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The movie industry early on depicted or villainized witches. They depicted witches as being evil, bad people who only wanted to harm and create chaos, which that's not the case in real life. Hollywood loves to have a villain and they love to have a hero, and a witch is never going to be a hero in any of these stories.
Luckily, more recent movies, the movie industry has kind of changed. Years they are depicting witches as strong, independent, beautiful women who take no [ __ ]. What we're finding in culture now is people are realizing, "Hey, this is more dimensional than just a regular person. It's interesting. It's something that people, you know, they get involved in." So it's fed over into social media.
Also, it has changed. Uh, they still villainize witches, but then they seem to kind of counterbalance. You know, they have a bad witch and then they have a good witch. They kind of have that yin and yang going on. It does get our name out there and it does let people know that there's a lot of us out here. Uh, recently you've got *Charmed*, um, you've got *The Craft*, um, which really depicted women very strong, um, and they were, they were very strong women, very positive women, very beautiful women, and powerful women.
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My definition of a witch is one who is born with the ability to connect with Divine energy and through that energy, focus and manifest what was not already there. Even in society today, witches are more thought of to be kept in a box, and you don't even realize it. Um, some people can learn to be a witch, but the natural-born witches are the ones that have the innate ability in their DNA to manifest and and make things happen.
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People are fascinated with witches because there's always something for people to hope for. Um, look at your Bible, look at all religions, there's always going to be something to hope for. You put your faith in it. Well, witches are the same. We are using things and we're making these manifestations.
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Witchcraft is trendy, empowering, alluring, and mysterious. It has a dark history that's behind it, so people actually look at it and they're like, "Wow, there's hope in that. There can be a resolution. Maybe I can do this, you know?"
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So magic, religion, and science has coexisted for thousands of years. In ancient times, there was no thin line. Magic and medicine were hand in hand. In fact, it, it really is now when you think about it today. In England, we have apothecaries, and apothecaries are somewhere that you go and they're quite like pharmacies, except just instead of just chemical, they will prescribe herbs and teas and tinctures to heal you. In ancient Mesopotamia, there was no difference. If you wanted to heal someone, you would put maybe a solstice to someone who had been wounded, but you would also look to this guy and ask, you know, Anana to help you with the healing that was taking place. So there was no separation of signs. They would look to the skies and they would, they wouldn't understand that the Earth wasn't the center of the universe or, uh, that, you know, there was so many universes other than our own. But they realized that every day the sun would come up and there was power in that sun, and that sun would spread its rays in a healing manner. So they saw that and they said, "Father Sky, we connect with you and Mother Earth, who would give the, you know, the bounty of the earth through harvest." They would connect with her, and so there was no need for a separation of that during that time. Uh, mankind wasn't ready for it.
Go towards the Egyptians and the time of the ancient Egyptians. Those people could not imagine life without magic because magic was in everything they did. The ancient Egyptians believed that they can harness the power of nature to achieve certain goals. A world with without magic didn't exist to them. They built pyramids, they would like bury everything they owned with them because they believed that there was magic in the afterlife.
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Well, they believed magic was what created and sustained the world and a sure one of internal life after death. It was something that they saw in every aspect of their lives, and as we know, they were one of the greatest death cultures that has ever existed, and there was quite a very, uh, ritual and deep meaning to death. Ancient text contains spells as well as medical procedures, and of course, we know about the Book of the Dead and all of the prayers that were said and exactly how the body was separated. The Book of the Dead is a collection of ancient texts. It contains spells to help navigate the underworld and assist you in your afterlife. The texts were magical as well as religious. Magic was just as legitimate as religion, and there was little distinction between the two.
The liver to go here in this canopic jar, you know, the, the kidneys here. They knew to clean the body cavity before everything was dressed because, of course, the awful of, uh, of human bodies will deteriorate quite quickly. But there was a magic in that and a knowing that when you think about it, is very scientific. They knew to get rid of that and to cleanse that. But they did more than that. They gave the soul to Anubis at the end of this, and Anubis would take his scale and he would put the soul in one end of the scale and then a feather in the other, and the soul must be lighter than the feather in order to enter into the afterlife.
So the really, you know, as far as comparing it to today, where there is such, or it seems such a separation of science and magic, and yet it's not. We're a soul inhabiting a physical body. Science states when we die, our brain shuts down and we are unconscious to the world. The reality is, the body is what's left behind, but your spirit goes to a different realm. As a medium, you're able to see beyond the veil of these different dimensions. Mediums can tell you when there, when there was someone who has, who is dying or who is in the process, the final process of dying. At the final moment, it's not something that is just like somebody clicks the light off. It's this tremendous exertion of power. You can feel it being released from the body, and why wouldn't it be? Because at that moment, we are being released, literally the soul is being released from the body, and we call it the cutting of the silver cord that keeps us tied to the body. And so what science has always thought is that when we die, there's a little, uh, light that, you know, as, as the body dies, it just clicks off and clicks off until there's no more.
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Lights. But the reality is, there is a surge of energy that happens at the moment of death. And that's what I mean, you know, it's not like magic is the red-haired stepchild. Quite the opposite. I look to science to explain what I am experiencing as a medium and as a psychic. So that is a positive aspect of the, the relationship I feel of magic and science. And there's a third in this triune, and that is religion. And when you think about it, magic was the original religion in that it was so core to religion itself. Then we have science, and we have, so we have a triad that all of humanity resonates with. It affects all of us.
Even if you look all the way back to Eve, she's the one that picked the apple to give to Adam, um, because she was tricked. And I think that's where it all goes back to. Seriously, what their reasoning was behind condemning witchcraft in the Bible was to keep women under thumb. They couldn't do that. They couldn't let women be powerful. So in order to do, you know, to keep them where they needed to be, that, and in their place, they would, you know, they would say that witches were evil and they needed to be taken care of. You know, that they were, they made deals with the devil, you know, with Satan. It's not that way. If you're a natural born witch, how could you have made a deal with Satan? That doesn't work that way. You were born that way. So it is basically misogynistic intent at its best. It's misogyny at its best.
The worst thing you can do back in the day would to be to stand up and say that you love Satan, because everything in the Bible is, is saying, "Okay, this person was bad. They are the controller of hell. This is the worst that can happen is if you're in league with them." The reason why I think that women are more likely, or thought of to be more likely, to be in cahoots with the devil, um, is because you got to remember a long time ago, women didn't have the rights that they have now. What they had was a weak mind. They were doing housework, they were taking care of the kids, but they were not in business, they were not leaders. In the forefront of their minds, so they thought, "Oh, these women, these women that are working in these houses, well, these poor things, they're not strong enough to resist the devil." And I think that's where it comes from. Cuz if you see, there's always a man that would go rescue the woman. All these movies, things like that. Man, men, not to say anything bad about men or anything, but that's just the, the part that they played because these women were feeble and they were weak and they were weak-minded. So they believed, "Okay, the devil can get to them easier."
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In 1692, Salem Village was rocked by mass hysteria and false accusations. This was all centered around a group of girls who accused their neighbors of witchcraft. In 1692, an innocent game with a woman named Tiba, who had gotten to the New World by way of Barbados and actually was on the ship with Samuel Paris, was, was playing with two children. So the whole thing with the Salem witch trials started with young girls, you know, dabbling in magic with Tiba, um, and they were interested, they were intrigued, um, they felt powerful, um, you know, with this magic that they've just learned. They got caught, and when they got caught, they decided the best thing to do was accuse other people to get out of trouble. I mean, that's what kids do.
The Salem Witch Trials was one of the most notorious times in witch history, and that's the truth. You had, uh, a woman, Tiba, who actually was talking to these young girls, was helping them do devon with eggs, things like that. Now, do I think it was all in fun and games? I do believe so. Also believe that they, what they were consuming at the time, such as the breads and things like that, could have altered the state of how they were thinking due to the mold that was in the bread, things like that. Was I there? No. Do I believe that these little girls, um, had these stories and spun these stories quite wildly? Yes. Do I believe there could be some truth behind it? Yes. I do believe, um, that there were witches at the time, but I probably don't believe they're the ones that were set on trial. I believe those were the ones that were cowering, trying to take care of their families because they knew their life also depended on it.
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These two girls, Elizabeth Paris and Abigail Williams, along with Tiba, had broken an egg in a, uh, a jar of water, and by looking at the egg, you can describe or you can predict things. It's, it's a way of, uh, you know, connecting with and and telling someone their future or, you know, what, whatever it is that they are to know. But that day, Elizabeth thought that she had, um, had looked into it and didn't like what she see. But it was Abigail that absolutely went into spasms of convulsions, and so the witchcraft craze of Salem, Massachusetts began. And it was so easy.
Salem W trials was from 1692 to 1693. Over 200 people were accused, 30 were convicted, and out of that, 30, 19 were hanged, 14 were women and five were men. And then there was Jes Corey, who was pressed to death with stones because he refused to admit his guilt. But there were many, many more that were actually tortured because you couldn't kill a witch without a confession, and so there were different methods used to try to force the confession.
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As I had mentioned before, we had JW Corey, who was willing to take over three days enough rocks that were being piled on him that it eventually crushed him. Jes Corey, over a period of three days, had so many rocks piled on him, it actually crushed him. But for most people, they were put through such horrible tests that it would even traumatize people in present day. And the test was horrible. It, it would have traumatized anyone even in the present day, laying so many stones on the body until it crushes the body until they got a confession, as well as the dunking of which, or throwing them over the side to see if they would float. And if they floated, they were a witch. If they sunk, they were innocent. Out of those 30 that were convicted, five of those died in jail.
In fact, scholars say now that it was really a bunch of hysterical girls who had no place in the society where they lived at that moment. It was so patriarchal, it was a Puritan society, and so they had no voice. But this, this gave them a voice. It gave them power, and they grasped as hard as they could to that. But in doing so, they did a great disservice. History might not have it correct completely. I believe that there was probably, there were probably witches, but the biggest thing in that time, people have to understand that Puritans were there, right? The worst thing you can be is a witch. The worst thing you could be was a devil worshipper.
So they were always looking for devil's marks, you know, marks of the devil. And, and they would strip you, they would, they would grab your hair and they would twist it back so that they could look all through your head. They were screaming all the while because it was also designed to break you down, to make you confess. And as we all know, you can put someone under so much pressure that they're willing to tell you what they think you want to know. So you got to understand, these are superstitious people. And so these girls begin to point out people, a lot of people, and basically, "Which, which, you're a witch." And they picked out people like Goody Good. Sarah Good was a poor, pregnant mother of a young daughter and one of the first three women to be accused in Salem. Even her husband testified against her at the trials. The University of Virginia still has a record of the trial. There are transcripts, uh, that are available online through the University of Virginia. And she is so scared, so terrified, and, uh, so uneducated, and she had no one to step forward to speak for her. And you can sense that in her words and the desperation as she tries to prove that she's a good Christian and that she's one of them and that she didn't want to be sent to her fate.
They confessed, which I say that and I took a pause in that because I don't believe that was a confession that was easily given. Another way that they would try to get confession was to, um, put your fingers in a vice and crush until you admitted guilt. Um, there was just so many ways that they would torture. And then ultimately, if, if you were hanged, hopefully your neck would snap. If not, you're going to, you know, hang until you die from asphyxiation. So it was horrible. It was very horrible. These ladies, you got to understand, were beaten, were held, they were all sorts of things done to these women to get them to confess. So then they did, you know, they would be, uh, deprived of sleep, they would be deprived of food, they would be thrown into a dark, dark, as I said, dank, uh, jail and left to rot and drug her back out and then ask again, "Are you a witch?" Only it wasn't that. It wasn't anything so simple. They would say, "With whom do you practice?"
The misconception is that witches burned at Salem. That's not true. They were actually hung. People believe that these witches were burned. They were actually hung and pressed. Some of them were pressed, meaning stones were put on top of them until they couldn't, um, their life was ended. We ended up with 14 women and five men who were hung for the crime of witchcraft. And during that time, there were children who were accused. One of them was 4 years old when she died in the very dank and terrifying dark hole that they would put these people in. I mean, this was, you had a choice. You could, you could either leave the town because one of the things that I've had people ask is, "Why didn't they just leave? Why didn't they escape?" Because it's 1692, you know, America, and there was nowhere to go.
Too. One of the tests that they would use in Salem was to tie you to basically, it was almost like a seesaw, and they would put you into the water and they would hold you under and then they would bring you back up and then they would do it again. Imagine the most malevolent type of waterboarding that you can imagine because it's whole body, you are actually drowning. And then they bring you back up. And they always, the price of the sensation of this horrible torture was always, "Name someone. You must name someone." Or two or three. And people were willing to do that just to make the pain stop.
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When the devil came to Salem, Massachusetts, the people, or some people, were ready to make use of that presence for their own benefit. And that's what happened. And I will tell you that that the witchcraft craze finally quit whenever they pointed the girls was pointed to the governor's wife. The craze finally ended when the girls started pointing at the governor's wife, and that's when it stopped because everyone knows you can only point up the ladder so far until it falls. The governor put an end to the trials to protect his own family. Sentences were amended, arrests were stopped, and the prisoners were released.
But what people don't understand is that in other countries, it is still a crime that considered a crime worthy of the death penalty. I mean, they still hunt women, torture women, and kill women under the guise of witchcraft. In Africa, I know there is, I know in the Middle East, um, these seem to be countries that, you know, aren't as liberal or as open as other countries. I know that in the Middle East, um, there's certain countries over there that, you know, you're put to death for that. Obviously, these women, you know, maybe some of them are, you know, healers or wise women or, or or actually practice witchcraft. Maybe they are just someone who has a little money or property or that the government wants or some somebody wants. They just accuse them of witchcraft just to keep them under the, under control. It's basically a way to keep women under control, keep them down, and, uh, keep them from being equal to man.
The thing of it is, is I believe that a healer and a witch walk a very thin path. Such as certain nationalities, they'll say, "Well, she's a healer." And then if they say that you're a witch, you're doing the same things, but they believe that a witch in some societies can curse, where a healer can't curse, but they can take curses off. But they walk the same path, they do the same thing. It just depends on how they are seen. So some of these countries that are not as up to date as we are, as open, I believe they have their own healers there, and it's probably a woman just like me, but she chooses to use the name healer so she doesn't get killed.
The abuse of women still happens to this day, witchcraft being the excuse. And we're seeing that. I mean, in Saudi Arabia, they actually have an anti-witchcraft force under police. If someone accuses you of practicing in any manner, they'll hunt you down and put you on trial. If someone turns you in for, uh, for, for practicing in some manner, uh, then they, they will come to your house and they will drag you out. If found guilty, you'll be beheaded. This is a very serious thing to be accused of. You are sent to their court system, and if you are found guilty, you are beheaded. This is a very serious thing to be accused as a witch, and it's not just in Saudi Arabia. We're seeing it in Uganda, uh, where if you are accused as a witch, you can be tortured. I mean, you can have limb hacked off, and that's if you're lucky and you survive the attack. It, it happens all over, um, um, Africa. And I will tell you that one of the saddest, I have to just, one of the saddest cases is in Nigeria. There is this huge influx of accusing children as witches. And, uh, one care worker found a little boy, and he had just been left because he had been, you know, pointed out as a witch. He was full of worms, he was near death, you know, he had to have medical help to be brought back. No one would help him because he had been accused as a witch. All it takes is an accusation.
The reason this was happening, it was a combination of religion and poverty. There is a huge explosion of the Christian Pentecostal religion, which they said really highlights the possibility of a child being a witch, just the possibility. And there are also some, uh, I hesitate to call them pastors, but they call themselves pastors of these churches that think that it is to their benefit to allow this because they, they tell these people that they have saved them from the witch, from the four-year-old or the two-year-old witch that they came to them, and that was their, their response is that this, this child, yes, they're right, this child must be a witch, and now they have saved them from the witch. And the child is just put to the streets if they're lucky.
Paganism came over with the sailors, the Germans, the Irish, the English. They brought their beliefs, their mystic culture, but it was kind of buried. You, it was a hidden thing, um, because of, you know, the wide, wide, um, spread of Christianity. So these people, even though they came here to be free, they still had to kind of, you know, keep it quiet. So during the '60s, if there was a resurgence of it, or a popularity, I guess, of, uh, paganism and witchcraft, women became, they embraced their power. Witchcraft is the ultimate way women have power. We can use it for manifestation, use it for glamour. I mean, it's just, it is power. Witchcraft is power to a woman.
In the 1960s, it was really pivotal also for witchcraft and the craft just growing in paganism during that time. There was also a law that was lifted that it wasn't against the law to be a witch. During this also, the uptick of Wiccans also in the US. Plus, you got to understand, it's a time of liberation in the country, so people were able to choose what path they wanted to go on. Throughout the years, it has become more accepted. A larger diversity of people, or mostly women, but men too, are practicing witchcraft. There's been a lot of, um, influence in the US. Writers and witches and sorcerers, whatever you want to call them, have written many books, and so, you know, anyone get their hands on these books, they read them and realize what they can do with this belief system or religion, whatever you want to call it.
So you got to understand that we've came out of World War I, World War II. These women have realized that they can do a lot more than they had ever done at home. And that attributed to a lot of women standing up and being like, "You know what? I've got more power in me than what I thought." Now you add a couple, you know, 10, 20 years to this, and now these women are ready to fly. So you got a lot of feminists that are standing up. You got a lot of people who are sewing their oats of, "Is this Christianity path I want to go, or do I want to go down a paganism path?" And then also, you have Wicca in the middle of it. So it was a booming time for a lot of strong female leads that come into the picture. There's this resurgence of witches, young and old, men or women, and it has just, it's exploded recently.
Witchcraft in America really took off when the English repealed in 1951 the Witchcraft Act, and that, uh, that made it actually illegal to be a witch or to work as a medium or as a psychic. And when that happened, people really started stepping out of the shadows. There was one person in, uh, particular, Sybil Leek, and she was quite the character. She owned three very successful antique stores, and she had a jackdaw or a blackbird that would sit on her, her shoulder, and she was said to have actually been part of the oldest coven in England, which is the, um, New Forest Coven, and that is where she was initiated. So she came out and she wrote a book called *Diary of a Witch*. *Diary of a Witch* started bringing witchcraft to a broader audience. And of course, during that time, we also had Gerald Gardner. During that time, Gerald Gardner took bits and pieces of the old religion and started making a new one, and he brought that to America in the, uh, early 1960s.
And there was so much going on, uh, during that time. You know, as you mentioned, you know, women were wanting to reclaim their, their power, and women started gaining their power back from a male-dominant society. They wanted to know that they were of equal value as their male counterparts. They knew their essence was just as important. And it encouraged people to accept themselves as magical beings. And so we had that. We fast forward, we are seeing now, you know, a multitude of young women who are really stepping up and saying, "I want this. I want to be able to worship a female deity. I want to be able to see, you know, uh, that, that I, my energy is as valuable as male energy," who has had a very male-dominated religion which has permeated the entire world. You know, I know that my essence is as important. And so they're being drawn to that. And it's also encouraging people to accept themselves as a magical person, as someone who may have psychic ability or intuition that's more than others.
And I think part of it is the climate right now is very unbalanced, and I think that we're looking for a way to balance that. And when we have too much male energy, we often go to a place where things are, they're bad. We have war, we have, uh, you know, we have too much aggressive energy in the universe. And now we are wanting to bring that back a little bit, and with more female energy. And if you'll notice, it does seem like, you know, this connection to Mother Earth again is happening. People are listening. They understand she has a heartbeat, and she does. Mother Earth has a heartbeat. And so we are realizing that we have a symbiotic relationship. We must balance that. We cannot keep destroying the Earth. We cannot keep leveling the Amazonian jungle and expect us to be able to survive. And what is going to be very, very quickly, a, a very dark place where even basic needs such as water and and good oxygen may become an issue.
Like I said before, I was born a magical person, and I can't deny that part of me. Um, even as a young kid going to church, it just didn't feel right. It didn't feel like my path. When I was old enough to realize what my path was, I was open about it to family and friends. Everyone who knows me knows that I'm a witch. I've never hidden it. Those who know me and are close to me have always known. But this is the first time that I have ever, in a very open way, said, "I am a witch."
The stereotype of a witch is a traditionally, and definitely in the Christian sense, is someone who has sold their soul to the devil. So if you have any bad habits, we're going to blame it on the devil. The devil's tempting you. Do I believe there's more negative forces? Yes, or misunderstood, rather. Does the devil come and talk to me on a regular basis? No, that's not something that I believe would happen. For a lot of people, I believe that I have a closer, actually, bond with God than I would have ever thought before, because there's no middle man. There's nobody telling me how I should act to get God's acceptance. Being a witch, you are accepted by your God.
I am a hereditary witch, in combination with eclectic. Hereditary being that I was born a witch. It's in my bloodline, it's in my DNA, it's just who I am. Eclectic is basically the way I practice. So I pull, I'm drawn to Hudo, I'm drawn to Mountain magic, I'm drawn to the Druidism. I just, I pull from different cultures and different beliefs, um, and make it my own. How I like to be seen as is alist. Eclectic. Alist is a word that means that you believe in all religions and believe in none. I was raised Baptist, and their thoughts were, "If you do certain things, you're going to hell. If you believe in a different God, you go to hell." And it shook me because there are some really good people that Christian would believe was a perfect person, but because they were raised in a different culture, they believe in a different God, then they're damned to hell. I refuse to believe that. So I took on the term alist because I believe there's truth in all religions, and at the end, I believe that God would judge the person for themselves rather than the culture they were in.
The type of witch I am is an eclectic hereditary, but I also have components of the hedge witch because I am able to astral project and jump the hedge, as the phrase goes. And also, I'm an energy witch because I, I do, I have this incredible ability to manifest to energy itself without, you know, taking in or worrying about, you know, things like the element of fire or water or air or Earth. It's simply the energy of the universe itself.
Being a practicing witch in rural America, I think it's a little different where I live here in the Appalachian Mountains. The reason why is because your neighbor can treat you greatly, right? Y'all can be best friends, but as soon as they find out that you're a witch, things may change. It is the Bible Belt, and religion, Christianity is very prominent. People keep wanting to save my soul. "Let me save your soul." They will pray for me and my family. I'm damned to hell, as well as, um, there's the fear, the initial fear of everything. They think I'm off conjuring with the devil and all these evil spirits. In reality, it is me becoming my own within myself. I don't see the flaws in what other people see. I don't need my soul saved. I'm good with who I am. I feel right with who I am. I don't need them to tell me, and I don't need their God to tell me that, you know, my afterlife is going to be good. And the box that you've been placed in no longer contains you. So the people that was your friends for a long time will all of a sudden say, "I don't want to be friends with them." Your perception on things, how people will believe a certain belief and you don't believe that anymore. You don't feel that your place is with these people anymore. There's a lot that changes, and people need to understand that. But if you're strong enough and you have faith enough, then you can take this path, but you have to be aware that it is against society.
So a lot of practicing witches in this area, and I'm sure in other parts of the country in rural America, some of them have to hide it depending on on their circumstances, which makes it very difficult because then you're not being true to yourself. If I say witchcraft to you, people believe that that's bad. It, it's in. So I choose actually not to use that word very often. I say I'm practicing, and you'll hear me ask other people, "I'm practicing." Because when you lay the whole word of witchcraft out, even though I may embrace it, the other person may not. So I make sure that I word things a certain way. Um, I can tell you everything that I did my day, I just leave out the part of the magic. The magic's for me and the people that I do it with. But I also stand proud as a witch practicing here. I just have to be selective of my surroundings.
What makes Appalachian witches different is, for one thing, the geographic isolation that we have had over the centuries, and because of that, it's encapsulated our unique brand of magic, which is a culmination of many diverse nations such as the Scots and the Irish and Africans and just all of these things have been a beautiful stew. But once it was combined, it stayed in the m, in the mountains. So in one way, our magic, Appalachian magic, is very raw, very root, and it has stayed pure. I'm an Appalachian witch. It kind of goes side and side with the eclectic witch because in Appalachian, you have so many different immigrants that come in and add different flare and flavor to witchcraft. So in Appalachian, we learned to survive. Whatever we needed to do, we would do. And there was no, "Okay, well, you're a Hoodoo, you're this, you're that, and the other." It was, you just wanted to survive. And we weren't considered witches in Appalachian. We were considered healers because if you were a witch, you would have got hard and you would have got beaten and you would have been outcast of any religious community. So they were called healers. But in my day and age, I proudly take the term of a witch.
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Just like in other cultures, you can be a healer, but if you walk the witch path, it's, it's two, it's the same thing. It's just two sides of a coin, and how you actually put it out there. Being an Appalachian witch, it's being special because we are adapted to the needs of our communities. So being in Appalachian makes it very unique also, cuz it was literally a melting pot. It didn't matter if you were black or white or Latino or indigenous. We all worked together, and our one goal was to survive in these mountains. So that's why a lot of times the folk magic actually gets blended together too. So it's unique in itself.
I do see a growing number of people coming out in the Appalachian Mountains. I'm not sure if they're actually people who are just becoming witches, or if these are people who are just letting it be known and they have been witches all along. We hold different types of events for witchcraft. The people that come to those, they will tell me that they're very excited and happy that there's a place for them to be open about who they are and speak with like-minded people and, um, just share their stories and and their belief systems and compare and just have someone to speak to because it's, they still feel like they're in the shadows.
Witchcraft is on the rise. Um, I do believe that social media and people's voices are a plus and a negative. Um, there's a plethora of misinformation that you can find on the internet, and just because someone has a soapbox doesn't mean that you need to listen to it. I believe that there is an increase in the number of witches that are coming out of the broom closets in Appalachian, everywhere else, due to social media. I belong to a, uh, a group on Facebook called Appalachian Witches. So that is something that you would not have seen, uh, 20 years ago, I don't think. And the fact that they have thousands of followers tells me that they also, that we have amongst those, probably most of them are practitioners.
I do believe that social media has contributed to the rise of witchcraft. I think that it has both been positive and negative. Positively, you are able to connect with witches around the world, whereas before, you, you know, that was virtually impossible unless you traveled. However, you do have a lot of people who are not genuine witches, who just want to dabble in it. We have these young baby witches. TikTok is full of that. They're trying to cast for love or whatever, and they have no experience in love or in casting. I mean, it's just, it's had a positive and a negative effect.
Many witches have a very strong connection to nature. My two elements that I resonate the strongest with is sky and water. So when I am in the woods, I can sense the energy around me to a point that it makes me uncomfortable because I am not resonating to the Earth as some of my other sisters would. I have great respect for the forest, for for animals, for nature itself, great respect. But again, what I worked with is energy. And so if I'm finding myself in an uncomfortable position where I can feel all this energy around me, it's like I can sense the squirrels, I can sense the bear that is a half a mile away, I can sense all of this energy. I look up and I make my connection to the sky.
This is a scrying ball. It's also known as a crystal ball, and I use it to focus my energy so that I can see the future, the past, and the present. When I'm in nature, it's like I have a grounding all around me, and I'm able to pull energy. I feel the life around me, I feel that energy, and I use it for magic. Everything in nature has a purpose. In witchcraft, we are very nature-oriented people. We find a feather, we use it. We collect herbs, we use it. We find gemstones, we use it. When we take something from nature, we thank nature for the offering, and we give back, we reciprocate. We don't just take, take, take. We are environmentally conscious. We realize that the Earth and nature is the whole reason we're here. It's, we can't survive without it. Well, I am so nature-oriented that I, I am vegan. I don't even kill a bug. I respect all things, all life. After every cast, we always end it with, "So shall it be done. Harm to none."
To be in nature, to me, it's a reconnection that calms you. You need it to get away from the hustle and the bustle and just give your mind time to quiet. I think that's probably, um, why, why everyone comes out, witches or non-witches. When you think about it, you go in a room and maybe they just had an argument, and you walk in the room and it's so heavy with this argument, you feel the energy in it. You can, there's no way of you knowing the people are out of the room, but you feel the negative energy in the space. That's a representation of a human being feeling the energy that's around them. I've been on trips and I'll pick up like sticks or stones from the vacation and things like that because it just has a different energy flow about it. Everything, even life or death, has an energy field. Your energy is always like a fingerprint everywhere.
Fascination with bones and things like that that I have is that you get the essence of the animal and the characteristics of the animal, as well as how the animal passed. So energy is transferred through bones and things like that. Energy is all around us everywhere. Where you are at is a place where you should be aware of what you are doing at that moment. Karma. People worry about karma. They, they think that it is this awful punishment. But karma isn't. There's no saying that today the frog eats a worm, but tomorrow the worm eats a frog.
Some people choose to do ritualistic magic, which means that they are bound by certain things, such as you drawing a circle. You call the circles. You, what that is, is literally you protecting yourself. You're calling in this circle that you ask that nothing within that circle is bothered while it's doing this magic. We call on the four elements, make offerings. We'll give, we'll have a candle, a lit candle for fire, we'll have water for water, dirt for earth, a feather for air. Sometimes it's, you know, just forming a circle around the table and manifesting. You wear cloaks, you take a bath before your ritual, you put on your cloak, you put on your like magical jewelry, and you, it's very staged, and it's not as free-flowing as the magic that I normally do. But I've also seen the corners called, and that's where you call all the corners, um, the north, south, east, west, and you call and ask the protectors to watch over while you're doing these spells or spell work, and ask that they guide you in this time and make sure that you're protected while you're doing this. These are the watchtowers.
People refer to pentagrams or a pentacle. One is just the star itself, but one is encased in a circle. The points on the star are actually representation of you and the elements, or it could be your God and the elements, just how, however you choose to practice. That's the great thing of magic these days. You can choose to practice whatever you would like. Everyone's is different, and by that mean, I mean from coven to coven. For instance, how we cast our circle, you know, some people use, uh, wands, and we certainly do that also, but we might also use a broom. You can use that to kind of sweep away everything negative and to create a very holy place. We consider it a world within worlds. And also, we call the four quarters, are, uh, you know, the elements into our circle in order to help and to support and to, uh, be with us as we engage in spell work.
Working within the spirit realm is something that you need to prepare, prepare for. You cannot just go into that good night because that's what it is. It's, it can be a very dark place if you don't have a lamp with you. When you hear the word necromancy, it triggers something in you, just like witchcraft. We've been told this is bad. You are doing something with spirits, you're doing something with the dead, you're trying to raise the dead. These are things that I've been told. But it actually is a lot simpler than that. Um, everybody in this coven takes on that actually, um, whether it be we're talking to our spirit guide, and then they are conveying the messages from the other side. Necromancy is just means working with something that has passed. When you say it, you, even as a person who would be standing back and listening, it cringes a little bit. I'll tell you, when I hear it, I'm like, "Oh no, I'm not supposed to do that." But it's something I do every day. People on the other side do not have a concept of time. If you had the chance of speaking to someone you truly loved and you were able to talk to them, why would you not?
The issue with speaking with the past ones is that they only have a certain ability or energy to get a message through. Some might ask, "Why would you want to communicate with the dead? What is the purpose of that?" It's always the ponder in life to know that your loved one is somewhere safe, and that they know that you love them, and all those things that when they were alive, they weren't able to tell you or you were able to tell them, just that they know that they're okay.
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What you get from reading bones is it's a very primal way of doing divination. You're closing out the distractions, and you're just becoming one with the raw natural earth. What you have to do before you are at that place is to be able to recognize, "Is this positive energy? Is this negative energy?" You have to be able to recognize it, even if negative energy is trying to hide itself. People want to put labels on angels and demons. If it's good, it's an angel, and if it's bad, it's a demon. In reality, if someone's an [ __ ] in real life, they're going to be an [ __ ].
On the other side, I don't recommend just, uh, you know, flipping open a Ouija board, although I myself did that as a reckless youth. Spirit boards are neither good nor evil. They're basically a conduit to receive information from energies. If you're a very positive person and your intentions are good, you're going to get positive energies coming through that board. If you're a negative person, your energy is bad, you're on drugs, you're alcoholic, whatever the deal, you're obviously going to get negative energies in that board.
It would be like using a Spirit Box. Nobody scoffs and and says, "Ooh, the Spirit Box is bad, it's evil." It's the same thing. Just it's technology, it's not a board. Um, you are using radio frequencies for the Spirit Box, whereas with the board, you're using your own energy for that board, and you're letting yourself be part of that conduit. But that's the only difference. You're still inviting something in to answer questions.
And then there's different methods of using the Ouija board. Some believe that the medium would put their hands on it, and then they would move it themselves, as in, they move it, not this outside force moves it, and that's how they get the message. The board itself is not evil, but what you're doing is, you're putting your intent into that board. And as someone who's not trained, what you're, what you may be doing is simply saying, "Anyone, it's like anyone." It's like putting out a red light or a bright light in the middle of darkness with things that you cannot see around you and saying, "Come one, come all."
So you have to be very specific in your requests whenever you're connecting with someone who has crossed over. And if you aren't, there are things in the ether that are very, very negative. They, they hit him, they him, I, you, I get it out, oh, go, so sad, oh my God, they, they hit him, oh. Was throughout my years, I have came across a few more negative entities. Um, I don't like throwing around the, you know, D-word, as in the demon or anything like that, but they were more malicious intent. Um, I was in a more notorious hospital for this, and, um, it was more of a hide-and-seek type thing. It would always seek us out throughout this place, and we could always tell because it would make certain equipment go on the fritz, and it came around the room, and it smelt like rotted meat.
I have encountered a negative spirit. It was pretty bad. I didn't understand what was going on. It was mediumship that was happening. The spirit comes close, it's giving me these feelings, these messages. I didn't know, I wasn't trained to know at that time. Um, it can be for the person that it happens to, it could be very scary and very alarming. And of course, this is negative, it's got to be a demon, it's got to be something bad, it's got to be all these things. But what it seriously is, to an untrained person, it's a spirit trying to make communication.
Negative energy does not have to be strictly demonic. Demonic is what I call dark energy. That is something that has never been human. But there's also very bad humans who have lived, and their energy shows somewhat the same. In, in other words, when I see bad human energy, I'll see it's like something that's swirling, and it's like it's, it's misty around the edge. For demonic or negative energy, it's much bigger, much denser. It still has some of that, okay, but it's like energy, if you can imagine, just swirling energy.
When you're working with positive energy, you're going to get positive change, you're going to get positive results. Um, but when you're working with negative energy, like I said, there's a price to pay for that. There's always karma to deal with later on. So a lot of witches believe in karmatic law and things like that. Um, otherwise, if you work with a deity and you say that you're going to give them something and you make a deal and you don't follow through with your deal, they can make your life more difficult. There's the darker side of that. You have to understand what you're putting out and what you're asking for.
When we are in the ether, we have everything. We have all this energy that is out there. Um, and you have to know what is positive and what is negative, or anything can come through. Now, someone like me, we're really born with this. I've always been able to tell what's negative and what's positive. So not all witches are Wiccan. Wiccan is a newer religion. It has its origins in paganism, but it was not formed until the 1950s, I believe. It is a subcategory of paganism, just like witchcraft is, which is basically worship nature. They hold their rituals outside. They, they're nature-based. All witches are not Wiccans.
There are those amongst us who, who embrace the word witch. We connect in a way that our forbears would have connected. We don't follow the Wiccan creed, which is, uh, you know, basically what you put out, you're going to receive, uh, back three times. And we simply connect, once again, like our forbears did, with the goddess and with the god. The myth that witchcraft is a form of devil worship is basically hogwash. Um, it is not. Witches typically don't even believe, most, it depends on their belief system, but we don't believe in the devil or Satan the way that Christians believe or, or most of the world believes. We believe in positive and negative energy. So there's really no devil or Satan to worship. You know, it's just negative energy, and there's no worshiping in the craft. Witchcraft does not recognize the devil at all. We recognize but positive and negative energies.
People will say that magic isn't real, it's just fun and games. But when they say that, my comeback to them is that you pray in church, that's manifestation. You put on your makeup, that's glamour magic. You light a candle for ritual purposes. We light candles for ritual purposes. It's just two sides of the same coin. You're basically practicing magic, but you're calling it something different. There's magic all around you. Like, and it just depends, depends on the day and age and time. Um, you can look at anything, a medical miracle, that is magic. Um, how you feel as a person, like that is magic. How music makes you feel, how you can change your mood with just a few things. Um, magic is something that's all around you that you overlook because we're desensitized not to recognize it.
Magic itself is benign. It's like water. Water can give you sustenance and keep you alive, but water can also kill you if you are unfortunate enough to be in it and not being able to make your way back to shore. It is simply an energy. It is the practitioner of witchcraft and their intent that makes that energy perform in either a very negative or positive way.
Once you go down this path, you'll find that it's very hard for you not to want to keep down it, and there's no other path that you can see for yourself. It's really finding the true beauty within yourself, and it gives you the power to become the beautiful being that you're meant to be. Witchcraft is here to stay. Witchcraft is not going away. It's here to stay. It's not going anywhere. The growing popularity proves that it's not going anywhere anytime soon. So, which or not, that's that's the truth of it. So wouldn't you want to be a witch?
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