#maddiviner

[thewideopenwitch]

I’ve been trying to find a way to practice my craft frequently since I’ve returned along the beam. So, I’ve decided to develop myself with a30-day challenge!

The first one I am doing will be from @maddiviner​. I'm starting with her Roots of Your Craft 30-Day Challenge to get my gears spinning again! It's for beginner witches, but as we're really getting into actual workings in my kiddo's Paganism 3 homeschooling class this year, I need to refresh myself on the beginner things. So, tomorrow while she's doing her weekly homework, I'll start blogging. 

I would LOVE for any witches, young or old, to play along. I have no idea where the prompts will take us, but I’d like to give more of us ideas to discuss our craft.

All I ask if you join me is that:

You have a witchy heart and a desire to share personal thoughts about your craft.

You please give credit where credit is due by leaving any and all of @maddiviner​’s original posts intact when sharing (image, prompts, signature, etc).

You please give credit where credit is due by leaving any and all of my original posts intact when sharing (image, prompts, signature, etc).

While I'm working on this, I'll be creating my own 30-day challenge of witchy journaling prompts for you and me to do together. I hope you stay along and enjoy the ride! 

[lets-go-every-witchway]

Roots of Your Craft - Day 11

What kind of witch do you believe you will become?

Maybe this sounds like a cheesy cop-out, but I believe I’ll become the witch that I’m meant to become.

I’ve still got a lot of trial-and-error to go through before I can even say with any degree of certainty what kind of witch I am now. Yes, I’ve put a load of “types” on my profile, but that’s more just covering all the bases of what I want to be rather than what I am yet. The only label that matters for me right now is “beginner”!

My journey as a witch has still only just started. So, there’s a lot yet to come that will influence the kind of witch I am. When I move in with my boyfriend, for example, and am no longer living alone - the way I practice and what I practice is bound to change. In turn, that will influence and change the kind of witch I become.

[lets-go-every-witchway]

Roots of Your Craft - Day 9

Was there a tipping point that convinced you witchcraft was worth practicing? What influenced your desire to learn more and why are you learning about it?

I’m not sure I could pin down one moment per se... it feels more like the whole pandemic situation was a push to find some kind of meaning and sense of wonder when the whole world stopped. 

I was also in dire need of a purpose. As the lockdown just seemed to carry on with no end in sight, I was in danger of becoming listless, lazy and utterly depressed. I’d just started reading books on the occult and demonology (I found some very cheap editions of King James I’s Daemonologie, Sinistrari of Ameno’s Demoniality: Incubi and Succubi, Johnson Smith & co’s The Book of Forbidden Knowledge: Black Magic, Superstition, Charms, and Divination, and Samuel Mathers’ The Greater Key of Solomon: The Grimoire of Solomon), and I had just finished watching a fantastic witchy Italian series on Netflix called Luna Nera.

All of these things together prompted me to take a look back at the research I’d done on Wicca and Paganism. When I found out about secular witches... well, the thought of actually following through this time stuck in my mind. 

Then, in July, everywhere reopened and I was back to constantly working. The November lockdown came and went (I was mostly in an exhausted daze after the mayhem of “Eat Out to Help Out” and the constantly changing socialising rules), and then it was December. Two weeks of hectic preparation for Christmas in hospitality, and then we got locked down again. This time I ended up being at my parents’ house, with no idea it would be for the next two months.

Being in that environment was stifling. I found a lot of my old folders with my witchraft research in from when I was a teen. Researching witchcraft (alongside a few inane games) became my escape, and I was living vicariously through a few witchy tumblrs. It was then that I decided enough was enough - enough beating around the bush, enough procrastinating, enough laziness. I would become a witch. 

Every day I learn about some new aspect of the craft, a new way to practice, a new list of correspondences that has relevance to my path... and it makes every day genuinely worth living. I’m doing little experiments here and there with spell work, overcoming years of self-repression and some kind of ingrained idea that what I’m doing is somehow silly. I’m slowly breaking bad habits and forming better new ones. I’m more productive, and my utterly ridiculous lockdown sleep schedule righted itself within a week - and it didn’t feel like the changes I made took any extra effort. 

I feel good about myself, and if that doesn’t make witchcraft worth practicing, worth learning - well, I don’t know what is

[lets-go-every-witchway]

Roots of Your Craft - Day 7

What was your earliest memorable exposure to the concept of witchcraft? How did it influence your interest in it?

My earliest memory of witchcraft as something that existed in the real world (as opposed to cartoon witches in kids’ story books - Meg and Mog anyone?) was probably when I was 13 years old. We were doing a History project on witchcraft in England in the Middle Ages. Actually, the title of the project may even have been “Women as Witches in Fifteenth Century England” or something like that... I think the point was, as I went to an all-girls’ school, we were meant to unpick the misogyny and prejudice behind the witch hunts.

Anyway, I soon found out that what was required for the project was very simple, surface-level research. I very quickly got sucked down the rabbit-hole of Paganism and Wicca, and outside of my school work I built up ring binders full of information. 

Back in 2003, most of the easily available materials were on Wicca and Paganism. That was more or less it. So I immersed myself in it, I was utterly fascinated by it. There was a time when I could recite the Wiccan Rede by heart. Once I’d printed out and photocopied almost entire books’ worth of research on Wicca, I started looking at dream interpretation. Pages and pages of symbols and meanings, colour theory, astrology... man, I had so much!

But it was all pretty much knowledge for knowledge’s sake. I didn’t practice at the time. I just consumed. I think the Goddess and Horned One aspects - at least, how they were presented to me in the books I read at the time - put me off. As I said in yesterday’s challenge answer, I wasn’t raised with any spiritual belief system. I had already decided that Christianity and other organised religions weren’t for me, and as I far as I was concerned, practicing Wicca meant practicing a religion and believing in something that I didn’t.

Having said all that, my fascination with witchcraft never left me. I suppose it became a sort of longing. I hoped that one day, some big spiritual event would happen and - TA DA! I could freely become Wiccan without any doubts. Ah, teenagers. In my twenties was when that longing was at its lowest I suppose. I was at university, I was deep into Shakespeare, anime was my biggest obsession...  then I left university and had to become a real adult. EURGH. 

The longing returned. Slowly, and mostly in regards to the aesthetic and the paraphernalia. Until the first national lockdown in the UK, March 2020. I had the time to go down the rabbit hole again. And boy, was that rabbit hole waaay bigger than I remembered. I discovered that there are plenty of witches out there who aren’t Wiccan or Pagan. That was a huge moment for me. Suddenly, witchcraft was back on the table. 

I don’t regret all that time I spent delving into Paganism and Wicca. It meant that so much of what I read more recently already had a familiar feel to it - I was just no longer processing everything though the very specialised lenses of Paganism and Wicca. It was incredibly liberating, but without all that fevered, obsessive teenage research to give me starting points, I think I would still be floundering and not really knowing where to begin.

So, thank you 13-year-old me. You did good, kid.

[lets-go-every-witchway]

Roots of Your Craft - Day 4

I’ve just got out the shower having done a purification & protection body scrub. Feeling very relaxed, then realised I almost forgot today’s challenge question!

What are your beliefs about ethics and morality? Do you think practicing witchcraft will change your views? If so, how?

We’re really getting into the deep s*** today...

What are your beliefs about ethics and morality? Uhhhh... @_@ 

Ok. I’ll be honest, these are not things I’ve consciously thought about since I took ethics classes at secondary school. However, I will read things in the news and think “well, that seems highly unethical”. The separation of children from their families at the US-Mexico border for example. 

From a personal point of view, I don’t set out to purposefully harm anyone - I suppose that would be against my sense of morals. I also try not to manipulate anyone’s feelings or actions. I do know that sometimes I have ended up doing all of these things through some oversight or sheer thoughtlessness (or alcohol. Sshh...). And when that happens I will feel guilty as hell, try to figure out where I went wrong and make sure I don’t do it again.

As mentioned, I think I can recognise something unethical when I see it. But I’ve not been in a position to influence ethical decisions anywhere (which I’m quite grateful for - hopefully that means I’ve never experienced an unethical environment up close!). 

I would say that ethics are morals applied to a ‘big picture’ situation, or across a number of people. Morals tend to be more individual and are heavily influenced by a person’s upbringing. So although, in general, lots of different people may be able to agree on what constitutes an ethical situation, individually it’s likely there’ll be points where their moral compasses differ.

Do you think practicing witchcraft will change your views? If so, how? I don’t think that my views on ethics will change much, I think that my views on the right way to treat people will remain pretty much the same.

However, my personal moral compass may end up being slightly altered or strengthened. For want of a better word, I’m ‘journaling’ my life in a way I never have before. Not a diary as such, but my daily tarot readings and even this challenge are forcing me to commit my inner thoughts and feelings to paper (or screen). And when you do this, you have to be honest with yourself. You just have to be. You can try perpetuating the little white lies and facades that usually make up your appearance to other people, but once it’s down on paper and you know it’s not true... it feels incredibly awkward. I feel almost physically uncomfortable putting down a lie about something that happened or how I felt about it.

Because of that, I’m able to examine my thoughts, feelings and actions in a much more real and productive way. I am able to see where I’ve made mistakes rather than simply try to recall them from memory, and that makes self improvement that much more attainable. 

I certainly expect practicing witchcraft to change me, and if one of those changes will be to strengthen my sense of morals - and give me the confidence to practice them - then so much the better.

[lets-go-every-witchway]

Roots of Your Craft - Day 3

This was another “let’s make a hot beverage and try and get my thoughts in order” kinda question....

How powerful do you believe Magick to be, and why? I believe magic is very powerful. Or rather, it can be. Going back to yesterday’s question on what magic is, I would say that magic is as powerful as the caster’s belief, focus, experience and strength of will. 

If the power of magic was inherently at a certain ‘level’, we’d never hear the end of problems. If the default power level of magic was fairly high, you’d hear about beginner witches getting into all sorts of trouble and danger as spells either work in ways they don’t expect, work too powerfully or too quickly, or backfire entirely. If the default power level was fairly low, more experienced witches would end up frustrated that their efforts weren’t yielding any better results than when they first started out.

The whole point of the researching, learning, note-taking, meditating and practising we all do is for the same reason we practice sport, or a musical instrument, or art. The more experienced you are, the better the results - in this case, the more powerful your magic can be. 

I am starting to believe that I am powerful and that I have the power to effect change. Now, this doesn’t mean that my spells are very powerful - I’ve only done a few simple spells so far, because I’m still learning and getting a feel for things. Also, to believe that you have power is a form of self love, and so many of us find that difficult. You can’t flick a switch and suddenly believe in yourself wholeheartedly. It takes work! 

[maenadsfaerytales]

Roots of Your Craft - Day 18

Roots of Your Craft – Day 18

Are there any witches or magicians in fiction or history that you particularly admire? Why or why not?

I’ve said before that I was heavily influenced by pop culture when it came to my own craft but it’s harder to list them. Hermione, Harry Dresden, Terry Pratchett ,and Uncle Iroh from the last Airbender are the first that come to mind when it comes to admiration and inspiration.

Hermione…

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[maenadsfaerytales]

Roots of Your Craft - Day 17

Roots of Your Craft – Day 17

If you’ve practiced spellcraft, what was the experience of casting your first spell like? If you’ve not yet cast one, what do you think your first spell will be and why?

I’m not the type of person to do a lot of spell work. I have an affinity for knot work, or any type of weaving based spell work. It’s nice, hands on, and is also a great form for spell work since it takes some amount of time…

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