Sarah Lyons - Revolutionary Witchcraft: A Guide to Magical Activism

Being an activist means, in part, being actively engaged with the world around you. Its like making a pact between yourself and the spirit of the earth, that youre going to continue fighting for it, and looking at the bad parts of it, even when thats deeply uncomfortable. Once you realize how messed up the world is, its hard to let that goand man oh man are things messed up right now!

As an activist myself, Ive been all over the place the last few years, taking stock of whats been going on and advocating for change. Ive marched, organized, and agitated; slept in tents on the path of pipelines with snipers in the distant hills; been arrested for civil disobedience on one of the largest bridges in New York City; and seen tanks rolling down more than one streetunder two different presidential administrations. Its all given me so many reasons for despair, but also for hope.

Why hope? Because its been incredibly heartening to see more and more people get enraged and engaged over the last few years. Theres a building sense, around the world and especially in the United States, that things just cant go on the way they have been for much longer. Young people, from my generation and the ones below, seem to have an especially keen sense of whats happening and what needs to change. People in general are more politically engaged than they have been in years.

Now, its been said that there is no such thing as a coincidence. In fact, Im saying that, right now. (Give me a second while I get my first foot up on this soapbox right here.)

I dont think its a coincidence at all that witchcraft and the occult are seeing a revival at the same time there are great shifts in our politics. In my humblest opinion, understanding and doing witchcraft the right way mean acknowledging its political dimension. Politics, after all, is about way more than just elections. Politics is about the movement, wielding, and embodiment of power in our world. That may not seem immediately tied to witchcraft, but try replacing the word power in that sentence with energy and youll start to get a sense of how much the political is tied in with the magical.

Witchcraft in particular is having a bit of a momenta fact that is still a little weird to me, since up until very recently being into the occult was a bit like the goth version of being a Revolutionary War reenactor (but hey, Im not complaining!).

We could go into all sorts of fancy sociological reasons for the revival of witchcraft. I could run the data, pop out some cool charts, and delve into some boring statistics about markets and demographics and on and on. At the end of all that, we might have some good reasons behind why kids these days love the occult so much, but what good would that be for us? Witchcraft is about what you do with it, and I say that while there are many reasons, scientific, economic, and spiritual, for the rise of witchcraft, what really matters is what we do with the power of the witch.

And powerful witches are getting involved! Witchcraft is in many ways the earths immune system kicking in at the last moment and, I dont know if youve heard, but the earth is kind of in trouble right now. Like Peter Grey writes in his Manifesto of Apocalyptic Witchcraft: If the land is poisoned, then witchcraft must respond. So how then do we respond? Welcome to the world of magical activism!

This is a book about magic, politics, and how we can change the world when we blend the two together. If you know lots about witchcraft, but nothing about politics outside a voting booth, this book is for you. If you know loads about politics, but your knowledge of witchcraft begins and ends with Harry Potter, this book is for you, too.

Maybe you bought this book for a cool kid in your family, and you decided to flip through it. Maybe at a certain point you went By science, this womans crazy! Its all good, I get that this much woo-woo in a book about activism can make some people uncomfortable, and for good reason! Religion and spirituality combined with politics have hurt a lot of people, and so some just choose to say no thank you to the whole thing. I actually dont mind if youre one of those people who is side-eyeing this book right now, but I will make a utilitarian plea to you, just once, before you put it down and walk out of the store to post something angry on social media: Magic, or at least a belief in magic, has been around for pretty much ever, at least if the oldest artifacts of humanity are to be believed. And the way I see it, we can either make a home for these beliefs or face the consequences of leaving all this power and history for our political adversaries.

Or maybe you are that cool kid and got really excited when you saw this book! Maybe youve read a bunch about witchcraft, and you know it has something to do with feminism, which means it could possibly have something to do with activism. You know something is wrong with the world, but dang, you just dont know how to make the pieces fit! Well dont worry, this book will hopefully be just the metaphysical duct tape you were looking for to pull it all together for you.

This book is about ways to bring your witchcraft into the revolution against what Im going to call The Disenchanted World. To help fight against this great evil, Ill be going through different concepts and ideas pulled from magic, grounding them in political history, and giving you exercises to bring it all into the mix. Ive tried to keep these rituals and exercises pretty loosey-goosey, since I think you should be able to add your own pizzazz once youve gotten the hang of them. Having said that, I do expect you to, at some point, really sit down and work through the practices in this book. Theres a weird, but common, misconception that witchcraft is radical because it gets you something for nothing or doesnt require work. Oh honey, if only! Ive been at this game for over a decade, and Ive still got work to do. Now, dont let that scare youthese exercises are pretty 101. Im just saying that even Hogwarts assigns homework.