As a young teenager I spent a lot of time hanging out in a Yahoo chat room called the Graveyard. If this is where you also spent your youth (weirdo), you will remember me either as Satan_666 – embarrassingly spelt Satin_666 for the first few weeks – or Lonewolf24. You see, during this fleeting chapter of my life, I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to be a witch or a werewolf and flitted non-committally between the two. This phase continued for longer than it should (a couple of months), before my obsession with werewolves came to an abrupt end when I spent a whole evening trying to evoke the transformation outlined in the young-adult fiction book The Blooding, and failed. I decided there and then that werewolves probably weren’t a thing.
After spending our school days filling our exercise books with pentagrams and Celtic crosses, my friend Kat and I would meet to burn incense and recite internet-sourced spells through black-painted lips. We would tell our fellow chat-room members (who the hell were these people?) that we were witches and ‘prove it’ by saying things like ‘Blessed be’ and ‘Harm none’, responding to the creepy, yet strangely acceptable at the time ‘A/S/L?’ (age/sex/location) question with, ‘Our souls are thousands of years old/genderless/nowhere and everywhere.’ I think this put people off asking us for cybersex. Thank God. Maybe this is why my mum happily bought me a book of spells for my thirteenth birthday. Good job, Mum.
Equipped with this formative experience, I was excited by the prospect of re-immersing myself into the Wicca community as a (sort of) grown-up, curious to see if the aspirations of my thirteen-year-old self were still lurking somewhere, deep in the broom closet of my mind.
Wicca is largely regarded as a path of paganism, and there’s a good degree of crossover between these two communities. So it would be fair for you to wonder why, despite my teenage foray, I didn’t treat you to a bit of variety and choose to do something a bit different for chapter ‘W’. Well, first off, and I’m not asking you to feel sorry for me here, but finding a subculture to explore beginning with W was nearly as difficult as it was for the letter J (whose idea was this bloody alphabet thing again?). But the main reason, if I’m being honest, was my desire to don my best poker face and say to my friends: ‘Sorry, guys, I can’t go to that gig in Hyde Park with you this weekend. Why? Oh, because I’m off to Witch Camp.’
‘Of course you are,’ came the disappointing response before the conversation moved on. I think my friends have officially become desensitised.
After an hour of haring around the windy roads of Oxfordshire in my floaty green pagan dress, I pull into the entrance of Witch Camp, or, more accurately, the Artemis Gathering, on a rainy summer’s evening in August. Damh the Bard (remember him?) performs his pagan music on the main stage as I begin setting up my tent in a downpour. Once it’s erected, I squelch over to join my fellow witches in the middle of camp and begin to explore the enchanting stalls offering robes, healing crystals, herbs, ceremonial knives and tarot readings. Mostly covered in tattoos, the women wear a contrasting mix of black gothic dresses and bright hippie colours.
Following the smell of honey around the circle of stalls, I find the bar sheltered in a large white tent, scan the numerous varieties of mead on offer and fill my battle re-enactment tankard with a measure of Lindisfarne Spiced. Taking a big swig of the sickly-sweet elixir, I make for a nearby picnic table to watch an angelic tot engrossed in waving an ivy-covered stick around in giant circles.
‘Be careful!’ A lady comes rushing up and bends down in front of the small girl so they are both at the same level. ‘Your wand is not a toy, Ophelia; it’s a very dangerous tool.’ She rips it from her hand. ‘I’ll keep hold of it until you learn how to treat it properly!’
Common activities for the witches of today involve performing rituals and healing ceremonies, using crystal balls, tea leaves and cauldrons to perform divination, and honouring the magic of nature. And so, a bit like modern-day vampires, they are effectively reclaiming a concept from folklore, shedding the negativity previously associated with it and reinterpreting it in a new light.
I head back out to the stalls, where the smell of damp grass is infused with essential oils and herbs, to see a stream of witches emerging from their tents. Now adorned with leather masks, cloaks and pentagram necklaces, the surrounding crowd are summoned to join hands and form a circle for the opening ritual. I take the hand of a girl wearing pointy elf ears, her cotton-covered dreadlocks running down to her knees.
A female figure in a long blue dress walks around the perimeter of the circle we have formed, holding up a vast sword, as if offering it to the sky.
‘Come, circle, may you be a place of power. May all goodness, happiness, positivity and knowledge be contained within you. So mote it be.’
The circle of a hundred-plus witches all repeat, ‘So mote it be.’
The figure’s blonde hair billows dramatically in the wind. A gold bracelet snakes down her upper arm, and a leather belt houses a ceremonial knife at her waist. Something about her draws me in, like the curious kids in Hocus Pocus. I visualise her warning us that the night is dark and full of terrors.
As Rollo Maughfling, the Archdruid of Glastonbury, had done at Stonehenge, she stops in the middle of the circle, opens her arms to the sky and motions for us to do the same. We all turn to face the east.
‘Come, air. Great communication, great laughter and great joy be here. I call you to guard us, help us and welcome us. Hail and welcome.’
‘Hail and welcome,’ the circle echo.
We turn to face the south.
‘Gods, goddesses, spirits of the south, grant us the gift of energy in our endeavours. Fire of passion, burning away all the negative spirits and letting only good enter here. Hail and welcome.’
‘Hail and welcome.’
We turn to face the west.
‘Welcome, element of water. Without you we are nothing, we can be nothing. Hail and welcome.’
‘Hail and welcome.’
Finally, we turn to face the north.
‘Gods of the north, the element of earth – what we stand on, what makes us, what balances us – give us wisdom. Hail and welcome.’
‘Hail and welcome.’
Having successfully called down the quarters, we are instructed to sing and weave in and out of flags representing the four elements, while four children skip around the middle, each holding the end of a tied rope that wheels in the centre of the circle.
‘Lady, spin your circle bright. Weave your web of dark and light. Earth, air, fire and water, bind us all as one.’
When the song is complete, we share a bowl of digestive biscuits – ‘May you never hunger’ – delivered to our mouths by a stout man with flowing locks of silver hair.
Later that evening, we are entertained by an energetic folk band playing before a sea of euphoric dancers who wave their whole bodies without inhibition. After the set, we follow a procession of torches to the fire pit on the other side of camp for a ritual to welcome the burning of a massive phoenix sculpture; a metaphor for us all rising together into a new era for Wicca.
The crowd sway, eyes closed as fire-breathers ignite the giant cloth and metal structure, singing repeated verses of ‘Earth my body, water my blood, air my breath and fire my spirit’. Remembering the words from the song taught to me at Findhorn, I join in at the top of my voice, relieved to finally be able to blend with the group.
As the day draws to a close, I read my Wicca magazine by torchlight back in my tent, keen to understand the ritual I had experienced that afternoon. According to the magazine, most rituals start with the ‘casting of a circle’; this involves spreading salt and walking the boundary with a ceremonial tool, like a knife or a sword, while visualising a protective barrier. Then a psychic charge is built by making an offering of some kind, culminating with calling upon whichever goddess that particular witch works with, to either ask for something or give thanks for something. A bit like saying a prayer, or making a wish, I suppose.
The evening had been as otherworldly as I had hoped for, and I was excited by the prospect of feeling like a witch again. I’m not sure I can convince my adult self to believe in natural magic, but I like the idea of it enough to give it a go. As Kiaan the star had said to me, your truth is all that matters, and a witch’s model is as true to them as mine is to me. After all, I always touch wood when I say something I don’t want to happen, I don’t walk under ladders, I never swear on someone’s life, and I sometimes toss a coin in a fountain, so what’s the difference? I make a vow to myself, once again, to try and suspend my disbelief as the gentle patter of summer rain sends me off to sleep.
The keynote address the following morning is ‘Meet the Witches’, a Q & A session with a panel of four men and two women (‘witch’ applies to both sexes here) all apparently prominent figures in the Wiccan community. My hand rockets into the air.
‘How has society’s attitude towards Wicca changed over the last twenty-five years?’
A chap with shoulder-length hair, wearing a sharp suit and cravat, stands up and clears his throat. ‘Well, it’s positive and negative, really. We no longer get social services trying to take our children away. But we’ve sort of fallen into the same camp as the Quakers now: harmless, but not to be taken seriously. That’s why you never really see any of us in public positions.’
A female witch called Tylluan stands up. ‘You’d still get a brick through your window if people knew you were a pagan where I live,’ she says in a strong Welsh accent. ‘Mind you, in the Valleys, some people can’t tell the difference between paediatricians and paedophiles.’
There is a ripple of laughter.
‘Do you think they even know what it means to be a pagan?’ asks a lady in the audience.
‘No clue, none whatsoever. It’s fear and ignorance. Utter ignorance, that’s what we have to contend with.’
‘I work in a Catholic school,’ another lady, whose t-shirt reads ‘Keep Calm and Spread Salt’, joins in. ‘There is no way I could tell them what I am. I want to build tolerance as much as the next witch, but the risk is too much for me.’
‘How many people here would be nervous about performing a ritual in public?’ Tylluan asks the audience.
There is a lot of nodding as most people raise their hands.
‘But aren’t we just adding fuel to the fire?’ asks a man in a multicoloured jumper. ‘By hiding it, we are making what we do look secretive, which keeps people thinking it’s scary, or sinister in some way.’
Someone else agrees. ‘I think we should be out in the open. We should be proud of what we do. Otherwise nothing will ever change.’
It seems that Wicca is at a crucial stage of its development. For most, it is safer than it has ever been to ‘go public’, but there is still fear and ignorance out there, and people don’t want it to affect their lives. So the argument could be that all witches should talk openly about who they are and take whatever career knocks come their way to normalise witchcraft and benefit the cause, but on an individual level, people are not yet willing to do that, particularly those who work with children or in positions of public office.
This is a ‘no photo’ event, meaning you cannot take photos of other attendees without their express permission. As with the naturists, this rule is in place to protect those who haven’t yet or may never intend to ‘come out of the broom closet’ as witches, and do not want to be forced into this by social media.
The room goes quiet and I decide to ask another question. ‘What is the difference between a witch and a Wiccan?’ I wince at the naivety of my question, but the room smiles back.
‘In order to be dubbed a Wiccan,’ begins a witch who had previously introduced himself as Tam, ‘you need to be part of an exclusive witch family, known as a coven.’ His face is red in the cold of the morning, framed by long white hair that he gathers behind his shoulder at regular intervals. ‘Becoming a member involves an initiation, during which you are shown “the mysteries”, which must be experienced and cannot be explained.’
How convenient.
He goes on to explain, in a broad Scottish accent, that coven members are also required to attend regular Sabbats (celebrations and festivals) and group rituals. For example, to mark Samhain (Halloween), most covens will host a ‘feast of the dead’, where they set twice as many places at the table; every other seat is saved for loved ones they have lost, invited to join the celebration at a time when the veil between this world and the next is at its thinnest.
‘But you do not have to join a coven to be a witch,’ he says. He looks out to the audience. ‘How many of you here are solitary witches?’ About half the room raise their hands. He gestures outward. ‘These people like to practise their magic alone.’
Tam has been in a coven, also known as a lineage group, in south London for thirty-six years now and is a ‘high priest’, a condition for which, he tells us, is ‘a soul on fire with the love of the gods and the love of humanity’. ‘We worship the gods together,’ he explains. ‘Not by praying, but by doing, by laughing, by having fun, and by joy.’
The Q & A turns to the everyday practice of magic.
‘When casting spells,’ a tall male witch begins, ‘we do not have to reject our rational knowledge of this realm, but simply recognise that, in doing magic, we are straying into another realm where things work differently. Our minds are connected to reality in a symbiotic manner, so that our reality affects external reality, and vice versa.’
So what we create in our minds becomes reality? I am reminded of my thought train from yesterday evening, about suspending my disbelief. But can we really will things into existence? There are many schools of thought that would agree with this – the act of manifesting, law of attraction, neuro-linguistic programming, the power of positive thinking, etc. – but can I truly convince myself to believe this? Just as I can feel myself tumbling back into my cynical rabbit hole, I recall the lunacy of trying to prove the fallacy of someone else’s model. I picture myself, walking slowly in the pitch dark between the Avebury stones, desperately trying to work out why the metal rods in my hand were swinging, and my frustration at not being able to understand the songs during the Kabbalah ‘meditations’. I’ll never be able to experience these worlds fully if I keep questioning everything so literally, but it feels impossible for me to stop.
Later that afternoon we gather in a small wooden Scout hut that smells of bonfire to listen to a talk from the lead singer of last night’s folk band, who looks alarmingly like Ralph Fiennes in a Robin Hood costume. With beads and feathers woven into his shoulder-length wispy hair, he wears long leather boots that curl up at the toes over black britches, a white lace-up shirt and a leather necklace. I can’t take my eyes off him.
‘People like me used to be known as occultists,’ he begins, pensively pacing back and forward through the seated witches, radiating charisma, ‘but I prefer the term… esoteric scientist. All this campaigning for paganism to become a religion stuff – I won’t support that. People tell me I should be tolerant. But I will not be tolerant of religion, because it keeps people primitive. That’s why I love paganism, because it isn’t a system – it is a collection of individuals with their own set of spirituality.’ The room is silent, hanging on his every word.
‘Religion has had its day,’ he says, ‘it’s only a matter of time before it’s axed out of the world. Then we can really progress.’
He gives the example of a Yazidi girl who ran off to marry a Sunni Muslim in 2007; her family begged her to come home, and when she did, they dug a pit, put her in it and stoned her to death in front of a mob of 2,000. His point, as far as I can understand it, is that religious dogma disconnects us from our humanity.
‘This is the most crucial time for paganism,’ he continues. ‘We are so young and so fragile, like children. We will make mistakes, naturally, but we shouldn’t try and become another religion. That isn’t the future.’ He gestures to the woods on the other side of the window. ‘If we do, we may as well go out and swing in those trees.’
At the closing of the weekend, we meet for a fire-walking workshop with Oona, a beautiful, passionate witch who dons a top hat over cascading flame-red hair.
‘I love it here,’ she tells us, her eyes dancing from face to face around the busy room, ‘it’s like coming home for me. You are all so open; you already know that we can work with the elements and that there is more than what we can see.’
She smiles, recalling a memory. ‘I was up casting a circle earlier, holding a knife up in the air with my eyes closed. Then I could sense that I was being watched, so I turned around and saw two women. They asked if they could watch me. I felt so panicked, I had to explain myself. “I am a witch,” I said. Then they looked at each other, smiled and said, “So are we.”’ She laughs with the room. ‘It was such a relief.’
Oona exudes radiance, an Elysian glow the like of which I haven’t seen before. I don’t know if it’s the aesthetics – if it’s because I have been conditioned to associate people who look like this with childhood tales of magic – or if it is real, but I have never before been so utterly captivated as I have with Tylluan, Tam and Oona. I spend a long time searching for a word to describe them that is accessible to me, that sits in the world of the rational and the scientific, but I have to give up. There is nothing rational and scientific about these people, and to apply that language to try to articulate the effect they have on me is redundant.
The fire that we are due to walk on in an hour (gulp) rages ten feet in the air, tended by a lady called Sheila, who wears a sparkly purple dress and no shoes. She looks at the fire and mumbles to it, conjuring up the flames with indistinguishable words, swaying from side to side in a ghostly dance.
While we wait for the fire to burn down to glowing coals, we are invited to take part in a ‘cleansing ritual’, using visualisation to charge an arrow with something we want to rid from our lives, before placing the arrow’s head into the soft flesh at the base of our throat. The other end is propped against a board, which we are to walk towards in one quick movement, snapping the charged arrow to pieces.
‘You will feel a lot of pressure, but it won’t harm you,’ we are promised. Oona demonstrates this, walking assertively into the arrow as it shatters and flies into the air. The arrow is made of wood, with plastic flights and a severe metal head.
‘This technique is perfect for helping you to eradicate negative thinking,’ she says. ‘It’s much quicker than wrapping an ox tongue in barbed wire and burying it at midnight. Of course, that works as well,’ she adds, ‘but it can get a bit messy. Who’s next?’
My hand shoots up of its own accord. I walk tentatively up to the front and she hands me an arrow. Taking it, I place the head at my throat.
‘Wow, that’s sharp!’ I say, recoiling with a start. There was no way I was going to be able to do this.
‘Yeah I know,’ she says sarcastically. ‘I told you, they are real arrows; I got them from the real arrow shop.’ Everybody laughs, lightening the weight of the room, but making me feel like a bit of a knob.
‘What’s in your arrow?’ she asks me.
‘Self-doubt and fear of failure.’
‘Great,’ she says. ‘Now what I want you to do is flap your arms up and down three times, like wings. Then take a deep breath and walk into it.’
‘OK,’ I say, feeling like even more of a knob now I’ve heard about the wing-flapping.
‘We will help you by chanting. What do you want us to say?’
‘Erm… strong?’ I suggest, feebly.
I lift my arms to flap them as the crowd of witches starts to chant, ‘Strong, strong, strong.’
OK, I guess I have to walk into this rock-fucking-hard arrow now. Sure. I try to clear my mind of fear, try not to think about what might happen if this all goes horribly wrong. Is this a trap? Are these witches going to burn me after all? Or even worse, eat me? Is this all part of their sordid plan? Am I the human sacrifice?
Enough. I take a big step forward, and my neck sears with a split second of pain before the arrow shatters and flies across the room.
I am still buzzing from my successful ritual an hour later, my pride at the heroic act only just outweighing my embarrassment at thinking I might get eaten. But no one has to know about that.
As if that wasn’t enough terror for the evening, the embers have now burned into a road for us to walk across. A road of glowing red spikes. My palms are sweaty and my breath is shallow, but I am emboldened by my triumph over the arrow. I’ve got this.
‘It’s all in the power of the mind,’ Oona encourages us. ‘You know you can make it, that you can master the fire, so do it. Prove it.’
I take my feet out of my red wellies onto the cold damp grass and place my foot on the glowing embers. There is a loud hissing sound as the evening moisture is wicked from my feet. I take my first tentative step and feel encouraged by the lack of pain; the road is sharp, yes, but I don’t yet feel like I’m walking on fire. I carry on putting one foot in front of the other, and the coals grow hotter and hotter with each step. The pain kicks in, and I start to panic, running the last few steps and leaping into the cool grass at the other side.
I feel an overwhelming rush of relief and exhilaration as I sink my feet into the damp grass and look back over my shoulder at the embers, despite my feet being a bit hurty. Does the pain come from the panic, I wonder? Is it all in the mind? And why aren’t my feet burned to smithereens? My mind grasps for a biological explanation. The skin on your feet is thick, right? And the water from the grass could have protected them? Perhaps.
The last person to cross the fire is Sheila, who dances and skips gleefully through the flames in her floaty purple dress, her eyes full of mischief. My wall of denial comes crashing down as my saddest suspicions are confirmed: there are definitely witches out there but, alas, I am not one of them.