Witchery: Embrace the Witch Within - Juliet Diaz 2019

Connecting with Your Inner Witch
Practical Magick

One of the things from my childhood that I’m most grateful for is the journal that my mother handed to me when I was seven years old. It was blue and had Disney’s Little Mermaid on the cover. (I didn’t like the cover, but I didn’t say so.) I quickly ran into my room and shut myself in my secret hiding spot in the closet. I lit a lantern I kept there, opened the journal, and just stared at it. The only thing I could think to put in it was a drawing. So I drew some stars and a giant Moon. I drew the graveyard across the street from where I lived and added some ghosts. I took a hard look at what I’d drawn and for some strange reason I felt compelled to write the words ’Full Moon’ next to the Moon, and then I labeled everything I had drawn: ’Stars’ next to the stars, ’Clouds,’ next to the clouds, and so on.

It was completely new to me to label what I had drawn, and then I remembered the big old book my mother wrote in but never allowed me to touch. I ran to the kitchen to try to take a peek. When she wasn’t looking, I took my chance… Wow! To my surprise, it was full of drawings with labels and writings. Without looking back at me (I swear she had eyes in the back of her head) she said, ’You can look, but don’t touch. Don’t copy, but create your own.’ I asked her why she liked to draw vegetables and plants, and she said, ’I like to keep a record of the things that speak to me and the conversations we have.’ I looked at her and thought, You speak to celery? What could celery possibly have to say?

From that moment I wrote all of my secrets and thoughts in my journal and drew the things I had conversations with — the bees, butterflies, trees, and spirits. I stuck into it random things I’d found and liked, especially those that spoke to me. I began to understand what that great big book was for, and from then on I kept what I now call a Witch’s Journal.