The Witches’ Alphabet

Many folks rush to magick thinking that spells can immediately fix all their problems. On the surface, that’s somewhat true. Spells can remedy problems in our lives and make them easier to manage. However, most spells are often focused on addressing situations in our lives, be it money or dealing with difficult people and circumstances. The most potent, most effective magick you can indeed cast is upon yourself to awaken yourself, heal, and grow in wisdom. When you awaken your psychic senses, you open yourself up to having a direct experience with divinity. That divinity may be in the form of other spirits and gods and goddesses. However, it’s also growing awareness of the divinity within all people and all things, and perhaps most importantly, within yourself. To do this, we must take our blinders off. Re-enchanting the world is about enchanting ourselves first to truly wake up so that we can respond to the world instead of reacting to it. Re-enchanting the world is about truly seeing, dreaming anew, and taking control of the narrative through magick paired with action.

Magick has completely transformed me and my life in unrecognizable ways, and I’ve witnessed the same effect on many others as well. It has helped me find a more profound sense of myself, as well as a deeper sense of connection to the world around me. I have found myself more open to new and different ideas and ways of thinking. I am more confident, and I have found my voice, which has helped me be more assertive where I was once a pushover. It has opened me up to new and exciting opportunities that I would not have been able to get to without it. I have found I am more compassionate toward others, and I am more aware of my power. It has helped me overcome my fears and insecurities, and it has removed me from volatile relationships and situations. It has helped me to heal myself and others, internally and externally. It has also altered the course of situations in my life in a way that has bordered on miraculous.

Some say magick has nothing to do with self-help, self-improvement, psychology, or self-transformation. I strongly disagree. Are these things the entirety of what magick is? No. But almost every magickal path I can think of focuses on improving and healing the individual to prepare them for greater and greater magickal works and experiences. In occultism, all of this is the Magnum Opus, the Great Work, which is the only true work worth doing. I wrote in Psychic Witch that “magick changes everything it touches.” A good

reflection and barometer of your path is to frequently stop and evaluate who you’ve been, who you are, and who you’re becoming, and see if you’re growing or not. Change must start inwardly in order for your life and world to change outwardly. “As within, so without.” This isn’t about being perfect, or neurotypical, or anything like that. It’s about striving to become a better person, a better human being. I don’t care how long you’ve been studying or practicing. Kind, loving, and empathic human beings are the most radically magickal things in the world. These types of people are as rare as witches were centuries ago. We need more. Focusing on improving the self assists you to be better equipped in improving the world and that is extremely impressive. That impresses me way more than any sort of occult knowledge or experience one might have. By self-transformation, I don’t mean spiritually bypassing yourself or others. I mean actual, genuine growth and transformation, which is often ugly, messy, uncomfortable, and at times painful.

Mastery

The term “mastery” in magick means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. To me, mastery means a gradual and continual accumulation of knowledge, wisdom, and experience in a specific field that is often difficult to understand or convey in words, due to its subjective nature. Mastering magick isn’t about learning everything there is to know and having nothing further to learn or experience. I will tell you right now that this is impossible while existing in this life. The dead end of stagnation comes when we stop seeking wisdom and experiences to grow in knowledge and spirit. The point of mastering magick is to continue to grow and expand; as we do, we begin to transform into the force of magick itself through recognition.

The point of mastery is not to do the most flashy or impressive spells and rituals or have the most extensive occult book collection or the most expensive assortment of witchcraft tools. While those things aren’t inherently wrong in themselves, they aren’t the point of pursuing this path. Mastering magick is not simply something you do. It’s a state of being, of knowing yourself, others, and your reality as magick. It is something you slowly begin to realize through a magickal practice. You begin to see magick in everything and everyone, just as much as you begin to see it within yourself.

Yet, I still don’t consider myself a master in the sense that most people understand the word, namely, someone who has reached the end of learning. But I would consider myself the master of the magick of my own life. I’m a master when it comes to understanding how magick has changed my life, how I’ve come to understand how it works, and how I’ve integrated this knowledge into my life so far. But mastery isn’t a destination; rather, it is a lifetime pursuit in the never-ending path of personal evolution. Books, teachers, and traditions are all helpful on this path, but they can only take you so far in your experience and growth. A common complaint is that there aren’t enough “advanced” witchcraft books available. That’s because books can only take you so far. There comes the point where we must pursue connection to the force of magick, and it begins to guide and teach us. Scott Cunningham brilliantly writes, “Seek wisdom in books, rare manuscripts, and cryptic poems if you will, but seek it out also in simple stones, and fragile herbs, and in the cries of wild birds. Listen to the whisperings of the wind and the roar of water if you would discover magic, for it is here that the old secrets are preserved.”3

While I do actively encourage people to learn from as many sources as they can, through formal training and informal study of books and other media, the path of mastering magick will always be the path of the solitary witch, and it always has been. The path of witchcraft is one that you travel by forging it for yourself. Upon this path, the witch is always alone and yet never truly alone either. That’s because mastering magick is about how you personally connect to the force of magick, and how you choose to incorporate it into your own life. It’s about how you relate to the spirits, the divine, others, and yourself, and how you experience the Mysteries of witchcraft.

In this sense, there is no one-size-fits-all answer, as we are all unique spiritual entities and expressions of the life force.

You will see throughout this book that a key concept for me is that of connection being at the core of witchcraft. This is the reason I placed such a strong emphasis on psychic ability and meditation in the previous book, and try here to focus on teaching magick through that viewpoint. Many people have compared prayers to speaking and meditation to listening. I liken

3. Cunningham, Wicca.