This book is an introduction to witchcraft. It has been written to specifically address the needs of those who are queer, marginalized, living in the shadows, or on the edge of acceptance. It is well known that Paganism and witchcraft have been pushed to the sidelines and marginalized since Christianity began its stronghold. So has queerness.
For most of my adult life, I have practiced and studied magick. I have also studied queer theory, history, and culture. Magickal craft and queerness have gone hand in hand for me personally for so long (and I live in such a queer city) that I forget that my queer craft isn't the norm. Over the course of my practice, I have come up against problematic elements in witchcraft and Paganism that I reconciled and worked out for myself long ago. In spite of those problematic elements, witchcraft gave me the confidence to break from an extremely codependent familial relationship, come out of the closet, and move halfway across the country. Those are probably three of the most groundbreaking, earth shattering decisions I've ever made and magick was there for all of them. I want everyone to have the same access I did to a spellcraft that can change your life
Witchcraft has always belonged to the outsiders and outcasts in society, yet so much of the practice enforces and adheres to the same hierarchy we are faced with in the world at large that isolate and hurt those living beyond society's binaries and boundaries. Queering Your Craft takes witchcraft back and helps put it into the hands of those who need it most: queer and marginalized people and their fiercest allies. Queering Your Craft will introduce you (or reintroduce you) to magick and spellcraft, and throughout this discussion, I will address the craft from a queer perspective.
This book wraps up everything that is important to a queer practitioner: the personal, the collective, the political, and how deeply intertwined all three are into one useful witchcraft practice that is accessible in both price and grasp (meaning the work is easy to do) while still offering new and inspiring information to those who have been practicing their craft for a long time.
When we look at queering witchcraft and accessibility and the intersection therein, there's an easy in to start understanding how and why it can all fit together: the huge influence of “do-it-yourself” culture and aesthetic that permeates much of the queer community (especially the poor and marginalized queer community that informs this as well). This DIY idea makes its way into every facet of learning witchcraft and many facets of queering things, so if nothing else, Queering Your Craft can help push your craft from by-the-book to something that's all your own.
For those who are newer on their path or who struggle to put their practice into words, let's start at the beginning with what magick even is. Magick can be as deep, ethereal, and complicated as you want it to be, but ultimately it is simply using the energy, elements, resources, and tools at your disposal to create outcomes you desire. Everything we know and have and are was created by magick. Everything we know and have and are is maintained by magick. Magick is a skill. Magick is a love song to yourself and the world around you. Magick is internal, external, and beyond even that. Most of all though, magick is your right, and responsibility—as a human living on this Earth.
Put another way, magick is your determination and force of will combined with your desire for something to happen. Your force of will and desire are what bring that outcome into being. This often happens through sheer hard work or by diving into networking. The living of your life is a magickal act. I've written in my personal journal many times some variant of “I haven't done a lot of spell work lately, but I have been reveling in opportunities and adventure and I think maybe that's the same thing.” I repeat: the living of your life (your way) is a magickal act.
Sometimes we need help, though. In a perfect world our will would be enough to bring the things we want into being, but we live in a world that is far from perfect. Magick is not like it is on TV and movies. We can't blink our way into success or snap our fingers and end up sitting on a pile of money. We're not helpless though, and that's where spells and ritual come in, which is what most people consider the magick. The natural elements that fill our world and make it rich and nuanced also make it easier for us to reclaim our energy, our bodies, and our lives. The stones, herbs, water, other humans, animals, and so on and so forth that we love so dearly can be core components of working magick and helping turn the tides in our favor. Spells and rituals are taking those natural elements and using them to turn those tides.
Your craft then, is how you perform the rituals and acts of magick that we think of as spells. Craft is writing and performing spells, but it's also the learning process that goes into any spiritual practice. This book focuses largely on the craft of witchcraft or Paganism itself (and therefore the spells and how to get to the spells), but from the perspective of a sick, disabled, fat, often impoverished queer. That means it's a perspective that gets that you don't always have a million dollars for new tools or access to meetups that will teach you what you know. The most successful witches out there aren't better, more skilled, more magickal than you—they just had access. This book seeks to break down that discrepancy and grant you access to learn a craft that will become your craft.
The majority of this book is devoted to learning spellcraft so you can make spells of your own. This means learning the pieces, tools, and elements involved in craft first. Specifically, when we talk about magickal spiritual paths we are interested in using:
The energies of:
Resources and tools, such as:
The last portion of this book is a grimoire of spells to help you invoke or inspire a specific outcome. This section is comprised of explicitly queer spells I wrote that will be easy for readers at the beginning of their journey to cast. Some of the most common forms of magick include love spells, money spells, and protection spells. Other New Age forms of magick include self-love mantras or carrying crystals for grounding and clarity. Old school folk magick or very modern DIY magick can be anything from having a lucky pair of pants that you wore when you aced your midterms to carrying around a lucky penny.
What we think of as the “norm” now hasn't always been the case. Sexual and gender identity that fall outside of straight and cisgender have had rich periods of acceptance throughout time. We saw it in pre-Nazi Germany with Hirschfield's Institution of Sexology and their successes. We see it in Native and Indigenous cultures even today. There are even texts and other evidence to show that we saw it in pre-Christian times when Paganism was the default spiritual belief throughout most of Europe.
As Christianity gained ground and power, we have seen the reflection of the religion's exclusion get passed down even through other subcultures, like Paganism. When Wicca became really popular through Gardnerian Wicca in the 1950s, male/female polarity was stressed in a way that not only excluded transgender (especially non-binary) people, but also was not very inclusive of gay or bisexual people either. Then there's the Aleister Crowley problem. In the early 20th century, Crowley began his journey to popularize the religion of his creation: Thelema. Thelema is a mystical spirituality (called both a religion and a philosophy depending on who you're talking to) that takes a lot from Ancient Egyptian pantheons and symbolism, general esoterica, and Qabalah. Like the later Wiccan resurgence, Thelema really struggled due to its era: one of generally accepted misogyny and homophobia.
Thelema and Gardenerian Wicca both have foundationally beautiful, magickal, and important principles. They are also both deeply problematic, binary, and full of constraints for people who don't fit into that norm. Because so many marginalized people were looking for something other than Chistianity to rest and relax in, queer people in this period did what queer people always do—they found a way to subvert and reclaim that witchcraft as their own. Nonetheless, neo-Paganism, which largely owes its roots to the creation and popularization of Wicca and Thelema, also suffers from the shortsightedness of its creators and the limits of the language in the early to mid-20th century.
There are also other ways modern witchcraft has been harmful to marginalized people over the years. I have very complicated feelings about the doctrine of “and it harm none,” which I'll touch on a little bit later in this book. The phrase itself though is a tenant of most mainstream witchcraft that is well intentioned but falls very short. It's meant to inspire us to do any witchcraft we want so long as it doesn't directly harm someone else. However, what it calls to mind for me is all of the times a marginalized person who has been abused or oppressed, is tone-policed or silenced because they were “too angry.” Black activists in particular are constantly being told to silence themselves in order to protect white people's comfort and often language is abused to hold them to that silence. They are told they are being mean or hurtful but that's not true. That tone policing is a tool of white supremacy to silence dissenting viewpoints and serve the status quo instead of social justice. If we are to be witches, with a duty to humankind and the Earth itself, and to serve social justice, we cannot always be polite and harm free. This is just one way “and it harm none” is nonsense.
In a politically difficult and tense world, witchcraft is a secret weapon. It is catharsis, first—something that helps us purge our emotions and heal. Then it's about autonomy and taking control of our lives. From there, it's about power. It's about the power to create outcomes and wield change. It's about the power to love this world enough to want to make it better. And, it's about the power it takes to make that happen. Because of that, witchcraft has always been something marginalized groups can and should wield. No one is more powerless than those living on the fringes of society, and that is where most queer people can be found. Something quiet, almost secret, happens in those fringes though. Society casts us out into them, but in these darkened shadows we learn to share, to love, and to thrive even in the worst of times.
Those shadows that we thrive in can remain powerful allies in our spellcraft and are a form of shadow work. Shadow work is loosely defined as coming to terms with, and either healing or incorporating the hurt, hidden, or darker sides of ourselves. Learning to use the fringes and shadows that we thrive in is much more about incorporating those shadow sides of ourselves into our lives and is therefore the brand of shadow work I prefer. I put darker in italics because, as queer and anti-racist witches I want us to get out of the binary of thinking that light magick is good and dark magick is bad. This thinking came from very racist roots—a lot of what we think of as dark or black magick comes from traditionally Black cultures like VooDoo. A lot of what we think of as light magick is often appropriated from other religions largely practiced by white people, such as Christian mysticism. Furthermore, a lot of dark magick is also survival magick. We're told it's selfish or harmful magick because these people are doing work just for themselves. So what? We all have needs and desires. Please don't fall in to the trap of thinking that gaining something for yourself is dark. That is such unnecessary self-punishment, and on top of that, gives in to those aforementioned roots of racism.
The idea of dark magick even existing also comes from conservative Christianity lambasting all magick as dark magick. The term light magick was created likely as a way to try to compromise with Christians in our lives, but I don't feel like it successfully does that. We're just giving in to corporate Christian views on dark magick, which is something as queer witches we should refuse to do. I say all of that to show that I think, as humans, we are meant to overcome pain, adversity, and trauma. I don't think we're meant to overcome parts of ourselves (with the exception of any truly toxic or abusive behavior manifestations). When we talk about queering magick, we don't just talk about our own shadow work. We talk about group shadow work and honoring the shadows and fringes we've thrived in. Working with your environment is such a crucial and generally accessible part of magickal practice, and for queer people that environment hasn't always been ideal. Yet it's been there, all along, protecting us and allowing us to come into our full selves. Bring that, all of that, into your practice as you continue on your magickal journey.
Queering, to me, means deconstructing something for the purposes of rebuilding it in our own queer image, subverting it in that process, and claiming it as our own. That claiming, or reclaiming, is then an act of power and magick all its own. It makes us come alive and it roots us to the very real, very queer magick running through our veins. Queering magick is necessary because as queer people we have a right to the same power everyone has the potential for and a responsibility to make change in this world. Queering magick is vital because you, beautiful, precious, darling you, deserve all of the joy and healing available, which is so much! Queering magick is critical because as we've seen over and over again, the system will not protect or nurture us—so we need to have as many tools as possible in our toolbox to protect and nurture ourselves.
So often when people hear me speak of queering anything, they think only of sexual and gender identity. If they're pretty well versed they might think of relationship identity or sex-positive connotations. Those are all really wonderful starts to a much deeper philosophy that is anti-racist, anti-capitalist, anti-rape culture (and pro-consent culture), fat positive, disability inclusive, and doesn't leave out those who don't have the financial or social capital to hoard or even access resources. Queering magick must mean making space for those who don't have it elsewhere in the world. Often this means developing or researching accessible resources for new witches, since not everyone has that ability to do it for themselves. You'll notice one thing I seem to be driving at is that even if we are solitary practicioners, queer witchcraft is moving towards a collective we. While our own queer wishes and hopes are valid and deserve space, queering witchcraft really is about moving it from the elitist and selfish / that even group ritual can enforce to a place where we are fighting for collective liberation as well.
I use a lot of principles of queer theory, history, and culture in my work, which you've already seen if you're familiar with those principles. A few key ones that you'll notice is that I do take the stance that while gender and sexuality may be partially socially constructed, they are still vital parts of who we are. That either/or binary is a key debate in queer theory, but modern understanding has taken more of a both/and approach. One thing that is agreed upon in queer theory, that I also use in my work, is the idea of history as recognition. Queer history is as old as history is, and in recognizing that we recognize that, regardless of the ever-changing social constructs, there have always been queer people. Furthermore, recognizing our history is a gateway to honoring it, and in honoring it we welcome a whole new group of ancestors and a whole new way to venerate them. Sex positivity has also made its way into queer theory, which is another huge foundation of my work as a witch and a writer. We have to honor queer sex if we're honoring queer people, and this book leaves plenty of space for that. If you are queer, you'll see several other overtly queer concepts show up in this book too: community building, resilience, fighting for radical change and activism, chosen family (and how it fails us sometimes), the necessity and vibrance of queer art, and safer spaces, to name a few.
While I've mostly written about the beautiful parts of being queer so far, this community is not any more perfect than any other community. I also seek to dismantle the white supremacy that shows up in our spaces and therefore leaves little to no space (depending on the size of your community) for queer people of color. Because of the DIY nature of a lot of queer space making, these spaces are often inaccessible and overstimulating to people with disabilities. On top of these very large issues, there's also the infighting that happens in a community of mostly traumatized people. There's the way chosen family will give up on you just as quickly as given family sometimes. There's the unique pain that comes from that. In these ways the queer community itself needs to change, and this book strives to open these doors, too.
To make it even easier to understand and break it into bite sized chunks, I've written a manifesto for queer witches below. I strongly suggest making your own and using mine as a loose guide instead of prescribing strictly to my or anyone else's version. I can't possibly have covered everything, and if there are hordes of witches each with their own manifesto driving towards social progress, collective liberation, and personal empowerment, then the magick and power in those manifestos' words will automatically begin picking up steam, getting into the universe, and manifesting from there.