I have gotten two or three questions recently that basically boiled down to the same thing: “wanna do magick, plz tell me everything that you know”. I just say “I have a search bar and suggested books on my site, try that” because, frankly, I’m not going to repeat a near decade of info since someone is too lazy or incompetent to look for themselves.

Here’s the thing, I do expect people to exercise some basic form of thinking when traversing this site for info. Maybe it is because witchcraft doesn’t have any “oooOOoOOOOooo spooky!” glossy-gleam for me but it really is not that hard to find anything – at least not basic stuff. Though this site talks about occultism, I hide extremely little – because A ) it’s not really worth hiding and B ) if people are this stupid, hiding is pointless. I guess there’s the idea of going to a witch to ask for a personal how-to but, c’mon, it’s best to just search the site first and then bother me with questions. At least there is a chance the question will be one worth answering.

When it comes to magick of any tradition, you’re going to have to do some heavy reading, substantial research and critical thinking. Individual critical thinking. This means you have to think for yourself and make choices yourself for the most part. Given the amount of people that pop up in my inbox, a lot just want to be told what to do – and then somehow feel empowered because of it. That’s just being a lemming with a misplaced ego. Not a good fit for magick. That’s how you get cults.

Magick can be hard. Depending on what you want to do, very hard. Takes practice, takes diligence. If you don’t want to do the very basics by yourself, if you have to be personally spoon-fed information, magick is not for you. Trust, it isn’t. There are different traditions in magick, countless traditions, I won’t know every single last one of them. But a library might. Though scant, Google might. If it isn’t worth looking up and doing the basics, then it is best not to do it at all.

Granted, some people don’t know how to research, either as a result of being a sucky student or being stuck in a paltry education system. However, it still does not mean I have to spoon feed someone because they seem to be daft at using the search bar on my website. Or they think I practice the Left Hand Path because they can’t read: I never talk about LHP stuff (because I don’t practice it) and I have a lot of posts about being a Black person, including a “race” category. That should make it glaringly obvious why I call myself “Black Witch”. If you can’t figure out something as plain-stated as that, then magick is seriously not for you. There’s already enough racist dumb people in Paganism, we don’t need more. It just appears to me that folks think there’s a “101 EZ Witchcraft 4 U” guide I provide. I don’t.

Long story short: If you can’t use the search bar, the various categories or anything that requires independent thought, then just stick to the Harry Potter, Charmed, and D&D. It’s a better choice than asking me information I already provided time and time again on an accessible site.