In her book Waking The Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic and Power, witch-ambassador Pam Grossman compares her feelings about witches going mainstream to the time when her favorite indie band blew up: “I was happy for them, because it meant that they were being appreciated and compensated, and that mattered to me. But I was also afraid that their music would become watered down.” Grossman’s mixed feelings resonate with my own apprehensions about this moment. As a psychic practitioner from a family of spiritual nonconformists, I embody this archetype publicly: the magic woman whose knowledge is feared, desired and also scorned. A body on fire.
As I watch the witch ascend into the mainstream—everywhere from women’s coworking space The Wing calling itself a “coven” to witch-inspired looks at Fashion Week—I’m forced to reckon with the suppressed witch legacy of my own family. While my family background is now increasingly considered “cool” or “different,” as a child I knew instinctively to distance myself from “The New Age” and ideas that would sound the alarm bells of the Reality Police. I kept my visions to myself. In school, I honed a comedic routine making fun of my psychic mom to classmates, while quietly accepting my own intuitive experiences, and letting them guide me. I never thought I’d be performing psychic readings, until suddenly I was, unable to hide anymore. But my own resistance remains strong. There are many days I torture myself: “Do I really have to stand up for this… represent this?” When I’m feeling particularly misunderstood, threatened or unsupported, I fight the urge to take it all back. As a sonic medicine, I’ve started to employ “Too Late to Turn Back Now” by Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose, a jam which caught my attention in Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman. I spin in my room and let the music gently soothe me onwards.
While Grossman sees the witch’s rise as evidence of a paradigmatic sea-change, I am more skeptical, though not entirely unhopeful. What I’ve noticed in my own life and in the lives of other psychic practitioners with whom I organize is that so far this witch trend has not translated into meaningful public support or acts of institutional inclusion. The “What do you do?” question remains dicey for the working witches I know. Whether you get challenged on your worldview, or asked for a free reading, it’s a lot of labor and stress. There is a palpable hunger for psychic knowledge and insight, but at the same time a deep accusation stands in the room with me when I announce this possibility out loud. How can you tell me that magic is real? Everybody knows that magic is fake, failed, dead. Gone. Continue reading
