Ok, so you want to practice every day?
You know what, valid. So do I. I'm going to make this as short as I can because we have a lot to get through.
You don't have to practice every day to be a "good," valid, powerful, or whatever-you-want witch.
Generic "ground and center every morning, then enchant your tea" practice routines aren't going to be helpful for 90% of us out here. (yes, I wrote similar in the past!)
"Practice" does not equal repeating exercises and casting spells.
When witches say "in my practice," IMO they are using this word interchangeably with "in my path," or "when I actively engage in my path."
Eschew the idea that your "daily practice" is supposed to be a workout routine that is training you for something better.
Embrace the idea that we're actually talking about "practicing daily," aka "engaging with my path on a daily basis." You aren't training for the next thing - you're at the thing already :)
Your daily practice needs to start with what you want out of your faith and practice.
Not everyone wants to be an energy worker.
Not everyone wants to venerate nature.
Not everyone wants to be a spirit-worker.
Not everyone wants to learn herbalism or kitchen witchery
Brainstorm your idealized path. I mean envision yourself in the cutest little cottagecore village, living your total fantasy witch life. What are you doing?
Talk to spirits and make friends with the forest and the flowers?
Help and heal the villagers?
Be a spiritual warrior who battles with evil spirits and aberrations?
Be a world-walker, who goes to unseen realms?
Learn to slip into new skins?
Also ask yourself what you don't want. Gods freak you out? Ok, don't interact with them. You want to do pure energy work with very little ritual ingredients? Beautiful. Stand your ground, flip off people who tell you "but witches worship pagan gods and burn candles to their familiars 🥺"
Find ways to start including what is the most important to you in your daily life.
It might be helpful to make a list of the 1-3 things you really want to focus on right now. If it helps, choose a time frame of weeks to try out these practices and see if you like them.
But before you get too far into that:
[Picture ID: A tweet from @rmccarthyjames which reads, "all of my plans for the future involve me waking up tomorrow with a sudden sense of discipline and adherence to routine that i have never displayed even once in my life"]
This, right here, is what we want to avoid.
Please, for the love of God, do not sit down and say, "okay, I'm going to wake up 30 minutes early and do a 15 minute meditation each morning, then 5-10 minutes of energy exercises. Then, I'm going to ground and center (energy work goals). Then during breakfast I'll enchant my food and read about herbalism while I eat (kitchen witch goals). Then, in the evening ---"
I can pretty much guarantee you that almost any activity you have access to right now will be actively draining.
Magical techniques, exercises, and spellwork take energy - just like working out at the gym.
You can work out at the gym and feel energized for the next couple of hours, but then become fatigued in the evening/next day.
You can work out at the gym every day for 5 days, but then suddenly you feel too weak or sore to even get out of bed the next day.
Meditation, grounding, and centering can restore metaphysical energy to your body, and increase your access to it. But it's like eating a protein bar after a workout - you still have to rest and recover.
So if you've tried to stick to "do X, Y, Z" activities every day and failed, ask yourself if you were actually engaging in a strenuous magical workout routine that wore you into the ground.
Instead of choosing "X activity for Y minutes at Z time every day, consider this:
One of the most available ways you can engage in your path is by dwelling within your magical and spiritual worldviews.
Are you an animist? Look for a plant. Think about how it's got a soul. You just engaged with your path :)
Are you interested in energy work? Look for a conversation between two people. Consider the energy flow between them. You just engaged with your path :)
Are you into Traditional Witchcraft? Watch a TV show. Ask yourself how you'd solve a problem on the screen (not necessarily using magic to solve it, just in general). Then, ask yourself how your hag, fetch-beast, or familiar (hypothetical or otherwise) would solve it. You just engaged with your path :)
Are you into religious magic? Look around you. Feel the vibes, feel your feelings, feel your mood. What would your god(s) have to say about it? You just engaged with your path :)
Do you play a lot of video games? Overlay your beliefs onto the game and use events, interactions, and developments as an opportunity to consider your own beliefs (or, with Minecraft, build your own astral temples).
The more you dwell within your magical and spiritual worldviews, the more you "phase in" to the reality that you're a witch and magic is within you and around you.
Over time, constantly engaging with your path in these small ways - through choosing to see the world through the lens of your practice - makes choosing and employing "techniques," exercises, and spells soooo much more relevant and practical.
With that tangent is out of the way, practical tips for how to interact with your path on a daily basis:
Avoid "daily" activities with a high barrier to entry. If you make all these rules and regulations for your own practice, like you have to make a journal entry for every spell and magical activity, and it has to include the moon phase and planetary hour, you're going to be engaging probably a lot less than you think you will.
Choose activities which directly help and support your day to day life.
Tough work environment? Try picking up energy shielding or amulet-making.
Art commissions down? Try learning prosperity or money magic.
Feeling confused or directionless? Experiment with forms of divination.
Lonely? Learn to talk to spirits.
You do not need to create barriers to these things. You DO NOT need to meditate, ground, or center before you make an energy shield. You can just make one right now, actually.
You don't need to learn protection and warding before you practice talking to the nature spirits around you, or bringing protective presences into your sphere.
You don't need to copy down a two-page spell and then write grimoire entries for each correspondence before you can do effective spells and charms.
One of the easiest ways to perform casual, daily magic is to extend regular daily actions into the spirit world.
(For me, the "spirit world" is where all magic happens. Maybe you might call it the etheric, or the energy-double of the world).
Shower to clean yourself - just expend energy to extend the cleaning to your spiritual bodies.
Eat food to gain energy - just expend energy to also feed your spiritual bodies.
Exhale to send old breath away - and at the same time, send away an unwanted thought, energy, or presence.
("Expend energy" can be done in many ways; most often we say "visualization" but you can also dedicate your power to the task through words of intent ["I apply my power to nourish myself thrice over"], mindfulness [staying present in the moment and maintaining focus on your spiritual goal], physical gestures [stirring food clockwise with the knowledge that you are stirring power into it], etc.)
So you've found some free time. What do you want to do with it?
Maybe you started energy shielding earlier this week, and now you're feeling worn out and just want to take a day off.
Hot take: "Hey, I'm too tired to do this magical thing, I'm going to choose something else instead" is engaging with your path :) You didn't forget or ignore your path. You checked in with your magical self, took stock of the situation, and choose the activity of rest.
I personally say, give all techniques and methods a chance. I myself am not a person where I start out good at things. I'm one of the people where I start out bad at things and get a little better each time I practice.
But if a technique is not vibing with you, or if new concerns arise in your life, there's no need to dedicate yourself to doing something you don't like and don't need for the sake of reaching an arbitrary goal of completion.
Remember, it's not a daily workout until you're good enough to improve your life.
It's improving your life, right now, and each time you do it you get a lil better at it :)
Your path is not subject to object impermanence*.
(*The following is primarily poetic; take it or leave it as you please)
You are what you are and wherever you stand, there your path is around you. To try and curse your path into a quasi-existence where it only appears when you're making energy balls is a terrible fate for a path to be bound to.
It's your friend. It wants to be with you. It doesn't want to be told it's invisible and un-present unless you're staring it in the eye.
A great deal of my early path was taking huge breaks from magical practice - I mean, for months and months at a time. It's called the Crooked Path, not the Straightforward Linear Path Where Expected Things Occur.
Sure, if you're done with witchcraft for a while (or forever), set it aside. Tell your path it's done, closed down, and you'll be back when you're back.
But while you're in, you're walking it. Is your path one where you accidentally forget witchcraft exists and take breaks for months at a time without meaning to? So that's your path. It matches you step for step, no matter where you go.
It doesn't go hungry - you eat and you sleep, and it eats and rests with you. It doesn't feel rejected - it's right there with you. When you touch the doorknob, your path reaches through and holds your hand. When you write a school exam, it traces the pencil lead from the other side. It doesn't matter if you know it or see it - it's there, patient and waiting, watching you with love. All you need to do is fail to believe that your path is gone when you stop paying attention to it.
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