Everything

This summer, as a devotional act, I wrote a mini-essay on my patron, the horned god Cernunnos. It is very common for people to confound Cernunnos with the wiccan horned god;

In this text I’ve instead higlighted the historical Celtic god, using all academic reasources that I’ve been able to find. It tells the story of a god of wilderness, liminal spaces, death and rebirth. I thought I’d throw in a link here for anyone searching for an easily read academic source. Safe roads and open fires!

For a long time, I felt reluctant to draw/ otherwise decorate my Book of Shadows. I knew that it could never live up to those beautifully tea-stained aesthetic ones that you see all over the internet. Besides, I've always been a very text-based person. Whenever teachers in school asked us to draw pictures or mind-maps, I just rolled my eyes and wrote it in text form instead. But I've recently come to change my tune...

Now, at the time of writing, I've been practising the Craft for a little over four years. Despite this, I'm only on my second BoS. Part of this is that my current book spans 300 pages - but that' isn't's not the only reason.

My first book is a mess: Half of the book contains either facts that's incorrect, statements that doesn't apply to me anymore and really far fetched tarot readings, where I'm clearly wanting a certain outcome. I love it to bits. But I didn't always feel like that: When I finished my first BoS after about a year of practise, I looked back on it and Cringed Hard. I found myself wishing for the strictly factual BoS that I'd seen on witchblr and youtube.

So when I started my current book, that's what I set out to do. And as a consequense, I rarely wrote anything in my Book. On the rare times I wrote in it, it was basically a glorified goodreads review - on books that I didn't even necesserily liked!

Ok, so... I have a confession to make. Although I have been a practising witch for over seven years, the word "practising" is in some ways doing some heavy lifting.

Don't get me wrong; I have done spells and many of them successfully. The problem is, I tend to only do spells when it *really* *needs* to be done. As a consequense, I may be lacking in some basic "magickal reflexes", so to speak: it takes time and effort for me to connect with magick source, and I easily get distracted and drop the connection - needing me to again take time and effort to reconnect. Basically: My magick works like a sketchy wifi connection...

Recently, however, I have started doing protection braids in my hair in the morning. And today it struck me that this is a really good beginners practise!

Not because they need protection - actually just the opposite. Protection magick is of course always good to know, but beginners witches rarily encounter the Big "Bad" things where that knowledge is truly required...

Instead it's... Like, if nothing happened, no harm done - you would just have the bad luck/ conflict/ whatever that was coming to you if you hadn't done protection. If it works, you get to duck out from that - great!

The main focus here is to train your magickal ability - how long can you connect to your magickal source? When you drop it, how fast can you pick it up again? Can you do a practical task (like braiding hair) and still connect to it?