Whether you’re dorming, living in a sorority/fraternity house, still living with your family, or even living off campus with some non-witchy roommates, I have compiled a list of witchy advice, activities, and tips to help live your most magical life while still complying with any rules that may be in place.
I spent the past 9 months or so living in the dorms at my university. The housing contract was 20 pages long and filled with everything I wasn’t allowed to have, do, etc. To summarize that annoyingly long document, I was not allowed to have any electrical heat sources besides hair tools (hair dryer, straighter, etc), a clothing iron, and an 800 watt or less microwave. I was not allowed to burn incense or candles, use a wax warmer, a hot plate, an electric kettle. The icing on the cake was that we couldn’t even have an incense diffuser because of the air system being connected throughout the entire building and how it could travel into someone’s room and cause an allergic reaction or make them sick. So I had to get a little crafty (pun intended) with my magical practices.
Activities & Tools
Things to Avoid Doing/Having:
Anything With Fire (candles, incense, smoke cleansing, etc)
Anything That’s a Heat Source (hot plates, wax warmer, electric kettle, etc)
Having Alcohol Regardless If You Are of Age (All Campuses are Dry Campuses meaning No Alcohol is Allowed)
Having Your Familiar (Unless It’s Been Approved by Disability Services to be your Emotional Support Animal)
Doing Spells Outside on Campus (Security Will Be Walking Around And May Think You’re Making a Bomb or Doing Something Illegal)
Leave Your Fancy Athames at Home (Weapons are not allowed on college campuses so to avoid that rule get a kitchen knife or a small hidden knife)
Keeping Anything Obviously Witchy/Occult Related Out Unless You Have Your Own Room or Your Roommate is Okay With it (Pentagrams, Animal Skulls, Ouija Boards, etc)
Shower Magick (Make Sure to Clean the Shower After and Check my tag #shower magick)
Kitchen Witchcraft (Dorm Kitchens Have Refrigerators and Microwaves but sometimes more. Check my tags #recipes and#kitchen witchcraft Also the internet has so many dorm-friendly recipes available)
Tarot (Check my tags #tarot for how-tos and tips and #spreadsfor tarot spreads
Crystal Grids (Check my tag #crystal grid for ideas)
Pendulum (Check my tag #pendulum for tips and tricks)
Scrying (Water, Mirror, Oil, and Crystal are dorm safe)
Color Magick to Pick Your Clothes, Dorm Decorations, and School Supplies (Check my tag #colors for correspondences and for which holiday uses which colors)
You don’t have to do magick every day in order to still be considered a witch. College can be draining and time-consuming. Put your schoolwork before your magick.
Make sure if you using the dorm microwave, to use microwave-safe plates, cups, etc. You do not want to set off the fire alarm at 2 am because you put your metallic non-microwave-safe coffee mug and it started to smoke.
If using common spaces like the bathrooms or kitchen for your witchcraft, make sure to clean up after yourself as soon as you are done. It can cause the Head of Housing the fine your dorm hall/building if it continually happens.
There was a college witchcraft post saying to give your roommate a gift that you enchanted when you first move in. You should never do magic without their consent and especially if you have just met them and have yet to find out their feelings towards it. Starting out already at odds will turn into fighting roommates in no time. Fighting roommates are not fun or easy for your RA.
If your roommate is not okay with you having your tools out, there are tons of ways to discreetly hid them. There are boxes that look like books that you can buy at Micheal’s. You can also DIY your own book box! You can also use a trunk, cloth bag, decorative box, or even a shoe box to hold your tools.
If you’re interested in green witchcraft, it’s best to wait until you move into your dorm room before getting a plant. You’ll never know that your room doesn’t get enough sunlight or that AC is always on in your hall until you move in. If you don’t wait, you’ll end up with a lot of dead plants like me.
If you’re a religious witch and your roommate doesn’t want there to be an altar, you can make a shoebox altar. Open it when you need and close and store it away when you don’t. You can also make one the size of an Altoids tin or even a digital one such as a sideblog or a screensaver for your electronic device.
You don’t have to do elaborate spells all the time. You can just do simple things like picking what to wear based off of a color’s correspondence or enchanting your pen/pencil for good luck on a test.
@nightshadeandroses suggested to me that you reach out to your school’s religious department. A lot of smaller schools like mine don’t have one. For some universities, it’s a part of Student Services/Resources on campus. Whichever applies to you, the people there are willing and ready to help you. Some campuses have a space available for students to meditate/pray while others will help you find a place to do that whether it be on or off campus. Every college is different and the only way to get what you need is to ask.
If you have any questions, please feel free to send me an ask or message me. I’ll be glad to help!
Best of luck witches! 🔮✨
I really needed this! I’ll be starting college in about a year so
Article 13 got approved and that means the internet will be censored for all countries under the EU. If that happens, it’s likely bloggers from affected countries cannot post content anymore. I wouldn’t be able to post gifs, edits, icons, anything anymore. Even adding links to posts could cost money. You can get more information here and here or simply using google to find information from a source you trust. Please sign the petition here and here (everyone can sign this one apparently) to prevent this from happening. I don’t want to lose my blog.
probably an obvious tip but bathing or showering with different scented soaps or soaps filled with little items like flowers or exfoliating beads is a great way to imbue that quality to your entire body as you cleanse at the same time. this can even go for body spray/shampoo/conditioner basically anything you put on your body.
look man i know the united states is a horrific hell hole of villainy right now but can we not get aggressive about people looking forward to the 4th of july
people going to see fireworks or have backyard cook outs aren’t automatically singing the praises of donald the trumpster or w/e just let people have one day of their lives to look at the sparkly boom booms and dream of a united states that isn’t in shambles
Stop all that “you attract what you are ready for” shit. Sometimes life is just terrible. It’s not always my fault.
“Life never gives you more than you can handle.” Yes, it does.
“People are placed in your life to teach you a valuable lesson that helps your soul on its way to enlightenment.” No, there are a just a lot of people who feel empowered when they act like assholes. We live in that kind of society.
“You keep finding yourself in the same situation because you haven’t discovered the message the universe is trying to send to you yet.” Sometimes unpleasant things are stuck on repeat, because you have a mental or physical condition, and it is a symptom. Symptoms are like that.
“The truth always hurts.” No, it doesn’t, and what hurts often isn’t the truth, but is instead someone’s biased opinion.
I really appreciate this comment. Thank you thank you thank you.
This is what I need to hear. I blamed myself for so long for the abuse I endured and for attracting the people that hurt me.
A lot of beginners in Astral Practices have many doubts that have yet to be put all together and cleared at once, so I’ve decided to make of it my next FAQ for beginners. Please keep in mind that the advice offered in this post is based on my personal experiences and on the experiences of those close to me; do not take my word as an universal rule. Warning: very long post, be sure to click read more for the complete FAQ.
If you’re new to actions with an arrest risk and you don’t have experienced protestors with you, there’s stuff you can find online about having a legal team, writing the name of a lawyer on your body, saying NOTHING to the cops except the name of your lawyer, etc. That’s all good advice.
But let me give you a bit of advice that is just as essential as all that:
If one of your comrades gets arrested, and you know they can be held for 6, 9, 12 hours, depending on where you are, you get a group of people together and you wait outside the police station.
You may be tired, you may be stressed, it may be freezing, you may need to take turns, but you take whoever can still physically and mentally bear it and you go to that police station and you wait for your comrade. You can spend the time taking care of each other, drinking hot drinks, doing whatever gets you through, but you wait.
And when your comrade gets out, you make sure they do not walk home alone in the dark thinking about the fucked up experience they just had, you make sure there’s a big fucking crowd of their comrades there to greet them with hugs and hot drinks and a cigarette if they smoke.
And whether the arrested comrade that just got out is happy or sad or pissed off, you take that for what it is and give that space and you support that. And you get them a hot meal and you hang out with them and you offer to let them stay at your place or you stay with them so they don’t have to spend that night alone with their thoughts.
You do this every damn time, regardless of whether you really like that comrade and regardless of how you feel about the thing your comrade got arrested for, regardless of how often they’ve been arrested. Because you never know how shitty their experience is going to be in there this time.
Trust me. This is absolutely essential. Once you’ve been arrested and have felt the difference between walking home alone or having your friends waiting for you, you’ll understand.
Be good comrades
I can’t stress how important this is. When my father and I were arrested in Seattle some years back for agitating for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, we were greeted outside the jail by the event’s organisers. They cheered us, had cokes and munchies for us. They drove us to our car and, during the drive, asked if we wanted to stay the night in Seattle with one of the organisers, they filled us in on what had happened after our arrests, they asked about and listened intently to what we experienced from arrest to release. They did so much so well that when another call went out for potential arrestees, we were amongst the first to raise our proverbial hands.
Read the post. Re-read the post. Remember it. And, when the chance comes, do it.
When I was arrested at a Black Lives Matter protest a few years ago, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice were doing Jail Support when I was finally let out of One Police Plaza at around 6am.
They had gotten a klezmer band to stand along the hill you have to go up to leave the jail, and as I walked to where the volunteer lawyers were waiting (they were there to make sure all 200+ people who were arrested that night would be represented at their later hearings. They also were surrounded by volunteers who had food, phone chargers, directions to all the nearby subway stops, and one of them let me borrow her phone to call my mom when I got frustrated with how slowly my phone was charging) the band played music, cheered and applauded.
Honestly? That band playing klezmer for me as I left jail, cheering me on and making me laugh… it’s a memory I really treasure.
It’s also one of my mother’s favorite stories. Before I told her about that band, she got so upset and agitated whenever anything reminded her of my arrest. She’d freak out, cry, start fussing over me, and so forth. After I told her about the klezmer band though? It became something she’d tell her friends about, over and over again, laughing each time. She stopped calling me to beg me not to go and protest every time she knew a big one was happening, and instead would call to make a joke about how if I want to listen to klezmer she has some CDs I can borrow.
When I think about that night, rather than any of the many many terrible things that happened from the moment the cops grabbed me onward, the first thing I remember is the klezmer, and how it made me laugh, and the popcorn someone gave me as I gave the lawyers my name and info, and the kindness of strangers.
After the dehumanization of even a few hours in police custody, those volunteers made me smile, and gave the night a new fun and funny angle to be remembered from. I actually laugh when I think about that night, thanks to them.
Jail Support is a beyond vital part of protesting. It really really is.
you deserve love. your crush does not owe you a date.
you deserve success. your coworkers do not owe you extra hours.
you deserve emotional support. your friends do not owe you free therapy.
what ‘you deserve this’ means is that it’s ok to want it and hope for it and try to achieve it, not that you have the authority to demand that a person provide it. it’s good to ask for it, but you have to be willing to take no for an answer.
Candlelight-magick 