Something I’ve noticed is that some people who have no knowledge of witchcraft whatsoever have their own small rituals (whether consciously or not) and I’m so in love with it.
- A young boy I know tells me he wears a necklace to help him run faster, and whenever he looks at it he gets a boost of self-assurance and luck. And I couldn’t help but smile when he told me this - it’s his self-created talisman, whether he knows it or not.
- A woman I met recently told me that writing a letter to someone and then burning it is extremely cathartic. It reminds me of spells performed to release negative emotions.
- My mother has a cup of tea around the same time daily, using her favourite mug and sitting in her favourite chair as a way to reduce stress. A calming self-care ritual.
- Even before I discovered witchcraft, I did things as a child like projecting my anger and negative emotions into a stone and throwing it into a body of water so it would leave me alone. I felt better after that, even without knowing it was basically a spell.
I see it everywhere, all kinds of people doing relatively mundane things to achieve better outcomes for themselves: strength, calmness, healing and more. They have their own, personally-developed rituals and magicks - not necessarily of huge proportion or complexity, but effective nonetheless - and I find it so beautiful.
If a cis person, a straight person, a gamer, a white person, or a member of another non-oppressed group asks, “Where’s MY pride parade? Where’s MY special flag? Where’s MY exclusive club?” Then they must also ask…
“Where’s my fabric patch that my people were forced to wear on their clothing during the Holocaust?”
“Where are the laws that deny me being able to adopt children, marry my partner, or freely use the public bathroom that makes me feel safest?”
“Where are the politicians and religious figures that openly murder and imprison my people?”
If none of these questions make any sense in regard to their group, then perhaps they should next ask, “Why am I trivializing the traumatic history of oppressed people trying to survive in a world that violently tries to make them disappear?”
“The brain is the human body’s most mysterious organ. It learns. It changes. It adapts. It tells us what we see, what we hear. It lets us feel love. I think it holds our soul. And no matter how much research we do, no one can really say how all that delicate grey matter inside our skull works. And, when it’s hurt, when the human brain is traumatized, well, that’s when it gets even more mysterious.”
