This question was answered in a longer Q&A I recorded for the magickal community in December 2022

Question answered between 0.00 – 15 mins 40 secs of the video

Transcript: edited in places for clarity

Balancing life and magick

We’ve had some really good questions. And the first one, I think it’s a really important one. It’s about balancing life and magick.

I’m going to read you what they’ve said and then I’m going to give you my take on it because they talk about life as in their spiritual life, their magickal life and their ‘muggle’ life, as if they’re all separate. And actually I want to talk to you about how I believe they’re all the same.

They ask:

“How do you suggest a person balance their magickal practice, living in connection with spiritual/intuitive work, with mental health?

 

Life involves different energetic levels. And at times of mental and emotional struggle, it can feel like for me, that these things cause conflict or lead to more confusion and doubt in your own intuition and other abilities. I’m trying to push through, and it can sometimes feel like it’s having a negative impact on my mental health, which is clearly not the goal.”

 

And she continues: “is taking a break from magick sometimes the best choice?”

Being out of touch with yourself

So what I would say here, is absolutely never push through. Pushing through is not the plan here. But equally, I see magick as who you are. It’s not something you take a break from.

When we have those conflicts of ‘should I do this’ or ‘should I do that?’ Or when we’re out of touch with our intuition it’s usually because we’re out of touch with ourselves and our needs.

We’re trying to push through and do what we think we should do, we’re trying to focus on the expectations, trying to live up to someone else’s standards of who we are.

Rather than coming back to us, who we are, what we need.

Should you take a break from magick?

So when you asking, ‘should you take a break from magick?’ What I would say is I would take a break from… I wouldn’t say ‘everything’, but I don’t mean you have go live in a monastery because obviously most people can’t do that.

But I would just take a moment.

This time between the years is a really good time to do that. If you’re in the Northern hemisphere, where in winter, this darkness is a really good time to feel into this and ask yourself:

What is it you actually want in life right now?

What’s really not in alignment for you?

Intuition isn’t a special gift for special occassions

Because your intuition isn’t a special gift that you bring out just to work your magick.

Your intuition is constantly communicating with you.

Your intuition is so important and it’s as important as the intellect.

Just like living life and going through the everyday things like, connecting with friends and family, going to work, earning money and paying your bills.  All of that is as important as a connection to something bigger than yourself, as important as learning how to wield and weave your magick in the world to support you live the life that you want.

They are not separate.

They are a life of weaving.

If you heard the phrase ‘weaving the web’, that’s what it is. It’s layers upon layers upon layers.

When we try and squash one area for example, we do live in a world that prioritises intellect, that prioritises logic and reason and dismisses intuition as ‘oh, isn’t that lovely?’ ‘Isn’t that twee?’

People can say ‘it’s not provable’, ‘it’s intangible, dismiss it!’

And yet it’s so important. It has so much information for us, we need both.

Working with your intuition and intellect

I see them as an infinity sign which contains both. Your intuition inspires you to take action. You take action. You try it in the world. You test it, is it working for you? Then you get that intuitive insight that inspires you to refine your action, and then you take more action. It’s always this combination of the two.

So, when you go, right, that’s it, I’m not doing my spiritual work. I’m not doing my intuitive work. (I say ‘work’, but it’s not really work…) When you say ‘I’m not connecting with my magick’, you’re cutting off half of you.

You’re cutting off the part of you that gives you that richness of life, that gives you that deep connection to yourself.

You’re cutting off that part of you that allows you to know what’s yours and what’s not, to know the magick that you’re here to wield and weave in the world. And I don’t mean like to create a love potion, although that could be fun…  but I’m talking about the magick that you uniquely offer in the world.

And I want to pick up on something that you said about intuition, because I think this is really important.

Becoming more intuitive

People often say to me, ‘Rebecca, how, how do I support my intuition? How do I become more intuitive?’

The thing is, you already are intuitive.

What you have to learn to do is trust yourself.

And we are really bad at trusting ourselves.

For example, if somebody lies to you. You don’t trust them.

Maybe the first time they lied to you, you let them off. The second time, the third time, you’re not trusting them again.

Perhaps a friend, who’s always late, says to you ‘I’ll definitely be on time this time, I promise.’ And guess what?  You don’t believe them. They’re not on time. They become untrustworthy. And it might seem funny and frivolous that they’re always late, but inside you don’t trust them to turn up on time.

Which leads to you not trusting them for bigger things.

Become a person of your word

Now, the reason I share this, is because when you lie to yourself, you start not trusting yourself too.

When you say to yourself, ‘I’m definitely going to be in bed before midnight’, and then you don’t.

When you say, ‘I’m never letting them speak to me like that again’ and then you do.

When you say, ‘I’m never behaving like that ever again’ and then you do.

You’re lying to yourself.

And that lying to yourself stops you being able to trust yourself.

And it’s not often big lies. It’s the little lies.

The drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, little lie, after little lie, after little that we stop trusting ourselves.

So when we come to make a decision, when we need to ask ourselves, ‘what is it I do want’, and you want to rely on that inner wisdom, that inner knowing, your intuition will give you the answer.

But you won’t trust it.

Because actually you’re a person that’s untrustworthy because you lied to yourself over and over again.

Whilst we might tell ourselves that ‘it’s only a little lie’. Actually, it’s really significant because it’s undermined your ability to trust yourself.

So, when you do have an intuitive insight, you don’t trust it. You want proof.

But that’s not how intuition works.

So you’ll often say ‘just one more card’, as you pull another oracle card for guidance.

‘Just give me another sign’. Just one more sign. Just one more sign…

Looking for more reassurance.

And then what felt so true and what you felt like, ‘Yes, this was definitely what I needed to do’, then becomes the energy of ‘maybe it wasn’t as good as I initially thought it was. Maybe I was mistaken. Maybe I was unsure’.

So that intuition piece is really important. On my website, RebeccaAnuwen.com, if you go to the shop, there is a short course on intuition. It takes you through those steps. It’s not about closing your eyes and seeing or visioning what what’s coming through. It goes back to basics, teaching you how to trust yourself, because that is the fundamental piece.

It’s not sexy, but it does work

I always think none of this is sexy. It’s not like wearing fancy robes, whilst wafting along the beach in your kaftan.

It’s not sitting up a tree at midnight and talking to the moon.

And although both of those can be fun, it is about your relationship with yourself. That’s what the energy of your intuition and that’s what your power, that’s what your magick. That’s what your spiritual life is. It’s all a relationship with self.

You cannot separate that from everything else.

So if your logic and reason, which often is governed by judgments expectations – societal expectations, religious expectations, cultural expectations for family expectations – is often governed by that.

‘Oh, that’s what I should do’. And it feels safe. It feels safe to have someone tell us what to do, how to behave, what we should want, what we should do.

Of course, it feels safe. It feels easy.

Following the rules isn’t always the right thing to do

‘Oh, I just I’ll just follow the rules that society has given me. And then I’ll feel happy, then I’ll have a good life and then everything will unfold as it should do. And I’ll have whatever you think you should have.’

However, what that does is it takes you away from your truth.

Now your truth might be something very similar to the expectations of others. It might be bits and pieces of all of these expectations. But it will be your way of doing it, your version.

A tug of war between what you want and what others want from you

However, often what you end up with is this tug of war between following your intuition, your soul, and your spirit, all of which is longing to express this thing in a particular way.

But your logic and your reason is pulling you in another direction, telling you ‘you have to fit in’.

You have to fit in otherwise you feel not good enough. You feel ostracized, you feel like you don’t belong. And these are really important to us as humans.

And so we end up suppressing our power, suppressing our magick, suppressing our intuition, because we desperately want to fit in.

We might not go around saying, ‘I desperately want to fit in’, but what it looks like is:

• not speaking up
• not asserting that boundary because you’re afraid you might cause trouble
• not having those difficult conversations because you don’t want to be kicked out of the group, kicked out of the community.

And so all of those things are that energy of wanting to fit in, to feel part of the community, to feel needed, to feel that we belong.

And part of it feels easy, but actually it’s really, really hard.

Trying to fit in takes an unexpected toll on you well-being

All of those masks, all of those roles that you take on, become really exhausting and then we start blaming the power and the magick. Telling ourselves that we just need to take a break and step away from it.

But actually, you can’t, because it’s who you are.

You have to embrace all of you.

Otherwise you do have that push-pull, which affects our emotions and it ends up us feeling exhausted, depleted, disconnected and distant.

We engage less with the world, which of course then affects our mental health.

Now of course, with things like mental health, get the support that’s needed, if that’s required.

Misalignment affects our mental health

However, often our negative mental health is a misalignment with our actions and what we know to be true for ourselves.

That lack of fulfilment sends us down into this spiral of:

• not feeling good enough.
• Thinking that nothing ever works out
• feel disconnected from all of these things in life.
• Feeling that you don’t fit in

And it’s all of that energy that pushes you over, trying to force yourself into a way of being that’s not aligned with your truth.

Asking the brave question

When actually, you need to ask the courageous and brave question, of: what is it you actually want? And then create that life alongside everything else.

So, when you ask, ‘should I give my magick a break?’ Well, if you’re doing. spell work, I would say yes.

But if you’re talking about magick as a way of being in the world, I would say absolutely not because you’re not actually embracing your true magick.

When to give spell work a break

And the reason I say you would give spell work a rest, is because for spells to work effectively and for them to work reliably, you have to be in alignment with who you are and what you want.

Because if you’re not clear on who you are, what you want, and what your intentions are, you’re likely to get wonky magick or wonky results at best.

When you know who you are, what’s important to you, what your power and what your magick is, how you want to show up in the world, the things that are important to you, and then you do spell work, all of that energy is aligned. And it’s just beautiful.

You can only be nourished by aligned energy and actions

That aligned energy circles around you. It feeds you, it nourishes you, you expands it, you receive it back.

But if you feel wonky, shaky, misaligned, like you’re being pushed and pulled from everywhere. And then you try and do a spell on top of that. You end up with that push and pull energy.

That doesn’t mean you can’t do spell work when you’re feeling awful, because sometimes that helps you come back to centre.

But focus on you first.

You have to get that foundation of you feeling good and aligned.

You don’t need to feel your ‘best self’

You don’t have to feel your best self all the time. Because you can still weave incredible magick, you can cast incredible spells when you feel awful. But you do have to be clear in who you are and you do have to have a level of personal awareness about what you want to achieve and why.

Okay. So, let me just check that I answered your questions…

Yeah, so that conflict leading to confusion and doubt. That is the energy of like that push-pull of you dismissing the truth of who you are, dismissing the things that are important to you, dismissing your own power, your own magick.

And if you see the world as disparate it’s like, here you’re doing/being this, and over here you’re doing/being this, and over there you’re doing/being this. Then of course, you’re going to feel fractured.

Embracing all of you is where the real magick happens

But when you can embrace all of you, that’s where the real magick happens.

I often think of it like a cauldron. I love cauldrons. I’m obsessed by cauldrons, cauldrons and trees.

When you have a cauldron, yes, it’s used for magick. But what it’s used first and foremost is for cooking. It’s a cooking vessel. And just like magick, when you bring all your things together, like when you cook a soup, that’s where the magick happens.

I’m quite partial to a lentil soup. And lentils by themselves are quite nice, carrots by themselves are quite nice, celery by itself is quite nice, the same for onions and peas.

But when you bring them all together with some herbs and spices, you get something that’s so much flavourful. It’s hearty and nourishing and fulfilling. Rather than just eating those things separately.

And it’s the same with you and your life.

If you can bring all of you together, the richness of who you are, then life becomes blended, tasty and delicious. Rather than trying to keep everything separated.

So, bring all of that together.

You don’t have to wear a witch’s hat and go out with your magick wand… although that would be fun…

But just feel that magick within you.

Someone said to me the other day, ‘Rebecca, you’re just like you are on your podcast.’ I had been talking to them about something for about an hour and they said ‘you’re just like on all of your podcasts. You’re so cheerful…’ and all of these other things.

I was like, ‘oh, thanks’. But the truth is I don’t know how to be anything else.

I can only show up as me, as all of me. And most of the time that is cheerful. I have my grumpy moments. But they are only moments. Because I have a word with myself. And snap myself out of it, but that’s because I’ve been doing this work for a long time, and I know my own nonsense.

This path of magick, for me, is a journey of knowing yourself deeply. And of knowing all of the mischief that you’re capable of causing that can distract you from your own power and magick.

Okay. So, I hope that’s helpful.

Additional Resource:

Other Q&A’s