Magick is a very real, and powerful thing. It can be learned, and used to not only better your life, but to better the world around you. It is a beautiful art, and science that has been with us throughout, and even before history. It is shaped our cultures, and traditions, and has even been at the focal points of our religions. It is been feared, and it has been praised. It has been used for all manner of tasks, from benevolent acts to malevolent deeds. It has been well understood, and it has been hidden in the occult. There has always been some type of mystical, and occult practitioner that has taken up the use of magick to help, and understand the world around them. You need nothing in particular to be a practitioner. Practitioners are all as different as our practices, and our understandings, but together we all share the universal understanding of magick.
All this post is supposed to help you do is to find a path to start exploring the basics of the occult world, so that you can continue to learn more, and explore your individual path. Magick is a practice that you never stop learning about, there will always be something new to learn, and you will always find yourself being surprised by the things you have found. This practice is very vast, and expansive, and will always keep giving you more as long as you are searching for it. You are about to embark on a very personal individual journey that will teach you much about the world around you as well as yourself. This will allow you to better yourself, and to learn things you never thought you would. Welcome to the beginning of your magickal Journey.
In this post I will be giving you some tips to remember, so that you can build your own foundation, and begin your practice as a magickal practitioner. All of these things I have found very helpful in my own practice, and I have also seen them work very well for others, and because of this I hope that you can also bring it into your own practice, and use it if it resonates with you. So take this information as you would like, and use it as a compass to help direct you to where your path is leading you.
Personal path:
There are a lot of different perspectives from various magickal practitioners. Some are a lot more prevalent than others due to the fact of their upbringing in culture, but you must understand that there is not one path, and there are many various ways of doing things. So look for the best path that suits you, and resonates with your soul. By being more connected to your practice, and enjoying what you are doing, it will allow your practice to flow more smoothly, and achieve the unimaginable. Remember that your path will be unique, and may not even be the same as a person that practices the same tradition as you. By understanding each other’s perspectives you can learn, and become even better than you both were separately. Others can be your greatest teachers. Even people that you believe cannot teach you a thing can teach you a lot, as long as you are open to their teachings. It is also a very good idea not to weigh yourself against anyone else’s practice, because everyone will be at different points on their path, and will be learning what they need to at that time to get the most out of their experiences. Your path is your own. It is beautiful, unique and will stretch out to exactly where you needed to go. you are an individual, and you can personalize your craft any way that you see fit, so do not be afraid to be your true self, and to experiment.
Know yourself:
knowing yourself is very important. It allows you to have control over yourself, so that you can have control over the world around you. By understanding your spiritual, religious, and philosophical beliefs, and the reasons that you got into magick in the first place will allow your path to run much smoother, and to be more organized, and focused. Take time to think about the big questions, and what you truly believe, and why you are doing certain things. Introspection is key here, and it will help shape your morals, and ideologies going forward allowing you to be more connected with yourself, and the magick that you do.
✔️ A method of strengthening your empathetic abilities
Meditation is NOT:
🚫 Thinking of nothing
🚫 Clearing your mind completely
Things you need to meditate:
✔️ Yourself
That’s it. You don’t need candles or crystals or a mantra or a yoga mat or a special outfit or anything.
You don’t even need to be able to do the thing where you cross your legs with your feet up on your thighs. You can meditate lying down, sitting up, kneeling, regular cross legged, or even standing. Just so you’re not in a position where you’ll lose circulation, you’ll be fine.
Kinds of meditation
Yup, there’s kinds. Lots of kinds. Way too many to list in this post. Do your research, find a kind that works for your needs. Practice a bunch of different ones! The kind I recommend for a beginner is called Mindfulness Meditation.
Mindful meditation is about staying in the present moment, rather than ruminating on the past or worrying about the future. Like any kind of meditation, it improves your focus and concentration. It’s also been shown to increase your empathic connection with the world around you. Once you achieve a mindful state, you can move into any other kind of meditation you want.
The guide below is for mindful meditation.
How to Meditate
Go to a quiet place and find a comfortable position that you can keep up for a few minutes without getting sore or losing your balance.
Close your eyes and begin breathing steadily through your nose.
Focus on your breath as it moves through your nose. Try to follow it from moment to moment, rather than lingering on a past sensation or anticipating a future one. The breath is dynamic; it moves with you through time. Try to synchronize your focus with your breath so that they both exist in the present moment.
When you have a feeling, an emotion, or a thought, acknowledge it, accept it, and then go back to focusing on your breath.
If you find you have become distracted, bring back your focus by counting to 10: each odd number is an inhale, while evens are exhales.
Do not be discouraged if you become distracted often; meditation is not something that comes naturally: it has to be practiced. The present moment is hard to hang on to, because it requires not hanging on to anything. The present moment is always slipping by, and it will take practice to teach your mind to acknowledge and dismiss each moment rather than trying to linger. Try aiming for one minute of focused meditation, and increase the time little by little as your concentration improves.
Eventually, you’ll be able to meditate in noisy places, with your eyes open, using focus tools like candles or crystals, you can start employing visualization or mantras if you want; the sky is the limit. But before you can do any of that, you have to be able to concentrate. Simple quiet, eyes-closed meditation that focuses on the breath is a good way to get you there.
Harvesting & Storage In late September, the petals will fall off of the sunflower head and the head will start to curl. When you peak into the head you will find that the seeds are visible and turning black. When this happens, cut the stem far enough from the head that you have a good handle. Then hang the head upside down in a well ventilated area out of the sun until it is thoroughly dried out then shake and rub the seeds out into a bag. Alternatively, put a mesh bag over the sunflower as it starts to ripen to protect it from the birds and let it ripen on the stem.
The seeds will keep longer in their shells. They will store up to a year in the freezer but will start to go bad after about 2 months. The oils begin to go rancid. Exposure to sunlight and heat will speed up the process so store them in a cool, dark spot to get the most out of them. You can roast them like pumpkin seeds in the oven, sprinkled with a little salt, or not.
Magical Attributes Sunflower is associated with the sun and all solar deities. Its essence helps balance the first chakra and also helps with confidence in leadership roles. Growing sunflower in the garden brings positive energy to the home. (Plant near the front door so everyone sees it before they come in!)
The sunflower is also considered a figure for internal healing and happiness. It can be paired with rose, lavender, sage, and balsam to boost spells while you cast.
Cleansing Crystals If you have certain crystals that should not be cleansed in water, you can always place them in a bowl of flower petals; adding sunflower petals to the mix can really help with your process.
Household Use Sunflower oil can be used to make homemade soap (though coconut oil is best) Sunflowers can be used to extract toxins from the soil including lead, arsenic and uranium. Simply plant them in the tainted area and don’t eat their seeds!
Healing Attributes Sunflower oil can be used as a carrier oil for healing used in massages and ointments. If you work with candles to to cleanse your energy from negative to positive, you can combine lavender, sage, and sunflower petals during your meditation. As a best practice, blessing your candles and your flower petals can really help boost your meditation and transfer to ensure that you’re filtering out as much negative energy as possible.
sources:Grimoire for the Green Witch, Witchipedia, Witchy Tendencies
The Open Mind were a short lived British psychedelic group of the late 1960s, also known by the name The Drag Set. Magic Potion was their best known single – of three total – but strangely never was released on their sole album. The rough, heavy sounds of the song echo the coming blues and jazz influences of the early heavy metal scene.
We all spend so much time
thinking about the correspondences of the actual ingredients that go into our
potions that we often forget to think about what the potion base represents!
(At least I do.) It would be nice to have a list of all the various liquids
that can be used in place of water. Naturally, I can’t think of everything but
I think this is a pretty good starting point! What else can be used? Eventually, at some point down the
road, I will compile all these thoughts into a book on potion making and want
to include this! Keep in mind that these are my own correspondences. Let me know if you disagree or if you’d change anything up! Let’s see how big we can make this list. Also, I should probably note that not all of these liquids can be ingested. (Obviously.)
The List
Vinegar: Used for cleansing and purification potions. Lemon Juice: Used in hexing, cursing, or revenge potions. Cranberry Juice: Used in love potions. Apple Juice: Used in healing, knowledge, and youth potions. Ammonia: Used in banishing, cursing, purification, and protection Red Wine: Love potions and potions dealing with death and the afterlife. White Wine: Used in platonic love potions as well as success brews. Rum: Used in potions involving spirit work. Whisky: Another good base for potion work. Vodka: A good base for work involving rapid banishing. Laundry detergent: Good for cleansing potions. Oils: Used to speed up a process. Molasses: Used in potions intended to slow a situation down. Rubbing Alcohol: Another good base for cleansing and purification. Hydrogen Peroxide: Used in healing potions. Milk: Used in potions to promote sleep and peace. Sour Milk: Used to cause nightmares or in potions designed to torment. Orange Juice: For potions of solar importance, healing, success. Soda Water: Used in potions designed to encourage laughter and giddiness. Ginger Ale: Used in health or healing potions. Olive Juice: Used in peace potions. Honey: Used in potions to sweeten up another’s disposition. Syrup: Used in abundance and prosperity potions. Beer: Used in potions intended to induce slumber. Clam Juice: Used in aphrodisiacs. Cough Syrup: Used in healing potions and to make someone ‘cough it up.’ Soy Sauce: Used in protection potions. (Thanks Lexa Rosean for this one!) Pineapple Juice: Used in abundance potions and fidelity potions. Coconut Milk: Used in spiritual and magical cleansing potions. Ice: Solid first, then melted for transformation potions. Coffee: Really, a potion in and of itself in my book. Vanilla Extract: In small amounts, used in passion potions. Witch Hazel: Used in communication and cleansing potions.
If you were to look up the definition of both of the words on a search engine (hello, Google!) they are defined as follows:
Curse: (aside from meaning vulgar words) is “casting the evil eye or an evil spell upon someone.”
Hex: to curse someone.
Oh, dear sweet Google, you have tried your best but in this instance, every witch will tell you that you are wrong.
The general consensus is that ultimately, curses are worse than hexes; the target tends to suffer more at the hands of a curse than they do at the hands of a hex.
Curses:
Usually more serious than hexes.
Can live on through generations if that is what the caster intended.
Tend to be long-term in nature.
Usually, curses are borne of anger; of hatred and even a need for justice.
They can usually be reversed or undone; reversals can be done by the caster, and undoings may be done by the caster, target or a third party.
Hexes:
Often cast as a “one-off” piece of magick.
Their effects are apparent very quickly, but they are not long-term – seen sometimes as an instantaneous form of malevolent magick.
Hexes are borne of revenge and/or annoyance, and they usually cause irritation and subsequent annoyance to the target – hexes are a way for the caster make their target feel what they have been made to feel for a short time.
Due to their nature, hexes are usually over and done with quickly and do not require a reversal or undoing.
Both of these forms of magick, are forms of malevolent magick that is used for many reasons. Some people curse their abusers, or people who have hurt them and some people hex their ex-partners, or someone who has brushed them up the wrong way. Like all magick, what you do is circumstantial and no one can tell you whether you should or should not perform magick of this kind (I am pro-curse and hex, but not everyone is).
You’ll notice that I’ve bunched the common ingredients for curses and hexes in one list – that is because these two are simply lesser and greater forms of the same kind of magick, so you must bear in mind what your intent is when you choose your spell/ritual ingredients.
Do you want to frustrate, annoy and irritate your target? Do you want to bring them bad luck? Do you want to bring them untold misery? Consider this carefully.
Athanasius Kircher – Hieroglyphical Representation of Jupiter or Pan, “Oedipus Aegyptiacus”, 1652.
The great Pan was celebrated as the author and director of the Sacred Dances which he is supposed to have instituted to symbolize the Circumambulations of the Heavenly Bodies. Pan was a composite Creature, the upper part – with the exception of his Horns – being Human, and the lower part in the form of a Goat. Pan is the prototype of Natural Energy and, while undoubtedly a Phallic Deity, should nor be confused with Priapus. The pipes of Pan signify the Natural Harmony of the Spheres, and the God himself is a Symbol of Saturn because this Planet is enthroned in Capricorn, whose emblem is a Goat. The Egyptians were initiated into the Mysteries of Pan, who was regarded as a Phase of Jupiter, the Demiurgus. Pan represented the impregnating Power of the Sun and was the chief of a horde rustic Deities, and Satyrs. He also signified the controlling Spirit of the Lower Worlds. The fabricated a story to the effect that at the time of the birth of Christ the Oracles were silenced after giving utterance to one last cry, “Great Pan is Dead!”
Liber Samekh – Theurgia Goetia Summa (Congressus Cum Daemone) Sub Figura DCCC being the Ritual employed by the Beast 666 for the Attainment of the Knowledge and Conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel during the Semester of His performance of the Operation of the Sacred Magick of ABRAMELIN THE MAGE.Prepared An XVII Sun in Virgo at the Abbey of Thelema in Cephalaedium by the Beast 666 in service to FRATER PROGRADIOR
Occult Aspects 