Articles That Helped Me As A Baby Witch

articles that helped me as a baby witch

so i’ve been helping my friend @wholecashews get into witchcraft and this has given me a chance to go over all of the things I read when I was just starting out and think about the things that really impacted me, and I decided maybe it would be cool to post some of the links I sent to her on here as well :) 

so I’ll start with the big one: this article, Sigils Reboot by Gordon at Rune Soup, MADE ME BELIEVE IN MAGIC. Like before I was kind of like, “Sure, yeah, this sounds fun to believe in and play around with” but after I read this article I felt like I’d just found the glitch in the Matrix or something. I highly recommend reading if you appreciate an explanation of magic that leans toward the psychological side. 

this little blurb about witchcraft and the placebo effect also makes a good point about the psychology behind magic’s power. 

this thread on skeptics trying to get into witchcraft again discusses several people’s experiences with the psychological approach to magic, and was very helpful for me to read. Looking at all of these different articles as someone just starting off and trying to figure out “how does this even work?” really helped me get a handle on how magic works (to the best extent that you can even try to understand that) and helped everything suddenly feel a lot more accessible and sensible. Suddenly I was like “oh ok yes you use a red ribbon in this spell because of your brain and how it works, not just because Somebody Said So”. as a beginner that was an important distinction to make because then I began to see how I could make witchcraft my own instead of just copying people’s spells. 

to that end, reading this piece on aesthetics and mechanics of magic made a lot of sense to me once I had really considered the psychological aspects of witchcraft. it was also encouraging for me to think about my own craft and put more thought into building it. 

all of those links^ came from @upthewitchypunx‘s diy witchery resources. that page is a treasure trove, thank you for compiling it!

all of that info also reminds me of something i saw around tumblr a few times that really confused me at first: spell paradigms, meaning the assumption behind how a spell works. lots of spells don’t explicitly say “this spell will bring you money because the green candle has supreme money power or the thyme sprinkled around will attract it or etc”. instead they just sort of tell you what to do without telling you how they make things happen. the subject of spell paradigms is definitely still interesting and maybe not entirely clear to me, but I think it is related to the whole psychology aspect of the discussion. personally i haven’t really even begun to think about deities but have thought more about chaos and energy. deities is a whole other can of worms if we’re going to to get particular about how magic works, so I haven’t gone there yet. 

the witches’ workbook by @theoryofmagick is a great general primer that I really appreciated reading because it clearly lays out a lot of things that are good for a beginner to think about. unfortunately i can only find those first 2 chapters, but they are great and informative!

this post also provides a simple list of ideas for what to do as a witchling. sometimes you just need a list!

Eliza at @maddiviner has a really awesome and informative site in general. I really appreciated how well-written her new witches page is - she also does a good job just laying a lot of info on the table for you. she has a lot of good info on divination as well. 

lastly, I <3 andi grace! this article of theirs on coming out of the woo closet really helped me see how witchcraft and social justice are tied. i came to witchcraft already having radical politics, so i was not super into the very white, eurocentric, binaristic, and blissfully-unconcerned-about-cultural-appropriation version of witchcraft that came up sometimes on tumblr. this is a great and motivating read for anti-capitalist witchbabes. 

ok 2 more and then I’m done. 

Pagans of Color! Important and much-needed resources on racial intersections and practices of witchcraft - as a white person I love reading this site to broaden my perspectives. They also have a really good set of articles on there that are targeted towards white people in the witchcraft community. 

and through them I found this really great article (and here’s their notes on it too) about the toxic privilege and racism that underlies white spiritual communities and how to improve it. always good to be thinking about this no matter where i am in my craft. 

phew! ok. that’s all. as you can see i did a lot of reading starting out, and i still do a lot of reading. that’s what it’s about! hope these help :)