Local Practice: a Series
Hey y’all! So I know my blog is a teeny-tiny little pebble in the pool of all of witchblr out there, but I’ve been having a time for the last...oh...year and a bit...trying to really grasp the deepening pull of witchcraft in my life, but without quite knowing the direction of it, you feel me? I’ve been traversing deeper into my heritage practices (Mediterranean Strega, Celtic witchcraft), which has been good, trying to sort out my feelings around Divinities and spirits (and what the difference is, and if I even believe there really is a difference?), where I stand on low magic vs high magic (decidedly low, folk, and land-based), and what it means to be a witch, for me, and the considerations that come with it (including appropriation, racism, terfs, etc), and how to work witchcraft with serious and exacerbated mental health issues (thanks COVID! Oh, and special thanks to my parents on this one too!). I think I’ve figured out the next leg in my practice. Deeply and vocally localizing my practice. I do a lot already with my local area, I know it well, but I haven’t documented it, I don’t go posting about it, and it’s not something I really write down, but I think it’s important for me to chronicle it, to think more deeply about it than the sort of inherent knowledge one gets from being a witch in a place, and deeply root, as it were, instead. I also think it’s a great opportunity to put some helpful how-to’s out there, and to build out a more authentic practice for my region for anyone who may be new to paganism and witchcraft. I read a lot of books and listen to a lot of podcasts about witchcraft in North America, and generally, when they say North America, they mean the States. I want to change that. I want to make sure Canada and Canadian witches have a way to localize their practices. So I’m going to do my best to do it, from my little corner of things. I’m going to start a Local Practice series, based on Calgary, Alberta. Some post topics I’m considering:
Animal allies
Seasons and weather
Spirits and land wights/Genus Loci
Places of power
Elements and encountering them
Local folklore, magic, and correspondences
How to build a local practice
Identifying your biome
Plant allies
How to hunt and gather your research and sources
(as a note, I am approaching this from a settler white pagan perspective. I intend to honour the land of the indigenous people of Treaty 7, on which I work and live, and that means identifying and honouring Indigenous local culture, and not appropriating their practices, traditions, or spirits. Indigenous practices are closed.)
If you have any questions, suggestions, or comments, feel free to hit up my asks!
