Is It Just Stuff? (Or: “I Have to Have My Tools!”)
Athames, candles, herbs, shiny rocks, ritual bells, cauldrons, Books of Shadow, crystal figurines, and more line the New Age store shelves and populate the altars of thousands of witches around the world. One of the longest-standing misconceptions in the wider witchcraft world is that you NEED stuff to properly practice spells and rituals. Much to the dismay of many a metaphysical shop’s sales numbers, this is a far cry from the truth: magic exists with or without a fifteen-pound rose quartz obelisk and a fancy altar cloth to put it on. And yet… is there some value in all the stuff? I argue yes, but with a giant asterisk.
More than just a witch, I am also a musician. As a musician, I own a lot of music gear both for playing and recording what I play to share with others. Music, like many of the “mundane” things we do in this world, is magic. An act of creation out of the aether meant to improve the world around us. Music can be as simple as humming notes to yourself, or as complex as a world-class orchestra performance. Do I need the four guitars, three amps, multiple synthesizers, a full drum kit, and my little home recording studio to make music? Absolutely not! All I really need is what I was born with: my voice (and my decent sense of rhythm). Bjork, one of my biggest influences, recorded an entire album, a full production with drums and bass and other “instruments,” with only vocal tracks (“Medulla,” arguably her most challenging and terrifying work but I highly recommend it).
But if I want to add a percussive beat behind my singing? Well, sure, I could be like Bjork and beatbox (she got someone else to beatbox, but for the sake of this metaphor getting out of hand, let’s just focus on one person performing the work). But I’m not really all that great at beatboxing, and beatboxing and singing at the same time is out of the question. So, I own a drum set and a drum machine. These items make creating the musical magic I hear in my head easier and give me an intentional and focused medium through which to bring my idea to fruition. This same thing applies to all my instruments: I COULD do it all with just my voice, but sometimes it’s just easier, better, and more fun to play the guitar.
Magic (with a capital M, the Crafty kind) is exactly like the magic of music. None of us NEED any of the trappings of ritual and spellwork to be effective in our craft. If work needs to be done, the best thing to do is roll up your sleeves and get it done without worrying about whether you have the right combination of herbs and crystals. But the stuff of the Craft can be highly useful tools to enhance and smooth the process. It is important to not get hung up on the “how and what,” but rather “the why.”
I personally love working with candles. The flame provides a wonderful focus while doing spellwork, and the energy it creates while it burns is wonderful to harness and use. Not to mention, burning candles is a whole vibe and really helps mentally and emotionally set the mood. My candles, however, are not just ritual trappings that I use because I’m supposed to use candles. They are selected, lit, and burned with intention poured into every second of the process. They are there to help and enhance the spellwork, not because a book on Spells 101 told me I needed a candle (specifically a gold taper!) for the spell to be successful.
Circling back to this concept of “how and what,” it is very important as you learn and grow in the craft to not get hung up on these things. You do not NEED a step-by-step guide to performing a spell, with an ingredients list as long as a food blogger’s recipe. Not only does the insistence on the STUFF and the STEPS trip you up in a mundane sense (yet another shopping trip to get the right color of crystal! Oh shit, I didn’t light the incense before starting my cleansing!), but it also trips you up in the metaphysical sense. We lose sight of the intentionality behind the Craft when we focus on the things. Almost like we expect the things to do the heavy lifting for us. But magic works on energy, not items. You have to meet “the universe” (or whatever personification/entity of The Big Unknown you ascribe to) halfway, you can’t shortcut it with a shopping trip. You owe your energy and intentions as your end of the bargain, and a physical item is just an additional offering of intent.
Let’s take, for example, one of my most-loathed internet spells (meaning that it seems to be popular on the internet): the cord-cutting ritual. Popular consensus seems to be that you need two candles and a string to burn between them. One article I read while double-checking my work got deep in the weeds of the kind of candles, the color, the length they burn, the kind of twine, and whether you should use chili powder (advised against in said article, as the chili powder will just “spice things up more,” as if the chili powder is sentient and acting of its own will). After the candles and string burn, you can even “read” the wax to see the results of the spell! (Know that I am rolling my eyes here).
Not even getting into the fire hazard of a multi-hour process of burning a string tied between two candles, this instruction focused way more on the STUFF than the WHY. It gives readers the false sense that for this ritual to be successful, the right stuff must be combined and used in the right way, and that the stuff will even tell you afterward if it was successful. I know a newer practitioner who followed this spell to a T and was upset and worried that the cord didn’t burn and that the spell didn’t work. They asked me, “what does it MEAN?” It means it didn’t burn! I told them, “Screw the candles and the waiting, put all your intention, your energy, and your desire to cut this attachment into the act of breaking the string, and just DO IT!” This person did so, and said they felt so much better after taking a more active and decisive role in the spell. It was never about the candles or the string, it was about pouring the energy and intention into the act of cutting the cord to help this person mentally and emotionally disconnect from an undesirable second person.
The magic is not in the stuff. The stuff can be a vehicle, a metaphor, a representation, a guide. Our senses and collective memories are powerful: smells, colors, certain patterns or objects, can all evoke deep connections and emotions within us. Items that evoke these memories and connections within is are valuable to the practice, and highly powerful, but at the end of the day, they aren’t required. If you work with a deity or spirit, items that remind you of said entity can be powerful enhancements to your work… but the deity is not IN those items, nor are they going to be mad at you if you didn’t use their preferred shade of red. The intention and the energy you put in are what is the most important, and arguably all you really need. When you learn that you need for nothing to do magic, the entire world and everything in it is your craft. Everything else is just added instruments to your song.
