1. Are you a witch? / Am I a witch ?
Potentially, every woman and every man is a witch. The idea that we form distinct and separate matters from the ‘natural’ world is a delusion: we are made of water, mainly, then proteins and void. The physical qualities that make us ourselves may be found in the whole of nature. A witch is the product of the land, and she recognises and feels the bond with the rest of the existing word in a strong and affirmative way.
Said that, some people might have a particular attitude towards witchcraft. Some other people perform some or other forms of witchcraft for their whole life, but they do not realise it. It is also true that although everyone is a potential witch, not everyone as the spirit and the vocation to pursue the path of witchcraft. This is natural: everyone may be able to use a paint brush, but we are not all Leonardo here.
Yes and no. Let’s try to split this question in its two most common and possible meanings.
First, thanks to tv series and misleading books, many think that hereditary witchcraft may entail the transmission of mighty supernatural powers from mother to daughter. It is true that particular gifts that witches may make use of (clairvoyance and mediumship, for example) seem to be recurrent within the same families, although this is not always the case. My youngest sister, for example, has often had premonitions in her dreams, and no significant event has occurred in my family without her dreaming about it. She also occasionally seems to perceive ‘presences’ and to dream our loved ones who have passed. My mother’s sister, my aunt, has always had the same gift and often she and my sister would have the same dream, on the same night, pertaining the same events. My mom’s and aunt’s cousin also shows the same ability, as did my granddad’s aunt, and this is as far back as I have been able to track it. With a tremendously lesser frequency, my mother, my middle sister and I occasionally have such dreams also. I have no doubts that my sister and my aunt would be amazing and powerful witches, however, they are not. They have innate future-telling abilities, but they do not practice witchcraft. Witchcraft is a set of practices, you cannot be born with it. In this sense, witchcraft is not hereditary – some psychic abilities seem to be, but this does not make a witch.
Second, some people do receive magical practices from their parents and choose to embrace them. In this sense, witchcraft can be hereditary. The passage of practices may happen mostly in two ways. Some (few) families are repository of sometimes ancient forms of witchcraft, and do transmit them to their siblings and sometimes to people out of their family groups. These forms of witchcraft may be organised and structured, or simple country practices passed on from centuries and filled with Christian names and beautiful synchrony. In very many cases, these people may not call themselves witches – and if they do not, we do not see why shall we. Many, possibly most, witches nowadays do not come from an hereditary lines (in the broad sense of actual family and of ‘coven’).
Finally, there are people who have a natural gift for witchcraft, but they do not necessarily become witches – as there are people who have a great potential for painting, but never took a brush in their hands.
It is the ability to affect the physical and spiritual world, by means of energetic interaction, in order to obtain a valued result.
How does magic work?
We do not know, we know it works though, and for many witches this is enough. However, the strongly positivist society we live in may not accept that something happens which there is no explanation to, so many new witches (including myself, at the time) often struggle to accommodate together their rational minds and the fact of their effective spellwork.
Quantum theory is the only scientific theory that given rationalists a hope for the explanation of the forces behind witchcraft, although it seems to be used to explain pretty much everything which science seems not to grasp nowadays. What quantum theory suggests is that at the sub-atomic level our perception of reality affects the very fabric of it. The quantum, the smallest particle of matter yet theorized, would change his physical properties (mass, position, speed) according to how we think of it. The following fun experiment may provide an insight for the sceptical regarding the powers of the minds on the physical world.
This experiment was introduced by Mr Masaru Emoto, a Japanese man willing to show the power of ‘positive thinking’. The experiment has been repeated many times, and never fails to deliver its result. Boil three hundred grams of rice (any type will do) in abundant water. Dry the rice, let it cool down, and then distribute it equally in three identical jars, then close hermetically. Prepare two pieces of paper. On the first write ‘Thank you’ or ‘I love you’. On the second write ‘You fool’ or ‘I hate you’. Stick the two pieces of paper on the first and the second jar, then place the three jars next to each other on a shelf or wherever you have available space. For thirty days, when you pass in front of the jar look at the first jar and say ‘Thank you’ or ‘I love you’, say ‘You fool’ or ‘I hate you’ to the second jar, and simply ignore the third. If you live with other people, ask them to do the same. After, thirty days, notice the difference between the three jars. The rice in the first jar will most likely be still quite fresh, white, with few or no signs of degradation. The rice in the second jar will most likely be completely rotten, of a dark or black colour, and smelling badly. The third jar is usually half-way rotten.
In this experiment you have used your mind to alter physical reality. Rice is an organic compost, and you will learn these are the easiest to affect. The way you do that, is by continuously directing your thought towards the right. It is not enough to say ‘I hate you’ to make the rice rotten: to produce change it takes discipline and repetition, and the same thing is true in witchcraft. We can affect physical reality, but it is not enough to think of it to make it happen. Especially for the beginners, witchcraft is a path of dedication and discipline. Results must be earned.
Although we do not know how witchcraft works, we do have some clues about it. First, witchcraft seems to be closely linked to the moon. If we have power over the physical world through our will and our mind because of the communalities we share with the rest of nature, then the relevance of the moon should come as no surprise: living beings are mainly made of water, and the moon calls and rejects water through gravity. Not only spells do seem to work according to lunar phases, but spells directed at increasing and calling will work best during crescent moon phases, while spells directed at diminishing and banning work best if performed during the drawing moon. Observing these simple rules is one of the first and most effective ‘traditions’ of witchcraft. The same works for colours and the ‘correspondences’ in general.
The moon may be a big constraints or a potential push for one’s spellwork, and should never be ignored. However, correspondences are useful but not fundamental in witchcraft, as the witch’s will is everything the practitioner really needs.
Do spells really work?
It depends on the practitioner. Spells are associations of symbols which are meaningful to the practitioner, and which are aimed at producing the result she desires. However, a spell without a good practitioner is lifeless and the most powerful spell is useless in the hands of the untrained or ungifted.
When well crafted, or well understood, and performed by a capable person spells do work. The reality of effectiveness of spellwork is one of the main reasons why people are drawn to witchcraft.
Can I only choose to do white magic, I am scared by dark magic…
Magic is not dark, nor white, just as electrical currents can kill you or be useful in your life. Magic is not good nor bad, it just is, and it will work towards the objective you have set for it. When people talk about dark, red, green or white magic they are usual referring to the purpose towards which they are setting magical forces at work: destruction, passion, love or healing. There are reductionist definitions, as life is much more complex in reality. For example, sometimes a destructive work is necessary to restore a solution to a previous condition, or to eliminate dangerous forces. Is this dark or white magic?
Is practicing witchcraft a dangerous things? Will bad things happen to me if a ritual goes wrong?
Two things can happen to beginners if a ritual goes wrong. The first is : nothing. As the practitioner might not have developed the will and the skills to practice spellwork effectively, nothing may happen. In the case the beginner does develop the right attitude and mindset, and a spell goes wrong… well, it depends on the spell. The most recurrent example is of the witch that trying to make a man love her man love her ends up generating obsessive compulsive relationships which make their lives – and those of the partners – miserable. A spell ‘gone wrong’ most likely means a result which is different from the one envisioned. This can be just disappointing, or totally shattering, it will always depend on the situation. The obvious advice here is : do not walk further than your feet allow you, develop your skills step by step. Mistakes will occur, but the practicing witch should take them into account and take the appropriate precautions. This also means thinking in advance of how to undo something gone wrong.
I heard of the Law of Three, that everything good or bad shall return threefold
That is Wicca. Wiccan practitioners believe that any magical action will return to the practitioner multiplied by three times. However, wiccan practitioners also admit that this ‘law’ was deliberately introduced by the funder of their movement, Mr Gerald Gardner, and that it is a reformulation of the concept of karma.
There are no ‘laws’ in witchcraft, and the law of three represents a very mechanical view of how magic works. Most witchcraft practitioners will admit that there is ‘blow of return’ when practicing magic in most cases, but to say that it always happens and it is always threefold is pure abstraction. The most common witness of such blow of return is seen in people who practice particular forms of magical healing, who seem often to gain in health and longevity as they practice them. Practicing sex magic may also strongly affect one’s sexuality, in ways that inextricably combine the ‘magical’ and the ‘psychological’. Practicing aggressive magic can bring blows of return. However, sometimes these are just little bothering consequences, at times they might be more serious. The experienced witch should know how to take precautions against undesired ‘blows of return’ and to act pre-emptively.
Do you worship the devil?
No. We do not worship the devil, as the devil is an invention of the Christian churches to name all the existing entities which do not conform to the absolute purity and monolithic mercy of the New Testament God. The imagery of the devil was built upon pagan representations of spirits of nature, such as the Greek Pan and the Nordic Cernunnos. One of the names for the devil, Lucifer, derives from the name of a Roman pagan god, Lux fero, the Light Bringer.
Witches may call such entities in their rituals, but they are not calling the Christian Satan, also known as ‘the devil’. We work with entities of nature, which may represent passion, forestry, the subconscious and chaos.
Is witchcraft a religion?
For some people it is, for other is not. Many practitioners of witchcraft are agnostic. Many are pagans, especially wiccans.
The Strega Lore 