Photo by Jemma
Has anyone ever felt they need to hide their practice? From parents? Partners? Friends? Being in the broom closet is something we know a little something about, despite now running a magick school. Ok, despite now secretly running a magick school.
Lets explore 8 of the clever ways we’ve gone about our practice to keep things hidden from judgy eyes.
Card Reading
Now before we ever picked up a single tarot card, we learned to read a standard 52 playing card deck. There are some overlaps with tarot that can be made (such as Hearts are Cups, Clubs are Wands, Spades are Swords and Diamonds are Pentacles) and the numerology can pretty easily be ported across from tarot as well.
As long as you have a consistent way of reading the cards, you can read a 52 playing card deck and it looks like you’re just playing a ‘made up’ game of cards. Have a go, see how you get on with the standard 52 playing card deck as it’s actually pretty useful for other cartomancy systems, such as Lenormand.
The 52 playing card deck has a role to play with Lenormand as well. We have some free to use Lenormand pages on our website if you want to get familiar with the meanings. One of our suggestions for getting to know Lenormand covertly is to simply cut out 36 pieces of paper and write the key words on one side. Nothing witchy about a piece of paper with the word ‘House’ on it….no sir, nothing to see here.
Divination
As with our cheats for Tarot and Lenormand, divining though simple questions could be done using household objects, as long as you decide the rules and stick to them. ‘Yes or No’ can be decided by the throw of a dice or the flip of a coin (hell, who doesn’t do this?!)
Divining in front of the bathroom mirror with the door locked means you won’t be interrupted as you literally stare at yourself. We used to do this in the dark as well. Just ask a question quietly in your head and stare, sometimes the room fades away but after all that staring into space you’ll be left with a clearer mind to allow the answer to come.
Meditation and visualisation
Whilst there’s nothing inherently ‘woo’ about meditation, we still hated the constant barage of ‘hippy’ comments we’d get. So, we would do this laying in bed in the space between going to bed and falling asleep. What else is there to do but teach yourself to ‘quiet the mind’ and learn to ‘count your breaths’.
We would use an eye mask sometimes if our roommate had the light on, but mostly just laying in the dark was enough to find that quiet space to count the breath and watch any pictures come into our heads.
Using candles
This, for us, candles are all about colour and less about naked flames. Luckily, this wasn’t questioned when we were in the broom closet so we had as many candles as we liked, but we appreciate not everyone is ok with candles so some alternatives need to be found. One alternative is simply to use a virtual candle. Find a guided meditation video that uses a candle of the right colour for you. Whack it on mute, and prop the virtual candle on the altar. Easy.
Another alternative is just to add colour to what you’re doing, whether this is coloured card from a craft shop or some painted rocks. Even some coloured gels to shine a torch through or coloured light bulbs in a lamp would bathe your room in the required colour. Using the colour to combine it with your magick in some way that works for you will give you what you need if you’re not using candles.
Cleansing the space
We hardly ever use a smoke cleanse as our beliefs probably align in a different way on this point. But when we were in the broom closet, we needed work arounds for smokey things. So we have a ton of these for cleansing.
One is a simple salt solution made up of a few pinches of salt in a small bowl that you dip your finger tips in and waft about the place. Not enough to soak the rug of course, just a few drops as you walk about.
If that’s not your bag, try a sonic cleanse. This involves walking about with a bell and cleansing the room with sound waves. The third way just involves some good old fashioned cleaning. Take out the actual broom, or hoover, and run it round your space to literally cleanse the area.
Casting spells
The incantation bit is actually pretty easy as this can be done in your head. Ingredients such as herbs or crystals can become a bit of a block for some closeted practitioners. All we’d say is, don’t get in your own head about it. Just think about the correspondances, and try to work with what you’ve got and how it aligns with what you believe.
Start with colours and work your way up to herbs. Herbs can be found in any supermarket and disguised easily enough at home as cooking materials, or use any of the millions of herb teas that are on the market these days. Again, these are easily disguised as kitchen goods.
Then think about what else you might include for casting a spell. Literally anything can be used in a spell as long as it means something to you symbolically. A paper doll for a person, a drawing of yourself, the written word on a piece of paper, some scraps of fabric, the coloured ribbon from a gift box, egg shells, sea shells…you name it….if you can use it symbolically then bring it home and keep it safe for future spell work.
Rituals
Yeah, these are harder to do when you’re in the closet. We pretty much always waited until we were alone or until we went out on our own. That said, not everything needs a massive ceremony with hats and gowns. We’re actually really introverted and hated all that showy chanting and stuff. So we don’t do that at all these days.
Our rituals are actually quiet, sedate symbolic actions. Stuff like burying something, wrapping something up or burning something…anything as long as it’s symbolic of releasing the spell or binding the situation…whatever it is that symbolically gets the spell out there, that’s all you need to do as your ritual.
Magickal Tools
Things like pendants, pentagrams, Book of Shadows or magick wands….lots of magikcal people like to have magickal tools. But how do you hide them when you’ve got them?!
A magick pendant can be any necklace, ring or earring you choose. As long as you’ve decided what it does and you ‘charm it’ or ‘consecrate it’ for that purpose only. We have even drawn symbols on ourselves in chalk, oil, salt water…you name it…anything we wanted to give a boost of personal power.
A Book of Shadows can be any book you want, it can be a blog online, it can be an old spiral notepad. Write it in symbols and nobody will ever know what it’s about. Our first Book of Shadows was written in some weird made up code language, so written down it looked a bit like Greek.
As for a magick wand, anything you want can be your magick wand as long as you decide it is. Our first wand was carefully hidden within a display by the fireplace for years. It just looked like a bit of an old stick. Which to everyone else it was….but to us it was the most magickal, precious item we owned.
Those are just 8 innovative ways to keep your magick away from annoying questions and judgy opinions. We understand what it’s like, and one day hopefully you’ll be ready to come out of the broom closet!
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