What does it mean to be a witch?

Hi Wiccurious! I'm so happy to be back on my blog and with an important subject such as this.

Over my many years of witchcraft practice, I have come to develop my own notions regarding what being a witch means and I must mention that putting upon myself the task of summing up the complexity of our role in a short explanation is not a small endeavour.

Being a witch has so many ramifications that I will have to branch this paper into many areas to be able to cover it all.

I see our role as relevant and active in the many levels of reality, so it has deep and vast significance in the areas that I will be detailing next.

The individual level

What makes a witch a witch? That might deserve to be the title of a whole blog entry on its own but to make the answer short, what makes a witch a witch for me has to do with certain characteristics I want to share with you.

First of all, something you'll always find in a witch is power; untamable, unapologetic, evergrowing power; the kind of power that fill desire with freedom and possibilities; the kind of power that expand your lungs like a summer's breeze. No witch can carry that title with pride until they accept they like power and build their magickal practice with it.

Another characteristic intrinsical of the witch is her intuition. No magick is possible without a connection to a realm that exceeds the awareness or speed of logic. Intuition is so vital to a witch, that no practice is complete without it. Intuition is a dialogue with the ineffable, and with realms that go beyond the mundane.

Finally, on an individual level, what makes a witch a witch is cultivating the deep awareness that Nature is divine and is within us as much as it is outside and that our calling always comes from Her, she, who nurtures us all, Mother Nature.

That's why, to be a witch means accepting we want and embody power, intuition and Nature itself.

The priestess level

To be a witch is not only to guide but to teach and empower others to become witches themselves. At the same time, it means never relinquishing the role of student, and that means accepting our ignorance with responsibility and maturity so the ego won’t get in the way of becoming wiser: since, after all, in the olden days 'wica' meant "wise person".

It is to acknowledge how Nature flows through your veins with its destructive and regenerating power.

It is to understand that communication is not always verbal and it’s present in everything since we are in constant communication with the Cosmos at large.

It is to think not only on a factual but also on a symbolic level to find ever-present and primordial meanings hidden in plain sight.

The political level

On a political level, our role is not minor either. To be a witch is to build a spiritual pillar to support the restoration of a balance between the female and male forces within society and the collective. Therefore it is to defend and take part in the feminist movement, the LGBTQ+ movement and any other movement that due to oppression doesn’t have the space to explore and assert its own power and entitlement to exist.

We, the witches, the outcasts, the heathen are born to balance magickally and spiritually the domination and control that mainstreaming forces have placed as shackles upon our connection with Nature, our right to choose and our right to be heard; and because historically witches have had a very important role in supporting other women as midwives and herbalists; to be a witch means also helping women empower themselves to become the owners of their bodies and desires.

So, there is no possibility of witchcraft without rebellion, for there is no possibility of true magick without defiance of reality.

The grand scale

Almost no one better than witches knows how balance has a relevant presence on the grand scale of the Cosmos.

Many millennia ago, the human race had a magickal approach to reality. At the time, nothing was impossible, and even if we must have been at the mercy of fear and ignorance easily, we were also one step away from marvels. Those years only seem a fantasy to us now, the reality is that since then we gained a lot but we also lost a great deal.

There has been an ever-going dialectic rivalry between rationality and magick. It is the same rivalry that puts the male and female aspects of humanity as rivals and the logical and sensitive aspects as well.

I don't believe this feud is necessary and yet it's there. In reality, both aspects need each other, we need our senses, the physical, the psychical, the imaginative senses, to throw ourselves into the unknown, the "impossible", the unconscious and bring more phenomena and water to the mill of life, and we need science to explain it, to put a light in it, to bring all of it to the conscious side, not to be a gatekeeper and to determine what it's real and what is not, and yet this is the role that science has assigned to itself these past centuries.

This feud is not going to stop until we make it stop, and to do so, we don't only have to have a very clear view of what space and role belong to each side, but also, we need to reappropriate the power that hyper rationalization of reality has taken away from magick.

A world with only magick and no science, and be a very scary chaotic one, but a world where science controls the narrative it's just a world doomed to destruction because the oversaturation of technology will never produce qualitative or existential jumps that take us beyond that.

And so, magick has to explore and science has to explain, and the latter doesn't have to determine what deserves to be explained and what does not. We, the witches, the priestess, the Wiccans, comprehend the importance of reaching this balance in power, and how its restoration will take humanity a step further in a greater awareness of our union with the Universe; so it is we who hold the key to unlock it since we are not limited or bound by either science or magick and yet we understand the power of both and harness them.

The Legacy

Therefore, to be a witch to me is to leave a beautiful legacy to the world. It's to express with actions and out loud that women and matter have as much of a connection with the Divine as men and the immaterial, that there is a principle of sisterhood that unites us as much as one of brotherhood, that not only what it's perceived with the physical senses is real, that the power we hold can't be tamed and that we're not scared of fighting for what it's owed to Nature and us.

"Witches going to their Sabbath" by Luis Ricardo Falero