Witch Craft, The Faith For Women By Women
Witch Craft Was Once Illegal, Only Because It Empowered Women
witch
/wiCH/
- a person thought to have magic powers, especially evil ones, popularly depicted as a woman wearing a black cloak and pointed hat and flying on a broomstick
Here’s what Witch really means:
Often a woman who passes her knowledge down to her daughter, so that the legacy of KNOWLEDGE continues.
The witches have spoken, and they have chosen a theme song. I think it’s pretty apt. Thank you Paris Paloma for so beautifully describing the Hell that is life for so many women around the world.
Witches have been around since there was a word for women. We have always existed, and we are not going anywhere, the difference between now and back then is now we are globally known.
We are connected in ways we never have been before. Because of the internet covens have spurned up overnight in the millions, and sections of the internet are devoted to whole communities of witches, living in your very own backyard.
We are famous not for being witches, but for claiming that we’re sick and tired of men. No matter where you go in this world, on every continent, on every corner of this planet, you will find at least one woman, who knows how to work the land.
I have a friend whose mother is an African Healer, capital H, because it’s now finally an accepted practice of medicine, but it wasn’t always. There are things that natural African medicine can do, that scientifically one might say is impossible.
This is because witches — in general — are taught, not only to take from the land but to give back to it in as equal measure as we can.
We are taught to work with the natural forces of the universe, to receive the outcome that we deem desirable. We lean on our ancestors for support, and in return, they give us what they can do if they deem us worthy.
Now here’s where it gets complicated.
Before there were registered doctors, there was herbal medicine. Herbal medicine was practiced for centuries, eons before religion took over the planet like the disease it is, and convinced men that those who practice “Majick,” or herbal medicine, are evil, wicked, satan worshipers. Small s, because in the Craft we don’t believe Satan exists.
Not as he is taught to exist in the Roman Catholic church. In that church, Satan was once Lucifer, now deformed, Satan roams through Hell destroying the souls of those God deems worthy of punishment.
But in the craft, Lucifer is still an Angel, guiding over Hell not punishing people but watching over them until they are done punishing themselves.
Women do not “become” witches. We are born to the craft, all of us. Witchcraft is in the blood and always has been. In every corner of the world, they have a different word, for the same fucking thing.
Witch. Woman.
Men, however much you want to say so, cannot, have never been, and will never be, a “Witch”.
Much like the N-word, the word Witch is and was designed to describe a very specific group of people. Unlike the N-word, we don’t consider it an insult, but a title hard-earned.
Not every girl or woman can call themselves a witch, though many will try. People who don’t truly believe in the idea that the earth matters as a living, breathing entity, can’t be called Witches because they cannot and will not obey the basic law of the craft which is “Thou shall harm none” That includes the planet.
The animals we eat — witches, will always bless their food before they eat it, and be grateful to the universe for the plate of food given to them. Even if it’s not what they want to eat, why? because we know how easily we could be going without food at all.
The water we bathe in, the air that we breathe, the heat that warms our homes and cooks our food. All of these elements are in their ways honored and respected in a practicing Witch’s household.
We do not, however, kill animals in large groups, eat the dead animal without cooking it properly, and say that we’re doing it to “Honor the Gods.’
A true witch knows that the Gods can’t eat physical food because they’re fucking dead, dead things don’t walk the earth and they can’t eat food. They however can smell it. So sometimes we burn some shit.
Witches aren’t inherently evil, any more than your average Christian is inherently evil — actually, that’s a lie, they’re pretty fucking evil — unless you piss us off, then all bets are gone.
Witches are just average people trying to exist in a world that tells them even though they are descended from the eldest of the elders, that we do not belong here.
Much like most marginalized communities in the world, our existence is an inconvenience to those in power. Because if folks started to believe that women are just trying to exist, they’d have to start leaving us the fuck alone.
And there is nothing a white, cis man loves to do more, than harass and abuse the woman closest to him, in as many varied ways as possible.
It’s not until women are truly at their breaking point that they wake up the true witch within them, and the irony is, is that if men just left us the hell alone, we probably wouldn’t still need the craft.
But connecting to the earth and disconnecting from the humans of the world is how we refill our batteries.
Like those who pray in a church, many witches find their solace outside. Inside the trees, near the air, close to the rivers and the oceans that surround our beautiful lands.
It is in these quiet, often unseen by other human eyes, places, that we find our most safe space, and in those safe spaces, we can speak, either privately or out loud, about what we’ve been through. It’s how we connect to what was, what is, what could be, and possibly even what might be.
How could that possibly be called evil?
For thousands of years, men called us evil precisely because they decided they did not like knowing women could kill them just as easily as we could feed them. They didn’t like knowing that we were considered high and powerful, because we knew how to communicate with the earth.
So they outlawed “majick” called it evil, and said that we worship a deity most of us don't even believe in, just so they could sell their propaganda.
Meanwhile, they killed their creator’s son, named a religion after the man who ordered his death, and then pretended he didn’t, and did horrendous things in the name of their God including drinking the blood of the son they murdered.
But somehow women are evil?
From the first tribe of seers who were women, worshipped for their ability to navigate war fields better than any other, eventually these women were tied, beaten, raped, and tortured, into giving “Second sight” warnings, instead of being highly respected for their acumen.
Women were respected once until men decided that the respect women got, outweighed the respect men earned. And it was white men who decided that women and their accomplices be burned at the stake, men who could, did.
And those who remained silent, or used the witch-hunting system to murder others, are and were just as complicit.
The blood that men have soaked the earth with has taught the earth to demand blood, you’re just lucky women want respect instead of revenge.
Sending all my love,
Devon J Hall The Loud Mouth Brown Girl
