“Come out, come out,
wherever you are,
come meet the young lady
who fell from a star!”
- The Wizard of Oz
Image © Kaitlynn Copithorne
“Come out, come out, wherever you are!” This phrase can either tickle our ears or chill us to the bone. Are we being summoned to play, or are we being sniffed out by demons on the hunt? The witch’s (broom) closet is a dark place—simultaneously cosy and lonely. “I am a witch” is something we might struggle to affirm to ourselves, let alone others. I know I fall into both camps. What’s worse, the coveted life on the other side of the closet door can be contrary to say the least.
Coming out is a question that has threaded throughout my entire post-pubertal life. As a person living with a severe mental illness, I’ve often felt alone, and am always primed for the judgements of others. Coming out as a mentally ill person (or mad, as I often gleefully refer to myself) feels simultaneously like a responsibility, a right, a risk, and a chore. I can count on my fingers the number of friends who know the shape of my experience, in tens the people who know the facts but not the form, and in hundreds the acquaintances who are none the wiser. Often any frankness is met with “oh but you seem so normal!”, as if there is nothing normal about me now that my nasty truth has been revealed. Coming out of the crazy closet is akin to stumbling out of the shadows and into the fire.
We might ask whether keeping aspects of our life secret (be it witchery, insanity, or otherwise) is tantamount to complicity with our closed minded oppressors. Are we duty bound, politically, to take the leap for the sake of others? For me, the simple answer is no - that is no-one’s personal responsibility. An example from the world of mental health is the UK’s Time to Talk Day. On this day we are encouraged to talk with others about our mental health. For those of us who struggle to live under the banner of a highly stigmatised diagnosis such as schizophrenia or borderline personality disorder, the invitation to just talk about it—largely for the benefit of the normies - is yet another demand in our already treacherous lives. Why should we be liable for removing others’ biases? And how can we guarantee that our talking about it won’t provoke a hostile response?
A decade ago, I performed my first solo public ritual. Certain Muggle friends in attendance expressed concern regarding my shift to the dark side, as if I’d forced them to stand at the Hellmouth for half an hour whilst my red eyes burned holes into their souls. “Be careful!” they whispered at the sight of such creepy witchery. I guess the ritual was a bit scary—it did, after all, attempt to summon Lilith for the sexual liberation of all women. I’m sure, however, that it wasn’t the content that struck fear into their pretty little hearts. It was the display of something not normal, something definitively outside of their experience.
Other times, responses can be pleasantly surprising. I once found a moment of honest connection with my mother, as we compared manifestation practices with her own Christian belief in prayer and miracles. Even now I wonder whether she was in fact secretly horrified by my ideas. When you’re afraid of others’ judgements it’s sometimes hard to trust that they really do get where you’re coming from, regardless of what they might say.
Through admitting our witchiness, we might also find ourselves shouldering the burden of others’ ignorance and fear. We might be asked to define, for example, our relationship with Satan, or to attest as to the accuracy of The Craft. Another classic is “so do you actually believe in magic?” Sometimes these conversations can feel joyful, but for the most part they’re a burden some of us could live without. I like to ask in return, “well do you believe in magic?” Now there’s a question.
Divination is another case in point - millions find the notion of the tarot, runes, or I-Ching truly spine-chilling. Their pupils dilate at the mere thought of such devilishly occult activities. A moment later, intrigued about their fate, they’re positively desperate for you to read their fortune. (Next, perhaps, they’ll start learning a divination tool for themselves, as, you know, an art practice thing.)
The rapid increase in witches using social media reveals the vast numbers of crafters looking for connection—over three million have used the hashtag #witchesofinstagram. Both solitary witches and covens alike are connecting with one another, often under pseudonyms, and creating online communities where they can find kinship and even magical services. Podcasts such as The Witch Wave garner listeners from across the world who seek affirmation for their interests and identities. There is safety in numbers, especially under the cloak of the digital sphere.
There are many reasons why we come to identify as witches—personal, religious, political. For many of us, coming out is a choice, and to many more of us, a minefield. Sometimes I choose to out myself as a person who is mentally ill. Occasionally I choose to make public my witchy practices. You are allowed to pick and choose what you say, and to whom you say it. Explain yourself? No thanks.
I find wondrous solace and solidarity in the coven that is my weekly therapy group, and the spaces I share with like-minded witchy friends. Much like the language of both magic and the mind, I trace circles with my fingertips—circles within circles. My eyes dance between these borders and spaces, my words follow. To some people I’m mad, to some I’m ‘normal’, but most importantly, to those who truly know me, I am just their friend. I am a weird nutcase, a normal-crazy-normal witch, and I’m beginning to be cool with that.