How I came to the Craft

I am writing this on the 15th anniversary of my initiation into the Coven of the Wildwood at Mt Coot-tha. It feels incredibly fitting that I am finally sitting down to write this blog I have been wanting to write for months. I have been brewing on these reflections and thinking through the events of the past 21 years of my life a lot lately. I might always do this as Samhain approaches… I think I do. I notice that I have been looking back through old photos, feeling incredibly nostalgic, and plumbing the depths of my family tree…

I knew I was Witch at age 11. What that meant for me then, I can still sense. It meant I knew I was destined for Witchcraft. It meant I felt I could participate actively and sensuously with Fate, that I could weave with this Mystery that I later was able to call Grandmother Weaver. I also desired to be a witch, I wanted it to be true. And from age 11 onwards I threw myself head-and-heart first into the well of witchery.

I had known that my family had a history of magic and spirit-work, I knew that my father’s parents were known for their capacities, especially my dadong (Balinese grandmother). When I asked my papa about things like the Good Folk and described what I understood the Irish and Scottish lore to be, my father nodded, agreed with those descriptions and said here we call them Jin.* He specifically also told me stories about his cousin going to live with them in the forest (matter-of-factly) and that the Shining People liked our family quite a lot, so to be careful. He said that at night on the full moon they would dance together outside, their luminous skin glowing. My father speaks of Sakti which in the Balinese context is considered specifically to be magical power or strength. I recall that once, during my high school years, we had to turn back and drive up the range to Toowoomba (on our way to Brisbane) to retrieve my father’s protective amulets that he would always wear. In Bali “black magic” (which is how the Balinese refer to this phenomenon of anti-social maleficent ill-wishing, in English) is considered prevalent in society and warding against it is a daily-nightly task.

My mother’s family lineage includes multiple healers (one quite famous) and folk with the sight. Though of course my mother’s recent ancestors were as Protestant or as Catholic as any convict or migrant family of a few generations from Ireland, Scotland, and England could be.

I was raised as Hindu. There was no formal indoctrination or religious schooling, but each year my father would stay with us for a couple of months and we would go to Bali as well and suddenly ritual, prayer, spirits, magic were once again present. The kind of Hinduism that prevails in Bali is a deeply syncretic cultus of local, indigenous traditions relating to ancestor-veneration and relating to spirits fused with Tantrik and Vedic teachings, rites, and writings.

This is all context and landscape; it’s all connected, my family history and my family’s cultural inheritance can not be divorced - for me - from the reality of my being a witch and spirit-worker. Consequently there were several hurdles I did not have to jump that other so-called western witches I know struggle(d) with. For me, spirits and magic were and are facts of life. Ask almost any Balinese person about these things and they’ll laugh at the question of “do you believe these things happen or exist?”… Of course they do! is the common answer. It’s considered ignorant if you aren’t aware.

So at the tender and stubborn age of 11 I realised: oh, this is me. Witch. It helped that witchcraft was all around in the media, in the popular culture of the time. I’d also argue that witchcraft and the occult is always cycling through waves of being in vogue. I say it helped because I was able to test things and begin that process of sorting wheat from chaff. Charmed, Buffy, and Harry Potter were fun, but they were certainly not my sources for witchcraft lore.

I read ferociously, earnestly, with deep desire to understand these feelings inside. The first books I could locate were either pop occult Reader’s Digest editions or strangely enough, books by Doreen Valiente, Lois Bourne, and Starhawk. The Toowoomba City Library and the University of Southern Queensland were interesting places to read on weekends… or week-nights… I was at the library a lot! I didn’t read any Scott Cunningham until the end of high school. I didn’t fully engage The Spiral Dance until after high school. There was a scent I was following through it all, the scent of a witchcraft of apples, bone, feather, claw, hedge, hill, cave, blood, cum, fire, flower, and horn… I found that witchcraft on the night of April 30th, 2006 at my Wildwood Initiation, but the years before this were crucial to that arrival.

Of course, from age 12-14 I called myself a Wiccan. Didn’t you? At some point in my reading between those ages I discovered that the term Wicca was more correctly applied to a group of initiatory lineages that could be traced to Gerald Gardner. When I realised this, I stopped calling myself a Wiccan. At age 13 (four months before I turned 14) I was ritualistically brought into a recently re-birthed teen eclectic witch coven. At that eclectic initiation a Circle was cast, Elemental spirits invoked, the Rede of the Wiccae (yes, the Lady Gwen Thompson one, attributed to Adriana Porter) was read, an ivy wreath was placed on my head and very cold water was poured over me to symbolise my rebirth. This was Autumn Equinox, 2002. When a group of sincere folk come together and invoke spirits and work magic, even without much training at all, sometimes things happen. Something certainly happened. I think fondly of that ritual and that coven. That coven dissolved at the very end of 2002, though through that group I began to engage with various adult Pagans, Witches, and Occultists in Toowoomba and Brisbane. Fortunately the Internet was an incredible resource… for bullshit, but occasionally jewels. As was my actual practice.

As a teen witch I cast a lot of spells. Largely I did this to see what would work for me. I have too many stories to recount about that period of my life. Suffice it to say, I quickly realised that if I did not pay close attention and form solid relationships with familiar spirits I would continue to have messy, if not dramatic, results. Fortunately for me, those familiar and ancestral spirits turned up. They are still here. They continue to teach and instruct me in the Art. Around this time I also had several older pagans and witches offer insights and advice. Several of those people told me they were Wiccan, others very gradually revealed to me they were involved in “other groups”. The descriptions of their rites and workings, whether within their small families or larger covens, did not resemble anything I was reading necessarily. I began to scent traditional witchcraft.

Another witch who had been initiated into the teen coven actually stuck around in my life during my high school years. We became firm friends and we would visit each other in our respective towns/cities and conduct rites and workings that, upon reflection, were rather advanced for 15 and 16 year olds. The shit we pulled off sometimes scared me, or left me in holy awe. But all of these experiences were incredibly instrumental in forming my understanding of what witchcraft is. We practised spirit-flight, trance-journeying, aspecting and possession, multi-realm workings, mixed incenses and oils, and studied the lore of the Festivals together. One of our joint workings helped her get pregnant against doctor’s opinions at the time. This person contacted me again this very week, after years of not being in touch. She has 3 kids now and seems happy and healthy.

Towards the end of high school I had plans to move to so-called Brisbane (the capital city of the state of Queensland, in Australia) and I deeply desired to be in a coven of people around my age (late teens/early 20s) who were seriously dedicated to the Craft. Magic was worked, I imagine by all of us simultaneously (as these things usually go), and we found each other (again). At the Pagan Pride Day in 2004 - held at the old Boggo Road Gaol in Brisbane - I encountered the Earthwyrm Coven whose witches delighted me. They ran the Spring Equinox ritual there that day and the High Priestess Anna ran a workshop on starting and running a witches’ coven. Earthwyrm and Coven of the Wildwood (founded on April 30th, 2006) were good friends and celebrated festivals together on occasion. Anna and some of the witches of Earthwyrm saw a fire in me and encouraged me to get more public, to offer my developing work, and to teach. That encouragement was instrumental in my daring to do just that. Well that, and my own Coven and Spirits.

Those 6 years of stumbling, reading anything I could find, getting back up again, injuring myself, and finding my way through it all were foundational and formative years. I was as much a witch then as I am now. I have undergone initiation in four Witchcraft traditions and none of those initiations made me a Witch. They certainly helped (and still do) me orient, get deeper, discover more, skill up, and teach me about Friendship and Family, but I came a Witch to those initiations. I want it to be clear that it is not required that you, beloved reader, go through formal witchcraft initiations in order to be legitimate. A witch is a witch is a witch is a witch because we can get the attention of spirits, weave with the wyrd, get results, fly on the wind, and change our shape… You were born for that. And you chose it. At some point we embrace it - and are embraced by It - and that is our dedication, our initiation, our welcoming into the Craft.

*Jin is a word in Bahasa Indonesia that likely comes from the Arabic term. Jin in Indonesian refers to spirits, faeries, elves, etc.