For many people, the words psychic and witch are seen as words reserved for fiction. The words may conjure up ideas from movies and television such as American Horror Story, Salem, The Craft, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, or perhaps the witches of Hocus Pocus, or maybe even fraudulent scam artists pretending to be psychic. Though it is not my intention to prove that both psychic ability and magickal ability are real on blind faith alone, let me assure you that they are. My goal is not for you to just take my word for it, but to have you prove this to yourself through direct experience by the time you come to the end of this book.
Psychic and Magickal Power Is Our Birthright
In both psychic and magickal circles, there’s quite a bit of gatekeeping. This is unfortunate. Gatekeeping is best defined as an attempt to control and limit who can be a part of a certain group or activity. There’s a strong notion that you can only be born with magickal or psychic aptitude. While you definitely can be born with a predisposition to these realms, just as one might be born with a predisposition to art or athletics, it is definitely not the only way to attain them. In fact, it often becomes a form of lazy elitism to make such statements. Just as with art or sports, continual training, dedication, and practice are necessary for development and maintenance.
I once had a client in a psychic reading who kept referring to my “gift,” saying that I was the one with a gift that they claimed they did not have. I kept reassuring them that it’s not necessarily a gift, but an ability that must be developed and continuously worked at to help maintain and strengthen it. This client didn’t seem to believe me at first but I reassured her that it was absolutely true. I invited her to one of my psychic development workshops in which I taught psychic techniques, many of which I am sharing in this book. I had her prove to herself that anyone, even she, could be psychic. This excited her greatly and put her on a quest to learn more and more, and to keep working at it. She is now a professional psychic reader a few years later.
Some folks will say that these are things that must be passed down genetically in the family or that only certain groups, cultures, ethnicities, or genders can possess these abilities. This is absolutely incorrect. Not only do we see magick and psychic ability universally throughout history in both genders, but as humans, we all share a common ancestry—one that if you trace it far back enough is pagan and magickal. So let me make this crystal clear: anyone can perform magick and everyone is psychic. Magick and psychic ability aren’t supernatural but rather completely natural and absolutely possible for every single human being to engage in. We were born to embrace our full potential, to use all of our abilities, and to experience and interact with the world around us to the fullest degree possible.
Combining Psychic Power and Witchcraft
Both psychic and witch are heavily charged words, so much so that many people
who are psychics or witches try to dodge the words altogether. They may find other words to be more comfortable and accepted by outsiders—words such as intuitive, empath, Pagan, or energy worker. However, one of the problems that I often find is that through the toning down of these labels and attempts to make them more palatable to the general public, there’s often a lessening of the full potential of psychic and magickal ability as well. The succinctness of thoughts, emotions, and words only enhances the psychic and the magickal—and the words psychic and witch are two very succinct words that evoke very strong thoughts and emotions. To me, these words conjure up a level of adeptness and power within their respective realms. Lowering the bar of these practices serves no one.
Magick ability and psychic perception may seem like two completely different things at first. Just as the Roman god Janus is depicted with two faces on a singular being, the psychic and magickal are two sides of one coin. At the core, they’re aspects of how we are engaging and interacting with subtle energies. Psychic ability is also commonly referred to as extrasensory perception, wherein one is able to perceive energy as information through various means.
Folk etymologies have their place in our collective psyche and are often used among magickal teachers. The word witch is often connected to the word Wicca, which is popularly passed on by elders of the Craft as meaning “to bend,” “shape,” or “wield.” While there’s not really a lot of strong evidence of this being a historical etymological definition, it’s an effective idea that gets to the heart of what witchcraft is when you strip all the different trappings and traditions away. In other words, the Craft of witchery revolves around “the ability to manipulate energy and shape it for desired outcomes.”
Many witches rush through their basics and their daily practice. Perhaps this is because they’re entirely focused on completing tasks for a level of training that they’re going through and moving on to the next stage. Maybe it’s because they are not taking personal accountability for their practice and growth and are relying instead on the validation of their teacher to tell them that they’ve mastered a particular stage. Perhaps they’ve become bored with the work that they’re doing. Maybe they assume that something more complex means that it’s more powerful and they therefore are seeking the powerful.
Just because something is basic or simple does not mean that it isn’t immensely powerful. Magick changes everyone that it touches and everyone who touches magick changes. It’s important to understand that all initiations are beginnings and not endings. I have found continual unfolding of attunement and depth in the basic practices that many others may set aside as being part of their past practice as beginners.
There are times when magickal practitioners can lose their love for magick despite engaging in complex rituals and magickal practices. I’ve had many witches tell me that their magick was no longer working and that they were getting bored with the Craft. This may lead them down other avenues of exploration in regard to spirituality, but in my experience is usually a call to revisit the basics. It is within the basics that we can find new depth. I have seen dedicated and earnest seekers begin to radiate energetically just from grounding and centering themselves.
Whatever you touch will touch you back. The simplest way that I can try to explain it is that when you spend time touching the core of the earth, soaking in the stars, communing with the moon, aligning with the elements, working with the gods and spirits—it changes a person. It’s as if their wavelength begins synchronizing to different wavelengths and the person’s energy hums like a symphony. Sometimes we feel this through psychic means, but often we experience it as just an intensely strong comfort with the individual, a sense of familiarity and kinship, and a high level of respect, even if we don’t recognize exactly why. There’s just this knowing in regard to the nature of their heart and spirit. I believe this is because we’re feeling the energies within them that we spend so much time with ourselves, so there’s this recognition. You can feel the energies that they’ve spent time with because you’ve spent time with those energies as well. There’s just this je ne sais quoi about them.
Witchcraft is often considered a crooked path that weaves serpentine between the right-hand and left-hand paths. I am not convinced that this path has a destination, but rather that the path itself is about the journey. I suspect that this serpentine path is ouroboric, having no true beginning or end.
I’m Here to Help
As a practicing witch who is very active in both my local community and the greater online community—and through my experience as a professional psychic interacting with other psychics—I have noticed something. There are a lot of witches that are not that great when it comes to psychic abilities; there are also a lot of talented psychics who are absolutely blocked when it comes to magick and manifestation. I have met so many witches who are completely unsure if the spirits and gods that they’re working with are even there, or are unsure if they’ve cast a circle or raised energy other than the simple fact that they followed directions. It’s like they’re working completely blind. I have also met psychics who can give other people fantastic life advice and clarity but struggle to pay their rent, remove obstacles, and manifest opportunities.
This is by no means a judgment; rather, it’s something that I understand from my own experience as well. There were many early years when I would try casting spells, and they just wouldn’t work. I would follow the instructions, have the right ingredients, and recite all the words—yet it would still fall short of manifesting any sort of concrete outcome. Magick isn’t about empty rituals, words, or objects. The key to magick is the manipulation of energy, and energy is best worked with when it can be perceived.
Through the years of my deep immersion within both the psychic and magickal worlds, I began seeing how these two abilities not only work together but also how greatly they complement and strengthen one another. You can use magick to enhance your psychic ability, and you can use psychic ability to enhance your magick. I have sought out some of the most prominent and well-respected teachers of magick and psychic ability to study with through the years, and this has only strengthened my conclusion that they’re not merely intertwined—they are two halves of one whole.
Through the experience of my own practice, and through years of actively teaching others both psychic and magickal development, I have been able to boil down the foundations of awakening to your psychic senses and wielding energy. I have left room for experimentation and adaptability. There are absolutely no one-size-fits-all methods for perceiving and working with energy. Individuals are individuals, and we’re all wired differently—thus, different things work for different folks. I have kept this in mind throughout the book and will help you to explore your own relationship to these methods. I have also stripped away techniques and trappings that are specific to certain traditions of witchcraft as much as possible. What is left are core ideas and components that are similar throughout the various traditions I have trained in, and among teachers of other traditions that I’ve read and spoken with, such as the Three Souls and the Three World models.
Through my own experimentation, I have found that there are ways around certain culturally specific practices without appropriating them as our own, simply by using a cosmological system that is a bit more universal in nature. While the Divine is touched upon, I have left room for you to modify this based on your own spiritual beliefs and have also provided some angles to work through this for those who are more atheistic in their approach to witchcraft or psychic ability. I have approached the subject of the Divine through the vague term of Spirit, which is open to personal interpretation such as the Divine Mind, the Universe, Source, God, Goddess, or the Star Goddess—even if your interpretation is that it’s a psychological tool to access something deeper within you.
You may also notice that there are few to no tools or materials necessary for the work in this book aside from your mind, body, and spirit; it lacks the pomp and circumstance of what is viewed as a traditional spell. That is intentional; I want the reader to understand and master the energies that they’re working with before they venture into proper spellwork. Mastering the perception and manipulation of energy is crucial before you move forward to effective spellcasting. However, you will be amazed at what you can do with only your mind, body, and spirit.
My aim is not to assist you in becoming merely a powerful psychic or a powerful witch, but to make you a powerful psychic witch. To me, a psychic witch is one who not only perceives information with all of their inner and outer senses in all of the realms of reality but one who is also able to directly experience, interact with, and manipulate them for their own advantage. Throughout this book, I will be sharing some of my most closely guarded tips, secrets, practices, and meditations. While it may be tempting to skip around to sections that seem interesting to you, I strongly advise viewing this as a course in which all elements build upon one another. You’ll also be given exercises along with a model of the soul, a model of different planes of existence, and concepts related to divinity. Regardless of what your personal beliefs are surrounding these topics, I encourage you to approach this book as if the concepts are true, as they’re serving a purpose and building toward something else.
I encourage you to learn the rules, cosmology, and praxis as laid out here before modifying them to reflect your own tradition or spiritual path. Due to the spiritual and metaphysical nature of these topics, it’s hard to say with any certainty that this is the way that things are. But I can say with certainty that following the concepts as if they are true will yield great results. At the least, view it as a giant thought experiment of holding it to be true for the purposes of this book. Learn the rules first and break them when you’ve thoroughly experienced and understood them as I’m teaching them.
I believe that different people get different things out of witchcraft and spirituality. But for those with a focus on mastering magick, witchcraft takes work. It takes dedication. It takes perseverance. For some, these statements will stir up insecurities of inadequacy, and that isn’t my intention. My intention here is to hopefully inspire and motivate you in your practice.
Though I teach and share, I see myself as a seeker and a student first and foremost. I sincerely believe that an earnest beginner witch lighting a candle for the first time and making a simple wish with a focused will can be infinitely more powerful than a seasoned witch who is performing a complicated rite from an archaic book of magick for the same goal, if that seasoned witch is just going through the motions without sincerity. It all depends on the level of work that they’ve put into their path and practice and how much of their heart is in it.
From where I am in my path it appears to me that mastery is not so much about reaching a specific end goal, but instead about seeing how deep you can take practice and striving to better your experience with it. Meditation, for example, is one of the most straightforward techniques out there—but it is also one of the most profound and transformative. The simple act of closing your eyes, focusing on nothing but your breath, can seem basic and easily tempting to rush through. But how many people do you know who cannot meditate, who cannot clear their minds or focus on solely one thing with every sense engaged with it?
You can’t build a magnificent structure on a weak foundation and expect it to stand the test of time. Regardless of where you are on your path, ensure that part of your daily spiritual and magickal routine involves deepening into the basics. How much deeper can a simple practice element of magick go? I encourage you not to lose sight of the foundations. We practice witchcraft—perhaps because it is something that can never truly be mastered, but rather something that we deepen and strive to perfect just a little better every time we engage in it.
This book is written for everyone regardless of experience level and is meant to be an entry point for some. While some of the fundamental practices and concepts may seem basic to more seasoned practitioners, I encourage you to revisit them with me. Being adept in these fields isn’t about how complex you build upon the foundation, but how much richness you can gain in your practices by diving into the core elements. You may discover a new level of depth by returning to them. It is my hope that this book will present these practices and ideas in a new light that both the novice seeker and the most seasoned practitioner can sink their teeth into.