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A Restless Spirit on an Endless Flight

Discovering My Identity as a Witch

I find when I practice magic—when I focus my intention for a greater good or outcome—more often than not, my purposes are family-­focused. I am incredibly family- and home-centric. My definitions of what is home and who is family may at times be somewhat untraditional, but it is within those confines that I feel I have the most power to create good. In witchy terms, that makes me most similar to a cottage witch: someone who finds her greatest intentions enacted within her home, for her family. A cottage witch considers his or her home to be the most sacred space. Cottage witches are caretakers and homemakers, and they employ these skills to strengthen and impart their personal divine abilities.

As you can imagine, there are all kinds of witches. The cottage witch is most similar to the kitchen witch, for obvious reasons. Whereas the cottage witch incorporates sacred rituals throughout the home, the kitchen witch’s focus is specifically on (you guessed it!) the kitchen. Meals are opportunities to create with intent, to infuse meaning into every dish, every gathering. Ingredients are specifically chosen, meals carefully planned. Sigils (symbols that invoke certain kinds of power) are stirred into soups, traced out with a spoon in pancake batter. Kitchen witches find their greatest peace and comfort in the rituals of preparing food and channel their intentions in that way. Often, kitchen witches are also healers, drawing upon the natural properties of plants and herbs to help ameliorate physical and psychological ailments.

There are also practitioners called green witches. Green witches share some similarities to kitchen witches, as they, too, are often seen as healers. Green witches are what I imagine a lot of people associate with Wicca; they feel most closely connected with nature and organic elements. While all witches align themselves with the natural world, its seasons and rhythms, the green witch feels most connected to the greater universal power as it’s found outdoors. Green witches often find their acts of intention tied to trees, herbs, plants, flowers, and stones. They may find grounding and inspiration in Druidic tree adulation, the Gallic sacred groves, and the practices of traditional Italian witches. (The Italian witch is historically known for “folk botany” and was often a community’s healer as well.)

Sea, or water, witches are innately similar to green witches, only they find their connection to the divine power in nature through water rather than the earth. Their sacred spaces will often be lakes, rivers, or the sea, and their intentional acts or spells will more often than not have a liquid element. Due to their close association with water, they will also be especially cognizant of the tides and hold high honor for the moon. The tools they use are more likely to be found objects, such as shells for bowls, sea glass, driftwood, and sand. Sea witches have often borne the brunt of evil-witch lore—from sirens to underwater beasts, the sea witch overall gets a pretty bad rap. In reality, the sea witch is one who is often hyperaware of balance, conscious of the ever-changing motion of life. She stands on land, with her heart in the sea.

Another witch who understands duality and the precarious nature of balance is the hedge witch, so named for the hedges that once separated properties. Hedge witches feel most spiritually connected to matters of the mind and spiritual planes. Just as a hedge would stand between two properties, hedge witches stand between two worlds. They are interested in the connection between the mind and body, the physical world and the soul, and the delineation between this world and the next. Hedge witches are often closely associated with shamans; they sometimes employ similar techniques, such as drumming and meditation, to induce transformed states of awareness and to better explore alternate planes of existence. They are seen, more often than not, as possessors of great wisdom, people who are able to see the totality of existence and therefore lend guidance.

They aren’t the only ones looking at the totality of things, however. Probably the most common type of witch is the eclectic witch, one who takes bits from all kinds of other practices to form his or her own path. Eclectic witches pull from various customs, traditions, and myths to establish their own unique set of rituals. Some practitioners warn against this method, which they see as simply an unwillingness to learn enough about any one path, but all in all, it’s simply a way for a witch to evolve her practice as she personally evolves through time. Eclecticism is beneficial, not because a witch isn’t dedicated to truly understanding what he or she is doing but rather because following a set definition of who one is and how one should practice is simply too confining.

Like seekers on any other religious path, witches find a practice that speaks to their hearts and build around that, be it a set of predefined rituals, or customs slowly collected over time. The list of witches above contains just a few basic examples; no two witches are the same. There are numerous buckets and classifications, and it seems we all pick and choose from one or two (or all) at one point or another.

As I grow in my practice and as a person, my places of power shift accordingly. In my life now, I am a mother and a wife. I find these roles to be incredibly fulfilling and empowering. Embodying those roles in my life to the best of my ability is my absolute priority. It makes perfect sense that in the here and now, I am able to harness my energy and intent most effectively in my home, around the needs of my family. Perhaps someday, when steel and stone do not surround me, I will find a greater everyday connection to soil and stars. The beauty of Wicca is I don’t have to know or decide right now. My practice can ebb and grow as I do.

It might seem counterintuitive, in fact, that I belong to a religious order that is so closely tied to nature when I choose to live in one of the largest cities in the world—and not just on the outskirts, where small private patches of land exist, but right smack in the center. I admit that when I first moved to the city, well over a decade ago, I had a passing thought that I wouldn’t be able to practice here in any meaningful way. I couldn’t imagine heading to Central Park at dusk to try to catch a faint glimpse of a star, or walking to the West Side Highway and standing amid the exhaust trails of cars to see the setting sun. I had been spoiled thus far in my practice; living among the wild endless fields of Kansas I had always had space and ample nature available. I knew what it felt like to watch storms roll over the horizon, or to drive small two-lane roads along winding pathways with no destination in mind, just the top down and the wind waving. It was easy to connect with the universal divine power where I lived, easy to picture the wheel of life when you’re in the midst of what we all associate with it: grass and sky, birds and squirrels. In New York City, even when I found nature, it was highly manufactured. I wasn’t sure what to do with that.

I first fell in love with New York City in college, after a road trip with a group of friends over Valentine’s Day in 1998. It was love at first sight: the energy, the art, the people. A couple years into my career, I spent six weeks commuting between my Kansas home and a client’s office in Manhattan, and my heart eventually just couldn’t take it anymore. I knew where I had to be. I had to try. When I was given the opportunity, in 2001, to study for my master’s degree at Pratt Institute, I jumped at the chance. I fixed up my house, sold everything I had, and landed in the heart of Kips Bay, New York. (It wasn’t until over a year later, when Sam and I had been dating long distance for some six months, that I realized how much it had become my home. I couldn’t bear to depart, and so he arrived.)

Yet my first months in the city weren’t easy. There was many a lonely, frightened, tear-filled night followed by a challenging day. It was the first time I was really on my own, building a home and starting anew in my career. My life felt a bit in pieces, and I struggled for some grounding.

I moved to the city at the beginning of July, so my first real Wiccan holiday here was Lammas, the first of the harvest festivals. Coming from Kansas, this holiday always felt very much like home to me. It is a time to celebrate the bounty the summer has given, the tall wheat and burgeoning gardens. In my previous life, you would find me driving small, winding roads with the top down on my convertible, surrounded by the endless wheat fields of the place I was born. I would often return home that evening to finish off the loaf of bread I had baked in my kitchen, enjoying a nice hunk of it on my back porch beneath my giant fir tree.

All that I had left behind in Kansas was as unreal as a dream once I looked around my newly acquired ten-by-sixteen-foot studio apartment. I had no idea where to begin. I peeked out my windows and saw nothing but the buildings across the street. There was no harvest here. I was at a loss for where even to begin. Just when I was finally feeling steady on my spiritual feet, so to speak, it seemed they had been swept out from under me again.

I took a halfhearted walk to Central Park. I freely admit that I did more wallowing than celebrating; I came home no more refreshed and connected than when I left. I walked to the corner grocery and bought some bread, preparing for my little lonely Lammas feast. I was in full pity-party mode. I sat on my couch in my tiny apartment and wondered if I’d ever be able to really practice Wicca in my new home.

Looking back now, I can see that a lot of what I was feeling had little to do with not knowing how to practice and everything to do with being incredibly homesick. I had no friends whom I felt comfortable inviting to help me celebrate my little pagan holiday, and the loneliness was hitting me particularly hard. I eventually gave in to tradition and decided I needed to at least try to celebrate outside, even if it was on my tarpaper roof instead of a wide expanse of grass. I packed up a little bag of bread and wine and an old blanket and headed up the two grungy flights of stairs that separated me from the topline of the city. I tiptoed past the final apartment in the building, inhabited by an old Greek man who adored regaling me with stories of his adventures with the hookers of the Upper East Side, and carefully opened the steel door to the roof, ignoring its warning about an alarm that I knew had been disconnected long ago.

In a perfect story, I would open the door to be greeted by a fresh wind that would remind me of home and a canopy of stars—but this was Kips Bay, Manhattan, and all that greeted me was a somewhat stale smell I was sure emanated from the Greek man’s apartment below me, and a perfectly dark sky. What the view may have lacked in stars, however, was made up for in skyline. Above me soared the Empire State Building in its full glory, with a collection of other brightly lit buildings clamoring for attention at its feet.