Witchcraft is Not About Wellness

First published on my now defunct private Patreon community in March 17, 2019.

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Flowers floating in a bowl in water, photo by spiritual teacher Sabrina Scott

Witchcraft is booming within wellness spaces.

A troubling trend I’ve seen lately is the idea that magic is all about cultivating positivity and calm. And while gaining calm and a deeper, more meaningful and genuine sense of inner peace can definitely be a result of practicing witchcraft over time - I know it has been for me - this hasn’t been without its dramas, pains, and uncomfortable moments.

What used to be simply the new age movement – largely subsidized by divorced old white ladies looking to connect with their inner goddess – is now simply ‘wellness,’ so vague and inert as if to be completely meaningless, allied with the equally vague concept of health. 

I’m not saying that care and wellness are irrelevant to magic – no, definitely not!

Do I totally use the wellness hashtag? You bet. Do I consider myself part of the wellness space? Kinda, haha!

In the 101 book I’m working on, I do include sections on self-care because I see it as a crucial aspect of witchcraft: it’s a topic I’ve been writing and teaching on since 2012.

I do primarily see magic as something that is in many ways an act of collaborative care carried out by multiple beings.

However, I think it’s important to remember that care doesn’t always look like sweetness or kindness.

I’m sure you’re all super familiar with concepts like tough love, and intervention around problematic behaviours.

For instance, transformative and restorative justice processes for rapists and abusers are not often experienced by perpetrators as pleasant; however, this unpleasantness is necessary. These processes are ways of caring for survivors and communities, and ultimately for perpetrators as well. Psychotherapy can often be jarring and unpleasant as we learn more about ourselves.

Sometimes, what looks or feels violent or harsh can be a form of care and love, and can even be a part of stepping into responsibility and accountability.

And, on that note, witchcraft is not inherently about positivity.

Witchcraft is not inherently about calmness, peace, or happiness. In fact, these goals rarely factor explicitly into my own workings.

My witchcraft has at times been much more often violent, chaotic, intense; intended to disrupt and create instigate change where and when I might have least expected it, but where it needed to happen.

The end goal may be concerning personal growth (spiritual, financial, romantic, emotional), but we do often require dramatic and unpleasant shifts in order to get out of our own way, in order to step more firmly into the lessons we need to learn. 

The calm comes, of course - but we can’t bypass the storm.

If we know what needs to change in our lives and how and when to do it, we can do this in our lives in mundane ways; we won’t need magic or any spirits to intervene in order to assist us. Often, these shifts that ultimately result in greater self-awareness and alignment with our personal integrity can happen with magic, when we admit and embrace that we don’t fully know what to ask for – and ask our spirit team to take care of the details. I find that a good spirit team often knows what to bring us much more than we know what to ask for. 

Witchcraft – in my opinion – should not be used as a tool of spiritual bypassing.

When we use magic to ask for happiness and good vibes only, we sidestep doing the real and difficult work of toil and growth that is often necessary in order to feel greater and lasting contentment. 

Magic is not about wellness. Magic is not about feeling good.

In fact, in order to grow and flourish and expand into our best, happiest selves, often we need to undergo many trials and tribulations which frankly fucking suck (no two ways about it), and we need to work through some period of time of really feeling like utter garbage. This can be a necessary rebirth process.

With witchcraft, we can face our traumas, our demons, the monsters that always already live inside us, we face the ways we have been hurt and the ways we hurt others.

We can face our nasty patterns, the holes we keep digging ourselves into, again and again. We can see ourselves through others’ eyes, through the eyes of our spirits. We let go of what we think we want: the job, the relationship, the ring, the money, the sex, the love that takes one specific form. Yeah, it will probably feel like crap for a while. But, we don’t have to stay there. We can feel the crap, process it, and move on. Magic isn’t about bypassing, but it’s also not about swimming in our misery until the end of time. Instead, we open to possibilities.

We trust the universe to catch us. We trust our ancestors to catch us. We trust the spirits to catch us. We trust ourselves to catch us. 

In order to be well, we must go through periods of being unwell.

We cannot magic away our trauma. We cannot magic away our rape. We cannot magic away our abusive parents or ex partners. We cannot magic away our tendencies to people-please and put ourselves last. 

Yes, witchcraft can be a big part of these transformations.

If we believe in our magic, it should be. But witchcraft doesn’t whisk away our pain, our memories. It helps us feel – not numb. It helps us go deep. It helps us dive into it all, it helps us get wet when we don’t want to. It helps us gain the courage to jump into the icy cold plunge pool, it helps us hold our breath long enough for that cold to change us, to create shift in us, in our bodies and beings. 

Magic is a welcoming of that pain, of that incubation, of that movement, that transformation.

Using magic to sugar-coat and oversimplify our lives with a wash of false positivity will solve no real problems.

Witchcraft is doing a spell for happiness and then being fired from your job, having your partner break up with you, and losing all your friends – all within the span of a week.

Magic with integrity and depth is done with that long game in mind.

Our spirits often know that it’s the partner, the job, the friends, or ourselves that are in our way. While these losses can at first be devastating, I think often we find ourselves the better off for them. 

Spiritual and religious witchcraft altar with flowers and saint statues by spiritual teacher Sabrina Scott creator of Tarot Without Bullshit and Magic Without Bullshit

We shouldn’t use witchcraft to simply create ‘wellness.’

Something else needs to happen first. Often, something big, something hard. Something needs to become unblocked. Something needs to be lost, in order for something greater to be found. That something is often us, our shining true selves, hiding beneath all of the muck and then beneath all of the icing sugar we present ourselves with.

Magic is not icing. 

If we use magic to numb our reality and paint happy little clouds over it all, what are we really achieving?

For ourselves, for our communities?

Some of the most violent abusers I’ve known have been outwardly joyful, seemed happy, kind, were devoted to yoga and meditation. How can someone who does all of those things be so cruel, calculating, manipulative? 

It’s quite a common phenomenon! Maybe I’m outing myself here as someone who does the occasional Netflix cult documentary binge, but I do truly see echoes of similar tropes and themes within some contemporary witchcraft writing. I see so much work about avoiding and banishing ‘bad vibes’ without much discussion of what this might be – and, okay, to some extent I get that – but there’s a difference between spiritual bypassing and deeply meaningful spiritual work.

Witchcraft as it gets taken up within wellness spaces seems to be mostly about just feeling good – and neglects to address fairly obvious questions in regard to both cause and mundane avenues of improvement. For instance: Are you experiencing poverty, employment insecurity, or housing insecurity? Have you been to see a therapist? Are you under significant familial stress? Have you recently been abused?

No amount of vision board making and chanting will instantly zap some problems away and create a blissful life.

Can it be an important first step? Yes, totally! But/and, we should still all go to therapy. Instead of a veneer of happiness, I’d suggest doing magic to deeply feel these things, so their impact can be worked through and then shaken off. 

Witchcraft doesn’t always feel good. But, even in those icky moments, it can be good for us. 

Witchcraft shouldn’t be used to sidestep or ignore our own demons. Instead, witchcraft can and should help us to take a big look and step through to meet our demons with joy and gratitude and acceptance, so we can actually process and work through these less than savoury parts of ourselves.

Pushing our nasty bits deeper beneath the surface without excavating them just means they will be worse when they finally explode through the surface, both for ourselves and those around us. 

Burying a knot isn’t good enough. We need to untangle it.