Witch: a Magickal Journey: A Guide to Modern Witchcraft
Copyright
Thorsons
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published as
Witch: A Personal Journey &
Witch: A Magickal Year
Random House, Australia 1998, 1999
This combined edition first published by Thorsons 2000
This 20th Anniversary Edition published 2017
FIRST EDITION
Text © Fiona Horne 1998, 1999, 2000, 2017
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
Fiona Horne asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780008265144
Ebook Edition © August 2017 ISBN: 9780008268190
Version 2017-07-18
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Foreword
Spelling It Out
Read This First!
Which Witch Is Which?
The Herstory of Witchcraft
Witches’ Britches
Witchy Style and When to Take Your Clothes Off!
This Goes with This and That Goes with That
All You Need to Make Your Own Spells
Is It a Bird? Is It a Snake? No, It’s My Familiar!
Magickal Animal Partners
This Is the Place to Be and I’m in It
Magickal Hotspots
Spell Boundaries
Casting Circles and Making Your Own Sacred Space
Altar-ed States
Setting Up Your Own Altar
Seven Days to a Magickal New You!
A Magickal Makeover
Having Your Wicca’d Way
Spells to Sort You Out
The Labyrinth of Love
How to Find Your Way In and Out
Bitchcraft
Hexing, Psychic Attack and Protection
Cosmetic Conjurings
Making Your Own Witchy Cosmetics
Divine Dealings
Getting a Grip on the Past, Present and Future
Bed, Knobs and Broomsticks
Magickal Sex
Flying High
Magickal Drugs
Cyber-Sorcery
Making Magick with Your Computer
Spin That Wheel!
The Wiccan Wheel of the Year
Days of Our Lives
Witchy Days Throughout the Year
The Witches Are All Rite!
Celebrating the Life of a Witch
Gobbledy-Gook!
Unusual Words and Terms
The Library
For the BookWitch!
About the Publisher
BLESSED BE
My heartfelt thanks go to:
My special friend Liam Cyfrin. I couldn’t have written this book without his advice and Witchy insights.
The brilliant girls, Tracey Shaw and Lauren O’Keefe, who not only do a magnificent job of running my website (www.fionahorne.com) but are also good friends!
All the wonderful Witches who shared their stories with me.
All the generous people who took the time to write in to my website and who sent me letters offering their comments and support.
My gorgeous friends and family who supported me during the writing of this book.
My awesome management team in London – Terry Blamey and Alli Macgregor, and in Australia – Melissa LeGear, Justin McNeany and Rochelle Nolan.
And, last but not least, the spunky team at Thorsons, especially Louise, Joanna, Jo, Jessica, Karen, Paul and Meg.
Foreword
The journey of this book began 20 years ago in Australia – the world was different then. Witches were still cloaked in fear, suspicion and myth. Now, in these ‘woke’ times, who doesn’t know a proud, self-professed Witch?
I’m grateful that this book has stood the test of time, being re-released in this 20th Anniversary Edition. I hope it is useful to you, whether you are new to the Craft of the Wise, or a devout practitioner looking to refine and deepen your skills.
Witchcraft is a spiritual path – it welcomes all seekers.
Enjoy your journey.
Blessed Be,
Fiona Horne
May 2017
www.fionahorne.com
Spelling It Out
READ THIS FIRST!
Some say that you have to be born a Witch – a Witch cannot be ‘made’. I disagree. In our society, where the majority of alternative spirituality is hushed or treated with derision and scepticism, it can be hard to hear your inner calling.
I spent most of my teenage years as a practising Catholic, going to Mass every Sunday with my parents and attending a Catholic girls-only high school. At times I found comfort in the rituals that many people of all faiths reduce their religion to. It was pleasant to think that all I had to do was be good and I would go to heaven, and that the only spiritual responsibility I had in my life was to obey the Ten Commandments.
When I was thirteen I had a favourite nun, Sister Geraldine, who taught at my high school – she was tough and cool and didn’t take crap from the school heavies. She told me one lunchtime that she’d never had a boyfriend in her life, that she’s always loved God and He’d always loved her back, and she always felt happy and good about herself. I was in High School Hell at the time, no girlfriends, no boyfriend, constant fighting at home, and in her words I saw freedom from the depressing nightmare my life had become. So, I decided to become a nun.
I started to read the Bible and educational books about the Catholic faith but I found so many contradictions and disempowering female stereotypes, that instead of my usual attitude of blind acceptance – of having faith – I started to question everything spiritual I’d been brought up to believe. The deeper I delved into the religion the stranger it seemed to me, being made mostly of legends and unexplained laws, yet demanding absolute faith in these stories and rigid adherence to the rules. I listened to the sermons preached from the pulpit and became more and more convinced that the Catholic faith was not for me.
I started to look for alternatives. The most obvious one to an angry, rebellious thirteen-year-old who didn’t want to be Catholic any more was Satanism. So I went to the library and discovered the tacky fiction writer, Dennis Wheatley. All his books featured demons and evil witches, Satanic sabbats, sex and death. This all seemed quite thrilling at the time and I happily lit black candles in my bedroom, said the Lord’s Prayer backwards and read the Malleus Maleficarum under my sheets at night by the light of a torch. However, rather than becoming seduced by black magic, I became depressed with its banal, cruel and perverse obsessions and my interest waned. About the same time my attractiveness to boys increased and not long after discovering Satanism I discovered boys, and they were to occupy my every waking thought for the next few years of high school.
Later in my teens, having established my independence by leaving home and getting a job, I started thinking about my spirituality again. It was now the 1980s and the New Age movement was exploding. Lots of books on alternative spirituality started to appear and I got swept up by the ‘positive thinking’ brigade. I bought books on affirmations and personal healing by Louise Hay and books on manifesting pleasing things in my life – like Shakti Gawain’s Creative Visualisation. If anything bad happened in my life I would focus on the positive and attempt to think only happy and constructive thoughts. Consequently I felt frustrated and let down when I wasn’t always able to avoid unpleasant experiences and it became quite a struggle to stay positive all the time. My wholesome interest in the New Age mutated into scepticism.
Some of the New Age books I read over my late teens mentioned the word ‘paganism’ and I strongly identified with its concept of living close to the land, being environmentally responsible and finding divinity in Nature. So I became a vegan, avoiding all animal products in my life, including leather and honey, and recycling everything that I could. As I read more books I started feeling drawn to those that had that mysterious and exotic word ‘witchcraft’ in them. At first I thought I was going to be inundated with Satanic scare stories again, but instead I was excited to find a documented nature-worshipping religion that placed great emphasis on the sacredness of the individual and the land.
For a while I browsed through these books finding all the terminology and rigmarole a bit off-putting – but then one day I saw Ly Warren-Clarke’s The Way of the Goddess (now published as Witchcraft – in Theory and Practice) and my life changed. Here was a book about Witchcraft, or more specifically, Wicca, that was both easy and thrilling to read, and I realized that all along I had been a Witch, even since those early naïve days of Satanism. Here was a religion that made sense: it was dynamic and logical, loving and responsible, sensuous and holy.
I felt very attracted to the fact that Wicca acknowledges many different Goddesses and Gods, but most importantly, recognizes that they can exist within the individual, not in the sky out of our reach. In fact, the Craft doesn’t provide answers as to what the Goddesses and Gods actually are, but emphasizes that whichever way the individual relates to them is the right way for her/him. I have always felt that the Gods and Goddesses do not exist in their own right but are projections of our consciousness.
Over the ages humans have created deities to teach us about ourselves. In Witchcraft ritual I treat the Goddesses and Gods as if they are real and I do feel I commune with some kind of presence, but I consider that I’m tapping into a deeper level of personal consciousness. There is, however, something called the ‘egregor’ in which most Wiccans believe. This term involves the concept that Goddesses and Gods and other metaphysical entities actually gain ‘astral substance’ as more and more people think about and relate to them, and through this they come into a kind of sentient existence.
Anyway, back to the story! I was twenty-one when I bought Ly’s book and within a year my bookshelf was crammed with over fifty books on Wicca, and using The Way of the Goddess as a guide, on the Summer Solstice of my twenty-first year I declared my love of the many faces of the Goddess and God to the Universe and initiated myself as a first degree Witch. Over the next few years I practised as a solitary Witch, keeping it pretty quiet, often not really sure if what I was doing was ‘right’, but persevering anyway. I started studying naturopathy to learn how to heal, because from my reading I ascertained that my Witchy ancestors were primarily healers and I felt it appropriate that I respect the fact by becoming a healer myself. So I worked in a health food store by day, studied naturopathy at night and played guitar and sang in a punk band on the weekend.
When I was twenty-four I received a phone call from a guy who asked me if I wanted to sing in a band that played a techno-metal fusion style of music. It sounded cool to me and I said yes. This band eventually became Def FX, and it was ultimately through the lyrics that I wrote and some interviews that I did in various publications and television shows a few years into the life of the band, that I ‘came out of the broom closet’ and let people know that I am a Witch.
Originally, I would never have wanted to be a spokesperson for the Craft, being wary of having my beliefs treated with the usual lack of respect most Witches who come out in the media receive. But, as more and more people kept asking questions I sensed a genuine and respectful interest – so here I am writing a book about Witchcraft.
Hubble bubble too much trouble
The above heading is the title of a newspaper article in which the journalist said that after attending a seminar on Witchcraft that Witches ‘ain’t what they used to be’; that in the search for acceptance we have become whitewashed and there’s nothing wicked or titillating about it anymore. The journalist said ‘These days, your self-proclaimed Witch looks like a suburban mother of three, more used to Tupperware parties … These “white” Witches are just about as scary as lady bowlers and about a tenth as interesting.’ She obviously got a dose of the lighter side – but what else could she have expected in the first meeting? If you meet someone at a party, you don’t usually begin telling them your darkest sexual fantasies or your worst fears – you just show them your lighter side. Only when someone’s earned your trust do you let them into your darker side. Anyway, she certainly wasn’t going to get an in-depth education in a complex subject in an afternoon.
However, in some ways I agree with her sentiment; for instance, I avoid the term ‘White Witch’. It’s so New Agey I believe that a lot of the New Age is like a big, happy band-aid. I always emphasize that Witchcraft is about embracing polarities – the Light and the Dark – respecting the darker emotions of anger and hatred as much as the lighter of love and empathy. Bear in mind, of course, that light and dark are by no means the same as good and evil (the latter being terms which most Witches would see as completely relative; after all, if you’re human, a little purring cat might be the epitome of goodness but if you’re a mouse it might be the personification of cold-hearted, rodent-torturing terror and dismay).
Even though that journalist didn’t get her stereotypes fulfilled at the seminar she attended, in our patriarchally-dominated society there is unfortunately something scary about a woman who is in control of her mind, soul and body. And there’s something confronting about a male who values a woman and the role they have in society and in the heavens, the role of the feminine within him, and who’s in touch with a type of power completely removed from conventional male brute force. I’m talking about Witches (well, most of them anyway). The kind of Witchcraft I and a lot of my Witch friends practise means we don’t shy away from pain and fear, and we agree with Hungarian Witch, Z Budapest, who states, ‘A Witch who cannot hex cannot heal.’
Having said that, we certainly don’t go around hexing at random and roasting small children or sacrificing furry animals (actually, I do feed mice to my hungry snake familiar, Lulu, but snakes have to eat). And our lives don’t revolve around goodness and niceness either, but we certainly aren’t the sworn enemies of these qualities. We’re into finding our own balance between sun and moon, day and night, light and darkness.
In fact it’s the dark, difficult and avoided parts of life that are often the most fertile of human experiences that give rise to our most enlightened achievements. Being a Witch is about having your eyes wide open and experiencing the whole onslaught of existence – and that can be pretty scary. A Witch’s view of the world in a time when much seems uncertain is sometimes frightening because we accept change and death as much as we welcome stability and life. It’s chaotic, somewhat anarchic and it runs on Goddess time: all things happening at all times. The human body is sacred and the individual is Goddess/God. We lead ourselves without too much trouble, are powerful, but don’t shove it down anyone’s throats (and if you know someone who does, they’re a Wanker not a Witch).
About This Book
This book is pretty much my vision, the way I do things. It’s different from a lot of other Witches’ traditions, but similar in that all Witches tailor their own form of the Craft. Witchcraft is reliant on the individual to give it meaning and power. Witches are not sheep or lemmings who like playing follow the leader. We lead ourselves in the knowledge that the Universe is big and beautiful enough for everyone. We don’t demand converts but we are interested in letting people know we are not screwed-up Satan worshippers. Most Witches find the idea of a God who’d create a demigod of evil with whom to play cosmic war-games a little mystifying.
In this book I’ve included some essential Witchcraft information, i.e. altar implements, Circle casting and Sabbat details. There are also lots of spells to try, but as I emphasize throughout the book, the most powerful and effective spells will be the ones you create yourself, specifically tuned to your requirements and charged with your creative passion.
Right now I’m going to mention a few things worthy of getting a good grip on.
All the Magick You’ll Ever Need is Already Inside You
Where Witchcraft comes in is to help you tap into and unleash that power, and harness the forces of nature to help you create change at will.
For a Spell to Work, it Has to be Fuelled with Your Magickal Intent
It’s not enough to buy a ready-made boxed spell, or to follow a spell suggested in this book to the letter and then ‘do it’ passively and politely. You’re not in church being told what to say and when to stand, sit and kneel! You’re doing Witchcraft! Making Magick! Get excited about it! Get passionate, dirty and downright messy! Well, not necessarily to those extremes, but what I mean is: get involved. A spell is only fuelled by your intent, otherwise it just sits there like a blob glued to this world not going anywhere, not doing anything. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes or doing things ‘a bit wrong’. In Quotable Women the divine Italian actress/Goddess, Sophia Loren, has been quoted as saying, ‘Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life.’ In living a full, empowered life mistakes are inevitable and fantastic learning tools. So don’t be afraid to experiment, just keep in mind:
The Laws of Witchcraft
1. Do what you will as long as it harms none;
2. Do what you will as long as you don’t interfere with anyone else’s free will;
3. That which you send out returns to you threefold.
As long as you are clear on the above, you are on your way to becoming a formidable Witchy presence on the planet – and beyond!
Which Witch Is Which?
THE HERSTORY OF WITCHCRAFT
There are many versions of the herstory of Witchcraft. Some idealists believe it can be traced through an unbroken lineage – handed down from mother to daughter, grandmother to granddaughter, generation after generation, existing in various levels of exposure and secrecy since the dawn of humankind. Witches who believe this consider Wicca to be the original religion of humankind, rooted in an ancient utopian time when women held the deciding vote, and the ability to give life was worshipped more than the ability to kill, as is honoured now in this time of patriarchal dominance.
Before the role men played in procreation was understood, Woman was revered as Goddess because of her ability to give and nurture life.
For prehistoric humans, a woman’s stomach mysteriously swelling, then nine moon cycles later, a baby emerging from between her legs was one of the most awe-inspiring spectacles they could witness. That she could also produce food – the life sustaining milk that squirted from her breasts – made her representative of the nurturing and providing elements of Nature. The oldest work of art discovered from prehistoric times, the Venus of Willendorf, is a small clay statue of a fertile woman with a rotund stomach and huge pendulous breasts. It is a representation of the Fertility Goddess worshipped in those times, and has evolved into the multi-faceted Goddess all Witches love and worship today.
In ancient times the ability to hunt for food, rather than kill for sport as in the present-day, was also worshipped. Cave paintings from pre-historic times show that (most likely male) humans would throw on animal skins and antlered masks and in a kind of ‘sympathetic’ magickal ritual, play out a successful hunt for food, hoping to ensure a successful real hunt outside the cave on the plains the next day. The humans enacting these rituals were ‘shamans’ who were considered to have magickal relationships with the animals, able to communicate with and woo their spirits, so that they would be prepared to give their lives in order that the human tribe could continue. From this the concept of a God of Hunting developed which went on to evolve to the present day Witches’ God of Nature and Animals, the Horned God.
Most Wiccans now relate to the concept of Witchcraft existing as an unbroken mythic tradition. The Craft today is really built on the sense of our culture having lost, buried or corrupted the old traditions and Witches are attempting to rediscover them and make them relevant to this brave new world. Some do this through historical research and re-enactment, but most work more on tapping into the intuition and the collective unconscious to recreate a Witchcraft in which the voices of the lost past are reawoken in fresh, new chants, rites and spells.
As the mythic and objective herstory of the Craft has been discussed at great length in many books, rather than attempt to restate it at length here, I’ll recommend some of the better works on the subject. For more detailed publishing information see ‘The Library’ chapter at the back.
Starhawk’s Spiral Dance has an excellent first chapter ‘Witchcraft as Goddess Religion’. Laurie Cabot and Tom Cowan’s Power of the Witch has an inspiring chapter called ‘The Old Religion’. Margaret A. Murray’s The Witchcraft in Western Europe is considered a classic on the herstory of ancient Witchcraft, but some dispute its accuracy. Murray was an English Egyptologist who claimed Witchcraft originated in Palaeolithic times 25,000 years ago long before Christianity. After persecution by the Church in the Middle Ages, Murray claims it continued as a secret tradition until its re-emergence around the time she was writing in the 1920s. Scholars and historians have refuted her work saying that she largely contrived the whole thing, but it still makes for thought-provoking reading.