A practical path
One of the things I love about practicing Witchcraft is its pragmatic approach to dealing with life.
No matter what The Fates throw at us, chances are high there’s a meditation, visualization, ritual, or spell that addresses our particular need or desire.
Suffering from an overly busy mind? Why not sit down and practice the four-fold breath to slow down those racing thoughts.
Feel like you’re struggling to make new friends? Consider designing a spell to attract fulfilling connections as a supplement to attending new activities and putting yourself out there.
There are countless other examples of how to apply Witchcraft to our lives, but today, I want to focus on witchy “first aid” – that is, the basic practices we can turn to at challenging times to bring immediate comfort and relief.
Taking up the wand
Witchcraft, at its core, is a path of empowerment — a practice which seeks to restore our sense of agency.
For those of us who have been in situations where we were made to feel powerless, this emphasis on personal empowerment can be immensely healing, but it does certainly take time.
Breaking the habit of freezing or running away when confronted with a problem usually doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time to rewire the brain and learn a new behavior — in this case, standing our ground and taking action.
With awareness, patience, gentleness, and consistent practice, using the tools of Witchcraft when you’re dealing with life’s difficulties will become like second nature.
With that said, let’s look at some of these practices and how and when to use them.
1. Grounding
The absolute first exercise I would teach anyone who wants to learn Witchcraft is grounding. In addition to being the first step in any kind of ritual or magickal work, grounding also helps us reduce overwhelm, become more present, and cultivate calm.
The grounding exercise I use most often is a variation on Starhawk’s “Tree of Life” meditation, which you can find in The Spiral Dance.
Start by putting your feet flat on the ground, and straightening your spine. Take several deep breaths, and feel the surface beneath your feet — whatever that happens to be.
Now, visualize roots growing from the bottom of your feet and pushing down through whatever is between you and the earth. See your roots stretching down through the soil, and all of the earth’s layers until they reach the inner core.
Take a moment to see and feel the orange-red energy of the earth’s molten iron core — that part of our planet that is still hot from the moment of creation.
From there, draw the orange-red energy back up through your roots, through all of the earth’s layers and into your feet. See and feel the energy spread through your body until it flows out of the crown of your head, like a fountain, and back down to the earth.
You can end the grounding here, if you like, or continue by sending branches from the crown of your head up into the heavens to connect with and drawn down the sun, moon, or starlight.
If you choose to continue in this way, let the light flow down from the heavens through your branches and into your crown, and then down through your body, until it flows out of your feet and into the earth.
Take a moment to feel yourself between these two currents of energy, cleansing you, grounding you, and bringing you peace.
2. Soul Alignment
One of the things I love about the Feri Tradition of Witchcraft is its teachings on spiritual anatomy.
By spiritual anatomy, I mean the soul, and our spiritual body — the part that’s not usually visible to the naked eye.
In Feri, we’re taught that each of us possesses three souls, and one of our fundamental tasks is keeping them in a state of alignment. Most Feri witches align their souls on a daily basis, or at the very least, before undertaking any ritual or magickal work.
The names for the three souls change from lineage to lineage in Feri, but their overall descriptions are the same. In BlueRose Feri, the lineage I study in, we call the three souls Talker, Fetch, and Holy Daemon.
While the topic of the three souls and how to align them warrants an article of its own, what’s important here is the integration of different, at times conflicting, aspects of ourselves and the cultivation of balance.
Talker, our thinking soul, needs to be balanced by Fetch, our gut intelligence, and both of these souls need the guidance of Holy Daemon, our personal God-self and guardian angel, in order to make good decisions and take action on behalf of the whole.
There are as many ways to align your souls as there are Feri practitioners, but for the purpose of this post, I will walk you through a simple soul alignment.
Start by using the grounding meditation given above, and then state your intention to align your souls out loud.
Next, close your eyes, and visualize each of your three souls.
Your Talker appears as a golden-yellow sun, which radiates in the middle of your head head. Your Fetch takes the form of blood-red full moon, slightly below and behind your navel. Your Holy Daemon manifests as brilliant blue star hovering several inches above your head.
We will now gather life force to align your souls by taking four deep breaths — one for your physical body, one for Talker, one for Fetch, and one for your Holy Daemon.
With each breath, breathe in life force, and feel it filling you and charging you. On the fourth breath, carefully tilt your head backwards, exhale, and send the power you’ve raised to your Holy Daemon (it’s traditional to exclaim “HA!” when you send the power up).
See your Holy Daemon glowing with power, and watch as it sends down a blue light which flows through your crown and into your entire body.
When you are glowing with this energy, see each of your three souls move into your heart center, forming a beautiful, black eclipse. I sometimes use my hands to move them physically, and strengthen the visualization.
To complete the alignment, affirm that all three of your souls are now aligned as one.
3. Waters of Purity
The Waters of Purity is one of the core practices of the Feri Tradition of Witchcraft. Traditionally, it is called the Kala Rite, and has its origins in the practice of Huna.
In its most basic form, the Waters of Purity involves charging a glass of water with life-force energy, and then drinking the charged liquid.
Upon drinking the liquid, the witch visualizes the charged water flowing through their body and bringing healing on all levels.
In its more complex forms, the Kala rite involves summoning up something that is binding you, holding you back, or weighing you down, willing it into the water, and then transforming it.
To transform the block, you will gather life-force energy in the same way as you would for a soul alignment. In Feri, we often visualize this life-force energy as electric blue fire.
After you’ve raised sufficient energy, direct it into the glass of water, and watch it transform whatever is bothering you.
Once the transformation is complete, drink the water, and reclaim your personal power.
4. Spirit Allies
One of a witch’s life-long tasks is building and maintaining alliances with a wide range of spirits.
In this sense, our spiritual practice mirrors our daily lives – connections, whether on the physical or the astral, are key to our well-being.
A witch’s personal power, in fact, is directly related to the strength of their spiritual relationships. Strong allies empower us and protect us by association with them, and provide us with a way to influence things that would normally be out of our control.
Imagine, for example, you need to travel at night, and want to ensure you have a safe journey. If you have a working relationship with the goddess Hekate (who rules over the night, amongst other things), you might ask her to grant you safe travel.
There are many beings a witch will want to be on good terms with – the spirits of the land they live on, for example, and the spirits of their home – but some of the first spirits I would recommend building a relationship with are your personal ancestors.
As spirits that are believed to reside in our actual physical forms, our ancestors are some of the closest spirits to us. They’re among the easiest spirits to connect to, and the ones that are most willing to help us.
Our ancestors include a number of spirits – perhaps most obviously the people that are related to us by blood, but also those spirits we choose to connect with, and those we share things in common with.
Turning to our ancestors for help is always a good idea, as they are generally more knowledgeable than we are, and can often influence situations in ways we’re not able to comprehend.
In my personal practice, I’ve asked my ancestors for help with everything from finding an apartment and deciding on a course of study to navigating romantic relationships and resolving immigration issues.
I have often been surprised by my ancestors’ responses to my petitions – both by the wisdom they share with me, as well as their mysterious ability to resolve problems.
Like the stage crew behind the scenes of my life, they help me in numerous ways, pulling on unseen strings, and ironing things out.
5. Divination
As I mentioned in my post on The Faeries’ Oracle, divination is an excellent way to gain clarity and perspective at times of overwhelm and confusion.
My go-to method of divination is the Tarot, but there are many divination systems in use today. Honestly, almost anything can be used as a divinatory tool — what’s most important is your intention.
It’s usually helpful to have a clear question in mind before consulting an oracle, but you can certainly do what I call a “bird’s eye” reading, to get a general overview of your current situation and orient yourself. Whatever you decide, be clear about it, otherwise, you’ll probably get unclear results!
Before using an oracle, I always ground and align my souls, and I recommend my students do the same. I will then often say a number of prayers — to my Holy Daemon, to the spirit of the oracle, and sometimes to my ancestors or deities that I honor. If I’m working with another person, I may direct a prayer to their Holy Daemon as well, and invite it to communicate through the oracle.
When doing the actual reading, it’s helpful to remain grounded and calm. Notice your reaction to the results — whether you’re using cards, runes, yes and no stones, or even a coin.
If you’re using cards, or some form of divination that incorporates art, contemplate the images you’re seeing, and try to feel what they’re telling you (sometimes, this is different from the traditional meaning of a card).
I personally recommend you write down your impressions, and plan to revisit them in about six months to reflect on how things turned out. In addition to strengthening your self-awareness, this will help your divinatory muscles get stronger.
Lastly, before I finish a reading, I always give thanks to the spirit of the oracle, as well as my Holy Daemon, and any other beings I may have asked for assistance from.
If the result of a reading was not positive, I may also take steps to deal with that — whether it’s doing a cleansing, or writing and performing a ritual to achieve a specific goal.
Go do!
Now that your witchy first-aid kit has some new additions, I would encourage you to try them out.
Witchcraft, after all, is a practice, which requires us to take action, experiment, and draw our own conclusions about what works best for us.
If you’d like help working through any of the exercises in this article, please consider booking a spiritual mentoring session with me, and we can work through them step-by-step.
Thank you for reading, and please feel free to let me know what exercises you would add to this list!