How My Practice
Has Changed

I've been practicing witchcraft for over ten years now, which is long enough to have made every beginner mistake, worked through every intermediate crisis of confidence, and landed somewhere that actually feels like home. It's also long enough to have real perspective on how the practice evolves over time, which is something I wish I'd had access to when I was starting out.

So here's an honest look at what's changed, what I've let go of, and what I've grown into.

I actually cleanse now

Beginner me would light a candle and start reading tarot without cleansing the cards, the space, or myself. I probably would have told you it wasn't necessary. It was necessary. It's always necessary.

Cleansing isn't a superstition or an aesthetic choice. It's the foundation of any working, and skipping it is a shortcut that catches up with you eventually. Muddy energy in equals muddy results out. That was one of the earliest and most important shifts.

My altar has grown

When I started, my altar was a small container of things. A few crystals, a candle, maybe a stone I'd found on a walk. That was it. And it was enough for where I was.

Now it's an entire cabinet and shelving unit. My oracle and tarot decks live in a huge basket dedicated just to them. Working tools have their own drawers. There's space for whatever season or working I'm currently focused on. It's genuinely one of my favorite spots in my home, and I love sitting at it in a way I didn't when I first set it up.

I didn't grow the altar on purpose. It grew because my practice grew, and the space had to expand to hold what I was actually doing. If your altar feels small right now, that's fine. It'll grow when it's ready to.

My workings are layered now

Beginner me would light one candle for one intention and consider it a spell. Now, most of my workings involve at least one crystal, one herb, one candle, an incantation, and a spirit I've built a relationship with.

That's not because more is inherently better. It's because I understand correspondences now, and layering aligned energies genuinely strengthens the working. Each element reinforces the others. A protection candle is fine. A protection candle dressed with a protection oil, next to a protection crystal, called on by a protection deity, spoken with a protection incantation, is a wall.

You don't need to layer this heavily at the start. Simple workings work. But there's a real reason experienced practitioners tend toward more elaborate setups.

I've relaxed about timing

This one is funny in retrospect. When I first started, I didn't pay attention to astrology or moon phases at all. Then I hit an intermediate phase where I learned about timing and became convinced that everything had to be perfectly aligned or the working wouldn't count.

Now I'm somewhere in the middle. I do try to align with timing when I can because it does add power. But if I need to do a working now and the moon is doing the wrong thing, I do the working anyway. Urgency and necessity matter more than perfect alignment, and rigid timing rules can become their own kind of magickal thinking that gets in the way of actually practicing.

I found my footing with deities, spirits, and ancestors

For the first few years of my practice, I wouldn't touch this. Too big, too intimidating, too much room to get it wrong. I stuck to plant magick, candle work, and divination, and I told myself that was enough.

It was enough, for that phase. But there came a point where the practice wanted to deepen and this was the direction it needed to go.

I approached it slowly. I started with ancestors, which felt safer than deities. I read a lot. I built altars and let them sit for weeks before doing anything active with them. I made small, consistent offerings. And gradually, the relationships built.

If deity or spirit work is scaring you right now, that's actually a good sign. It means you're taking it seriously. Go slowly. Do your research. Start with ancestors if it feels safer. It'll unfold when you're ready.

I do baneful workings now

This is one of the biggest ones and it took a long time. For years, I avoided anything that felt "dark." Binding, banishing, hexing, cursing. I'd absorbed the idea that a good witch never did those things.

I don't believe that anymore. I understand now that I'm allowed to have duality. I'm allowed to defend myself, the people I love, and my community. Baneful workings aren't the mark of a bad witch. Refusing to protect yourself when protection is warranted is the actual failure of judgment.

That doesn't mean I do this work casually. Baneful magick is serious, it's specific, and it should be reserved for situations that genuinely call for it. But I've stopped pretending it doesn't have a place in a mature practice, because it does.

I'm confident, but I know I don't know everything

The single biggest shift is confidence, but not the loud kind. Beginner me was overwhelmed and constantly second-guessing every choice. Intermediate me overcorrected into thinking I knew a lot more than I actually did. Now me knows a lot, feels solid in what I know, and is very clear that I will never know everything.

Witchcraft is not a subject you can finish. There will always be another tradition to study, another correspondence to explore, another connection to trace between things I thought I already understood. I hope I'm always learning, evolving, and growing in this practice. If I ever stop, something has gone wrong.

I trust my intuition first

The biggest tell of how far I've come is this: for most workings and readings now, I trust my intuition first and check my grimoire after the fact. Not to be cocky. Just to confirm.

And I've never been wrong yet.

That took years to earn. Beginner me had to look up everything because I didn't have the knowledge yet. Intermediate me was learning to trust the pull between what the book said and what I felt. Now me knows the difference between guessing and knowing, and my intuition has been rigorously trained by over a decade of actually doing the work.

You get to this eventually. But there's no shortcut. The intuition has to be earned through study and practice, and the way you earn it is by consistently checking what you feel against what's documented, over and over, until the two start to line up.

What I'd tell my beginner self

If I could talk to the version of me who was just starting out, I'd say a few things.

• Cleanse everything. It matters more than you think.
• Your practice is going to change. That's not a sign you're doing it wrong. That's a sign you're doing it right.
• You will overcorrect. You'll think you know a lot when you don't, and then you'll think you know nothing when you actually know a lot. Both feelings are part of the process.
• You're allowed to protect yourself. That doesn't make you dark or dangerous. That makes you responsible.
• Ancestor work is safer to start with than deity work. Try it first.
• And please, actually build a reference system as you go. Every book you read, every correspondence you learn, every working that succeeds or fails. Write it down. Trust me on this one. Over a decade is a long time to try to hold in your head.

Where I am now

I'm still growing. That's the honest answer. There are corners of this practice I haven't touched yet, traditions I want to understand better, correspondences I haven't fully mapped. I hope that never changes.

If you're at the beginning, I promise it gets easier. Not because the practice gets simpler, but because you get more capable of holding its complexity. You'll be surprised how much you're able to grow into.