We are a circle, within a circle, with no beginning, and never ending…
Ahead of you lies a spiritual adventure beyond anything you first imagined. Wherever you choose to go next, whatever challenge confronts you, whatever Mystery beckons, you have everything you need for your journey.
You have the power to re-enchant your life, and the world.
Personal practice is one of the keys to awakening the magic within you and in the world that embraces you. It’s as simple as a daily act that connects you to the Sacred – a practice or action that opens your heart, keeps you present in your body and in the positive feelings of the moment; something that helps you pay attention and experience your connection to the natural world, its divinity and its blessings.
You can perform a daily meditation at your altar, water the plants growing on your windowsill or feed the birds in your yard. You can act in accord with the spell you’ve cast, reread yesterday’s journal entry, or take your dog for a walk and pay attention to what she pays attention to.
It doesn’t have to take long – just a few minutes is enough to experience the rush of energy, the mindfulness and gratitude that awaken magic. It’s how I start my day, and it’s a wonderful way to end the day. Whatever you choose, daily, personal ritual is magical.
Wonderful as living with this awakened magical sensibility is, it can also be challenging. Divine magic disrupts, disorients and disconnects you from the things that stand between you and your sacred self. Past patterns get challenged, self-doubt rises to the surface, the dreams we once held dear are no longer meaningful. And sometimes, the new dreams that we put our heart and soul into, for which we craft the most compelling spells, fail to manifest. Sometimes the magic just doesn’t seem to work and the Sacred seems to have forgotten us. What then?
You’re never alone. You may forget, or doubt, or find yourself in a winter cycle of silence and stillness, but there’s one practice in particular that will always connect you to the Divine – divination.
Divination is not just a way of predicting the
future. Its real purpose is found within the word
itself: divination is a way for you to engage in a
dialogue with divinity, to receive the guidance,
insights and inspiration that you need in daily
life and on your soul’s great adventure.
Divination is a prayer that’s always answered. It’s an act of communion, an experience of love and wisdom the Divine offers you. Reliably, your inner magic awakens when you realize the Divine is aware of you and present when you need help.
There’s another gift that divination offers you: a mirror to see deeply within, to know yourself – your strengths as well as shadows. Any method of divination is an oracle, which actually means the mouth or voice of divinity. It’s the Divine guiding you to find the gold within the darkness.
Divination reveals your soul’s true purpose. It helps you understand the deep meanings within the events of your life – good and bad – and so helps you transform loss, longing or difficulties into wisdom, empowerment and fulfillment.
Divination actually teaches you that the future is not predestined. When you try to see into the future, divination shows the probability of where you’ll end up, based on how you are feeling, believing and behaving now. It shows possibilities, not inevitabilities.
With the divine guidance an oracle provides, we can understand ourselves, our learned patterns and unconscious impulses, the meaning of a current situation, relationship or dilemma. The insights divination provides can help us to change how we feel, think and behave, and so change our future. If there is indeed a destiny, it’s the one that divination liberates you to fulfill.
On the path into realms of magic where wonder dwells and where you’ll also be tested, divination is a sacred GPS. It helps you know where you’re headed and how to get there. And, working with divination, you’re also cultivating your intuition and your confidence. Best of all, every time you use divination, you’re being guided by the Sacred: you are never alone.
There are countless methods that enable you to send and receive a message, almost all of which rely on a symbol system rooted in Nature – whether it’s astrology, Tarot or oracle cards, runes, the I Ching, or directly reading signs in Nature. In fact, the Divine will use whatever is at hand to communicate with you, whether it’s a synchronicity, a cledon (the ancient Greek term for a spontaneous sacred message), a dream or many other methods. You just have to pay attention.
Finding your first divination tool isn’t complicated – just allow your intuition to guide you to whatever feels most appealing. Buy, find or create it, purify it, cultivate your relationship with it, sleep with it beneath your pillow for one lunar cycle and then consecrate it as you would any magical tool. And begin working with it. Address it with respect and gratitude. It is an oracle, the voice of the Sacred.
One of the simplest and most useful daily practices is to begin or end the day with a simple question and a simple divination. It will help you to understand the purpose and the wisdom within any situation. And it enables you to use the insight it gives you to transform any challenge into empowerment. Daily divination will also cultivate your intuition, your self-knowledge and confidence, and along the way you’ll master a language and system of divination and cultivate your relationship with the Divine. It’s a wonderful practice.
Every morning, take a moment to breathe, ground and clear your heart and mind. Then hold your divination tool to your heart and ask one simple question, like: ‘What do I need to know to have the best day possible?’
The Divine also guides you with synchronicities and epiphanies that reveal the Sacred Mysteries of your life. Divination helps you to recognize and understand their meaning and the heroic journey that is uniquely yours.
An easy, simple, personal act repeated regularly becomes a ritual and can be your daily practice. You can also cast circle and make magic in weekly, monthly or seasonal rites where you awaken and honor the divine magic within you and that surrounds you.
In addition to the rites that celebrate the cycles of seasons, Sun, Earth and Moon, life is full of crossroads and events that deserve and require rituals. They are the passages that profoundly change who you are and who you’ll become. Some are undertaken voluntarily, others come by force of time or unexpected tragedy, triumph or destiny. We grow up, friendships and love affairs begin and end, we get married and divorced, end pregnancies and give birth to children or dreams, achieve a great goal, break a bad habit, change careers, come out of the closet or go live in the woods. Loved ones die, we age and accidents or illness change our course and deepen the meaning of our lives.
Life provides endless opportunities to discover and fulfill the magic of who you are, and who you’re meant to be, and ritual is part of the process of discovering, becoming and celebrating. This book provides you with all the skills and information, and I hope encouragement, to create rituals to honor all the magical moments and turning points in your life, whether difficult or blissful.
And remember, rituals and magic are not just for the momentous. They are also for the simple matters of daily life, whether it’s setting your intention as the day begins or releasing stress as the day ends, finding solace or inspiration to make a difficult decision or getting the energy to accomplish your goals. Personal rituals are precious time for self-care, reflection and raising energy that you need and deserve. Whatever the occasion, great or small, creating personal rituals will fill your life with magic.
Wiccan rituals can also be group celebrations: creating beautiful, meaningful and helpful rites of passage is something you can do for others. It’s a gift we can give to honor, support and assist the ones we love, to deepen friendships and create caring communities grounded in the sacredness of our shared life. Rituals have the power to transform lives and to transform the world.
Two examples in which I’ve often participated were once disempowering taboos – a girl’s first menstruation and a woman’s passage through menopause – both now increasingly honored by women alone and in circles with rituals of empowerment and sisterhood. And young men and old, transgender and gender non-specific, are increasingly creating rituals of personal meaning as well.
Reflect on an event in your life that should be ritualized. What’s the purpose of your ritual, the meaning of the event you’re going to honor, the meaning of the event in your life?
A Book of Shadows is a written collection of Wiccan invocations, blessings, rituals, expressions of gratitude and wisdom. You can also create a grimoire, a companion book of spells, recipes, formulas, symbolic alphabets, magical lore and workings and more wisdom.
Keeping a Book of Shadows is a modern practice. Early Wicca was an Indigenous shamanic wisdom tradition and so it was mostly an oral tradition. And later, even if you could read, you certainly wouldn’t keep evidence of your religion in the midst of deadly persecutions.
But in the mid-20th century, Gerald Gardner, the father of modern Wicca, began keeping a book of wisdom that he called a Book of Shadows. He and High Priestess Doreen Valiente created and preserved a coherent system of sacred rites that was passed on to initiates in the Gardnerian tradition’s Book of Shadows. The initiate was supposed to hand-copy the original, which never left the possession of the Priestess.
Today you don’t need to be initiated in a tradition to create your own Book of Shadows. It’s an ongoing spiritual creation, preserving the invocations and rituals, spells and practices that you’ve found meaningful, evocative and effective. Your Book of Shadows is also meant to be filled with beauty: whether you’re an artist or not, adding images, pressed flowers, even doodles and other ornamentation is not just OK, it’s gorgeous.
While a Book of Shadows has a traditional structure and content, you may also want to include important dreams, readings and results of divinations, chants and songs, poetry and inspiring prose, wisdom received from your guides and power animals, from Drawing Down or journeying and other sources. You may also wish to preserve these in journals, diaries or a grimoire.
When I began, I kept my journals in spiral-bound notebooks and used beautiful blank books covered in tooled leather or printed silk for my Books of Shadow. Yes, books plural because if you continue to practice Wicca, you’ll collect an extraordinary amount of wisdom and beauty.
This book has provided you with basic texts that you can read and memorize and, if you wish, copy into your own Book of Shadows. Over time, you’ll expand your repertoire, drawing on other sources including, most importantly, your own creativity. And things will come to you spontaneously, especially in Nature. Whenever possible, as soon as you’re done, write down what you did and said and experienced so you don’t forget it. Your Book of Shadows is one of your most beautiful power objects, so keep it some place safe and treat it with the love and respect it, and you, deserve.
Enjoy!
You may also want to keep a grimoire. This is the fun and crafty aspect of the Craft of the Wise that we explored in Chapter 11. It’s also the divinely embodied artistry of Wicca. A grimoire includes everything that engages all of your senses, alters your consciousness and helps you shape and direct your energies – transforming the mundane into the magical. A great deal of this information is provided within the pages of this book, and of course, you’ll find other resources elsewhere – just be sure to check the expertise of the source.
It’s all the elements of Green Magic – working with herbs, oils, potions, recipes and formulas. It’s Creative Magic – working with chants, dances, poetry, movement, language and more. It’s Traditional Magic – working with symbolism, tools, talismans, amulets, sigils and more.
It’s time to look back to the beginning of your quest: Open your magical journal and read the first pages in which you described what you were seeking. Read your reflections, impressions and descriptions of your experiences. Consider how much you’ve changed and achieved, all you’ve learned about Wicca, about magic and about yourself.
Perhaps one of the most important rituals you can create is one that marks your spiritual commitment to yourself, to Mother Earth, to the Divine. It’s a rite that looks back to honor how far you’ve come and how much you’ve changed. It’s a rite that looks forward as you make a commitment to yourself and to the path that lies ahead.
It’s a ritual of rejoicing and honoring who you are, in this moment, in this place, in your life, your body, your spirit. It’s a rite that honors and awakens the divine magic within you. And if you wish, it’s a rite in which you commit yourself to continuing to practice Wicca. We call it a ritual of self-dedication and below is a simple script you can use with additions only you can write. Feel free to adapt it as you wish.
Take your time to read and reflect on the rite below and/or to write your own rite; when you feel you have your final draft, write it in your Book of Shadows.
‘I am ready to dedicate myself to my true and sacred self and to this path that lies ahead. I come to my future with perfect love and perfect trust.’
‘Great Mother Goddess, by flower and by fruit I invoke you. Great Father God, by hoof and by horn I invoke you. Beneath the Moon and the Sun, standing upon Mother Earth, surrounded by the blessings of the Green Man, and all the children of Creation, I welcome you to this sacred space, to the temple of my heart. Embrace me and transform me. Bless me and fill me with your presence. Accept my offering as I dedicate myself to a path of beauty, wisdom and love.’
I open my eyes, my heart and my soul to the Mystery of the Sacred, everywhere present in the world and in my life. I will draw my power from the Divine and awaken to the magic of Creation, and I will always give thanks for its blessings.’
‘With the Waters of life, I bless and dedicate myself.’
‘With the Fires of life, I bless and dedicate myself.’
‘I am awake to the divine magic within me.’
The world that you re-enter will be an enchanted one, for you have awakened to the magic within you and all around you.
Even though we’ve not (yet) met in person, I created this book aware of your presence, as if you were standing over my shoulder reading as I wrote, working next to me as I refined each practice, sharing the experiences as if we were sitting in circle together. Because, really, we are in circle together.
Like seeing a new star in the night sky, I’ve felt the magic within you awaken. And now you know that the first thing magic changes is you. You’re becoming wise and life will become increasingly enchanted. It’s like seeing the world in color after a lifetime of black and white, like hearing someone you love say ‘I love you,’ after being deaf. You’ve awakened the most important sense of all – your sense of the Sacred. And that’s where all the magic comes from.
It’s a good way to live. It can also be difficult because your heart is now wide open in a world that denies the divinity of life on Earth. But if you’ve learned anything from this little book it’s that you are never alone – the Divine is always with you. If you forget, if the world seems darkly overwhelming or the magic seems to have disappeared, use any practice from within these pages and reconnect.
And remember, there is a reason you were born in this place at this time of challenges to the future of life on Earth.
I hope our journey together has been all and more than you expected, that I have been a helpful guide, and that this book will continue to awaken and nourish your divine magic. May all your spells be charged with love and all your magic be divine. It’s hard to say goodbye and so instead I’ll simply say:
‘Thou art God/dess.
Our circle is open, but never broken.
Merry meet and merry part and merry meet again.’