My Advice for those Starting in the Craft

7 min read

Witchcraft as a magical practice is something which more and more people are feeling drawn to nowadays. Out of the rise in popularity of Wicca, we now have a variety of traditions in modern witchcraft; some with an emphasis in folk magic, others in ceremonial, and many incorporating elements of both. Whichever path you go down, it can be hard as a beginner to know where to start, so here are some tips which I believe may be useful for a beginner witch!

What may be comforting to know is, you don’t need to know everything all at once. A lot of us tend to fall victim to imposter syndrome and put an invisible pressure on ourselves to be an expert in a subject straight away – but this is not and does not have to be the case. In the advent of social media, it is easy to compare yourself unfairly to other online witches and judge yourself for not being at the same level as them. Here is my advice: cut yourself some slack and recognise that we are not in competition with each other. Everybody goes at their own pace. We all have our different limitations and strengths, and all that matters is your own level of comfort with your progression through the craft. If it takes you years to figure out the basics, that is okay, that doesn’t make you any more or less of a witch than others. There is no end result with witchcraft, so rushing to “figure it all out” will leave you perhaps a little unsatisfied anyway. There is a tremendous amount of beauty in the journey of self-discovery as a witch, and I thoroughly recommend stopping to smell the roses along the way.

What follows on from this idea, is that you also don’t need to have everything all at once. We live in a consumerist society, that isn’t news to any of us and as spirituality becomes trendier, it has become an industry. Also touching on the idea of social media witchcraft, it is easy to fall into the habit of thinking you need an assortment of “things” to practice witchcraft, after seeing so many lovely witchy posts on Instagram. Yes, ingredients such as herbs, plants, crystals, candles, incense, etc., are useful things we use in the craft and witches like to collect for usage. However, there is no rush to go out and bulk buy every single herb that is listed in that green magic book you’ve just read, nor do you need to buy every single crystal for each correspondence. Another thing to caution is that there is no requirement to buy lots of fancy tools, that you don’t even know you’ll use. I’ve been a practicing witch for years now and I’ve never owned an athame. Certain witchcraft traditions may require certain tools, but generally, broadly speaking as a beginner witch, you needn’t concern yourself with making sure you have everything straight away. Focus on using what is around you to begin with and invest in pretty tools as your craft develops. Magical practitioners of the past used the cauldron because that is what they used to cook dinner!

A further tip I like to emphasis to beginners is to document your journey. Write all your experiences down and these can be from anything small, such as spotting a lovely flower in the wild that you identified for the first time, to the detailed workings of a ritual you experienced and how it made you feel. Different witches call this journal different names – a book of shadows, book of mirrors, a grimoire. Whatever you want to call it, just know that it doesn’t have to be a huge fancy leatherbound book with medieval-looking pages and written in calligraphy. This magical journal can look like a basic binder bought from WH Smith’s with some lined paper in it, or a digital folder on Google Drive. The most important thing is to record your experiences and the knowledge you collect along the way, as this way you can see your progress and watch yourself grow. It’s also great to have a book like this to go back to as a reference! I refer to my book of shadows and grimoires frequently mid-magical working and it is very useful.

Documenting your journey comes in handy with the next tip for beginner witches, and that is to not isolate yourself to “witchcraft 101” content. This is something I see younger witches fall into the habit of doing online. Whilst it’s amazing for our community that there are more witchcraft books being published on an array of different magical topics, when researching magic, sometimes in order to get a full understanding of the topic you need to get a wider approach. To use myself as an example, I consider myself a witch who practices English folk magic. Reading witchy books about English folk magic is wonderful, of which Troy Books have published a plentiful amount of content on, but diving deeper into British history, archaeology, architecture, folklore, etc., has been massively rewarding in my practice. If you’re a beginner witch and are thoroughly interested in herbal magic, perhaps taking the time to research the plant folklore of your region, your country’s native species, the general botany and ecology of the plant you’re interested in, environmentalism and conservation, or herbal medicine, may be research topics that will help you understand the use of herbs in magic in a way which “witchy 101” books fail to do.

The last tip I have for you is to be safe. Safety seems like a far too obvious thing to bring up, but it is vital to consider safety and to make it a priority in your craft. Being safe in your craft may look like: practicing fire safety by making sure you’re using fireproof candle holders and not leaving candles burning unattended, or ecological safety through making sure you’ve researched the toxicology of a wild plant before touching or ingesting it. Safety also considers consulting a doctor or medical professional for health concerns in the craft and for example, not substituting crystal healing for modern medicine. Practicing magic for the wellbeing of your health is perfectly valid, but it is done best alongside modern medical treatment. Spiritual bypassing is not a great habit to fall into here and does not ultimately serve you best. Under this umbrella of practicing safe can include decolonising your witchcraft or making sure to check your craft for cultural appropriation. This is a term thrown around a lot, however, it is an important topic within spirituality. One notable example is the practice of smoke cleansing, which many people wrongly refer to as smudging. Smudging is an indigenous ritualistic act. It is perfectly fine to smoke cleanse, but many people are quite easily adopting the term smudging, without researching it’s proper origination or having respect to any indigenous cultures. In this example, people also like to use white sage (Salvia apiana), which although has not been officially evaluated by the IUCN Red List of Endangered Species, there are large concerns within the Native community that it is close to being endangered as a species. This is because it is being unsustainability harvested due to the demand of the spirituality industry. This is a topic which I dedicated a whole video on, researching different indigenous perspectives:

My advice here is to research plants in your surrounding area that are associated with purification and cleansing as this would be what you will connect to most. Rosemary (Salvia rosmarinus) and garden sage (Salvia officinalis) are perfectly fine to use instead and are quite accessible in that they are easy-to-grow herbs.

There are lots of things for a beginner witch to consider when practicing magic, but overall, I want you to remember to have fun! The practice of magic and witchcraft is a wonderful and rewarding journey. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows all the time, and it will teach you some very hard lessons sometimes. But your journey as a witch will grant you some experiences you never thought were possible. I wish you best of luck on your journey and happy witching!

Ariana Carrasca

About me

Hi, I’m Ari.

I go by The Oak Witch, and I create educational witchcraft and paganism content as a creator on YouTube and writer in my blog and as an author. I am an ecologist, English folk witch and pagan, whose been in the craft for over a decade and hails from East Anglia.

Leave a Reply