I Confess: Another Witch out of the Broom Closet.
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I have a confession to make: I’m a Witch.
Today, with this article, I’m officially coming out as a Witch. And even though Witches may not have the bones of their fingers crushed anymore to draw out their confessions, this confession feels scary.
Like a great many seemingly self-possessed people, I am not above worrying about what my friends, family and peers think of me. And I find that, despite my best efforts to be stoic, I have a deep fear that my acquaintances, friends and family (much less all the randoms on the internet) will think I’m weird.
Not just weird like when I left academia and moved to a meditation commune on a mountain for 16 months. Or weird like when, in the 10th grade, I cut my own bangs minutes before the homecoming dance and ended up looking like a blonde, permed version of Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice.
I’m afraid you’ll think I’m really weird. Scary weird. Don’t-let-her-use-any-major-appliances weird.
But the fact is that most people have had an experience or three that could easily be identified as witchy — that, when thought about, could dissemble the facade of empirical experience that we call reality.
What about that bizarre experience on the Ouija board you had when you were a kid? That time when you prayed (to whatever god or the universe) really, really hard for something and it came true? The other day when you were suddenly thinking of that song, and a few seconds later it came on the radio, out of all the songs in the world?
Being amenable to Witchness is, in some ways, quite simple. It’s just a willingness to entertain the possibility that reality is incredibly subjective. That reality may be far more layered than it seems. That perhaps reality, as we usually think of it, barely exists at all.
But all we need is quantum physics, or even the study of neurology or optics, to tell us that.
So I’ve been scared about this coming out, and it’s possible that other people will be scared too. When some people hear the word Witch, at worst they think of the words heretic and blasphemer (this includes people in the community where I grew up), and at least think of the words woo woo and flake. The word Witch makes people uneasy. They wonder if they will be able to relate to you.
I first identified myself as a Witch when I was four. Age nine found me discovering I had a gift for talking on the Ouija Board, and I did it for hours a day. At age nine, I also had my first prescient dream. Many years later, I found out that my Lithuanian/Polish grandmother had prescient dreams, read tarot and did Ouija mediumship for her community. As had one woman in every generation for many generations.
It was my turn.
In any case, in large part, my fear is probably due to the fact that I come from a conservative Southern Baptist culture (though my estranged father was Catholic) that, to say the least, does not approve of such practices. In the eyes of that culture, it is uncategorically a sin.
And though the fact that my (deceased) Catholic grandmother’s side of the family is where I inherited my tarot and mediumship tendencies, and though I have a quite poetic love of cathedrals, Saints, Jesus and the Virgin de Guadalupe, these facts have not made it easier for me to reconcile myself with this aversion to a confession.
I know I’m not alone in these fears. In the magical classes, communities and forums I’m a part of, there are closet Witches everywhere. After today, there will be just a little more room in that broom closet.
Beyond fictional books and movies, I sense that many people don’t really know what being a nonfictional Witch is about.
For starters, Witchness is about training yourself to be alert to the movements and patterns of life. It’s about intuiting the resonances between layers of meaning, as indicated by the very useful alchemical edict of Hermes Trismegistus: “As above, so below.” Though this last bit may be taking us too far for our purposes.
Witchery is based on agreeing to live in the realm of magnetism, expanded possibility and potential — and slowly learning to do it all with a Buddha’s sense of non-attachment to outcomes. I mean, That’s all. No bigs, right?
Personally, I think of myself as a Buddhist/Taoist/existential/eclectic Tantric Witch. It’s a mouthful. My new business cards are going to have to be more like placards.
Basically, the biggest difference between Witchcraft and other forms of spirituality or religions is that not only do we practice our spirituality by prayer, ceremonies, rituals, holidays and offerings, but we also practice by actively working with god/the gods/spirit/the spirits to create desired outcomes in our earthly lives via what are commonly known as spells.
Most of the best things I’ve gotten or experienced in life, I’ve received via Witching.
The Witch path is also one of the most revolutionary extant spiritual paths. This craft tends to include an ever-widening circle of women, people of color, LGTBQ folk and rebellious men. Many (though not all) of us are educated, left-leaning and tending toward sex-positive. Make no mistake, modern Witches are on the leading edge of thought, spirituality and culture.
So why did I ultimately decide to come out publicly as a Witch? Well, for one, I’m currently running an online tarot and magic business based on the precepts of Witchcraft, so a broad-scale confession was perhaps inevitable.
But more importantly, there’s the matter of shame.
As a child, between having an estranged father, very real poverty, a sick mother, and for a while really no real parental guardian to speak of, shame was something I’ve known plenty about. Then add in a molesting Youth Pastor, a few assaults and a rape, and you get the picture that there were many dark realities in my life that I really didn’t want anyone to get a look at.
Because I wasn’t living a very normal life (or so it seemed to me then), I wanted to cover these things up in the hopes of not being cast out of the warm glow of conventional society any further than I already had been by circumstance.
I let a friend, one of the few who already knows about my practice, read this post last night. She said that she didn’t really get the coming-out-of-the-closet thing or the shame.
What I can say on that count is that everyone’s experience is different, but for me, having had the experience at 19 of losing almost everyone in my life because of making a religious choice, makes it so that I understand this is no joke. There is likely to be fallout from people in my life as well as social media followers and readers.
And indeed, if my shame and fear around the confession weren’t real, why did I stay silent about it for over 20 years? Why do so many other Witches I know resist coming out? Why do we hide it from our employers and colleagues? Why have so many people in history been killed for it? Why, even now, are people being killed for it by extremists?
Unfortunately, the stigma is real, and so is the fear and shame.
As both teenagers and adults, we try to hide so many things about ourselves: sexual orientation or gender identification, kinks, addictions, old traumas, current abuse. The image of coming out of the closet is so apt in these situations. We come into the open, and relieve ourselves of being alone in our hiding place
When we accept who we are, we step out of the dark. When we have shame about something that’s essential to our human experience, we can’t shine. And we can’t be free. It seems my life has forced me over and over to come to the conclusion that it’s just not good enough to almost be my full self.
And anyway, as I was getting ready to write this post, something happened.
When I stopped trying to look at myself through the eyes of incredulous outsiders, and really looked at how enthralled my Witch practices keep me every day, I had to admit that, in my not so humble and certainly biased opinion, when it comes to a spiritual practice that requires a perpetual education in synching up with all the glittering threads of the Universe, plugging into the electric source of All That Is, and learning to decipher the intricate symbolisms of existence, what really could be more profound… or sexier?
What, in the end, was there to be ashamed of?
So then, having said all this, though there are tomes left to say, my confession feels complete for the moment.
Writing these words today, I feel I’ve just seduced my own spirit by embracing another hidden part of her with full adoration (knowing that there are always more hidden parts to lay bare). My heart is beating fast from being seen. My cheeks are flushed from the admission.
Let my second life, my Witch life, begin.
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Snow is a seducer of spirits and reader of tarot cards. She also offers Law of Attraction and magical services for those seeking to magnetize the life they most hope for. In addition to her esoteric pursuits, she’s a writer with an MFA in Creative Writing from Hunter College in NYC. When she’s not traveling and searching for the poetics of life, she lives in a blessed space directly overlooking the sunrises of the southern ocean. Her fantasy romance titled ‘Book of Fire & Shade: A Trilogy of Fated Love and Magic’ can be found here. You can follow her on Twitter at AttractionTarot or TheSnowGlobe888, and find her Tarot, LOA and Magical services at Attraction Tarot.
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