All About Spells

Spells . . .

There is a lot to understand about the craft before you get to the point of doing spells. At the very least you need to develop a relationship with a goddess, a god and the elements. And by “develop a relationship” I don't mean just knowing their names...I mean really getting to know them, and letting them get to know you. You need to have a very good understanding of energy including where it comes from, what it is, and what it can do. You need to understand the consequences of each possible magical act. You need to know how to divine what those possible outcomes can be.

Before doing a spell you need to be very, very sure that you should be doing the spell at all. You need to be very sure that there is not some other more appropriate action that you could take.

Before you do a spell you need to know the purpose of each ingredient, word, and action in the spell. You need to know what the consequences of changing any part of the spell would be.

Sure you can find websites and books full of spells. You can try these spells and maybe they will have the desired results and maybe they won't. To attempt to do a spell without the fundamental knowledge of the gods and magic is not merely like trying to follow a recipe with no training in cooking (which can be bad enough). It could more closely be compared to performing surgery with no medical background - not something that any sane person would do.

An important thing to realize though is traditionally, witches do not ask strangers for spells. There is never any need to. When you do, you come off sounding at best a little naive, and at worst like a complete fool - especially those who insist that, “Of course all witches should help each other with any information they have.” Wrong. Traditionally witches understand the training that needs to come before spell working and they don't need that kind of help. And even more importantly, they are ethically obligated to not give information out to anyone whom they do not know personally, and can not trust to use the information correctly. So, if you find someone offering to teach you magic or give you spells whom you do not know very well, in person, then you can be sure they have not been trained as witches and are not qualified to give the information they are offering. This is an all to frequent occurence in online “chat rooms” and e-mail discussions groups.

Traditionally, a witch trains from the ground up. First learning the history of the craft and of his or her chosen pantheon of gods, then going on to develop those relationships mentioned earlier, and going further to learn about all the possible steps and ingredients which could be included in a spell. By the time a witch understands all that needs to be understood about spells he or she can write spells for themselves. They don't need to ask.

I hope this clarifies our position. Thank you for reading this page. To continue on your quest see our course outline on our “Solitary Study” page.

-- Forest Butera
Rev. 8/21/01