Being Witchy

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday, as much for the chance to be spooky as the candy haul (spooky being a key ingredient of Witchiness), though since becoming witchy I tend to refer to the holiday as Samhain. If you know how to pronounce “Samhain,” congratulations, you’re probably witchy yourself.

In childhood, Halloween meant marching down the sidewalk with a host of ghouls, goblins, fairies, and princesses, running up strangers’ porch steps, and demanding treats – and recognition. And what can that be but a remnant, or an evocation, of the Wild Hunt?

Today the holiday means carving a pumpkin and endowing it with spirit, the magical power of protection. But more importantly, it means observing a ritual, an ancient one. Lusting after ritual is a key ingredient of Witchiness.

Being witchy is taking the time to learn the phases of the Moon, its rising and its setting, and walking outside at night to spend a few moments with it in acknowledgement of the Goddess. Meditation, growing herbs and hanging them to dry, taking care of my 94-year-old mother – who is spooky and witchy and a queen – these seasonal and daily rituals are things that can be performed along the witchy way.

Inevitably, Witchiness strives to shuck off the yoke of patriarchy that was forged by the religions of the Book, Judaism, Christianity, Islam (if they don’t all use exactly the same Book, they are all Book-centric). And along with the Book, you’ll want to shuck off the animosity toward women, the command to be fruitful and multiply, the idea of dominion over nature. (Handy reminder: Monotheism is authoritarianism.)

The wisdom of the Druids was never written down in a book. Witchiness is a desire to connect to that wisdom in the only place it’s still available, the unconscious. It could be the search for a coven, a community, knowledge, practices. It can start with something as simple as remembering the names of the ancient feast days, Samhain, the Celtic New Year; Imbolc, the herald of spring; Beltane, a day for dancing and bonfires; and Lughnasadh, the harvest festival. The Celts believed the new day started, not at daybreak but at sunset. How’s that for spooky?

Witchiness is more an acknowledgement of mysterious possibilities than a set of beliefs. Reading about the Druids finally taught me the difference between and Equinox and a Solstice. I learned that the ley lines they discovered in France and Britain were the same places the Romans decided to build their famous roads. The knowledge of the Druids was destroyed by murdering each and every one of them so that it could not be passed down. Their living knowledge died with them because it was at odds with the rationality, the systemization, the hierarchy that the Romans called civilization and that, in one form or another, continues into the Modern world. Ultimately, Witchiness is political, even anarchic.

Being a witch and being witchy are related things, though not necessarily the same. If you find it appropriate to call yourself a witch, I’m all for it. People have been calling me a witch for years, and I’ve always found it flattering. Being a witch implies being a mistress of spellcraft. A woman I know, a Hearth Druid devoted to the Goddess, once remarked that spells are magical self-help. I think of them as using material things as tools to focus the mind. Whether they “work” or not is largely irrelevant. They’re going to show you something, if you’re paying the right kind of attention.

It’s tempting to say Witchiness is a journey, but it’s really more of an exploration, and sometimes a celebration, of something mysterious and maybe unknowable. Whatever you think it is or might be, I’d love to hear about it.

Blixi Federberg