A Witch Begins

I Was Introduced To Witchcraft At Seven Years Old

What is the proper term for a male witch anyway? I never liked warlock or wizard. Mage and cleric sound ridiculous and remind me too much of long nights playing 1995’s Hexen: Beyond Heretic. Sorcerer maybe? That has a nice ring to it!

My mom started practicing witchcraft when I was six or seven. I don’t know for sure because it all seemed to come about so suddenly and she very well could have been practicing long before I knew about it.

When we kids came home from school one day to find a new television in the living room and, by her example, praised Satan for his gift, I knew that something was up.

She started performing spells in the name of Satan in the secluded downstairs storeroom. We were no longer allowed in there, though I would sneak a peak one day and be terrified out of my mind by the artifacts and symbols that I found.

It was a while before we became her minions in the craft but, when she was ready to bring us in, we began with the small task of gathering materials from the neighborhood like white rocks, tree bark, dandelions, and buds from the honeysuckle plant that grew in our backyard. We were never allowed into the room with her while she was doing her spells but she sometimes allowed us to recite chants, ogle at her handwritten notes, and touch the shiny jewelry that rested on her altar.

At the time, I was too young to really understand what she was doing, but I was interested in it because it was so different from anything else going on in my life. She performed a lot of spells in that little room and I can remember many times when she would go in there with a fluttering cardboard box and come out an hour later with a tightly wrapped paper bag that she would bury in the backyard. I did not ask a lot of questions because I understood that Satan was like God — mysterious, all-knowing, jealous, and completely useless in everyday life. That part of it was boring to me and I would later look back on it and wonder if it was integral to what she was doing or some ancillary spice to beef up her conjuring.

We went through some interesting spiritual shifts over the years but her penchant for witchcraft never honestly left her. Luckily, Satan did, and she stopped mentioning him. I never asked her why she thought that she had to pray to him in the first place, but I thought that maybe it was influenced by all that popular entertainment where witches were ghoulish hags and servants of the devil. I learned through her shame and embarrassment that he was a symbol of power to her younger, impressionable self and that she was so misguided that she thought that she needed to honor him to gain influence over her life.

I was eleven by the time that she finally brought us into the fold as practicing contemporaries. We performed spells and incantations, were given talismans, sigils, and artifacts for power, protection, and prosperity, and were finally allowed to read her small library of witchy books and indices. My brother and sisters lost interest as we got older but I moved deeper into it. She and I became infinitely closer than ever before when she became my spiritual and magical guide.

As I got older and our craft evolved, it became clear that it was not about conjuring fire with your bare hands or laying biblical curses on your enemies. Like she told me:

Magical spells are a ritual to lure out the energies that pre-exist inside of you. The pageantry of the ritual is always unique because everyone does things differently, but that energy for change and transmutation is there in you already. Don’t doubt yourself. Doubt is a poison that gets less and less powerful with each successive generation.

Once I left her house and her symbolic coven, I took her teachings and used them as a guide on my own spiritual journey. I still called her up every once in a while for advice on where to buy quality candles, how to dispose of ritual materials, and how to properly anoint an artifact, but most of what I did was my own. It had to be or it would never work. I learned that very quickly.

Magic is manifestation.

I take my rituals very seriously and laboriously prepare for them sometimes months in advance. They last for days. That’s probably why I only get to do one or two a year. They feed my soul and are immensely important for my spiritual and metaphysical health.

Manifestation is real. Anyone who is where they want to be right now in life will tell you that. It’s not just a popular mantra for successful celebrities and pop culture icons. It is a practice for all of us. Manifest your future.

I’ve evolved to pitch my tent somewhere in the intersection of enlightenment occultism, witchcraft, and humanism. I’m still evolving but I have a pretty dense base thanks to my mother the witch and those witches that came before her.

My mother passed away in September of 2020. I never found her handwritten spellbook. I love you, mom. Stay up. ✌🏽💯🖤

This is a blog post that originally appeared on my site Metallically Black under the title A Witch Begins.

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