A witch's guide to magic in a hurry

I checked my phone again. 

12:13. 

Shit.  

I was twenty minutes away from home, twenty-five if I was being realistic. Not good. I was going to run out of time.  

For fuck’s sake.  

The twitch in my right eye that had been bugging me all day was constant now, locking me in a permanent squint. Even worse, my stomach was starting to gurgle, and I could feel myself starting to bloat.  

I had spent the last thirty-six hours at Izzy’s because her ‘boyfriend’, Dan, had told her that he couldn’t see her that weekend. He was going on holiday with his girlfriend’s parents. It was over between them. You’d think that would be obvious, but apparently it needed spelling out. All of us had been telling her for months that he was a dick, a weirdo, and that he was bound to do something like this. But Izzy is melodramatic, and she was convinced that they were soulmates.  

Fucking Dan.  

So, I had spent two days consoling her and calling him all sorts of names and saying that she could do better etc. It had driven me up the fucking wall.  

Finally, I had invented a deadline for the next afternoon to get out of there. That sounds awful, but I’m a witch. Not in a ‘I’m a bad person’ kind of a way, I’m actually a witch. Cool, right? No. Being a witch is hard work. It involves forethought, timetables, and serious graft. You see, witches are inherently magical beings. That means that magic is a part of us, not something that we can tap into whenever. We inherit our gift from our mothers, who inherited it from theirs. For reasons we don't understand, this means that we have to use our powers regularly. It’s like the magic builds up in us and has to be let out or we’ll blow. 

I know what you’re thinking, surely you can just wave your wand, mumble something in Latin, and dye your hair or something. Wrong again. Firstly, as a classically trained witch, I wouldn’t mumble in Latin, I would chant in Ancient Greek. No one uses Latin. We use Greek and the hedge witches use ancient Gaelic. Secondly, there are strict rules that regulate when you can use magic. It may surprise you to know that the witching community got sick of our neighbours burning us at the stake whenever a pig suddenly died, or it rained too much one weekend. So, in the early 1700s the great and the good of European witchcraft got together – in Cologne I think – and decreed that magic should only be performed between the hours of midnight and three o’clock in the morning. Great for not getting you lynched by the Ye Olde Neighbourhood Watch Association, not great for sleep schedules.  

That’s why the ‘witching hour’ has become such a thing in the popular imagination. We didn’t come up with it, which is a shame because it’s a cool name. No, it’s because during those spooky hours, every magic user in the western hemisphere is up and busy. I’m pretty sure that if we were able to spread our casting throughout a twenty-four-hour period then no one would notice. But magic affects the atmosphere, especially that much all at once. You probably wouldn’t notice a gentle breeze, but you’d sure as shit notice a hurricane. Magic works the same way. 

I’m sure you’re wondering why we didn’t just minimise our usage. That would have been fine for wizards and warlocks, they can tap in and out pretty easily. Typical. But for a witch, not using isn’t fun. It affects each witch differently. My mum gets very wriggly feet if she misses one night and a tendency to start fainting if she misses two. I get a twitch in my eye after night one. After night two I get a bad stomach. A really bad stomach. If I don’t want to spend three days on the loo, I need to stay up until three at least every other night and use magic. It’s the same for all of us. The symptoms might be different, but the inconvenience is comprehensive.  

That’s right, every witch in the world is magnificently sleep deprived. All. The. Time. I haven’t had more than one full night’s sleep in a row since I was twelve. Most witches use their magic hours for sleep replacement or appearance enhancing spells. No more influencing the royal succession of Scotland for us, we’re just trying not to look like shit for work. That’s modern witchcraft ladies and gents, just as you always imagined, right? 

So that’s why I was rushing home from Izzy’s, eyes twitching, cursing every man ever to have blighted the world with the name Dan...

12:22... Shit. Another thing that you need to understand is that magic takes time. We don’t just whip out a twig and ‘Hey Presto!’. There are preparations, procedures, and rituals. We get trained by our mothers and grandmothers from a young age so that these become habit, but they still take time and need to be done carefully. Magic cannot be done in a rush. Doing things in a hurry results in mispronunciation, faltering in your rhythm, or dropping your knife – all of which can have a myriad of outcomes on the spell that you are trying to cast. I once set fire to my dad’s flowerbeds instead of making them bloom early as a Father’s Day gift. Mum has a story of a witch who accidentally flayed her arm instead of removing a regrettable tattoo ... that might have been made up to put me off getting a tattoo... Anyway, surely you can see why I was worried about getting home in time?  

It was around 12:30, and I was just under ten minutes from home when my thoughts turned vengeful. I had been planning on casting a standard sleep replacement spell, or maybe one of grandma’s that would tidy my room for me, get the magic out, and give me a few hours' sleep before I had to get up for lectures. But I was starting to take Dan’s indiscretion personally. Sure, he’d screwed my friend over, but it was more because of my squint and the urgent gurgles in my stomach. I know, typical petty, vengeful witch. You spend three days shitting your guts and tell me you wouldn’t want revenge if you could get it. I was very tempted to see if I could flay his arm...  

He’s meant to be going on holiday with the girl’s family tomorrow...  

That was it. There was a brutal, karmic, justice in displacing my fate if I didn’t use tonight on to him. It needed to be tonight, once he was in the air he would be out of my range. That was ok though, I had enough time, just. Somone would be running for the toilet tonight and it was not going to be me.  

12:38. Home. Just under two and a half hours. It was going to be tight. First things first. Shoes off, I prefer to have bare feet when I cast. Lemon and ginger tea to settle my stomach.

12:52. Time to get my kit out. This is where it gets serious. As I mentioned, I’m a classically trained witch. That means that I am part of a tradition stretching back to when Zeus was being potty trained, and Mother Hecate taught her first priestesses in the ways of magic – hence the Ancient Greek. Witchcraft, as a rule, is not prone to modernisation and so my paraphernalia is pretty freaky. It was wrapped up in my goatskin, which I spread on the only small patch of available carpet in my room. In an arc around the goat's head, I spread my bronze knife, my key and the statuette of a serpent. The ensemble was completed by three small bronze bowls carved with glyphs far older than Greek. These were inherited from my grandma, and they were the most important items that I owned. One bowl went in the centre of the arc and the other two at each end, in easy reach. 

01:02. I turned off the lights. If I was going to cast two spells, I had to get a wriggle on. Why not go straight for liquidising Dan’s stomach, I hear you ask. I cannot emphasise enough that this was night two. I had forty-eight hours' worth of magic boiling away inside me. In these situations, the power can be quite desperate to get out and breaks the control of the caster to hurl itself full throttle into one spell. The effects of such spells are often far greater than intended. That’s how entire flocks of sheep get killed or unseasonable storms wreck harvests, bringing with it the wrath of the entire village and a cozy spot on a pyre. Before turning to Dan, I needed to cast a spell that would use up that excess. I wanted to give this dude the shits, not bowel cancer.  

01:06.With the lights off, I sat on my goatskin and focused on my breathing. My first spell was going to be one of grandma’s favourites, a simple one that would tidy my room. Given the amount of reserved energy that was about to be put into this spell, I doubted I would ever be able to unfold my clothes again, but there we go.

01:07. I needed to start.  

I picked up the closest bronze bowls, one in each hand. I began to recite the preparatory chants. I humbled myself before Mother Hecate, thanking her for the gift of my witchcraft and dedicating my spells to her. Following the old liturgies, I then recited my lineage, reminding the goddess of my foremothers and their ancient devotion to her and promising that our devotion would continue. I risked a glance at my bedside clock.

01:19.  The chant ended, I only sped up a little bit at the end. Now we wait.

01:21.

01:23.

01:24.

Mother Hecate answered my call, and the bowls in my hand filled with fire. Two torches, lit only by magic, a sign of Her favour. As always, my shoulders relaxed at this point. It’s very rare for the goddess to refuse a witch, but you hear stories. 

01:25. Fair warning, this is the point at which witchcraft gets spooky. For those not familiar with Greek mythology, Hecate is a three-bodied goddess. As her devotees, classical witches are also three bodied when we cast. Weird right? There’s our physical body, the one that roots us to the Earth and makes us human. Then there’s the body that contains our own power, body two, the manifestation of the magic that resides deep inside of us. The third body is the manifestation of our foremothers, the ancestral wellspring from which our own magic ultimately comes. The second body feels familiar, it feels like me. It’s like astral projection, yourself beyond itself. Even now, I’m still a little intimated by my third body. That girl feels ancient, authoritative, there’s a reluctance in how she humours the mundane ways in which I use magic. My third body still thinks we should be meddling in the royal succession of Scotland.  

01:26. My eyes are closed, but my other eyes are open. I can see my other bodies, not quite solid, but more than ghostly, joined to me at each hip and stretching their limbs.

01:28. Time for the first spell. All three of my voices began to chant, one like mine, and another that felt as though it had been dragged through aeons to be there – raspy, ancient, and far more comfortable with Ancient Greek.  

The flames in the bowl flared brighter as we started to bend the power to our will. Another lesson for you, all magic requires sacrifice. Our first spell only needed a minor one. My third body took the bronze knife and, as we chanted, drew the edge across the right palm of my second body. Blood, black and viscous, pooled in her cupped hand which she tipped into the third bowl at the head the arc. I know, it seems a lot of effort to go to just to tidy my room, but whilst we all feel the pain, my physical body doesn’t bear the wounds. My second body made this sacrifice because it was a small enough spell to be undertaken by my own power. The range was short, and I wasn’t trying to work magic upon another being. It still fucking hurts though and it takes control not to falter in your chanting, which now demanded that our power fold, dust, and put away. Which sounds bizarre in Ancient Greek, I can tell you.  

01:42. The sacrifice was accepted and now as the third bowl roared into flame, I entered the trance, my physical body had played its part in summoning the other two and they were going to take it from here. The trance is an odd experience, you can still hear what is happening, and you still have a sense of the movement around you, but you are not a part of it, you can still watch through your other eyes, but it’s very strange to see yourself, slumped like a marionette who’s had her all of strings cut bar the two supporting  the burning bowls in her hands. My other equipment takes up its role at this point. The key hangs above the third bowl, gently turning – our sacrifice unlocks the portal to our power, allowing it into the corporeal world. The snake statue, no longer a statue, circles us on the goatskin, keeping us together, binding us.  

In that perimeter time is nothing. Which isn't helpful if you’re in a hurry. In the trance it’s impossible to tell if your spell is working, or if there is anything happening in the outside world. There is only the chant and the flames and the feeling of the magic, tight in your gut.  

And then the release, the magic doesn’t flow out of you like a long and satisfying breath. No, it tears out of every one of your pores, eviscerating you in its desperation to be free. This is what the snake is for. That perimeter forces the energy into your purpose, driving it into your sacrifice, driving the flames higher and higher until the magic accepts its direction and starts to fold your clothes and get the dust from the top of the wardrobe.  

02:02. It’s only at this point that my physical body regains itself. Every joint creaked and cracked as I straightened. My other bodies were expectant. They sensed that this wasn’t it. They wanted more.

02:03. The third fire was extinguished and the others flickered dimly. My other voices still chanted; urgency laced through every syllable. This next spell was complicated, I would be cutting it very fine. I could leave it here. But no. I am a witch, and this dickhead had very nearly ruined my week. If I can’t have my vengeance, then what’s the point? I felt the lips on my third body twist into an approving smirk. This is what she wanted. Magic done right and for the right reasons. 

02:04. The chant changed; it felt older and deeper. We were casting into an unknown distance against another person. Izzy had probably told me Dan’s address, she’d never been there, but she sure as shit knew where it was, I hadn’t paid attention. But that was ok, it would just take more power, a greater sacrifice.

02:05. This time it was body two who picked up the knife. My third body held out both of her hands and the blade was drawn across both palms, cutting deep. Smoke billowed from the wounds, twisting and blooming, forming the shapes of serpents and hounds howling at the moon.

02:08 This was the power of my ancestors, ancient and terrible. The three of us blew on the smoke, driving it into the third bowl which, as we took up our chant again, ignited in a sucking rush, blazing into copper flames, suspended above the bowl.  

I entered the trance again and this time my second body joined me. Once more, time was nothing and alone, my third body fed the flames with more smoky essence from her wounds. Big magic like this is weird. My first and second body might be lifeless, but something moves our mouths, forcing the chant to continue. Over this my third body laid a terrible descant, high and keening. She sang of blood, violence, vengeance, and ancient wrongs. There was joy in her voice, I never let her stretch her legs like this, to use her power as she wanted it to be used. Dan’s face bloomed in the flames, sleeping. We saw him as he was at that very moment. The magic didn’t tear out of us this time, most of its force had been used in the previous spell. We directed it through those billowing wounds, feeding the sacrifice. We sat there for a long time, layering our curse, ensuring that Dan would suffer. Until the flames were pulled into the central bowl, extinguished. I sat in darkness. I could still feel my other bodies besides me, spent. Then the circle was broken, and they were gone. I was on my own. One girl sitting on a goatskin with a blackened knife in front of her, exhausted. 

02:58. Very close. I hadn’t pushed it that close in a long time. I slumped. Sweat ran down my forehead and I couldn’t catch my breath. My stomach though, felt settled. After a couple of minutes my breathing slowed, and I was able to drag myself into bed. The witching hour was over and somewhere, I hoped, Dan had been woken by a sudden and very uncomfortable gurgle in his belly.