Witchcraft has always played a large role in my life. While many kids were learning badminton or taking trombone lessons, I was reading up on spellcraft and ways to plant my herb garden. I grew up in the late 1990s when my cultural life became saturated with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed and Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Channel-hopping without stumbling across a young woman with magical powers was virtually impossible. But the draw wasn’t just the empowerment that spells and telekinetic forces threw my way; I was intensely charmed by witchcraft’s connection with the world outside and the earth around me.
In the evenings I spent time in my garden wrapped up in scarves and blankets to watch the different phases of the moon pass each night; I learned the names of wildflowers growing at the side of the road where no one cast a second glance and wondered how I could use them in a spell. These small things gave me an overwhelming sense of calm, so enthralled was I by constellations, intricate root systems and the dashes of magic I found around me. Perhaps witchcraft was in my blood – my very first word was “moon”.
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