Visualization for Witchcraft, Magick, & Manifestation

Despite being a fundamental part of practicing witchcraft and magick, visualization seems to be a topic that is rarely covered in introductory texts. Sure, it's mentioned and the reader is instructed to visualize, but it's never explained how it's done, why it's done, or how to practice this skill. Today we're going to cover the following:

• What is Visualization?

• How Do You Visualize? + Primary Exercise

• Passive Exercises for Improving Your Ability to Visualize

If you prefer video format, you can check mine out here:

What is Visualization?

Visualization is the utilization of the imagination in order to picture a person, place, object, or scenario in the mind's eye. If one's visualization skills are strong enough, it is almost as if the visualizer is in the location they are imagining or the object they are thinking of is right in front of them.

With enough skill and practice, visualization, despite its name, can become strong enough to involve all five senses. Visualizing being at the beach does not just bring the scenery but the warmth of the sun on your skin and uneven sand beneath your feet, the crash of waves and caw of seagulls, the taste of salt on the lips, the smell of fish and salt in the wind.

Visualization is an integral skill in witchcraft and the practice of magick as it is used in so many aspects of magickal work. The most commonly experienced use of visualization is in spell work and ritual--visualizing the end results of what you're using the spell or ritual to manifest. It helps the practitioner to focus on their intent and communicate it.

But that's not all! Visualization is used in meditation, Spirit work, sensing and directing energy, circle casting, and the list goes on. It also helps build other skills. If you've ever read instructions on sending energy or moving it through your body, the instructions probably told you to visualize the energy as having a color. This is because it is easier to sense and work with energy if you can "see" it.

How Do You Visualize?

If you have ever daydreamed, followed along with a guided meditation, or tried to recall what someone or someplace looks like, you have practiced visualization. As I said, it is simply calling up a visual in your mind's eye.

Try sitting down comfortably, closing your eyes, and trying the following in a place and during a time when you are unlikely to be disturbed. This is a very simple exercise, but don't be dismayed if you can't complete each step. Visualization comes easily for some and not so easily for others, and some people have been unintentionally been practicing visualization more often during their lives than others. Unless you are one of the few people with Aphantasia, you can visualize, you may just need to practice in order to strengthen your skill.

Here is the exercise:

1. Visualize a whole apple in as much detail as you can muster. What color is it? Does it have a stem? Does it have any bruises or blemishes? Is it shiny or dull?

2. Now try turning the apple with your mind and see if you can watch it move while simultaneously revealing its different angles to you.

3. Now imagine picking the apple up. Feel its weight in your hand. Run a finger over the smooth skin. If you squeeze it lightly, is it firm? Does it have any soft spots? Pass it from one hand to the other. Feel the bumps along the bottom of it. (If it is easier for you to imagine this by physically pantomiming the action, do so.)

4. Raise the apple to your face and bite into it. Feel your teeth puncture the skin, the resistance as you bite down. Hear the crunch.

5. Begin chewing the bite and taste it. Inhale through your nose and smell the sweet juices of the apple.

6. Try combining all sense as once: See the now-bitten apple, hear the sounds of yourself chewing the bite, smell the juice of the apple, feel the texture of the bite change as you chew it, continue to taste it.

Again, if you could only manage to visualize parts of that, or could only manage to tap into each sense briefly before you lost a grip of it, that's okay. This is a skill that can be improved with practice. Take this exercise and keep performing it.

Once you have that mastered, try upping the difficulty in the following ways:

• Perform the exercise with your eyes open.

• If you needed to mime the actions in order to visualize holding and lifting the apple, try the exercise completely still.

• Perform the exercise in a busy, noisy locale like on the train or while walking through a store.

• Expand the scene while keeping your focus on the apple: Imagine it sitting on a plate. Then imagine the plate on a table. Then imagine what room the table is sitting in. Try changing these around each time. One day the apple may be sitting on a ceramic green plate on a marble countertop in your kitchen. The next time, it might be on a white paper plate on a wooden picnic table in an orchard. I recommend beginning with places familiar to you and then graduating up to less familiar, and then completely imagined scenes.

• Experiment with different types of fruit. Try the exercise with a type of fruit you haven't eaten in years.

Exercises for Improving Your Ability to Visualize

In addition to repeating the apple exercise, there are a number of ways you can improve your visualization skills in a passive manner.

Guided Meditation

This is pretty straightforward and you get to work on your visualization while getting your daily meditation session in. If you have never experienced guided meditation before, it usually involves a narrator giving you a list of instructions that will help you transport yourself to a soothing locale. They may tell you to imagine you are in a forest and then will go on to describe your surroundings, including a stream, and then instruct you to follow the stream to a waterfall. Consider it a "paint by numbers" exercise as you don't have to decide where you will be or what color the apple is. You just have to do your best to picture what the narrator is describing to you.

My only advice is to always try to take it a step further. In my experience, most guided meditation is focused on what you should see and less on the other senses. So be sure to take the time to feel the softness of the forest floor and hear the trickling stream as you follow it.

You can find plenty of free guided meditations on YouTube, Spotify, or on free mobile apps.

Reading

If you don't read for pleasure very often, this is a good excuse to get into it. Unlike television, reading requires transcribing words into visuals in your mind. Additionally, good writers will not just include what their characters are seeing but, if it's important to the scene, what their other senses are taking in. If an author describes a character shrieking, can you hear it? If they take a bite of something that has gone bad, can you taste it the way the author details? If the protagonist's lungs are burning and heart racing after escaping an attacker, can you imagine that feeling too?

Daydreaming

Think of a scenario you would like to happen within the next few days and play the scene out in your mind. Plan on asking your crush out? Daydream what will happen if they say yes. Buying a lottery ticket? Imagine what you'll do with your winnings.

These of course don't have to be all positive daydreams. Who hasn't imagined themselves as the "final girl" (or boy, or non-binary) surviving in a horror film? Daydreaming some not-so-fun scenarios can be entertaining as well and will work for strengthening your visualization skills just fine. But good or bad, make sure daydreaming isn't your only visualization exercise. As fun as it can be, it's not good to be lost in fantasies all the time.

Use Memory Recall

Not only can you try to drum up memories of experiences (happy ones!) in your mind and replay them, but you can also use this whenever you are putting in effort to remember something. If you're at the store and trying to remember what is in your pantry, think back to when you last opened it and visualize what you saw inside. Or, just like the advice most of our mom's have given us at one time or another, if you've lost something, instead of immediately overturning your entire house until you find it, try imagining the last time you used it or saw it.