Author: A Solitary Pagan

Magick is a constantly flowing stream of energy. It is a  concentrated and channeled form of the life force that flows through all animate life forms, people , animals, birds, insects, and plants of all kinds. The life force is also present in rocks and crystals, in some cultures regarded as living energies, in rain sunshine, the moon, winds, storms, the rainfall, and rivers to the sea. We re...

True magick is not like a cake in which everybody must vie for a slice or be left with none: it is more akin to a never-emptying pot. Like the legendary Cauldron of Undry in Celtic myth, the more goodness that is put in, the more the mixture increases in richness and quantity. The Cauldron of Undry, one of the four main Celtic treasures, provided an endless supply of nourishment, had great healing...

Although there are many different kinds of magick, in practice all spells and more formal magical rituals tend to follow four stages, though informal spells may combine one or more steps. The Focus This defines the purpose of the ritual or spell and is generally represented either by a symbol or a declaration of intent. These could take the form of a candle etched with the name or zodiacal glyph o...

Magick is not like the magic a conjuror uses to bring a rabbit out of a hat: that kind of magic is just a trick, which relies merely on the art of illusion. White magick is much more than that. It is intensely exciting because it means that we can extend the boundaries of possibility, recalling the psychic powers of childhood when we could span dimensions as easily as jumping across a puddle. We c...

In magick, time and direction have an important place and it is necessary to understand that there may be differences according to which hemisphere of the globe you are working in. In the northern hemisphere, magical circles are cast clockwise, or ‘deosil’, which means ‘in the direction of the Sun’. In the southern hemisphere, however, practitioners casting their circles deosil should normally cas...

You can create magick in all kinds of ways and you can use it for an almost infinite variety of purposes. Your magick can be solitary or group-based, self-centered, or entirely altruistic. It can be personal and informal, or it may be framed in a rigid ceremony. But whatever kind of magick you wish to practice, you will need to create a special place to work in, a personal area at home for your pr...

The Green level of Witchcraft uses herbs in many different practices pertaining to the Craft. Herbs alone can be used for health, comfort, treatments of ailments, and divinations. They can be added to spells in charms, candle magic, oils, and incenses, and are used in bulk for sprinklings, aspersions, and magic packets. Infused herbal oils, they can be used for consecrations, anointings, blessings...

The hours of the day are also influenced by the planets. For example, if you were carrying out a love spell in which you wanted rapid results, perhaps for a special meeting, you could work on a Friday, Venus’s day, on both her hours – sunrise and the third hour after sunset. If you wanted courage in love, you would use a Mars hour on a Friday. If you needed to communicate your feelings, but found ...

Ritual magick is no different from any other activity that you may carry out in a systematic way. Yes, it is true, it is more formal than folk magick: you are using special tools and following a series of preordained steps based on traditional practice. But this does not mean that it has to be so complicated as to be beyond the capabilities of any normal person. You do not need special powers; and...

As well as preparing the physical area for magick, you also need to prepare your mental state. It is universally agreed that we have two hemispheres of the brain -the left, logical, and the right, intuitive, side – and that generally in the everyday world the left brain predominates. This may be no bad thing; after all, buying golden sunflowers and oils pressed from fragrant herbs may lift the spi...

The overall idea of types of magic, like Black magic, or White magic, largely stems from applying Ceremonial uses of magic practice to Witchcraft. The dark side of nature and the light side may naturally find balance in the world. The idea that black magic is evil and white as good, with grey being somewhere in between, stems from assumptive mainstream ideas about magic. Using dark power to harm a...