this preparation that your magick has already started, and is going strong, long before you actually start the spell proper. That’s the point – magick is about focusing your energy and intention on your purpose, and everything that you think and do to manifest that purpose is part of that magick.
Finally, work your spell from start to finish. Hold your candidate in your mind, and see him or her surrounded in the positive energy of your spell work. Imagine the outcome that you want the spell to accomplish, and send all the good and hopeful emotional energy that you’ve been accumulating into that mental image and the components of the spell in front of you. When you feel the intensity of that energy tapping out, give it one more intense emotional burst, and release it to the Universe. Wiccans would typically close with a proviso along the lines of “for the good of all, harming none, so mote it be.” That is simply to account for the possibility that we are all human, and can never know everything there is to know about a situation, so we ask the Universe to ensure that no harm comes to anyone from our spell because of our ignorance of circumstance.
Once you have finished your spell, the most important thing you can do to ensure its success is let it go. Don’t worry about whether it worked, because doubts running through your mind are the opposite energy to that which you used in preparing the spell, and thus detract from its effectiveness. The more invested we are emotionally in having a spell work, the more likely we are to worry about whether it did, so it’s usually best to just put it out of your mind and forget about it. If you think about it at all, do it by noticing positive stories in the news that you