Once we know the basics of working with the elements and what a ritual is, we're ready to build a manageable daily practice that will keep us in our power as witches all day long. However, the truth is, no matter how devout you become you won't feel like a witch 24/7, and that's not an expectation you should put on yourself. Our society really tries to drive home being productive at all times, and even when we're defecting to take on something like witchcraft that internalized idea of always feeling on follows us. That doesn't mean you won't be a witch 24/7 though, and that's an important thing to remember. It's just as witchy to rest, even if it doesn't feel like it. It's just as magickal to laugh with friends about sitcoms for a few hours as it is to keep a grimoire, even though you may not feel like you're creating magick.
As we're building a regular practice for our craft, the first step should be to add some cornerstones into our practice that will help us learn our witchcraft style and grow as witches. Regular practice is not the same as big rituals where we call the corners and call in gods. Instead it's tending to our magickal spaces and taking care of our magickal selves. This is an absolutely crucial part of our work because this is often where the big breakthroughs happen. A lot of what I hear from those newly taking a witchier path is that they don't even know where to start because working with the elements and tools at hand can feel so overwhelming. To those people, I encourage the use of grimoires, journals, and meditation to help take care of their spiritual selves, and slowly building altars to take care of the external pieces of their magick. Proper self-care is also important for your craft and is especially important for queer people, disabled people, trauma survivors, and people of color trying to survive the systems that drove us to the margins in the first place. Pleasure is resistance. Self-care is resistance. Period. It feels like it's not important, but what you're doing when you're taking care of yourself is telling those that do not love or support you that you are fine without them. You are telling our society that you are worth taking care of even if they don't see it. This is rebellion. On top of that, it's straight up necessary no matter how busy you might think you are. You cannot give from an empty cup. Superheroes aren't real, and if they are, it's dubious that you are one. Learn to relax, and learn to allow yourself joy. Call it magick. Call it a political act. Call it whatever you need to. Just please, do it.
Magickal best practices are the specifics of how we can keep up a spiritual practice in the worst, best, and busiest times. These are all tangible steps you can take and practical things you can do in your own time, to take care of and grow into your witchy self. As your craft gets more ambitious and bigger, these grounding principles will help you keep track of what's working and what's not. The best practices I recommend are building and maintaining our altars, using a combination of journals and either a grimoire or Book of Shadows, meditation, and proper self-care.
As witches, focal points of our practice should be sacred spaces carved out in our home that we dedicate to magickal purpose. I am talking about altars, of course. Altars can be to specific gods or deities. They can be for specific purposes, like community building or making a smooth gender transition. They can be for our ancestors, or for those we love that have passed on. It's also common to have a general altar to witchcraft itself. Each altar will look different depending on how you want to focus it. Altars are an important way to send ourselves, as queer people, strong reminders of what our goals are whether that goal is hexing the patriarchy or casting glamours until your self-esteem builds back up. It's easy to get distracted or carried away by the whirlwind of just trying to get by in the systems we have to work within. Having a sacred, beautiful space in your home reminds you that skating by is not all you are doing.
Altars can be tables, windowsills, tops of dressers or bookshelves, or shelves hanging up on the wall. It just needs to be dedicated space that is big enough to support the things you want to decorate it with. Common altar accoutrement includes candles, charms, incense holders and incense, flowers, bowls of herbs, Moon water, and artwork—but this list is not comprehensive. These are just the first altar decorations I could think of. Anything that aligns with your goal, your god, or whatever else your altar is for, can go on your altar. Most people recommend having separate altars for separate purposes, but I suggest starting with one basic witchcraft altar until you have a handle on maintaining it. This altar should contain tools of all five elements, and any symbols of your goals as a witch. It can include starter altar items for gods, ancestors, or specific workings you're ramping up to.
Queering our altars can start with aesthetics alone. What screams, “I'm here, I'm queer, and I'm doing freaking magick!” to you? Add all of that to your altar. Add subtle rainbows or go all in on the glitter. Make it the punkest, most DIY looking altar that ever existed, full of patches and ornaments made out of bike tires. Use poppers in place of rum to serve your deities. Put an Indigo Girls poster up. Get creative, and get queer—but do make sure it circles back to the reasons for your altar in the first place.
To further queer your altar, think beyond your basic magickal goals and the focus of your spirituality. What unique barriers do you face to those goals as a queer person? If I set up a money altar, I put something that represents the fact that I am competing with straight white men for clients, who are often taken more seriously than me with my nasal voice and blue hair. While I don't love living in a state of hyper competitiveness, the reality is that's what my tarot practice faces. So, if I'm including a querent caller in my money work, I need to face that reality. If I'm looking to work with a politician to change legislation to be more queer-friendly, I'm facing even bigger obstacles. I would almost have to have a patch that says Hex the Patriarchy sitting front and center. I might also print out and roll up what my legislation's ideal wording is and stick it in a bowl with some herbs for luck and dab it with oil that helps us within the justice system. If we're looking to honor a god associated with queerness, we're probably in the minority of people that look at that aspect of that god. They'll greatly appreciate any identity-affirming tokens you can toss on to the altar.
I include altars in this section on regular practice because it provides a visual that will reinforce your intentions. Altars should be cleaned and tended to with regularity, and those are often the first steps to regular practice. Candles that have fizzled out should get thrown away. Stones that have cracked should be removed. Any incense dust should be swept away. Your altar doesn't have to look clean and Instagram friendly (I would be the worst witch ever if that was the case), but it should show respect to your intentions, which shows respect for yourself. The practice of maintaining your altar also physically connects you to the altar, creating an opportunity for you to work one on one with your gods and goals.
For queer people dealing with housing instability, or, alternatively who are so successful that they're traveling to present their queer art to new places or fighting with Washington bureaucrats even though they live in Montana (there are queer people in Montana, I promise) you need a travel altar. This can go in a cigarette case, an Altoids tin or a bigger box, if you're able to acquire one. It would be mostly tokens, charms, very small candles like tealights or miniature tapers, and mini-vials of oils or herbs. The same principles we've been talking about apply. Once you're in your temporary spot for the night, pull it out and set it up. If you aren't in a place where that's safe or practical, keeping it on you until you need it works just as well. That physical closeness with your magickal implements does the same good that having an altar in a home does, keeping you connected to your magick and your intentions (as well as your ability to do that magick).
I know not everyone fancies themselves a writer or a journaler, but I cannot stress enough the importance of writing down and tracking your spellwork some way or another. The clearest example of that is using a grimoire, a Book of Shadows, a journaling practice, or any combination thereof. We've already talked about the power of our words, written or verbalized, and a way to make them gain power is to write them down so we can keep track of them. The terms grimoire and Book of Shadows are often used interchangeably, so I'll break down the difference between them.
A grimoire is a book of general knowledge about your craft and practice. Using one means taking notes on the witchcraft books you're using and noting your knowledge of plants, stones, and more as you learn it. It can include spells or spell formulas, too. Many witches also use their grimoires to take notes on magickal tips and tricks they pick up along the way, for example, herbs that can be used in a variety of spells or what certain dream symbols have come to mean to them.
A Book of Shadows is a personal record of your journey as a witch. It's similar to a grimoire; both are where you design and write down spellwork. They are sometimes considered slightly different because a Book of Shadows focuses more on the spells than the basic knowledge and ingredients that a grimoire often focuses on and includes personal notes tracking which spells work and which ones don't.
What I do is slightly different. I use my personal journal for all of that as well as general journaling. I do think that the magickal (read: healing and empowered) living of our lives is a deeply magickal act and don't like to separate the two. Some witches don't like having the petulance and darker thoughts that can show up in their journals in their grimoires and Books of Shadows and that's okay, too. Journaling is not a witch-specific practice, but it is one a lot of witches use to keep detailed records of how their life is going and, therefore, how their magick is working. Journaling as a way to process your emotions so you don't go into a ritural overloaded or overwhelmed is a good part of a witch's process, too.
Writing itself is an important part of spellwork, so you have to do what works best for you. Take your accessibility needs into account here, too. You might have much more luck going digital or even using voice-to-text apps for your digital record.
It's fine to combine these things into one book, or have separate accounts—one solely for magick and one solely for feelings. I like keeping mine together because the bleedover of spirituality and my emotional self is so intense for me, but I'm also a triple water sign who is as sentimental as I am spiritually gifted, and I recognize that separate accounts work much better for a lot of witches. Separate accounts also make it easier to find your spells and the work you've done on them.
Grimoires, Books of Shadows, and journals are so deeply personal that the concept of them queers themselves. Queer community has always been drawn to personal accounts and the written word, and these can be a fantastically witchy way to own and tell your own story as you move through it. Sure, you can decorate it to look more queer or personal and include explicity queer stories and spells, and I recommend all of those things. It's also worth noting that recording your own triumphs and pitfalls and chronicling your own journey towards liberation (not to mention that of any movements you're a part of) is a badass move all its own.
Grounding is an important part of your craft overall. It is the act of centering yourself, steadying your breathing (if that's something you're physically able to do), and becoming more calm and rooted into where you are and what you're doing. It looks like a lot of different things for a lot of different people. I tend to sit in a comfortable-ish position (with my arthritis it's never fully comfortable) and do some deep breathing or a body scan. I work into feeling my body and how it connects to the floor and wall, or whatever else I'm sitting on and against. For some people it's standing and stretching. For others it's focusing on a candle's flame as it flickers and steadying their breathing. It's whatever helps you calm your breathing as much as possible and gets you focused for either your day, or whatever task is in front of you. Grounding is an important piece of ritual work, and I strongly recommend you do it before putting up a circle in a big spell or meeting up with a group for group work. Grounding is something I do before I start writing or seeing clients for the day. It's the practice of putting yourself back into the present and into your body—and it's an important part of building a meditation practice.
Meditation is the act of clearing your mind and either keeping it clear or focusing on specific thoughts and ideas for a certain amount of time. There are relaxing components to it, too. This should be a comfortable, peaceful exercise that brings you a sense of calm. Meditation can be virtually spirituality-less—used only to clear your mind and to relax, or it can be focused on an intention or spell you've been working. There are also, countless YouTube guided meditations that will walk you through deity-focused meditations that bring you closer to understanding and connecting with a god, so depending on your beliefs and needs, deity-focus can be a good way to use your meditative time and energy, too.
Anyone can meditate, and here's the dirty little secret: no one is good at it all the time. While you'll have significantly more luck meditating if you throw some grounding work into it at the beginning of your meditation, the reality is that our minds are often scattered with dozens of other things we should be doing—among other distractions. The feedback I get when I push tarot clients to meditate is that they could only clear their minds for a second or two at a time. Please know that, especially in the beginning, this is not a failure. It is part of the process. The good news is, you did clear your mind for a second or two. You know what that feels like now, and you can build from there. This is an exercise, especially in the beginning of your journey as a witch, to get you to sit still and find clarity. Give it space and over time you'll be able to clear your mind for longer and longer stretches. Please know, though, that even those who lead guided meditations, who teach meditation classes, who put their dedication to meditating on their Tinder bios absolutely do not clear their minds for an hour at a time or more every single day. They have days they can't do it, or moments in the meditation that they can't calm down, or entire weeks that are basically wasted, meditation-wise.
Meditation is an important part of a witch's journey because you need time, even just five minutes a day, where you sit with your body, mind, and soul and focus on that. You need space where you can be comfortable and connect your gut to your higher intuition, your intuition to your body, your body to the world. For queer people whose heads are constantly being filled with doubt about if they're queer enough for this friend group or too queer for the rest of the world or somehow both, it's especially important. This is time alone with yourself to develop your craft, and it gives you more of a blank canvas to start from than going in without meditation.
If you have not yet incorporated meditation into your spiritual practice or self-care routine, you should start with basic meditative rituals to clear your mind. Once you feel like you kind of know what you're doing, you can include intentions or follow guided meditations. Meditation classes might be good for that if you feel like you need an instructor. Breath work is another common group working or class that you might be able to find if you live somewhere with any kind of New Age scene. Breath work isn't meditation specifically, but it follows a lot of the same principles and will give you a similar outcome.
You don't have to write about your daily or thrice weekly meditations in your journal or grimoire if you don't want to, but you can. I would take note of any emotional or spiritual breakthroughs that you have, and if you have a day where you're unusually able to focus or unusually unable to focus, I would note that, too. Over time, this practice should bring you increased peace even in trying and borderline traumatic circumstances. It should help you access new levels of spirituality, and that means your spells will be even more powerful. Most importantly, your meditation should, in time, connect and root you deeply into yourself, where you are. This is a form of reclaiming your body. You'll notice as we go that so, so much of queering your craft is making it yours. To get there, you have to make yourself yours first, and for that, you have to connect with yourself and that's what meditation gives you.
Marginalized people are ridiculously resistant to basic self-care principles. Between internalizing a hypercapitalist society that forces go-go-go all the time, the ensuing cult of busy that follows after living like that for too long and the queer ideal of focusing on community first, we insist that we either don't need or don't have time for self-care. Sometimes we insist on both. Yet not giving space for self-care inhibits your witchcraft. Even beyond the spiritual sense, I want to reiterate that you cannot give from an empty cup, and you will burn yourself out if you don't engage in self-care. Burnout will leave you no time or energy for making enough money to survive or taking care of your loved ones, let alone creating change or community.
So what is self-care? In this Instagram age we think of this as taking entire nights off on a whim to live in the bubble bath. For some of us, this is a form of self-care because pleasure is a human need. Why do we have pleasure receptors, points on our body that feel good, taste buds, and so much more if we aren't supposed to use them? Many of them serve no other evolutionary purpose beyond enjoying them, which means that need needs to be fulfilled. I think what makes this form of self-care so easily scornable is that the same things do not bring us all pleasure. For me, bubble baths are a very real physical health need to help my body physically relax in the face of pelvic floor disorder and rheumatoid arthritis. Automatically condemning this form of public photo-worthy self-care is short sighted at best and ableist at worst. What's worse though, is you could be shutting out your own ability to feel pleasure in some way.
Again though, not everything that is pleasurable to some is pleasurable to all. For some people really good food tingles our senses, and for others it causes eating disorder related anxiety. For some of us sex and masturbation are incredibly pleasurable but for others it can remind us of trauma that we've been through. For me, laughter is key. I need anything hilarious, several times a day whether that's goofing off with friends or putting on a stand-up special to watch as I decompress from the day. Figure out what brings you pleasure and incorporate it into your life. Pleasure is absolutely a self-care need, and one you need to suss out and prioritize for yourself.
Of course, self-care is not our only need. We need to be well fed, well rested, and feel like we know where we're going and what we're doing on any given day. That means incredibly boring things like keeping your freezer stocked with frozen burritos on weeks you're really busy. Brushing your teeth, taking your meds, and showering are forms of self-care. Exercising, if you're physically able to, is self-care because it focuses on what your body can do and celebrates that. You're also putting endorphins straight into your brain. Rest, though critical for self-care, is a hard one because most of us really do try, but sleep eludes us. Improving your sleep hygiene, then, is a foundational form of self-care. That means setting an actual rough bedtime for yourself, fluffing your pillows, and settling into a nighttime routine that is restful. You may need to do some body scans or deep breathing to get into a sleepy headspace. There are witchy ways to meet this need, too. There are stones like scolecite that help with sleep, or lepidolite that helps with rest. There are relaxing teas and lavender scented sprays.
You'll notice that some of these things overlap with things that bring us pleasure. Our needs are not meant to be isolated, or sectioned off. They feed each other, and when we feed each of them we operate better as humans and as witches. I really wish I could tell you that sheer will and determination can bring the most powerful of spells into being, but you have to take care of your body as well as you are able to. Our bodies and our spirits are the most powerful energetic tools we have, but they both need to be running as well as possible for the other to function. A better rested witch is a more successful witch.
As queers, let alone as queer witches, there is a lot to be said for self-care as resistance magick all on its own. One of my heroes, adrienne maree brown, has a whole book called Pleasure Activism, that you should read if you struggle to see why self-care and pleasure, especially, are important. We owe it to ourselves to claim these tired, sick, hated bodies back from the gatekeepers that made them this way. And, we absolutely need to develop a standard self-care practice to get there.