The Ultimate Guide of Witchcraft

WHEN WE EMBARK ON our path as witches we make a choice to change our lives and follow a little voice that calls to us each from some place that is familiar but unseen. It whispers to us on the cool breeze, it rings in our ears in moments of perfect clarity, and it beckons us to become something bigger than ourselves, something more ancient, and more powerful. When we meet a kindred soul we bond by sharing our most intimate thoughts about what it is that makes us so different, so aware of the unseen, and perhaps even more important, capable of reaching out and touching it. To some this thing is all in our heads, a product of an overactive imagination that needs discipline, and isn't something to be openly discussed with outsiders. But to some witches like myself, this preternatural instinct is seen as an important facet of what we call the Witch Power.

The Witch Power isn't just that thing that makes you the odd ball, though. When looked at through the lens of parapsychology and its subfields, one could draw a strong comparison between the Witch Power and the psychic ability known as psychokinesis or telekinesis. Telekinesis is described as the ability to affect an environment without physically touching it, examples often invoked being the performing of psychic healing and surgery, the moving of objects, and the production of noise and light phenomenon. In the craft we do these same things but by tapping into the hidden energies around us to propel our work. To me there is little that separates the two and the discovery of this some years ago altered the way I approached witchcraft entirely. Instead of seeing it as something that we get from our traditions or our gods, I started looking at it like any other psychic gift and then set out to coax it from its dormancy.
Here is seven ways to unleash your inner power.

1. You've Got The Power, So Act Like It! We all know confidence reigns supreme in magic as one of the pillars to any successful practice. It isn't, however, enough to just believe you are capable of magic; you have to see yourself as a magical person and then interact with the world as so. The late occultist and leader of the Cult of Sabbati, Andrew Chumbly, refers to the term Somnisience as a state of being so lost in your connection to the magical world around you and your propensity to interact with it that it becomes your reality. The poet Rumi refers to this state as ecstasy, a moment of absolute harmony and rapture with the universe where you are both its partner and instrument. Whatever we call the state of mind produced when we surrender to the ideologies of not just living a magical life but being key players in how that life unfolds before us, it is imperative to successful magic. At some stage in the game as witches we have to stop trying to continually convince ourselves that our magic works and simply accept the fact that it does. We then have the added burden of making choices and decisions that are informed by that world-view.

2. Feed The Fire, Not The Fear! Believe it or not, you're wasting an extreme amount of mental energy on things that just don't matter, most of which haunt you as ghosts of the future and the past—fears that keep you held hostage to parts of that other reality. Fear is normal; it is perfectly human, but it isn't something to avoid. In matters of the Witch Power, fear is a powerful tool that can be worked with to tip the scales back in your favor and fuel the fires within. The trick is in being aware of all the ways fear sneaks into our lives and having a game plan on how to handle it when it does creep its ugly head around the corner. As witches, we can't afford to succumb to our fears, we have to face them head on so that we can both take back the power they has been stolen from us, as well as to take the power that comes from confronting them. There is no use approaching our fears empty-handed, so it is always imperative to think of every forward movement before actually taking it. Think of what it is actually going to take to deal with it once and for all, what magic you can be doing to help with that, and how you are going to keep yourself going through those dark and stormy nights. For me this comes with a lot of list making, introspection, and reciting this quote from Frank Herbert's Dune: "I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."