It’s your brain.
Exciting, right? No? Well, it’s true.
The reason that your brain is so powerful and so important is because you need to use your head to think before you go through the process of casting spells.
Normally on Magick Monday, I like to share a spell or something magickal that you can do, but this week I need to address something else, and that’s thinking. Thinking before you commit to doing spellwork and thinking when you’re going through the process of creating or choosing your spells.
Spellwork is always best done from a place of passion, emotion, and true desire. But there is a point where there can be too much emotion and not enough thought. Logic does play a role in good, effective magick.
As a priestess and teacher of the Craft, I get the chance to talk to a lot of people who are either new to magick or still getting their bearings in the magickal world. They all have questions, and all of them want to try their hand at magick. Some people just want to try a “beginner’s spell” to see if they can do magick (spoiler alert…there really is no such thing) or they have a specific situation that they want to do a spell for, and they want to do it now!
It’s not unusual for someone to pick up witchcraft out of need. When a person feels they have exhausted all of their mundane resources and they are at their wit’s end often something like magick and witchcraft feels like a possible answer. Unfortunately a lot of people, not all but many, who come to the Craft this way have a few misconceptions to have cleared up first. Specifically three particular things…
⭐ the fact that magick isn’t actually a “magick pill” that always fixes everything
⭐ magick doesn’t happen instantaneously and takes time to manifest
⭐ not everyone is suited for magick and spellwork
I know some people would argue with that last one, but there are definitely people out there that for one reason or another just aren’t suited for doing spellwork and magick. Often its because they are impatient, unteachable, inflexible, irresponsible, and irrational.
Time
You need to be mindful that in the magickal world time is pretty meaningless. To work with magick, you need to be willing to give magick time to manifest. Energy has a lot of things it needs to touch and shift for you to get what you want, and the Universe works in its own time, not yours. I have personally cast spells, not seen results after a while and thought “well that didn’t work” only to have it manifest months and months later!
Growth
You need to be willing to learn, to get out of your comfort zone, and to change your way of looking at yourself, your beliefs, and the world around you. You will defiantly have to shift some things there to give magick room to work and grow. If you’re not willing to change and be different how can you expect your life and your challenging situations to turn out different?
Trust
You have to be flexible and trust that when you send your request to the Universe and put your intentions and energy into the spellwork that you do that whatever you need will find its way to you, even if it isn’t what you want. Trust me, take a few steps back from what you get and you’ll see it was what you needed after all.
Responsibility
You need to be responsible for your actions, your words, and your thoughts before, during, and after magick is cast. You can’t cast a spell for unlimited abundance and then go around always obsessing about your bank balance and talking about how broke you are. Magick only works if you do, and if the work you’re doing is going against the magick you’ve cast, you’re just sabotaging yourself.
Rational
You have to be rational in your desires while remembering that the claims of some spells and the people that write them or work them are not always factual. You’re not going to light a candle and say an incantation for fame and suddenly become a famous actress in a month. Especially if you’re just sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring and you’re not out doing the actual work. Magick doesn’t make things happen that could never or would never happen normally. Magick can help speed things up or open doors to opportunities, but you still have to go through the paces to reach your goals.
But let’s say that you are a patient, teachable, flexible, responsible, and rational person that wants to learn magick and cast spells to improve your life. Now what?
Know that not everything needs a spell.
Magick is an art of energetic influence. If your own energy is a mess, you’re not going to have terribly easy time influencing the energy of someone or something else. When you allow yourself to step away for a day or two and get some distance between you and the issue, you may very well see you don’t need magick. Or at the very least, not the magick you thought you did.
Sometimes it isn’t an actual spell you need but rather another kind of magick, the magick of personal confidence, courage, and strength to do things that you need to do for yourself even if that action is difficult.
Sometimes you don’t need to do a spell to get a raise or a promotion at your current job. What you really need to do is leave and find a new job. Sometimes you don’t need to do a spell to save your marriage. What you really need is to accept that things have changed and the relationship needs to be released. Sometimes you don’t need to do a spell to heal a dying friend or family member. What you really need to do is bless them with love, surround them with light, and let them make their way to the other side.
Magick doesn’t have to be a last resort, but it shouldn’t be the first stop.
Always ask yourself if this is something you could deal with through mundane means? If the answer is yes, then you don’t need a spell…at least not now. If the answer is no, then you may want to work some magick. If the answer is maybe, you need to sort out what you can deal with in a mundane way and use that first. Once you have used all your mundane resources, reassess your situation and start over.
Also, have you truly looked at the situation from all angles to see what practical changes you could make to help you along? In the case of the job situation I gave above, ask yourself why you haven’t been promoted yet. Is it because you aren’t a team player? Do you need more job training? Are you not showing more initiative or interest in being promoted?
If you don’t play well with others, aren’t skilled enough in your job, and don’t show the real desire to step up, learn more, and take on more responsibility a spell isn’t going to suddenly get you that big promotion you want. And, just for ha-ha’s let’s say it did, there’s an excellent chance that you’ll find yourself in over your head in no time.
However, if you’re doing everything you feel you should be doing and taking the right actions, magick is certainly a tool that can help you move things along. So it doesn’t have to be the last thing you do out of desperation, but it also shouldn’t be your go-to every time you need or want something.
Sometimes two’s a party, three’s a crowd, and ten is a surprise because you didn’t even know the other seven people were there!
Another thing to consider with this example is that our might think you know who you need to influence with magick to get this promotion but there is a good chance there could be other people as well who would have a say. Sometimes you don’t know all the players behind the scenes of any given situation, and without knowing everyone that needs to be influenced, you could end up making this even more complicated.
Magick should come into play when you are ready to receive the thing you desire, and you’re ready to work for it as the Universe responses to your magick by presenting opportunities to you.
Also, despite what you may have learned from the movies, it’s never a terribly great idea to cast spells on other people.
There is a reason that the best magick you’ll do is usually magick aimed at yourself; you’ll have a far easier time influencing yourself than your ex or your boss. Doing spells specifically aimed at attracting or removing things around you is always magick that you can do. Because, at the end of the day, isn’t that what your magick is all about?
For instance, consider a love spell cast on a specific person to get them to fall in love with you (which is a wonderful idea if you feel your life is lacking drama, tears, and sleepless nights). The end goal is, truly, feeling loved. You might think it’s about the other person, but it isn’t. It’s about you wanting to feel loved. You could cast a spell aimed at attracting more love into your life or helping you to radiate a vibration that makes you more lovable and you’ll get what you’re really after. Sure you might not have a piece of arm candy to walk around with, but when you’re attracting love in all forms into your life, you’ll be feeling amazing, and you’ll forget “what’s his/her name” soon enough.
And one last thing…
Something that can help all of this is to learn divination. Whether it’s tarot cards or other forms or cartomancy, runs, crystals, bones or pendulums if you have a divination tool that you can use and trust you’ll always have a way to gain insight into whether or not your magick is a good idea.
Please don’t think I’m trying to say you shouldn’t do magick! That would be fucking insane! But what I am saying is that if you use your brain, the most powerful magickal tool you’ll ever own, and really think about your desires, think about the situation and the magick you want to work, you’ll have far better results with your work. Not to mention you won’t be wasting time and energy casting spells and spending money on supplies for something that was set up to fail from the moment you picked up your wand.
