Visualisation and meditation. One of the most potent ideas in magic and ritual is creating what we want to have happen in our minds, so that we can focus and direct our energy into making it happen. (This is just as true when we’re talking about practical goals as magical ones, of course.) Meditation is a huge and broad subject, far too big to go into much detail in this format: I highly recommend getting a copy of Diana Paxson’s Trance-Portation and working through it.
That said, there are some skills you can start with that will give you a really good foundation for whatever work or path you find yourself on later. The most basic of these is visualisation – only, not just images, but other kinds of responses. As I talk about in the “Ways you learn” article, people will have different preferences. What to practice: Begin by getting comfortable (some people prefer to sit on a chair, some on the floor, some to lie on their backs with their knees bent.) Starting exercises: More complex exercises: Longer meditations: Some first steps. Here’s a guide to how some of your initial learning and exploration might go, along with a few other tips. Basically, it’s all about taking your time, being gentle with yourself (and those around you), learning how you learn, and seeking out multiple sources. Take your time: You don’t need to sort everything out today, this week, or even this month.
It’s okay to break things down into smaller pieces, to focus on one thing at a time for a bit, or even to take a break if you need to. Just be aware you’re doing it, and that you don’t know the other parts yet. Some things, you’ll need more time to learn. Wicca – and other forms of religious witchcraft – honor cycles. Why a year and a day? Be gentle with yourself. Listen to what your body, mind, and soul are telling you. Be open to changes. Be gentle with the people around you.
The people around you – who are in their own places in their lives – may be changing in a different way or direction than you. How do you learn? Encourage debate. Esbats. Many people following a Wiccan-based or religious witchcraft path celebrate both the Sabbats in some form (the solar holidays), as well as the Esbats, or lunar holidays. In many paths, the Sabbats are seen more as a celebratory time (a chance to pause and reflect on the seasonal change, while the Esbats are seen as a more practical time: a time to do magic, divination, and other workings.
You don’t have to follow this (lots of people include some divination, magic, or other workings in their Sabbat work, for example), but it can be a good way to start figuring out what you’re doing. Likewise, in pantheons (Greek, Roman, Celtic) where the sun is associated with a particular God, and the moon with a Goddess, the Sabbats may be seen as a more God-focused ritual (external, active, about the pattern of the God’s life and sacrifice), while Esbats may focus more on a Goddess, or on the cycles of a woman’s life. Esbats commonly are celebrated at the full moon, the new moon, or both. Moon cycles: Grounding. As I’ve said elsewhere, grounding is the term used broadly in the Pagan community to talk about getting rid of excess energy that we have picked up, and also to replenish our energy when it is low. A common grounding exercise: be a tree There are many versions of this out there. The most basic is visualising yourself as a tree – roots reaching deeply into the ground, branches reaching up to the sky, with energy running down your body into the earth as you need to get rid of excess, or drawing up some if you need to renew yourself.
Stand, centered physically and energetically. Practice this every day for a few weeks (or as close to that as you can). Variations and other approaches: There are many examples of this meditation. Some other variations on grounding you might find interesting include: Additional grounding techniques: Sometimes, the basic energy techniques we’ve described may not help all the way – or you may be too scattered or unfocused to make them work well. Other considerations: The elements. Chances are, by this point in your reading, you’ve come across people referring to the elements in terms of Pagan practice. These aren’t the same as the elements you learned in chemistry class, as fascinating as those are.
Instead, they refer to what are sometimes called the Platonic elements: air, fire, water, and earth, the elements considered for many centuries to be the building blocks of all life. We know the science’s different now, but these four forces still have a great deal of resonance for magical and ritual practice. These elements all have a huge impact on our lives: without air we can’t breathe (or communicate, or many other things). Without the fire of the sun and the molten core of the earth, we wouldn’t be here – and without the fires that let us cook and have light in the dark, we’d have a very different world. Water, of course, not only makes up over 60% of our bodies, and covers more than 70% of the planet. Why are they important in religious practice? Resources: Developing will. One thing you’ll see come up over and over again is the idea that you need to develop your will in order to do effective magic – and many forms of effective ritual.
What this means is that you need to increase your ability to: decide what you’re going to do.decide how you’re going to do it.do it.and remain focused on your goal while doing it. This is both very simple in some ways, and very complicated. We can think that it’s simple to take a particular action – but does that action actually get us closer to what we really want? Or sometimes, we know what we should do, but have some roadblocks in our way. Sometimes those are practical, sometimes they’re related to health issues or other things in our lives of that kind. Sometimes they’re even roadblocks we subconsciously put up for ourselves.
The good news is that you can develop your will in all sorts of ways, many of which can fit right into other tasks you need to do anyway. Look for growth – not perfection: Keys and triggers: Breathing. One thing you’ll see a lot of people talk about first is breathing. On one hand, that seems sort of odd. After all, we’re all breathing, right, or we wouldn’t be sitting here reading this. On the other hand, there’s a good reason for that. How we breathe has a lot to do with the ways our bodies work. And it turns out that by breathing in certain ways, we can encourage certain specific physical responses in our bodies that are helpful when we’re looking at focusing and directing energy (in ritual, or for magical workings). Or for things like meditation. Why focus on breathing? Step one: basic breathing. Even though we all breathe (lots!) Lie down on your back (bend your knees if it will be more comfortable) A bed is fine.
Practice for 3-5 minutes every day. Once you are comfortable with it, make it a practice to pause and take 5 deep breaths during the day. Step two: counted breaths This is where we get to the actual techniques more useful in meditation. Cautions and notes: Useful tools: Centering. Centering is really all about being very present within yourself, so that you can move on to other tasks. It’s often not easy in modern society. You can think of centering as creating a container for yourself, like a bottle filled with water.
You pour all yourself, your being, into that container, and you are centered when you know what’s you, what’s not you, and what you sense and feel and know, and what’s coming from outside of you. What does feeling centered feel like? There’s an example a friend of mine gives. Imagine that you are going along, doing your own thing, when all of a sudden, someone hits your hand with something large, heavy, and painful. In that moment, you are completely centered on the feelings from your hand, your knee, your elbow. The trick is to learn how to get there without the pain (which will distract from anything else you might want to do, besides being unpleasant.) Exercise 1: Physical centering: Start by standing up, feet shoulder-width apart. Practice! Energetic self-care.
Just like we take care of our physical bodies, we should take care of our less-physical bodies. That’s where a set of skills sometimes called psychic hygiene come in. Cleansing is the energy equivalent of having a shower or bath – getting ourselves clean, washing away any grime from the day. Shielding and warding sound all spooky – but really, they’re about shelter, about making a space for us to be that’s secure and comfortable. They can even be a little bit like clothing: a way for us to choose what we share with the world around us. Cleansing: Most of the time, some very general techniques go a long way – just like in our shower or bath, the basic concept (apply soap, scrub, rinse) goes a long way.
How do you find the ‘dirt’? The other option is that you may find – especially as you practice other energy and magical skills – that you’ll feel areas of your body where energetic grunge seems to stick and clump up. Basic shower method: Center and ground yourself. Other options: Shielding. Home, sacred home… I’ve talked elsewhere on this site about taking care of your own energy, but what about your space? Just as you do, the space you live in picks up energy and emotions. Often, we bring these things in ourselves, with the stress we bring home from work (or school), from news stories, or from things we actually do at home. The good news is that just as you can cleanse your own energy and smooth things out, you can do the same thing with your home. A little regular attention goes a long way toward making your home welcoming, peaceful, and enjoyable.
There are different ways to approach keeping your home well. Good habits: Take steps to keep a tidy house: You don’t need to live in something out of one of the beautiful home magazines, but clutter and dirt drag down a home’s energy. A tidier house takes less time to maintain, so you have more time for other things. There are lots of resources out there to help. Oh – and a word of support. From time to time: Banishing: Herbs and other materials: