Author Archives: rogerjhorne

Let’s just say it, shall we? Cartomancers disagree on how to read the court cards. Attend a tarot workshop with one reader, and you’ll be trained in one method. Read a book by another, and you’ll encounter a completely different system for understanding these characters. I’d like to unpack a few different approaches here in broad terms, but not in order to place any value system upon them. On the contrary, what I’d like to say is really this: that each approach to addressing court cards has its own strengths and weaknesses, and it is the intuition and style of the reader that will determine which method is most appropriate. In knowing ourselves, we will come to know what the best method of reading is for us; this is true in many ways, and it is certainly true of approaching the royal families of Fate’s wheel.

One of the oldest methods that doesn’t enjoy as much use today is to interpret the court cards as persons in the querent’s life who have certain physical characteristics. In this system, Queens are women, Kings are men, Knights are youths (of any gender), and Pages or Knaves are children (again, of any gender). The suit is often used in this style of reading to determine other physical characteristics in a variety of ways. Coins might indicate dark features, while Rods indicate red hair, for example. Sadly, this system leaves out gender queer or non-binary adults, and the problems we run into when associating cards with ethnic attributes also become clear rather quickly. It’s estimated that anywhere from 80-90% of people in the world have brown or black hair, and yet only one or two of the suits are devoted to this quality? Instead, readers who subscribe to this method might use the suit to indicate a person’s size, height, or physical mannerisms in some way. What we really should not do here is read physical characteristics and personalities as correspondences, for having blonde hair doesn’t make a person adventurous (or any other thing) by nature. The benefit of this method is that we are able to describe a person quite physically, but the drawback is that we have less information regarding their inner qualities. This problem can be mitigated, though, by reading the cards surrounding the court card for more information.

This brings us to the most popular method today for interpreting the court cards: as people in the querent’s life with certain archetypal or astrological personalities. Instead of associating a particular card with a person’s bodily presence, we are reading it entirely as a set of non-physical qualities. The Queen of Coins might be anyone who in a querent’s life who is possessed of a very nurturing quality, regardless of gender. The Page of Cups might be any person who is highly in touch with their inner child and sense of wonder, regardless of their physical age. This approach is helpful because it focuses on how the querent perceives the people in their life and their relationship to them, and it emphasizes the gifts (or, alternatively, burdens) they have to share with the querent. Problematically, this system can also describe people the querent hasn’t noticed, or it may be describing a person they know quite well using qualities that make sense, but don’t immediately “click.” The querent might say, “Oh, hmmm, I guess that description really does fit John better than Sarah.” Still, the time spent trying to pinpoint the court card’s identity in the querent’s life can be a bit frustrating, distracting from other, more important topics.

Finally, we come to my two favorite methods, both of which completely abandon the idea of court cards as external persons. I think both of these methods have grown more popular in recent years. The first of these posits that court cards do not represent people in a querent’s life, but rather, represent spiritual influences along a particular stretch of their journey. For example, the appearance of the Knight of Rods might be guiding the querent to be more bold and assertive in matters of their career or creative projects. Likewise, the Page of Swords might be offering the suggestion to be more adaptable in the face of a current struggle. These are not people, or even aspects of people, but are read as spiritual guides who answer the call of the spread and decide to offer their wisdom in the moment of the reading. The benefit of this reading style is that we can cut to the heart of the matter rather quickly, avoiding the game of “who’s who” and dealing instead with the more crucial question of what is to be done next at the current crossroads of their life.

Lastly, my very favorite. (I’m more than a little biased, of course.) This method reads the court cards as aspects of the querent’s own self, however hidden, underutilized, or unfulfilled. If, for example, we meet with the King of Cups in the releasing position of a three-card spread, we might interpret that the time to draw on our inner philosopher is not now. This is, perhaps, a time to let go of worrying about inspiring others or influencing them with our grand ideologies, and instead to focus on something else. If we meet with the Queen of Rods in the central position, we might interpret that we are, in the present moment, called to rely on our social skills, our charm, and our ability to navigate power structures. This is different from the previous method in that the presence of these cards here indicates that the querent already possesses these gifts, or is in the process of acquiring them. These presences are not external spirits or guides showing up in the cards, but are in fact powers alive within the querent themselves, often as a seed waiting to be realized. In fairness to the other methods described above, I must point out the downside of this approach: that our reading, in focusing entirely on the querent’s sphere of influence, can be misinterpreted to suggest that they have the power to reshape any circumstance in their life, which isn’t true. The querent cannot simply will their way out of poverty, disease, or a broken heart. On the other hand, we cannot leave a querent feeling entirely powerless, for that is also a lie. The querent always has some power, however small (or, more often, only seemingly small). My chosen focus, as a reader, is on empowering the querent with choice and self-knowledge, even if those choices are limited, because dwelling on things outside of our control–well–it just isn’t very useful, is it?

Ultimately, it isn’t really necessary to dedicate oneself to one of the methods above. Readers often synthesize more than one system, which is as it should be. But it is important, I think, to conduct a self-inventory from time to time, to reflect on how we tend to read the court cards and why we find ourselves drawn to that approach. If, in reflecting on this question, we aren’t really sure, then perhaps that is an opportunity to experiment with a different method. After all, it is in the experience of giving readings that we find what works well for us and what does not.

The latter half of winter is a time of weariness, isn’t it? The Yuletide season is over, and without its glimmering lights and spirit of warmth, the darkness and cold stare back at us with their hollow gaze. We’re full of ache and sleep, not quite ready for the return of summer, but also tired of winter’s gray. It is for this very reason, in part, that the folk traditions of Candlemas and St. Brigid’s Day endure: to abate the bitter cold with arts of prediction and illumination.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: there is no conflict between Christian folk traditions and old folk witchery, for these practices are deeply enmeshed and entangled. The difference often lies only in the manner of approach. While Christian observation of Candlemas or St. Brigid’s Day stems from a deep belief in Christ, folk witches often include the magical aspects of these traditions in the spirit of heresy and subversion, for the pagan incorporation of liturgy into folk magic was actively punished in previous ages. Other witches regard these traditions more as cultural artifacts that are a part of who we are and where our ancestors come from. Some folk witches even identify Christians themselves, often with caveats and context to help other pagans understand, and for them, these festivals are points in the year that touch both threads of their making: the witch and the believer, both held sacred simultaneously in the moment of ritual. All of these approaches are beautiful and valid and worth preserving today, for hundreds of years ago, all of them would have been echoed by our ancestors, who surely had varied and complex feelings about the ways pagan spirituality mingled with the growing power of the church.

Candlemas, celebrated in churches as the Presentation, is also a time to bless candles for the coming year, and this is one of the traditions incorporated into folk witchery to this day. It aligns closely with St. Brigid’s Day, reminding us of the pagan roots of many of our traditions. For cunning folk and other charmers in the early modern period, candles brought home with a liturgical blessing on this day were believed to hold a special potency, and the uses for these candles weren’t always aligned with the intentions of the church. Similarly, witches today may choose to bless their own candles for magical use in any number of ways. In recent years, I’ve grown fond of calling Brigid’s potency into a single, central candle as I light it, then lighting the others from its wick. Even a single candle alone will do in a pinch. What matters is that the incantatory call is true and the feeling is right. Old words are helpful, too, like the following, adapted loosely from the Carmina Gadelica, a collection of Scottish charms:

I light this flame in Our Lady’s name
to bring warmth to the earth again.
The encirclement of Our Lady
be about this place
on this night, and every single night.

Another adaptation of my own, also drawing on the language of the Carmina Gadelica, names Brigid and Mary:

I will light this flame
as Brigid would, as Mary would.
The encirclement of Brigid and Mary
be about this place, on the household all,
to save, to shield, to surround,
the hearth, the house, the household,
this eve, this night, and every single night.

Groundhog Day, too, in the United States and Canada, derives, at least in part, from Candlemas traditions. On Groundhog Day, it is said that one can predict the weather by observing the reaction of a groundhog as he emerges from his den. If he sees his shadow (meaning the sun is shining), there will be more winter yet to come. If he does not, winter will soon be over. Other, similar traditions rely on different creatures for prediction, including badgers, serpents, or other animals that emerge from a hole in the ground. One Scottish saying offers the connection to the old Candlemas traditions more clearly:

If Candlemas Day be fair and clear,
there’ll be twowinters in the year.
If Candlemas Day be foul and rain,
winter will not come again.

While it isn’t practical for most of us to crouch around a chthonically-inclined creature’s home for hours and hours, we can certainly observe the weather where we live, perhaps even engaging in the fine arts of divination in order to offer some illumination on our circumstances and our journeys. This would be quite in line with the folk traditions of Candlemas.

However you draw on the bright tide of this time, in whatever way your culture and ancestors afford you, and by whatever paths you are called to this art, may your late winter days be gentle and full of hope.

The horseshoe hung above the door, the salt thrown over the left shoulder, the clocks stopped in a house where someone has died: all of these have been described as old wives’ tales and, more commonly, as superstitions. For the shrewd folk witch, however, these bits of lore are more than mere archaisms and oddities; they are cultural treasures preserved over generations, often carrying within them a hidden potency, a source that may be tapped in times of need, a magical guide no less valuable than a rare tome.

One of the most common challenges faced by those new to the path of folk witchery is the process of building a personal craft that is specific to one’s culture and heritage. Reading folktales, researching one’s ancestors and their lands, and spending time with the flora and fauna around us are all valuable pursuits to this end, but the sheer practical value of superstition is impossible to overstate. By peering deeply into these treasures–not merely reading them, but contemplating their symbolism–we can derive a wealth of charms that come from who we already are, that are rooted in our very being. Charms of this nature are always, in my experience, easier to access than lofty, ornate rituals because they feel effortless and natural to the practitioner, lending themselves to almost endless adaptation and improvisation.

Take, for example, the blowing of dandelion or thistle seeds (depending on where you are), which is a form of wish-making superstition. To access the hidden potency of this charm, we must look more closely. By means of the witch’s own breath, the seeds of the plant are carried away to germinate and propagate the land. The very breath that speaks the wish is able to accelerate the plant’s proliferation. What better offering could there be for a seed-bearing plant, a being that wants, more than anything, to multiply and thrive? Perhaps we can speak more directly with this plant spirit. Perhaps the spirit can hear us. Perhaps we can analyze the nature of this plant (solar, saturnine, mercurial) to discern what sorts of powers might lie within its nature. Even a simple charm, if it is worked from a place of deep understanding, can be potent.

It was Cicero, in his ancient treatise De Natura Deorum, who originated the word superstitio to describe an overabundance of care in spiritual matters. He contrasted this with religio, meaning proper observance. As is often the case, we see here the concept of improper spiritual practice defined by its deviation from dominant religion. This was no less true for the vehement anti-Catholic sentiments of early modern Scotland, where many executed for witchcraft practiced simple healing charms and folk magics peppered with Catholic influence. It is the new religion risen to power that defines what is “religion” and what is “superstition” for the people. And it is the witch who chooses for herself, heedless of authorities, what is most useful.

For those of us on the folk path, superstitions are usually our earliest education in the magical arts. Many of us have learned from parents or grandparents what objects or signs confer the property known as “luck” (derived from the Middle Dutch luc, meaning good fortune). For our ancient ancestors, whose cosmology was both pagan and animist, fortune came from a host of powerful spirits who viewed human actions as either pleasing or displeasing. It is reasonable to discern from this that having luck, for the modern pagan, means perhaps more than mere serendipity. Perhaps it speaks to having good relationships with the spirits around us, to preserving small rituals and traditions that please them, to procuring, in some small way, their favor–or at the very least, preserving acts that in some way invoke the remembrance of them.

Conversely, and perhaps confusingly, many witches favor signs that may have been traditionally viewed as bad luck to previous generations, usually because these things were associated with, well, witches. In the Appalachian region, black cats have been associated with witches for hundreds of years in traditional lore, and while they have also been viewed as bad luck, many modern witches favor them for this reason. One man’s bad luck may prove another man’s good luck, it seems, particularly for a witch, since part of our very nature is rebellious and countercultural. And really, let’s be honest: black cats are simply precious.

For witches interested in researching superstitions in their own culture, I recommend two things. First, conduct a little exercise in self-inventory. Note the superstitions you remember from childhood, everything from the breaking of mirrors to finding holed stones. Some traditions that may seem mundane to you may actually be quite unique, but without identifying them and researching them, you may be ignoring treasures you already possess, preserved by ancestors from hundreds of years in the past. Second, of course, is the library. Collections of superstitions by folklorists aren’t difficult to find. People consider them amusing, but they almost never actually read them. They’re usually gathering dust on library shelves or sitting unread on someone’s coffee table. It’s a funny thought, actually: so many people wish to know magical secrets, to feel privy to ancient knowledge, to feel empowered, and meanwhile, the magical treasures of previous centuries are just there, so very near–for those who can recognize them.

One of the more frustrating aspects of writing about witchcraft is addressing what we might lovingly (snark intended) call “no-not-me moments.” These moments tend to arise when we attempt to say something that is true about our own practices and traditions as witches, and especially when underrepresented currents of craft dare to speak up and describe what we do and believe. It tends to go something like this:

Folk witch: “I often utilize the psalms in my craft. I enjoy participating in the long history of cunning folk who have put these incantations to magical use.”

NoNotMe: “Witches are of the Old Religion. We don’t use psalms or rosaries or anything like that. Stop calling yourself a witch if that’s your thing.”

Now, before we pile on the NoNotMe in this situation (for our instinct, as folk witches, is usually to invoke a much-needed history lesson), let’s consider their perspective for a moment. Let’s be more than fair. They may have had some extremely negative experiences with Christianity as a young person, and when they came into witchcraft, they probably experienced those old shackles falling away. Perhaps they never again thought they would encounter remnants of their painful childhood turning up in their new spiritual world. Perhaps they joined a modern initiatory tradition under leaders who told them, without context or history, what one must do and what one must believe in order to call oneself a witch. These words and rituals were probably prescribed to them regardless of their culture or background, and they were probably written within the last 50 years, but were presented to the new initiate under the guise of a supposed ancient lineage, which made them feel quite special, much like the use of the psalms feels quite special to our folk witch. NoNotMe was probably never informed of the diversity of witchcraft traditions in the world. They were told their tradition was the only one, that all of the others were false pretenders. Given this context, it isn’t hard to understand NoNotMe’s reaction to an element of craft that feels so outside of their comfort zone. NoNotMe isn’t a bad person, even if they are spreading bad ideas.

The problem here is really two-fold. First, NoNotMe believes that their form of witchcraft is the only one. This isn’t new or unusual in any spirituality. How many wars, within Christianity alone, have been fought over who is the “real” believer, the most correct, the most special, the most chosen? The larger issue, and the one that is more difficult to approach, is NoNotMe’s belief that everything that is said, shared, or written about must be, in some way, for them. They cannot imagine a world in which things exist for other people, for folks with different beliefs or preferences or tastes, but not for them at all. This is, in part, the result of a modern information age that tailors all media to our individual likes and preferences, sealing us away in our own little sepulchers of discourse, unexposed to difference. And without regular exposure, difference is uncomfortable. It reminds us that we are not, as we might imagine ourselves, the most worthy, the most correct, or the most special. We’re just like everyone else, really, trying to figure out what works for us and what doesn’t. We’re just another branch on a very large tree.

I’ve been encountering quite a few NoNotMe moments since the publication of The Witches’ Devil last year. They don’t upset me or offend me, but they do make me worry about the broader state of things. Part of the thesis of The Witches’ Devil is the slow and steady incorporation of pagan and animist elements into the character of the Devil over many hundreds of years, not merely the recasting of Pan into the Devil’s role, which is an oversimplification, but the shifting of the inherent symbolism of our thousands of ancient horned deities and regional spirits, resulting in a complex connection between the demons of the grimoires, the old revered daimons and spirits of the ancient world, and the Devil as a teacher of witches in early modern lore. It’s a tricky subject with many facets and no simple answers. This question is delicious to me, and it’s largely been met with responses from folks who love these kinds of folkloric inquiries as much as I do, but it has also attracted the attention of a few Wiccan NoNotMes who are, well, less enthusiastic about the devilish aspects of folk craft traditions. Let’s put it that way.

On a personal level, these responses have about as much an effect on me as junk mail, but what disappoints me is that we still, after so many years, are so far from being accepted as folk and traditional witches among the broader body of witchcraft discourse. It seems that the modern forms of witchcraft that took root in the mid-century are still viewed as the status quo, that witches operating in veins of cunning craft, herb-doctoring, fairy-doctoring and the like are still viewed as the weirdos in the room, despite our history and our legacy. This is disappointing to me because it means that witches operating in culturally-specific craft lines, who are by and large outside of the modern initiatory traditions of Wicca, may feel discouraged from writing about their craft and adding to the conversation of occult literature. And we need these voices. There aren’t nearly enough books on brujeria, stregoneria, hoodoo, and the like. These and others are sister traditions to my own streams of Scottish and Appalachian folk craft, and these voices are already underrepresented and often (worse) whitewashed or wiccanized into something more marketable and unrecognizably bland.

As folk witches, we’re a lot more like our Devil, it seems, than even I originally thought. We aren’t going anywhere, but we also can’t seem to shake the box that has been made for us. Though, perhaps there is some old magic at work in this as well, that the deep mysteries at the heart of our traditions are so far out of reach from those who lack the historical knowledge to appreciate them. Maybe the poor NoNotMes, who are, again, not bad people, who are surely moving through their own journeys of discovery towards their own destinations, are being kept back from something that could prove harmful to themselves or to others at this stage in their journey. If that is the case, may those barriers hold firm. May the gate we need appear only when we are surely ready to cross it. For all of us.

As a folk witch, I spend a lot of time thinking about previous ages and the beliefs shared by those people. But I also live in modern times; I’m alive here and now, not somewhere else. Sometimes, the ideas and cosmologies inherent in the old lore feel almost incompatible with who we are as modern humans living on the edge of capitalism’s collapse. But it simply isn’t so. In fact, it’s possible that this age needs animist spirituality more than ever.

I’m not interested in putting forth a rigid definition of animist spiritual practice. I’m not interested in deciding who can or cannot call themselves an animist. For one thing, it’s just a boring question. It also assumes a singular definition of lived animism rather than a plurality of practices. I’m more interested in the diversity that already exists among different expressions of animism, even if this challenges the concept of animism itself as a cohesive paradigm. Concepts and ideas aren’t that important, after all. Animism is simply the best term we have for these practices, but we must accept in advance that the term itself is flawed, imperfect from its very beginnings.

Let’s just say it, then: originally, animism was a word made up by white people (specifically, 1800s scholar Edward Tylor) to describe indigenous spiritualities that often (but not always) predate the worship of deities. It is usually applied to the belief in non-human spirits, to the belief in a complex spiritual world governing the forces of nature, entities dwelling within trees, hills, storms, creeks. The idea of spirits at work within flora, fauna, and land features is indeed ancient, and we now know that these beliefs are not a novelty among Siberian shamans, but were once widely held among ancient peoples of virtually every known culture. Today, animism is a term used in modern anthropology to describe a vast and diverse group of spiritual practices thought to be older than organized religion. The interesting pivot here comes from within witchcraft scholarship, specifically in the works of Emma Wilby, Carlo Ginzburg, and their contemporaries, for as this group began to unpack the history of witch lore and folk-magical practice in western Europe, they discovered that old forms of European folk magic actually preserved animist elements that were similar to the practices of shamans and seers in other parts of the world. The term animist, which originally smacked of ethnocentrism, was found to apply equally to the spiritual roots of colonizing cultures, and the fear and hatred of those roots gave rise, in part, to the fear of witches.

In reality, there has always been a disconnection between academic discourse on animism and the lived realities of people who fit within this umbrella. This concept was, after all, defined and pioneered by people who looked down on those who held such beliefs. Modern animism might, in fact, be the first instance of people actively self-identifying with the term. For those of us who chose to identify this way in modern times, it can mean many things. Many of us observe ancestral folk-magical traditions that involve spirit interaction and otherworldly travel. Many of us identify as witches, warlocks, herb doctors, cunning folk, or sorcerers. For myself, I look to the charming traditions of my Scottish and Appalachian ancestors, which preserve the means of calling to plant spirits, warding baneful entities, and entreating fortune and favor from the invisible world of spirits, including the dead.

One of the things I tried to accomplish in A Broom at Midnight was to shine light on the connection between animist views of the otherworld and the flight to the witches’ sabbat, for these otherworldly journeys are iterations of the same spiritual phenomena, as vibrant today as they were hundreds of years ago. Like the shaman’s journey, the witch’s departure into the world of spirits is not ornate, but simple; not elaborately choreographed, but improvisational; not imaginary or merely “visualized,” but vividly psychonautic and ecstatic. When we, as witches, contextualize this ecstatic praxis as a part of the greater tapestry of animist spirituality among human beings everywhere, we are better able to understand ourselves, but we are also actively dissolving the racist framework that would cast some spiritualities as “civilized” and others as “primitive.” We witness for ourselves that animist spirituality is every bit as complex, sophisticated, and ornate as theological traditions. We also begin to recognize that animism does not exist in a vacuum, but blends and syncretizes with other forms of faith. Even Frazer in The Golden Bough recognized that many cultures experienced animism and theism at the same time (though he mistakenly viewed theism as a more “evolved” spirituality).

Often, the choice to identify as a modern animist is simply an acknowledgement that our spirituality is informed by these types of beliefs, even in broad strokes, that regular interaction with spirits is a part of who we already are, inseparable from the spiritual cultures in which we are rooted. I like this meaning best, for it is the roomiest and probably applies to most practitioners under this umbrella. Perhaps we only interact with a handful of specific spirits in our regular practice. Perhaps we live in an urban area and keep potted plants rather than strolling a deep forest. Perhaps our physical condition prevents us from taking long, wandering hikes to connect with land spirits. These activities are merely examples of practice, not edicts to be followed. In whatever ways we are able, in whatever way we can, what seems to unite most modern animist practice is the recognition of selfhood in the non-human other; the belief that a forest, a lake, a tree, or a frog is possessed of a spirit and a selfhood that exists for its own purposes and operates based on its own rules. We share a world with these beings, but they can never belong to us. They are not ours. On the contrary, if we act without cunning, we are often at their mercy, not the other way around.

This approach to modern magical practice comes with certain concrete benefits. When forging a relationship with a spirit governing a particular plant, we will usually spend a great deal of time observing it, watching how it grows and withers, how it reacts to its environment. We realize how unique each species is, and in this realization, we arrive at our own doctrine of signatures. Suddenly, the old “correspondences,” though certainly viable in a broad sense, become less useful to us personally. We can discern for ourselves the ways in which a particular plant is martial, venereal, or saturnine. We’ve simply no need for a book to tell us how to read a plant or an animal anymore. We have eyes. Similarly, we are less bound by ceremonial traditions of spirit evocation because we learn to interact with spirits using simpler, more direct methods, forging personal relationships with very real benefits in the form of revealed charms, sigils, and lessons that guide us in the progress of our craft. These practices do not preclude us from participating in modernity, but they provide a grounding center, a moment of solace that restores and realigns us. We are reminded that human beings are not the center of the world or the pinnacle of evolution, but are just another form of living thing, no greater and no less.

The extension of this same grace to what we might call “dark” spirits is perhaps less commonly held among modern animists, though I believe this is changing. The church’s vast colonizing influence in Celtic countries transformed the belief in ancestor spirits, recasting the honored dead as elves, fairies, and demons. These beliefs were carried over by immigrants to the new world, and even today, I regularly come across witches who perform routine exorcisms and cleansings to threaten, berate, and harm dark spirits without even trying to understand them first. Though malevolent spirits are real, they are rarer than one might think simply because humans aren’t all that interesting. We are more alike than we are unique, and though it is human nature to imagine ourselves special and intriguing to the spirit world, this is a narcissistic overestimation of our importance. The unpretty truth is that we are usually regarded by spirits (if they regard us at all) as mere pests or trespassers.

If we acknowledge that the spirit world is as diverse and interwoven as the ecological world, we must also be ready to admit our limited perspective within it. In the absence of our demons and our angels, we witness the difficult, more complicated truth: a spirit world of natural predation, of usually faultless harm, of carnivorous, parasitic, or toxic entities that may often be unaware of their influence or even of our existence. We begin to understand that we, as human beings, are not actually very important. Usually, we’re just in the way, much like standing in the path of a flood or walking too close to a hive of bees. A modern animist’s approach to warding is usually not to destroy, but to understand. Our ghosts and phantoms, our hauntings and demons and shadows are not enemies, but kin, and it is wiser to establish clear boundaries and agreements than it is to declare war on a kingdom that outnumbers us.

The most difficult question, and the one I do not have the ability or the desire to answer here, is how the animist negotiates the relationship with modernity, with capitalism, with personal responsibility in the face of ecological collapse. Ideally, we take ownership of the choices we have and try to respect the other beings in our world as best we can. But for the past fifty years, corporations responsible for 99% of environmental damage have been waging expensive disinformation campaigns in order to convince us that it is the “masses” who are responsible for climate change. Billionaires squeeze profits from the working class like a spider sucks its prey. Poor and disempowered individuals are blamed for all manner of disasters. But who has built the web? Much of our disconnection to the world of flora and fauna is not a conscious choice, but a choice made for us by corporate powers and the governments that bow to their interests.

On the other hand, the romanticization of the country life, so ubiquitous in aesthetics like “cottage-core” and “witch-core,” portrays only the consumption and taming of nature, not the realities of planting and harvesting, not the sweat, the ugliness, the bug bites, the scratches and sprains that come with actually living alongside nature. But who am I to judge? Perhaps even this representation is an awkward step forward. I believe that the massive political shift we need in order to prioritize the other beings in this world will come not through preaching or scolding, but through the act of personal witness, through individuals coming to love and appreciate the wild around them, and the more we can do to facilitate this change, the better.

Recently, I’ve been thinking a great deal about how we present ourselves as witches, and especially of the images we curate in online spaces. A new witch poring over social media might deduce that we are all at our altars from dusk to dawn, fumigating animal skulls and grinding herbs until our elbows creak, our candles a constant and unending fire that we tend to day and night. If the thought of this exhausts you as much as it does me, let’s consider for a moment how overwhelmed a budding young witch must feel.

They probably wonder if their efforts can ever be enough when tasked with this unending labor, if they can manage the gargantuan investment of time it would take to dedicate themselves in what they believe to be the necessary degree, if they are comfortable changing their appearance and behavior in so many ways in order to fit in with the occult glitterati they see performing before their eyes. How utterly overwhelming and how misleading these images are when approached without context. And how embarrassing for us when our spiritual practices are mistakenly perceived as a mere trend–or worse–a “lifestyle” (whatever that odd and oft-abused word really means).

Nor am I innocent in all of this mess. As a person who values privacy, the parts of my life I choose to share publicly are limited and curated around my craft, and so many moments that matter to me are not recorded or projected in online spaces. My partner’s long and difficult cancer treatment isn’t there. Those overwhelming weeks spent in hospitals aren’t there. The recent loss of our beloved cat isn’t there. My struggles with anxiety and self-criticism aren’t there. The pile of unfinished projects, the nourishing meals shared with loved ones, the laughter and the glasses of wine, those aren’t there. One might easily mistake us for witches and nothing else, but we are in fact whole people with whole lives. New witches should try to remember that the public images of ourselves that we choose to share are just that: images. Chosen and constructed. A partial picture. They cannot capture whole realities.

But the witch’s mundane moments are real, and they are important. Most of the time, I am not conjuring spirits, analyzing cartomantic spreads, and binding smudge sticks of garden mugwort. Like the majority of witches today, my life is mostly a series of non-ritual moments: perfecting a favorite quiche recipe, tending to my animals, spending time with my partner (who is thankfully in remission and doing very well), shopping flea markets for treasures, cavorting with friends and family, reading horror novels, playing music, and yes, watching television. We’re human. These are the common, everyday moments of my life. And these moments (young witches, really hear me on this) do not contradict the important role of my spiritual practice. Witchcraft is a part of who we are, but it cannot be the whole of who we are.

Modern paganism is perhaps one of the few remaining spaces in which the “lifestylification” of one’s spirituality is still acceptable. Imagine a person who, having recently taken up yoga, begins wearing henna and long linen shirts, casting off all facets of the person they were before, becoming a completely different person overnight? How would we feel about a friend who joins a Christian church and is suddenly unable to hold a conversation without circling back to biblical references? The distaste we feel towards these people is not rooted in their beliefs per se, but in their choice to perform their spirituality as a costume rather than a personal practice. Not only does it look more like obsession than dedication, it cheapens the beliefs we mean to celebrate, resulting in something farcical and ingenuine. If you’ve come to witchcraft recently, please don’t throw away who you are and where you come from. Any spiritual practice worth keeping should fit comfortably within the person you already are. Your perspectives and your rituals may change, but who you are, at your core, should be good enough already. Let me rephrase that for emphasis: you are good enough already, and if the message you receive from more experienced folks in your newfound path does not echo this, walk away from them.

From the perspective of practice and potency, dedication is certainly important, but obsession presents a very real danger, for when our craft is the constant focus at hand, it begins to lose its vibrance. Our charms become nothing more than routine, our words mere recitations, our magics machinery. Stepping away from the altar and into the concerns of the secular is not merely a requirement of the modern world, but a necessary prerequisite for a lasting spiritual practice. What matters is not our ability to engage ritual every day or even every week, but our ability to answer its call regularly over the course of our lives. How many planned rituals did I miss because I was busy helping my partner navigate chemotherapy? Who on earth would care? When it comes to progress in witchcraft, longevity is what matters, for power and awakening come to us slowly, built on experience spread out across the years. Our spirituality helps us weather obstacles and make sense of the lives we already have. It is a well from which we drink and to which we contribute, not an empty space to be filled.

In broader terms, this posturing is all generally strange stuff in the eyes of a folk witch, since most of our ancestors did not even call themselves “witches” in the way we use the word today, instead practicing cunning arts, fairy doctoring, wortcunning, and so on, traditions that survive in the charms and rites we keep, now commonly grouped together under the umbrella of folk craft. Historically speaking, witchcraft is not a title our ancestors chose, but one that chose them, a name we choose to embrace in remembrance and understanding of the practitioners of the past who suffered for it, a name we work to rescue that comes with both power and a price.

I hope that young witches are able to see beyond the staging and posturing of online images. I hope they are able to allow their spirituality to fit within their lives alongside all of those other meaningful moments, to sacrifice no part of themselves in order to live the life they desire, to grow in spiritual power while they also grow in many other kinds of fulfillment. Life is very big, after all, and our spiritual practice need not cannibalize the time we offer to our loved ones, our careers, our hobbies, and yes, even our tragedies. In reality, the time we are able to spend in the practice of our art waxes and wanes with the demands placed upon us. We have all skipped a ritual night due to exhaustion or distraction. We have all rescheduled a full moon working because we simply were not in the right headspace to perform it with focus. As witches, we are both worldly and otherworldly, and between these, we must find a careful and deliberate balance.

Let us remember that the message at the core of the old craft is not that we are unworthy or inadequate. On the contrary, folk witchcraft is empowering and affirming. It teaches us that our knowledge and power, our tools, our spiritual allies, and the entirety of our craft is rooted in who we are and where we come from, meaning our ancestors, our homes, and our cultural heritage, whatever those things might be for us–the unique milieu that makes up who we already are and how we got here. We are not supplicants, after all; we are witches.

The truth is that we’ve no need to prove ourselves. We need only be ourselves.

I’m not a disruptive sort of person. I try hard to respect others’ perspectives, to foster harmony, and to assume a good reason behind things I don’t yet understand. Still, there are times for making bold statements out loud, not to incite conflict, but to challenge widespread assumptions and paradigms that become passively ingrained in our practices, and in that spirit, I’d like to offer up a series of radical suggestions that a new tarot reader might consider when it comes to taking up the cards.

Radical suggestion one: There is no such thing as “the tarot.” By this, I mean we have today not one singular tarot tradition, but many traditions with quite stark differences between them. We know, of course, that tarot did not actually arise from ancient Egyptian priests or medieval qabalists. It is not the perfectly preserved treasure guarded over centuries by ancient mystical grandpas. The tarot deck was without question invented as a game in the 1400s, though it quickly found its way into folk magic and divination soon after, evolving over the centuries into the many branches of tarot tradition we see today, all of them distinct and equally valid.

The main streams of modern tarot are connected primarily with the types of decks we use, and these consist mainly of Marseille, Smith-Waite, Thoth, and Sola Busca (though encountering this last type of reader is sadly a rarity). Almost any tarot deck today can be described as a variant or an evolution of one or more of these basic traditions. Marseille readers tend to rely more on folk traditions (which are very diverse and can contradict one another) and pattern discernment, which is admittedly my own camp. Thoth readers lean on more complex ceremonial magical concepts as written about by Aleister Crowley and his contemporaries. Sola Busca readers draw on mythology and Greco-Roman historical characters in order to weave together their readings. Smith-Waite is, of course, the most influential reading style today, but we must remember that it is also relatively young, drawing on the systems invented around the early 1900s by an organization known as the Golden Dawn.

While all of these traditions are equally valid and capable of facilitating a rich reading, the young tarot reader might benefit from learning to recognize these camps and perhaps deciding which is their preferred path of study. An expert who claims, for instance, that the Hanged Man represents enlightenment is probably speaking from the perspective of either the Smith-Waite or Thoth school of thought. Similarly, one who asserts that the Hanged Man represents humiliation is more likely to be speaking as a Marseille reader. Both would agree that this card can imply a change in perspective. And Sola Busca might simply ask, “Hanged Man who?” Our various traditions and styles inform how we read and talk about the cards on a deep level, and a little self-reflexivity goes a long way in terms of understanding how our approach might differ from another reader’s. This is especially true, and I do hate to say it, of Smith-Waite readers, who sometimes assume that theirs is the only tarot tradition in existence.

Radical suggestion two: Correspondences are flawed. Now, hold on just a moment. Before anyone gets their feathers ruffled over this one, let me explain what I really mean. There’s nothing wrong with memorizing a few key facets of a particular card or even wondering how a card might express itself in another context (i.e., What kind of weather would the Hermit be? If the Star were a popular song on the radio, what might that song be?). This is learning by analogy, a tried and true approach to mastery in many disciplines. Where we get into trouble is when we begin dividing and categorizing obsessively in an effort to make everything “fit” inside its neat little box, to imagine a card for all things, and all things in their card. It is probably not helpful, for example, to decide that for all time, in every reading, the Empress shall correspond to Venus. Unless you are conducting purely astrological readings, this categorical approach only limits her potential for complexity in a spread, and it reduces the art of reading to mere translation.

We are better readers, I think, when we treat the cards like whole people, understanding what they desire and how they often express themselves, but also allowing for the fact that they may do something wild and unpredictable. We can allow ourselves to be surprised by the ways familiar cards turn up in a spread, and we can resist the urge to oversimplify their natures. Our Empress may, depending on our style of reading, bear Venusian qualities, but she is also a ruler, and regardless of our tarot tradition, she will often have something to do with power. While this power may be held in a gentler or more inward way than in the Emperor, that isn’t really saying much, is it? Her nature, like the nature of a living, breathing person, is complex and multifaceted. Reading tarot is not a perfectly ordered, meticulously enumerated science; it is an art, and it is messy. In a lovely way.

Radical suggestion three: It is the reader who divines, not the cards. This suggestion seems less radical on first glance. When we draw cards for a querent, it is tempting to fall into a routine of explaining their associations one by one in a linear fashion, as if we are simply reading a book, sentence by sentence and page by page. And yet, in this type of reading, we miss the story that is unfolding between and across the cards in the form of repetitions, reflections, contrasts, and progressions. These connections between cards offer the most insightful moments in a reading, and they are interpreted entirely by the individual reader. The cards do not offer an objective, linear statement of fact, but are symbols and patterns interpreted wholly through the skills of the reader.

It’s simply true that two different readers, when gazing at the same spread, might tell two different stories. Let us appreciate, though, that the querent has chosen their reader, and that in this choice, fate has placed a given reader before them for a reason. The querent relies on and trusts the reader’s skills of discernment. We are empowered by that sacred trust, in that moment, to do more than simply rattle off individual card associations. We are not only allowed, but obligated to trust our experience, ability, and intuition in the act of discernment, and this duty is what allows us to let go of doubt and reach boldly for insights that only we can offer the human being sitting before us.

Radical suggestion four: Memorization will not make us good readers. In the beginning, many types of card readers set the early goal of memorizing keywords and associations for each individual card. While it’s certainly necessary to have a sound working knowledge of the cards on an individual level, an overly simplistic process of memorization can easily become a trap that actually stifles our development. Suppose we do the thing and memorize a handful of keywords for each card. Eventually, a card is going to turn up in a position or in proximity to another card that just doesn’t jive with the cage we’ve constructed for it, leaving us scrambling for clues.

Instead of rote memorization in the manner of flash cards, I recommend learning groupings and pairings of cards together so that it becomes very natural to recognize patterns in an overall spread. What do the fives seem to have in common? The nines? The suits? What do cards beside each other in the trump (or major arcana) sequence have to do with one another? We might note, for example, that in the Tarot de Marseille there is a natural pairing structure built into the trumps so that each card is reflected in another (Sun and Moon, Empress and Emperor, Pope and Popess, Chariot and Hanged Man, etc.). What do these pairings suggest? Do they complement or antagonize one another? What changes when we move between them? What is different? What is the same?

Radical suggestion five: Guidance is more important than prediction. This one is a very common point of disagreement among readers, and I’ll note here that my views are usually in the minority when it comes to this. On the one hand, many readers claim that it is our chief task to predict events that have yet to occur so that the querent may prepare themselves. Assuming that the trajectories identified in a spread are fixed foretellings to begin with (which is another discussion entirely), I personally find that foreknowledge rarely leaves people more prepared for the event in question. The major events of our lives–joyful or painful–are not things the heart can truly prepare for in advance. And the mind seems even more capable of denial. On a macro level, consider our very culture that continues destroying the planet despite the known and inevitable disaster awaiting us, that refuses to prioritize a living wage despite the fact that most of us live a month’s salary away from hunger, and that mistreats the elderly, knowing good and well that each of us will (if we’re lucky) grow old and be counted among them.

Much like these widespread cultural refusals to act on foreknowledge, querents usually do not change their behavior to prepare for an event. Or if they do, it may not have the intended effect. We all know how fickle fate can be. Telling a client that they’re going to get that raise may result in them putting in less effort at work, thereby thwarting the happy ending promised by the reading. Telling them that marital conflicts are going to get worse may create anxiety and tension, leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy that may have been avoidable if we had approached the reading in another way.

No, despite what the querent says, they do not actually want prediction. What they want (or perhaps, more accurately, what they need) is guidance and actionable advice, something they can follow through on. For some clients, what is truly needed is a challenge, a question to ponder that will help them navigate their situation with as much grace as can be managed. If we are successful at this, they should come away with an assignment of sorts, or at the very least, an idea of where to direct their attention and energy. Often, we can base this direction on the restoration of balance in the spread. For example, when we observe too many forces pulling the client in different directions, it is probably more helpful to direct them to prioritize than to say, “You’re going to collapse from juggling too many work projects.” The best readings, I often find, are advisory rather than purely predictive, caring rather than calculating, human-centered rather than stuff-centered.

Radical suggestion six: There’s more than one reading in a spread. In a way, this builds on radical suggestion number three, but I want to offer something else here. Even in the hands of a single reader, a spread has more than one story to tell. When we first come to tarot reading, I think we sometimes imagine a clear and singular vision forming in the cards, but the more experienced we become, the more complicated the story before us appears. Often, I find divergences in a spread of cards, usually indicating options within options or paths within paths. Tarot readers worry about confusing the client by laying too much before them, and I share this worry sometimes, but if presented as conditional statements, these sibling readings within a single spread can actually be more helpful than offering a paradigm. (i.e., “If you take X path, consider Y carefully” or “When choosing between A and B, be sure to make C your top priority.”) I’m a fan of taking photos of a spread for contemplation later or sharing a quick sketch of the spread with a client virtually so that they can consider the ways progressions in the spread branch off in different directions. The risk of messiness and confusion is always there in a reading, but we don’t remove that prospect by ignoring the complexity before us. When we intentionally ignore tensions and conflicts in a spread, we are oversimplifying and reducing, removing options that are may be helpful to the querent, limiting their perspective in ways that it need not be limited. My preference is to embrace the mess. Life itself is a mess sometimes, after all.

Let’s come clean now: these suggestions seem radical, but they’re really not, are they? At the core of each lies the idea of letting go, of loosening our grip a little bit, of acknowledging limitations, of allowing intuition and compassion to take the reins, of accepting what is actually before us in a spread, however unruly it may feel, rather than attempting to beat the truth out of it with a stick. Our knowledge and experience of the tarot, in whatever vein we practice it, can only take us so far in the end. Where do we go from here? Maybe we don’t have to try so hard to be good readers. Maybe we can simply let go of those impulses and assumptions that make us bad ones.

The popular modern rhetoric of witchcraft refers to our calling as both a craft, a practical thing to be done through concrete steps, and a kind of spiritual art, guided by vision and inspiration. Think of the words we use to describe what we do: “the craft,” “the old craft,” “the magical arts,” “the occult arts.” These are more than evocative phrasings, for they appear in old grimoires and manuals from hundreds of years in the past. We are, all of us, guilty of perhaps overemphasizing the “craft” element of our calling, neglecting what makes witchcraft an art. And yet, most of us recognize that our work is more than a mere series of actions, that its culmination is more than the sum of its parts. After all, if it were so, merely speaking an incantation would produce the desired effect, which is, as we all know, the stuff of fantasy novels.

No, there is more to our craft than a series of actions, but defining that something is tricky. For many of us, acts of magical power are sensed out intuitively, which is why many folk and traditional witches begin their learning by working through old charms and operations, meeting a mixture of successes and failures, often without knowing why. We know instinctively when the work is potent; there is a tangible feeling of excitement and arousal of spirit when this is the case, and yet, that sensation resists definition, evading our attempts to identify the variable that results in our success. What we want is to replicate that effect at will, but without understanding its nature, we are simply casting darts at a board.

It is in witchcraft-as-art that we find this missing piece, and if we accept witchcraft as a spiritual art, we can now reckon with certain principles that aid us in our search for success. One of the things that good art does very often is render the familiar unfamiliar, to allow us to experience something mundane through new eyes and senses. Think of a portrait that captures a side of someone only the painter could convey. Think of a piece of music that conjures deep emotions in a way that feels new to us. It isn’t simply that good art replicates experiences familiar to us already; that’s just imitation. Good art presents the known and familiar to us as something strange and wonderful, allowing us to feel young and unjaded, wrapped up in the sensation of the moment for what feels like the first time.

Potency in witchcraft is like this. If the execution of the charm feels raw and immediate, it is usually good. If our words and actions feel strange to us, all the better. If we feel like a strange, new person in the process, even more so. This is part of why we see so many psychoactive plants like henbane, belladonna, wormwood, and even cannabis in the old grimoires, for it is not so different than the bohemian artist chasing their green fairy in bottles of absinthe. We seek a raw experience, an ecstatic experience, to feel fully both the need and the charm to answer its ache. In incantations, we seek to feel the texture and weight of the words themselves in our mouths, to feel their impact upon the invisible listener behind and within the candle’s glow. In crafting talismans, we seek to feel fully the shaping of the object in our hands and the sinking of the charm within it like ingredients kneaded into warm dough. We construct elaborate altars and surround ourselves with evocative aesthetics all to this effect, but ultimately, all of these tricks and trinkets cannot do the work for us. They’re just things, after all. A dancer’s power is not in the costume or the set, but in controlled and intentional movement, set alight by feeling. In the course of time, many of us find that simple charms conducted slowly and deliberately, with care and appreciation, are more potent than all the ritual garb and expensive candles in the world. This is why so many experienced witches shed their elaborate baubles after many years, finding that they simply no longer need them.

Conversely, art without the discipline of craft is like fire without fuel, feeling without form. While the experienced witch is certainly capable of accomplishing more with less, having grown to know and understand the nature of potency, it is only through the structured discipline of craft that we acquire this taste, like a cook who no longer needs measurements, but simply knows when the flavor is right. And like cooks, we come to our skills by following recipes, tasting as we go and savoring them fully along the way. Like a saucier, we must learn not only how to build a béchamel and a hollandaise, but to understand what they feel and look and taste like when done well, to appreciate how the components within them come together, what principles guide this act of creation. In folk and traditional witchcraft, we observe over time the principles of contagion and sympathy in our magics, these two concepts being the engine within so many charms, and we come to understand the nature of ecstasy, which brings us into communion with the otherworld and carries us to our hidden sabbat. Overlooking the pragmatic fundamentals of craft-as-process robs us of these and many other valuable lessons, leaving us full of fire and longing, but with little practical knowledge to muster achievement.

We also find that trying to complete the work with speed or efficiency strangles our efforts, as does following step-by-step instructions too slavishly. We cannot allow ourselves to view the ingredients or actions in a charm as mere procedure, mere commodity. What we’re really after is art. This is part of why many of us choose to grow or forage our own ingredients, assemble our own tools, and burn our own dried fumigations. We could buy these things if we wanted to, but would our work be the same? The raw and vibrant experience we are seeking is not fast work, but slow work: to sow and to harvest, to dwell within the charm as we work it, to soak in it, to perform it while appreciating its flavor fully, slowly, intentionally, to savor our awareness of it, not unlike the movements in a dance. The art is not simply in the end result of our magics, but in the process of the charm itself. We want its sensations to surprise and arrest us. We want to be shaken from our modern “time management” consciousness, to feel and perceive our craft like the first charmers who performed it in the ancient dark, sensing and longing our way through its gestures. In this way, witchcraft is, at its core, resistant to commodification, for its rewards can only ever be won slowly, and a potent charm can never feel cheap or tawdry.

Often, we ask ourselves the old question: are we witches because we perform witchcraft, or do we perform witchcraft because we are witches? In other words, is witchcraft, at its core, something we do, or is it something we simply are? Simple, reductive answers to this question miss the point. A sculptor would likely say that they became what they are through practice and discipline, that in practicing their art over many years, sculpting naturally became a part of who they are. We witches often come to the craft feeling “called” to it, frequently with a predisposition for its demands and an instinct for what “feels right,” but this alone is not enough. It is only in the course of practice that our craft becomes a part of us, that it slowly awakens something within us, sharpening our instincts and enabling us to achieve potency in our art with fewer bells and whistles. And so, it seems the answer to our question is actually both: we become witches by practicing witchcraft, and we continue in this act of becoming, this ongoing awakening, through discipline. We are much like the sculptor, both doing and being as we try to understand what our art is and means, relying upon the discipline and structure of good, sound craft to guide us in our work along the way.