Some Things You May Need

(Most if not all of these are from when Ashiok was teaching me)

To start with, if you want success in magic anybody needs discipline. The drive to achieve something and the patience to allow yourself time to succeed. That doesn't mean believing blindly though, anything you come across should be looked at with healthy skepticism and testing, not blind faith and not outright rejection. Otherwise anybody could miss something valuable to their progression and never know. -Ashiok

Once you're familiar with your energy and can move it (literally, it's like having water inside that goes where you mind directs it) you can move it both Inside and outside the body.

People often learn psi balls, and there are a thousand tutorials on how to do those things. The handy part about this is you learn what it feels like to put your energy outside of you. It responds to your intentions after all.

With this knowledge, you can apply it. Put energy into sigils, into candles, into oils. Put it into crystals, into yourself. The intention is what matters, intention is how energy is programmed. -Ashiok

Magic, in a manner, is forming a language with your subconscious so it allows your will to manifest. When you've started taking in energy and honing yourself, often times events and situations will manifest in your favour, including finding lost things or being "in the right place" etc.

This is why actions are critically important. Each action you take reinforces to your subconscious something. Magical actions reinforce that you're opening yourself to power and want magic in your life. This is why one who practices must form a daily practice. Thing or things that need doing daily, be it set meditations, a block of time to practice with energy, a ritual or magical act of some kind, charging an item, healing, etc, etc. -Ashiok

There are certain acts as well that will be beneficial. Creating an Altar isn't necessary, but it will help to anchor energies into your life and into your space.

Meditations on expanding consciousness are useful, stretching perspective to encompass your room, house, town, state, country, continent, planet, solar system, galaxy, Universe. This expands your aura as well as your mind.

Taking in energies you resonate with or Want to resonate with is also important, i.e. a person seeking to be closer to spirits of the dead would meditate in a graveyard (perhaps on a tomb) to take in energies of death. A person who was working with a celestial/infernal spirit would have an area dedicated to them with a sigil and offerings, allowing influence and energies to seep through. -Ashiok

Daily practice, absorption, strengthening. These are all considered a form of "spiritual alchemy" and are the true meaning of the Philosopher's stone (turning lead into gold refers to refining the Spirit, not actual metals). -Ashiok

Question everything. Form understanding of how something works and integrate it. Discard it if it's useless. Alter it if it needs changing. Prioritize things that will make you your best, not things you feel will help you hide away.

You'll eventually come to realise both your own way of using your energies and ways/Paths others have walked that are compatible. Then those will combine into something wholly yours, because that's how the Paths of magic branch. Everyone's different and we can only hope to glean understanding from each other for our own works.

Nothing wrong with resources. As long as they're credible. A child run site that has one perspective is hardly credible. Hell, books are easier to find as .pdf free online now too. -Ashiok

-Action. Never ending motion, commitment to action. Discipline and refinement. Applied learning.

In a few words, that's all you need. -Ashiok

As an example, although I'm currently altering my routine, my Normal nightly routine has me doing approx 14+  min. of Kundalini Yoga, raising energies through each chakra, as well as visualizing a sigil of Ahriman to harmonize my energies more with the current of the Path of Smoke. I also spend around an hour in meditation, sometimes more sometimes less. General grounding and centering, plus a few specific kinds. Often I attempt to enter a trance state where I can achieve temporary nonexistence.

I'm currently looking to integrate sun gazing and a rite of empowerment, preferably both together, as a means of farther bolstering my personal energy and assisting to refine my aura.

* During general meditation, there are a lot of little exercises involving moving your "sense of consciousness" as well that I have integrated.

I also melt wax, dye and stearic acid together to make black candles once per week for my altar, which is then consecrated and empowered before being set to burn for the week. -Ashiok

Pick something, learn it. Master it to the best of your ability, but don't fixate. In ritual or in incantation it's Fine if you say something wrong or move incorrectly. It's your head that  rules whether a mistake is an issue or not, and more often then not you can restart or continue onwards with no problem.

It's only Window dressing, like this Reality itself. Everything you believe is solid is actually not, it's made of a near infinity of tiny particulate (obv, but still). Everything in life is like that, solid on the surface only.

* + another good thought to pass along is not to overwork yourself. Practicing every day, multiple times daily is a good way to burn out. Magic is not physical but the body acts as if it is, and overpracticing magic in attempts to speed yourself is just as harmful as overpracticing in a gym. 3-4 days a week have a practice. Maybe have a small nightly thing like a meditation or Yoga, but ensure you have at least a day weekly to rest and allow results to integrate. -Ashiok

Meditations for chakras often involve drawing energy up from the earth, into each successive chakra, and staying in that state for a while. Or focusing on a specific chakra per day, ect.

Some Paths even have specific effects. The Left Hand Path often blackens the Chakras, eventually Consuming them and unifying them. The Right Hand Path does something akin to "polishing" them and causes a brightening effect, intending to have them simultaneously resonate with the highest frequencies to ensure they resonate as much as possible with the ALL. -Ashiok

Once you gain discipline and learn meditation, you can then learn how You interact with your energy. After that, you can choose to learn many ways to apply it. Putting energy into sigils, putting it into crystals, into candles, casting spells, creating thoughtforms, astral projection, ect ect.

Once you learn How, the What and Why is up to you. \_Ashiok

-Practice. Energy feels like what it feels like. Your Feelings are what's important. When you meditate, as my Primer directs, you will eventually learn to recognise the rhythms of your body and Ignore them. Once you Ignore them, you'll realize there's another rhythm you weren't aware of before. It might feel like heat, like cold, like electricity, or like some weird combination, or even like somehow air. The feel doesn't matter, it's how you recognise it that does. Picturing can help, but feeling is paramount. -Ashiok

-Energy control. Practice, an easy technique to practice anytime anywhere. It's also a way to practice programming energy (I.e. making energy do what you want). A person who's good with psi balls can move to more complex visualizations and Constructs. For example, If I wanted to I could form a glob of energy in a hand and shape it into what I associate with a sword. Does it cut? No. Does it go through things? Yes. Can it cause issues for people? If I intend it to, yes. I can pass energy through a person for benefit or harm, usually minor things like causing/removing headaches (which is intention).

Making small constructs and manipulating your energy is a good way to start into bigger things like creating more Independent constructs and thoughtforms.

A psi ball is when you can feel the energy inside you, and have interacted with it enough to understand that it moves when and where you Want it to, you can learn to "pipe" it up your arms and out into your palms. You hold your hands slightly apart like you're holding a ball weird and "pulse" the energy between the two points.

The psychic energy merges and makes a   kind of..   H== (   ) == H   if H is the Hand, == is the Stream and  (  ) is the forming ball. There's a connection. Normally they disperse if you stop focusing or drop them, but with Intention and practice you can make them last. Which is the start of psychic construction towards things like thoughtforms, ect. This is also amplified on the astral realm because it's a place of pure thought. Having the ability to manipulate energy there is similar to Lucid Dreaming.-Ashiok

The idea is to empower yourself and evolve. Attain enlightenment if you prefer, but that's a long goal. The work is to uplift yourself, the great work is to uplift Humanity. Become the change you want to see embodied in the World. That's the great work.

Do with power attained as you will. -Ashiok

- An altar is useful. But it's also meant to embody the current you want to align with. That's why a Wiccan would have specific things on their altar (Usually representations of masculine, of feminine, perhaps a mirror, a representation of each element, an Athame, perhaps a bell, a device to burn incense, and a Pentacle) compared to what would be on my altar.

My altar has 3 candles. 2 red, one black. The black one I burn for a week, make a new one, then ritually bless and replace it. My altar is also essentially a massive urn filled with Earth, because the Path of Smoke draws power from cursed earth essentially. It's more complex then that, but that's the easiest way to explain it without great detail.

An altar is something you construct when you want to bring a current more into your life. It's a place To meditate at, to perform your rites, and essentially to saturate with the energies you want to be apart of. Not every practitioner has one, but those who do personalize them based on their path and what sort of magic they find they use the most. -Ashiok

-It's not about thought. It's about feel. Trying to stop a wandering mind or to clear it is impossible. Instead, you simply sit and feel. Feel your body, feel your blood, your breath. Then feel your power. Simply be. Sit and feel the power flow on its own.

That's all you really need to do, at least at first. Then once you understand the ueel, you can throw in Visualizations or complex ideas like walking yourself through a meditation for a specific purpose (I.e. astral projection).

Relax. Learn to relax on demand. The feeling flows freely.-Ashiok

(Welp, now this wiki looks like a shrine to Ashiok, which its not, but they are very educated in this scene, and have many good theory's and experiences to share) -Kar

(And now some more things I have learned that will help you on your way!) -Kar

Whatever you do in your practice, is entirely up to you. You can mix and mold, bend and break different parts of witchcraft to form your own path, or you can follow another practitioner and do the same thing they are doing, its all up to you. Nothing is set in stone, besides for a few closed practices, which unless invited into, YOU DO NOT GET TO PRACTICE! Search those up, because it is very disrespectful to practice a closed practice. (This includes white sage and palo santo)

When starting out, it is better to start with energy work instead of spells straight of the bat. The best way to have a spell backfire, is to not understand what you are doing before you do it. Also hexes, curses, bindings, ect. Just don't do that until you have sufficient knowledge of what you are doing.

Magic cannot take away a persons free will, it can only alter things around a person, like a smell around you that makes you remember something. (Horrible analogy, but it works) For example, if you do a love spell on a person who hates you, they will just get annoyed that they can't stop thinking about you. But if you do it on a person who has feelings for you, they are more likely to act on said feelings with the little push the love spell gives them.

NEVER, disrespect someone's path of magic. Unless of course it is just fluff magic, and in that case, still don't disrespect it, so either find a kind way to push them in the right direction, or just don't talk about it. Back to not fluff paths: If someone's path isn't the same as yours, then that's okay! Not everyone is going to practice the same, not everyone is going to interpret signs the same, not everyone is going to associate certain herbs and crystals with the same thing as you! It all depends on what resonates with them. This also applies to if you are very into spellwork, and someone else is into divination. You might not see what is so magical about getting signs and doing divination stuff, but they do. Overall, just respect other people's practices.

Always check your facts. Always make sure you know what you are doing before you do it, especially if it could harm you or someone else.

I know how I said that no hexing or bindings or cursing if you don't know what to do, but here is a little quick thing I have picked up along the way (I haven't used it since I am an empath and if I do this I will most likely feel super guilty and feel their emotions but stilllll) If someone is being rude to you, or someone else, right there name on a piece of paper (You can run it under water if you want a stronger effect) and pop that thing in the freezer.... yup, that's it, just give said person a little nudge in the, "don't mess with me" way. This spell (Not sure what else to call it, but it falls under the category) won't harm the person, just give them a little string of bad luck. But again: DO THIS INSTEAD OF HEXING SOMEONE IF YOU FEEL THE NEED TOO. Like come on, don't hex people unless they are really freaking bad, like just don't.

(Alright, that's all for now, hope this helped!) -Kar