#witch tutorial

Intent

Intent is the most important component and is the starting point of any magical process. Part of manifesting your desires into reality is defining them clearly and empowering that thought. 

Making your intent specific is very important because it will help you avoid unwanted outcomes. Here are some examples of intents:

Weak: Protect me.

Better: Protect me from negative energy. 

Strong: Protect my mind, body, and spirit from negative energy while allowing good energy in. 

If you are less specific, you may find that you block of good energy as well as bad energy! The universe can also twist your words in ways you do not expect so be sure that your intent is clear.

General and simple intents may work for some practitioners but I recommend beginners strive to be specific. 

Everything from here on will be directly related to your intent.

Materials

Choosing materials sounds difficult but if you have a clear intent, it should not be too difficult. Having a book of shadows or notebook and taking notes on spell materials is very helpful to crafting spells. As a beginner, you may be overwhelmed by the wide variety of herbs, flowers, spices, and crystals. Try to focus on a few at a time and keep track of their associations. 

Pick materials that align with your intent. For example, if we are using the previous example you would want the following materials:

One that brings protection 

One that connects to the self or the mind/body/spirit

One that absorbs or deflects negative energy

One that welcomes positive energy

You do not necessarily need all of these materials, as when you are performing the spell you can compensate for this through your words or actions. 

Finding the correct components will involve research so be prepared! Your choices should be based on a combination of outside sources and personal experience. As you cast and create more spells you will become more advanced at using and choosing materials. 

Words

The words you choose to speak, sign, or think, when casting a spell should reflect your intent. Your spell does not have to rhyme but the rhythm of a rhyming poem can 1. make it easier to remember and 2. help you connect more deeply to your spirit. You can also use repetition to strengthen the spell and solidify your intent. 

If you are lacking in components, you should take great care in crafting your words. This is your chance to communicate to the universe what you want and need. 

I recommend researching different types of poetry and literary techniques. In a way, your poem is an offering to the universe as a thanks for empowering the spell. There is value in choosing beautiful and meaningful words to aid your spell. 

Actions

I find the actions people use when executing a spell vary depending on their religion and background. In the end, you have to go with your gut and choose actions that feel right to you. Some examples of actions you can take during a spell are as follows:

Kissing a component

Burning a material

Grinding or combining materials

Drawing shapes or sigils with your hands

Facing a specific direction 

Sitting, standing, walking

Dancing or physical exercise

As you can see, actions are much more open ended which I why they are difficult to explain. However, I can say that the actions you take can aid in adding power and energy to your spell. For example, dancing releases your physical energy which can charge your spell. 

Actions can also help you invoke specific spirits or deities. There is a reason many Christians make a cross motion when praying. The motions themselves are a symbol that invoke whatever power you are calling upon.

Conclusion

Much of spell-making is a personal process of research and discovery. But, hopefully this post gives you an idea of where to start! I invite people to add on to this post with other ideas and suggestions as well as critiques!

So as y’all know, the place I live is pretty fucked. Ive been researching protective magic for awhile and ive connected most with sigils. I thought you guys might want to try them out too, especially if your luck is as shitty as mine (its literally not).

Sigils are symbols charged with magikal power- basically a spell in a symbol. I like them because they dont take expensive materials (im a poor bitch), are pretty easy to make, and are mega aesthetic. Most importantly tho, they’re effective. While tons of premade sigils are available online, work that you create is always going to be more powerful in anything youre trying to do. Heres a guide to making your own, original sigil.

Start by writing your intention. This needs to be written positively, without using words like “not” or “won’t”. For example, i want to be protected from the thing in the woods. Instead of writing “I will not be hurt by the great evil”, i wrote “I will be protected from the great evil”.

(srry my hand writing is absolute garbage)

Once youve written your intention, cross out all vowels. This will help us simplify our intention to its simplest form.

Next, cross out all duplicate letters, leaving only one of each.

Now, write down the letters you have left.

We will now break these letters down even further until we are left with only their base symbols. Separate all complex shapes down to lines, curves, and circles.

This looks pretty complicated, but organizing the symbols makes it a lot easier to keep track of all of them.

Now we can begin forming the sigil. Start arranging the symbols in whatever way your mind is calling you. If i stay focused on my intention, my hands just work and seem to know where the shapes fit. If youre having trouble just take a breath. Dont stress. It will work because YOURE making it. The power doesn’t come form the symbol- it comes from YOU. Thats another reason why this is only a baseline. You may feel called to add extra symbols- do it. Trust yourself, the goal is to make something that you feel connected with.

This was my finished sigil. To charge it, it is usually best to make it transform. This symbolizes the transformation between where you are and where you want your intention to lead you. This transformation can be done in a few ways, but is most commonly done by burning or soaking the sigil. Because we’re having a rainstorm tonight, Im leaving mine outside to be soaked. Once it dries in the sunlight I’ll carry what remains of the paper with me. This is just a personal preference because I like having something physical to remind me that the magic is working even if i cant see it. Other options for transformation include:

Burning and scattering the ashes

Writing in soil or sand before a rainstorm and letting it wash the sigil away

Writing it on your hand and letting it naturally fade away

Constellation sigils. Go, create, have fun. If you want more of my information, feel free to drop me an ask.

Hidden in Plain Sight

Adding a dust jacket to your witchy books

Yes, I know this is a repeat tip, but much like the broom tutorial, this is fleshed out! This post was pretty much my first Witch Tip that sparked these Wednesday posts last November. It was rough and a photo set and not formatted and blah blah. Figured I would revisit it for the anniversary! Also, I couldn’t figure out how to re-format it and reblog it because it was an old photo and caption thing...

I got this book at my local retailer and as usual when I get a hardback witchcraft book, I decided to cover it with wrapping paper. I do this for a few reasons and it takes just a couple minutes but has saved my books from damage numerous times.

Most witchcraft, supernatural, occult related books I get that are hardcover, don’t have dust jackets.

I can read a covered book in public without a hassle from strangers.

When they’re covered I can keep them out on the bookshelves without worry of house guests getting all skeeved out by yet another pentacle or misunderstood symbol on the spine glaring at them.

It protects my books...simple. There have been some near misses where the wrapping protected the cover from damage and that’s awesome.

You could go hog wild and recover all your non dust jacketed books if you’re a closet witch. Designate a specific wrapping paper for your spooky ones and witchcraft ones, and no one is the wiser. At most, they’d usually just think you had a cool idea of adding some color and festivity to your bookshelf.

You can also magic them up. Write sigils, messages, spells etc on the reverse side of the paper and know each book has a layer of protection, secrecy, memory retention or whatever you feel inspired to do.

Wrapping paper is out and about this time of year and benefits of the times we’re in, there’s usually a fair amount that aren’t related to the holidays, but rather colors, patterns and just neutral designs. Here’s a small walk through...it’s easy, but some small tweaks make it easier.

🦇Cheers, Barberwitch

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Original content of this blog is licensed under a Creative Commins Attributution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license

Photoset and tutorial below the break!

Hello all! One of the main things I do as a part of my practice is work in my Grimoire. Art is a huge part of my spiritual path so it was obvious to me when I started that I was going to take on making my Grimoire as an art journal as well.  Alright, enough about me, you came here for a tutorial! So first things first I’m going to be showing various techniques I use that you can then use in your own book. I use a blank mixed media sketchbook, that part is fairly important because I use a ton of paint, watercolor and acrylic, and regular sketch paper just isn’t made for that.  Here you can see some of the other things that I find useful when making a page. I don’t use all of them in this tutorial but I’ll be using them in the next one!

So, for this page I used:

- Acrylic Paint 

- A paint mixer (If you don’t have a fancy one you can use an old gift card, or even a scrap of cardboard, you just need something to scrape paint with)

- A plastic bag (It got cut out of the picture, oops! You can really use anything that crumples and can get paint on it)

- Markers 

- Any pretty bits you like (I used an old envelope but I’ve also ripped up old books, magazines and even plain old trash for pictures or words!)

Step 1: Move that paint around 

I like to just plop some paint on the the page and start scraping, remember you can always add more later if you didn’t put enough. You can mix as much or as little as you want, you’ll most likely end up with extra paint on your scraping tool, you can either whip that on a towel or slap it right back on the page. If you make a mistake, let it dry and then you can put more paint on top of it. But I promise it’s hard for this to not look cool!

Tada! You should have something like this when you’re done. Now you can stop here if you want but I like layers on my page so I’m going to do another step. 

Step 2 - More texture!

Remember the plastic bag? Crumple that bad boy up and dip it in an accent color, I chose a darker purple but you do you!  For aesthetic reasons, I just went around the edge a bit because I will be putting the majority of my content towards the middle of the page, the darker paint will highlight this.

There! It’s subtle, but they key here is layers. Layers add depth which makes a page look better, in my opinion anyway ;)

Step 3 - Final touches

Alright, this page is far from its final form, but the base is pretty much done. One of the things I’ve found helpful is to prep pages with backgrounds so that when I have an idea I can just open my book up and start writing. For this page I think I’ll be using it as a herb reference page for lavender, hence the purple. I taped an envelope in to hold note cards with spells and maybe some dried lavender. 

honestly this was 100% inspired by the fact that im hella light-sensitive and hate using pillows when i sleep but really liked the idea of psychic dream pillows

you will need:

fabric (i just used a fat quarter; it was cheap and provided more than enough fabric)

~13-14″ elastic

(optional) fabric-safe velcro

(optional) cloth drawstring bags for storing herbs. you can find these in most craft stores

herbs of your choosing--if you arent sure what to use, pinecone.pub offers provides lists of materials for different intents. i used bay leaves and peppermint (note: please make sure you arent allergic to any of the herbs you use. these will be near your face for at least several hours while you sleep)

needle and thread or a sewing machine

i printed and used this free pattern as the base for my sleep mask, but instead of sewing it shut, i hemmed the edges that were left open and then applied fabric-safe velcro to them. this will allow me to change out herbs as needed/desired

Witch tutorial: how to make a natural candle out of a citrus peel. This is a wonderful alternative to burning candle offerings and can be made out of things you already have in your kitchen.

A few notes for my beloved witches.

1) Never leave a burning candle unattended. The oil you added before lighting should be used up in an hour and the wick extinguish itself on it’s own, but because this is 100% natural and not in a fire safe container, you must attend this candle at all times. Likewise, allow the peel to complete cool before throwing it away.

2) Never use essential oils or dark colored cooking oils for your fuel.

3) Extremely photosensitive witches should avoid using this method because contact with citrus oil increases your chances of burning from sun exposure.