What’s your witchy background?

Cover of "The Crone's Book of Words"
Cover of The Crone's Book of Words

I was bullied a lot in school, so after martial arts failed (the boys in Karate bullied me too) I went to an occult shop and searched for a book that would help me curse them.

I found The Crone’s Book of Words by Valerie Worth and never ended up cursing anybody with it, because I chickened out. However I did try the weather spells (worked really well) and the building up one’s own power spells. I also tried the “To Bind a Malefactor” spell, but I did not know what “malefactor” meant and so I thought it meant to bind a person of the male persuasion. My dad did not respond to my commands as I had hoped.

I then picked up Teen Witch and walked around in a SRW-groupie haze for several years.  It was a dark, dark time in my life. I don’t like to talk about it.

After the Dark Ages of SRW were over, I started actually, you know, thinking for myself and figuring out what it was I believe. I moved away from the more CM-influenced Neo-Wicca I’d been practicing and got more into folk and hearth magic. Witch has now taken on the meaning of “worker of liminal spaces” to me, or British Isles version of a shaman. (Shaman is a specific term linked with Siberian cultures; I avoid using it to describe what I do even though it could be considered shamanic. Witch works fine.)

Now I’m interested in rootwork (working with plant and animal curios, etc) on top of my current hearth and hedge witchery practice, so I’m doing some research in that area.