Can someone point me at some introductory materials on becoming a witch? I don't really know what I'm looking for or where to start.
@binary you may be interested in picking through the #UmbraLibrary ?
I've found cartomancy is a decently easy place to start - buy a tarot or Lenormand deck and learn how to do readings and other things. it's a witchy activity that's low-stress, relatively low-impact, and genuinely pretty fun. c: also, tarot cards in particular are used elsewhere.
practicing meditation is another good preliminary that's useful for a wide range of disciplines, if you want pursue something stronger
@binary keep at it! meditation is really hard. i know i'm really bad at it. i've read in some places that 10 minutes a day is a good starting point - maybe try that for a week or so, then up it to 20 minutes, then 30 minutes.
then if you get really good at it you can start looking into gnosis exercises, opening your third eye and such, which is the basis of chaos magick if you want to go that route
@binary to be clear i am nowhere near that far along
@typhlosion @binary Seconding tarot and meditation; with meditation you don't even have to worry about 'think nothing'; a good start that will get you pretty far is 'observe thoughts, and let them pass'; just try not to get stuck on any specific train of thought.
For witchcraft/paganism more broadly, there are a zillion-and-a-half intro books and blogs and stuff, all pretty interchangeable. Read some, and feel free to mentally bin huge chunks of them as ridiculous nonsense. ;)
@typhlosion I have a tarot deck I found particularly interesting arriving soon. Meditation has been on my list for a while. So far I have not been particularly successful with it but have also not been particularly determined.