developing your craft (beyond tumblr)
Witchblr can be wonderfully supportive and rich with information for a new witch. Spells! Masterposts! Correspondences! Oh my!
But at some point, it feels like you keep seeing the same posts, the same lists, over and over, and your grimoire is full of conflicting correspondences pulled from 15 different resources, and you feel like you should be further along than you are, and there is a subtle guilt over the witchy practices you continue to fail to adopt, and your craft is beginning to feel a little....stagnant.
Where are you supposed to go from there?
I think it is important to understand that while the witchblr community is a wonderful melting pot of ideas and practices, and can be a wonderful place to start, it shouldn’t be your primary resource.
So, without further ado:
1. Beliefs
What are your beliefs? Take the time to think about it. What is important to you? What is it that you want out of your craft?
What are your thoughts on hot topics such as cursing, consent, cultural appropriation, and if applicable, the law of three? What practices or subjects are essential to you? What does your practice look like in terms of spellwork, rituals, devotion, meditation, and practices? Are tools essential? What type of witch do you consider yourself, and is the label necessary or important to you? Perhaps it is important that you don’t align yourself any which way at all.
This is the time to figure out what your craft means to you, and what you value. A little self-reflection never hurt anybody (I don’t think?).
2. Data
I assume at this point you’ve gathered enough information to make yourself dizzy. Go through it.
Pitch out anything unreliable. Mark anything that requires further investigation. Put aside or throw out information on subjects you are no longer interested in or are no longer applicable to your practice. If you don’t give a damn about Astrology, you don’t need to keep collecting the information because of the idea that this will make you a more well-rounded witch.
From what is remaining, sort all the conflicting information and decide which sources to rely on, which ones to mix and match, and which ones to scrap all together. Note the subjects in which you wish to explore more and deepen your knowledge of, and which things you consider essential knowledge.
At this point I also imagine you have plenty of your own input to add as well, so go ahead and do that.
3. Correspondences
Correspondence lists are all over the place.
But correspondences are a very deeply personal thing that vary drastically between communities and from person to person. New witches tend to take these lists way more seriously than they should. I don’t have a lot of faith in a spell that requires a heavy amount of cross referencing correspondences that don’t align with your own intuition.
For instance, if you look up correspondences for money, you might find clovers, basil, and hyssop. But if you don’t know what hyssop is, then don’t use it just because a list or spell made it sound like you have to have that hyssop or the spell won’t work. If you don’t associate hyssop with anything, its not going to carry any correspondence in whatever you use it for.
Develop your own correspondences based on your own associations and intuition and suddenly the possibilities for spells and ingredients are endless. Use lists for quick reference, but don’t work from them religiously. When you come across a list that has a paragraphs worth of meanings, pick and choose which ones make sense to you and ignore the rest.
4. Resources
You never have to be done with exploring new methods and subjects, unless you want to. Delve into things for as long or intensely or as sporadically as you want to. But for the love of all that is good, expand your search outside tumblr.
And when you do, I’m here to let you know, it’s going to be a bitch finding information you can trust. Learn to sniff out bias and avoid it like the plague.
Refine your Google searches. Read a book. Investigate. Basically become a scholar. When you have a massive collection of quality resources mixed with your personal accounts and intuition, forming your own opinions is a lot easier.
It’s a pain in the ass, but unfortunately that’s how the world works. There aren’t many authorities on witchcraft. You have to become one. At least as far as your interests go anyway.
5. Practice
Refine your knowledge, refine your skills, practice how and what you want to practice. Tumblr can’t tell you how to be a witch. That is something you need to figure out on your own.
Ultimately nothing on this list is particularly earth-shattering to hear, I realize, but these are all things I wish I’d been told a little sooner. Ultimately if you want to grow, don’t rely on the community as your only source of information.
Whether that means diving into other platforms or going solo, you need to find that out for yourself.