MAGICAL GUIDANCE FOR BEGINNERS

Bringing Magic into your life

A friend of mine is a ‘Wish Witch’.  She lives a balanced and harmonious life and what she wishes for happens.  She was once very late for a ritual.  Her car wouldn’t start and the AA could find no fault with it.  She’d wished she could avoid a shopping trip before coming out to meet us.  So, be careful what you ask for!

Clear up any fuzzy ideas and your Will will manifest harmoniously once you flow with the tides and elemental balances under the guidance of an appropriate mentor.  If you ask for more money and responsibility at work consider the conflict with your desire to spend more time with your loved ones.  Only ask in magic when you are prepared to accept the consequences because once you are flowing and flowering magically your wishes will start to manifest without spells.

There is no better guide for your magical development than a deity from a pantheon you are strongly drawn to and which resonates with your personal background.  Celtic energies obviously work for everyone in Britain.  Egyptian energies work well for immigrants and British of all races.  Amerindian and Asian pantheons are fashionable but work best for people with an ethnic link.

Read the stories so you know what qualities belong with your deity before asking for their help.  Avoid all tricksters and psychopomps until you’re an expert.  Don’t be like my client who asked Loki to remove her husband and had her jewellery stolen!  Isis and Rhiannon are both gentle and patient with beginners and will introduce you to their kindred as you develop.  Make space for your mentoring deity within your home, creating a shrine using those things he or she shows to you as you move through life – feathers, stones, shells etc.

Fairies are helpful if you’re working for the environment but love to play tricks.  Angels will push your spiritual development to the detriment of your physical needs for money and sleep.  And, remember, Pan = Everything and is wild.

Get your ego under control.  Magic is a tool.  Don’t get glamoured.  Being magical or spiritual won’t make you a more useful person to society than a dustman who probably does more to remove unhealthy diseases from people’s lives.

Work With Nature

Look at the tides and seasons of life on planet Earth and in the heavens and work with them, not against them.  Solar tides flow through the year and within a day.  Dawn and Spring bring new beginnings.  Midday and Midsummer fulfil and warm.  Dusk and Autumn tides take away unwanted energies and Midnight and Midwinter bring negation.  Marking these tides will bring your life into synchronicity so you instinctively ask for that which blocks healing to be removed at Dusk and that which brings healing to flow in at Dawn.

Solar energy is good for physical healing and success work.  Lunar tides reflect in emotional wellbeing and don’t forget that anger and frustration are as potent as love and empathy.  The Moon also governs growth of plant and animal life so bring her into your observations too.  Find out what astrological sign the Moon was in at your birth and observe her tides in your emotional life. This way you’ll go with the flow and not fight it.  And if you live by the sea you may wish to harness her tides too.

Don’t try to understand everything at once intellectually.  Ask for guidance in integrating these things on a physical, practical level in your life and your mentor will help.  Realise it’s not about lighting a candle and wishing.  You need to balance your spirituality with your mortality.

Therefore, to manifest on a physical level and get results you might bake your wishes into a loaf of bread (your kitchen can be an alchemist’s den) made from the finest ingredients that you then share with wild birds. This nurtures the wish within yourself and spreads it far and wide as powerful magic.

Learn about the elements – Earth, Water, Fire and Air (unless you are from the Far East) – these are the building blocks of magic used all over planet Earth, placed differently to reflect the local environment.  Assess how they appear in your everyday life.  For example, excessive airy mental anxiety typical of urban 21st century life often manifests in computers crashing and lightbulbs blowing.  Is your water system clogged or overflowing?  Do your doors stick?  Often practical action e.g. oiling the hinges and lock, releases the block on other levels.  When we balance the elements in our life Spirit is generated spontaneously and magic is present.

Now it’s time to ask for what you want using colour, scent, music etc.  To help you, play ‘Let’s pretend’ or ‘visualise’.  Make it easy by asking that you change to allow change to happen, then you will evoke a new, exciting response from the Universe and other people manifesting your desires.

Books to inform and inspire

There are dozens of ‘How to be a witch’ books, mostly ‘How to be an American witch’.  But you can get closer to the true path that works for you by researching your own heritage and folklore.

Get these from your library or bookshop.  Handling a book and exchanging real cash for it anchors the knowledge.  Don’t read online or Kindle.  And don’t just read!  Give your magical quest a safe place to manifest physically.  Armchair magicians can find unexpressed thought forms making mischief.

Story telling is an ancient method of teaching and some of these are amusing too.  The Maginogion: for non-Welsh speakers the best translation is by Sioned Davies, published by Oxford University which has an easy pronunciation guide.  This is The British Book of Mythology – an invaluable source book for anyone practising the Craft in Britain.

Read all and any retelling of Irish, Norse, Greek and Egyptian myths for children, especially by Roger Lancylen Green and Rosemary Sutcliffe.  Some have wonderful illustrations by Charles Keeping who also drew for Alan Garner.  All Garner’s books are painstakingly researched and he understands the shamanic experience and responsibility.

Brian Bates’s Way of Weird owes a lot to Castaneda and Bates’s Celtic monk would have known far more of the Elemental powers than he allows but is a good Saxon viewpoint.

Robert Graves wrote The White Goddess in a rush of Awenydd-poetic inspiration.  Read it for the spirit, though scholastically, it is chaotic and inaccurate.

Terry Pratchett’s Lancre witches and Tiffany Aching stories from his Discworld are a fund of cautionary tales.  He knows the power of stories, the quintessential practicality of witchcraft and the egocentricity of magicians.

All Dion Fortune’s novels teach us how to create a dynamic focus for Spirit to manifest.

Janet and Stewart Farrar’s Witch’s Goddess and God are useful so you can get to know the story behind each deity before you ask for their help.