Answers

I didn't get a question, just a comment, but I still felt it deserved a response.

What I know about magick I read in books. I mainly studied Celtic magick b/c that is what’s most popular. I tried to learn about the magicks native to my part of the country but folk magick tends to be looked down on, or considered not as powerful so it’s surprisingly hard to learn what the witch up the road is doing. Finally I settled on Hoodoo which is shrouded in misconception and false information. People don’t talk about Hoodoo. I got hold of a book called Not in Kansas Anymore, the Curious Tale of How Magic is Transforming America by Christine Wicker and thus discovered this site
http://www.luckymojo.com/
The site covers things besides Hoodoo and the book was written by a religious reporter who explores several different magickal systems to uncover what magick is without belittling it. That alone impressed me. Sometimes when non-magickal people write about magick they seem to try to debunk it or they make fun of the people who practice it. That’s one reason why I don’t tell people I’m a witch. I don’t think I’m obligated to defend my beliefs to strangers. Some people get deeply offended by witchcraft. I think this is because they don’t want to explore their own belief system. If a person has been told all their life that witches don’t exist and then they meet one that may mean some other things they were taught are also wrong. I think some people are just scared to find out how many lies they believe.

I never thought of shape-shifting as black magick. Of course, I never met anyone who could shift their physical body. I was taught the shift occurred to the astral body so that changes could occur on the astral plane to gradually make changes on the physical plane, sort of like a rippling water effect.

My grandfather used to cure sick babies. His mother-in-law taught him how to do it. He was not allowed to tell another man the cure, only a woman, and he couldn’t tell anyone who was blood related. He would take the child in the woods. He cut a branch off a certain bush and said a certain bible verse and within an hour the child would be cured. That is all my family knows about it. I think the not telling thing was originally designed to protect the magick but it had the opposite effect- magick just got lost. There’s an old family in Virginia who used to have all sorts of cures but they aren’t allowed to write them down. Now most of the spells are gone. I’m all for sharing information. I don’t think it lessens the power in any way. I do think someone’s negative energy can have an adverse effect on me and that’s why I keep my personal spells secret. I don’t mind telling you how I did the spell, but I’m not going to reveal what I’m working for.

Despite having a magickal family (the great-grandmother who taught Papa had visions and spoke to a ‘little man’- probably a fairy) no one in my family ever taught me magick except for my mother who showed me how to use a pendulum. She uses a pendulum to determine the gender of unborn children. You can use a pendulum for lots of things (think ‘Charmed’) but she only knows how to tell if it’s a boy or a girl. It’s like my family knows magick but only in bits and pieces.

Using herbs can be as simple or as complex as you want. I learned by buying spices at the grocery store and reading about them. Sometimes I experimented with them. I kept notes on what worked and what didn’t. If I had pretty good success I would try growing the herb. I think you should use what’s available and not worry about some rare, hard to find ingredient.

I don’t charge people either, nor do I take donations. Actually, I’m leery of doing spells FOR people because if they lie to me whatever I do ends up on my karma. I usually tell people HOW to do the spell so if they make a mess it’s on them, not me.

When I was a child I used to dream things before they happened. Then I grew up and I don’t dream like that anymore. I could also tell what people were feeling. I can still do it, but I try not to because it’s exhausting. I literally feel what everyone else does so one minute I’m happy, then I’m depressed, then an angry person walks by and I want to kill someone. I avoid the mall. It’s really hard to separate other emotions from my own. The bad part is I just absorb things so sometimes I’m really down and then I suddenly wonder why. I’ll look and realize a negative person is near, so I walk off and then I feel fine. I suppose in some cases it would be an advantage to know what people are really feeling, but about 97% of the time you don’t want to know what kind of junk people carry around.