Author: Anna Walther

What do you want from your witchcraft? I don’t know about you, but from my Witchcraft, I expect results. In general, my Witchcraft should support an ecstatic relationship with a the world as it is, a world full of many different people, processes, and stories. It should help me make meaning of mortality, of the… Continue reading A Good Enough Witch is the Best Witch →

“Happy for the outcome; sad he had to be treated so badly,” a woman commented on my mother’s Facebook post in celebration of the Senate’s confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh. My mother and her friend teach preschool together in deeply conservative Northeast Texas, where I grew up. Lots of nice, white Southern ladies live in my… Continue reading A word of power: VOTE →

Attendance was poor and last-minute cancellations were frequent, in both of the place-based witch groups with which I’ve circled in recent years. We struggled to develop common ritual, probably because we lacked a shared intention in the first place. In the first of these groups, nontheists like me wanted to get outside regularly, encounter the… Continue reading Even solitaries need a tribe →

It has taken me years to experience any clarity around my religious identity. I grew up attending Catholic mass but knew from an early age that I wouldn’t continue, once I had a choice. In adulthood I’ve cycled through Protestant, atheistic, New Age, Buddhist, Unitarian Universalist, and Pagan approaches to religion, in roughly that order. A… Continue reading Exploring mystery, trying on labels →

Autumn Equinox 2018 approaches; time for a pulse check. What’s unfolding with the living world where I am? Daylight hours are noticeably decreasing. In summer months I can see sunlight beginning to peak over the horizon when I arrive for my shifts around 6:30a, but now it’s still twilight when I walk in to the… Continue reading Approaching Autumn Equinox in Austin →

Some say bluntly that there is no afterlife. That our lives are a “one-way trip.” Easy to assert, because it’s almost certainly true. Anyone else remember those care-free slogans of the 2008 Atheist Bus Campaign? “There probably is no god. Now stop worrying. And enjoy your life.” Photo by Dan Etherington via Wikimedia Commons Ah, if… Continue reading Some stories are better than others →

One of my favorite Reclaiming traditions is Waters of the World, the practice of collecting small containers of water for ritual use from the oceans, rivers, lakes, creeks, and springs that we visit. A bowl filled with Waters of the World makes a great centerpiece in rituals related to healing of self, community, or earth,… Continue reading Tools for Practice: Waters of the World →

John Halstead recently called for a Pagan prophet, someone who could unite naturalists and supernaturalists, someone to “come along to lead modern Pagans out of the wilderness of superstition and self-absorption.” John’s role, as he states, is the role of the critic, not the prophet, but he suggests a list of other Pagan writers who… Continue reading Call and Response: Paganism Needs a Shared Telos →

                        I submit to awe of Earth, Sun, Moon, Storm, Sea, Wind, Stone, Fire, Rain, and Forest. I practice the old magics of hospitality, reciprocity, story, and sympathy. I choose to belong to myself. I frame my choices around the ethics of care and… Continue reading A Witch’s Creed →