My Craft is Hekatean

I do work with other deities and spirits but Hekate is my primary goddess and, as of the last couple of years, my primary focus. I had a profound experience of Hekate at a crossroads one Beltane eve, and since then she has been a quiet but constant presence guiding my path. It is no exaggeration to say Hekate changed my life, if not saved it outright, and she remains the deity to whom I am most devoted.

I work with Hekate principally in her tripartite forms of Hekate Enodia, the Guardian of the Crossroads, Hekate Lampadios, the Torch Bearer, and Hekate Kleidouchos, the Key Holder. In these aspects she guides my way when I feel lost, gives me a light of hope in the darkness, and opens the gates to a more magical life.

Being Hekatean gives my craft a central point, the Anima Mundi who is the soul and axis of the world. Hekate is a goddess of witches, who knows healing and hexing, who walks between the realms of the living and the dead, who opposes tyranny and uplifts the oppressed.

My Craft is Nature-Based

Hekate is a nature goddess. She was given a third of all the land, sea, and sky by Zeus. She is spoken of as wearing garlands of oak and ivy, of delighting in deer and serpents, of knowing healing and poisonous herbs and teaching that knowledge to witches.

My craft is Pagan in the true sense of the word, not as a slur used by Christians against those “country folk” and their uneducated superstitions but as Paganus, of the land.

My craft is rooted in where I live, the ecology and ecosystems of the land and waters around me, the plants and animals, the agriculture, the folklore. Of course, that includes advocating for environmental protection, reducing my impact on the earth and campaigning for political change to protect our shared world.

My Craft is Political

Witchcraft is political. I'm not going to argue about this, witchcraft has always been “unauthorised” magic used by people who are marginalised and oppressed to fight back against those in power. In Aradia, the Gospel of the Witches (1899), Aradia the daughter of Diana and Lucifer is sent to earth specifically to teach witchcraft as a tool for resistance.

As a queer trans woman, every aspect of my existence is political and every day is a fight against the forces of oppression, conformity, and genocide. My craft is one of the ways I fight.

Witchcraft that is not political is witchcraft without power.

My craft is oriented to social justice and liberation for all. And I will use every tool in my witchy toolbox to achieve that. Yes, that includes hexing and curses as well as protection magic.

My craft is practiced at the protest march, the union rally and the ballot box just as much as at my altar or underneath the full moon.

My craft is queer. It is subversive. It is sexual and sensual. It is rebellious. It is delicious.

My magic is revolution.

My Craft is My Own

I am not bound by any coven, grove, order, or lineage. I need no initiation except for that given by my Lady of the Crossroads beneath the Beltane crescent moon.

My craft is no less real or valid because it doesn't come with courses, certificates, titles. My craft is of earth and sea and air and fire and spirit. It is the song that thrums in my bloodstream, the tears that sting my eyes. It is kenosis and catharsis. It is real, and it is mine.

My craft is an expression of self as much as my being a trans woman, or my being a writer, a poet, a lover.

Of course then it will look and feel different from your craft, or the crafts read about in Llewellyn books, or taught by Wiccans and others.

I don't need authority to validate my craft. All I need is all I am.

And yes, I believe in real magic with real power to create real change. I believe in real gods and spirits and fae. I believe a whole lot of things modern society tells us are not, cannot be, real.

Why might they insist upon this so strongly, this disenchantment of the world? Whose interest does it serve to have us disregard the magical? And what might happen if we were to believe in it, and put it into action to bring about a different future?

#Witchcraft