SHIFTING CONSCIOUSNESS

Sit in front of your altar and slowly close your eyes, relaxing your mind and body.
Once you feel sufficiently relaxed, start by counting down from fourteen to one. As you are counting, you may experience a tingling sensation. This is the process of your brainwave activity lowering from the beta state, which is the level our brain is in when we we are awake, then to the alpha state, which is when we are dreaming and therefore closer to our subconscious. Alpha is the level at which you are able to tap into your psychic powers and project your spells.

CREATING A PENTACLE CIRCLE OF PROTECTION

Once you have reached this level, you need to create a pentacle circle of protection around your sacred area. The purpose of this circle is to enable you safely to achieve your mental projections with no interferences from negative, unbalancing, inappropriate energies and forces.

To create your circle, you need to imagine that the divine powers which you have chosen for your spell have sent you a ray of silver light. This light is so bright and electrifying that you reach out with both hands and grasp it. The energy of the light will travel down from your fingertips to the palm of your hand and thence to the rest of your body.

Next envisage a bright silver circle forming around you. This circle should include your altar. Then, through your minds eye (sometimes called the third eye, behind the middle of your forehead), create an imaginary pentacle at each of the four geographical directions around your altar.

PURIFYING THE PENTACLE CIRCLE OF PROTECTION

Now that you have created the safety net around sacred area, you must invite healing energies to purify your circle. This can be achieved by imagining a second beam of light, which is bright blue. This will fill up the inside of your circle, so that it has the effect of enveloping you. This sea of blue will cleanse your circle and, at the same time, send healing energies into your mind and body. This should make you feel extremely relaxed and secure. Imagine all unsuitable energies being washed away.

Spend as long as you like adjusting to your circle. it should make you feel totally calm and your own strength. Once you feel ready for the task ahead, take a deep breath and slowly release it. Repeat this a few times.

Next, close your eyes, begin to look through your minds eye and repeat out loud:

I form this pentacle circle of protection in the name of the divine powers
(name the chosen deity/deities).
I heal and cleanse my circle, so that it is free of harmful and incorrect forces.

My circle is now ready and filled with
suitable energies for my magical work.

CASTING YOUR SPELL

Then cast your spell.
Place all your mental strength and power into the outcome of the spell.

RELEASING YOUR SPELL

When you have completed your spell, open your pentacle circle of protection by repeating:

By opening this circle,
I have freed my spell so that it is successful.
So it shall be.

Your spell is like an arrow which you have fired into the universe to land at the right point – and only the sacred powers know where that is. Once your spell has been released, you should prepare yourself to return to the beta level of consciousness.

RETURNING TO REALITY

Raise your arms into the air with the palms of your hands open. Imagine the silver light leaving your body. As it does so, lower your arms and run your hands over your chakra points (the power points of the mind and body) beginning at the top of your head and ending at your feet. Then push your hands away from yourself.

While you are performing this healing act repeat:

I have now given my mind body and soul a safe healing clearance. I am totally healthy and happy.

Finally start counting up from one to fourteen until you reach beta level.
Now that you are “back on earth”, spend a few minutes adjusting.

You have now returned to this word after successfully casting your first spell. It is important to remember, once a spell has been released, never to doubt yourself or the outcome of the spell. To introduce lack of faith in your own ability is to create a rod for your own back and will result in the weakening of your spell.

If you have followed my guidelines, you can be sure that your spells will triumph. The knowledge that you have accumulated, combined with the gift of faith and positivity, should give you a powerful boost. However, such a gift should be use wisely and with discretion for every good action is followed by a good reaction.

Raven Tempest: How To Bewitch – A Manual Of Modern Witchcraft

This is a simple spell to fulfill the hearts wishes.

Essential ingredients

• Sheet of gold paper
• nine of hearts (from a normal pack of cards)
• black pen
• box of matches
• enamel bowl

Magic formula

Cast a pentacle circle of protection, write your wish on the gold paper and wrap it around the nine of hearts.
Burn both items, leaving the ashes in the enamel bowl until your wish is fulfilled.

Magic is an art, ability to recognize the inner strength and focusing the energy with a certain goal. Every magical act is a communication with a higher entity (god, godess or other deities). Magic goes beyond the boundries of the natural world and goes directly to the cause and result. The result in magic can be exactly predicted, and the same magical rituals don’t give always the same result. It varies from person to person, depending on the inner strength and the ability to control the energy.

Magic, just like a river, always searches for the closest way to the sea. When the wish is defined and the ritual is performed, the magic seeks for the closest way towards the fulfillment of the wish. Magic opens many possibilities, and an adept magic practician (called a witch or a mage), recognizes them and uses them as best solutions, because in the contrary, they will be lost. If you wish to eat an apple, magic will put the apple in your hand, but you have to bite it yourself.

If there are any obstacles on the way to the desired result, magic helps to overcome them, even if they seem insuperable. If extraordinary, spectacular results are needed, magic is spectacular. One of the aspects of magic is, that it is unbound and is not limited with time. A magical result can appear even before the perfoming of the ritual. This can sound as fantastic to those who haven’t experienced magic yet, because you don’t have to know how magic works in order to use it. In many cultures magic is being practised by regular, often unskilled people, in order to overcome everyday problems.

There are a lot of sorts of magics: natural magic, ritual magic, high magic, ceremonial magic and every branch is slightly different form the others, in some rituals, ceremonies or practice. But the basics and the roots in magic stay always the same. The difference between the branches of magic arises in the individual approach of the practicians, the difference in cultures, language and the variaties of the deities they worship. Different variations manifest even inside the same branches of magic, especially in the same rituals and magic spells which are adapted to the individual for his easier visualisation and experiencing the personal energy.

In natural magic, there is a theory that many objects in the nature (rocks, roots, plants, bones of the animals) are interconnected. For example Rose Quartz represents love and love rituals, the spice cinnamon is associated to money and wealth, moss is associated with money winnings and games of chance. In this branch there is a connection between the objects and their magical simbolics and the magical attributes that arise from old doctrines and learnings which unite the spiritual, the nature, the learnings and the alchemy. Witchery in the natural magic often does not include elements of invoking deities, prayers or ritual structures. Here are only being used the magical atributes of the herbs, rocks or objectes for magic to be performed and acomplished. In some traditions, wicce or paganism magic is the reality of the divine. The practician then invokes a god or a goddess so they take part in the rituals. For example, performing the love magic, the person would want to invoke the goddess Aphrodite to take part in the magic ritual. A person who is moving in in a new home will invoke Brighit or Frey, godess of love and home.

Some magic branches believe that only the exact goal and a strong will are needed for the completion of a magical act. In this branch candles, herbs and objects are not that important, but can serve for easier visualisation. Magic won’t solve all of your problems, but if it is being used carefully and correctly, can be a very useful medium that will ease your everyday life and often it will surprise you with the extraordinary results, will make you stronger and happier.

In magic, i often stumble upon one question: „ Is magic real?“ Some claim it is, others that it’s not. Magic cannot be scientifically explained, because it does not always have the same result and sometimes looks like pure luck. But the best way to find out if it is real or not is to experiment a bit. Try to perform any spell (a protection spell, attracting money spell, attracting love spell) and write down your result. Sometimes you’ll be really amazed how a simple magic can have a strong effect. Like any other ability, magic must be practised, perfected and cared for. Most people already quit after first failed attempt. That’s just a sign that the ritual needs to get perfected, the ability developed. Just like knowledge, it needs to be renewed. Remember your first attempt of riding your bicycle, or baking a cake. Maybe it didn’t work the first time, but you tried again in the belief that you will succeed. It’s the same with magic. This ability is within you and waiting to be freed.

Many people follow a certain magical branch, her beliefs and the represent themselves as wiccans, pagans or witches, but they have no sucess in performing rituals because they haven’t put any efford in learning how magic works. Like any other ability and talent, magic demands a certain knowledge and practice to be sucessfully applied. Learn, read, research, experiment and grow. If magic is real, why doesn’t everybody use it. In a certain way, many people do use it, even if they are not aware of it. Have you ever wished for something and blowed out the candles on a birthday cake? Crossed your fingers for good luck? Eagerly wanted a raise?

Many people haven’t heard of magic, or they associate it with something dark and evil. With curses, diseases, ugly witch-women, demons. Magic is often considered to be evil, people think that if something isn’t from God, it is therefore evil.On the other hand, magic is nothing from above. It is the opposite it. Magic is an ability like painting, often a people’s doctrine, natural, pure, a state of spirit, spitirutal and comforting.

The Book of Shadows arose with the intention to explain the delusions associated to the still controvers subject of witchcraft, and to up bring this art in the right light. Its image is very distorted. Many occultists and authors are trying to prove the historical roots of a certain system in their works, so thanks to them, many systems today stand on firm grounds. That is why the history of witchcraft is important to us as well.

So, what is witchcraft? Witchcraft is a complex magical system, it’s not a religion nor a cult, nor did it ever have the intention do develop in that way. Witchcraft is mostly being practiced independently , or in rare cases, inside family bloodlines. Roughly, witchcraft can be split in two groups. The first one is the Wicca and the second one is the Traditional witchcraft. The segmentation is much more complicated, and that doesn’t mean that the first one has more quality than the other, but at the moment it’s helping us to show the basic difference between them.

Wicca is the witchcraft of the newer age, began in the 50′s, but it draws it’s roots from traditional witchcraft. Wicca, unlike traditional, has many additions like ceremonial, ritual magic, kabala, heathen mysteries, eastern philosophies etc. Wicca experienced a full symbiosis with ceremonial magic and kabala, which in her history – the history of witchcraft, wasn’t the case. The word wicca comes from the anglo-saxon word wicce (wise) – to shape, to form, to possess wisdom.

Wicca is a modern tradition, a neo-pagan reconstruction of the ancient witchcraft, based upon old earth oriented prechristian religions of Europe, antic heathen cultures like Greece and Rome. The maker of Wicca is the british Dr. Gerald Brousseau Gardner (1884-1964), who was interested in various systems, which is one of the reasons why the elements are mixed inside the Wicca. It is assumed that wicca started to form in 1920, but for certain, we can say that it started in 1954 with the publishing of Gardner’s book: „Witchcraft Today“. The system of wiccan beliefs and the way of life is based on the reconstruction of prechristian traditions founded in Ireland, Scotland and Wales, which still take effect in its traditional shape.

Traditional witchcraft, more or less, managed to survive in its true form with minor adjustments. It kept the clarity, the originality and the old historical roots. Traditional witchcraft has no additions, it doesn’t use candles, ritual knives, vestments it doesn’t use astrology, nor the correspondance tables. In ancient history, people didn’t have access to a lot of todays things, they were using things that were accessible to them at that time, mostly herbs, a fireplace and some plates and dishes. They were also illiterate, so everything was reduced to oral delivery.

Witchcraft roots have roots from shamanism. A proof for it is the basis that is being used – ritual trans and controlling the spirits (nature spirits or entities). Unlike witchcraft, shamanism didn’t know any deities, they come considerably later, and with them, paganism as well. Originally, the most worshiped deities were the goddess of Moon, the Big Mother and the antlered god Cernunnos. Although there are many proofs which track the use of witchcraft even to paleolith, it is completely being formed in the Medieval, in the area of southern France.

In order to practice magic sucessfully the only thing to you need to do is to link yourself to nature and it’s flow. That needs to be done because during the rituals, ceremonies, energy is being withdrawn from the nature and is being used as a tool which we steer towards the goal we wish to achieve. Spend some time in the nature, start observing the life in it. At the moment you begin to notice the flow of enery in nature you’ll realise it’s all going to be very simple. You will develop innate instinct towards energy.

The following exercise; the grounding exercise; is a starting part of any magic ritual. With this act we connect with the nature, more precisely the earth element. Thee are four elements: air, earth, water, fire and each is extremely important for itself when practicing magic. Each has it’s own properties and purpose. I will explain each one in detail. It is desired to use the famous affiliation with elements tehnique. Using that tehnique it is needed to invoke each element for a week. This tehnique is very powerful and simple. Even without thinking about it’s purpose the results are astounding. Already after that step you’ll be ready for more serious magic venture. Click here for the grounding exercise.

In majority I’ll talk about neo-paganism – Wicca, with reference to the modern ways of implementation and life of magic, to simplify it.

Also I’ll talk a bit more about herbalism which not only is easy to practice (without getting into Magic) it also doesn’t require special knowledge, is easy to practice and it gives great results. I don’t want to exclude other parts of magic: druidism, samanism, egiptyan paganism, hermetism, traditional witchcraft, because in every branch (section) one can find something of interest (something more suitable).

Mostly, I practice neo-paganism but at the same time I’m utilizing other sections and elements which suit each other, so I’ll go in that direction also. You’ll find everything you need to start practicing and realize the beauty of magic. If you already practice magic, here you’ll be able to exchange your experience, impressions and knowledge.

I promise that I will not share anything that could harm a living being or hurt it in any way! You will not find anything regarding black magic here.

I count on 4 elements: air, earth, water and fire, which have been given to us from Mother Earth and which we may use.

In hope that you’ll find magic within you, I wish You a lot of success.