Nowadays, you can hire someone to flip cards around, make a coin seem to appear from behind your ear, or, ironically, saw a woman in half. For entertainment. You know, for the kids.
Illusions, Michael.
I’m not dismissing magicians. Quite the opposite. I find them delightful, fun, and puzzling. It’s not dissimilar, in a way, from the type of magic I’d like to attempt to describe. It’s a practice and an art, for sure. But it isn’t witchcraft.
I’ll likely burn for this, at least in some people’s minds.
So.
Let me show you some magic.
Witches seek to know the tilt of the Earth. They speak to plants (shout-out to my rosemary plant, Rhonda. Love you, bebe). They speak to planets, far away as they are. They experiment. They create. Witches are wild and uncontrolled and weird. They come in every flavor outside the curve of the bell.
Autism, ADHD, OCD, ODD, PTSD, anxiety, depression, chronic pain (of about a hundred or so sorts), the writers, the artists, the creatives, the addicts, the decidedly different.
All witches.
Just different covens.
A brief interlude to explain.
Witches are outsiders. They (we) move in liminal spaces, a check on the course of humanity, largely unseen, certainly unrecognizable. In the space between realities, there is ritual, beauty, suspicion, curiosity, the unknown, the unknowable, valuable information, creation, obscurity, illumination.
Witches are outsiders because they think and feel differently. They might focus on a particular specialty, they may dabble in many. Their (our) magic isn’t one of tricks. It’s one of imagination, of possibility, of exploring depths, of grabbing the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth itself and rendering it more expansive.
But.
Witches are secretive, closeted, shy, coy about our magic. Because for insiders, it means ruin. We don’t want to reveal our alchemy. Except to other witches of similar magic. The insiders fear this magic.
Yet, the intent isn’t destruction. It isn’t harm or chaos for chaos’s sake. It isn’t boring defiance of the norm (although it is, at least, interesting defiance of the norm). It is keen sight into the being of humanity, wonder at the universe, and the willingness to find out.
Magic is mystery.
It’s courtship of the unknown.
Each physicist, each chemist, each biologist, each sociologist, each psychologist, each mathematician, each mechanic, each engineer, each theologian, each monk, each mystic, each poet, each philosopher, wants and needs connection to the wildness and weirdness and wonder. Witches, all.
And that’s magic.
They used to burn witches.
They still do.
But.
Most witches have been through the fire already. It’s not common knowledge. But every practitioner of magic knows it. Inside the fire, outside society. Resilience is magic.
We know the spells that allow us to burn like the sun, the magic that makes us sit with the fire of life and the difficulties and the hardships and what came before and what comes next and what happens now. Just try and burn a witch. You won’t succeed.
Our magic is cosmic.
Ad Astra per Aspera. Look it up.
Infinite diversity in infinite combination. Look that up, too.
That’s the secret.
That’s what we know.
It’s not supernatural. It’s supranatural. Nerds (I use that lovingly) who know Latin and language know that I mean that. They know it means “beyond”. Other nerds will recognize it as an obscure reference to one of my favorite books.
References aren’t the point.
They still burn witches.
And therefore, when a politician declares something— prosecution for actual crimes, an uncomfortable truth made public, an undesirable disadvantage— to be a “witch hunt”, well, frankly, it’s a bit insulting.
I’m being my most Canadian self. Sorry.
It IS insulting.
It’s a charlatan dancing around, pretending at magic. We, as a society, prefer that to witches, to the abnormal, the weird, the wonderful. It’s easier. Slap a label on and see what you want to see, hear what you want to hear, taste beige, and anyone who does or thinks or says otherwise is a heretic.
No.
Witches are the interesting ones.
They still burn witches.
The magic of difference is paramount here. The different are the most capable of noticing difference. Of holding it in safety, respect, dignity, folly, among the stars. And, sadly, sorrow. Because sorrow is intransigent to difference. The curve does not define, only attempts to explain. Magic knows the difference.
So.
Magic comes in many forms. Tabletop RPG players will recognize that I’m using verbal components. But there is kitchen witchcraft, using food as a focus. There’s movement, such as my partner’s acroyoga, which uses somatic components.
I know.
I said it’s not about references.
I may have misled.
Shush.
It’s still a secret.
But it’s a secret in another sense. We keep ourselves hidden, as humans. We say it’s a good thing. Rationalize it. Moralize it. The sorcerers, the mystics, the witches. There is no gain in revelation if it’s met with shunning.
Good news. Or, maybe, uncomfortable news. It’s probably still good for you.
We’re all magic.
The point I’m trying to make is that our differences are our magic. The carpenter, the suburban mom, the trans kid nextdoor. All magic.
And divination, specifically.
We must delve into our depths, our own mysteries, and so too with others to find magic. To waltz in the gloaming and talk to the world, and then devise spells to do it again.
And again.
And again.
You will burn, because you are a witch. A magic user. A magic haver.
They burn witches.
We burn witches.
But we don’t have to do it in the traditional way.
We can light a different fire. Fuel the spark in each other, in community. With the care and medicine and precision of a witch’s secret. With the hope of the alchemist, the love of the coven, the absurdity of not knowing and knowing too much.
