Free Witchcraft Resources for Beginners
A couple months ago I made a post shouting out the fact that witchcraft doesn’t require any money to get started (or to be practiced, for that matter), and I had a few people ask me about what they can do that’s free, especially as a beginner, so I wrote up this post. I was lost and broke when I was getting started with my craft, and it was really difficult to find tips for beginners that weren’t just “buy these things!” I’m hoping this will be useful for people who are looking for a place to begin.
So. You’re interested in witchcraft and would like to find out more. Maybe you keep seeing those “crystals/herbs/books/etc. beginner witches should have” posts, and you’re frustrated, because you want to begin your practice, but don’t have the money for those supplies. I was once in that spot, and even now that I’m five years into my practice, I have rarely purchased any of the supplies witchtok deems to be fundamental. Here are some places you can begin instead. Let’s get started!
Info continues below.
Foundations
By foundations, I’m referring to things that aren’t explicitly witchcraft, but that I have found very beneficial within my own practice.
1. Before anything, I recommend asking yourself a simple question: why do I want to practice witchcraft, and what do I hope to get out of it? You may not know for sure yet, and your answer will likely change over time, but having some intentions going in can be helpful when you’re in the early stages of research. When I was starting out, I felt very overwhelmed by the amount of info out there, so if you have a bit of an idea of what you’re specifically interested in, that can be helpful to get you going.
2. Meditation: not all witches meditate, but a lot of the skills you develop through meditation can be helpful within witchcraft. You can try out secular meditation (apps like Balance and Headspace, as well as Insight Timer—the former has a mix of secular and spiritual meditations), or you can find a witchcraft-specific guided meditation on YouTube. For neurodivergent folks out there, I recommend looking into active meditation, which I’ve found to be quite beneficial for myself.
For me, it’s always important to remain grounded when I’m doing any spiritual practice, and meditation is a good skill you can work on to help with that. I also find that having a background in meditation can be really helpful later down the line when/if you are attempting visualization and/or astral projection, witch’s flight, and so forth.
3. Journaling: another thing that isn’t specifically witchcraft-related, but is an important skill to harness, on my opinion. To me, it’s crucial to be in touch with what I’m feeling (especially when it comes to doing spellwork), and journaling is one great way to do that. If you’re stuck and don’t know where to begin, look up witchcraft (or general) journal prompts on here or somewhere else. A lot of the ones that come up will be shadow work, which can be intense, so only do what feels comfortable for you.
I’d also like to note that automatic writing/drawing is an entirely free option if you’re interested in communing with spirits or deities. Essentially it involves getting into a trance-like state (usually in a dark room only lit by candlelight or similar—this is to avoid distractions) with a piece of paper and pen, and you write or draw everything that comes to your head without thinking about it. And then you go back and see what sort of messages you may be receiving. It’s a bit hard to explain and I’m not very experienced in it myself, but it’s something worth looking into if it sounds interesting to you!
4. Look at what you have, instead of what you don’t: a lot of beginner witch resources will list specific items that you should have, without really explaining why. And without that knowledge of how/why having an item is important, you might find your Must Have crystal sitting unused on a shelf somewhere. So instead of focusing on the items you want or feel like you should have, look at what you do have. Are there plants or herbs in your house/yard that you feel drawn to? Do you have a collection of cool rocks and stones? How do these items make you feel?
For me, a large part of my craft is my belief in Animism (the belief that all living things have innate spiritual qualities, like a soul, spirit, or specific energy) and this can play into the way you interact with the natural world if it’s a belief you also subscribe to. Try and feel the presence of a plant to see if it gives you any specific feeling. It does? Great! Now you have a correspondance for that plant. And it’s even better than the correspondances you’ll get in a book because it’s based on your own personal connection and intuition. That’s what is most important.
5. When in doubt, use your intuition. You might find a source that says cinnamon should be used for protection. Another will say it should be used for abundance spells. What matters the most is what you think about an herb/plant/stone/colour, or whatever else you may utilize. I recommend to start keeping a list of what you associate these things with. It can take awhile to build up a personalized list, but once you have one, it’ll be a lot more useful than what a correspondances book says to do.
6. Scour your pantry and get cooking: are you wanting to try out a spell but you haven’t bought the ingredients? Look in your pantry. You may be surprised by how many commonly used witchcraft herbs you find in there. And if you have been starting to associate certain herbs or spices with specific feelings or energies, that’s a great way to get started with creating your own spell.
You can do a spell in many ways, but when I was starting out, one of my favourite ways was to incorporate a certain herb or spice into food I made. Say you’re making a soup and maybe you want a bit of protection, so you add some ground pepper with the intention of that pepper protecting you as you stir it into the soup. Same goes for any other ingredient you’d like to use. A little intention goes a long way!
7. Dedicate your actions, time, or energy: if you’re interested at all in working with deities, ancestors, and other spirits but don’t have the time/space to build an altar—or maybe you aren’t sure how involved you want to be with this part of witchcraft—you can devote an action to the entity. This can be simple. For example, when I worked with Apollo, I would use taking my meds and vitamins as an act of devotion to him. This is an offering. And offerings can be anything you want them to be. They don’t have to be expensive or fancy!
It’s also important to note that you do not need to work with deities or spirits to be a witch. You don’t even have to believe in them. Many witches are atheists or don’t work with any deities at all. But for those who are interested, simple offerings can be a good place to start.
8. Practice energy work: in my view, energy work is the most important skill to learn for your craft, since so many things build off of it. And with energy work, you don’t need to spend any amount of money on it. All you need is yourself, your intuition, and anything else—I mean that quite literally, you can practice feeling the energy of other people, pets, trees, buildings, foods, socks, your favourite pen, and whatever else you think of!
Once you get to know the energy of the things around you, you can more effectively utilize them as tools within your practice (this builds off of the intuition point I made earlier).
For example, as a child I lived in a house that was surrounded by cedar trees. It was a place where I felt very safe. To this day, when I see or smell a cedar tree, I feel safe and protected. You can read this any way you’d like—to me it’s both a spiritual and psychological phenomenon—but this is one example of sensing energy.
As a witch, you can practice that skill and use it to get to know the tools you’d like to use within your own craft (the things that connect to you personally, not what you’re told you should connect with). This isn’t an easy skill by any means, so if it doesn’t come naturally to you, that’s perfectly okay!
For more on this subject, I recommend two books: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Kimmerer (more on animism in particular) and Psychic Witch by May Auryn (lots of exercises to practice working with and sensing energy).
Where to Go for Learning
After you’ve thought a bit about some of the above, or skipped it altogether if it doesn’t suit you, you’re probably wanting some good resources that will actually tell you how to do the witchcraft thing. But before that, I want to reiterate again that this is your practice, and you should only do what you are interested in. So take what you want and leave what you don’t.
I’m going to point you in three primary directions for learning good information: books, podcasts, and YouTube.
But first, I want to issue a massive disclaimer for the YouTube information (and some books, for that matter). You should not have one sole source for your information. Books that have bibliographies are always the most trustworthy sources. And even though I trust the information coming from the YouTubers I’ll mention—especially because I’ve read similar information in several witchcraft books—don’t take their word at face-value. Be critical of what you’re told. Believe what you believe. This is a skill you’ll learn over time. It can be a bit overwhelming at first, but it will get easier to discern what’s good info vs. bad info, over time.
Before you get started, I highly recommend watching this helpful video by HearthWitch with info on how to vet your witchcraft sources: link.
Books
In my view, books are the Best source of information, period. Anyone can publish an article or video online, but not everyone can publish a book. So there tends to be a bit more reliable info in witchcraft books.
As far as knowing what book you should begin with, there are lots of lists out there for beginners, and I recommend just looking at one of those lists and picking what sounds interesting to you. Take what you like and leave what you don’t.
Most of the YouTubers I’ve listed below have videos recommending books for beginners.
If you’re interested in British folk witchcraft, I started out with Folk Witchcraft by Roger J. Horne and it was a brilliant beginners guide that I recommend to anyone who is interested in that branch of witchcraft.
As always, while you read witchcraft books, be critical of the information you are presented with. Unfortunately, lots of witchcraft books (especially the classic ones) can be rooted in concepts like bioessentialism, colonialism, and racism. My recommendation is to not take any author’s word as gospel and to use your critical thinking skills when reading witchcraft books.
Where I live, books are EXPENSIVE. And when you’re just starting out in your practice, you might not have the money or ability to go out and buy a book just yet. Maybe you’re still unsure if witchcraft is right for you. Or maybe you’re in the “broom closet.” Whatever the reason, here are some free places to find books.
1. The public library: a bit obvious, but a great resource to look at, because you never know what your library might have. Libraries are the best. And entirely free!
2. Library apps like Libby or Overdrive: especially helpful if you don’t want to bring home a physical witchcraft book, or if your branch doesn’t have any copies of what you’re looking for. You can also get some audiobooks on there.
3. Archive.org: aka the web archive. Entirely free and entirely legal, this works as an online library service where you can check out a book for a bit of time right from your computer. Sometimes you can download PDFs as well. I’ve found a lot of my favourite witchcraft books on there, so if you have a specific title in mind, search it there.
YouTube
First, as a bit of a caveat before recommending you to watch YouTube videos on witchcraft: in my view, books are the best source of information for any witch, as they are able to contain a large degree of nuanced and research-informed information. But books aren’t a simple solution for everyone, and I’ve learned a lot from informed YouTubers over the years (in fact, like many witches, I was first exposed to witchcraft via Harmony Nice on YouTube!).
I’m including a list here of witch YouTubers that I personally recommend because I have found that their content aligns with information I have read in books and other research-informed sources over the years, and because I find them to be generally reliable.
I want to note here that this list is rather biased, as I tend to watch witchcraft YouTubers whose practices mirror my own in some ways. So most of these practitioners have practices informed by European folk witchcraft, and are not very diverse as a result. If any practitioners have further recommendations to add on, especially for practitioners of colour and practices that are different from mine, please do so!
My recommendations:
ChaoticWitchAunt: folk witchcraft, specifically in the Italian tradition, some great beginner content, info on working with saints and spirits.
TheWitchOfWonderlust: death magic, spellwork, great beginner content, lots of excellent info on working with spirits.
HearthWitch: truly a well of information on British witchcraft, beginner videos on any topic you can think of, q&a livestreams, and there’s even a video on vetting witchcraft sources that I really recommend for beginners.
The Redheaded Witch: folk witchcraft and folklore, spirit and ancestor work, daily witchcraft ideas, some beginner videos.
TheGreenWitch: such an excellent resource for herbal/green witchcraft, videos on spellwork, ingredients, tools, and more.
Mintfaery: lots of beginner information, videos on working with the fae, nature witchcraft, and lots of fun witchy days in the life.
Ella Harrison: German folk witchcraft, great beginner resources, including some more niche traditional craft topics like witch’s ladders.
The Norse Witch: info on Norse witchcraft and Heathenry, Norse paganism, and some content about astrology.
simplywitched: lots of great everyday witchcraft content, pagan witchcraft, more vlog style.
Warrior Witch Nike: witchy book reviews, paganism, deity work, some astrology content.
Mhara Starling: the place to go for anyone interested in Welsh witchcraft and folk magic related to Wales.
Alwyn Oak: lots of witch’s guides, especially relating to sabbats (those popularized in Wicca), forest witchcraft, gorgeous videos.
Ivy The Occultist: chaos magick and lots of interviews with practitioners from a variety of paths/backgrounds.
Shadow Harvest: personal day in the life witchy content, some videos looking at working with dark goddesses and deity work in general.
Note: some of these YouTubers have written their own witchcraft books geared towards beginners, so if you enjoy their videos and want to learn more, check those out.
Podcasts
The Astrology Podcast: not specifically witchcraft, but if you want to learn about astrology in detail, this is an excellent place to begin. Link goes to YouTube.
Books and Broomsticks: all kinds of good info, especially pertaining to folk magic, witch guests invited on to share more about their own practice. Link goes to Spotify.
Southern Bramble: A Podcast of Crooked Ways: a variety of witchcraft related topics, interviews, and discussions, often revolving around folk magic and traditional craft—interviews show different traditions. Link goes to Spotify.
New World Witchery - The Search for American Traditional Witchcraft: what it says on the tin; various topics and conversations through an American traditional/folk magic lens by the author of the (amazing) book with the same name. Link goes to Spotify.
Salty Witches Podcast by Cat & Cauldron: traditional witchcraft through a modern lens, another podcast that has a wide variety of topics covered. Link goes to Spotify.
—
As always, if anyone has any additional (free!) resources to add onto these ones, please do so.
Good luck to all of the beginner witches who are embarking on their spiritual journeys, and I hope some of these tips have been helpful! :)
-Em
282 notes
·
View notes
hi Silver! o/ because that fanart made me wonder - would you happen to know when/where Dick's stuffed elephant plush Zitka turns up in the comics?
GREETINGS CAM <3333 THAT ART WAS SO CUTE
Yeah, I think your instincts are right - it's a truly adorable bit of transformative fandom, but I'm 95% percent sure it's not comics canon. Barbara has canon plushies, but I don't think anyone else does.
I got kinda invested in the investigation (it's hard to prove a negative!) and I ended up typing out an entire History of Elinore/Zitka, so, uh, if you're curious, meet me below the cut for:
Where does Elinore / Zitka - the animal - appear in comics?
Did Dick ever have a stuffed elephant toy in comics?
Where does Elinore / Zitka appear in comics?
We're gonna go in chronological order!
Dick's circus elephant friend was first created for practical reasons: in Batman 436, Marv Wolfman does a big expanded flashback to Dick's circus backstory as a way to subtly show us Tim before officially introducing him (so that we can have a technically-solvable mystery-of-Tim's-identity in LPoD). In this comic, there's an elephant named Elinore who loves Dick:
Aww. Such a cute elephant!
Batman 436 comes out in August 1989. New Titans 60 comes out a few months later, in November, and guess what? When Dick visits the circus, he is suddenly surprised by an unexpected blast from the past! It turns out that even though it's been years, Elinore still remembers him!
Here's the part where Elinore remembers Dick:
SUCH a cute elephant. I love her.
(Guess who else still remembers Dick even though it was so long ago. Guess which other character is about to be an unexpected blast from the past. Guess which character Elinore is directly paralleling guess guess guess sorry everything is about Dick and Tim in my mind but I can focus I swear)
Four years later, in 1993, Batman: The Animated Series retells Dick's origin story. They like and keep Wolfman's elephant, but they change her name to Zitka:
Wolfman doesn't return to the elephant beyond those two appearances, and a few years down the line, New Titans gets cancelled and Wolfman's not writing Dick anymore anyway. So the animal gets abandoned for a while, until Devin Grayson, a fan of both Wolfman and B:tAS, revives the Wolfman-era Titans team in JLA/Titans and then the ongoing series Titans 1999.
Grayson then brings back the elephant in a flashback to Dick's past in Titans 16 (Jun 2000), where she imports the B:tAS name. Sometimes I'm skeptical of TV-to-comics imports, but honestly, I endorse this one. You lose the alliteration, which is a shame, but IMO Zitka is a better elephant name than Elinore.
Here's Dick with the newly-christened Zitka in Titans 16:
Grayson also briefly references the elephant in Gotham Knights 20 and - in a final angsty callback - in Nightwing 88 (Feb 2004), where Zitka tries futilely to comfort Dick in the midst of his trauma conga line:
... And... honestly, I think that's it for comic appearances? The two Wolfman comics plus the three Grayson comics.
Both Wolfman and Grayson are writing multiple titles - Batman, New Titans, Titans, Gotham Knights, and Nightwing between the two of them, spanning a big chunk of Dick's post-Crisis canon - and both writers use the elephant for heartwarming moments of nostalgia, which means if you're doing a post-Crisis readthrough for Dick, Elinore/Zitka feels memorable. But I don't think she actually shows up that much.
For post-2011, I am not as well-informed - throwing this out to the dash? anyone know? - but I feel like Zitka the heartwarming symbol of Dick's heartwarming circus past is, uh, thematically very at odds with the Court of Owls evil!circus vibes, so my instinct is that this story element was almost certainly dropped in the reboot.
Did Dick ever have a stuffed elephant toy in comics?
In WFA, yes; in main comics continuity, no. Technically, I have not read every comic ever published, so I could be wrong!! But I don't think so.
Below, find my rambling reasoning on the tonal vibes of pre-Crisis, post-Crisis, and post-2011, and why this particular story element doesn't seem right to me for the first two.
Pre-Crisis (...okay, mostly the Silver Age): stuffed animal, yes or no?
tl;dr no, requires too much background knowledge on the part of the reader, plus the elephant wasn't a thing until later
Elinore doesn't get created until post-Crisis, but also just generally, pre-Crisis callbacks are more along the lines of this reference in Batman 129 (published in 1960), where, wow, Batman and Robin are hunting jewel thieves - and it turns out Robin recognized this strongman! BUT HOW?!
The comic goes on to recap Dick's entire origin story in flashback, on the assumption that you may not know it.
(BTW, if you'd like to know more about Haly's Circus throughout the years, nightwingology has a great post here summarizing a lot of fun plotlines and characters!)
Basically: Silver Age comics are very self-consciously episodic and kid-friendly; they're not generally gonna do overly-elaborate callbacks because they don't know what comics their kid readers may have randomly picked up or remember.
By the time of post-Crisis, comic books were being written for an adult audience buying from the direct market, i.e. readers who are collecting whole runs & don't need or want Dick's origin story to be recapped to us in full every time it's referenced. That's why in post-Crisis, we get stuff like "hey, neat, this particular soda brand is getting mentioned in several different books!!" or "in order to understand this story arc, buy SIXTEEN DIFFERENT COMICS in FIVE DIFFERENT RUNS and read them ALL ACCORDING TO A NUMBERED ORDER and also you better be following the individual plotlines and recognize these five minor characters who we don't bother to introduce!! Good luck!!" But the elaborate post-Crisis plotlines - and subtler worldbuilding like a stuffed animal callback to Dick's backstory - don't make a lot of story sense UNLESS you're imagining your readers as completionist adult fans.
So IMO a stuffed animal wouldn't be a pre-Crisis thing unless it was The Episodic Story Of the Week, and I don't think a stuffed animal is action-adventure-y enough for the fast-paced storytelling of the Silver Age. (Unless it, like, came to life and tried to eat you or something.)
Post-Crisis: stuffed animals, yes or no?
tl;dr: no, Dick's a manly tough guy, he's not gonna have a stuffed animal, that'd be lame, like something Tim might do
Part of the edgy grimdark adult vibes in 80s/90s comics is that some characters who used to be kinda silly & goofy & lighthearted - like Batman and Robin - get reimagined as Serious and Angsty and Edgy in a Tough Cool Manly Brooding Way. This massively affects characterization for Bruce, Dick, and Bruce and Dick's relationship.
(I obviously love this change & love the tense Bruce-and-Dick interactions, but plenty of fans of the earlier fluffy comics really disliked the edgy retcons of Miller / Wolfman / Starlin / et al.)
The upshot is that post-Crisis is a period when you could have a recurring reference like a stuffed elephant, but you wouldn't have a stuffed elephant, not for Dick. I think a toy like that would be too cutesy / childish / effeminate to give a male character in post-Crisis, unless you were poking fun at him.
Now, you could probably let Tim have a stuffed animal, because Tim is sometimes cool but also sometimes a tryhard loser who is faking being cool and not entirely pulling it off (see e.g. the Robin comic where he practices tough-guy faces in the mirror, or the Teen Titans comic where Conner discovers his cringy Enya CD, or when he's fanboying over Connor and it's awkward, etc etc.). A stuffed animal would be deeply embarrassing, and you'd have to be careful to compensate by having Tim do something cool afterward - but Tim's character concept allows for "he's kind of a loser sometimes."
But Dick isn't!! In post-Crisis, Dick's a tough / impressive / "cool guy" character, the kind of guy anyone would want to be, even in the flashbacks where he's Robin, and even in the stories where he's more lighthearted than angsty. It'd be kinda lame for Dick to have a stuffed elephant, so he wouldn't. I feel like Dick would be more likely to poke fun at it if someone had one, like when he's making fun of Wally for liking the Hardy Boys. Dick could have a Batman action figure, at most, and if he had one he would have it ironically.
Basically: in post-Crisis, a male character hugging a stuffed elephant feels more likely to be a punchline to me, not something poignant. (Even with Tim, Tim could have an embarrassing stuffed animal, but he couldn't hug it when sad - that's too far. Maybe Booster Gold might do this. Probably he wouldn't, but spiritually, he would. Sorry Booster ilu! <3)
Instead, Dick instinctively deals with his inner turmoil like the TORTURED ACTION HERO he is: by punching things and brooding and yelling and joining the mob and sleeping on rooftops and going on obsessive secret missions and acquiring Angsty Stubble!! Just like Batman!
(Technically I don't know if Bruce ever joined the mob but you know he would.)
Anyway as you know this is my favorite continuity and I am poking fun affectionately, but uh, yeah sdfsfdsfs. No stuffed animals.
Post-2011 / Infinite Frontier / Wayne Family Adventures: stuffed animals, yes or no?
tl;dr it's in WFA! Probably not anywhere else, but it could be.
Post-2011 stuff tends to be cutesier overall, most of all in the current Infinite Frontier era. So I don't feel like this would be tonally out-of-line with IF comics. Taylor tends to go for more meme-y references rather than fanfic references, though.
So the obvious best fit is WFA, which is aiming for a rough approximation of Silver Age family-friendly vibes - wholesome, episodic plots, Teaching Good Moral Lessons For The Youth, etc. - plus lots of Easter eggs for fanfic readers and some comic references.
And look, here we are:
Aww.
Whew - that's everything I could find!
Anyway as you can probably tell, I LOVE the elephant, so this was a very entertaining rabbit hole to go down, thank you <3
43 notes
·
View notes