Reconnecting with Your Lost Magick

If you practice magick, there will come a time when you feel less than magickal. When you feel that you have lost your magick completely. Whether this lasts for a week, a month, a year or more, one day it’ll arrive leaving many magickal folk confused as to what is going on.

But the appearance of magick’s absence is just that - an appearance.

See, magick is like the Moon - even though the Moon seems to wax and wane each night, disappearing from the sky altogether every month, She always remains whole. It’s simply our perception of Them that changes. So it is with magick that we can experience periods of disconnection in our practice that appear to us as if our magick is gone altogether.

image by annie spratt

At this point you might wonder why this happens. I don’t have that answer but what I have observed is that once we realize that magick, like the Moon, is never absent, we can begin to pay attention to what’s looming large in the place we usually expect our magick to be.

While your journey reconnecting with your magick after a period of fallowness will be uniquely shaped by your life and needs, here are some activities and tips to help you shift perceptions, open up to wonder, and cultivate enchantment. You’ll notice that many of these suggestions are similar to those I would make to someone experience burnout and that’s because burnout and feeling like your magickal fire has been extinguished often go hand-in-hand. In addition to trying one or two of the suggestions on this list, you might consider some seasonal self-care or connecting with herbal allies that are especially suitable for sensitive or overwhelmed folks.

image by annie spratt

Do nothing.

I know, what a way to start off a list of how to reconnect with your magick. But sometimes we try and do all the things in a mild but meaningful panic to attempt to reconnect to our magick. Rather, take a look at what it is that’s driving you to do something instead of just be. Even if that being feels decidedly unmagickal. It’s ok to be a bit confused and not knowing where to go next in your practice. Use your discomfort as a tool of discovery. Practice a bit of slow magick.

image by annie spratt

Go back to basics.

It can feel too easy to rush on to the next great thing when it feels like our magick has left us. If I just master Enochian magick, I’ll find my spark again. And while learning something new can help us to reconnect to what we love, it can also create a cycle of always seeking something else that exists out there to give us back our magick. Instead, I suggest returning to the basics of your craft and, in particular, a practice that has significantly shaped you but you now no longer practice or, if you do, it’s infrequently. That will mean something different to everyone reading this. I might, for example, pull out the very first book I used for casting circle and do that same rite. Returning to basics creates a touchstone for your magick - your modern self is revisiting an important point in your magickal development. During this act of returning, pay attention to what is happening in your body and your energy field - interesting revelations often arise and we begin to remember who we are as magickal beings.

image by annie spratt

Talk about it.

I find it strange that the magickal community doesn’t seem to talk much about the very common experience of not feeling magickal. Let’s change that! Connecting with another magickal practitioner and sharing with them that you’re struggling to find your flow and connection in your practice can be incredibly healing and rewarding. You’re not less of a witch or magick maker if you don’t feel magickal - you’re just at an important transition point. No shame required, but reach out to others for encouragement and inspiration. If you don’t have someone to talk about it to at the moment, try journaling or free writing. Ask yourself questions like:

I don’t feel magickal, I feel…
I’m afraid that…
I feel my most magickal when…
When I think of magick…

image by annie spratt

Work with allies.

Gods, herbs, stones, ancestors, tarot cards, spirits, pets, strange shaped gourds, best friends, lovers, therapists… Connect with your allies! As suggested at the start of this post, the absence of magick often marks the arrival (or, really, exposure or revelation) or something that requires our attention. But that something isn’t always easy to give our attention to or understand for various reasons. So just as I’m encouraging you to talk about where you’re at in your magickal practice, I’m also encouraging you to connect with your allies in whatever form they come in. No one can give you back your magick, but your allies can help you remember and return to it. Don’t know which allies to start with? How about connecting with your stars. If tarot or oracle cards are some of your favorite allies to turn to, this spread is my go-to when I need some extra love and support.

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Feeling like you’ve lost your magick is never easy, but you’re not alone. We’ve all been there and soon it shall pass. In the meantime, be kind with yourself, celebrate what does inspire you, and let the rest be.

Remember, the Moon is always full, and your magick remains. Soon you’ll remember just where that is…

Lunar Teas + Slow Magick

At the beginning of this year I was feeling the least magickal that I have in quite some time. To be honest, the last two years have been full of rewarding adventures and some truly challenging experiences that have stretched my “keep-it-together” capacity. 

On top of that, as I’ve been getting back into in-person teaching after a hiatus, I found myself struggling to find my flow again as a teacher. Including, finding myself struggling again with a resurgence in the dreaded imposter syndrome that so many of my fellow generation seem to experience. Not a pleasant place to be in especially considering that teaching in-person classes has traditionally been one of my absolute favorite things to do and is typically a time that I feel most comfortable and confident in myself. 

It’s easy when we come to these places of spiritual malaise to seek out something to fix it now - whether that’s a new shiny crystal or the latest book on magick or thinking that if we scroll through pinterest or instagram for hours we may suddenly find it. 

(I have, ahem, never done any of these things.)

(That last statement was entirely untrue.)

At some point I found myself returning to something which I know and love - making herbal remedies - to try and recenter. Now you might expect at this point of the story I will tell you that  I spent a blissful afternoon making tea as sunlight danced across my apothecary table and a song blossomed in my heart. Alas, twas not the case. I did make tea - a brew inspired by the Moon in hopes of falling back in love with my magick. But I felt lackluster. I combined nine carefully chosen herbs, for that is the sacred number of the Moon, in my large silver bowl and stirred and sang over them. But it felt like I was going through the motions.

As I stirred, I couldn’t shake that feeling running up and down my spine that I wasn’t enough.. Or the creeping sensation that I had lost my magick, never to be found again. 

But I still made that batch of tea. I brewed it and tasted it and decided that it was ok. Over the next few months, though, I somehow started to believe that it was one of the worst teas that I had made. I shoved it back in my herb cabinet, not wanting to waste the herbs, but not sure what to do with it quite yet. 

A few more months passed and I had another class to teach. It happened on the heels of a rough few days of bittersweet revelation. I needed to bring tea to the class and did not have time to create a new blend. I saw the jar of lunar tea sitting on the shelf and grabbed it. As I was brewing it for the class a strange peace settled over me and I had the feeling that it might just be ok. That I was ok.

The class gathered, the tea was served, and I left a few hours later feeling more like myself than I had in a very long time. And folks loved the tea - I ran out of it before the class was even halfway over.

Walking home after class, carrying a heart full of  healing vibes, and an empty tea canister, I was reminded that magick can be sudden but it’s most often slow. It requires us to trust in the long run. Magick asks us to trust in our future self even when we’re uncertain about who we currently are. And while magick doesn’t provide a predictable journey it’ll always provides a path. 

My experience with that Moon-inspired tea pulled together a lot of personal lessons that I’ve been wrestling with the past few years. It also helped me to re-member (to put back together), as the Moon so often does, my joy of slow magick. A magick that takes time. A magick that refuses to speed up to fit the needs of culture or fade. A magick that shows up in uncertainty and charts a path towards resiliency. A magick that asks more questions than provide answers.

I found myself dreaming up and planning classes that I had been too hesitant to consider before. And reconnecting to the truth that what I teach has value (if for any other reason than it brings me joy).  I’ve found myself wanting to write more openly about particularities of my spiritual path and what being a Witch and Priestx means to me. I started with a story on instagram about my spiritual geas (something which is both a prohibition and obligation, a restriction - or curse when particularly difficult - and gift) when working with crystals. Within it I mentioned a need for a slow magick movement within our magickal community. The conversations that sprung up around that post were amazing and this next year I’m going to spend time diving into the idea of slow magick with all of you (you can start to read some of my thoughts here). But for now, let’s make some tea…

Luna Love Spell Tea

A Moon-inspired tea of nine sacred herbs to help you fall back in love with your magick.

Combine all herbs and brew between 5 - 20 minutes.

• 4 parts Lemongass (Cymbopogon citratus)
• 1 part Damiana (Turnera diffusa)
• 1/2 part Honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica)
• 1/4 part Blue Lotus (Nelumbo nucifera)
• 1/4 part Lemon (Citrus x limon)
• 2 parts Passionflower (Passiflora incarnata)
• 1/2 part Lavender (Lavandula x intermedia)
• 1/4 part Jasmine (Jasminum spp.)
• 1/4 part Mugwort (Artemisa vulgaris)

May you fall in love with your magick again, wise ones and witch kin. I hope you'll join me on my journey this coming year through the world of slow magick. There'll be tea, new types of content (hiya, videos!), and a renewed commitment to a magick that is in pace with the values of love, fierce justice, and radical kindness that has drawn us altogether in the first place.