Making Everyday Magic Easy

If you're anything like me, you get a lot of satisfaction from being a witch. It fills your spirit, and lifts your heart, and helps you find your place in the universe. And if you are anything like me, you are also so busy and overwhelmed trying to keep up with Life and All the Other Stuff, you hardly ever find the time to actually work on your Witchcraft practice, even though it is important to you and makes you feel better.

Never fear, I have an easy solution. One of the ways I have found to integrate a small daily practice into my life is to use one of the many 365 Day books that are out there. I have a bunch of different ones, some of them featuring goddesses, some with short meditations or affirmations, and some with fast and easy bits of magical work. In fact, back in 2017, I wrote one of my own, A Year and a Day of Everyday Witchcraft: 366 Ways to Witchify Your Life, in which I had a year's worth of witchy information, along with some cool poems, and recommendations for activities you could follow up with after reading.

It was a fun book to write, and people seemed to enjoy it, but eventually I got a bunch of messages saying, essentially, "Hey, I use this every year, and I'd like something different." So I wrote a new one! (You saw that coming, right?) A Year and a Day of Everyday Magic: Witchify Your Life with a Daily Dose of Magic follows the same premise the first one, but it is a little more action-oriented, with a lot of fast and easy options for actual practice, rather than just reading about witchy things. (Not that you aren't allowed to do that, too, if it suits you better.)

Here's what makes 365 Day books so helpful, whether they are mine or someone else's. They are broken down into short, manageable bits that almost anyone can sneak into their busy, hectic lives. One short page. (You can even read it in the bathroom, if that's the only time you get five minutes to yourself.) Quick, simple activities, many of which can be done in only a few minutes. Nothing overwhelming, since we all have enough of that already. And yet they still provide you with a way to connect to your witchy nature every day, no matter how briefly.

My new book in particular is designed to be as flexible as possible, in order to suit as many people as I can, no matter what their style, their needs, or their time limits. So how do you use it? Any way you want, of course.

The traditional approach is to start at the beginning, on January first, and read one page every day until you get to the end (which is actually day 366, the first day of the new year, which in this book has a spell for new beginnings). Because of this, a 365 Day book makes the perfect holiday gift, either for someone else or for yourself. This is the way I like to use them, because I'm a methodical kind of person, and admittedly, some of the days are linked to date-specific topics, such as the sabbats (you're not going to talk about Yule in April, after all).

But you can also hop around by topic, depending on what you are in the mood for, or if you are looking for something in particular. There's a list at the back of the book where you can see all the spells and rituals, for instance, so you can look up "Spell for dealing with difficult people" if that’s what you happen to need after a bad day. Or you can check out the possibilities for kitchen magic, connecting with deity, divination and tarot, herb magic, or moon magic. Having a difficult time coping with the crap life is throwing at you? Check out the options listed under mental health magic.

If you're a crafty kind of witch, there are plenty of fast and easy projects in there for you, too, along with some activities you can do just for fun (some of which are perfect for sharing with your kids or friends, if you want). There's even bathroom magic, since let's face it, we all spend a certain amount of time in that room of the house. No one has to know you're doing a quick bit of magical practice in the shower or in front of the mirror.

If you're the spontaneous type, and don't like to be tied down to specific dates or topics, you can always try simply opening the book to a page at random and see what shows up. Maybe whatever is there will contain a message from the universe, or be exactly what you need at that particular time and place. There are no rules: you can use this book any way you want, or in any combination of approaches. You can even read two days at once if you feel like it. I won't tell.

What if you live in the Southern Hemisphere, and the holidays for the Wheel of the Year fall at opposite times than those in the Northern Hemisphere, and your winter is our summer? No problem! In that case, you could choose to just ignore the dates and start the book at the days that are more appropriate for your own calendar. (Instead of going to the winter solstice on December 21st, you'd go to the summer solstice section on June 21st instead, and move forward from there.)

Whichever approach works best for you, the whole point is that you will be taking a few minutes every day, whether when you first get up, or right before bed, or maybe in whatever five or ten minutes you can steal out of the rest of your busy schedule, and getting in touch with your fabulous witchy, magical, and spiritual self. You can give yourself the gift of feeding your soul, widening your mind, and boosting your practice, one short page at a time.

And who could ask for more than that?