Articles — beginner

The decade is new and uncertain, the planet is melting, there are way more witchcraft books coming out every day than I can keep up with…dammit! Time to crouch down by a dusty bookshelf and get nostalgic for the books that shaped us when we were baby Witches. Google is great for looking up a moon phase or herbal recipe—but for the dedicated Witch, there’s nothing like the printed word to guide your studies. We’ve combed through our library for classic beginner’s books that have stood the test of time. Each one of these titles has passed the quarter-century mark...

Empathy: It may be the most common of all psychic experiences—so common that it often seems perfectly ordinary. Have you ever “caught” a bad mood from a coworker as if it were a cold? Have you ever been swept up in the excitement of a sporting event, yelling and cheering, even though you didn’t really care about the outcome? If so, then you’ve experienced the transfer of emotional energy known as empathy. Is empathy really a psychic ability? As social creatures, most humans have a high degree of empathy. In the language of psychology, empathy simply means we can recognize...

If you have a birthday, then you have a birth card in the Tarot. (Actually, you have three—but this article focuses on the birth cards in the Major Arcana.) Learning your birth card(s) can provide insights about your personality and life's path and enhance any readings you perform for yourself. The twelve birth cards (the zodiacal Trumps), are distributed throughout the Major Arcana (interspersed with the planetary and elemental Trumps). They appear in the same order as the zodiac signs, beginning with Aries. These correspondences were inherited from the 19th century Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. But zodiacal images...

Haste makes waste. Garbage in, garbage out. In witchcraft—as in life—taking too many shortcuts often leads to underwhelming results. However, fast magick doesn’t necessarily have to be sloppy magick. Few of us have time for hours-long rituals, but we can still find ways to fit ­­spiritual practice into our busy lives. Here are seven suggestions for shaving some minutes off your witchy routine: 1. Rely on one-card Tarot readings. I am a big advocate of the one-card Tarot reading. You, too, will be amazed at the concise eloquence of your deck when you ask it for an executive summary of...

Thinking about deepening your witchcraft studies by attending school? Welcome to the future—it’s pretty amazing here! One of the blessings of the information age is that it is easier than ever to connect with a teacher, especially in arcane subject matter that was once available only to a select few. Most witchcraft schools exist primarily in the online sphere, where rent is cheap and information can flow freely across distances. Online education has some disadvantages compared to face-to-face instruction. You will likely complete your studies by downloading lessons and interacting with your teacher(s) over email, video, and forums. (Hogwarts, it...