It’s possible that you who read this post are a Christian and wonder how I could possibly worship God and practice witchcraft. You may be a witch who wonders how I could practice witchcraft and be a Christian. And you may wonder what difference it makes that I’m a hearth witch. This post will answer the questions you may have about my practice and why I call myself a Christian hearth witch.
Why I’m a Christian
Specifically, why I’m a Catholic and not any other denomination.
Well, it’s complicated.
I converted in 2018 at the end of my college career. My exploration of the faith began with a cruel joke that went over my head (but that is a whole ‘nother story that I won’t get into here). What actually drew me into the Catholic religion wasn’t the dogma, the doctrine, or the conservative politics. It was the mystics, like Meister Eckhart and St. Teresa of Avila, who drew me into the tradition. There was something there, something magical that I had to be a part of.
Of course, my conversion did not come without struggle. My first two years as a new Catholic were hell on earth, that special kind of madness that is known as scrupulosity OCD. It’s my belief now that these obsessive-compulsive symptoms came about as the result of a nasty spirit attachment, the only remedy for which was the daily praying of the rosary.
And after I got married, I had to deal with the religious trauma of my first foray into Catholicism, including secondary trauma from reading about the systemic abuse of minors and the widespread coverups, among other things (look up the Magdalen Laundries and the residential schools for indigenous children). For me, an empath and highly sensitive person, this was another hell.
What on earth would make me stay in a religion with a history of corruption, misdeeds, and even outright evil behavior? It’s a few things.
First, Catholicism has been the religion of my ancestors for hundreds of years at this point, so I find through the tradition a connection to my blood lineages. This seems a poor argument, but many cunning folk of Ireland in the era of Christian hegemony used Christian prayers to spell for their needs.
My paternal great-grandmother, her sister, my grandmother, and my father all used to sit and pray the rosary at the end of a hard day of labor in their rural community. Their ancestors on my grandmother’s side are Irish and Scandinavian, both of which were at one point Catholic peoples.
My mother has a special love for Mary. My lola went to a convent boarding school. The Philippines, too, even today, is a heavily Catholic country. I cannot escape Catholicism within my ancestry, so I would rather embrace it and include it than resist it.
Second, my husband is a devout Catholic and differences of religion would put a terrible strain on our marriage. This is something I’ve already learned the hard way. And my husband has and continues to show me that there is a different way of being Catholic that is based on love, not fear.
There are still differences between us. I’m a rebel by nature. He trained in a Benedictine monastery, shaped by the rule of obedience. I see much of what is ugly about the church as it currently is. He sees the beauty of it. We have had long conversations discussing these things, and I imagine we shall continue to.
Third, the Eucharist is a direct channel of Christ, known in his incarnation as Jesus of Nazareth. This is my experience of the Eucharist, and it is Christ who keeps me returning to Mass to receive his teaching from inside my being.
I don’t subscribe to the doctrine of transubstantiation, preferring to leave the “how” of the Eucharist a mystery. I think many Catholics forget that the Body of Christ is not a physical body like we have (and many ex-Catholics are confused by this as well).
There is no resurrection of the physical body. That body returns to the arms of our Mother Earth. It belongs to her. “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The body of Christ is a light body, which can pass through walls and appear in multiple places at once. There is documentation of such masters in the East, who reappear to their disciples to teach. But Christ chooses to come to us in the humble forms of bread and wine. I find that beautiful.
Finally, and most importantly, I call myself a Christian because I try to the best of my ability to follow the teachings of Jesus.
My first love of Jesus came with the reading of the healing miracles. I felt a call early on in my journey with Christ to continue in his healing ministry. I am currently in deep study of herbalism and energy medicine to do just that.
I also am moved every time I read the miracles of the loaves and fish. I have always loved feeding people, especially people who are shunned by society, and I want to build a life based on compassionately serving the basic needs of the most vulnerable.
Living in Christ has shaped me such that my only desire is to live in compassionate service to all beings, to devote myself to serving God as the All in All, and to follow in the footsteps of Jesus.
Why I Call Myself a Witch
As a child, I believed in magic. I knew that fairies were real, that brownies can become boggarts, and that a charm thrice spoken is powerful. My childhood religion came out of fairytale, folklore, and myth. I was unchurched until middle school, and even then I doodled my way through the sermons and only just tolerated the evangelical rock music.
By middle school, my interest in astrology had developed, which I picked back up in college. I started my plant path in 2016 with Susun Weed and Rosemary Gladstar’s YouTube videos, picking up bits and bobs of information over the years until I enrolled in a clinical herbalism course last year. I bought my first pack of tarot cards in 2017, along with Meditations on the Tarot. I got more serious about card reading in 2023. I’ve been a bit witchy since childhood, but I got up the courage to cast my first spell in 2024.
Let me tell you, it worked. It was a money spell. The day after I worked it, we received a $1000 windfall. I have done other prosperity spells since, and after a year of unemployment, I finally landed a contractor job that pays $20-25 per hour.
I know magic works. I’m an eminently practical person. If magic didn’t work, I wouldn’t do it.
But how in the world can being a Christian, let alone a Catholic, be compatible with witchcraft? Isn’t the practice of magic the act of taking the reins away from God? Isn’t talking to spirits other than the Holy Spirit dangerous? Isn’t divination of the devil?
Actually, Jesus himself was accused of sorcery during his trial before the Sanhedrin. Christians say this is a false accusation because Jesus is God after all.
Right?
Well, if you dive deeply into mystical texts, if you follow the logic of John 1 all the way through, if you sit quietly alone and get past all the thoughts and emotions, what you’ll find is… we’re all divine. We’re all children of God, with God’s DNA woven into our being.
God is the ground of being according to Paul Tillich (among other mystics), and if that’s true, if God is the very being of our being then… we are expressions of the Divine, the very Body of Christ, who is God.
And if you know your inherent divinity, you know your power. And if you know your power, you can do magic.
Jesus knew his power. His healings and his miracles are magic. To us he says, “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”
That word “believes” is a poor translation of what Jesus probably said in Aramaic, which would be closer to, “whoever resonates with my energy will do the works I have been doing, etc.”
I know my identity as a child of God. I know my magic comes from God because, to paraphrase St. Catherine of Genoa, “my deepest me is God.” My magic allows me to be a participant in God’s will, a co-creator rather than a passive bystander in my own life.
I’m not taking the reins from God. I’m partnering with God, taking on God’s yoke, working together with God to bring in an abundant harvest.
Furthermore, if you just read your bible, there’s magic all over the place! There is divination, the use of crystals, the use of incense, prophets who call down God’s power, the use of herbs for magical purposes, people talking to angels (aren’t angels spirits, y’all?), people talking to demons (Jesus asks their name, doesn’t he?), people talking to the dead, and on and on. There is plenty of magic in the bible if you open your eyes to see.
I regularly commune with saints, angels, and nature spirits. I have even talked to Brigid, the Celtic goddess of healing, smithcraft, and poetry. She’s quite nice. She watches over my home. I wouldn’t cross her, but she’s definitely not a demon.
This is my normal. To me, everything is alive and conscious and able to be communicated with. This is the real “communion of saints.”
I use divination in the original sense of the term, namely, “to discern the will of the Divine.” I use cards to talk to the I AM presence within me. I use my pendulum to talk to Jesus. I read the clouds, the swirling of leaves on a fall day, the smoke of incense offered to my ancestors. I will even divine using license plates, library books, and receipts. The word of God is written in all things. The wise know how to read it.
But why call myself a witch and not simply a mystic? Or a cunning woman? Or a folk practitioner?
Firstly, I practice magic, which most people associate with witchcraft (although not all magical practitioners call themselves witches). I do spellwork regularly. I use the Psalms magically. I have spiritual contracts with saints. I commune with and make offerings to spirits. I commune with God and nature. I divine. I practice herbalism. I have learned how to manipulate energy using my hands and my will.
Honestly, I don’t know what else to call my practice. Witchcraft, in the modern sense of the term, seems to fit what it is I do.
Secondly, my church has a history of criminalizing dissenters by labeling them witches. And I want to reflect that I, too, am a dissenter, a troublemaker, someone who will not pray, pay, and obey. I question, I disagree, and I don’t believe blind obedience to be a high virtue.
My obedience is to God within me, not to men whose moral backbone is so diseased that they would actively protect rapists within their own ranks, who believe that women are unfit to sit in Peter’s seat, and who continue to teach the masses that eternal damnation befits the unconditional love of God (it doesn’t, as David Bentley Hart so eloquently lays out in his book That All Shall Be Saved).
But most importantly, I want to reflect the fears of Christian society back onto itself. Let me explain.
There is the archetype of The Witch that lurks within the collective unconscious. Erica Jong wrote beautifully about this in her book Witches:
“She is more beautiful (and uglier) than you dream. She is a chimera, yet she is real. She loves you, yet her love has festered into hexes. She hates you, yet she will not hurt you—as long as she can enslave you forever. She controls love, death, fertility, and the weather—but she will not share her power with you for less than the pledge of your life. She is the witch. You wish you were she. Except when the time comes for burning.” (13-14, Kindle Edition).
This archetype of The Witch has two faces.
She is the ugly old woman who lives isolated outside the boundaries of society and who uses her power to wreak havoc on the community. Or she is the beautiful temptress and enchantress who lures men into sexual impurity.
The ugly old Witch makes her blood pact with the devil, consorts with demons, and eats children. The gorgeous seductress bewitches men, appears in their dreams, turns them mad for her, and causes them to sin.
And guess what?
The Witch doesn’t exist in reality. She exists only in the minds of Christians who can’t bear to see their own shadows and project their fear of their own atavistic and malicious tendencies onto other people.
Erica Jong writes:
“What is the witch’s heritage? Her great, great, great, great, great, great ancestress is Ishtar-Diana-Demeter. Her father is man. Her midwife, his fears. Her torturer, his fears. Her executioner, his fears. Her malignant power, his fears. Her healing power, her own.” (14-15, Kindle Edition)
I align myself with the archetype of The Witch, not only because I actually practice magic and have a deep relationship with the Earth, but also because I want to be a mirror. I want my brothers and sisters in Christ to notice how they project their fear of the dark and the unknown onto others.
I feel my greatest work as a witch, aside from caring for the earth and for my community, is to hold up a mirror to the increasingly right-wing mainstream Christian religion. My hope is that through an encounter with me, my Christian fellows will see that the devil they fear lives within, that they are not more righteous just because they claim to follow Jesus.
I am a willing mirror for Christian hypocrisy.
Jesus said, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
I know the plank in my eye. I have my own shit (and it is shit) that I’m working on composting and turning into flowers. I can’t say the same for many of my Christian brothers and sisters, and this is not a judgment. It’s an objective assessment of behavior that has a real negative impact on the world.
The above saying of Jesus comes out of a chapter where Jesus preaches non-judgment and the Golden Rule (”So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”). How many Christians in the United States practice what their savior preaches?
He did say, after all, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’”
It doesn’t matter what prophesies you come up with (and is it really prophecy?), and it doesn’t matter if you drive out demons in the name of Jesus (are you actually?) if you do not practice non-judgment, nonviolence, and loving-kindness. These are the values I live by in my practice, and I find that witchcraft helps me to live out my call as a disciple of Christ more completely.
And so I’m a witch.
Why I Am a Hearth Witch
I have made a conscious decision to focus on home and local community after reading the first half of Radical Homemakers by Shannon Hayes. It doesn’t mean I don’t work, but I have chosen to seek jobs that allow me to work from home.
I am reclaiming domesticity and hearthkeeping as a conscious act of protest against the “extractive economy” (as Hayes calls it). My goal is to pull as far out of the money economy as possible and to subsist mostly on our own produce, barter, and gifts. Of course, some things must be bought because they cannot reasonably be made at home (like Mason jars). But as much as possible, I want to live with less money, more time, and more meaning.
To me, hearthkeeping is an act of social justice. Living a simpler life, consuming less, driving less, and finding those things which are free (like quality time with my family around the table, walks with my husband, reading library books, etc.) has a positive impact. It leaves less of an ecological footprint, and it starves unethical corporations of profit. Focusing on building a stronger community means creating social and material resources for the most vulnerable among us.
Because my conscious decision is to build up my home, naturally my spiritual practice occurs within and is focused on the home.
I actually make offerings to the spirit of my home, who I lovingly call Roh (short for River Oak Hollow). I bless my thresholds regularly, and I have a holy water font at my kitchen entrance. I maintain a hearth flame, stir blessings and intentions into my recipes, and maintain a physically and energetically clean space.
Creating sacred space in my home allows me to have a solid foundation for being of service within the community.
Currently, since I’m studying and working, my ability to be of service is limited. If I follow the numerology of my personal years, this year has been one to focus on domestic matters and then 2025 will be a year to focus on self-reflection, study, and inward journeying. The year of action and manifestation will actually be in 2026, which is the year I’d like to devote time to serving my community using the skills I’ve been learning from 2023 to 2025.
I’m sure this section will be updated over time, so come back and visit this page to see what I get up to in the coming years.
What You’ll Find Here
On this blog, you will find posts about radical hearthkeeping, which builds on the concepts that Shannon Hayes outlines in Radical Homemakers with a twist of magic and a sprinkle of mysticism.
You’ll also find essays about economics, philosophy, social justice issues, religion and spirituality, and the healing arts. And you’ll find some homier how-tos here as well: recipes, remedies, and practical magic that you can try for yourself.
Enjoy what you find here! I welcome you. Blessings and peace to you.