Last week we discussed what shadow work is, why we would want to do shadow work as witches, and a few basic ways to begin dipping our toes into shadow work practices. This week, we’re going to be diving deeper into the purpose behind shadow work and how you can use this magical modality to alchemize your emotions and start seeing real change in your life. I’ve also included one of my favorite emotional alchemy rituals so that you can really get your hands dirty with your new shadow work practice. More Than Just Letting Your Feelings Out In our previous blog post, we talked a lot about letting ..read more

If you spend enough time hanging around witches, you will inevitably start hearing about shadow work. This subject tends to be greeted with either morbid curiosity or deep fear. There’s something just so visceral about the term shadow work. In the mind of the uninitiated, it can call up images of black magic, dark rituals, or illicit midnight jaunts to do magic. But in truth, shadow work is much less racy than that, though no less exciting to myself and other witches who make use of these practices. Today, we’re going to clear up all the confusion around shadow work so that you can understand ..read more

Glamor spells are a fascinating and often misunderstood form of witchcraft. This form of spell work can be very intimidating to newer witches. It can seem very complex, unpredictable, or intangible, and many witches avoid them entirely simply because they don’t know enough to feel comfortable performing this kind of magic. Some witches consider glamor spells to be immoral, almost like lying, while others consider glamor to be more like magical makeup, in other words, not immoral at all. And then there are the misconceptions about what glamor spells even do and how they work. Does it change ho ..read more

I don’t often discuss religion on my blog, but today I’m breaking my own rule. By and large, I tried to keep things as secular as possible around here not because I’m not personally religious (I am) or because I think there’s anything wrong with religion (I don’t) but simply because my students come from an incredibly varied background and doing so allows me to teach all of them without exclusion. I teach students who are atheists, who are tried-and-true pagans, who are Wiccans, who are Christians, who are Muslims, who believe in Heathenry, who worship ancient gods, and so many more. Witchcra ..read more

This is Part 2 of this series, to read Part 1 click here >> In last week’s blog post, we discussed the dangers of spells that cut you off from your feelings. These spells can’t remove emotions, no matter what they promise, so all they do is hide the emotions where you can’t feel them anymore. This causes some enormous problems! Using spells that get rid of anger, that make it so you can’t feel depression or anxiety, or that hide your heartbreak doesn’t improve your life at all, it makes you blind to the reality of your situation. When you do this, it can destroy the effectiveness of you ..read more

Have you ever seen those spells that promise you can banish your anxiety or your depression? What about spells that promise to make you forget about your ex? Or spells designed to get rid of anger? Chances are if you’ve been involved in witchcraft for any length of time, you’ve come across quite a number of these spells. Hell, I get asked for a spell like this at least a couple of times a week! And I get it, we all encounter emotions that are painful, hard to process, or just downright uncomfortable. No one wants to feel bad! These spells might seem well-meaning, or useful, or even benign, bu ..read more

This is Part 2 of this series, to read Part 1 click here >> In last week’s blog post, we talked about what intuition is and how so many of us lose touch with it. This is such a frustrating topic for so many people because in many ways, the people who teach about intuition the most assume that you already have a halfway decent connection with yours. They don’t bother explaining what it is or what to do if your intuition seems to be broken and so a lot of people just go about their lives assuming that they just don’t have an intuition or are somehow intuition deficient. This could not be ..read more

How many times have you heard some spiritual teacher tell you, “Just follow your intuition!” or “trust your intuition!” If you’ve been living on the same planet as I have, I’m going to guess about a million times. As spiritual people, we are constantly told that we need to trust our intuition or follow our intuition, or intuition this and intuition that. But nobody ever really stops to explain what the hell intuition even is and how you’re supposed to follow it or trust it or whatever it is we’re supposed to be doing with it. You’re just told to trust it, like that’s some kind of switch that ..read more

Divination is a huge part of witchcraft, but it can seem really complicated and unapproachable to new witches. It’s not hard to see why! The most common form of divination is tarot and to utilize a tarot deck effectively you have to be familiar with and be able to interpret 72 separate cards, and that’s not even getting into tarot spreads and how the cards interact with each other in combination. It’s a lot to learn! For this reason, I see a lot of newer witches avoiding divination entirely because they think it’s just too complicated for them or they think that their memory isn’t good enough ..read more

When I say the word sigil, what do you think of? Is it little symbols and squiggles dashed out on paper to create quick spells? If it is, then you’re not alone. The vast majority of information available about sigils pertains to symbol and imagery-based sigils. You can easily find half a dozen commonly used methods for turning an intention or a power phrase into a sigil. These little symbols are not the be-all-end-all of sigil magic, though. Today, we’re going to be talking about two of the lesser-known forms of sigil magic: verbal sigils and movement sigils. Sigils Are More Than Just Squiggl ..read more