Embracing the Power of the Witch
21
After you have grounded yourself, close your eyes and bring your attention to your breath. Visualize your auric field around you in the shape of an egg of white light. As you inhale, visualize this energy shrinking and condensing at your heart center in the middle of your chest. As you exhale, visualize your aura expanding from your heart center back to that egg-shaped aura around you. With each inhale, feel your mind focusing; with each exhale, feel yourself relaxing. Continue this breathing and visualization for about thirty seconds. Bring your awareness to the fact that you are the center of your reality within physical space from your vantage point, and that your heart is the center of your physical and spiritual essence within the metaphysical space of your reality. Affirm that you are right here, right now. All your attention is in the present moment at this time and this place.
Are Physical Items Necessary for Magick? In Psychic Witch, I proposed that all you need to cast effective magick is the power of your mind. I am often asked why anyone would use candles, herbs, and other tangible physical items if we can cast spells effectively with just our minds. The honest answer is, it’s easier to do so with items (which we call materia when working with them). Learning to work with energy and perform magick without physical objects will make your spellcasting stronger when you do. However, the conscious mind only has so much storage capacity, just like RAM on a computer. The more things you’re holding on to mentally, the more difficult it can be to focus our mental and psychic energy to cast a spell. When using materia in our magick, we free up some of our internal RAM and use that freed-up data space to perform more elaborate rituals and spells. Another reason is that we are composed of multiple parts; many witchcraft traditions refer to these parts as the Three Souls, comprised of the Lower Self, Middle Self, and Higher Self. When we are moving about in ritual, holding spell items, working with tools, and lighting candles, we engage our Lower Self. We are giving our physical animal aspect of ourselves something to do to keep it pre-occupied and in alignment with the intent of the working, therefore helping bring all parts of ourselves into the working of the magickal goal at hand.
