Magickal Art Journaling: An Introduction for Witches Part I

4/24/2018

This is the first in a series of excerpts from my online class "Introduction to Magickal Art Journaling". In this first part we talk about magick.

What is Magick?

Magick for me is becoming fully awake. So much of life seems to be made up of distractions, ways of removing oneself from the present moment. Feelings are wrong, vulnerability is embarrassing and authenticity suspicious. To be alone is to be lonely or sad. Where does this leave us? Hunting but not experiencing, looking towards the horizon but not seeing the sand beneath our feet.
While I became a witch in my late teens, I abandoned that path a few years later after a death that left me confused and angry. Magick wasn’t real anymore except when I went to art galleries and these became sacred places to me. I did not understand my feelings as I sat surrounded by paintings and sculptures, at that time I didn’t make art myself and certainly never thought I would. The magick was always there. I had simply gone to sleep.
It was only when I came to Asheville that I started to wake up as I returned to my witchy roots as well as finding the confidence to make art. The two together were, and continue to be, a potent mix.

Magick for me is to be alone within myself and at the same time knowing I am part of something interconnected. It is the sense that energy is all. It is trusting intuition and the subconscious, because that is where we can find our path to the goddess who is everything.

Spellwork then is finding agency in our own lives through magick, looking to ourselves and seeing that all we need is within us to make a change. True there are many who practice magick that has influence over others but we have to start with ourselves and the goddess within us.
If this all reads like something of a riddle that’s because it sort of is. In many ways it is a hard thing to verbalize and that is essentially what this whole course is all about. We can talk about these things, but there is no substitute for doing.