The Green Witch: Your Complete Guide to the Natural Magic of Herbs, Flowers, Essential Oils, and More - Arin Murphy-Hiscock 2017

Focus on Your Energy Centers
Embrace Your Own Power
Discovering the Green Witch

LIKE KITCHEN WITCHCRAFT, GREEN WITCHCRAFT emphasizes practicality and everyday activity. There are no special words, no unique prayers, no uniforms, no holy texts, no obligatory tools, and no specific holidays . . .unless you create them for yourself. While the green path is very much the art of daily practice, it isn’t set apart as sacred. It recognizes the sacred in everyday life. The path of the green witch is sacred—very much so—but not isolated from the secular. The secular life itself is what is sacred to the green witch.

That being said, and understanding the personal nature of living the green life, the green witch path can be said to focus on certain issues and energies experienced in the secular life. Far from being simply a practice based in the use of herbs or green matter, the green witch’s practice revolves around working toward establishing and maintaining harmony within herself, within her community, and with nature.

Focus on Your Energy Centers

There are seven basic areas or energies on which the green witch’s practice focuses:

1. Harmony: within the self; between humanity and nature; between individuals; within a community or family

2. Health: of the body, mind, and spirit; of the immediate natural environment; of the larger environment

3. Love: for the self; for other individuals; for humanity

4. Happiness: in oneself; in others; in the natural world

5. Peace: within oneself; within a community or family; between factions; between nations

6. Abundance: personal; familial; community; nation; nature; also includes prosperity and fertility, both of which are aspects of abundance

7. Protection: personal; familial; community; nature

These seven areas encompass most of life. Let’s look at them one by one.

HARMONY

Harmony is the watchword and main goal of the green witch’s practice. Harmony can be seen as the energy that helps all the other energies flow and is capable of being applied to any of the other six areas of focus to help them along. To maintain harmony, you must balance the six other areas of your life, and when everything is in harmony, these other six areas will flow smoothly and in balance. Of course you can work toward harmony as a general goal as well, and several of the rituals, spells, and recipes in this book promote harmony.

When your personal energy is balanced and all the various parts of yourself are in tune, you are in harmony with yourself. That’s harder to achieve than it sounds. We all possess traits that we dislike and wish we didn’t have. It’s important, however, to acknowledge those bits of your personality and spirit, for if you deny them then you are attempting to reject a part of yourself, and you thus deny part of your own energy. In doing so, you deny part of your connection to nature. Harmony between humankind and nature is important, and fostering that balance between humanity and the natural world is part of the green witch’s work. Because encouraging harmony between individuals is also part of the green path, communication within humanity is one of the most common ways that energy is stirred and passed along. This communication is one of the foundations of society.

HEALTH

Health affects your physical well-being, certainly, but it also affects your emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being. Illness is a result of, or creates, an imbalance in your personal energy, which must then be rebalanced in order to return to health. Listening to and working with your own body’s energy will help you maintain a balanced and healthy mind and spirit. All of these energies are interdependent and deserve to be taken into account when one or another goes out of equilibrium.

The health of your immediate environment also affects the health of your own body, mind, and spirit. Likewise, the health of the environment is a general concern for the green witch, for the environment affects all of humankind.

LOVE

Most people consider love to be an important part of their lives. They spend a lot of energy attempting to find it, keep it, or strengthen it. But there’s more to love than the romantic kind that immediately pops into mind. Healthy love of the self is crucial to a well-balanced personal energy and to healthy self-esteem. Love of family and close friends who form your chosen family is also important, for it is the love of such companions that supports you in your everyday efforts. Maintaining positive and balanced relationships with these people is integral to your emotional and spiritual balance. Love for all of humanity is also an important area of focus for the green witch, even though it can be difficult to love someone you do not know personally or someone you do not like. Loving others is an example of honoring and respecting nature and all nature’s creatures: it is an act of honoring their very existence and their place within nature’s energy.

HAPPINESS

Like love, many people strive for happiness and joy. There are many different kinds of happiness. Your own joy, for example, is one goal, but you can also work for the happiness of others and of the natural world. While the natural world does not necessarily feel emotions as you do, there is a sense of peace and contentment to be found when an aspect of or object within the natural world is in harmony with its surroundings or with you. This state can be considered happiness. It is important to remember that happiness is very much a personal thing, and that no one act or item will make everyone happy. Happiness also encompasses the ability to rejoice and celebrate the self, and each person celebrates the self in a unique fashion.

PEACE

Peace can mean a variety of different things depending on your need: serenity, relaxation, an absence of aggression, and tranquility, for example. Like happiness, peace is a highly individual concept, and thus what constitutes peace for you may be different from how someone else defines it. When a family or community is at peace, it is balanced within itself and in harmony with surrounding communities. The green witch works for tranquility and peace, for in a peaceful environment energies that would otherwise be directed toward defense or attack of some kind can instead be directed toward more productive and positive actions.

ABUNDANCE

Abundance is an area of focus that encompasses such energies as prosperity and fertility. When you have an abundance of something, you no longer worry about it (unless it is an abundance of problems!), and you feel secure enough to focus on the areas of your life that require your attention in order to bring them into balance. If your needs are seen to, then you have the freedom to care for others. As with the other areas of focus, the green witch may look to personal, familial, and community abundance, as well as to ensuring the fertility and abundance of the natural world.

PROTECTION

Protection involves safeguarding something precious. It can be protecting your physical body or the bodies of others, your possessions, your emotional well-being, the soul or spirit of an individual, the well-being of a family or community, or the natural world, either locally or globally. When we are protected we feel safe and free to pursue other avenues of self-expression and development.

We’ll return again and again to these seven categories as we explore the practice of the green witch. You will see these focal areas mentioned with recipes and rituals to help you understand the purposes for which they may be used.