge. I'm better at corroborating a single topic of interest at a time because I can go looking for multiple sources and glean information from them. But I will be updating this list as and when I find valuable sources.
