S: You're listening to episode 13 magical names. and you are going to hear more from me today because Tara is feeling a little under the weather, got a bit of a scratchy voice, so sorry for all the talking you're going to hear from me. so we have decided that this would be a good episode to include because The whole concept of magical names can be kind of confusing to beginners. When we first start venturing into witchcraft especially now with social media you come across a lot of witches sharing information under names like silver ravenWolf, the author that we mentioned a couple weeks ago, or is there azura dragon feather a really popular witch on YouTube. it's obvious these aren't their real names, but you may be wondering came from why they use them and whether you would need one yourself.
so today's episode will be about the topic, the purpose of witch names and how to find yours. and as always we like to start by mentioning that everyone's path is completely different so if you never feel called to use a magical name is absolutely not necessary, but like all the other tools that we've ever mentioned.
T: this is me, this is why I also let Steph do most of the talking because I don't feel the need for a witch name.
S: so let's start with what even are magical names? Also referred to as witch names or craft names, it's simply the name a practitioner Adopts that's different from their birth name that they use during their workings or at gatherings with other witches. and many witches also use his name as a pen name or on their social media channels to sort of set that aspect of their lives apart from the mundane.
Which is a good segue into you why and when you would use one. so one large reason stems from hiding identities. we may use our real names on this podcast and be super open about practicing witchcraft but that's because we both have supportive family and friends, and we always have. not everyone has that especially practicing practitioners were just starting out. some have very religious families or conservative workplaces who really wouldn't understand .so in order to connect with others people will use their magical names to create a Facebook or Instagram accounts that their families can't find. And this is even a bigger issue a few years ago when witchcraft was less widely excepted than it is now. I feel like younger crowds have always had facebooks with their names on it, but when we were kids, Tara and I had AOL instant messenger and chat rooms. There's a good chunk of the younger generation that has no idea what we're talking about, but you never had your real name on anything, even when you were talking to your friends, you still all had like a screen name. I don't remember what mine was but it definitely did not include my real name in any way.
But that is one reason the prevalence of magical names really grew, because people didn't want to use their real names in chat rooms, even if they was a witch craft related chat room back in the day, they didn't wanna put their real name out there because you never know who else is in that chat room, it could be somebody else from work that they didn't want to know.
T: This is true outside the Internet also, because until the early 2000s in England it was still legal to burn a witch at the stake. They literally had a murder case where some people, a lady came out of the broom closet and they burned her house down with her and her children inside and the authorities pressed charges for the children because the people that burned her down couldn't prove that the children were witches because her husband was not a witch. and so they did not prosecute the people that murdered her for her murder because it was legal, because she come out as a witch. so there are other reasons why you may want to hide your true identity. that is now not a rule only England anymore but it was until early 2000s.
S: things are crazy out there. so aside from the whole hiding identities and that whole aspect of it, the other main reason witches use magical names is that they become a sort of symbol to their commitment to the path of witchcraft. and like all the other tools that we mention, a magical name can be used in a practice, can be collected, so it's like another tool. It also makes it easier to focus and sort of say OK right now I'm in the mindset doing some sort of working so I'm using a different name, and it separates that magical space from the rest of your life and signals to the universe like hey I'm putting this intention out there like hey this is who I am being right now, so you can really make that division. and for a lot of people they really like that aspect of it because they find it hard to either meditate or focus or separate and really be in the mindset, which is where you need to be when you're practicing witchcraft. we talked about that before, about grounding, centering, manipulating energy, you like be focused and intentional about what you're doing. a lot of people find that if when they go into that space and imagine themselves casting circle, they're in that bubble that we talked about and they use that magical name in the bubble, it just helps them focus to what's going on and separating that space.
So how do you find yours? We seem to have a lot of listeners who are also solo practitioners like we are but we still want to mention that covens have different rules for magical names. many covens give you a name when you join, that may change when you like grow and learn and move up the ranks, so to speak, so if somebody tells you or you read somewhere that someone else needs to give you your magical name they're probably talking about more formal coven-based witchcraft. but obviously if you're a solitary witch, you will be giving yourself your name.
So there are a lot of ways that you can determine what's right for you. and know that it may take a while before you find what it is and it may change over the years as you change and your practice changes. The examples we gave earlier sounded like real names with like a first and last name because that's become really popular lately. but it can be anything you want. there's another popular witch on YouTube known as star girl the practical witch, which is another fine example of name. there really are no rules, it doesn't have to be the first and last name thing, you just be like one single word. So it's completely up to you. You do want to choose something though that inspires you and you connect with. So the silver Raven Wolf example it sounds beautiful and I'm sure that she connects with all those different things but for me I have absolutely no connection to Silver or ravens and not really wolves so it's not a name that works for me.
the best way to find out with what you connect with though is to start making lists. I love lists for everything. I find that it's easy to, easiest to categorize and kind of just start with broad heading to make a list under those headings of things that you connect with. so for example you can make a list of animals that you connect with like the ravens or wolves or swans, fox anything like that. You can also do plants or trees like Willow or pine lavender. crystals is a popular one, emerald ruby sapphire. herbs is popular seasons, autumn, winter. Elements is another popular one, especially if it connects with your Zodiac sign if you're a fire element or water element and it doesn't have just have to be the word water, you can expand from there and say river or if you connect really with the ocean and it might be coral or seashell something like that. Astrological signs as well is popular, colors colors are a very popular one.
T: colors are fun
S: Gifts hat you may have like dancer or Weaver if you are good at sewing. Gods and goddesses is a popular one if there's a particular pantheon that you really connect with. I caution on gods and goddesses is that you ask them first, so if you have a deity that you work with and that you pray to, ask them don't just take the name that's not a good idea, you're going to make an angry so ask them first and then change it up don't just call yourself Lady Aphrodite, that's going to make them mad, so pray to them ask for guidance. Anything from your heritage is popular if you really connect with a Celtic-Irish background, anything you know if you look up Celtic mythology or even like trees things like that. or even a favorite characters from movies or books is perfectly fine too. Harry Potter do you want to call yourself Luna, you go for it. but just start making lists probably about 50 different words it's good place to start and then start narrowing it down and get rid of anything that you don't absolutely love.
once you do that certain words are going to really start to stand out to you with something really called you and you will probably start to see a pattern similar types of words, specially colors elements are all going to start to come together. and then once you sort of narrow that list down and start combining words to see what flows together. so there's another witch on YouTube that goes by WillowWynd and she always says that she didn't like willow by itself and she didn't like wind by itself, but she's an air element so she combined the two together and really liked the way that it sounded So that's another option.
and something else that people used to you know kind of determine, narrow it down when they have a couple choices that they like, a lot of people follow numerology and their life Path number. so your life Path number you get by adding your birthday together. so you add up the digits of the month day and year add those altogether and then if it's like a double digit number you keep adding until you get to a single digit so do you like a really easy one and say that you were born on October 1, 2000, you would add 1+0 for October is 0+ one for the first day of October and then 2+0+0+0 for the year that you were born which equals four, so your life Path number would be 4. Mine when you add it all together, November 20, you end up getting 26, since that's a double digit number you add 2 + 6 so my personal life path number is Eight. and it's similar to you know Enagrammes or things like that work for your specific life Path number tells you something about your personality and for 8 I think we're like we are leaders, aggressive, assertive, it's basically the same as being a Scorpio. a lot of people feel connected to their life Path number and there is a way to make the alphabet also numbers so you list out you know one through nine and then you assign the letters in order to those numbers so a is 1, b is 2, c is 3 and so on and there are online calculators for this so you don't have to remember like that they're like doing the math in your head like we're right now, just look it up online numerology or life Path number and there will be calculators to help you. and what a lot of people do then just take the various names that they narrowed it down to to figure out if their name matches their life path number, they like that cosmic connection. It's, I've never felt like my life has numbers, I mean it's definitely correct and describes me, but I've never felt particularly any sort of connection to my life path number so I've never really used eight in anything and I don't care my name like matches eight. That's another way that you can do it if you have some options for names that you're considering if you have it narrowed down or change the spelling to be the right number, just another fun way to do it.
the last thing that we are going to talk about is whether or not we have witch names and when we use them. so Tara already said, she does not have one in which is obviously perfectly fine and especially for solitary practitioners you don't need one and if you're able to be in the magical mindset and you have a real connection to your given birth name, there's nothing wrong with just using that.
T: I am very connected to my birth name.
S: I on the other hand do you have one. and I use mine but as I said before it's really like separate and get in the mindset of like doing a magical working and setting the intention. another reason that I decided that I wanted one because I didn't have one for a long time. I would say Tara was that maybe like late summer early fall of 2019 that I just decided. so I never really had a need for one before but the main reason that I decided that I wanted one is because it, which is gonna sound so me, but the minimalist in me loved it. so I do not have a lot of stuff around my house even related to witchcraft or anything else and I have some crystals and I have a books and things, but I've never liked having a ton of stuff around so having a magical name was just something I could collect and like related to witchcraft that wasn't actually a physical thing.
S: But that is all we have for you today and we will see you next week for episode 14.
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