solitary city witch @illicitude - Tumblr Blog

I thought I'd never get access to this account again !!

I literally gave up, and three years later, two moves and many more major life changes, I stumble upon my old journal and it has my login written into the first page. I'm sooo thankful. I didn't want to reset my password because it was attached to a really meaningful period in my life and I didn't want to undo it, I was nostalgic but I decided to let it be and figured it wasn't meant to happen....

✨anyways... I'm back✨

#rituals #witchcraft #crystals

girlinthebroomcloset-blog

🔮⚡🌛PLEASE ALL WITCHES READ THIS 🌜⚡🔮

Many witches make the mistake of casting spells like they are baking, following a recipe down exactly to the book. It is okay if you make things feel a little more personal. It’s okay to stutter during a spell. It’s okay to need to read through your book as you cast your spells. It’s okay to make mistakes. It’s all in the intention.

irisdoesmagic

Days of the Week and Witchcraft ✨

A good way to plan when to do your spells

Sunday - The Sun - Solar power, success, personal empowerment, material wealth, health, beginning anew.

Monday - The Moon - Lunar power, purity, spiritual cleansing, astral work, divination, psychic ability.

Tuesday - Mars - Physical power, passion, sexuality, drive, ambition, achievement, masculine power, activate protective talismans, reverse hexes and psychic attacks.

Wednesday - Mercury - Knowledge, money, communication, the arts, change, acceptance, adaptability.

Thursday - Jupiter - Luck, growth, fulfillment, worldly power, justice, authority, health, and prosperity. (Mercury brings quick cash, but Jupiter governs the long term accumulation and preservation of wealth.)

Friday - Venus - Fertility, love, money, prosperity, healing, charm, goodness, blocking, glamour, self-care, feminine power.

Saturday - Saturn - Binding, banishing, stopping, ending, loss, renewing, transforming, protection.

— Just a thing from my grimoire

aquariusgod

Reblog this for luck in love, for Venus to watch over you & to be able to find yourself & others who are good for you.

Reblog to imbue love in your current relationships, to assist in finding a new one, to help heal from past ones & in order to obtain a loving and committed relationship.

Reblog in order to maintain, reblog to persevere, reblog to commit, seek loyalty, and to love wholeheartedly.

Reblog for love for the years to come. Reblog for the love you want. Reblog in hopes of a fairytale, reblog to make that dream come true.

Reblog for love, for me, & for you.

samwisethewitch

Why Your Spells Don’t Work

You set your intention. You had all the correct correspondences. You even timed your spell with the appropriate moon phase. And yet – no results. What gives?

Failed spells happen to the best of us, and for a variety of reasons. But a spell gone wrong doesn’t necessarily mean that magic isn’t real or that you’re bad at witchcraft. Magic is complicated, and there are a lot of reasons it might not behave the way you want it to. Here are some of the most common causes of ineffective spells:

1. Lack of real-world follow through

Magic is meant to be used as a tool to supplement your mundane efforts – not as a substitute for them. How can you expect your job hunting spell to bring in results if you aren’t applying for jobs?

Magic does not exist in a vacuum, and it can’t make something out of nothing. If a spell doesn’t bring you the desired result, make sure that your non-magical actions are aligned with what you are trying to manifest.

2. What you’re trying to manifest isn’t a realistic possibility

Wait, what? Isn’t magic supposed to be, well… magic? Shouldn’t you be able to ask for whatever you want and get it? Yes and no.

Magic is simply a way of directing energy. Magic can’t defy the natural laws of the universe. It can’t make something happen unless it was already a potential possibility.

If your intention is unrealistic for where you are right now, try splitting it up into a multi-step process. No spell is going to make you a billionaire overnight, but magic could help you get hired at a better paying job… and then get promoted… and then get offered a profitable side gig… etc. Starting small and working your way up is always going to produce stronger results, because you laid the foundation first.

3. Your intention was either too vague or too specific

Whether you use written petitions or spoken incantations, clearly stating your intention is an important part (maybe THE most important part) of any spell or ritual. A good intention is specific enough to get you the results you want, but open enough to let those results manifest naturally.

Let’s say you do a money spell, and your intention for the spell is simply, “I have more money.” If you find a penny on the ground the next day and pick it up, technically that is more money than you had before. A better alternative would be to use an intention like, “I have enough money to buy ___,” or “I have enough money for everything I need and want.”

Using an intention that is too specific creates the opposite problem. Let’s say you want to manifest a scholarship to a specific school. You do a candle spell with the intention, “I have been chosen for the John Smith Scholarship at Jane Doe University.” But maybe the John Smith scholarship had already been awarded by the time you did your spell. Maybe there’s another scholarship at the same school that would be a better fit for you, or maybe you’re eligible for a grant that would make tuition more affordable. A better intention for your spell would be “I have enough financial aid to easily and affordably attend Jane Doe University.”

Magic always follows the path of least resistance, so you want to make sure that your intention is specific enough to give your magic a clear direction, but open enough to allow it some flexibility.

4. Lack of focus/concentration

We all know the struggle. You’ve been planning this ritual forever, and it’s finally the full moon, but you’ve got a really full schedule today. If you hurry, you can probably squeeze it into the thirty minute window between school and work, right?

If you say a few quick words and burn some incense before you head out the door in the morning, that totally counts as a spell, right?

Not so much. Rushed, lazy, and/or half-assed spells rarely, if ever, work. Spells revolve around the raising and direction of energy, and that requires two things: a clear intention (see above) and intense focus on that intention. If you don’t have the time/energy/mental capacity to focus, it’s best to take a break, have a self care day, and come back to your spell some other time.

5. You’re subconsciously blocking your own results OR you did a spell for someone else who isn’t open to it

I decided to lump these two together, because they’re different variations of the same issue.

Whenever you are doing magic on yourself, it’s important that your mindset is aligned with your intentions. You can do love spells all day long, but if deep down you don’t believe that you’re worthy of love, that belief is going to block your spells from working. This is why mindfulness, psychology, and self care are all such important parts of a successful witchcraft practice. It’s also why I recommend doing the mental work before you sit down to ritual.

If you did a spell on yourself, or are trying to manifest something for yourself, and it just isn’t working, I highly recommend setting some time aside for journaling and meditation and asking yourself 1.) if this is really what you want, and 2.) if you truly believe that you can have it.

The whole mindset thing gets even more tricky when you’re doing magic on behalf of another person, because their energy is also at work in the situation and could be at odds with yours. For example, if you do a spell to help a friend land a job, but that friend believes that they’re totally underqualified and could never get it, they probably won’t get the job even if you did everything “right” in your spell.

This should go without saying, but it is extremely unethical to use magic to mess around in someone else’s head. Even if you think you know what’s best for them, they need to be open to it. If someone is blocking the spells you do on their behalf, all you can do is try to be supportive and find other ways to help them out.

Other (Rare) Reasons for Failed Spells

If a spell goes wrong, it will almost always be for one of the above reasons. But maybe you did everything “right” – you did the mental work first, had a strong, realistic intention, put lots of focus into your spell, and followed through in real life – and you still aren’t seeing results. There are a couple of other things that could be blocking your spells, but they’re very uncommon so I’m not going to talk about them in as much detail. These may be things you want to look into if you really, genuinely can’t think of any other cause.

It’s possible that another witch has done magic that cancels out or blocks yours. This is not common, and it does NOT mean that someone has cursed you. It could be as simple as two witches unknowingly casting spells with opposite intentions, which end up cancelling each other out. (For example, maybe two different people both cast a spell to get the same job. Obviously, they can’t both get that job.) This is why it’s never a bad idea to incorporate a protective element into your spells to block outside interference.

There is a very, very remote possibility that someone has placed a curse on you specifically to block your magic. However – and I cannot stress this enough – this is VERY uncommon. If you were cursed you would know it, or at least know that something was very wrong in your life. If you feel like you have been cursed or hexed, I recommend looking into uncrossing spells, which are specifically designed to undo negative magic.

It’s also possible that a higher power is intervening. This doesn’t necessarily have to be a deity, although it certainly could be. Most witches believe in some form of fate or destiny, and it’s possible that your spell didn’t work because what you asked for is not in alignment with your destiny. In these situations, really the only thing you can do is surrender to the bigger picture.

selestiaaal

I attract all good fortune.

🧿🏹🔮🙏🏽💸💕🏡✨👩🏽‍🦱🧑🏽✨🏡💸💕🙏🏽🔮🏹🧿

You attract luck. You are affluent. You are safe. You are loved. You are everything. All good comes your way, period.

likes to charge, reblogs to cast.

follow me if you’re feeling extra cute

blessed be, bb 💕✨

free-spirit-tarot

Finding Clarity Tarot Card Spread

Use this tarot reading spread when you are wanting to find out more about a situation that you feel confused about. Easy 4 card spread. Feel free to use extra cards for clarification in each pile.

glazedeye-s

Statue of the goddess Aphrodite (Venus) bathing in the garden of the Royal Palace: Caserta, Italy.

samwisethewitch

When NOT to Trust Your Intuition

“Trust your intuition” is a phrase we commonly see thrown around in witchy spaces, and in many cases it’s good advice. Part of practicing witchcraft (especially if your craft has a focus on divination or psychic abilities) is learning to trust in your intuitive promptings. In a lot of cases, going with your gut feeling is the right call. But not always.

Our intuition can be wrong, or can give us an incomplete picture of a situation. It can also sometimes be difficult to tell the difference between intuition and subconscious programming. The human brain is designed to find patterns. Because of this, it can sometimes be hard to tell if we are genuinely receiving a psychic prompting or just connecting dots that are actually unrelated.

There are a few common thought patterns that often get mistaken for intuitive messages by new and experienced witches alike. It’s a good idea to read up on these and to keep them in mind when determining the validity of intuitive messages.

Cognitive Distortions

According to Rebecca Joy Stanborough, MFA, writing for Healthline, cognitive distortions are “thought patterns that cause people to view reality in inaccurate — usually negative — ways. In short, they’re habitual errors in thinking.”

Like a computer error, cognitive distortions cause us to misinterpret information and draw incorrect conclusions. Cognitive distortions are common symptoms of mental illnesses [see below], but all of us experience them at some point, even if we’re 100% neurotypical. Research suggests that cognitive distortions may have evolved as a survival mechanism, and that they’re usually tied to trauma or negative experiences.

This is way too big of a topic to cover in a single post, but here are a few common cognitive distortions to look out for:

Black and White Thinking (also called “All or Nothing Thinking”): only thinking in extremes, framing every situation as either/or. (Example: “I have to do this ritual right or I’m a failure as a witch.”)

Overgeneralization: applying a conclusion based on a single experience to a whole group of people or things. (Example: “People who cast curses and hexes are all evil.”)

Catastrophizing: assuming the worst in every situation; turning everyday worries into major catastrophes. (Example: “I didn’t feel the gods during my ritual — the gods must have cut me off because they’re angry with me.”)

Personalization: taking things personally when they have nothing to do with you. (Example: “My friend cancelled our lunch plans for today — they must have decided they don’t like me anymore.”)

Mind Reading: making assumptions about what other people are thinking or feeling, usually projecting your own feelings onto them. (Example: “My partner is being quiet tonight — they must be angry with me.”) This cognitive distortion is especially important for witches to look out for, as it can be mistaken for empathy or claircognizance.

Mental Filtering: excluding positives and focusing only on negatives OR excluding negatives and focusing only on positives. (Example: You draw the Tower, the Sun, and Death in your tarot spread. You become fixated on the negative messages in the Tower and Death cards, ignoring the positivity and blessings heralded by the Sun.)

Labeling: reducing yourself, another person, a group of people, or a thing/activity to a single, one-word label. (Example: “I’m lazy.”)

I strongly encourage all witches to do research into cognitive distortions and learn to recognize them, especially if the nature of your magical practice has you leaning heavily on your intuition. A cognitive distortion is not an intuitive message — your intuition should be logical, and can often be fact-checked.

Prejudice

The prejudice I’m talking about here isn’t just the obvious kind, like blatant racism or homophobia. We all have prejudices, whether we realize it or not. Merriam-Webster defines prejudice as a “preconceived judgment or opinion” or “an adverse opinion or leaning formed without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge.” Prejudice simply means thinking we know what to expect from something, even if we’ve never experienced it before.

You may have an image in your head of what “real” witchcraft looks like. You might feel like emoji spells, for example, aren’t “real magic” because they seem silly, they don’t take a lot of time and effort, there’s no historical precedent for them, etc. etc. In short, you feel like they aren’t “real magic” because they don’t fit your idea of what magic looks like. This is an example of prejudice, and buying into that prejudice prevents you from having access to an easy, fun form of techno magic.

If you find yourself receiving an “intuitive message” that someone else is faking it, is lying about their spiritual experiences, or is only imagining those experiences, take a step back and seriously examine that thought and where it might be coming from. It’s possible that the thought came not from your intuition, but instead from your own prejudices. It doesn’t matter if the way someone practices magic or experiences spirituality is different from your path — it’s the right way for them, and that’s what matters.

When you bring your prejudice into a tarot reading or other form of divination, you bring a set expectation for what the cards are going to tell you. The cards are going to pick up on that, and they may very well tell you what you want to hear — or you may twist the meaning of the cards to fit your expectations. This prevents you from getting clear, accurate readings.

I know it’s hard, but witchcraft requires us to leave our prejudice at the door. There is no “right way” to be a witch or to practice magic. There is no “right way” to communicate with the gods or the universe. Prejudice, biases, and expectations will only keep you from fully exploring your spirituality. Work on letting them go and opening up to the full spectrum of possibilities.

Stereotyping

This one goes hand-in-hand with prejudice and is closely related to overgeneralization (a cognitive distortion). Stereotyping is a necessary coping mechanism that we use to simplify our social interactions — but it is also the root of serious social issues like racism and misogyny. We all use stereotypes without consciously thinking about it.

While it’s important to be aware of stereotyping in order to avoid contributing to social issues, it’s also important for witches to learn the difference between an intuitive hit and a stereotype. This is especially important for witches who use claircognizance, where information often comes in the form of “downloads” that can sometimes be difficult to tell apart from our own thoughts.

For example, you might “just know” or “have a gut feeling” that a man you know is gay. But if that man talks in a higher pitch, acts effeminately, and puts a lot of time and effort into his appearance, then your gut feeling may have less to do with intuition and more to do with applying stereotypes to your friend.

Mental Illness

Many common mental illnesses, like depression and anxiety, can cause you to feel like you know that something bad is about to happen. “Anticipating disaster” or feeling like something is going to go wrong, is one of the most common symptoms of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and other anxiety disorders. Hyperfixating on details and worrying over small things are also common symptoms of these and other mental disorders.

As a witch with two anxiety disorders, I’ve had to learn to tell the difference between my intuition and my anxiety. Here’s a very recent, real life example: Last week, the entire staff at my workplace was tested for COVID-19. The results were expected to come back on my day off, and I found myself constantly watching my phone. Now, I do have some claircognizance, and when my phone goes off I usually know who the message is from before I even look at it. But on this day, every time my phone dinged I was just sure that it was my boss texting me to let me know that I’d tested positive. After the first couple of “false alarms,” I realized that this was an anxiety thing, not an intuitive thing. I was anxious about the test results, so that was the first thing my mind went to every time. (For the record, when my results did come back, they were negative.)

If you have or suspect that you have a mental illness that affects your thoughts and emotions, I highly recommend seeking out a good therapist or counselor. A trained mental health professional can help you sort out your symptoms and learn to recognize them, so you can differentiate them from genuine psychic experiences. (I’ve personally had really good results with CBT and DBT.)

Journaling has also been really helpful for me, as it helps me keep things straight and allows me to go back and read over my experiences when I’m having a better mental health day. (In my experience, it’s much easier to tell the difference between anxiety and intuition when you’re not in the moment.)

Resources:

“What Are Cognitive Distortions and How Can You Change These Thinking Patterns?” by Rebecca Joy Stanborough, MFA, medically reviewed by Timothy J. Legg, Ph.D., CRNP, published through Healthline

“50 Common Cognitive Distortions” by Alice Boyes Ph.D., published through Psychology Today

“Stereotypes” by Saul McLeod, published through Simply Psychology

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) Facts page on the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA) website

New World Witchery Podcast, “Episode 65 — The Slender Man Discussion”

hexandbalances

From Marcin Nagraba’s Pagan Poetry collection.

crimsonsongbird

Prayer to Hekate

Hekate, Mother and Mentor,

I thank you for the blessings you've given

And for the lessons I have learned.

I am grateful for your guidance,

Encouragement and support.

If not for your steady hand and brilliant light,

I might not have found the strength to stand and continue on.

I thank you for all you've already given and for all you have yet give.

Thank you and hail to you, Mother.

grimes-claireboucher

#omg #babie #grimes #claire boucher

an-earth-witch-deactivated20181

Let’s start a new superstition

On my walk in the woods today I came across this beech tree and I almost cried.

It’s such a gorgeous old tree, with such a smooth and elegant bark. I don’t understand why anyone would carve their fucking name into it. First of all, it;’s bad for the tree - it’s the tree’s skin, and it can introduce infection and fungus into the flesh of the tree and give destructive insects a foothold.

It’s so beautiful, and I want to see it whole. Why the actual fuck would anyone find a beautiful tree like this and think, “Carving my name into it would look nice”? No. Fuck no.

I’m angry.

So I think we should start a new superstition: Carving your name into a tree will incur loads of bad luck. Or, alternatively, the forest spirits will follow you around and torment you. Or earth witches will copy your name down and perform a mega-curse on you.

illicitude

Lol by carving your name in trees youre straight up giving your name to the fae and i think we all know where that can get you 🤡🤡 lmfao

#fae #faeries #witchcraft #spirits #the fae #forest magic #earth witches

🌿🌟 @ all of you poppet magick witches , i have a question : can i make a poppet of myself and use it for self improvement and such ? ? ? (Is there a specific way of doing it?) 🍂🍄✨

#👀#witchcraft #spells #poppet magick #poppets #pagan #witch

vital-information

To those who have swept or have blown the leaves from the walk, have rinsed the dishes or dusted their screens, Hestia looks on you from beneath her veil. She smiles, then wraps a shawl made of sunlit October air around you.

To those who remain in bed, who are on the edge of crying, who have turned on the tv to drown out the world, Hestia sits on the edge of your bed, patting circles on your back. I know, my love, she says, I know, I know. It can be so hard. My sweet, it’s time to get up. I need you, she says. Let’s make this home a sanctuary. Light a candle. Make your hands to care about this place. Let out the work of love.