More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Like most women and femmes, witches are familiar with the demons of patriarchy.
Witchcraft is an act of healing and an act of resistance. Declaring oneself a witch, practicing magic, has everything to do with claiming authority and power for oneself. Life itself initiates each of us according to our own peculiar stories. Our stories lead us toward our purpose in this world. Each initiation strips something away and gives us a gift. If we want to meet our full form, we are obligated to give that gift to the world.
The Goddess pulls you under, and there you see Her face, and you know you are not alone in this world. You are a child of nature, and She will never leave you.
Witches exist throughout space and time. Witchcraft brings together the magical people throughout the world for the shared goals of justice, liberation, and celebration of the life force of the earth.
But when we’re encouraged to be rational, often we’re really being encouraged to be more individualistic. We’re being encouraged to see ourselves as separate and in competition with others. But magic is about connection, collaboration, magic is a process of bringing things together. Ultimately, magic is about love.
Hecate stands at the place where three roads converge. As the Goddess in her crone aspect, avatar of age and experience, the most existential of goddesses, she tells you, “When everything breaks, you still have choices.”
“Destroy the patriarchal hordes that have invaded your mind,” her crows were telling me. “Show no mercy. Pick the bones clean.”
Hoof and Horn Hoof and Horn All that die shall be reborn Corn and grain Corn and grain All that fall shall rise again We all come from the Goddess And to her we shall return Like a drop of rain Rolling down to the ocean4
My culture had trained me to believe that the greater your sacrifice, the greater your virtue.
out, if I stopped chanting, the dam would collapse. I’d be swept away in the freezing waters of poverty and despair.
Magic connects people to their roots, to their spiritual ancestors and allies, to the hundreds of thousands of beings who have gone before them experiencing similar struggles.
The fact that magic connects people to their power is the main reason most systems of oppression attempt to ban it.
“Stop looking for a way out of the underworld,” the Medusa told me. “Instead, start looking for a way to claim your dominion. If the Lord exiled you into the desert, the Goddess can transform that sandy wasteland back into a garden of delight.”
The moment you stop seeing yourself as a supplicant and start seeing yourself as a participant, a co-conspirator, an agent, that shift marks the moment you become a witch.
I had a demon lover once. They often appear when a witch is about to step into her full power.
My father claimed to love me, but his love was confusing and conditional, liable to be withdrawn at any moment if I didn’t concede to his demands or tolerate his frequent insults. He’d written me songs and adoring letters, praised my creativity, took me camping, made me poached eggs on toast, and bought me bouquets of flowers on every birthday, and before I’d ever even had sex, he’d yelled in my face that I was a slut
By my late twenties, I’d stopped expecting my father’s approval or even his love, but the wound was still there, whetstone and elating shame, a ferocious, needy animal scratching in the basement of my consciousness.
I proceeded this way until my pile of stones was no more; then I said his full name, shouted it into the wind, and declared with total conviction and authority: “I banish you, I release you, I sacrifice you for the greatest good of all concerned. Go with honor, go with love, be gone! Be gone! Be gone!”
ground and center, cast a circle, call in the guardians, invoke the Goddess, do the working, give offerings, thank and release the spirits, ground again.
