Witch Ways

What does it take to be a witch?

Blood rites and ancient incantations under a full moon?

The finest crystals, candles, and books of lore?

No, thank you.

You don’t need to buy special tools to be a witch. In fact, just the opposite. 

My upper lip curls like Elvis’ when I think about the commercialization of witchcraft in the last decade. Oh I’m sure it’s been happening for longer, but I remember clearly the first time I saw a large hippie-chic clothing company offer beautifully illustrated tarot cards next to their flowy skirts and feathered hair clips. On the one hand, praise be for the popularization of embodiment and connection to a higher self. Thank goodness that a new generation of young women is being introduced to the ideas of manifestation, self-initiation, and spiritual healing.

But must we sell things to empower that personal growth? Must our enlightenment come with proof of purchase?

This is not how I came to experience the witching world. I was first exposed to the words and ways through literary sources. The Wheel of the Year and some of the old gods appeared in the fantasy books I was obsessed with as a child. Faeries and magic came straight off the stage and into my head through Shakespeare and Mendelssohn. My first contact with the idea of using cards to divine fortunes came from the aria “Melons! Coupons!” from Bizet’s Carmen. Far from being tools of darkness and evil, these appeared to me as shining keys to a world beyond my wildest imagining, served on the silver platter of canonical culture.

But, of course, when you’re a very young child in a Christian household, you may not have easy access to ways to practice these things. Few ministers are going to buy their daughter a Rider-Waite deck. So I made my own ways, wrote my own words. My earliest altars and magic bags were blessed with shells found on family beach trips, special beads, paper clips, safety pins, and a few coins. These were usually made as part of some story I was telling to myself, or playing out with friends. But I knew that putting important objects together made them collectively more important. I knew that saying the right words in the right order could create a special feeling in the air. (This I learned in church.)

This is the root and wave of witchcraft. Operating out of instinct and intuition, reaching out your hand and using what falls into it to weave wonders.

In the words of author Alix Harrow, “Witching is about finding a way where none exists.” Our ancestors didn’t buy pre-bundled herbs to smoke-cleanse their spaces, they went out into their gardens and made their own from what grew in the hedges and hillsides. Many didn’t have books to refer to, so they consulted their own souls and guides, brought into relationship with these higher powers by their elders. They didn’t have retail spaces bedecked with purple scarves and beaded curtains to proffer incense burners and rare stones. They used the resources in their own landscapes.

So too can we reconnect with the divine feminine, the wild woman within and without. Not by buying the right things, but by working closely with our intuition and re-membering what it is to feel fully alive, fully empowered, fully powerful. 

Go outside. Take off your shoes. Dig your toes into the dirt. Be right there, exactly where you are. Listen to what your body desires. That’s witchcraft. That’s what we’re here to do.