Do you sometimes feel the need to escape from reality and immerse yourself in a world of magic and enchantment? If so, then a getaway to the realm of witches might be just what you need. Witchcraft has long held a fascination for people all over the world, whether it be through literature, movies, or the practice of actual witchcraft itself. The allure of the mystical, the unknown, and the idea of tapping into supernatural power is both exciting and intriguing. **A getaway to witch can be a transformative experience.** It allows you to step outside of your everyday life and step into a world where anything is possible. You can learn about the history and traditions of witchcraft, take part in rituals and ceremonies, and even explore your own magical abilities.
“Witches then were the ‘wise ones’ of their communities. They brewed the healing medicines from herbs,” he said.
In 1966, four years after he emigrated to New York with his wife and two young sons, he was the first witch in America to stand up and be recognized. 165-13, Religious Requirements and Practices of Certain Elected Groups--A Handbook for Chaplains, lists the religious rights of witches beside those of Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Jews, Indians and others.
You can learn about the history and traditions of witchcraft, take part in rituals and ceremonies, and even explore your own magical abilities. By immersing yourself in the culture and practices of witchcraft, you can gain a deeper understanding of yourself and the world around you. **A getaway to witch can also provide a much-needed break from the stresses and demands of modern life.
Bedeviling Thought: Those Nice Neighbors Just Might Be Witches
“There are hundreds of thousands of witches now. They are all age groups. All types. Your neighbor might be one. Or your dentist,” Raymond Buckland said. “What are they like? Very intelligent, usually. They’re likely to be quiet, unassuming, community-conscious men and women with a deep affinity for nature.”
A genuine witch, he added, is the sort of person who enjoys the way walking barefoot on grass feels. Someone whose remedy for depression is to sit quietly for a while with his back resting against a large tree.
“Witches are not anti-Christian,” he said. “They’re not anti-anything.”
Buckland, 52, is a practicing witch himself. The author of 13 published books--the most recent, “Buckland’s Complete Book of Witchcraft,” is now going into its fourth reprinting since it came out in October--he is considered an authority on the occult and the supernatural.
AdvertisementToday’s witches, he said, do still gather in groups called covens to perform dances, chants and rituals based on ancient fertility and crop-growing rites. (If the coven prefers to work naked, it’s referred to as being skyclad--”clad only by the sky.”) They do use “white magic” to draw to them the things in life they desire.
What a genuine witch doesn’t do is worship the devil.
Don’t Believe in the Devil
“Witchcraft, which is a religion of nature in which there is both a male and a female deity, evolved centuries before both Christianity and Satanism did,” Buckland said. “So witches don’t even believe in the devil.”
He was speaking in his sun-splashed Pacific Beach living room. A soft-spoken, neatly dressed Englishman who holds a doctorate in anthropology, he seems a living illustration of the kind of community-conscious witch he describes.
In 1966, four years after he emigrated to New York with his wife and two young sons, he was the first witch in America to “stand up and be recognized.” That was on television on the “Allan Burke Show.”
The admission plunged him into a whirl of newspaper, radio and TV interviews. His Long Island neighbors saw this nice, quiet man, who worked as editor of British Airways’ manuals, chatting about initiations and sabbats with Dick Cavett, Barbara Walters and Tom Snyder.
“I always wore a suit and tie, and tried to look as respectable as I could. In 1966, the average person’s idea of a witch was someone rather evil,” he said. “Someone warty and black-hatted, with a penchant for putting hexes on anybody rash enough to cross them. They thought witches were always ugly, always female and boiled up a lot of peculiar things in caldrons. Things like claw of dragon and eye of newt.”
AdvertisementThe “peculiar things in caldrons” myth dates to medieval times, Buckland said.
Made Medicine From Herbs
“Witches then were the ‘wise ones’ of their communities. They brewed the healing medicines from herbs,” he said.
Most herbs were named for the way the plant looked. The crawly root was called “dragon’s claw.” The foxglove was “bloody fingers,” the dogtooth violet “adder’s tongue.”
“Today they have Latin names. But, back in the 13th Century, a mother teaching her daughter how to brew a remedy would say, ‘Toss in some mother’s heart.’ She wouldn’t say ‘Toss in some Capsella bursa pastoris! ‘ “
It wasn’t exactly helpful to him that the movie of Ira Levin’s book “Rosemary’s Baby” came out shortly after he began speaking in public.
The story of “Rosemary’s Baby” centers on a struggling actor who is persuaded by two elderly witches to let his wife be impregnated by the devil as the price of success.
“It was an entertaining movie. It would have been fine if Levin had done his research properly, and called it what it was--Satanism,” Buckland said. “But all through the movie they were referred to as witches. True witches don’t harm others. Just the opposite.”
The one unbreakable rule of the Old Religion, as witchcraft is called, is, he stressed: “An it harm none, do what thou wilt.”
Buckland was born in London, but not into a family of witches. His father was a full-blooded Romany Gypsy. Again, popular myth differs from the reality. Most people would picture a person born in 1934 to a Romany Gypsy as growing up in a caravan strung with rattling pots. Buckland’s father was an executive officer in the Ministry of Health.
Childhood Centered on Theater
“He was also an award-winning playwright. My childhood revolved around the theater and writing,” said Buckland, who sold his first article when he was 12.
“I did wear the two gold earrings that all Romany boys wear,” he said, pointing to a single earring in his left ear. “When a Romany marries, he gives one earring to his wife.”
He was 28 when he decided to become a witch.
After extensive reading--particularly the works of Dr. Gerald Gardner who, in 1954, was the first British witch to “stand up and be recognized”--Buckland decided witchcraft was exactly the right religion for him.
He was initiated as a Gardnerian witch by Gardner’s high priestess, the Lady Olwen, in 1963.
“It’s a joyful religion, with no gloom in it,” he said. “But no religion is right for everybody.”
Because of the nine years--from 1962 to 1971--he spent working for British Airways, Buckland had the opportunity to travel all over the world. In each country he visited, he researched the occult and the supernatural. He collected artifacts--black magic as well as white. (The old form of spelling magic-- magick --is used by witches to differentiate it from the stage conjuring kind.)
His favorite stores were the back street junk shops.
“The kind where everything is in dusty heaps, and often even the owner doesn’t know what some of the things really are,” he said. “I once found a 100-year-old Athame, which is a witch’s black-handled knife, mixed in with a bunch of old kitchen knives.”
He collected drums and voodoo accouterments in Haiti, an aboriginal “pointing-bone” in Australia, a 4,000-year-old Ushabti mummy-doll in Egypt. He found an ancient magical mandrake root in a Yorkshire junk shop and, in Paris, a pact some long-ago human being made with the devil.
For five years, he ran a museum in his basement, “but we got a little tired of having people constantly traipsing through the house.”
Opened Museum of Witchcraft
So, in 1971, while he was working on his seventh book, “Here Is the Occult,” he quit his job with the airline, joined the American Museum Society and opened “The Buckland Museum of Witchcraft and Magic.” It filled six rooms and two floors of a Victorian house in Bayshore, N.Y.
“It was the only one of its kind in the United States. It was an anthropological display, rather than a sensational one,” he said. “My aim was to show the relationship of magick to religion throughout history.”
The most common remark he overheard from people wandering through, he remembers, was “I never knew that . . . “
He was a museum owner for 10 years, answering every kind of question from “Can witches really fly around on broomsticks?” (No, they can’t) to “How do you cast a love spell on somebody?” (You don’t).
“A genuine witch would never try to cast a love spell on another human being,” he said, “because of their basic rule about harming no one. How would they know if falling in love with them was in the other person’s best interests?”
In 1973, after more than 10 years as a Gardnerian witch, Buckland decided he did not like the secrecy involved in that group and introduced his own denomination of the craft, Seax-Wica (Saxon witchcraft), which now has about 5,000 members worldwide. They practice democracy; coven members vote. There are Seax-Wica witches practicing in Japan, Australia, France, Germany and even the Soviet Union. Not all of them live in places where it’s easy to get a coven together.
“Dear Mr. Buckland, I thought you might like to know there is a very tiny coven of Seax-Wica in Finland! Albeit it consists of myself and a friend; at least it is there,” a female witch, who works in a bookstore, wrote.
Wanted Male Witches
She went on to comment, rather endearingly, that they were hoping to find some male witches to join them because “rites like the spring one can really only be celebrated with both sexes, so we had to change a bit. Hope you don’t mind. . . .”
Buckland and his wife, Tara, who is also a witch--”It really works better for a married couple if both are in the craft,” he said--moved to California in 1984. Both of them felt drawn by the creative energy of the state. Buckland also sometimes serves as a technical adviser for movies and has worked with both Orson Welles and William Friedkin, director of “The Exorcist.”
Today his collection--the pointing-bones and the voodoo drums, the ceremonial swords and the black magic effigy figures stuck with pins--is stored away in trunks.
Although he recently appeared on both the Sally Jessy Raphael TV show and on “Mid-Morning L.A.,” he is planning to drop out of the public eye as a spokesman for witchcraft.
His last book--appropriately, No. 13--will be his last work on witchcraft, he said. He plans to focus on writing screenplays.
“Witchcraft will always be my religion,” he said. “I’ll always practice it. But privately. I feel like I’ve done my share of speaking out about it.”
Nowadays, he said, things are easier for witches than they were in 1966. Witchcraft festivals take place openly, at places like Holiday Inns. Witchcraft courses are given in colleges.
Even the armed forces recognizes Wica--as Witchcraft is often called--as a valid religion. (Army Pamphlet No. 165-13, “Religious Requirements and Practices of Certain Elected Groups--A Handbook for Chaplains,” lists the religious rights of witches beside those of Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Jews, Indians and others.)
But even with all the advances made, telling people you are a witch is likely to produce an entirely different reaction than telling them, for example, that you are a Baptist or an Episcopalian.
“I’d just like people to look at witchcraft with an open mind,” Buckland said. “We still have a long way to go, but I think we’re getting there.”
“He was also an award-winning playwright. My childhood revolved around the theater and writing,” said Buckland, who sold his first article when he was 12.
** In the world of witchcraft, time moves at a different pace. You can relax and unwind in the tranquil surroundings of a forest or a cozy cottage, surrounded by the beauty of nature. You can awaken your senses and reconnect with your intuition, finding a sense of peace and calm that is often elusive in our fast-paced society. **Moreover, a getaway to witch can be an opportunity for personal growth and empowerment.** Through the practice of witchcraft, you can develop your own sense of spirituality and tap into your inner strength. You can learn to harness your energy and create positive change in your life and the lives of those around you. By connecting with the elements and the natural world, you can gain a greater appreciation for the interconnectedness of all things. In conclusion, a getaway to witch can be a transformative and empowering experience. It allows you to escape from the mundane and tap into the mystical. Whether you are seeking relaxation, personal growth, or simply a break from reality, a trip into the world of witchcraft can provide all of this and more. So why not take a leap into the unknown and embark on a magical journey of self-discovery?.
Reviews for "Embracing Your Inner Witch: Retreats for Self-Exploration and Empowerment"
1. John - 2/5 - "Get away to witch" was quite a disappointment for me. The story started off promising, but quickly spiraled into a confusing mess. The characters felt underdeveloped and lacked depth, making it difficult for me to connect with them. The plot seemed to lack direction, with random events happening without any clear purpose. Overall, I found the book to be poorly executed and struggled to stay engaged throughout.
2. Sarah - 1/5 - I have to say, "Get away to witch" is one of the worst books I've ever read. The writing style was incredibly amateurish and filled with grammatical errors. The dialogue felt forced and unnatural, making it difficult to believe in the characters or their relationships. Additionally, the plot was predictable and lacked any originality. I was left feeling bored and uninterested in what should have been an exciting story. I would not recommend this book to anyone.
3. Emily - 2.5/5 - While "Get away to witch" had an interesting concept, it fell short in its execution. The pacing was all over the place, with long stretches of dull exposition followed by rushed and confusing action scenes. The world-building felt underdeveloped and at times inconsistent. The dialogue was often stilted and lacked authenticity. Although there were a few moments of potential, overall, I found the book to be lacking and unsatisfying.
4. Michael - 2/5 - "Get away to witch" had so much potential, but it didn't live up to my expectations. The story started off strong, but quickly lost momentum and became convoluted. The writing style was clumsy and lacked finesse. The characters seemed one-dimensional and lacked complexity. Additionally, the dialogue was unnatural and took me out of the story. It's a shame, as the premise had promise, but the execution fell flat for me.