Quarantine Witchcraft: What to Do If You’re Feeling Unmotivated during Social Isolation

4/11/2020

Have you felt too sluggish to practice your craft during quarantine? Me too. In this article, I’ll discuss why that’s okay, and how you can perform simple rituals to improve your socially isolated life.

If You’re Feeling Unmotivated, You’re Not Alone

It has rained all week. Every time I peeled back the blinds, I saw grey and downpour. Although I could easily walk in rain, it felt like another physical barrier between me and the outside world. Yet another thing holding me back from a fifteen-minute walk.

My logical brain has treated quarantine like a time advantage. “Since I’ll be home all the time, I should practice more. I should perform those rituals that I’ve been planning. And I need to plan for the next full moon.”

Instead, I oversleep one or two hours, and I don’t practice. I work all day and don’t practice. I call my parents, ignoring my craft. And then I stay up until 2:00 a.m. playing Animal Crossing--and don’t practice.

If you’ve been in the same sluggish, unmotivated boat, you’re not alone. We’re not robots. All this extra time could benefit us IF we weren’t stressing about a pandemic, separated from our friends and family, and bombarded with apocalyptic news.

We’re not “supposed” to act any way during this once-in-a-lifetime pandemic. This situation is new, hard, and unpredictable. When I finally stopped beating myself up for not following my “should” statements, I finally considered how witchcraft could benefit me.

Look how dusty my altar is! (I'm sorry, Hades.)

How Witchcraft Can Help without Bogging Us Down

Don’t be surprised that you have to change up your rituals and routine. When you’re feeling unmotivated, focus on magic that tackles the problems you have now. Abandon the rituals you performed before this all started.

Magic uplifts our lives when we’re at a disadvantage. When we need a job, it gets us one. When we want a new romance, it sends suitors our way. And it’ll do the same during this pandemic.
To be clear, I’m NOT claiming that magic will cure COVID-19. But it can make our daily lives more manageable.

Determine WHY you're feeling unmotivated. What about this time is preventing you from practice? Is your emotional weight stress, concern for safety, or something else? After you determine the cause, you can use magic to tackle it.

Throughout the week, I considered my main problems brought about by quarantine. I landed on these issues:

Worrying about you or a loved one getting sick
Feeling trapped
An excess of negative energy
A lack of direction or guidance
Struggling to feel your emotions

The following are rituals that can assuage these problems. Perform them as you wish--remember, there is no timeline that you have to follow during social isolation.

For Health Protection

A Mjolnir necklace has the protective rune, algiz. The Etsy seller that made this necklace is IntoTheCaveCreations.

Magic has warded illness for centuries. In many cultures, magicians would seek the help of spirits or deities to keep disease away (which many believed were caused by evil spirits). Ancestors, health deities, chthonic deities, and nature spirits may aid you. Give them offerings and ask for help to keep you and your family healthy.

Folklore also references protection and luck charms. For instance, the Celts would place Brigid’s cross in their homes to ward off sickness for a year. The evil eye, Gorgon’s head, and horseshoes were worn or hung to keep misfortune away.

Other magicians would aim to redirect the disease. They would carve images out of clay, which was designed to attract the disease. Then, they would bury it far away.

There are far too many health and protection spells to list here. If you’re interested in more info, check out the Encyclopedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World: Volume One by Cora Lynn Daniels or The New Encyclopedia of the Occult by John Michael Greer.

For Feeling Trapped

We stay at home all day--no one can blame people for feeling stir crazy. Although you can’t head outside (except for essential needs), you can create an “away place.” By redesigning your spiritual place, you’ll feel less trapped in the same boring house all the time.

Now is the time to revamp your altar. Sort through your magic tools, and throw out anything you don’t use. Hang different art on the walls. If you can, construct a blanket fort in the corner of your room that will offer a small “away place.” Obviously, this doesn’t replace going outside. But it can spark that desire to practice your craft.

For Negative Energy

For smoke cleansing, I prefer palo santo.

For those who feel more down than usual, you may want to cleanse more often. The most popular method is smoke cleansing with rosemary, sage, lavender, or palo santo. But I’ll teach you a couple of different methods too.

One uses oil instead of smoke. In my experience, rose geranium oil works well, but you can use rose oil or rose water instead. When in doubt, infuse cleansing herbs in a carrier oil or water.

Take the oil and rub it on your window sills and doors. You only need a little bit; dab the four corners if you can. If a specific area feels congested, such as a desk, cleanse that too. If you have an infused water, put it in a spray bottle and mist your home.

Next is a banishing spell in case these cleansing rituals aren’t strong enough. Take a black stick candle and place it in a shallow bowl. (You may anoint or carve the candle for extra strength.) Fill the bowl with one inch of water.

Light the candle. Focus on the negativity leaving, and repeat the intention to yourself. Chant, sing, whisper--invent your ancestors or other spirits if you need help. Keep the energy high until the candle flame extinguishes in the water.

For Lack of Direction or Guidance

If your day’s schedule gets thrown off, or if you have no idea what to do with your craft, perform divination. Whenever magicians have questions, divination offers answers. It exists to guide people.

Even a single rune drawing or five-minute pendulum session can lend you more clarity. I highly recommend journaling about your divination results. In the past, I’ve received answers that I didn’t understand until I wrote about it.

For Blocked Emotions

My favorite self-cleansing tools: palo santo, selenite, pink mangano calcite, and unakite jasper.

“Blocked emotions” may need some explaining. Recently, my subconscious has prevented me from really feeling my emotions. I’d experience bouts of anxiety before it vanished seconds later. I’d try to reflect on my recent stress, only for my mind to go blank. When we don’t experience our emotions, they continue to build until they overflow. If you’re also struggling with blocked feelings, try these techniques.

First, consider meditating. Although meditation isn’t inherently magical, many practitioners do it before or during ritual. It slows down thoughts, soothes us, and prevents the mind from interrupting your experience.

Even an occasional five-minute meditation can make a difference. If you can’t focus on the breath, consider listening to a guided meditation. There are plenty on YouTube and the free app Insight Timer.

The second technique is self-cleansing. I’ll admit that, for a long time, I doubted that self-cleansing would make a difference. But after trying it, I found an unexpected benefit. It kept me in touch with my body. While cleansing, I detected energy stalls and blocked chakras that I didn’t know about before.

My favorite methods of self-cleansing involve smoke and crystals. Use a smoke cleansing stick or small crystal to move around your body. You don’t have to touch the skin; hover right above it. Drag the smoke or crystal across your head, neck, shoulders, arms--your entire body. Notice what you feel and where, then journal about it later.

Conclusion

There is no "right way" to handle quarantine. If you're feeling unmotivated or struggle to pracitce your craft, that's okay and valid. Consider why you're feeling uninspired. Is it a trapped feeling? Worrying about health? Or another issue? After you discover why you're not practicing, use witchcraft to tackle it. Just one ritual could make your experience better.

What have you done with your craft during quarantine? Comment below and let me know how you're doing! We'll get through this together.

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