The Listening Witch

A six-week course in meditation and intuition, taught the way modern witches practise them, for someone starting from nothing.

Many books on psychic witchcraft hold dozens of exercises and leave you to work out which to do, in what order, and what to do when nothing seems to happen. This one gives you one practice a day for 42 days, in an order where each skill gets a few days to settle before the next one leans on it. Each session takes 5 to 20 minutes, about 11 on average.

How it works

• One page a day. Each day page says what you need, why you are doing it, and the steps with a time beside each one. Then three short boxes: Can't picture it? (another way through the same practice, by touch, words or simply knowing), If nothing seems to happen (what that usually means and what to adjust), and Count it done when (a plain test that you did the practice, never a special experience you must have). It finishes with one question for your notebook.
• Worked examples. Most days show a short, fictional note from a reader in handwriting, so you can see what a useful answer looks like.
• For people who don't see pictures in their mind. About four people in a hundred have little or no visual imagery. Every practice that asks you to visualise has a route that works without it.
• Honest notes. Where the tradition and checked fact part ways (what "energy" is, why a pendulum swings, what luck alone would give you in a card test), a short note says so plainly. The book teaches the tradition as a practice. It does not ask you to believe anything.

The six weeks

1. Arrive. Breath and attention: counting breaths, the long out-breath, the square breath, a body scan, listening, and what to do with a wandering mind.
2. Ground and centre. Heavy feet, roots, centring, grounding outdoors, draining off what you carry, and an anchor object. The week ends with the Anchor, a two-minute opening you use every day after.
3. Sharpen the senses. Slow looking, listening, touch, smell and taste, a memory walk, and a short test that measures your own inner senses. Meets the clairs: clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience and the rest.
4. Picture it. Seeing, feeling and knowing; colour breathing; building an inner place; waiting for an impression or a symbol to arrive; candle gazing.
5. Energy. Feeling it between your hands, reading a room, cleansing with water and salt, shielding before busy places, raising energy and grounding it after, and a complete way to open and close a session.
6. Intuition. Your body's yes and no, a hunch log, a red-or-black card test with a chart of what luck alone gives, reading an object with a friend, the pendulum, and scrying in water.

By the end you will be able to

• Sit for ten to twenty minutes and bring a wandering mind back without fuss
• Ground and centre in about two minutes, anywhere
• Open a session, work, and close it so you finish steady
• Visit an inner place and wait for an impression, whether or not you see pictures
• Keep a hunch log and score your intuition honestly against plain luck
• Choose a daily practice you will keep (three ready-made plans are at the back)

Also inside

A three-minute practice to try before you read further; how to sit, with photographs; how to keep a practice notebook, with a filled-in example; care and safety; nine common snags and what to do about each; a quick-reference page; and a glossary. The book is illustrated with Étienne Trouvelot's colour plates of the night sky (1881 to 1882) and the pastels and paintings of Odilon Redon, both in the public domain.

What you download

• The Listening Witch (71 pages, PDF, US Letter, in colour, with bookmarks and a contents page)
• Practice Pages (9 printable pages, PDF, in US Letter and in A4): a 42-day tracker, the sense profile, session logs, a hunch log, card score sheets, yes-no and pendulum sheets, inner place and symbols, and cut-out cards of the Anchor, the Close, the Shield and the two breaths. They print well in black and white.
• A ZIP holding all three PDFs.

Good to know

• You need nothing from a specialist shop: a chair, a timer, a notebook, and on a few days an apple, a candle on a tray, a bowl of water, a deck of ordinary playing cards, and a ring or key on a thread.
• Meditation is not a substitute for care. If you live with trauma, psychosis, bipolar disorder, or severe anxiety or depression, talk to your doctor or therapist before starting a daily practice. The book has a page on care and safety, with crisis lines for the US and UK.
• The book makes no medical claims, and cards, hunches and pendulums are for practice and small personal choices only.
• This is a PDF download. No physical book is shipped.