Starting out in traditional witchcraft

Nature is one of the most important and essential ways of focusing in traditional witchcraft. It is the backbone of my practice. Being close to and aware of the natural cycles in nature should be the first thing start for anyone that is interested in studying witchcraft. Give yourself time to get away from the computers and the books. Reading is great but this is a secondary and least important way to study witchcraft. For me I just love reading so I read but I cannot learn anything from any book that I haven’t and will not learn from myself. And this means doing, getting up, going outside, and going within, practising, learning about herbs and plants, your environment, your land, your ancestors and learning about who you are.

I started out as a pagan before I began to learn about witchcraft, which for me was a really good start. This is because I see nature as a whole, when I say this I do not just mean open spaces and the outdoors, I mean everything. In general people tend to put nature in one category and humans in another. But really humans are already a part of nature, we are not separate or above, we are the same. As humans we have simply leant to manipulate nature. I also think of spirits and the afterlife as a part of nature. I don’t believe anything in this world, the universe or the other side is apart from nature. We just do not understand this yet. Maybe one day science will come to understand this. This is a very different way of thinking about nature but for me it is a much more accurate and holistic way of viewing nature.

Most people that practice a traditional witchcraft live very closely with nature. But for me it is very important that nature is viewed with truth, and that is to see it has a whole. To be a traditional witch and to live with your practice is to see things as they are, to see with a clear eye. You cannot do this if you only want to see the pretty, the cute and the beautiful side of life. This means while realising that nature is inspiring and wonderful, that it also ugly, harsh, dangerous and deadly. There are two sides of the coin.

As witches we must and should strive to be in harmony with all sides of nature, this means within and without – everything within ourselves and everything outside ourselves. This is true balance.

So if you are interested studying witchcraft the first two places to start are you and nature, go within and then go without, or better would be to go within sitting outside by a river, in your garden, in a park, on a bench under a tree in the middle of a town. It doesn’t matter where as long as you realise that to begin all the tools you need are you and the land under your feet. After this the rest will follow quite naturally.