I am a witch. A kitchen witch, specifically, meaning I make messes into magic and brew potions. Yes, you can drink them . I suppose I’ve always been a witch, but I didn’t embrace that part of myself until about 10 years ago. What happened was I went through some fresh yet familiar trauma, started my life over, found love again, and with it, magic. The inclinations that I’d dismissed, the mythologies I’d thought of in only an academic sense, began to impress themselves upon me. To call me. So, like any good writer or student, I picked up some books on witchcraft. But my initial finds were lackluster, pedestrian. Contextless spells and rootless folklore, presented without acknowledgement of what had been lost in translation. What is modern witchcraft and where did it come from? I wanted to know.

First, I uncovered a host of misinformation. For example, the myth of the Burning Times—the idea that actual witches were murdered during the witch trials.…