I Was a Teenage Witch

During a recent conversation about art with a muggle artist, it came up that I was a witch and that this has inspired my photography.  He asked how long had I been a witch?  A fair question but one that required some mental calculations on my part.  I was surprised to realize that I have been a witch 29 years.  And because I am in my mid-40s, I felt like I had to clarify: I had been introduced to the Craft in high school at the age of 16.  I had been a teenage witch.

As a kid, I loved stories about witches and magic, but I always felt that there was some element of truth in these stories.  I was a geeky, introverted kid who was an avid reader and frequently spent hours in the library.  It was there that I read books about modern witches and of the burning times.  I was so interested in the subject, that as a high school freshman when it came time to write a term paper on a historical subject, I wrote it on the burning times.  I accessed the required 5-10 reference books from the local library and cited my research with the required footnotes.  (I got an A.)

A year or two later, a high school friend of mine cattily commented that a new acquaintance of ours was a witch.  I knew instantly that it was true and began pestering her with questions whenever we had a moment to ourselves, usually during lunch period.  I had met my first witch and my lust for knowledge and hearing of her experiences was insatiable.  I knew after our first lengthy conversation on the subject, where she explained to me about the gods and the cycle of the seasons, that I too was a witch!

For simplicity's sake, let's call this new friend, Persephone.  Persephone had a boyfriend who lived in Berkeley.  The mother of her boyfriend was a witch and developed a friendship with Persephone, eventually agreeing to take her on as a student in the Craft.  Though the romance with the boyfriend was measured in months, Persephone's friendship with the boy's mother lasted years.  Persephone was invited into this woman's home, her coven, and eventually, sometime after graduating from high school, was initiated into her Feri lineage.

My friendship with Persephone blossomed; we had many similar interests including music and poetry, but most notably witchcraft.  She took me to my first metaphysical book store (Shambala in Berkeley), took me to buy my first quartz crystal, and taught me how to work with it and other stones.  She taught me an in-drinking spell that I later learned was part of the Feri Kala ritual.  She took me to my first ritual, a Beltane ritual with the woman's Feri coven.  She even told me secrets I wasn't supposed to know, denying later that she had shared such information with me.

Persephone and I eventually went our separate ways but my connection to the Earth, the cycle of the seasons, and the Craft that she had introduced me to remained and continued to deepen.  I continued to study and practice as a solitary witch.  My love of science led me to my college freshman Principles of Biology class and through this course of study, I had a religious experience studying for a biology midterm on a grassy hillside. Learning about the commonalities and interconnectedness of life through cell biology, ecology, and evolution brought me closer to the gods.  It taught me the divine nature of the microbes, lichens, fungii, nudibranchs, garden snails, and sea anemones and gave me context for the cycles of life.  It was magical.  I was enthralled and for me, science, spirit, the gods, and magic all intertwined as one.

As a teenager I wasn't sure about many things.  Between my love of science, my love of photography or my enjoyment of writing and working on student publications, I couldn't determine which one(s) to pursue.  I didn't know what college I wanted to go to, what I wanted to major in, or what I eventually wanted to do for employment.  I was confused about my sexuality, enjoying my sexual relationships with women, as well as the time I spent with my male friends but wanting more from that, while not being really attracted to the straight men or gay men that I knew.  Yet in this time of so much unknowing, I strongly knew that my politics were on the left and that I was a witch.