For witches in this situation, writing your own spells might be the only plausible solution to reviving the fluidity and enjoyment of your craft.

For some newer witches the process of writing your own spells may seem a bit intimidating. When you haven’t got much experience under your belt sticking with spells written by other people just feels safer. And that’s OK! As with any art, you must first copy other peoples work until you simply cannot stand it anymore to really master the techniques and build a firm foundational knowledge. Only then do you start to compose and explore your own voice in your craft.

Even for those who are new to the craft however, playful experimentation can hold merit. If you feel confident and ready to explore a little more freely please do not hold yourself back regardless of whether you consider yourself a beginner or a more advanced witch.

A few Pros of writing your own spells:

• You’re never missing materials
• You can tailor every spell for the spirits and energies you work with
• Spells can be as involved or simple as you like
• Experimentation! (I count this as a pro because it’s fun)
• You get complete creative license with your magic
• You learn and develop a personal style in your craft

A few Cons:

• You may not really get a good idea of what works until you’ve been writing for a while
• Sometimes it’s too time consuming to write your own spell
• Some people can’t write well (although if you’re not attached to your spells being beautifully worded don’t let this stop you!

Writing Your Spell

The first thing you must do is clearly define the purpose of the spell or your intention. A good beginners rule is to start with the guidelines below when outlining the objective of your spell.

• Phrase it as though what you want to happen is presently true
• Make it absolute
• Make sure it’s descriptive and phrased in such a way that doesn’t leave a lot of loopholes for mishaps (i.e. “I am ten pounds lighter” could lead to you getting food poisoning and dropping ten pounds, not so fun)

Though similar, these rules aren’t so hard and fast for spell writing as they are for creating sigils. Play around with these guidelines and find what works for you! I prefer working more abstractly, working with the natural flow of events instead of shaping them overly much. If you work with a deity or particular spirit then phrasing it as a request instead of an absolute may work a bit better for you.

As an example, lets say our objective is to attract more abundance. Now, we don’t have anything specific in mind, we simply want to open up the channels that can allow abundance in a variety of ways into our lives. The objective could be phrased a number of ways, “I am open to abundance and draw prosperity into my life” would work, as would “Abundance enters my life freely”.

Next, it’s time to figure out what kind of spell you’d like to use. This is largely going to depend on what materials you have available to you and what kind of magic you’re comfortable working with. If you can’t cook you probably don’t want to be making food-based spells and if you don’t have jars then that curse jar isn’t going to get very far. This is a fun place to get creative though. Have you ever wondered if you could use something in a spell? Now is the time to try it! (In all likelihood the answer is yes)

Our abundance spell could be set up any number of ways, for example you could use:

• An abundance attracting knotted bracelet
• A candle spell
• A charged object that you keep near your bed
• A bowl of enchanted pennies that you throw your change into every day
• Or even some combination of techniques

This is just a fraction of the ways you could do this one spell, this is the time to really let your individual preferences and strengths shine through. What sort of spells do you love doing? What have you always wanted to try? What feels truly powerful to you?

From this point on it’s all tweaking, you have your bases covered, you just need to assemble the pieces. This includes your “standards” like any kind of sacred space that you cast for working, calling deities and other entities, invoking elements, etc. This would also be a good time to figure out if you like working with words. Most of my spells are wordless but I know there are many witches who like to supplement their power with incantations, rhymes and sometimes songs or chants. Writing these yourself is an excellent way to just funnel that much more energy into your spell. 

If we continue with our abundance spell, say we’ve decided to enchant an object. There are many objects that we could choose but I prefer one that I’ll come into contact with frequently, something like a wallet would serve perfectly in this context. 

To assemble the pieces of the spell we would begin with cleansing and calling up a sacred space. After that we might write the intention on a slip of paper and tuck it under a green or gold candle that has been dressed with a basil infused oil. You might choose to say an incantation as you light the candle or you might prefer to quietly focus on your intention as the candle burns down. When the candle has burned itself out the slip of paper simply needs to be placed in the wallet and then we can end the spell by closing our sacred space.

There are an endless number of ways that you can combine types of spells and tools and ingredients, let your imagination run wild and see what you can come up with. What sounds ridiculous in theory may turn out to be the best spell you’ve ever tried. Be creative, have fun and don’t hold back!

If you try a new spell that you’ve written and it doesn’t work, tweak it and try it again. Writing spells is like any kind of creative process, you’re likely to find a dozen methods that don’t work for you before you find even one that does.

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Updated on August 20, 2023 by Avery Hart