You would think after 50 plus years of Witchcraft and Spell-crafting, that I would be the best person to do work I need for myself, huh? Well strange as it may seem, actually no! But to understand this you have to understand what practicing Witchcraft is really about, and how spell-work actually works. Well both these subjects are way bigger to explain than I could do in an article such as this. This is why I teach both subjects over many classes which have students that follow these for years! But for the sake of getting to the relevant point, let me try and whittle this down to some basic bones of what is really going on.  

First I have to say, Witches are by definition free spirits who are working within a reality that speaks truth to them personally. Using the words and concepts that serve their empowerment within that defined reality. And there are many different paths of Witchery, all with their own varieties of what witchcraft is for them. And they are all correct! Simply said, a cosmology is a language of spiritual order, that serves as a basis for the order of reality that becomes active in a Witch’s life. How one experiences reality is directly related to the fundamental concepts and truths that spiritual order is built upon. The subjective experience of this spiritual order can only be felt, either perceived by the gift of Sight, or by the sense of truth and powerful feelings stirred through one’s faith. Fully committing to what one experiences as reality, and the powerful emotions that empower those feelings, is what makes these Spirits of cosmic order such powerful forces in our mundane life and world.

Witchcraft therefore for me, if I were looking for a commonality between all the divergent witchcraft practices and traditions, I would say Heresy is the common key. Understanding Heresy as the act of circumventing all authority from organized Religions to mediate Divine Spirit and all order of Spirit to its congregation, through its ordained Priesthood. Witches, as Free Sprits, have their own direct relationship with all spirits, Divine and mundane, circumventing the authority of mediation by any Temple or Church. This makes us Heretics and obviously a challenge and threat to all forms of organized religion. To walk a path without the guidance of a priesthood, without the guardrails of fixed liturgy that binds us, means we are liberated and free. And to engage in direct communion with the Divine, with the invisible world of spirit, which provokes an accelerated evolution of awareness and perspective, liberating our perception of the workings of creation. So I see Witchcraft as a way of life, a path of evolution, and a stance of heresy akin to the spirit of liberty depicted in our classic totem animals!

Spellcrafting is also a form of heresy, in that we don’t even accept the authority of Dame Fate! When Fate guides reality down a certain path and we don’t like it, we engage in spellcrafting and we push reality down a different path! Spellcrafting is an art we employ to take some aspect of reality that is going down one track and redirect it down another track. In a sense, this is like the direction shift that occurs at a crossroads, when we redirect a journey to a different chosen destination. My understanding of Dame Fate is that she is the Divine Spirit of Causality. She does not have an agenda about you, rather she is addressing how the disruption of order creates chaos and undermines the greater harmony of creation. So she is the principle of reordering creation back into a living fluid harmony of synergistic spirits.

So there are consequences to pushing the hand of Dame Fate, that as Witches we need to be mindful of. We can make things worse or our magic can have unforeseen consequences that impact our lives in really negative ways. So a degree of distance from the work actually serves the clear vision needed to do the work in a safe and effective way. And when you are invested personally, it’s hard sometimes to hold to the principles of Magic needed.  

Another reason it works better to have someone else do spellcraft for you, is that if you do it yourself, you can’t help but look to see how it’s doing. Do you need to make an adjustment? Was that the best way to achieve this? And all this insecurity births spirits that actually work to undermine the spell in motion. To change course at the crossroads, requires decisive action and commitment. When your emotions are engaged together with any degree of non-commitment, that can bring powerful forces into play that can seriously undermine the work.

I like to think about it this way: as Witches we are children of the Moon and we embrace change, evolution and as part of that, the paradigm shifts in awareness and reality that come upon our witches’ crooked path. When we engage in deliberately changing aspects of our reality, as related to our path, it’s like when we go through initiation that’s designed to bring a paradigm shift in our reality. As with Initiation, you can’t bring about a paradigm shift upon yourself if you are the one leading you to a different paradigm that you are supposed to be the recipient of. With Spellcrafting, if another witch does the work of shifting the paradigm, the track of Fate, into a different reality, then that leaves you to surrender to the process and commit to the new track of Fate as it presents.  

The key to making a spell work is the follow through. To commit to the new reality that is coming into being. The path of Witchcraft in a new evolved state that was redirected by will. Chosen by you but executed by another, in the role of the architect of Fate. Then you become entangled with the subject of the spell, instead of the architect of it. This is a cleaner and more potent approach.

To claim the power of the work, done by another, always pay for it! The passing of a coin is vital to the passing of the work to you after the work has been executed. Pay the witch their due; they are performing a service you value, right? And if it is a family member the work is done for, then still pay a silver coin, for the magical transference. 

So even after so many years as a practicing Witch, and a teacher of the Arts, when I need work done, I reach out to another to do it for me! And thank the Gods I have other witches in my life that can be there for me when I am in need as I am there for them when they are! Because even though we may be independent like cats, we are the big cats and like lions, we work best when we work as a pride!