#pathandpractice questions

Inspired by the weekly discussion question in our Discord server today, here are a few questions to dive deeper into how we each understand and experience magic. These prompts are meant to spark introspection, conversation, and a bit of soul-searching about what witchcraft means to you. There are no right or wrong answers. Post post and answer one of these questions each day and tag @pathandpractice in your replies and don't forget to put then in the #pathandpractice tag. Also, feel free to reblog and tag friends you want to join in with you. Everyone is welcome!

Day One: How do you define magic? Is it energy, intention, relationship, will, or something else?

Day Two: What does witchcraft mean to you? Ex: is it a craft, a calling, a way of life, a skill?

Day Three: When did you first understand what “magic” meant to you, and how has that definition changed over time?

Day Four: Do you see a difference between magic and witchcraft? If so, where do you draw that line?

Day Five: How do your spiritual, cultural, or philosophical beliefs shape your understanding of magic?

Day Six: Do you think everyone can practice magic, or is it something that calls to specific people?

Day Seven: How does your definition of magic influence the way you practice it?

Day Eight: Do you view magic as natural or supernatural? Or do you see no real division between the two?

Day Nine: How would you explain what magic is to someone who doesn’t believe in it?

@pathandpractice

Day One: How do you define magic? Is it energy, intention, relationship, will, or something else?

Well... I guess a lot of it has to do with the idea of creation. Magic is exerting your will on the world, in non-physical ways, to create physical change. It also, for me, often involves creating some sort of physical apparatus. A lot of my praxis revolves around the idea of art-as-magic, artist-as-sorcerer, reinventing and engineering things, Macgyvering a solution.

The other part of it is relationships between things. That's the entire reason correspondences and symbols work. Things relate to other things. A plant can stand for an abstract concept. A stone can perform a metaphysical function which relates to its physical function. A bit of hair or a slip of paper with handwriting on it can be a targeting mechanism for the person it belongs to. Sympathy and contagion-- the cornerstones in a lot of ways.

Day Two: What does witchcraft mean to you? Ex: is it a craft, a calling, a way of life, a skill?

Witchcraft is a specific subset of magic. Historically, witchcraft was somewhat countercultural and had more of a malefic/selfish bent. Unlike a cunning person, who served their community in most cases, witches (in folklore or otherwise) used magic to their own devices.

Day One: How do you define magic? Is it energy, intention, relationship, will, or something else?

I define magic as two things: personal power, and intention. To me, everyone has personal power that dwells and sleeps within them until it is awakened and used. When I cast a spell, I call upon my personal power to do this working, to empower it, to accomplish my task. Then, when my working is active and alive, it is the vessel for my intention that is release into the universe. I like to think that my intention pulls strings in the universe to help influence a certain outcome.

I think in that way too, it is energy. It is the energetic signature of this personal power I'm mentioning. The way it is exteriorized... That is so scientific, wtf. You know what, so be it, I like it.

How do you define magic? Is it energy, intention, relationship, will, or something else?

This is difficult to answer, but I'm going to try. I'll also try to stay confined narrowly to the question, since I don't intend to peek ahead to Day X to see if I'm repeating myself.

Magic to me is a person consciously witnessing and participating in communication in relationship with the Universe. It's relating to varied entities in varied realms, some of which are utterly mundane and not occult*.

It's been a while since I've put out a questionnaire based on our weekly discussion questions in the server. I miss seeing everyone's answers. So here are a few follow-up prompts based this week's community discussion to give folks an opportunity to explore their practice from new angles and to open the floor to share more with each other. These can be answered all at once or used as daily writing prompts.

Where are the spaces where you feel overlap between your magical and spiritual practices? Where is there tension?

The word "sacred" is used in both religious and magical contexts. What does this mean to you? Does it have different meaning in one context vs. the other?

How, if at all, do community expectations (tradition, lineage, covens, social communities, etc.) shape the way you integrate (or avoid integrating) devotion and magic?

How has your relationship to power--personal or external--shifted as you've come to understand your preferences regarding the combination/separation of craft and faith?

How do you relate to traditions that insist magic and religion must be unified--or must be kept apart?

How do your religious and spiritual actions look different from your magical ones? Do they follow an entirely different protocol or are there differences more subtle?

What are the three most important rituals, habits or routines in your spiritual/religious life? What are they in your magical life?

What would you consider the personal virtues you have associated with your magical vs. spiritual/religious practice? Are they different or the same? Does one uphold the other or challenge it?

Day Three: When did you first understand what “magic” meant to you, and how has that definition changed over time?

I stumbled upon my first dose of witchcraft content literally by accident-- I was looking for something else and found a Wiccan blog. My first forays into the occult were very influenced by Wicca because I literally didn't know anything else existed. I think that this is a pretty common experience among occultists. Wicca, by and large, still dominates the conversation, but that's a whole other can of worms.

It was doing some digging off the internet and actually in books that expanded my definition of magic. It didn't have to be restricted to the psychological. It could create physical change. Magic is, in many cases, to stack the deck in your favor; to do the improbable or impossible. That's why it's called magic.

Day Four: Do you see a difference between magic and witchcraft? If so, where do you draw that line?

As previously stated, witchcraft and magic were two separate things historically. While there isn't *as much* of a separation these days, and many use the term interchangeably, I think that it's important to keep some degree of separation. There are plenty of magical practitioners for which witchcraft is still a very negative thing, and they would be very insulted if you called them a witch.

Day Six: Do you think everyone can practice magic, or is it something that calls to specific people?

To me, everyone can practice magic.

I believe people may feel called to it, like a gravitational pull towards the craft that they can't ignore. But there are people like me who just stumble upon an obscure post on Tumblr and fall down a rabbit hole, one afternoon, and they decide to start practicing.

There was nothing particularly witchy about my upbringing or my family. My grandma basically practices folk catholicism, but it's not something I was taught or particularly interested in. But I had a surface understanding of the occult and witchcraft lore, so that was enough to make a decision to start practicing and commit to it in the end.

Day Two: What does witchcraft mean to you? Ex: is it a craft, a calling, a way of life, a skill?

To me, it is definintely a craft. It's something you have to keep working on and practicing. You can get better at it. Witchcraft to me started as a separate craft from the rest of my life, much like a hobby. But with the years and by interacting with it much more and growing as a witch, I've come to understand witchcraft to be a way of life as well.

It's a way of life because I see life through the lens of my practice, of my craft. The mundane is magical and the magical is mundane. They co-exist in the same space, they are layered upon each other. They complement each other. I like to think of this quote by the late Terry Pratchett:

It doesn't stop being magic just because you know how it works.

Actually, the way I've come to see it, things are more magical to me when I know how it works. I know that gravity is the thing keeping us on a even keel throughout the universe, it's a science fact, but the fact that this force is keeping it all together in this way is fucking magical to me. There's this invisible thing that has power over everything that is holding all that we know together. That's absolutely magical.