Why witchcraft is good

Each informs the other and always has. The witch is a notorious shape-shifter, and she comes in many guises:. The witch has a green face and a fleet of flying monkeys. She wears scarves and leather and lace. She lives in Africa; on the island of Aeaea; in a tower; in a chicken-leg hut; in Peoria, Illinois. She lurks in the forests of fairy tales, in the gilded frames of paintings, in the plotlines of sitcoms and YA novels, and between the bars of ghostly blues songs.

Our witches say as much about us as they do about anything else — for better and for worse. More than anything, though, the witch is a shining and shadowy symbol of female power and a force for subverting the status quo. No matter what form she takes, she remains an electric source of magical agitation that we can all plug into whenever we need a high-voltage charge. She is also a vessel that contains our conflicting feelings about female power: our fear of it, our desire for it and our hope that it can — and will — grow stronger, despite the flames that are thrown at it.

Whether the witch is depicted as villainous or valorous, she is always a figure of freedom — both its loss and its gain. She is perhaps the only female archetype who is an independent operator. Virgins, whores, daughters, mothers, wives — each of these is defined by whom she is sleeping with or not, the care that she is giving or that is given to her, or some sort of symbiotic debt that she must eventually pay.

Witches have power on their own terms. They have agency. They create. They praise. They commune with the spiritual realm, freely and free of any mediator. They metamorphose, and they make things happen. They are change agents whose primary purpose is to transform the world as it is into the world they would like it to be. This is also why being called a witch and calling oneself a witch are usually two vastly different experiences.

The second is an act of reclamation, an expression of autonomy and pride. Both of these aspects of the archetype are important to keep in mind. Diaz finished fixing my candle and, after promising to light it soon, sent me off with instructions to complete her page candle-magic workbook. I followed its directions to burn sage, express gratitude, and meditate for at least five minutes daily.

Not much seemed to be happening. I tried to help the magic along by emailing, again, about the invoice and, again, about the loan. But I felt, in that moment, like a disorganized, but magical, being.

Skip to content Site Navigation The Atlantic. Popular Latest. The Atlantic Crossword. Sign In Subscribe. That might not have been my doing, of course, it might have happened anyway. That said, most witches hesitate to use black magic because they believe in the threefold boomerang - that their actions will return to them three times over.

Since sending her victim a skin disease, Rands' own health has taken a downturn. Cursing and hexing are partly what gives witchcraft a bad name, of course. All the same, there's a reluctance among many witches to talk freely. You can hardly blame them for having a persecution complex. Somewhere in the region of 40,, mostly women, were murdered in Britain during the great witch-hunts, for an assortment of evils ranging from spinsterhood and warts to ergot poisoning.

Ergot is a fungus that infects rye, causing convulsions and hallucinations in anyone who eats it. There is now plenty of evidence to suggest that the symptoms of the "possessions" at Salem and elsewhere - in the UK in East Anglia especially - during the witch-hunt period were the result of ergot poisoning.

Even now, in our secular age, we can't quite make up our minds about The Craft. Though the Witchcraft Act was repealed in , we're still edgy about witching. Lest we forget, it was only 15 years ago that we had our own Salem, with the tabloids screaming blue murder over supposed acts of satanic abuse by witches and Devil worshippers.

Even though a government enquiry into the whole affair found that ritual abuse "has never been substantiated by empirical evidence", the public remains willing to lump witchcraft in with Satanism, as though the two were some devilish double act.

Earlier this year, evidence of ritual activity was discovered on the hills overlooking the Meon Valley, near Southampton. Wax had been dripped on to the ground from candles and, buried in a circle, investigators uncovered 12 dead rats. Shock and horror! Wax drips and dead rats. Unfortunately, discrimination against Wiccans and pagans is alive and well, tinged with ignorance and paranoia.

Drama teacher Ralph Morse was recently suspended from his job at Shenfield high school in Essex after admitting to being youth officer for the Pagan Federation and a practising witch he was later reinstated.

The school's headteacher, John Fairhurst, issued a statement saying, "We completely and unequivocally reject their world of witchcraft and magic. In the US, things are even worse. Despite a constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech and religion, Harry Potter our own dear HP! The rows of chain stores and discount outlets piled high with pointy Hallowe'en hats and broomsticks are okay, though. That's just business. Thankfully, witches appear not to have returned the religious bigotry. Having made the journey from Catholic to witch, Rands insists, "there's not much distance between them.

They share the same sense of ritual. I would visualise him and ask for his assistance. I don't think he's the son of God, but he's a pretty good witch. The next decade could see Wicca completely throw off its associations with the occult "occult" means hidden and go mainstream. Which would no doubt please its founder, Gerald Gardner Claiming to have been initiated in the "Old Ways" by a crone named Dorothy Clutterbuck in the New Forest in , Gardner published Witchcraft Today soon after the repeal of the Witchcraft Act in and effectively founded what has become Wicca, the witches' religion.

A mildly eccentric ex-colonial civil servant whose influences ranged from Hinduism to folk magic to freemasonry, Gardner conceived of a celebratory religion whose focus was on the power of the natural world. Wiccan rituals generally begin with the drawing of a magic circle, offerings to the elements and the four directions, and continue with a series of rituals, incantations and chants whose power rests in the symbolic marriage of male and female.

But does that amount to a religion? Vivianne Crowley says it does: "A religion is a set of ritual acts and practices invoking or calling up the divine. By that definition, Wicca is undoubtedly a religion. One problem with Gardner's work, however, was that, in order to give Wicca the authority he felt it deserved, he couched its rituals and incantations in purple prose, stuffing in grandiose archaisms wherever he could fit them, so that, to the unconvinced, Wicca can seem rather absurd, all thees and thous and thereforeuntos.

Even the Wiccan salutation - Blessed Be - is tinged with hey-nonny-no. Another problem is that Gardner appears to have been a bit of a perv. It was he who introduced into Wiccan ritual scourging, the practice of using flails or whips lightly to scourge the skin as an aid to concentration.

This idea was not new - some Hindu and Christian sects still practise it - but there was no evidence that it had ever been part of witchcraft traditions. And his ideas about working "skyclad" or naked also raised some eyebrows. Neither of these things appears to have put Wiccans off.

Its feminism and emphasis on individual responsibility matches people's perception of the world. But, I say, nudity, magic, the mysteries of nature, it's all a bit un-British, isn't it? On the contrary, says Ronald Hutton, professor of history at Bristol University. We are the first nation to have industrialised and to have been acutely cut off from the natural world. Wicca is a response to that, a countercultural religion allowing people to link back with the land. A product of our history it may be, but does Wicca have a future?

Since its inception 50 years ago, it has branched off and taken on local flavours. There are now radical feminist, gay and all-male Wiccan groups. They're attracted to participatory ritual, and there's a hunger for a spiritual system that enhances lives by bringing about an inner change.

And Wicca is celebratory. Wiccans themselves are optimistic. As Crowley says, "Wicca has no paid leadership, no buildings, no capital: it's like a huge voluntary group, but it's survived 50 years. If that's you then congratulations, you're a witch. Researching and doing some homework is never a bad idea.

However, writing a spell does not require a coven, goat's skull, and full moon, as fun as nights involving these can be.

Performing a spell just means setting an intention and then conducting a ritual, be that lighting a candle or meditating in the bathtub, to fulfill it. For instance, let's say you want to wake up each morning filled with more self-love. Write an intention letter affirming how much you appreciate yourself as you honor Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. You can invoke the energy of any deity you personally connect with so long as you show proper respect, but Venus is a great go-to for love spells.

You can also work with an ancestor or inspired celebrity, like David Bowie a personal favorite or Rihanna. Light some pink and red candles and take a bath while meditating on how loved you are. You're doing magick. Simply writing out gratitude lists or repeating a mantra is casting a spell, as it means you're injecting reminders of your self-worth into your life. Most witches believe that the universe is filled with energy. Casting a spell is just harnessing that energy.

The upside to witchcraft's recent popularity is that it's becoming more accessible and more people understand that witchcraft isn't synonymous with evil. It's also allowed powerful witches to make money from their craft, which demonstrates the power of magick on its own. Some online shops are worthy of your money if you have some extra to spend.

Witch Baby Soap , for example, sells lovely, vegan, cruelty-free beauty products infused with spells. However, it seems like everyone is cashing in on the witchcraft trend these days. Sure, tools such as crystals, tarot cards, and incense can be handy in rituals and help sharpen your practice.

But all you really need is yourself. You are the witch, you practice the magick, and you are more powerful than any crystal money can buy.