qxessence:

therathseries:

unfriendlyblackwitch:

substitutions are bullshit like there is a reason my great grandma used chicken bones
there is a reason i use blood
there is a reason for these ingredients and rosemary or quartz wont save u from ur botched spell
and the need for substitutions i think comes from ppl tryna distance themselves from unaesthetic craft

killing a chicken isnt light and pretty and wont get u notes
piss doesnt go well with the lavender sprigs u just bought
crushed bone doesnt make a cute IG pic

im sry but a lot of black ass magic isnt rose quartz and cute hand tattoos

its blood
its coochie juice
its dead animals

and if that aint for u then theres always wicca 👀👀👀

SAY IT AGAIN‼️‼️‼️

People misunderstand this post as shaming those who do not want to work with “nasty” ingredients. To me, this post was born FROM being shamed for using said ingredients. The entire point is being missed.

Not to mention, when a chicken is used for workings… the chicken is not aimlessly slaughtered and mutilated. That chicken is also food. That chicken does have a use OUTSIDE of the workings. Who eats the feet and bones?

Waste not. Want not. Is one of the main points.

thedragonscholar:

bedaelia:

It is strange to think but when we work with spirits of other worlds, especially that of pop culture, they are considered spirits in our world – and thus perhaps we are spirits in their worlds when we speak to them. 

I bring it up because I made an offering of tea to a spirit I work with, some time ago.

When I was feeling terribly ill, the spirit, in turn, made me tea in their world, and somehow, as intangible as it was, it helped me feel a little better. 

Thinking about it feels like a strange, faraway dream that sounds made up, but certainly most witchcraft does, anyway. 

This really reflects how I see the spirit world

calgarianwitch:

missmewtwo:

limunette:

my-witchinghour:

psychic-sara:

aquamystic:

Let’s play a game

Try sensing and finding out things about me by intuition, tarot, shufflemancy or even just by deduction. For those who may be psychic or something similar, it can be a good exercise for you and it’s simply fun. I’ll tell you how accurate it is. 🔮

I had a rough rough night. This’ll be a good distraction.

Let’s play!!

Please. Would be awesome!

I wanna play! 😮 I love anons! ❤

If someone did this for me I’d be beyond flattered!! 😍

This sounds like fun!!

How to start practicing magic

chaoskyan:

I keep getting this question in my inbox so I figured I’d post the answer publicly so I can refer to it instead. First of all though, there are tons of posts about this already and if you do a quick search through the “witchcraft community” tag or “witchcraft 101″ you’ll find a lot of great advice already circulating. What I’m going to outline here is my personal recommendation, and as for all my posts this is the “YMMV” disclaimer (your mileage may vary, i.e. do what works for you and don’t take this as absolute in any way). 

Step 1: Pick a spell. Any spell.
Seriously, it doesn’t matter. Well… okay, maybe don’t like… try to conjure Baphomet into your living room or something, but pick any rando spell that you feel like doing. Don’t worry about what it is, or who wrote it, or how “authentic” it is. Do these things matter? Sure, maybe, depends on who you ask, but you can figure this stuff out later. For now, just pick a spell. The only real guideline I’ll give here is that it should ideally be something with a measurable result within a reasonable timeframe. I’ll get to why later.

Step 2: Bake a cake.
Don’t actually bake a cake (unless you want a cake, in which case by all means please bake a cake), but this is the part where you gather whatever it is you need for the spell and perform it as it’s written. Spells can in some ways be considered recipes in that you want to try following the directions first, and make your changes afterwards. This is especially true for a beginner or someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing yet. 

Step 3: Mouth feel.
The spell is done, congrats. You probably feel… nothing, tbh, maybe even vague disappointment. Why? Because this wasn’t really your magic yet, and there’s very likely something (maybe even a lot) missing. This is the most crucial part of your process. What were you expecting? What did you like, not like? It’s time to write this down, and if you’re the type of person who wants to keep a grimoire this is a great first entry. Were you hoping for more ritual? Maybe ceremonial magic is what you should look into. Did you want there to be more bubbling cauldrons? Try looking into hearth magic or herbal magic. Were you missing a chant, a poem? Look more into spellcraft and the power of words. Some key subjects you can look up: crystal magic, herbal magic, hearth magic, cosmic magic, spirit work, death magic, healing magic, bane magic, divination, folk magic, chaos magic, technomancy, sigilwork, spellcraft, hedge walking, deity worship, sex magic, blood magic, etc. If any of these sound appealing to you, do a google search and read about them a little more so you can decide whether or not you want to delve in a little further.

Step 4: The cake is a lie.
This is where we drop the food metaphors, and get back to that thing I brought up in step one: measurable results within a reasonable timeframe. This is the part that seems to get lost the most in all the advice going around, and in my opinion it’s the second most important (the first one being that practicing magic feels good/right to you). Grimoires aren’t just supposed to be pretty lists of spells and correspondences, they’re supposed to contain spells that actually work. The key here is to figure out what feels right to you as far as method, and then to refine that method to achieve tangible results. If you already feel great doing magic, let me tell you… you’ll feel pretty fucking amazing when your magic starts having an actual effect on the world around you, and it shouldn’t take years of mastery for that to happen. Small magics and simple spells can be done effectively by beginner witches, and these are the things you build upon to form your craft. If your magic isn’t getting results, it’s not magic: it’s ceremony.

Step 5: Rinse and repeat.
For most people there is a specific facet of magic that attracted them to it before they ever cast a spell, and while some people might know what it is straight off the bat most people don’t, and that’s fine. You don’t need to know what you’re doing right at the start, and making mistakes isn’t going to curse your house or open up a portal into the dark realms by accident (still assuming you’re doing beginner stuff and not trying to invoke dark spirits to do your bidding or something). The witchcraft side of tumblr can often look really serious and like everyone knows exactly what they’re doing all the time, but the truth of the matter is there’s a lot of trial and error and that’s exactly what magic is supposed to be. If you’re looking towards magic as something to provide all the answers for you, you’re gonna have a real bad time. It’s about looking at how other people have gotten to where you want to go, and forging your own route from there.

On a final note, I’d just like to add that if anyone claims to be an absolute authority on any given topic of witchcraft or occultism, be extremely fucking wary. If anyone is saying you need to pay x amount of money or buy x number of things to be a “real witch”, be extremely fucking wary. Witchcraft existed before money, before capitalism, before industrialization and consumerism. 

As always, my inbox is open if you have any questions about this (or anything else). If I don’t know the answer, I can usually point you towards someone who does or at least give you a direction to search in. Happy witching!

Q&A: Why Isn’t My Sigil Working?

thedesertgod:

sigildaily:

“I’m very new to sigils, but after reading Frater UD’s Practical Sigil Magick I recently decided to make my first sigil. It said “MY WILL IS TO WIN THE TOP PRIZE ON A SCRATCHCARD TOMORROW.” I did everything the way the book explained, drawing and redrawing the letters until they looked strange, unique and magical. Then, I activated the sigil, ripping it up under running water.

“Today I purchased two scratchcards one in the morning, and one in the afternoon. I didn’t win a penny. I’m confused, because so many sources say sigil magick really works and fast and is the only magick most people get results.

“Did I do something wrong? Do you have any ideas why it didn’t work?”

-Anonymous


Let’s start with the traditional mystic’s answer to this question: If you believed it would work, why did you stop at three scratchcards? Why not help the “magick” along by buying more until you got the result you wanted? You asked for something terribly unlikely — winning the lottery — and yet you only gave it a mere three chances to happen. That’s almost the same as not buying a scratchcard at all, and hoping someone will just hand you the winning ticket.

That’s a nice, simple answer, isn’t it? It even has the ring of wisdom to it. But it’s not a satisfying answer.

So, let’s get real. It didn’t work because that’s not really what sigil magick is for. Sigil magic is more about focusing your intent than it is about shaping the world around you. Remove the occult trappings from sigil magick — the 18th century idea of the “will” being able to control all, or the arcane rituals for breathing life into a symbol — and what you’re left with is art, passion, and a statement of intent.

Those statements can be powerful. They can — and do — steer the course of entire lives. In the case of sigil magick, things that seem far too perfect to be coincidence often happen, but WHY and HOW they happen is an open question. Is it something truly supernatural? Or is it a tool for channeling the power of the subconscious mind, subtly steering the user toward uncanny connections, discovering the hidden obvious, or even providing a token of confidence to move in a new direction?

I come at sigilcraft from a chaos magick perspective. That tradition holds the view that belief is a tool. Maybe there are powerful arcane forces shaping the world, just beyond our view. Maybe not. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. If believing in something — anything — creates real results, then it doesn’t really matter if it’s “magick” or “positive thinking.”

Do you want real results from your sigils? Here’s my advice: Forget the scratchcard.

Unless you just have some fetish for scraping silvery glue off cardboard with your spare change, it’s not the actual, real thing you want. It’s a means to an end, right? You want to have some money, I’d guess. Ultimately, it’s not even the money you want, but what that money would allow you to have or do.

It’s a lot harder to get the result you want if you try to force it to go through a single channel
— like, say,

only via a scratchcard
—

and on a specific schedule of “tomorrow.” Consider how many things you directly control or strongly influence that couldn’t happen on that schedule. I can’t even get my friends to agree on a place to meet for coffee with a week’s notice.

So if you really want to give this sigil magick thing a shot, I’d say dig down to the root of what you actually want. Be specific. Focus in on it. See it in your mind’s eye. Then write out that desire, make a fresh sigil for it, and activate it. Don’t get tripped up in the details of how you active it. Then, shake it all off. Finally, give it a little time. It’s a big ask for the world to change itself around you (or for you to change how you experience the world), and a little patience seems reasonable.

Will it work? Prepare to be surprised. In my experience, however, it’s also not much for generating the kind of instant, obvious effects you probably expect. It’s a subtle thing, almost imperceptible at first. But it builds. As I wrote in the Sigil Daily guide:

Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride: In the coming days, you’ll start to see little things that are eerily evocative of the sigil you activated. Don’t deny these. Don’t dismiss them, even if they seem minor. This is the process starting to work, bit by bit, to bring your intention into reality. The more open you are to these changes, the faster the magick will come into effect.

It’s important, however, to note that your decisions play a hugely important part in how effective the sigil will be. If your sigil is about meeting a new romantic partner, for instance, you might want to think about going out to a place where that could plausibly happen. Staying inside your home, with curtains drawn and lights out, not answering the door, is actively working against the thing you want. Don’t count on the sigil to do the work for you. You’ve already bought the ticket, now you have to take the ride.

I hope this helps. If you want some additional insight, check out the Sigil Daily page on sigil creation and activation here.

Best wishes,

Sigil Daily

Sigils can absolutely work very soon. I’ve done them myself and there’s no reason they HAVE to be “subtle” (whatever that means).

If you want, fire the sigils in clusters. Make a few sigils of things that are already true and fire them off with the sigil you wish to make true. Experiment with several different methods. Wanking has always been the most potent for me; theres a reason its so often suggested first.

You probably werent specific enough with your intention, or it needs to be tweaked because its not as likely for you to get the ticket with the highest amount even at wherever you bought it from. Maybe “I wanna win a sizeable sum” instead.

Tbh, if it’s money you want quickly I’d say Solomonic magic is faster than sigilwork for most people because the tech carries “intention” and doesn’t necessarily require a super altered state to work. You DO need to be in a changed state of mind for a sigil to work however (hence the wanking). Thats harder for some folk.

Just keep trying and experimenting. Maybe hone your psychic work (meditation and reaching gnosis) by meditating for five minutes every day and doing pranayama breathing five minutes every day. At the very least do some pranayama breathing maybe fifteen minutes beforehand. Theres some realistic advice.

azaizall-witch-of-shadows:

Intent is not everything

So I’ve seen some shit on this site and I need to speak my 2 cents. I can understand where people are coming from when people say things like “oh it will be fine as long as the intent was there” or “oh, I made a mistake but I had good intentions” but like this is witchcraft not saying sorry to your partner for getting them a cake instead of pie like they asked for. Speaking of cake, one of the analogies I use when explaining to people that substitutions are ok but there are limits. If you are baking a cake and you don’t have all the right ingredients but you have something that close enough you use it and you can still come out with a great cake. If you just use whatever the fuck you have on hand cause fuck what the recipe says you’re probably gonna come out with a shit cake and same goes for spells, you can intend to make the best cake ever but unless you use the right(or similar) ingredients it won’t come out the way you want it to so do better Susan. You’re willpower is a lot more then just your intent, you actually have to put effort into what you are doing to get real results. Another analogy I would like to use is let’s say you intend to quit smoking and you think about it really hard but fuck man you really want a cigarette and you eventually give in but you intend to keep trying but at the end of the day it was your own willpower that failed you not your intentions.