Starting or ending your day with a body scan is a wonderful way to just sit (or lay down) and spend some time paying attention to your body. Giving gentle, non judgemental attention to any bodily sensations in various parts of the body from your feet through to your head. By mentally scanning yourself, you bring awareness to every single part of your body.
Our body scan invites you to bring this gentle awareness to where you store your emotions, tension and how the breath feels in the body. The goal is not to change anything, and not to have perfect stillness in the mind but just to get to know yourself and your amazing body!
This video will guide you through a meditation practice for you to practice every day, so that you can spend some quality time just with you. You deserve to have all this attention!
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So you’re a witch? Well, when you know you know. You don’t have to have been born magickal or have cast a single spell. Sometimes you just have a feeling you’re magickal. Sometimes spotting something ‘witchy’ in a shop or online wakes it in you. Maybe watching something or reading about something magickal lights that first spark. So you googled it a bunch, and you’re pretty sure you’re a witch. Now what?
How do you ‘start’ being magickal?
Learning anything new takes dedication. Learning about magick is no different. So yes, you’re gonna have to do a lot of reading m’fraid. Or sign up to a Magick School (waves hello). Back in our day the only access to information was in the one book that existed in the library (yes we are that old). Imagine the internet printed out on bits of paper and stored in a warehouse. That’s what libraries used to be like. So finding information was super difficult. Thankfully Google Is King these days and can fetch answers right to you, you just have to know what questions to ask. Happily we’ve got some suggestions for further research below.
Which witch is which?
Some people like to figure out what kind of magick they’re into and labels can help here. However, this comes with a big steaming pot of CAREFUL because labelling your magick might seem helpful, but it can also be problematic. Let’s take a look at some of the common magickal labels.
A green or blue witch incorporates the natural world into their practice. Green witches will have a deep affinity for herbal magick, plants and will often find ‘green space’ restorative. A blue witch will have a preference for the ocean, rivers and lakes and will find water restorative.
A hedge witch is like a green witch in that their practice involves a deep study of plants and herbs and the natural world. Using, and often growing their own, herbs is part of their daily practice. A hedge witch will find being outside restorative.
A kitchen witch is a term for a witch who emphasises cooking, food preparation and meal times in magickal practice. Like a green witch and a hedge witch, kitchen witches often grow their own herbs for magickal use. Kitchen witches find the home restorative.
A ceremonial witch incorporates ritual and ceremony into their practice. Often using the voice and chanting as part of their practice. Ceremonial witches often, though not always, practice together, they find group work, outward expressions or togetherness restorative.
A cosmic or star witch is a witch who uses astrology and practises astral magick, preferring to time magick in accordance with the planets and the phases of the moon. Star witches find the night sky restorative.
A chaos witch is a witch who uses psychology and belief as their practice, avoiding dogma. Chaos witches focus on results and less on worshipful daily practice. Chaos witches find personal power and meditation restorative.
An eclectic witch could be a mix of any of the above, or a mix from something else. Eclectic witches mix lots of practices together into a personal blend. Eclectic witches may find they go through cycles of what they find restorative, sometimes using nature for a while then swapping for meditation and so on.
We are all of the above and none of the above. We are just witches. We practise astral magick, but this includes using herbs collected in accordance with the planets. Does this mean we are hedge or green witches? Our astral magick will include making potions in the kitchen at the most opportune time. Does this make us kitchen witches? Our astral magick is results based, and makes belief the central tenant. Does this make us chaos witches? If we have to label ourselves as anything, we would probably suggest we are humanistic witches…witches who focus on the potential to change and grow as people. But who knows if this is a thing? Who cares!?
So this is why it might be problematic. Putting yourself in a box might mean you don’t learn about the rest of it! So, we don’t feel the need to subcategorise. But big up to those out there who plan to research all the different ‘kinds’ of possible magick, with the idea of becoming an expert in one area. If this sounds like you, these labels are the place to start your googling.
Does being a witch mean you can’t be religious?
Not at all. A witch could choose to follow a magick based religious practice, such as Wicca. For example, you could be both Wiccan and a green witch. You could choose to follow a different religion. You could follow Thelema and be a ceremonial witch. You could be Christian and be a kitchen witch (Gasp. Can it be possible? Yes!). Or you could choose not to follow a religion at all.
We’re not religious witches. We don’t worship deities as part of our practice, but equally we are not secular either. Being human (and humanistic witches) means we do have some spirituality! Everyone will have their own approach. What do you want to do? Do you feel aligned with a particular deity, religion or practice? And is that practice open to you? If this sounds like you, this is another place to start with your research. Remember some practices are only open to members of a certain community so it’s really important to know where your ideas come from, and do your research.
Do I have to tell anyone?
Nope. If you’re not looking to practise with a group and be initiated into a certain belief system (see religions point above) then there’s no register, no leader, no One Ring….and despite what the Internet will tell you (pesky Internet, thinks it’s so good and knows everything) there’s no certificate of authenticity for your witchiness either. You can learn about where your magick comes from and keep it entirely to yourself or you can tell everyone you meet.
How do I know I’m ‘doing magick’ correctly?
Well, that is the million dollar question. The final answer for one million dollars is that there is no right way.
So if there’s no right way, how do you know if you’re doing any of it right? This will all come down to the reading you’ve done. For what it’s worth, we’re still reading. We’ve been doing it for over 30 years…so it might take you a while. But honestly? Start small. For example, you might see a particular herb and its correspondences in a book or on a website. You might see a particular date mentioned as being ‘special’ or a particular deity as being important. Understanding why that is, is a place to start small. Even understanding why one herb is used for something and not a different herb can take hours of research!
Don’t take everything you see on the Internet as the truth. Because, spoiler alert, some people on the Internet don’t always fact check, and they don’t always back up their statements. This is something that bugged the hell out of us if we’re honest when we got started. This whole copy and pass it on, and nobody really questions it (and it’s why we include everything in our course materials, every study, every book, it’s all in the footnotes of our course materials).
Googling every small detail is an important place to start because whilst you’re reading about these small details, you might find that actually it stops holding meaning for you (eg you decide it’s not something you can get on board with). Then stop. You don’t have to be magickal in the same way other people are, this does not mean you’re doing it wrong. It means you’ve researched and decided that it doesn’t work for you. If anything, you’re doing it right!
Is being a witch expensive?
Absolutely not. Being a witch is a state of mind, that bit is free. Meditation, visualisation, believing in magick, believing in making change possible, enjoying nature, appreciating the moon and stars, walking barefoot outside…all of these things are possible without spending any money at all. Access to training or access to information to teach yourself can be free, if you don’t count needing access to the Internet. Books in the library are free, if you don’t count any expenses involved in getting there.
Collecting materials for use in magick can be free, if you know where to go. For example, we collect plants locally. Finding what there is at any given point in the year takes a bit of effort (and research) but it’s more sustainable. We’re not using plants that don’t grow in our location, so we’re not adding airmiles or expense to our practice. Other ingredients for spells can be made cheaply, or found, as anything can be used in spell work if it has meaning to you. Incense, oils, candles…they don’t need to be used but if you want to use them, they don’t need to be expensive. Candles can even be virtual! Check out our article on Broom Closet magick for how, plus other ideas to run your practice on the down low and keeping expenses to a minimum.
So where should I start to be a witch?
You can start right here, we have a lot of free resources you can use and now you’ve found us you know you can come back whenever you need to. You’re welcome to read our articles, listen to our podcast, or have a look at our Casting Spells page. For those of you who would like to try Magick School, there is a link below. There are of course other Magick or Wicca Schools available. Give yourself time to learn. Learning how to do anything takes practice.
When can I call myself a witch?
Whenever you want to. Maybe that’s right now? Maybe it’s after you’ve cast a spell? Maybe it’s after you’ve done some reading or watched a tutorial? Only you will know when it’s time. You get to decide your own labels and when to use them!
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Everyone should have the confidence to step into their personal power as a leader. Sometimes little blocks around what we value, and what strengths we have and what we can bring to our leadership roles get in the way. We invite you to ask yourself as a leader, what is most important to you? What do you want to achieve? What is getting in the way of that?
This video will guide you through a meditation practice for you to practice every day, so that you can access the qualities you admire in other leaders and clear and transmute those leadership blocks whenever you want!
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Colour being quite an emotive tool, makes it useful to draw those correspondences from in order to work magick. So, in a magickal context colour is more often than not used through things like candles and crystals to make a connection, or a correspondence, to the type of magick being worked.
But how do we know which coloured candle is the right colour? What about crystals? Do we go with the colour of the crystal or are there other magickal properties we should learn first? What is more important? See….it gets messy pretty quickly.
Ok, now let’s get things out into the open because what colours mean is still hugely subjective. For example, certain colours can be culturally conditioned, they can have aesthetic or psychological links to us that are so deeply rooted we don’t even know where our likes or dislikes originate. This all means colours may not have the same meaning to all people. If we can accept that, it’s going to make the rest of this article a lot easier to get on board with!
Let’s look at candles first
Not everyone uses candles, and that’s fine. At Magenta when we use candles in magick, we choose them based on their colour. Lots of other practitioners do this too, so that’s probably not that weird. Or special.
But where do people learn which colours to use? There are a lot of resources that might talk about using a blue candle for a certain spell, or a red candle for another kind of spell. Is there some secret Hogwarts that teaches people about all this?
But why those colours?
Ok, so there’s no secret Hogwarts. A lot of the correspondences used today get passed about like a meme. Basically someone decided one time that a green candle gets used for one kind of magick, they teach other people this and on it goes. One of the best examples of lists and lists of colours and their “meanings” is a book called the Liber 777, which was banded about the early 20th Century as the “correct” correspondences.
Alright. But we’re calling bullshit on it now. Remember earlier when we said certain colours can be culturally conditioned, they can have aesthetic or psychological links to us that are so deeply rooted we don’t even know where our likes or dislikes originate? And that this all means colours may not have the same meaning to all people?
Yeah. That. So some white guy wrote a book once, big whoop. He doesn’t speak for all of us.
Our magickal practice is often focused on personal growth and change. So, for example, at Magenta, we align our colours with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, not the Kabbalah, and we have a couple of extra colours for good measure. This gives us up to 12 colours to work with which we feel is wide enough to achieve our aims, whilst narrow enough to still be manageable.
Surely that has no magickal basis because it’s just made up?
At some point in time all colour correspondences were just made up by someone. Black for a funeral in some cultures, but not in others. Red for good luck in some cultures, but not in others. How long ago it was all decided is probably what gives it credibility though right? Or how powerful or influential the writer is?
Our colour thing does work for us, so we’re comfortable with it being newly made up. It works because as Humanistic Counsellors, the Maslow system makes absolute sense and works. It’s a powerful symbol of human motivation that we have coloured in and attached our psychological links to.
But we absolutely encourage everyone to find out where their colour correspondences came from. If you do find out, and you decide it’s all bollocks, you know you get to decide the colour correspondences that work for you, right?!
It’s the same with crystals as well. For example, we just go with the colour, its a lot less pressure to just learn one thing about magickal ingredients. Plenty of other people will disagree and talk about the various properties of each stone being more important and that’s fine. For us, we’re ok with just the colour.
Our colours of magick
So for us, darker coloured candles or crystals like black and dark red we use for physiological needs or more primal magick. This might be things like individual protection or grounding spells.
Bright red and orange is for safety needs like the protection of others or for an emotional connection with others.
Yellow is for belonging needs, and used in confidence, friendship magick and for mental wellness spells.
Green is for esteem needs and used when seeking moments of calm, love, beauty or abundance.
BrightBlue is for all those cognitive needs, and for communication or forgiveness magick.
Dark Blue and Purple for self-actualisation needs and spiritual magick.
White, Magenta or transparent (in the case of crystals) are for transcendence needs, and used for magick in service of others
Colours may not have the same meaning to all people
Although some of our colour correspondencesmay not make sense to you, that’s cool. But maybe they’re the same ones you use, if so great!
But give it some thought. Have you ever thought about why you use certain colours in your magick? We invite you to think about how the colours you use connect with the psychological overlay. By this we mean, for example “Blue for Calm” but why? Always ask why! Research where your correspondences come from, the history may surprise or delight you. If you don’t like what you find, have a think about making up a new way, or use our correspondences. Sure, it’s new. But it works and innovation in magickal thinking has to start somewhere right?
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Have you ever wondered if any of the ancient magickal texts people like Rupert Giles or Sam and Dean Winchester had were real? What about the really old magick books Dark Willow assimilated or a real Book of Shadows like the one the Halliwells have? If they are real….can they still be used today?
Last week we started to look through our magickal library for real life grimoires. For Part 1, we got things going with The False Monarchy of Demons, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, The Grand Grimoire/ The Red Dragon, The Key of Solomon The King and Arbatel. So now we’ll conclude our look at old magick books.
Welcome to Part 2
The Sworn Book of Honorius
The Sepher Ha-Razim
The Lesser Key of Solomon
The Picatrix
The Voynich Manuscript
The Sworn Book of Honorius
The oldest preserved manuscript in the British Library dates to the 14th century. So we know this is a pretty old book. It’s a very real grimoire but it was supposedly written by Honorius from Greece, but nobody knows who this guy is, so there’s no way to tell who really wrote it. Our version was published in 2016 by Ibis Press.
What’s it about?
It’s four ‘works’ in one book. It’s more like an instruction manual, rather than a book of spells, so this is exactly the sort of thing Dark Willow would have assimilated. The objective of the Sworn Book is to try to know God through magick. It’s got a lot of Christian thought, as well as Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism contained within it, and talks about using seals and sigils to call on various angelic entities, when to best contact them and what to ask them for.
Fakelore? Or Real?
The prologue to the Sworn Book has a whole bunch of fakelore in it. It’s awesome! Apparently, magick in the middle ages was getting corrupted so, after some hand-wringing from the Pope and some other church types, 89 magicians teamed-up to elect one badass mage, Honorius, to co-author a magickal text with an angel no less. The job was to bring together the best bits of other magickal texts into one book and then discard the so-called corrupted bits. Kind of a magick heist. And so the Sworn Book is the result.
The real history around this book is not as cool but we know the book is pretty old, and we know it was pretty hard-core feared or revered. We know this because we see references to this book pop up in various legal proceedings through the years (yeah, remember witchcraft and magick wasn’t en vogue at certain points in history). This book also gets an honourable mention in other magickal texts. So the magick in it really was considered the best of the best. We don’t really know who wrote it though. Yeah spoilers, it wasn’t Honorius (whoever he was).
What do we think of it?
If you’re looking for an old Rupert Giles type grimoire, you can’t go wrong with this book. It’s a great text if you’re new to working with various entities and especially useful if you’re more interested in ‘angelic ones’. This book does come with the seals and sigils as well, more on what they are later!
Personally, we’re not that into all the Christian language this book contains, it’s a lot. Even for a book of it’s time….so it’s not a book we’ve used but for anyone who is interested to see the evolution of magick, as we are, this is great research material.
The Sepher Ha-Razim
Imagine the scene if you will….it’s 1963, and you’re in some dank cellar pouring over dusty old manuscripts for your thesis. Then suddenly you spot a fragment of a magick spell….you gasp. It can’t be, can it? You scrabble in the dim light (oh yeah, this dank cellar is candle lit now) to find your notes…you knock over your chair as you stand in excitement…IT IS!
This is exactly what happened to Mordecai Margalioth, a student of Kabbalistic texts, at Oxford. Well, mostly. We’re pretty sure the dank cellar was a library. Properly lit with electricity and with a librarian pushing a cart full of books ready to “sshhhh” any squeals of joy, but you get the point. This really real event led Margalioth down a rabbit hole to get all the other fragments together that he remembered seeing, which then became the Sepher Ha-Razim. Our version of his completed text was published in 1983 by the Society of Biblical Literature.
What’s it about?
This is seven books in one. The first six books correspond to one part of heaven and include all the names of the angels that work there. Book seven talks about the ‘seventh’ heaven which, being the best one, is where God works. It’s got various rituals in it and the best times of day to call the angels when they’re at work. Given it’s all about angels, Sam and Dean Winchester could easily have flicked through this themselves a few times. Sadly it doesn’t have a ritual for calling God directly.
Fakelore? Or Real?
The preface, like most of our grimoires, has a bunch of fakelore. Apparently angel Raziel gave this book to Noah while he was building that ark. It is implied that Noah used the Sepher Ha-Razim to understand how to build his ark, how to get the animals on the ark and what food to bring with him. Then when the flood was over Noah passed the book down through his descendants and others until Solomon got hold of it. To be clear, this is isn’t fakelore that Margolioth made up, it was stuff he found on the manuscripts he was researching.
The real story is pretty amazing though (aside from our embellishments…). When Margolioth found that first fragment, he was looking at something that dated back to the early 4th century, which was describing magick that was even older still. Pretty impressively old.
What do we think of it?
It’s not a book we use if we’re being perfectly honest. We don’t practise angel magick and we’re not Jewish, so for us we feel we need to respectfully leave it. But as a study into really old magick, this is amazing.
The Lesser Key of Solomon
This is a different book to the Key of Solomon The King, we talked about in Part 1. Though, like that book, this one was also compiled in the mid 1800s. The Lesser Key reproduces (steals?) material that is a couple of centuries older, and found in other grimoires. Our version of The Lesser Key was published in 2001 by Weiser Books.
What’s it about?
It’s five completely different books in one. The first book is called Ars Goetia, and reuses the Who’s Who of demons from The False Monarchy of Demons, but this time the demons have a bunch of seals and sigils, so exactly the sort of thing the Winchesters would have painted on the floor to trap demons in. These seals and sigils kinda act like the @ of its day, meaning no demon could resist when the sigil is used.
Book two is the Ars Theurgia Goetia. This one has more sigils, more demon summoning, and seems to reuse material from another magickal text called Steganographia rather than come up with anything new.
Book three is the Ars Paulina, which is more stuff borrowed (nicked?) from Steganographia but this time it’s is about contacting angels, and the best time to do that…so a little bit like the Sepher Ha-Razim (but in the 1800s the Sepher Ha-Razim was still in bits and pieces waiting to be discovered, so we know it isn’t nicked from that directly).
Book four, Ars Almadel, contains one long spell for building a wax tablet and using it to contact angels.
Finally, book five is theArs Notoria, which is a series of incantations or prayers designed to curry favour with God.
Fakelore? Or Real?
In and of itself, it’s sort of real. Well, in the sense that it’s a collection of other books. The material in the five original books date from about the 1500s, maybe a little earlier in the case of the Ars Notoria, so if we’re ok with the fact the five books probably come with their own fakelore about which angels did or didn’t write them with some guy from mediaeval times, then it’s real and using material that really is kinda old.
But, the Lesser Key never really credits the original material, so the Lesser Key itself is a bit fake-ish, because it was written, or rather, created in the mid 1800s. So it’s not as old as it likes to suggest it is, and it isn’t saying anything new about the magick. Aside from attributing sigils, which The Key of Solomon TheKing does as well….so…nothing new. Even the name isn’t new.
What do we think of it?
It’s fine, as a one stop shop to access some real mediaeval magick. We’ve not used the magick of the older texts it cribs from very much, and so we don’t have copies of the source material. If you’re into seal or sigil magick you’re probably better off searching for copies of the actual source material rather than hoping the author of the Lesser Key didn’t edit out some crucial bit of the sigil. Nobody wants to accidentally @ some total bore of a demon instead of the cool ones.
The Picatrix
The Picatrix was possibly written in the ninth century by an unknown Arabic practitioner. The book was translated into Spanish and Latin on the orders of King Alfonso of Castille in 1256 and it is one of the oldest surviving books on astral magick. A very real grimoire. Our version was published in 2011 by Renaissance Astrology Press, and we’re gonna fan-favourite all over this one.
What’s it about?
This is four books in one and is one of the more detailed discussions on magickal philosophy. So it’s more like Agrippa’s Three Books and less like a book of spells or lists of angels. Picatrix describes the most opportune times to practise certain kinds of magick spells, and how to use the energy of the various planets in magick, collecting herbs or when making talismans. But it does also have a few spells to practise what is being taught along the way. It’s right in the sweet spot between astrology and magick. Right where we are.
Fakelore? Or Real?
There isn’t a whole bunch of fakelore that goes along with this book. The prologue to the book does talk about the translation by the Spanish, and attributes the book to some dude called Picatrix. Though nobody really knows who that is. So it seems that the prologue was added through that translation process. It could be that that any fakelore was just lost in translation, but we like to think the author just didn’t need all that guff to appeal. The author does make a big deal about only proper clever people will understand this book, but that’s about it.
All that aside, it really is a very old magickal text and was considered important enough to be translated from Arabic for the King at some point in the 13th Century. After that, it weirdly disappeared in its own right and sort of becomes a source of inspiration for other magickal texts. These other books then became more popular. As far as old magickal books go, this is one of the oldest. What impresses us more is even though it’s damn old, it talks about other even older ideas. So Picatrix pulls on even older source material.
What do we think of it?
Well, it’s one of our favourite magickal texts and this is what our magick is based on. We use this book and draw on its knowledge heavily, so of course we think it’s one of the best magickal texts there is. The philosophy, the practice, it’s all aligned with our belief system. We haven’t practised any of the spells in this book, as they’re very ‘of its time’. When seemingly, back in the day, nobody minded the consumption of poisonous plants, and no magick was complete without something’s blood in it. Those bits aren’t up our street. But the rest of it is amazing.
The Voynich Manuscript
The Voynich Manuscript is a mysterious text dated to the early 1400s, written by an unknown author in some kind of weird code, that nobody can seem to crack. It’s named after the last person to have it in their possession, a chap called Wilfrid Voynich, who had it at some point in the early 20th century. Our version was published in 2016 by Yale University Press.
What’s it about?
Literally nobody knows. But it looks to be divided into six books, or six sections. Each section details a different aspect of magickal lore, herbs, star signs and all that good stuff. So it’s a Book of Shadows. Complete with beautiful pictures in it, just like the Charmed Sisters had. Or at least to us, that’s what it looks like. There’s a couple of sections on plants or what look to us like potions or tinctures, another on astrology and the Zodiac, a section on what looks to be female empowerment or sisterhood, a section with circular drawings which could be some kind village plan or Virgil’s personal map of Hell (equally it could just be a dream diary). Then finally there’s a section with what look like spells, each marked with a star next to it.
Fakelore? Or Real?
Considering nobody knows what this book is, what it says or what it was for, this one has been through the ringer for lore, fakelore, back to lore and more fakelore. Even the book’s ownership is not really known for sure. The book has been carbon dated to the early 1400s, but the first documented owner was some antique dealer guy from the 1600s. Who knows where it was for 200 years before he had it. It’s now in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, where some White Coats can look at it and wonder.
What do we think of it?
We’d love to know what it says! We love the mystery of it. We love to make up our own lore as well. After all, it might not be someone’s Book of Shadows, but we think it is. Possibly the first Book of Shadows, which would be like the Dead Sea scrolls for Wiccans. How amazing would it be to crack the code and find out what it says? C’mon Science, you don’t look busy. Hop to it.
So that wraps up our exploration of magickal texts….What we found striking about a lot of the magickal texts we have, is the need by the author to add ‘authenticity’ to the contents by adding in prologues and prefaces filled with fakelore. To be clear, this is not the modern day publishers or editors doing this. These folks have worked tirelessly to reproduce these texts as they were, even the fakelore that came with it.
No, it seems to us that the orginal authors from eons ago needed an influencer to promote their work. To give their ideas credibility, they used kind of a celebrity endorsement via an angel or some Old Testament guy. Of course, old ideas do seem more attractive somehow. More mysterious perhaps. Even back then. Now that centuries have passed since these books were first written, they do now carry their own credibility.
If you’re interested in the source material for your magickal practice chances are it’s been written down in one or more of these magick books. So you see, grimoires are real. See if you can get hold of a copy and have a look at where your magick comes from.
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Everyone has access to their own inner wisdom, but sometimes we get stuck in our own heads or we get stuck in logic thinking patterns which means our intuition can’t get a word in.
If we can learn to quiet the chatter brain when we ask the difficult questions, there’s every chance the answer will come. Your inner wisdom is all right there waiting for you to access it.
This video will guide you through a meditation practice for you to practice every day, so that you can access your inner wisdom whenever you want!
Meditation practice can produce unwanted effects in people who might be more sensitive. We encourage anyone who is unsure about practising meditative techniques to seek appropriate professional support before experimenting with meditation.
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At Magenta, we are all about magick being used for personal development, and we want to give you guys personal power so you can make change happen for yourselves. Whatever that change may be. Perhaps it’s overcoming hardship or an emotional block. Perhaps this is understanding the material world and making changes to the physical environment. The most difficult bit of making change happen is not how to cast a spell or what planets are in alignment and when. It’s knowing what change to make.
Being in alignment with who you are is one of the most aspirational human goals possible. It’s often at the root of all the other changes we want to make. Ask yourself, do you feel excited by the day you have ahead of you? If any one aspect of your day does not excite you chances are it’s out of alignment with who you really are in some way.
Some people use the phrase “not being in flow”. This means all the parts of your day – your life – that leave you disengaged, bored, distracted by something else, these are the things that are out of alignment. It’s possible that these are the things that you could change. This could just be a little tweak, like setting some goals to bring a little bit of direction in that area to make it more exciting. Or it could be a big tweak like trying out something new. It’s a place to start to bring some positive change and a place to focus your magick.
Step 1 – What are your strengths?
One first step to finding your sense of alignment, your flow, could be figuring out what your key strengths are and whether you’re using them or not. Maybe you’ve got a good idea already what your strengths are. But, if not this is a great question to ask the tarot. Pull a few tarot cards (one card for one strength) and see what the cards reveal for you. Try to interpret the meaning of the card to match your question “What are my strengths?”. Try not to get in your own head about ‘bad’ cards! If you get a suit card, maybe your strengths are aligned with the energy of that suit. If you pull a major arcana card, what is the meaning of the card when thought of as strength? Nobody needs to worry about pulling the Tower and their key strength being The Destroyer of Worlds or whatever.
Easy. So now you know what your strengths are. Now what?
Step 2– Spot the Difference
The second step here is just to notice whether there were any surprises. Do you recognise yourself in the cards? Can you spot any strengths the cards suggested that you didn’t realise you had? After all, it’s entirely possible you are not using your key strengths. Which makes perfect sense if you don’t feel aligned!
Step 3 – What do you value?
The third step to being in alignment is working out what you value versus what you are valued for. You may already know what you value, for example you may value family or helping others, but the cards stand ready to help you with what you value if you don’t already know. Once you know what you value, ask the tarot cards “what is it that people turn to you for?” Now ask yourself again, what do you value? Be honest! Is what you value family and helping others, or is that what you are valued for? It’s ok, we won’t tell anyone if what you value and what you are valued for are the exact opposite. It makes perfect sense and may account for some of those feelings of being out of alignment.
Step 4 – Find those opportunities to shine
So now you have your strengths and what it is you value. You also have some clues about what it is other people value you for. This is where you can play detective. There will likely be some conflict between the cards at this point. For example, it’s possible that your true strengths aren’t being used to help you take action in the areas you truly value. It’s possible you’re giving more of your strengths to things other people want from you. Ask yourself, is there a conflict here?
You can pull some final tarot cards to help guide you towards alignment. Ask the cards “what am I not seeing about how I can use my strengths?” or “where should I be using my strengths more?” or even “What do I need to do less of in order to let my strengths shine?”.
Finding Flow
The tarot might reveal some answers you hadn’t expected, and now you know some of the areas you might wish to focus on in order to bring yourself closer to a sense of flow, closer to being in alignment with who you really are. Start by creating some opportunities to put your strengths into action in the real world through the things you value. This will bring you back into alignment with your purpose and help you find your flow. Whether this starts with a spell, with a meditation, with some positive affirmations or even just a promise to yourself to be open to opportunities. The tarot has given the gift of insight, now the next bit is up to you!
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Have you ever wondered if grimoires are real? If any of the ancient magickal texts people like Rupert Giles or Sam and Dean Winchester had were real? (Ok, not Dean. I mean did he read? Like, ever?) What about the really old magick books Dark Willow assimilated or a real Book of Shadows like the one the Halliwells have? If grimoires are real….can they still be used today?
Well, certainly real gimoires and other magickal texts have been in circulation for centuries. Some are older or more authentic than others. So as ever, beware of a bunch of fakelore that goes along with any ‘ancient’ magickal texts. So you’ll be relieved to know that we’ve read a fair few of these ‘Ye Olde Bookes’ and we’ve done our research, so to make life easy for you we’ve got a little ready-reckoner for these books right here.
We’ll break it down into two parts, cause otherwise we’ll be here all day. Part one now, and Part two next week.
Part one features these real grimoires
The False Monarchy of Demons
Three Books of Occult Philosophy
The Grand Grimoire/ The Red Dragon
The Key of Solomon The King
Arbatel
And in Part two we’ll talk about
The Sworn Book of Honorius
The Sepher Ha-Razim
The Lesser Key of Solomon
The Picatrix
The Voynich Manuscript
But before we start, just a word from our sponsor. History. Now, a lot of the books we’ll look at do go on about traditional mono-deity type religion. Whether it is Judaism or Christianity. It’s just what they do. So they use words like angel, God, demon, heaven, prayers etc etc….this was against a backdrop of societal change and persecution. The author isn’t trying to convert people away from magick, and neither are we. So let’s look at the books with that in mind and just go with it, alright? Cool.
The False Monarchy of Demons (aka Pseudomonarchia Daemonum)
This was first published as an Appendix to another real grimoire, On the Tricks of Demons(aka De Praestigiis Daemonum) way back in 1577. This particular grimoire was written by a fella called Johann Weyer. Then some guy called Reginald Scot, back in 1587, nicked this Appendix and created The False Monarchy of Demons. Our version was published by Strigoi Publishing in 2017.
What’s it about?
It’s basically the 1500s version of Facebook for demons. So, kinda like the Halliwells’ Book of Shadows. This book has about 70 demons in it, and it describes their various attributes, what powers they can bestow on us mere humans and how many ‘minions’ they all have. But it certainly doesn’t talk about how evil they are. In fact according to this book some of these demons can give us a bunch of pretty cool powers, if we ask nicely.
Fakelore? Or Real?
Well, thepurpose of both Weyer’s original book and then Scot’s plagiarism of it, was to try and argue that witchcraft wasn’t real and that Europe probably ought to stop killing ‘witches’. So real or fake I guess depends on your perspective. For the purposes of this article, we’re not going to debate the existence of magick, demons, angels or any of that stuff…so instead let’s go with the authorship and publication story, and leave the contents of each book on one side. Everyone ok with that? Good. It’s definitely a real book, it really was published in 1587 so its age and oldness is genuine.
What do we think of it?
It’s a pretty interesting Who’s Who of the Underworld. It’s a tiny little book though, and doesn’t really explain how you get in touch with these demons (No, that gets covered later by a whole bunch of other books we look at in Part 2!).
It doesn’t really align with our magick, and as there’s no instructions or spells there’s not much to use this book for. However, for anyone who is interested in working with spirits this might be a good book to look at first, to familiarise yourself with demons and their powers.
Three Books of Occult Philosophy
Now, this is a proper grimoire. Very real. It’s a Book of Shadows, a Book of Mirrors and it’s almost like a magickal Haynes Manual from Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa. It’s got absolutely everything about magick in it, including its relationship with religion. The first three volumes were published in full in 1533. Our version is an English version edited by Donald Tyson and published by Llewellyn in 1993.
What’s it about?
Absolutely everything. This is exactly the sort of thing Dark Willow would crave. The Three Books deal with things like folk, astral and ceremonial magick. So it goes into a lot of detail about the elements, about astrology, the Kabbalah, sigils, seals, magick squares, numerology, angels, God, divination. You name it, if it’s even remotely used in magick, it’s found in this book.
Fakelore? Or Real?
There’s no fakelore with this one.By this we mean, yes this was really written by Agrippa in the 1500s and it’s written from a perspective that magick could be useful in resolving problems, and that magick could work in harmony with faith and religion. Agrippa wasn’t creating the magick, but he was describing much older texts and established practices. So he was summarising or representing magickal practice in a new way. Don’t forget this was a terrible time in history to be even remotely magickal! But whenever the religious types started getting twitchy, Agrippa would bark back.
What do we think of it?
These are three massive books on their own, and our copy has teeny tiny text, written in columns to get the words to fit inside this one massive book. So it’s a lot to read! But because it’s got everything in it, nobody can say it isn’t detailed.
We use it as reference material because it aligns with our magick, given we’re a hodge podge of elemental, folk and astral magick. It also aligns with our philosophy that magick can be used for change in the world.
The Grand Grimoire/ The Red Dragon
This real grimoire claims to be super old. So let’s just talk about that for a second. There’s a whole collection of magickal books supposedly written by a bunch of Bible guys, like Adam, Noah and King Solomon. But they weren’t, of course. A lot of the books were written during the Renaissance and ‘borrowed’ (stole?) from a lot of Jewish and Arabic texts, and from each other. This particular grimoire was apparently written slightly later, in 1750 and our version of The Grand Grimoire aka The Red Dragon is an English version edited and published by Tarl Warwick in 2015.
What’s it about?
This is really three books in one. The first book is one long spell for summoning a demon and explains the magickal tools required to force this demon to do whatever you want. The second book is sort of in two parts. The first half of book two is another long spell for making a pact with a demon. However, in this spell no tools are required to control the demon apparently. So maybe we’re all supposed to be ok with that. The second half of Book Two contains some simpler spells and rituals. Mostly about controlling women, of course. Eye roll.
Fakelore? Or Real?
It’s a fun history, it claims to have been written by King Solomon but as it wasn’t it’s pretty obvious the book’s history is fake. We’re not even convinced it was written in 1750 either for that matter.
What do we think of it?
Well, it’s a bit dumb. There’s an awful lot of animal sacrifice required for this magick as well, so it doesn’t exactly align with our practice and we haven’t used it. But it’s ok as a bit of silly grimoire if you accept the fakelore and just take it for what it is. Although it’s three books in one, it’s only about 60 pages long. And it has pictures.
The Key of Solomon The King
This is another one of those magickal books supposedly written by King Solomon. There are a few books that like to say they were written by Solomon or, confusingly, are called Key of Solomon. This version is an English version edited and published by Golden Dawn founder Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers in 1888.
What’s it about?
It’s in two parts, or its two books in one. Book One contains spells and incantations for summoning various entities or demons, and how to find stolen property, how to become invisible, how to obtain love etc. It also has pictures of talismans (eg pentacles) that can be used. Book Two is a bit more like a manual, or Book of Shadows if you like. It describes the various rituals that the practitioner (termed “exorcist”. Nice.) should go through, like casting a circle, and how they should be dressed and what magickal tools they should have etc.
Fakelore? Or Real?
A bit more creative thought went into the fakelore for this one. Apparently Solomon wrote this book for his son and Solomon told him that when he (Solomon) died, his son had to hide the book in his tomb. So of course his son did this, and the book was not discovered until a group of philosophers repaired Solomon’s tomb. Cause apparently that’s what they do. They think about the big questions and they also have emergency grave repair call-outs to attend to. Obviously nobody could read the book until they asked a passing angel to have a word with God and see if God would help. They all pinky promised that they wouldn’t tell anyone about this book if God let them read it. To double down on this promise, they put a spell on the book keeping the contents a secret from the unworthy, the unwise or those who did not fear God.
The real history is that the book possibly dates to the middle ages, but there are a few copies of the manuscripts kicking about in different languages. The version we’ve got was probably copied and edited from the British Library manuscripts by Mathers, dating it to somewhere around the 17th Century.
What do we think of it?
Although it’s two books within one, it’s not a huge book. It aligns with our magick a fair bit. For example the ingredients in the spells must be made of the appropriate correspondances, collected and the spells cast at the appropriate astrological time using the right kind of planetary energy. There are some useful pentacles if you’re into seal or sigil magick, so if you can live with the fact that it is built on fakelore, it’s fine. But if you’re after something authentic or really old, this possibly ain’t it.
Arbatel
This is a bit of an outlier, as it’s a lovely grimoire that doesn’t invite you to consort with demons and such. It was possibly first written in the mid to later 1500s, our version published in 2009 by Ibis Press has a date of 1575 included on the title page, with the editor (Joseph Peterson) suggesting this is probably true.
What’s it about?
It’s a book with nine volumes in it, but it’s not a huge book by any stretch. Arbatel mainly focuses on the relationship between humanity, celestial beings, and the positive relationship between the two. So it uses a lot of angelic magick, good spirits, various magickal creatures and some spirits called Olympians. It talks about how these good spirits can be contacted to help you be a better person.
Fakelore? Or Real?
There is no fakelore with this one. Even though there’s no clear idea of who even wrote it in the first place, nobody since has tried to attribute it to any one from the Bible. So it looks to be genuinely from the later part of the middle ages.
What do we think of it?
It’s pretty safe as far as these real grimoires go. So if you’re new to working with various entities and you’re still unsure about whether you want to confront that word ‘demon’, this is a safer journey than the False Monarchy of Demons. It aligns with our magick a fair bit as it teaches that magick can be used positively and to invite the practitioner to be mindful and practice gratitude. So we’ve used it a couple of times to communicate with entities. It teaches that magick can be used positively and to invite the practitioner to be mindful and practice gratitude. Plus, there’s no requirement to kill animals or spells for controlling women in this book. So hashtag for the win.
So that wraps up Part One of our exploration of real life grimoires and magickal texts….next Monday we’ll conclude our romp through our library so don’t forget to subscribe to us, then you’ll have something more interesting to read while you’re at work! Hey, here to help folks.
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Wanna learn simple spell casting? Here’s a spell to bind someone’s power. Use this spell in accordance with your own values and ethics, as we do, but some people just want to watch the world burn and that ain’t cool, people. Not. Cool. At. All.
All our correspondences, the days of the week that work best for certain kinds of magick and how we use the moon and planets are all included on our Casting Spells page.
This one uses fire so obviously when setting fire stuff, please don’t wander off….and also have a think about whether the fire alarm system might be triggered or whether its best to burn stuff outside.
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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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