How to Become a Witch by Amber K. (large ebook reader txt) 📗

side to them. An NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) practitioner won’t even necessarily need to know your issue, just the behavior or thought you need to change. (Search the Web for “NLP” and your state.)

And don’t neglect the many really good books that are available on many different aspects of self-help. Browse your local bookstore until one or more speak to you. They can add structure to your quest.

Practical magick

The Arts Magickal can easily be seen as very serious stuff, only to be used in a properly cast circle for important issues. That’s true for theurgy, the branch of magick that helps us connect with the divine powers. However, thaumaturgy has a more immediately practical slant. Witches use mini spells and incantations all the time to deal with ordinary life: for traveling safely, finding a parking spot, healing a cold, getting calm before a test or interview...these little magicks help us get through the day. Now, to wash the dishes instantly by wiggling our noses...

Ritual is a vessel for magick, a structure that has proven effective for a long time. Magick itself is the heart, and it is more difficult to understand than the steps of ritual. You may have doubts about magick. You may have been programmed for your entire life to believe that magick is irrational and superstitious—even sinful. Your first task may be to simply open your mind and give it a chance.

Magick has been practiced for untold thousands of years by people from many cultures. They were not all fools. Magick is real, even if much of it is still a mystery. Magick is a tool, and like any tool it can be used for good or evil, and wielded for great purposes or small ones.

If you are one of the few who really become adept, use it with wisdom and love, for magick truly does have power.

Deepen your Practice

Energy Exercises

Imagine a ball of energy in your hands; compress it until you feel it tangibly, then shift it from hand to hand. Play with it for a while, bouncing it, stretching it, and compressing it again. Now gently release it into the earth.

Do the same again, but before you give it to the earth, allow a little energy to flow into any part of your body that is stiff or weak or painful.

Ritual Exercises

Begin by becoming familiar with the steps of ritual as outlined in this chapter and expanded in appendix F, the self-dedication ritual.

Asperging and casting: every week for six weeks, come up with a different way to asperge and a different way to cast the circle, and do a ritual using your ideas. By the end, you will have six new methods in your toolbox. Hint: think of how you could asperge and cast using visual cues, sounds, touch, taste, or smell. Also, try one way that you would use in an air ritual, one for fire, etc. Write the results in your Book of Shadows.

Calling the quarters and invoking Deity: every week for another six weeks, come up with a different way to call the quarters and a different way to invoke Deity. Do a ritual calling and invoking that way. By the end, you will have six new methods in your toolbox. Remember that these are the parts of ritual most suited to poetry—so put on your poet’s hat, and have fun!

Moving energy: every week for six weeks, come up with a different way to raise, send, and ground energy, and do a ritual using them. Then you will have six more new techniques in your toolbox.

Cakes and wine: every week for six weeks, come up with a different way to do “cakes and wine” and to say your farewells to the quarters and the Lady and the Lord. For the farewells, go back to your quarter calls and invocations, and make matched sets of calls and farewells. Do a ritual each week using your new farewells, and make sure your entire ritual hangs together stylistically.

Create a water-based ritual as a house blessing, so that all the parts of ritual have something to do with water. Do likewise for a fire-based ritual for raising your own willpower, and include something fiery at every step.

Shadow Work Exercises

Get several sheets of paper, and write a negative emotion at the top of each: anger, fear, shame, guilt, and so on. Then ask yourself questions and write down your answers for each. Example: anger. When do I feel angry? How does it feel? Where did that feeling come from? What would my life be like without it? Who could I be without the anger but with the energy and intensity of it? How can I transform it into something positive?

Use an idea from the list of tools and techniques discussed starting on page 160, under shadow work, and try it. Discover whether it helps you release or transform a shadow you have grappled with. Write your experiences in your Book of Shadows.

Chapter 9

I Am the Soul of Nature

This Sacred Earth

Work your will, but earth revere,

Touching magick, wielding power,

And every creature living here,

I am a Witch at every hour.

Imagine a world where slender, faerylike beings exist in colonies, connected underground with a fine web of nerve and tissue; each one whispers and flutters in the sun for forty to 150 of our years, then dies, but the colony may survive for eighty thousand years…

Imagine a planet mostly covered with oceans, some deeper than six terrestrial miles. Deep below, in darkness and freezing cold, black tubes rise from vents in the sea bottom, spewing acid at 750 degrees F into the blackness—more than 370 trillion gallons as this watery world makes one orbit of its star. Imagine that gastropodlike creatures crawl about the base, some with venomous fangs, some with scales of iron. Other bizarre life forms live on the methane and sulphur compounds all around them. Nearby, drawn to the warmth, float huge-eyed monsters