The Spiritual Journey of a Modern Witch

The store front of Catland in Brooklyn, NY. Photo by Elizabeth Winn.

NEW YORK — From the outside, Catland is a thin shop, taking up only a sliver of real estate on Flushing Ave. in between a heavily graffitied bar and an insurance storefront. Crystals sit on the window sill, herbs and bones dangle from the ceiling, and in the center of the window hangs a white neon sign forming a hexagram with “witch shop” printed underneath. A black-and-white sign hangs on the door; it reads, “OPEN.” 

Ten after 1 p.m. on the Sunday before Halloween, Haylin Belay, a 26-year-old witch, walked through Catland’s door. Pausing in the walkway after being pelted by the rain outside, she stomped her shoes and shook her coal-colored coat dry before fully stepping into the shop. Belay was there to teach a 1:30 p.m. workshop—“Sex Ed for Witches.” 

She was running a bit late.

“Thank you for coming out in this trash weather,” she smiled at a group of five women assembled, “We’re trying to do a lot of sex ed in a small amount of time [to try to] serve people of all different witchcraft traditions.” 

In the hour-and-a-half workshop, Belay covered several topics in a slideshow presentation, including pleasure’s role in sex and the practice of witchcraft, polished eggs called yoni eggs, usually carved out of semi-precious stone to be inserted into the vagina meant to open the door to sexual power, aphrodisiacs and homemade love potions and even curses.

For Belay, this was just a regular Sunday. But it wasn’t always. 

Witch traditions and spiritualism have become more popular in the last two decades, with their numbers almost tripling according to U.S. census data. The number of Americans practicing Wicca and pagan religions has grown exponentially since the 1990’s to 1-1.5 million in 2014 (or about 0.4% of the population), according to Pew research. Those numbers don’t account for many new or modern witches, like Belay, who don’t consider themselves Wiccans. They are independent, like non-denominational Christians, with a variety of beliefs and practices sometimes drawn in part from other religions. 

Haylin Belay, 26, inside Catland, a witch shop in Brooklyn. Photo by Elizabeth Winn.

In the cards

“I started using the word ‘witch’ probably about 4 or 5 years ago,” Belay said. 

She was in her second or third year of college studying anthropology at Columbia University when she was first introduced to the practice through a deck of Tarot cards.

“I admit when I first got my deck of Tarot cards I wasn’t expecting it to be a deep spiritual journey of any kind,” Belay said. 

Tarot or “Taroti,” its original name in Italian, began as decorative playing cards that nobles in the 15th century, first in Italy and then in the rest of Europe, would play games with in their parlors. It wasn’t until the 16th and 17th centuries that people began to assign meanings to the cards and use them divination. 

Today, the Tarot is popular among modern and new age witches who ask the cards questions and then look for an answer and interpretation from the cards dealt to them. There’s no one way to read the cards, Belay explained. 

“There’s a logic of the Tarot that I use that makes sense to me, but I’m very aware of the fact that there’s not a rational scientific explanation for 100% of why the Tarot works the way it does,” she said. “I think there’s like a 95% explanation and it has to do with psychology and archetypes and how the human brain responds to certain types of stimulus and then I think there’s that 5%, or whatever percent, of magic.” 

At first, Tarot was just a fun activity, a way for Belay to procrastinate doing her homework or a game to pull out at a house party. Like so many people who believe in a god or gods or God, she had this craving to believe in something more than just luck or chance or science. Tarot, witchcraft and the concept of magic satisfied that craving. 

“The idea of witchcraft, very much in the same way the idea of a god, if you could prove it, it would cease to be the thing that it is, right?” she said. 

Belay explained that if faith or magic were scientifically proven, they wouldn’t be faith or magic anymore. They would simply become an “observable phenomenon.” 

A brief history of witchcraft

As a “solitary intuitive” witch, Belay makes her practice her own. But solitary witchcraft is a modern practice.

Phil Stevens, a retired anthropology professor from the University of Buffalo who specialized in the occult, said that historically, witchcraft was specifically a community practice.  

“In the 1970s, it was always a group enterprise,” he said. “The idea of a solitary witch was phony. In the 1990s, the idea of the solitary witch caught on and has become more accepted.” 

The so-called “diabolic” witchcraft that emerged in the Middle Ages, over the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries, looked very different than the witchcraft many modern witches practice today. Diabolic witchcraft is where most of Western society gets the idea that witches were wicked “agents of Satan,” Stevens said.

“Witches were said to be Satan’s representatives on earth and he was empowering them and commanding them,” Stevens said. “Thousands and tens of thousands of people in Europe were condemned and many were executed by the church, the Western Christian church, including Protestants. As Christianity spread throughout the world, this idea [of witches being evil] spread throughout the world.” 

The witchcraft traditions that Wiccans as well as modern and solitary witches tend to practice commonly focus on nature and spiritual rituals that provide healing in their lives.

Wicca is probably the most popular form of witchcraft, Stevens said. It was developed in Britain in the 1930’s by a man named Gerald Gardener. Gardener’s form of witchcraft became known as Gardenarian or Wiccan witchcraft to differentiate itself from the diabolic witchcraft that was known and feared during that time. He valued the differences in nature, emphasizing the differences between men and women. He also taught those who followed him to do no harm, and warned that a curse could come back to its caster three times more powerful.

Many modern and solitary witches disagree with the way Gardener looked at nature and approached witchcraft. 

Haylin Belay, 26. Photo by Elizabeth Winn.

“Witchcraft, by far, is the magic of the disenfranchised,” explained a witch who goes by B and works at Catland. 

Modern and solitary witches are essentially a tradition that broke off from Wicca, believing that looking at the world in a gendered way was limiting and that banning curses was wrong. 

“[Wicca] doesn’t hold space for people to be arbiter of their own justice,” B said, adding that it also isolates people of the LGBTQ+ community. 

In her own practice, Belay includes elements of  “folk” or “low magic” as well as certain rituals from her Ethiopian Orthodox background, like burning resin incense.

“[Witchcraft] is a way of developing my self-knowledge and self-trust and obviously self-care,” Belay said. “It doesn’t really matter to me -- and this is why I say that my skepticism and my witchcraft can coexist -- if it’s fake. The fakeness or realness of it isn’t the point.” 

The point of practicing witchcraft is that it brings her joy. 

Leaving the church but keeping rituals 

Growing up as part of an Ethiopian Orthodox church in Austin, Texas, Belay shared that even though the ritual of the religion was comforting, she experienced some shame in the church as the daughter of a single mom. Single parent families were frowned upon, she said. As Belay grew into her teen years, she developed some skepticism of organized religion and deity worship.

With witchcraft, she doesn’t experience shame. In her practice, Belay focuses on finding joy. In order to do that, she asks herself three questions: “What’s the potential for harm? Does this practice bring me pleasure? Does it work?” 

“Does it work?” is the least important question of those three, however. 

“I am a big old skeptic, and I think of my witchcraft as a practice, not a religion,” she said.

Belay explained if the answer to the second question, “Does it bring me pleasure?” is “yes,” then the answer to the third question, “Does it work?” is “yes” too. 

Everyone has experienced trauma, Belay believes, and that’s why a lot of her work as a witch is informed by her work as a sexual health educator. Like therapy, education and religion, Belay believes that witchcraft is another way for people to process trauma and make sense of life experiences. 

“Witchcraft is a way to come back to yourself,” Belay said. “Or, at least the way that I practice it.”

Elizabeth Winn is a student journalist at The King’s College.