I learned this song when I was 17 years old, travelling through Yellowstone on a school bus filled with other Girl Scouts.
I’ve been singing it to my classes for decades, and twenty years ago when my nieces were little, they requested it at bedtime (I bet they can still sing it word for word).
I’ll be singing it to the mystery school students tomorrow morning when we gather for our seasonal retreat.
Do you ever wonder who, indeed, were the witches?
And what happened to them? And why our well-meaning friends and family worry that we might be one?
They worry because history, my friends, is a tricky bitch.
While this song is light and fun, and Halloween is light and fun, and these days being a witch can be light and fun (and oh-so-cool), there’s some very real and serious history about witches.
And I tell you this not to rain on your Halloween parade, but to soothe you.
That heartbreak you feel? That fear of not wanting people to think you’re “weird” or “witchy”? That deep curiosity you don’t listen to? Those women’s circles you don’t want anyone to know you attend, or can’t bring yourself to attend?
It’s not because you’re “crazy”.
Nor chicken.
Nor doing anything shameful.
You are, instead, responding to a very real survival mechanism put in place by centuries of conditioning.
You are protecting yourself, your daughters, and your friends from being “caught”.
Caught? Yes.
It’s a fear, a response to a 300-year persecution called the Burning Times, that goes deep.
It’s real, right there in our bones along with our wisdom and marrow.
So, who were the witches?
We were.
We are.
And what is a witch, anyway?
Here’s what I think.
Witches live with nature rather than in spite of it, befriending it and building intimacy with it.
Witches rarely curse the weather, wishing it was warmer or cooler, dryer or wetter, lighter or darker; instead, they marvel at it and harness their momentum to it.
Witches watch nature with curiosity and agape, learning it’s patterns and cycles and matching their own to it for ease and efficiency.
Witches have a natural comradery with the wild, preferring it to things people control or create.
But what about when nature wrecks her town, her career, and her home; takes away family and friends? What does a witch do then?
They (we, you) grieve right along with everyone else; mad as hell, powerlessly wondering why it happened– shocked, traumatized, scared, and hopeless.
And.
We are also able to register the awe of it.
I think witches are people who work to have the capacity to take in the magnitude of nature — a wind that can sheer the trees from the side of a mountain, or a little creek that barely covered your ankles swelling and raging in the span of half an hour to take out every bridge; the river that people paddleboarded down peacefully at sunset, or had Mermaid parades alongside, suddenly swallowing towns, carrying away homes with the effort it takes to move a leaf downstream — and never, ever forget it.
It’s not that witches like this magnitude. I’m not saying that.
I’m saying that right beside the grief, the anger, the desperation and the hopelessness is also respect — witches keep the magnitude of nature in perspective.
When you find yourself pausing to watch a shower of autumn leaves, when you hear a melody in the crackle of your evening fire, when you see a dance in the steam of your tea, you might be a witch.
When you watch a natural disaster with tears of grief and anger, awe and respect, and Know to keep certain details of what you’ve witnessed between you and the divine, sacred, you might be a witch.
And if you’re a witch, you can sing this identity from the mountaintops or you can just be it, no need to label it, proclaim it, be certified in it, or “earn” it (this is the Wisdom Keeper talking).
Either way, we can feel grateful for these times when we have the freedom to post on Instagram about being a witch, to have a door mat at your home that says “witch, please”, or to rock your “weird” for everyone to see.
To even get emails like this, from a woman like me.
Don’t take this for granted. The freedom to be open, even trendy, even cavalier, about being a witch is hard won and, these days, precarious.
We have to work to protect this freedom.
If you have friends, daughters, mothers, people, who are witches, you must also work to protect that freedom.
Part of the work is sending peace and sweetness through the ethers and beyond the veils, and living our lives in honor of the fact that we haven’t always had it. And part of the work is voting for people who will protect nature, the artists, the weirdos, and the women.
Blessed be the witches, and the ones who protect and love us.
Blessed Samhain
love and witches,
xo
kv
