Wild Witchcraft
Do not allow others to tame your craft. Do not tame it yourself out of fear that others will look down on you or reject you. Embrace your wildness. Sometimes it may alienate you from those others who dare not lose themselves in the wild.
'“A witch ought never to be frightened in the darkest forest, Granny Weatherwax had once told her, because she should be sure in her soul that the most terrifying thing in the forest was her.''
- Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith.
Do not let your witchcraft be tamed. Do not allow yourself to be tamed.
Witchcraft is my escape from the world when everything seems too much. Witchcraft is my weapon against the world, or more specifically against those who would control me or scare me or threaten me. Witchcraft is my everything. It is always there, sometimes in the background, sometimes to the fore, but it is always there.
It is my strength.
Do you ever just look at things and think 'shit'? Look at all the doom and gloom in the world. Poverty, exploitation of people and nature. Capitalism and all of the other ism and schisms that divide people from one another and the land. What's the point in trying to fight back? What's the point in trying to help others against the rising tide of shit thrown at us, all of which we have no control over?
I think those things, sometimes quite often.
But I don't give up. I just can't. I can't roll over and give in. Perhaps it is the fighter in me, always ready and game for a tear up, the working class woman, the council estate girl who has had to battle for everything in life. Everything I have and everything I have achieved has come about through sheer hard work, determination and will.
Sometimes in this world, it is hard to resist, to keep your witchcraft as something wild. Sometimes even other practitioners and pagans will warn you against something or other, which is fine if it is just a general feeling of wanting you to be safe, or to take care. However it is when these become overbearing and judgemental when it becomes an issue.
I cannot tell you the times I have been warned about appropriation, or told not to use flying ointments because they are dangerous, or warned to be careful I don't violate the threefold law. And whilst such sentiments are offered with well-meaning intentions, mostly anyway, what this really is, is someone projecting their fears, their limitations onto me. And whether they mean it to or not, such sentiments can end up taming you and your craft.
Do not allow others to tame your craft. Do not tame it yourself out of fear that others will look down on you or reject you. Embrace your wildness. Sometimes it may alienate you from those others who dare not lose themselves in the wild.
You know, I joined quite a well-known pagan group on FB, and they have thought of the day type posts. A while ago, the topic of stealing came up and how it was wrong to take things like magical items. Fair enough, you might think, and perhaps rightly so but what about the theft that occurs daily around the world. Is it not theft to pay people wages they cannot survive on? Is it not theft to destroy forests and poison waterways for greed and profit? Is it not theft when people are displaced from the land. Are these thefts not more important? You don't see these issues covered very often on mainstream pagan sites and when they are, people don't really listen with an ear to truly listen to the other party and engage in meaningful debate and the sharing of ideas and opinion. Instead everybody wants to be right. We do listen, but not to understand, but instead to come back with a witty remark or some other fact or report that proves why the other is wrong.
We don't find solutions but instead argue over the semantics. we do not take action but argue about taking action.
If we really are Pagans, as in the modern usage of the term, is not our spirituality based on nature, on the wild and acknowledging our place in that web? Of course we pagans can and do also fall into the trap of materialism, of becoming over reliant on tools and imagery and aesthetics. And it's easy to do as our connection to what is real and truly meaningful is lessened over time.
Wild witchcraft to me speaks of the relationship between the witch and the land. The land comes before all else and everything else comes from that. You see, the land, well, everything comes from it doesn't it? It does in my experience. It is through the land that connection with spirit begins. Hermeticism tells us that the land - earth comes before all else. The element of Earth relates to all matter, but what is it we have on our altars to represent it? Soil perhaps, or a plant, a memento from the land itself. It is through our connection to land that we build relationships with th spirits that reside there.
Find the wild where you live and honour it. Spend time in it. Just accept it for what it is. All too often in mainstream paganism the wild is tamed, made more ‘perfect', pruned and primed. We buy crystals that, we are told, have energies that connect us to the all loving and all caring earth mother and yet where do those crystals come from? Where are they sourced? Who was it that mined them? We give honour to this god or that all the while forgetting that they are the forces of nature incarnate, that they are wild things too.
Accept nature, in all of her incarnations. When predators kill, we do not ask them not too, when the storms roll in we batten down and prepare, we don't beg it to change course. We respect its power. And yet, we are asked to tame ourselves. Why? Why must we not use our craft in our protection, in our defence, in our attacks? Why must we polish it and groom it, make it presentable and palatable. Why must we not use it to protect nature?
We can and we will.
A witch ought never be afraid, not even in the darkest forest for she should be sure in her soul she is as wild as the forest.
Emma Kathryn
My name is Emma Kathryn, an eclectic witch, my path is a mixture of traditional European witchcraft, voodoo and obeah, a mixture representing my heritage. I live in the middle of England in a little town in Nottinghamshire, with my partner, two teenage sons and two crazy dogs, Boo and Dexter. When not working in a bookshop full time, I like to spend time with my family outdoors, with the dogs. And weaving magic, of course!
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