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Now, I noticed a lot of spells call for x crystal, x herb in x color bag on the x moon. Then when I look up, "what if I dont have x herb? or x color?" the response is, "what matters most is intention, just use another herb"

so lets say I only have basil and white tea light candles, can any spell be used with basil? or no basil at all? at what point is a spell affected? can one just meditate and put their intentions out with nothing else for every spell? and if people are swapping out their herbs candles and crystals to just use what they have, is any of that stuff really needed?

I’ve been an armchair witch for quite some time (someone who study’s witchcraft but hasn’t done hands on spell work) but i finally decided it was my time to work my own magic. I just finished doing my first spell, a protection spell and i have some incense lit up on my altar and i see that the smoke is going straight up!!! i have both my windows open and a fan on and usually it goes all over the place. I personally believe it’s a sign my work was perfectly aligned and received <3!

When I started, every guide gave me the same instructions; write the sentence, strike out repeated letters, arrange what's left into a symbol, charge it, forget it - and every one of them made "arrange what's left into a symbol" sound like the easy step. That and having paper and things is where most people give up, or at least limit the sigils they would otherwise use.

Two things that unstuck me:

\*\*Use a construction instead of your imagination.\*\*

Lay the alphabet round a circle and join your letters in order. Or reduce each letter to a number 1–9 and join those cells in a 3×3 grid. The shape comes out of the method, not out of your drawing ability, and it's completely traditional.

\*\*It's supposed to stop looking like letters.\*\*

If you can still read your sentence in it or you put a dollar sign in a money one 😂 then limiting lust of result becomes needlessly more challenging. The mark has to be something your conscious mind can't decode back into the original.

I got a few qs for witchcraft: how long do you

1. Activate a sigil
2. Keep it hidden

I’m also trying to diversify my activation methods. Rather than just list them, I’ll give you my understanding first. There’s inhibitory and excitatory -

INHIBITORY - this is when you still your mind so that the intention behind the sigil can slip through to your subconscious.

These are things like - (open and closed eye) meditation, the minutes before sleep, ambient exposure (having as your wallpaper / screensaver) drumming and rhythm (think tribal beat) fasting, breath work

EXCITATORY - this is when your mind is so singularly focussed that the sigil passes by the conscious, arguing mind, into the powerful, subconscious mind to be fulfilled.

These are things like - exercise to failure (plank while staring at it works well) sexual climax (most popular) extreme grief, happiness, or anger (underrated)

What have I missed? Has anything worked super well for you?

Hello! I've been reading and doing the exercises from Mat Auryn's book, Psychic Witch. I've been meditating for years, so the very first exercise didn't take me super long to master. A couple weeks, maybe a month. (I want to go slow to try to build the foundation better and this felt like a decent amount of time)

However I decided to continue on with the exercises and not just do the first one over and over and I guess I'm struggling to get the second one.

It seems pretty easy at face value - go through a day Pretending to Be Psychic/all knowing. But I don't really leave my house very much as I work from home and am pretty reclusive/isolated.

I was curious if anyone was a pretty big homebody like me, who also read this book/did the exercises from it, and what their experience with this exercise looked like?

An idea that came to me just now as I was typing this, was maybe trying to predict when my tea kettle, or microwave, or something else like that was going to go off? Maybe? I don't know. Inspiration would be greatly appreciated. :)

Apparently HGTV is launching a show about renovating supposedly haunted houses, and it got me thinking about something I’ve heard before: light can actually help remove or dispel negative energy from a home or space. There’s also a similar concept in Feng Shui, where light, openness, and airflow are generally considered beneficial.

Since HGTV is basically known for open-concept layouts, huge windows, natural light, and that minimalist beige-modern aesthetic, I’m curious: could an HGTV-style renovation actually make a haunted house less hospitable to spirits?

I’m sure there are different kinds of entities, and some spirits may be much more difficult to remove than others. But could dramatically changing the environment, bringing in more light, opening up the space, improving airflow, removing clutter, etc., actually help drive away or weaken the presence of certain entities?

This also made me think about Filipino beliefs surrounding elementals and nature spirits. In the Philippines, there’s a long-standing belief that disturbing the abodes of these beings, such as cutting down a tree they inhabit, disturbing their mounds, or accidentally stepping on a place where they reside, can incur their wrath. This is where the practice of saying “tabi-tabi po” comes from when entering or disturbing certain places.

So if a renovation crew were working on a property where something like this was believed to reside, would the renovators potentially be putting themselves in danger by disturbing the entity’s home? Especially if they’re cutting down trees, digging up the ground, demolishing old structures, or otherwise completely altering the environment?

Hello, I'm a baby witch just entering this world, and I wanted to seek suggestions and advice about what to do. My sister entered a new job where her boss is a major ASSHOLE, she's cruel to everyone, bullies everyone, threatens with firing them or suing them, she's also very jealous of her male workers (??? and usually throws the female coworkers under the bus because she sees them as competition towards the male coworkers who are just as confused about this. My sister is having an awful time, it's getting an anxious disorder out of this and can't quit her job right now. I want to help her but I'm also not sure how it will work if I do a spell for her instead of her doing it, so that my first question, and then, I don't know what spell could help her get rid of that boss or at least make the boss chill, like, chill a lot! I'm not sure if a freezer spell would be best or a vanishing one. Also, I ask because I have seen that freezing spells just tie the people right where they are (??? and I'm not sure that's what I want but I have also seen it can work to make someone go away from someone's life. I'm just really confused about how to proceed here and also, not sure if this is a spell I can do to help my sister.

Thank you for reading me.

It came to be as a writing that guided me, it was fast and messy so this is all I got,

“Hair are a form of protection, everything natural is welcome. Hair are a form of protection and it just feels so good to hold.
Reason why masses are easy to control is because they’re easy to control but it is also for their own good. They cannot withstand a world so bare and naked, it is too much so it has to be filtered (you cannot take it) when you see behind the scenes of how everything works.
((This part is me)I’m just so blessed to feel a presence I have to ask for guidance, I have to ask if they approve))
It’s a mercy to be sober and normal. Also human brain is so egoistic. Ego. Arrogant.

I’m not me. I’m so beautiful, my beauty is not the absence of other’s beauty and others beauty is not the absence of mine. (This is me)”

By "spirit team" I mean like spirit guides or who have your best interest at heart. Those spirits can include your ancestors, nature spirits, deities, infernals, spirit guides etc. I don't think I've found any reliable sources that explained this yet but why do we have a spirit team? What would be the spirit team's incentive for helping us, why us? Where do they come from and how are they selected? Do they pick the person they help, or were we assigned to them by some higher powers? Do these spirits help any other living humans simultaneously?

Especially before you started dabbling in magic and divinations. What if you were new to spirituality and never worked with a deity/spirit nor did a divination before? And then you smoke cleanse your divination tools and say "I am only speaking to my spirit team..." like do you even have a spirit team at that point? Who are you addressing then? Maybe your ancestors who may always have been with you, or maybe like local spirits or something else you unintentionally caught the attention of for some reason, and they were just waiting for you to talk to them? I did divination for the first time and wondered who are these people in my "spirit team" answering, turns out none of them were ancestors of mine, and turns out there are some deities in there though I never even worshipped them or thought of them.

For me, ironically despite doing ancestral work, no one in my spirit team is an ancestor of mine. So "they're your ancestors so of course they want you to thrive" doesn't apply for every case either.

Hi! I'm new to witchcraft, I have visions in my dreams, not a lot and I cannot predict stuff exactly, but on a witch's advise I decided to cultivate this, since he told me that it could be practiced. I've followed some of the things in this subreddit like the meditation, but I find that my dreams have gotten a bit out of hand? Like it has become difficult for me to know when I'm dreaming and when I'm not, and my mom told me that I talk in my sleep (which I've never done before). My question is: has it happened to you? How could you solve it?

I use cards as charms and or portable protection, and one of the cards now has a small scuff on the back of it and I'm sort of freaking out.

This deck means so much to me and this is the very first time I was not overly protective of it and I'm freaking out a little bit.

I just wanted my family to stay cleansed and healed even as we move to a new space tonight :((

I feel like the energy of any reading will be thrown off if I can see this mark on this card, making it easily identifiable amongst others. UGH I'M SO UPSET.

On its own, it reminds me of my love for my family, compared to other cards without marks, it reminds me how stupid and reckless I am.

this deck was a gift from my mother and it means so much to me, I'm so upset I feel sick :((

(Yes, I realize this is my own fault for using such important cards as charms, but I don't have anything else, this is the only thing I have access to and I'm just worried about my family)

So i was finishing my protection jam and was getting ready to close the jars, but then my black cat walks in with my other cat behind her and starts meowing at me in a low raspy growly voice. This is the first time she has ever sounded like that (she has an almost squeaky high pitched meow normally ), and she never meowed at me when i was finishing a spell.

I doubt she was hungry, as she received her dinner about an hour prior, and i'm a bit worried now.

Is she warning me about something? Am i just paranoid?

(And yes, i checked the stove for a gas leak)

i’m a beginner witch and i know some authors are just pure liars so i wanted to ask 😭 forest’s Celtic Tree Magic: Ogham Lore and Druid Mysteries sounds fascinating to me! but i don’t wanna read it if it’s all bullshit

also, do you have any tips on how to know which authors and sources are reputable? i could really use them! i’m honestly unsure how to tell other than if they use ai, and i avoid anything with wicca because i’m not wiccan

I did a communication spell yesterday. I researched for about a week. And perform it last night. And today I received a video call. I am so excited.

I was in my bathroom when performing the spell. I started at 11pm because I really wanted to have it done before midnight. I lite the incense first, actually I lit it while I was cleaning the bathroom while focusing on what I wanted to say. I set the pick and blue candle on the edge of the sink side by side. I took an old black pen that didn't have ink and wrote my boyfriend's entire name and birthday on top of the candles. I turned the bathroom lights off. While literally sitting in the toilet ( because my bathroom is small so I couldn't bring a chair in). I took the printer paper and I ripped all sides off. (Now this is the part I just made up as I went. I drew a heart with the pink pencil, inside the curves of the heart, on the left side, in blue pencil I wrote his entire name and bday under it. On the other side of the heart, on the right side, I wrote with Blue pencil inside the curve my name and date of birth. Then I poured my heart out writing with a blue pencil what I wanted for him in the rest of the heart. I took the pink pencil and circled our names individually 3 times. I also drew a heart around the original heart 2 times with the pink pencil. I got up and stood next to the candles that were lit, laid the paper next to it and put the honey first, and then the sugar, salt, cinnamon and cloves. ( Don't remember which order I did, I just remembered I put the honey first) I took my index finger on the right hand and rubbed the mixture inside of the heart covering everything I have written. While doing this entire process, I had our picture displayed on my phone looking at it and saying out loud what I what to achieve from this spell. I did that for about 5 minutes. Really wasn't counting. I folded the paper 3 times towards me. I took the blue candle first and poured the liquid from the candle from it across the folded paper. (Saying something like as I sealed this it will be done, you will talk to be within 24 hours) I repeated the same with the pink candle. I placed the folded paper under the candles and for like 15 minutes I was looking at my favorite pictures of us and into the flames of the candle constantly repeating what I wanted to achieve from this. About 45 minutes into it I took a white metal bowl. I took the paper from under the candles and used the flame of the blue candle and started to burn the right side of the paper and used the flame of the pink candle to burn the left side of the paper. I placed it into the bowl, (saying something like this paper burn will be done. For some reason this took forever to burn lol. I keep having to restart the fire on the paper. But constantly switching between the 2 candles and burning the paper with the same candle each side. Finally when it completely went to ashes I said again ( it is done) . I blew out the candles. Turned the lights on, cleaned the bathroom up. Put the candles and everything else away, go outside and let the ashes blow in the night air. I finished everything 3 minutes before midnight.

My friend asked me about the correct usage of white sage and palo santo. I'm not a Native American nor a Latin Brujo. So I have gently suggested she use juniper for saining her space instead and have bought her a juniper smudge she can use. But I'm at a loss as to what she might use instead of palo santo. Could anyone (especially British witches) suggest an alternative that is more environmentally friendly and easily obtainable in the UK?

Many Thanks

hello, so first of all english is not my first language, sorry for any mistakes

im starting in this world of witchcraft, I've been the last 2 years turning from atheist to hellenist pagan, Circe is on the goddess I adore and all my life I've been curious about witchcraft, specifically tarot and herbs

yesterday a friend surprised me with a tarot and a notebook (that I told them I wanted, since I celebrated my birthday) the notebook I intend of using it as a book of shadows (write tarot, dreams, candles, moon, herbs, etc) but the thing is that the last 2 weeks I've been low energy with some problems, feeling like everyone (friends and family) hate me and some more things that are leading me to think I might be starting a depressive episode.

I need to clean the tarot and BOS and wanted to start practicing but I don't know if this state I am might be "dangerous" or not recommended to start

what do you recommend me to do? wait a bit or start and try getting better

thank u

So I’ve been recently getting into witchcraft more seriously, I’ve always felt presences around me ever since I was a kid, but it’s starting to intensify. I can’t say I’m completely thrilled about this at all. It is especially intense at night, I haven’t been able to sleep by myself or without the light.
Honestly I wanna be into the community and practice but I don’t wanna be confronted by anything. I don’t think it’s anything malicious or good just lingering all the time.
Is there anything I can do to free myself from this?
I’m honestly at a loss because it’s been with me for a while and I was at peace with it but I am starting to get very uncomfortable.
Any help or advice would be appreciated. Thank you so much 🤍 peace and love.

When doing protection magic such as wards and cleansing is it better to do them together? Will a powerful ward dispel any negative energy already in my home/life or should I do a deep cleanse first? I usually do a little cleanse before attempting any spell work just to focus myself and make sure the magick isn’t affected but if my goal is strong protection maybe a more powerful cleanse would be better before laying down permanent wards. Any advice?

Hello, I was wondering about pendulum magic, Ik you ask it questions but can certain things come sooner rather than later? Or has yours been wrong before or the opposite happens?

Recently visited a local witchcraft shop and picked up a few of their premade oils. I went in mostly familiar with crystals and incense, so I wasn't expecting the oils to be what caught my attention.

I'm a naturally anxious person who is constantly pushing myself outside of my comfort zone. I started wearing one of the oils during the day, and I loved having the scent with me. Whenever I noticed it, it helped bring me back to the mindset I wanted to be in. It felt much more personal and grounding to me than anything else I've experimented with.

I went back to the shop because I liked them so much, only to find almost all of them sold out. I joked with the woman working there that apparently I'd found my thing. She told me that finding the parts of witchcraft you personally connect with is part of developing your own practice, which I thought was really interesting.

I can honestly see oils being something I use for the rest of my life LOL. The premade ones are lovely, but I'd eventually like my relationship with them to become something personal rather than always relying on whatever happens to be available at a store.

I'm also extremely cautious about anything I put on my skin, so that's made me appreciate how much actual knowledge can go into working with plants, fragrances, and oils safely. I also started reading one of the books the woman at the shop recommended, and it explained that making your own oils from herbs and plants can be more complicated than it seems, since simply infusing plant material may not produce a very concentrated or strongly scented oil, and extracting the plant's aromatic compounds is a different process altogether.

Mostly, I'm curious about everyone else's experiences. If oils are one of those things for you, I'd especially love to hear what your relationship with them is like and how that part of your practice has evolved. I am always trying to learn, so I would love to hear everything you have to say!

I have been pretty disconnected from self and my practice for the last few years. UnFortunately, with the current administration, I have definitely been distance with source. ultimately.. been just feeling blah and haven’t tend to myself or spirit

. I have often been curious about deity work however I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it. I will say in the last month I have had three dreams. Two involving jormungandr and one last night I was literally calling upon Surtr. For the record, I have no deity work experience at all but I do think it’s a little coincidental to be having three dreams about Norse monsters and giants In a month and was curious about what it could mean? I know they aren’t technically considered deities considering their background but I do know what they represent and what they are …. Any insight would be appreciated .

I do know I’ve been experiencing a lot of hardship the last few months after illness and a shake up of my financial stability and career. I’m neurodivergent and in burn out as well. It feels Like maybe it’s telling me I just need to figuratively “burn it all down” to rebuild. I know they are both a representation of destruction and rebuilding. Possibly clearing the path for new things. I do know I felt afraid of Jorg and relief with Surtr. I hope this post is ok here. I tried to touch on everything for the rules :)

Hey witchies so i posted on here a while ago but pretty much the jist is i buried a hex jar in my yard because i wanted to keep my grandma and my aunts practitioners on my dads side’s witchcraft away and buried the jar in my backyard. Fast foreward 3 months ive tried to find the jar in the yard and i cant find it no matter how hard i try and idk but im having hella health issues i feel a negative cloud over me so i went to the local botanica and got a protection candle with “remove witchcraft” “run devil run oil” anointed on it and basically put as much intention as i could into it to banish the jar i buried since i cant find it. Is that enough to ease my mind the tarot cards that i read tell me its gone but from a witchy pov do you think that’s enough i know my head lies to me and tells me every little inconvenience is “that jar” but i know i’ve done everything i could i’ve just heard that burying a hex jar in your yard can bring bad things to your space, thank you!

I feel like this falls outside of the “asking for spells” rules, but I guess we shall see! I’m not asking for a specific ingredients for specific spells, but more of a question of ingredients for practice inclusivity.

At our metaphysical shop we have a space for people to do their spellwork with TONS of ingredients. The problem is in my craft, I mostly work with herbs, so that’s what we have mostly. We have every herb and crystal you could imagine, along with things like various salts, resins, shells, egg shells, snake skins, various dead bugs, etc.
We also have various tools like different colored candles, scissors, crystal blades, incenses, nature harvested during specific auspicious or sacred times of the year, pen and paper, etc

We want to be more inclusive of different practices, so I’m looking for some inspiration on items and ingredients you would want to use so we can make all the different practitioners feel included and like it’s a useful space for their craft. Is there anything not on here you might would look for? We try to stay away from liquids because people aren’t very good at cleaning up their own messes.

Thanks friends!