Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

The Green Witch: Your Complete Guide to the Natural Magic of Herbs, Flowers, Essential Oils, and More
The Green Witch: Your Complete Guide to the Natural Magic of Herbs, Flowers, Essential Oils, and More
The Green Witch: Your Complete Guide to the Natural Magic of Herbs, Flowers, Essential Oils, and More
Ebook309 pages4 hours

The Green Witch: Your Complete Guide to the Natural Magic of Herbs, Flowers, Essential Oils, and More

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

()

Read preview

About this ebook

“For covens who prefer meeting outdoors, perhaps in a garden or a deep forest clearing, The Green Witch is a delightful guide to nature magic. It’s filled with practical recipes for herbal blends and potions, the properties of essential oils, and lots of ideas for healing and relaxation.” —Bustle

Discover the power of natural magic and healing through herbs, flowers, and essential oils in this guide to green witchcraft.

At her core, the green witch is a naturalist, an herbalist, a wise woman, and a healer. She embraces the power of nature; she draws energy from the Earth and the Universe; she relies on natural objects like stones and gems to commune with the land she lives off of; she uses plants, flowers, oils, and herbs for healing; she calls on nature for guidance; and she respects every living being no matter how small.

In The Green Witch, you will learn the way of the green witch, from how to use herbs, plants, and flowers to make potions and oils for everyday healing as well as how crystals, gems, stones, and even twigs can help you find balance within. You’ll discover how to find harmony in Earth’s great elements and connect your soul to every living creature. The green witch focuses on harmony, healing, and balance with the Earth, but also with humanity and yourself. This guide also contains easy-to-understand directions for herbal blends and potions, ritual suggestions, recipes for sacred foods, and information on how to listen to and commune with nature. Not only will you attune yourself to nature, but you will also embrace your own power. Learn about the world of the green witch and discover what the power of nature has in store for you.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 19, 2017
ISBN9781507204726
Author

Arin Murphy-Hiscock

Arin Murphy-Hiscock is the author of The Green Witch’s Grimoire, Spellcrafting, The Pregnant Goddess, Wicca, The Green Witch, The Way of the Hedge Witch, House Witch, The Witch’s Book of Self-Care, Pagan Pregnancy, Solitary Wicca for Life, and The Hidden Meaning of Birds—A Spiritual Field Guide. She has been active in the field of alternative spirituality for over twenty years and lives in Montreal, Canada.

Read more from Arin Murphy Hiscock

Related to The Green Witch

Related ebooks

Wicca / Witchcraft For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for The Green Witch

Rating: 3.8958333364583333 out of 5 stars
4/5

96 ratings11 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Great introductory text, nothing complicated or advanced. Informative and easy to peruse
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I loved it so much I ordered a copy to keep so I could highlight and sticky note. I've been looking for something less ceremonial and this has been a perfect transition away from the wicca centric books. She touches on a lot of things that have been on my mind awhile but couldn't articulate - like elements not being fixed points but changing with your location, and so many correspondences being more personalized and less universal.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Filled with so much knowledge I must buy the hardback now!!!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Extremely informative and easy to understand, definitely recommend to those of curiosity.

    6 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Excellent book on learning how to connect with plants, the seasons and mother earth.

    10 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was a lovely book to read in my witchcraft book club! I can definitely see why people say it's so good for beginners. It covers a lot of basics and different ways that Green witchery can be used. I really loved that it offered so many rituals, spells, and correspondences throughout the book as well. It was also very well written and generally just an easy read.

    A few of the complaints that I remember is that the order of the chapters near the end was a bit strange and there were maybe some extra details about some things (like element systems) that I would have really liked to see in the book as well. Overall, though, it was a fantastic book and I agree with it being a good beginner book!

    2 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I am disappointed in this book a little bit, because i feel its only scratch the surface. And i already knew most of the things about green witchery from other books. The other thing is, the author writes like “The green witch must... the green witch have to.... the green witch is like this, and not like that...” i think thats not so good. The first half of the book is about the craft and the other half have tips and tricks and recipes to try out. Some of them are nice but mostly i never even saw the ingredients in the supermarket, let alone its on my shelf..which makes it nearly impossible to do the recipe. Also, i thought the book is gonna mention more details about the crystals, since its about working with nature and natural things. Instead, it mentioned a few crystals only but nothing else like; how to work with them, spell, etc.

    3 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Basic, but we'll written with a lot of good information.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Very practical book, I really enjoyed it. It's one of those book you can keep for references. I loved the views of the author about the connection with the environment and nature that surrounds it. I highly recommend this book for those interested in Green Witchcraft. I do have two small complaints to make:
    - The author did not mention any crystal care, especially regarding certain types of crystals being unsuited for water or sun exposer.
    - The author also did not mention any cares or alerts regarding the consumption of stone elixirs which is a VERY sensitive and careful topic due to the characteristics of certain stones.
    Besides those two points, I really enjoyed the book.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Hey no puedo eliminar está cuenta es una estafa. Son unos estafadores

    2 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Witchcraft will end in devils controlling you and you going to Hell

Book preview

The Green Witch - Arin Murphy-Hiscock

Introduction

Whatever your reasons for seeking balance you’ll find that harmonizing yourself with the energy of nature can help you break free from the stressors in your life and focus on the here and now. And there is no better way to explore the bounty of nature than by following the path of the green witch.

The way of the green witch is the path of the naturalist, the herbalist, and the healer. It is a free-form, flexible, and personalized practice for anyone who wants to explore the gifts of nature and use them to find balance and harmony in life. With The Green Witch you’ll find the information you need to develop and nurture the spiritual practice of green witchcraft—from advice on walking the green path in the modern world to information on essential herbs, plants, trees, stones, and more. You will find recipes, exercises, ritual suggestions, and directions for making potions and herbal blends for purposes both mundane and magical.

From issues such as the history of the practice to creating your own individual traditions, The Green Witch is a positive and practical guide for the modern green witch trying to connect with nature in today’s society. What is so relevant and unique about green witchcraft is that it is a highly specialized and solo practice. Not everyone will be drawn to the same things and practice in the same way. It’s about finding a workable balance in your own life within your own setting.

The green witch works closely with nature and its gifts. She uses natural elements to improve the well-being of the physical body, the spirit, and the environment, and works to establish a personal connection with the natural world. It may seem like a challenge to harmonize with nature in today’s technological and industrial world. Fortunately, you don’t need to remove or reverse modern influences. What you need to do is discover how to connect your modern life to that earlier knowledge that is waiting for you to find it again. The trick is to recognize the presence of green energy in the world today and to see how it still operates.

Listen to the world around you. Open your heart. Rebalance. And enjoy your journey.

Note: Although the green witch and reader are referred to as she throughout this text, the path by no means excludes male practitioners, who are more common every day. The pronoun she was chosen simply for convenience.

Chapter 1

What Is Green Witchcraft?

HISTORICALLY, A GREEN WITCH LIVED apart, using the energies of plants and trees around her to heal others. Those who needed her services traveled to see her. These days, a green witch is more likely to be living in the middle of a city or in the suburbs. She could work in any of a variety of fields, such as business, medicine, or teaching, or might be a full-time mom.

A green witch isn’t defined by where she lives or what she does to bring home a paycheck. Nor is she limited to working with plants, trees, or herbs. She is not, as people might assume, defined solely by the particular way she expresses her spirituality or by the religion she follows. A green witch is defined by her relationship to the world around her, by her ethics, and by her affinity with the natural world. In essence, she lives the life of a green witch: she lives the green path.

The path of the green witch is an intensely personal path that integrates ability, likes and dislikes, the climate of a particular geographic location, and interaction with the energy of that environment. It isn’t a tradition so much as a personal adaptation of an ideal.

The Path of the Green Witch

In popular perception, the practice of green witchcraft is a nature-based expression of spirituality that focuses on the individual’s interaction with his or her natural environment. Witchcraft itself is a practice that involves the use of natural energies as an aid to accomplishing a task or reaching a goal. In general, witchcraft acknowledges a god and a goddess (sometimes solely a goddess) and recognizes that magic is a natural phenomenon.

Witchcraft is frequently confused with Wicca, which is a modern, alternative, nature-based religion. While Wicca and witchcraft possess many similarities, including reverence for nature, Wicca is a specific, formal religion. There is a wide variety of forms of witchcraft, with varying degrees of structure. For the sake of this book, the term witchcraft refers to the practice of working with natural energies to attain goals, without a specific religious context.

A green witch, then, is someone who lives the green path and is aware of how the energy of nature flows through her life and environment, even if that environment is not the traditional garden and forest setting popularized by fairy tales and romanticized notions.

Why do we use the phrase living the path instead of simply saying practicing green witchcraft? It’s very simple. Green witchcraft is not a practice separate from ordinary life, like ritual magic, for example; it is an all-encompassing, total-immersion experience wherein all of life is a magical experience.

Green witchcraft is not a formal tradition in the sense of Gardnerian Wicca, Dianic Wicca, Feri Tradition, or other established forms. When we use the phrase the green witch tradition, we do not refer to an unbroken line of initiates or an established body of lore. Instead, we are referring to the various practices from diverse places that come together to inform the modern green witch and wisewoman.

Because the path of the green witch is an individualized solo practice, any modern book on green witchcraft is simply a single author’s way of interpreting the practice. Initiation into green witchcraft is technically impossible. There exists no body of formal knowledge passed on through careful training, no established group mind to which you are connected by sacred ceremonies performed by elders. Some modern eclectic groups may base their regular practice on the ideals of green witchcraft, but it’s not the same thing.

A practitioner of green witchcraft may pass on her personal knowledge, including her personal notes and writings, to another, but that’s not an initiatory process. Reading a specific author’s ideas and views concerning the path of the green witch is a form of apprenticeship in which you learn a new way of looking at your world and discover new exercises and techniques that will help you refine and deepen your connection to the natural world around you. This process cannot be as intensely personal as traditional apprenticeship, where the apprentice worked beside the master, but it is a modern form of acquiring the knowledge and skills of one particular practitioner.

THE GREEN WITCH’S OUTLOOK

The concepts of healing, harmony, and balance are all key to the green witch’s practice and outlook on life. These concepts embody three distinct focuses:

1. The earth (your local environment, as well as the planet)

2. Humanity (in general, as well as your local community and circles of friends and acquaintances)

3. Yourself

The earth is often singled out as the green witch’s main focus, which is slightly unfair. The green witch understands that the earth incorporates the planet and all living things upon it, including animals, plants, and people. In this respect, yes: the earth is a collective term for all living things. However, the green witch also knows that to lump them all together means that we sometimes forget the more individual emphasis each deserves. We can decry the general mistreatment of our planet’s water supply, but local action often has more of an immediate effect on our environment than demonstrating in front of an office tower. Clean up your own backyard is a phrase the green witch understands well.

People are also the green witch’s province. The modern green witch understands that humanity impacts the natural world, not only through how individuals treat it, but also via the energy created by their feelings and beliefs. Just as nature’s energy affects us, so too does our energy affect nature, and that effect isn’t always positive. Therefore, the green witch seeks to maintain harmony between humanity and nature. She also understands that people affect other people with their energy, and she strives to maintain a harmonious energetic environment in which people can feel calm and empowered to improve themselves in a positive fashion and interact with each other with ease and love.

Finally, the green witch must function in harmony with the realities of her own life. This means working out your own goals and obstacles and knowing your own self so that you can apply your energies and skills to the best of your ability. Your true self is not necessarily the self you wish you could be; it is the self you actually are. Finding this true self can be a remarkably difficult goal. We lie to ourselves on a regular basis, often so well that we are completely deaf to certain aspects of our personalities until the day we die. Working with that shadowed side of ourselves can be rewarding, however, and maintaining a harmony between our darker aspects and our positive aspects brings our personal energy into balance.

ETHICS OF THE GREEN WITCH PATH

In any path related to the expression of spirituality, the concept of ethics is important. Interestingly enough, there are no ethical or moral rules associated with the green witch path other than those that the practitioner already possesses.

Why are there no ethical rules set out in green witchcraft practice? First of all, the practice is so very personal that to create an overarching ethical system would exclude some practitioners or force them to change who they are. Green witchcraft isn’t about forcing an individual to change; it’s about an individual choosing to harmonize her own life with the energy of nature. Second, the green witch is so in tune with her surroundings that a set of ethical strictures is unnecessary. Knowing yourself to be a part of a greater whole makes it difficult to act against that whole. Working with the earth means that to act against it would be counterproductive, and that includes acting against a member of the earth’s extended energy, such as other people, animals, plants, and so forth. It is difficult to act unethically when you understand how everyone and everything is affected by the negativity of such an action.

If you love and respect the world around you, you will not abuse it. The more empathy and sympathy you have for your surroundings, the better you will treat them. This is tied in to the basic Golden Rule found in several religions. It’s ethical reciprocity: if you treat those around you with courtesy, they will extend the same to you. What you put out into the world returns to you, and that goes for thoughts, acts, and energy.

With the well-tuned awareness that the green witch strives to possess comes a knowledge of who and what will be affected by her actions and choices. With this understanding, and the sense of responsibility and guardianship for life that she also possesses, a further focus on ethics is unnecessary. Nature is your mother, your father, and your best friend. It makes no sense to harm your kin or friends intentionally. Think of the love and respect you have for the earth. Extend that regard to all the creatures that make up the natural world. Humans, animals, plants, trees—they are all part of nature. Naturally, you treat them with the same respect with which you treat the earth herself.

A Brief History of Green Witchcraft

The practices of the modern green witch have arisen from folk healers and practitioners of folk magic. The modern green witch finds her foremothers and forefathers in village herbalists, midwives, healers, wisewomen, and cunning-folk who performed particular services for their communities.

The duties of these spiritual ancestors of the green witch usually included midwifery and preparation of the dead for burial, as well as the use of various plants to heal mind and body. These people possessed knowledge of both life and death. They knew what kinds of which flora could create both states of existence. These earlier green witches, while often respected, were more often feared or mistrusted because of the knowledge they held. They were often marginalized by their communities and lived alone or away from the social center of the community. Even today, society is often uncomfortable with those who possess knowledge not held by the common man.

It is also likely, however, that the spiritual ancestors of the modern green witch chose to live apart from the center of the community because it is harder to hear what nature has to communicate to you when you are surrounded by people. Being closer to the forests and fields made it easier for the cunning-folk to commune with the energies of the living world of green and to gather what they needed.

Practitioners of folk magic, those who live on the second branch of the green witch’s family tree, are not necessarily separate from the first. Sometimes the healers were also spellcasters who performed folk magic particular to the region (such as Pennsylvanian pow-wow), but more often they were just grandmothers who had a talent for fixing things. Folk magic is composed of traditions and practices that have been handed down in a geographic or culturally specific area. It generally focuses on divination for love and marriage, agricultural success, and weather prediction.

Owen Davies, author of the fascinating Cunning-Folk: Popular Magic in English History, explains that as opposed to being healers, cunning-folk originally dealt mainly with lifting bewitchments from people who believed themselves to be the victims of a curse or of some sort of spell. Witchcraft was the soil in which the careers of the cunning-folk grew; when popular belief in witchcraft ended, the roles of the cunning-folk ended as well.

SIMILAR PATHS

There are other modern paths that resemble the path of the green witch. Kitchen witches and hedge witches observe similar practices, and, indeed, sometimes people use these terms interchangeably with green witchcraft. All three paths have three basic things in common: they are based in folk magic, they do not require a spiritual element, and walkers on all three paths tend to be solitary practitioners.

Before we launch into a full examination of what constitutes the modern green witch’s path, let’s take a look at kitchen witchery and hedge magic and see how they are similar to and how they differ from one another.

• Kitchen witches, who are family oriented, focus on magic performed in the heart of the modern home: the kitchen. The kitchen witch bases her magical practice in her everyday household activities, and cooking, cleaning, baking, and so forth all become the foundation for her magical acts. Sweeping the floor free of dust and dirt may inspire a simultaneous cleansing of negative energy, for example. A kitchen witch works intuitively rather than ritually and may or may not keep track of how she works.

• Hedge witches, a term used more in the UK than in the US, live close to nature, often away from urban areas. When you think of the classic wisewoman on the edge of town who was visited for love charms and healing potions, you have a pretty decent idea of what a hedge witch is. The modern hedge witch is usually a solo practitioner of a neopagan path who uses spellcraft as a basis for her work.

Modern practitioners often try to link their practice to some sort of history in order to create a sense of tradition, but that sense of tradition is not as important as the sense of self. This is particularly true of the green witch path.

It is easy to look back and acknowledge the influences of the past on modern practice, but every green witch creates her own practice. There is no initiation, no adherence to a set of rules. Living the green path is really and truly a reflection of the green witch’s inner light.

THE MODERN GREEN WITCH

Despite its so-called progress, our modern society tends to look back to a simpler time, even though pioneer days were probably harder and more isolated than life today. This yearning isn’t nostalgia, which is a longing for an airbrushed memory. It is a genuine subconscious draw to knowledge that has been obscured by innovation, progress, and improvement. We don’t need to remove or reverse modern innovation and give up our sidewalks and television sets and computers. What we need to do is discover how to connect in our modern environment to that earlier knowledge that is waiting for us to find it again. Removing the technology and replacing it with witchcraft and agriculture-based practice is not the answer. To reverse evolution and merely substitute something older is a denial of the modern world. A green witch does not deny the world around her. She accepts it and seeks to understand how to integrate it into her spiritual practice. The green witch serves as a bridge between past and present, new and old. The trick is to recognize the presence of green energy as it exists in the world today, to learn how to see it as it still operates.

Learning to Identify with the Earth

The main identifying trait of green practice is a close identification with the earth. Although honoring the earth and being aware of the natural world is a large part of the majority of modern alternative spiritualities, the green witch is not necessarily a member of an alternative spiritual path. The main difference between the green path and the neopagan religions is that godforms are not an essential part of a green witch’s practice. While the green witch is content to look to mythology and ancient religions in order to deepen personal understanding of how earth energy has been perceived throughout the ages, she does not necessarily worship the gods and goddesses that are expressions and representations of

Enjoying the preview?
Page 1 of 1