Modern Witchcraft: Beginners Guide

Protection

One of the first things a beginner witch should learn is how to protect themselves, both physically and spiritually.

You might be asking yourself, why is protection even necessary? And that is because, as a witch beginning to open up their awareness, you may also be opening yourself up to spiritual and metaphysical vulnerabilities. It might even be that these dangers have always been there, but before now you had no way to protect yourself against them. In witchcraft, you are also making literal changes to your subconscious brain; you don't want to re-program your mind in a way that causes negative side effects.

Protection is necessary for all witches at any skill level, because as you cultivate your personal power more and more, different entities (spirits & sometimes people) start to notice you and may want to take advantage of you. When you are a beginner witch, the more powerful entities won't bother you because you are not worth their time, but you might have to deal with "lower tier" dangers instead. As you grow more powerful, "higher tier" entities will take notice, and "lower tier" entities will not bother you because you're too powerful. 

I'm not trying to scare you, my point is that every witch needs to practise protection, not just beginners or seasoned witches.

Do atheist/sceptic witches still need to exercise protection magick even though they don't believe in spirits or magick as an external force?  Yes! Protection magick for sceptics is all about reassuring yourself so you feel confident when you're doing spell work, and setting up a safe space for correctly re-programming your subconscious brain so you don't accidently re-program it in a negative way.

Think about a time when perhaps a stomach bug put you off of your favourite meal, and now whenever you think about your favourite food you just think about being sick - that would be an example of how your subconscious brain has accidentally been re-conditioned in a way that has negative consequences for you. The same thing can happen in witchcraft (perhaps causing brain fog, clumsiness, nightmares, anxiety, negative associations with things, etc). 

🛡️ Layers of protection magick make you feel safer when doing your spellwork, relaxing you so you are able to be fully centred, and create a safe space in which you are able to re-condition your subconscious brain without negative side effects. 🛡️

What's the worst that could happen? Demonic possession?!

Witches protect themselves from almost anything. Demonic possession is just an extreme and vanishingly rare example that has been way over-dramatized in movies (it's not something most witches have to realistically worry about). In all honesty, the most common thing witches protect is their mental energy and wellbeing; something everyone (including non-witches) can benefit from doing more.

Think about how negatively the news and social media affects you - that's something you can learn to protect yourself from with witchcraft. What's more, witches tend to be very empathetic, open, and aware folk. This means that their empathetic abilities can often be negatively affected with just a simple trip to the grocery store. Particularly empathetic witches can pick up on the subtle energies people in public can project; hatred, fear, anger, anxiety. Witches can come away feeling ungrounded and drained of energy. If you ever feel like this, you need to practise some protection magick.

When it comes to casting spells, as a beginner with pure intentions, the worst thing that could happen is that your spell fails. That's it - no demonic possessions, no natural disasters, no life-changing consequences.

A beginner doing spellcasting with impure intentions (mockery, disrespect, selfishness, ignorance) may annoy or anger some spirits or universal forces at work, and may run into some bad luck for a short while (feeling drained/tired(1); unusual clumsiness; nightmares; illness of the self/family member/pet; general bad luck, etc).