farming magic versus wild foraging magic
It's been on my mind a bit but I really think in Witchcraft, a lot of it is finding power. A LOT of it.
You know I talk about my system a lot, building relationships with ally spirits ("correspondences"), evoking and petitioning spirits, laying a compass, carefully storing and distributing energy between spells.
And this is all kind of like farming; you can learn how to cultivate the magical ecosystem around you to carefully seed, grow, harvest, and store power, and to make friends with the gods and spirits within and around this system who help you (or decline to hinder you, which is also very good).
This farming is good because it serves the same function as regular farming, i.e., it's hard work but it provides reliable and predictable resources available throughout the year.
But that's not finding power, that's farming it.
Several months ago I did one of the most powerful workings I had done in a while, which transformed my life. There was no evoking correspondences or compass laying or invocations or spirit offerings.
I found a free-flowing source of incredible power (an eclipse, and I found it by looking up), called it into myself, and asked that it do something specific.
No candles, incense, bells, talismans, or whatever: the actual technique I performed was extremely basic energy work.
The results were humbling, and continue to humble me, and I believe it is probably beyond what I would have been able to accomplish working only through 'farming'.
After all, I am a competent adult. I could build a fish farm. I could learn to keep it regulated and sustained to provide fish all year round.
But it doesn't matter how good of a farmer I am, I'll never be able to compete with the open ocean.
A lot of this stuff about Witchcraft techniques - if it seems like a lot, that's because it is a lot; it seems like hard work because farming is hard work, and it seems like you must plan ahead so much because farmers must plan seasons ahead.
But that's not all of Witchcraft, and homesteading your magic isn't just farming - it's wild foraging, too.
So if all this Traditional stuff seems a bit stuffy and laborious and lacking in spontaneity, perhaps it's good to ask if you're ever leaving the boundaries of your homestead and venturing out into the woods.
And all those planets and transits and holy days and plant lore and special tricks for foraging power without profaning it are not tedious rules, but maps that show pathways to wild foraging your own power, bringing great boons and benefits to uplift your seasonal farming.
