The Modern Guide to Witchcraft (3 page)

Before we get into
how
, let’s consider
why
learning to do magick is worth your time and effort. Here are ten ways magick can help to make your life better. It can:

1. Improve your love life
   
2. Attract prosperity
   
3. Keep you and your loved ones safe from harm
   
4. Enhance your health
   
5. Protect your home and personal property
   
6. Open up new career opportunities
   
7. Give you more control over your life
   
8. Improve interactions with family, friends, and coworkers
   
9. Ward off problems and enemies
   
10. Strengthen your intuition and psychic skills
    

People who don’t understand magick have made it seem weird or evil, and Hollywood sensationalizes it to the point of absurdity. Actually, there’s nothing scary, strange, or silly about magick—it’s a natural ability you were born with, a talent you can develop just like musical or mathematical talent. All it takes is desire, a little training, and practice.

Fortunately, you don’t really need any special tools to practice witchcraft. Yes, witches frequently do use a variety of tools to enhance their magickal workings—you’ll learn about these later. The tools, however, aren’t the source of power, the witch is. The truth is, magick is all in the mind—mostly the tools just help you to stay focused.

In the movie
What Dreams May Come
, the character played by Robin Williams dies and then wakes up in the afterlife. The place looks, smells, tastes, and feels more or less like the so-called real world. But he quickly learns that in this place, whatever he thinks or desires manifests instantly. All of it is a construct of consciousness.

Magick works in the same way. What you think is what you get. The manifestation may not be immediate—although it can be. If your belief and your intent are strong enough, if you bring passion to your spell, and if you can focus your energy clearly toward a specific goal, then you have a good chance of achieving what you want.

Knowing exactly what you want to accomplish and stating your intention with absolute clarity is essential whenever you perform a spell. Otherwise, your spell could backfire.

The fact is, you’re doing magick all the time, whether or not you realize it. As noted later, the Law of Attraction states that your thoughts, emotions, and actions affect the energetic patterns around you, and the most significant “tools” in magick are your thoughts and feelings. That’s why it’s important to use your magickal power with clear intent, so you can produce the results you truly desire.

Underlying all magick is a simple principle of physics: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Remember that old computer axiom, garbage in, garbage out? Magick is like that, too: If you put bad thoughts and feelings in, you’ll get bad stuff back and vice versa. So, be careful what you ask for!

Belief is the core of magick. Without it, all you have are words and gestures, light and dust, nothing but bluster—rather like the Wizard in
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
that Dorothy and her companions exposed as just an ordinary man behind a curtain. But what, exactly, is meant by belief? Go back to Oz. The Lion sought courage because he believed he was cowardly. That belief ruled his life until the Wizard pointed out how courageous he actually was. The Lion experienced a radical shift in his beliefs about himself when he realized that he had possessed what he desired most all along. Believing he didn’t have courage was what crippled him.

Most of us are just like the Cowardly Lion. We let fear, doubt, and erroneous beliefs limit our power and our ability to create what we desire most in life. Let’s say you want abundance. To you, that means financial abundance, money in the bank, freedom from worrying whether the next check you write is going to bounce. However, to those around you, your life appears to be incredibly abundant—you have a loving family, wonderful friends, good health. Sometimes a shift in our deepest beliefs happens because someone whose opinion we respect points out that we really
do
have what we desire. Other times, we reach the same conclusion on our own. One thing you can count on: When your beliefs change, so will your life circumstances.

When you do magick, you must believe in yourself and your ability to produce the result you seek. Doubt pours water on your creative fire. If you doubt you can achieve your goal, you won’t. That’s true whether you’re playing a sport or casting a spell.

A belief is an acceptance of something as true. Thousands of years ago, people believed the world was flat. In the 1600s, men and women were burned at the stake because people in power believed they were evil and consorted with the devil. (You’d be surprised to discover how many people still believe witches are the devil’s disciples—more about this later.)

On a more personal level, all of us face the consequences of our personal beliefs in all areas of our lives, every day. Your experiences, the people around you, your personal and professional environments—every facet of your existence, in fact—is a faithful reflection of a belief.

Some common ingrained, self-limiting beliefs that many people hold on to include:

• I’m not worthy (of love, wealth, a great job, whatever).
  
• My relationships stink.
  
• I’ll never amount to anything.
  
• People are out to get me.
  
• Life is a struggle.
  
• You can’t be rich
  and
  spiritual.
  
• I live in an unsafe world.
  

The foundations for many of these notions are laid in childhood, when we adopt the beliefs of our parents, teachers, and other authority figures. Childhood conditioning can be immensely powerful. Inside the man or woman who lacks a sense of self-worth lurks a small child who may believe he or she is a sinner, unworthy, or not good enough.

On a larger scale, our beliefs also come from the cultures and societies in which we live. A woman living in the West, for example, is unlikely to have the same core beliefs about being female as a woman in, say, a Muslim country.

A belief system usually evolves over time. It’s something that we grow into, as our needs and goals develop and change. Even when we find a system of beliefs that works for us, we hone and fine-tune it, working our way deeper and deeper into its essential truth. Everything we experience, every thought we have, every desire, need, action, and reaction—everything we perceive with our senses goes into our personal databank and helps to create the belief systems that we hold now. Nothing is lost or forgotten in our lives.

You don’t have to remain a victim of your conditioning, however. You can choose for yourself what you believe or don’t believe, what you desire and don’t desire. You can define your own parameters. Once you do that, you can start consciously creating your destiny according to your own vision—and keying into your magickal nature to make that happen.

Have you heard of something called the Law of Attraction? Actually, it’s an ancient concept, but in recent years Esther and Jerry Hicks have popularized and expanded it so that now millions of people around the world are familiar with the idea. At its core, the Law says that you attract whatever you put your mind on. In their best-selling book
Money, and the Law of Attraction
the Hickses wrote, “Each and every component that makes up your life experience is drawn to you by the powerful Law of Attraction’s response to the thoughts you think and the story you tell about your life.” In
The Secret
, Rhonda Byrne explained that “Your life right now is a reflection of your past thoughts.”

What they’re saying is, you create your own reality. Your thoughts and feelings generate energy, and they interact with the energy all around you in your environment. Over time, your ideas—especially the ones you feel passionate about—produce “thought forms,” which serve as patterns that eventually become physical forms. You could look at it this way: Let’s say you’re a fashion designer and in your mind you envision a fabulous dress. That creative idea or “thought form” must exist before you can start to develop the physical object. You keep refining your design, doing drawings and maybe even stitching a sample, and eventually produce the dress you’d imagined.

Magick works in essentially the same way. First you create an image in your mind of what you desire and then imbue that image with energy and emotion. In time, what you conjured up mentally will emerge into the material world.

A big part of becoming a powerful witch and performing effective magick is training your mind. This means focusing your thoughts, raising your energy to the highest level you can, and using your will to bring your intentions into fruition. Later in this book, we’ll talk more about how to do this—and the more you practice, the better results you’ll achieve.

Start paying attention to your thoughts. Are you focusing on what you lack? If so, you’ll continue to experience lack. Do you spend time lamenting the problems in your life? If so, you’ll keep making more problems for yourself. Whenever you catch yourself thinking something that’s
not
what you want, do a mental 180 and start thinking about what you do want instead.

Magick is ethically neutral, just like electricity is neutral. Both magick and electricity can be used to help or to harm. Magick is simply the intentional use of energy. Casting a magick spell is simply a means to an end. A witch uses willpower to direct energy toward a particular goal. Her intention is what colors the magick white, black, or gray.

You’ve probably heard people describe themselves as white witches, meaning they uphold the “do no harm” rule. The truth, though, is that most magick isn’t black or white, it’s gray—including the magick most self-proclaimed white witches perform. That doesn’t mean it’s bad or harmful, however. In fact, the spells of most witches and magicians fall into the gray area.

Not every witch will agree with the following definitions of white, black, and gray magick. However, these guidelines can help you sort out the differences:

• White magick’s purpose is to further spiritual growth, by strengthening your connection with the divine realm and/or gaining wisdom from a higher source.
  
• Black magick intends to harm or manipulate another person, or to interfere with his/her free will.
  
• Every other kind of magick is a shade of gray.
  

This means that if you do a spell to get a better job or to attract a lover you’re operating in the gray zone. Nothing wrong with that. It’s easy, though, to stray from the path and inadvertently cast a questionable spell—especially when you’re having a bad day or dealing with difficult people. Let’s say a coworker is a real pain in the neck and you do a spell to get even with her for a dirty deed. Your revenge may seem justifiable, but it’s still black magick.

Here’s another little-known fact: Most black magick isn’t performed by evil sorcerers or wicked wizards, it’s done by ordinary people who don’t even realize what they’re up to. Have you ever cursed some jerk for stealing your parking space or cutting in front of you in a long supermarket line? That’s black magick, too.

Maybe you’re wondering, why
not
use magick to put someone who’s wronged you in his place? It’s tempting, for sure. Except remember that in the world of magick, whatever you do returns to you like a boomerang. Indeed, many magicians say it comes back magnified threefold. That’s a good reason for keeping your thoughts focused on positive stuff. It’s also why usually the best way to get what you want—especially on days when everything seems to be going wrong—is to bless instead of curse.

Admittedly, it can be hard sometimes to determine if you’re treading on the dark side of Magick Street. For many people, love spells seem to raise the most questions. What if you want to do a spell to get your yoga instructor to fall for you? Is that okay? It all depends on your intention. If he already has a partner and your goal is to win him away from her, obviously that’s
not
a good idea.

Good spells respect other people’s free will and right to make their own choices in life. Even if your yoga teacher isn’t romantically involved with anybody else, it’s manipulative to cast a spell to coerce him into doing something he wouldn’t want to do otherwise. How would you feel if someone did that to you? There’s another reason, too, to think carefully before casting a spell to win a person’s heart. A well-executed love spell creates a strong bond between you and someone else. Later on, if you change your mind, breaking the bond could be tough, to say the least.

Instead, try another angle to accomplish your goal. You could magickally enhance your own attractiveness. You could do magick to remove any obstacles existing between you and the other person. You could do a spell to attract a lover who’s right for you, rather than targeting a particular individual. Or you could turn the final decision over to a higher power and let your favorite god/dess, angel, or spirit guide find the perfect partner for you. This kicks your ego out of the driver’s seat and lets the universe guide you toward an outcome that’s right for you. Maybe you and your yoga teacher would live happily ever after together. On the other hand, maybe you’d be better off with somebody else, perhaps someone you haven’t met yet.