Free The Modern Guide to Witchcraft by Skye Alexander

psychic ability? Ask an undine for assistance. These elementals will also come to your aid when you’re doing love spells.
    Always remember to thank the elementals that assist you in your spellworking. These beings enjoy receiving small gifts that express your appreciation:
Gnomes adore jewelry and crystals. Bury a token in the ground as a way of saying “Thanks.”
Sylphs enjoy flowers. Place fresh blossoms on your altar or lay them in a sacred spot outdoors as an offering.
Salamanders like candles and incense. Burn these to honor your fiery helpers.
Undines are fond of perfume. Pour some in a stream, lake, or other body of water.
    If you behave disrespectfully toward the elementals, they may retaliate by playing nasty tricks on you. Be generous, however, and your elemental friends will continue to serve you faithfully.

Chapter 6

GODS AND GODDESSES
    How do you envision the Divine? How do you integrate sacred energy into your own life? Do you believe in many gods and goddesses, one deity with many faces, or a single Supreme Being?
    Throughout history, virtually every culture has entertained visions of a divine realm populated by one or more beings with supernatural powers. Early people who lived close to nature often revered female creator/fertility figures. A great Mother Goddess shows up in many different civilizations as Mary, Demeter, Ceres, Isis, and various other deities. The ancient Greeks, Romans, and Norse worshipped numerous gods and goddesses. The Hindu pantheon includes many diverse spiritual beings, too.
    Witches, Wiccans, and Neopagans—just like followers of other belief systems—often disagree about the nature of the Divine. Some follow a specific faith and worship one or more gods or goddesses; some aren’t religious at all. Wiccans honor a Goddess and a God as her consort; Neopagans often recognize a number of deities. Many witches consider all spiritual paths equally valid and that all lead to the same place. Who or what you believe in—if anything—is totally up to you.
FACETS OF THE DIVINE
    Early people connected spirits with the wind, nature, the stars, and the forces behind phenomena they couldn’t explain in other ways. These divine beings were said to watch over creation and guide human destiny. As the earth’s population grew and cultures interacted with one another—through war, trade, and migration—our conceptions of the heavenly realm evolved.
    Some spirits fell out of favor as our ancestors learned more about the actual workings of the physical world and the universe. In some instances, minor tribal gods and goddesses merged with or gave way to deities with greater powers. Some deities went by different names and faces in different countries—Venus in Rome, Aphrodite in Greece, Amaterasu in Japan—although their attributes were essentially the same.
    A popular metaphor describes divine energy as a gemstone, and every facet on that gemstone as a different manifestation of the core energy. These manifestations present themselves differently, but they are all, in the end, from the same divine source.
    Some witches naturally relate to the gods and goddesses that are part of their personal heritage. Scandinavians might gravitate to Freya, Greeks to Sophia, Irish to Brigid. Santeríans combine Catholicism with African Paganism, and honor deities from both traditions.
    One Deity or Many?
Monotheism means a belief in a single supreme being.
A dualist believes in two deities; in a Wiccan context, this would be God and Goddess.
Polytheism is the belief in many separate gods.
Henotheists believe in one god without denying the existence of others.
DUAL FORCES IN THE UNIVERSE
    Wiccans believe that instead of one divine source or entity, there are two distinct deities—Goddess and God—and they in turn manifest as the gender-related god-forms. But the concept of dual forces operating in the universe isn’t limited to Wiccans. Many cultures speak of a feminine and a masculine principle that