Harmony Nice - Wicca: A Modern Guide to Witchcraft and Magick

Copyright 2019 by Harmony Nice

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First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Orion Spring, an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd.

Published by Seal Press, an imprint of Perseus Books, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Seal Press name and logo is a trademark of the Hachette Book Group.

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ISBNs: 978-1-58005-915-2 (hardcover), 978-1-58005-914-5 (ebook)

E3-20190222-JV-NF-ORI

To my best friend Morena,

strong witch; stronger and most valuable, irreplaceable friend.

My family,

To my mother Jade, without whom this book would not have been possible, Peter, Isabella and Genevieve (and the rest of them). My crazy family, close as a family, but even closer as friends.

Yvonne,

the highs were better with you; the lows will always be harder without you.

To the others,

loving boyfriend and incredible friends, where without them, the flowers would look less beautiful and the world would be so much less enjoyable. The many Witches & Wiccans I have encountered who have changed my path and my life, including my Inspirations, Scott Cunningham, Tituba, Stevie Nicks, Marie Laveau. Not to mention my closest Wicca friends, Georgia Burns, eclectic solitary Wiccan and the lady who has educated me on Wicca for the last four years, former Gardnerian Wiccan, current Faery Wiccan, who wishes not to be named. Last but not least, Anais Alexandre, the powerful Afro-Wiccan who was kind enough to share her information on Afro-Wicca and educate me on her path.

I was born on 19 May 1997, in a small town in Norfolk, England. My mother and father, Jade and Peter, both worked hard to provide me and my two sisters with a loving, noisy family home. According to my parents, I was a calm and cute baby, and for whatever reasons, I grew into a nutty childthe sort who couldnt sit still, spent most of the time mixing up mud pies in the garden and didnt ever want to be told what to do.

I didnt really enjoy primary or high school. I wasnt bullied, and I didnt really have a hard time, but I just wasnt very good at the subjects that we were taught, except for the few that I loved, Drama, English and Biology. Ive heard some people say that they knew what they wanted to do with their lives when they were very young, but I didnt. I knew there was something more to lifejust what that was, I didnt know.

When I was fourteen, I remember lying outside in the summer in my front garden with my mum and asking her about her family. Mum told me stories about her grandma, Maud, a kind and creative woman whose family owned a flower nursery, and with whom my mother spent a lot of her childhood, painting, baking and playing games.

For the first time, she spoke about my great-grandmother, Hilda. My curiosity was instantly piqued. Hilda was a half-German witch; she made fur coats, played with Ouija boards and cast spells on people to give them headaches when they annoyed herso, basically nothing like the type of witch I am. This was the first time that I realised witchcraft was real; magick was real.

Even though Ive never met these incredible women, somehow I feel connected to them both. After these conversations, it felt like a switch had been flicked in my brain. Yes, Id had interests beforeI had dabbled in hobbies, had a go at playing various musical instruments, become a bit obsessed with dyeing my hair every colour under the sun and even read up on Buddhismbut each time I grew bored and gave up.

Witchcraft was different. I began reading up on it, and over the next few months gradually learned about the different types of witches, spells and crafts, about necromancy, divination, the lot. I purchased my first set of tarot cards soon after and began tarot reading. I also started doing witchcraft. Im cringing nowat how I had no idea what I was doing and I most certainly made mistakesbut all of this was a great learning curve for the future. Id love to say the rest is historyI found my way and that was itbut that would be far from the truth.

My paternal grandmother, Yvonne Nice, had passed away suddenly in the previous year. Looking back, this affected me so much more than I realised at the time. We were all incredibly close to her; she had a fun-loving, larger-than-life personality, and her death left our family in a mutual state of shock for a long time. The combination of my grief and the fact that I was also dealing with a lot of other, typical adolescent stresses was probably the trigger for a long, difficult period of depression. This lasted for most of my teenage years. I also experienced a couple of negative and damaging relationships, the effects of which had severe repercussions on my mental healthresulting in self-harm, anxiety and finally dissociation. It wasnt an easy ride, but, with hindsight, I didnt make things easy for myself. My negativity and jealousy were through the roof; I was unkind and confused, and didnt really give much thought to anyone else. No wonder I was so unhappy.

This period lasted longer than I care to mention, but things did improve. There was no simple fix that stimulated my recovery; it took a long time and a lot of help from many angels. As things began to improve, in 2014, I created my first YouTube video, Kylie Jenner Make-up Tutorial. As you can see, my content has changed direction slightly. I started going out more and began to try and find a purpose. Obviously, life still had its ups and downs after that, but I continued to get better. The challenging aspects of my life, such as relationships, got easier to deal with. I felt as though I had the ability to get through negative times, which I hadnt had before.

There was one day in particular that changed everything for me. I was browsing in a second-hand bookshop in Norwich, when I came across Living Wicca by Scott Cunningham. I had heard of Wicca before, but never looked into it, and was under the popular misconception that a Wiccan was some kind of good witch (see for the differences between Wicca and witchcraft). Scott would become my inspiration and guide for 80 per cent of everything Ive ever done in my Wicca journey.

At this point I hadnt really touched witchcraft for a few months and it seemed like a distant part of me. I didnt purchase the book then, but the drawing on the cover caught my eye. It was a picture of a red-haired lady, holding her hands in the air either side of a goddess symbol. I got home that day, lay on my bed and typed the words into my phone: What is Wicca? Yesas typical as it soundsthat moment marked another beginning for me.