Your coven awaits

Have you always wanted to be part of a coven? I have. And was a witch without one for decades. I have one now. We are accomplished and weird and queer and silver haired and with Hermione-like spellcraft genius in the house.

Just over a week ago, we had one of the best rituals ever. (To be fair, I always think this about the most recent one :)

Our spring equinox ritual was focused on calling forth the little one, the child of Spring.

The witch who was hosting (we rotate) set up areas to play all over her house: hopscotch, Play-Doh and a frog game in the kitchen, bubbles on the balcony, puzzles, crayons, and glitter in the dining room.

I think she might regret that last one. Two of us started blowing it on each other and made a holy mess.

OK, it was mostly me being messy.

(This Kangaroo would never blow glitter on their friend.)

But this is what happens when we play!

This is what happens when we make magic together…Not glitter messes necessarily.

But energy. Maybe you know this feeling – when you are part of a group that has gelled. That has gone through something hard, found something special. My coven formed in the fall of 2019. We had no idea what was about to happen to us.

For the next months and then years, we met every full moon .There were many times in those hard years when no one had the energy to plan a ritual and we showed up anyway. We checked in. We shared. Some months, the experience of telling the truth about my feelings to circle of witches I trusted was all that held me together.

And there was other stuff.

When I was named in a lawsuit, targeted for being a witch (the subpoena actually blew off using my full name and called me “Witch Andrews.“ Which I later took as my Instagram handle,) my coven came over with protection magic for my house and my community – horseshoe nails and crystals, chants and circles, fury, and fight. (Shortly after that, the lawsuit was dismissed. With prejudice. But I kept the handle:)

Over the last seven years, we have answered so many crises together. With magic, but not just magic. With togetherness.

On the equinox, the ritual ended with story time. We piled onto the bed and listened to the story of Kore, the child of Spring, who becomes Persephone. When she is trapped in the land of the dead, everything is flat, colorless. As a grown woman, a mom, a business owner, a mortgage holder, a renter, I spend so much time keeping the trains on track that I forget to listen to my own inner spring. I have lost touch with her – sometimes for years. I have felt like Kore, trapped in a flat and gray land.

At the moment when Kore decides to eat the pomegranate seeds that turned her into the queen of the dead, everything changes: The underworld, which had been flat and gray and lifeless, springs into color and life.

At that moment, my coven mate turned on a light machine that threw Northern Light- like waves of color over the walls, the ceiling, the excessive glitter.

I felt the little one in myself awaken, felt the power of spring rising everywhere. It was a wonderous, pulsing delight zinging in my veins. I remembered that, even when I spend too much time indoors, the wild is right here. Is powerful. Is mine and is me. Then we sang and drummed and raised energy for ourselves and this world we love.

My dear ones, I hope there is some spring magic rising in your life. That, when things look awful, when they are awful, when the firehose of fear seeks to tell us that hope is selfish and stupid, I hope you’ll remember that Spring has been rising on this planet for eons, is part of a larger cycle, and that in that cycle, we find not just strength, but a model of power that is trustworthy because it is in relationship with the land, the birds and bees and rocks and trees, and because we can all hold it together.

If you want to touch Spring, you might try this: find yourself a daffodil. Not a cut one but one that is rooted in the earth. . Treat it like Kore’s telephone, like Persephone’s ear. Whisper what you wish your inner spring, your inner young one, could know and remember and feel. Whisper what you’d like to see turn from gray and lifeless to brilliantly alive. Ask for help from the rising energy of spring.

And if you long to be part of a circle that calls this kind of power together, through story and magic and ritual, the next Reclaim Your Fire coven starts in just over two weeks, on April 14th.

Instead of working with Persephone, we work with Baba Yaga, who is the initiator, the old forest witch who will tell you exactly how to Reclaim Your Fire… if you dare. This is a journey for those who are ready to be held, guided, and connected as we do deep healing, meet our shadows, make ritual and return with the clarity and energy. Join us.