The Hearth and Home Path - plus kitchen witchery

Here’s what I’m learning about what witches want from my Substack:

• They want cozy cottagecore convenient homes, with minimal spiritual interference. Also, my perception may be algorithmically distorted, but I’m seeing a big shift from deity-centered home practices to animism-centered home practices. People aren’t yeeting their deities, but they may go to the home and the home’s ecology before they go to the outside and above/below for spiritual centering and acclimation.

• They want to cut a bitch, put him in a jar, and rocket people off to space with activist magick.

I have the capacity for both - you develop those after decades of practice. But it’s hard to put energy into the calm, warm center of a home and the chaotic spiral of the world at the same time.

I do think both paths are completely necessary. There was a mix of violence and relief during the pandemic shutdowns. Relief at not needing to go into work every day, relief at letting go of the pretenses and demands of the outside world, relief because you got to spend time with all you ostensibly worked for.

But violence, too, because suddenly the relationship problems you could ignore due to work schedules became unavoidable. I distinctly remember how snide some Millennials on Tumblr got with me about my book Divorcing a Real Witch. “I’ll never get divorced so it’s not relevant to me!” (The statement also came as a demonstration of a certain type of narcissism, thankfully not a trait of all Millennials.) 2020 happens, and suddenly there’s headline after headline about millennial divorces, and people asking me if my book is still in print.

I won’t mock anyone for what they believed as a kid. I both wanted to stay in my hometown forever and move to New York City. Neither happened, and at least on leaving my place of origin, that was for the best. Everyone learns as they go, as their bubbles get popped.

People are made, people are stressed, and people want at least the illusion of safety. I get it. I’ll teach the magick I can for that, I’m just trying to keep up with my catch-up.