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Journal Prompts for Shadow Work #2

Here are some more journal prompts to help you get started on your Shadow Work Journey!

These were the next set of journaling prompts I personally used and these are the ones that also made me think about how I was raised, the people I used to surround myself by, and how much I have grown till now.

The first part is rejection, followed by embarrassment, I’m sure everyone has been rejected or embarrassed in some way or another in their life. This could come from our parents, guardians, siblings, cousins, neighbors, and even friends or strangers. This prompt isn’t asking you to write all of your rejections, however if you feel drawn to it to work through, then go for it!

Forgiveness is something I struggle with personally. The feelings of, I could have done this better, or I should of said this instead, or missing out on an opportunity, etc, is a familiar feeling. I started to forgive myself for whatever memory that came up during this time, it’s not an over night thing either. I am still learning on forgiving myself for past mistakes still!

These prompts made me realize something too, I have been focusing on everything else BUT myself. I had to sit down and think for quite a while to answer some of these and to reconnect to who I once was and what was holding me back, now I can move forward with my healing to work through the issues that have presented themselves to me.

Don’t feel bad about crying or getting angry during this process, trauma comes up while working through it, remembering to breathe, taking your time and to reach out to your support system will help.

I hope this prompt brings you much clarity in your journey.

*Reminder to use caution and to seek professional help if needed. I’m not a licensed therapist. However my inbox is open for support.

Selections from “The Somnia Tarot” - Nicolas Bruno

Instagram- brittany.morian

🎵 Music in Witchcraft 🎵

I love music. More and more, I have been including music in my practice of witchcraft, simply by having a song in the background while cleansing or making kitchen magic, and singing or humming particular melodies in the shower, when I perform a spell or a ritual, etc. If you’re interested in music witchcraft, here are a few ideas to get you started. 

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🎵 Singing out loud is a really powerful practice that can help when performing difficult spells, or rituals that are energy-draining. 

🎵 If you’re uncomfortable with singing, humming a melody is a good alternative. I love humming a simple, happy song while cleansing my home.

🎵 Charge your crystals, magical items and plants with soothing, dramatic and strengthening music. 

🎵 If you can play any instrument, include them in your practice - by playing before, during or after your daily practice, for instance. 

🎵 Sound playlists have their own power, especially if you’re working with the 4 elements:

🌱 Earth: listen to forest and nature sounds

🔥 Fire: listen to fire crackling

🌪️ Air: listen to birds chirping

🌊 Water: listen to ocean sounds and waves

🎵 Make very specific playlists on Spotify ; e.g. “Songs to dance around in your room by yourself”, or “Songs to listen when you’re angry about the world”. Having songs that reflect your feelings will be incredibly useful and can make you feel less alone in your happiness / or in your pain. 

🎵 Bring back your inner child by listening to nostalgic playlists of songs that came out when you were 5, 10, 15 years old. 

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Here’s a great Spotify playlist with witchy music, if you’re interested. 

Animal Preservation

Here’s a post to preserving animals in as many forms as I can shove in here/am aware about. Please feel free to reblog and add more links!

Taxidermy

Mountable vs Non-mountable Pelts (visual guide)

Mountable Pelt (visual)

How to Reshape a Face on a Pelt

Making a Soft Mount Coyote

Mounting a Persian Leopard (gore tw)

Salt and Alum Tanning Rabbit Hides

Finger Fleshing Rabbit Hides

Tru Bond Tanning

Egg Tanning

Fleshing a Coyote (video)

Taxidermy Quality Pelt

Collecting

Bone Collecting for Beginners

Bone Collecting in Scotland

Roadkill Collector’s Arsenal

Using Hydrogen Peroxide to Whiten Bones

Whitening Tutorial

Why to not Boil or Bleach Bones

Degreasing Tutorial

Processing and Cleaning Bones

Feather Identification

Decomposing in Pots

Choosing the Right Method for Cleaning

Cleaning With Maceration

An American Vultures Guide to (legally!) Working Around the MBTA

Studying Owl Pellets

How to Clean Feathers

How to Blow Out Eggs

Preservation

Forum Thread on Rat Preservation

Preserving Animals

Alcohol Preservation

Preserve Moss

Preserve Bird Nests

Dry Flowers

Salt/Borax Drying

Preserve a Wasp Nest

Insects

Relaxing Jar Tutorial

Basic Insect Pinning Tutorial

Insect Relaxing

Insect Pinning

Carving

Bone Carving Tools

Working With Horn

Legal Issues

United States Animal Parts Laws

Legal Birds to Collect From (US)

Migratory Birds Protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act

Wild Bird Laws (Scotland)

Birds Protected in Canada

Schedules (UK)

US Cat & Dog Fur

International Shipping

Taxidermy Regulations

Misc

Vulture Culture shirt by NaturePunk

Book Suggestions

Vultures Around the World

Fur Sewing

Another Masterpost by Pastoriagym

Make a wish

just showing off my two favorite cuttings i’ve been growing this summer ☀️🌱

pothos ‘njoy (3 months of rooting)

philodendron brasil (4 months of rooting)

Witchcraft 102 Masterpost

So. You’ve covered the basics. You know what every kind of ritual tool does, you understand all the terms that seemed alien to you before and you think you’re finally starting to get a feel for this witchcraft thing. You’re not a baby witch anymore, but… where to from here? Making the move from beginner witch to intermediate witch is a lot more difficult than it seems, purely because resources aimed at intermediate witchcraft are few and far between. But there’s a good reason for that.

There are general rules and ideas that can be applied across all of witchcraft. There’s so much to learn from other witches, but your greatest teacher will always be yourself. There is a reason witchcraft is so customisable to the individual: some things just work better for certain people. Not to mention pretty much every magick practice in history was developed by witches using their intuition! Because of this, it’s hard to create resources that tell somehow how to go from a beginner to an intermediate. However, they do exist! You’ll just find that most of them will act as prompts or scaffolds. They’ll instruct you on how to figure things out for yourself.

This next stage of your craft will involve a lot of introspection, and a lot of trusting your gut. It’s the reason you learnt all that baby witch stuff in the first place. This is where most of the personal growth happens. It can be scary, but it’ll also be magical. It’ll be a while before you actually qualify as an ‘intermediate witch’, and there’s no shame in that. The process of moving from beginner to intermediate is one that can take years, simply because witchcraft is such a deep and complex art. I myself definitely wouldn’t identify as a baby witch, but I’m still a beginner in many aspects despite having been a witch for years.

Without further ado, I present to you witchcraft 102.

GENERAL

The Problem with Sharing Advanced Magic

Using Tumblr as a Resource

How to Stop Being a Beginner Witch

How to Deepen Your Craft

Developing Your Craft Beyond Tumblr

Creating a Spiritual Calendar

SOAP Journaling: a Devotional Framework

Devotional Journal (for deity worship)

Questions for a Deeper Spiritual Practice

ORGANISATION

When reading through information, I recommend taking notes on the content, as well as your thoughts on it. Do you notice any connections to other texts or ideas? Do you have any questions you’d like to follow up? This will not only help you remember the information, but encourage you to look at it critically and see the bigger picture. Here is an example of my personal note-taking scaffold which includes some of the notes I took a while ago. I adapted it from the Cornell notes system based on my personal needs.

At TechnoCoven, a recent online witchcraft convention, there was an hour-long panel about planning in witchcraft called Spirit Papers. Here is a link to the recording. It goes over different organisation systems, notebooks, etc.

Why you should cite sources

How to cite sources

What is an annotated bibliography?

I would highly recommend setting aside a specific time every day to study witchcraft. This way, you will be improving your craft every day. Even if you only set aside half an hour, you will be doing three and a half hours of study a week. An hour a day totals to seven hours a week. If you can’t find a specific time every day, then find a specific time every week. 6pm-8pm on Tuesday and Saturday, for example, or reserve all of Sunday afternoon. This structure obviously isn’t compulsory, but with it you will advance at a much quicker pace and probably find your craft more fulfilling.

You should definitely have a grimoire already, but if you don’t, get one. It can be on paper or online, if you’d prefer. OneNote, Evernote, Microsoft Word and Google Docs are all viable digital options. You probably have lots of loose information lying around, whether its physical, in note form or on your Tumblr blog. Categorise it and order it. Then go through it. Document the important and useful parts in your grimoire.

READING

Elemental Magick in Science

Elemental Systems

The Darker Elements

History of Magick Part 1

History of Magick Part 2

History of Magick Part 3

History of Magick Part 4

How Location and History Affect Spiritual Practices

Botanical Medicine for Women’s Health (ebook)

TAROT

Stop Learning Tarot Like Flash Cards

Learning the Major Arcana

Learning the Court Cards

Reading Tarot Cards Vertically

Reading Reversed Cards

How to Take Notes on a (New) Tarot Deck

Understanding Yourself Tarot Mega-Spread

Conceptions of the Self Through Spreads

Shadow February Divination Challenge

Daily Tarot Journal Printable

SHADOW WORK

Introduction to Shadow Work

6 Phrases for Shadow Work

Safety Planning (good to have one of these if you’re doing shadow work and have a mental illness)

Shadow Working with Stuck Points

Shadow Work with Hillbillyoracle (pt. 1)

Shadow Work with Hillbillyoracle (pt. 2)

Hillbillyoracle’s Personal Shadow Work Framework

RESEARCH

Good Things to Research When You Don’t Know What to Research

Areas of Research for the Intermediate Witch

Masterlist of Journals, Articles & Books on Folklore, Mythology and the Occult

Index of Old Grimoires

Working with Plants

Tips on How to Google Correspondences

The Cornell University Library Witchcraft Collection

Sacred Text Archive

Bocastle Museum of Witchcraft

Occult Library

Hermetics Library

Project Gutenberg Paganism Bookshelf

Legal Free Ebooks Masterpost

Good Pagan & Wiccan Publishers

How to Get Use Out of Older Texts

Finding Experienced Witches

PRACTICE

What to Do When You Fall out of Practice

Making Your Own Correspondences

Pendulum Dowsing for Correspondences

2019 Grimoire Challenge (a year of grimoire prompts)

Stones for Advanced Practitioners

On Tools and Psychodrama

A Way to Astral Project

Energy Alignment Identification

Magic in the Body

Spell Circles

Irish Concept of “On the Breath”

Sky Catch

Verbal Sigils

PODCASTS

Tea With the Gods

The Hillbilly Oracle

Hex Positive

The History of Witchcraft

The Empowered Modern Witches Show

Academy of Affluence

TESTIMONIALS

A Samhain Fairytale

Foundations of Diywitchery’s Practice

Godphoning

Devotional activities

GET OFF TUMBLR (AKA GET SOME VARIETY IN YOUR SOURCES) I’ve got some examples listed here but there are definitely more out there!

Bree NicGarran’s Blog

Luna Luna Magazine (Blog)

Witchy Words (Blog)

Mumble & Things (Blog)

Down the Forest Path (Blog)

The Travelling Witch (Blog)

Prisoner’s Apothecary (Blog)

Harmony Nice (Youtube)

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

6 Books for Advancing Your Craft

Hellenic Polytheism Books

Walker Between Worlds by Robert Kirk (I haven’t read it so I can’t vouch for its quality but I’ve heard its a valuable resources for those wanting to learn about the fae)

The Study of Witchcraft: A Guidebook to Advanced Wicca by Deborah Lipp (I will link to my book review here; this book is essentially a study guide)

Evolution of Goddess by Emma Mildon (book recommendation) (especially good if you are looking to find a deity but are unsure of where to start)

The Occult, Witchcraft & Magic: An Illustrated History by Christopher Dell (a fantastic starting place for looking into occult history)