Author: A Solitary Pagan
The Hermetic Principles
Witchcraft can be said to employ the Law of Attraction in a sense, though magic can be much more complex than simply focusing one’s thoughts on the desired outcome. It might be more accurate to say that Witches employ rituals, tools, words, and gifts from the natural world to enhance and expand their work with the Hermetic Principles, which are where the Law of Attraction comes from. The Hermetic ...
No Turning Back from Witchcraft
Once you have chosen to take upon yourself the obligations of the practice of Witchcraft, then the effects, or the immanence, of this way of life will be bestowed on you from aligned intelligence, and so will the tests that accompany them. Anyone who willingly opens themselves to powers beyond the veil of manifestation (as we understand it) opens themselves to the possibility of inner initiation. ...
Learning Witchcraft
Whether reading grimoires or studying under a teacher, it can be difficult to truly know how to discern true value from innocent babble or even outright deception. As such, when one is Seeking out there, it behooves us to maintain a standard of discernment to help us consider what we discover. The Measuring tape: Consider your source. Each author of every book, each teacher of any tradition,...
Types of Witchcraft
Witchcraft is the magical manipulation of energy to bring about change. The energy used by a witch may be environmental, from herbs, stones and other natural objects, or it may come from the witch herself or it may be channeled through the witch from a God or Goddess or from the Earth or Universe at large. Witches are best known for casting spells which tends to incorporate all of these methods in...
Witchcraft Awareness
Don’t miss anything. In all of your undertakings, have all your senses working at their fullest potency; this is necessary in your magical, ritual, and personal activities. Of primary significance is the activity of your sixth sense, which will have been triggered/awakened by the preceding exercises, and which will pick up the exchanges of energy in interactive circumstances. You will hear more in...
Understanding The Terms of Witchcraft
The Terms of witchcraft are meant to transport the practitioner into the heart of life itself, where words are ultimately limitations and qualifiers. More specifically, they can guide practitioners toward a direct mystical experience of deity, nature, and the individual spirit. Words are obliterated and become meaningless when the practitioner achieves this experiential state of understanding. Wit...
Cauls use in Witchcraft
The amniotic fetal membrane that sometimes clings to a newborn’s head or body after birth. Being born with a caul, or veil, has significance in folklore related to magical powers. A person born with a caul was believed to have psychic gifts such as the ability to see ghosts and spirits and to divine the future. In seafaring lore, such a person can never drown. In earlier times, cauls were brought ...
Exorcism
The expulsion of evil spirits by commanding them to depart. The expulsion is often done in the name of a deity, saints, angels or other intercessory figures. Exorcism comes from the Greek horkos, meaning “oath,” and translates as adjuro, or adjure, in Latin and English. To “exorcize,” then, does not really mean to cast out so much as it means “putting the Devil on oath,” or invoking a higher autho...
Lucius Apuleius
Lucius Apuleius is best known to us as the author of The Golden Ass, one of the most famous romances in the world, containing as it does the story of Cupid and Psyche. His importance to the study of witchcraft rests on the fact that The Golden Ass is a romance of witchcraft, and illustrates the beliefs which were held about witches in the pre-Christian world. This work of Apuleius proves that witc...
Blasting in Witchcraft
The ability of witches to interfere with or destroy the fertility of man, beast, and crop. This malicious destruction was considered a common activity among witches, and remedies and preventive actions circulated in folklore and magic. Blasting is the antithesis of rituals to enhance fertility, and accusations of it date to the second century c.e. Witches also were credited with the power to produ...
Mathew Hopkins
Hopkins, Matthew (?–1647?) England’s most notorious professional witch-hunter, who brought about the condemnations and executions of at least 230 allegedwitches, more than all other witch-hunters combined during the 160-year peak of the country’s witch hysteria. Hopkins was born in Wenham, Suffolk, the son of a minister. Little is known about him before 1645, when he took up his witch-hunting acti...
Fairy Witch of Clonmel (1894)
Fairy Witch of Clonmel (1894) A young woman named Bridget Cleary, of Clonmel, County Tipperary, who was tortured and burned to death because her husband believed the fairies had spirited her away and substituted in her place a witch changeling. Changelings are sickly fairy infants that fairies leave in the place of the human babies they are said to kidnap. However, many stories exist of fairies ki...