Sufficiently advanced witchcraft is chores: longform (it's not actually about hearth/domestic magic)
This little post has gotten some notes and now there's an ask so I'll make it into more words:
Witchcraft isn't Chores vs. Fun. It's Chores vs. Events. And I posit to you that framing witchcraft as Chores is healthier, easier, better, and more pervasive than framing it as Events.
I've found that if you want Witchcraft to have a profound, transformative effect on your life, to get you out of the bad places and into the good places - then you must discard that mindset that any instance of working magic must be spectacular, mystical, or even motivated. Basically, you must stop treating witchcraft like it's supposed to be an Event.
When you plug into your currents, they release a stream of transformative power into your life. But this power is fleeting and only lingers like a perfume even after the actual burst of power has long evaporated in your life.
I mean this "plugging in" to be very practical, normal stuff: raising energy to cast a spell. Close communion with your spirits where the spirit world is drawn into an overlapping state with the material world. Any time you open up a doorway in your life to the magical Other and let power in.
Like turning on the garden hose, these actions pour a little power into your life. But when the rite is done (the spell is over, the communion is finished) then the garden hose is turned off again. That power soaks into where it was directed, seeping into the soils of your life.
Once that power has soaked into your life, it will continue to be helpful and effective. That garden bed is watered now! So of course the plants will flourish all week (or in my climate, until late afternoon, lol!).
But that power is now absent from you!! It's already used up, it's gone. It is no longer available.
By the time the plants begin looking dehydrated, the original power may have already been gone for a very long time. But this tricks us, right: if we wait for signs that the power is fading, that means we're always waiting for the plants to wither before we tend to them.
This creates the dastardly spiral:
My life is chaotic, I struggle to cast a spell to help -> I finally get around to it, the spell helps my life -> Now that the magic is done I don't need to prioritize it until I need it again -> The spell has faded, my life is back to its original chaotic state -> I need magic to help me -> My life is chaotic, I struggle to cast a spell to help
(Above, replace chaotic with stagnant, a slog, draining me, exhausting, harrowing, or anything you like)
If engaging with the Other is like turning on a garden hose of power, then you have to turn on the garden hose as often as you need power, and you need it before things show signs of going bad.
The problem with framing witchcraft as an Event is that it creates this mental load that's nothing but a barrier to entry. You have to put on you Sunday best, have the right attitude, have the right mental health, have enough energy (but not be manic), have complete control over your thoughts but also be perfectly in tune with your body and emotions, be able to sit still for the elaborate working (but not be fatigued), be able to do all of this with complete privacy, and pull all of this together on a random hour on a Tuesday with a spell you had to modify because you can't light candles or incense in your home.
And god FUCKING help you if you can't feel the energies, or don't get the visions or the signs, if the candle omen isn't right, if you don't feel magical, because that means of the two or three times you engaged in your practice this month a HALF or a THIRD of those engagements were failures, you're getting a D or an F in magic, failure magic. Who would ever want to engage in a practice like that??
Of course you can't pull that shit together to constantly cast spells to make your life better! That's EXHAUSTING!!
Do you know what I think takes less energy, is less frustrating, is less exhausting, is more helpful, easier, and more transformative?
It's to stop treating witchcraft like an Event and start treating it as Chores you just go about and put a bit of energy to on a daily or near-daily basis.
At first, this is no fun and games: this garden bed has gone totally rotten, it needs weeding and tilling, it needs soil amendments. Exhausting labor. And then it must rest until the correct season of planting. You can go out and do twenty minutes of work a day. But all that work and it may seem that there are very few rewards for months and months.
But you can't take one weekend and make an Event out of it, and then ignore it all winter until it's completely overgrown and ruined again. You can't progress that way. This is like saying you only do the kitchen dishes on solstices, or you only brush your teeth on full moons. That's not how you have a supply of clean dishes, or good dental hygiene, or a thriving life.
Truly transformative Witchcraft must be steeped into your daily life, and the only way to do this is to engage with it daily or almost daily. There is no room for waiting until you're in the "right headspace," and it's no good to wait until things have already started to go wrong again.
But how can you tell when it's time to work the next bit of magic unless you're checking in regularly? And how can you check in regularly if engaging in magic gives you the same feeling as having to go get ready for your partner's corporate Christmas party at the Marriott?
The question isn't if magic is either fun or a bore. It's whether magic is something you are comfortable approaching and addressing in your everyday life, in the 5 minutes you have before you take the kids to school, at the red lights during rush hour, as part of your shower routine. Or if it's something you need half a week to prepare yourself for, and another week to decompress from.
Can you tolerate tending to an altar for a couple of minutes a day, blurry-eyed, not feeling jack shit, not feeling magical or connected, knowing you will see long-term success, but limited short-term momentum? Or does magic scald you unless the immediate rewards are there to soothe you: the visions, the mystic trance, the instant omens, the short-term ripples in the pond?
I think one of these things is sustainable and the other is not. And so I think in order to stick with it long enough to progress beyond the early stages, then the following is perhaps tautologically true:
Sufficiently advanced witchcraft is chores.
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