Meet the Village Witch: Part 1

Finding the Village and Cultivating Awareness

“Village Witch” is a descriptive term that pretty much says it all. However, the journey of every person who embraces village witchery is a unique one that has to be understood on its own terms for each individual practitioner. We have to define what a Witch is, and what particular village they are showing up for. These questions are intrinsically tied to the identity and story of the Witch. In countries like Ireland, Witches were often important parts of their communities, and were supported by them in exchange for important goods and services. In our modern world of loneliness-producing faux connectivity, where do we find our village? For me, the answer is in my values. My village is anyone who wishes to develop themselves, and make the world a kinder place, specifically for those who are most at risk. A society’s value is determined by how well it cares for those most vulnerable. The most salient tool in getting us to vulnerability is awareness, and awareness starts at home.

My Journey to Authenticity

My own journey of awareness started as a child living in rural Alabama as the son of a conservative United Methodist Minister. The sense of social responsibility instilled in me as a child led me to eventually reject the teachings of Christianity as propagated by the contemporary church, and led me to Witchcraft as my spiritual home. Within Witchcraft I found teachings of balance with the natural world, with myself, and with others. The Pagan worldview invited me into a way of living that sough harmony and community, rather than antagonism and subjugation. After the September 11th Attacks in 2001, my father decided that it was his calling to join the Navy as a chaplain to further his Christian nationalist ideology. This backfired quite spectacularly, as it exposed me to several ways of being that I would have never known of in the Deep South. While living overseas, at age 10, I consciously understood that I had an interest in Pagan spirituality. The best I could find was a book of fortune telling stories in the naval base’s elementary school library, which had a small page on cartomancy using a standard deck of 52 playing cards. While my parents were less than thrilled, I continued to study in private, and ritually dedicated myself to the Pagan path in secret at age 14. 

I continued reading as much as I could about Paganism and Witchcraft over the next six years, until I was initiated into my first coven. What a wakeup call that was! I was practically still a child, and had not yet done the work to understand that religion and spirituality did not present a panacea for all ills. My initial missteps led me to try a few different philosophies as a younger person, but I eventually made it back to what made sense for me: Witchcraft. My curiosity had led me to formally study religion at Harvard Divinity School by that point, and serendipity led me to the man I consider my teacher and spiritual father. During my apprenticeship with him, I learned many things both endemic to Witchcraft, and to just being a good person. In truth, he finished raising me and helped me to start the real work of decolonizing my mind, body, and spirit.

The Label Buffet—Defining Witchcraft

That’s, how I got here, but what is Witchcraft, after all? The broader community seems to only agree on one thing: a Witch is someone who practices Witchcraft. Witchcraft is a nuanced term that spans several cultures and has diverse meanings. If I were to exhaust my options on the spiritual label buffet, then I would describe my practice as contemporary Pagan traditional religious initiatory Witchcraft. Let’s look at the nutrition data on those labels. 

Label One: Contemporary Pagan

Contemporary Paganism is what the cool kids call what used to be Neopaganism. Most of us, though, are fine simply being called Pagan. The history of the word Pagan is sometimes contested. I first encountered the term as a child while watching a ghost hunting show that erroneously asserted that “Pagans were an ancient order.” The word “order” is taking it a bit far, and there was certainly no unified complete system of “Pagandom” in antiquity. To my knowledge, it has been universally accepted that the English word Pagan comes from the Latin word “paganus.” It has been debated whether it signifies backwards country dwellers resistant or antagonistic to Christianity, or those who prefer the ways of the pagus, which is what the Romans called local government bodies rooted in pre-Christian traditions. Ronald Hutton asserted the scholarship claiming the word’s relation to the ways of the pagus, rather than the pejorative usage denoting uneducated rustics, has been widely accepted. I like this definition, and feel it describes the character of my own practice well. It’s much more palatable than other definitions that reek of white men explaining other cultures to themselves without belonging to them or their traditions. While I was spiritually nurtured in the Minoan Brotherhood, an American Witchcraft tradition that works with Bronze Age Aegean deities, I have come to view my personal Paganism as a method of place-based consciousness that helps me to ground myself in my current time, environment, and society. I am personally uncomfortable with the pejorative use of the word pagan (little “p”) to describe any person not practicing Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, which is strange since all those religions have used the word to describe each other at some point or other. For that reason, I refuse to take parts of living practices, like Hinduism or Native American religion, and incorporate them into my practice. I don’t feel I have the right to take practices I have not been invited into.

Label Two: Tradition

There was a time when “traditional” was used widely within the Pagan community as a signifier of authority and claim that practices originated from an unquestionable source. The term has changed and become a bit more complicated. When someone uses the term “traditional” these days, they often mean the folkloric craft of people like Andrew Chumbley, which was called by him Sabbatic Craft. Lee Morgan is a current author, though there are many others, who carry the legacy of folkloric Witchcraft forward. I don’t think the term “traditional” belongs to any one style of Witchcraft, and I don’t think that most reasonable people would make that argument. I like descriptive terms that tell me something about what a practice actually is, so I like the term “folkloric” for types of Witchcraft based in folklore and mythology of a specific region as carried through folk memory, though there is certainly more to it than that. When I say I am a traditional Witch, what I mean is that I was trained in a way that was organized to be passed, was passed to me by a teacher with the authority to do so, and who stewarded me through life and spiritual milestones in this way. A tradition is simply a method of passing what one knows in a way that preserves its authenticity, whatever that may mean for its context.

Label Three: Religion

The word “religion” has become a malevolent specter in our society. We have to decolonize our language in order to embrace it as a useful term. There’s no doubt about it: religion has been used to justify every crime under the sun. Western culture, indeed much of the world, is still in the hangover of Roman colonization and its use of Christianity for subjugation. It has become a word in popular culture that takes on too many meanings to cover here. I embrace the term religion akin to its original context as something that connects us to each other. Victor Turner used the Latin term communitas, meaning community, to describe this on the grounds that the term “community” could apply to secular as well as sacred contexts. In our current age of dis-ease, in which loneliness is killing us, any genuine community is sacred, as it can save our lives. Often, however, when people hear the word “religion,” as Margot Adler noted, they mean the religion that they are familiar with. Therefore, for many of us, “religion” means “the way humans justify abuse using the divine.” The way I use the word is perhaps closer to how Brené Brown defines the term “spirituality.” Her definition includes the sentiment that we are all connected by something greater than ourselves. Seeking external validation, though, can discount the divine within ourselves. Each of us contains divine essence, so I would say rather that we are all connected by the divine spark that is at the center of who we are. Another issue is that the crimes laid at the feet of religion are often perpetrated by a dangerous cult or an institutionalized (not organized) religion. Organization is necessary for survival, from the simplest single cell organisms to the most complex lifeforms. After all, if we weren’t organized, how would we know who was bringing wine for ritual, or who was putting together a casserole for after? An institution, however, seeks to consolidate power, and will often stamp out any dissent with extreme prejudice. “Religion,” when applied to my practice, describes connection and community that is organized for practicality’s sake, and privileges the sovereignty of every person participating.

Label Four: Initiation

As per the theme you have noticed thus far, defining initiation is complicated and nuanced. What I present here is based on my personal experience in an initiatory tradition. To initiate means to start, so initiation is the process of starting. Starting what, though? In initiatory Witchcraft, the answer is connection to Mystery. Mystery is the pre-verbal or non-verbal experience of direct contact with the rhythms of the universe, which humanity personifies as deity. For further reading, I recommend Seeking the Mystery by Christine Hoff Kraemer. Since initiation seeks to put one in direct experience with the divine, rather than using an intermediary, it is inherently mystical. Initiation often takes the form of a ritual or ceremony performed by a person or group in order to admit someone into that group’s particular way of understanding the Mysteries, but can also come directly from life experience or deity. A Witchcraft initiation has been described as one of the most beautiful experiences people can go through, and also as a signal to the universe that the initiate is empowered to receive experiences from the universe that will result in the development of wisdom. Therefore, initiation is an experience that intentionally opens one to the subtle reality of life that manifests as Mystery.

Label Five: Witchcraft

Perhaps just as contentious as the word “religion,” we now come to our fifth label. Witchcraft has several complimentary meanings and etymologies. Christopher Penczak notes that the overculture (the dominant cross-section of society) sees Witchcraft as outdated superstition. Sometimes it is even thought of as dangerous, being incorrectly linked to Satanism and its ilk. To the accusation that a person practicing Witchcraft is living in the past, let me ask: When was Jesus born? About 2,000 years ago. The Buddha? About 2,500 years ago. Abraham? Far longer than that. Why is it then, that Witches are accused of living in the past? To speak to claims of Satanism, I am a Pagan. Popular culture’s view of Satan is a Christian invention, and honestly comes more from Paradise Lost than strict Biblical sources. Satan comes from a completely different tradition than mine, and is not part of any of my beliefs. Witchcraft comes from the old English word Wicca or Wicce (pronounced witch-ah or witch-eh) to denote a wise man or woman, respectively. In its verb form, it also means “to bend.” Wicca has come to be pronounced “wick-ah,” denoting both the popular understanding of religious Witchcraft and the oathbound Mystery traditions of Gerald Gardner, Alex Sanders, and their direct descendants. When I call myself a Witch, I mean that I am a person who seeks to cultivate wisdom, and to shape reality through good deeds, thoughts, and actions. That is the basis of Witchcraft, which is both a tradition of Mystery and wisdom. 

Onward, ho!

In Part 1 of Meet the Village Witch, I briefly discussed my own personal journey to Witchcraft, and how I have come to think of my practice. In Part 2, I’ll delve into village and community. After all, what is a Village Witch without a village?