No, it's not another Quizilla quiz (which I sometimes find fun) - it's an issue I've been mulling over while bunches of blog posts and book passages and other random bits of information have been floating about in my brain, turning into some kind of collective stew that hasn't quite congealed yet.

I've referred to myself on occasion as a green witch. This was because I had read a definition of "green witch" that essentially equated this path with the practice of a simpler folk magick, as opposed to formal, ceremonial, ritual-based magick. That definition certainly applies to me, so when trying to describe my path to others I've taken to using that terminology. But other sources have described being a green witch as one who is an herbalist, who works spells and mixes potions with a close affinity for and use of nature. Well, that's not quite me. Living in the city, it's difficult to live as a truly green witch, even if you are a skilled herbalist, which I'm not. So, if I'm not exactly a green witch, then what color witch am I?

Lately I've been reading Raven Kaldera and Tannin Schwartzstein's book The Urban Primitive: Paganism In The Concrete Jungle. Another of my favorite books on the topic of being a witch in the city is Christopher Penczak's City Magick. One of the ideas that is common to both books is that the city has sources of energy unique to its urban essence and that we, as witches, can work with that energy just as we can work with the energy of trees, rocks, and oceans. These authors would argue that typical man-made constructs in an urban environment are no less from nature, although they do not fit many pagan ideals of being from the earth. All matter is natural. In the city, it just finds its way into forms that have evolved far from the states in which we find matter in the woods or in a meadow. In the city we have power lines, concrete, steel, and glass. Neon even!

Other sources of city energy are the radiated feelings and psychic residue from the vast number of its inhabitants. This energy is intense because of the density of living beings in the city. And by extension - and given that cities tend to be where hospitals are located - more people die in cities. Ghosts are much thicker here than in rural or suburban areas. All of this energy combines into a great, soupy morass made up of all of the disparate kinds of energy these beings exude.

If we try to imagine a color that might best represent the forms that energy in the city takes, the closest we might come (neon notwithstanding) is grey. So then, as an urban witch, does that make me a grey witch? It's actually an intriguing thought.

The primary association with the color grey is neutrality. Grey is a color of darkness tempered by light, a balancer of positive and negative, a color of complexity. In magick, grey is used to achieve balance, for attuning to the spirit world, to learn peace and patience, veiling, invisibility, and to assist with vision quests, theft and dreams. It also has to do with neutralization, cancellation, protection, grounding and hex deflecting.

The Urban Primitive posits that one of the most important things that the city witch must learn to do is self protect. We all learn to be street savvy and watchful for physical predators, but we also need to develop the ability to protect ourselves from energy:

... city dwellers need just as much to protect themselves from the constant swirl and fog of energy that billows and throbs in great glittering invisible clouds all around them. Effects of being immersed in that energy all the time range from fatigue to forgetfulness to depression. It's as if your third eye is constantly exposed to a strobe light, with the resulting dull headache. You need to be able to escape from the city's energy vortex, for your own health.

When we think of green, we think of healing. Herbs are used in remedies to heal a world of ills. Just as green witches are skilled herbalists, perhaps grey witches are those who are called upon to be skilled neutralizers of the immense amount of city energy around them. Just as green witches provide healing for themselves and others, so can grey witches achieve balance for ourselves and others through a uniquely urban approach to magick. Spells not only to protect us from harmful effects of the exuberance and abundance of urban energy, but also to provide patience standing in queues, to provide invisibility from psychic predators on the subway, and to deflect thieves who might be tempted to lurk on our fire escapes.

So now, if I'm called upon to define what kind of witch I am, I'll say: I am a Grey Witch!

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 7:57 PM