Why So Serious?
"Serious practitioners" remind me too much of indie rock bros.
It is completely natural that amidst the cacophony of so many “content creators” -- dubious individuals peddling knowledge of indeterminate utility and even sketchier provenance, that everybody’s very anxious to prove that they are “the real deal.”
As magical practitioners we’re already a little bit sensitive to this kind of thing, given that many in the 21st Century seem to think that magic is at best overhyped psychological trickery and at worst charlatanism or mental illness. We all have that hardcore atheist friend who insists that science is the only thing worth trusting, and low key thinks we’re actually a bit daft for believing that deities exist and that magic works.
Add in the wacky, wild world of Instagram woo-woo types and the mess that is WitchTok and witches might be excused for having a bit of a chip on our shoulder when it comes to being taken seriously.
Enter the “serious practitioner.”
The serious practitioner wants you to know that they’ve been doing this a long, long time. Decades, in fact. They will tell you at the drop of a (pointy) hat that they have been initiated into a variety of traditions, and they have been taught by some of the Craft’s most notable teachers. If they come from a culture that has its own indigenous form of magical practice, they will tell you how much they learned from their parents, their grandparents, their great aunts, elders and ancestors.
They have studied. Oh, how they have studied! They have not only read all the basic magical texts that have become the standard syllabus for modern western eclectic witches, they have gone on a deep dive study of historical and ancient magical texts that date back to the Middle Ages, or maybe even to Antiquity. The more obscure the magical tome is, the faster you’ll find it cited in their conversation. They want you to know that they are more than mere wiccans, and their magical practice is based on texts with “real” magical provenance, not the musings of a British civil servant.
And here’s the thing. I am a huge advocate of historical rigor in the practice of witchcraft. I advocate and teach workshops aimed at getting witches to understand how to history and why they should. I think it’s important that witches be aware of the provenance of the tools and practices they are using, because it makes them better witches.
And I love the fact that we’re recognizing and developing a body of knowledge as a community that goes well beyond one tradition, one culture, one set of ideas. Not only are “serious practitioners” going deep into the source material, they are broad in their areas of expertise. So many different cultures, different types of magical practice, and that’s fantastic. We need that diversity. It’s been sorely lacking for a long time and it’s important as we work towards an inclusive and welcoming community.
“Serious practitioners” who have devoted time and energy to increasing the knowledge base of our community have a lot to contribute. I don’t want anyone to come away from this thinking that being a “serious practitioner” is a bad thing. We need them as part of our community, and what they bring is important.
And it is also true that “serious practitioners” need to know when to stop being so serious.
What do I mean by that?
Sometimes, in their passion for the pursuit of excellence, of historicity, the serious practitioner can make the craft inaccessible and quite frankly, a drag (and not in the awesome RuPaul way).
Read a post by a “serious practitioner” and sometimes you can get that feeling that I used to get back in the 90s when I was a budding rock zine editor. Yep, that’s right. Your girl used to publish an indie rock zine. Record labels would send me dozens of albums to review and tickets to shows and I was pretty much a fixture at the handful of dark clubs on the edge of the transitional neighborhoods in my city, the ones where the beer was cheap, the floor was sticky and the bands were up and coming.
My partner in the zine and I were both women, which meant that we often ran up on the “indie rock bros.” They were a dime a dozen in this scene. The look was easy to spot -- ringer tee with an obscure band or label name on it, messy hair that was often longish and dirty. Almost always drinking a Rolling Rock. They would love to engage you in conversation so they could show off how much they knew about the band on stage, and the “scene” more generally. They loved to tell you about the deep cuts on the latest album, or tell you about the homage to [insert classic rock influence of your choice] from the ep they did two years ago before anyone knew who they were. Their goal in the conversation was to show you how much they knew, and tacitly challenge you to demonstrate that you were on their level. And yes, if you were a woman, they were very keen to “check your indie cred.” They frequently complained about sellouts and poseurs.
Needless to say, my partner and I could do more than “keep up.” But we were there to enjoy the music and document artists who we thought deserved a platofrm. Dunking on fellow fans held no appeal. We were happy to have the conversations about deep cuts and influences and fantastic performances and label politics, we just didn’t see the need to judge anyone based on how much or how little they knew. If they were there to enjoy the music and love on the band, I didn’t care that they hadn’t been there “since the beginning” or that they had no clue about the obscure lyrical references.
Listening to the “serious practitioner” talk about the craft can often feel like listening to an “indie rock bro” waxing poetic about his favorite band. They know it all, and are prepared to geek out about their greatest love, but they’re determined to impress upon you how extensive their knowledge is, and how vastly superior their practice is to those who can’t be bothered to beccome a deeply researched expert like them. They complain about the “fluffy bunnies” at festivals, and basically anybody who hasn’t taken the “go hard or go home” approach that they have adopted.
The problem isn’t the depth of knowledge, the depth of commitment, or even the desire to share those things with anyone who happens to be within earshot. The problem is the tacit judgement, the undertone that suggests that anyone who’s not embracing the same approach or not willing to acknowledge the superiority of their approach is somehow less than or incomplete. Sometimes they don’t even bother to make it tacit or use an undertone. Sometimes it is overt and explicit.
Here’s the thing: while the Craft is served well by the presence of “serious practitioners,” that doesnt mean that everyone has to be one, or even that being one makes you “better” than other witches. Not every witch has the time and the capacity to do the deep dive and relentless study that would give you the kind of practice the “serious practitioner” claims to have.
And not everyone who takes up the Craft does it to become a “serious practitioner.” In fact, most don’t. Most folks are looking for a practice that provides spiritual fulfilment and some practcal assistance with the trials and tribulations of their day to day existence. Just like there were some folks who came to the rock show because they’d heard a song on the radio and liked it, or even because their friend liked the band and they decided to tag along, there are some folks for whom the Craft is a thing they think is cool and they want to see if it works for them. They don’t need to go deep into it in order to get everything they need and want out of it.
Are these superficial practitioners going to be able to do the more complex or powerful workings that the serious practitioner does? No. Do they need to in order to be decent at their craft? No. Can a witch have a practice they enjoy and that satisfies them without becoming “serious” about their craft? Absolutely.
And in the end, that’s the point. Every witch deserves to build a practice that they enjoy and that satisfies them. And that practice doesn’t have to live up to anyone’s standards but the witch to whom the pratice belongs. Most witches are trying to do the best they can to learn effective craft and eek out a satisfying practice in these challenging times. Most of us struggle to find free time to read books and try out spells and do a devotional practice in between doing a job, keeping a house and raising kids and all the other stuff that we have to do on a regular basis as part of being an adult here on planet earth in the 21st Century. That anyone has the time and the energy to devote to becoming a “serious practitioner” is laudable. But celebrating the person who has the time, skill and circumstance to pursue magic in a serious way does not simultaneously require making the witch who does not have those things feel guilty.
Witchcraft and magical practice, if it is to have a chance at making the world a better place for us all to live in, needs both depth and breadth. Serious practitioners who embrace intense study and build out the knowledge base of the craft are vital. While I think we can all agree that we want our craft to be based on good information, not everyone’s practice needs to be intense and deep.
In fact, what the unserious practitioner may lack in rigor, they make up for in sustainability and accessibility. Having a rigorous understanding of magic that is honed with endless study does no one any good if you never actually do the magic. Unserious practitioners remind us that magic is not just esoteric, it is also deeply practical. Magic is not just for out of body experiences and summoning elemental entities and transcending space and time. Magic is also as real as a station wagon. It’s the spell you cast to help along your salary negotiations. It’s the meditation you use to calm yourself down when life gets stressful. It’s the healing rhyme you say over your son’s knee when he scrapes it by falling off of a scooter.
These are not impressive displays of magical prowess. They are not the kind of “high magic” that one studies in books dating from the nineteeth century. They are often passed down casually from person to person, much in the same way that you pass on a recipe for macaroni and cheese or a home remedy for hiccups. These bits of magical practice have no provenance that can be discerned from a historical record. But they are magic, just as much as any elaborate summoning spell.
It’s easy to become fascinated with magic that has a big legacy or carries big, world-changing ideas. It is easy to believe that sort of magic is just more special and more important than the stuff that unserious practitioners do to muddle through their day. Magic that may be no more than a harebrained idea from the mind of an Instagram creator who’s mashing up stuff she read somewhere and learned in an online workshop last year, well, it’s easy to see it as just not on the same level.
Because it isn’t. It’s not meant to be. It’s like comparing Bach to Taylor Swift. Both created music, music that in its time was wildly popular. Both are and were in their respective times, considered cultural icons. And yet their music is deeply different in its structure and its legacy and its perceived importance. One can make arguments as to why one might be “better” than the other, but if one is being honest, that is really a matter of personal preference.
But this has always been the truth: knowing more about a thing than someone else doesn’t make you a better person. It also doesn’t make you an asshole. Not all by itself anyway. It’s only when you think that knowledge gives you a way to make comparisons that place you at an advantage, that make you better than someone else, have you wandered into asshole territory.
Every witch deserves to build a practice that they enjoy and that satisfies them. And that practice doesn’t have to live up to anyone’s standards but the witch to whom the pratice belongs. There is not only room in the craft for the unserious practitioner, the unserious practitioner is as vital to the advancement of magic as any high-falutin’ scholar with esoteric flair and a stack of dusty books. Sneering at someone because their craft is more everyday, less studious and more practical is unfair. It makes you the Indie rock bro who can’t just let someone love the music on their own terms.
Blessed be, witches!
PREACH SISTAH!!!!!