If you are looking into witchcraft it is likely you are from a Western Civilization. Because we were colonized and have created man made environments, we have lost our ability to connect to nature, our ancestors, and rituals that cultivate our magic. Western culture has been forged by capitalism, racism, the church (as a political power), and patriarchy. When we live in a society that is not made for us, it's hard to create magic that benefits us.
 

Some ways to decolonize is to:

• Do a guided meditation to meet your ancestors and spirit guides. 

• Learn your family's migration story.

• Learn how capitalism, racism, the church, and patriarchy harms your power. 

• Teach others so we can fight against it and reclaim our power as a collective.

• If you have religious trauma, to help heal that, and separate spirituality from the church as an oppressive political institution, I highly recommend the book "The Law of Light" by Lars Muhl. It views the bible through it's original spirit, and not what the church warped it to be for political power. Much of it aligns with pagan beliefs.  

Energy attracts like energy.  When we communicate with spirits, spirits want to communicate with us, when we manifest negative energy, we attract negative energy that can manifest more negative energy. Having good spiritual hygiene is critical if we don't want to attract spirits that we want to communicate with, or prevent attracting negative energy that can manifest around us. 

In order to manage this you will want to learn how to:

• Cleanse your space and self.  Both physically and psychically. 

• Set up protections, both physical and psychic. 

• Set up wards to alert you when energy you don't want is around.

• Do shadow work.

• Learn to properly Ground.

• Drink water, touch the ground and get some sun everyday.

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Learning a form of divination lets us gain insight on whats going on with spiritual energy. In witchcraft, its vital because it lets us peak into the future to make a game plan on how best to proceed. It also helps us check in on a spell to see how its working out. Different cultures do this differently, learning a method from your ancestry usually works the best. There are modern accessible ways to do it as well, such as:

• Tarot

• Pendulum

• Coin Tossing

• Shufflemancy

• Numerology

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When we create a sacred space, we call this an altar. It is a dedicated space that concentrates energy. They are typically used as a space to do witchcraft or store your workings. You can also dedicate it to a specific spirit to gift offerings, venerate, and communicate to them. 

Many traditions, religions, and cultures do this differently but they all have a common format. I can teach that here:

Plan: Decide on what kind of spell you want to do. Gather ingredients. 

Cleanse: Clean your space physically and psychically to ensure no other energies will affect it. If you are new it helps to already be in the state of mind of your intention.
Open: Invite the spirits that will help you. By putting out objects that represent them or that they like. As well as give offerings.

Do the Spell: Combine your ingredients that correspond with your intentions for the spell during a time that aligns with your intentions.

Align the energy: While the spell is going, visualize what you want the spell to do in your mind's eye. You can also say how you want the spell to be carried out, out loud, or use tools to act out your intentions.

Close: End the spell by thanking the spirits for working with you, and clean up your mess. If its physical you can put it on your altar, if its an consumable eat, drink or use at your leisure.

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The strongest energy that we can access is celestial. Doing our spells during the timing of celestial bodies makes our spells more predictable. For beginners, focusing on moon phases is all you need. Some prefer to do rituals and spells around the seasons, and some like to do it based on astrology. It's up to you how much you want to learn here and how nuanced you want it to get. As always learning how your ancestors did it, works best. Personally, I use Western Astrology and you can find a calendar on my site that helps with astrological timing for spells. 

Getting to know the spirits that have your back greatly increases spell reliability. I typically recommend working with spirits that want to work with you. These are your ancestors, and spirit guides, or ancestral deities.

You don't have to work with sentient spirits if you are new and that freaks you out. You can just as easily use the collective energy of the universe. In traditional witchcraft we do this with the alchemical elements like earth, fire, wind, water, and spirit.

Discernment is the most important thing you need to learn in your practice. Because we are working with energy we can't physically see, but that we see physical evidence of, it's easy to get in our own heads and lose touch with reality. Grounding helps with this, but sadly, spiritual psychosis is a very real problem in witch communities and this often happens when people focus too much on the psychic side of witchcraft. They forget about animism believe everything is some unseen puppeteer pulling all the strings or get paranoid about being cursed when negative energy isn't properly managed or are simply having a bad day.  Usually the obvious, grounded real world answer is the correct one. Physical space and spiritual space are symbiotic, magic is the force that communicates between the two, you need both for successful witchcraft.

With divination, this isn't required. But learning how to use your psychic abilities to gain insight or communicate with spirit lets you see in real time how your spells are doing and you can learn things from the spirits you work with to gain advantages. Understanding how your psychic skills work, or don't work also greatly aids in discernment.

Knowledge is power. Misinformation is rampant about witchcraft. And pop culture sets unrealistic expectations with how it works. Magic always takes the path of least resistance, and adheres to the laws of physics when being carried out. When researching, be sure to find primary sources, speak to elders, and people who can share their practice and speak critically about it. Read, Listen, Learn, keep what resonates and let go of what doesn't. 

The first step out of the spiritual kiddie pool is to stop being afraid of spirits and energy.

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Remember, most of civilization is written by the victors of war. Books written by anyone that wasn't part of the church were burned, the authors killed. Women were prohibited from learning to read or write. So much knowledge about spiritual energy has been hidden, villainized or suppressed so that a small few can maintain the power of the collective.

Release your fear, and take your power back.