Fiona Horne - Witch - a Magickal Journey - A Guide to Modern Witchcraft

Later in my teens, having established my independence by leaving home and getting a job, I started thinking about my spirituality again. It was now the 1980s and the New Age movement was exploding. Lots of books on alternative spirituality started to appear and I got swept up by the ‘positive thinking’ brigade. I bought books on affirmations and personal healing by Louise Hay and books on manifesting pleasing things in my life – like Shakti Gawain’s Creative Visualisation . If anything bad happened in my life I would focus on the positive and attempt to think only happy and constructive thoughts. Consequently I felt frustrated and let down when I wasn’t always able to avoid unpleasant experiences and it became quite a struggle to stay positive all the time. My wholesome interest in the New Age mutated into scepticism.

Some of the New Age books I read over my late teens mentioned the word ‘paganism’ and I strongly identified with its concept of living close to the land, being environmentally responsible and finding divinity in Nature. So I became a vegan, avoiding all animal products in my life, including leather and honey, and recycling everything that I could. As I read more books I started feeling drawn to those that had that mysterious and exotic word ‘witchcraft’ in them. At first I thought I was going to be inundated with Satanic scare stories again, but instead I was excited to find a documented nature-worshipping religion that placed great emphasis on the sacredness of the individual and the land.

For a while I browsed through these books finding all the terminology and rigmarole a bit off-putting – but then one day I saw Ly Warren-Clarke’s The Way of the Goddess (now published as Witchcraft – in Theory and Practice ) and my life changed. Here was a book about Witchcraft, or more specifically, Wicca, that was both easy and thrilling to read, and I realized that all along I had been a Witch, even since those early naïve days of Satanism. Here was a religion that made sense: it was dynamic and logical, loving and responsible, sensuous and holy.

I felt very attracted to the fact that Wicca acknowledges many different Goddesses and Gods, but most importantly, recognizes that they can exist within the individual, not in the sky out of our reach.In fact, the Craft doesn’t provide answers as to what the Goddesses and Gods actually are, but emphasizes that whichever way the individual relates to them is the right way for her/him. I have always felt that the Gods and Goddesses do not exist in their own right but are projections of our consciousness.

Over the ages humans have created deities to teach us about ourselves. In Witchcraft ritual I treat the Goddesses and Gods as if they are real and I do feel I commune with some kind of presence, but I consider that I’m tapping into a deeper level of personal consciousness. There is, however, something called the ‘egregor’ in which most Wiccans believe. This term involves the concept that Goddesses and Gods and other metaphysical entities actually gain ‘astral substance’ as more and more people think about and relate to them, and through this they come into a kind of sentient existence.

Anyway, back to the story! I was twenty-one when I bought Ly’s book and within a year my bookshelf was crammed with over fifty books on Wicca, and using The Way of the Goddess as a guide, on the Summer Solstice of my twenty-first year I declared my love of the many faces of the Goddess and God to the Universe and initiated myself as a first degree Witch. Over the next few years I practised as a solitary Witch, keeping it pretty quiet, often not really sure if what I was doing was ‘right’, but persevering anyway. I started studying naturopathy to learn how to heal, because from my reading I ascertained that my Witchy ancestors were primarily healers and I felt it appropriate that I respect the fact by becoming a healer myself. So I worked in a health food store by day, studied naturopathy at night and played guitar and sang in a punk band on the weekend.

When I was twenty-four I received a phone call from a guy who asked me if I wanted to sing in a band that played a techno-metal fusion style of music. It sounded cool to me and I said yes. This band eventually became Def FX, and it was ultimately through the lyrics that I wrote and some interviews that I did in various publications and television shows a few years into the life of the band, that I ‘came out of the broom closet’ and let people know that I am a Witch.

Originally, I would never have wanted to be a spokesperson for the Craft, being wary of having my beliefs treated with the usual lack of respect most Witches who come out in the media receive. But, as more and more people kept asking questions I sensed a genuine and respectful interest – so here I am writing a book about Witchcraft.

Hubble bubble too much trouble

The above heading is the title of a newspaper article in which the journalist said that after attending a seminar on Witchcraft that Witches ‘ain’t what they used to be’; that in the search for acceptance we have become whitewashed and there’s nothing wicked or titillating about it anymore. The journalist said ‘These days, your self-proclaimed Witch looks like a suburban mother of three, more used to Tupperware parties … These “white” Witches are just about as scary as lady bowlers and about a tenth as interesting.’ She obviously got a dose of the lighter side – but what else could she have expected in the first meeting? If you meet someone at a party, you don’t usually begin telling them your darkest sexual fantasies or your worst fears – you just show them your lighter side. Only when someone’s earned your trust do you let them into your darker side. Anyway, she certainly wasn’t going to get an in-depth education in a complex subject in an afternoon.

However, in some ways I agree with her sentiment; for instance, I avoid the term ‘White Witch’. It’s so New Agey I believe that a lot of the New Age is like a big, happy band-aid. I always emphasize that Witchcraft is about embracing polarities – the Light and the Dark – respecting the darker emotions of anger and hatred as much as the lighter of love and empathy. Bear in mind, of course, that light and dark are by no means the same as good and evil (the latter being terms which most Witches would see as completely relative; after all, if you’re human, a little purring cat might be the epitome of goodness but if you’re a mouse it might be the personification of cold-hearted, rodent-torturing terror and dismay).

Even though that journalist didn’t get her stereotypes fulfilled at the seminar she attended, in our patriarchally-dominated society there is unfortunately something scary about a woman who is in control of her mind, soul and body. And there’s something confronting about a male who values a woman and the role they have in society and in the heavens, the role of the feminine within him, and who’s in touch with a type of power completely removed from conventional male brute force. I’m talking about Witches (well, most of them anyway). The kind of Witchcraft I and a lot of my Witch friends practise means we don’t shy away from pain and fear, and we agree with Hungarian Witch, Z Budapest, who states, ‘A Witch who cannot hex cannot heal.’

Having said that, we certainly don’t go around hexing at random and roasting small children or sacrificing furry animals (actually, I do feed mice to my hungry snake familiar, Lulu, but snakes have to eat). And our lives don’t revolve around goodness and niceness either, but we certainly aren’t the sworn enemies of these qualities. We’re into finding our own balance between sun and moon, day and night, light and darkness.

In fact it’s the dark, difficult and avoided parts of life that are often the most fertile of human experiences that give rise to our most enlightened achievements. Being a Witch is about having your eyes wide open and experiencing the whole onslaught of existence– and that can be pretty scary. A Witch’s view of the world in a time when much seems uncertain is sometimes frightening because we accept change and death as much as we welcome stability and life. It’s chaotic, somewhat anarchic and it runs on Goddess time: all things happening at all times. The human body is sacred and the individual is Goddess/God. We lead ourselves without too much trouble, are powerful, but don’t shove it down anyone’s throats (and if you know someone who does, they’re a Wanker not a Witch).