ASTER PERPETUA'S

ICAL B
G
OO
MA

A GUIDE FOR THE

BEGINNER WITCH
magic
is something
you create

@asterperpetua - 2023
 contents
what is witchcraft and why to practice it? ..................................................4
the witch's toolbox ..............................................................................................6
books .............................................................................................................6
supermarket essentials .............................................................................7
candles, oils and herbs..............................................................................7
altars...............................................................................................................8
grimoire or book of shadows..................................................................9
wand, broomstick and cauldron............................................................9
correspondences guide........................................................................................12
days of the week in spellwork...............................................................12
phases of the moon...................................................................................13
colors.............................................................................................................13
a short list of herbs...................................................................................14
when to start casting spells?..............................................................................16
folk magic................................................................................................................17
thank you!...............................................................................................................18
bibliography...........................................................................................................19

*This e-book cannot be sold*

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What is witchcraft and why practice it?
Witchcraft is something difficult to define. To begin with,
each person will create their own personal view and concept of what
it means to them. Not to mention the history attached to the term,
which brings another meaning completely different, and filled with
prejudice.
For me personally, witchcraft is first and foremost a spiritual
practice. It is autonomous, free, and empowering. It is ancient
wisdom, the ways of our ancestors, the power of nature, elements and
spirits. Witchcraft is the path of the wild and the brave. Of people
who are curious and not at all afraid of what they might discover,
because a witch knows that wherever they are, they will be the most
dangerous presence found therein.
Witchcraft is also the manipulation of the energies surrounding
a situation: that’s what we do spells for. To change or influence
something so the final results will align with what we wish. For some
it’s psychology spiced up with cayenne pepper, but for us, the
practitioners, it’s surely pure magic. Many say it’s just a placebo effect
and whatever, but trust me, once you tune in and find your path, you
will encounter many things that are not just a product of your psyché.
You’ll know when you find them.

But why should you practice this thing anyway? Well, each
person will have their own reasons. Coming from my own experience,
I found in witchcraft the perfect pathway to my spirituality. I never
felt any connection to “regular religious models”, they either bored or
annoyed me. Don’t get me wrong, witchcraft isn’t necessarily a
“religion”. For some it is, for others it isn’t. It all depends on the shape
that each person chooses to give to their practice. But either way, it is
a gate to your connection to the unseen, the unknown and the
spiritual.

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 When I heard about witchcraft as an actual practice that people
did, I KNEW this was the path for me. Once you find the right
building blocks you can just put them together as you see fit. The path
of the witch is completely built by oneself. It’s a path not only to
spirituality, but also to self confidence, self love, and pure
empowerment. Witches are bold, strong, they are the weirdos, mister!
They are the badass people who bring charisma, uniqueness, nerve
and talent to the table and serve it like no one else can. Who doesn’t
want to be like that? I found witchcraft as a spiritual practice when I
needed it most, and it transformed my life from the inside out.
It all comes down to your personal why. Ask yourself “why do I
want to be a witch?”. Honestly? I don’t think there’s a wrong answer
for that question, as long as you take it seriously. If you just do it to
post some cool pictures on Instagram or to get back together with
your ex, but your actual practice, research and spellwork are almost
nonexistent, you’ll get nothing from it but backlash.

With that being said, let’s take a look at some pillars upon
which you can start to build your practice.

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 The witch's toolbox
The tools you will need to start your practice are very few
and simple, you don’t need to go on a consumerist rampage and get
everything you see the witchy influencers use. As a matter of fact, any
experienced witch will tell you that you don’t need almost any tool,
because all the power comes from you, not from them. However, if you
feel that you need to use a certain something to enhance a spell, by all
means do use it. But keep in mind that the only thing that is a must
here is your intent. The energy and intentions that you put into your
working are what will break it or make it. All the rest is extra
support.

Books
The very first tool you need is books. Obtaining information
and educating yourself are the most primordial things that a witch
must do, and that comes mainly from good sources written by
experienced sorcerers. Note that I’m not talking about cute
instagrammable books of spells. Books of spells are good sources of
inspiration when you already know your craft. The books that I mean
here are the building blocks that will teach you how to create your own
magic.
For that purpose, there are 3 books that I recommend:

✦ Moon Spells, by Diane Ahlquist

✦ Psychic Witch, by Mat Aurin
✦ Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs, by Scott Cunningham

All 3 books are inexpensive and easily found on Amazon.

MOON SPELLS will teach you many correspondences (which is super
useful) and basically how to work with the energy of the moon. In the
end, it brings spells to try out. Trust me, it's not only about moon
magic, it goes beyond that. It’s a non wiccan book, and extremely
helpful for a beginner. It was the first book I read on magic.

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PSYCHIC WITCH will teach you about how to connect to your
mind powers and states of consciousness, and how to use them in
your craft. It also brings lots of exercises to practice throughout the
book. I tried many of them and got very impressed with where they
can lead us. Like the previous book, this one has some spells in the
end, too.

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MAGICAL HERBS is a classic book of herbal

correspondences, and a great reference when you are creating your
spells, just so you can make sure that you are picking the herbs that
will work with your intent. You will find all the most common herbs,
fruits, and plants in general in it.
To this day, I still refer back to those books to check information,
cross references and even to use the spells brought in them. In my
opinion, any witch who begins their library with these books is off to
a very solid start.

Supermarket essentials
You will soon realize that most of the things you need can be easily
found at your local supermarket. Especially for those who are just
starting out and don’t want to break the bank to get started, items
such as candles, fire safe jars, salts, oils, herbs and other ingredients
are just a few blocks away from you for a reasonable price.

Candles, oils and herbs

Candles are often used in magic simply because they bring light to
the situation and to the entity powers working together with your
own. They are also a great way to use colors in order to enhance your
spells, and there’s a whole magical segment you can discover called
candle magic.

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 Speaking of candles, I love to dress them with oils! Oils are great
conductors of powers, both the ones they already have naturally and
also the ones that we add to them when we make a custom oil, for
example a Protection Oil or a Success Oil. My favorite to use is
sunflower oil: it’s light, versatile and easy to find.
After I put some nice conditioning oil on my candle, the next
thing I like to do is to add a layer of herbs with the properties that
match my spell. They will stick on the oil and burn with the flame of
the candle, adding more potency to the spell. Any supermarket has
the dried herbs that a witch needs the most, such as rosemary, basil,
sage, thyme and many others.
Some snobbish people look down on using supermarket bought
spices in spellwork and they will say that this is something that a real
witch shouldn’t be doing. Don’t listen to those people. They just say
that to make themselves seem better than others in their own eyes. A
real witch doesn’t waste their time measuring somebody else’s practice
by their own ruler of measurement. If you want to grow your own
organic herbs in your garden, that’s great, go for it! But if you want to
buy dried herbs from Carrefour, that’s also great!
To each their own :)

Altars
Altars are a great way of having a sacred space of energy flow
directed at a certain purpose or veneration that you want to keep
manifesting and emanating. You can make an ancestor altar, a money
altar, a glamour altar, a deity altar, or basically any type of altar that
your imagination can think of. I wouldn’t say that you need to have
altars right off the bat, and honestly, if you don’t want or don’t have
the space for it, you don’t need to have an altar at all. But if it’s
something you would like to do, now you can start to think about it.
How you would like it to be, to what purpose it would be dedicated,
what items you would place on it, and so on.

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Grimoire or Book of Shadows
The Grimoire or Book of Shadows is the place where you will
write down every piece of information that you find useful for your
personal craft as well as your personally made spells. Just like altars,
though, you don’t really need to start your own BOS right away. It
takes time until we start crafting our own spells, and at the beginner
stages I believe a BOS would be only used for keeping track of
correspondences and the wheel of the year, for example. But then
again, that’s not a requirement because you can just refer back to the
book sources where you learned that information.
I still keep my personal BOS as a board on Trello. Yes, I intend
to eventually start to make a physical copy of it (because you can’t
always rely on digital things), but I still haven’t had the chance to do
that. My choice, however, is already made: I’ll get a binder for that
purpose. Why? Because you can always add in pages without messing
up your page setup or the general organization of your BOS. If you
use a notebook you have a certain amount of pages that you can use,
and say your correspondences part is filled up but the spells part isn’t,
then you don’t have any more space to add further correspondence
info, even though there are still many blank pages. You can’t just
rearrange the pages or something, because they are all stitched up
together. With a binder, you can rearrange it all as you want or need.

Wand, Broomstick and Cauldron

These are the clichés of witchcraft: wand, broom and cauldron.
We’re just missing the pointy hat and nose wart to get a halloween
costume… but that’s not what we’re aiming for here.
An item that is very known and related to witches is the
magic wand. Everyone has heard about that and seen it on TV shows.
In reality, a magic wand isn’t exactly as fiction leads us to believe. The

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wand is simply a conductor of your energy, to direct it to where you
want it to be. You can make your own wand with wood from a specific
tree, or buy one online. Another popular choice is having an athame
instead of a wand. An athame is a small double edged knife that should
be blunt. If it ever happens that your athame cuts someone or
something, you’ll need to discard it and get a new one.
Personally, I chose to use a letter opener as my conductor of
energy. It looks like a tiny sword and I love it!

The broom is another item instantly associated with witches, and

I’d love to be able to fly on one. Yeah, just like wands, the uses and
capabilities of brooms on TV shows have nothing to do with reality. In
fact, all this buzz about “witches flying on broomsticks” was actually
made up by the church during inquisition times, just to increase how
diabolical and powerful witches were. But in reality, a broom is simply
used to clean the area where you will do your working, both physically
and energetically.

And the cauldron? The cauldron is simply a fire proof container.

You need to burn herbs, petitions or whatnot? An iron cauldron will
certainly be safe to do that into. However, they aren’t always easy to find
and tend to be kind of expensive. So any fire safe receptacle will do the
job. Personally, I like to use large sea shells, empty candle containers and
little glass Pyrex thingies that I bought at the closest supermarket.

Needless to say, whatever items you choose for your magickal

workings should be cleansed, charged and kept only for that purpose.
Don’t spellcast with your athame and then use it to open a cookie
package in the kitchen.

✦ How do you cleanse, and what is it for?

Cleansing is meant to rid our tool from any previous energy that it is
carrying, so it won't influence our spell. You can cleanse with various
methods such as using a selenite wand, tapping, shaking, visualizing, and
fumigation. I personally prefer fumigation with smoke, and for that you
can use banishing/cleansing herbs such as juniper, sage, guinea hen
weed, palo santo or even incense.
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✦ How do you charge, and what is it for?
Charging your tools aims at setting them up with energy that matches
the purposes that you desire for a certain spell. You can do it by leaving
the item to catch moon light or sun light for example, or simply by
visualization while holding the item.
Just be careful with sun light exposure for too long, because it can fade
some items, such as crystals.

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 Correspondences guide
Here I’m bringing a basic list of correspondences that should be
enough information to get started: days of the week, phases of the
moon, colors and 10 common herbs. I hope it will be useful to you!

Days of the week in spellwork

The days of the week can influence your spellcasting through the
powers, planets and deities associated with each of them.

MONDAY - ruled by the Moon, it’s the best day for: creativity,
divinatory arts, intuition or psychic ability, and emotional matters.

TUESDAY - ruled by Mars, it’s the best day for: sexuality, initiative,
finding motivation, increasing strength and confidence.

WEDNESDAY - ruled by Mercury, it’s the best day for:

communication, career or job, intellectual endeavors, travel and
exploration.

THURSDAY - ruled by Jupiter, it’s the best day for: finances, business
and legal issues.

FRIDAY - ruled by Venus, it’s the best day for: relationships, love,
beauty, self care and self love.

SATURDAY - ruled by Saturn, it’s the best day for: future projects,
personal goals, closures and endings.

SUNDAY - ruled by the Sun, it’s the best day for: healing, increase of
energy, divinatory arts, decisiveness, problem solving.

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Phases of the moon
I consider the phases of the moon extremely important when
choosing a date to perform a spell. Mind you, if the moon phases can
influence the tides, imagine what they can offer to energy manipulation!
It’s definitely a detail to pay attention to.

NEW MOON - happens when you see the first silver line on the moon.
It’s the phase for: anything new that you wish to start with good
fortune, like new relationships, new job, new beginnings in general.

WAXING MOON - in this period the moon seems to grow. It's the
phase for: anything that you want to grow and become stronger in your
life.

FULL MOON - when the moon is fully illuminated in the sky. This is
the phase for any kind of spell really, because it’s when the moon is at its
most powerful stage.

WANING MOON - it happens when the moon seems to decrease. It’s

the phase for workings aimed at anything that you want to end in your
life. Letting go, closure, release.

DARK MOON - often mistaken with the new moon, it’s the couple of
days where the moon can’t be seen in the sky at all. It’s the phase for
discarding anything that you no longer want, perfect for cleansings and
banishings.

Colors
Colors are an element that I like to combine with the candles that
I’m gonna use in a spell, and each color brings a specific energy to the
working.

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WHITE - the most versatile color of all. In case you don’t have a candle
in a certain color, use white. You can never go wrong with a white
candle. It’s associated with peace, purity and power.

BLACK - the ideal color to remove negative energy.

BLUE - communication and mental agility, but also related to psychic

abilities, spirituality and intuition.

GREEN - can be associated with money and business workings.

ORANGE - associated with extra energy and power.

PINK - brings self love, and gentle nurturing love for others.

PURPLE - associated with psychic ability, intuition, wisdom and

independence.

RED - the color for love, lust and passion. But also related to strength
and courage.

YELLOW - associated with money, as well as joy and creativity.

A short list of herbs

Herbs are basically the staple of magic and spells. They are powerful
elements that shouldn’t be dismissed, and just to give you a few
references I listed 10 of the most common ones that we can find and use.

Basil -♂ fire element, its powers include love, wealth, protection and
exorcism. It’s one of my favorites to dress my candles with!

Cinnamon - ☉ fire element, its properties include success, speed,

money drawing and personal power. I always use cinnamon in my
conditioning oils, especially the ones for success and wealth.

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Fennel - ☿ fire element, its powers include healing, sweetness,
purification and protection. I like to put fennel in my little patuás,
which are the brazilian version of mojo bags.

Garlic - ♂ fire element, its powers include protection, healing and

exorcism. One of my favorite protection spells is made with garlic, not
to mention my use of its peals and entire cloves for conditioning oils.

Juniper -☉ fire element, it’s my go to for cleansings and banishings, I

make sure to always have a jar of it. Its magical properties include
protection, exorcism, male potency, and hex breaking.

Lemongrass - ☿ air element, it can be used to repel bad spirits and

energies, and to increase psychic powers. Another herb that I add to my
patuás.

Rose - ♀ water element, it can be used to promote love, healing and

luck. Every time I get a bouquet of flowers I leave the rose petals on
paper towels to air dry, then I store them in a jar.

Rosemary - ☉ fire element, its properties include purification,

protection, exorcism and healing. For me it’s a must when it comes to
protection.

Sage - ♃ air element, wisdom, protection, healing, purification. I love

to use it to dress my candles as well!

Star anise - ♃ air element, it can be used to increase psychic powers,

wealth and luck. It’s the cherry on top of the prosperity bowl that I
make each year.

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When to start casting spells?
The first thing we want to do is jump right into the action and do
spell work. We want to cast a circle, get a bunch of ingredients, light
candles and have it going. But hey, slow down! When we first start we’re
not ready to perform spells yet. First thing you gotta do is build a good
library and read a lot. As a matter of fact, about 70% to 80% of your
time as a witch will be spent researching and reading, not spell casting.
If you jump in too quickly the results won’t exactly come out as
you would have liked. Maybe your spell will backfire, have a twisted
effect or simply not work at all. Similarly, a “book of spells” type of
material isn’t the first book you should get, as mentioned earlier. I stand
by the opinion that a witch should tailor their own spells, not just
reproduce what someone else created. It’s called witchCRAFT for a
reason, don’t you think? You get your hands on it, make some of your
items from scratch and create your spell recipes based on your
knowledge and intuition. Only you know what you’re going through,
therefore only you can develop a spell that will fit perfectly in your
situation. Moreover, if you’re just starting out and get only “ready-to-
use-spell-recipes” you won’t even know why a certain ingredient is
required for that spell and what you could use instead if you don’t have
it.
But then, when is the right time to start casting spells? There isn’t
one right answer, because each witch has their own learning rhythm. I
would say that the right time is when you are able to have some ideas of
your own about how a spell of yours would be. What ingredients would
be used and why? Would the moon phase play a role in it? The hour of
the day (or night) would be important? Or it wouldn’t matter? Would
you work with a deity, spirit or planetary power, or not? Are you using
a poppet, sigils, divination?
Once you can pinpoint each element of a spell you came up with,
you’re ready for spellcasting.

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 Folk Magic
As folk magic is a huge part of my practice, I wouldn’t be able to
not talk a little bit about it here. There are many magical paths
available, and maybe this one won’t appeal to you - which is fine.
However, I believe it is important to know our roots and where we are
coming from, so it’s clear where we are going. Besides, the magic in your
genes is the strongest connection that you can have.
Folk magic is the day to day problem solver of the common
people, so certainly your culture had them at a certain point in history,
even if colonization, wars and christianism ended up killing them
overtime. We can argue that folk magic is not witchcraft, which
historically speaking, is right. But today with the resignification that we
are creating for the terms “witch” and “witchcraft”, we can understand
that witches and folk practitioners are the same thing with different
names.
You may tell me that the practices of your ancestors of centuries
ago got lost and forgotten, but I do encourage you to look up some
history books, because they will definitely have some information about
the customs of your native people.

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 Thank you!
Thank you for downloading and reading this e-book! I hope these
bits of information will help you to get started with your practice. It’s
simple, short and straight to the point, but I made it with all my love
and care.
Make sure to follow me on social media and to subscribe to my
YouTube channel (coming soon) so you won't miss out on all the
content that is coming! :)

Aster
Love, Aster.

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 Bibliography
Ahlquist, Diane. Moon Spells, How to use the phases of the moon to get
what you want. Massachusetts: Adams Media, 2002.
Cunningham, Scott. Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs. Minnesota:
Llewellyn Publications, 2000.
Sédir, Paul. Occult Botany. Translated by R. Bailey, Vermont: Inner
Traditions, 2021.

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