Glossary – Lylah Wraithbourne

One who seeks transformation of matter and spirit through alchemy. Details: Alchemists blend science and magick, often seeking spiritual enlightenment (“turning lead to gold”). Their tools include furnaces, natural substances, and symbolic rituals for inner and outer change.

A sacred space for ritual work, meditation, or honoring deities, ancestors, and intentions. Details: An altar may be as simple as a candle and a stone on a windowsill or as elaborate as a table with statues, tools, seasonal symbols, and offerings. It's the energetic hearth of magickal work.

The subtle, luminous energy field surrounding the body. Details: The auraveil protects, reflects mood, and can be strengthened through visualization, crystals, or magick. Gold and violet shades often signal clarity and protection.

A traditional witch’s broom used for ritual cleansing and protection. Details: The besom is often crafted from natural materials (like birch, willow, or ash) and is used to sweep away negative energy from a space before rituals. It symbolizes purification, the blending of masculine and feminine energies (handle and bristles), and is sometimes placed by the door for protection or leapt over in ceremonies to mark new beginnings.

A personal journal, spellbook, or magickal record kept by witches and practitioners. Details: Contains spells, rituals, herbal lore, moon phases, incantations, dreams, and more. May be handwritten, digital, inherited, or uniquely crafted. It's a living, evolving record of spiritual practice.

Energetically purifying a person, object, or space to remove unwanted influences. Details: Methods include smoke (smudging), salt, water, sound, light, and intentional prayer. Cleansing restores harmony and prepares spaces or tools for magickal work.

A witch who works with astrology, planets, and celestial cycles. Details: Cosmic witches draw down star and planetary energies for magick, timing rituals by moon phases, eclipses, and planetary alignments.

Wise women and men skilled in folk healing, herbalism, and protection magick. Details: Cunning folk served rural communities with remedies, charms, divination, and curse-breaking. Their legacy inspires many modern witches and folk healers.

A traditional folk healer from Latin America. Details: Curanderos/as use herbal medicine, ritual cleansing, energy healing, and spiritual guidance, blending Catholic, Indigenous, and African traditions to serve their community.

The practice of seeking guidance or insight through tools like tarot, runes, or pendulums. Details: Divination provides answers, guidance, or forewarnings using symbolic systems (cards, runes, scrying, etc.) or intuitive messages.

A magickal approach drawing from many traditions rather than one fixed path. Details: Eclectic witches weave together techniques and symbols from diverse sources, creating a personal, adaptive, and authentic spiritual practice.

A witch who focuses on working with earth, air, fire, and water. Details: Elemental witches invoke and balance elemental energies for grounding, cleansing, passion, and flow in ritual and daily life.

A symbolic design or object representing identity, intention, or heritage. Details: Emblems can be family crests, sigils, amulets, or custom designs used for ritual focus, belonging, or energetic anchoring.

A look or glare believed to cause harm, misfortune, or illness, often fueled by jealousy or malice. Details: Protection includes blue or eye-shaped amulets (nazar), red thread, prayers, and ritual cleansings such as limpia. Recognized across many cultures.

A mystical threshold place where the ordinary and enchanted meet. Details: In my path, Evermore is both a real and spiritual location—home to Wildbrook Cottage and ancestral magick. A place of cycles, beginnings, and hidden doors.

A personal book of spells, rituals, correspondences, and spiritual notes. Details: Unique to each witch, a grimoire may include spell recipes, magickal symbols, herbal correspondences, and collected wisdom for reference and inspiration.

A witch who works with plants, herbs, gardening, and earth spirits. Details: Green witches focus on healing, earth-based magick, and the sacred cycles of nature.

A solitary form of witchcraft focused on crossing the boundary between worlds. Details: Hedge witches practice trance, dreamwork, herbalism, and spirit journeying. The “hedge” marks the threshold between the known and unknown, waking and dreaming.

A spoken or chanted set of words used to focus intent and direct energy. Details: Incantations can be simple or elaborate, rhythmic or poetic, and are used for spell activation, protection, invocation, or affirmation.

Focused goals or desires that direct the energy of a spell or ritual. Details: Clearly set intentions make magickal work more effective, serving as a beacon for energy and manifestation.

A witch who infuses cooking, baking, and home life with magick and intention. Details: Kitchen witches treat the home and hearth as sacred, turning everyday acts into rituals for love, abundance, and well-being.

The cycles of the moon, each holding unique energy for magick and intention setting. Details: New moon for beginnings, full moon for manifestation, waning for release, waxing for growth. Each phase offers specific power for rituals.

Magickal workings or symbols intended to shield from harm or negativity. Details: Protection may involve herbs, crystals, amulets, wards, spells, or visualization to maintain safe, sacred boundaries.

A witch who draws power from the ocean, tides, shells, and sea lore. Details: Sea witches connect with water spirits, use ocean treasures in spellwork, and honor the rhythms of the tides.

One who pursues truth, healing, knowledge, and spiritual illumination. Details: Seekers of light value wisdom, growth, and resilience, moving beyond darkness toward hope and transformation.

The process of exploring, understanding, and integrating the hidden or repressed parts of the self. Details: Shadow work uses journaling, meditation, therapy, or magick to heal wounds, face fears, and reclaim authenticity and power.

A symbol created and charged with a specific intention or magickal goal. Details: Sigils are drawn, carved, or painted, then activated and released as vessels for intention and transformation.

A practitioner who works alone rather than with a coven or group. Details: Solitary witches develop highly personal paths, trusting intuition, and often blending traditions to fit their needs.

A traditional folk healer in Cajun and Creole culture, known for prayers, touch, and herbal remedies. Details: Traiteurs use ritual gestures and folk remedies, seeing their healing as a spiritual calling. The tradition is still alive in Louisiana and the Gulf South.

Shifting awareness or energy through hidden pathways between places, times, or states of being. Details: Tunneling can occur during trance, meditation, or spirit journeying. It symbolizes transformation, initiation, and access to deeper knowledge or other realms.

The cycle of seasonal festivals observed in many pagan and witchcraft traditions. Details: The Wheel of the Year includes sabbats like Samhain, Yule, Imbolc, Ostara, Beltane, Litha, Lammas, and Mabon, marking seasonal changes and cycles of growth and renewal.

Times when magick, divination, or spirit work are considered especially potent. Details: Traditionally, the Witching Hour is midnight to 1am, but “power times” can also be dawn, dusk, storms, moon phases, or any moment of personal energetic peak.