New year, bolder dreams conjured
Emma Mendez (she/her/they/them) // Culture Editor
You may have heard of the concept and practice of manifestation a lot lately. Maybe you’ve been seeing it on TikTok, heard about it through your friends or have been delving into spirituality and witchcraft yourself. However you’ve heard about manifestation, it’s no joke. It works, and can be a powerful tool to bring your dreams to life. No more “someday,” the time is now. Manifesting with vision boards makes it that much more accessible and potent. But before you start trying to conjure whatever, there’s a few things to be cleared about what manifestation is, isn’t, and how it works (well, how I believe and have been taught it works).
As a witch and student of the occult, here is what my mentors, teachers, Isabelle Rizo and The Eckharts, as well as my own experience have taught me manifestation is and isn’t: manifestation is harnessing your desire, intention and vision to bring something into your reality. It is a powerful act of sovereignty proclaiming to the universe, yourself and the gods — whatever you believe in and work with — that your desires are more than worth being honoured.
What many people get wrong in the New Age spirituality community, is that aligned action is also required. You can’t just expect everything to come to you without any effort beyond your manifestation ritual, you have to meet the magic, or the energy, if that’s how you prefer to look at it, halfway. As much as it’s harnessing your desire, intention and vision, it’s also a co-creation of the spiritual, metaphysical, combined with tangible action.
Also important to note is that magic, spirituality and manifestation don’t take away the fact that there are systems of oppression at play in our lives. An example that I’ve seen online is that often white spiritual practitioners will say that manifesting financial abundance is just about changing your relationship to money, that it’s simply about mindset, erasing the very real barriers that exist for racialized and marginalized people.
Now that you have some basics, let’s get to it!
Step 1: Setting intentions & prep
Journal, talk it out or meditate on what you want to bring into your life. Ask yourself the following questions: How do I want to feel about my life in a few months or weeks? About myself? What do I truly desire? What has kept me from taking action toward it in the past?
Answer the questions you feel called to, then get out your candles (if that’s your vibe) and do a short grounding meditation (you can literally type that into YouTube) to get yourself ready!
Step 2: Writing it out
Now that you’ve identified what you want to manifest, comes one of the key steps, scripting it. Grab a piece of paper and write it out combining the present and or past tense (depending on what you’re manifesting). For example: I am a bestselling author, I found my dream apartment, my presence is enchanting, etc.
While you’re writing, focus on the vision and the feeling of having your manifestations in your life as if they were in the present moment. For the purpose of the ritual, it is.
Step 3: Choosing your medium
Will your vision board be a Pinterest board? A digital collage? Something more hands-on? Will you print it out? Your medium is important and should be chosen depending on what’s more accessible to you, but also what feels most authentic to you. Connection to your medium is important. Remember that this is a ritual, so your medium and connection to it impacts how successful your ritual will be.
Step 4: What to put on your vision board
Search for content that is aligned with your desires/what you want to manifest. For example: if you’re manifesting a new apartment, you’re going to be looking for pictures, words, lyrics, etc., of what you want the interior to look like. Maybe the type of building, style of neighbourhood, location, price, ambiance, etc.
Step 5: Putting it all together
Taking three deep breaths to ground (close your eyes while doing this if you like), say your intentions out loud while once again focusing on the feeling and the vision as if in the present.
Then start putting together your vision board using the pictures and other materials you chose, assembling your vision board while still focusing on the vision and the feeling. You can also continue to say them out loud or even play music that is aligned with your vision. Once you’re done assembling it, once again write down or type what you’re manifesting. Either writing them on the back of your vision board (if on paper/printing it out) or if you’re keeping it digital, you can type it on top of the images making it semi-visible but not standing out.
Step 6: Finding a place for your vision board
Now that you’ve made your vision board, you need to decide where it will go. This part will vary depending on your beliefs around energy and manifestation. For some it’s simply your desires being absorbed by your subconscious. For others it’s magick, or both. If you’re of those who go with the subconscious route, or a mix, you can put it up in a place where you are sure to see it everyday, several times a day. You can also use it as your phone or laptop wallpaper. For those who lean more into magick, you can glue it onto a page on your bullet journal (one you might not go to often), your grimoire or even placed inside an envelope on your altar.
Step 7: Making it come to life
Trust, believe and take aligned action.