The main disadvantage of magic - for all its wide reaching effects - is that it is usual much less direct and efficient to levitate a cup than it is to simply grab it and pick it up. As such Witches, just like all people, have a number of direct non-magical skills they can turn to when magic simply isn't the best option. These skills are things that your character can be relied upon to be able to do consistently and competently. Skills can be approached from multiple angles, represented by the five disciplines of magic, and one may gain the same skill multiple times, so long as it is in different disciplines. This general broadening of one's understanding of a skill - looking at it through multiple lenses - means that they will be a lot more effective than someone who just has a rather narrow view of the skill.
For simplicity, it is easiest to understand each skill as having five subskills: Aesthetics, Athletics, Ethics, Linguistics, and Mathematics. For example Charisma: Ethics, and Charisma: Linguistics, are two subskills of the Charisma skill. Each of these subskills can be taken once, so each skill can have anything from 0 to 5 points spent on it. Even when you have a skill in more than one discipline's subskill you can indicate one of them to be your primary subskill, which is the one that most informs your understanding of the skill. Note that this choice does not have a mechanical effect and merely serves to highlight the methods in which you perform the skill.
GM note: While you are free to roleplay the different disciplines informing your understanding of the skill, due to GM workload we cannot promise that this will always be perfectly represented in write ups.
When taking a Skill point, a character simply gains a skill/discipline subskill that they did not previously have.
Note that this can be in any discipline and does not have to be tied to your Background Knowledge advances, unlike at character generation.
At character generation, all skill points must be taken in discipline subskills that match their initial Background Knowledge picks. (e.g. a character with all 5 advances in Athletics must take 5 Athletics subskills)
Sometimes things just go much more smoothly if people can be told in nice simple words, of no more than two syllables, what they need to do and when they need to do it. If you are the poor soul who has been tasked with this job, then having some Administration skill is usually very useful. This will aid you in dealing with groups of people on a range of topics from a hectic firefight in a back alley of Milton Keynes, to organising a grassroots witch organisation out of a bungalow in deepest darkest Wiltshire.
Arts is the ability to make things (be they music/writing/fine art/etc.) that capture some part of the human condition and touch the emotions of the people who partake in it. Alternatively you could just make something that looks really damn fine. This is often confused with the magical discipline Aesthetics, but this skill allows to make things that are actually considered generally good. For the purposes of magic, the ability to follow through on your artistic intentions are of secondary importance.
There is no overestimating the usefulness of a silver tongue when it comes to getting people to give you what you want. As with all things, a lack of a natural way with words can be overcome but the ability to win friends and influence people can get you off on the right foot, especially when dealing with a wide variety of opinions and personalities. Charm is of course, not magic, and cannot substitute for actions if you are unable to backup your words.
Note: The Charisma skill will never work on PCs - you'll have to use your own winning personality to bring them around to your point of view IC.
Do you ever get that feeling where you know, deep down in your gut, that someone just needs punching? Yeah, that. Well this will let you do that. It's fairly self explanatory, a solid understanding will help you keep yourself safe in combat situations, as well as allow you to dish out the pain as and when needed. Furthermore, someone who has seen enough scrapes to be experienced in this skill has likely had enough opportunities to patch themselves up to learn a thing or two about how to do it to other people, so you could be a bit of a dab hand at first aid.
Some people are very good indeed at not being seen or heard, as if they have some intrinsic quality that screams “Don't look at me, I'm not important!”. This is often looked at with some degree of mistrust, but there are perfectly good reasons why you would want to be able to avoid detection when everyone and their dog is looking for you. Similarly, if you want to be able to keep things other than yourself hidden, knowing a little bit about this skill is probably a wise choice.
The world's a harsh place, and not everyone is cut out for the cloying luxuries of modern life. Sometimes you just need to get away from it all, and camp out in the woods for a while; when that happens, a familiarity with Survival will help you with exploring to find the best routes to new and interesting things as well as to keep yourself from dying from starvation, exposure, or many other of nature's hazards. Also you are likely to quickly learn what can - and importantly, can't - be used to assist with first aid and simple medical work.
And on the other end of the spectrum, few of us can survive in the modern world without some understanding of how to use the technology that suffuses it. But there are still people who seem to have a more natural affinity for all things electronic, mechanical, and engineered. These people have the Technology skill - as it allows you to make better use of tech especially that which you haven't had the opportunity to look at before. It also affords you some bodging skill to make technological devices of your own, but if you are trying to create a device for a specific repeatable task, you're often best going with a spell.