by Steiner Engeland

[Protection Edition] WELCOME!

Enjoy These Sweet Ass Links & Stories

Welcome to the very first ever edition of WITCHES RISE! This edition is themed PROTECTION.

I’m not going to lie to you, pretty much all of our writers wrestled with this topic as our first theme. I’m proud of what they published because they worked their witchy assess off, and I hope you’ll enjoy it (and like it, comment on it, and share it), too! You’ll know the stories under this theme because they all begin with [Protection] in the title. We’ll be including other stories as we move forward, but editions will always be labeled by theme.

We’re also publishing about a week later than I’d originally wanted to, but I realized that today couldn’t be more perfect for a publication meeting at the intersection of witchcraft and social justice: Inauguration Day. Resistance comes in so many shapes and colors, and there’s no better day to publish something resisting fascism than on the day a fascist takes the highest office in the United States. So suck this, you big orange hairball.

Here’s the lineup:

Brianna shared a spectacular reflection about the scant representations of black witchcraft and the role we Euro-descended witches we can play in protecting witches of color.

Gwynne contributed an important piece about protection in the era of the Orange-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named and his special sidekick.

Caitlin shared a delicious piece of Dia de Los Muertos fiction with us, about which, she says, “Your imagination can’t protect you from the very real, very scary circumstances that life will bring you. No matter what sort of boogeymen you dream up, real life will always find one that’s scarier.”

Jess contributed a meditation designed to draw back to ourselves some of the power that oppression or violence takes from us.

Finally, I shared a piece more about the realm of physical protection, and how simple steps towards situational awareness can make a big difference.

I’m also including a little round-up of PROTECTION-relevant links below for those of you who just can’t get enough. Thanks for visiting, loves! ❤ Please don’t forget to heart, comment, and share us with your witchy loved ones. For tips on submitting, click here!

Firstly, in honor of Brianna’s article piece and because, as a white woman witch, I need to understand and honor the needs of ALL witches, it’s important for me to add this piece by Big Liz Conjure on why black witches need safe spaces to practice. Tl;dr: because even white witches, pagans, and other occultists are still racist as fuck. We can do better, y’all. Let’s get to it.

It’s hard for many of us to imagine a society without police intervention, but there’s some information out there to have a good look at on this topic, including Chain Reaction’s Alternatives to Policing resources section and Justice in Policing’s (Policy Link and the Center for Popular Democracy) resource list. Here’s a FREE 58-page PDF toolkit from them to promote justice in policing.

Sigils are of extreme interest to me and fantastic to include for a protection-themed edition, but since I haven’t had the chance to work with them extensively enough to lend you any guidance, I wanted to include this piece by Gordon White on his Rune Soup blog. I stay away from White’s political ramblings but I love his magic theory.

I am also including this stellar 5-part ritual by GODS & RADICALS writer Christopher Scott Thompson to protect against “Night-Hunting,” and he says of it,

The ideal is to perform the ritual over and over again, so that you’re constantly renewing and reinforcing your own wards as well as striking at the forces of repression. (This ritual is not intended as a substitute for direct action in the waking world, but as a tool to help people maintain resiliency for that daily struggle.)

For my techie witches, here’s another piece by GODS & RADICALS that uses a case study to provide a “quick and dirty” protocol for communicating under an entity (such as a government) that may want to interfere in your activities.