The Visible and the Invisible

I am a Kitchen Witch. Many people think this is a 'lesser' kind of Craft because it uses simple things. I use things I have around the house for my spells. I rarely buy a spell component. I can make a protection spell out of an old bottle, nails, and vinegar. I can make spells out of yarn. Everybody forgets knot magick is a powerful art, thousands of years old. Or maybe they know it until you want to the tie the wind with cheap, store-bought acrylic yarn. It's one thing to read about magick and quite another to do it. This is why I became a Kitchen Witch- I didn't have everything a spellbook called for. You really figure out what works and what doesn't when you have to DO the work.

To me, all magick falls into two categories, Visible magick which uses lots of 'props' and Invisible magick which is secret. There are a million things in between like burning incense to cleanse a space. People can see the incense, they can smell it, but they might not realize why it's burning. They don't know your intent.

Most people want the Visible magick. The want the candles, the long robes, the stones, and the herbs. There's nothing wrong with this. I like these things too. But we often forget, we are the magick.

This is a traditional Witch's symbol. For most Witches, this is the most powerful object of all. We use pentacles in all manner of spells. It's how we identify ourselves to other Witches. I've had lots of pentacle necklaces over the years. Some were given to me, some I bought. I still have the first one I ever purchased. And it was somewhat expensive. I put a lot of consideration into that necklace. I felt like I was buying a badge of honor. But this is the one I wear now:

I know you're going to say, well, that's a star, not a pentacle. But stars are pentacles. And pentacles are five point stars. Do you remember being a new Witch and it seemed like stars were everywhere? Stars on the flag, stars on the policeman's badge, stars in coloring books, stars to rate movies, stars for luck. Both the pentacle and my star are merely designs based on a circle divided into five 72 degree angles. The difference is I can wear my star around my mother-in-law. This is the Visible being Veiled. But alone, neither star nor pentacle has any power. You can draw a pentacle on a wall and it will not do anything. It is meaningless until someone see it and has a reaction. Even then, power is not being utilized to full extent. It will not protect, it will not heal, it will not banish. Someone will have to use that drawing before it has real meaning.

Sometimes ordinary objects become tools. This is also a veiling. It falls into the Invisible because if it were seen it probably would go unnoticed.

I don't know what this object is. It's thicker in the middle, one side is more flat than curved, and it almost looks like a large magnifying glass, but it doesn't increase the size of anything very much. It's too thick to be picture frame glass, and too thin to be an old headlight. I have no idea what its purpose is. I found it in my sister-in-law's Halloween decorations. I don't know why it was in the box. I don't know if she used it as a crystal ball prop or if it just got tossed into a random box. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was magick. I now keep it wrapped in silk and I use it in my circle work. I'll talk more about this mystery object when I write about transmutation circles in October. As long as we are on the subject as ordinary used as magick, there's 3 magickal objects in this picture. You see the coffee mug behind my glass? It's an agate slice. It is intended to be a coaster. I use it as a coaster, but I also use it to charge items. At the very back of the picture is the third item, a slinky. I use the slinky as a meditation tool to achieve altered states of mind.

You probably wouldn't see evidence of magick if you came to my house. But the magick is there because I am here. I don't know if I look like a Witch or not. This is what comes to some people's minds when they think of a Witch:

and this is me:

To me, the second picture is very magickal because it was taken in my backyard in Tallapoosa County. I'm in my favorite chair, it was spring, and I was near my fire pit where I performed many spells.

This is where I do magick now. This is my porch. It's a between place- neither inside nor out. Will built the porch years ago. For some reason, people don't notice the porch. It's in plain view, first thing you see when you come up my driveway. Yesterday, Will and I were on the porch. He was replacing glass in a window and I was drinking coffee. My mother-in-law drove through the yard on the riding mower. She looked dead at the porch and kept going. A few minutes later she came back. I walked down the steps and she stopped. She said she had came by earlier but didn't see us. We weren't hiding. I don't know why she didn't see us. I've had this same problem with delivery truck drivers. For some reason, they don't see me until I walk into the yard. There's a little bit of Visible- the stones and the gargoyle. I think the potted plants are magick because they are nature brought to civilization. Gardens are always magick even if the gardener isn't a practitioner. A secret garden is even better. I didn't intend for anything to be a secret. I just liked the space. Now I think the porch was already magick. When I began using it as sacred space, the mists between the worlds thickened. This is veiled Invisible Visible.

Is this a spell or just a burning candle? We don't know. We have nothing to put it in context. We have no altar, no wedding party, no house during a storm, no person praying. Whether or not this is magick depends on how we perceive it.

What makes our homes home is how we feel about the place. This is the real art of the Kitchen Witch, to make every little thing magick. Even if no one sees it.