Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Witches and Wine

Home
Pagan
Witchcraft is Gloriously Mundane

Witchcraft is Gloriously Mundane

Last updated on: October 5, 2018 at 3:57 am by Chaweon Koo

Witchcraft is Gloriously Mundane 2018-10-05T03:57:30-04:00 Chaweon Koo

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Embedded above is a vlog about this article.

Also, I’m giving away a new copy of Aidan Wachter’s “Six Ways.” More details about this in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.

***

With heavy heart, I confess: your girl is a subpar witch.

My eyes dart to the kitchen counter, where I keep an (dusty) altar for local land spirits. It wouldn’t take long to give offerings to them. But instead I sit, with shoulders curved inward, solar plexus clenched. On the wall, my shadow is long, Nosferatu-jagged.

I am filled with justification after justification on why I’m not magic-ing on a daily basis. I’m tired, I’m busy, I drank 3 glasses of New Zealand rosé at dinner and so tonight is out.

Never mind that my magic results have been so significant that it softened the edges of my atheism. Recently, magic has started to feel like a chore. Like waking up at 6am to go to the gym.

(By the way, I don’t wake up at 6am to go to the gym)

Finally, my shoulders uncurve – I’m gonna give offerings.

I pour Brita-filtered water into a cup. That goes on the altar.
I get my fancy Japanese incense, the one that smells like fabric softener.
I do the triangle of manifestation from Jason Miller’s “The Sorcerer’s Secrets.”

I feel a marked sense of relief when I finish the offerings.
But there’s tomorrow. And next week. And next month.
And then what?

The honeymoon is over, and now I have to decide: relegate magic to the status of hipster hobby…or commit to the Sisyphean task of doing the daily work

Hi, my name is Chaweon and this is how I roll that muthafuckin’ rock up that muthafuckin’ hill.

Resistance Isn’t Always What It Seems

Steven Pressfield wrote:

That’s a law of nature.

Where there is a Dream, there is Resistance.

Thus: where we encounter Resistance, somewhere nearby is a Dream.

I don’t know why I insist on making life more difficult, but I ooze Resistance from every pore.

Against all my gung-ho intentions, I have Resistance towards a daily magic practice. It’s the same Resistance I have to writing.

It’s most definitely the same Resistance I have to L-O-V-E, love. I toss and turn at night, the booming cacophony of my breaking heart too loud.

As a teenager, I would write a story in my journal, hate it, then as the page would get polka-dotted with tears, tell myself: if I had a cool boyfriend, I’d finish this story, no problem. I was a dark rock, a Moon needing a Sun.

But the cinematic lushness of love could not compete with the everyday work of ass-in-seat and writing, editing, rewriting, editing, rewriting, ad nauseam.

I’ve had nice boyfriends.
And I could only finish stories when they left me.

If only I had ecstatic visions everyday, I could magic on the daily, no problem.

This question makes my eyeballs vibrate with tears and fears, but I can’t help but wonder: what else has to leave me so I can step up The Great Work?

“Craft” is Part of “Witchcraft”

Scarlet Magdalene and Cyndi Brannen give great historical context and nuanced explanations of what “witchcraft” means.

As for me, I use witchcraft as a catch-all word for “magic you do.”
But when I first started magic, witchcraft was merely a synonym for “being a witch” as in:

1. Pentagrams drawn in chalk
2. #witchesofinstagram altar
3. Glossy lips chanting barbarous words
4. Full moon peering down on a circle of undulating bodies.

Witchcraft was terribly glamorous, all black stockings and garter belts and shibari rope.
But witchcraft rarely works for me unless I equally invest in the -craft aspect.

I remember when I was in kindergarten, tracing the outlines of my hand on red construction paper. On each finger, I wrote down something I was grateful for.

I don’t remember the other four, but the fifth one was: NO SELARY.
No Celery. I was grateful for no celery.

Or, should I say: I would be grateful for no celery.

Once a week, the teacher would hand out limp celery smeared in peanut butter, the bane of my young existence. I was not about to go through that bullshit again.

As I wrote it, my little brain was screaming: NO SELARY! NO SELARY! NO SELARY!

Exhausted, half in tears, I gave my teacher my completed hand. She put it on a laminated cartoon turkey as its tail.

That afternoon, we had crackers with cheese.
And we didn’t have celery again. In fact, I didn’t eat celery again for another 20 years.

My construction paper hand had imprinted life into this turkey, like God’s finger gifting Adam the spark of life on the Sistine Chapel.

The craft did not happen in my head. It literally happened in my two hands (writing and cutting requires concentration and effort from a 5-year-old). It happened as I put my authentic enmity with celery into the material.

This story may seem cutely insignificant, but does witchcraft have to be so Lord and Lady McSerious? When the murmuring sweetness of everyday life is seen as inferior, then the daily work is overshadowed by the peacocking of elaborate one-off rituals.

Can I accept that my magic is rooted in this body, this physical world, this reality of polarity, of manifestation, of everyday things like soggy vegetables?

“Kraft” is (Homonymically) Part of “Witchcraft”

When I think of “witchcraft,” I think of the band Kraftwerk, the electronic music pioneers from Düsseldorf, Germany. In an age of hippies, these OGs wore suits and ties, and came to their studio with their briefcases. The Man Machine defined my preteen sonic landscape.

Musik arbeiter – music worker. Not musician. No, a worker. That’s what Ralf Hütter considered himself.

Magic arbeiter – magic worker. Reconciling the otherworldly promise of magic with the mundane-ness of the daily work is something I struggle with constantly.

Magic, at its core, is work.
Witchcraft is work.
Aligning one’s True Will is The Great Work

Learning to embrace this work…is work.

Despite the flattering filters of the witch aesthetic, being a witch isn’t just about wearing a T-shirt with a Pinhead Hello Kitty on front. It’s about channeling the abominable focus of all the Hellraiser Cenobites into the ebb and flow, the sines and cosines on the graph of a magical life.

Tweet me your comments, and let me know – how do you feel about the Hellraiser movies? Oh, and about the challenges of a consistent daily practice (or maybe it’s easy for you? Girl, color me jealous)

Giveaway

Here’s a call for all other magical people who also struggle with keeping a consistent daily practice.

I want us all to read Aidan Wachter’s “Six Ways” together. Over the course of six weeks. And do the work together. (More details about it on my IGTV)

Here’s me interviewing Aidan about the book, and he’s a cool cat. Plus his taste in music is killer.

UPDATE August 11, 2018: Giveaway closed. Congratulations to Polly Lind!

Don’t have the book? I’m giving away one (1) new copy of Aidan’s book to one (1) person.

How to enter the giveaway:
1. Subscribe to my email list
2. Giveaway closes August 10
3. Winner will be randomly chosen and contacted via email on August 11
4. Open to international addresses. Don’t worry, I got you

Already have the book? No problem. I’ll send the book to anyone you choose.

Want to get the book directly? If you get it through this link, I get some money to buy wine (but alas, no one can buy love).

I’m looking forward to doing magic with you guys!