Witches walk among us. They're not like the fictional ones you grew up with

CNN-

Elwynn Green's morning routine is relatively mundane, at least at first.

Along with his wife, Green wakes his three daughters, makes them breakfast and packs their lunches. Once they are sent to school, and after he has had a moment to meditate, he will take a walk near his home on the rugged Causeway Coast in Northern Ireland.

While he is away, he usually talks to the wind.

Green could feel the air swirling around him or the force of a gust pushing dark clouds into the sky, blotting out the blue. He hears the wind speaking and so may feel compelled to ask it a question. Sometimes the wind will respond. He has a similar impulse when he hears the trees whispering or the waves crashing.

For most people, in everyday life, it's a sign of insanity, he says.

But Green is a witch, and communing with the world around her is at the heart of her craft. He asks questions about the wind and the trees, the ancestors and the spirits. Sometimes the answers never come. But for Green, witchcraft isn't about finding answers to the big questions of life (or death, for that matter). It's about finding beauty in chaos.

Sometimes it's not about knowing, Green said. Knowledge is overrated.

The way Green practices witchcraft defies stereotypes of witches wielding a broom, a cauldron, and a pointy hat. He doesn't belong to a clan. He is neither Wiccan nor Pagan, religions rooted in witchcraft. He has a few cats, although they are better suited for snuggling than serving as useful familiars.

There's no one way to be a witch, he says. The principles and rituals are unique to all who practice. Traits that others might find strange only reinforce witchcraft, Green said.

We never belonged, he told CNN about witches. If we had our place, we wouldn't be witches. And so my advice to people on this is, generally, to get used to not belonging. It's a good place to settle down.

Witches can be born and made

Green is a hedge witch who exists in the metaphorical hedge, the liminal space between our world and a spiritual realm with which he interacts. Her witchcraft is heavily influenced by animism, or the belief that everything possesses a spirit. For Green, there is magic in everything, the air we breathe, the water in the ocean, the animals and plants with which we share our planet.

Witchcraft runs in the Green family. He was raised by his two aunts, both witches, who shared their home with spirits and encouraged Green to discover his magic. Although both have since passed away, Green said the spirit of one of his aunts comes in from time to time to chat.

Andrea Samayoa, for her part, was not raised as a witch. She came to the profession innocently as a child, when she and her friends made potions with leftover condiments from neighborhood parties. Playing witches, they cast spells to make it rain and dance under the moon.

We didn't know what we were doing at the time, said the Florida witch.

This practice became more important to her when Catholicism, the religion she grew up in, began to feel too restrictive. Samayoa said she resists inflexible rules, which is part of the reason she doesn't belong to a clan either.

Even in his early thirties, Samayoa maintains a carefree approach to witchcraft. Its eclectic interpretation, which draws on several witchcraft traditions, has very few, if any, rules. She even published a spell book called Lazy Witchcraft for Crazy, Sh*tty Days, inspired by the impact of her chronic illness on the way she practices her craft.

Both Green and Samayoa are full-time wizards, mastering the rituals and spells typical of witchcraft. Green performs a banishing ritual each morning to rid her environment of negative influences, and Samayoa prepares an anti-curse wash with herbs, citrus, witch hazel and quartz to keep the damage at bay.

While they practice witchcraft solo, they practice it in front of an audience. Both Green and Samayoa are popular figures on WitchTok, a popular TikTok community whose members share tips for improving their craft with other witches of all experience levels.

On TikTok, Green, who also hosts a podcast and a Patreon, performs readings using bones and tarot cards for commenters who ask him heavy questions about their love lives, careers, and child safety. family. It's a tall order, so Green chooses his words carefully.

Samayoa, meanwhile, often shares no-nonsense rituals in profanity-laced videos that require little more than an open mind. (She also sells spell kits.) Earlier this month, she taught her subscribers how to create a simple protection sigil with pen and paper, which she used to protect her Tampa home from the Hurricane Milton. It worked, she says: Her house was not damaged by the storm, although a few pieces of her fence were blown away.

WitchTok gained popularity in 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic inflicted extreme stress and uncertainty on the world. Even in the months before the pandemic upended life as we knew it, witchcraft was poised to make a comeback, partly in response to societal unrest following the 2016 election and the #MeToo movement , The Atlantic reported in 2020.

Pam Grossman, a pagan witch and scholar, told The Atlantic that the more frustrated people become, they often turn to witchcraft, because the usual channels through which they accomplish their tasks no longer work.

But witches who go into this business to gain power or control will be disappointed, Green said. Witchcraft is a way of interpreting the world and finding one's place in it, but there are never easy answers or perfect solutions.

Control within nature does not produce its chaos, he said. This teaches us.

Being a witch doesn't require belonging to a coven or casting a complicated spell, both witches told CNN. Witch-centric media like Hocus Pocus, American Horror Story: Coven, and Agatha All Along may show fictional witches brewing potions in cauldrons, making soul-sacrifice pacts, and harnessing their magic for dark purposes, but nothing None of this is required to be a witch.

You don't even have to understand how magic works to be a witch, Green said: Just accept that it's there and use it.

In fact, both witches said, fictional depictions of witches are almost entirely inaccurate. As long as your intentions are clear and your mind is open, you can become a witch, Samayoa said.

I feel like everyone has magic within them, she said.

While Samayoas' book includes spells intended to bring money and abundance to their casters, some of the most essential spells she shares are intended for self-care and healing. It's not easy to know when these spells have worked, because very rarely is there a simple solution to such nebulous problems. But once she works, a witch will know, she said.

Since magic comes from you and you alone, if you don't feel like you love yourself, your magic won't be as strong as you want it to be, she says. Self-care is better for your witchcraft.

Both witches said that practicing witchcraft is healing, although the process remains incomplete.

Witchcraft is a transformative thing, it changes us, Green said. I believe that we must accept all aspects of ourselves, the most difficult parts, we must love them. This is our power.

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