I’m finally looking to the future and creating posts I can link, instead of answering the same questions over and over. It’s not that I mind answering them, it’s just that I usually don’t have the energy to give you the solid answer you deserve.
Where to start?
I generally wouldn’t recommend picking up where you left off. You spent a lot of time building up to that point, jumping right in is going to be a lot. I would recommend starting slow, and slowly building back up. Get a solid foundation back under your feet:
Make a list of the things that you’d like to relearn, and do one per day.
Start at the basics, even if you knew the advanced stuff. Act like a beginner again and relearn. Chances are, you’ll learn some things you missed before!
Don’t compare it to your old craft. Crafts and paths are constantly shifting over time, taking a break doesn’t change this, time has passed and your craft will likely be different.
Do what excites you! Learn new things too! What drew you back into the craft? This is a great chance for a fresh start!
Drawing a blank? Here’s some ideas of things to research/relearn:
Altars.
Astral travel/projection.
Astrology.
Crystals.
Deities (perhaps learn about a new pantheon!)
Divination (any type)
Local wildlife; birds, animals, plants.
Mythology (maybe local mythology and lore?)
Sigil creation and using.
Space; the cosmos.
Spell writing and casting.
Spirit work.
Warding/protection.
Whatever you want!!
Some recommendations if you feel stuck/hit a block:
Browse the baby witch tag and help some beginners out. They have so much motivation and inspiration, and it’ll likely leak over to you (and you’ll reinforce some of the knowledge you forgot you had).
Buy yourself something witchy (it doesn’t have the be expensive, even just a new little candle you only burn for witchy things).
Find a friend who is also getting back into the craft, talk about your practices!
Look up some tips and tricks on overcoming art block/writer’s block and find a way to apply them.
Know that it’s perfectly normal to hit blocks and lose motivation (it happens to me all the time at least). And it’s okay to take as many breaks/hiatuses as you need.
I have some general tips for the beginner kemetic, if you’re looking for advice or help on a particularly subject – always feel free to drop me a message. These are in no particular order;
☀️ Read everything. Read everything you can find about Ancient Egypt, the different time periods, the people, the culture, the neighbouring societies, religion. Even if you read something and it’s useless, at least you know.
☀️ Read wisely. Egyptologists are our friends. But they can be mistaken and different scholars will have different opinions. If you’re researching a topic, the first thing you read won’t necessarily be correct.
– if you want reading lists on subjects I can always try to help 🙂
☀️ Offering rituals. Find an offering ritual that you like the wording of, there are plenty of them out there to chose from. Find one you really like and then try to sort out a schedule. Even if it is simply offering the gods a glass of water once per month, that’s amazing! More importantly try to stick to it.
☀️ Shrine building. Buy things slowly, if and went you can afford them. You don’t need to go out and buy a hundred different items for your shrine. Your shrine should be a labour of love that is perfectly crafted as a representation of your beliefs and as a place where you can practice meaningfully. If that means it takes ten years, then it takes ten years.
☀️ Plan for ritual impurity. No one likes to think they are going to be ill or that something will come up. Life sometimes gets in the way of the best made plans. But it happens and if you have back up plans, you will feel a lot better in the long run. I personally use inscribed pillar candles that I light instead of performing offering rituals.
☀️ Take your gods with you. Try to honour the gods in your daily life. Wear devotional jewellery, or listen to music that reminds you of the gods. Make actions for them in your daily life, if and when you can.
☀️ Keep safe. If you cannot safety tell someone you are Kemetic, then don’t. If you cannot safely practise openly, then don’t. If you cannot build a shrine safely, then don’t. Your safety and security should always come first. This is true at home, at school, at work, anywhere.
That’s all I’ve got for the moment that I can think of, if anything doesn’t make sense or you’d like clarification on anything, always feel free to drop me a message.
and if anyone else has anything to add, please feel free!
⛤Okay, so I have been wanting to put out a post about pendulums based on how I was taught to use them by my aunt, a long-time pendulum diviner and dowser. This post is based solely on our traditions and beliefs. I am NOT telling anyone that this is the one and only way to work with pendulums. Please do what works for you. If these methods suit you, fantastic! If not, it’s okay. Alright, buckle your seat belts ‘cause here we go.
⛤So, you want to use a pendulum. Cool! First you have to get one. There are several ways to obtain a pendulum. You can buy one from a specialty shop (many new age and crystal shops sell them). You can buy one online from places like Etsy, Ebay, and other places. You can even make one. All you need is a string or chain and something to hang from it. It can be as simple as a needle stuck in a cork hanging from some thread (as my great grandmother did). You can also use a piece of jewelry, such as a necklace or a lanyard as a pendulum. Find, make or buy one that is suitable for you.
⛤Now that you have a pendulum, it’s time to clear/charge it. A very important step when using a pendulum is to cleanse it, especially if you bought one. A pendulum in a store, even an online store, has been touched by many people. People have probably touched it to look at it, shop employees have probably touched it when they were putting out to be bought. The seller from an online shop has certainly touched it. All of these people touching the pendulum that you just bought have left residual energies on it. These energies can affect the accuracy of the pendulum. So, you have to cleanse it. I recommend you cleanse your pendulum the same way you do any of your magickal tools. If it’s made from a crystal, you can cleanse it the same way you cleanse your crystals. If you don’t know how to cleanse your pendulum, I was taught to start with a prayer/incantation/chant. Write one that explains your intention just like you would to write a spell. Be specific in your writing. If you want to work with your spirit guides, say that. If you want to work with your higher self, say that. Be specific in the kind of spirits you want to work with. Do you want to work with ancestors? Spirit animals? Etc. If you want to work spirits aligned with light, be specific on the type of light. Anyway, after you have your prayer/incantation/chant written down, you can begin to cleanse your pendulum. The cleansing ritual/ceremony/process can be a elaborate as you deem fit. When I cleansed mine, I didn’t go very elaborate, but if you need to go for it. There are several ways you can use to cleanse your pendulum. 1st, smoke cleansing. Just as you would use sage to cleanse a room, you can use it to cleanse your pendulum. Light a bundle of dried sage, or sage incense. Pass your pendulum through the smoke and say your prayer/incantation/chant. Do this for as long as you think is necessary. 2nd, visualization. Hold your pendulum in your hand and visualize it being surrounded by a brilliant white light. Focus on the residual energies being driven away and cleansed from your pendulum. Say your prayer/incantation/chant while you do your visualization. I used this method to cleanse my pendulum. I visualized putting the pendulum in a stream of white light and letting the light flow over it like water, cleansing away the residual energies. 3rd, if your pendulum is made of crystal, any crystal cleansing techniques will work to cleanse it (i.e. burying it, putting it in running water, burying in salt, putting it with cleansing crystals, such as clear quartz and selenite, etc.). If you made your pendulum, you might not have to worry so much about cleansing and charging it because you made it and it’s already aligned with your energy. However, if you bought your pendulum, after you have cleansed it you need to charge it with your energy. You can do this by carrying it around with you in your pocket and asking small, mundane questions. (I’ll explain this more later)
⛤Now you have a cleansed and charged pendulum. What’s next? Well, you need to program it. By programming, I mean you need to establish how your pendulum will work for you. This includes deciding how you want your pendulum to move based on certain responses to your questions. Now, I have seen many posts and read several books that say that you are supposed to ask the pendulum to show you how it will move for yes, no, maybe, I don’t know, etc. I was taught that you shouldn’t do this because it opens you up for potentially dangerous situations and it sets the precedent that the pendulum or the spirits communicating through the pendulum are in control. I was taught that this is potentially dangerous. I was also taught that this is your experience on this plane of existence. Because of that, you should be in control and do what you are comfortable with. The pendulum is a tool and the spirits communicating through it are guides that can only offer advice. Anyway, you should be the one who decides how the pendulum will move according to the different responses. My pendulum moves in a clockwise circle for “yes”, a counter-clockwise circle for “no”, back and forward for “maybe”, side to side for “I don’t know”, and it stays still for “please rephrase the question.” You can program your pendulum however makes you feel comfortable and however you will remember the meaning of the movements best. After all, what’s the point in asking a question if you can’t understand the answer?
Going back to charging the pendulum. Programming it actually goes into charging it. The more you use your pendulum, the more it becomes aligned to your energy. When you first start using your pendulum, begin by asking it mundane questions. Start with things that don’t have a significant impact on your life, such as what should a I eat for dessert, what color shoes should I wear, should I buy this thing. Simple stuff like that gets you used to your pendulum and it helps you remember your programming for it better. It also helps your pendulum become aligned with your energy and makes the responses more accurate.
⛤Using a pendulum is a great way to get advice on decisions you’re indecisive about. It’s also a wonderful tool for communicating with your spirit guides and companions.
⛥As you get more accustomed to using your pendulum, you can do other things with it. You can create charts to help you get more in depth information. For example, you can make a time table to help organize your tasks for the day. You can make a list of activities to do and when you are bored or don’t know what to do next, ask your pendulum. My aunt did this a lot with her kids. They would want to go outside to play and she would want them to do homework. She would dowse (ask her pendulum) on it and whatever the pendulum said is usually* what they did. Additionally, you can use your pendulum for spirit work. You can make a letter board (like a ouija board) and communicate with spirits. You can also use pendulum for Reiki work, using it to find blockages in the chakras. The list goes on and on.
I put an * next to “usually” in my little anecdote because as I said earlier, this is your experience on this plane of existence. Your pendulum and the spirits communicating through it can only offer advice. You have the ability to either listen to what your pendulum advises or not. That being said, in my experience the pendulum is usually right.
⛤Anyway, I know that was a super long winded post about pendulums. I hope you find the information useful. If using pendulums is something you want to do, go for it! I absolutely LOVE mine and I am so happy I had someone in my life who could teach me about them!
Thank you and blessed be,
Anne Sage 🌻🌼
⛤Also: a good exercise to do with pendulums is to have two, one in each hand, and see if you can get them both to move in harmony with each other. This will show any weak energy flow in your body. It’s a good way to help build up that flow and make it stronger. I, personally, have to work on this with my right hand because it is significantly weaker than my left.
Anyone have any tips on how to get in a good head space before approaching a shrine?
I’ll use my seperate Amun shrine as an example here instead of my larger Kemetic Orthodox Senut shrine.
First I decide if I need to do a full ritual purification shower or bath. As someone who is chronically ill this can be a huge energy suck that leaves me clean but without energy to do shrine. So I might wash my wands and mouth with natron water, put on deoderent and brush my teeth. Then I pick out what ritual white I’m going to wear. I have a few options, from a very simple one I made myself(basically linen folded over with a head hole) to my much nicer ones I’ve ordered.
Once dressed I put on Amun’s playlist as I gather up the offerings. I focus my mind on how I am upholding a tradition that was done by great ancestors such as the gods wives, Hatshepsut and others. I then bring the offerings into the room where the God’s shrine is. Walking down the long hallway with offerings, in my whites and ritual jewelry with soft music playing helps a lot. Currently the shrine in my living room because someone is staying in the guest room where it is normally located. Then I approach the shrine, set the offerings down and spend a few minutes just breathing and focusing on that before I started
Would the Gods mind if I was unable to shower? I am similar, it takes a lot of spoons from me just to shower some days. Would showering the day before, then doing the deodorant + others be okay too?
Thanks so much for the tips 🙂 I am fairly new to shrines and how to approach them, at least within Kemeticism ~
Here is a list of unconventional and affordable ingredients that can be used in spells and witchcraft along with their correspondences; good for witches “in the woods” and witches on a budget. Many of these can be easily found for inexpensive prices or at home.
Acorns/Acorn Caps: security, abundance, longevity, good luck, youth and brings good health
Animal toys/stickers: relates to correspondences of that animal
Recycle bottles, jars and medicine bottles for jar/bottle magic
Reuse tea bags (though not too long after use) in bath magic
If you do wish to use herbs, it is cheaper to order them online in bulk rather than the supermarket. Trust me, supermarkets and grocery stores really over price most herbs. You can get triple the amount for 2 dollars less online
Make up and toiletries are great for glamours
Its fine to use kitchen knives if you can’t afford am athame
Look at the ingredients in food you eat to see what is in it and determine that food’s correspondences, quick and easy kitchen magic
Crayons, colored pencils, markers and pens are good for easy sigil and color magic
Binders are cheaper than blank books and make great grimoires
One of the most frequent asks I receive is how and where to get started when it comes to polytheism. This is a fairly broad subject and I’ll try to be as general as I can for advice but I will include specific references for Norse polytheists as that’s my shit. This information can be used to help you find a pantheon or to help you pick deities to work with it. If you’d like to use it to pick a patron deity that’s super, if you want to worship 20 gods and not have a patron deity that’s cool too. You do you dude. Please keep in mind this is all reflective of my research and personal practice.
🌻
Picking A Pantheon/Deity
This really boils down to personal preference. You’ll read a lot of posts and books that tell you many different ways and it’s entirely up to you because it is your practice. That being said, there’s a couple of different ways to go about it.
Research! This is one of my favorite ways to delve in. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with reading the stories of multiple pantheons and picking on that calls to you. You can also talk to other devotees and see what they have to say about deities and their religions. It is important to keep in mind that some religions are closed so please do proper research!
For example, I wasn’t originally a Norse pagan. I read some stories and thought the Hellenic pantheon would best suit me. I reached out to Eros for a while but after feeling no real connection to the pantheon I continued my research! After reading up on the Norse pantheon I decided to reach out to them out. Obviously, I fucking loved it because here I am. Point being, you can pick a pantheon based on research and not some divine message or whatever. You are also more than welcome to try out a religion, decide it doesn’t suit you, and move on.
Divination! You can use runes, a pendulum, tarot, etc.This can go a few different ways. You can write pantheon/deity names on separate pieces of paper, mix them up, and place them face down then ask the pendulum to pick. You can assign a deity/pantheon to each suit of cards or major arcana card or even do the same thing with runes.
For example, this is how I found a devotion to Frigg and Hel. I asked if there were any deities who were interested in working with me and pulled the runes Hagalaz and Berkana which read as Hel and Frigg to me. I followed up with tarot cards and pulled Death(Hel) plus the Queen of Pentacles(Frigg).
Asking/waiting for a sign. This isn’t something I’ve personally done so I don’t have much to say on the subject. You can go about meditating, praying, doing a ritual, or whatever and essentially wait for a sign after. It can come via a dream, something you experience, symbols you see in your daily life, it’s pretty much up to your intuition to decipher it. If anyone has information they’d like me to add in here please let me know!
If there’s a god you’re curious about and don’t want to do any of the above it’s totally cool to just reach out and ask if they want to work with you.
Idk How To Research
Same, tbh my keyword search game is weak. Anyways, good portion of us are looking up dead religions with little reliable resources. To give those curious about the Norse an easy head start here’s a compiled list of books by @witches-of-ouroboros. It’s important to take everything with a grain a salt of salt when doing research. In my experience a lot of the retold Norse sagas have been Christianized or written under heavy Wiccan influences. It’s a good idea to do research on the author before reading one of their books.
Other blogs! There are tons of great witches and pagans on tumblr that have information waiting for you. 💗 You can search their blog/tags for good references for books, websites, podcasts, etc. Plus lots of blogs are open to answer asks. If you don’t know where to start for searching it’s best to try things based around your interest like: “norse polytheist”, “hellenic witch”, “gaelic polytheism”, etc.
Media! How lucky are we that we live in the age of technology? Knowledge is right at our fingertips! There are countless documentaries, podcasts, and audiobooks on youtube full of information for different cultures and religions. I’d personally recommend almost anything by BBC, Myths & Legends, and World Mythology!
Books! I love starting on goodreads to find good books and trust worthy authors. They’ve had almost every book I looked up with bunches of different reviews so you can get varying perspectives. Check out your local library as well! A lot of city libraries have online databases now of all of their books so you can “check it out” online and read the PDF(personal fave).
Feeling Lost Still?
That’s completely reasonable and your feelings are more than valid. It can be overwhelming and lot of information to soak up. Just do your best and take it at your own pace, there’s no rush to find a deity or pantheon. 💞 Below are a few other general concerns I hear a lot that I was hoping to address.
“I’m leaving a monotheistic(Christian, Catholic, Jewish, etc) religion and it’s giving me anxiety.” This is entirely common and almost expected in my opinion. I was raised Roman Catholic and my first year to two looking into polytheism riddled me with anxiety. I was constantly concerned that god would smite me down or I’d face an eternity in hell for worshiping false gods. While I can’t speak for everyone that fear was entirely erased for me when I found my gods. I’ve never felt so safe and strong and hopefully with time you can find the same in your gods!
It’s okay to want to learn more or to seek something more. I can’t tell you how to handle your anxiety but please know you’re not alone in that fear. There’s whole communities out there willing to support you and help you find your safe space(including me)!
“What’s UPG?” You’ll see a lot of posts, mine included, that mention UPG – UPG is Unverified Personal Gnosis. This is essentially someone’s personal thoughts and beliefs about a deity. For example, I associate Sif with hazelnuts. There’s nothing in the lore or any book that says that she likes hazelnuts; that’s just a personal opinion(aka a UPG).
“How do I reach out to the gods?” I have a lot of information on my blog about this topic although a lot of it is Norse specific. You can check out my beginner polytheist tag here and my beginner norse post/ask here.
Altar! This is my go to typically. Altars aren’t limited to the cookie cutter image that comes to mind(no hate though I have a few); one thing you can make a side blog dedicated to your pantheon/deity, make a small one in a tin can, or even make one in a video game like Minecraft or some shit. You can be as creative or as to the book as you want. It’s up to you.
Prayer! You can totally just sit down and be like, “Hey man wanna work on some shit together?”. While I’m not 100% that all gods would be down with you being that casual it’s still something you can try.😂 You can reach out to them by sitting down in a quiet space and meditating into prayer, praying in the car or in the shower, or just pray at the altar you set up if you did. Again, I can not reiterate this enough, it’s your practice, reach out to them as you please.
Do something personal! This is more like devotional work in my opinion. Let’s say you knit and you want to reach out to a creative or domestic deity, you can knit something as a devotional act to them and as a way to reach out. For example I pick up litter in honor of the Vanir and
Jörð, or I play Skyrim for Thor and
Týr.
Most importantly just be honest and up front with the god that you’re reaching out too. Considering that statement be honest with yourself as well. There’s no point going into a relationship with a god if you can’t be upfront, it’ll end up in nothing but grief.
“Can deities reach out through gods/signs?” They totally can. However, it is up to you and your intuition if a deity has and it’s not likely another witch will decipher that for you. Sounds, experiences, images, all have different meanings to each of us – they may show you something that’s very personal to you but would be mundane to someone else. Trust your instincts. However, please remember that not everything is magical, sometimes a raven is just a raven and not Odin.
I decided to make a little directory for my hymns and such, so people looking for something specific can find it, and is accessible on desktop and mobile. I will be updating these every few hymns/resources that I post, so please make sure to go directly to my original post to see if anything new has popped up! Please note that some of these come from blogs I no longer have, meaning I deactivated them for one reason or another. Therefore, some of the links within those posts may be broken. Most of this is solely mine, unless otherwise stated (simply because I like to collect my stuff all together haha).
elaion.org (Another group for dodekatheists with rituals, festival calendars, etc. Very wonderful as well)
Theoi.com (a site full of information about all of the gods and goddesses that we really know about. Good for basic information. Not the end-all-be-all, and as with any site, can sometimes be inaccurate, though usually great for beginner things, epithets, etc.)
There’s tons of others questionable authors, but since these two market their books espicially towads newbies within the witchcraft community, I just wanna give the heads up to those newer witches that these two are NOT OK to take advice from.
Silver Ravenwolf:
Strong anti christian rhetoric
Very misinformed about the Satanic religion (looking at this critically, many are)
She’s spread misinformation about the USA ethics law involving employment (i.e. she assumes employers can ask what potential employees religion is, which is a straight up NO, this CAN NOT happen legally)
Bashes people who don’t believe they’re witches (not the charmed/harry potter/etc version, but those who believe in magik)
Lack of credible sources
Bizarre and possibly dangerous lies about the scientific community (like for some reason your friend/loved one dropping dead cause you cast a spell wrong ???)
Encourages lying
Pushes the elitist idea of “real witch” vs “not a real witch”
Pushes Biblical misinterpretations of the “witch” (many Biblical academic and professional scholars say the term “witch” really resulted just from mass mistranslation over time)
*There’s a bunch of other issues with Silver, but this points out the big ones*
Ann Moura:
Ann has a tendency to bash Christianity
Ann has horribly missed the mark with historical things, despite being a high school history teacher (and having a masters degree in it). Many people complain that her ORIGINS OF MODERN WITCHCRAFT is more fantasy than actual history.
Some of her “beginners books” are not easy to read.
She claims to be a natural witch (3rd generation), this concept has had criticism by contemporary witches
Poor editing styles and book organization
Questionable dieties in relationship to specific spells (such as a goddess of chastity for pregnancy and birth)
fair--y backup 