Witchcraft Doesn't Require You to Believe Everything You're Told
There is something I wish more beginner witches were told when they first step into the Craft: you do not have to believe everything you're told.
That probably sounds like a strange thing for a witch who teaches witchcraft to say. After all, when you're brand new, you're looking for answers. Which crystals should I use? Do I need an altar? Should I cleanse before doing spellwork? What moon phase should I work with? Do I need protection? What kind of witch am I? Which rules am I supposed to follow?
There are plenty of books, websites, teachers, witches and social media accounts willing to answer those questions. Some of those answers will be incredibly helpful. Some will come from established traditions, some from personal experience, and some will have been repeated so many times online that nobody seems to remember where they came from anymore.
After decades in the Craft, I think one of the most valuable things a beginner can learn is not simply what to believe, but how to question what they're learning.
Where did this belief come from? Is it part of witchcraft generally, or does it belong to a particular tradition? Is this historical information, someone's personal belief, or a modern interpretation? Most importantly, does it make sense to me once I understand where it comes from?
Learning witchcraft and learning how to think for yourself should happen together.
Some of the "Rules" I Stopped Treating as Rules
When I was younger in my practice, there were things I accepted because they were presented as part of witchcraft. One of the biggest examples for me was the Rule of Three.
The general idea is that whatever energy you put into the world comes back to you threefold. Do good and good returns; cause harm and that harm returns. Many beginner witches encounter some version of this very early, and if nobody explains its background, it's easy to assume this is simply one of the rules witches follow.
It isn't that simple.
The Rule of Three is much more closely associated with modern Wicca than with witchcraft as a whole. That doesn't make the belief wrong, and it doesn't mean someone shouldn't follow it. It means context matters. A Wiccan belief isn't automatically a universal law governing every witch.
That distinction changed the way I approached my own Craft. I can respect someone's belief in the Rule of Three without making it a rule within my own practice.
The same thing happened with ritual. When I was younger, I believed much more strongly that everything had to be a spell or a ritual. Witchcraft needed to involve doing something recognizably "witchy." As I've grown in my practice, I've come to understand intention differently.
Sometimes a thought can carry the same intention for me that a larger ritual would.
That doesn't mean I think rituals, candles, herbs, crystals, altars or tools are meaningless. Far from it. They can help us focus our intention, connect with symbolism and create a physical practice around something that might otherwise exist only inside our minds. But I no longer believe that every act of witchcraft needs to become a production.
Sometimes my Craft is obvious. Sometimes nobody standing beside me would have the slightest clue I'm practicing it.
Even modern beginner resources are increasingly making this distinction. The Pagan Grimoire's beginner material, for example, emphasizes that tools aren't required to begin practicing and discusses intention as an important part of spellwork. That's valuable for beginners because it removes the idea that becoming a witch requires purchasing the correct collection of objects before you're allowed to start.
You Can Just Be a Witch
Another major lesson I've learned is one I think beginners desperately need to hear: you don't have to follow Wicca or Paganism to be a witch.
Witchcraft, Wicca and Paganism can absolutely overlap, but they are not three words for exactly the same thing. Wicca is a modern Pagan religion. Paganism itself is a broad umbrella containing many different religious and spiritual traditions. Witchcraft can exist within those traditions, alongside them, or separately from them depending on the practitioner.
You can be Wiccan and practice witchcraft. You can follow a Pagan path and practice witchcraft. You can have another religious belief and practice some forms of witchcraft. You can also simply identify as a witch without adopting Wicca as your religion.
This is one reason I think beginners should explore before rushing to label themselves. You don't need to decide immediately that you're a green witch, kitchen witch, lunar witch, eclectic witch or anything else. You don't need to pick a spiritual identity because somebody handed you a list of witch "types" and told you to choose one.
Learn first. Experience things. See what keeps pulling you back.
Your practice has time to become whatever it's going to become.
When I Don't Know Something, I Ask Where It Came From
One of the questions I was recently asked was how I personally decide whether something I'm being told is tradition, personal belief, modern internet witchcraft or something worth incorporating into my own practice.
My answer is remarkably simple: if I don't know, I ask where it derives from.
That's not disrespectful. Asking where something comes from isn't the same as telling another witch they're wrong.
No two people practice exactly the same way. If another witch tells me they believe something that I don't, I'm not going to immediately disregard their belief simply because it doesn't match mine. I can respect their choice without adopting it myself.
What I want to understand is the reasoning behind it.
Where did you learn this? Is it connected to your tradition? Is there history behind it? Is this something you've experienced personally? Was it taught to you by another practitioner?
Those questions give me context.
If I'm considering incorporating something into my own practice, I want it to be something I can see myself believing in, but I also want to understand the method or reasoning behind the statement. I'm not interested in adding something to my Craft simply because someone confidently told me that's what witches do.
And sometimes the answer will simply be: this isn't for me.
That's okay too.
The Internet Changed How Beginners Learn Witchcraft
When I started learning, there wasn't an endless stream of thirty-second videos telling me ten things every witch "must" know before breakfast.
Today's beginner has access to an incredible amount of information. That's a gift. You can read about folk traditions, historical witch trials, herbs, divination, mythology, moon practices and magical traditions from around the world without leaving your house.
It's also a problem.
Anyone can publish information. A confident voice, beautiful graphics and 300,000 followers don't automatically make information historically accurate. Something being repeated by hundreds of people doesn't necessarily make it ancient either.
Modern internet witchcraft is one of the places where I would tell beginners very clearly: do not believe everything you read.
Look around. Compare sources. Look at everyday practitioners rather than only the Hollywood version of witchcraft. If somebody claims something is an ancient practice, see whether you can find historical information supporting that claim. If several practitioners disagree about something, don't panic—you may have just discovered that witchcraft isn't a single standardized practice.
You can even see these differences by comparing beginner witchcraft websites. The Pagan Grimoire approaches beginner education through a fairly structured Witchcraft 101 system, while The Cottage Mystic's Beginner's Hub incorporates the author's personal practice and includes substantial material around Paganism, Sabbats, deities, correspondences and other subjects. Neither approach has to become your approach simply because you're learning from it.
The same applies here at The Witch Club Creations.
I'm sharing what I've learned through my own years in the Craft. I'll tell you what I believe, what I've experienced and what I've discovered through research. But I don't want you walking away believing something solely because Raven said so.
I'd much rather you understand why you're doing it.
Books, Teachers or Your Own Intuition?
Another question I was asked was whether beginners should trust books and teachers or trust their own intuition and experiences.
My answer is both.
Books can introduce you to history, terminology and practices you didn't know existed. Teachers and experienced witches can share lessons that took them years to learn. Good resources can save you from reinventing the wheel every time you encounter something new.
But witchcraft isn't learned entirely from a page.
As witches learn, they also learn about intention and intuition. Some may have already felt that intuition before they ever called themselves witches. That feeling may even be part of what led them toward this path in the first place.
The tricky part is learning the difference between intuition and simply believing what you want to believe.
That takes experience.
Your intuition doesn't need to be treated as unquestionable evidence any more than a book does. Instead, pay attention to patterns. Record your experiences. Keep a journal. Notice what happens repeatedly rather than what happened once. Research what you don't understand. Allow yourself to change your mind when you learn something new.
A book doesn't need to become your authority. Neither does a teacher. Neither does TikTok. Neither does another witch.
And neither does your first interpretation of an experience.
You are allowed to say, "I don't know yet."
In fact, I think those four words can make you a much stronger practitioner.
Respecting Someone's Belief Doesn't Mean Adopting It
There is another side to questioning what we're taught that matters just as much: don't turn skepticism into disrespect.
If another witch works differently than I do, I don't automatically assume they're doing witchcraft incorrectly. Their tradition, culture, beliefs and experiences may be different from mine.
Someone may follow the Rule of Three while I don't. Someone may work closely with deities while another witch doesn't work with deities at all. One practitioner may plan spellwork carefully around moon phases while another barely considers them. Someone may believe crystals hold particular energetic properties while another uses those same stones primarily as symbols or tools for focus.
The existence of different beliefs doesn't require us to declare a winner.
Ask questions. Learn where practices come from. Respect closed cultural practices and traditions that aren't yours to simply take. Understand the difference between learning about something and claiming it as your own.
And then decide what belongs in your Craft.
Your Practice Is Allowed to Change
Perhaps one of the biggest differences between being a beginner witch and having decades behind you is realizing how much your practice can change.
Things I believed when I started aren't necessarily things I believe now. Things I once considered essential have become optional. Other things I barely noticed when I was younger have become much more meaningful with experience.
That doesn't mean younger me was foolish or that everything I practiced before was wrong.
I was learning.
Hopefully, I'm still learning.
If you enter witchcraft believing you need to discover the correct set of rules and then follow them forever, you're putting an enormous amount of pressure on yourself. Your Craft doesn't have to be finished.
Read the beginner guides. Learn the history. Talk to experienced practitioners. Explore herbs, tarot, divination, protection, grounding, spellwork, folklore or whatever caught your attention in the first place.
Then question it.
Try things.
Write down what happens.
Ask where beliefs originated.
Keep what makes sense.
Leave what doesn't.
Come back five years later and discover you've changed your mind about half of it.
That's growth.
I don't think becoming experienced in witchcraft means reaching a point where you finally know everything. If anything, experience teaches you how enormous the subject really is and how comfortable you can become saying, "I don't know, so I'm going to find out."
That's the lesson I would give someone standing at the very beginning of their path.
Don't surrender your critical thinking because you've discovered witchcraft. Bring it with you.
You don't need to practice exactly like the witch who taught you. You don't have to believe something because it's written in a book. You don't have to recreate what you saw online. You don't even have to practice the way you practiced ten years ago.
Learn from other witches.
Learn from history.
Learn from books.
Learn from your own experiences.
And somewhere between all of those things, start discovering your Craft.
Explore. Learn. Grow. Connect.
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