Witchcraft today – by Ann Williams I’m a solitary witch; I belong to no coven and to no systematic school of witchcraft. So what I tell you can only arise from my own personal experience; I’m not speaking for anyone else. Nor have I any wish to ‘convert’ you, or persuade you of anything. This is my story; it may not be yours, and if so that’s perfectly okay by me. I’m also going to talk about witchcraft as it has developed in the latter half of the twentieth century; ‘modern’ witchcraft, not the traditional beliefs of this, or any other country.

Let us begin by dispelling some misconceptions. Firstly: modern witchcraft has nothing to do with the popular concept of Satanism, which is (or was) derived from biblical demonology; the Devil is a figure found only in Judaeo-Christian and Islamic traditions (there are modern Satanists and even a Church of Satan, centred in San Francisco, but they are not witches). Secondly: although there is a link between witchcraft and magic, the two are not identical; from the later middle ages at least, magicians have been learned and educated men who did not draw any line between scientific, philosophical and mystical speculations; Sir Isaac Newton, for instance, was both a scientist and a magician (specifically an alchemist). Thirdly: modern witchcraft is not the descendant of a pagan religion which survived the Christian conversion of Europe, to be practiced in secret throughout the medieval and modern periods, and re-emerge in the twentieth century. Earlier references to witches and witchcraft do occur from time to time, usually in the context of religious or secular prohibitions, but when the actual practices of witches are recorded, they usually turn out to be remnants of folk belief, herbalism, medicinal charms, or the kind of blessing and, more significantly, cursing spells recorded both in pagan and Christian tradition from late classical period. Modern witchcraft may search out and embrace such practices, but it is itself a new construct, which, as it exists today, is largely the creation of one man: Gerald Gardner (1884-1964), whose book, Witchcraft Today, was published in 1954. His ideas were developed by Doreen Valiente, once his High Priestess, in her own book, Where Witchcraft Lives, published in 1962. Of course Gardner and Valiente did not appear out of nothing, and it’s possible to trace the roots of modern witchcraft to the various occult

societies which sprang up in England at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. For anyone interested in the history of the movement, I’d recommend Ronald Hutton’s splendid book, The Triumph of the Moon, published in 1999. The whole field of magic and the occult out of which witchcraft springs is covered by an equally interesting and perhaps more accessible book, The Book of English Magic, by Philip Carr-Gomm and Richard Heygate, published in 2010. (Philip Carr-Gomm is head of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids).

There are today a number of different strands of witchcraft or Wicca (to use Gardner’s term), some deriving from the Gardnerian model, others independent of it. Most witches belong to covens with their own priests and priestesses and their own rituals; some require new members to undergo initiation, others don’t. But it isn’t necessary to join a coven to be a witch; solitary practitioners (of which I’m one) also exist, and have been known as ‘hedge witches’ ever since the phrase was coined by the West Country witch Rae Beth in 1990. This variation is possible because witchcraft isn’t a religion; it has no creed to which all practitioners are compelled to subscribe, no set of fixed and prescribed rituals, and above all no system of enforcing compliance. The Pagan Federation defines three beliefs which characterise all pagans, including witches: one, acceptance of the inherent divinity of the natural world and a rejection of any notion of its creation by an external power; two, rejection of any concept of divinely prescribed laws for human behaviour, including the concepts of sin and salvation; and three, an acceptance that divinity can be both female and male. The only code of behaviour to which all witches subscribe is the Wiccan Rede: ‘if it harms no-one, do as you will’. Witchcraft does not employ coercion of any kind, nor, and I want to emphasize this, does it recruit. Being a witch is a free choice you make for yourself. Beyond this, witches, like other pagans, seek inspiration in the pre-Christian beliefs of Eurasia and North America, whether Celtic, Graeco-Roman, Egyptian, Germanic, shamanistic, or native American.

This is not to claim that modern witchcraft, or indeed modern paganism, is a

direct re-creation of any ancient religion. I live in England, and had an English mother and a Welsh father, so the traditions which interest me are those native to the British Isles, pre-Celtic, Celtic and

Germanic; but since I’m also an historian, I know just how little information survives about the preChristian world. We have the physical remains of those cultures, but we don’t (and can’t) know what monuments like Stonehenge or Newgrange meant to the people who constructed them, while knowledge of the beliefs of the Celtic and Germanic peoples is largely based on descriptions written by their enemies. Nevertheless we are linked to all those people; they are our ancestors, literally in the sense that all Europeans alive today are descended from the Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers of prehistory, and symbolically by the fact that we inhabit the same space. Modern witchcraft, indeed modern paganism generally, is an attempt to re-connect with our roots and re-imagine the past as it survives in the present.

The rise of paganism and witchcraft, visible in the 2011 census, is part of a reaction against two contrasting and competing world-views current in the West: dogmatic religion, with its prescriptive rules and regulations and its obsessive attempt to regulate every aspect of the lives of its followers; and scientific materialism which, in its extreme form, holds that all forms of spiritual experience, whether Christian or pagan, are deluded and nonsensical. Both lead to a similar worldview: on the one hand, there’s the physical world which we perceive through our five senses, and on the other hand the metaphysical world, accessible to the scientists through rational thought, or to the religious, prayer and contemplation; in both cases such investigation should only be undertaken by trained professionals not ignorant amateurs like the rest of us. What this dualism leaves out is something which most of us feel but find hard to describe. Many people have seen, heard or felt things which, though ‘real’ to them, are not ‘material’, in the sense that they have no form in the physical world. Such experiences are often described as intuition or instinct, or ‘gut feelings’. The old word for them is ‘visions’, but nowadays, in the western world at least, visions are widely held to be impossible, so that people who experience them must be deluded or fraudulent. As a result, there is a general reluctance to talk about such feelings; there is no ‘generally accepted frame of reference for them and no system of explanation within

which they may be sustained or discussed’. They are ‘imaginary’ and ‘unreal’, mere subjective fancies and fantasies, the product of disturbed or disordered minds. It wasn’t always like this, and even today, for some people, imagination has its own internal reality, contingent to and intermixed with physical reality. It’s a concept which surfaced among those pioneering students of the mind, the psychologists, and particularly in the work of Carl Jung. Psychologists distinguish between the conscious and the unconscious mind; Jung added to this the idea of the ‘collective unconscious’, which was common to and accessible to all of us. He believed visionary experiences arose from what he called ‘psychic reality’, where intuitions, apparitions, spirits, angels and the like exist in a world which is ‘invisible but present’. This ‘psychic reality’ exists both within the individual consciousness and outside it; it is investigated in Patrick Harpur’s book, Daimonic Reality: a Field Guide to the Otherworld, published in 1994.

The Otherworld, intertwined with the material world, is a concept found especially in Celtic mythology. Since the borders between the two can be crossed (in both directions), it’s in no sense ‘supernatural’; it’s simply a part of being alive which has been crowded out by the Western pattern of materialist culture and abstract thought. Witchcraft is one way of trying to reconnect with this Otherworld. I don’t mean that witches are anti-material or anti-intellectual; we have physical bodies with their own needs, and rational minds which we ought to use to the full. But the mind + body theory doesn’t describe the whole of our being; to use a rather old-fashioned term, we have souls as well. And it goes beyond that. For pagans, including witches, everything that exists has a soul, animals, trees, plants, rocks, fire, earth, air, water, our planet itself, often known (both to pagans and environmentalists) as Gaia. Nothing is ‘inanimate’ (without a soul), everything is ‘alive’, and everything is linked together; in fact everything comes from a single World Soul which flows through and animates everything, and we – human beings – are part of this living universe. The pagan view of the world is therefore quite different from traditional views, which draw a line between humanity and everything else. We completely reject the idea that the rest of the world is

there simply to serve the needs of human beings, whether the justification is religious (only human beings have souls) or scientific (only human beings are capable of rational thought). Being a witch means re-connecting with all our companions in the world, both physical and immaterial. To be a witch means not only to look but to see, to be attentive not just to yourself but also to your surroundings, streets, houses and gardens, trees and flowers, birds and animals, the changing sky, the season of the year. It means knowing the time of the day, not just by looking at the clock, but by dawn, noon, sunset, and night. The time of the month is also important. Who here knows the current phase of the Moon? (She’s a waxing crescent, at the moment). Winter, spring, summer and autumn all have their own properties, and witches align their personal lives with the life of the world by observing the Wheel of the Year. Spring is the time of germination and growth, when sap begins to rise in the trees and bulbs which were buried last autumn begin to push up leaves, and all this fresh energy can be incorporated into our own lives as we make plans and set out goals. Summer is the time of abundance and fruitfulness, for enjoying the fine weather, meeting friends, taking holidays, learning something new about the world. Autumn sees the harvest, when we can gather our thoughts and look at what we have learnt and achieved. And winter is the time of darkness, which is not to be feared or dreaded, but seen for what it is, a time for rest and reflection, for thinking about what we’ve done and will do. It’s for these reasons that pagans, including witches, celebrate the Eight Sabbats; Imbolc or Candlemas (2 February) marks the very beginning of spring, when life is returning to the land and the spring equinox in March marks the moment when the days begin to lengthen again. Beltane or Mayday (1 May) sees the beginning of the summer’s abundance, culminating at the Summer Solstice in June. Lammas (August 1) is the time of harvest and reward for the year’s labour, and at the autumn equinox in September, when the days begin to darken, we give thanks for the fruits of the earth. And then comes Samhain (31 October), Halloween in contemporary terms; a muchmisunderstood feast with its ghosts and hauntings, for the ghosts are our ancestors, whom we should remember at this time, when the days shorten, and the winter closes in. It’s a time for remembrance, for rest and recuperation, and culminates in the winter solstice of December, the feast

of Yule, and the re-birth of the Sun. And then – it all begins again. How you celebrate the stations of the Year is up to you; you can decorate your house, arrange special meals with family and friends, celebrate some personal ritual – it’s your choice. But regular observance of this kind makes sense of the circling year and offers time for recollection of the past and preparation for the future. Being a witch is essentially a matter of individual choice but there are some constants. A witch will probably set up an altar in her house as a focus for her activities. I have three; one in the kitchen, one in the living-room, and one in the garden. You can buy various objects from specialist shops, but altars can also be made from whatever is to hand; the base of my kitchen altar is a beautiful old bread-board that I rescued from a skip some years ago, while my living-room altar holds pictures and photographs of my relatives. The centrepiece of my garden altar is an image made out of a building brick topped with a three-sided stone; as soon as I set the brick on its end and placed the head-stone upon it, the Goddess came to inhabit the altar. They are places where I can focus my mind, remember past friends and relatives, send thoughts to friends who need help or healing, resolve my problems. Although there are many male witches, the craft has traditionally been practised by women and is therefore focused on female divinities, unlike the patriarchal religions whose the deity is usually male, or at least described in masculine terms. The Goddess has many names and has existed in many forms: Astarte, Isis, Hecate, Hera, Juno, Freya, Danu are some of her names and there are many others. The identity of my garden goddess changes with the seasons; from the beginning of winter (at Samhain) to the return of spring (at Imbolc) I think of her as the Cailleach, the Old Woman of Winter, but at Imbolc she becomes Brid, the Celtic goddess of medicine, poetry and smithcraft, and at the vernal equinox, Persephone, returning from her sojourn as queen of the underworld to her mother Demeter, who begins her own rule at Midsummer. At Lammas she becomes Ceres, queen of the harvest, and in October (the apple harvest) Pomona. But there are lots of other incarnations to choose from. Witches acknowledge a God as well as a Goddess, often in the form of the Green Man, the consort of the Goddess; again particular individuals are drawn to particular deities. I’m especially fond of Odin, but the presiding genius of my kitchen altar is an

image of the Great World-Rim Spirit found among the North American Iroquois; it was given me by a Canadian friend back in the ‘70s, so he came to me, not I to him (traffic between this world and the Otherworld goes both ways). Witches have always been associated with spell-casting, and most will keep a book (called a Book of Shadows) to record useful charms, recipes, thoughts, and reflections. Various books of spells for different occasion exist, but I’ve always preferred to make my own, using Doreen Valiente’s Natural Magic as a guide. The basic ingredients are simple, and although all sorts of magical implements and ingredients can be bought in specialist shops, what you have in your own kitchen and garden will probably be enough. The essential thing is to make clear in your own mind what it is you want to achieve. The same applies to the times when you want to make contact with the Otherworld. Some witches use the traditional crystal ball, others a pack of Tarot cards, or a bag of runes, or tea leaves. All these aids help to focus the mind on the particular problem, to clear your head of extraneous thoughts and concentrate on framing the question you want to ask – and then on falling silent to receive the answer. The silence is as important as the question for the answer, if there is one, must come from the Otherworld, not your own rational mind. But there’s nothing ‘magic’ about implements or herbs or runes or tarot packs or any other apparatus. The spell’s effectiveness lies not in what you use but in how you think, for thoughts are not random but have power to help or harm, and this applies to the thinker as well the object of her thought. ‘What goes around comes around’ as we used to say, which is why you should take great care in spell-casting; they can backfire, which is why it’s inadvisable to curse. Do the spells work? My experience suggests that they do - sometimes. Appendix: The Hedgewitch (from www.scottishpf.org/hedgewitch.html). The Hedgewitch is very common in Britain these days, though it was once thought to be on the verge of extinction in most places due to government suppression. It is most commonly found in woodland and on riverbanks, though it also thrives in other habitats. It can, with difficulty, be cultivated in urban areas, though it much prefers the countryside. The Hedgewitch is often slow-growing due to its preference for shady hollows, and due to its solitary nature it is often slow to reproduce. In rich seams of knowledge it grows more quickly, and may attempt crosspollination with others of the species. However, when a group of this species does meet, each specimen undergoes substantial growth spurts. Very rarely, this group may evolve into the

subspecies covenii, but this is an unstable strain, and it usually reverts quickly to its former state.

It is often difficult to distinguish between the male and female of the species due to their similar attire, which has evolved to allow ease of spread in dense undergrowth and woodland areas. However, the male is very rare, so unless there are other indications one can usually presume that the specimen is female. Tell-tale signs include twigs in the hair, a thin covering of mud, and a distinctive odour of cat-piss caused by its close association with elderflowers and other pungent herbs. Under close examination, it may tell you to 'bugger off and mind your own business if you don't want this big stick rammed somewhere unpleasant', so care must be taken at all times. Protective clothing may be advisable when handling.

Though once considered poisonous, the Hedgewitch may in fact have healing properties, if used correctly. It may be governed by almost any deity, or could also possibly have told it to 'bugger off and mind your own business if you don't want this big stick rammed somewhere unpleasant', an unusual attribute almost unique to this species