Woo-Woo Bullshit
For those of you who don’t know, I’m a witch.
Well, OK…generally speaking I use the word “pagan” over witch (and the word “Wicca” rarely enters into my vocabulary). Although, when I really think about it, witch is probably more accurate than pagan as paganism has more to do with faith and witchcraft more to do with action and experience (at least to my mind). Terminology aside, I think it’s probably time I come out of the broom closet.
I think I’ve always been a witch. I’ve certainly always been interested in the more esoteric aspects of the world. From building fairy houses in our yard to collecting leaves and berries for “potions” to wandering around the old local cemetery just around the corner from our house to my inexplicable love of Bullfinch’s Mythology as a small child, all the signs were there. My parents never discouraged these interests. While I’m sure I seemed a bit strange lots of little kids live in an imaginary world. Lots of children enjoy stories of fairies and mermaids and mythological creatures. But not all little kids believe they’re real.
Or maybe they do. As far as I know my few playmates in those early days were passively going with my weird little fantasies. It’s hard to believe they didn’t feel the same things I felt – that we were building little houses out of sticks and stones and moss for little otherworldly creatures to inhabit – but I suppose what they felt doesn’t really matter to this story. What matters is that I really believed in boggarts and banshees, pixies and nixies, naiads and dryads. I really believed that putting together the right “ingredients,” all of which could be gathered in my own backyard, I could make something magical happen. I believed in the ghosts of the long dead that lived in the graveyard up the road and the great, fallible gods and goddesses that lived on Mount Olympus.
The weird little girl who believed in all these things learned fairly quickly that the rest of the world didn’t. Most of my little friends wanted to pretend their barbies were going to a dance or getting dressed for a party. I pretended my barbie was practicing magic by moonlight (even if she did go to that party first). The weird looks started early on and were rapidly followed by a lack of invites to play at other kids houses (and the rejection of invites to play at mine). And that was OK with me. There were still a few kids who liked my odd games, and when I was alone I could always find a way to amuse myself. I’d climb my apple tree and talk to the spirit who lived inside it. I’d build scrying pools in the tiny brook that bordered our property. I’d wander down the nature walk at my grandmother’s house (who lived right next door) and watch the seasons slowly turn day by day. I was a little socially isolated, but I was happy. The special way I understood the world around me made me feel a part of something and safe.
Teenage me was more concerned with holding seances, hanging out with her best friend who had convinced her he was a 1,000-year-old alien, and understanding the ghosts in the graveyard next to her new house than learning how to do her makeup and listening to NYSNC (I was more of a Hanson girl if you must know). Her Gap and Abercrombie clad classmates looked down on her thrift shop peasant blouses, long broomstick skirts, collar of hemp necklaces, and homemade bellbottoms, and while she acutely felt their rejection she was still too interested in the esoteric (and getting straight A’s) to really care. She found a couple of groups that suited her (thanks White River Valley Players and Village Harmony), and while her compatriots in those groups didn’t exactly share her perspective she didn’t feel like a complete freak when she was with them.
When I hit my late teens things started to change for me. I left my little town, my idyllic world filled with magic, for college at 16. Academically it was the best thing for me and I wouldn’t change that decision, but leaving the people who sort of understood me for a group of disparate individuals with entirely different life experiences and perspectives left me feeling a bit lost. While in school I dug deeper into the faith aspect of paganism. I’ve never been much for “practicing” witchcraft, but, in secret I would study the major pagan holidays, the meanings of signs and symbols, and the usage of crystals and herbs. I kept this part of me a secret from my classmates. I knew these brilliant kids would see my belief in woo-woo bullshit as a weakness, as something that marked me not just as different but less than. I respected the hell out of all of my classmates and wanted to be just like them. I only told a few close friends when a spirit took my body for a walk for the first time. I played with a Ouija board with those same girls, but I knew they didn’t think it was real. I dove headlong into the study of music (and music history) because that was a kind of magic that everyone could access.
While I never stopped believing in magic, seeing it everywhere, and experiencing impossible things I did stop talking about it for about a decade. I felt like the people around me would have rejected my experiences or simply thought I was crazy. My love of contra dancing, serial killers, and sacred harp music was weird enough for my peers at that time in my life. How could I possibly explain communing with dead, feeling the emotions of people around me, and my inexplicable connection to Artemis, the Morrigan, and Kali? My belief in and knowledge of the fantastical moved from my everyday life to the worlds I created in my writing. I write fantasy, but it’s fantasy that’s grounded in the real world. Of course it is, that’s the way I still experience the world to this day.
Since the beginning of this year, when I actively changed just about everything in my life, I’ve been trying to find a way to reintegrate my more magical views with the practical person I’ve become. It’s not easy, but I’m trying. I occasionally have a hard time expressing what’s going on with me because there’s an element of magic to it. I still have a little bit of a hard time accepting that the things I’ve spent so much time rejecting and ignoring are real. I fight the impulse to describe my experiences as woo-woo bullshit (as you might have noticed from the title of this post). The battle between being accepted and acceptable versus things I’ve experienced is not an easy fight, but I need to find a way to win it. I need to find a balance.
