Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power (Witchcraft Bestseller)

by Pam Grossman

As with all categorical systems, interpretations of each of these terms vary, and lines between them can be blurry. Furthermore, many people are attracted to witchcraft because it is highly individualized. There is no one book or single leader or unifying set of dogmata, which means you learn as you go. You research, you experiment, and you evolve as you encounter others who have also been drawn to this path.

As with all categorical systems, interpretations of each of these terms vary, and lines between them can be blurry. Furthermore, many people are attracted to witchcraft because it is highly individualized. There is no one book or single leader or unifying set of dogmata, which means you learn as you go. You research, you experiment, and you evolve as you encounter others who have also been drawn to this path.

of Theosophy, the nineteenth-century gnostic religious movement that brought Eastern mystical thought to the West.

of Theosophy, the nineteenth-century gnostic religious movement that brought Eastern mystical thought to the West.

Yes, I’m a good witch and a good person. But I also embrace complexity. I intend to wear a black cape over my proverbial pink gown. To laugh too loud and get real mad and defend myself and the people I care about. I want more out of life than to float gently along in a bubble. I want to wear the pointy hat and the crown. To live as vividly as I can, as I am. To be wicked and winsome and wild and whole. I want to be more than either/or. But my heart’s true desire is to live in a magical land that values all of it: the goodness of Glinda, the glee of the Gulch witch, the artistry of Margaret Hamilton, and the promise of Matilda Joslyn Gage. To call that place home.

“They smelt of woods, of dark rustling woods like the wood to whose edge she came so often in the country of her autumn imagination.”

The witch’s plotlines rarely focus on the desire to be a mother. She’s busy making other things.

through our choices we meet destiny halfway.

Georgiana Houghton

So often the female sphere is overlooked, taken for granted, or considered banal. Carrington and Varo showed that the everyday tasks and arenas of the feminine sphere were actually sites of enchantment.

images of kitchens and cauldrons and laboratories and labyrinths: magical stand-ins for the metamorphic interior spaces they occupied both physically and psychically. And

She had survived such hardship, and alchemized it into beauty. And she lived to see her work be internationally

of attention and intention, discipline and devotion. The witch attempts to pull invisible forces into reality.

pity. When you send out a great call, how do you know if it is Spirit or nature that answers? Maybe there’s no difference at all. Maybe grace is green.

I felt as if my seams were being stitched back together, and old, forgotten wounds got sealed back up with honey.

Witchcraft was reframed as a practice that was alive and accessible to anyone who felt drawn to learn it.

“we . . . must be willing to examine how our own interpretations have been shaped by the limits of our vision.”

In Starhawk’s view, the witch is a being who honors all of life; therefore activism is a large component of her practice. As she sees it, witchcraft is a process of dissolving estrangement—or rather, the false idea of estrangement—from other living beings. And once you do that, you realize that taking care of others is a holy responsibility, because everything is interconnected.

the Spirit of Air in the East, the Spirit of Fire in the South, the Spirit of Water in the West, the Spirit of Earth in the North, the Spirit of the Ancestors Below, the Spirit of the Guardians Above, and the Spirit of the Center which holds Love and all of the great mysteries that transcend language.

We would end by calling the spirits in the direction opposite of that in which we had cast the circle, starting with the Spirit of the Center.

Witchcraft was a haven then, a place for me to retreat from the dizzying demands of my day-to-day. I would light my candles, check in with my deities, mark lunar and solar occasions in quiet, private ways. I’d buy bouquets of flowers to decorate my cubicle on the Pagan holy days, and save up more elaborate ritual sessions for nights and weekends when

We honor the holiness of nature, and in doing so we honor our own sense of worthiness, for we witches are part of this world.

descriptor. But no matter the fluid intentions behind it, when a person uses it to refer to herself, these days it’s more likely to be an act of self-fortification. One knowingly takes on the word with all of its terrifying history and becomes stronger and braver in doing so.

And it’s truer to life, as marginalized people have long gravitated to witchcraft because it enables them to have access to power and to be celebrated as sacred in a society that questions their worth and threatens their well-being on a daily basis.

First, the practice of witchcraft is decentralized, which is one of the reasons that so many are attracted to it in the first place.

anyone to dance to. I’ve also come to realize that the witch has a tendency to reach the ones who need to be reached, and there’s a reason her drumbeat is growing louder. I believe people need her more than ever, whether as a holy figure, a feminist statement, or a bit of frenetic fun.

metamorphosing wounds into wings.

As with most Western occult systems, modern witchcraft has always been marked by syncretism, or the merging of many cultural influences, which makes it both revolutionary and inherently problematic. It

There is a reason that the archetype of the witch resonates with those who feel different or oppressed: she is an outsider herself, after all. In declaring allegiance to her, one forges a sacred bond with anyone who has been overlooked, underrepresented, pushed aside, or cast out.

THERE ARE SO many ways to be a witch. Likewise, there are many ways to define what witches are, what they do, and what they do for us. Some people enter the witch’s world because they are turning away from something that no longer serves them, such as a religious past that they found insufficient, or a self-image that made them feel diminished or unseen.

But no matter the how of it, there is a reason why so many of us are reaching out to the witch for gratification and for guidance. She offers us a pitch-black blueprint for building alternative social structures and stronger selves. Hers is an old story that we’re retelling in order to get somewhere new. We walk through her forest of marvels and, in doing so, are made to confront our fear, our fantasies, and our faith. The path she sets is personal and different for everyone, but the destination is the same. It leads to a land of liberation, where each of us can be our most complicated and imaginative and troublesome and true.

Adler, Margot. Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America. 4th ed. New York: Penguin Books, 2006.