How to Cast a Spell Like a Christian Witch | Part 1: Energy Work and Magical Allies
Get back to basics with me and learn the foundations to make your practice your own!
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So, as I look around these days at the witchy content online, and I look at the books that are available to modern witches to learn from... I find myself honestly feeling a little sorry for folks. And I don't say that to sound rude or pretentious, either. I say that because when I pick up the common, over-designed, mass-marketed books on witchcraft, I start to understand that what is happening to witchcraft as a practice is what has happened to religion (especially mainline Christianity) for years, if not decades already:
Commodification. Of the highest order.
It's odd watching it all happen with so little resistance now. When Sephora tried to push their "witch kits" with like, a single piece of rose quartz and some other bullshit in it, people (understandably) went nuts decrying it. Nowadays, however, you've got brands claiming that having a psychic is a status symbol, and "witchy" themed everything, to the point that you can't walk two feet without finding something laden with crystals or claiming to help you with some spiritual thing (peace, love, etc.): connecting it to chakras, selling spirituality as inherently intertwined with certain forms of wellness culture, the list goes on and on.
And don't get me wrong: I like to see that alternative forms of spiritual engagement and practice are becoming more normalized. I also like watching people realize just how silly a lot of mainline corpo-Christianity is when it melts down about something as innocuous as a Halloween decoration in the front yard. However, this... this is not normalization. This is commodification: as in, this is the watering down of spiritual practice into standardized, easily marketable, and easily consumable household clutter and easily-displayable identity monikers. Suddenly, witchcraft and other forms of spirituality (even other established religions, like Christianity's older denomonations of Catholicism, Orthodoxy, etc.) become little more than aesthetics for Pinterest moodboards or easily displayable trinkets; it becomes something that has to look, act, feel, and above all present a certain way to be labeled witchcraft at all, which begins to do precisely what witchcraft as a practice sought to avoid: standardizes and makes institution of a personal, hidden practice meant for anything except the public eye.
Naturally, this creates problems. When everyone tells you that you must use a pink candle for love workings, or that you must have rose petals on hand for it—that you need a certain type of item for hexings or banishments, without even explaining the proper praxis for doing such a thing to begin with, or insisting that Witchcraft™ as a whole would never do something like, say, animal sacrifice—you begin to box out some of the oldest forms of magic to begin with. The folk Catholicism, the syncretic dual-faith practices, the traditional and ancestral ways that carry on through veins like vodou/hoodoo, espiritismo, Santeria, etc., it all gets labeled as "wrong" the same way that mainstream institutions of religion try to label witchcraft as a whole "wrong."
And so, I think here, today, we begin a new blog series. One where we return to basic principles, so that you might build off them on your own and learn to incorporate your own varied, unique, ancestral ways into them. Please keep in mind, however, that the way I view spellwork and magic as a standard may not be the way that necessarily jives with everyone or every philosophy; this is merely how I have come to understand magic and spellcasting through my own study, experience, and practice.
Now let's begin.
What is a Spell? And What is Spiritual Energy?
When we think of a spell, most often, we might think of the things we've seen across various types of popular media, be they fictional or real: the circles, the complicated set-ups, the long, drawn out processes with many tools, materials, books, and so on. To the right here is an example of one such spell set-up for a cord cutting: a type of spell built to sever connections between two people and banish any involvement with each other from their lives.
However, spells don't always have to look this way. There are many types of spells, some of which require weeks of preparation and set-up, or certain symbols etched into the floor or otherwise preserved for repeat use, and others that require nothing other than the spoken word (known as cantrips).
To put things very simply, I will personally define a spell as nothing more than a structured request or demand made of either the Universe, one's God (or gods or other spirits/allies), or oneself. This means that several things can fall under the definition of a spell, such as (but certainly not limited to):
Prayers (and all their derivatives)
Litanies
Novenas
Mass
Mantras
Cantrips & Incantations
Poems
Songs
Stories (written or spoken)
Drawings
Jars
Boxes
Edible items (meals, teas, etc.)
Charms and amulets
But we'll get more into spell formats in a future blog.
You will notice that many of these things are things that religious people do everyday without understanding themselves as witches, and I'm here to tell you that this is because most people who did magic did not understand themselves as witches. The folk healers, the unwitchers, the seers and psychics, they did not call themselves witch because that was a term exclusively reserved for those in the community who sought to do harm or to steal the good fortune of their neighbors for themselves. It was not a term you wanted associated with you, and I do imagine that many of these people whose folk methods are now being passed around as spells for witches would in fact be rolling in their graves to know such a thing. Therefore, what we call witchcraft today is really, and plainly, religion—especially personal religion as practiced by those unauthorized to practice it on a larger, more institutional scale (like clergy or other recognized religious officials).
Nonetheless, the single most important thing a beginning witch should know when it comes to creating magic and spells of their own is the very philosophy behind witchcraft in the first place: the idea that it requires not certain materials, education, or other resources, but instead requires relationship and accessibility. This is what makes witchcraft witchcraft and not any other type of magic out there: the focus on using what one has available and building relationships with the materials/land spirits/other spiritual guides around them. It's part of why witches have traditionally been thought to source their power from "the devil" or, in general, minor folk devils or just their own items and ingredients they have.
For example, in the book Polish Folk Magic, Joanna Tarnawskawa lays out the ways in which a practitioner might bargain with a folk devil (of which there are many kinds) to exchange goods and services. In other areas, however, such as Slovenia, the common people didn't really think witches worked by the power of the Devil or any other little devils; it was just their own decisions that had them doing known tactics to curse a neighbor, like leaving toads on their front step or burying eggs in their field, per Mirjam Mencej's Styrian Witches in European Perspective. The items people used were not some special, hard-to-earn treasure (unless they won it from a fairy or folk devil of some kind); they were common objects or animals nearby that anyone on a farm in the rural European countryside would have access to.
So before you start stocking up on five billion types of candles and herbs and crystals, start there. Start with understanding a spell as either a request (asking a spirit or ally for something or to help you achieve something) or a demand (enforcing your own will onto your reality).
So What is Spiritual Energy, Then?
Now comes the actual how to cast the spell part: raising energy. Again, not everyone may agree with my philosophy here, but when I think about spiritual energy (AKA, magic), I think of it as something we have, not something we do. I view magic as related to the soul the way I view blood as related to the heart: it is a living, circulating system in our body, much like any other fluid we have (blood, lymph, etc.), and this is what we use when we cast a spell.
This has been called many things in many different religions and spiritual systems: chi (like in tai chi / Taosim), prana (like in Hinduism), or even the breath of life that God has given us per the lore of Judaism/Christianity (called ruach in Hebrew); it's when God breathed into the dust and gave Adam a soul. All of us have that "breath," or that magic, animating us beyond just flesh and blood and giving us the access point to God in the first place. This is the materia that truly matters when it comes to spellwork, because it is the living channel between you as a physical being and you as a spiritual being. Through this, and the recruitment of other creatures' energy (stones, plants, etc.), one creates the nucleus of a spell.
How Do I Access My Spiritual Energy?
In my earliest days as a witch, I, like many others, found myself on the absolutely zany site known as Spells of Magic. On this site, there was every kind of spell known to man, including many that are just... not physically possible. Did 11-year-old me delight in the idea that I could turn back or slow down time, or make items levitate? Of course. Does 29-year-old me think that this is how magic works? No. But that doesn't mean the website was without its uses.
One such exercise on this website was known as the "energy ball." In this exercise, the poster put forward a method of feeling energy, and then working with it, so one can become familiar with the feeling of it in their bodies before projecting it out. In short, you're going to need to be able to visualize and also feel certain things, as the exercise goes like this:
Hold one hand about an inch above the other hand. Let the proximity of your skin be felt as that weird tingle of awareness you normally feel when people get too close or when you are hyper-aware of something near you.
HOLD ONTO THAT FEELING. Really study it. Does it feel cold? Sharp? Warm? Fuzzy?
Now close your eyes and imagine what it looks like.
Imagine a wellspring of that in the center of your body (typically your stomach), and visualize it branching out through your body as if through your veins. Feel the fuzziness reach every part of your skin and note the qualities of this energy.
For example: I see my own as a stream of golden flecks, like fairy dust.
Now place your palms about two inches apart from each other and feel that fuzziness from the proximity again.
Imagine this energy flowing up from your center, across your shoulders, down into your arms, and pooling out of your palms until they create a ball of this energy in the center.
If you have to, close your eyes and imagine the energy coming between your palms.
Spread your palms further apart and imagine more energy pooling between them. Then press your hands closer together and truly feel the resistance of the energy as it compresses, the way you might feel the resistance of two wrong ends of a magnet being forced together.
Do this over and over until you get a feel for your energy, and then either reabsorb it into your skin or let it naturally dispel away from you, like steam or mist.
Because you'll be used to how it feels to move this energy within yourself by time you grasp this concept, you'll then be able to use it to imbue into your future spells, whatever shape they take. For now, however, just get acquainted with the feel of this energy in your body. This is your main tool when it comes to pressing your Will on the world, or in asking a higher power to accept your intent and return your offering of energy with a greater, more powerful press of Will.
The Spiritual Energy of the World Around You
With energy, there are multiple ways we might understand its existence in the world. Many people believe only humans have souls, and therefore we're the only ones with energy. However, that's not necessarily the case. Depending on your personal spiritual philosophy, you may also understand animals, plants, rocks, bodies of water, or other things to either have their own life to them, or resident spirits that are associated with them.
The former is known as animism. This is a belief that all things are alive and hold some sort of spirit or energy in their own way. For things like plants or animals, this is likely easier to understand, though with inanimate things like rocks or dirt or water, it makes sense that people would have a harder time connecting this idea (as things like wind or water are not necessarily alive; they're merely natural phenomenon. At least a tree or a plant is actually classified as a living thing that could reasonably have any such energy—so says those who don't necessarily subscribe to this idea).
For folks who don't grasp any innate sense of life from the inanimate of this world, this is where spirit work comes much more in handy. A rock may not have its own spirit, but there can be spirits that are adapted to the rock, much the way animals are. Certain spirits of a desert, for instance, will act and look and be differently talented than the spirits that inhabit a forest or a tundra. Spirits that are attached to waterways or bodies of water will behave differently than the spirits that come or are spawned when a fire is lit. There are many spirits across folklore that act as personifications of certain otherwise inanimate settings or natural phenomenon (like the Slavic spirits, the rusalki of the waters or the leshy of the forests, the domoviki of the houses and the banniki of the bathouses). These exist in each culture, and they are, in my humble opinion, creations of God like anything else. In fact, in a fiction book, no less, it was put forth to me this way (via Katherine Arden's Winternight Trilogy, in the third book, Winter of the Witch):
“Men are also wicked," Vasya returned passionately. "And good, and everything in between. Chyerti [the term for spirits in this series] are, just as men are, just as the earth herself is. Chyerti are sometimes wise and sometimes foolish, sometimes good and sometimes cruel. God rules the next world, but what of this one? Men may seek salvation in heaven and also make offerings to their hearth-spirits, to keep their house safe from evil. Did not God make chyerti, as He made everything else in heaven and earth?”
Perhaps this is why the folk devils Tarnawskawa speaks of in her book are often so irritated with Christianity: not because they hate God, or Jesus, but because they hate how small-minded men have presumed to tell them about their Source as if they didn't already know it, or as if that Source can only be perceived in one way, shape, or tongue.
Anyhow, what matters is this: when dealing with the larger world and witchcraft, the concept of individualism that has poisoned so many modern minds goes out the door. You must understand that you, like the creatures around you, exist in harmony (or should); unlike many modern sentiments that consider humanity to be separate from nature (or worse, a plague, an alien invader on it), the paradigm one must understand in magic is the opposite. We are not separate from nature, neither in being above it and therefore able to abuse it as we like, nor below it and not worthy of it. We are a part of the land, and a part of the ecosystem, including the ecosystem of our human communities, and this means that our will can either be supported or denied depending on the Will of the creatures, people, and spirits around us—including our own God or gods at times!
Relationship is an integral piece of connecting with both our own magic and the ecosystem around us. Reciprocity is a prized value for a reason, across both ancient and modern society. To build a relationship with the spirits, the land, your gods, anything, requires energy to be spent—but not just in the way of making an energy ball and imaginging yourself shooting it all Dragon Ball Z style at them. Rather, energy is put into your gifts to them:
Gifts of sustenance (ex: domoviki, Slavic house spirits, are known to appreciate fresh water and fresh bread in return for their services of protecting the house.)
Gifts of time (ex: beach clean-ups, tending a garden, community service to a relevant charity related to a certain Saint, etc.)
Gifts of expression (ex: many spirits love music and/or pretty, jingly things)
All of these require your energy to either create or perform, and therefore show your goodwill and camaraderie with the spirits you then might ask for help in boosting your own energy to accomplish your Will later on.
And for now, I think that's a good place to leave this lesson. Follow along (or join my newsletter!) for updates as this series progresses!
Sara Raztresen is a Slovene-American writer, screenwriter, and Christian witch. Her fantasy works draw heavily on the wisdom she gathers from her own personal and spiritual experience, and her spiritual practice borrows much of the whimsy and wonder that modern society has relegated to fairy-and-folktale. Her goal is to help people regain their spiritual footing and discover God through a new (yet old) lens of mysticism.
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