What is a witch? It’s a tricky label. For some people, witchcraft is a religion. If you worship the old gods and follow a religion like Wicca, then for these people you are a witch. Other people focus on the craft part of witchcraft and consider the use of folk magic as the defining characteristic of a witch. If you know the magical properties of herbs, the words of spells, and the use of oils and candles and stones, then you are a witch.
Folklore tells us that witches are supernatural monsters, people who are born with magical powers or have gained them through a pact with spirits, usually the devil. They may possess a book or a familiar, but it is the witches themselves that are magical. Of course, other than in the movies, this is a vision of the witch that we usually don’t talk about. But maybe we should.
When you cut past the paranoid fear-mongering about stealing babies and fornication with the devil, we are left with a vision of witches as beings of power. They don’t just believe in old gods and local spirits, they know them personally. They don’t just have magical knowledge in their heads, they possess magical powers. If you are this kind of witch, you are not just doing something different than the rest; you are something different.
Assuming you were not lucky enough to be the seventh son of a seventh son, born with a caul on Walpurgisnacht, possess a magic third nipple, or any of the other circumstances that are alleged to hand you magic powers from birth, we are left to wonder: how do we transform ourselves into this kind of witch? The answer is training. Not the kind of training where you memorize a ritual to perform, but a kind of training that is more like a martial art. In this kind of training, knowing how to do something is only the entry point of a journey that you will continue your whole life. You keep getting better and better at it until you are dead. This is what it takes.
There are very few people who teach magic this way. It is not easy to tell students and readers that they have to develop a skill before they do something, and not just understand it in theory, but be competent in practice. It is demanding work, and those who cannot stop entertaining themselves by consuming book after book long enough to actually practice anything in them will not like it. In this type of witchcraft, you can’t just have the right candle, oils, and words—you need to be able to stand in the path of power and direct it through your body, breath, and mind. It’s not enough to call the Goddess; you need to be able to hear what she says and make sure that it is not just your own wishful thinking. There are few who teach this way, but Devin Hunter is one of them.
This book is divided into two parts. The first is where the witch develops their skills. You will learn the secrets of dreaming true, how to extract the magical quintessence of plants and places, how to channel the witch power through the body, and how to communicate effectively with the unseen. The second part is all about what you can do with these abilities. Without the skills developed in the first part, the second part is just words. If you want to soar through the night to the sabbat, first you need to learn to fly.
Everything in this book is placed in context. Apart from the numerous stories from Devin’s own adventures, several strands of Witchcraft come together in this work. I don’t think you will find many people who can invoke Wiccans like Scott Cunningham and Gerald Gardner alongside traditional witches like Paul Huson and Andrew Chumbley, but Devin does this with skill and respect. Here the mysteries of traditional witchcraft are laid bare, with none of the obfuscations or pretense that can occasionally plague such writings. You will know what to do and how to do it, with no confusion or guesswork.
Even John Jones, another traditional witch whose line of work is threaded into this book, was asked by the ceremonial magician William Gray to define what a witch is. His answer was:
If one who claims to be a Witch can perform the tasks of Witchcraft, i.e. summon the spirits and they come, can divine with rod, fingers and birds. If they can also claim the right to the omens and have them; have the power to call heal and curse and above all, can tell the maze and cross the Lethe, then you have a Witch.
If you follow the instructions and undertake the explorations in The Witch’s Book of Mysteries, you will be this kind of witch. The sabbat will not only be a coven meeting or open circle you attend after dinner, but a world-shifting event where the Black Goat leads you into the darkness to behold the Magister and the Sabbat Queen.
—Jason Miller, author of
Elements of Spellcrafting,
Protection and Reversal Magic,
and Strategic Sorcery