RT Both

My incorporation of witchiness into my earthbound day-to-day life began with the heavens. When I read The Discovery of Middle Earth: Mapping the Lost World of the Celts by Graham Robb (Norton, 2013), I learned for the first time the meaning of words like “solstice” (the Celts believed the sun remained stationary for several days at the solstices) and “equinox” (you can see this for yourself: at the equinoxes, the sun rises and sets in the exact middle of the horizon). We’re always told these things are happening, usually by the person giving us updates on the weather, but nobody ever tells us what they mean.

I’d always liked the moon, but once I started regularly paying attention, it began to feel like we had a relationship. I began to see her (the moon’s pronouns are she/it) as a manifestation of the goddess, I suppose in a way similar to the ancient Egyptians thinking the sun was a god. I began to want to understand her, to pay attention to her phases. I learned that the moon is “waxing gibbous” when the right side is illuminated viewed from the Northern Hemisphere. A waning gibbous moon is illuminated on the opposite side. You can tell if a crescent moon is waxing or waning too. If it’s waxing, the points of the crescent face left. In the days before TV, social media, and Christianity, these simple forms of knowledge were intensely meaningful to people, as was the fact that during its dark phase, the moon is actually new and getting ready to reappear.

I feel kinda weird saying this, but you can talk to the moon. And it’s a lot easier than talking to the sun, because looking at it won’t blind you. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, and I’ll parse it out when I’m feeling less embarrassed.

Behind my house are a number of black walnut trees. When my niece visited over Christmas, she said my yard has the fattest squirrels she’d ever seen. I explained that’s because the black walnuts are a habitat, a squirrel sanctuary, a reliable food source, as long as nobody in the Homeowners’ Association gets a notion to cut them down. If they do, I’ll fight for those trees and my fat squirrels.

I wish I could get to know the squirrels better, but they’re probably still mad at me for putting Flaming Squirrel hot pepper oil on the bird seed in the feeder. But when squirrels are making a feast out of the bird food – which they will if it’s not treated – they’re less easy to love. Though one year we had a pure white squirrel out there, until it got run over by a car. All the neighbors loved that squirrel.

The birds are ordinary backyard birds, cardinals, sparrows, juncos, orioles, blackbirds of variously hued wingtips, mourning doves, a solo blue jay with an aggressive personality, a black-and-white striped woodpecker with a red crown. The odd crow caws to its fellows. On occasion, a Cooper’s hawk will appear in the crabapple tree, scaring away the other birds. And at night, I can hear the hooting of a great Great Northern owl and sometimes its mate. I know it’s a Great Northern because one cloudy night I went out with my binoculars and walked around the neighborhood until I saw this animal about the size of a large house cat perched in the branches of a tall tree. I could see its tufts through my binoculars. I think it knew I was watching; I felt it looking back at me.

A wild turkey hen comes by every summer with her big chicks. Sometimes we even see the magnificent waddling beast of the male turkey. A mated pair of mallard ducks swims in the canal behind the house. Sandhill cranes in a small flock tour the neighborhood in summer with long-legged grace, and in the pond across the street, I’ve seen blue heron and a snowy egret.

And once there was even a pair of peacocks racing through the yard like escaped convicts. They were escapees, from a nearby peacock farm.

This is nature, as it manifests in a suburban backyard in the twenty-first century, vulnerable, as more and more habitat is destroyed, in constant need of protection by and from humans, and bringing with it something magical whenever it appears.

Blixi Federberg

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

Author: RT Both

Witchiness in the Suburbs: The moon, a few trees, some birds, and a squirrel or two

Being Witchy