Traditional Witchcraft in the 21st Century

As an author of books on the folk traditions of the Alps, the buzzword "Traditional Witchcraft" was something I just couldn't ignore. I had to look into that and what I found out pretty soon was that people had quite different opinions as to what that means. There seems to be no widely accepted definition, no one agreement on what tradition in should be. Is it mediaeval European? Vodun, Hoodoo, or Appalachian? Norse Seiðr or Latin American Brujería?

Well, it's all of the above and more. Because it is all about the personal choice of the witch, a choice that may be influenced by where they live, who their ancestors were, or to what they feel drawn. And as far as I can tell, people into Traditional Witchcraft are doing exactly that, free from the shackles of prescriptive models but tied to what works for them. (Hopefully with a solid understanding of cultural appropriation.)

So, what is it for me? In the end I came to the conclusion that the question may be less "Trad-Witchcraft, yes or no?" and more, "What is the framework—the area and the era—in which I am interested? What tradition speaks to me, which one do I feel most comfortable with?" And for me, personally, that area is, globally speaking, rather small—the Alps—but the time frame is rather long, spans over roughly four hundred years from the late mediaeval period throughout the Renaissance to the beginning of the Era of Enlightenment. The reason for this choice is simply that I was born and raised in the region—and that's where my heart is, geographically—and that I have access to actual spells from that place and time. I found them so fascinating that I wrote a book about them, Alpine Witchery.

What I also realized very soon was that this choice also comes with limitations. For example, while witches back then did put things in glass jars (one claimed that she had one of the devils with whom she works in such a jar), "freezer jar spells" would not fit into this framework. Not because I think they aren't working—they sure do if done right—but simply because the first household freezers came on the market in the 1940s. Even though industrial walk-in freezers were already in use prior to that, they were expensive, huge, and the chemicals used were dangerous. My mother's family farmhouse, for example, had a butcher's shop in it, but her grandfather could not afford such a freezer in the early 1900s. So instead, they had a cool room that still has the wooden construction above it where they placed huge ice blocks cut from the nearby pond in winter. It's an excellent place when you play hide and seek with your siblings.

Here are a few things that I discovered as being important to consider when aligning yourself with the witchcraft tradition of your choosing.

Ingredients That Are No Longer Available or Difficult to Procure
Something I found limiting but equally fascinating was that the further back I went through the centuries, the more difficult it became to replicate today those old spells. For instance, many spells from the 15th and 16th centuries ask for patches of clothes from hanged men, or even for their body parts. Obviously, it is quite difficult to obtain such spell ingredients today. Another often-mentioned ingredient for spells were the needles used to sew up the shroud covering a deceased. It's just no longer common practice to do so, and one would have to travel to more remote cultures where the dead are still sewn into linen sheets. These are, however, all obstacles that can be overcome. But before I talk more about that, let me mention another yet somewhat similar hurdle.

Questionable Hygiene
Science was somewhat rudimentary in the Renaissance. Biology, especially, was only just on the verge of becoming a field of study when Antonie van Leeuwenhoek invented the microscope around 1650. It took almost another 200 years for Louis Pasteur to finally prove that killing bacteria in food makes it a bit healthier. So, some suggestions that can be found in 16th- and 17th-century grimoires and court records need to be adapted to today's knowledge of how diseases are transmitted.

Language Was So Different
But, with the right adaptations and substitutions, we can still replicate what witches in that era practiced. And while there are still historical grimoires around that can be studied, it was actually court records from that time that allowed me to get my hands on some old spells and charms. Fortunately for me, in the 1920s a professor of law at the University of Graz, Fritz Byloff, collected about 70 such records where accused witches and witnesses revealed spells that they had either done themselves or had observed being done. He was also an anthropologist, so he penned them down verbatim for students to learn from that rather than interpreting them for a wider audience. This provided its own, unique challenge, because the original records were written phonetically, before a German grammar even existed. (And mind you, there are still vast regional differences within spoken German to this day.) There are also some very strong dialects in Austria. In other words, my German-speaking mind, educated in reading modern, grammatically correct Standard German, was blown half the time. Imagine you don't speak Scottish English and someone hands you the transcript of a speech by a Highlander, but that transcription is completely phonetic and that that is what you get to read. So, more often than not, what I had to do was override my left brain and just say the seemingly randomly put together vowels and consonants out loud, over and over, until they made sense. What helped was knowing where these historic trials were held and the dialect people speak or spoke there.

What Was Authentic and What Was Made Up?
Which brings me to the next challenge: can I even trust that the spells revealed in those trials were legit witchcraft practice? Let's not forget that being on trial back then, especially when accused of witchcraft, meant that eventually you would end up being tortured (such as the practice of forcing the accused to sit naked on a spiked chair for 48 hours as the points of the spikes slowly broke the skin and then equally slowly made their way into flesh). People would say anything to avoid or stop the excruciating pain. Now, when it comes to discerning whether or not a spell was something the witch might have actually done versus something they made up under torture, a lot is based on gut feeling. What helps, though, is when you've seen a similar spell in other literature, even from other countries. Such similarities are a really good indicator for the witch having admitted to a genuine spell. Another helpful indicator is when the spell fits into typical patterns, most often that of sympathetic magic. In essence, that is the kind of magic where you do something in a small format that in some way or form mimics what you want to have happen to the whole person. The "sour jar" is an excellent example for that. You put something that belongs to the target of your curse into a jar together with all kinds of painful and gross items, such as glass shards, rusty nails, lemon juice, urine, etc. The goal is that the whole person has similar experiences in their actual life as the little part of theirs has in the sour jar, especially when you shake it vigorously. Image spells, such as poppets in which needles are stuck, are also textbook examples of sympathetic magic. So, if the witches admitted to these kinds of spell, you can be pretty sure that they in fact did them.

View the above examples in comparison to absolutely absurd confessions like having flown through the chimney on an oven pipe with the devil sitting in front of you, having attended witches' sabbaths where a crawfish pulled a cart with a casket of wine, or that you had run with wolves, ripping apart the sheep of a farmer who didn't help you out with some milk, bread, and bacon—yes, these were actual things people accused of witchcraft admitted to under torture. These are confessions you can easily discard as made up on the spot, for they were more than likely just uttered in agony to stop the pain of torture.

How to Make Substitutions
Once you have gotten a feel for what are factual spells of the time and region on which you base your own, personal Traditional Witchcraft, you will have to face the next challenge: substitutions. Let me thus circle back to the spells that ask for patches of the clothes or even body parts of hanged people, or for splinters of the gallows. The only explanation I can come up with for this obsession with the gallows and the people hanging from them is that these are dead bodies that are still in the world of the living—excellent betwixt and between objects, neither amongst the living nor amongst the dead in the cemetery. Even the ancient Celts based a lot of their myths and magic on such liminalities, where the veil between our world and that of spirit is thinner than elsewhere. Whatever the reason may be, people back then used these items for all kinds of magic. Wood splinters from the gallows were needed to cause someone pain, as well as to fight bedbugs. The Catholic sacristan Leonhard Gschwendtner from Lower Austria claimed in his 1666 witch trial nine more uses for such splinters. One was that having some in your pocket would keep anyone from winning against you in court. Lo and behold, the prosecutors were not successful in their case against him, and he was only reprimanded and then acquitted.

So, what could you do today, in the 21st century, in these and so many other cases where objects are no longer available or would cause serious legal problems if one were to be caught obtaining them? This is where your creativity comes into play. One such spell suggested touching a person on whom you have a crush with a patch of clothing worn by a hanged thief. In a 1485 trial, that was exactly what the witness Clara Lienhart testified a witch known only as "The Old Fenden" had suggested to her, Clara. It was probably more important that the piece of fabric belonged to a thief than that he was hanged. Do you know a thief? An old friend who couldn’t resist the excitement of shoplifting, even if that happened only once? They're technically a thief! A patch from an old tee shirt from them would do the trick. And that is exactly what can be used to "steal a heart."

What about those splinters from the gallows? If you do some research into the history of the town or county you're living in, you might find out where they once stood. And the stones, the soil, even very old trees around them witnessed these executions and therefore still carry some of that energy. Often enough, it is merely the understanding of what role these old, no-longer-available objects played in the spell that may fire up your creativity and allow you to easily adapt a charm from the Renaissance to your modern practice.

Spotty Recording
There is yet another challenge when basing your Traditional Witchcraft on old court records. You have to imagine the environment then and there. It was probably loud in the room, people upset and talking on top of each other. The poor scribe frantically tried to keep up with all that was going on with his scratchy quill and ink and maybe had instructions what to record and what not to. When looking at the transcripts, individuals are sometimes mentioned just by their name, but not how they were relevant to the court case. Practices were stated but not explained, because everybody in the room seemingly knew them and there was no need to describe them in detail. Sometimes it's just said that the witch uttered "some words" or used "other materials" in addition to the ones the record keeper was able to list. Maybe the witch talked too fast or maybe they actually never revealed those words or objects. Unfortunately, we will never know.

But again, this is where you can be creative. Traditional Witchcraft doesn't mean that you are beholden to the spell as it was penned down hundreds of years ago. It just means that if you choose to work in the spirit that shines through these old records, often enough only between the lines, you take what these witchy ancestors revealed and bring it into your practice, complete with ritual where you create your workspace—maybe draw a circle, light a candle and incense, and invoke whoever you usually work with—and with speaking your own words where only procedures were recorded back then.

You Can Do It
So, to all of you on this patchy path of weaving together traditions, witchcraft, and modern life: you got it! You have the two main ingredients to brew the potion of the ways of the Traditional Witch at your fingertips: the records of what those before you have done and the creativity to fill in the holes that those records left blank.

So mote it be.