 It's finally time to talk about magic and sorcery, and what that means in Druidry. Hey there saplings, welcome back to esoteric moment. I've had countless comments and messages asking me to talk about magic and witchcraft and sorcery. This is such a big topic to cover, so I'm going to do a whole series of videos on magic. This is the introductory video, of course, but you will be seeing videos that go into specific types of magic over the next couple weeks. The book reviews that I do during this time will also have an emphasis on magic and witchcraft in a Celtic or Druid path. Before we get into the meat of it, I do want to emphasize that not all Druids practice magic or witchcraft. You can totally be a Druid without doing any spellcraft, and if you do lots of it, it totally works in a Druid path. I'm also going to use some words interchangeably, and I know that really they are slightly different, and we can get into the minutiae of what magic versus spellcraft versus witchcraft actually means. However, I want to make this series of videos really welcoming to all sorts of different magical practitioners. So I'm going to use those words somewhat interchangeably, just bear with me and understand that I know there are slight differences, but it's just for ease of this conversation. I'm going to talk about two kind of major categories of magic. I'm going to call it folk magic on one hand and high ritual magic on the other hand. For me, folk magic is that small, quick magic that is really easy to incorporate into all sorts of tasks that we do on a regular basis. Folk magic to me is the healing tea I make for a friend. It is the wish on a shooting star. It is that magic where I'm focusing my will onto a specific outcome, and I might incorporate some small symbols or ritual practices like physical things I'm doing, but it doesn't take a lot of prior planning and it's really fast. The outcome to folk magic is usually on a smaller scale, but happens faster for me. Ritual magic on the other hand for me is something that I don't do as often, but when I do it, I go all out. I will take time to plan in my journal a specific ritual. I might write out a script. I will gather lots of supplies and symbols that will help me really, really tune into the specific currents and energies that I want to use to make big changes. Ritual magic will usually mean preparing, opening a circle, doing my normal ritual things, building lots of energy, focusing that energy onto something that I want to happen, change or become, and then closing ritual and waiting, documenting for what's going to happen next. Both of those cases, I don't anticipate Harry Potter magic or like movie magic. What I anticipate is me setting in motion the things that I want to see happen, and I have to follow through on some of that. And we'll get into that in each topic area on what I mean with follow through on that. Like my daily practice like Druidry in general, I don't think magic is an armchair practice. I don't think it's just buying crystals or even just buying a spell kit. I think you really got to do a lot more work outside of that action or item. In order to have magic create the outcome that you want, you need to be really clear about your intention and you need to be able to practice willpower. Frankly, if you're the type of person who says you want to do something, but then never ever does it and you can't hold yourself accountable or even find someone else to help you stay accountable, magic is not going to work for you in my opinion. Magic is the combination of using symbols and inspiration and your own willpower to see things happen. I have a friend who's incredibly astute and intuitive and does some interesting magic work, but if it's ever big magic about making life changes like moving somewhere or starting a new project, they really struggle. And I think that's because they allow other fears and concerns get in the way of them using their willpower on basic things. So it's hard to make magic do anything different on a big scale. If we can't do those mundane willpower thing. Of course, magic sometimes works amazingly well and sometimes it doesn't. I think one of the ways that we can make sure that spellcraft and magic has the outcome we want is by including some specific phrases or at least thoughts in our workings. Some of the things I like to do is include make this happen this or better. Letting the universe know that I really want this to happen. But I also know that maybe there's something even more incredible out there waiting just around the corner for me. Of course, the common phrase and let it harm none or something that says, you know, it only affects me is another way of kind of tuning into the energies of the universe and saying, I'm looking to make changes, but changes for the better. I think this helps avoid situations where you immediately are fired when you do a spell looking for more time in your day. Whether you write these down or you use it in your verbal magic or just hold it in your head as you're doing spellcraft. I think it's important to understand that the universe might have more for you and that you don't always understand what the fastest way of having your goals accomplished might be. So make sure it doesn't harm people. I'm really excited to share with everyone. Some of the magic that I use, what has worked for me and what hasn't worked for me and really dive into some of these particular conversations. I also have a couple of rants that I've wanted to get off my chest. Like why do pagan authors use quantum mechanics to describe how magic works? It doesn't. That's for another video. If you want to hear that rant and learn more about magic, including learning specific spells that I have had work in my practice, don't forget to subscribe so that you will get all the videos in the coming week. This week's sapling shout out goes out to Belle Hewitt. She put a comment on my two new Druids video saying that she was really looking for guidance in her new path and the video was helpful. And I'm so glad. If you want to be the next video's sapling shout out, leave me a comment below telling me whether you use magic in your practice. Thanks for watching. And as always, may you find peace in the sacred grove.