Initiated: Memoir of a Witch

by Amanda Yates Garcia

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.

Women in Northern Europe probably stopped calling themselves witches around the same time you could have your tongue ripped out for saying you were one. So instead, my mother called herself an activist when I was a child. Years later, she told me that she saw activism and witchcraft as two parts of the same practice: devotion to the Goddess.

Children don’t just believe in magic; they live it. Early child psychologists like Bruno Bettelheim were convinced that children are by nature animists. Children see the sun, the moon, the rivers, the animals, the trees, and the stones as alive and full of intelligence. Everything that moves is alive, and everything moves. Atoms buzz, the planets spin. Nothing is still. Every bit of the universe vibrates with Spirit.

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.

We live on haunted land, in a haunted world. Conquistadors and colonizers spilt the native people’s blood; dark deeds haunt the lineage of many white American families.

A well-known axiom of witchcraft is called the Threefold Law: what you do comes back to you three times over. Actions have consequences. But even a brief study of history demonstrates that though all events have consequences, it’s rarely the aggressor who has to face the worst of them.

The Threefold Law of witchcraft is less a description of a universal truth and more a statement of intention: a commitment to living AS IF your actions will come back to you. A commitment to holding your own pain and transmuting it into something that leaves the world better than you found it. A witch is an agent; with her community, she takes responsibility for her own pain, her own experience, we take responsibility together. Witches use magic to compost suffering into something nourishing, something that brings the world around us to life. Of course, this intention is an ideal; not even the most powerful witches I know are able to behave according to the Threefold Law all the time. One isn’t born knowing how to do this work, but if we show up with courage, sometimes our guides and teachers emerge from unexpected places.

By transforming our perceptions, we transform our world. We tend to think of magic as hair-of-bat potions and anointed candles, when in reality magic is a shift in perception that allows us to open up new worlds, new possibilities for our lives. It wasn’t that other people’s beliefs changed me as a child; it was that suddenly, their encouragement made me believe in myself. That belief in myself changed me so profoundly it rewired my brain. Magic works.

For many of us, self-administered, drug-induced initiation ceremonies are the best we can manage as we fumble toward spiritual awakening, even when mentorship in these processes is what we need most of all. We look around and can’t find anyone we trust to help us; without elders to look to for guidance, it’s easy to get lost.

Rebelling, choosing the life of the artist, outsider, or witch, causes many hardships. So much self-doubt. But then there are moments like this. Moments of such raw and spontaneous beauty, when you feel like you’re living the way humans were intended, in joy, in freedom. And it seems worth it then. No other life seems possible.

Empathy is a spell that creates intimacy and connection, a free exchange of information. Protection spells are sometimes necessary, but their objective is to keep things out. Create peace, and protection becomes less necessary.

Art is magic because it makes the things we imagine visible to us; it pulls them into material reality and changes the way we experience the world.

In order to enter a ritual space, a space between the worlds, you need to cross a threshold; even if it’s subtle, something has to happen that signals something outside the ordinary is about to happen. Changing the way our body moves through space can initiate a change in consciousness.

When it comes to magic, for me it’s less a question of belief and more a question of value. Magic is a practice, not a belief system. Rather than asking, “Do I believe in this?” I ask myself, “Do I get something out of this? Is it meaningful to me? Is it helpful?” When it comes to magic and witchcraft, most always, my answer is: YES.

We light candles and anoint them with oils. We enter the realm of magic, and fresh possibilities for my clients’ lives begin to emerge. In magic is comfort and power. Both spring from the fertile earth of care.

Practicing ritual together strengthens the bonds of our community. We empower each other. We stand together, arm in arm, breath mixing, declaring our support for one another, collectively addressing our grievances, in recognition that we are not alone. We are not just isolated individuals struggling to stay afloat in a system that dictates to us the terms of how we should live and thrive. We are not merely objects acted upon by outside authorities. When we come together, we do more than resist. We create connection. We create healthier ways of living together on our planet. We create love.

The goddess within us goes underground, and in that dark, she grows and changes, until she bursts forth and becomes the tree that bears her own fruit. Our initiations are not the end. Our initiations mark a beginning. In the story of our species, and the story of our lives, our initiations come again and again, like waves. Our sorrows initiate us into the cult of the mysteries. They humble us before the power of the life force, the Goddess herself. However they find us, our initiations lead us into the underworld, where we witches, priestxsses, and magical beings are keepers of the seeds. In winter the gardens die, but in the spring they are reborn.

We are the trees in Her sacred grove. We are Her seeds that grow. And now, we rise. Now we sing our songs, we pour our libations, we dance our dances, we make love in the fields, we link our arms, we stand together, we refuse to be dragged from the protest, we storm the prisons, we jam the phone lines, we tie ourselves to the trees of knowledge, we protect those trees, we eat their fruit, we plant their seeds, we march in the streets, we love, we resist, we re-enchant the world.