A digital grimoire

she/her | amalgama de lenguas y culturas I'm a genderqueer sort-of-anarchist dipping her toes into witchcraft Currently reading: "How to study magic. A guide to history, lore, and building your own practice" - Sarah Lyons

[sumergete-en-magia]

How to study magic (Sarah Lyons) - 2. The basics

28/06/2025

Turns out I'm first stepping into the basics! The first topic that is introduced is divination:

 When in doubt, I find the answer is usually divination.

I already practice divination as I've been laying tarot cards for a couple years now, so I'm open to try out some new things!

Lyons suggests using playing cards for divination, which seems really cool and I'm familiar with using la baraja española as minor arcana cards to read tarot, though I personally am not a big fan of that (I like reading tarot cards based on the art). Either way, maybe someday I'll look into it.

The next thing that actually quite caught my attention was divination through a pendulum. A friend of mine recently gifted me a hand-crafted necklace with a bolivianita stone. This same friend is one of my inspirations for approaching magic again, as I know that spirituality is a huge thing in her life and meditating with her has been very healing for me.

While pendulums are not great for answering complex questions, they can respond to yes or no questions in several different ways.

I feel like using a pendulum for basic questions as opposed to tarot cards can be a good way to round out my practice of divination :)

- [...] hold the pendulum and ask your question. Swinging perpendicularly to your body means “yes” and swinging parallel to your body means “no.” - If you are trying to communicate with a specific place or object, you can hold your pendulum over the object as you ask your questions. You can also use a photo of a loved one who has passed away, the image of a deity, or a map for a similar effect.

I already tried it out by asking the bolivianita if I may use her for divination, and she answered yes! So I guess the next weeks I'll be trying it out a little, maybe researching some of it on the side as I continue reading this book.

[sumergete-en-magia]

How to study magic (Sarah Lyons) - 1. Why study magic?

27/06/2025

Today i finished reading the rest of the first chapter.

Lyons briefly introduces the different approaches to magic she'll cover throughout the book: chaos magic, witchcraft, grimoires, ceremonial magic and paganism. Out of all of these, chaos magic instantly stood out to me:

"- CHAOS MAGIC If you like the idea of forging your own path, if you hate your reality being dictated by others, and if you like the idea of your spirituality being defined as “fuck around and find out,” then you will like chaos magic. A postmodern form of magic, chaos magic is the youngest path in this book. It holds that reality is a construction that you can define for yourself and that 'nothing is true, everything is permitted.'"

I could also see myself exploring some aspects of witchcraft and ceremonial magic later on. I don´t really care much about any of the religious aspects around magic and already went into this aware of the fact I'm most likely sticking to a secular practice.

Tomorrow I want to start the chapter around chaos magic and hopefully begin trying things out :) Writing this reading diary is being a really nice addition to this attempt tp approach magic. It makes it feel like even if I´m just reading, I am also in a way practicing my jotting down my thoughts and feelings on the matter! So yeah, I´m excited for tomorrow.

[sumergete-en-magia]

How to study magic (Sarah Lyons) - 1. Why study magic?

26/06/2025

The first chapter begins asking the following questions:

"Why study magic? What do you want to get out of a magical practice? What is your life lacking right now that you think magic can give you?"

The third is the easiest for me to answer. I think I´m generally lacking connection to the physical world around me.

Sometimes when I watch strangers going through their day or observe things happening in the nature around me I get overwhelmed with this immense sense of beauty, like this is what everything is about and it feels so much larger than myself. I feel like I want to tap into whatever that feeling is, invite it into me, dejarme sumerger por él.

I feel like I am so tense all the time and so deep in my head - tan metida en mi cabeza - , that except for those brief moments of beauty, I might as well not exist outside of my thoughts. Sometimes, rarely, through meditation or when being active part of the moments that make me feel so intensely, I feel this intense connection and I think that's what I think magic is and I want more of it in my life.

I want to study magic because I feel a need to become part of something greater than myself. I think that neoliberalist individualism actively wants to distance us from this feeling by having us form our sense of self around personal identity, by shaping ourselves by that which separates us from the rest, and it usually does so through consumption of material goods which exist as ours and ours only. They're things that define you.

I want the opposite, I want to loose myself into muddied togetherness where I don't know where I end and the next person, creature, living or non-living being starts. To not only be temporarily, but permanently enmeshmed.

"Magic can be a lot of things all at once: It’s a tool for making your reality a little bit better. It’s a philosophy for understanding the world we live in. It’s a language through which we can talk to the divine. And it’s a technology for self-transformation and betterment"

For me magic is everywhere and in everything around us. We just have to let go of ourselves and let it to wash over us.

[sumergete-en-magia]

How to study magic (Sarah Lyons) - Introduction

25/06/2025

So, I've decided to pick up this book as my first resource into witchcraft after superficially scouring r/WitchesvsPatriarchy. After reading the introduction I'm pretty sure this was the right decision, as it directly mentioned the main problem I've been encountering throughout the years I've unsuccesfully attempted to start my own practice:

"I don’t think studying magic has become any less confusing. In fact, in some ways it has become even more so. So many videos, tiktoks, blog posts, books, articles, and tweets get made every second that it can be overwhelming for newcomers and difficult to parse out the good information from the not so good."

Especially as someone with ADHD the sheer amount of available resources paralyzes me. There is simply too much for my mind to grasp. I either hyperfocus and get stuck or superficially read a bunch and get nothing out of it. It was quite comforting to read Lyons describe this very experience, making it feel like my brain is not the only one at fault for this:

"I’ve seen a lot of magical novices either get so overwhelmed that they back away entirely or get sidetracked down a path that maybe isn’t right for them."

i feel quite welcomed by the book and am excited to continue reading throughout the next days!