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Irish-American Witchcraft: Witchy Life Hacks

Irish-American Witchcraft: Witchy Life Hacks

Last updated on: August 8, 2018 at 10:48 pm by Morgan Daimler

Irish-American Witchcraft: Witchy Life Hacks 2018-08-08T22:48:17+00:00 Morgan Daimler

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The longer I’ve been a practicing witch the more I’ve moved away from long, complex rituals and into simpler ways of doing things. Some of this may relate to the fact that as time has gone on life itself has gotten more complicated and I find I have less time to spend on complicated daily magic, but my desire to have magic in my daily life hasn’t lessened. To balance out this desire for magic in my life with the need to keep things simple, or at least less complicated, I’ve come up with some basic ways to include aspects of magic in my daily life which I like to call witchy life hacks. None of these are necessarily super original and I’m sure other people also do them as well already, but I’ve found when I talk about them on social media that there are always some people who are excited to try them. So I thought it would be fun to share some of these today.

“The Love Potion” by Evelyn De Morgan, via WikiMedia.

Sartorial

Magic and clothing are a great combination and there are lots of ways we can do this. In folk magic we see things like safety pins pinned to hems of shirts or specific herbs sown into the hem of clothing for protective purposes. You can certainly still use those older ideas but there are some others that work as well that don’t have a clear history to them.

1. Runes and Sigils – runes and sigils can be drawn or sewn onto everything from shoes to jackets for a variety of purposes. For example you could write or lightly carve a runestave or sigil for safe travel into the sole of your shoes.

2. Jackets – if you have a favorite jacket or coat you can work magic into that in a variety of ways from blessing the item itself, to embroidering a symbol into it, to adding patches or decorative pins with specific meanings. These may be obvious or more subtle depending on what you want to do with the item. Every time you put the item on you can take a few seconds to just refocus the energy you want to invest into it.

3. Individual items of clothing can have magic worked into them for specific purposes as well, so that you might have a shirt you can wear when you need to feel confident or one for times when you need some extra strength to get through a situation. In the case of daily wear type clothing like that symbols could be drawn or sewn onto the item’s tag or hem where it wouldn’t be noticed by other people.

4. Even simpler clothing magic might involve just choosing items based on colour and what that color itself symbolizes to you. Just make it a conscious choice with intention behind it.

Image by Hans via Pixabay. CC License.

Personal

There are a few basic things I do with my daily routine that work just a bit of magic into things. They tend to involve essential oils or blends, but you could modify that for whatever works best for you.

1. This may only apply to people with curly hair, but I spritz my hair with water every morning as part of my hair care routine. To add some cleansing and protective energy to the process I started putting a few drops of rose water into the regular water I use for this. If you don’t have curly hair this is still something you could do though if you wanted to.

2. Switch out the chemical perfume or cologne for something that uses essential oils, and tailor what you wear to your needs or goals that day. I can credit this one to my friends Amy and Jennifer who got me into Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab and their products which are made with essentials. Not that that particular company is the only option but the idea is a good one, to use both the scent and the energy of the herbs to focus your purpose that day.

3. I keep sea salt and a few cleansing oils* in the bathroom to toss in the tub whenever I shower. Great easy method for cleansing, no difficult prep, just a palm full of salt and a few drops of oil.

Salt!

General

Just a couple general things that I have found simple and useful.

1. I try to keep on hand both birch misting spray and lavender misting spray; you can buy them or make your own with essential oil and purified water. Misting spray is cost effective and is a great quick way to do a light energetic cleanse on an area without a full on herb-burning session which is a lot more time consuming.

2. Symbols and sigils are super useful and often underutilized. You can trace them on doors, on the backs of picture frames, on windows. My friend Patty suggested when you are painting a room you can paint protective runes onto the walls first then paint over them so the rune is hidden underneath, which is a great idea. I’ve done something similar using blessed water and that can be done regularly, while cleaning, or anytime you feel the need.

Those are just a few ways that I have found to work little bits of magic into various aspects of my daily life; there are certainly many more possibilities. They are all low maintenance and once you get into the habit of doing them they become reflexive. I’ve found things like this are good options for keeping little bits of magic going even when life gets hectic, and they are also often fun to do.

*I use pre-mixed oils. If you prefer essential oils, as always, just be sure they are safe.

Irish-American Witchcraft

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