what is witchcraft: a samhain meditation

This morning, I woke up and made offerings to my ancestors: water and fire, but also tobacco and whiskey. I spent nearly an hour in prayer, which is to say conversation, with my beloved dead. Later, I sent a long put-off email about local language classes, as an additional step in devotional practice.

I also made a content calendar, gave notes on a ~behind the scenes project being announced soon~, and shower-sang to Florence’s new single “Sympathy Magic.”

All of this was witchcraft.

Quickly: a reminder that So You Want to Learn Astrology starts this Sunday! No worries if you can’t make it live but still want to learn the basics — recordings will be available to download!

So many folks are interested in witchcraft, but don’t know where to start. And even finding introductory resources can be hard, since there are so many traditions and eclectic practices, many of them based around different values or beliefs.

Months ago, I was asked what witchcraft was to me in the Discord’s #ask-jeanna channel. For a long time, I noodled on an essay, getting way too caught up in the details and specifics rather than the undergirding beliefs that inform my practice.

And the truth is that my beliefs are, actually, quite simple.

This is a simple, short meditation on witchcraft for Samhain, the witch’s new year, but I want to articulate the core beliefs undergirding my practice that are too-often taken for granted… and that honestly will probably render this essay useless for the materialists among you. But that’s good. Not everything is for everyone.

First, I believe in the existence of spiritual, non-material [to humans] realms on this Earth.

Second, I believe that there are spirits all around us: our ancestors and the wandering dead, yes, but also various other classes of spirits unique to place, tradition, and more. I don’t think it’s just humans and animals on this planet, bless.

Third, I believe that witchcraft works — for the same reason that Christian prayer works (fight me), for the same reason that quantum physicists affirm that our thoughts actually do shape reality. I know that spiritual action can impact our material conditions.

These things are not often explicitly said. But they are worth saying.

Witches act upon the world. To practice witchcraft is to tap into spiritual and energetic forces they didn’t teach you in school and that some of us were taught could only be accessed “for good” by the church. I could truly care less about the “witchy” indicators in a birth chart, or about the TikTok videos telling you that you’ve been “chosen” by XYZ deity without any regard for how that materially impacts your life. (I recently went on a rant about the bullshit of being “chosen” on Call Your Coven.)

I think that witchcraft lives and dies on the actions informed by conviction. Whether you’re an eclectic folk magician or an initiate in Ifá or a self-taught priestess of Hekate or simply someone who is curious about connecting with your ancestors: it’s the action that makes the practice, and the practitioner. So if you’re doing anything, no matter how “small,” you’re already way ahead of the curve.

My understanding of witchcraft is centrally built upon a belief that, while we are all born into systems that pre-exist us (capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy), and while our lives are inevitably informed by certain limitations (economic class, disability and chronic illness, etc.), it is what we do with our circumstances that counts. I venerate agency and free will, inasmuch as those things are possible under late-stage capitalism. In this, my magic is informed by my rural, working class upbringing: I am not under the delusion that I can “manifest” something entirely brand new, but I do think I can influence my conditions to my and my loved ones’ benefit.

A lived spiritual politic of action also means that I understand that others are acting, and that my actions reverberate out. We live in a society! Which brings me to the next point —

With the land we live on and its own spirits. (And the concrete of a city is still land!)

With our neighbors — those we cherish, those we despise, those we know, those we don’t.

With our chosen family, of blood or choice.

With our dead — ancestors of blood, of profession, of identity, as well as the local and wandering dead.

I understand the world through an animistic lens: that everything is enspirited. My first introduction to animism was the movie Pocahontas (listen, I was a ‘90s kid) and not gonna lie, there’s a line in “Colors of the Wind” that sums it up well: “But I know every rock and tree and creature has a life, has a spirit, has a name.”

When you understand our world as enspirited, practices like not littering, avoiding petroleum-reliant products, defending water supplies from AI death-data centers, and volunteering/donating to organizations working toward environmental restoration (like the local-to-me Billion Oyster Project) become both obvious and necessary.

And feeding your neighbors — through local food bank donations, through our own Discord’s grocery coverage happening right now — becomes a proof of practice.

Tending to relationships both spiritual and material is how we co-create and cultivate a healthy ecosystem.

I’m not gonna pussyfoot here. Witchcraft is about power: declaring one’s agency, wresting it back from the ruling class, working to change one’s circumstance.

I don’t just believe magic works; I know it does. And because of this, I am going to do workings that benefit my beloveds and those I cherish as beloved (my dnd group; queer and trans folks; Palestinian people; my fellow New Yorkers). I am also someone who is comfortable working against those who work against my beloveds — because all energy (power) is up for grabs, and it’s about who is going to actually act.

I know some queer folks who insist upon only doing witchcraft that does not influence others’ decisions. To which I say, what the ever loving fuck is witchcraft for, then? The self-helpification of tarot and astrology that has helped the practices become more mainstream also cuts them off at the knees in insisting that these practices are for “self-improvement” rather than literal magic.

I’ll tell you that other people — people who want to take away gender-inclusive markers on passports, people who rejoice at the death of Palestinian children — are definitely doing spiritual ritual to influence YOUR decision making. Evangelical Christianity engages in what is by any other name highly ritualized energy work, to great effect — the magical practices of the Religious Right was the subject of my talk at this year’s Salem Witch Fest.

The people outlawing abortion, criminalizing transness, and robbing everyday Americans of affordable groceries are using magical ritual against you. What’s stopping you from flinging it back? I know that a respect for other people’s autonomy doesn’t stop me from doing a binding spell on ~local far-right things that shall remain nameless.~

Last thing I’ll say: witchcraft, and magical folk traditions, are what women the world over have relied on when systems of government and religion did not acknowledge our wisdom or allow us restitution against, say, abusers.

To act as if many forms of witchcraft are not traditionally a reclamation of power that actively work against the ruling class is historically inaccurate, at best.

Witchcraft is power: making a wedge, limiting fallout, and otherwise claiming whatever small bounty we can that is systemically unavailable to us.

Happy new year, witches. Sending you all the love.

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