Do you want to craft powerful magic? If you ask people what magic is, you’ll probably get very different answers. For some, magic is arcane and complicated, holding hidden, ancient knowledge.
You need to know the meaning of strange sigils, ancient recipes, and dead or ancient languages such as Latin, Hebrew, and Ancient Greek. To others, it simply means manifesting your intentions: as easy as setting a goal and making a wish.
The truth is often somewhere between these extremes. To arrive at an understanding of what magic truly means to you, it can help to look to the history of magic and the role it has played in the evolution of our species and civilisations over millennia.
From the first hunter-gatherers who made clay effigies of prey animals and burned them before a hunt, to the shamanic healers who spoke incantations to the spirits of plants, willing their remedies to heal.
The principle of magic has always been about change and transformation: turning to healing, opening portals and pathways, making good things possible.
Do you believe you can bring about positive change in your life and the lives of others through magic and ritual? To be an effective magician, you don’t necessarily need to be taught by masters and gurus, or inherit powers through a magical bloodline like in Harry Potter.
The most effective people in the world are often those considered wise. In the ancient world, the mages and alchemists were considered wise men and wise women. In medieval times, healers and cunning folk were also considered wise.
The term wisdom may be overused. It can carry an impression of loftiness or moral superiority. It’s not something most of us would feel comfortable claiming. “I am wise, with a good sense of humour and strong skills in piano, cooking, and bookkeeping,” for example.
Wisdom is the quality of deeper insight. It is knowledge you accumulate that results in better judgement. If you have wisdom (insight) in a particular area, it follows that you will also make good decisions in that area.
Magic is about working with divine symbols and archetypes, and attuning to the Earth’s natural rhythms and cycles, in order to make good decisions that result in favourable outcomes. Setting an intention is another way of saying “I’m making this decision.” Magic is the practice of embodying wisdom that results in manifestation aligned with your will.
Let’s see it in action:
At the time of writing, it's Samhain. What is the wisdom of Samhain? In other words, what spiritual insights does the season bring for you? In modern esoteric tradition, Samhain is about learning the power of darkness: surrendering control, practising patience, dissolving the ego, and facing our fears of absence and loss.
What is life asking of you now? What tensions or challenges are calling for your attention?
Crone Wisdom: When knitting is more important than the thing being knitted
The Crone is the spirit who comes into power at Samhain and maintains her presence throughout winter. She is wise with years and, like Saturn, teaches us about limitations and restraint. It’s not always the obstacles themselves that block our path, but our attachments, the things we cling to, that become the obstacle to peace and fulfilment. By releasing our attachments, a more powerful truth has room to manifest.
Wisdom can be abstract and all too throwaway (like a cheesy inspirational quote), until we embody it. This is where magic truly comes alive. Magic is our way of making wisdom tangible: thought shaped through action, repeated in ritual, until it takes form in the world.
How do we craft magic?
Any craft uses materials. A potter uses clay and water; a knitter uses wool and needles; a spoon carver uses wood and knives. A magician, too, works with materials - materia magica.
These are objects animated with the raw energies of nature: woods, waxes, roots, herbs, and the elements themselves: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. These tangible things, rich with texture and presence, can anchor meaning into our actions, rituals, and ultimately, our lives.
Magic and ritual are ways of doing, touching, enacting, and tending. The change and transformation we seek are not necessarily supernatural, but the result of wisdom having been assimilated. Many synchronistic processes may interact and align with our work, from celestial forces, seasonal energies, encounters with people or animals, and our own personal history unfolding: all interweaving to make our practice truly magical and meaningful.
Rituals and Materia Magica for Samhain
Candles & Fire
Light a candle at sundown to honour the rebirth of light within darkness, and to remember that the darkness is not empty.
Roots & Earth
Work with nature’s roots and explore the hidden yet vital functions of plants. Roots are healing, nourishing, grounding. Engage with them through medicine, food, or contemplation to glean the wisdom of stability, stillness, and being rooted and at home in the world.
Books & Air
Our cerebral faculties, information, and the mind are associated with Air. If our feet are roots, our heads are in the clouds. Samhain and winter invite introspection, which can be channelled into study and contemplation.
In our age of social media, reading requires Saturnian discipline: the willingness to become accustomed to silence and solitude. Learn to enjoy that quiet again, feel the transformation it brings, and reap the rewards.
The wise spirits of winter all teach us that transformation begins in the dark, where roots form and new growth is born of seed buried in the soil. Crafting powerful magic during winter requires less grand gestures and more small, thoughtful, low energy acts repeated throughout the season, like knitting a scarf, or embodying knowledge through repetition and experience, until it becomes instinctive to you.