9 Practical Tips for New Witches
1. Write down a list of your current passions, interests, goals, and beliefs. Knowing this information can help you to develop your witchcraft and to make it more personal. It’s important to feel a deep connection to your own style of craft, so it is incredibly helpful to incorporate the things that you love in life. While it’s a good idea to think of and list serious things, it’s 100% okay if your list mostly contains entries like ‘shiny things, stuff that smells good, My Chemical Romance’; you should definitely add entries like that, because that right there still tells you that you’ll probably enjoy using reflective objects, aromatherapy, and music in your witchcraft. The entries on your list can help you to creatively think of ways to make your magick yours, while still helping you to identify any pre-existing styles and paths of witchcraft that incorporate elements of your list.
2. Keep a regular journal, along with any magick journals that you might have. Keep track of your health, your dreams, your moods, your habits, your life in general. When you are first starting out, it can be difficult to automatically see how magick affects you. By keeping a mundane, regular journal, you’re better able to reference past events against your magick journals, to see if any changes or unusual entries (negative or positive) occurred at the same time as something witchcraft-related.
3. Sign up for as many guided nature walks and talks as you can. It’s always a good idea to know the nature around you, especially if you’re a witch. Guided walks and talks can give you first-hand experience when it comes to identifying plants, animals, and other things that you can find in your area. If it is allowed, remember to bring along a camera and / or a notebook so that you can record and reference your new knowledge afterwards.
4. Take an interest in cooking. This is an especially good tip for any witches that are looking to hide their witchcraft. Learning to cook is a life skill, and doesn’t tend to draw unwanted attention. The food, herbs, and spices that you use all have their own magickal correspondences and associations, so it really comes down to figuring out some ingredients that match your magick’s intent, and then finding an actual recipe that calls for those ingredients.
5. Start your own garden, no matter how small. Seeds can be affordable purchased at most stores with gardening centers, and you can grow some herbs in a leftover tin can. Really, you don’t need a lot of space or cash to be able to start some sort of garden, whether indoors or outdoors. Just make sure that wherever you are planting, you have permission to plant there!
6. Develop your DIY skills. Crafting, sewing, upcycling – spend some time learning about the ‘Do It Yourself’ culture. Aside from being an excellent way to learn how to create your own tools and witchy stuff, a lot of the skills that you will learn can be incorporated into your spells. So can any supplies that you have on hand for regular arts and crafts, for that matter. And when you get right down to it, nobody has to know that your handmade lavender lip-balm is actually an enchanted item and a dual healing / beauty spell. Making anything by hand helps to give it power, and can be another great way to practice witchcraft under-the-radar; unless you literally announce that your felt-and-an-old-sock plushie is actually a poppet, how can anybody know?
7. Find places to source your witchy ingredients and supplies. Look up and scout out any local:
o Box stores (like Walmart, Target)
o Garden stores / Nurseries
o Metaphysical / New Age stores
o Rock / crystal / mineral shops
8. Build a non-fiction library. Cookbooks, how-to books, field guides, books that teach you skills. History books, scientific magazines and journals, textbooks on any topic. Read about first-hand accounts, theories and practices, facts and trivia. Read educational books meant for kids, and encyclopedias meant for months of study. Don’t be afraid to check your material against a different source, either. Finding multiple sources citing a piece of knowledge is a good habit to develop, especially if your knowledge deals with the safety or danger of anything. Whether it was posted online or published in a book, make sure that the author’s information is accurate!
9. Collect and upcycle bottles, jars, tins, and other storage. It’s a running joke here on Tumbler: ‘witches love jars’. But wow is it an accurate joke. There have been a couple of times that I’ve come home with new loose supplies like shells or acorns, only to stand there and realize that literally all of my other storage is taken and that unless I want to stick them in a plastic bag, I have to temporarily store them by taking the last few Piroutte cookies out of the tin and giving it a quick cleaning (and now you know the exact moment that I thought of posting about this tip! lol). Practicing witchcraft can be a really quick way to turn into a self-powered miniature recycling plant; it’s a lot cheaper to clean that jelly jar than it is to go buy an actual Mason jar, and it’s usually better for the environment as well ^_^
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