Communicating Authentically

I’ve always wanted to be a witch. A good witch, you know, like Glinda in Wizard of Oz, but even more, like the beautiful Samantha Stevens on that gold standard of 1960s television smarm, Bewitched. Oh, man, when I was a kid, I longed to be able to make things appear and disappear with a wiggle of my nose. I would have settled for even being able to make my nose wiggle that way.

Even then, I never understood how someone with Samantha’s beauty, charm, and power would marry a schlep like Darrin and subjugate herself to his will. I certainly wouldn’t have, but then, I was eight. And I suppose a show about a witch flying around and doing whatever she damned well pleased would not have cut it on network television.

Growing up and understanding that nose-wiggling, even if I could do it, would not make things magically materialize was a disappointment, to be sure, but even more discouraging was the judgment my childhood and teenaged friends and their families held on all beliefs outside of the binary, white-washed American Christian worldview. I had friends whose parents wouldn’t let them have a Ouija board because it was an instrument of Satan. As a teenager, another friend told me that any kind of material about psychic powers, hypnotism or the zodiac was “an invitation to let the devil into your house.” I never learned about Christian mystics, or the fact that most of the rituals in the church where I was raised were pagan traditions that had been appropriated by that same church. My born-again friends pooh-poohed things like meditation, intention-setting, and the study of herbal properties, crystals, and lunar cycles as new-age nonsense. So, as I approached adulthood, I set aside my childish fascination with witchcraft and strove instead to be a good citizen, a good Christian and a good wife and mother, never questioning whether those things were mutually exclusive.

But gradually, throughout my 40s and 50s, I stopped caring so much about what people thought of me. And after a period of chaos during which my dear, beloved mother died, I lost two high-paying jobs in five years and moved from sunny Southern California to the frigid North Country of New York (long story), I stopped giving a shit entirely. I began to assuage my natural curiosity about witchcraft. And it turns out, it’s possible to not only embrace these beliefs and be a good person but exploring and learning about what fascinates me makes me a more authentic, caring, and loving person.

No, I can’t make things apparate out of thin air, but I can make things happen through intention, focus and energy. I can’t make things disappear, but I can choose to pay less attention to those things that don’t serve me well. And I can practice rituals and traditions that remind me to focus on the natural world and the people around me, and these practices do manifest happiness and peace. As Laurie Cabot says, “The witch knows nothing in this world is supernatural. It is all natural.”

So, I’m a little late to the party, but I am ready to rock.

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