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Northern European Starting Points

Magical and animistic practices that are good starting points for people of Northern European descent:

  • Working with local or ancestral land spirits, for example Hawthorn, Rowan, Yew, local lakes and mountains, springs and native animals.
  • Working with local or ancestral deities and spirits, such as the Celtic pantheon, Merlin, fairies and elemental beings.
  • Working with local or ancestral folk magic, such as hagstones, witch bottles and charms.
  • Working with your ancestors.
  • Working with your kin and helping animal spirits, which could be any native species.
  • Working with divination methods such as mirror gazing, inky water, tarot and runes.
  • Personal work to honour the Earth and her inhabitants as a whole.
  • Personal work to develop deeper empathy, connection and awareness of interdependence.
  • Personal work to increase creativity and inspiration.
  • Personal work to confront and integrate dark aspects of yourself and your culture.
  • Personal work to heal conflicts and harm caused by your ancestors to the land, other people and yourself.
  • Personal work for a better relationship with your body.
  • Personal work for a better relationship with your land and environment.

This isn’t an exhaustive list, but merely a place to start working with animism and magic that honours your own heritage while respecting the heritage of others enough to not occupy it.

Those of us with Northern European heritage have rich roots of animist to draw upon in our practice, and while the animism of other cultures can be beautiful and inspiring, we have to be careful not to bring materialist and collonialist attitudes to our spiritual practice.

It’s clear that all humans have animist heritage and access to magical methods, but that when we take the spiritual language and methods of cultures we don’t belong to, we rip them from their roots, damaging both our own practice and that of the people we took them from.

Folk Magic

Folk magic is what happens when animist methods like ceremony, craft, altar work and working with spirit helpers are combined.

Folk magic can be very specific to the time period, location and people who are using it; it’s often shared between members of a tradition, and it’s commonly called witchcraft in European areas. It can be subtle or expansive, more or less structured, solitary or communal; it differs from the Occult traditions in it’s open, flexible, changing nature.

Folk magic is useful when:

  • We have been given a spiritual teaching to embody throughout our day.
  • We want to protect our boundaries, at home or abroad.
  • We need an anchor for our power, nature or inspiration to carry with us.
  • We want to affect a change in our lives, such as better health or changing a habit.
  • We want to honour a relationship with a deity, spirit helper, animal, plant, ancestor, place or person.
  • We are working on embodying or invoking a spirit helper’s magic.
  • We need creative inspiration.

Folk magic is the flexible conclusion of animist practices; when we put them together, we have a toolkit for dealing with any situation, and for solving any problem. It is founded on the fundamental tools of animism; ceremony, altar work, crafting, spirit communication, divination.

Once we are comfortable with these fundamental tools, we can play with them to create exactly what we need in our animist practice.

To learn how to use the fundamental tools of animism, join the free 12 week course here.