Hot Garbage Witchcraft

A friend recently posted something about “making hot garbage and enjoying it.”

She was speaking of art.

She is an artist who creates from a wide array of mediums and elicits many different emotions and sensations with her work, and she has also been through the wringer in recent years.

I would not wish what she has been through on anyone.

As she’s coming back into a space of creating, giving her grief and other feelings a place to go, she made the aforementioned post.

It made me happy to see her making something, even if it was “hot garbage” in her mind, because it’s a sign of healing, growth, and the beginnings of new inertia.

Then it got me thinking about witchcraft and other areas in our lives.

How many of us aren’t honoring our work, our art, our magickal practices, because we’re worried about the quality of it?

I know I do, and I’ve been there recently.

I spiraled hard, and I still feel like I’m picking up some of the pieces of that mess, although I’m doing it better and faster than I have before thanks to my practice.

And making hot garbage witchcraft.

I am a recovering perfectionist, and have a tendency to not do anything unless I feel I can do it “right” or “completely.”

I’m sure you can see how this quickly trips up a spiritual or magickal practice.

If I didn’t feel I had the time, the energy, the space, the focus, the quiet, the tools, the inspiration, the whateverthefuck . . . I wouldn’t practice.

Told myself I would do it later, when the circumstances were better.

Spoiler alert, those times didn’t come, and I did not improve in my practices - magickal, writing, business, or personal.

It seemed like every day I was hitting the pillow and then just beating myself up for everything I didn’t do - even though each day felt like I was just barely keeping things together.

I’m not going to make it sound like one day the clouds parted and angels sang, and I was suddenly on the path to clarity and consistency.

Pfft. Far from it.

If anything, my angels bopped me upside the head, told me to quit letting life get the best of me, and kicked me in the ass to get me moving.

My angels are not what most people would expect.

What DID happen was that I got tired. Emotionally and energetically weary of every day feeling like a carbon copy of the last, especially when things had the potential to be so amazing.

I knew something had to change, and so I just started DOing things.

One of the most important, was getting back into my practice as a daily thing.

Not treating it like a side note of spirituality, but making sure I was making space for it. Giving it the time and attention it deserves.

Letting it soak into my existence like wine soaking into a fancy dessert cake.

And it started like hot garbage.

There was no perfection.

I was using a ball point pen and notebook paper to scrawl sigils and intentions, and lighting them on fire in an old cast iron pan.

I was doing a card pull and sticking my tongue out at it because THANKS, I hate it.

I was lighting whatever incense I happened to grab, and putting a small cup of coffee on my altar to Ares every morning. Because it’s what I had, he seemed to enjoy it, and he’s my god of “help me do the things.”

It was hot garbage.

And it worked.

Day by day my workings became more intentional.

My energy increased (not hugely, and not in some miraculous way - but it was easier to do all the things I needed to do.)

My writing increased and improved.

But the most important part was that my connection to myself, my higher self, and the things that make me tick at my most tock-ish felt GOOD. Better. Liberated.

And it started with half-baked witchcraft done with intention.

Make hot garbage.

Make magick.