Safety First!

Witches will often tell you how dangerous magick can be, but they always seem to fail to give you any sort of guidance on how to practice it safely. Luckily, we’re here to save the day!

Dangers of Witchcraft, Generally

Backfiring

So, we’ve all heard of “backfiring” but we may be a little lost as to exactly what that entails. Typically, a spell will backfire if your intention is mucked up. This can happen, because you’re doing a spell for one thing, but either want something else or do not truly believe you are deserving of it. For example, we see this all the time with new witches trying their hand at self-love spells. Hell, it happened to us when we did our first spell! What happens here is we want so desperately to be loved, but we believe in our heart of hearts that we aren’t worth loving. Therefore, how will a self-love spell manifest with a conflicting intention running around? It won’t. It could just blow up in your face.

In our experience, we became overzealously confident in our abilities and became manic. We weren’t able to think things through and got into some really nasty situations. Once we reversed the self-love spell, everything went back to normal. The point being here, is that if you don’t believe you actually deserve something or can manifest it, your spell will most definitely lead to some sort of backfire whether it be insane or miniscule. This is why in our class, we recommend learning the basics and completing the course before trying any sort of spellwork.

Unintended Results

Sometimes our spells will work! (yay!) However, we may run into the pretty common issue of unintended consequences. It doesn’t mean you did the spell wrong per say, but it does mean that perhaps it wasn’t the right time or situation to cast that particular spell. Sometimes it will clash with your energy or those around you. For example, if we were to do a spell for more productivity, we may find ourselves writing for our blog and classes for HOURS, but completely neglect our actual law school responsibilities. Thus it is important to be super careful about specifying how you want something to manifest. However, sometimes the universe will have other plans, so it is important not to be too specific.

Taking Something From Someone Else

We’ve all heard of black/dark/baneful magick. Many old and new witches don’t understand that there is no such thing as bad energy. Energy is energy. It is the way in which you use it and transform it that creates a bad or good situation. In baneful magick, you’re typically using it for personal gain. Whether you are wanting a promotion, a raise, a lover, luck, or anything else, you are ultimately setting the stage for your success even if another person is more qualified for whatever it is you are trying to manifest.

Yeah, it’s pretty sweet you got that promotion. Your spell worked perfectly! Congrats! On the other hand, someone who may have gotten the promotion over you was left in the dust because of the influence of your spell on the hiring managers. You didn’t make the decision for them, but you gently tapped them on the shoulder and reminded them how great you are. Thus, spells for personal gain outside of things you can do for yourself, are baneful magick. You’ve probably engaged it unknowingly because you didn’t per say use negative energy. Regardless, someone else got hurt. If that’s something you’re okay with, great! If not, you may want to reevaluate your witch’s code.

Ways to Practice Safely

Find a Mentor

We swear the best thing you can do for yourself if find a mentor if you are just starting out! Find a witch you admire or a program, like ours, with mentors that can guide you down a neutral path till you know enough to choose a path on your own. Be careful of potential gatekeepers. We never had a mentor, but all of our students said it made a world of difference for them, and have confessed that they may have gotten too overwhelmed on their own (after all witchcraft is pretty intense) had they not had us there to guide them.

Mundane Safety Tips

Burning Things

DO NOT LEAVE ANYTHING ON FIRE UNATTENDED, unless you actually want to burn down your house because you saw the mother of all spiders, in which case, skip to the flamethrower.

Cooking

Kind of the same concept as above, but if you’re using an oven or a stove for some magick, set a god damn timer if you have to step away.

Smoke Cleansing

Did you actually cleanse your house if your smoke alarm didn’t go off? Do NOT unplug your smoke alarms. Not only is this illegal in almost all states and european countries, it also would really suck if you didn’t listen to us and left a candle unattended and your house caught on fire while you were sleeping and you burned alive. That would really suck.

If you are THAT annoyed with your smoke alarm going off, just open the windows.

Pets

We absolutely adore our fur babies, but a lot of things we use in our practice are toxic to the poor dears. Before doing anything either make sure your pets cannot get to it or research the toxicity of the herbs and oils you may be using. Also, don’t be like us and leave candle wax in a box on the bottom of your book shelf or your puppy may distribute it across the house because he’s an interior decorator.

Specificity

If you haven’t figured it out by now, we are going to lay it plain and clear. When casting you need to be specific, but not too specific. For example, you may need $500 for a vet bill because you didn’t listen to us and your cat ate your aloe and got a tummy ache. When doing your spell, as you are transforming the energy, you need to specify to the universe with your very specific intention that you need a way to pay for your cat’s medical bills.

Something very similar happened to our cat and we were just $100 short of affording his emergency bills. So, we did a spell to attract the money we needed. Instead of saying “I need $100 by 5pm on Tuesday” (too specific and likely won’t manifest, but you’re welcome to try it) we said “our cat is sick and we need to attract funds to help him.” So, after our spell, we are sitting in the parking lot of the emergency vet, talking to our mom about how we are $100 short of the bill. As she is explaining, that she doesn’t have the money, a stranger taps on our window. We crack the window, and politely ask how we can help. She said, “I noticed you’ve been in the parking lot for quite a bit. I work at the bank next door. I might not be able to heal your kitty, but hopefully this $100 will ease your burden.” And that’s how magick works. It comes about in ways you don’t expect, but as long as your energy is receptive to the energy of the money you are looking for, it will likely manifest.

Entities

Angels

Always a safe bet. When in doubt, go the angel route. If angels can’t help you, you can explore some of the below options.

Demons

See our post on demons. Demons cannot move objects, so before you start calling your local exorcist, you’ve either got a poltergeist or a fae in your home and exorcism and cleansing will not work.

Spirits

Poltergeists

These guys are tough to get rid of because they are so attached to something on the terrestrial plane. Their spirit never quite left, so they are in this weird pseudo-limbo between the spirit realm and the terrestrial plane. Poltergeists CAN move physical objects, because they still have one foot in the terrestrial door. The best thing you can do for yourself is learn how to make a warded box and trap them inside and through it in the river or bury it far away from your home. Eventually, in the dirt or at the bottom of the river, the earth spirits will help it on its way. By putting wards on it, you are keeping it from opening preemptively. Some poltergeists are stronger than others, so it is important to know exactly what kind of poltergeist you are working with. As much as we hate scary movies, Insidious is surprisingly factually accurate in regard to poltergeists and demons.

Benevolent

On the brightside, benevolent spirits just need some help finding the right way. They cannot move objects unless it is to what they are attached. To help a benevolent spirit along, attempt to communicate with them and try to figure out what is holding them here. It is very Ghost Whisperer esq. Then you can try to help them move along.

Fae Folk

Sprites

These little guys LOVE shiny things. Missing your favorite ring? It is likely it made its way to a sprite’s nest. They are easy enough to get rid of if you don’t want them in your house, but the naturally give off protective energy so some people like to keep them around. To avoid the whole rings going missing situation, you can put a bowl of cheap shiny things out and the sprites will happily protect your home.

However, if you would like them to leave simply heat some milk and add honey. Allow it to cool. Put a drop or two on a plate outside your home and do this every day until the sprites have gone. Make sure to move the plate a little farther away each day.

Deities

See our post on deities!

Determine Your “Witch’s Code”

Every witch should start their practice by defining which lines they will not cross in spellwork. This is known as the “witch’s code.” Write a letter to yourself about magickal actions that are and are not acceptable. Define your boundaries.

Once you’ve written your witch’s code, stick to it! By defining your code, you are essentially setting your boundaries within the universe. When you exceed those boundaries, the universe has to balance that energy. This can result in any of the dangers listed above and can even hurt the people around you. Be clear with yourself and the universe on what moral ground you wish to stand.

There are several schools of thought when it comes to the universe’s balancing act of energies. Wicca popularized the “rule of three,” which essentially premises that when you do something bad (against your code; exceeding your boundaries you’ve set), that energy will return to you threefold. Then there is the law of karma, which describes the balancing the universe must do over time and space. Under the karma school of thought, the sum of a person’s morally good or bad actions will determine their future path and existence. This also includes past and future lives. Karma is a concept devoid of time and space.

The more modern take on these schools of thought is as we have outlined above. The universe will immediately seek to balance negative energy produced by producing additional negative energy (a negative plus a negative equals a positive) to reach its universal equilibrium in the present. In some instances depending on how much negative energy you’ve created by exceeding the boundaries of your code, the universe may come back threefold, it may come back once over, or it may not even come back to you and go to someone else. The universe is omnipresent and omnipotent, so it stands to reason that this individualized karmic law must extend across the universe and not just the lives of an individual soul. Thus, when one breaks their code, producing negative energy, the universe will immediately seek to correct that and bring the energy back to neutral. This can be accomplished in your life, a past life, a future life, or someone else’s multiple lives. It is entirely dependent on your karmic debt.

Cleansing and Grounding Always

You should always cleanse your space before you ground. If you don’t you’re pulling in energy you may not want to work with. We are not going to reinvent the wheel on this one so check out this article if you want to review some cleansing methods. Keep in mind sound does not cleanse, it simple puts vibrations into the universe to break up stagnant energy so it is easier to cleanse. Cleansing is the process of moving unwanted energy away from a space. You use tools to help you visualize and sense the energy in the area. For example, smoke doesn’t cleanse the space by itself, you cleanse the space by using the smoke to move the energy away. Depending on your spell you’ll want to decide what kind of energy you would like to exclude. In most positive spellwork, you will likely want to remove all the negative energy. However, in some cases, as in the case of baneful magick, you may want to remove the positive energy.

As for grounding, do what brings you peace and feel secure. This could be most popularly, sitting on the ground and drawing earth energy, or simply listening to a relaxing playlist of songs that bring you those feelings. It could be standing on your head for all we know. Do what works for you. The goal is to pull the energy of the space into your personal energy. However you decide to go about grounding is completely up to you so long as you are transforming the energy around you into personal energy.

Casting a Circle

Unless you are Wiccan, casting a circle every time you do a spell is not necessary. In Wicca, the ritual is a very important part of pre-spellwork, because Wiccans work with various entities. It is really only necessary to cast a circle when working with otherworldly entities, because they bring in different kinds of energy to a space. If you want that energy in your circle, you invite said entity into the circle. In secular witchcraft, it is really only necessary to cast a personal shield, which essentially acts as a moveable circle. The only downside to only casting a personal shield is that the personal shield is tied to your personal energy. A circle is basically a shield tethered to another energy source such as the elements or specific deities, angels, demons, etc.

Listen to Your GD Spirit Guides

We cannot stress this enough. We get busy and distracted and that is ok, but a witch should always make time to hear from her guides. We as witches can have multiple guides: familiars, angels, animal spirits, deities, etc. Each has a purpose in our magickal lives. Familiars, for example, come into our lives when we need them most, and once their work is done they go away. They are purely spiritual beings that take TEMPORARY form on the physical plain. The way they maintain their physical form is by tethering to our energy. In exchange, they lend their energy in spellwork and protect us from psychic magickal attacks. Angels can be a type of spirit guide, with the only catch being that they must be summoned to you. They can stay for as long as you want and are happy to offer their angelic traits to aid you not only magickally, but also in the mundane. Spirit animals are spirits that embody the positive and negative traits of their animal representations. They are not technically the soul of an animal, but another entity entirely. A spirit animal is assigned to you by the universe at some point in your life, not necessarily at birth. It guides you in specific areas of your lives. You can tune into this specific guide to gain its traits.

Spirit guides work in various different ways. Angels typically communicate through dreams and angel numbers. Spirit animals communicate in more mundane manners like sending your representations of themselves when it is time for you to utilize their lessons. Familiars appear during spellwork and you then have the option to accept their help and tether them to the physical realm. Knowing how your spirit guides get your attention is key to listening to them. For example, our spirit animal is a tiger, so when we start seeing tigers around we know that it is time to meditate with our spirit animal for whatever symbolism it represents. Note. You do not have to see a physical animal when a spirit animal reaches out to you. You can see them on the TV, hear them mentioned on a podcast, view them on a shirt, etc.

Be Careful

As we said in the beginning it is incredibly important to practice magickal safety and etiquette when doing any magickal work. As a witch you must also be aware how your energy can influence others’ energies or auras.

As always,

Love and Learning