The Modern Witch Wants You to be Self-Empowered

The modern witch is more than a character from “Harry Potter.” She, he or they could be a co-worker, a neighbor or a friend who uses spells, spirituality and study to connect with ancestors, mystery or the divine. Throughout history and across cultures, witches have been persecuted – labeled as heretics, Satanists or just plain weird. But witches have also been revered (and feared) for their ability to cure ailments with herbs and tinctures, to commune with nature and to summon the spirits. We talk about witches, witchcraft and the powerful spell they hold on us.

Interview Highlights

On calling yourself a witch

Michelle Tea, author of , “Modern Magic: Stories, Rituals and Spells for Contemporary Witches,” says it can feel strange to call yourself a witch. “As right as the witch label felt,” Tea writes, I’ve often wondered if I am putting on airs. I mean, I don’t own a robe. A cape, yes. Wool, gorgeous, timeless. I’ve never been initiated into a coven despite lots of tight friendships with cool, eerie weirdos. I can’t really say if what I’m doing in front of my altar with my candles is Wiccan or pagan or what. I let full moon after full moon go dark in the sky without ever putting my crystals out for charging. And yet I find again and again that I want, I need, to have a regular practice of communicating with the universe, with everything I can’t see but feel is there.”

For Bri Luna “calling myself a witch or a bruja . . .was a reclaiming of power.” Luna, who’s the author of “Blood Sex Magic: Everyday Magic for the Modern Mystic from the Creator of The Hoodwitch” says that witchcraft has often been associated with evil, shame, and stereotypes like the “hideous hag” or “crone”– as if aging is the most evil thing that could happen to a woman. Calling yourself a witch, she says, is a way to reclaim your power and your “true essence.” 

Persecution of witches and women

Harvard Divinity School scholar Helen Berger, who studies witches and pagan culture and religions, says  the persecution and trials of witches often centered around what was wrong with women. A 15th century treatise called “The Hammer of Witches,” described women as inherently weak, but when a woman seemed powerful, it was because she had sold her soul to the devil. “It was really an indictment of womanhood, Berger says, noting that” across cultures powerful women cast as witches “were accused of killing people through magic, killing their children, making men’s genitalia evaporate or disappear or become very small.” Witches had power, yet women in these social structures were powerless and easy scapegoats.

Connecting with ancestral ties through witchcraft

Bri Luna says that finding her practice as a witch was a way to reconnect to her ancestral culture. She is both Black and Mexican, and her father’s family came from the South, and she has deep roots in the practice of hoodoo, which is distinct from voodoo, via her paternal grandmother Althea. Her maternal grandmother Sylvia, who was Mexican, brought her own traditions and rituals. Growing up, Luna dismissed her grandmothers as superstitious and susceptible to old wives tales. As an adult, she came to realize “This is your blood…This is a part of your culture.” The legacy of these pre-colonial traditions that date far earlier than Christianity offered a path to break away from spirituality that was rooted in patriarchy. 

Michelle Tea says that as a white person navigating the cultural contexts within witchcraft, it is important to be respectful and thoughtful. In the New Age era, white people thought  “they can grab anything” to form a  ritual. But in fact, “there are some practices that are very generously open to all, and then there are some that are not. And so proceeding with respect and curiosity and doing your due diligence is really important.”

Modern witchcraft is highly personalized

Michelle Tea says that the lack of hierarchy in the world of witchcraft is particularly appealing. “Women and queer people and misfits of all stripes have tended to end up in bad situations in hierarchical religions. So it’s really great to be able to kind of call your own shots and gravitate towards the things that feel meaningful to you and that inspire you.” She says she loves that she “can go and research really old spells and old practices and bring them in and allow them to connect me to a longer history of these types of meaningful practices that predate Christianity. And then also just pull things up on my own … go to the thrift store, find a really freaky knickknack, decide that it resonates with a type of spirit I’m interested in and do some magic with that. It really allows you to be the expert on your own spirituality, which I think is super important and empowering.”

Modern witchcraft doesn’t need a wand

Luna says that when most people think about magic, they think about wands, Harry Potter or you “wiggle your nose and something’s gonna happen.” In reality, “a lot of these spells that you do are based in your mundane life.” It can be part of the ritual of how you dress with intention: someone going to court is going to dress conservatively, hiding their tattoos so they look believable, innocent. Growing up, Luna “learned from [her] grandmothers – you don’t cook when you’re sad because you can make people that you’re cooking for sick.” Instead, you cook with love. You set an intention. 

Where does the power in witchcraft come from?

Listeners wondered where the power behind witchcraft comes from – whether it’s physics in action or some other form of power. Bri Luna says that as a witch “you are working with the cycles of nature. You’re working with spiritual elements. If you are more science-oriented and you’re not so much believing in higher powers outside of yourself, then you’re pulling that power from yourself.” Luna herself believes in the power of spirit, mysticism and nature. Witchcraft “acknowledge[s] what our ancestors have known for eons, for millennia.”

Michelle Tea adds “we’re all made up of these atomic molecules that vibrate and that produce energy. And so much of my practice, and I think a lot of people’s mystical practices, are about being able to tune into those different vibrations and those different frequencies. And that’s why we believe that certain crystals have certain powers. But, by that token also, the rock under the bush in your front yard also probably has some power. And so it’s really about enlivening the world around you and being tuned into the magic of the world around you.”

This content was edited by the Forum production team but was generated with the help of AI.