Hi everyone! Five years ago I started THE WITCHES' WORKBOOK, a book project designed for beginners to start their practical journey into magic, witchcraft, and spellcraft. I'm so happy that it's been helpful to you all over these years, and wanted to put up a post!
CHAPTER ONE: BEGINNING WITCHCRAFT is an orientation into what witchcraft is and isn't, common misconceptions, avoiding cultural appropriation, vocab, and other basics.
CHAPTER TWO: ELEMENTS OF WITCHCRAFT goes into all the aspects and fundamental pillars of witchcraft, ritual, spellcraft, and other "witch adjacent" crafts like herbalism and divination.
CHAPTER THREE: ENERGY ESSENTIALS is a guide on how to perceive and manipulate energy, including meditation, grounding and centering, raising energy, charging, and more.
You can read the three chapters so far here: https://theoryofmagick.gumroad.com/
It's also available in PDF form on Discord, via @archives-discord.
The books are always free, but tips are always appreciated! I hope to continue the project with more volumes as time goes on. Happy 5th Bookiversary to you all! <3
I'm tinkering away at a new supplemental chapter for the Witches' Workbook series - Paths! This one will cover lots of umbrella groups of paths, both historical, lineaged, new, and old, from across the world; and hopefully serve as a bit of a phone-book guide to all the paths available to you to learn about. As the workbook is designed for all magic practitioners, some paths will be closed to some people, as it's my goal to be as comprehensive as possible, in an encyclopedic way!
Do you have any paths you'd definitely like me to cover in this upcoming chapter (The big tradcraft umbrella? Neowicca? Druidry? A specific Grimoire Tradition?) Let me know!
I’m SUPER blown away by the response to the Witches’ Workbook chapters I’ve put out (in the best way)!! I wrote them specifically to help new witches get a grasp of the fundamentals, it’s so great to see the chapters do exactly that! I love you all so much :>
I’m currently breaking back in with the next (supplemental) chapter to the Workbook, a much-needed primer on existing magical paths and traditions. I’ve since changed laptops and am missing my original formatting template for the Workbook, so if the fonts look a little mismatched, now you know! (edit: They’re still going to be gothy black fonts on a white background with signature Ash sarcasm quips, which is what matters :P)
The new chapter of The Witches’ Workbook, “Energy Essentials”, covers all the basics of energy work! Grounding & centering, charging, raising and releasing energy, drawing things down, and everything in between! Most of it is practical instruction you can use right away in spellcraft and ritual, so I’m pretty proud of this one! :>
[ Witches’ Workbook, Chapter 3: Energy Essentials ]
I’m hammering out the second half of Chapter 3 of the Witches’ Workbook, which is on the fundamentals of energy, and I wanted to share one of the exercises I jotted down for it! I get the “how do I start meditating?” question all the time - here’s the basic bones of it all!
At its simplest form, a basic meditation allows the user to throw off the confines of everyday thinking, and simply “be” - exist, sense, and feel the environment and area around them.
If the weather is good, it's safe to do so, and you can be somewhere comfortable doing it, sit outside. If not, do this meditation indoors. Make sure you're comfortable (whether you're on the ground, sitting in a chair, lying down, standing, etc).
Close your eyes.
Take several calm, cool, deep breaths. Inhale – hold – exhale. Relax, and feel your breath moving in and out of your body. Continue to breathe deeply until you feel like you're in tune with your resting heart rate.
Now that you're in tune with yourself, let's get in tune with the outside. While you're breathing, start to listen to the world around you. (You can also use your sense of smell instead). Instead of being an “active” listener, just try to relax and let the sounds come to you. See what you can pickup while just relaxing and being “passive”. You'll hear one or two things first – like cars on a busy highway, or wind rustling the grass – but eventually, as you listen (or sense), these things will begin to layer. Eventually, you will pick up more and more minute and quiet details of the environment.
Enjoy the sensation of the world around you!
When you're ready to come back down, gently take several deep breaths again. Count to three (or longer, if you need), open your eyes, and stand back up (if you've been standing, you can shake yourself off or do another action to “break” from your meditation stance.)
Congratulations! You just tuned into the local energy. This skillset will prove valuable in your Craft to come, should you decide to use it!
[You can read the previous chapters of the Witches’ Workbook here: (Ch1: Beginning Witchcraft) (Ch2: Elements of Witchcraft) (Supplemental Chapter: Divination I)]
I’m almost done writing Chapter 3 of The Witches’ Workbook!! It should be available in a couple days! I’m so excited :D This one’s all about energy and energy essentials, so there’s a lot of practical heavy lifting spellcraft!
In the meantime, you can read both the previous chapters of The Witches Workbook (plus the Divination chapter) here!
It’s here!! The first supplemental chapter of The Witches’ Workbook!!
For all my divination-inclined witches, please enjoy the first revision of Divination, Part One! (Perfect for the tail end of this Rowan moon - cough cough!)
THE WITCHES WORKBOOK, CHAPTER 2 - REVISED (VERSION 2.0!)
Hey everyone! Big news on the Witches’ Workbook front! :>
1. Chapter Two of the Witches Workbook, “Elements of Witchcraft”, is now available to read and download for free! Chapter 2 covers the fundamentals (a primer on energy work, spellcasting, ritual, et al), a guide on maintaining your own research and library, a discussion of how and why witchcraft works, and more new goodies!
2. The Witches’ Workbook is now all up on Gumroad! That means that you can print, download, share, and/or keep the chapters of the Witches’ Workbook you want (as well as share a tip if you’ve enjoyed my chapters!) You can also use it to keep up-to-date when new Witches’ Workbook chapters come out (I know! Technology!!)
