Many will say that rituals are a very important part of magick. With the correct intentions, it helps focus your mind and emotions. For me, this has never been the case.
While I understand its importance, it has never really worked for me. I find the structures of rituals limiting and every time I try to follow a pre-defined set of actions/rules, I feel like I’m just going through the motions. It never feels genuine.
For a long time, this used to bother me. I believed this was due to a lack of discipline – a flaw that needs to be corrected – especially after reading about and personally witnessing the reverence other witches feel when they follow their rituals. One of my dearest friend has a prayer she says before each tarot reading and I find this act to be incredibly beautiful but when I tried to do the same thing, I felt like a fraud.
It’s not that I don’t believe in prayer. I do and I pray often – but in my own way. Sometimes it would be a walk by myself; other times it would be a dedicated meditation session at my altar with candles, incense, crystals and the whole nine yards. Sometimes, I would know what I’m praying for but just as often, I don’t have a clue.
I also don’t set aside specific times to perform my magick. I don’t always wake up early to meditate and I don’t always perform new and full moon ceremonies on the actual night of those lunar events. And, yet, I feel deeply that meditation and the lunar cycles are important to me.
But after struggling for some time with feeling like a ‘bad witch’, I finally came to accept this aspect of myself. While there are definitely things I do truly lack discipline (like consuming less sugar – like, a LOT less!), my lack of magickal rituals and rules isn’t one of them. This is my self-expression.
The Mechanics of Tarot 