When I started Enchantment Learning & Living what feels like a lifetime ago, I did so with the intention of exploring a central truth: true magic is in the everyday. That’s the tagline of much of my creative work and the backbone of my own brujeria practice.

Spiritual Gatekeeping

I wanted to get away from the idea of complex spell-work and esoteric occultism that often felt like gatekeeping to what should be an organic fluid practice. Like the church insisting they are the conduit through which God, or the numinous, speaks, these more complicated approaches to the craft can imply that people can only connect to that mystic energy within themselves and without if they perform intricate rituals. We must have an Instagram-worthy altar, a collection of large, expensive crystals, and an herbal apothecary filled with hard-to-find often dangerous herbs.

Don’t get me wrong. We all have our ways of conjuring, our rituals, and spells, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You can even enjoy that Instagram-worthy set-up! The trouble occurs when we get so lost in the performance of our witchiness, yield to consumerism that tells us we can’t be magical unless we have that ultra-expensive [fill in the blank magical tool]. It’s easy to get lost in the ritual and theater of the occult, so much so that we can forget the purpose behind our spiritual practice: to reconnect to self, the universe, to others in a meaningful and life-affirming way.

This is also a way to keep people out of elitist witch circles—if you can commodify spirituality, you can choose who can and can’t have access to these energies via simple economics and cultural appropriation, which is a byproduct of this commodification. More simply, it sells the idea that you are not enough on your own to manifest what you need to, which is simply untrue.

Spiritual Bypassing & Performative Conjuring

We also run the risk of spiritual bypassing when our practice is so focused on the pomp and circumstance of witchy business. We fall into the trap of “love and light” and good feelings only, suppressing the bad so we don’t have to do the hard shadow work to truly heal. We can, in essence, get so lost in the spectacle of the occult that we successfully avoid whatever it is we need to deal with.

And it’s not just witches that do this. I’ve seen this in the yoga community, where people misuse a powerful practice to numb, rather than heal. Buearocracies roll out their anti-racism agendas that amount to nothing more than a publicity stunt—it’s easy to feel like they’re doing the hard work when a shiny new poster says they are. Actual social justice is much harder and takes more work, hence it’s easy to fall back on feel-good performativity than it is to wade into the waters of genuine activism.

The real work—spiritual, social justice, relational—happens when we show up and aren’t afraid to get messy, uncomfortable, and grounded. And, yes, sometimes those spells, rituals, and social media posts help with that—as long as people don’t stop there. That’s why one of my witchy principles is that magic is a hard, gritty thing. You have to show up and do the work every day. It’s not glamorous and it doesn’t always feel good, but if you keep at it…good stuff starts happening.

Keep It Simple

So…what do we do, knowing all of this? Easy. We keep it simple. My upcoming book, Practically Pagan ~ An Alternative Guide to Magical Living, takes a practical approach to magical living. You don’t any money to perform these proverbial spells and rituals. You don’t need fancy tools or a scholarly background in the occult. You don’t even need a lot of time. All you need is a desire to conjure more magic in your life.

Put even more simply, this book and my personal practice are all about knowing that there is magic in the mundane. As the book blurb says, “It’s a less mumbling 'double double toil and trouble' over a cauldron and trouble and a more cooking a delicious soup in a beloved cast iron pot. It’s simple. It’s mundane. It’s magic!”

You won’t find love spells or hexes in this book, but you will find simple practices rooted in self-care and energetic awareness designed to help you live a more magical life. Perhaps this is what makes this book “an alternative guide” because it side-steps the hocus pocus people expect from witchy books and gets real about the hard work it takes to conjure a more magical life.

It’s a simple concept but difficult to put into practice. I’ve been marinating on this concept more recently as reviews of my latest book are rolling in. It’s a striking contrast as the reviews can be broken into two camps: the people who are upset that they didn’t get a grimoire filled with complicated spellwork and the people who utterly and completely appreciate a more practical—alternative—guide to magical living rooted in basic energetic and mystic principles with examples and tips for how those practices play out in real life.

The magic is in the repetition, the overlap between cultivating radical self-care and developing a pleasure magic practice. These things work together to form a powerful, magical whole. And yeah, on the surface that might seem boring to practitioners who want more sparkle and flair to their witchy practice, but—and I say this with a profound love of glitter and shiny things—sometimes all that sparkle is distracting you from the very real work of sweeping up a dirty floor and thinking twice about welcoming in people who always track in mud, literally and figuratively.

Oh, and that soup in your beloved cast-iron pot? That’s a comfort spell. Pointing out, as I often do in this book, that it’s harder for women of color to acknowledge that they are allowed to do less and enjoy themselves? That’s a protection spell and boundary-setting spell. It might seem like overkill to those who haven’t had to constantly assert their right to wellness and a balanced life. But to us? The repetition is part of the conjuring and an invitation to fellow people with marginalized identities to claim our right to joy, pleasure, and the magic of everyday life. No complicated spells required.

So as you go about your daily life this week, pay attention to the energy you bring to your work, your play, your relationships. Treat every action as a conjuring, every cup of tea as a potion, every word that slips from your lips as a spell. Then see where the magic takes you.

And remember, as I always say, true magic is in the everyday.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!