(somber whimsical music)
- Hi.
(somber whimsical music continues)
If you're new here, my name's Olivia.
I made the same video a few years back.
It was one of the first videos
that I ever made regarding my craft.
Oof, yeah. (chuckles)
So obviously you can tell that I've come a long way,
not only as a practitioner but also as a filmmaker.
If you saw my previous video,
I will be reiterating a lot of the things
that I touched on in that video, but there's a lot of things
that I think should be added and corrected.
Now, that being said, of course I am not an expert.
I'm not a professional practitioner,
meaning I don't sell spells or do spells for payment
or sell any kind of spiritual supplies.
And everything in this video,
along with all of my other videos,
should be taken with a grain of salt
and also cross-referenced.
I'm only human, and I'm learning alongside everybody else,
so just take my advice as somebody
who's learning alongside you.
I'm just trying to make a video that I wish I had
when I first started out.
All right, so let's get into it.
First things first, Wicca and witchcraft.
They are not the same thing.
Wicca is a religion, witchcraft is a practice.
So not all witches are Wiccans, but all Wiccans are witches.
The act of practicing witchcraft
means to manipulate the natural energies around us
in order to influence a situation.
A side note on that is that not all spiritual practices
are labeled witchcraft,
so just be wary of that as well.
The second point is figure out why you're practicing.
What do you want from this practice?
Self-knowledge? Self-growth?
To connect to your ancestors?
To understand the universe?
Of course, this reasoning might change as you practice
and as you go along,
but if you're just in it because it's cool
and you think it looks cool,
there's a lot of responsibility
that comes along with dabbling in something like this,
so just keep that in mind.
Number three, titles don't matter.
Now, if you've been officially initiated
and christened as a Priest or a High Priestess,
a Shaman for example,
I'm talking about the newer titles,
things like Kitchen Witch, Green Witch, Astral Witch,
et cetera, et cetera.
Also the term witch is gender neutral,
so if you are male and you prefer to call yourself a witch,
that's totally okay
and don't let anybody else tell you otherwise.
Now don't come at me because I get it.
Labels can be fun
and they can lead you to like-minded people,
but don't get so caught up in it that it puts you in a box.
At the end of the day, we're all practitioners.
This is another little side note
that not everybody who practices
identify or connects with the term witch,
so be mindful of that when you're meeting new people.
It's always best to just refer to them as a practitioner
before you understand what they best identify themselves as.
Number four, write everything down.
I'm serious. (chuckles)
Meditations, spells, divination, tarot spreads,
thoughts, feelings, rituals, everything.
Just trust me.
At first when you're journaling,
it's gonna feel like you're stumbling around.
It's gonna get messy and ugly
and it's not gonna look pretty.
You're probably gonna misplace a lot of notes and journals,
but just trust me when I tell you to document everything.
Number five, the biggest question, where do you even start?
It's overwhelming, I get it.
There's a ton of information.
There's so many resources.
There's so many things that contradict each other
and it just gets to be a lot.
Once you open that door of you realizing
that you wanna practice,
you open the door and it almost feels like everything
just comes at you at once and you just close the door
and have to process what you just saw.
The thing is, start one place.
What interests you the most right now?
Is it history, lore, culture?
Is it different religions
and why they believe what they believe?
Is it folk magic, ceremonial magic, crystals, herbs,
maybe your ancestry?
Just pick one and start there.
Just believe me when I tell you one is plenty
and you will easily just fall down the rabbit hole.
Now that being said, it's really, really important
to cross-reference everything
and make sure you can find the sources
of where your sources are getting their information.
So for example, if you're reading a book,
when they source something,
it should be in the very back of the book
where they reference all of the things and all of the books
and all of the sources that they used to make their book.
That's just an example,
but it's a really good way to keep going
and keep falling through into your rabbit hole.
And I get it, there's a lot of misinformation out there
and there's a lot of information out there in general,
but try not to get overwhelmed, take it one step at a time,
and at the end of the day there's no deadline.
A lot of this is studying.
Number six, how do you know what's real and what's fake?
Well, it all comes down to this: whatever works works,
the things that you see results from,
the spells and the rituals that you see results from.
Again, this is a lot of where the cross-referencing happens.
Once you find some information and you think it might work,
write down your hypothesis, put it to practice,
and see what works.
Record your results.
Now you're technically a magical scientist.
Write everything down.
Number seven, what do I need to start?
Your self, some creativity,
and a little bit of a change of perspective.
Also an open mind.
Truly you have everything that you need to get started.
You've got herbs in the kitchen, possibly a tealight candle,
some olive oil, some water.
Anything that you have in your house right now
can pretty much be used in your practice,
but the people way back in the day
didn't have all these fancy tools
and Etsy shops to go get their tools from.
They would make things that they had at access to them
from the land or in their house.
(Olivia softly laughs)
Hello.
(bird calls)
They just used what was around them
and what they had access to them
in their household or around the land.
They were resourceful and you should be too.
Number eight, there is no such thing
as black or white magic.
Magic is energy and energy is natural.
Just like nature, there's no good or bad.
Of course, nature can be beautiful and calm
and wonderful and healing,
but it can also be destructive
and terrifying and horrendous.
It's just a balance.
What we should be focusing on
is how the practitioner decides how to use that energy.
The energy, magic, witchcraft, it's all a tool.
Like I said in a previous video,
give somebody a hammer
and they can build some really amazing projects with it,
or they can beat the living daylights out of someone.
It totally just depends on who's holding the hammer,
but the hammer itself is neither good or bad.
Anything that can be used to heal
can be used to hex and vice versa.
One of my favorite quotes,
"Blessing and bane both grow on one stalk."
Number nine, magic is just science that we don't understand.
Science is the way that we use
to explain the universe to ourselves.
Okay, so this might be more under
an opinion-belief type of category for me,
but I fully heartedly believe this,
that magic is just science that we don't understand yet.
Math was seen as mysticism for a very long time,
and math is used to explain the universe.
Even look at herbalism.
Before we could really truly understand herbalism
and why herbal medicine worked
scientifically down to the chemistry of it,
it was still working and it was seen as mysticism.
It was seen as magic.
Now, of course, we can understand why those things work
because of the interaction that certain plants
have with our bodies.
There's even fascinating studies
about why the poses and breathing techniques of meditation
work the way they do.
And there's even some really interesting studies on monks
who can change the temperature of their body at will.
There are endless examples,
and the more you learn about science,
the more you learn how magical
the world we live in really is.
So alongside as you're learning
about mysticism and the occult,
learn about the way an herb works,
and not just the correspondences
of how you can use it in your working,
or about how a crystal is formed and understand why
(bird calls) (Olivia laughs)
and understand why that crystal
is connected to a specific element.
Understand why you're using these things in your craft
and keep up with our wild
science discoveries and accomplishments.
Just because we're able to explain something
shouldn't make it any less magical.
10, perspective is a huge factor.
Seeing our world the way we live our lives,
our actions, our intentions,
and even the words that we use
to communicate to each other and ourselves,
all of these things are going to shift dramatically.
Start seeing the world as a more magical place.
And lastly, don't ever let the curiosity in you die.
Don't ever stop learning.
What your practice and beliefs look like today,
that's gonna change.
It's gonna be so different in a month,
in a year, in 10 years.
Allow yourself to grow,
allow yourself to learn from everyone that you meet,
because as Bill Nye once said,
"Everyone you meet knows something you don't."
So those are my big tips for you,
and I hope that it helped.
My biggest hope is that your practice enriches your life.
May it bring you new and good perspectives,
big opportunities, and massive self-growth.
That's it for this video.
I'm Olivia, thanks for watching.
And as always best of luck,
be kind to each other,
and may your gods treat you as you've treated others.
Bye.
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