Witches’ Tools: Meditation as a Tool

In witchcraft, meditation has been rising in prominence, over the past few decades, especially. Meditation serves many purposes. It is a way to soothe the spirit, enhance the circumstance of living, and decrease the overall load of stress, as well as learning to harness the individual peculiarities of the person’s mind, train it to be still, become aware of itself and how it functions, in order to strengthen it. Meditation is used to improve the lives of those who practice this ancient art in many different ways. Meditation can enhance and calm the spirit, during times of trial. Meditation can lead to better mental, emotional, and even physical health. Meditation can be used to train the mind, body, spirit connections to achieve a greater cooperation to work together as one.

Meditation may be used in a more passive, contemplative manner while sitting, or lying still. Sometimes it is used for allowing thoughts and emotions to rise in the mind as the person explores them, each in turn, understanding them without trying to control them, or have a conscious effect on them. This allows the person greater insight into themselves, their thought processes, their emotions, how things link together in their mind, as they explore the stream of thoughts and emotions that their mind presents to them without being guided.

Once this process is mastered, learning to focus on a single thought, exploring it, manipulating it within the mind to see all sides, explore possibilities, consider it from various angles in relation to other thoughts and ideas, is an excellent way to advance the understanding of the mind. The same exploration toward each emotion is helpful in learning to control emotions as it relates to magickal practice. When casting a spell to promote a specific intent, the witch must be able to control their mind, to harness it with the specific intent, without the mind wandering, to make the spell cast as strong as possible. Without the proper focus and intent behind the spell, the power of the witch is pointless. It serves no purpose other than the wasting of valuable time. Without control of focus, a wandering mind can cause a spell to fail, at the very least, or have unintended consequences toward the focus of the spell, the witch, or even innocent bystanders, for good or ill. As any long- time practicing witch can tell you, the intent behind the spell and focus on this intent from the witch are two crucial elements that cannot be out of sync if the spell is to be a success.

Another form of meditation a person may choose to use is a more active manner when performing daily activities. They may progress through any number of daily activities and carefully take note of the feelings each activity brings, the way their mind reacts to the activity, the emotions and responses (mental, emotion and even physical) which their mind links to the activity. This can greatly assist people who meditate in understanding their own motivations, their strengths, their weaknesses, how to approach things differently in order to experience them differently. When using an active focus of meditation, a mindfulness of action, the same action can be taken day after day, with a different focus, or lens, being used daily to see it from various perspectives. This process exposes much about the person that otherwise they might never know about themselves.

This practice can come in very handy when performing rituals or casting spells as well. At times, many witches will find themselves helping out a friend, a friend of a friend, a family member, or even a stranger to whom they may feel anything from a mild fondness to outright disgust for as a person. It is only the strength of their mind and the control of purpose over their emotions which will allow them to perform the magick without losing control of the situation. Magick should be exacting when cast and there is no room for errors in the casting of spells. As such, meditation is an essential way to learn the control and focus of the mind before undertaking the physical practice of using magick.

Meditation can be an amazing tool to improve one’s life and understanding of oneself. As such, it is something that should be explored by every witch, in my opinion, as a way of improving their knowledge and understanding of how their mind works. As I see it, a witch without experience in meditation will not be as fluent in the practice of their magick.