Seeing the Extraordinary in the Ordinary:
A glimpse into Canberra’s World of Witchcraft.

Freaks. Satanists. Healers. Evil. Spiritual. Weird hippies. What if I told you all the stereotypes are true…and not? Bring up the word ‘witchcraft’ and watch the eyes of even the most ardent person change. For some it’s fear, for some it’s curiosity. For me it was an itch to know more. Welcome to the world of witches in Canberra.

According to the 2016 Census over 15,000 Australians said that they subscribe to a pagan belief system, and more than 6,500 said they are practicing Wicca. This number is but a rough estimate of those who practice witchcraft in Australia.

Sitting in an eclectic little bookshop slash café, bar and mini music venue in Weston, I couldn’t help but feel the weeks of research had led to this moment. I was meeting a woman who shall rename nameless, and sitting across from her, with a tarot deck between us, I understood that everything I am investigating is real to her.

When a woman tells you that she has the power to make real change, whether through a strong will or something extraordinary, you sit down and listen to why she may hide that part of herself from the world. The answer is she’s a witch.

They aren’t the stuff of nightmares, old hags built from horror or demons in human flesh, but mothers, friends, healers and every-day people who believe in something that may seem extraordinary.

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Witchcraft and everything affiliated with the term has always had an aura of mystery surrounding it. They are myths, stories to tell naughty children, and a part of our history. Being Truly in Your Body Is the Most Sacred Thing by Emma Quilty cites the practice becoming popular in the 1960s and 70s, inspired from the alternative movements occurring in the USA and Europe.

According to Spheres of Light, an Australian witchcraft organisation, a witch is a person who seeks to live in harmony with nature, understanding that everything has a rhythm and a heartbeat.

In Celtic times, a witch was many things, explains the witch in the bookshop.

‘A witch was a midwife, she a woman who knew herbs, she knew how to work with the elements, and she knew what to say to make people feel better.’ she says.

What is a Witch?

Witchcraft is varied, like its followers, who can be any gender or nationality. There is no correct way to be a witch or a Bible to follow but there are some titles used to describe the branches including Alexandrian, Gardenarian, Wiccan and many more.

Paganism is a broad term that can be used to define a religious aspect of witchcraft. According to the Pagan Awareness Network Australia, paganism is the practice of ancient, pre-Christian religions, that often involve the belief in or worship of more than one god. Wicca is another religious aspect of witchcraft. It is a nature-based practice, that is centered around the dedication to nature and the worship of the affiliated deities. However, not every witch has a religious aspect to their craft. They may or may not hold religious or spiritual ideals, but they do not cross over with their witchcraft. To talk about every form of witchcraft, you’d need thousands of pages, for no witch is like the next.

A Brief History of Witchcraft.

Coming Out of the Broom Closet

The first pagan shop in Canberra is like a scene straight out of a movie. Books shelves line the walls, crystals can be found everywhere and in the glass display case sit daggers made of stone and jade.

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Lilitu Babalon is a small woman with short, greying hair and an air of knowing more than she lets on. Rings glint on her fingers and a red crystal hangs from her neck, nestling in her black jumper.

Her earliest interest in witchcraft began in the 1970s, introduced to her by the Women’s Liberation movement, but she has always been interested in extraordinary things.

‘I don’t really know why [I began practicing] to be honest. It’s just something that happened.’ she says.

At the ages of 18 and 19, Lilitu started going to Women’s Liberation events and she met the Goddess Women, a group of women who practice Dianic Wicca, beginning her path and leading her to the different forms of witchcraft she follows now. For her, witchcraft is not a religion but a form of spirituality.

To celebrate the end of winter there was a gathering at the EQ Café in Deakin. Seated in the back, with the sun streaming in from the high windows, table 55 began filling up with an eclectic group of people. That’s where I first met 18-year-old Wiccan Sage. Sweet like a flower, you can almost see an invisible thread that connects her to nature. She tells me she's a hereditary Wicca, her mother and grandmother also following Wiccan traditions. But that’s not what drew Sage into witchcraft at the age of 13.

‘It’s an amusing story as it’s not the cliché witchy coming of age story. I had a crush on this girl in my class. She said she was getting into Wicca and witchcraft,’ she says.

She launched herself into finding out more about Wicca, fondly remembering doing full moon rituals with her mum when she was a little girl. Sage hasn’t spoke to her high school crush in years, but it’s thanks to her that she has continued to follow the religious Wiccan traditions and holidays in-between balancing university work.

Image provided by Sage Casey

I met Jessica after she had finished work for the day, her dark red hair tied back from her face, a silver pentagram hanging around her neck. With a glint of a smile in her eye, she tells me she researched witchcraft during her teenage years, receiving a copy of The Nice Girls Book of Naughty Spells from her mum, after begging for it.

‘I think every Australian teen witch began with that book.’

Twenty years ago, Jessica began her journey as a Wiccan but was unable to connect to the religious aspects of witchcraft. After lapsing for some time, she discovered the secular path, something that separated religion and witchcraft. Her enjoyment of science and witchcraft is like a star-crossed love affair, it shouldn’t work, but it does.

‘I’m not religious at all…Any spell work that I do,it’s my intent, my will that pushes anything through, I’m not petitioning a God or Goddess for their power, I’m just using my own.’ she says.

The Perfect Perky Woman Fighting Demons or the Evil, Depraved, Satanic Witch?

Sage was at a family event, her hair tucked behind her ears, wearing the pentacle earrings that were a treasured gift from her mother when her nana pointed at them and exclaimed, ‘You’re a Satanist.’

Pop culture, particularly film, represents witches in two main lights, the perfect perky woman fighting demons daily or the evil,depraved, satanic witch. In The Wizard of Oz the witch is pure evil, plotting to kill Dorothy and her little dog without much prompting while in Charmed the Halliwell sisters are powerful good witches, protecting the innocent without fail for eight seasons. These are examples of two extremes of witchcraft and the stereotypes attached have some truth to them.

‘I do use a cauldron. I don’t have my wand yet because I’m very particular, I want to make my own wand,’ Sage says.

There is some truth in pop culture, because like fairy-tales, they originate from somewhere. The references of wands, cauldrons and the rhyming schema of some spells are from the original witchcraft practice.

‘They’re just twisted a little bit to be funnier or more extreme…the difference is I have a cauldron to burn herbs and incense and they use it to put potions in.’ she says.

Sage is open about being Wiccan, sending private Snapchats of her grimoire and often wearing small witchy symbols, but like others, she doesn’t scream it from the roof tops. While doing spells or calling the elements in her room, she admits she sometimes feels like a nut.

‘I think it’s really hard to explain to people.'

Spending years honing her craft and running The Crystal Chalice, Lilitu has also had mixed responses from people.

‘I get all sorts of people come to the shop and try to convert me. But now I don’t think I’ve suffered from that at all. I don’t really know what people think witches are like.’ she says.

Jessica is also open about being a witch with her friends and work colleges and is fiery when she talks about it.

‘It’s in my tinder profile. You do see a couple of good Christian boys on there and if they’re not going to be okay with that, then that filters then out right off the bat.’ she says, cracking a smile.

While there are satanic witches, like in hit television show, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina they are the exception, rather than the rule, Jessica explains to me.

‘It’s not at all as Hollywood portrays it.’ says Jessica.

‘The more people who know that we aren’t the big bad wolf, the scary witch in the middle of the forest, it can only be good for us,’ she says.

Not the Scary Witch in the Forest.

For some, The Crystal Chalice is a safe haven. Witches gather there to be with their peers or to do rituals in the giant tree whose branches reach the ground and sky. Others go there for help. People have walked into the small shop looking for charms to stop workplace bullying, deal with personal issues and more, looking for hope in a place they would otherwise ignore.

The most haunting stories Lilitu told were about women coming in for assistance and refuge from domestic violence.

‘Why they come to us, I’m not sure,' she says.

‘I think that they don’t really know where to go so they come to us.’

As a woman who has lived many lives in one, Lilitu passes on both her knowledge of the mundane and the magical.

For Sage, her magic is a form of self-care. It offers her a sense of comfort when she needs it the most.

‘I do have a lot of mental illnesses and I think Wicca or witchcraft or any sort of mind, body, spirit work works really well with those sorts of things…gives you that additive of control in your life.’ she says.

For her, magic often comes in the form of hope, comfort and a wish to feel better within herself.

‘I feel more positive after performing a spell that’s supposed to help with my anxiety or help me with my studies.’ she says.

‘The magic is my intention. When I do a spell for a test, I make a day out of it. I’ll light some candles, I put on some comfy clothes and that is a spell, it’s getting me into that study mood. That will make me do well, not using various herbs and melting candles.’

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Jessica spends her days working in hearing services, booking appointments, rescheduling them and repairing hearing aids. Witchcraft is a significant part of her daily life, but to her, magic is life itself.

‘You look around and you see humanity, there’s billions of sparks of electricity going through billions of people. That’s magic right there. Obviously, its science but its magic.’ she says.

‘Being able to help someone hear again is magical in itself…that feeling you get knowing that you’ve connected someone to the world after their hearing aid breaks; you change a couple of parts and suddenly they’re back again.’

Seeing the Extraordinary in the Ordinary.

As for the witch in the bookshop?

‘Can we click our fingers and then have something magical appear? No. Do we do spells? Yes. Do we talk about them? No. Because to talk about it breaks the wave. The work that we do is in secret for a reason, because if you talk about something you take the power away.’ she says.

‘It’s time to get rid of the pop culture, it’s time for people to understand and accept we are here, we’re not evil. We’re just people who have been born with a unique gift and we want to share that gift.’

Lilitu, Sage and Jessica and all those who I spoke too, whose story wasn’t told, are just like you and me, with one difference. They see past the ordinary to the extraordinary. Like that bookshop, a little hidden place with a door that doubles as a bookcase, one filled with the words of so many different people, so is the world of Canberran witches. It’s hidden, but it’s there, and once you turn the handle, you’ll discover something new.

Word Count: 2195

All images my own.

Seeing the Extraordinary in the Ordinary: A glimpse into Canberra’s World of Witchcraft.

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