Perspective

How I came to Witchcraft.

Witchcraft was the last place I expected to find myself. My parents were social justice activists—my father was a union organizer, my mother was a community organizer for the NAACP—and I followed in their footsteps. Forty years ago, I was a young lawyer in New York fighting organized crime in trade unions and managing a rock and roll band at night when the magic began. Dreams, premonitions, even wishes came true. I could feel the Universe come alive and I followed the thread it unfurled before me into a numinous world of Romantic poets, Egyptian Goddesses and quantum physics. It led me to the last place I expected and exactly where I was meant to be—a circle of amazing women of all ages, races and backgrounds who were rediscovering the Goddess and practicing Witchcraft.

They invited me to join them. I politely declined—they were Witches. A few months later, wandering the Metropolitan Museum of Art and worrying about my career, the message arrived: larger than life and carved from marble, sat the woman who’d repeatedly visited me in my dreams. A crown rested on her plaited hair, a necklace with a six pointed star hung at her throat, and she held a scroll of papers. I read the plaque beside her toes: “The Libyan Sibyl.” We sat together until closing time. At home with the new moon appearing out my apartment window, I looked up “sibyl” in my OED. “An ancient prophetess, a witch.” I accepted the invitation and studied with those Witches for three years.

Witchcraft awakened my magic; it awakened me to the magic of Creation. It healed my separation from Nature and Spirit. It’s been a path home to a re-enchanted world, a path to my place and purpose in that world. It’s been a re-wilding, wondrous, magical way to live. I was originally initiated into the Minoan Sisterhood, a then secret, neo-Gardnerian tradition, and, simultaneously, I joined the Brooklyn Group, the first core shamanic circle in the U.S. I quickly recognized modern Witchcraft is the rebirth of our ancestors’ indigenous wisdom. Witch comes from wicce, a 5,500 year old word that meant a wise woman, a shaman, a seer of the Sacred. I came out of the broom closet forty years ago, which made me one of America’s first public Witches. I became a priestess and created my own tradition, the Temple of Ara, the first to fuse core shamanism with Wicca. As an attorney, I’ve handled groundbreaking cases that established the legal rights of Witches, and I’ve been an outspoken advocate in the media fighting the negative stereotypes. I’ve written five books, created a revolutionary Tarot deck, taught internationally and been an interfaith activist, all to widen public understanding and acceptance.

Of course, there have been many challenges, especially being public long before it was acceptable, but when I found my purpose, I found my strength. I’ve very joyfully spent my life making the impossible possible—helping Witchcraft become the fastest growing spirituality in America. There are countless “traditions” and ways of practicing Witchcraft now. My own Temple of Ara is deeply rooted in reverence for Mother Earth, and practices that reconnect us to her and to the lost and sacred parts of ourselves. The results are magical.

Passion

How I live as a Witch.

Being a Witch is like waking up from a black and white world to see everything in vivid color. Witchcraft is a deeply personal spiritual practice and if you work it, it will work. It’s a spiritual technology that hacks your brain and your body. It heightens and expands all of my senses, especially my sense of the Sacred. That connection to the Sacred—in realms of spirit and embodied by nature—is the source of magic and the first thing that magic always changes is me.

For example, no matter the weather, every day I go out to my garden and cast a simple circle. I honor the four directions, the Air, Fire, Water, and Earth, and the Sun above and Earth below. I make an offering, usually bird seed, for the blessings in my life. It grounds and centers me, keeps me balanced and connected, attentive and grateful. It’s simple to do and profound to experience. My heart opens, the Divine flows into me, helps, heals and inspires me. I shape that energy into my work—as books, as teaching, as projects, as activism. My work is my offering to the world. My life is my magic.

I’ve had two key influences. One is my drum, which taught me that I could experience the Sacred in realms of spirit and in this world. It showed me that I am never alone, that there is always wise and benevolent guidance. My other great mentor is Mother Earth. My great epiphany was that Her natural laws are actually spiritual principles. Everything lives according to her laws, only we humans have forgotten. The result is the devastation of our planet. But the Earth is constantly showing us her Great Magic: that all things, living in accord with her wisdom, make the world better for all Life. We just need to pay attention.

And paying attention is easy: with practices that are simple and natural like green breathing, water blessings, or grounding into the Earth, I attune myself to that divine template. Everything we need to heal and to be whole is already a part of us and is being shown to us by the natural world all around us. Creation really does embody Spirit. It’s not an idea, it’s a lived reality, something I can experience, something we all can experience. That’s life-changing and deeply inspiring, and has become the centerpiece of my life and my work.

 Purpose

Why Witches are essential in the world.

The Witch endures for many reasons. The most important is the truth of who the Witch is—the wise one who knows spirit and world are one. The Witch survives because she resists domination, refuses to be limited by stereotypes. She inspires us to refuse restrictions, to push the boundaries of patriarchy, to live on the edges where change comes from and magic dwells. She inhabits the numinous and conjures what is longed for into being. Witches remember the magic of childhood and know that we are all children of Mother Earth. The Witch knows that we are held, healed and supported within a world that loves us. The Witch knows that we wield unwavering power when the Earth and our bodies are inseparable.

Witches have always been here, midwifing babies and healing the sick, summoning spirits and retrieving lost souls, interpreting dreams and revealing the future. We have always been here, cleverly disguised but signaling our untamed presence with red lipstick or wild hair, by our choice to live on the outskirts of town, to stand up when we’re told to sit down, to refuse to be less than we are meant to be. The Witch is the rebel who challenges our hypocrisies, shadows and constraints. She knows the magic to see the unseen, to make the impossible possible and the numinous manifest. She knows how to re-enchant the world and she knows this is her time.

A Witch is a wise one, a seer of the Sacred, a healer. I call myself a Witch to challenge and defy society’s misogyny and to take back my voice, my freedom and my power as a woman. All the negative stereotypes are projections of our culture’s fear of women. The Witch Trauma—the brutal persecution and murder of women that went on for more than 300 years—terrorized women. We couldn’t own or inherit property, we were legally the property of male relatives. Women couldn’t learn to read or go out alone, and the threat of violence was always present. Why were we taught to fear Witches and not those who tortured and burned them? Whenever a woman is strong, smart, independent she’s called a Witch. In fact, Witch comes from wicce, a 5,000 year old word that means a woman who is wise, a diviner who speaks to the Sacred, a healer, a shaman. To be a Witch is to see the mystery hiding in plain sight: that we live in a sacred world and are meant to live in a sacred way.

I am a Witch. And I believe there’s a Witch, a wise one, inside all of us, and now more than ever, the world needs her Witches.