🧙♀️Module 13: Writing Your Own Spells
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🧙♀️Module 13: Writing Your Own Spells
The Witch Finds Her Voice
Everything is in place for this module. The student knows how magic moves, speaks the language of correspondences, owns a working altar, can build and open sacred space, and has walked a complete spell through all five phases. One thing has been borrowed the whole way: the words. Every script in this course was a loaner, offered, as Module 1 promised on the first night, until her own words arrive. This module is where they arrive.
Why write her own at all, when books hold thousands? Because a spell in the witch’s own words carries what no borrowed spell can: her exact intention, in language her whole self already believes. Borrowed spells work, and adapting them is a real skill taught below. But the old teaching holds across every tradition: the spell written for this witch, this need, this night, by the one who will speak it, is the strongest words she will ever cast. And the secret this module exists to tell is that writing one is not a literary feat. It is a craft with methods, and the methods have steps, and by the end of this module three complete methods will be in hand along with the words witches actually use.
The Shapes Spoken Magic Takes
First, the vocabulary of the craft’s spoken forms, because books use these words interchangeably and they are not interchangeable:
An incantation is the spoken heart of a spell: the words recited during the working to declare and direct the intention. When people picture a witch speaking a spell, they are picturing an incantation.
A chant is a short phrase repeated, over and over, to raise energy and deepen focus, Module 11’s raising method wearing its proper name. A chant can be one line, or even one word; repetition, not length, is its engine.
A charm is, in the old sense, a short verse spoken to enchant something: the words said over the pouch, the doorway, the cup of tea. The word later attached itself to the enchanted object too, which is why a bracelet trinket is called a charm; the folk verse came first.
A blessing is words that confer goodness and protection on a person, place, or thing, and it is the form beginners are already fluent in without noticing; every “safe travels” meant sincerely is a small one.
A petition, defined back in Module 4, is the request form: words asking, addressed to whatever the witch’s practice addresses, usually written, often burned or kept beneath the working.
One working may use several: a petition written and placed, an incantation spoken over it, a chant to raise the peak, a blessing to close. Knowing the forms by name means a witch can now read any spell in any book and see not just its architecture, after Module 12, but its anatomy.
Why Spells Rhyme, and When They Should Not
The famous question first. Spells rhyme, when they rhyme, for three working reasons. Rhyme locks words into memory, and a spell known by heart is spoken with full presence instead of read with half attention. Rhythm entrances: a metered, chanted line settles the mind into the light trance where magic works best, the same reason lullabies and drums do what they do. And rhyme marks the words as set apart: nobody accidentally speaks a couplet, so the rhyme itself signals, to the witch and to the working, that these words are deliberate. Some traditions add a fourth belief, that rhyme binds the spell, and a witch may hold that or not.
And here is the rule that outranks all of that, the one every experienced spell-writer teaches first: sincerity beats rhyme, every time. A plain sentence spoken with full conviction outperforms a couplet that twisted the intention to reach its rhyme. The craft’s law of wording: never bend the meaning to serve the sound. Rhyme is an amplifier for a clear intention and a distortion of a muddled one, which is why this module teaches an unrhymed method first, and why some of the strongest spells a witch will ever write are three plain words long.
The Witch’s Wordbook
Now the phrases themselves, the working vocabulary heard across witch spaces and met in every book of spells, each defined so it can be used knowingly rather than copied blind.
So mote it be. The craft’s most famous closing seal. Mote is simply Old English for may or must, so the phrase means so may it be, sealed with certainty. It entered modern witchcraft through Freemasonry by way of Gardner, Module 3’s story again, which makes it Wiccan-flavored rather than universal; witches of every path borrow it anyway, because it is a very good seal.
Let it be done, and its cousins it is done and so it is: the plain universal seals, at home in any tradition, and this course’s own habit since Module 10. Every spell wants some seal, the craft’s amen, the click of the lock; which one is the witch’s choice.
As I will it, so shall it be. The declaration of will as the working’s engine, Module 4’s whole intention teaching in nine words. Often the final line before the seal.
By the power of three times three. The old amplifier, calling on nine, Module 9’s number of culmination, to drive a working home. Any “by the power of” or “by flame and root and stone” line works the same way: naming the forces the spell stands on.
For the good of all, and harm to none. The ethical rider many witches add before the seal, cousin to the Wiccan Rede of Module 2, asking that the working land cleanly. Optional, widely loved, and Module 14’s whole subject in miniature.
With gratitude, and every form of thanks: the craft closes its workings and its callings with thanks as reliably as it opens them with intention, which the quarter releases of Module 11 already taught in practice.
Thee, thou, and the antique voice. Some witches love archaic English in their spells for the way it sets ritual speech apart; others find it costume. Both are right, and the only rule is Module 13’s standing one: use it if it deepens sincerity, drop it the moment it becomes performance. A spell is not required to sound four hundred years old. It is required to be meant.
The Five Rules of Spell Wording
Whatever method builds the spell, five rules govern the words, and together they are most of what separates strong wording from weak:
Present tense, as already true. “Peace fills this house”, not “peace will fill this house”. Future tense keeps the outcome perpetually ahead; the spell speaks the world as the working makes it.
Positive phrasing, naming what is welcomed rather than what is feared, Module 12’s teaching carried into the words themselves, with banishing work as the deliberate exception that names its target on purpose.
No hedge words. Try, hope, maybe, if possible, and please-if-it’s-not-too-much-trouble all leak conviction out of a working. A spell is a declaration, not an application.
Short enough to mean every word. The craft’s old advice: keep it short and sweet. Two to six lines is the working range; past that, the reciting mind starts managing lines instead of meaning them, and one perfect line beats eight decent ones.
The read-aloud test. Every draft is spoken out loud before it is cast, because spells live in the mouth, exactly where Module 1 taught the word witch itself lives. Words that stumble, embarrass, or bore in the air get rewritten until the spell wants to be said. That wanting is the finish line.
Method One: The Plain Declaration
The simplest complete method in the craft, three steps, no rhyme, and never outgrown; witches of forty years still write most of their working spells exactly this way.
Start from a finished intention, built by Module 4’s five steps, as everything starts.
Turn it into a present-tense declaration by the five rules: the intention restated as already true, in the witch’s plainest strong words. “My intention is steady work that covers my life” becomes “Steady work comes to me. My life is covered, my table is full.”
Add a seal. One closing line from the wordbook or the witch’s own: “It is done.” The spell is complete, and it took ten minutes.
A finished example, a plain declaration for courage before something hard:
I meet this day with a steady heart.
My voice is clear, my ground is firm.
What is mine to do, I do.
So it is.
Method Two: The Rhymed Couplet
The classic witchy form, the one that sounds like the spells in the stories, built in five steps, and worth watching assembled live. The working example: a money spell from the intention steady, sufficient income arriving through the doors I am knocking on.
Finished intention first, as always. The couplet method punishes vague intentions instantly, which is one of its virtues.
List the key words. The intention’s load-bearing words and their kin go on scratch paper: money, income, work, doors, steady, flow, grow, open, come, home.
Find the rhyme pairs hiding in the list, and the craft’s favorite pairs are famously simple: flow and grow, door and more, way and day, light and bright, me and be, ground and found. Simple rhymes are not childish; they are chantable, which is the entire point. Here: flow/grow and door/more both offer themselves.
Build the couplets, two to four lines, meaning first and rhyme second, by the five rules: “Work and wages find my door; what I earn flows in, and more. Steady income, come to me, honest, ample, flowing free.” Notice what did not happen: the meaning never bent for the rhyme, because when a rhyme fights the intention, the rhyme loses and the line goes plain. Half-rhymed spells are completely traditional.
Speak it, smooth it, seal it. The read-aloud test, drafts adjusted until the lines want to be said, then the seal: “As I will it, so shall it be.” A rhymed spell has one bonus feature: any line of it can be lifted out and repeated as the working’s chant, which is why the old spells rhymed in the first place.
Method Three: The Litany
The third method is the old folk formula built on accumulation rather than rhyme: the litany, a spell shaped as a repeating pattern, by this, by that, by the other, each line stacking one more force or image under the intention. It is the easiest form to write beautifully, because the pattern does the composing, and it pairs naturally with physical workings, one line per ingredient as the jar is layered, one line per knot as the cord is tied. Four steps: finished intention; choose the pattern phrase, “By the...”, “With this...”, “Let...”; write three to five pattern lines naming real correspondences from the working; close with a turn and a seal. A finished example, a protection charm for a home, each line spoken as its material is placed:
By salt of earth, this house is held.
By flame of candle, watched and warmed.
By rosemary, swept clean and blessed.
By my own word, its walls are strong.
No harm comes in. Peace stays. It is done.
The litany’s turn, that last shift from the pattern into the declaration, is where the spell lands, and hearing it once is enough to write a hundred of them. This is also the form hiding inside half the folk charms of Europe and the layered workings of every tradition Module 2 mapped, which a student can now verify on her own bookshelf.
The Fourth Skill: Borrowing and Bending
Between casting book spells as written and writing from blank paper lies the skill most working witches use most: adaptation. The method is Module 12’s architecture reading turned active: take any published spell, find its bones, intention, correspondences, action, words, then keep the bones and re-flesh it for the actual need, swapping the correspondences by Module 9’s composing skill and rewording the incantation by this module’s rules into the witch’s own voice. A prosperity jar becomes a protection jar by swapping the stack and rewriting the litany; a love couplet becomes a friendship couplet by changing the key words and keeping the meter. Two honesties travel with the skill: the Book of Shadows records where the original came from, Module 3’s crediting habit at the personal scale, and closed-tradition workings, per Modules 2 and 14, are not raw material for bending. Everything open is, and the day a witch first improves a published spell for her own use is the day the bookshelf stops being an authority and becomes a pantry.
Saying It Like a Witch
Last craft note, because the words are only half of spoken magic: delivery is the other half, and it is allowed to be enjoyed. Witches play their voices deliberately, a whisper for secrets and banishings, a full voice for declarations, a sung line for blessings and glamours, a slow heavy cadence for the serious workings. Repetition in threes, speaking a key line three times, is the oldest delivery trick in the craft and still the best. And for the witch who cannot speak aloud, in the broom closet, in a shared apartment, in a body that does not speak, the tradition is clear and kind: whispered, mouthed, or purely inward recitation is real casting, and the written word is too. The spell lives in the meaning it is given. The voice, at whatever volume, is the giving.
A Witch Practice: The Spellwright’s Week
The Book of Shadows opens a new section this week, titled Spells Written, which will grow for the rest of the witch’s practicing life. Four parts:
The wordbook, copied. The Witch’s Wordbook and the five rules go into the book in the witch’s own hand, joining Module 9’s reference pages, one more vocabulary made hers by the copying.
Three spells written. One real intention from the witch’s actual life per method: a plain declaration, a rhymed couplet, and a litany, each built by its steps, each passed through the read-aloud test, each recorded with its date. Scratch drafts are kept too; witches love their own crossed-out lines later.
One spell cast. The favorite of the three, cast through Module 12’s full five phases, in Module 11’s container or without it by the witch’s own judgment, with the standard record. This is the course’s quiet milestone: the first working that is the witch’s own from intention to seal, no loaner words anywhere in it.
One spell bent. Any spell from any owned book or trusted source, read for its bones, adapted by the borrowing method, and filed in Spells Written with its source credited. The original stays on the shelf, officially demoted to pantry.
In Her Own Words
Count the voice the witch now owns: five forms named, the reasons rhyme works and the rule that outranks it, a wordbook of the craft’s own phrases with their meanings and their histories, five rules of wording, three complete writing methods at three depths, the adaptation skill that turns every book she ever buys into raw material, and at least one working in the world that is hers from first word to seal. The scripts this course loaned her along the way did their job. She will keep some of them, out of fondness, and need none of them.
One great subject remains before the course turns to the building of a whole practicing life, and it has been signposted from nearly every module: the ethics of all this power. What the craft owes other people, the old arguments about harm and hexing, love workings and free will, closed doors and open ones, and how a witch decides what she will and will not do with what she now knows, that is Module 14: The Ethics of the Craft. The witch has her voice. Time to talk about what it is for.
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A few calls I made you should sign off on:
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