Skills of the Craft

Skills of the Craft

While there are many important skills to utilize in your Craft, including patience, visualization is one of your most essential skills. When you visualize something happening, particularly with an energy shift, you help to make the shift happen. Visualization helps us learn to control, focus, and direct our energies to create the changes we seek.

Is visualization really that important? Yes! This cannot be emphasized enough. And yet, I understand that visualization can be a huge problem for people, which is why I want to cover this skill first. Let’s talk a bit about some of the issues with visualization that people face and discuss different ways of overcoming them.

When someone tells me, “Just imagine,” I do. I do because my brain is wired to allow me to. The problem is, not everyone’s brain is wired the same, and not everyone has had the same experiences to draw from. So, someone tells me to imagine a mountain, and I can suddenly find myself in the Grand Tetons staring out over Jenny Lake. I can smell the fresh air and the pine trees on the breeze. I can hear the cranes calling along with the chipmunk rustling in the leaves. I have also been to the Grand Tetons, where I was able to stare out over Jenny Lake, smell the air, and hear the cranes. This makes visualizing it easy for me. I can quickly and easily put myself back into a place I have been before.

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For some people, being told to imagine a mountain sends their brain into overdrive. It doesn’t bring up just one mountain. It brings up dozens of different images: the Rocky Mountains, the Smokies, the Alps, Mount Everest, Superstition Mountain, and many more. Then the brain wants to decide which mountain works the best and begins an argument with itself as it goes through pros and cons of each one.

Other people do not have much experience with mountains and therefore have a hard time drawing on any inspiration to base their imagined mountain on. They can’t fully visualize it because they do not have the required information to draw upon.

These are issues that can be overcome with prep work before completing your workings. Always read through your spell or meditation first. Remember—the Craft is a practice; we can practice all we want. We can practice performing a spell before we perform it for real. We can practice a ritual or meditation before we perform it. Practicing ahead of time allows us to find where issues might exist—needed supplies, pronunciation problems, visualization limitations—and correct them ahead of time. We want our magic to work, and to ensure it does, we need to be able to perform it with confidence. The first few times you try something new, your confidence level may not be the greatest; that’s okay. Practice allows us to build our confidence and deal with any roadblocks that may be in the way.

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If you come across something you don’t know how to pronounce or you aren’t sure how to visualize a concept, remember, research is your friend. Google can tell you how to pronounce things with a search asking for the pronunciation. When you aren’t sure how to visualize something, you can also do searches for images and videos. A little bit of research can help your visualizations and workings in a big way.

When you feel your visualization may not be the strongest, there is another way to give your working a boost and that is by using your own symbolism. If there are times when you simply cannot visualize something, don’t try to visualize it so specifically. Give it a more generic symbolism. For example, often with physical healing work, or any work that takes place inside the body, it might not be the best to visualize the exact process even if you can. Most people do not have the necessary medical knowledge to fully visualize what the inside of the body truly looks like, and some people may find even attempting to visual their insides disturbing. Nothing wrong with that; it’s your own personal preference, which needs to be respected.

There are many ways you can use abstract symbolism to help you in these visualizations. For example, bones do not have to be seen as real bone with muscle attached; they can be seen as made of steel or titanium with a robotic appeal. They can be seen as glass with a fragile quality that needs to be strengthened; perhaps the glass bones are visualized as being dipped into vibranium and hardened. What you picture in

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