On Notice

Being a good noticer is vital to good Craft.

God is in the details, or so the saying goes. The saying, by the way, appears first in France, sometime in the early 19th Century. It is often attributed to a number of folks, including architect Mies Van der Rohe, German art historian Abi Warburg, and to French author Gustave Flaubert. The origins might be murky but the meaning is clear — what elevates something to the level of divinity is attention to detail.

There is, of course, the flipside axiom, “the devil is in the details,” which means that it is when one ignores the details that one can get truly screwed over. The point, however, is the same in both instances — whether it’s God or the devil, the details are where a thing can be won or lost, a source of divine pleasure or hellish agony.

In the world of witchery, details are often where the Craft is. A ritual or a spell that is well put together pays close attention to every detail. Every element of the working, every item that is placed on the altar, every gesture and every word should serve a purpose in creating the magic you are attempting to do. In this way, the Craft has much in common with poetry. Almost every poetry workshop or class or how to book will tell you this: if a word, any word, does not add to the ultimate meaning of the work, edit it out.