 There are no books specifically about death witchcraft. That is why I wrote one. However, you can find many texts on death work, necromancy, ancestor work and folklore that can aid your craft. Here are many of the resources that helped me learn.
Books:
If you have any more sources, please, please add them. Or you can message me, and I’ll add them. Sources for death witchcraft are elusive, and I would appreciate any extra insight or resource.
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Those who have practiced on meditation know that focusing on / controlling the breath can affect your mood. According to a 2010 study by Professor of Psychology Pierre Philippot, our breathing involuntary changes when we experience certain emotions. This means that we can actually change our own state of being by manipulating our breath in a certain way. In this post, I’m going to discuss how some of the techniques your yoga instructor taught can enhance your spellcasting as well.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that breathing is some kind of spell in itself. Rather, it is a tool that can be used in spells to achieve certain ends. Center and calm yourself through breathing. Since many of you have probably read something like this before, I’ll explain it quickly. If you sit with your back straight (but not tense), and pay attention to your breathing, you can direct that breath to certain areas of your body. Start at the top of the head and notice any sensations: tingling, throbbing, itching, whatever you’re feeling–without judging it. Then direct your breath there to soften it. Move down to your facial muscles, back and front of the neck, shoulders, upper back, lower back, chest, belly, and so on. If you notice any tightness or shakiness, direct the breath there and see if you can soften it. You can do this as a pre-ritual calming, or even as a sort of cleansing. “But Yunan, you’re literally just describing meditation!” Oh, I totally am, just packaging it into simpler, less “mystical” terms to hopefully make it more available to people. If you’d like more info on where I receive my guided meditations and techniques, feel free to shoot me a message. Grounding through breathing can be performed in moments. You’ll want to close your eyes, and breathe slowly. Sweep your breath down through your lower back, butt and legs. Really feel your weight on the cushion or floor. You may feel yourself getting heavier, the soft push of gravity on your head. When you feel this way, use your breath as an energy guide to connect to the earth, and really feel what’s below you. This is a fantastic starting point for earth magic and spirit work, if you’re working with local land spirits. To improve focus, here’s an easy technique: As you breathe in, say to yourself, “breathing in”. As you breathe out, tell yourself, “breathing out”. Do this with slow breaths for a couple minutes. The point is to plant your focus back into your own body, into this present moment. You can do this after coming back from spirit flight, ending a trance work ritual, or assuaging any wandering thoughts you have during ritual. Build energy through the Magical Breath, as I’ve seen some call it–the technical term is diaphragmatic breathing. The diaphragm is the largest muscle in the body, separating the belly from the ribcage. Basically, it’s the muscle you flex when you breathe in deeply through your chest. The best way to do this is to sit up straight, and inhale into the lungs. Make sure your shoulders are straight and your chest is slightly lifted. Once you’ve taken a deep breathe, hold it in for a moment. Then try to exhale without contracting the stomach muscles or ribs. Because this isn’t the natural way we breathe, it can be hard at first. Do it a couple times, though, and you’ll have built up a lot of power inside your body, and heightened awareness or yourself and surroundings. This exercise can help before energy directing, or before divination. The Four Fold Breath in a similar, shorter method that can also be combined with magical breathing. It’s fairly simple: inhale to the count of four; hold the breath for four seconds; exhale to the count of four. Again, this can build up your energy, but it can also calm you down if you find that you’re nervous or anxious during a ritual. This slow breathing will lower your heart rate and soften tense muscles. Pool energy from where your breath touches the body. When you breathe in deeply, where do you feel it the most? Is it a coldness in the back of your throat? Is it a pressure in the chest? A swirling in the belly right below your ribcage? When you find that area where you most feel the breath, you can pull a ton of magical energy from there easily. Absolutely fantastic if you’re trying to power or charge something. The Rapid Breath / Fire Breath builds up a ton of energy and releases it in one flashing moment. A technique with many names, this exercise speeds up your breathing into a rapid, but steady pattern for a few moments. If you focus on your spell intent while building up these breaths, you can eventually release that intent through a hard blow, or even a laugh, until all the oxygen is out of your lungs. By doing this, you’re releasing a ton of fiery energy into the spell component. Note that this isn’t hyperventilating; it’s a quick technique used to speed up the heart and blood flow, and should not be exhausted to dangerous levels. Holotropic Breath is one I won’t be diving too much into, but deserves a mention. This technique is controlled hyperventilating, which can cause hallucinations under the correct circumstances. It’s often used during trances or spirit flight to achieve that ‘high’ like state, usually combined with other tools (smoke blends, projection, ointments etc.). If you have experience in these fields, you’re welcome to look up safety precautions on your own, as I haven’t tried it yet. My biggest tip for all of these techniques is to not judge yourself. Don’t think you have to breathe in a certain way, and don’t blame yourself if your mind wanders. Our minds are built to wander, so gently bring yourself back, and accept how you feel in the present moment. Did I miss anything? Please add on! I am by no means the queen of breathing techniques, and would love to learn other methods. Have a great day everyone!  Candles from Burke + Hare Co. burning on my Hades altar. As with all my posts, feel free to add to or ignore any of the ideas listed.
Got more ideas? Feel free to add on! Hope this helps!  This is one of the most frequent questions I receive. Otherwise, I would not make this post. Worship is incredibly personal, and Gods usually contact you in ways that you don’t expect, or ways you didn’t realize until you look back on the past.
These methods listed are common ones that I often hear from others. Do not limit your communication to these steps.
Anything I missed? Please add on. And remember that these are simply examples. Listen to your instinct, and you’ll know. It may take some time. I wish you a fun and rewarding path, lovelies!  A snapshot of the cover of my zine, Pleading to Hades. There are a ton of posts out there for signs and symbols, offerings and all that. Regardless, I’m making this post because Hades is the God I receive the most asks about, and this post was highly requested.
~ The Basics ~ Offerings:
Symbols:
Ideas for His Altar:
~ Active Practice ~ Worship Etiquette:
Ideas for Active Worship:
~ Frequently Asked or Requested Information ~ Hades can help with:
You DO NOT need to:
You DO need to:
For more information about worshipping Hades and my experiences with Him, feel free to check out my zine Pleading to Hades.  I guess a better title for this post would be Communicating to Spirits of the Dead Through Their Bones. But that’s a little lengthy.
Bones are commonly used to enhance spirit communication. According to some theories, a piece of the deceased’s soul still remains in the bone, allowing the soul to contact the living–kind of like a spiritual telephone. There are many techniques to communicate via bones, but this is my personal method. For this technique, you need a solid foundation with energy work. You’ll also need ethically gathered bones. You can gather them in the wild, buy cleaned and ethically sourced bones online, or get some from your local butcher and clean them yourself. This process happens within a couple minutes, so here is each step, slowed down. The First Time:
Once you have a general sense of the soul, it will be a lot easier to communicate directly. Every Time Thereafter:
I hope this was helpful or gave some good ideas. Happy witching!  Cow teeth that I occasionally use for spirit work. I feel like some materials that are commonly used in other paths are often overlooked by death witches. For example:
These are simply ideas. Hopefully, these suggestions expand your knowledge and creativity surrounding death witchcraft.  An older version of my Wiccan altar. It’s been a while since I’ve made a post. I’m going to address one of the most frequently asked questions I receive: How do I give offerings? For some reason, many beginner books don’t dive into the specifics of this religious practice which many are unfamiliar with. Hopefully this will help.
General Rules:
Food Offerings:
Liquid Offerings:
Incense and Candle Offerings:
Plant Offerings:
Other Offerings:
I hope I got all of this. Feel free to reblog or message with corrections, since I know I don’t know everything about every pantheon. Have a beautiful day, and have fun worshipping!!  Headstone from the Pioneer Memorial Park Cemetery. I get asked what to do with graveyard dirt all the time. In short, what you do with it depends upon the spirit connected to the dirt. In this post, I will lay out the basics concerning magical uses for graveyard dirt.
In general:
From specific graves:
From the crossroads of a graveyard or cemetery:
How do you know the character of someone who was buried there? You have to communicate with the spirit who inhabits that grave. That, however, is a conversation for another post. I hope this clears up graveyard dirt for you.  Reposted from my Tumblr It’s been a while since I’ve made a witchy post. This past full moon, I spent a good deal of time designing a complex spell. You can see the pages I brainstormed for a complex spell above. For the sake of this post, a complex spell:
This post is a guide or, at the very least, food for thought on how to design complex spells. As an example I will use the most recent spell I designed, a spell to worry less about what others think of me. Step 1: Determine exactly what kind of spell(s) you wish to cast, and in what order. For example, I created a spell to worry less about what others think of me. But in witchcraft terms, what exactly am I doing? Is it banishment, where I force others to turn their opinions away from me? Is it protecting myself from others’ opinions? Is it cleansing myself from the effect that others have on me? Is it an anti-anxiety spell, or a confidence spell? There’s a lot to consider here that can’t be covered in a single step. Think hard about exactly what you want to achieve. This is a very critical step, so do some brainstorming or sit on it if you must. Eventually I decided to imitate the weight of others’ opinions on me, cleanse myself of their affect, protect myself from their affect, and then banish others’ affect on me. (I figured that other peoples’ opinions will be there whether I banish them or not, so I might as well protect myself from them before banishing them from my mind, in a sense.) There are many other ways I could’ve done this spell that would’ve changed the overall intent. But notice how I’m including four spells into one ritual: simulating peoples’ attention on me, cleansing myself, protecting myself, and a banishing at the end. Step 2: Decide which actions to perform. In my opinion, action is just as important (if not more) than ingredients in spell work. The action determines what you do with the ingredients you decide on doing. For each spell/step, brainstorm a couple options you could potentially do for that step. Here’s my example: Ridding Scrutiny: burning, crushing, ripping, trapping in a jar, burying, locking away, cutting, throwing into the wind or into a body of water, snuffing out a candle. Once you’ve got some potential actions written down, you can decide on which one works best for your particular spell. Step 3: Decide on materials for each step. For this step, I advise that you coincide the magical properties of the materials to the purpose of the spell. For example, I had originally thought of ripping up rose petals for the banishing spell, but later decided that that wouldn’t work. Roses symbolize love and peace, and it makes no sense to banish that from my life, when I really want to banish the weight of other peoples’ expectations set on me. Now that you know exactly what your intentions are, and what actions you’ll be doing with the materials, it’ll be easier to decide on which ingredients to use when. These ingredients don’t only include herbs or crystals–I included mirrors, sticky notes, cleaning wipes, washcloth, and anything else I needed. I know these are listed as only three basic steps, but hopefully it helps you form an idea on how to design complex spells. If you have any extra ideas or questions, add on to this post, or message me anytime. ☆=(ゝω･)/ That’s all from me for now! Love and light to you! |
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