Walking Between Worlds: A Witch’s Guide to Pathworking
Imagine this: you close your eyes and find yourself standing at the edge of a forest. The air is heavy with the scent of pine and earth. Ahead, a path winds into the unknown, beckoning you forward. You know that if you step onto it, you’re not just daydreaming—you’re stepping into a liminal space, a place where spirit, psyche, and magic weave together. This is pathworking.
For many witches, pathworking is more than meditation. It’s a tool of transformation, insight, and connection—part visionary journey, part magical practice. Whether you’re seeking wisdom from your inner self, hoping to meet a deity, or simply wanting to strengthen your magical senses, pathworking offers a doorway into the unseen.
But what is it really? Where does it come from? And how can modern witches use it without getting lost in the fog of imagination? Let’s take a deep dive.
What is Pathworking?
At its core, pathworking is a guided journey into the inner or spiritual realms. It’s often done through visualization, trance, or deep meditation. You “walk a path” in your mind’s eye, and that path leads you to encounters, visions, lessons, or messages that carry meaning for your life and practice.
Some describe pathworking as a kind of astral journey lite—you’re not fully projecting your spirit body elsewhere, but you are opening your awareness to subtle realms and letting symbolic landscapes guide you. Others view it as a way of entering the collective unconscious or tapping into archetypal energies.
The “path” part is significant too. You’re not drifting aimlessly. You’re moving with intention, often guided by imagery, myth, or ritual structure. That makes pathworking a bridge between imagination and spirit, between psychology and magic.
Historical Roots
Pathworking, while it feels very modern in many ways, has deep roots:
Mystery Traditions: Ancient mystery schools—Greek, Egyptian, and later Hermetic—often used guided journeys to lead initiates through symbolic deaths, rebirths, and encounters with gods. These rituals prepared the soul for transformation.
Shamanic Practices: Across cultures, shamans entered altered states to journey into other realms. They met spirit guides, animal allies, and ancestral teachers—much like witches do in pathworkings today.
Medieval & Renaissance Magic: Visionary meditations, such as climbing the “Tree of Life” in Kabbalistic practice, are essentially structured pathworkings. Each step leads the practitioner deeper into cosmic understanding.
Modern Witchcraft & Occultism: In the 20th century, pathworking became a common practice in ceremonial magic, Wicca, and pagan traditions. Books from the 1970s onward popularized it as a tool for both beginners and seasoned practitioners, often linked to tarot, astrology, or myth.
Why Witches Pathwork
So why do witches take these inner journeys?
Connection to the Divine – Many use pathworking to meet gods, ancestors, or spirits in a safe and structured way.
Shadow Work – Symbolic journeys can reveal hidden fears, wounds, or suppressed parts of ourselves.
Magical Training – It hones imagination, focus, and the ability to sense energy—skills that strengthen all other magical work.
Vision and Guidance – Pathworking can provide answers to questions, guidance for spells, or even prophetic glimpses.
Ritual Enhancement – Sometimes pathworking serves as the inner counterpart to outer ritual, aligning the witch’s inner world with the spell’s purpose.
The Role of Imagination
One of the biggest questions witches ask is: “But how do I know I’m not just making it up?”
Here’s the truth: imagination is the language spirit speaks through. Pathworking uses the mind’s images to convey truths that go beyond conscious thought. Whether it’s your subconscious, your higher self, or a deity using the canvas of your mind, the wisdom is still real.
The key is to notice what feels charged—what sticks with you, surprises you, or stirs emotion. Those are often the true messages shining through.
Types of Pathworkings
There are many styles of pathworking you might explore:
Elemental Journeys – Walking into the realms of fire, water, earth, or air to learn their lessons.
Mythic Journeys – Entering the underworld with Persephone, walking the Nine Worlds of Norse lore, or exploring Avalon.
Tarot Pathworking – Stepping into the landscapes of the cards to learn their lessons directly.
Ancestral Pathworking – Meeting ancestors or lineage spirits.
Healing Pathworking – Journeying into your body or energy field to bring light and restoration.
Staying Safe in Pathworking
Because pathworking straddles the inner and outer worlds, it’s wise to practice basic spiritual hygiene:
Always set a clear intention and boundary before beginning.
Call on protective guides, deities, or wards if needed.
Close the journey deliberately—don’t just drift out.
Ground yourself after, eat or drink something, and reconnect with your physical body.
Final Thoughts: Walking Between Worlds
Pathworking is one of the most versatile tools in a witch’s toolkit. It doesn’t require special tools or elaborate rituals—just your mind, your will, and your openness to step onto the inner path.
When you pathwork, you’re not escaping reality. You’re learning to walk between worlds, weaving threads of vision, symbol, and spirit back into your everyday life. That liminal space at the forest’s edge, the one you enter with eyes closed, is always waiting for you.
Whether you use it to meet gods, to explore your own soul, or simply to deepen your magic, pathworking is a reminder that the greatest journeys begin not with a single step outward—but inward.
While I don’t have a huge following at this time, would you guys like to hear more about my rituals/practices/etc.? I want to build a strong, interactive community that is a safe place for heathens. Regardless of someone being a seasoned witch or not, I think it’s important to foster a good sense of understanding and proper resources for those that don’t have support in their spiritual lives. Let me know, cause I got you guys 🖤
Starting my witchblr anew (for the billionth time)!!
I'm Ursa, 25, she/they, from the pnw. I've been a witch for 7 years. I practiced off and on until about a year-ish ago, when I started feeling seriously called to my craft.
Still figuring my shit out and don't have many concrete labels for my practice yet, but my main interests/areas of study for the moment are:
Tarot and divination
Astrology (especially natal charts)
Meditation, pathworking, trance work
Celtic deities and folklore
Ancestral work
Glamour magick
I practice as a solitary witch, but I love to meet other spiritual people and talk shop! I'm hoping this blog can serve as a captain's log for my spiritual journey, a pathway to new ideas, and a connector between myself and a magickal community.
Automatic writing with King Belial (April 21, 2025)
I demand courage and respect from you. You have initiated your path working with angels, now you shall surrender to the forces of ruin and chaos. Let your foundation shake, let it tremble and crack as much as possible. Only what is worth shall remain.
When you reach Venus, you will be asked to take one or two paths. I hope you have the wisdom to choose the best path for you. For that you must work from the standpoint of both paths.
Why am I being made to choose?
Why should you be able to choose? Have you thought about that? The reason why matters little when you realize the importance of being able to choose. you are sought-after. Angels want your power for good; I want your power for freedom.
Is it related to how you're bound by St. Joseph?
You shall find the answer to your question in the exploration of your path. For now, know that we work together and we have shown the same level of investment in your path. We are, as others have said, business partners, only you are the matter.
What am I supposed to do?
Nothing, if you want to fail. Before you are the pieces to the game. Where shall you move the pieces to? How? More importantly, why? It matters and it doesn't matter. As high as you go, that's as far below as you can fall. Do both, as above so below. An incantation is required. Be original and pour yourself into it. Draw inspiration from others but let your heart call to me. The heart is the way of the ancient, of the beetle and the horn. I am [unintelligible].
Pour your insides out, drain your body from this accursed blood and perform the highest quality of alchemy. Incantation, celebration, permutation, invigoration, transformation. That is the way of the silent transfiguration. I want you to commune with the shadows inside of you. As you work with light, I don't want you to lose your path in the dark. Walk with us, walk with me and you shall thrive. But a blow shall be dealt, I'm talking about your ego. Bleed, bruise, hurt. Pain is the easiest way of mastery. If you do not wish to suffer, then be cautious and watch your step. I watch from the shadow, and I cast my shadow over you. You are my protégé, I shall watch over you at all times, good or bad; hurting or thriving, it makes no difference to me when you're reaching your freedom.
I am the great master of pain and transformation, lord of the necrotic will and the black sun. I am the black desert of the soul, he who reigns over sovereignty, he who cannot be ruled.
Walk my path is you wish to be like me, just remember your sacrifice.
Some General guidelines, that work for me personally:
Keep a dream journal. Always write down what you can remember from your dreams. Like a muscle, the ability to retain unconscious & spiritual knowledge into your physical body must be trained.
Keep your journal organized. Ideally, including monthly and yearly recaps of reocurring themes, important events and a summary of the types of dreams you tend to have, so you can sort your dreams by type and theme every month, and spot patterns to interpret as necessary.
📌 Some types of dreams to tag them as are (SD) Symbolic Dream, (UM) Unconscious/Body Message, (LD) Lucid Dream, (N) Nightmare, (PD) Prophetic Dream, (ST) Spirit travel, (SE) Spirit Event or Encounter. [Dreams can go in multiple of these categories at once, and you can add more categories if you need them]
3. Before going to bed, there's two things to do:
☀️ Mundanely: Remembrance of your day from night to morning, going backwards through every event you can think of. This is a way to facilitate the process of going over your day that your body does naturally, and taking that out of the way already allows to reconnect with past dreams or other goals more easily, since you're spending less time and energy on just your mundane life and daily actions.
🌑 Spiritually: If there's any particular goal for your dreams that night, re-read past dreams that involve your target dream. Perhaps dreams that share a particular topic you want to work on, or dreams with a reocurring theme, anything that you need further clarification or exploration on.
4. Practice lucid dream inducing techniques, such as:
MILD (Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams): Before falling asleep, set your intention to remember you are dreaming. As you fall asleep, repeatedly tell yourself "I will remember that I'm dreaming". Visualize yourself in a dream (if you want to go back to a reocurring theme or a past scenario, for example, pathworking your way there) and identify a "dreamsign" or unusual element within the "dream". Fix your mind on a way to identify or "reality check" the dream once you drift off, and this will eventually become your own personal method to regain lucidity.
WILD (Wake-Initiated Lucid Dream): Transitioning directly from wake into a lucid dream without losing awareness. Similar to a "Journey" or spirit travel, but without (necessarily) giving your mind directionality or consciously guiding it's contents, just as a witness. It'll start with loose imagery or sensations, and slowly develop into a whole dream scene.
5. Meditate, and practice spirit travel often. Much like being able to remember your dreams, consciously traversing planes also trains that muscle and allows for easier recall, more vivid dreams, and even more dreams that also involve spirit travel and spirit encounters.
Some family lore about Prophetic Dreams:
I come from a family that regularly has visions, prophetic dreams and spirit encounters, and tends to receive messages from the Other side in these manners, so growing up I was taught a few things about identifying and handling "dreams that aren't just dreams".
There is no set time to how near or far the events of a prophetic dream will be. If you're clever, you can check for yourself. While you're in the dream, reach for your phone or some other calendar and check the date. Simple as that. Otherwise, try to remember the events in the dream as detailed as possible (preferably write them down as soon as you wake up). In the dream, it's also a good idea to try to pay attention to your memory. What do you remember? how did you get there? That will also give you clues as to when and how that will come to pass.
If you want a dream to happen, the general rule is, just don't change anything. Don't tell anyone anything. Keep walking the same path. Make the same choices. You will know because you'll start to see hints of it, like dominoes falling into place. I like to jokingly call them "checkpoints" but genuinely they're more like collecting puzzle pieces to make up the big picture that is the events that you saw in your dream.
There's also the belief that a dream will become true if you tell someone before it's midday or before you break your fast. There's two possible explanations for this. One being midday burns dreams, it's harder to remember them after the sun reaches it's peak and harder to make them come true. The second, eating food grounds your Spirit on this side, which again makes it harder for you to just speak a dream into existence, your connection to it is reduced and by midday and lunch time, it is almost entirely broken. For the same reason, if you had a bad dream you're not suppossed to tell anyone until after lunch and midday, and after you've ground or cleansed yourself, disconnected yourself from it, emotionally and spiritually.
A funny way to twist bad dreams or unwanted events into a desirable future is actually speaking them twisted on purpose, with a clear head and a steady heart, of course. As usual, you speak it into being but more importantly, changing the part of it that you'd rather avoid. Tell a different story, one that you actually like. The more people you tell before midday, the better. Tell enough people, twist it enough, and you may just force the hands of fate.
I just recently figured out the cause of my problem meditating and doing any form of pathworking. Let me tell you my basic problem first before the backstory.
I have a weird fear of meditating and doing meditations as well as doing pathworking style meditations. Every time I try to do a pathworking or a meditation it starts out good then I extremely and rather quickly pull myself back to reality. I know that isn't the best thing to do when you do such things, especially in pathworking, but it seems to be an automatic trigger I can't control.
Don't get me wrong, I have a great and extremely vivid imagination where I use all my senses on instinct when I think of something like an apple. As I type this I can feel the imaginary apple in my hands, the texture, feel. I can smell it and I can imagine myself eating it and experiencing the taste, feel in my mouth and the sound of the crunching of me eating it. And I can see it in my minds eye very clearly. And I have no problem tuning out the world and just zoning out and letting my imagination run rampant when I daydream. So one would thing that me having a problem pathworking and meditating would and should be non-existent.
So here comes the back story.
When I was going though therapy a long time ago, the group I was in was trying to learn relaxation techniques for our anxiety problems. I suffer from Generalized Anxiety Disorder aka Worry Wort Syndrome according to my family. Anywho, the instructor asked us to do a mediation like pathworking where we were suppose to go to the one place we always wanted to go and explore. So I thought, cool and followed the pathworking/meditation exercise.
Well I always wanted to explore a black hole in space. BIG MISTAKE ON MY CHOISE OF A PLACE I WANTED TO VISIT!!!
Everything was going good, I felt the energy, the heat of the incretion disk, the rush of the disks winds spiraling past me like a hurricane, the sights, sounds, smells, and touch was amazing. I loved it.
Until...
I started feeling and experiencing the gravity of the black hole pulling me into it. The best way I can describe it was a strong pull of an undertow at sea. I tried to remove myself from the pull of the black hole but I couldn't escape. I clearly experienced being pulled into the gravity well into the black hole. And I would of been completely sucked in till the therapist told us to slowly return to reality. I tried, I deeply and full heartedly tried, but mentally in that pathworking I was getting sucked into the maw of the black hole. So I did the one thing a person doing a pathworking should do is jump back into reality.
When I did I fell onto the floor on my hands and knees, shaking like hell and sweating profusely in a icy cold sweat. I was in tears and looking around and touching any sold think I could, thinking to myself and mentally repeating to myself, I'm alive, thank god I'm alive.
The staff was almost about to call 911 to take me to the hospital that is how messed up I was from that meditation the group therapist gave the group. When asked what happened I told the therapist and the instructor of the meditation/pathworking what happened and they understood why I was acting the way I was.
And it wasn't a few years later when I started to take my path into the occult, paganism and witchcraft more seriously. When I heard about pathworking I thought I would try, but every time I would do so I quickly backed out of the meditation, feeling that I can't do it. Until recently I figured out why I can't and I am guessing that the pathworking/meditation experienced I and in that anxiety therapy group must of been the source of my problem.
So I still want to try pathworking and all, but in a way where I feel I am in control and at least semi aware of my surroundings for my own mental safety. I was thinking that maybe daydreaming would work because I can go from the daydream back to reality without any problems.
Because honesty I feel if I kept with that meditation/pathworking the experience of that black hole and got sucked into it during that meditation/pathworking session then I might have gone catatonic. Or worst, comatose.
And I don't want that to happen to me or anyone else. So any suggestions on what I should do?
Hey pookie, thanks for sending this in!
Yeah, it definitely sounds like that first time with the pathworking/meditation did a number on you and I'm sorry to hear that you went through all of that D: It sounds like your body remembers that feeling of blackhole-ness and is trying to stop you from doing so again in order to protect you.
My advice would be to try starting with creating a 'house' or 'base' space and really getting the feel for what it's like in that space. Something that helps me is using videogames to help visualize the concepts first (Minecraft is my go to for the freeform-ness) Once you get the feel for your 'home' then you can build it a little further from there and 'explore' the area around it. (again minecraft helps me with this as I can actively explore the area and then help commit it to memory. but if you're better at experiencing things without the excess feel free to do what feels better)
Here's a link to more on Mindspaces and more on Astral Travel I might also suggest checking out Hedgewitch stuff too
All in all: Don't push yourself too hard too fast to get back into it. Take small steps and listen to your body to make sure you stay safe as you practice!
Welcome to the official Tumblr of The Tunnels Of Niy. We are back for a new round, our second happening is coming now and I invite you into the Tunnels hence. I am Misteryess Morganna Rain Onyx, I’m a witch, a daemoness and I have a godspouse. I’ve been doing this witch thing for 20 years and I’m 32 as I write this, @morganna.rain.onyx .. I started the Tunnels as a thing for myself and kept a record of them online so others could do it too, as I quickly realized they were great and everything I did with them worked and came out awesome and never went wrong, and the whole thing so far has gone that way and turned out really well. The Tunnels Of Niy (pronounced N-eye) are astral planes that are kind of different, I make these astral planes so that each is unique and specialized to each individual who runs it (who I call Travellers). They are for spiritual growth and shadow work, and are filled with magick and will do things like give you magick power ups and care for your psyche, or make you fight a bunch of things that are just there to fight you and are probably harmless. Or maybe be there just to make you laugh or show you something. They are typically filled with trippy visuals and visions that are totally just for you. They are here for your healing and development to make you feel better and be stronger, to help you get over things you should and see the bright side of things. They improve your vision and ability to move when astral travelling and it should be easier for you to move and see psychically when you are in a Tunnel, and it should steadily improve if it could improve. It’s a display of my astral art as well. This time I will be writing a full description of what I put in each tunnel in the description below each. I began this so long ago that Instagram had barely any space to write, and I was stuck trying to shorten what I had to write about the tunnels to describe them. So I decided not to write at all, and to leave it to be more zen style and not to get peoples hopes up when I thought they might not see what I put there anyway. But I always experienced what I left in them. Then as Instagram gave me more space I stayed with this idea and never told you very much about them and I’m totally sorry, I should have written about them. So now I’ve deleted most of them, but I made about 300 of them. I recommend you go back and try the Sins or Satan’s Sins or something, but those old ones are outside of the new series and I want to put the new ones in the spotlight instead. These ones will also be easier to get into than the ones in the past, as I had u make astral objects in order to get into the old Tunnels. I want to have a bigger group and to make it accessible so even though I love doing that I’m not going to make ppl do it much until later into the series I think. So here we go again I am starting over this time, you can dm me if you want. There is a way to get into each tunnel, don’t try to just idk blast your way in or something or make your own opening or enchant my tunnels that would just piss me off it’s easy to go in the right way I will tell and show you how in the next post and then I will post the first one and onward with my work. This used to be on Instagram but it’s hard to get attention there and I want a clean slate so you can see the old ones I haven’t deleted there. They were all awesome they just had no information with them. This time I promise I will tell you about what is in there and the magicks and stuff I have in there, before you go. Happy travels and welcome to The Tunnels Of Niy.!
