Some Thoughts on Witch Power

“outside the bounds of modern Neo-Paganism, witchcraft is NOT about Goddess or God, seasonal celebrations, procuring a good harvest, reliving the past, dancing in a cloak while drinking wine or wearing flowers in your hair or even necessarily about being Pagan. Witchcraft is about sovereignty.”

In a Facebook group someone posted a picture of Besom Stang & Sword by Christopher Orapello and Tara-Love Maguire, with the above quote. I can’t speak on the book as I have not read it. I believe in historical witchcraft more so than modern Neo-Pagan and social aesthetic forms of witchcraft, but I’m not really tied into the trad-craft movement. That said, I do like some trad-craft writers and approaches. I’ve heard enough good things about Besom Stang & Sword that I am curious to read it.  

This particular quote – which again I cannot attest from the book but rather from the forum; leaves room for discussion. It certainly drew some interesting responses in the forum.

The first individual suggested that the word sovereignty was a biased and Christian view. I think maybe she did not understand what sovereignty means on an individual basis…or that they were speaking of witchcraft outside of the context of NeoPaganism, and thus historically that might also include Christians.

One person dismissed any book that would use the term NeoPaganism, because the term seems “dictatorish” (sic).

Others seemed to view witchcraft along the lines of modern ceremonial magic – a path to enlightenment and the spiritual pursuit of the higher self. In fact, that seemed to be predominant. Most did not like the idea of witchcraft as a means of power. Some felt that you would grow past the desire for power. Others felt that witchcraft is humbling and would teach you not to seek power. Some said it is not a path of power at all but only one of wisdom and harmony.

Some people today say that the revival authors and the NeoPagans of the 60s and 70s reclaimed the word witch, but you can’t reclaim that which was never yours. They’ve stolen and abused the word and left us with these sad, weak, and uneducated points of view.

The only comment I responded to was one which suggested that witchcraft was the birthright of all mankind. I responded that this position was directly in opposition to all historical meanings of the word witchcraft. But I should further point out that this powerlessness is also antithetical to the idea of witchcraft. In modern parlance we view witchcraft to be witchery, the things done by witches. People who can’t quite figure out what a witch is say that a witch is someone who does witchcraft…a rather meaningless definition due to its circular quality. Historically Kraft was not science, or a skilled knowledge, Kraft was power or force. Witchcraft is the power that a witch has to work magic. Witchcraft is inherently about power.   

I am not in the habit of saying a witch must be this or that. Witchcraft is not a system but rather a state of being and something possessed of one in that state of being. Historically there is a quality of antagonism associated with the witch. Modern writers have said that witchcraft is a recourse to power for the powerless. Historically this is well supported. So, the idea that witchcraft is not a path for power cuts away its teeth and turns its back on its history. It takes away from the important place witchcraft has had in mankind’s experience.

We truly need to turn from this silliness.

I was not intending to focus on that, but rather write a short post on the quoted passage, so I will turn to that.

In saying that witchcraft outside of NeoPaganism is not about a God and Goddess, or nature worship or creative anachronism, but rather about sovereignty, I must agree that this statement is 100% correct.

Even with it being 100% correct I’d say it’s not 100% complete. But then why should a quote out of context be 100% complete? I thought perhaps people’s hesitance to agree with it would be because they needed more than sovereignty to define witchcraft, but as we’ve seen it’s because the people reading the quote didn’t know what witchcraft is. Still, let’s look at some of what else there can be. I think sovereignty is important and can be expanded but it isn’t what I’d center a definition of witchcraft around.

Sovereignty is important. Being able to be effective as a witch involves being self-determined, I’d like to say also being self-possessed but that’s not exactly right. A witch should have a certain hold on their own being and an acceptance of their own character and selfhood, but the calmness and emotional stability implied by being self-possessed aren’t necessary. In fact, a turbulent spirit might be a more natural quality.

A witch needs to feel and know that they are ruled by their own power and have the awareness that they might stand against a sea of disagreeing powers, but that only their power and determination for themselves matter; they will either change the sea, or navigate the sea until they reach their own end.

More than this sovereignty, which arises in part from power, I would say otherness and liminality are the central qualities of witchcraft. These natures provide access to the power to be sovereign. Existing in a liminal state of being is central to the power we call witchcraft. A witch is tied to spirits in such a way that the witch stands between the world of man and the world of spirits. Historically witches were often described in an otherworldly way somewhere between mankind and spirit-kind. Inhabiting this state more fully empowers a witch’s relationship with the spirits with whom they will work. This liminality also allows the witch to be the crux of change in the magic they work. Existing liminally the witch’s heart is like the crossroads and so possibility flows through. Along with possibility the thing to be changed, the force of change, the state of what is, and the possible ways that it may come to be, may all simultaneously be held by the witch until they allow one road to arise.

With this liminality comes otherness. The witch is separate, but at the same time able to intimately connect because of this separateness. The witch is other from the average man, but also other from the spirits. The witch is outside the norms which create boundaries because the liminality creates a different relationship to boundary. Consider anyone who is by their nature a witch and you will see the influence of these qualities upon them and their life. These qualities give rise to witch-power because they are the basis and nature thereof.  

Ultimately, a witch is sovereign to be who they choose to be. Their quantum relationship to boundaries and borders, to normalcy and otherness give them a fluidity to be who they choose and at once to be many different things. With that in mind, rejecting modern pigeonholing – both that of the NeoPagan priests of nature and humble servants of wisdom crowd, and that of the re-wilding witchcraft politically charged seekers of antedeluvian freedom; is welcome, because witches don’t fall into pigeon holes; witches rise powerfully in what manner they choose, from what place they choose into whatever venue they choose.  

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In A Word? A Witch

“The obiya is a forest power. It is also a sorcerous gift and somehow different from genuine ‘witchcraft’ that is focused on transmission through blood, while obiya is transmitted by through breath and spirit. Hence you can find the ‘witch-blood’ in vessels void of understanding its own blood, as you are born with it, but it is not like this with a sorcerous transmission as you have to receive it. There is great truth in a saying like “A witch is born, a sorcerer is made” and because of this a sorcerer can strictly speaking be ‘unmade’, while a witch cannot really be ‘unborn’ as such.” - Nicolaj de Mattos Frisvold

I've seen a few conversations online lately about more clearly defining what is and what isn't a witch. People seem to finally be done with the silly idea that we can't define a word and that anyone who wants to call themselves a witch can be one. Clearly that's not how words work.

Unfortunately, no one is defining it the way Nicolaj Frisvold is, despite his being the accurate view historically. People are comfortable with the Neo-Pagan point of view popularized in books from the 60's up through today. But we know a lot more about magic now, and we know a lot of what came from the occult revival, and from Gardner, and from the growth of NeoPaganism is incomplete. We know we need to move away from a lot of the practices and ideas popularized in those movements. There's good stuff there that we need to keep, but we need to critically review what's there and let go of what's not tenable. Like the idea that witch is about some sort of feminine empowerment, or worshiping the god and goddess of nature, or drum circles.

People claim we can't look at historical evidence about witches because Inquisitors were mysogynists and medieval people believed things we take as nonsensical. But the wrongheadedness of some people who used the word witch doesn't mean witch had no meaning until we assigned it a new one. People say we can't take historical meanings of the word witch because witches were supernatural monsters, I say you can't be a witch if you're not a supernatural monster. If we don't want what the word meant, worts and all why would you want the word at all? There are so many other things we as modern magicians can call ourselves other than witches, words which are more accurate, so why do we need the word witch?

Witchcraft is only a part of what I do. It's not the main thing I spend my time on. But it's been part of it since the beginning. I accept the word, as one of several that describe me, because when my mom was four years old, she was routinely locked in a closet by a woman who was punishing her for being born a witch. And while she wasn't happy when my dad tried to introduce magic to their relationship early on, because she rejects her magic, both of my parents shared things that helped me develop magically as a child. I dismiss the popular view that says that people want to claim to be born witches because they want to be special. My mom didn't want to be born a witch and doesn't want to be a witch. I personally think my upbringing doesn't make a great “old gramma tale” and is pretty boring, in fact I grew up assuming everyone was taught the same stuff as a kid. Most of my magic comes from hard work and study. And my sister readily admits that she didn't do anything with familial witchcraft, which is a good example of how being born with something doesn't matter if you don't do anything with it. It's like being born left handed, or with natural musical talent, it's one of many traits, that may or may not result in something.

When I got into magic, a lot of the serious, knowledgeable, successful magicians I know were from families that held a belief in witch blood. None of them were people who needed to claim witch blood to legitimize themselves. They were all pretty awesome without it. Most of them only talked about it in private. In fact, that's part of why I'm making this post. Well, for one, yesterday was Halloween. For two, I was having a conversation with a friend and my view on traditional witchcraft came up. I ended up getting a lot more detailed into my point of view and into my own experiences, and those of my friends, than I normally would. I still don't intend to get to detailed about myself or my family or my friends here. But I do want to present in detail my view of what a witch is.

Historically, there are a couple ways to become a witch. There are the fully supernatural varieties, like Circe, where they are semi-divine figures. There are also the fully supernatural ones that we often see in tribal stories where the witch is something of an evil sorcerer but is often described almost as if it is some sort of malevolent fairy or spirit creature. We also see historically ones that are a little more tenable. Witches are often born as witches. Either through some circumstance of the timing of their birth, or coincidental occurrences that make them a witch, or based on some familial element such as birth numbering or simply being born into a family of witches. This idea of being born a witch plays out in folklore with witches being born with unusual or particular physical features.

We also have stories of people encountering a faery or spirit and that faery or spirit offering to serve as a familiar spirit as part of some deal. The spirit performs magic for the witch and teaches them witchcraft. In modern pop culture we see this playing out in The VWitch with Black Phillip.

In stories of conspiratorial witchcraft, or witchcraft involving covens we see a different sort of pact. Witches meet the black man in the forest, who incidentally is very similar to spirits described in some forms of sorcery. Der Teufel is cast as Satan in the witch trial transcripts, but we can find non-Satanic antecedent figures who fit this shadowy spirit who teaches magic, grants power, and binds familiars in various magical and religious systems.

In history though, the witch is a witch because of birth or because of a spirit contract. Not because they just decide they're a witch, or because they dance under the full moon and love the earth.

What do witches do? Well, in Thessaly, they mostly did black magic and necromancy. Again, there seems to be some overlap between the Witch and the sorcerer, but they're also not precisely the same. The witches trace back to figures like Circe and Medea, the semi-divine witches of the silver age and so they seem to avoid some of the problems associated with necromancers, while still being characters treated pretty unsympathetically.

In more positive Mediterranean depictions, and in later folklore and in trial confessions witches seem to also do stuff that looks like folk magic and pretty standard sorcery. They don't sing about reincarnation at drum circles, and reclaim their person-hood with pearl pentacle rituals. Sometimes they do things for the good of the people in the community, sometimes they do things for themselves, sometimes those things are pretty neutral or positive looking, sometimes they're pretty awful looking, like Isobel Gowdie and her friends killing all the children of an unjust land owner. In general it looks like witches in history did what they needed to do, or what they wanted to do without considering anything other than their own view on what they should and shouldn't do.

I think this to me gets to one of the most important parts of the witch. This is one that we see in the character of the witch in stories, and fairy tales, and in my own experience what I've seen of real witches. The witch is more than anything else an example of Otherness. The Other represents an individual or idea that stands outside the cultural norm and is potentially disruptive to that norm. The Other is by its nature transgressive and when approached correctly there is power in that transgressive nature. Alternatively the witch could be described as Queer. In cultural and queer studies otherness is often associated with homosexual figures. In our concept Queer doesn't necessarily mean homosexual, but more so “blurry” or something which is between various potentialities and is able to move between them and inhabit them as they choose to. This ability to choose, to navigate, to inhabit more than one space at once is a key to the witch's power.

This Otherness addresses also the difference in modality between a witch's magic and other systems of magic. Based on what we've touched on so far, witchcraft involves sorcery and folk magic, necromancy, work with fairies and nature spirits, and magic taught to the witch by spirits. There is also an intuitive element. This is actually how I got to discussing witchcraft with my friend the other day, as the place of intuition in learning magic came up. I think it has a higher place in witchcraft than in other systems, where magic is more learned and studied. A witch, by virtue of being a liminal creature by nature can explore the spaces between potentialities within his or her own liminal state, and this gives a certain access to magical awareness, and is likely why being born a witch historically is associated with being born with the Sight. A witch also works magic through connecting with the natural world, not to worship or honor it, but to move and manipulate it through that connection. Similarly bewitching animals and people is based on this connection and internal multiplicity.

The word witch does not come from a word meaning “wise one” but rather a word meaning “to bend.” A witch is a bender. This multiplicity and the ability to self select ones state of being is the operant element of witchcraft outside of what it shares with other systems of magic. The witch joins him or herself to the object they wish to bewitch or shape, and the witch changes so that the thing being spelled also changes. This isn't, in my experience, how most systems of magic work. When I was about 4, and then again at 6, the first couple pieces of magic my father taught me were based on this. He didn't describe it in this way, he simply explained how to lock someone into you (create a connection) by looking at them, and then how to control them based on how you felt inside (bend and bewitch). As a boy I didn't think of this as “magic” or “witchcraft” or anything other than just stuff dad's teach their kids. But as I hit my twenties and began to refine my idea of witchcraft from talking with familial witches, and then studying under one, it became evident that the difference between witchcraft and other systems I was learning was that a witch engaged in activities to, as my teacher called it, “become a good animal” or return to a state of being connected with the natural world, so that they could shape themselves in a way which would result in changes in the world around them.

So in short, in my mind, if you're a witch, you're born a witch. Either because you had witches in your family, or because of some special thing that happens with your birth. This idea isn't even foreign to Neo-Paganism, Gardner had to prove witch blood to join the coven he was in before he started Wica. Sybil Leek's coven worked the same way. The handful of pre-Wica covens out there seemed to include proving a witch ancestor as a standard. If you're not born a witch but wish to be one, you might also become a witch by making a deal with a fairy, tossing a toad skeleton in the river, or going to a tree at a crossroads in the night and making a deal with the Black Man who encounters you there. The last of these seems to be the easiest and most common. Once you become a witch, you consort of the dead, maintain business relationships with underworld gods, talk to nature spirits, fairies, and potentially other sorts of demons on the regular, and do folk magic and sorcery. Most importantly, you become something which isn't what everyone else is, something liminal and queer, and you use that transgression not to empower yourself, but to have power over other things around you.