Introduction
Welcome to the Live Your Magic course. My name is Raechel Henderson and I’ll be your instructor throughout this course. I am an author of several books on magic and crafting. My first book, Sew Witchy, combines sewing and magic. My book The Scent of Lemon & Rosemary is about witchy home economics. And my book The Natural Home Wheel of the Year teaches readers how to celebrate the eight sabbats that make up the pagan wheel of the year. My fourth book called The Witch’s Wardrobe is another book about sewing and magic and creating your own witchy garments.
Beyond being an author, I am a witch who has been practicing for over twenty-five years. I started in the late 1990s with my introduction to witchcraft coming from Scott Cunningham, who was another witchy author. His books introduced me to Wicca, one path of witchcraft, but I soon moved on to my own path. My practice is eclectic and if pressed for a title for it, I would call myself a witchcrafter.
I also run Idiorhythmic, where I blog about living a magical life. Idiorhythmic is a word that means “living by one’s own life patterns,” and this is the cornerstone of my practice. I believe that magic is personal and should be rooted in one’s own lived experiences.
I’ve worked hard over the years to find the magic in my day to day life and I have created this course to help you do the same.
What You Can Expect From This Course
So what can you expect from this workshop? By the end of this course you will have created an actionable plan for yourself that includes ways you can incorporate magic into your home, your relationships and your job.
The course is broken up into seven modules: This introduction, and then five modules covering different areas–Home & Body, the Mind, your Passion, Relationships, Spirit–and then a section on putting everything you’ve learned together.
This course was set up to be self-paced, but I suggest not doing more than one module a day so that you can let the lessons really sink in. In several lessons you will be prompted to engage in a technique each day for thirty days. This is to help you create a habit of the technique to enchant your life.
Each module will include a video, journaling prompt, and further resources to support your learning. There will also be hands-on assignments for you to complete.
We’re also going to address some of the common obstacles to living a magical life, and how you can overcome them.
When it comes to things that get in the way of enchanting your mundane life the biggest factor is society. Our society places a lot of emphasis on money and buying our way to magic, but anything we buy is only a tool. You can buy all the magical accouterments but if you don’t use them they won’t help you enchant your life. This is where we’ll be talking about intent and how that is the force behind everything you want to do, not the tools you have.
A second factor is time. We are constantly running around, with every moment scheduled so that we don’t have time to slow down, poke our heads up, and see what is going on around us. Many of the techniques in this course are going to require your full attention for at least ten minutes a day. To that end, I encourage you to protect your time. Schedule time each day for the things you need to do as you go through this course. Tell your friends and family that this time is for yourself.
The final big obstacle to living magically are mental health issues like depression, anxiety and conditions like ADHD. You can engage in things like medication and therapy to alleviate some of the symptoms of your conditions. But the best way to address them is to have grace for yourself. If you fall behind, if you forget or get side-tracked, just forgive yourself and bring your attention back to the course.
What You Will Need For This Course
You won’t need much in the way of supplies for this course. The main object you’ll need is a journal and a writing instrument. The journal doesn’t have to be fancy. You can use a spiral notebook from a dollar store. Or even just staple a bunch of blank pieces of paper together. The point is that you need something to write in and something to write with. Check to see if you have something already on hand before you go out and buy a journal.
You will also need access to Discord. Discord is a website and app that allows you to connect to servers and interact with people all over the world. For this course you’ll be using Discord to connect to the Idiorhythmic server where you can discuss this courses topics with other students and where you will have access to me for questions. There is a link to Discord at the end of this lesson.
Finally, you might want to use your printer throughout this course. It is not required, but I have included pdfs of the self-assessments, as well as other portions of the course. If you want, you can print these out and use them along with your journal.
Getting Started
To get started, you’ll want to get your journal and head over to the self-assessment portion of this lesson where you will start your first journal entries. You’ll also want to sign up for Discord if you don’t already have an account, and then use the link in the Discord portion of the lesson to log into the Idiorhythmic server. There you can say hello and start in with any questions you might have right now at the beginning of the course.
Once you’ve done that you can continue through the other lessons of the course, starting with the Earth one next. Good luck and I look forward to chatting with you on the server.
Self-Assessment Exercise
Welcome to your first self-assessment or journaling exercise. These exercises are meant to help you reflect on what you have learned, what you hope to learn, and to form the basis for your plan to enchant your life.
By now you should have a journal, or notebook, for this course. If you haven’t gotten one yet, stop now and do so. It doesn’t have to be fancy, a spiral notebook from the dollar store will work just fine. Just make sure that what you will write in what you have. You can also print out the PDF attached to this lesson if you want.
For this first self-assessment I want you to turn to a blank page and answer the following two questions as thoroughly as you are able. Take at least five minutes to answer each question. Don’t feel like you have to limit yourself to writing, either. You can doodle, color, sketch, and even collage and stamp your answer to the questions. Do what feels right and makes sense to you. Just make sure that you will be able to understand your entries later.
Let’s dive right in with these two first questions:
- When you think of what it means to live a magical life, what comes to mind? What does living a magical life look, sound, feel like? What does it involve? How would you know if you were living a magical life?
- What are the obstacles that keep you from living a magical life? Are these external forces, such as being too busy with work? Or are they internal in that you don’t think that you could make your life magical?
Resources
Discord is a site and app that allows you to connect to servers and talk with people all around the world. Idiorhythmic has a private Discord server for students. There they can interact with other students, get additional resources, and have access to me for questions.
To get started on Discord go to https://discord.com/.
Once you have gotten your Discord account set up you can click on this link to join the Idiorhythmic server.