Year of the Witch: Connecting with Nature's Seasons through Intuitive Magick

by Temperance Alden

Intuition can be broken down into three levels: passive intuition (complete guessing), intuition (moderate intuitional awareness), and educated intuition (active intuition).

There is a sacred quality to intuitive spell crafting, a mystery or sacrament in the relationship between witches and the cosmic energies of the universe. To empower your intuition as a guide along the winding road of your practice and personal craft is to make a pact with the elements of nature so that they can be called upon whenever you are working your own personal and unique style of magick.

In The Dark Arts, Richard Cavendish writes, “In modern occultism the four elements are four conditions in which energy can exist. Fire stand[s] for electricity, air is the gaseous state, water the liquid state and earth the solid state. All things exist in one or other of these conditions, or in a mixture of them, and one condition can be changed into another.”

There is hardly anything more grounding than taking the time to walk up to a tree, putting your hand against it, closing your eyes, and taking a deep breath. By doing this simple practice, witches are able to connect with the grounding energy of the earth and feel literal mountains being lifted off their bodies and spirits.

Witchcraft is, at its heart, your strength and ability to manifest your desire with what you have right in this very moment.

A healthy mind stays rooted in what is real and processes one's thoughts and feelings without the lens of guilt that “love and light” often brings with it. Weeding the garden of our soul is time-consuming, hard, and absolutely worth the effort.

Cannabis is also related to hops (as in beer), elm (hackberry), and figs (distantly). We know that hops are good for health and wellness spells, as well as dream work. (It's also been said that hops is a good anti-aphrodisiac, but I don't know how accurate that is.) Elm is well known in love and fertility spellwork. And figs are used for divination, prosperity, fertility, and love.

Knowing that cannabis is in the Rosales order, meaning that it is directly related to roses, is a pretty good first indicator that this plant has strength in love and healing. This does not necessarily mean romantic love but can also mean self-love as well.

This is not to say that Wicca is an offshoot of the Golden Dawn, but to point out in broader terms that the founders of Wicca (specifically Gerald Gardner) used the skeleton of the Golden Dawn to create the methods for groupwork that we see throughout witchcraft today. The biggest, most visible reminder we have of these origins is the phrase “so mote it be,” which is used widely in the right hand and Wiccan communities today. This phrase is actually Freemason in origin and was adapted by Gardner into modern Wicca.

Author Ashleen O'Gaea describes Samhain as a family reunion, and I absolutely love that analogy because it simply and succinctly cuts to the core of this festival: family, spiritual connection, thanksgiving, ending, and beginning.

The Greeks and Romans kept mistletoe for its medicinal purposes, using it to treat everything from menstrual cramps to epilepsy to poison.

The Celts associated mistletoe with romance, however. Mistletoe is one of the few things that can blossom during the frozen winter months—the druids saw this as a sign. During the first century, the Celtic druids believed that the blooming of the frozen mistletoe during the harsh winter months was a secret symbol of virility and fertility.

The Norse have folklore with mistletoe as well. According to mythology, Odin's son Baldr was prophesied to die. His mother, Frigg, went to all the plants and animals of the world securing an oath that they would not harm him. She overlooked and neglected to speak with the mistletoe, so Loki, a mischiev...

If Candlemas day be sunny and bright, winter will have another flight; if Candlemas day be cloudy with rain, winter is gone, and won't come again. —proverb

Lughnasadh is not just any harvest festival; it is literally a wheat harvest, and the loaves are literally bread.

Autumn is a second spring, when every leaf is a flower. —Albert Camus

One of the elements I looked at the hardest was the wheel of the year. It didn't fit. Was I still obligated to use it to be a pagan or a witch? The answer is a resounding NO. This wheel was only created a little over sixty years ago, and you can deviate from it as much or as little as you'd like and still be a “real witch.”

Passing down traditions from one generation to the next is how the love of all of our ancestors survives.