Embarking on a Spiritual Journey

There’s an inexplicable connection you feel with nature; the wind seems to whisper secrets, and the voices of trees, streams, and meadows resonate within you. Your dreams are rich with symbolism and occasionally hint at future events. These experiences stir a desire within you to explore their depths.

You’re considering embracing the role of a modern, EuroPagan witch, seeking deeper insights into the natural world and your place within it. (We use the term “EuroPagan” as a way of recognizing that for most of us in North America, we don’t have a Lakota, Bantu, and Japanese or other native non-Western earth religionist heritage or upbringing. Nor do most of us live on the land. We are newcomers to this perception of the world.)

The initial step on this journey involves shedding any preconceived notions shaped by Hollywood’s portrayal of witches. Forget the idea of you and your friends’ gaining powers over time and space, and you and your toy poodle aren’t defending the Universe against Demonic Invaders from the 247^th Plane of Hell – with or without one of you losing a hand and having it replaced by a semi-sentient chainsaw.

It is neither a motion picture, a fantasy novel, video game nor a role-playing game or LARP. That doesn’t mean that practitioners don’t also enjoy many of those things.

Adopting the stereotypical image of a witch—clad in black, laden with oversized pentagrams, and reciting mangled Latin—isn’t any more likely to improve your abilities than donning Renaissance Faire or bohemian attire or a pair of jeans. However, there’s more to say about that later.

Your practice should be grounded in the foundational “legs” of your personal cauldron’s tripod: meditation, physical well-being, and the art of poetry amidst nature. Each element is crucial; if one is lacking, the stability of your entire practice is compromised and can collapse.

Leg One: Meditation

Meditation is the ability to identify what is important in yourself and the environment, ignoring distractions, and cutting through the “noise” of idle chatter in one’s own head. This is the basic skill that all magic, all ritual, all personal peace comes from. The ability to meditate, the discernment to distinguish fantasy from reality and identify your own true nature is the first skill you need to develop. Without this, magic, ritual and a “right livelihood” are simply impossible

Find a place that is safe and private, free from noise, lights, and other people. You don’t need candles or incense, just a place to sit down undisturbed, preferably in an outdoor, natural setting. Just sit down in a comfortable chair with your feet flat on the floor, close your eyes, rest your hands in your lap, drop your head slightly, and breathe into your belly, inhaling slowly, holding your breath for a second, and exhaling slowly. Relax the muscles around your cheekbones.

Listen to the sound of your breathing and heartbeat. Continue until you can hear this, and only this. Let the distractions of the day and petty problems float away from you. Repeat as needed. Practice makes perfect.

Leg Two: Food, Mood and Sleep Journal

Sleep, proper nutrition, exercise and good attitude are the second “leg” in the tripod of your personal cauldron. If you want to do real, rather than pretend witchcraft, you need to be healthy. Caffeine, cigarettes, lack of sleep and poor eating habits are the fastest way known to mankind to sabotage your magical ability.

Start keeping a journal of what you eat, when you eat, how much you sleep, and what your personal exercise program is. Record your moods and see if they fluctuate with when or what you eat. You need an adequate amount of sleep at night, and while 8 hours is often the recommended amount, the truth of the matter is that each person has different needs. Sleep, eat, exercise and be healthy enough to do real magic.

Leg Three: Poetry in Nature

The Gods and Not-Gods of all earth centered cultures and practices have one thing in common: All of them are encountered in the wilds, not in an apartment building, dorm room or living room. And, in all of these cultures, these deities are celebrated and spoken with using poetry.

All cultures, all places in the world have a history of spirits, ancestors and magic. It is easy to pick up a book on magic, gods and spirits for a faraway land.

Sadly, this isn’t relevant to your initial magical practice, or where you live. So start by learning about the land, the sacred places, the stories of the place that you live, work and play. Go to the local library, talk to a research librarian.

 Find a folklore society in your area. Some of the members will know, or know where to find, the stories of how that mountain was formed, where the First People came from the ground, etc. Local spirits want to be remembered and celebrated. What happens in your environment? When does spring begin where you live? What trees and plants bloom in your backyard?

Have you wondered why some workings are called “spells”, or why books of magical instruction are called “Grimoire”?  A Grimoire is a grammar, a skeletal outline of how to do something. Using a Grimoire without understanding poetry and the power of language is like trying to speak a foreign language by stringing together words from a dictionary: the result is sometimes funny, but always fractured and imperfect.

Communicating with spirits works better as poetry than as simple prose, as the experience of thousands of years has shown.

The ability to “weave” a spell, cast circle, or do other rituals depends on one’s skills as a poetic storyteller. Storytelling is the oldest of all human arts.  Every person who can speak can and has told stories, if only as gossip. Good ritual depends on good stories and good storytellers.

A poem is a story in rhyme or meter, including free verse, haiku, sijos, sonnets, or other structures. The greatest rituals in the world are also great poems, and for good reason. The spirits respond better to good poems!

Put out of your mind the goofy rhyming couplets in Hollywood magic or the silly spell books for sale on the internet and in occult shops—they don’t work anyways. Save your money for real books and references.

You don’t need to tell stories to anyone else at first.  Find a story that has meaning in your life, and learn to tell it to the trees, rocks and running waters around you. It doesn’t matter if you stumble at first, you’ll improve with practice.

(If you feel shy about talking to trees, how will you feel about talking to gods and spirits?)  Keep a journal but be willing to disregard your early efforts in a few months or years.

Recommended Books for this section:

• How to Develop Your Psychic Powers—Hereward Carrington. The winner and all-time champion, a no-nonsense book that teaches westerners how to meditate and discriminate between noise and the spirits.
• Spellcraft—Robin Skelton. Out of print. Find a copy used, get it through Interlibrary Loan and photocopy it, do whatever it takes (ethically, of course) to get a copy. This is the only book ever written on how to make, understand, and use poetry as magic. (Nota bene – Dr Skelton was unhappy with this book toward the end of his life and had planned on completely rewriting it. Sadly tht never happened.)
• Spells for Clear Vision—Neile Graham. This fine book of poems is by a friend of the late Dr. Skelton. Excellent examples of what poetry can and should be in everyday and mythic realms.

The above is adapted from an earlier piece written by Scarecrow for StarMist Cuveen in the late 1980s. It has been slightly revised and updated for use with Nemed Cuculatii by Ash McSidhe in 2024.
Featured image for this post is “Big leaf maples in the Hoh Rain Forest of the Pacific Northwest. By User:Doug Dolde, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19987582