CNN —
Elwyn Green’s morning routine is relatively normal, at least at first.
Green and his wife wake up their three daughters, make breakfast and prepare lunch. After dropping off the children at school and meditating for a bit, he plans to go for a walk near his home on Northern Ireland’s rugged Causeway coast.
When he’s out and about, he usually talks to the wind.
Mr. Green may feel the air swirling around him, or the force of a gust of wind pushing dark clouds up into the sky, erasing the blue. You might want to ask the wind a question because you can hear it talking. Sometimes the wind will give you the answer. He feels the same urge when he hears the trees whispering to each other or the waves crashing.
“For most people in everyday life, it’s a sign of insanity,” he says.
But Green is a witch, and interacting with the world around him is central to his job. He asks questions about the wind and trees, ancestors and spirits. Sometimes the answer doesn’t come. But for Green, magic isn’t about finding answers to life’s big questions (or death, for that matter). It’s about finding beauty in chaos.
“Sometimes it’s not important to know,” Green says. “Knowing is overrated.”
The way Greene practices witchcraft defies the stereotype of the broom-wielding, cauldron-toting, pointy-hatted witch. He doesn’t belong to a religious organization. He is not Wicca or Pagan, a religion rooted in magic. He has several cats, but they are better suited for cuddles than serving as helpful familiars.
He said there is more than one way to become a witch. Doctrine and ordinances are unique to all who practice them. Traits that others may find strange only enhance a person’s magic, Green says.
“We never belonged,” he told CNN about the witches. “If we belonged to it, we wouldn’t be witches. So my advice to people about that is, ‘Get used to not belonging.’ It’s the perfect place to set up a shop. ”
Witches can be born and created.
Green is a “hedge witch” who exists in a metaphorical “hedgerow”, a liminal space between our world and the spiritual realm with which he interacts. His magic is heavily influenced by animism, the belief that everything has a spirit. For Green, there is magic in everything, including the air we breathe, the water in our oceans, and the animals and plants we share our planet with.
Witchers are of the Green family. He was raised by two aunts who were witches. Her aunt shared her home with spirits and encouraged Green to find his magic. Although both have passed away, Green said one of her aunt’s spirits sometimes “appears out of the blue” and talks to her.
On the other hand, Andrea Samayoa was not raised as a witch. She innocently became interested in the craft as a child, when she and her friends would make “potions” using leftover condiments from a neighborhood party. They played witches and chanted “spells” to make it rain and dance under the moon.
“At the time, we didn’t know what we were doing,” said the Florida witch.
This practice became more important to her when she began to feel that the religion in which she was raised, Catholicism, was too restrictive. Samayoa said she resists inflexible rules, which is part of the reason she doesn’t belong to a coven.
Even in his early 30s, Samayoa maintains a carefree approach to magic. Her “eclectic” interpretation, which incorporates several magical traditions, has few, if any, rules. She even published a magic book called “Lazy Witchcraft for Crazy, Sh*tty Days,” inspired by how her chronic illness affected the way she practices magic.
Both Green and Samayoa are full-time witches and are skilled in typical rituals and witchcraft spells. Green performs a banishment ritual every morning to remove negative influences from the environment, and Samayoa performs a curse-removing face wash with herbs, citrus, and witch hazel. And quartz that keeps out harm.
They practice magic alone and then perform it in front of an audience. Both Green and Samayoa are popular on WitchTok, a popular TikTok community where members share tips for improving their craft with fellow witches of all experience levels.
On TikTok, Green, who also hosts a podcast and Patreon, uses bones and tarot cards to perform readings for commenters who ask heavy questions about love, career, and family safety. It’s a heavy task, so Green chose his words carefully.
Samayoa, on the other hand, frequently shares nonsense rituals that require a generous heart in profanity-strewn videos. (She also sells spell kits.) Earlier this month, she taught her followers how to create simple protective seals with pen and paper, and used them to protect Tampa homes from Hurricane Milton. I did. It worked, she said. Her home was not damaged in the storm, but several sections of her fence were blown away.
WitchTok skyrocketed in popularity in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic brought extreme stress and uncertainty to the world. Even in the months before the pandemic upended life as we know it, witchcraft was making a comeback as part of a response to the social unrest in the wake of the 2016 election and the #MeToo movement. The Atlantic reported in 2020.
Pagan witch and scholar Pam Grossman told The Atlantic that “people often turn to witchcraft in times of frustration” because their typical routes to getting things done no longer work.
But witches who come to the spaceship to gain power or control will be disappointed, Green said. Magic is a way of interpreting the world and finding your place in it, but there are never easy answers or perfect solutions.
“The natural world is uncontrolled and chaotic,” he says. “That tells us.”
To become a witch, you don’t need to belong to a coven or learn complex spells, the witches told CNN. Witch-centered media such as “Hocus Pocus,” “American Horror Story: Coven,” and “Agatha All Along” depict fictional sorcerers brewing potions in cauldrons and making pacts that sacrifice souls. While it may show people tying themselves together or using magic for dark purposes, none of that is true. Must be a witch.
You don’t even need to understand how magic works to become a witch, Green says. “You just have to accept that the magic is there and use it.”
In fact, both witches stated that fictional depictions of witches are almost completely inaccurate. As long as your intentions are clear and your heart is open, you can become a witch, Samayoa said.
“I feel like everyone has magic inside of them,” she said.
Samayoa’s book includes spells intended to bring money and abundance to the caster, but some of the most important spells she shares are for self-care and healing. It’s not easy to determine when these spells worked, because there are rarely simple solutions to very vague problems. But once she worked, she said, the witch would understand.
“Magic comes from you and only you, so if you don’t feel loved, your magic won’t be as powerful as you want it to be,” she says. Said. “Taking care of yourself is better for magic.”
Both witches said that practicing witchcraft is healing, even if the process is incomplete.
“Magic is transformative and it changes us,” Green said. “I believe we have to embrace every aspect of ourselves, the most difficult parts, and we have to love it. That’s our empowerment.”
