by Shez

Shez was one of the most experienced and plainspoken voices on alt.religion.wicca.moderated, a practitioner who had been working magic for decades before the internet existed. In this January 2005 essay she turns a sharp eye on what she saw as a growing problem: the commercialisation and mystification of Wiccan practice, with its specialised shops, velvet-wrapped tools, and elaborate ritual systems that obscured the simple mental discipline at the heart of the Craft.

Her argument is both practical and historical: real magic is in the mind, not in the tools, and the "modern desire to create special tools" was in fact a modern innovation. The witches of earlier centuries used kitchen knives and pudding basins — and then put them back in the kitchen.

I have been running into a lot of what I consider garbage lately. I don't know if I am being more sensitive to it, or its just several incidents in a short time. The thread on Tarot decks was just another part of that problem.

I am a very practical person, very down to earth. For me magick and divination is not mystical or something that only special people can do. We all have the ability to use magick and to use divination methods. Its a matter of a different mind set, not a lot of mumbo jumbo and mysticism. You need to find the right mind set, that is what takes time, not learning spells, or practising rituals, or using divination tools... simply learning to adjust your mind into the right frame.

Often it can be easy and you can explain it, like car drivers going into a trance state when they are driving being in a very similar state which those who use divining methods use. Sometimes its harder — the magical state of mind is one of belief as well as trance states, and it does take a lot of work in practising both your concentration and focus. However there are many systems that teach and use meditation techniques that will give the needed skills.

If you pick up a book that purports to explain how to use magick and it talks about nothing but spells, ritual, gods, tools and the right time of the month, day or year, then its not teaching the basic skills of magick. If you pick up a book on divination that confuses you more than you were confused before then its not teaching you divination skills. The cards, the crystal, the rune stones — anything that you use in divination is only a tool. It is your mind that is doing the real work, and the tools simply act as a focus for your mind.

Tools either in magick or divination are not magical or imbued with some sort of special sacred energy. They are simply symbols that help your mind to concentrate on either divination or magick. And that is all they will ever be. Once you have learned how to go into a trance state you don't need the tools. Once you have learned how to concentrate and focus your mind you don't need tools, spells, or ritual.

Now I do realise that a lot of people enjoy the colour and ritual involved, for them its part of the experience. That is fine, whatever helps you to concentrate and focus is good. Its when you lose sight of why your using those tools and begin to believe the ritual, tools, spells and so on are the real magick that you start to lose the plot. You should be able to use magick without anything at all. Except your mind and your innate abilities.

Most people find it easier to use things... but some find it far simpler to drop the whole shebang — mumbo jumbo, spells rituals, crystals whatever — and just use their minds. We are all different and neither is wrong. As long as you keep in mind that the true magick and the true divination is coming from your mind and your abilities. Not anything outside of you. Neither gods nor tools. You're learning how to use real magick. Once you forget that then your simply playing a game with a lot of pretty things that doesn't mean a thing, and will not create magick or allow you to be a good diviner.

On Divination

Magick is a real thrill when you learn how to use it properly, as is divination. Both however are very tiring, and in the case of divination can be upsetting. To truly see someone and their problems, their worries, their past and future isn't easy, it leaves you exhausted and often upset. One of the reasons I don't read any longer and try hard not to read people inadvertently is because I don't want to know. I prefer to keep a few illusions.

Before you start using divination keep that in mind. A good reader can never do lots of people every day as a job — it's too exhausting and too upsetting. Seeing someone's death, seeing people hurt, ill, grief stricken, abused and lost is not easy, and I would advise anyone who truly wants to read properly to learn to clear themselves and their tools on a regular basis, usually after every reading. Learn to shut down your mind so you don't remember what you saw. Cleaning your tools is necessary — they can become dirty with the sort of energy that you don't want around you.

You also need to keep silent sometimes. Telling someone they will die is unethical — you cant stop them dying and they get worried and frightened. Telling them that they need to see a doctor is much better. You have to have ethics when you read for people. No matter how much people say they really want to know the worst, believe me they don't. They want to hear that there is some hope — that is why they are consulting you.

Tools and the Kitchen Witch

If you study magick or divination then keep in mind always that its you who are doing this, that nothing outside of you is affecting the skills you have developed in your mind, that they are simply tools, and like tools should be treated with respect but not given undue importance.

You would not wrap a bread knife in velvet, carve sigils on it and treat it as if it were something truly special and sacred. You would however keep it sharp and to hand and respect it as a sharp kitchen tool. If you treat your magical tools in the same way they will not assume undue importance. Remember that before the 20th century witches did not have specialist shops to buy their tools in. They used what was to hand — the kitchen knife, a ball of string, a candle, a pudding basin — and they were put back into the kitchen and used without giving them any importance other than being kitchen tools.

This modern desire to create special tools is exactly that — modern. And most modern witches do not have the power that was within those old witches, because they have become too attached to tools, and forgotten that the real magick is within them. If you break a tool it shouldn't be important — you can replace it without any problems. And if your not in a position to replace it physically then replace it with a symbol: a twig for a knife, or your finger is just as good as any knife, which is just a symbol in any case for your focus.

I sometimes think I am talking to a blank wall when I try to explain this to all of you modern witches. I hope some of it will get through. I would like to think that witches who are young and just learning will pick up the skills they need and use them properly — and learn that they are the fountain of magick. Their minds create the changes; that is what magick is truly about.

I do worry about this constant desire to make everything sacred and mysterious when its nothing of the sort. A good working witch is practical down to her/his toes. If you have your head in the clouds and forget to keep your feet firmly in the mud, then your never going to be a successful magick user. Remember most of the mumbo jumbo was created to make it look difficult and special.

The difficulty is in learning the right tools to improve your concentration and focus, and to learn how to go into trance states. Often people who show an interest want instant magick, and there is no such thing. You're learning and improving your abilities all through your life. Using meditation techniques and learning to concentrate and focus is quite difficult enough without adding the mumbo jumbo to it, and usually sorts out the wheat from the chaff — it's too much like hard work for most people.

Real practical magick is easy. Learning the techniques to use magick is bloody difficult.

Colophon

Written by Shez and posted to alt.religion.wicca.moderated, January 2005. Shez was among the most experienced practitioners on the group, consistently bringing decades of practical experience to bear on questions of technique and ethics.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Original Message-ID: [email protected]

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