Witches Care for the World

Care for Ourselves

Two of my books are filled with spells. Practical Magic for Beginners uses candles and Cord Magic uses cords. They fall into five main categories:

• Health
• Prosperity
• Connections
• Love
• Spirit

Witches stand on our own two feet. In my life I’ve been proud that I can make a home, earn a living, build a circle of friends, give and accept love, and connect with the grace of spirit.

Witchcraft grants us the power to take care of ourselves. We have to get our own lives right as a foundation for our spiritual journey – it’s hard to focus on spiritual development while we’re cold, hungry, anxious or lonely. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs applies to Witches too, all our energy goes to developing a safe and happy life until it’s self-sustaining, then we naturally become a source of support for others.

Care for Others

Many of my covenmates over the years have commented that they became a Witch in order to heal. Cunning folk have historically been the people others turn to when they’re in need of help. We’re the rocks in our communities, the strong reliable people who know how to fix what’s happening.

Cunning folk don’t get into the art to make a living. It’s a calling. People gravitate to us. When I’d been around Pagan community for a while people just started asking me stuff. My kid hasn’t come home yet, is she safe? My ex is threatening me, I need a new job, I’ve developed cancer, I’m starting a new business. Can you help?

When there’s an immediate crisis we need to move energy right away. My favorite way to do this is a candle spell.

Light a candle

I keep a supply of differently colored candles in my magic supply chest. Tea lights and votives are easy to work with, but I also use small tapers and pillar candles. Sometimes I pick out a color that matches my intention, green for healing and red for protection, but neutral wax color always works, both paraffin white and beeswax tan.

This is a simple working. Sometimes I invoke a deity. For example Kwan Yin and Artemis are helpful in protecting children. It isn’t necessary though. What is necessary for me is using the power of the spoken word. I take the time to properly frame an intention, light the candle, and speak the intention aloud. “The child comes home safely.”

For longer term issues I take the request to my coven so we can work together to help. There are two main ways the covens I know move energy: raising the cone of power and passing the cup.

Raising the Cone of Power

This is a pretty widely known technique. It can be done on your own as well as with a group. First you frame the intention and speak it out loud. Then you raise energy by chanting or dancing, letting the energy intensify until you or the group recognize it’s time to release it. Next you let it go – shout or throw your hands upward to send the energy out. The last step is to put your hands on the earth to ground out any remaining energy.

One of my Witch friends calls this the “fill and dump” method. It’s a good technique to direct a lot of energy at one time to a single issue. I tend to use this to address a major crisis or to do larger scale workings for community.

Passing the Cup

I handle the majority of the requests I get by passing the cup. When my coven gets together to do a ritual we cast a circle, invoke Goddess and God, and consecrate wine and cakes. Then we pass the cup around the circle. Each person gets a turn to talk, asking for what we need for ourselves and speaking out loud what people have brought to our attention. “Jim needs a new job closer to home with more money. Hazel’s in the hospital, may she heal quickly. Kenan’s opening a bakery, may he have success!”

Recently I’ve discovered that the technique of passing the cup is less well understood than raising the cone of power. People ask me, how does passing a cup raise energy? Isn’t eating and drinking a way to ground energy instead of raising and sending it?

Food and drink is a good way to ground energy and we make sure to have snacks after ritual. However consecrating wine and cakes is a form of communion. It’s not grounding and it’s not intended to be, instead it carries the energy of spirit. When we consume the communion we take in the energy of spirit as a blessing. That spiritual energy can be directed toward people outside the circle too.

The circle itself also collects energy. You make a container, put people in it, and invoke spirit in some way, as quarter guardians, elements, or deities. The circle/container fills up. Then you send that energy out with your intent by passing the cup.

The cup itself is also a container. Everyone puts a bit of energy in as it comes by and then takes it out to send it along. My friends call this the little-bit-at-a-time method.

Passing the cup is the best way I know to direct energy for a lot of different intentions for a lot of different people. My coven usually does at least three passes: one for things people have asked us for, one for things we are asking for ourselves, and one to work for the community or the natural world.

This is one of the major reasons I work magic in a group, so we can combine our energies to support each other and the people who ask us for help.

Care for the World

Many indigenous communities perform rituals which support the land. Buddhist monks create sand mandalas to support world peace. As I grew into my Witchcraft practice I wondered if Witches could also perform rituals to support the world.

Turning the Wheel

It seems to me that the sabbats support the world. The eight sabbats of Witchcraft are evenly spaced throughout the year. They were originally patterned on the seasonal round in Europe, acknowledging the changes at the solstices and equinoxes and the life cycle of creatures and plants. Today Witches around the world adapt the meaning of the sabbats to our own ecosystems.

To celebrate a sabbat I start by walking around my yard and neighborhood. I pay particular attention to native plants. Berries flower and set fruit which are eaten by birds. Geese fly into my neighborhood in winter and leave for their northern homes in the summer. Eagles stick close to their nests in my woods to raise their chicks and then fly farther afield when the chicks leave the nest. Maple leaves cover the ground in the fall and cones fall from the firs and pines. Winter storms blow down branches. I bring the flowers, fruits, leaves and branches inside to decorate the sabbat altar.

This tunes me to what is happening in my world. When I celebrate the sabbat ritual it seems to me that I am affirming the natural pattern of the seasons. The wheel turns, and when I do the ritual, I am helping the wheel to turn.

Climate change threatens the seasonal pattern. Every year I see changes. It’s not just a warmer climate, it’s also flowers blooming early or late, storms coming at different times, the introduction of chaos and disruption. One of the wishes I make on the cup is “May the weather fall into its accustomed patterns”.

Bringing Calm

This is a moment of great agitation in my own country and around the world. People are very concerned about the preservation of the natural world and about human rights. War, oppression, and environmental destruction threaten livelihood and lives.

Our neighbors seem to threaten us personally. The political divide in the U.S. has frozen into a civil war. People on opposite sides of the divide have stopped talking to each other, even within families and marriages.

What I notice right now is that people are afraid. We don’t feel safe and we blame each other for that. This is true wherever we fall on the political spectrum. Of course this is exacerbated by social media algorithms which are engineered to provoke strong reactions, setting off storms of fear and hate.

Witches everywhere are responding to this moment. We are acting to create safety for ourselves, for our people, and for vulnerable people who are at risk. This is exactly what we should be doing.

There is another way we can help. This is a moment when we are called on to bring the care of being calm. We can start with ourselves. Whatever our personal beliefs, however we ourselves are at risk, we can refrain from projecting anger and hatred into the communication cloud around us. We don’t have to agree, accept, or forgive, but we can choose calm.

Calm is different from peace. In these times we may be called on to defend ourselves or others. Defense is a forceful act. It causes disruption to stop something which from happening. It shatters the kind of peace which goes along with injustice because it turns attention away from ourselves. That kind of peace will be shattered anyway as the aggression it condones will eventually turn toward us.

We can forgo the peace of inaction and instead center ourselves in calm. From a calm center we can act to protect ourselves, our people, and the living world around us. Projecting calm into the communication cloud helps to ground anger and fear, not only in our own communities but for people of other faiths and geographies and political movements. We may enter into conflict with others, and this is appropriate, but doing so from a state of calm mitigates the threat of emotional and physical violence. Acting from calm is tremendously powerful.

Here are some ideas for generating calm.

• Rooting in the earth: see and feel roots pushing out from your abdomen down through your feet into the earth. You can release physical and emotional agitation down the roots and draw up the earth’s unstinting energy of support.
• The well: see and feel a well extending down into the earth. This well is a source of calm energy that surrounds you. This is a good image to use when a person or group you are interacting with becomes agitated, the well releases energy that allows people to relax and tap into comfort.
• Breathing deep: take a deep breath in through your nose for a count of four, then exhale through your mouth for a count of eight. The idea is to exhale for a longer time than inhaling. This immediately brings calm as tension leaves the body and your breath is refreshed. This also works with other people, when you’re interacting with an upset person you can suggest to them to take a deep breath and then a long exhale three times.
• Calling on Spirit: frame a request to a spirit you connect with, a land spirit or ancestor or deity, to support you and help center yourself in calm.

These techniques work for us individually. We can also use the energy projecting techniques to generate calm in the community. We can light a candle, raise a cone of power, and speak an intention on the consecrated cup. The intention can be this simple: “We are calm. We care for each other. We are healthy, safe, and free.”

I’m proud to be able to care for myself, my family, friends, and community. I’m also grateful to have tools on hand to contribute calm to the world at a difficult moment. I care about all of them, and Witchcraft helps me care effectively.