Your Witchcraft Doesn't Need More Stuff, It Needs You to Do the Work
There’s a point in just about every practitioner’s life when they convince themselves that the answer to whatever isn’t working in their craft is probably sitting on a shelf somewhere, just waiting to be purchased.
Maybe it’s another crystal. Maybe it’s a new tarot deck because the six you already own apparently aren’t speaking to you anymore. Maybe it’s a particular ritual oil, a fancy new wand, or some elaborate altar setup you saw online that looks like it belongs in a museum dedicated to very wealthy witches.
And don’t get me wrong, I love a good witchy shopping spree. Hell, I own a metaphysical business. I’ve spent nearly 15 years surrounded by crystals, herbs, ritual oils, incense, and enough magical supplies to make a small coven lose its collective mind. I’m certainly not going to sit here and tell you that tools don’t have value. They absolutely do, and I wouldn’t spend so much time carefully selecting and creating them if I didn’t believe that.
But here’s where things get interesting, and where I might step on a few toes…
Sometimes the problem isn’t that you need another tool. Sometimes the problem is that you haven’t learned how to properly use the ones you already have. And sometimes you haven’t learned how to work without them at all…
I know. Not exactly the advice you’d expect from someone who sells witchcraft supplies for a living, is it?
But I’ve never been particularly interested in telling people what they want to hear just because it might encourage them to buy something. I’d much rather see someone develop a strong, meaningful practice than spend a small fortune collecting beautiful things they don’t actually know what to do with.
And believe me, there’s a difference.
When Shopping Starts Looking Suspiciously Like Practicing
We’ve all done it in one form or another. You’re working on something, perhaps a protection spell, an energy exercise, or a ritual you’ve been trying to get right, and things just aren’t coming together the way you’d hoped. Your concentration wanders, your intentions feel scattered, or you finish the working wondering whether you actually accomplished anything beyond burning a candle and making your house smell nice.
So naturally, you start looking for what you’re missing.
Maybe you need a stronger crystal. Maybe the candle wasn’t the right color. Maybe that particular herb wasn’t quite what the working called for. Perhaps you need to rearrange your altar, purchase a different book, or find a ritual that involves considerably more steps and at least three ingredients you can’t pronounce.
Before you know it, you’ve spent two hours researching supplies, added six things to your shopping cart, and somehow convinced yourself that you’re making tremendous progress.
Meanwhile, the actual problem you started with is still sitting there, patiently waiting for you to pay attention to it.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with researching different methods or experimenting with new tools. As a chaos witch, I’m practically obligated to encourage thinking outside the box, around the corners, and occasionally questioning why we’re still hanging on to the damn box in the first place…
But experimenting with intention and constantly searching for something new because you haven’t mastered the basics are two very different things.
One expands your practice. The other can become a rather expensive way of avoiding the work you actually need to do.
Your Tools Aren’t Supposed to Do All the Heavy Lifting
Let’s talk about something that doesn’t get nearly enough attention in conversations about witchcraft.
Your tools are meant to work with you, not replace you…
A crystal can be a wonderful focal point for intention and energy work. A wand can help direct energy. Ritual oils, herbs, candles, and other supplies can bring their own correspondences, symbolism, and properties into a working. These things have meaningful places within magical practice, and many traditions have spent generations developing ways to work with them.
But none of that means you can completely skip developing your own abilities.
If you can’t maintain your concentration for more than fifteen seconds before your mind wanders off to what you’re making for dinner, buying a more expensive wand isn’t necessarily going to solve that problem.
If you haven’t practiced directing your energy, surrounding yourself with another dozen crystals isn’t automatically going to teach you how.
And if you don’t have a clear understanding of what you’re trying to accomplish with a working, adding another seven ingredients isn’t going to magically organize your intentions for you.
At some point, you have to stop rearranging the furniture and deal with the fact that the foundation needs attention.
I see this particularly with newer practitioners, although plenty of experienced witches fall into the same trap. Someone learns a few spells, buys some supplies, gets excited about everything they’re discovering, and then becomes frustrated when their practice doesn’t immediately produce the results they expected.
Instead of examining their focus, consistency, or understanding of the working, they assume they’re missing some essential ingredient.
And sometimes they are. There are absolutely workings where specific materials, correspondences, or traditional methods matter.
But sometimes what they’re missing isn’t sitting in a metaphysical shop.
Sometimes it’s practice.
Let’s Talk About the Boring Stuff Nobody Wants to Hear About
I know meditation, visualization, grounding, centering, and energy control aren’t always the most exciting subjects in witchcraft. They’re certainly not as visually appealing as an altar covered in gorgeous crystals and candles, and they’re considerably harder to show off in a social media photograph.
But they’re important.
I’ve been practicing for decades, and one of the things I’ve learned is that people often underestimate how much these foundational skills influence everything else they do.
Can you sit quietly and maintain your focus without constantly chasing every thought that wanders through your head? Can you visualize something clearly enough to work with it and maintain that visualization while directing your intention? Can you ground and center yourself when your emotions are running high? Can you recognize when your own energy feels scattered and take the time to bring yourself back into balance?
These aren’t particularly glamorous questions, but they’re worth asking.
And before someone gets defensive, no, I’m not suggesting that everyone needs to sit perfectly still for an hour without having a single thought. That’s not realistic for a lot of people, and it’s certainly not the only way to develop concentration or work with energy.
There are different methods, different approaches, and different ways to strengthen these abilities. Some people work beautifully through stillness, while others find movement, sound, breathwork, or repetitive physical actions much more effective.
The point isn’t that everyone needs to practice the same way.
The point is that you need to actually practice.
You can’t spend twenty minutes working on something once, decide you’re terrible at it, and immediately go looking for a magical shortcut.
Well, shit… technically you can... People do it all the time. But don’t be surprised when you end up right back where you started, only now you have another crystal and a slightly lighter wallet.
A Little Chaos Witch Perspective
One of the things I emphasize in my teaching, particularly within chaos magic, is that understanding why something works within your practice is just as important as knowing how to perform it.
I help run one of the largest chaos magic covens in the United States, and something I wish more people understood about our path is that chaos magic isn’t about destructive magic or doing whatever the hell you want without any thought behind it.
It’s about exploring possibilities, questioning assumptions, blending approaches that make sense for your practice, and recognizing that magical systems don’t necessarily have to be treated as rigid, immovable structures.
But there’s something people occasionally overlook when they hear that.
Freedom to experiment doesn’t eliminate the need to develop skill…
In fact, I’d argue that understanding the fundamentals becomes even more important when you’re working outside established formulas.
If you’re going to adapt a ritual, you should have some understanding of what you’re changing and why. If you’re going to combine different approaches, you should understand what each one brings to the working. And if you’re going to create something entirely your own, you need enough familiarity with your practice to make informed decisions rather than simply throwing together whatever happens to be within arm’s reach.
There’s a difference between creative magical work and tossing a handful of random ingredients into a bowl while hoping the universe figures out what you meant.
And yes, sometimes experimentation leads to unexpected discoveries. That’s part of what makes it interesting.
But when something doesn’t work the way you expected, you should be able to examine what happened, consider what you might change, and learn from the experience.
That’s considerably harder to do when your entire approach consists of buying something new every time you encounter a difficulty.
Here’s an Exercise I Want You to Try
I want you to set aside your tools for a little while.
Yes, all of them. The crystals can stay on the shelf. The candles don’t need to be lit. Your favorite wand isn’t going to develop abandonment issues because you left it alone for twenty minutes.
Find somewhere comfortable where you can spend a little time without being interrupted.
Sit down, take a few moments to center yourself, and work with nothing but your own attention, intention, and energy.
Start with something simple.
Focus on your breathing and allow yourself to settle. Once you’re comfortable, choose something to visualize. It might be a small sphere of light resting between your hands, a protective boundary surrounding your body, or a particular color of energy moving through your chosen focal point.
Whatever you choose, keep it simple enough that you can concentrate on the exercise rather than worrying about performing some elaborate magical working.
Now pay attention to what happens.
Can you maintain the visualization? Does your attention wander almost immediately? Are you able to bring your focus back without becoming frustrated? Can you consciously change the size, color, or movement of what you’re visualizing?
If you already practice energy work, you might also experiment with directing your energy toward a specific point or maintaining a particular intention for a few minutes.
And if you find yourself struggling, congratulations. You’ve just discovered something useful about your practice.
No, seriously.
Finding an area where you need more practice isn’t a failure. It’s information. It’s an opportunity to recognize where you can strengthen your abilities instead of continuing to wonder why certain workings feel inconsistent.
You wouldn’t expect to become an accomplished musician simply because you purchased an expensive instrument. You still have to learn how to play the damn thing.
Witchcraft isn’t entirely different in that respect.
Why Some Practitioners Can Do So Much With So Little
Over the years, I’ve encountered practitioners who can create meaningful workings with very few physical supplies. I’ve also met people with absolutely stunning collections of magical tools who still feel uncertain about their abilities.
And before anyone twists that into something I didn’t say, having a beautiful collection doesn’t make someone less capable. I have plenty of magical supplies myself, and I genuinely enjoy working with them.
The difference isn’t how much someone owns.
It’s what they’ve learned to do.
A practitioner who has spent years developing their concentration, energy work, and understanding of magical principles may be perfectly comfortable performing certain workings with minimal supplies. They understand what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and how to direct their intentions without needing an elaborate setup every single time.
Another practitioner may find that specific tools are essential to the way they connect with their craft, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that either.
Different paths have different requirements, and different people work in different ways.
What concerns me is when someone becomes convinced that they cannot accomplish anything unless they have exactly the right collection of objects in front of them, even when the working itself doesn’t require those things.
That’s when I start encouraging them to explore what happens when they remove some of those supports and focus on their own abilities.
Not because tools are bad, but because I want people to understand the difference between choosing to work with something and believing they’re completely incapable without it.
Those are two very different relationships with your craft.
And Yes, You Can Still Buy the Pretty Rock
Since I own a business that sells crystals and metaphysical supplies, I feel like I should probably address the rather obvious elephant in the room.
I’m not telling you to stop buying magical tools.
Please don’t go home, throw out your entire collection, and announce that Jennifer from Witchy Wares said crystals are useless. Because I most certainly did not, and I’d appreciate not having to explain that particular misunderstanding for the next six months.
I love crystals. I love creating ritual oils. I love finding interesting tools, researching their uses, and discovering new ways to incorporate them into magical workings. That’s a significant part of both my business and my personal practice.
And sometimes you don’t need a profound spiritual reason to purchase something.
Sometimes you buy a crystal because it’s gorgeous and you want it. That’s perfectly acceptable. Not every piece of amethyst needs to arrive in your home with a detailed assignment and a five page ritual plan.
What I’m encouraging you to do is recognize when you’re purchasing something because you genuinely want to work with it and when you’re purchasing something because you’re hoping it will compensate for an ability you haven’t taken the time to develop.
There’s nothing wrong with expanding your collection.
Just make sure you’re expanding your knowledge and skills along with it.
Your Practice Is Only as Strong as the Work You’re Willing to Put Into It
If you’ve been feeling stuck in your craft, I encourage you to spend a little time examining what might actually be holding you back.
Maybe you do need to explore a different method. Maybe the tools you’ve been using aren’t particularly well suited to the way you practice. Maybe you’ve outgrown an approach that worked beautifully for you several years ago, and it’s time to experiment with something new.
Those are all legitimate possibilities.
But maybe you also need to spend more time grounding, centering, visualizing, or learning how to maintain your focus.
Maybe you need to stop collecting spells and start practicing the ones you’ve already learned.
Maybe you need to give yourself permission to be a beginner at something without immediately expecting to be good at it.
And perhaps, just perhaps, you need to stop searching for the next magical object that’s going to fix everything and recognize that some of the most important work happens when there’s absolutely nothing sitting in front of you…
I’ve spent more than thirty years studying and practicing witchcraft, and I’m still learning. I still experiment, question things, revisit techniques, and occasionally discover that something I’ve done one way for years works better when I approach it differently.
That’s part of the process. You don’t reach some magical level of experience where you suddenly know everything and never need to practice again.
And frankly, I think that would be rather boring anyway…
So by all means, enjoy your crystals, your candles, your herbs, your oils, and whatever other tools bring meaning to your craft. Learn about them, work with them, and appreciate what they contribute to your practice.
But don’t forget about the person holding them…
Because at the end of the day, you can own every magical tool under the sun, but none of them can do the learning, focusing, experimenting, and growing for you.
And if you really want to strengthen your craft, that’s where I’d suggest you start.
Jennifer Foley-Weaver
High Priestess | Chaos Witch | Rune Reader | Ritual Architect | Reiki Master Teacher
Founder of Witchy Wares
Witchy Wares: Elevate Your Craft
P.S. And since I just spent an entire article telling you that you need to work on your foundations instead of buying more stuff, I should probably mention that I actually teach these things, too. Ha! If you’re wondering where to start with grounding, centering, visualization, energy work, and all those other fundamentals I keep harping on about, they’re covered in my Level 1 lessons, available through Witchy Wares. Because while I can’t do the practicing for you, I can certainly help you figure out what the hell you’re supposed to be practicing and why it matters. You can find the lessons here: Witchy Wares Downloadable Content. And yes, I appreciate the irony of telling you that buying something won’t magically fix your practice and then pointing you toward something I sell. The difference is that these lessons are designed to help you develop your own skills, not convince you that you need another shiny object to do the work for you.
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