I often use the term "witch" to describe myself, but let me be clear - I prefer to say "magician" usually, "witch" is just slang to me. I hang out with a lot of self identified witches and pagans, among other groups (my main gang are mostly from Abrahamic traditions). The reason I often say I'm a witch is because I feel I can get away with it. Toronto, though not Salem, New Orleans or any city where magick is a popular subject matter, is pretty witch friendly, we even had WITCHfest North for a few years, a festival that celebrated the end of an archaic Canadian law that was designed to criminalize professional use of witchcraft.
Another reason is that I expect people will just call me a witch after a certain point anyway, women with interesting spiritual skills have often been accused of this throughout the times, so why not just own it? I'm goth, I love Hallowe'en, so I'll roll with it.
What I really think I am (and I probably can't get away with this right now) is a shaman, or witch doctor. I don't yet have that role in society to really call myself that, but what I did suffer was that archetypal spiritual crisis that arises when a shaman is called to initiate. I became possessed by evil spirit, the old self was destroyed, I felt chewed up by maggots and cut into with the sensation of razor blades while tormented by psychological horror, I saw my power animal come forward, and it was Cobra. A devil tormented me while angels cheered me on. I had to heal myself by reintegrating, and shaping the new self. In the end, after figuring out my medicines, I healed, and now I don't need Latuda anymore.
Unfortunately, if I were to go around claiming this at this point, I would eventually face some asshole who would want to chime in that I can't be a real shaman because I'm white, I don't come from a traditional society, I don't have the right lineage, or whatever reason they would use to try to discredit me, believing that in doing so, they are doing indigenous people a favour by "calling out" some random white chick who longs to discuss her experiences. But real shamans have to get sick and solve it to be the real deal, one can't simply want to be a shaman, train in a school of shamanic studies, get a certificate, and then they're fit to practice. You have to be royally fucked up by the spirit world, risk your life to save yourself, and learn your power that way, which is exactly what happened to me. I don't yet have the role of the shaman in any sense in this society, so perhaps I'm still just a student, waiting for the next stage. I believe anyone from any group can be a shaman, including caucasians in the west, but you must be called with the sickness, or you are a wannabe.
Schizotypal Personality Disorder was the brief insult I have to bear in mental health care when I asked for ECT, which is one of the most insulting things one could call a true shaman. It feels like an attempt to discredit my experiences outright, rather than find any meaning in them, and I had to shut it down with reasoning by outlining that, at the very least, there were simply not enough symptoms there to call me this. I am convinced that, on the world stage, Toronto is a bimbo for ideas related to consciousness, which is really disappointing for a city this multicultural, and therefore multi-faith too. We should know better, we should do better, white supremacy could stand to learn from other groups for a field of medicine that seeks to treat the most spiritual vessel of them all = the human mind.
So, I will keep using the term "witch", along with terms like "magician" and definitely "mystic" (I know I am the real deal that way), I am not about to go around claiming I'm a shaman until it is proven to me as well.
-Saraƒin
